When they had gathered in a formal reception room that linked the state rooms to the private rooms, her aunt said, ‘Nicky and the children are on their way from Peterhof and are very much looking forward to meeting you.’
For a second, Alicky had no idea to whom her aunt was referring, and then she remembered that Nicky was Uncle Sasha’s son and heir, the sixteen-year-old Tsesarevich, and that the children she had spoken of must be his younger siblings.
Later, when she was with Irène in the bedroom they were to share, and after she had endured hours of being introduced to a seemingly endless parade of Romanov royalty, Alicky said unhappily, ‘I can’t face this evening’s reception, Irène. Truly I can’t.’
‘Of course you can. It’s going to be wonderful. It isn’t only Romanovs we’re meeting for the first time. There are distant cousins of Mama’s here that we’ve never met before. Meeting them is going to be absolutely thrilling.’
Alicky didn’t think it would be thrilling at all. To her it sounded unbelievably daunting. She said hopefully, ‘Can’t you tell Papa I have a headache?’
‘Absolutely not.’ Irène regarded her in exasperation. ‘A great exception is being made in allowing someone of your age to attend an evening reception and consequently people will think your shyness quite natural, and perhaps even appealing, but it is a shyness you have to get over, Alicky. You are a royal princess, and royal princesses have to be perfectly composed in the public eye. You can’t continue to turn beetroot-red whenever anyone who isn’t intimate family speaks to you.’
Alicky bit her lip, knowing it was a battle she couldn’t win and would just have to endure.
What made the enduring more difficult than normal that evening was that because Vicky, Ella, Irène and Ernie were so enjoying the Romanov experience, they weren’t, as they often did, shielding her from unwanted attention.
As the hours passed, Alicky’s heart pounded more and more painfully and she knew red blotches were staining her cheeks. Making her shyness worse than usual was the fact that only Aunt Minny and Uncle Sasha spoke to her in English. Although they were Russian, everyone else spoke French to her, and her French wasn’t good enough for her to say even a few words in it without it being an embarrassing struggle. It all added to her nerves and sense of awkwardness. And then, just when she thought she wasn’t going to be able to survive another minute, she found herself facing a handsome young man with the bluest, gentlest eyes she had ever seen.
Time stood still.
She drew in a deep, unsteady breath. Unbelievably, wonderfully, it was the moment she had dreamed of. The moment when she knew herself to be facing the one person in the whole wide world who was destined to be her everlasting true love.
In flawless English and with an engaging smile, he said, ‘Hello, Alicky. I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you. I’m Nicky. Would you like me to show you the Knights’ Hall? There are wonderful life-size bronzes of knights on horseback in it.’
‘Yes,’ she said gratefully, knowing that he was instinctively removing her from the oppressive crush of his intimidating relations; and certain she would never feel nervous with him, never feel shy. ‘Yes, Nicky. I’d like that very, very much.’
And with her cheeks no longer stained red, and her heart singing like a bird, she left the room with him, happy to go wherever it was he wished to take her; happier than she could ever remember being.
Chapter Ten
JULY 1884, FLORENCE
It was mid-July and, for May, the heat in Florence was overpowering, far too hot to be out in the countryside gathering wild flowers, sketching or sitting companionably nearby with Rowena and Belinda, or with her mother and Miss Light as Mr Thaddy painted views of the Arno. Instead she was enjoying the shade of I Cedri’s rooftop loggia. Its outer wall, supported by delicate stone arches, was open to the elements and, as well as affording a wonderful view of the river, captured the occasional welcoming light breeze.
The loggia was furnished with cushioned wicker chairs and May was sitting in one of them, with two unopened letters on her lap. Both of them had arrived at I Cedri that morning. One, with a Sandringham postmark, was in Maudie’s unmistakeable near-indecipherable scrawl. The other, in Alicky’s far neater handwriting, had been posted from Darmstadt.
May bit the corner of her lip. Which should she open first? Alicky’s letter would be full of gossip about Ella and Sergei’s St Petersburg wedding, but Maudie’s would have Wales family news in it – and that meant there was a good chance of there being news of Eddy in it.
