The Summer Queen

by Margaret Pemberton

  It was a prospect that didn’t disturb her. There was nothing about marrying Sergei that disturbed her. She was aware that when people knew of her decision they would be mystified by it, for Sergei was not a popular member of their vast extended family. His attitude to everyone but her was stern and arrogant. He was seven years older than she was and, until now, had been so oddly reluctant to marry that there were rumours about his sexuality. She, on the other hand, was considered the most beautiful and nice-natured princess in Europe.

  Five years ago, at Osborne, she had indicated to May that the prospect of one day becoming a queen and an empress had filled her with a certain satisfaction – but that had been five years ago, and she knew a great deal more about life now than she had then. She knew that the vast majority of royal marriages were, where the brides were concerned, desperately unhappy. The men, married to a wife who was suitably royal and fulfilled dynastic requirements, found love and passion outside marriage. But the same option wasn’t open to their long-suffering wives.

  It was public knowledge, for instance, that Uncle Bertie was serially unfaithful to Aunt Alix with actresses and other ladies of the demi-monde, and that nearly all married men in the family behaved in a similar manner – and did so blatantly.

  It was not the kind of marriage Ella wanted; nor did she want the other kind of marriage: the faithful kind that was built around close physical intimacy. For a long time her secret desire had been to become a nun, but knowing how such a desire would be received by Granny Queen at Windsor had been enough to make her see the impossibility of it. Sergei, too, had no wish for any kind of physical relationship in marriage. His true interests lay elsewhere, although his fierce Russian Orthodoxy and innate Puritanism ensured he didn’t pursue them. The two of them understood exactly the kind of marriage they were about to embark on and, having been close companions since childhood, it was one they were certain was going to suit them – and if it didn’t, it was absolutely no one’s business but their own.

  The next few days were a misery for Alicky. The palace, the palace gardens, even Darmstadt itself were thronged with relatives, and finding somewhere she could sit in the seclusion that was so necessary to her was impossible. Not even her schoolroom was sacrosanct, for when she opened its door, it was to find her one-eyed Uncle Christian displaying his collection of coloured glass eyes to Toria, Looloo, Maudie, Missy, Ducky and his daughter, Marie-Louise. She and Marie-Louise were to be two of tomorrow’s twelve bridesmaids and, as they were the same age and the same height, they had been paired together to walk hand-in-hand behind the bridal couple.

  But that was tomorrow. For now, Alicky wanted somewhere quiet where she could anticipate seeing Vicky in the bridal gown that had been their mother’s. As her uncle replaced one glass eye in his eye socket with another and his audience shrieked in enjoyable horror, Alicky closed the door on them. She had thought of one room in the palace where no one was likely to be, and that was Frittie’s bedroom.

  She didn’t remember Frittie, for she had been a baby when, after falling through an open bedroom window, he had bled to death, a victim of the family bleeding disease, haemophilia. Her mother had, however, often spoken to her about Frittie and of how they would all one day meet in heaven – something she devoutly believed her mother and Frittie had now done. Frittie’s bedroom had been kept exactly as it had been on the day he had died, and Alicky knew it would be nice and quiet in there and that she would be able to think of tomorrow and of how one day she, too, would be a beautiful bride.

  A fierce glow spread through her from head to toe. When that day came, she would have someone of her very own – someone even more special than a Kindred Spirit; someone who would be her soulmate forever and ever; someone who would be her soulmate for eternity.

  The day preceding the wedding was a hive of frenzied activity. Last-minute alterations to bridesmaid dresses were made, ancient family silver was given a last hard polishing and, under Irène’s careful eyes, the gardeners brought in armful after armful of white roses from the palace gardens.

  ‘And now for the best bit of the wedding preparations,’ Irène said, taking Alicky by the hand, ‘the decorating of the chapel with the roses. I had intended doing it on my own, but on reflection, I think I’m going to need a little help.’

  Alicky’s cheeks flushed with pleasure. ‘Will there be white roses in my bridesmaid’s bouquet?’ she asked as they made their way to the family’s private chapel in the east wing of the palace.

  ‘No, sweetheart. You and Marie-Louise will be carrying posies of lily-of-the-valley.’

