The Queen's Husband Read online

  She would never forget – and who else would? – the terrible case of their ancestress, Sophia Dorothea. How very like her own: a crude boor of a husband from whom no female was safe, be she lady of the court or tavern woman; and poor tragic Sophia Dorothea had loved romantically the Count of Konigsmark. The discovery of their liaison had brought about the murder of Konigsmark and the banishment and divorce of Sophia Dorothea. Poor sad Princess who had languished in her prison castle for more than twenty years while her coarse husband went to England to become George I. And she had had two children – a boy and a girl. How heart-broken she must have been to leave them!

  And here she was … she, Louise, married to Ernest, mother of two dear little boys, her Ernest and little Alberinchen. Poor darlings, if I am sent away what will they do without me? she asked herself.

  The door was unlocked and her husband came in. He looked at her with contempt and her expression became one full of loathing.

  ‘It’s no use making any attempt to deny it,’ he said.

  ‘I was unaware that I was attempting to do that.’

  ‘Szymborski is leaving the country.’ She was silent. ‘We have put no obstacle in his way. We think it better to have him out of the way with as little scandal as possible.’ She nodded. ‘As for yourself, you may go tomorrow. You shall go quietly and without fuss. There has been enough gossip.’

  ‘You and your women have created a fair share of it,’ she retorted.

  ‘I have behaved as a natural man is expected to behave.’

  ‘By crude peasants, perhaps.’

  ‘Whereas you have behaved in a manner which is intolerable to me, my family and the people.’

  ‘Why should what is shameful in me be so natural and commendable in you?’

  ‘I did not say commendable … only natural. And the difference is, Madam, that you are the mother of the heirs of Saxe-Coburg. How long have you been consorting with your Jewish lover? Was it before Albert’s birth?’

  ‘How … dare you!’

  ‘I dare because we are here in this room alone. I would not have the boy’s future jeopardised by voicing these fears outside.’

  ‘Albert is your son.’

  ‘With a wanton for a mother how can I be sure of that?’

  ‘A mother can be sure.’

  ‘I can conceive circumstances where even she might not be sure.’

  ‘You are making me an object of your insults. Pray don’t.’

  ‘You are an obvious object for insult. How can I know that you have not brought a bastard into my house?’

  She ran to him, her eyes blazing; she would have struck him but he caught her wrist and twisted her arm till she screamed with the pain.

  ‘Albert is your son,’ she said.

  ‘I believe you,’ he said, releasing her. ‘If I thought he were not, I would kill you.’

  ‘Always be good to Albert. He is not as strong as Ernest.’

  ‘Albert is my son and shall be treated as well as his elder brother.’

  That placated her to some extent; but she felt desolate. She knew that she would be sent away, but for the first time she realised how wretched she would be when she was unable to see her children. Perhaps she would never see them again.

  ‘Yes, Ernest,’ she said, ‘Albert is your son. Never doubt it. I swear it.’

  He looked at her searchingly and there was still a niggling doubt in his mind. His impulse was to seize her, to throw her to the ground, to beat the truth out of her. But Albert is my son, he assured himself. He must believe it. It was unthinkable that he could accept anything else. He had feared that under stress she might confess that Albert was not his son. What if Ernest were not also? Then he would be a man without sons. That was unthinkable. He loved the boys in his way. They were his. Ernest surely was, there could be no doubt of that. Ernest had his looks. And so was Albert. It was true those fair delicate looks were inherited from his mother but many babies resembled their mothers and bore no likeness whatsoever to their fathers.

  He could not afford his suspicions. Albert was his son and no one must doubt that in the years to come.

  He looked at his wife with hatred.

  ‘You will not take the boys away from me,’ she said.

  ‘Are you mad? You play the whore and then think it would be pleasant to be the mother for a while. You will never see the boys again.’

  ‘That would be too … cruel … wicked.’

  ‘What a pity you did not think of that before.’

  ‘Ernest, listen to me, I beg of you. I’ll go away. You can divorce me … never see me again. I admit I have done wrong, but please … I beg of you don’t take my babies from me.’

  ‘It’s a pity you did not think of your children when you were with your lover.’

  ‘I have thought of them constantly. Only they made my life worth while.’

  ‘They … and Szymborski?’

  The Duchess broke down and wept.

  ‘Be ready to leave the schloss tomorrow morning early,’ said the Duke. ‘I want no one to see you go. You will just disappear.’

  The Duchess, thinking of her little boys, began to weep silently.

  The boys were recovering. Grandmother Saxe-Coburg stayed with them and she was constantly in and out of their room.

  ‘Why doesn’t Mama come?’ Alberinchen asked Ernest.

  Ernest thought she might have whooping-cough too.

  Grandmother Saxe-Coburg said that fresh air was good for the boys while they were getting better, so they were taken out into the pine forests. They played games and pretended they were the kidnapped princes. But Albert could not forget his mother and made up his mind to ask his grandmother what had become of her.

  One day when she was reading to him he put a finger on the page and said: ‘Where is my Mama?’

  The Dowager Duchess hesitated for a moment and then she said: ‘She’s gone away.’

