Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle

by Beverly Bartlett

  The nation’s mourning was much shorter. In the first few hours, the florists sold out of Bisbanian mums, then lilacs, which were the official flower of the Prince of Gallagher. Tulips, a nod to Isabella’s Dutch heritage, were the next to go. During those first few days, nearly all work stopped, and bus drivers, cops, and other public servants were often seen blinking back tears. The smell of the flowers—first sweet, then sour and rotting—hung over the city-state for weeks.

  Investigations were called for. “How did we get to the point,” the prime minister asked, “where the heir to the throne is being flown about by a mechanic? Does the castle security staff do anything anymore?”

  That sort of talk lasted for months.

  And for years—even now, in fact—there were all sorts of rumors: that perhaps a missile shot down the plane, that maybe the engine had been tampered with, that surely the pilot had not wanted to fly through that storm but the prince, cocky and overconfident and used to getting his way, had insisted.

  (Raphael could not help but be irritated by those rumors. “Cocky?” he’d say in the e-mails he exchanged with Isabella while they were in hiding half a world away from each other. “Since when have I been cocky? I’m positively unassuming. That’s always been written about me!”)

  Mae did not sue the royal family, and that decision was seen as highly suspicious by the sorts of people who were suspicious about the whole thing anyway.

  There were questions about why it took so long to get search boats out, and there was concern about the condition of the castle’s aging plane fleet. In out-of-the-way Internet chat rooms, people with a loose hold on reality theorized that either the royal family had, at some point, been placed under a curse, or they had their own son killed to keep Isabella from eventually becoming queen.

  (“That’s just ridiculous,” Raphael would write to Isabella each time a tabloid featured that line of reasoning. “Wouldn’t they just kill you, then?” he’d ask, leaving Isabella a bit too flabbergasted to reply. “Why involve me in it?”)

  Meanwhile, the more serious papers were attempting to document how the tragedy had become a turning point for the nation. When Vreeland, Rafie’s longtime valet, left the castle service and became a missionary, magazines held him up as evidence that the nation would become more giving now that it had lost its innocence.

  But you know how these sorts of things go. It wasn’t long before people were making jokes about the conspiracy theorists, and even the prince’s worthiness was questioned. “He’s just a prince,” you’d start to overhear people say. “He wasn’t the pope.” And luckily for everyone involved, the nation’s innocence was somehow restored so that it could be lost again a couple of years later, when the king died.

  I shouldn’t be so flip. It’s predictable and trite, but it’s real too. Those feelings—both the feeling that it is all too unimaginably awful and we will never be the same again, and then later, the equal feeling that we need to move on, we need to be the same again—are real.

  People can’t feel such sadness forever. So three weeks after the funerals, when the king and queen announced that Isabella had left the castle, seeking a private place to grieve, it seemed to mark the unofficial end of the public’s mourning.

  Their Majesties asked that the press and others respect this action on her part and not try to find her. “It is our sincere hope,” said the queen, making a great effort to sound sincere, “that the Princess of Gallagher will be afforded time in a quiet place to adjust to her tremendous personal loss and to decide what role she would like to have in the royal family and the nation’s public life. We eagerly await her decisions and bid her all the best.”

  Some people greeted such statements from the queen and king with much skepticism, but I think it was their honest attempt to rise to the occasion. They were, after all, mourning their own loss, grappling with the need to prepare their daughter for queendom, and, for the first time, facing their own mortality.

  Naturally, the castle plea did not stop anyone from seeking the whereabouts of the princess. The foreign press was especially ruthless—tapping the Cordage family’s phones, staking out all the princess’s favorite vacation spots, and even following Mae for a few nerve-racking weeks, under the assumption that the two widows would stay in touch. But the national press was far more restrained, not out of respect so much. They were just looking for an excuse to let the story die. No one could take another day of it.

