Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle

by Beverly Bartlett

  And, of course, “Click here for the wedding.”

  I suppose none of us will know, until we die, if our lives really pass before our eyes at that moment. But we know this much: If a prince’s plane goes down in an icy sea, his life passes before everyone’s eyes.

  The coverage was inescapable. Even the leading fashion website of its time, a little publication called WEAR!, put together a slide show of what the prince had worn on the opening day of every racing season since he was two years old and set off the trend for better boys’ fashion with those little blue knickers and the matching bow tie.

  But none of the images of the past could compete with the images of what was happening right then. Isabella on the beach. Her fine, flyaway hair whipping in a photogenic way with the gusty sprinkles. The search dogs in the background. The helicopters overhead.

  And that afternoon, when they pulled the body out of the sea, the rain started pouring even harder. Ethelbald wrote that it seemed as if the heavens themselves were crying.

  Throughout the stormy day, a somber Prince Louis, who, as the younger brother of the king, had supervised the search, periodically relayed messages to the house from the tent that served as the rescue operation headquarters. It was four P.M. when he made the last fateful walk up from the beach. His account of that conversation, as later reported in The National Times, is well known to those of us of a certain age. But I will recount it here briefly for my younger readers.

  He said he remembered stepping inside the house, which belonged to an acquaintance of Lady Carissa’s and had been turned over to the family for their use during the duration of the emergency. As he walked through the foyer, he said he noticed how lovely the hardwood floors were, and he worried that his soaking clothes and wet shoes would damage the finish. “It was one of those odd things you think about,” he said, “when it seems like you should be thinking of only one thing.”

  He made his way to the upstairs sitting room where the family had gathered. Before he opened the door, he noticed that he could hear nothing. The family was sitting together in silence. He cleared his voice and entered.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he remembered saying as he noticed Princess Genia, who had been slumped on an overstuffed love seat, sit up straight. Her body was rigid and tense. The queen put her head in her hands, and the king walked over to a window overlooking the gardens. Isabella’s face was absolutely blank, but her body language seemed somehow relieved, as if she had long expected this and was just glad it was about to be over. At least that was Prince Louis’s interpretation later.

  “We found the prince’s body,” Louis said. “It washed up onshore twelve miles from Lancelot Beach.”

  “No!” Isabella cried. She buried her face in her hands, slumped to the floor, and began wailing.

  Louis continued, somewhat unnecessarily, “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  The rest of the royal family did not react, but continued to stare at Louis, waiting for more. Secrest walked over and put her hands on Isabella’s shoulders.

  Louis went on. “I’m afraid, Your Majesty, that we’ve had to call off the search. There’s simply no hope for the mechanic.” His voice cracked, and he paused. “No one could survive this long in waters that cold, and the rescue workers are risking their lives out there. We can’t ask them to continue.”

  “Of course,” said the king. His gaze returned to the window. The queen walked over to Princess Genia and wrapped her arms around the young woman. Isabella was clutching Secrest and crying in an elaborate, showy way that the queen both detested and envied her for.

  “Noooooo!” Isabella cried over and over and again. “Can’t we go back? Can’t we do it over? Can’t we go back to yesterday and do it all over?”

  (Many in the press thought these statements were odd when first reported, but when they interviewed psychiatrists, they learned that it was actually quite common for the survivors of those who die in accidental deaths to be overcome by the feeling that if they could just move time backward by a few minutes or a few hours, they could tell their loved ones to drive more carefully, not to take the plane, to stop at the railroad tracks, to refrain from blow-drying their hair in the tub. It is a manifestation of the horror that comes with seeing how random tragedy is and how quickly it comes and how easily, in retrospect, it could have been avoided.)

  Isabella’s showy grief lasted only a few moments and only in the privacy of her husband’s family. In fact, some have questioned whether it was actually as Prince Louis reported, or if he invented it—either to show the humanity of the situation or to put Isabella’s stability in doubt, depending on the theorizer.