  ‘She did not say goodbye.’

  ‘There was no time.’

  ‘Was she in a hurry?’

  ‘Yes, she was in a great hurry.’

  ‘When is she coming back?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Alberinchen and his grandmother did not answer: and when she saw the questions trembling on his lips she said: ‘I’ll tell you a story.’

  That quietened him; his enormous blue eyes were fixed on his grandmother while he waited for her to begin.

  ‘Three months before you were born another little baby was born right over the sea in a place called Kensington.’

  ‘Over the sea?’ repeated Albert.

  ‘Yes, in England, which is a big country. There are many in our family as you know, and the little baby girl who was born in Kensington three months before you is your cousin. Her name is Alexandrina Victoria. She is a little mayflower because she was born in May.’

  ‘What sort of flower am I?’

  ‘Boys are not flowers. You are an August baby. But one day you will grow up and so will the little girl at Kensington. Then you will meet because that is what your Uncle Leopold wishes. And I’ll tell you a secret, little Alberinchen. If you are very good when you grow up you shall marry the Princess in Kensington.’

  Albert’s eyes were round with wonder. He was not sure what it meant to marry; but that story about the baby girl of Kensington was his story too.

  There were changes in the household. The nurses were dismissed.

  ‘The boys have to grow up and learn to be men,’ said the Duke. ‘Now that their mother has gone there shall be no more pampering. Albert particularly needs a man’s hand. He will have to stop this crying habit.’

  Herr Florschütz came to be the new tutor; he immediately set about discovering what standard the boys had reached and found them to be rather forward for their ages. Lessons were going to begin in earnest now. Alberinchen was not dismayed for he was a little brighter than Ernest and he enjoyed coming in first with the answers.

  He was constan
tly asking when his mother was coming back and began to wonder because the answers were always evasive.

  The two grandmothers disagreed as to the desirability of Herr Florschütz’s taking the place of the nurses.

  ‘Poor mites,’ said Grandmama Saxe-Gotha. ‘They need a woman’s tender hand.’

  But Grandmama Saxe-Coburg was of the opinion that Herr Florschütz would make a much better attendant than the nurses for he was expected to combine these duties with those of a tutor, the Duke’s income being inadequate to his position and his necessarily large household.

  ‘His mother was a bad influence on Albert,’ was her verdict. ‘He was growing too much like her. A man’s firm hand is what he needs.’

  The grandmothers seemed to be the only women who came into close contact with the boys. Albert screamed less but dissolved into tears at the least provocation. Herr Florschütz was immune from tears. He just allowed Albert to cry; and Ernest said he was a bit of a cry baby.

  Albert cried sometimes quietly in his bed when he thought of his mother. Sometimes she had come to tuck them in. Why had she gone away without telling him, without even saying goodbye? Why did his grandmothers look strange when he asked about her? When was she coming back?

  He had a little gold pin which she had given him. She had used it once when a button had come off his coat.

  ‘There is a nice little pin, Alberinchen,’ she had said. ‘It will hold your coat together until the button is sewn on and after that you must keep it and remember always the day I gave it to you.’

  So he had and he would take it to bed with him and put it under his pillow; and first thing in the morning he would touch it and remember.

  It became the most precious thing he had.

  Once Grandmama Saxe-Coburg came into the bedroom and, bending to kiss him, saw that he was crying quietly.

  ‘My little Alberinchen,’ she said, ‘what is it? Tell Grandmama.’

  ‘I want my Mama,’ he said.

  ‘You mustn’t cry,’ she said softly. ‘Only babies cry. You must be brave and strong. Otherwise you won’t be able to marry the little Princess of Kensington.’

  Chapter II

  PRINCE ALBERT

  Albert had passed his tenth birthday. He no longer screamed to get his own way and had become rather solemn. He was inseparable from his brother Ernest and, although they fought now and then, the bond between them had grown stronger with the years and neither could be really happy out of the company of the other. They were as different in character as they were in appearance. Ernest was tall; Albert shorter; Ernest robust, Albert alarming his grandmothers by his delicate looks. Ernest had bold black eyes and a pale skin; Albert was pink and white with very fair hair and blue eyes. Ernest already had a roving eye and liked to joke with the prettier maids in their father’s castles; Albert had no interest in the women; he enjoyed the company of their tutor and his brother. The only women he was really comfortable with were his two grandmothers.

  He had never forgotten his mother. He had a vague idea now of what had happened, for Ernest had discovered and told him.

  ‘She had a lover,’ Ernest had explained, ‘and so she had to go away. Our father divorced her.’

  Ernest gave his version of what this meant and Albert could not forget it. Something terrible and shameful had happened in his family; he knew this was so because of the manner in which no one would explain it to him. Looking back he could see the little Alberinchen who had loved his mother more than he had loved anyone else except himself. She had been so beautiful – more beautiful than anyone else, more loving. No one had conveyed to him in quite the same way how precious he was; no one had made him feel, merely by being close, happy and secure in the same way as she had.

