Too Many Notes, Mr Mozart

by Bernard Bastable

  ‘But you mixed in theatrical circles, Mr Mozart.’

  ‘In those circles there was talk, of course. But such things, in the theatre, are very much a matter of course.’

  ‘As they are in aristocratic circles as well.’

  I dipped my head, smiling broadly.

  ‘I take your point, My Lord. If there was no great fuss in theatrical circles it may be because Mrs Jordan was the discreetest of women. Whereas His Majesty …’

  ‘Ah, quite.’

  ‘I was wondering if, at the time, there was any talk of a form of marriage having been contracted between them.’

  He raised his eyebrows and let out a little ‘phew’of astonishment. I could see that he was both remembering and examining the motive behind the question.

  ‘None that I can remember,’ he said, frowning. ‘There was talk at home, there was talk at Eton, where the doings of the King’s sons were naturally the subject of gossip – and some envy. But I never remember talk of any marriage. Of course any such marriage would have been illegal.’

  ‘Naturally,’ I agreed readily. ‘Under the Royal Marriages Act the pair would have had to have the permission of the King, which they certainly would not have got. But I wondered whether the Duke – the King, as is – perhaps from some feelings of chivalry, might have gone through some such ceremony.’

  Lord Melbourne lowered his voice still further.

  ‘The King hasn’t the feelings of a gentleman. He knows what they are, but he hasn’t got them. I would doubt it very much.’

  ‘As a protest, then, at the King’s tyranny over his own family, and the restrictions of the Royal Marriages Act?’

  ‘That is just possible,’ conceded Lord Melbourne. ‘Some such feelings, mixed with others, were probably behind the marriage ceremonies gone through by the late, conspicuously unlamented Prinny, and by the present Duke of Sussex.’

  ‘If them, why not him?’

  ‘As I say, it’s possible. But remember that Mrs FitzHerbert and Lady Augusta Murray were ladies, were from the sphere of society from which in earlier centuries queens had sometimes come. If Catherine Parr or Elizabeth Woodville, why not Mrs FitzHerbert? But that argument could not apply with Mrs Jordan. She was an actress. Nothing could have made her suitable to be a queen …’ He pulled himself up short, with the belated sensitivity of the typical aristocrat. ‘Do I pain you?’

  ‘No, no. But such a charming woman.’

  ‘Allowed. My young blood was warmed by her beauty and her charm. But she had had protectors before the Duke, had no right that anyone knew of to call herself Mrs and she had had children before his. Another point: she had not stuck out for marriage before. Do you think, because he was a Royal Duke, she would insist on an empty form of marriage?’

  I thought.

  ‘No. I did not know her well, but she never struck me as the sort of woman who would do that.’

  ‘As charming off stage as on, Mr Mozart?’

  ‘Fully as charming,’ I said, remembering. ‘My good friend da Ponte certainly thought so.’

  ‘Promiscuous, Mr Mozart?’

  ‘Generous, My Lord. I would prefer to say generous.’

  I thought it politic at that point to let the subject drop. Lord Melbourne was casting too many glances at me instinct with the sharp political intelligence which his lazy manner tried to conceal.

  I had a little conversation with my other neighbour, Lord Erroll, who was having noisy exchanges with other guests on the subject of horses (likely winners and the proper management of), hunting, women and dice. Not my sort of person at all. A brash, good-natured, blundering sort of man. The sort who comes to the theatre mainly to observe an actress’s ankle. He did condescend over sorbets to ask if I had enjoyed the picnic.

  ‘Very much,’ I said. ‘Though I don’t enjoy the open air as much as I suspect the King does.’

  ‘Oh, he loves it. The whole family does. They were brought up playing games in the grounds of Bushey.’

  ‘His Majesty’s eldest son didn’t seem to be enjoying it.’

  ‘George?’ said Erroll, but seeming mentally to back away. ‘Gets some funny notions. Finest chap in the world, great company, but gets some funny notions. Feels his position.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ I said at once, to stop him turning away. ‘I had some conversation with him on the terrace last night. He was … perhaps not quite himself. He was asking why the King waited so long after parting from Mrs Jordan before he married the present Queen.’

