by Lucy Worsley
My heart clutched with pity. I would give anything, all my own strength, to help her.
And then the decision became very simple: for she needed help and it was in my power to offer it. Uncle Leopold was right. A good, steady, trustworthy cousin like Albert would be the very thing to get her through the coming trial.
But where did that leave me? It left me, unfortunately, quite alone.
I sat at my writing desk and took up my pen, but I could not bring myself to begin. I had a sudden vision of Albert opening my letter, and of his face falling in disappointment. Surely this could not be the right thing to do?
Tears were running down my face. I gave up the task.
Half an hour later, I made a second attempt. This time I made a mad dash at it, scribbling as fast as I could before I lost my nerve.
Albert,
You are too good to me. Your impetuous, fine nature leads you to say things that are not true. Your letter paid me the finest compliment I have ever received. But I cannot accept your offer. My duty is to a certain person, and she needs you more than I do. The alternative is her failure, which would place the nation at risk of rule by a dangerous brute. You must do as your Uncle Leopold has planned. I shall miss your love greatly, but it is the right, the only thing to do.
Victoria
Then I sealed it, addressed it and presented the messiest, least careful letter I had ever written to Mrs Keen to take to the post.
Then I sobbed again as if my heart would break.
Chapter 34
‘I Love You’
A few days later I told my father that I needed to get away. ‘I’ve been here for so long,’ I said. ‘I shouldlike to see Mamma and home once more. I think I’d like to rest up while the king is still quite well, so I’m good and strong for when … well, for you-know-what.’ It was thus that we had taken to speaking of the king’s death and Victoria’s becoming queen.
‘Oh!’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt that you look a little pale and peaky. And it might be as well that you pay a visit to Arborfield before your mother completely forgets who you are. I suppose I could probably spare the carriage. But then, there is the princess to consider. Will she let you go? And what have you been doing with yourself to get worn out? I suspect you of eating ices in the early hours and getting indigestion.’
I hardly had the patience to make a civil answer and glowered at him across the marmalade dish. ‘The System,’ I said, ‘will hardly fall apart, will it, if I go home for a few days?’
‘Well, possibly not,’ he admitted. ‘But as the time grows shorter, the danger grows greater.’
I knew what he meant: the ever-shortening time between now and Victoria’s eighteenth birthday. We heard reports daily of the worsening health of the king. If he were to die, there would have to be a regency. There was talk of nothing else but of regencies, and of who would be regent.
I was so sick of thinking about it all that the very word gave me a headache.
Mainly I just wanted to get out of his sight. He was always saying that you could ‘count on a Conroy’, but he had discounted the Princess Sophia so utterly. At the very least he had been reckless; at worst he had stolen her fortune. I sat there simmering with resentment.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I can see that you are under the weather, and your losing your health will not best serve the princess. A few days in the country will perhaps restore the roses to your cheek. By the way, this letter arrived for you this morning. Who can be writing to you from Germany?’
I bowed my head as the blood pulsed shamefully up and down my veins. ‘I believe …’ I began, but faltered. Somehow, from somewhere, I gathered the wit to lie. ‘I believe it is from Baron Stockmar, the tutor who came with the Princes Ernest and Albert, as you may remember. He promised me the lyrics of that ancient German song we learned together when the princes were here.’
I was not used to lying outright to my father. I expected him to detect me at once. But there was nothing but silence as he turned over the pages of his paper.
‘Miss V!’ he said at last, without even looking up. ‘You are a funny little thing. You should really have been a professor or an archivist, not the lady-in-waiting to a future queen.’
You think you know me, Papa, I thought silently. You think I am just a mouse. The truth would surprise you.
‘Well, thank you, Papa,’ was what I said out loud. ‘Thank you for the offer of the carriage. I shall go and pack.’
‘Oh, but finish your breakfast!’ His words trailed after me, but I was already halfway up the stairs.
I was barely in my room, banging the door and leaning my back against it, before I was turning the letter from Germany over in my hands and raising it to my lips to give it a kiss despite myself.
‘Germany. Dearest Victoria …’ Even the very first words in that dear familiar hand made my heart beat faster. I glanced around the room, feeling for some reason that I was being watched. This was underhand, illicit behaviour. I was working against the System by reading this letter, by the very act of holding it in my hand.
But then I remembered that Albert might be hurt, might be sad. I desperately needed to know how he was, and concern made me read on.
I simply don’t accept what you say. You cannot refuse me, however much love and duty you owe to the princess. You see, I don’t love her, I love you. I don’t accept your answer. I know that we shall end up as husband and beloved wife. I beg that you will not think me impertinent, but this is too important for me to say less than I mean.
I take upon myself the honour of signing as your own constant
Albert.
An awful trembling overcame me. I had tried to be so strong, but Albert had been stronger. He had simply disregarded my good advice. My head told me that this could not end well, but my heart leapt with excitement.
All I wanted was to be quiet, alone, to think over his letter, to read it over and over again.
I turned to my chest of drawers. How perfect it was that I had already made plans to go to Arborfield. I began packing quickly, deftly, with excitement. I picked up a necklace that Victoria had given me. Victoria! In my haste, I had almost forgotten Victoria. How could I say goodbye to her?
