Was it possible the Queen was mortally afraid of her own son?
Von Stühlen stared at Gibbon. “What about the illness?”
“I don't know. God's my witness, I don't know a thing.”
The man was shuddering violently, saliva pouring from his mouth.
“Von Stühlen!”
The voice was Rokeby's. The British consul stood at the edge of the courtyard, a mixture of disgust and outrage on his face.
“Cut him down,” von Stühlen ordered, and walked swiftly toward his carriage.
Chapter Forty
Monday, the thirtieth of December, and Lord Palmerston come all the way to Osborne—some three hours' travel by coach and steamer—with his despatch box and papers.
I would not see him at first, my indignation at this violation of my grief knowing no bounds. A note was sent in to my rooms, in the hands of Arthur Helps, the Clerk of the Privy Council—Lord Palmerston's respects, and would the Queen be so good as to attend the Privy Council meeting, the matter at hand being the successful resolution of the affront to British sovereignty on the part of the United States of America, in seizing two Confederate envoys from Her Majesty's ship Trent . . .
I tossed the Prime Minister's missive on the fire and said to poor Helps, “Indeed we shall not. You may inform Lord Palmerston he is to conduct his business through the agency of Princess Alice.”
“Mama!” that serpent's tooth cried in protest—she had led Arthur Helps to my door—“that cannot be proper. I am not the person the Government must address, on matters of State—”
“Very well,” I told the Clerk. “Pray inform Lord Palmerston he may speak to our private secretary—General Grey.”
“General Grey is . . . was . . . Papa's secretary, Mama,” Alice faltered.
“So he was. And now he is the Queen's. What better person to stamp the Government's papers for them? He will know exactly what Papa should wish. Very well, Helps—you may go.”
The unfortunate fellow bundled himself off, and Alice followed—without a word or a look for me. I gather from my daughter's air of disapproval that she regards me as indulging my sorrow—as requiring this fresh expression of melancholy each hour, as a child might demand a sweet. I am quite content to confound her hopes of improvement; to exercise every whim a pitiable widow might dream up; to ignore, in short, all who would urge me to fortitude.
Helps very quickly reappeared, with General Grey in tow, to protest the new arrangement—Palmerston delivering himself of a peroration on the nature of monarchy, and the power that resides in my person, which none other may assume. I suppose he is perfectly in the right—although he cannot possibly argue that My Sainted Angel did not often assume the duties of sovereign—that he governed in my place—that he pretended to all the powers of a king, without benefit of coronation. All these, no one would deny. It is Albert's absence—not mine—from the Privy Council, that has them in an uproar.
Grey seconded Palmerston's views.
We argued the point by exchange of letter for full half an hour.
It ended with the Council in one room and I in another, the connecting door open between. In this manner, they could record my presence; and I could avoid attending.
Helps carried the papers to and fro across the threshold.
Before I signed, I glanced continually at Albert's portrait—whispering to him in German, all the while. Once or twice I nodded, as though in complete accord with his advice; and only then did I lift my pen.
I am not above appearing mad, if it ensures I am left in peace, and left alone.
The questions I might otherwise be forced to answer do not bear thinking of.
From one man at least, I may fear nothing.
William Jenner attended our party to Osborne, as is his custom at Christmastime; the man has no family of his own worth speaking of, and his anxiety for my reason is so acute, that he should never have been parted from me in my hour of need. I believe that the doctor dreads the possibility of blame, for having lost so august a patient—he dreads the idea that history will call him incompetent.
“Queries have been raised,” he mused last evening when I consented to see him—ostensibly to receive a copy of the death certificate he filed on the twenty-first of December—“theories, conjectures . . . in the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. It would seem they cannot reconcile my diagnosis with the medical bulletins issued from Windsor.”
“How should they?” I demanded reasonably. “We did not authorise a full disclosure of the Prince's condition. We saw no reason to make his agonies public. While there was a hope of his rallying, there was no cause to alarm our subjects with the spectre of his loss.”
“You will observe, Your Majesty, that I noted the cause of death as typhoid fever, duration twenty-one days. I marked the onset from the occasion of his fatal walk with the Prince of Wales, at Cambridge.”
“Yes,” I murmured. “He was struck down. Bertie! That dreadful cross—it was to escape him that we fled here to Osborne. But what possible objection should the medical journals make? You were upon the scene, Dr. Jenner—the editors of the Lancet were not.”
Poor Jenner hesitated. His face is grown puffy and grey; a decade of age has descended in a fortnight. “The Windsor bulletins referred only to a low fever, with a generalised depression. We did not say typhoid. And the fact that no one else at Windsor contracted the illness—”
“The Lancet is forgetting our nephew the King of Portugal,” I said comfortably, “who died of typhoid in November; and our Royal envoys, General Seymour and Lord Methuen, with whom Albert would meet, upon their return from Pedro's funeral. No doubt Methuen and Seymour bore traces of contagion.”
“But they met with the Consort less than a week before his death,” Jenner faltered. “And I cannot deny that the Prince was poorly for nearly a month.”
“Nonsense. We repose complete confidence in your diagnosis, Doctor—for why else should the Prince have died? He was a large and healthy man of but forty-two.”
When he continued to look troubled, and would have uttered still more devastating truths, I approached within inches of his person and spoke for his ears alone.
“No word of doubt or reproach shall ever pass my lips,” I said. “I make you the solemn promise of a Queen. You did for my Beloved what you could, dear Jenner—and I shall be forever grateful for your presence by his bedside, at the last. I believe we may consider the possibility . . . of a knighthood.”
Sir William Jenner. How well it sounds.
He went away a trifle cheered, and I, a trifle less so. Medical journals! Pray God that only medical people read them, and not the general run of my subjects! My seclusion, and the sympathy accorded a widow and queen, should end such trouble with time. What is essential, however, is that nothing more be found to feed it.
“Don't you wish to know, Mama?” Alice said to me after dinner.
“Know what, my dear child?”
“Why Papa killed himself ? That is the burden of all your hints, I presume—that Papa was guilty of self-murder?”
“I do not need to ask myself such a question,” I returned. “I know how your Papa was destroyed. He was cast into an abysm of despair—by the horror, the knowledge of your brother's misconduct. I am in full possession of all the disgusting details of Bertie's sordid affair. Your Papa spared me none of them. I can only shudder when I look at the Prince of Wales. But your angelic Papa was too good to live with such wickedness.”