The Royal Librarian, page 1
THE ROYAL LIBRARIAN
Daisy Wood
Copyright
Published by AVON
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2024
Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 2024
Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Cover photographs: © Ildiko Neer/Arcangel Images (woman reading), © David Lichtneker/Arcangel Images (library interior)
Jennie Walters asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008636920
Ebook Edition © April 2024 ISBN: 9780008636913
Version: 2024-01-16
Dedication
For Molly Walker-Sharp
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s note
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
Author’s note
This novel is a work of fiction. The plot described in the following pages has no basis in reality, and there’s no suggestion that the Royal Librarian at Windsor Castle during the Second World War handed over any of his responsibilities. Yet it’s undoubtedly true that the Royal Family would have been in great danger had Britain been invaded by Nazi Germany, which seemed likely during the summer of 1940. Hitler apparently believed King George VI would abdicate during the relentless bombing of London during the Blitz, which began that September, and there’s evidence that he was planning to reinstate the Duke of Windsor on the throne with a puppet government carrying out Nazi orders, similar to the Vichy regime in France.
The princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, stayed at Windsor from May 1940 until the end of the war, and Princess Elizabeth enlisted in the ATS when she turned eighteen in 1945. Plans were prepared for the Royal Family to be secretly evacuated to a house in the country – and possibly from there to Canada – but they were never put into effect. I’ve tried to convey something of the atmosphere of the castle in those times: the chilly stone corridors, gloomy dungeons and weapons mounted on every wall. And something of the princesses’ characters, too: Elizabeth aware of her responsibilities from a young age, and Margaret charming but naughty, clamouring for attention.
For obvious reasons, it’s been difficult to find out much about life at Windsor Castle both then and now. I was directed to a fascinating file in the Royal Archives at Windsor, giving details of ration cards, fuel restrictions, the need to salvage string – and even a letter from one of the secretaries living in the north terrace, requesting permission to continue using their wireless sets, which I wove into the story. And Marion Crawford, the princesses’ nanny, recounts in her book The Little Princesses being taken to the vaults by the Royal Librarian and shown the Crown Jewels, stuffed into a biscuit tin.
I was also inspired to create the character of George Sinclair by reading about Thomas Kendrick and his MI6 secretaries at the British Passport Office in Vienna; he and his staff worked long hours granting visas that enabled hundreds of Austrian Jews to escape the country. Helen Fry’s books, The Walls Have Ears and Spymaster: The Man Who Saved MI6, give a fascinating insight into this extraordinary man. And that dreadful incident in the Prater park in Vienna on 23 April 1938, which I describe in the book, is also true.
In short, I’ve taken a few facts and a lot of imagination to launch a giant ‘what if?’ I hope readers will forgive my temerity, and enjoy the ride.
Prologue
Windsor Castle, July 1940
Sophie is taken away through St George’s Gate for the last time. She knows in her heart she won’t be coming back. Her wrists are handcuffed behind her back, and she’s escorted by two policemen, one on each side, as though she were the most dangerous criminal in Britain. ‘I’m not the enemy,’ she wants to shout, but no one will believe her. Heads turned as she marched along the corridors from the Superintendent’s office, past footmen in battle-dress livery and housemaids appearing from nowhere to gawp. She could guess what they were thinking: ‘We never trusted that girl, and look how right we were.’
I am the Royal Librarian, she reminds herself, straightening her shoulders, and I have done nothing wrong. Is that true, though? Even now, she has no idea.
She catches sight of the Long Walk rolling away through the park, and the memory of the times she has found sanctuary there, mourning her parents, pierces her like a knife. What would they say if they could see her, paraded in all her shame? But they are both gone, and she is alone in a strange country. She has been playing for high stakes and lost the game, and there is no one to speak up for her anymore.
Chapter One
Vienna, March 1938
Sophie and her father listened in silence to the noise outside their apartment: car horns blaring, people cheering, a bicycle bell trilling over and over like a demented bird and, far in the distance, the alarming beat of drums. The wireless was only playing German military music, so they’d switched it off.
Sophie went to the window and stared out for the hundredth time at the people milling about below, many clutching swastika flags that matched the banners hanging from balconies and pasted over hoardings. A few days before, the Chancellor had announced his resignation on the radio and let the Nazis take control of the government. He’d asked God to bless Austria at the end of the broadcast, but without much hope. ‘God save us all,’ Sophie’s mother Ingrid had muttered, and her father had had tears in his eyes. And now Adolf Hitler was back in the country of his birth, being driven in triumph at that very moment through the streets he’d once swept. Ingrid had gone to her cake shop, not far from the Ringstrasse, to make sure it wasn’t looted; there was a febrile atmosphere in the city that they all knew could soon lead to violence. The schools were closed, and so was the library where Sophie worked. Today, anything could happen – and her little sister Hanna still wasn’t home. Sophie reproached herself for letting Hanna out to play at her best friend’s house. The Blumenthals lived several streets away and Gretel’s older brother had recently joined the Hitler Youth brigade. What if Frau Blumenthal had taken Hanna and Gretel out into the streets to join in the celebrations?
