by Julie Sarff
Alex parks Michael’s car right in front of #555 High Street, but instead of hopping out of the car enthusiastically, Alex sits unmoving at the wheel. Heavens, he doesn’t want to do this. He’s miserable.
“Come on.” I motion for him to get out of the car. “Whatever happens, it will be alright.”
We knock gently on the door of a small cottage that is painted in a high-gloss red. Then we stand there, listening to cars pass behind us. Nobody comes to the door.
“Maybe she’s at work?” I venture.
“Maybe she no longer lives here. Maybe she moved or died,” Alex adds solemnly.
Abruptly the door swings opens, and a women in a black wool skirt and purple mock turtleneck stares out at us. Beside me, I hear the Prince gasp.
“Yes?” the woman asks, with an uptight expression.
“Agnes Tannebaum?” I ask, and the woman stiffens. At that same moment, the Prince removes his wig.
“You look so much like your sister,” Alex murmurs. “For a moment, I thought you were Nanny Margery.
“Your Royal Highness?” the woman hazards, her face registering disbelief and alarm. For a moment she appears torn, as if she wants to shut the door in our faces. She glances again at the Prince and her gaze seems to soften.
“Quick!” she motions. “Come in.”
She ushers us into a dark sitting room. I recognize her as a fellow crochet enthusiast. Everywhere there are crocheted doilies.
The woman closes the door behind her and leans into it.
“Ms. Tannebaum,” Alex starts in.
“There’s no one here by that name,” the woman snaps and Alex stops speaking. “My name is Mabel Raince and I would appreciate it if that is how you would address me.”
“Of course,” Alex answers.
“I’m not sure what you’re doing here, or how you found me. Scotland Yard said no one would ever find me.”
“So you are Margery Tannebaum’s sister?” I ask, just to confirm.
“I was. Or rather Agnes was,” she says shortly. “I no longer associate with those names.” She shoots daggers at me.
We stand there in that dark, small living room engulfed in an odd silence, not knowing what to say. The woman does not ask us to sit, indeed she crosses her arms, letting us know we’re not welcome.
“Ms. Raince,” the Prince says quietly and once again the woman’s expression softens, “I’ve come to tell you how terribly sorry I am for what happened to your sister. I have felt eternally guilty about her suicide.”
Mable turns her eyes on the ceiling as if she is trying to hold back a tear.
“That is very kind.” The words catch in her throat. “But there was no need to come all this way.”
“Please,” Alex beseeches. I glance over at him. He looks more than miserable, he looks tortured. He’s been waiting for answers all his life, and will this woman have any to give? Alex must be wondering the same thing, as he grows paler by the second.
“I need to ask you if Margery ever talked to you about Albert’s death?” he finally asks.
The woman’s head snaps around. “And I need to ask you to leave, now,” is all she replies.
By his expression, I can tell Alex is shocked. I doubt anyone has ever asked him to leave in his entire life.
“I have nothing to say. Margery told me nothing, other than it was an accident. It was not her fault.”
“No, it was not. It was my fault,” Alex murmurs. Now it is Mabel who registers shock.
“Why would you say such a thing?” she cries.
“I pushed him, I know it.”
“You didn’t push him. There was an inquiry. Nobody pushed him. It was all an accident, except of course…” she breaks off, whatever she was going to say she has decided against it.
“Except of course, the part about his grandmother leaving the window in the playroom wide open. Why didn’t anybody ever talk about that? That’s what I always wondered,” she says at last.
“What?” the Prince asks.
“Hmm, yes, that part was never in the papers, was it? No, they were too busy blaming my poor sister, calling her a murderer. But if anybody was at fault for the little Prince’s death, it was his grandmother. Who keeps a window open with no screens on the second floor of a playroom? The Palace worked night and day to keep that part out of the papers. They were happy when the press was focused on my sister rather than on the dotty old-grandmother whom they wanted to protect by sweeping everything under the rug.”
