“You!” He reached for her hand. “To apologise—”
“I think I will just lie down,” she hurried on, clutching at the doorknob with painful force. “The excitement of the past two days seems to have caught up with me.”
He released her, stepped backwards. “Gibbon says you're sickening for something.”
She smiled. “An inflammation of the lung. I happened to clear my throat too loudly in his hearing. Now, if only Lady Maude had a Gibbon to look after her—”
He stood outside her door for several moments after she'd closed it, yearning for vanished warmth.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Palmerston assures me that I do very well—that I go through the forms of living, despite Albert's loss, with composure and dignity. My Prime Minister observes that regardless of the paroxysms of grief that sometimes overcome me (so that I am forced to retire for a period of solitary reflection), I have done my utmost to persevere for the sake of He who is Departed. How strange a force is national character! And how well the sovereign of the nation embodies it! Whereas in the princedoms of India I should be expected to immolate myself at my Beloved's death, in England I am to be commended for fortitude.
It is difficult to like Palmerston, however much one may admire him. He is not the Prime Minister that Melbourne was. There is an arrogance to the man's manner that must disgust. In his early years he was infinitely charming—possessed of intelligence and wit—a handsome fellow who brightened a room merely by entering it—but now that he is gouty and walks only with the assistance of two canes, I cannot forget how he attempted to force his way into Lady ——'s bedchamber one night here at Windsor, years ago, when he was at least sixty, with the intent of seducing her—and when betrayed by the lady's indignant screams, offered as his excuse that he had often been in the habit of sleeping in that room in the past—presumably with its previous occupant!—and had mistaken his way in the dark!
Albert refused, categorically, to forgive him for the affront—and could never meet him thereafter without distaste. And it is Palmerston who is to commend me for conduct becoming a Widow and a Sovereign!
Being tired of prime ministers and their prosiness this Monday morning, and having signed a ridiculous number of papers I did not attempt to so much as read, I pleaded a paroxysm of grief, and quitted Lord Palmerston after only an hour.
Yesterday's rain having quite left off, and the chill being not too great, I determined to set out on a walk through the Home Park—for refreshment, and the easing of disordered spirits. I succeeded in avoiding the Duchess of Atholl, and Lady Augusta Bruce; and should have accomplished my objective of exiting the Castle unobserved—had it not been for Alice.
I did not apprehend, at first, that she had followed me.
I thought myself quite alone as I made my way through the Lower Ward of Windsor, and slipped out by Henry VIII's gate; wandered through the dying remains of the garden, so desolate in winter, particularly after rain; and chose the path toward Frogmore.
Frogmore House will be eternally blessed as the final residence of my dear departed Mama—who died there, but seven months ago, and to which I am given to wander when at leisure, in my grief for and profound communion with that excellent parent, whose loss must forever cut a chasm through my existence. The house, a fine white edifice, is perhaps a hundred years old—and once served as a sort of retreat for my grandmama and aunts, when they tired of Windsor and Grandpapa's mental infirmity. Here they held fêtes, for a select number of their intimate friends, and behaved rather as Marie Antoinette might have done, among her milkmaids—with the principal difference being, that they kept their heads. It seemed the aptest place to lodge Mama, when she had grown too old to manage in Belgrave Square; within the Home Park of Windsor, but not within the Castle itself.
She is buried now in Frogmore's grounds—and the place seems a likely choice for Albert's mausoleum, which I intend to be very grand, in the Italianate style, with frescoes reminiscent of Raphael—a painter of whom my Beloved entirely approved. It is essential that no expense or effort be spared in the construction of this blessed Valhalla. I will have no one—exalted or low—question my devotion to that Angelic Being. I merely command them to marvel at this evidence of my fortitude.
At Frogmore, I might visit Mama and Albert both, and weep over the betrayals and misunderstandings that divided us—the meddling of vicious interlopers—the loss of trust when love alone ought to have guided us.
It was as I contemplated the idea of myself, bowed low before the awful entombment of my heart, admired in the eyes of a sorrowing and grateful nation—that I became aware of a Presence near me.
Not Alice; I had not yet perceived her black-garbed and ruffled form as I descended the steps of Frogmore House. I ought, perhaps, to have gone first to Mama's grave—but I preferred to sit instead in her dear yellow sitting room, shrouded in silence. It was here in the first days after her death I relived, with what fresh agony, every particular of my childhood; for it was my Duty to go through her things. To read her letters. Her journals. To comprehend, once again, in turning the pages of her account books, how deeply exploited I was by one who ought to have made my protection her sole object in life.
It was not her shade who troubled me now. The Presence I discerned, on the fringe of sight, was living enough—one of Windsor's under-gardeners. He had been scything the dead grass at the base of Mama's rose bushes, and had built a little pyre of sticks on which to burn the rubbish. Having already lit this bonfire before my solitary and august figure appeared to disturb his honest labour, he now stood in confusion, cap in hand, all but disguised by acrid smoke.
I approached him unwaveringly.
“What is your name?”
“Albert, Ma'am.”
Divine Token! I was moved—I was startled—I reached out a hand as if to touch his shoulder—and said: “We observe that you are already gone into black. That is very well done of you . . . Albert. We are deeply moved, for His Sake.”
The lad bent on one knee, his eyes fixed on the ground, his entire frame trembling. While he was venerating his sovereign thus, I reached into the capacious pocket of my black bombazine and withdrew a small clutch of artificial flowers—replete with bright leaves picked out in Scheele's Green—and cast them onto his bonfire.
Had I known Alice observed me, I might have chosen another time and place.
“Mama.” She emerged from a little coppice as I processed back up the path through the Home Park, my cloak drawn close about my shoulders against the cold—which, with the advancing afternoon, was now penetrating in an unusual degree. Her countenance was extremely pallid, and the shadows beneath her eyes as profound as though etched in charcoal. She wore no bonnet or cloak, and was shivering.
“Alice, my dear child! What are you doing there, loitering in the woods?”
“I saw you leave the Lower Ward from my bedchamber window. I was—anxious. I did not like to see you quite alone, Mama.”
“And so you determined to spy upon me?”
“—To ensure, merely, that you came to no harm.”
“And is the threat of violence so general, on Windsor's grounds?”
Her hands twisted nervously. “Your ladies-in-waiting are searching everywhere for you, Mama. Conceive their apprehension—that in the depths of despair—in the first agony of Papa's passing—you might quite unconsciously do violence to yourself. When it was discovered that you were gone from the Castle—”