  At any rate, they never found her. In what is considered one of the most stunning self-exiles since the dawn of the modern media, Isabella’s whereabouts were completely unknown for two solid years. It seems hard to believe now. But her exile was so successful that, after a year or so, she was almost forgotten except as a dated icon. The thought of her would give middle-aged women faraway looks in their eyes and make them recall their own lost promise and youth.

  Unimaginable as this seems now, the public was convinced during her exile that they had heard the last of the Princess of Gallagher and that her star had fallen with her husband’s fateful plane.

  But you know that they were wrong. On the second anniversary of her husband’s death, when Isabella emerged from a hiding place that, until the writing of this book, has never been revealed, she became what no one could have guessed: an even bigger star. And it happened for all the wrong reasons.

  Several months before the second anniversary of Rafie’s death, the king and queen begged Isabella to return to Bisbania. The king was quite ill and did not have long to live. Both His and Her Majesties wanted Isabella to return for a commemoration of Rafie’s crash and, more important, to be photographed spending time with Iphigenia, whom they were attempting to prepare for her rapidly approaching role as queen, but who was again having a bit of a rough time of it in the press.

  At any rate, the king and queen explained to Isabella—through an elaborate system of forwarded e-mails handled by Secrest—that they suspected the public held a lingering perception that the young widowed princess had been drummed out of the castle. They feared this unfounded rumor was affecting the way the people saw Princess Iphigenia, viewing her as a petty, heartless, weak replacement for her dear, glamorous brother. Isabella wrote short pithy replies in which she assured Their Majesties that it couldn’t be as bad as all that, and that she was quite certain the uproar of her return would only do the family more harm than good.

  But when the king, obviously weakened, sent a video clip of himself pleading with her, she relented. Though they were never particularly chummy, Isabella had always rather liked the king, because he was the only member of the royal family who enjoyed a good slapstick comedy and who shared her distaste for fig pie. (“Why ruin perfectly good figs with all that syrup and buttery crust?” the king would always ask. And Isabella would always reply that she couldn’t imagine a good reason.)

  Plans were immediately set into motion. Word quickly leaked out from the senior staff members of the castle, and soon everyone was completely abuzz with excitement. Isabella was coming home!

  I have always wished the queen would have talked about the day Isabella returned, for I’m sure her account would have been the most acid, biting, and astute. But she was much too discreet to ever say anything, although it was obvious enough that she was not pleased. The look on Iphigenia’s face, likewise, was just too precious: filled at once with shock, sadness, anger, and confusion.

  Knowing everything we know now, it’s hard to appreciate how shocking it all was at the time. When the princess had left the castle two years earlier, she had been a sad but composed woman of pearls and pastels. (Allowing for the more somber colors she wore during the sorrowful days after the plane crash.)

  In the weeks preceding her much anticipated return, the commentators had practically outdone themselves speculating on how she would look. Ethelbald said he thought she would look a bit sadder and wiser for the things she’d gone through. “But don’t forget,” he said, “this is a woman who defied all odds and hid herself
for two years. If she’s coming out now, it can mean only one thing: She’s ready. I expect to see her step off that plane in a pink suit and polka-dot shoes.”

  This prediction caused the queen to work herself into a bit of a tizzy, saying to Iphigenia over and over again that surely the princess would have the good sense to wear something a bit more serious. “Not too serious, of course,” she said. “But you can’t wear pink polka dots to a memorial service for your husband. Surely she’ll wear navy. Won’t she? Wouldn’t any sane royal woman wear navy?”

  And Iphigenia said any sane royal woman would.

  So both Her Majesty the Queen and Princess Iphigenia were positively aghast on the sunny day at His Majesty’s National Airport when the door of the chartered plane opened and Princess Isabella stepped into the sunlight.

  You’ve seen the photo a million times, so you are not shocked. But imagine what that photo would look like if you were expecting pink polka dots and pearls!

  Isabella was wearing—on an unseasonably warm day—wool. Dark brown wool. It was sewn together roughly with darker brown thread and gathered at the waist with a bit of rope. The dress, if you could call it that, had no body or shape or styling. It hung in a clumsy, unplanned way and looked like a horrible home-economics project gone awry. She wore sandals that appeared to be made out of reeds, though everyone assumed it was some new synthetic fiber.

