Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle (14 page)

The images were unforgettable, and not only because it was the first time she’d worn brown since the engagement. She carried
such a sad regal composure as she stood there on the beach in the cropped khaki pants, a snug-fitting pair that had been carefully
crafted by the nation’s leading designer to look as if they’d been purchased right off the rack. She wore a similarly simple
chocolate corduroy jacket as she greeted rescue workers on the beach, thanking them with quiet, shell-shocked dignity, refusing
all sorts of offers of comfort. “Would you like a chair, Your Highness?” “Can I get you some coffee, Your Highness?” “Wouldn’t
you like to go back to the castle for some rest, Your Highness?”

She would shake her head, smile in a wan and hopeful way, and say, “You’re too kind.” The wind tousled her hair as the gray
seas rose and fell in angry fits. The photographs were exquisite.

By contrast, everything Iphigenia did that day was wrong, starting with her clothes: a periwinkle polo shirt and a wrinkled
pair of plaid Bermuda shorts. This was a terrible fashion misstep that the tabloids, for the sake of decency, did not mention
right away, holding off in an unprecedented show of restraint until the initial shock had passed sometime later that evening.
“Leaving aside the issue of polo and its rather lowbrow connections with a certain batch of English cousins,” Ethelbald Candeloro
wrote, “what sort of person would wear shorts while her brother’s plane is missing? Especially shorts from Bermuda, where
legend has it planes go missing all the time and never with happy endings.”

Iphigenia also made the grave misstep of, upon being offered a chair, saying “Thank you” and taking it. This was regarded
as insensitive by almost all commentators. “I hope Her Highness was comfy while the rescue workers were out in the cold,”
Ethelbald said later in the same column. All of Iphigenia’s biographies, I must point out, say that she took the chair on
the advice of Hubert, who had that morning taken a new interest in Iphigenia, believing for the first time that she might
actually become the next in line to the throne.

“People do not want to see the future queen standing about as if she were waiting for a royal bus,” he theorized, and so he
practically ordered Iphigenia to take a seat when offered one.

By two
P.M.
it was obvious even to those with less of a self-interest than Hubert that the plane’s occupants must be dead. But no one
could bring themselves to point this out to either princess, both of whom had grown pale as the day wore on and who finally
consented to moving to a nearby home when rain started pouring. That walk was the only time that Isabella cried during the
entire ordeal. “I just started thinking,” she said, “about Rafie out there treading water in the cold rain.”

All the top news outlets devoted themselves to nonstop coverage. The main story on all the websites was a running update on
the search-and-rescue efforts, and off to the side, there were macabre collections of the news stories produced throughout
the prince’s life. “Click here to see the news accounts of his birth.” “Click here to see the archived coverage of his first
day in kindergarten.” “Click here to relive the minor scandal that occurred when, as a young teen, he sneaked out and colored
his hair bright purple.”
PLUM PUTRID!
screamed one headline.

And, of course, “Click here for the wedding.”

I suppose none of us will know, until we die, if our lives really pass before our eyes at that moment. But we know this much:
If a prince’s plane goes down in an icy sea, his life passes before everyone’s eyes.

The coverage was inescapable. Even the leading fashion website of its time, a little publication called WEAR!, put together
a slide show of what the prince had worn on the opening day of every racing season since he was two years old and set off
the trend for better boys’ fashion with those little blue knickers and the matching bow tie.

But none of the images of the past could compete with the images of what was happening right then. Isabella on the beach.
Her fine, flyaway hair whipping in a photogenic way with the gusty sprinkles. The search dogs in the background. The helicopters
overhead.

And that afternoon, when they pulled the body out of the sea, the rain started pouring even harder. Ethelbald wrote that it
seemed as if the heavens themselves were crying.

Throughout the stormy day, a somber Prince Louis, who, as the younger brother of the king, had supervised the search, periodically
relayed messages to the house from the tent that served as the rescue operation headquarters. It was four
P.M.
when he made the last fateful walk up from the beach. His account of that conversation, as later reported in
The National Times,
is well known to those of us of a certain age. But I will recount it here briefly for my younger readers.