  In public, Isabella was as stoic and dignified as the king and queen. She was photographed leaving the home, looking red-eyed but pulled together. Twice in the following days, she stepped out of the castle to admire the flowers left by well-wishers. The next Saturday, she was everything you could ask a young royal widow to be: beautiful and weary and sad-eyed and straight-backed. Some people said she reminded them of the American Jackie Kennedy, who all those years earlier had walked behind the coffin of her husband, the slain U.S. president. But Isabella is remembered for walking in front of the coffin, leading the horse that pulled the carriage, occasionally whispering to it and patting its neck. Behind the carriage walked the king and queen, and behind them walked Isabella’s parents.

  Later that same afternoon, Isabella rode in the back of a limousine to a memorial service for Geoffrey. She was photographed holding Mae’s face in her hands, peering into her eyes, and whispering something no one heard. One of the commentators noted that she cried at the mechanic’s service, though she only looked exhausted at her husband’s.

  “It’s no surprise,” said Ethelbald, who wrote about the funeral for what seemed like months. “At that point, she’d been in funeral-related activities for the better part of seven hours. It had to be getting to her. Besides, it is just like Isabella to be broken down more by other people’s woes than by her own.”

  You may suspect there is another reason that she cried so much at Geoffrey’s service. You may think that she was in love with him. She certainly loved him. But was she “in love” with him? Well, that is the secret of Isabella’s heart, and I, for one, could not claim to know it.

  But having said that, I do know some of what was going through Isabella’s mind as she broke into tears at Geoffrey’s service. She was looking at the empty place on the altar where a coffin would have been, and she was thinking how sad it was that Geoffrey’s family would not get to stand by a grave site and say their goodbyes as their loved one was given a proper burial.

  They thought his body was lost at sea. But Isabella knew it wasn’t. Geoffrey’s body had been properly buried earlier that day.

  In Prince Raphael’s grave.

  Chapter 15

  Oh dear! My agent, I can assure you, is having fits at this point. Calm down, Frederick. Take one of those pills of yours. You’re going to ruin your health.

  I know, I know, I can hear you before you’ve even said it. “If you’re going to write a book that says the body buried in the Prince of Gallagher’s grave isn’t the actual Prince of Gallagher, then say it in the first paragraph of the first chapter, don’t just slip it in at the end of the fourteenth!”

  I know, Frederick. In theory, I agree. But like I said, I can’t tell stories that way. All those years when I struggled with my mediocre journalism career, my editors were always nagging me about not burying the lead. “You buried the lead again, you buried the lead again.” That’s all they ever said. But me? I think sometimes leads should be buried. You’ve got to tell the story like a story. That’s what I always say.

  If you’re going to rewrite it, then rewrite it. What do I care? I’m old, I’m moody, I’m too tired to keep up my usual refined decorum, and the only thing I’ve got going for me is that I know things no one else knows. I’m going to tell it my way.

  So where was I? Oh yes, the Prince of Ga
llagher’s grave.

  The body in the coffin that Isabella so famously led into St. Luke’s Cathedral, the body that is buried in the sandy soil of the royal cemetery, is not the Prince of Gallagher. It is Geoffrey.

  Prince Louis’s account of informing the royal family was reasonably accurate except on two counts. The first inaccuracy is simple. Throughout the entire account, the words “the prince” and “the mechanic” are switched. The news started with “We found the mechanic’s body.” And reached its climax with “There’s simply no hope for the prince.” In some ways, I guess, it was the opposite of what Prince Louis really told the family.

  Isabella’s reaction did not need to be altered. Prince Louis was able to reliably describe her reaction to the news of Geoffrey’s death as being that of the death of her own husband. Some people may read something into it. But I don’t know. Under the circumstances, with the fates of the two men so closely linked, perhaps that is what you would expect. Her husband was missing. His traveling companion was found dead. Under any circumstances, this was bad news. Who is going to quibble with her grief?

