Murder Most Royal

’

The Queen didn’t mind the girl’s attitude and was glad there weren’t any eager courtiers around to leap, unnecessarily, to her defence. In fact, she admired Ivy’s spirit, and her unguarded honesty. It was vanishingly rare for her to be challenged in this way by one of her subjects, or indeed anyone other than Philip in a bad mood, or Anne in a very bad one.

‘Did you know Ned St Cyr?’ she asked, not in the spirit of enquiry this time, but out of curiosity. ‘You sound as though you have a lot in common.’

‘Yeah, I did,’ Ivy said. ‘Auntie Judy introduced me. She thought I might like to work on the rewilding thing.’

Ivy rolled her eyes with frustration. ‘I was going to, after my exams. It’s like literally the last chance we’ve got to save the planet. The way it’s going, it’s dying. Mr St Cyr was fighting for the future. If he’d carried on, people would’ve been coming from all over the world to see what he was up to.’

The Queen watched the girl’s expression transform as she spoke. The habitual surliness was replaced by shining-eyed conviction and a reasonable mastery of her facts.

‘You describe it quite compellingly,’ she admitted.

Ivy shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now. Someone else’ll take over. The land will be smothered in pesticides and the poor soil’ll be forced to produce bad food until it’s nothing but dust.’

This was not a thought the Queen wished to linger on. She always liked to find hope if she possibly could.

‘Perhaps you should be a professional rewilder,’ she suggested.

Instantly, the surliness was back. ‘You need land for that . . . ma’am. Like yours.’

‘Landowners need managers and experts to advise them.’

The Queen looked across at her, head down, striding forward. ‘I don’t doubt you will.’

They were nearly back at the house.

‘Thank you for joining me. That was very interesting,’ the Queen told her.

‘No worries, ma’am,’ Ivy said, with a lopsided grin. ‘Thanks for looking out for my brother. You won’t regret it.’

This ‘ma’am’ had come naturally, the Queen noticed. She felt, if not exactly honoured, then certainly gratified. Ivy was something of a wild creature herself and such gestures had to be earned.

On her way inside, she encountered Philip returning from a visit of his own to friends in the Fens. They paused together in the entrance to the saloon, where the jockey’s weighing scales still stood that had once been used to ensure guests of her great-grandfather were suitably well fed. She told Philip about Ivy’s passionate stance on livestock, because she wanted to see how far he could raise his eyebrows.

‘Pah! Does the girl want us to live on lentils?’

‘And who will grow them? Could she bear for the precious little things to be harvested?’

‘She would manage,’ the Queen said drily.

‘I heard a very funny joke about lentils and chickpeas at Christmas. Gerry Harcourt told me. What’s the difference between a lentil and a chickpea? You wouldn’t pay a hundred pounds to have a lentil—’ He stopped abruptly, mid-flow. ‘Never mind. Actually, I heard about a man in Suffolk who’s going to grow them commercially next year. Interesting crop. I must talk to Charles about it. Mind you, I suppose if Miss Ivy Raspberry had her way, even Sandringham would end up as a wild reserve.’

‘I rather think so.’

‘How will Charles and William support seven hundred people if they can’t work the land, I ask you? Or shoot? God, by the time we get to poor George the place will be nothing but a glamping fest for butterfly fanatics – if he’s lucky.’

Philip spat out the words, but he grew thoughtful. The Queen sensed he would rather love being outdoors, surrounded by butterflies. He certainly had on various trips to the jungle they had enjoyed during their royal tours. It was better than her vision of theme parks and golf courses: a sign of the return to the wild nature of their youth, when the countryside was messy and teeming with life, before all the hedgerows were scrubbed out and fields enlarged to feed the nation, and drenched with the pesticides of which Ivy Raspberry so vehemently disapproved.

‘I’m off. I have work to do,’ he said, shaking off his brief reverie and heading towards his library.

The Queen went upstairs to change. By the time little George was in charge, it would be entirely up to him how to run the estate, of course. One left it in as good order as one could, and hoped for the best. Who would win? she wondered. The farmers who wanted every bit of utility from ever-depleted soil, or the wilders who seemed to think the nation could live on bees and birdsong? She could see that both had the best interests of the land at heart, and one could only hope they would find a way of working it out together. It saddened her, and struck her as somewhat ridiculous, that they were constantly at each other’s throats.