  Alicky was disappointed, but was too polite to let her disappointment show. ‘And what will be in Vicky’s bouquet?’ she asked, as the general hubbub taking place in the main rooms of the palace receded.

  Irène, who was much enjoying this interlude of private time with her little sister, said, ‘Vicky’s bouquet will be white roses mixed with white gardenias and stephanotis. Stephanotis,’ she added as they entered the chapel, ‘signifies “marital happiness” and I’m quite sure that is what Vicky will enjoy with Louis.’

  Alicky was to remember the afternoon she spent carefully wrapping rose stems in white satin ribbon, pinning fan-shaped bouquets of them on the ends of the pews, filling vase after vase to mass the many stained-glass windows – paying particular attention to Frittie’s commemoration window – as the last time that, for days, her stomach wasn’t a knot of churning nerves.

  The nerves started with the dress rehearsal for the wedding. The white kid slippers she was to wear with her bridesmaid dress were too tight, and she was terrified she wouldn’t be able to walk down the aisle without limping and that, if she did limp, it would look as if she was making fun of Vicky, who had jumped over a coal scuttle for good luck and had injured her leg so badly that she thought she would have to use a stick to get her down the aisle.

  It didn’t help that her father had completely abandoned playing host to his scores of guests and had shut himself away in his study, in order, he said, to memorize his Father-of-the-Bride speech; that Granny Queen was still furiously angry at his even contemplating marrying a non-royal divorcee; and that Russian Aunt Marie was causing pandemonium by declaring that the pearl-and-diamond tiara she had been going to wear to the service had been stolen – only for it to be found where she had left it, underneath a shower cap in her bathroom.

  ‘Let’s hope everything runs like clockwork tomorrow,’ Marie-Louise’s mother said fervently to anyone who would listen. ‘I don’t think I could survive another day like today. Truly I don’t.’

  Much to everyone’s relief, she didn’t have to. The next morning Alicky swapped slippers with Marie-Louise, who had been given a pair of slippers a size too big, and which fitted Alicky as perfectly as Alicky’s slippers fitted Marie-Louise. Vicky announced that her leg was no longer painful and she would be walking down the aisle without the aid of a stick. And Alicky’s father emerged from his study full of nervous bonhomie.

  Alicky was nervous, too, but in a way that was full of sickly dread – dread that grew as her pretty, satin-sashed bridesmaid dress was slipped over her head and her red-gold hair was crowned with a coronet of lilies-of-the-valley.

  ‘Hold hands prettily with Marie-Louise,’ she heard her Aunt Lenchen say, as the time came for them to walk in procession towards the east wing and the chapel. ‘As the youngest two bridesmaids, you are going to receive far more attention than the older ones.’

  That was the very last thing Alicky wanted to hear. Her fingers tightened on the posy of flowers she was carrying. Somehow she had to get through the agony of being stared at by more than a hundred pairs of eyes, but how?

  As they approached the chapel, and in a moment she was never to forget, the solution occurred to her. She would simply pretend that the vast clan of extended family was not there; that there wasn’t a member of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, of Hohenzollern, of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of Romanov (apart from Sergei) in sight. That there was n
o aged German Emperor, no German Crown Prince and Princess; no Uncle Wales and Aunt Alix; no Uncle Affie – a brother of whom her mother had not been fond – and Aunt Marie; no Uncle Christian and Aunt Lenchen, who had been her mother’s favourite sister; no spinster Aunt Beatrice; none of the groom’s Battenberg relations; none of the army of cousins who were not part of the bridal party. The only two guests she would mentally acknowledge as being there were Granny Queen and Sergei and, in that way, glacially composed and not allowing a flicker of expression to cross her face, she would survive the experience of being on public show. It was a trick she learned that – with disastrous consequences – she would depend on for the rest of her life.

  Chapter Six

  APRIL 1884, NEW PALACE, DARMSTADT

  Once the wedding breakfast was under way, some of Alicky’s tension began to ebb. Conversation and laughter – bellows of it, where Uncle Wales was concerned – filled the vast room, and Alicky was able to do what she liked doing best: sitting as unobtrusively out of sight as possible and watching what was going on around her, without the torment of being an active part of it.

