‘Ah, Mr Mozart. Don’t bother with the bowing and scraping. Can’t do with all that. Give me one “Your Majesty” and then we’ll talk man to man, eh?’
‘Very well, Your Majesty–’
‘Right, that’s done. Gets in the way and slows things down, all that nonsense. Sorry to have to go on with this signing. M’brother left a great mountain of stuff – he was sick, of course, at the end, but truth to tell he was never very good at getting the day-to-day things done. Good at the formal stuff, standing around and looking king-like, bad at sticking to the paperwork. Time for a change. I look like the funny old buffer I am, but I’ll do the work. Luckily these are just army commissions, so I don’t need to read’em.’ He held up a very puffy-looking hand. ‘But it still takes it out of me, all this writing.’
The footman bent over and sponged his right hand while with his left the King gestured to a seat beside the desk.
‘Well, how are things going, eh? Ready to have anybody keelhauled? Or was it just a storm in a teacup?’
‘Not that, Your – sir.’ The old man’s face fell. ‘Mr Nussey feels certain Popper died from poison. That being so, we can’t rule out the possibility that the poison was meant for the Princess.’
The King looked up and screwed up his face.
‘Not a very likeable little man, was he? That was my impression. Wouldn’t have trusted him with a sixpence. May have had lots of enemies. Then again, one of the actresses told me that the Queens Theatre is in a pretty parlous state financially. May have decided to end it all.’
That was a suggestion I had to squash at once.
‘If the financial problems of the theatre bothered him he could have committed suicide any time in the last thirty years. He sailed through financial crises like a knife through butter. And he wouldn’t have done it now. He was in his seventh heaven at his company’s being asked to perform at Windsor, before the new King and Queen. He was politer to me than he had been these ten years.’
The King, signing away, chuckled appreciatively.
‘Damned funny people, these theatre managers. Knew Sheridan, y’know. Damned difficult chap. Damned rude too, when he felt like it.’
‘Similarly,’ I resumed, ‘the people who owed him a grudge wouldn’t choose to kill him at Windsor, where it was likely to cause the maximum of fuss. If someone drops down dead at a royal reception then questions are bound to be asked about the security around the King and the other royal personages. As far as the theatre people are concerned, Windsor Castle is the last place we would choose if we wanted to murder him. Much though most of us wanted to, from time to time.’
The King put down his pen, and let the footman sponge his swollen hands, before resuming work.
‘Adelaide usually does this,’ he said complacently. ‘Very gentle. I’m trying to do a year’s work in a month, that’s the trouble. So then, Mr Mozart, what has been going on?’
‘Something I’ve not got to the bottom of yet, not by a long chalk. I get a whiff – if I may use the word–’
‘Certainly you may. I know a stink when I smell one, as I’m sure you do.’
‘I get a whiff, then, of some kind of conspiracy. So that what one is after is not necessarily or not only the immediate culprit, but the person or people who lie behind the things that have happened. Do I make myself clear, sir?’
‘Clear as an Act of Parliament,’ grumbled the King. ‘Do you mean that someone is being used, for wicked purposes, by someone else?’
‘Probably.’
‘Without really understanding what’s going on?’
‘Again, probably.’ (This, by the way, I was far from clear about, but I was already preparing the way for the King to be let down lightly.) ‘I wonder, sir, if I could ask you a few questions about personal matters?’
‘Not about m’sisters, is it?’ he said warily. ‘Sad stories. Don’t want to bring them in if it can be helped.’
‘I mean about yourself, sir.’
‘Oh, my life’s an open book. Not a very edifying one, a preacher might say, but everyone knows about it.’ He scratched his head. ‘No one’s been very interested in it before. Now everyone’s talking about it, and I’ve forgotten all the details. So don’t expect too much of me, Mr Mozart.’
‘It was your relationship with Mrs Jordan I was going to ask about.’
‘I thought so. Lovely woman.’
‘Lovely.’