  He looked me straight in the eye.

  ‘Gets some odd ideas, George.’

  Then he turned determinedly back to his horsy friends. But our conversation had been overheard. Some time later Lord Melbourne bent his head towards me confidentially.

  ‘The reason the King did not marry the Queen until some years after leaving Mrs Jordan is that he tried to marry all sorts of heiresses, to retrieve his financial position. Most of them were almost as unsuitable, as matches, as Mrs Jordan would have been. All of them refused him. He was not a good prospect at all, then. He came to realise that the only chance he had at all of a legal marriage was with a German princess past her first youth. By the time Princess Charlotte died the Continent was again open to English travellers, so he started looking in Germany. Even there it took time.’ He smiled wickedly, then wagged his head sagely. ‘That I am old enough to remember.’

  I nodded. It was clear that the time gap between the King’s split with Mrs Jordan and his marriage was of no great significance, whatever someone had convinced George FitzClarence was the case. Lord Melbourne now straightened up, looking around benignly as if hoping no one had noticed he had been in a conspiratorial huddle (how naive politicians can be!) and said conversationally: ‘Are you still composing, Mr Mozart?’

  ‘I am, My Lord. I have just finished a violin concerto for Paganini. Trying to prevent him writing any more himself.’

  When the ladies withdrew Lord Melbourne gave the port five minutes and then went after them. I slipped out in his wake, not to join the ladies (pleasant though that usually is – the beery dreariness of all-male company, whether in taverns or at great tables, always appalls me) but to pursue my investigations. I had been so wrapped up in George FitzClarence that I had neglected other matters. I stopped by the Unfrocked Bishop, who was freezing the area around the staircase.

  ‘I need to talk to Mrs Hattersley, the Princess Victoria’s maid.’

  I had to repress the desire to say ‘My Lord’. Anything to do with the domestic staff was clearly beneath his purview. He raised a finger to summon a lesser footman by the door to the Drawing Rooms, had low words with him, then resumed his episcopal immobility, the only sign of life being the occasional throbbing of the third chin.

  The younger footman returned, coming all the way downstairs, bowing, then leading me up them again (it would have been more than his job – or his life – was worth, I supposed, to shout down to me). He explained when out of earshot of his superior that Mrs Hattersley was in the bedroom of the Princess and her mother, waiting for the Duchess to leave the glittering throng and come to bed. The Princess while at Windsor, as apparently at Kensington too, was on no account to be left alone. She was, however, fast asleep, and Mrs Hattersley could very easily talk to me without fear of being overheard. He led me along the corridor where I had already guessed the Princess and her mother were lodged, and then very quietly opened a heavy door. I slipped through, but as the footman shut it behind me, with the cantankerousness of old buildings, the door creaked.

  I was in a very large room, and I could just discern the gloomy shapes of two enormous four-poster beds. In a far corner there was a table, with a candle glimmering on it the sole source of light in the room. There were chairs around it, and Mrs Hattersley had risen out of one, and was beckoning me over: she was hardly more than a gloomy, threatening shape, but as I drew nearer she assumed a less melodramatic aspect.

  ‘The lassie’s fast asleep,’ she said, gestu
ring towards the bed nearest the door which held the Princess in its commodious embrace. ‘We can talk hearr without fearr.’

  I sat down and, keeping my voice low, began business at once.

  ‘You have kept quiet, I hope, about what you saw and heard last night?’

  ‘I have!’

  I saw a shadow cross her eyes, though.

  ‘But there has been talk among the servants?’

  ‘The sairvants were involved. The sairvants had to remove the body. We are only human. There has been talk.’

  ‘You haven’t told the Princess?’

  ‘I have not,’ she said indignantly, eyeing me through the gloom. ‘Why disturb the puir wee child?’

  ‘But very often you do tell her things – things that she otherwise would not know of?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Aye, now and then. For her ain good. They’re trying to keep her a child. But she’s no a child any longer, and there’s things she needs to know.’