  The palace where the wedding breakfast was taking place had been built only a few years before her birth and was known as the New Palace. Her mother had had a very large say in its design and, like Osborne, it was elegantly Italianate. The rooms were large and airy, with high ceilings and French doors opening onto delicately arched loggias. In every room were reminders that her mother had been very much an English princess: a daughter of Queen Victoria. A portrait of Granny Queen with Grandpa Albert dominated the main drawing room, while on other walls there were individual portraits of all her mother’s eight siblings, from Vicky, now Crown Princess of Prussia and Willy’s mother, all the way down to Princess Beatrice, the only one of Granny Queen’s children still unmarried.

  In the ballroom where the wedding breakfast was taking place was a full-size portrait of her great-great-grandfather, King George III, resplendent in his coronation robes and painted at a time when he was still young and rosy-cheeked.

  On the walls of the bedroom Alicky had slept in, ever since she could remember, were watercolour sketches of Osborne, Windsor and Balmoral. All of them had been painted by Granny Queen; and hanging on the wall of one of the palace’s many corridors was an oil painting of Dash, the Cavalier King Charles spaniel that had been the first in a long line of dogs that Granny Queen had owned and doted on. All through her life Alicky had been surrounded by reminders that she was just as much English as she was German and, with an English nanny and then an English governess, she had grown up not only speaking English fluently – although with a German accent – but often thinking in English as well.

  Looking to where her father was seated next to Granny Queen, she could tell that he was tense with barely suppressed excitement, and she was certain it was because he was about to stun all Vicky and Louis’s wedding guests by announcing Ella and Sergei’s engagement.

  Not far away from her, her Aunt Beatrice was paying no attention to anyone but the groom’s very handsome brother, Henry. Alicky wondered if Beatrice had been purposely seated directly in Henry’s sightline. At twenty-seven, Beatrice, plain but kind, was very much a royal old maid. Was Granny Queen up to her matchmaking tricks again? Because of a blip on the Battenberg family tree, all the Battenberg brothers were Serene Highnesses, not Royal Highnesses, something that played very much against them in the royal marriage market. It hadn’t affected Louis, for Vicky had been too head-over-heels in love with him to care that he was not of equal birth; and Alicky doubted very much if Aunt Beatrice, facing a lifetime of spinsterhood, would care very much about Henry not being of equal birth, either – especially not as Henry was tall and broad-shouldered, and just as strikingly handsome and charming as his three brothers. For Henry, marriage to one of Queen Victoria’s daughters would be quite a step up in royal ranking and consequently, even though Beatrice was plain, quite a temptation.

  On the other side of the room her sister Irène also looked as if she had been smitten by a Henry, although this time by a fully royal one, Prince Heinrich of Prussia – Kindred Spirit Willy’s younger brother. Alicky wondered if it was always like this at weddings; as if simply being at a wedding induced romantic thoughts in guests who had not yet taken the plunge. Certainly it was the best occasion to see, in the flesh, possible future marriage partners, for there was no question of marrying outside the exclusive caste of which they were all members. This meant there was a very narrow selection field, and it became even narrower when dynastic and political alliances were taken into account. Vicky was very fortunate in marrying a man she was in love with, and of whom Granny Queen approved; and Alicky hoped that when Ella and Sergei’s engagement was announced, Granny Queen was going to be similarly pleased at the prospect of Sergei as a grandson-in-law.

  All the main speeches had long since been made and there was a ripple of surprise as her father again rose to his feet and footmen flooded the room, recharging the champagne flutes. Not since their mother died had Alicky ever seen her father looking so pleased with life.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he beamed towards Granny Queen, ‘on this wonderfully happy occasion allow me to announce another joyful event, the engagement of my daughter, Ella, to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov.’

  There was a second of stunned silence and then – with the exception of the Hohenzollern contingent, who were well aware that Willy had asked Ella several times to marry him and had been spurned every time, which was, to them, the equivalent of their country being spurned; and of Granny Queen, who had a face like thunder – the room erupted in a storm of congratulations. A Romanov wedding meant a St Petersburg wedding; and a St Petersburg wedding meant another Royal Mob get-together – this time on a scale of almost impossible-to-imagine splendour and lavishness.

