The Golden Prince (12 page)

The King made a satisfied harrumphing noise and David felt vast relief. For once in his life he had, it seemed, made the right response.

His father began disassembling the Purdey with practiced ease, saying, “Naturally Knollys advised a conciliatory reply.”

Lord Knollys was one of his father’s two private secretaries, a man who had vast experience and who came from a long line of royal courtiers. An ancestor of the same name had been the Treasurer
of the Household to Queen Elizabeth. Where pedigree was concerned, Knollys’s was exceptional.

“How was that received, sir?”

“How d’you think it was received?” His father glared at him. “It mollified him, damn him.”

Aware that if he didn’t continue making right responses, his father’s wrath was going to be unleashed on him as well as on Mr. Churchill, David said, choosing his words carefully, “So will Mr. Churchill be continuing with his Cabinet task of writing daily to you with a description of parliamentary proceedings?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Though Knollys didn’t accept his doing so until he’d told him in no uncertain terms that he should have suppressed his remark about idlers and wastrels, bearing in mind that the cost of support in one case falls on the State and does not do so in the other.”

He rammed the cleaning rod down the barrel of the gun, saying, “So now we come to you, David.”

David tensed, certain it was going to be about him coming forty-eighth in geometry and forty-fifth in trigonometry. To his great relief he was proved wrong.

“You’re to stay in London from now on—and at Buckingham Palace, not Windsor. We can’t have Lloyd George trekking to Windsor to give you lessons in the Welsh language. There’s a formal rehearsal at the abbey tomorrow. Bertie needn’t be there, of course. He’ll be a spectator on the twenty-second, not a participant. I’ll be there, too, though I’m not leaving for the abbey until tomorrow morning.”

David’s heart sank to his boots. The command to return to Windsor after only a week back at Dartmouth had come as a very welcome surprise, or it had until there had been a phone call from the palace just before he had left, confirming his time of departure and estimated time of arrival. The phone call had meant he hadn’t been able to spend time at Snowberry en route. To compensate, he’d intended spending as much time there as possible on the way back.

Now that plan was also out of the window. Even worse, he had no way of telling when he would next be able to visit Snowberry.

Plucking up all his nerve, he said, “Very good, sir. I’m looking forward to my Welsh lessons with the chancellor of the exchequer. I shall need to return to Dartmouth pretty speedily today, though, to tidy things up. An essay to put in. That kind of thing. I’ll be back early tomorrow and go straight to Buckingham Pal—”

His father stopped what he was doing. “ARE YOU DEAF, BOY?” he bellowed. “YOU’LL LEAVE FOR THE PALACE
NOW
, DAVID. THIS MINUTE!”

For the King to have even mentioned the word
deaf
, considering his own deafness, was an indication how near he was to a full-scale explosion. Not only would arguing any further be as useless as arguing with a brick wall, it would also be highly dangerous.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry if …”

“NOW!”

He left the room and without even going to the White Drawing-Room to say good-bye to his mother and to Mary he left for Buckingham Palace, with Piers Cullen at the wheel of the Austro-Daimler.

“When will we be returning to Dartmouth, sir?” Piers asked as the car swooped smoothly down Castle Hill.

“God only knows. Perhaps never.” The bitterness in his voice was profound.

Piers hesitated and then said, “And Snowberry?”

David looked out of the car window. It was a beautiful late evening. The sky was the smoky violet of deep dusk, and in the town of Windsor gas lamps illuminated decorations already in place for Coronation Day.

“As soon as ever the hell I can.” His fine-boned jaw was set hard, his hands clasped so tightly between his knees that the knuckles gleamed white.

As the Daimler swept through the quiet streets he shot a quick glance toward his equerry and was touched to see that Piers, aware
of the difficulties there would be when it came to visiting Snowberry in the future, was looking devastated on his behalf.

Such loyalty was touching and he warmed toward the man he often found a stiff and difficult companion.

“I have to have some corner of my life to call my own, Piers,” he said, his use of Piers’s Christian name indicating how charged his feelings were. “Snowberry gives me that. I’m not going to forgo it, no matter what the difficulties may be.”

“I’m pleased to hear that, sir.”

They lapsed into silence. An hour later, as the car eased into the dark courtyard of Buckingham Palace, David said, “I shan’t require your company any further tonight, Piers. Once inside the palace I’m going straight to bed. Finch will see to all I need.”

Finch had been his personal servant since David was a child, when he had served both him and Bertie as a nursery footman. Now, dependable and devoted, he acted as David’s valet whenever David was at the palace.

The Austro-Daimler came to a halt and David stepped out into the warm night air. For a moment he looked unlovingly at the forbiddingly austere palace façade. Despite the redecorations that had been taking place ever since his grandfather’s death, the palace was not yet a home either to him or to his parents.

Previously their London home had been Marlborough House, which, though splendidly grand, had also managed to be what his mother described as
gemütlich
, German for comfortable and cozy. Buckingham Palace wasn’t remotely
gemütlich
. Constructed on four sides around an inner courtyard, it was massive in size and there was no coherence to the interior. In a way that was both rambling and confusing, acres of red-carpeted corridors and narrow passageways linked state apartments, picture galleries, throne room, grand drawing rooms, numerous small sitting rooms, bedrooms, landings, and staircases.

His own suite was on the third floor overlooking the Mall. So far, he had spent only a handful of nights there. Glumly, he set
off on the long trek toward his rooms, enduring the acknowledging nods of knee-breeched footmen as they stood sentinel at every strategic corner of his route.

