Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 12.2

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                 With Weatherall and a small suite, he leaves Yarmouth on April 27^th in a nine-gun frigate, the peace making it unnecessary to take much in the way of precautions. His encounter with the King makes for a desolate mood in the cabin; yet what they face upon arriving, in early May, at the Rock’s great harbour transforms this grieving solemnity into an astonished and appalled rage that his face cannot conceal. 

               The entire garrison has turned out on the quayside, and cannon are fired in a salute, which their frigate customarily returns. ‘Christ almighty,’ he says, gawping over the bows. Never in his life has he witnessed so slovenly, so vile and disorderly a collection of soldiers – and he’s seen some bad ones, as we know. These wretches are infinitely worse than when he’d first been here; they’ve decomposed; you’d think they’d just been exhumed. None has shaved in weeks; not one man is dressed in anything approaching a proper uniform; indeed, some wear no uniform at all. Many stagger or sway, falling-down drunk at noon. Even the officers are little better turned out, issuing incorrect or incoherent commands, which either go wretchedly obeyed, or else are completely ignored.

              “By God!” Weatherall gasps. “Let us never claim to have seen the worst until we have seen the worst – and I do believe these villains must be the worst!”

              “If York imagines moderation will renovate this shambling farrago,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief as his hands tremble, “then he knows less still even about the army than I’ve already presumed. What a sodding trap I’ve fallen into. Jesus!” He cannot find the words for this, suspecting there may not be any.

              Even most of the whores are  pox-riddled old crones, toothless and stinking of scabies. No broom is large enough to clean this sty; and if one were he’d use it to sweep this entire garrison off into the sea. He soon learns there are 97 shops or stalls vending wine and spirits — the same ones he’d closed down a decade earlier. The late governor, his old adversary Sir Charles O’Hara, had reopened them, since their licence fees supplemented his income and financed the construction of his folly. Memories come flooding back; few of them good ones; none of them fond; all a varyingly foul tide of effluent backing up in the mind. He misses Julie already, worrying over her condition back in London; but he’s very glad he had determined she should remain at home. This is no place for a lady.

              He’s greeted on the quay by his second-in-command, Major-General Barnett, an obese and shifty-looking man of middle years, with thin pallid lips and a sharp face marred by a prominent and decidedly broken nose. It’s angled like a dog leg.

              “Report to me in one hour,” he tells Barnett gruffly, requesting transport up to the old convent, which has served as a governor’s mansion since the 15^th century. He asks Weatherall to attend this meeting too.

                Riding in a springy gig through the crowded lanes, he sees again the carnivalesque spectacle of life on the Rock. It’s a meeting-place of worlds, with every possible national garb on view, from Berber traders in abayas and turbans, through Spanish Jews with wide hats and side-ringlets, to Catalan musicians in broad-sleeved blouses as brightly coloured as a field of wildflowers. How the Rock manages to house and support so many and varied a melange of people had always amazed him; yet a battlefield demonstrates how little room thirty thousand men can be squeezed into when necessary. Unfortunately, though, Gibraltar also shows how much space a dozen drunken soldiers can occupy when reeling about, or asleep in gutters, or fighting in a laneway. Enough, he thinks, by the time he reaches his new home, unable to countenance anymore howling military shame. So, this is the task York has given me, is it? The snake! The filthy rat!

                Though of great antiquity, the convent has been refurbished by successive occupants into a very comfortable dwelling, with both his bedchamber and office commanding an unparalleled view over the glinting turquoise sea and imposing harbour far below. Now French ships are moored there alongside all the other nations we’re currently at peace with. He’s met at the house by a Colonel Dodd, who claims to be his secretary. The man is sloppily dressed, very pale, with black hair which sticks out in oily shards, and two upper incisors so nearly horizontal that he always appears to be sucking on the broken stem of a pipe, or perhaps a ruined harpsicord key. 

            “Then you shall be a very busy man indeed,” he tells Dodd. “But I suggest you start by obtaining a decent haircut and bringing your uniform up to the regulation standards – which include being clean and pressed, with polished boots. I say this in the doubtless improbable event that you are unfamiliar with our code. Dismissed, Dodd.”

              Weatherall arrives exactly on time; Barnett, poor fellow, is nearly twenty minutes late. Not a good start for any professional relationship. The extra time, however, gives them a chance to discuss and arrange strategy, even tactics.