I sat down on my bed, disconsolate. This is where we had sat together and she had told me that we were sisters. Well, in revelling in the joy that Albert’s letter had brought me, I wasn’t acting as a good sister should.
Yet how could I remain here to be so tortured by doubts and anxieties?
It was no good. I had to go. I had to go home at last.
Chapter 35
Mr Grouch
Three days later, I was back at home at Arborfield Hall, and in some ways it was as if I had never left. There was the piano, and – oh! – the very same books on the schoolroom table. But then I noticed the place by the window frame where my old governess, Miss Moore, had marked my height with a pencil. I stood near it. I was taller now, much, much taller.
‘Ah, Miss V,’ my mother said, as I went into her room. ‘What’s the weather like outside? Is it raining?’
I wanted to shout that I had been away for seven years. Seven years! Surely she had noticed?
For a moment, just as if I were ten once again, I felt unable to summon up the words. ‘Yes, Mamma, it’s raining,’ was what came out.
Now she was looking at me closely, almost with her full attention. ‘You’ve changed your hair,’ she said eventually. ‘Ringlets. Like Jane.’
‘It’s more than my hair that has changed,’ I said, approaching her bed in expectation of further questions.
But she rolled away so that I couldn’t see her face. I drooped. Mr White the butler and our old cook had been more pleased to see me than she was. From the back she seemed to look exactly as I remembered, except for maybe a further paling of her skin and fading of her own hair.
Then I saw it.
By her bed, on the table, stood a green bottle.
I recognised it as soon as
my eye fell on it. I had seen a bottle like that before. I had seen it in the hands of the duchess when she was distressed or anxious, and I knew my father provided it.
Had he led both of them to the drops they drank so deeply? Was my mother really so sleepy as she seemed – or was this somehow his fault as well?
At that moment, I decided I would sit with her every single morning, and try to get her to take an interest in the world.
As I leaned over and looked at her lying on the pillows, her eyelashes fluttering upon her cheek, I felt like I was the mother and she the vulnerable little girl. It made my heart ache in a newly unpleasant way.
I sighed.
I crept out and softly closed the door. Like everything else at Arborfield, it swung smoothly on its oiled hinges, falling into its frame with barely a click.
After a few overtures, the Arborfield servants left me alone, and I took to my old solitary round of walks in the shrubbery, piano practice and long hours sitting with my mother, book in hand. I sadly missed Dash, as I had left him behind to comfort Victoria.
My mother continued hardly to register that I was there, but I think that as the days went by she began to like having me in the room. I read aloud letters from my brothers, now serving in the army all over the world. Once, she even took my hand and smiled. It was peaceful, sitting there beside her, and slowly, gradually, I began to feel I was doing her some good.
But her reactions were so weak, her progress so slow. As the days grew into weeks, I started to feel angry that my father was still controlling my mother through his bottle, even though he was far away from us. He would not control us any longer, I decided. He could not know that, each day, I stealthily removed the green bottle from my mother’s room and tipped away half an inch or so of its contents, filling up the gap again with water. As the days went by, the green bottle’s contents gradually grew weaker and weaker. My mother seemed not to notice, and I vowed that when at last it was all water, I would tell her and promise her that she didn’t need it any more.
I felt that this was really important, and that only I could do it. And yet with nearly every post, a letter arrived from Victoria full of complaints and her constant suggestions that I should return. Sometimes the letters hardly made sense, and I feared that her own health was declining alongside her uncle the king’s. I was torn. I began to think that perhaps my duty lay there too. She would need me as the king’s end drew near.
But I could not quite bring myself to write to my father to say that I was coming back to the palace.
April was almost May before something happened to shake me out of my dream-like state. I had begun to dwell often on the fact that it was nearly a whole year since, on that Kensington Palace staircase, I had first laid eyes on Albert. I was now quite old enough to be married, and indeed a letter had recently come announcing Jane’s engagement. ‘At last!’ was all that my mother had to say.
One evening I was all alone in the drawing room, my mother having gone up to bed.
And of course I was thinking of him. I always was.
With a start, I realised that there had been a knock, and that I had said ‘Come in!’ mechanically, without even thinking about it. Mr White was in the room, closing the door behind him and turning to me with a bow. ‘A young … gentleman to see you, miss. Should I ask Maria to summon Lady Conroy? He seems to have arrived with luggage.’
‘Oh!’ I rapidly turned to the fireplace and picked up the tongs so that he would not see my face. ‘No, White, no need to disturb my mother.’ I thought quickly. ‘Did he give a name?’
‘Of course, miss. I believe it was Grooch, or Grotch, or something of that nature. He seems, miss, to be a foreigner.’
Where had I heard that name before? Of course, it was what Prince Ernest always called Albert. ‘Albert the Grouch’ was his name for his brother. My heart almost stopped beating. Albert? Was this – hope against hope – Albert, come to see me?
But at the same time I almost had to laugh at White’s distaste. I was in complete disarray and urgently tried to gather my scattered thoughts. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ I eventually managed to say. ‘I was expecting Mr Grouch. But not tonight. Maybe a letter has gone astray or some travel arrangement has collapsed. Please ask Maria to prepare the blue guest room.’
