“All of them?” Fitzgerald said softly. “—Then why in God's name hasn't the Queen murdered him?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
I tell the world that I made Baron Stockmar's acquaintance on my eighteenth birthday, when Uncle Leopold sent him to wish me many happy returns of the day; but the truth is otherwise. It was a morning in June, when I can have been no more than six years old, and was engrossed in fashioning a daisy chain with dear Lehzen in the park at Kensington Palace, where our household then lived. The stems of the daisies were slippery, and the sun was hot upon the back of my neck; I wore white muslin, as was my invariable habit—a strange thing to consider of, now, when I shall certainly never in my life wear white again.
And suddenly, there he was: a stranger with an oddly-shaped head who looked at me like a familiar. He had walked up the carriage sweep as though he had a right to be there; and Lehzen actually ran a little toward him, with a glad cry, speaking in German. This surprised me so much that I crushed the daisies beneath my heels, and rose to stare at the man.
He approached me without the stupid condescension of those who think children know nothing. Because he treated me with respect, I concluded he was safe. When he said, “Let me see your teeth, Princess,” I opened my mouth obediently; when he lifted my dress and ran his hands over my shift, I let him feel the strength of my abdomen and bones.
When he had smoothed my skirt to my knees and said in a sober and judicious way, “She will do very well, Baroness. She has childbearing hips,” I suddenly felt ashamed. And burst into tears in Lehzen's apron.
Nothing of Albert's life or death would be comprehensible if one were unacquainted with Baron Stockmar. He is above seventy years of age now, but his first steps on these shores lie far back in the mists of time—to the years before I was even thought of. He came to London as advisor to my beloved Uncle Leopold—who at twenty-five was nothing more than a beautiful face and a fine figure of a man; the third son of the old Duke of Coburg, Albert's grandfather, who could give him nothing.
In the year of Waterloo, having fought against the Monster Buonaparte and been much admired among the English for his excellent looks, Uncle Leopold aspired to win the hand of the richest heiress in the world—my cousin Charlotte, Princess of Wales. They married, and were deliriously happy, until Charlotte died in childbed a year later, along with her stillborn son. But it was Baron Stockmar Charlotte cried for, in her last moments; Stockmar who held her cold hand as the life ebbed from her fingers; Stockmar who broke the news of his double loss to my Uncle Leopold in the wee hours of the morning.
Stockmar understood all too well that Charlotte's death meant more than a crisis for his protégé, Leopold; it meant a crisis for the entire British world. For there was no other legitimate heir to the throne of England then in existence. And Charlotte's death is the only reason I was ever born.
It was essential to secure the succession by producing a legitimate Hanoverian heir; and nobody expected Charlotte's father to do it. He was too old and too fat. His brother Edward, the Duke of Kent, was a betting man who rather fancied his chances—provided he could secure the hand of a proper princess. It was there that Baron Stockmar once again proved his worth.
My father was more than fifty, and had kept a French mistress for nearly thirty years. It would be as well, therefore, if his prospective wife were a hardened cynic, quite past her first bloom of youth. Stockmar observed that Uncle Leopold's elder sister, Victoire, the Princess of Leiningen, admirably fitted this bilclass="underline" She was thirty-one, widowed, and had already produced an heir to the Leiningen principality. There could be no objection to her quitting Germany in pursuit of greater fortune.
My father wrote Victoire a letter; visited her court some once or twice; found her complaisant on the subject of marriages of convenience—as indeed she ought to have been, never having looked for anything else—and the thing was done.
Within a few months of the wedding, Mama was pregnant; within a year, I was born. And though she may have suffered disappointment, as my father's consequence and fortune were far less than his accumulated debts—Mama had in the end no cause to repine. Rivals to the throne died in infancy; and the way to power was clear for me.
Having made a Coburg girl Heiress Presumptive of England, Stockmar returned to the Rosenau, where another child had recently been born: Albert, the second son of the present duke, whose wife was unhappy and would soon flee Coburg with her lover, never to be seen again.
Like a faery godfather, Stockmar watched over the motherless boy's rearing; reported on Albert's schooling and athletic progress to his uncle, Leopold; and when the hour was ripe, dispatched the Beautiful Teutonic Youth to London, where the most powerful Princess in the world fell in love with him at first sight.
There is something of the Brothers Grimm in the tale, is there not? A little of enchantment, and also of necromancy—of strings pulled and lives crossed, for ends that only the Maker divines. Stockmar has been the canny wizard of such scenes, turning dross to gold with his alchemic wand, his chessman's plotting; and it is Stockmar I must ultimately blame for Albert's death.
It is all there, in his last letter: the collusion between the two. How fortunate for me that the baron showed his hand, in a few lines of shaky script—and that I might with impunity press the letter upon my curious daughter. Confessions may be infinitely useful—when salvaged, carefully, from the fire.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen, stood at the entrance to Wolsey's Chapel on Monday the twenty-third of December, listening to the melodious voice of the organ. “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The old Lutheran chorale Albert loved so well. The Prince Consort was being borne into St. George's, Windsor, by the gentlemen who had surrounded him for most of his exile in England—followed respectfully by his son. Von Stühlen had only the barest sufferance for the Prince of Wales, who reminded him strongly of Victoria, but on this occasion Bertie's demeanour was above reproach. There were Lord Torrington, and Sir Charles Phipps, and Biddulph and Grey and of course Disraeli and Palmerston . . . all of them freezing in the chill of that stony place, a welter of black, of shining silk top hats removed in deference; a sea of men. Ladies did not attend funerals; not even the Queen.
Von Stühlen stared at the sarcophagus in which his childhood friend—his childhood self—lay rigid and cold. I wish you no peace, he thought; no happy repose of the soul. Albert had gone silently to this grave—he had confided nothing as the most bitter anxiety killed him. That silence told von Stühlen exactly how little, in the end, he had ever mattered to the man he called friend.
Years of following in Albert's wake, as though the role of courtcard and careless hanger-on had been fulfillment enough, as though he'd rejoiced in his useless days and desperate cadging for money—had ended in nothing. He still had no idea why Albert had been blessed, and not Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen, when the world abused one as maladroit, and celebrated the other for his charm. Had Fate rewarded Albert's obsession with ideals? His devotion to what he called Duty? From time to time von Stühlen thought he glimpsed an answer—in the immensity of Albert's pain. Fate slowly devoured Albert alive; in its boredom, it never even glanced at von Stühlen. His anger and bewilderment were immense. His mouth tasted of ashes.
The champagne flowed freely after the ceremony; that would be Bertie's touch. The same group of men uttered the same tired platitudes, about dignity and nobility and sacrifice, as they drank to the dead man's health and the wretched Queen's sorrow. Von Stühlen stopped only once as he made his way through the crowded reception rooms, still hung in black silk—to answer a question of Disraeli's.