               Major-General Barnett is eventually announced by a wary Colonel Dodd, who goes to follow him into the governor’s office. He’s done something with his hair: ironed it, perhaps? It now resembles a glossy academic cap, tassel included.

              “Go away, Dodd,” Edward says sternly. “We don’t require you.” 

            As Dodd retreats backwards, he, Edward, turns to Barnett, saying, “Good of you to find the time to join us, Barnett. Sit.” It sounds like the instruction to a recalcitrant dog in training.

                 Weatherall scribbles constantly with a nerve-scraping scratchy quill, filling sheet after sheet with cavorting black spiders whose inky sheen fades on its pages with the day. What is he writing there, writing and writing? They both sit on stout elbow chairs behind a long mahogany table reflective as a calm lake, their blurred chins wobbling within it. The only other seat available is a rickety dining chair, unusually low and facing the table in such a way that Barnett can’t see them both at the same time, besides being several inches lower. The itchy screeching quill; gulls complaining up on the steppes of heaven; distant shouts of anger or alarm; down the street a dog is barking; and the light is dying on Major-General Barnett’s epaulettes. Weatherall is pointedly not introduced or explained. He just writes, and he writes. Every word you say is being recorded. Possibly. What else could he be doing? A novel? 

              “Perhaps,’ says Edward, in a voice of cold ancient stone, ‘we might start this meeting with me asking you a question…”

               “Of course, General…um… Highness,” says Barnett, unsure in his little trembling chair of what to do with his large unwieldy hands.

               “There is no need for you to speak yet, sir,” Edward tells him, as if commanding someone not to breathe. “That question of mine is, Barnett, this: Why have you allowed this garrison to deteriorate into the most heinous shambles I have ever had the misfortune to witness during my entire military career, hmm? Why? Why have you so smeared with dung and sewer-slime the glorious traditions of the British Army? Why, hmm?” A pause as Edward leans forward, the cord-like muscles in his neck taut as bow-strings, as if he’s preparing to swoop across the table and pulverize his second-in-command. But he doesn’t, saying in a harrowingly amused tone, “It may seem to be two questions, yet it is not. Be so kind as to explain, if you would, Barnett.” His wintry blue eyes stare heartlessly across the steeple of his massive hands.

                The major-general is clearly not accustomed to being spoken to in such a manner; there is even a pale flash of anger in his deceitful eyes. But Weatherall is still scratching away in the tail of one deceitful eye; and the Duke of Kent does not look in the minutest degree like someone you ever get angry with. He looks like someone who gets angry with you. Very angry. So, Barnett launches into an inarticulate, lumbering explanation. It is the old story: idle men forced to occupy a small space; lack of entertainment; surfeit of ha’penny whores to warm the nights; shortage of healthy drinking water, thus much disease; abundance of cheap wine and liquor, so much brawling, not a little murder; frequent lack of all food except the foul salt beef, due to shipments from England being sunk or waylaid by privateers; and so it goes on, neglecting to mention only malevolent sea-sprites and syphilitic naiads. The silent and unidentified man scratches away on the nerves in your spine; peregrine falcons cackle somewhere nearby; someone kicks the dimwitted dog, which whimpers piteously. Edward is of course sympathetic to these excuses, yet he isn’t going to say so. He needss to forge a reputation here from day one – and you learnt that on day one in Prussia: If you do not establish your leadership over a regiment from the moment you first meet them, you will never be their leader. He says, “Are you at all familiar with army regulations regarding the handling of men under such conditions, Barnett?” 

               A long pause; breath; only the dreadful scratching, the claw scraping at your brain. What, for God’s sake, is all this writing for? At length Barnett says with less than certainty, “I know they recommend drill, cleaning and repair of equipment, s-sire.” He clasps his huge ungainly hands behind his back now, wishing they were detachable, left out in the hall, and then he goes on: “Your Highness…” But goes no further. Perhaps this is all he has to say?

              “Thus, knowing this,’ says Edward, his father’s most reproachful voice creeping in uninvited, ‘when was the last time any drilling, cleaning or repairing was performed by a soldier on this Rock, sir?”

                “Some men are quite good about it,” says Barnett, says it for some ill-advised reason almost cheerily.