  Alicky watched in pleasure as Aunt Marie rushed to Ella’s side, hugging her and telling her how pleased she was that Ella was about to become a Romanov. Missy and Ducky were jumping up and down and squealing that she would now be their aunt as well as their cousin. Every red-blooded male in the family was lining up to tell Sergei that he was a damned lucky fellow and, as Ella was far and away the most beautiful girl in the room, meaning it. And then Alicky saw Lady Ely, Queen Victoria’s lady-in-waiting, cross the room towards Ella and speak to her. Almost instantly Ella excused herself from her well-wishers and, as Granny Queen swept from the room, Ella – accompanied by their now apprehensive-looking father – followed swiftly in her wake.

  In normal circumstances Queen Victoria was an indulgent grandmother – something her government ministers, accustomed only to her stubbornness and her refusal to compromise, would have found hard to believe. Ella, well aware that there was another side to Granny Queen and that she was about to be faced with it, steeled herself for the coming storm as the doors of a nearby drawing room closed behind the three of them.

  Seating herself in an armchair and looking as imperious as if the chair were her coronation throne, the Queen fixed the son-in-law she had previously always regarded with deep affection with gimlet-hard eyes.

  ‘Never,’ she said emphatically, ‘never, Ludwig, have my wishes been so disregarded! For you not to have informed me beforehand about the announcement is such a breach of bad manners and protocol it takes my breath away. You know my feelings, where Russia and the Romanovs are concerned. You know that I had a far different match in mind for Ella. And yet, without taking into account my wishes, you have sanctioned an engagement between Ella and a Romanov – a Romanov who, I have on good authority, is so autocratic as to be regarded in St Petersburg and Moscow as a tyrant! And now I wish to speak with Ella – and I will speak to her on her own.’

  Summarily dismissed and looking unnaturally pale, the Grand Duke of Hesse shot a helpless look towards his daughter and beat a hasty retreat.

  ‘And now, Ella,’ the Queen said, striving for patience, ‘an explanation, if you please, as to why you have refused to consider either
Willy or Eddy as a future husband and have instead settled on a Russian grand duke of dubious reputation.’

  Ella regarded her grandmother gravely. ‘Because I know it is the right thing for me to do, Granny, and because I know that marrying Willy, or Eddy, would have been the wrong thing for me to do.’

  It was said with such quiet certainty that Queen Victoria sensed she stood no chance of getting Ella to change her mind. Nevertheless there were things she wanted to say, and she was going to say them. She patted the footstool next to her chair and, when Ella had sat down upon it, took hold of her hand.

  ‘Many German princesses before you have married into the House of Romanov,’ she said, deep concern now replacing her anger, ‘and none of their marriages were happy. With the exception of the present Tsar, Romanov men do not make good husbands. Do you know why Sergei was such a regular visitor with his mother to Darmstadt when you were a child? It was because his father, the late Tsar, had moved his mistress into the Winter Palace in a suite of rooms immediately above her; a mistress whom, the moment his wife died of a broken heart, he married. Even your Aunt Marie’s marriage to Uncle Affie is not a happy one. English and Russian temperaments are just as incompatible as German and Russian temperaments. I fear very much for your future happiness, dear Ella, if you persist in this ill-advised engagement, most especially because of the unpleasant rumours as to Grand Duke Sergei’s tyrannical nature.’

  Ella squeezed the pudgy, aged-spotted hand. ‘Dearest Granny, I suspect that all the marriages you are speaking of were arranged marriages, where the bride and groom were given very little time to get to know each other. That doesn’t apply to Sergei and me. I’ve known him since before I could walk – and I am well aware of the unpleasant gossip that surrounds him, but gossipmongers rarely ever speak the truth, and I don’t believe they do so where Sergei is concerned. It is true he has a brusque manner and that in his role as Commander of the 1st Battalion Preobrazhensky Regiment he can be a little harsh, but marriage to me will be good for him. My love will soften his nature and will ease his grief and rage over the hideous manner of his father’s assassination. Sergei needs me, Granny.’ Her eyes held the Queen’s, shining with love and conviction. ‘And I need to be needed, Granny. Over the last year I’ve discovered that being needed is what fulfils me.’