The Golden Prince (7 page)

“Will he carry a sword?” Lily asked, equally mesmerized at the thought of David playing such an important role in an event so historic it would have the attention of the entire world.

“He’ll certainly be wearing a coronet. I don’t know about the sword. Although the last coronation was only nine years ago, I can’t remember how King George—who was then Prince of Wales—was robed. I do know that the Prince of Wales takes precedence over all the other peers of the realm, but since Prince Edward isn’t of age yet to be a peer, he can’t wear a peer’s robes. That being the case, I think it highly likely that the King will invest him with the Order of the Garter. There’s no age barrier where that most ancient order of British chivalry is concerned.”

“And if he is invested with the Order of the Garter, what robes will he wear?” Lily asked, enraptured.

“He’ll wear the Garter dress of white and silver with a blue velvet cloak and a big black velvet hat with white plumes.”

“Oh! He will look
wonderful
. I do wish I was going to be in the abbey to see him.”

“Even if you were, you would probably only get the merest glimpse of him. Very few people have a good view of what takes
place.” The tea in the teapot was nearly cold and he rose to his feet. “It’s time for me to have a nap before dinner. Are the two of you coming indoors, or are you going to stay outside in this far too hot early evening sunshine?”

“The present heat wave isn’t too hot for me, Grandpapa.” Lily turned her face blissfully toward the brassy blue bowl of the sky. “I just want it to continue like this throughout the rest of the summer.”

“The farmers wouldn’t like that, sweetheart. We need a healthy amount of rain. We do need weather like this for the coronation, though. It’s the reason blazing June is the traditional month for coronations and why, although King Edward died a year ago, King George is having to wait until next month to be crowned. June of last year simply wouldn’t have given time for the arrangements to be made.”

Iris slipped her arm through the crook of his. “Then let’s hope the heat wave holds,” she said, as, together, they began walking companionably back to the house.

King George peered
at the glass of Windsor Castle’s barometer, tapped the case sharply to make sure that the needle wasn’t stuck, and set it again. The barometer read the same as it had originally.

“The weather’s going to break,” he said bad-temperedly to David. “I daresay it will still be the same on Coronation Day. Rain is the one thing impossible to guard against.” He tugged at his neatly trimmed spadelike beard. It was anointed every morning with lavender water, and David could smell its faint, unmistakable tang. “Come into the library.” His father’s command was as peremptory as always. “There is an arrangement with regard to the coronation of which I have to apprise you.”

David’s heart sank. So far, his return home had gone without a footman giving him the dreaded message that the King wished to speak to him in the library. Dinner, too, had passed off without incident. Since, after dinner, it was his father’s habit to shut himself away with his stamp albums, David had been looking forward to a stress-free—if boring—evening, spent in the company of his mother, one of her ever-present ladies-in-waiting, and his sister.

Dutifully he followed his father down the portrait-laden corridor and into the library where all one-to-one talks with his father took place. As his father seated himself behind his large desk David stood in front of it, his legs astride, his hands clasped behind his back, midshipman fashion. It was what his father, who, like him, had had a naval training, expected.

“It’s a damn nuisance you are not of age to be a peer and so I shall invest you with the Order of the Garter. After all, you can hardly take part in a thousand-year-old religious ceremony in naval cadet uniform, can you?”

“No, sir.”

“And your investiture as Prince of Wales will take place at Caernarvon Castle two weeks after the coronation.”

David blinked. To the best of his knowledge no Prince of Wales had had a formal investiture in Wales since the title was created, way back in 1301. A formal investiture in Wales—and at Caernarvon—would be a very big event—and he would be at the center of it.

He felt violently queasy. He didn’t like having all eyes on him. The coronation was going to be nightmare enough, without his having to endure another horrendous ceremony almost immediately after it.

“And afterward you will begin carrying out public duties proper to your title,” his father continued relentlessly. “When not at Dartmouth, there will be levees to attend and civic and charitable banquets. Never forget how much is expected of you. You were born to a great destiny. Always remember the position that will one day be yours. You will not only be King of the greatest nation the world has ever known, and King of all her dominions beyond the seas, you will also be King-Emperor of India—the brightest jewel in the Crown.”

The straitjacket of burdens and responsibilities that were his future was so daunting the very thought of it made David wince.

“I shall always do my utmost to make you proud of me, Papa,” he said stiffly, praying to God the interview would come to a close before more unpleasant shocks were lobbed his way.

His prayer went unanswered.

“Because of your new duties as Prince of Wales, your time at Dartmouth is to be cut short.”

David’s heart tightened within his chest. “But I’ve yet to go on my final training cruise, sir.”

“When your fellow cadets set off for North American waters, you will not be with them. You will be being measured for your Garter robes. You will be being measured for your investiture robes. You will be being coached in the part you will play at the coronation. For your investiture the chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Lloyd George, will coach you in the Welsh language. You will be giving thought to the historic speech you will make. But now,” his father said, glowering at him, “you will explain to me why Bertie was an atrocious sixty-first in his year group and why you, as his elder brother, have not been encouraging him to work harder.”

Even before he began, David knew it was useless explaining that he’d done his best to give Bertie every possible encouragement, but that it had been difficult when rigid rules forbade senior cadets from mixing with junior cadets.

Also, he was too loyal to say that, like him, Bertie found the curriculum massively difficult and that the reason for such difficulty wasn’t their fault. Their fellow cadets had all had the advantage of a preparatory-school education before going to Naval College. He and Bertie had only had a private tutor who had abysmally failed to teach them subjects such as mathematics and science, which they should have had a grounding in.