With hope in her heart, she opened the envelope bearing the Sandringham postmark:
Dearest lovely May,
I’m missing you. For how much longer are you going to be in Italy? Toria says that if you stay out there much longer you are going to return to England with skin as dark as a little native boy’s. You won’t believe this but we (Toria, Looloo et moi) now have both a German governess and a French governess. The German governess is also teaching us – and Mama – how to spin. Can you imagine it? My mama spinning? I think it the greatest hoot ever. Toria and Looloo are embarrassingly duff at both French and German, but I’m not. I’ve discovered I like languages and I am also (although this is something of a secret) beginning to learn a little Russian. I can’t wait until Sergei makes a visit to England with Ella and I can astound him by greeting him in his own language!
I have another secret, too. When Eddy and Georgie were at sea together and went on shore in Tokyo, they got themselves tattooed. Georgie’s tattoos are quite modest, but Eddy’s aren’t. He has blue-and-red dragons writhing all the way down his arms! Although he is now twenty and Granny Queen thinks it high time a suitable marriage was arranged for him, Mama insists otherwise, and for once Papa is in agreement with her. As you can imagine, Granny Queen is not best pleased.
I can’t help wondering who it is that Granny Queen has in mind for Eddy. Both Toria and Looloo think that, until Ella’s engagement to Sergei, it was Ella. I did as well. When it comes to her many grandchildren, Ella has always been Granny Queen’s number-one favourite and I think she would very much have liked Ella to be crowned Queen Consort when Eddy becomes King. We Wales girls have never been high on her list of favourites: Toria and Looloo because they always have coughs and colds (Granny Queen once offended Mama greatly by referring to them as puny), and me because she thinks I’m too much of a tomboy and not ladylike enough.
Perhaps, as Mama is reluctant for Eddy to marry until he is well into his twenties, Granny Queen will now have another of the Hesse-Darmstadt girls in mind as a future Queen of England. How old is Irène now? Seventeen? Eighteen? And if not Irène, there is always Alicky. By the time Eddy is twenty-four or twenty-five, Alicky will be of marriageable age. When it comes to who I would prefer as a future sister-in-law, I would much prefer it to be Irène. Alicky is a strange little thing. You never know what is going on inside her head.
What other news? Eddy is still at Cambridge and not, I think, enjoying it very much. In September he is to go to Heidelberg for a few months to improve his German. (Knowing Eddy, he won’t enjoy this, either, but will endure it silently and then have his tutor accuse him of being indolent and inattentive.) Georgie is still at the Royal Naval College and, as Papa has instructed that he shouldn’t leave the college except to go places that he (Papa) has first approved of, and not unless he is accompanied by a senior member of the college staff, I don’t imagine he is having much of a fun time, either.
I envy you in Florence – and a mama who allows you the freedom to make friends outside the family. How I would love to be with you when you picnic with Rowena and Belinda and Miss Light on the banks of the Arno. All I have to look forward to is an end-of-summer stay at Abergeldie and, instead of the blissful-sounding Arno, the all-too-chill River Dee.
Love always, Maudie x
PS: If you have any news of Frank, will you please write me with it? I haven’t seen him in ages and he doesn’t write. At least, not to me.
May put the letter down on her lap. Was Maudie right in thinking that, with Ella married to Sergei, Irène might now be next in line as a future prospective bride for Eddy? The Queen had always taken a particular interest in all four of her motherless Hesse-Darmstadt grandchildren, and the best future possible for Irène would be as Eddy’s bride – or would be, unless Irène made a surprising, unexpected marriage elsewhere first.
She looked into the distance where the Arno, flanked by wide green meadows, shimmered in the sun. Would Irène ever come to understand Eddy as she did? Would she come to realize that the only reason he appeared indifferent to everything was because he was never given the opportunity to do anything that interested him? Certainly his years as a naval cadet had held no interest for him. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how awful it must have been, enduring three years at sea when he had no love of it and when, unlike Georgie, who was to follow the traditional path of a royal second brother by becoming a naval officer, for Eddy it had all been for no good purpose.