“It’s a pleasure to have you back, sir,” Finch said welcomingly after David had walked what had seemed to be at least half a mile. “You’ve got a long heavy day ahead of you tomorrow, I understand.”

David was tempted to respond that now his father had deemed him old enough for public duties—public duties that would continue for the rest of his life—he had long heavy days ahead of him until eternity. It would, though, have been self-pitying, and dear old Finch deserved something better from him.

“It’s going to be a daunting day, Finch. His Majesty will be there and the Archbishop of Canterbury and no doubt the prime minister and a host of other people who will be involved in the ceremony on the twenty-second. I don’t suppose it will be the real Crown of England that will be used in the rehearsal, though. I expect it will be a dummy.”

“Just as long as the dummy crown is the same weight, sir,” Finch said practically. “When your grandfather was crowned, he said the crown was so heavy he thought his knees were going to buckle. You look as if you could do with a nice cup of milky cocoa, sir. Shall I go about getting one?”

David nodded. Finch had been organizing comforts such as cups of hot cocoa ever since his nursery days. Until now he’d thought Snowberry perfect in every single detail, but it occurred to him that there was one detail it lacked, and that detail was Finch.

With his thoughts on Snowberry again, another thought occurred to him. One he had been thinking of more and more often. “What happens if a royal prince wants to marry someone aristocratic but nonroyal, Finch? D’you remember that ever happening?”

Finch paused in the act of brushing down the jacket he had helped David take off. “Now, that’s quite a question, sir. It mostly
depends, of course, on whether the royal prince in question is heir to the throne or not.”

“Well, let’s suppose that he is. What would happen? I expect there’d be an awful stink about it.”

“I believe there would, sir.” Finch hung the jacket up and then said, “In that case I expect the marriage would have to be what I understand is called a morganatic marriage, sir.”

David was never surprised at the kind of information Finch had at his fingertips. “What does that mean, Finch?” he asked, intensely interested.

“I think it means that the lady in question is never granted royal status—and that any children are excluded from the line of succession to the throne. Just which of your European cousins is in this predicament, may I ask?”

David tapped the side of his nose with his finger and grinned. “Ah, now that would be telling, Finch, wouldn’t it?”

Finch knew better than to pursue the subject. He was that rare thing, a royal servant who wasn’t servile, but was always carefully respectful, even to the young man who, as a small child, he had dandled on his knee.

When David was finally on his own, he took his mug of cocoa over to his desk and sat down. Then he took notepaper and a pen from the desk’s middle drawer and began writing his first letter to Lily.

My dear Angel

He stopped. How could he address Lily in the way he felt about her, when he hadn’t yet told her how he felt?

He took another sheet of Buckingham Palace letterhead and started again.

Dear Miss Houghton

He stopped again. This was even worse. It was far too formal.

Dear Lily

Then, throwing caution to the winds, he took a fourth sheet of notepaper from the drawer and wrote,

He put the letter in an envelope, sealed it, rang for one of the twelve postmen constantly doing the rounds inside the palace, and, when he arrived, gave orders that the letter be sent express. Then he crossed to the window and stared broodingly down into the lamp-lit darkness of the Mall for a long, long time.

The next day, when David arrived at the abbey, it was to find it a scene of chaos. People were milling about everywhere, some in uniform, some not. Choristers were trying to practice, vergers were swarming like flies and putting name cards on the hundreds and hundreds of seats, the dean was having an argument with the Duke of Norfolk who, as earl marshal, was responsible for the whole ceremony and who, in turn, was trying to have a conversation with the Lord Great Chamberlain, who was responsible for the conduct of royal affairs in the Palace of Westminster.

“You wouldn’t think rehearsals had been going on for weeks now, would you, sir?” Piers Cullen said to him as a harassed-looking Archbishop of Canterbury approached the Duke with more problems.

“No,” David said, not knowing they had been.

A whole flotilla of choirboys from St. James’s Chapel nearly knocked him off his feet as they scurried past him in order to join the Westminster Abbey choirboys.

The Duke of Norfolk disentangled himself from the Lord Great Chamberlain and came striding across to him, the archbishop in his wake.

“Good morning, Your Royal Highness,” he said, sounding remarkably unharassed. “A run-through of your homage speech is needed. I will deputize for the King. Now, what happens is this.…”

Time after time, as other parts of the service were being rehearsed around them, David knelt before the Duke of Norfolk, nervously saying the vastly important words he had learned by heart.

“I, Edward, Prince of Wales, do become your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth I will bear unto you, to live and die against all manner of folks. So help me God,” he said nervously.

“Now you rise to your feet,” the Duke said, when he was eventually satisfied. “At the actual ceremony you will touch the crown upon the King’s head—it will be St. Edward’s Crown, worn only at a coronation—and kiss him on the left cheek. That is all your homage is. After you, the peers will do homage. The next rehearsal at which you will be required will be the full dress rehearsal on the twenty-first.”

Grateful that his part was over for the day, David looked around for someone a little more knowledgeable than Finch when it came to the subject of morganatic marriages.

He could see the prime minister deep in conversation with Lord Lansdowne, who was carrying the royal standard, as he would be doing on Coronation Day. Asquith would, no doubt, know all about morganatic marriages, but David sensed that he wasn’t the man to ask in case it set him wondering
why
he was asking.