“But I pushed him,” Alex repeats, as if in a trance.
Mabel’s head snaps round. “That’s garbage, that is. There was speculation about that. People are cruel. You were little, you just picked up on that speculation. You did nothing. I’m sure of it.”
“But how can you be if you and Margery never talked about it?” Alex asks.
“I just am. My sister did nothing wrong. I’ve hidden away for years and for what? For nothing? My sister did nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong, yet my family received death threats. I’m sorry I can’t help you more, but I think it’s best you leave.”
I glance at a picture in a silver frame on the woman’s upright piano. It’s a picture of Mabel and a man with two children.
Mabel follows my gaze. “Yes, it’s worked out alright for me here. Nobody but my husband knows my original identity. Now please, I’ve asked you to go.”
Before we leave, I scribble my name, address and telephone number down on a piece of paper and hand it to her, “If you ever want to get a private message to the Prince, you can give it to me.”
Alex’s face is expressionless. He remains stoic, even as we bid Mabel goodbye. She shuts the door tight behind us. I’m sure she feels betrayed. After all, Scotland Yard probably told her that nobody would ever trace her. She has a lot of reasons to be upset; she lost her family and her life after an accident that had absolutely nothing to do with her.
It’s a long drive from Portstewart back to Edinburgh with a Prince who simply stares straight ahead in silence. We drive to Larne and take the ferry. As it plods its way from Northern Ireland to Scotland, I retrieve a couple sandwiches from the food vendor. I eat them both, because Alex isn’t hungry. When the ferry docks, Alex drives expeditiously to Edinburgh, gripping the steering wheel hard, not saying a word. By the time we reach the outskirts of the city, it’s going on nine p.m.
“We can’t make it all the way home,” Alex says, breaking his silence.
“Are you thinking we ought to stay at the Earnest Ewe?”
“You ought to stay there, I’ll go to Holyrood.”
“But then the Palace will know where you are?”
He smiles for the first time today. “It’s okay. It’s time for me to go home. I have a lot of explaining to do. I should tell my mother everything.”
“Everything?” I ask.
“Well, not exactly everything,” he smirks and I can tell that although he has been silent this whole trip, he seems to be feeling better. It’s as if something inside him has changed. He looks tired, yes, but the sadness in his eyes seems to have disappeared.
“Oh,” he adds, as he drops me off at the Ewe. “Happy reading, I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t forget I still need a ride back to my car at your place tomorrow.” Then he hands me the pages of vellum that we retrieved from inside the cherub.
Chapter 19
It’s all I can do to contain myself as we drive from Edinburgh to the Cotswolds the next day.
“Well, were the letters everything you hoped they would be?” Alex questions, and I’m happy to see a grin on his face.
“Indeed they were,” I smile smugly and press down on the gas.
“Well, come now… according to all the papers I am besotted with you, but don’t tease me, my beloved…tell me what you read.”
It’s true; the papers are still carrying on with “After Acting Irrationally in Scotland the Prince Flees with Biographer.”
The Palace is going to have to talk fast
to set the press straight on our relationship. I am going to have to talk fast to get Meg, my editor, straightened out. Over the last few days she has left no less than 15 messages asking what is going on, and what did I think I was doing locking myself in a cemetery at night?
“It says here, in this fine newspaper that we picked up at the gas station, that Mrs. Taylor Anne Barnabus of no. 24 High Street in Portstewart, Northern Ireland swears she saw the Prince of Wales in a shaggy black wig along with his biographer walking down the street,” Alex reads.
Oh dear, I clench my jaw. How are we going to explain that? I decide not to worry about it for now, and return to talking about the papers we found inside the cherub.
“Those vellum sheets, with the exception of one, appear to be Mary Beaton’s attempts to copy Mary, Queen of Scots handwriting. They are basically practice attempts at writing the Casket Letters.”
“So, with that, my dear,” the Prince smirks, looking about a million times better than he did yesterday. “You have just solved a 500 year old mystery.”