‘Much better than I deserved.’
I was glad he had that much self-knowledge.
‘I wondered, sir, whether you ever tried to regularise the union?’
‘Regularise? Make it legal?’
‘Yes, sir. Go through a ceremony of marriage.’
He gaped at me. Clearly the idea had never occurred to him.
‘What would have been the point? That wouldn’t have made it legal. The marriage would immediately have been declared invalid by the King m’father.’
‘I wondered, sir, if Mrs Jordan might have felt better about the relationship if you had at least tried to make it a formal marriage.’
The King chuckled, and held up his hand to be sponged.
‘Not a bit of it. She was an actress, and a realist. She knew the way the world wags. Any marriage would have been a form, a sham. Don’t like shams. Like things honest and above board. So did she. Anyway, there was another thing.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Don’t know how to put this. Don’t want to sound too uppity. Dora was an actress. Even without the damned Royal Marriages Act she wasn’t the sort of person a king’s son could marry. She’d got three children already, for a start. I knew it wasn’t possible, so did she. Actresses could be royal mistresses – remember Nell Gwyn – but they couldn’t be royal wives.’
I was glad to have Lord Melbourne’s view confirmed.
‘So you never went through any ceremony of marriage with her?’
‘Never.’
‘And any supposed certificate of marriage between you must be a fake?’
‘Certainly it must.’ The King paused in his writing. ‘Mind you, in a way I regarded myself as married to her. Tried to do my best for her, when our ways parted – not that I had much to share with her…’
‘May I ask why you and she separated, sir?’
He waved the footman away, put down his pen, and looked straight at me.
‘Because I was a bounder. And a fool too. I had – what is it that black chappie says in the play? – a pearl of great price, and I let it slip through m’fingers. Oh, there were reasons. Dora and I loved Bushey, and I was always making improvements – in the house, the stables, the grounds. Kept me busy. Didn’t have a proper job. Should have had a ship of my own, but m’father stopped me getting one. But it all cost money. I hated to look into the eyes of the workmen and tradesmen that hadn’t been paid – horrible! Then all the children – I love them all, but they cost money too. Nobody ever taught me about money when I was growing up. Don’t know if I’d have learnt, mind, but nobody tried to teach me. I was in debt before I reached my majority, then deeper and deeper in. I knew I had to do something for my children – King’s grandchildren and all that. Couldn’t let them go begging, or go on the stage. So I thought the only thing I could do was marry someone with money. Set us all up for life. And Dora too, if I could manage it. She wasn’t getting any younger. She’d no more idea about money than I had. Mucked it all up, of course. Lost Dora and never found a rich wife. Served me right for acting like a bounder.’
He turned back to his commissions, and wiped away a tear. Then he motioned the footman back into place and went on signing.
‘So your children are still unprovided for?’
‘Girls are all right. Married well. Had their mother’s looks and charm. Good job they didn’t have their father’s looks arid charm, eh? Boys have had to be found professions – army, navy, church, that kind of thing. Not bad for them, having something to do. But not what I planned. Be easier now, with more nice little things
in my gift.’
‘You certainly found them all an excellent stepmother.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’ he said, looking up smiling again, very pleased with himself, as always when the Queen was mentioned. ‘Excellent woman. Everything a woman should be. Not like m’brother Ernest. Married a woman who murdered her first husband, or so they say. Bet she’d like to murder Ernest now. Everybody else does, anyway. No, I made a good choice. Or, to be honest with you, I was lucky. Because I got engaged to her before I even saw her.’
‘Your children get on well with her, it seems.’
‘They do. They bully her – but they’ve got more animal spirits than Adelaide has. Anyway, they bully me too.’
‘Your eldest son does not seem happy with his position.’
He shot me a glance. It was a sort of warning.
‘George will have to shake down into it. Nothing else he can do, is there? It’s not the best thing in the world, being a bastard. But being the King’s bastard isn’t the worst thing in the world either, eh? Eh?’