She knew, without being told, that no one had ever asked Eddy if he wanted to study at Cambridge; that no one had ever asked either him or Georgie what it was they wanted to do – what it was they liked doing best. Because Georgie had a natural aptitude for seamanship, the years at sea would have been no particular hardship for him, and he would probably be enjoying his officer training at Greenwich. But what about Eddy? Was Maudie right in thinking that he wasn’t enjoying Cambridge? May had no way of knowing. Although her mother received the occasional letter from Aunt Queen, and the even more occasional letter from Aunt Alix, no one – apart from Maudie and, of course, Alicky – ever troubled to write to her, and news of Eddy in the letters her mother received was not the kind of personal news she craved.
Telling herself that things could be much worse, and that at least Maudie hadn’t been writing with news that Eddy had become engaged, she opened the letter from Alicky:
Dearest Kindred Spirit,
I have so much to tell you, I don’t know where to start. I want to begin by telling you of the most wonderful, amazing thing that has happened to me – of how I have met the one person I am destined to go through life and eternity with. But if I do that, I will never get round to telling you about St Petersburg and about Ella’s wedding, which was spectacular beyond belief and which, because there had to be a Lutheran service as well as an Orthodox one, went on for what seemed like forever. The wedding took place in the chapel of the Winter Palace, which is not at all like a Lutheran chapel and is all white and gold, and all through the service it was full of the smoky scent of incense (which I liked, but which made my papa cough dreadfully). Ella wore a Russian-style dress of white and silver that fell into an ermine-edged train, yards and yards long. Her veil was held in place by a jewelled coronet that had once belonged to Catherine the Great, and she looked so untouchably beautiful that I found it hard to believe she was my sister.
What you will not believe is that I was one of the bridesmaids and my gown was white muslin and I wore a coronet of roses. I didn’t know I was to be one of the bridesmaids until the very last moment, for Papa had been told that Ella was to have only Romanov bridesmaids. If I had known beforehand, I would have pretended to be sick and would never have left Darmstadt, but I was given very little time to be terrified beforehand and then, throughout the long candlelit ceremony, the person I know is always going to be my other half was standing by the side of the altar and his eyes held mine all the time, and so I wasn’t sick with nerves.
Have you guessed yet who this very special person is? He is Sergei’s nephew, Nicholas (and also one of my second or third cousins). He is sixteen and the kindest, gentlest person in the world. He is also the most tremendous fun. The royal family do not live in the Winter Palace. They live nearly all the time at Peterhof, which is a summer palace set amidst vast gardens and lakes and fountains a few miles from St Petersburg. It’s within sight of the sea, and that is where we all stayed in the days after the wedding.
We had such good times, May. I do wish you had been with us. Nicky has two brothers and two sisters. Georgy is thirteen. Xenia is nine. Misha is five and Olga is two. They are all terrifically nice and I played with them every day I was there. Nicky doesn’t call me Alicky; he calls me by my second baptismal name, Alix. My first name is Victoria, after Granny Queen, and I expect your first name is, too. Because of Aunt Alix, my being called Alix makes me feel very grown-up, but I don’t want everyone calling me Alix. Only Nicky.
Before we left Peterhof we scratched our names into a pane of glass in a little summerhouse so that our names will be there forever and ever. Don’t you think that is romantic? And please, please, please don’t say that we are too young to be romantic. Kindred Spirit Willy’s mama was only fourteen when his papa offered for her, and in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is only thirteen. And when everything in your head and your heart tells you that someone is the right person for you, then it doesn’t matter how old you are when it happens. I’m back home in Darmstadt now, but Ella says she will invite me to stay with her and Sergei, and I can’t wait to be in St Petersburg again. It’s the most magical place you can imagine.