She turned away from the window, sighing.
‘Try not to worry,’ her father said, looking up from his book. ‘Hanna’s with Gretel and she’s a sensible girl – I’m sure they’ll stick together.’
Yet Sophie couldn’t bear to be confined a minute longer in the dark, cramped apartment. ‘I’ll go round to the Blumenthals’,’ she told him. ‘I shouldn’t have let her visit them today. The least I can do is bring her back.’
‘You’d be better off staying here,’ Otto replied. ‘They might have gone out somewhere and you have no idea where.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,’ Sophie said. ‘We should be together at a time like this and it’s bad enough Mutti’s not home. I need to find my sister.’
Her father shifted uneasily in his chair. He didn’t want to be left alone, Sophie realised, with a pang of sympathy mixed with irritation and fear. What would happen to the family if Otto were no longer in charge?
‘Well, if there’s any sign of trouble,’ he warned, ‘come straight home.’
Not so long ago, he would have been out looking for his daughter himself, but since losing his job at the National Library the week before, he hadn’t left the apartment. Sophie would find him sitting in a chair, staring into s pace. Her father’s only crime was to have Jewish parents: a fact she and her sister had hardly been aware of until recently. Now everyone seemed to know Herr Klein’s guilty secret. Sophie could only assume that somehow the Blumenthals hadn’t heard; as soon as they did, the invitations to play with Gretel would dry up. Her quietly confident father had become timid and hesitant, unable to make the smallest decision. The day before, a neighbour from the floor above – a minor government official – had rapped on their door and virtually pushed his way in, demanding the keys to the family car.
‘You won’t be needing it anymore,’ the man had said, and laughed. ‘It’s not as though you can go anywhere.’
Otto had made some half-hearted protest but given in embarrassingly quickly when the neighbour threatened to come back with his friends. ‘What could I do?’ he’d said to the family. ‘He’d have taken the car anyway.’ But he couldn’t look any of them in the face and spent the afternoon shut in his bedroom.
Sophie took her coat from the hall stand, tied a headscarf low over her brow and ran down the stairs of their apartment building. Neither she nor Hanna conformed to the dark-haired Jewish stereotype. Sophie was a blend of her parents’ colouring, with olive skin that turned nut-brown in summer, honey-coloured hair and light green eyes, while Hanna’s blonde curls and blue eyes came directly from their mother. No one would think she had a drop of Jewish blood in her. Hanna had probably simply lost track of the time, parading about Gretel’s apartment in Frau Blumenthal’s high-heeled shoes or chatting with her friend on the swings in the park nearby. There was no answer when Sophie rang the bell of the Blumenthals’ apartment, however, and the park was empty save for an elderly man, marooned on a bench with his dog. Everyone was out in the streets.
Sophie’s heart quickened as she stepped into the crowded street, scanning the various groups of people for a glimpse of Hanna’s red beret and blue coat. It was a bright spring afternoon, the tightly furled buds of the magnolia trees about to burst into flower.
‘Achtung!’ shouted a teenage boy, wobbling past on his bicycle with a girl balanced on the crossbar who shrieked with laughter. Sophie stepped back, colliding with a family dressed in their best clothes, their faces alight with excitement and the children clutching swastika flags. ‘Hurry up, Grandpa,’ a small boy urged. ‘We’ll never catch up with the Führer at this rate!’
And then walking down the middle of the road came a gang of the Hitler Youth, arms linked, chests puffed out in white shirts and red swastika armbands. There must have been about ten of them, pink-cheeked and proud in their moment of glory. Sophie took shelter in the doorway of an apartment building and turned her face away as they marched by. The little boy who’d urged his grandfather to hurry shouted, ‘Sieg Heil!’ in a squeaky voice and raised his right arm in the Nazi salute, which they ignored.
‘What are you doing, sucking up to those thugs?’ Sophie felt like asking the kid, but the shameful truth was, she was frightened of the boys, even though they couldn’t have been older than fourteen or fifteen. She had once seen a pair of them kick away the stick of an elderly rabbi and beat him with it when he fell in the gutter. When she’d tried to intervene, one had twisted her arm behind her back until she’d cried out in pain. They did as they pleased because no one dared stop them, and now their leader had arrived, they would be bolder and nastier than ever.