              “Correct me if I’m wrong, Barnett, but most, if not nearly all, are quite astoundingly, quite stupendously bad at it – if, that is, one can even be said to be bad at something one does not do…” A cruelly philosophic pause; and then a very loud, a thundering volley: “When did you, sir, last drill these men?” The words fly across that table like bolts from an arquebus.

          Barnett flinches, his response spilling down his chin in a thin gruel: “We practised for your welcome parade, sir, practised quite a lot and…” It is wiser to stop at this.

              “And before that deplorable debacle?” Edward’s question sounds serious, legal.    

             “Well, I…”

               He stops the man in an icily Jovian fury: “Many years or never are the only possible answers to that question, sir. I should rather have been shat upon than forced to endure that excruciating farrago you have the insolent gall to term a ‘parade’. Am I making myself clear, Barnett?”

             “Oh. Yes, General… Your Highness…s-sire…” He is disintegrating, little by little, his bones turning to jelly, his bent pugilist’s nose twitching, straining, trying to leave his shameful face.

               “Shall I tell you what I propose to do about this disgraceful situation, sir?” Without waiting for any assent, Edward rattles off a list that includes daily drill at dawn each day, with detailed inspections, and parades every evening, and all men in barracks for lights-out at nine. All wine and spirits stalls will be closed forthwith, particularly those anywhere near a barracks — the only exceptions being shopkeepers who make a legitimate living by selling other comestibles as well as the liquor. All men will shave daily before inspection, with no side-whiskers allowed; hair to be cut regularly above the ears. ‘There are,’ he adds, now in a more tenebrously sinister tone, ‘severe punishments permitted by our army code for any infractions of these irrefragable rules. Are we clear on this point, sir?’ 

              Barnett’s lantern jaw has dropped, kicked down by his nose in irs its resolute search of a way out, a way not to face this. He’s probably… No, he has definitely benefitted financially from the wine licences, especially after O’Hara’s death. Yet Barnett is not about to protest at the loss of income, is he? Instead, he says, and it is not the cleverest response, “The men will never stand for this, sire…I mean, well, it has been so… so long…” The last word gongs up in a convent attic, and it gongs for thee.

               “So long since they have been soldiers?” Edward’s hiss has veins of snarl rippling through it. “But it may not be so long before you are no longer a soldier, sir. I ought to have courts–martial convened for you and all your disgracefully deficient colleagues. But instead I’m going to permit you the opportunity of shovelling out and swabbing down this dung–heap and turning that fantastically filthy crew of ne’er-do-wells back into the soldiers they once professed to be, and are still paid for being.’ Not paid much, he thinks, knowing his point is made. ‘I shall be presenting my instructions in a formal written version; but, until you receive that document, I suggest you already have enough orders to make a very good start.” He lets the awful anti-silence sound its scraping chord, before concluding, “I shall attend tomorrow’s dawn drill personally, and will expect to find there much of what you’ve been told already put in place. The wine stalls shall be closed immediately.” A pause for the final rebuke to gather heft: “I do not wish to hear your questions, Barnett, because your laxity here sickens me to the core, to the very fundament of my being.” Then, as if surprised to find Barnett is still there, “You may leave forthwith. Dismissed!”

                 Barnett sits stunned for a moment, before staggering from the room on wobbling legs, on feet  of lard, scooping up his face from the flagstones as he goes.

                 ‘Did I sound firm enough?’ he asks Weatherall.

                  “If you’d sounded any firmer, the poor fellow would have dripped through the floorboards and plopped on down into the cellar… But I don’t think you’ve made a friend there, Edward.” Weatherall’s substantial military experience and innate understanding of his fellow man are always sobering in their sagacity.

               The advice is appreciated but not a part of this plan. “I have a friend, Fred. What I need to make is an army out of sots who probably now think drills are for boring holes…”

               Weatherall decides against mentioning the barrack-room joke involving ‘boring holes’, saying instead, “Boring, yes. But I strongly doubt if many have had anything approaching a thought of any kind in years.”  He’s no longer sure why he said this.

               A pause, as Edward too seems to have lost the thread. “Ah, well,” he says, the skiff of his sentence pushed from shore into the current. “As Governor-Commandant I can do what I like here; and one thing I’d like to do is…” And Weatherall knows, as we do, what’s coming. “…set up compulsory schools for these men; so their days will not be so long and fruitlessly idle, and they will one day retire from the army at least knowing how to read, write, and work out that a penny per day means they’ll earn two shillings and sixpence every month.”