He said he remembered stepping inside the house, which belonged to an acquaintance of Lady Carissa’s and had been turned over
to the family for their use during the duration of the emergency. As he walked through the foyer, he said he noticed how lovely
the hardwood floors were, and he worried that his soaking clothes and wet shoes would damage the finish. “It was one of those
odd things you think about,” he said, “when it seems like you should be thinking of only one thing.”

He made his way to the upstairs sitting room where the family had gathered. Before he opened the door, he noticed that he
could hear nothing. The family was sitting together in silence. He cleared his voice and entered.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he remembered saying as he noticed Princess Genia, who had been slumped on an overstuffed
love seat, sit up straight. Her body was rigid and tense. The queen put her head in her hands, and the king walked over to
a window overlooking the gardens. Isabella’s face was absolutely blank, but her body language seemed somehow relieved, as
if she had long expected this and was just glad it was about to be over. At least that was Prince Louis’s interpretation later.

“We found the prince’s body,” Louis said. “It washed up onshore twelve miles from Lancelot Beach.”

“No!” Isabella cried. She buried her face in her hands, slumped to the floor, and began wailing.

Louis continued, somewhat unnecessarily, “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

The rest of the royal family did not react, but continued to stare at Louis, waiting for more. Secrest walked over and put
her hands on Isabella’s shoulders.

Louis went on. “I’m afraid, Your Majesty, that we’ve had to call off the search. There’s simply no hope for the mechanic.”
His voice cracked, and he paused. “No one could survive this long in waters that cold, and the rescue workers are risking
their lives out there. We can’t ask them to continue.”

“Of course,” said the king. His gaze returned to the window. The queen walked over to Princess Genia and wrapped her arms
around the young woman. Isabella was clutching Secrest and crying in an elaborate, showy way that the queen both detested
and envied her for.

“Noooooo!” Isabella cried over and over and again. “Can’t we go back? Can’t we do it over? Can’t we go back to yesterday and
do it all over?”

(Many in the press thought these statements were odd when first reported, but when they interviewed psychiatrists, they learned
that it was actually quite common for the survivors of those who die in accidental deaths to be overcome by the feeling that
if they could just move time backward by a few minutes or a few hours, they could tell their loved ones to drive more carefully,
not to take the plane, to stop at the railroad tracks, to refrain from blow-drying their hair in the tub. It is a manifestation
of the horror that comes with seeing how random tragedy is and how quickly it comes and how easily, in retrospect, it could
have been avoided.)

Isabella’s showy grief lasted only a few moments and only in the privacy of her husband’s family. In fact, some have questioned
whether it was actually as Prince Louis reported, or if he invented it—either to show the humanity of the situation or to
put Isabella’s stability in doubt, depending on the theorizer.

In public, Isabella was as stoic and dignified as the king and queen. She was photographed leaving the home, looking red-eyed
but pulled together. Twice in the following days, she stepped out of the castle to admire the flowers left by well-wishers.
The next Saturday, she was everything you could ask a young royal widow to be: beautiful and weary and sad-eyed and straight-backed.
Some people said she reminded them of the American Jackie Kennedy, who all those years earlier had walked behind the coffin
of her husband, the slain U.S. president. But Isabella is remembered for walking in front of the coffin, leading the horse
that pulled the carriage, occasionally whispering to it and patting its neck. Behind the carriage walked the king and queen,
and behind them walked Isabella’s parents.

Later that same afternoon, Isabella rode in the back of a limousine to a memorial service for Geoffrey. She was photographed
holding Mae’s face in her hands, peering into her eyes, and whispering something no one heard. One of the commentators noted
that she cried at the mechanic’s service, though she only looked exhausted at her husband’s.