  But it wasn’t just the clothes. Isabella, who had left a slim, attractive woman, was gaunt and bony. Her face, which bore not a trace of makeup, was pinched and thin. And her hair? It looked like it had been cut by holding two rocks together and rubbing them back and forth until the hairs in between broke away. It was cut awfully short at that, short and spiky, like something from that awful punk fad. No glamorous buns could be made with this hair. Not only that, but it was dirty, almost matted in places.

  “She looks like a homeless woman,” Iphigenia whispered to her mother, who just stared ahead, aware of the camera on her and concentrating on not making an expression. Isabella, frowning and sad-eyed, took a step toward the queen and curtsied. Then she took a step toward her sister-in-law, smiled awkwardly, and reached out to hug her.

  Everyone at the airport that bright early morning was absolutely appalled. Isabella’s sister, Lady Fiona, wept as she hugged Isabella and tried to pass it off as joy, but the rest of the crowd knew it was stunned fear. Ethelbald Candeloro was, perhaps for the first time, speechless. He was so distracted by the shock of it all that he tugged at his mustache in what would have been a telltale way, except no one was looking at him. He also crossed his legs in a ladylike manner and absentmindedly walked into a women’s room. Luckily, though, he was not the only one doing things like that. Everyone there was rattled and thrown off-kilter.

  The small crowd of subjects who had been allowed to gather on the runway seemed a little embarrassed and sad. “I thought, Well, that’s it,” one of them later told me. “All that beauty, all that glory, all that glamour, it’s gone. Now she’s just a sad, crazy ol’ hag with nothing to look forward to but years of ridicule.”

  But that just shows you that no one who is at an event really knows what has happened until they see the news accounts the next day. Because the sole photographer at the scene, the one allowed in with Ethelbald, saw something that no one else did. He saw a split-second moment, in the endless time while Isabella had stood just outside the plane, dazed and tired and waiting for her eyes to adjust, when she had glanced up at the sun and given a small little smile.

  And that was enough. The slight smile transformed her entire being. She looked, if not happy, at least normal. At least pretty. No one else saw the smile. I wonder sometimes if it was ever really there. Or if it was, somehow, a trick of light and shadow—a moment of gas or exasperation. But it hardly matters now, for what matters is perception. Isabella got off the plane looking and acting like a desert hermit, but the photo—the only one released of Isabella’s arrival—was printed in the paper the next day and made her look striking and happy. So for the purposes of the story, as it was played on the world stage, that is what she was. Overnight, sackcloth clothing became the hot trend in clothes. Synthetic reed sandals replaced toeless slingbacks as the shoe of the season. Starlets started paying extraordinary prices for shampoo that, when used daily, would give their hair the not-washed-in-weeks look. Women the world over started starving themselves as Isabella’s bony figure became the new standard of so-called fitness.

  Isabella had been scheduled to do four weeks of appearances, and each day the crowds were larger and more enthusiastic than the day before. The energy was contagious. Soon Isabella seemed to be truly enjoying herself again. She gathered up flowers by the armful, appeared in several parades and two hot-air-balloon races, and inadvertently launched a multimillion-pound mail-order business for a modest cookie bakery by wandering into the small shop and proclaiming the macaroons “sinfully scrumptious.”

  Iphigenia—suddenly wearing simply cut brown suits, sporting a new, spiky haircut, and forsaking dinner—basked in the reflective glow. Her approval ratings skyrocketed for no apparent reason other than her ability to root for Isabella during a balloon race and to comfort her when, as was inevitable, the homecoming became emotional.

  During a ceremonial wreath-laying on Lancelot Beach, Isabella stepped away from the crowd of dignitaries and set float an origami seagull. She stood there for what seemed, on television at least, an excruciatingly long time, watching the waves carry away the bird and, occasionally, wiping tears from her cheek. Everyone else, the queen included, stood by awkwardly, not wanting to seem to rush the princess, but also not feeling like it was the sort of scene that should go on in public for too terribly long.