               “Except in February,” the wise Weatherall points out.

               “Well, they ought to receive a tuppence bonus in that month… and at least be able to count our generosity in their own numbers. Learning a skill or trade wouldn’t hurt either – but the march of a thousand miles begins with one synchronised boot-step…”

                  Comes to this a weary wisdom: ‘A thousand miles is right – although it seems like a million today…’

               ‘Yes, a million miles,’ says Edward. But he’s thinking about his Irish charity, and the pleasure of educating those bright little boys. These dull big men won’t be so rewarding or so pleasurable. Yet he promised Rabbi Gordon, and – it cannot be said too often — he always keeps his promises.

                 ‘Fish for dinner, I suppose?’ says Weatherall. ‘I swear I was developing gills the last time I was here…’

              ‘Ah. You ought to try it, Fred…’ He’s thinking about the sea-bathing; he’s thinking of his poor mad father floating in froth like a vast jellyfish, amorphous, pallid and pink.

              ‘The gills?’ Weatherall feels the need of a rest. This day has been endless.

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               Dawn drill is so repulsively horrendous that he simply rides away on his charger, leaving Barnett to reach his own conclusions regarding Edward’s opinion of the performance. 

              He has a busy day ahead of him. One of his gubernatorial duties is presiding as judge over the local court; and he next finds himself at the trial of three Spaniards accused of stealing property valued at five hundred pounds from a Mr. Hepper. The three men are roughnecks, obviously hardened ruffians, the evidence against them being so overwhelmingly conclusive that it’s utterly impossible not to arrive at a guilty verdict. Each of the three accused also has several previous convictions for various forms of more minor malfeasance. After summarizing the evidence – which largely consists of them being caught red-handed in the act – Edward notes to the courtroom that there’s little choice but to pronounce the sentence as it is laid down for such a  crime by English Law: death by hanging. He feels uneasy about a death sentence, but he can’t appear weak on his first day at the job. The three unrepentant Spaniards are thus hung in public at dawn the next day, in full view of the crapulous hooligans  Barnett is attempting to drill. Edward cannot allow himself to regret the judgment or the punishment, however, since the Law itself offers him no option. An official pardon is quite out of the question and would have been an insult to the victim of this crime. The dreadful action, coming so soon after his arrival, does, as intended, create a general impression that he’s not a man to tamper with, nor one from who to expect mercy. This seems to assist Barnett in disciplining his men, even if it doesn’t make Edward an especially popular figure. He’s taken Signor Maciavelli’s sage advice that a prince is better off being feared by his subjects than he is being loved by them. A frightened populace always has a strong government to protect it. But you wonder why no one objects to being protected from the government by the government, don’t you?

                  Remarkably enough, his efforts to abolish drunkenness and generally clean up the garrison through a harsh enforcement of standard military rules are very popular with the local citizenry. He receives numerous letters of thanks for his improvements, many from women who claim that now they finally find it safe to walk alone through the streets, even at night, when it had once been almost suicidal for a woman even to go out. Shopkeepers and tradespeople also express their gratitude for the dramatic decrease in theft and violence. Naturally, the main street wine merchants, allowed to keep their licences and see an end to cheap, illegally-produced, often poisonous spirits, are effusively grateful, if only for the vastly increased health of profits.

                 The more Weatherall and he study, study in minute detail, every aspect of army life on the Rock, the more convinced they become that drinking lies at the root of every problem here – perhaps every problem everywhere? By cancelling the wine-stall licences he’s also reduced his own traditional income – in fact it’s more like tribute — by thousands, considering that this gesture in itself demonstrates his seriousness about the issues at hand. But the men all imagine he’s rich, and thus has no need of the usual commandant’s perquisites. In order to inculcate better habits, and to prove he’s not merely an over-privileged killjoy, he has a brewery constructed at Europa Point – soon known as ‘Brewery Barracks’ – so that men can enjoy their national and more healthful drink, instead of the cheap wine and improperly distilled spirits, which frequently cause sickness, blindness, sometimes death. Because visits to the Spanish mainland are forbidden, everything consumed on the Rock has either to be made here, or else imported from England; and all imports cost up to three times the price they would back in London – as he well knows from old experience. Thus, he feels, a brewery will solve the problem of finding inexpensive beer. Ever industrious, he begins drafting a list of new regulations to enforce his solutions, beginning with ones concerning alcohol. No N.C.O. or private, for example, is now permitted to enter any shop at all where alcohol is sold. To alleviate any hardship this causes, he establishes canteens where beer can be purchased in the barracks. Even here, however, men of different ranks are not permitted to drink together – an activity which he’s long since concluded leads to poor discipline, since commanding officers cannot afford becoming too friendly around men under their charge without losing authority.

