The Golden Prince (39 page)

Her most passionately held belief had always been that to effect political change, women needed the independence of being
single—and this meant she had always avoided the temptation of a romantic relationship.

Rose was jolted back to the present when Toby said, in a loud clear voice, “I take thee, Iris Elizabeth Amy, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

The words were heart-stoppingly beautiful, and for the first time Rose realized she had only resisted temptation because the temptation had never been very great.

Which was not the case now.

For David, the
one mitigating factor about spending time at Sandringham, two hundred miles away from Lily, was that Sandringham was his grandmother’s home—and had been ever since she had come to England forty-eight years ago to marry his grandfather. The eldest daughter of the king of Denmark, Alexandra had been heralded on her arrival as the “Sea-King’s daughter from over the sea,” and the British people had not only fallen instantly in love with her but, even though she was now deaf and lame and the Dowager Queen, remained in love with her.

David understood why, for unlike his mother and father, who found it impossible to show affection, his grandmother did so with effortless ease—and was rewarded by always receiving it. As a child, living with his parents at York Cottage, on Sandringham’s grounds, the highlight of David’s year had been when his grandparents had descended on the Big House for Christmas.

As lights blazed and carriages arrived carrying the scores of guests King Edward loved to be surrounded by, he and Bertie would scamper up to the Big House to be, for a short time at least, part of all the fun that always surrounded his genial, pleasure-loving grandfather. It was fun that lasted for far too short a time and, when his grandfather died, the fun had died also.

His grandmother, though loving and sweet-natured, was hampered socially by her deafness; and instead of throwing parties, she lived quietly, attended by a large household staff, her
unmarried daughter, Princess Victoria, and two devoted courtiers, her lady-in-waiting, Miss Charlotte Knollys, and her comptroller, Sir Dighton Probyn.

Though Bertie, Mary, Harry, Georgie, and Johnnie had come to Sandringham over Christmas and the New Year this year, because they were staying at York Cottage, not the Big House, it had still been a staid Christmas.

His father had written to him from northern India where he was busy shooting tigers.

He had gone on to tell him of how, while he was in Nepal, Queen Mary was enjoying a fortnight as the guest of the maharajah of Rajputana, visiting the Taj Mahal and floating down the River Chumbal in a launch.

Then he had added,

It was typical of his father that there was no mention of John. If a subject was anathema to King George, he behaved as if it didn’t exist. Which was why there was also no mention of the violent scene that had taken place between them before David had left for his tour of duty aboard the
Hindustan
.

What steps his father had since taken to find out Lily’s identity
he had no way of knowing. He only knew that whatever they were, they hadn’t been successful for, according to Lily, life at Snowberry had continued undisturbed.

For the moment, with the visit to Paris looming so very near, that was just the way he and Lily wanted it. There would be time enough to reveal Lily’s identity when Paris was safely behind them.

“Come along, Johnnie,” he said to the youngest brother he never saw unless he was at Sandringham. “If you want to toboggan, you have to help pull the sled.”

Six-year-old Johnnie—so warmly dressed for the weather that all that could be seen between his tweed flat cap and his knitted muffler were his eyes and the pink tip of his nose—gave a whoop of laughter.

“Are we pretending we’re husky dogs, David?” His eyes were bright with merriment. “I’ve seen photos of husky dogs pulling sleds.”

David paused in the task of seeking out the steepest of Sandringham’s gentle slopes. “I draw the line at pretending to be a husky, Johnnie, but we could pretend we are Antarctic explorers trying to reach the South Pole.”

Johnnie loved dressing up and playing make-believe. If Johnnie had had to dress in the fanciful investiture costume David had had to dress in, he would have been as happy as a lark. Johnnie, however, was never seen publicly and so there was never any call for him to wear anything ceremonial. Unless he had dressed himself up as a soldier—and Johnnie loved pretending to be a soldier—he either wore a sailor suit or a tweed jacket and kilt.

“We’ll need a flag if we’re going to reach the South Pole.” Johnnie made a great show of hoisting the toboggan’s rope over his shoulder and hauling hard on it. “Have you got a flag with you?”

“No, but we can bring a flag tomorrow.” It occurred to David that Johnnie would expect to find a literal pole stuck in the snow and that he had, perhaps, created a difficulty for himself. In the summer, when Johnnie gardened and planted seeds, the gardeners
speedily planted bedding plants so that he never had to wait for his seeds to flower. For Johnnie, seeds flowered overnight. If they were pretending to reach the South Pole, Johnnie would expect there to be a tangible pole for them to reach.

David grinned to himself. Sandringham was a royal house. There would be spare flagpoles lying around all over the place. He’d ask the gardeners to site one in a suitable place.

“I think this slope might do to toboggan down, Johnnie,” he said, mindful that he’d promised Lala Bill he wouldn’t take Johnnie out of sight of the house. “We can pretend it’s a crevasse.”

He often wondered what he would do if, when out with Johnnie on his own, Johnnie were to have one of his falling fits.

“Don’t try to move him,” Lala Bill had told him. “If there are cushions nearby, put some under and around his head so that he doesn’t hurt himself. When the fit is over, put him somewhere he can lie down and sleep.”

If Johnnie had a fit while they were out in the snow, the snow would act as a cushion and afterward, when Johnnie came round, he would be able to lay him on the sled and take him back to Sandringham that way.