“It’s no surprise,” said Ethelbald, who wrote about the funeral for what seemed like months. “At that point, she’d been in
funeral-related activities for the better part of seven hours. It had to be getting to her. Besides, it is just like Isabella
to be broken down more by other people’s woes than by her own.”

You may suspect there is another reason that she cried so much at Geoffrey’s service. You may think that she was in love with
him. She certainly loved him. But was she “in love” with him? Well, that is the secret of Isabella’s heart, and I, for one,
could not claim to know it.

But having said that, I do know some of what was going through Isabella’s mind as she broke into tears at Geoffrey’s service.
She was looking at the empty place on the altar where a coffin would have been, and she was thinking how sad it was that Geoffrey’s
family would not get to stand by a grave site and say their goodbyes as their loved one was given a proper burial.

They thought his body was lost at sea. But Isabella knew it wasn’t. Geoffrey’s body had been properly buried earlier that
day.

In Prince Raphael’s grave.

O
h dear! My agent, I can assure you, is having fits at this point. Calm down, Frederick. Take one of those pills of yours.
You’re going to ruin your health.

I know, I know, I can hear you before you’ve even said it. “If you’re going to write a book that says the body buried in the
Prince of Gallagher’s grave isn’t the actual Prince of Gallagher, then say it in the first paragraph of the first chapter,
don’t just slip it in at the end of the fourteenth!”

I know, Frederick. In theory, I agree. But like I said, I can’t tell stories that way. All those years when I struggled with
my mediocre journalism career, my editors were always nagging me about not burying the lead. “You buried the lead again, you
buried the lead again.” That’s all they ever said. But me? I think sometimes leads should be buried. You’ve got to tell the
story like a story. That’s what I always say.

If you’re going to rewrite it, then rewrite it. What do I care? I’m old, I’m moody, I’m too tired to keep up my usual refined
decorum, and the only thing I’ve got going for me is that I know things no one else knows. I’m going to tell it my way.

So where was I? Oh yes, the Prince of Gallagher’s grave.

The body in the coffin that Isabella so famously led into St. Luke’s Cathedral, the body that is buried in the sandy soil
of the royal cemetery, is not the Prince of Gallagher. It is Geoffrey.

Prince Louis’s account of informing the royal family was reasonably accurate except on two counts. The first inaccuracy is
simple. Throughout the entire account, the words “the prince” and “the mechanic” are switched. The news started with “We found
the mechanic’s body.” And reached its climax with “There’s simply no hope for the prince.” In some ways, I guess, it was the
opposite of what Prince Louis really told the family.

Isabella’s reaction did not need to be altered. Prince Louis was able to reliably describe her reaction to the news of Geoffrey’s
death as being that of the death of her own husband. Some people may read something into it. But I don’t know. Under the circumstances,
with the fates of the two men so closely linked, perhaps that is what you would expect. Her husband was missing. His traveling
companion was found dead. Under any circumstances, this was bad news. Who is going to quibble with her grief?

The second inaccuracy is Prince Louis’s account of how the conversation ended. In fact, there was a long and spirited debate
about how to handle the reality that Prince Raphael’s body seemed unlikely to be found.

Isabella, who managed to collect herself somewhat, said that a full accounting was owed to “the people” and that openness
and accuracy, no matter how painful at first, would be the best in the long run for all involved.

But the king, who absentmindedly wandered over to the love seat and stood behind his daughter, lightly stroking her hair as
if she were the royal dog, said they must be practical. How would it look to leave the heir to the throne merely “missing
and presumed dead”? That wouldn’t do at all. Poor Iphigenia would have enough problems as queen without a bunch of what he
called “loonies” coming forth claiming to be the long-lost Prince Raphael.

“The people,” the king said, too sad and tired to sustain his usual sense of politics, “are scam artists and idiots.”

And Isabella? How would she like hearing all the wild stories they would come up with about how Raphael was really alive and
well and living in some remote African camp with the lost Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia?

“Anastasia?” asked Secrest, the only person in the room calm enough to worry over details. “Wouldn’t she be a little old for
him?”