I stood up, bowed, and the King brushed aside the ‘scraping’ and waved his pen at me.
‘Keep me informed, eh? Me or the Queen. What she knows I know. Trust her on anything except politics. Not for the womenfolk, politics. Keep at it, eh, Mr Mozart? Find out the truth in the end. Got to keep the little girl safe.’
And he turned back to promoting his officers.
In the State Rooms of the castle there was little sign that the house party was coming to an end. Of course there were few (apart from myself) among the guests who had to do anything so mundane as packing. I ascertained that the Princess Victoria was well chaperoned (watched over by Lehzen she was teaching one of the Erroll children to pick out a tune on the old fortepiano in the King’s Closet, and she was much bossier than I ever was as a music teacher), and having satisfied myself about that I went in search of my next prey. Fortunately the Countess of Erroll was on her own, walking thoughtfully in the Quadrangle. She smiled as I came up to her, but it was a troubled smile, as if I represented part of the problem she was in the process of thinking through.
‘Lady Erroll, I wonder if I could ask you about something you said during the picnic yesterday.’
‘Ah …’
‘You seemed to be saying it not so much to yourself as to me, to get a message across to me.’
This time her smile had something teasing and even coquettish about it.
‘Well, you are, are you not, Mr Mozart, doing something confidential for Papa? That is clear to everyone here. And you are also keeping an eye on little Victoria.’
‘There are many of us doing that, though too often we nod off. I’m sure you remember what you said, Lady Erroll: “Sometimes I worry about George.”‘
‘I remember … You are quite right, Mr Mozart: I was not talking to myself. I have been worried about George for some time now. I’ve been walking here wondering whether to talk to someone – to you, to Papa, to the Lord Chamberlain.’
‘I hope you will decide to talk to me.’
‘You give me little choice. I shall have to say something now. In any case it will be a relief…’ She thought for some time, obviously approaching a difficult subject with care. ‘We’re a harum-scarum, healthy, selfish, fairly happy lot, Mr Mozart – I mean my brothers and sisters and I. “The FitzClarences” as people call us, as if we were all alike, and a sort of family firm. Or else a nasty illness, depending on your point of view. But George is the exception. He’s not at all harum-scarum, not at all happy. I don’t know – perhaps it’s because he’s the eldest … I do notice that you’ve had your eyes on him, Mr Mozart.’
‘I’m trying to avoid trouble for the King.’
‘I’m afraid George is trouble for the King.’
‘I rather thought he was. What do you think his problem is?’
‘I think he is losing his grip on reality – our reality. He has been babbling on to me about a marriage certificate.’
I nodded.
‘Yes, he was talking to me the other night about why the King had not married the Queen until 1818. I concluded he meant until after your mother had died.’
‘I expect he did. He’s got the idea that Papa and Mama went though some kind of marriage ceremony. Such nonsense! Even if they did, it would not have been legal, because Grandpapa King (we were always brought up to call him that) had not given his consent. And in that case, what difference would it make? I would hope that people could accept us for what we are, not because of some scrap of paper our parents obtained.’
‘Your father says there never was any such marriage.’
‘There you are. But I never thought there was.’
‘On my first night here I heard your brother asking the King to make him Prince of Wales.’
‘Oh my God!’ She turned and looked at me, consternation on her face. ‘Was he drunk?’
‘Rather, yes. But–’
‘But it seemed to be a genuine demand.’ She looked down in thought, then we resumed our walk round the Quadrangle. ‘It’s worse than I realised, isn’t it? George is going off into some sort of fantasy world. Is he mad yet, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Do you know how he’s got hold of this supposed certificate?’
‘There’s an actual certificate, is there? I’ve no idea. If he thinks it’s genuine, then there’s no question of his having faked it himself, is there?’
‘No, that’s not what I think. My guess would be that someone has brought it to him, knowing his obsession.’
She nodded her head vigorously, as she did everything.