  Something had happened when she went away. He was not sure what, but it was for this reason that he had accepted Herr Florschütz so wholeheartedly and was glad the nurses had been dismissed. He did not want to look at women; they reminded him of his mother and something shameful. He loved her as he always had. Whatever she had done, and Ernest implied that it was terrible, he believed that he could never love anyone as he had loved her. He kept the little pin she had given him and he looked upon it as his greatest treasure. But his discomfiture in the company of women persisted because they made him think of vaguely shameful things.

  He was happy, though, in the woods and mountains; and his father wished him to excel at all manly sports so he and Ernest spent a great deal of time fencing, riding and hunting. He began to love the beauty of the countryside and became an expert on flora and fauna. There was plenty of opportunity to study these, for their father’s pleasant little castles were situated among the magnificent scenery of forests and mountains. Rosenau, his birthplace, would always be his favourite, but he also loved Kalenberg, Ketschendorf and Reinhardtsbrunnen: and, provided that Ernest was with him, he was happy in any of the family residences. Sometimes they visited one grandmother, sometimes the other. These ladies vied with each other for the affection of the boys; and when Albert could forget his mother, he was happy.

  In the early days following her departure she had been constantly in his thoughts, but because of the attitude of those about him he had not spoken of this. Often he complained of pains to the grandmothers and they would hustle him to bed and send for the doctors. He knew that his illnesses terrified them and, as they gave him such importance, he enjoyed them.

  ‘Oh, Grandmama,’ he would pant. ‘I have such a pain here …’ And it was a great joy to see the alarm leap up into Grandmother’s eyes.

  He knew there were conferences about Albert’s health. He was known to be ‘delicate’ – ‘not robust like Ernest’. Ernest was inclined to despise Albert’s delicacy until reproved by his elders for this attitude. Somewhere at the back of Albert’s mind was the thought that if he were ill enough his mother would have to come back to him.

  The situation did not persist because at the early age of six he started to keep a diary and, when this proved to be little more than a detailed account of his ailments, shrewd Grandmother Saxe-Coburg felt that they had been unwise to worry so much about his health.

  ‘The child is obsessed by illness,’ she declared to her son. ‘He appears to take a pride in it. If this goes on when he grows up he will make a point of becoming an invalid.’

  It occurred to her then that a good part of Albert’s fragile health might be due to his imagination.

  ‘Get them out into the fresh air,’ she advised. ‘We’ll let him see that Ernest’s rude health is more admirable than his delicacy. We’ll watch over him as usual but we won’t let him know it.’

  The Duke soon began to realise the wisdom of his mother’s council, for although Albert would never be quite the sturdy boy Ernest was, he was fast forgetting about his illnesses and in spite of a weak chest and a tendency to catch cold his health immediately began to improve.

  The fresh country air agreed with him and, as the Dowager Duchess said, to see those two boys coming in from the forest after one of their riding jaunts, chattering away about what they called their specimens, one’s fears for their health could be happily forgotten.

  Herr Florschütz was good for them too. From the first he had been quite unmoved by Albert’s tears. Once he had startled the little boy during one of the grammar lessons when Albert had been told to parse a sentence and did not know which was the verb – in this case ‘to pinch’ – Herr Florschütz gave young Albert a sharp nip in the arm so that Albert should, he said, know what a verb was. Albert, who had been in tears because he could not find the verb, was startled into silence. Herr Florschütz hinted that he did not think very highly of tears as a means of extricating oneself from a difficult situation, and as Albert had a natural aptitude for learning why not exploit that, and then he would be so proud of his achievement that he would want to crow with pride rather than whine in misery.

  So Albert applied himself to learning and Herr Florschütz applauded; so did his father and the grandmother
s. ‘You’re the clever one,’ said Ernest. Yes, it was much more pleasant to crow with pride; but only inwardly of course. He was learning very much about life.

  He asked Ernest what he wanted to do when he grew up. Ernest thought for a while and said: ‘To govern like our father; to ride, to hunt, to feast, to enjoy life.’

  Albert had replied: ‘I want to be a good and useful man.’

  Ernest called him a prude which angered Albert, who struck his elder brother. Ernest retaliated and in a short time they were rolling on the grass in a fight.

  Herr Florschütz, coming upon them, ordered them to stop and said they should copy out a page of Goethe for misbehaving.

  As they did it, Albert apologised. ‘I started it.’

  ‘Is that what you call being a good and useful man?’ taunted Ernest. ‘Fighting your brother.’

  ‘I was wicked.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ laughed Ernest, ‘it’s better than being a prude.’

  They laughed together, secure in the knowledge that nothing could change their devotion to each other; and as soon as they had finished their task they were off into the forest to collect wild plants for the collection which they had called the Ernest-Albert museum.

  So passed the years until Albert was twelve years old.

  The memory of that day in the year 1831 stayed with the Prince throughout his life. It had been an ordinary day. He and Ernest had been at their lessons all through the morning studying mathematics, Latin and philosophy, at which as usual Albert excelled. Ernest was longing for the afternoon when they would get out into the forest. He was anxious to add a special kind of butterfly to the ‘museum’ and hoped that he would be the one to capture it before Albert did. Meanwhile Albert was producing the answers required by their tutor and the lessons were running on the usual smooth lines.