Dear Alice! Yes, she and Arthur were the good ones, and apt to be overlooked when compared with the more forceful Vicky and gay and fascinating Bertie.
The sad season was approaching. December must always be a month of mourning, when she shut herself away with her journals and went over her past life, reading what she had written at the time and trying to recapture some of that rapture which she assured herself living with Albert had been. It was so long ago. Seventeen years ago since that dreadful December day when she had sat by his bed and known that he had left her for ever.
November came and with it a telegram from Alice to say that her daughter Victoria had caught diphtheria and was very ill.
The Queen was disturbed; she immediately wrote pages of advice to Alice. She must not wear herself out with nursing. She knew her daughter and she, the Queen, was not pleased with the wan looks which she had noticed during the summer. The Queen implored, no commanded, Alice to take great care and as diphtheria was catching, she must not expose herself to infection.
After the tragic death of the child who had fallen from the window, Alice had only six children left – five daughters and one son. There was Victoria, who had diphtheria; Alice known as Alicky, Irene, Ella and baby May; Ernie was now the only son.
Every day the Queen waited impatiently for news; she found it difficult to concentrate on anything else. How she wished the family were still in England for she was certain that with dear Jenner at hand they would have been much safer.
The telegrams came and the news was not good. Alice’s husband, Duke Louis, had caught it; Alicky had it; in a very short time all of the family with the exception of Alice had succumbed to the terrible disease.
What could she do? Did Mama think that she would stand by and see her family ill? She was certainly going to nurse them.
‘The doctors have told me that I must be careful and of course I will. I must on no account kiss them or embrace them.’
‘My dearest child,’ wrote the Queen, ‘I beg of you take the greatest care of yourself.’
Poor Alice! She was doomed to be a martyr. It had always been the same in the nursery. Vicky had bullied her; even Bertie who had championed her had occasionally teased her, but she had always taken it stoically and without protest, never telling tales.
Five-year-old May, the baby and pet of the household, was now dangerously ill.
‘How I wish that I could be there with her,’ said the Queen.
It was terrible when little May had died. But there was worse to come. They were a devoted family and the death of baby May shocked them all and filled them with grief. They were all sick, with the exception of Alice, who had miraculously kept free of the dreaded disease.
When she had looked at that small beloved face and known that her youngest child was dead she had stared speechlessly before her. How could she tell them what had happened, they who were so sick themselves?
But the truth could not be kept from them. ‘Baby is dead.’ The news seeped out, a terrible melancholy fell upon the palace.
Ernie, who had loved his baby sister dearly and was himself very ill with the disease which had killed her, was nearly demented with grief.
‘It is not true, Mama,’ he said. ‘Tell me it is not true.’
Alice could say nothing. She could only gaze sorrowfully at her son.
‘She is dead …? Baby May dead …?’ he cried.
‘She is suffering no more, Ernie, my darling.’
‘Dead!’ said Ernie blankly. Then he looked up at his mother. ‘Am I going to die, Mama? Are we all going to die?’
He had flung himself into her arms and what could she do, but hold him against her. She kissed him; she tried to comfort him.
‘I am here, my son, Mama is here to nurse you, so you will get well.’
He held up his face to hers. How could she refuse to kiss her own son at such a moment?
Alice had caught the infection. When the Queen heard this news she was alarmed.
She sent for Bertie and Alix. ‘She looked so frail when she was here in the summer. I warned her. I should have commanded her to come here. That house of sickness was no place for her.’
‘She wouldn’t have come, Mama,’ pointed out Alix.
‘I trust my daughter would have obeyed me.’
Alix shook her head. ‘She would never have left her family.’
The Queen was silent; then she said suddenly: ‘Do you know what the date is?’ And she began to shiver.
‘Why, Mama,’ said Bertie, ‘it is the twelfth of December.’
‘In two days’ time,’ she said, ‘it will be the fourteenth – the anniversary of your father’s death. It was on the fourteenth of December that we feared so for you, Bertie. Your crisis came then when we had all but given you up. And in two days’ time it will be the fourteenth again and Alice lies close to death.’
‘Mama, it can’t be. How could it be?’ said Bertie.
But the Queen was sure. There was something malignant for her about the 14th of December. That day had been the most wretched of her life; on it she had lost the Beloved Being; life had ended for her on that day, she had often said. And wasn’t it true that on the 14th she had nearly lost her eldest son? A miracle had happened then. And now … Alice!
‘Mama,’ said Bertie, very tender as he knew how to be on such occasions, ‘a miracle will happen again.’
The Queen sat in her room, praying, waiting for the miracle. She read her journals of that dreadful day seventeen years ago – the first fateful 14th of December. She had sat by his bedside, refusing to believe it; turning away from the blank misery which opened at her feet like a deep yawning pit.
‘Please, God,’ she prayed, ‘please, Albert, you saved Bertie. Leave me Alice.’
On the 13th there was no news from Hesse Darmstadt. The Queen went to the Blue Room in which Albert had died and she lived it all again and instead of that dearly beloved face on the pillows she saw that of Alice.
She had looked so ill even in the summer after the good air of Eastbourne. How would she have the strength to get through the illness? Only a miracle could save her. There must be a miracle.
She could not sleep that night. She kept saying: ‘Tomorrow will be the fourteenth.’ She could not stay in bed. She knelt by the bed in the Blue Room and prayed.
She must make a pretence of eating breakfast. Brown would scold her if she did not.
Brown came to her holding a telegram.
She snatched it.
‘I see by your face it’s nae good news,’ he grumbled and even at such a time she noticed the deep concern on his good honest face.
‘Ye’ll be ill yerself, woman,’ he said, ‘if you don’t give over grieving. Let me get you a cup of tea.’
And he got her what he called his special tea and in spite of everything she remembered how she had once complimented him on the best tea she had ever tasted. It was during one of their trips when they had boiled the water by the wayside. ‘It should be good,’ he had said with a grin, ‘it’s laced wi’ good Scotch whisky.’
And that was the sort of tea that Brown always made for her.
He made it now and she drank and felt a little comforted. But not for long.
There was another telegram.
At half past seven on the 14th of December, the seventeenth anniversary of her father’s passing, Alice had died.
The Queen called the family together and told them the terrible news. Leopold sobbed unashamedly, so did Alix, who could never bear tragedy in the family. Poor Bertie was heartbroken; Alice had always been a special favourite of his.