He bowed and turned, and instantly my hands flew to my hair and dress. Was it smooth? Was my dress straight? Was this really the person I thought it might be?
Had White guessed the reason I had selected the blue room for Mr Grouch? The answer was that it was next door to my own, and I wanted to be as near as possible to my ‘foreign’ visitor.
There was conversation in the hallway, and I swallowed an imprecation to the Almighty as I heard the housemaid’s voice. They were interfering in my arrangements! ‘No need, no, please do not disturb Lady Conroy,’ he was saying. ‘I am already well acquainted with Miss V. Conroy, from the palace, you know.’
That was his voice. It was him!
Then he was bounding into the room. For a moment we both stood on the hearthrug, trembling and looking at each other. White softly closed the door. At the exact same moment, Albert and I both laughed, and we hurled ourselves into each other’s arms.
We hugged tightly, but in the end I became very sad and still. It was a completely unfamiliar feeling to have arms tightly wrapped around me in a great big bear hug. I loved it, but feared the moment it would end.
Then he thrust me away from him and scanned every inch of me, looking for change. ‘A year has made a vast difference!’ he said. ‘You used to be ugly, but you are now almost pretty.’ I hung my head. I loved and hated being teased by him. But I could give as good as I got. It was Albert; he would not mind.
‘And you!’ I said. ‘You are almost tall now. I believe you have grown up. Is that a beard?’
Sheepishly, he ran his hand over his chin.
‘Almost,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry now I teased you. I know you hate it. My Victoria,’ he continued seriously, ‘you are the most beautiful woman in the world! Now, come sit with me and tell me everything.’
But we could neither of us remain seated for long. We paced the rug, I showed him the dank view out of the window, and he poked the fire to warm up my hands, which he said were too cold.
‘And why is your mother in bed at this early hour?’ he asked eventually. ‘It’s only eight o’clock. Is she an invalid?’
I had observed that at Arborfield this was the sort of question that casual acquaintances never ever asked, for my mother’s ill health was shrouded in mystery. But I could deny Albert nothing, and tell him nothing but the truth.
‘Well, she takes drops from a bottle. Every day. They make her very sleepy. I am trying to stop her; we are cutting down. I think … I think my father likes to keep her that way. He gives the same drops to the duchess when she is … you know … too …’
‘Too dramatic, you mean?’
I nodded silently. I felt a wave of relief followed at once by fresh anxiety. For in speaking openly about these doubts for the first time, I realised how convinced I was of their truth.
‘But this is very dangerous!’ Albert went on. ‘It must be laudanum. Once you start taking it, it’s very difficult to stop.’
I had suspected this for some time. But my father … he got the bottles from the chemist, and he seemed so right about everything. Except when he seemed so wrong.
‘Victoria,’ Albert said seriously, putting his hands on my shoulders. ‘You should know that my parents are not … quite normal, either. My mother has left us. She preferred another man. My father has taken up with mistresses. I think that you and I are in something of the same position.’
‘Albert, I really don’t know …’ I trailed off, miserable. But his face was very close, his eyes very insistent that I should continue. ‘I really don’t believe my father is a good man. Not just mistaken or misguided or overbearing. You know I have thought those things before. But now I think he might be wrong … almost evil
.’
I found I was panting slightly as I spoke, this admission torn from me only by a love of the truth and a need to speak it to Albert.
‘I have the same doubt,’ he said at once. ‘But don’t be frightened. You are strong. You will manage. And I will help you.’ He cradled my head on his chest. I could feel his heartbeat. The slow hypnotic pace of it gradually stilled my fears, and a soporific peace stole over me, almost like the benison of laudanum itself.
The tap at the door sounded like thunder, and guiltily we sprang apart. ‘Come in!’ Albert said, much too loudly. Maria, our housemaid, was there with the evening tea. The sight of two cups rather than one on the tray gave me such a radiant glow of happiness that I could scarcely hide my smile.
‘The room is all ready, miss,’ she said, hardly able to keep her eyes off this mysterious stranger who had arrived so suddenly and unexpectedly.
‘Thank you, Maria,’ I said crisply, and there was nothing for her to do but to leave.
We giggled.
‘I have caused a commotion in this household, have I not,’ Albert said, ‘by walking up the drive out of nowhere?’
‘Indeed you have, but given that for so many years I have been so good, so very, very good, I think I am allowed to be a little bit bad for once, and to have a gentleman caller.’
We sat drinking our tea. He sipped first from his own cup, then from mine, then from his own again, watching me sternly until I performed the same absurd little ceremony.
‘Victoria,’ he said seriously. ‘You are certainly allowed to be bad this once. You deny yourself so much for other people. That’s why I admire you. And I have something to tell you. I have been with the Princess Victoria. I have come to tell you that you must return to the palace.’
‘Is it the king?’ I asked, quickly putting down my cup. But I was a little uncertain. Surely if the king were dead, he would have told me straight away.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It is not the king. It is something else. It is not for me to tell you, though. She must tell you herself.’