  ‘I agree. Is there any talk in the servants’hall about how Popper came to meet his death?’

  ‘Naturally there is. If sairvants are commanded to get rid of a corrpse, they’ll ask themselves how it came to be a corrpse in the fairst place. But I’ve said nothing, and Smithson – that’s the footman – has said nothing.’

  ‘So the servants’talk is all speculation?’

  ‘Aye, if you like to call it that. There’s no solid information, except about what happened to the body at the end.’

  ‘Oh? What did happen?’

  ‘It was taken to his home in London, where the men from here had a tairrible tairmagent to deal with.’

  ‘I know her.’

  ‘Then you’re unlucky in your acquaintance, Mr Mozart. They had money, but the body would na’co-operate without she was promised much, much more. In the end she got what she wanted, and the funeral’s tomorrow.’

  ‘I see … Mrs Hattersley, what relation are you to the Hattersley the late Duke of Kent had flogged to death while he was in command in Gibraltar?’

  There was a moment’s silence. I had no idea what the answer was going to be, but I wondered whether she would say ‘husband’. Eventually she said, ‘Related by marriage.’

  ‘He was not your husband?’

  She drew herself up.

  ‘Mr Mozart, how old do you think I am? The things that you’re talking about, they happened thairty years ago. I was not even married to John Hattersley at the time.’

  Dear, dear – how touchy women are about their age!

  ‘I apologise. I did not know when it happened.’

  ‘And he died after punishment – about a week later.’

  ‘As far as he was concerned that seems to make things worse rather than better.’

  ‘Weel, mebbe you’re right. ’Twas often said the Duke was brutal in his punishments.’

  ‘No, the British army is brutal. The Duke was barbaric, from all I’ve heard.’

  ‘Whatever you say, sir.’

  She was being very cagey on the subject, much less than her usual rather theatrical self. It seemed more than the habitual discretion of a royal servant. What, I wondered, was she hiding?

  ‘You bear no resentment for his death?’

  ‘I never knew the man. I only know what my husband told me, which was no’much.’

  ‘What exactly did he tell you?’

  She paused, perhaps merely collecting her thoughts and memories, perhaps arranging them for my benefit.

  ‘You must know, sir, that royal sairvice often goes by families. Fathers and mothers get their children places, and their brothers and sisters too if they can, because it’s no’bad wages, for all they’re not always paid on time. And you can always go on from there to an even better place. My mother worked at Holyrood and got me a place there – and a good place it was, for all there was no royal pairsonage there to serve. My husband was valet to the late Duke of York, and he came to Scotland when he was Commander-in-Chief. We met and married, and we were both in the sairvice of the Duke until first my husband died, then the puir old Duke himself. After that I was fortunate enough to get my present position with the Prrrincess.‘

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Matt Hattersley was my husband’s uncle. He tried the royal sairvice, but it didn’t answer. He was unco’ wild, undisciplined, and took a drap too much. He sailed close to the wind, that’s how my John put it. When he got dismissed he enlisted for a soldier. It was the last thing such a body should have done. If he could na’ take orrders in a royal household, he’d never take orrders for his commanding officers. He couldn’t – with the consequences that you know of, sir.’

  I meditated for a while. It seemed straightforward enough, and, as far as Mrs Hattersley was concerned, innocent. The idea of her revenging her kinsman’s death could surely be set aside. But I still had the distinct feeling that the woman was holding something back, and I saw I had to worry out what it was.

  ‘Which royal household was his service in?’ I asked.

  ‘It was the Duke of Cumberland’s, sir,’ she said.

  The Duke again! Would we never be free of the Duke?

  ‘And what was he dismissed for?’

  There was silence.

  ‘I’d rather not say.’

  ‘Come, come, Mrs Hattersley. Nothing you can say could harm him now.’

  ‘It’s no’him I’m afraid of harming.’