  The second inaccuracy is Prince Louis’s account of how the conversation ended. In fact, there was a long and spirited debate about how to handle the reality that Prince Raphael’s body seemed unlikely to be found.

  Isabella, who managed to collect herself somewhat, said that a full accounting was owed to “the people” and that openness and accuracy, no matter how painful at first, would be the best in the long run for all involved.

  But the king, who absentmindedly wandered over to the love seat and stood behind his daughter, lightly stroking her hair as if she were the royal dog, said they must be practical. How would it look to leave the heir to the throne merely “missing and presumed dead”? That wouldn’t do at all. Poor Iphigenia would have enough problems as queen without a bunch of what he called “loonies” coming forth claiming to be the long-lost Prince Raphael.

  “The people,” the king said, too sad and tired to sustain his usual sense of politics, “are scam artists and idiots.”

  And Isabella? How would she like hearing all the wild stories they would come up with about how Raphael was really alive and well and living in some remote African camp with the lost Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia?

  “Anastasia?” asked Secrest, the only person in the room calm enough to worry over details. “Wouldn’t she be a little old for him?”

  “The people also can’t count,” said the king, glaring at the royal associate and seeming to notice her presence in the room for the first time.

  And then, as quick as that, his mind was made up. “We’ll use the mechanic’s body and say it’s Rafie,” said the king with a matter-of-fact air of regal confidence and authority. By this point in history, few leaders anywhere in the world would have been so audacious. But this king was the king of a small country. And small countries, like small towns, are the sorts of places where corners are cut and rules are often thought to be unnecessary. They do not lock their doors, and they do not do DNA testing on dead royals.

  “There will be no autopsy,” the king said without hesitation. “It will be simple enough.”

  Isabella stood up and looked directly at the king. The young princess may have been famously headstrong and outspoken, but this was the only time she directly argued with either of Their Majesties.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, seeming to gather her courage. “I know you are the king and I am only the Princess of Gallagher. But I am his wife.” She put her hand to her chest to emphasize this. “Or his widow, I guess.” Her voice quivered with that but quickly grew steady again.

  “You cannot ask me to mourn over another man’s body. Besides,” she continued with all the righteous indignation she could muster, which was quite a lot, “what about Geoffrey? What of his family? His wife? You can’t just use his body as your . . . your . . . .”

  She paused dramatically before spitting out the next word: “prop.”

  “This poor deceased royal servant is not just a tool for your convenience. Using him this way is just . . .” She seemed to search for the right word and finally came up with the perfect one. “It’s just wrong!”

  It was quite a speech. It was, in fact, the very sort of thing Isabella could always summon up, even in the most trying of circumstances.

  But the king just waved his hand at her in a dismissive way, asked that Geoffrey’s wife be brought to him, and told everyone to wait in the other room.

  Mae—who had seemed serene as the rescuers searched for her husband’s plane—was waiting in an adjacent room of the house with friends from among the castle staff. She would have preferred to be with Isabella, but Isabella had been invited to wait with Their Majesties, and you neither turn down such an invitation nor try to sneak in your common friends. Even when you are the Princess of Gallagher and the apparent future queen.

  But Mae’s calm seemed shaken when Secrest stepped into the room and told Mae that the king wished to speak to her. Mae gasped and turned white and walked on somewhat shaky legs.

  Moments after Mae stepped into the room, people heard her cry “No,” and there were loud wails. The king and Mae were alone together for over an hour.

  The other staff members thought he was comforting her and noted that he was a fine and good king who, in his own time of grief, comforted a servant’s wife more than his own family.

  But he was, of course, trying to sell Mae on his plan.