Sophie waited until the Hitler Youth were a safe distance away before joining the stream of people heading for the city centre. She would go as far as the canal, she decided, and hope to meet Hanna and Gretel on their way home. Approaching the bridge, she found barriers in place along the main road as ranks of soldiers in grey-green uniform with rifles over their shoulders marched in time with the military band towards the centre of the old town, while SS stormtroopers linked arms to hold back the spectators. Following behind the troops were teams of horses pulling wheeled guns, jeeps crammed with military personnel and then a long line of grey Mercedes gliding past with darkened windows. Swastikas were everywhere she looked: on the flags waved by children, on the soldier’s armbands, rippling on banners hung from balconies. And all around her, people were cheering at the tops of their voices, craning to catch a glimpse of the German troops who had come to occupy their country.
‘Sieg Heil!’ screamed a middle-aged woman next to Sophie, raising her right arm in the Nazi salute and practically toppling over in her excitement. Children were hoisted on their parents’ shoulders, boys perched on lampposts and the stormtroopers watched with grim satisfaction.
‘I saw him, the Führer,’ shouted a man pushing his way through. ‘Half an hour ago. He was standing in a Jeep. You might as well leave; he won’t come this way again.’ But nobody took any notice.
Sophie’s heart was hammering against her chest as she fumbled to retie her headscarf, dislodged in the melee. She couldn’t bear to think of her little sister lost in this scrum but there was no hope of finding Hanna here and being surrounded a second longer by these idiotic, grinning faces was intolerable.
‘Let me through,’ she called, raising her arms in front of her face. ‘I have to get home.’
‘Watch it,’ a man growled, and a shove in the back sent her stumbling forward into the side of a large woman in a fur coat who tutted and thrust her away, so vigorously that she fell on her hands and knees. I could die here, she thought; these people could trample me underfoot and no one would do anything to help. They could sense she was afraid and would turn on her like a pack of wild animals.
Yet just at that moment, she heard a voice ask, ‘Sophie? Is that you?’ and someone was lifting her up.
Her rescuer was Wilhelm Fischer: a boy she’d known in junior school who lived not far from the Kleins, and whom she still occasionally bumped into. He’d been the cleverest boy in the class and she the cleverest girl, and they’d always been rivals rather than friends. She found him arrogant and he, she suspected, thought her a prig. Still, she was relieved to see him now.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, taking her by the arm and managing to clear a path through the crowd. He was broad-shouldered with sharp elbows and a menacing air, and he was blond, too: as fair as any Aryan youth leader could have wanted. People got out of his way.
Wilhelm steered her towards a quieter side street and then into the shelter of an arched doorway, where they took stock of each other. He looked much older than the last time she’d seen him, the year before, skating with his friends around the outdoor ice rink. He’d lost weight since then and needed a shave.
‘Come to celebrate our glorious leader?’ he asked, scrutinising her. ‘Where’s your flag?’
‘I’m just trying to find my little sister,’ she replied. ‘Where’s yours?’
‘I must have left it at home.’ He glanced warily up and down the street before adding, ‘You know I’m a Communist, don’t you?’
‘The news must have passed me by.’ Her attempt at a joke fell flat. ‘Though I suppose you’re keeping it quiet.’ The party had been banned since a Fascist government had come to power in Austria five years before.
‘I was, but they’ve rumbled me. I’ve been in jail for the past couple of months.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sophie said awkwardly. She wasn’t sure how to act around the cocky schoolboy who seemed to have suddenly turned into a man.
‘Don’t be. It was fine; I met some interesting people.’ He took another look around and then said in a lower voice, ‘We can fight back, you know. That bastard Hitler won’t have it all his own way.’
Sophie let out her breath. ‘I hate him as much as you. My father’s Jewish.’
Wilhelm whistled, and looked at her for a few seconds without speaking. ‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m not sure. We’ll try to leave, I suppose, but it might be too late.’ She swallowed a rising sense of panic. ‘My mother didn’t want to abandon her shop, you see, and she’s not Jewish – she never converted. We have passports but we need a sponsor before we can get visas for another country.’
‘Aren’t there organisations that can help you?’
‘Perhaps.’ But the Kleins weren’t part of the Jewish community. Her father didn’t go to synagogue or observe the religious holidays, they didn’t live in a Jewish area or eat kosher food at home, and her parents’ friends came from many different backgrounds. The family opened Christmas presents under a candle-lit tree and celebrated Easter with decorated eggs. When it was time for religious education at school, first Sophie and then Hanna had stayed in their seats when the Jewish children were taken out for separate instruction, learning about the Christian faith instead. They had sensed the danger of their Jewishness, such as it was, even then. Otto’s family had cut him off for marrying outside the faith, so Hanna and Sophie didn’t see their Klein relatives. They were Mischlinge: half Jews with a foot in each camp, belonging properly to neither.
