The Whitechapel Conspiracy - Anne Perry [63]
“Actually,” she said quietly when Gracie had brewed the tea and brought it, “I think Jack is really worried, not about anarchists, who are only individual madmen, but about the feeling everywhere. The monarchy is very unpopular, you know, and not just with the sort of people you would expect, but with some who are very important and perhaps you would not think.”
“Unpopular?” Charlotte was puzzled. “In what way? I know people think the Queen should do far more, but they’ve said that for thirty years. Does Jack think it’s any different now?”
“I don’t know that it’s different.” Emily was very grave. She chose her words carefully, weighing them before she spoke. “But he says it is much more serious. The Prince of Wales spends an enormous amount of money, you know, and most of it is borrowed. He owes all over the place, and to all kinds of people. He doesn’t seem to be able to stop himself, and if he realizes what harm it is doing, then he doesn’t care.”
“Political harm?” Charlotte asked.
“Eventually, yes.” Emily lowered her voice. “There are some people who think that when the old Queen dies that will be the end of the monarchy.”
Charlotte was startled. “Really?” It was a surprisingly unpleasant thought. She was not quite sure why she minded. It would take some of the color out of life, some of the glamour. Even if you never saw the countesses and the duchesses, if there was no way in the world you would ever be a lady, far less a princess, it would make things a little grayer if they should not exist anymore. People would always have heroes, real or false. There was nothing essentially noble about the aristocracy. But then the heroes who would be put in their places would not necessary be chosen for their virtue or achievement; it might as easily be for wealth or beauty. Then the magic would be gone for no reason, no gain.
All of which was a silly argument, and she knew it. What mattered was the change, and a change born of hatred was frightening because so often it was done without thought or knowledge. So much could not be foreseen.
“That’s what Jack says.” Emily was watching her closely, her tea forgotten. “And what bothers him the most is that there are powerful interests who are royalist and will do anything to keep things as they are … and I mean anything!” She bit her lip. “When he said that, I pressed him what he meant, and he wouldn’t answer me. He went quiet and sort of … into himself, the way he does if he isn’t well. It seems an odd thing to say, but I think he was afraid.” She stopped abruptly, looking down at her hands again, as if she had said something of which she was ashamed. Perhaps she had not meant to reveal so much of what was vulnerable, and therefore private.
Charlotte felt chilled. There was too much to be afraid of already. She wished to know more, but there was no point in pressing Emily. If she had been able to tell her then she would have done so. It was an ugly and lonely thought. “You don’t realize how much you value what you have, with all its problems, until someone threatens to destroy it and put his own ideas in its place,” she said ruefully. “I don’t mind a little change, but I don’t want a lot. Can you have a little change, do you suppose? Or does it have to be all or nothing? Do they have to smash everything in order to make any of it different?”
“That depends on the people,” Emily replied with a tight, sad little smile. “If you’ll bend, then no. If you won’t, if you do a Marie Antoinette, then perhaps it’s either the crown or the guillotine.”
“Was she really so stupid?”
“I don’t know. It’s just an example. No one’s going to behead our Queen. At least I don’t imagine so.”
“I don’t suppose the French imagined so either,” Charlotte said dryly. “I wish I hadn’t thought of that!”
“We aren’t French.” Emily’s voice was firm, even angry.
“Tell Charles I,” Charlotte retorted, picturing in her mind Van Dyke’s sad, brilliant portrait of that unfortunate man, stubborn to his beliefs right to the scaffold.
“That wasn’t a revolution.” Emily retreated to the literal.
“It was a civil