Lily Fairchild. Don Gutteridge

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      An excuse was always found to explain her absence from errands into Port Sarnia and occasional travellers, brought to their door by a January squall or one of February’s ice-storms, only smiled their gratitude for the warmth of Lily’s hospitality.

      In fact the only visitors to arrive with a predetermined purpose were three gentlemen who said they were from “the railway” and asked to see Bridie alone. Lily and Chester went for a slow walk through the arbours of snow, holding each other upright and sending their laughter skyward. When they got back, Bridie forced a smile to acknowledge their return, but Lily recognized the subtle signs that the news was grim.

      “They wanted to buy us out,” she scoffed. “I told them where to go, and it ain’t cool there.”

      By now, the woodlot was cleared on the north-east side right back to the Grand Trunk property. Only a windbreak of pines on the north-west side separated them from the village-to-be. Bridie could cut and saw and haul and also keep an appraiser’s eye on the phantom town-site wherein so many of her hopes now lay.

      What surprised Lily about the baby taking shape in her body was how disconnected its existence seemed from the event that initiated it. Certainly the Prince’s pleasure in of that lusty and extraordinary encounter did not have thisend in view. Nor did Lily’s own surrender have any purpose but the immediacy of its joy and pain, the need to feel that she was the agent, not just a passive observer, of her own life. But the child inside her proclaimed its separate existence almost from the start, impudent and demanding.

      Her abdomen, as Bridie predicted, swelled outward and inward as well, pressing against her back. Her belly felt like a rind or a casing that might harden and burst without warning in the night. The babe cared little that she could neither walk nor sit nor lie with ease. Moreover, when she wanted to sleep, it decided it wanted to swim. Huffing and panting at the end of a day’s work, she could feel it sucking on her flagging energies, pulling the best of her blood into its own. Yet she felt no resentment. I will bear you, she thought often, then I will name you, and love you. Forever.

      By mid-April the snows had vanished. The crocuses and stove-pipes dotted the lawns and gardens of the town by the River and the Lake. The rains fell, gentle and inevitable. Surveyors arrived to lay out the streets and lots of yet another village destined to germinate and bloom within a single season. Bridie looked on this event and at the unswaddled belly of her niece, and permitted her heart to leap in expectation.

      No one at the Great Western station that April evening took any particular notice of an impeccably attired gentleman, accompanied by his valet, as he disembarked from the first-class Toronto car and crossed to the livery at the east end of the building. Sarnia was an important town now: politicians and businessmen and pretenders of all sorts stepped off the 6:40 almost every day of the week. Such anonymity seemed to suit this visitor’s liking for the exchange which resulted in the rental of a democrat –sans local driver – was done with despatch and discretion. The valet took the reins while the Honourable Charles Gunther Murchison settled down into leather and velvet, and studiously ignored the regional scenery. They turned north-east up the Errol Road and drove into the dusk of early spring. It was almost dark when the driver, following some route previously committed to memory, veered into the lane of the Ramsbottom farm.

      Having made introductions, Murchison dispatched his valet to the rig and turned to address Bridie, clearly the head of the household, directly. Chester perched on the edge of his chair, a spectator. Lily was in her bedroom, just waking from a restless doze.

      “I have come on the most urgent of matters, Mrs. Ramsbottom, straight from the office of Governor Head himself. I apologize again for the suddenness of our appearance so late in the day, but when you hear what news I bring, you will understand our need for covert action. Several lives are at stake.”

      Chester leaned forward; Bridie blinked but gave no ground. “Whose lives?” she asked evenly.

      “Before I am permitted to offer detailed explanations, I must talk with your...niece.” He was like an eagle at home in this strange eyrie, his bronze pate feathered at the sides with silvery whiskers, his aquiline beak and assayer’s eyes piercing every shadow in the coal-oil gloom, his bearing regal as befitting a man who has twice been a cabinet minister, who stared down a dozen rebel guns in 1837 and prevailed.

      “My niece isn’t well,” Bridie said. “She’s not available to you, sir, nor to the governor.”

      Murchison took no offense. “I’m afraid she must be. The orders I am under, you see, come from Her Majesty.”

      Uncle Chester fell part-way off his chair and barely recovered in time to abort the crick in his back. Lily opened her eyes.

      “The Queen?”

      “Yes. Directly from the palace, through His Excellency in Quebec. I have been asked to seek out and speak with your niece on a matter of the utmost delicacy and urgency.”

      A glimmer of insight reached Bridie’s eyes, then faded in disbelief.

      “With all respect, sir, my niece is ill and can’t be disturbed. If you tell me what you need, of me or her, I’ll talk to her in the morning. Surely even our Queen would understand the need not to upset a sick child.”

      Lily raised her head, the better to catch Murchison’s words. “I appreciate your desire to protect your niece, Mrs. Ramsbottom, and I know His Excellency and Her Majesty would applaud your loyalty and solicitude. But it is imperative that I at least seeyour niece. If she is ill, I can return to speak with her tomorrow.”

      “It’s all right, Auntie,” Lily said stepping slowly into the room’s light.

      Twenty minutes later, Aunt Bridie was sitting in the straightback chair by the stove. Her face was ashen.

      “You see,” Murchison was explaining in lower but no-less-formal tones, “I had no idea whether the girl had informed you of the possible paternity of the child. Indeed, we did not know for sure that the girl was ‘enceinte’, though one of our sources, a young man disguised as a lost traveller and sitting now in my carriage, reported the possibility to us two months ago. All this was carried out, you understand, at the request of Her Majesty after a belated confession on the part of His Highness. Then, of course, we had to use the utmost discretion possible to ascertain the moral character of the girl. It proved, as I’m sure you know, ma’am, to be unimpeachably stainless.” He was speaking directly to the stunned Bridie, averting his eagle gaze from the Lily’s heavy-laden figure seated to his right.

      “It is the Prince’s babe,” Lily said again.

      Murchison shifted tone and stance, as if he were a lawyer changing from defense to prosecution. “Now that these most difficult and delicate matters are clear, I have the awful duty to inform you of the decisions taken, as I have said, at the highest levels of state. I have been commanded to explain to you that these decisions have been reached after full consideration of the best and just interests of all parties concerned. The Prince, you will be pleased to know, is contrite and eager to make amends for his youthful indiscretion.” He looked about for some confirmation, but only Chester was nodding, unconsciously.

      “Now that we know the baby will have royal blood in its veins, we are under the strictest obligation, as citizens and subjects of the Empire, to treat that fact with the awe and respect it deserves. Her Majesty expressly wishes the child to be born in circumstances most conducive to its general health, including the utmost care of the mother during the crucial days of her lying-in. The best doctors and midwives are to be consulted; a hospital or surgery must be close at hand in case of emergencies.”

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