“I believe I have.” I wonder if this frustrates him, that we have resolution for Queen Mary but not for him.
“You know, all’s well that ends well for Mary. Bothwell got his comeuppance at the hand of his first wife Anna Tronds,” I continue with a smirk of my own.
“Really?” Alex asks with a grin. He’s probably tired of hearing me drone on and on about Mary, Queen of Scots. Our journey has been long and I told him every detail I knew about her life.
“When Queen Mary was imprisoned by her half-brother after being captured at Carberry Hill. Bothwell escaped. Stupidly, he sailed to Copenhagen. He was arrested and taken to Bergen, Norway, where his first wife lived. Anna complained about his treatment of her, how he had taken all her money and then abandoned her. The Norwegians took her side and threw him in prison. Later, when King Frederick of Norway learned that Bothwell was wanted for the murder of Lord Darnley, Bothwell was sent to the notorious Dragsholm Castle where he lived in appalling conditions until he went insane.”
“Mercy,” the Prince says, “that puts a few things in perspective, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?” I ask tentatively.
“Lizzie, this whole last few days of sheer craziness puts a lot of things in perspective. And you know what, I know it seems absurd, but somehow talking to Mabel did help. Maybe, I do remember things wrong. Maybe it was the power of suggestion from hearing things when I was only four. Mabel reminded me of an incident where my cousin Rose and I were watching the news coverage of my brother’s death, and I remember my mother flying into the nursery in a rage and yanking the plug straight out of the wall.”
“Wow, why?”
“Because the reporter was saying that there were all kinds of wild speculation going on, namely that I had actually shoved Albert out the window. I have to say that if I think about it, I can’t remember the day of Albert’s death in detail. It’s a bit of a haze. I’m not so sure any more what happened. But I do vividly remember that reporter talking about rumors that I had shoved Albert out the window. And maybe, that is where I got the idea that I did it.”
He stops talking and stares out the window.
“So I’ve been thinking and…” he hesitates, “I think it’s time for me to let it all go. Don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. Otherwise you will become insane like Bothwell.”
“Precisely,” he agrees and leans back against the headrest, closing his eyes. We’re still both exhausted from everything that’s happened. As the Prince rests, I wonder if 500 years from now, somebody will figure out what exactly happened on the day Albert died. Maybe someday someone will find a piece of paper marked “Top Secret” and all will be revealed. For now, Alex will have to make peace with not knowing for sure what happened that day. I wonder if Mary made peace, going to her grave, not knowing who had forged the letters that looked so much like her handwriting. I imagine in the end, Mary didn’t care. I imagine in the end, she simply forgave the others. I hope, at last, Alex has been able to forgive himself, although he never really did anything wrong.
I glance over at him again, he looks so peaceful, half asleep in the passenger seat. Do I dare disturb him?
I dare.
“There was something else I read in those letters too,” I add mysteriously.
“What?” he asks, his eyes flying open. I startled him awake.
“I need to reread the letter at home. Preferably after I’ve showered and…”
“And we order in some Chinese food.”
“We?” I ask.
“You don’t mind having me for one more night, do you, Lizzie. Honest to God, I am too tired to drive home. Tomorrow I’ve got to return to London and to my appointments.”
“Of course, I don’t mind. I have two guest bedrooms, neither of them has ever been used. You go back to sleep. I’ll tell you after I reread the letters exactly what I’ve discovered.”
******
That night we watch the latest reports on the incident in Greyfriars Kirkyard.
“They stole several tombstones, just ripped them right out of the ground. And they smashed up a really lovely cherub, just tore the head right off,” the cemetery keeper, a Mr. Marvin Upshod is telling a reporter.
I laugh, which causes pain in my mid-section. My ribs still hurt from being tackled.
“Dear Lizzie, I really did a number on you when I lept on top of you at the cemetery.” Alex’s face is etched with little worry lines.