Filled with an unpleasant feeling of unease, May stopped reading. Of all the people for Alicky to have developed a crush on, Nicholas Romanov, who, on his father’s death, would be Tsar Nicholas, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, was about the most unsuitable – and the most unlikely. Unsuitable because there was no way Aunt Queen’s deep Russophobia would tolerate a second Hesse-Darmstadt granddaughter marrying a Romanov, especially when she would one day be Russia’s Tsarina, and when Russia’s tsars – although not the present one – had a long history of treating their wives extremely badly. And unlikely because she knew Alicky’s shyness was so intense that she became physically ill when she was the centre of attention. A future life with Nicky – which was surely what Alicky was now dreaming of – would mean a life spent constantly in the public eye.
A butterfly flew into the loggia and, as May watched it, she reflected that Alicky was only twelve and that in another few months she would most likely have a crush on someone else. The butterfly landed on the loggia’s balustrade, its wings a brilliant azure in the strong sunlight. Still watching it, she reminded herself that she had only been twelve when she had developed a crush on Eddy, a crush she had still not entirely recovered from, although common sense had long since ensured that she no longer allowed herself romantic daydreams that couldn’t possibly come true.
Other daydreams had replaced those of Eddy being in love with her – daydreams of being able to stay in Florence long after it had been deemed that her family could return to England; daydreams of a life free of the restrictions that, being a Serene Princess, she had always, until coming to Florence, had to live by. A faint touch of colour heightened her cheeks as she imagined marrying someone neither royal nor aristocratic, but someone who loved her, and whom she loved in return.
One of the maids hurried out onto the loggia, saying breathlessly, for the stairs to the loggia were steep, ‘Mi scusi per il disturbo. La signorina Light aspetta fuori per andare al Duomo con il signor Thaddy.’
‘Grazie mille.’ May tucked both letters into the pocket of her skirt. A few days ago, when he had accompanied Miss Light to tea at I Cedri, Mr Thaddy had been surprised that Miss Light, on her many visits to the Duomo, had never given any attention to the tomb sculpture of Bishop Antonio degli Orsi.
‘Are you,’ Miss Light had said u
ncertainly, flustered at being thought not quite au fait with the Duomo’s many treasures, ‘referring to the tomb of one of the popes, sculpted by Donatello and Michelozzo?’
‘Not at all,’ Mr Thaddy had said kindly in his slight but very attractive brogue, ‘for as you have discovered, that is a tomb monument too big to be ignored. The sculpture of Bishop Orsi is far smaller and is by a Siennese sculptor, Tino di Camaino. It is placed very high and unobtrusively on the inner facade wall of the Duomo and is a particular favourite of mine, and of May’s, Rowena’s and Belinda’s.’
Miss Light had looked towards her in bewilderment. ‘But why on earth, May? I can never imagine a tomb monument as a favourite sculpture.’
‘Because of the way he is sitting, and his expression. He has his hands crossed at the wrists and drooping downwards in front of him, and he looks so glum and bored with being dead, it is impossible not to be amused by him.’
‘Then I must see him and be amused by him, too,’ Miss Light had said decisively. ‘Perhaps on Friday, if Friday is convenient to both you and Mr Thaddy?’
It had indeed been convenient, and now Miss Light, in her very comfortable horse-drawn barouche, was at I Cedri and waiting for May.
‘I have arranged with Mr Thaddy that we will meet him at five o’clock in the Piazza di San Giovanni,’ she said, when May stepped into the barouche beside her. She repositioned her lace-edged parasol so that it wouldn’t collide with May’s. ‘The nice thing about a late-afternoon visit to the cathedral is that the Duomo is always so blessedly cool.’
May agreed with her and then, as she enjoyed the breeze from the Arno and the sight of Florence’s distinctive skyline drawing ever nearer, allowed Miss Light’s chatter to flow over her.
Only as their carriage rolled into the bustling piazza did she realize that Miss Light’s subject of conversation had turned to Mr Thaddy. ‘Can you see him, May?’ she asked as their carriage rocked to a halt on the piazza’s cobbles. ‘I can’t, and it would be so unlike Mr Thaddy to be late.’
The Summer Queen Page 10