“House rules mean Bertie and I can only meet up in a far corner of the playing fields and we can’t do that very often, sir. And sixty-first isn’t really so bad—not for Bertie. He really is trying to work harder.”

There was a deferential knock on the library door.

“
Come!
” his father barked deafeningly.

The door opened and a footman said nervously, “Your Majesty, Lord Esher has arrived.”

The King’s mood changed instantly. Esher was an old and trusted friend and an adviser he relied upon greatly.

“You may go, David,” he said, to David’s vast relief. To the footman he added, “I’ll receive Lord Esher in here.”

Once on the other side of the library door, David hesitated. His
mother and his sister would be expecting him to join them, but he was far too emotionally disoriented to want to do so.

The news that he was to leave Dartmouth before achieving his goal of the last four years—the final training cruise and graduation—had come completely out of the blue, as had his father’s announcement that he would be embarking so soon on what would be a lifetime of public duties. What hadn’t been mentioned were any plans for his further education—plans that must, surely, be in place.

That he was always the last person to know of the plans made for him rankled deeply. How long ago, for instance, had plans for his investiture at Caernarvon been made? The answer, he knew, would have been months and months ago.

Two footmen in brilliant livery, their hair powdered, were standing impassive faced at either side of the library door. As he looked down the corridor he could see at least half a dozen more footmen at strategic points. At dinner that evening two of his father’s equerries had dined with them, as had one of his mother’s ladies-in-waiting. David assumed that there were times when his parents dined without the presence of courtiers, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember them doing so.

At this moment, though, he, for one, wanted to be alone in order to mull over what his father had said and to indulge in the pleasure of reliving his afternoon at Snowberry. Although the presence of footmen would, in royal terms, still equate with his being alone, he wanted to be really alone, with no palace flunkies in his field of vision. At Windsor there was only one place for such absolute privacy.

The roof.

As boys, he and Bertie had often escaped to the castle’s battlements, the excitement of the adventure intensified by the knowledge that they were doing something dangerous and utterly forbidden. It was years since he had made his way up the many staircases and along the warren of passages that led to an access door, but he remembered the way perfectly.

As he stepped out onto the vast expanse of lead he could see,
ghostly in the moonlight, the dark expanse of the Great Park and, if he turned round a little, the twinkling lights of the little town of Windsor, lying at the castle’s foot. A little farther away was the silken sheen of the river Thames winding its way languorously east, toward London. In the other direction, far too far away to see, lay Snowberry.

He leaned against an enormous chimney stack and lit a cigarette. The contrast between life at Windsor—or at any other of the royal palaces—and the kind of life he had glimpsed being lived at Snowberry was colossal. When he thought of the careless informality he had enjoyed that afternoon, he knew he wanted to experience it again and again. The question was: How would he be able to?

He blew a plume of smoke into the air. As far as the immediate future was concerned he could detour to Snowberry when traveling back to Dartmouth in two days’ time. Or he could if he were sure Piers Cullen would keep his mouth shut about it.

An owl swooped onto a turret a few yards away and regarded him unblinkingly with yellow eyes. He stared back at it, deep in thought.

Though Piers Cullen had arrived at Snowberry obviously intent on swiftly removing him from it, he had behaved surprisingly well once the game of doubles had been suggested. Had that been because of Marigold? She was probably just the right sort of age for him. She was also as sexy as any Hollywood vamp. Whatever the reason for Piers acting so completely out of character, his doing so had made it impossible for him to tell the King of any future visits, without hopelessly compromising himself.

David determined to leave for Dartmouth early enough to be able to spend a few hours en route with his new friends. That he now had people he could call friends filled him with a warm rosy glow. Whatever the difficulties of his future—a future that had been mapped out for him before he had even been born and which he couldn’t alter in any way—he knew he would be able to come to terms with it if, unknown to his family and to courtiers,
he had the solace of Snowberry and the friendships he had made there.

Especially his friendship with Lily.

At the thought of Lily his knees grew weak.

Not only did she look like an angel, she had the sweet, sunny nature of an angel. He wanted to see her again more than he’d ever wanted anything else in his life, ever.

And he would be seeing her again in two days’ time.

The very thought made him feel like a new person. The isolation at Naval College caused by his royal position no longer mattered. The fact that he couldn’t choose for himself what his future would be no longer mattered in the same way. His dislike of anything that set him apart as a person requiring homage—as would most certainly happen at the coronation and at his investiture and afterward on endless, innumerable occasions his whole life long—no longer mattered. At Snowberry he could forget all about his royal status and be treated like any other young man his age. At Snowberry, with Rose, Iris, Marigold, and Lily, he could simply be himself.

Euphoria surged through his veins. He felt as if he could take on the world. The imminent abrupt ending of his naval training was a bad blow because, once he was no longer driving regularly between Dartmouth and Windsor, opportunities to visit Snowberry would be much harder to come by, but he was going to allow nothing to stand in the way of his finding them.

He dropped the glowing stub of his cigarette and ground it out beneath his foot. With a great flapping of wings, the owl flew off to continue to hunt. As David watched it disappear into the star-studded darkness a quite different thought occurred to him. His father had been so irate at Bertie coming sixty-first in his year group that he had completely forgotten to take David to task over his own poor positioning in geometry and trigonometry.

A grin split his face, and as he walked back to the access door he was whistling, as happy and as carefree as a lark.