The Last Queen by C. J. Carey

Author:C. J. Carey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

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Ten minutes later, they were standing in front of a graceful, redbrick building in the Georgian style, surrounded by graveled paths and fenced lawns. A sign announced it as the Center for Early Years Purity, and it was housed beside the Lebensborn facility in Coram’s Fields, a garden square in the center of Bloomsbury. The June breeze was scented with lime blossom and the air was filled with the shrieks and laughter of children. Beneath the spreading boughs of a cedar of Lebanon, a pair of young girls were playing badminton, and Rose was transported to the games of French cricket that her father would play on the lawn at home with her and Celia. Quickly, she shrugged the memory away.

Lined up along the front of the building in the sunshine stood the Alliance’s favorite form of transport—prams. Rows of them, all containing babies, their little faces rosy and faintly furred, like peaches. In keeping with the purity theme, the infants’ white linen clothes were immaculate and their embroidered shawls looked freshly laundered. Paulas with starched uniforms and hair pinned severely under their caps were tending to their small charges.

Beyond was a playground in which kindergarten children were playing with balls and skipping ropes and next to it another area in which older children, boys and girls, played separately.

Helena led Rose toward the fence.

“Do you know what this place was? Historically?”

Historically. Rose suppressed the instinct to shut the conversation down at this blasphemy.

“It was the Foundling Hospital. Hundreds of years ago, Coram’s Field was a place where unmarried women could leave their children. It was a beautiful place, apparently. With a courtyard and a chapel. The people who founded it thought children should have the best start they possibly could no matter what their origin.”

Rose looked across at the line of babies, their faces flushed in the sunshine, the attendant Paulas flitting between their prams like butterflies visiting fresh flowers. She longed to ask how Helena could possibly know all this. Had she somehow scored access to the degenerate shelves in the London Library? Might she too have come across the History of London, with all its extraordinary tales of the past? On second thought, better that she didn’t know.

“This is still the best place. All the top men’s children are enrolled here. Some of Bormann’s kids are coming apparently.”

As they watched, a sturdy, towheaded boy around three snatched an Airfix model of a Stuka dive-bomber from the hands of an even smaller child and stamped on it. The younger child wailed in outrage as fragments of his toy lay on the pavement, yet despite his howls, no Paula came hurrying in response. Nobody intervened at all.

“Aggression’s encouraged in boys,” commented Helena bleakly.

The little boy moved into a corner to shed solitary tears.

A bell rang and the children began to move toward the doors.

“Come and look inside. They know me.”

Rose quelled her urge to comfort the sobbing child and followed Helena to the doorway.

The interior of the kindergarten smelled like any other, of chalk dust and boiled food and cleaning fluid.

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