  Finally, Iphigenia walked up, patted Isabella’s arm, stared with her out into the sea for a respectful moment, then took her arm and gently led her back.

  Later, at a ribbon cutting for the new His Royal Highness the Prince of Gallagher Elementary School, Isabella looked out upon the crowd of children and broke down in tears. Iphigenia hugged her sister-in-law and whispered in her ear. The two women smiled through their tears and even chuckled a little as the cameras snapped away.

  Those are the lasting images of the relationship between the two princesses.

  But if you think the two women were close, you are wrong. How could they be, when Isabella was keeping so many frightfully large secrets from her sister-in-law? Secrets that Isabella knew were the very source of all Iphigenia’s sorrows and fears.

  And how could Iphigenia love Isabella when she knew that she was the one thing that Iphigenia could not be? The tragic martyr, the princess who would never again be criticized because the poor dear had gone through enough, and who, by her very perfection, would make every day of Iphigenia’s life harder.

  To whatever extent that Isabella and Iphigenia shared a real bond, it was only of the foxhole variety. They both knew what it was like to live under fire, and clung a bit to anyone who was not firing directly at them, even if they somehow resented that the other person’s presence drew some much unneeded attention their way. What else could they do but remain friendly allies?

  In the last of the four weeks that Isabella was to be visiting, the king died. Isabella was forced to extend her stay in Bisbania to attend the funeral and, a few weeks later, her sister-in-law’s coronation. To that event, she wore a long bronze gown and a gemless tiara that thrilled the royal commentators to no end and completely upstaged Iphigenia’s rather dowdy crowning robes and overly bejeweled headpiece.

  “Isabella is a gem herself,” Ethelbald gushed. “She needs no jewels in her tiara.”

  The morning after the coronation, Isabella stood before the nation in a recorded address and announced that she was now renouncing her title, meaning she would henceforth be known again as simply Isabella Cordage.

  Wearing the same rough wool that had become her trademark, and with the spiky hair that now looked trendy rather than grotesque, she explained her reasoning.r />
  “I really should have taken this step two years ago,” she said. “But I could not bring myself to give up the title that was my sole link to my dear husband. Now, however, I have come to realize my tie to Rafie is stronger than any mere words or name. My role in the royal family no longer has any constitutional purpose. I will continue to be a part of my in-laws’ private lives, but I think it will be beneficial to everyone involved if I give up my public role and my title, which Queen Iphigenia may one day want to bestow upon one of her own children.”

  (Iphigenia had specifically asked for that line in an attempt to silence the mounting worry that her lack of anything resembling a boyfriend meant an end to the direct line of succession, a troubling prospect, as it would mean that one of Prince Louis’s dreadful granddaughters, specifically the oldest one with the tattoos and French boyfriend, could be the next monarch.)

  “To make the transition easier for all involved,” Isabella continued, back on her own agenda, “I will be making a new home in a remote place, and I ask that I be allowed to live my life there in privacy and peace.”

  Iphigenia thought the speech went exceedingly well and was thrilled with Isabella’s delivery of the line about the children. “She can put on quite a show,” Iphigenia told the ladies-in-waiting. “I will grant her that.” But once again, Iphigenia and Isabella learned how helpless they were at crafting public perception. The next morning, the headlines read:

  MEAN QUEEN GENE BANISHES IZZY TO NOWHERESVILLE

  GREEN BAY, U.S.A., READIES FOR NEW ROYAL RESIDENT

  Chapter 18

  I guess I need to tell you how I learned Ethelbald Candeloro’s secret. I don’t mean to be cruel about this, to harp on his one awkward truth. But the moment when Ethelbald and I learned each other’s secrets was a fateful one. And so I think any true accounting of what happened to all of us needs a detailed description of that encounter.