  ‘Mrs Hattersley, I am trying to discover if there is any danger to your young mistress. You will have heard of the incident involving the Duke of Cumberland on the terraces yesterday. Would you really wish to put obstacles of any kind in my way?’

  She dabbed her eyes, very distressed at the suggestion.

  ‘No, sir, no! I would na’. It’s the last thing I would do … Matt was dismissed for spreading malicious rumours, sir.’

  ‘I see. And what or whom did those rumours concern?’

  She swallowed.

  ‘They concerned puir Prrincess Sophia.’

  Suddenly a long-dead memory, the recollection of long-ago gossip, sprang to my mind. How royal gossip does linger in the back of the mind! It was a story that had had great currency at the time, though it had been generally discounted since.

  ‘Did he spread the rumour that the Duke of Cumberland was the father of his sister’s child?’

  She looked down into her lap.

  ‘Aye, sir, he did, to his shame. Wicked, worrthless crreature that he was. There was no truth in it, that I am quite sure of, Mr Mozart. Not a drop of trruth at all.’

  But then how, working at the Palace of Holyrood at the time, would she have known?

  There was, I judged, nothing more to be got out of her for the moment. I got up and tiptoed to the door. The bed closest to it was clearer now that my eyes were accustomed to the gloom, and my heart warmed as I discerned the tiny, motionless shape in the middle of its vastness.

  Back in the Crimson Drawing Room, now filled with chattering men as well as women, my entry was noted by the Duchess of Kent, who sailed over in my direction, followed – rather reluctantly, it seemed – by Sir John Conroy.

  ‘Mr Mozart, the Duke of Cambridge has just told me a most extraordinary thing.’ I bowed.

  ‘Really? Your Royal Highness?’

  ‘He says that the King has asked to the castle the … the offspring of Princess Sophia. That he was here all yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am, that is true.’

  ‘But that is monstrous! And it goes entirely against the spirit if not the letter of our agreement with the King.’

  She looked round at Sir John, who was beginning to look very embarrassed. That ‘our’had not been judicious.

  ‘I believe, Ma’am,’ I said, ‘it was just the kindness of the King’s heart. He thought mother and son should get to know each other better.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem like kindness at all to me! I think he was being cruel to Sophia.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Exposing her in
that way, publicly.’

  ‘I assure you she herself does not think so.’

  She shot me a shocked look.

  ‘You have talked to her abou it?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I believe the two found very little in common, which was perhaps natural. But she thought it a kind gesture on the King’s part.’

  Her look said, as clearly as if she had carved it in stone, that she found it astonishing that a mere musician should be discussing intimate and scandalous details of her past with the daughter of a king. A month ago I would have agreed. ‘And thus the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges’, as the only creative mind comparable to my own once wrote. Maybe my last years would see a mingling with the Great Ones of this world just as my early ones did.

  ‘Well,’ said the Duchess briskly, ‘it is too late to do anything about it now.’ Sir John looked relieved. ‘The Princess is asleep, and we leave in any case tomorrow afternoon. But we must watch her – we must all watch her, Mr Mozart. I rely on you.’

  Most certainly I would watch her. But I was starting to feel that I could have a longer view than that: I had the faintest glimmer of a hope that I could not only ensure the Princess’s safety now, but that I could discover who it was who posed the threat to her safety in the future. It would be up to others to put an end to that threat.

  15. King and Son

  Breakfasts at the castle had been relatively informal during the stay of us visitors. There was a good deal of fend-for-yourself, even though the King or Queen was always there. (The King, by the way, breakfasted remarkably frugally, when one recalled the gargantuan excesses at every possible meal of his late brother.) When, on the last morning of the party, I saw that the Queen was without her husband at breakfast I sent a message, feeling greatly daring, asking if the King could spare me a few minutes alone. The footman’s reply was to lead me frostily through to the private apartments of the castle, to the new King’s study, a warm, smallish room full (as studies usually are) of books that no one in their senses would want to read.

  The King himself was sitting at a desk, with a pile of formal-looking papers beside him to his right, and a bowl of steaming water and a footman to his left. He swivelled round as I was shown into the study.