It occurred to him that he’d never talked about Johnnie to Lily. Not doing so had been simply habit. He’d been brought up—as had Bertie, Mary, Harry, and Georgie—
never
to talk about Johnnie and what was wrong with him, to anyone. Lily, though, would understand. The word
epileptic
wouldn’t frighten her. She and Johnnie would get on like a house on fire, and when the day came that he could wangle permission for it—or simply didn’t need permission for it—Johnnie would love visiting Snowberry; he would especially love playing with the buns.

David positioned the sled at the top of the long glistening slope.

“Now put your arms around my waist, Johnnie, and hold tightly,” he said, taking up front position on the sled as Johnnie clambered on behind him. “Are you ready?”

“I’m a great explorer!” Johnnie shouted. “I’m Captain Scott! I’m Captain Scott!”

“OK then, Captain Scott. One! Two! Three! GO!”

He pushed off.

Johnnie squealed with glee.

And they went swooping down over the hard-packed snow. Two brothers, having fun.

As the
Medina
entered the English Channel King George stamped his feet and clapped his gloved hands together in an effort to keep warm. Snow was falling heavily, the wind was bitingly cold, and as the Home Fleet steamed to meet the
Medina
in order to escort her up the Channel and into Portsmouth the King thought longingly of the heat and color and vibrancy of the continent he had just left and which he doubted he would ever see again.

India.

It had been a life-changing experience. On the vast plains outside Delhi, the durbar had taken place in two adjoining amphitheaters, the larger one holding a hundred thousand spectators and the smaller and grander one for the princes, rulers, and notables of the Indian Empire. The amphitheaters were joined by a wide dais, in the center of which was a series of marble steps leading up to two thrones of solid silver encased in gold. There with May beside him, he had received homage from the princes of his Indian Empire.

As the long glittering line of rajahs and maharajahs passed before him, the thought impressed upon him was that the Oriental obeisances being made were very different from the obeisances he had received at his coronation in Westminster Abbey. In India, to be the emperor was on par with being a god. According to the governor-general, when the durbar had ended and he and Queen Mary had descended the steps and departed, a vast crowd had rushed across to the steps they had walked down and had prostrated themselves on them, pressing their foreheads against the marble.

To be regarded as semidivine was something that couldn’t possibly be forgotten.

Now that the coast of England was in sight there were other things that couldn’t be forgotten, though he fervently wished they could be. He was returning not only to miserable weather, but to grave constitutional problems. Home Rule for Ireland was a nightmare that wouldn’t go away. The country was widely beset by industrial unrest. The suffragettes were as militant as they ever had been. His cousin Willy was bellowing that the German navy would soon be mightier than the British navy, and fear of German aggression was, according to Mr. Asquith, being felt not only in the corridors of power but on the streets as well. Last, but by no means least, there was David’s nonsensical desire to marry a nonroyal girl he barely knew.

Absolutely nothing had come of the inquiries that Craybourne had put forth in Canada. Georgie Battenberg had been spoken to again and had been unable to throw any further light on the subject. It was as if the girl didn’t exist. As if that little mountain of problems wasn’t enough to contend with, he and May were sailing home to a family in mourning.

Snow had coated his mustache and beard, and bad-temperedly he brushed it away with the back of a leather-gloved hand.

On the day after his great durbar ceremony, his eldest sister, Princess Louise; her husband, the Duke of Fife; and their two daughters, Princess Alix, aged twenty, and Princess Maud, aged eighteen, had been sailing aboard the P & O liner
Delhi
en route to Egypt. Off the coast of Morocco it had foundered with the loss of many lives, and though Louise and her family had not been among the fatalities, they had spent long hours in the sea in life-jackets before being rescued.

A couple of weeks later, while on the Nile cruising toward Khartoum, Fife had died of pneumonia.

“Which of course he wouldn’t have had if he hadn’t spent so long in the water!” George had fumed to May when the wireless telegram had arrived telling them the news. “Apart from the thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s all our homecoming festivities
will have to be given up—and the thanksgiving service isn’t going to be too jolly, not when everyone will be wearing black!”

“Nearly there, sir,” Admiral Sir Colin Keppel, who was standing next to him on the bridge, said respectfully.

King George, who had no real desire to be nearly there, made his habitual
harrumph
.

The only good thing about this particular return home was that it was now more than six months since David had dropped his bombshell about wanting to marry, and since then, because of David’s tour of duty aboard the
Hindustan
and George’s refusal to meet with David in the interim before he and May left for India, nothing further had been said between them on the subject. Six months was a long time and young men, as he knew, not from personal experience but from his late brother’s experience, were capable of falling in and out of love with alarming rapidity.

As a flotilla of small boats came out of the Portsmouth harbor to greet the
Medina
, the King remembered May 1890, when Eddy had been head over heels in love with one of their many cousins, Princess Alix of Hesse, who, refusing his proposal of marriage, had gone on to marry yet another cousin, Nicky, and become Tsarina of All the Russias.

It had been the opinion of their grandmother, Queen Victoria, that it would take Eddy years to get over his heartbreak.

Within a month he had fallen violently in love elsewhere. Whereas Alix was extremely suitable as a future Queen of England, his next love, Princess Hélène of Orleans, was not. Not only was she a Roman Catholic—and no member of the royal family could marry a Catholic without losing all rights to the throne—she was also the daughter of the Comte de Paris, the pretender to the French throne. Which meant that even if it were not for the religious difficulties, there would have been political difficulties.