“I’ll be fine.” I give a dismissive gesture. “You did what you had to do. I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I was so afraid the McKenzie Poltergeist was after us.” I click off the television and lean back against the couch.
“Alright then, we’ve finished with the Chinese food. You’ve had a shower, I’ve had a shower. You reread the papers, I saw you. Are you going to tell me what they said?”
I stare at him for a moment, taking in his whole smiling face. I love him. I love him like I’ve never loved anyone in my life and I secretly wish what they were saying on the news were true. I wish that Alex was besotted with me. I wish he were a fool for love and that he would follow me on every crazy adventure. But then I remember the voice of the other woman on the phone, and I’m sure the dreamy expression I am wearing disappears off my face.
“So what did that last letter say?” he questions seriously.
“Before I get to that, I would like to point out that we still have two mysteries on our hands. The first is, with regards to finding Mary Beaton’s diary inside the chest in Holyrood, we still don’t know how it got there.”
“Schnipps is still reviewing video tape of the apartments to see who placed it in the chest-of-drawers,” Alex replies thoughtfully.
“And two, we still don’t know how that strange missive from Scotland Yard got in your Year Five Memorabilia box.”
“I suspect someday, some historian like you will figure out that mystery.”
“I suspect so,” I agree.
“Well?”
“Alright, here it is. The last letter we found was not a practice letter for the Casket Letters.”
“No?”
“No. The last letter was a letter from Mary Beaton asking the Countess of Erlington to look after something which was very special to the Queen.”
“What?”
“Her second son.”
“Her what? Lizzie, you’ve gone daft. Mary only had one child, James I by Lord Darnley.”
“Not according to that letter. According to that letter a second child was born to Mary Stewart after Bothwell fled and Mary was imprisoned. By that time, James Moray and Mary Beaton were thick as thieves, and when the child was born nobody was told. Moray sent the child into the care of Mary Beaton, under the condition that she never tell a soul who the child’s real parents were. It looks like Mary Beaton kept that promise until she grew ill in her later years, and then she pleaded with the Countess to look after the boy and to let the worl
d know who the child was. Listen.”
I grab the piece of vellum off my desk, and sit back down beside Alex on the couch, reading the last line of Mary Beaton’s letter, “My dearest friend Jane, tell them all someday that this is the son of Mary, Queen of Scots and Lord Bothwell and that if James I should die, then this boy, whom I have christened Charles, shall be the King of Scotland.”
“My god!” Alex jumps up. “Lizzie, do you know what this means?”
“I do.”
“We have to find out what happened to the child.”
“I like your enthusiasm.”
“The Stewart line died out,” he muses to himself.
“I realize that.”
“But perhaps it didn’t, perhaps the boy survived.”
“I know,” I say, as excited as Alex. “Perhaps out there somewhere is the descendant of this boy Charles and that man would have his own claim to the Scottish throne.”
“Ah, now wait a second, my father is the King of Scotland,” he says, sinking down on the couch beside me.
“Absolutely, your father is the true King of Scotland. Still, it’s romantic isn’t it, to think that somewhere out there a descendent of Mary Queen of Scots might be walking around, not having any idea who he is. How wonderful it would be to find him, this long, lost potential King of Scotland.”
Alex considers this for a moment. Then he says, “I suppose it is romantic, but not nearly as romantic as this.”
Quite unexpectedly, he leans over and kisses me hard on the mouth. Well, perhaps it wasn’t all that unexpected, because I find my hands going around his neck and I kiss him back even harder than he is kissing me.
I should stop. I should stop to contemplate what madness has brought us to this point and what good could possibly come out of such a kiss. We’ve been through a lot in the last two days and Alex has been in emotional turmoil over his brother’s death. This is just a manifestation of his turmoil. We shouldn’t be kissing like two manic teenagers.
The prince must be thinking the same thing, for abruptly he stops. My heart sinks all the way into my shoes.