  When she emerged from the room, she ran directly to Isabella, who had taken to sobbing again after getting a phone call from her sister Lady Fiona’s home. Isabella and Mae hugged for a long time. Isabella said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Finally, she took the American’s face into her hands in exactly the way she does in that famous photo of the memorial service and said, “Listen to me. You don’t have to do what the king wants. I’ll stick with you. I’ll expose everything. I’ll call for a full and thorough investigation. I’ll ask for an autopsy. They can’t deny me. I’m the widow. I don’t care what happens. Do you understand? I don’t care how things turn out. I’ll do it if that’s what you want.”

  And Mae said . . .

  But I can’t tell you what Mae said, can I? It wouldn’t make any sense. Knowing only what you know now, Mae’s words would be just so much gibberish. To make sense of Mae’s response, you have to know more than you now know.

  See, the great irony of all this is that the king took this drastic step, spent a small fortune to bury an American commoner in his own dear son’s grave, because the grief-stricken king feared that if people knew the rescuers had been unable to recover his son’s body, the people would entertain fanciful tales and hold out hope that the prince was alive and trade conspiracy theories as entertainment.

  The poor sad king thought he was doing a good thing. But his actions were filled with irony for one simple reason. Well, actually for two reasons.

  1) There WAS a conspiracy.

  2) The prince WAS alive.

  Chapter 16

  I suspect I’ll have to get a new agent once Frederick gets to this point in the story. He’ll surely have had a heart attack by now. I told him there was plenty of new material to explore, but he kept wanting me to write about King Will’s granddaughter, the one who seems to be bringing hats back into style on the streets of London. Poor Frederick. He really has no sense of history. Hats? My word!

  But I do suspect that even those of you more strongly constituted than Frederick must be getting a bit weary of the twists and turns. I can’t help it. It’s not as if I’m making this up! The facts are the facts. And I am confident you will find, if you bear with me for just a while longer, that the story of the Prince and Princess of Gallagher is the most beautiful and romantic and touching and tragic story ever told.

  At least Isabella thought so. I guess Mae did, too.

  It started out as a conspiracy of four. The plan had been hatched in those long sessions between the two couple
s. The dream had started with Rafie himself.

  See, Rafie was a happy, happy man but an unhappy prince.

  His unhappiness had dawned upon him slowly, after he had come to accept the fact that he loved Isabella. For most men the notion that they love their wives is not exactly news. They might be a little surprised to discover the feelings so fresh and alive if they, as Rafie did, were to find themselves overcome with adoration several years into their marriage. But they would take such a discovery as a small, unexpected, but much appreciated gift. For Rafie it was a crushing life crisis.

  You see, Rafie had known since he was twelve that he would not, could not, should not even consider marrying for love. (Or have I said that already? Yes, I believe I have.) His mother and father had made that quite clear. They had also drilled into him what it was that he needed and wanted and felt. What did he feel? Loyalty, mostly. To the crown, to the monarchy, to the people. Duty, he felt lots of duty.

  What did he want? To be a good king. To rule a prosperous nation. To help the poor. To ensure dignity. To pass on the crown as untarnished as it had been passed on to him.

  What did he need? Solid advisers. A respectable wife. An heir and a spare, by whatever names you called them.

  But in those wonderful, carefree Isabella years, Rafie began to realize that he didn’t want or need or feel any of those things. What he wanted was to run off with Isabella and keep her all to himself, to steal away with her for long weekends and read aloud to her the most fascinating passages of Accents and Affectations: Diagnosis and Detection. He wanted to cook meals with her in a small kitchen and to fill a tiny home with love and children and the smell of spaghetti, a popular Italian food normally shunned as “ethnic” by the Bisbanian royal family.

  “Oh, you’re silly,” Isabella would say. “We can do all those things now.”

  “No,” he would say, “we can’t.”

  I’m not sure if Rafie ever explained it very well to Isabella. But one late night, he explained it to me. He was the heir to the throne. If he decreed that he would never work on weekends, that he would cook his own meals, that he and Isabella would live in one of the servants’ quarters, there would be grumbling and wringing of hands and the advisers would sweat and swear and storm off, but it would be done. Even his father couldn’t really stop him.