‘I told you, Mr Mozart, that we all had fantasies as children that somehow we would prove to be real princes and princesses. Apparently George never grew out of them – that is something I never realised till now.’
‘And apparently someone is using them. That’s what I want to find out. Who is using your brother’s–’ I hesitated.
‘Madness.’
‘Let’s say obsession, Lady Erroll. Who is using his obsession, and what are they trying to make him do?’
Before we parted Lady Erroll promised to tell me anything she could learn from her brother –‘for the King’s sake, for the Princess’s, and for poor George’s own sake,’ she said, with an expression unusually worried and concerned.
I was not, however, going to leave further investigation of ‘poor George’ – mere tool though I felt he was – to the chance that he would spill his soul out to his sister. I therefore made it my business during the rest of the morning to find out where he was. I wandered through the State Rooms, on the terraces, around the rest of the castle, even into the Great Park, to no avail. I saw all the other players in the drama, including Princess Victoria, who was playing a boisterous game of something-or-other with Lord Melbourne and some of the other children, watched over by her mother and Lehzen, both lookingjealous, and by Sir John, looking distinctly discontented and ill-tempered: negotiations, I conjectured, were not going his way over the question of who was to control any extra funds that Parliament might vote for the Princess’s household.
The footmen knew nothing of George FitzClarence’s whereabouts, and the approach of luncheon did not see him joining the company, so I decided to forswear the meal and continue my search. I was finally rewarded by a sighting of him, coming in at the St George’s Gate, apparently on his way back from Windsor itself. He was walking somewhat jauntily, and turned down in the direction of the Lower Ward and St George’s Chapel. I went after him with a nonchalance that was partly assumed, partly genuine, for I had very little idea, should I get to talk to him, how I was to approach the topic I had at heart, or what specifically I would ask him.
When I got down to the Lower Ward he was nowhere to be seen. Instead of investigating the medieval shambles of the Horseshoe Cloister I decided to try St George’s Chapel. It was a fine day, and entering through the main door I was glad to find it grand but far from gloomy. Its size was not such as to remove it from
the human scale, and it provided a setting more homely than might have been expected for the assorted monarchs and their consorts whose graves and monuments were situated there.
It was a minute or two before I saw him. He came out from the far aisle, where it ran the length of the choir, and he stood there near the altar, looking down the length of the nave. He was once again posing – perhaps this time for one of those historical pieces that are becoming so popular: Henry VII on the Battlefield of Bosworth; Charles II Receiving the Plaudits of his Subjects on his Return to London. The handsome acquiline nose, the high forehead, the firm mouth – all perfect, and all reminding me of someone: was it someone I had known, or a picture of someone perhaps?
I strolled over.
‘A grand place,’ I said conversationally. ‘Full of the most interesting memorials.’
‘The tombs of my forebears,’ he said, in a voice instinct with drama. Here was a new role: the Master of Ravenswood in the halls of his ancestors, in one of the novels of Sir Walter that has not yet been made into a bad opera by anybody. It was difficult to think of a suitable response.
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said idiotically. ‘It must be a … moving experience for you.’
‘I came here before once,’ he said, with a rapt intensity that was unnerving. ‘I suppose I was about twenty, and it was my father’s birthday. The old Queen consented to my being of the party, and she received me. The old bitch! Made me feel like a mongrel cur among pedigrees. She must have had a real gift to be able to do that – ugly as sin herself, and surrounded by a brood most of them as unprepossessing as herself.’
‘Queen Charlotte had the reputation of being less than amiable,’ I said.
‘Much less. But how do you account for that gift – of making her hideous brood seem like pedigrees, while I …’
While I, handsome, gallant and talented, was made to feel like a cur, went the unspoken remainder of the sentence.
‘The trappings of royalty might do much,’ I suggested, ‘as well as the knowledge that possession was theirs, not yours.’
Too Many Notes, Mr Mozart Page 16