                 By the time he’s completed his new code of rules, it runs to three hundred printed pages, and covers every detail in a soldier’s life. Officers and men have to parade for roll-call at dawn, for instance, and there is another, less-exacting parade in the evening. Roll is to be called at every meal, and all men are required to be sober. The firing of a second evening gun proclaims the day is now over, and all men of every rank are required by then to be in barracks. Non-commissioned officers from every regiment are then paraded, along with the Guard Detachment for the coming day, to ensure they’re all fit for the task, and that no one is inebriated. Proper timetables are initiated for drilling, training, and exercises; and regiments come off duty in succession, in order that commanding officers can view all their men together once or twice a week. One system alone determines uniforms, marching, and maneuvers. He also reduces the number of time-wasting fatigues: carrying water, fetching reports, or carrying rations, for example. The guards are grouped into districts, overseen by commissioned officers, so there is no chance for men to slink off or otherwise shirk their duty. He introduces uniformity of appearance among the men: beards shaved up to eye level; and officers required to have a monthly haircut. After Guard, each man is required to untie and comb his hair for inspection. Umbrellas and similar accoutrements are forbidden as unbecoming, rain or shine. No deviation whatsoever from established standards or procedures is to be tolerated and will be punished to the full extent of army regulations. He’s convinced such a detailed code of rules will come to be regarded as indispensable throughout the British Army, since it establishes a uniformity which makes any regiment joining another one, or any man transferred, feel continuity in their lives, and familiarity in their surroundings, wherever they might be. Men like routines and find security in them – especially men who would otherwise have no structure or purpose to their time. One day this document will become the basis for a code applied uniformly across all the British armed forces. But in Gibraltar, now, it’s way ahead of its time. Way.

                 ‘Have I left anything out, Fred?’ he inquires, when Weatherall has finished reading the copious document.

                 ‘No, Edward. You’ve put everything in, I’d say…’

                 ‘Ah. Well. Yes. Let me ask you this, Fred: do you find it hard to lead a good life?’

                  ‘A good life? I’m a soldier. I try to be a good soldier – if that’s what you mean?’

               ‘As do I. Yes. But here we are in a time of peace, and what we need, what the men need, is a war. Doesn’t the contradiction trouble you?’

                 Weatherall has little doubt. ‘No. Because there will always be another war…’

                  ‘Always?’

                  ‘Yes. Unless fear and greed vanish from the face of this earth…’

“Ah. Well, let’s not abandon hope or an ideal, eh?” he says, misliking such a grim prospect.

“It would seem they abandon us, though, do they not?”

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 12.1

CHAPTER TWELVE

Mutiny and Prophecy

Gibraltar: May 1802- May1803

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                Some extraordinary things have suddenly happened, as they can sometimes do. Signing the Treaty of Amiens, France and Britain end our war. It’s over — just like that. It seems as if Bonaparte might turn out to be a man of peace after all, not that anyone thinks this is likely. He’s signed a Concordat with the new pope, officially reinstating the Catholic Church in France. He’s also allowed back most of the more notorious emigres from the Ancien Regime, restoring some of its social strata and lending his rule as First Consul the formal gravitas of a proper court, with people who instinctively know how to behave in front of foreign amabassadors, who’re all looking for faux pas to make their masters titter. There are other signs too that Bonaparte may not be such a reforming republican, as we thought he was. In French-held Santa Domingo, Toussaint Louverture, a slave, had staged a coup, abolished slavery, and declared himself Governor-for-Life. Bonaparte now sends his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc – who’s married to the greedy and lubricious first consular sister, Pauline Bonaparte — to the Caribbean island to quash this rebellion and seize Louverture. To make certain French intentions are clear, Bonaparte signs a decree reinstating slavery in all French colonies. The revolutionary councils had abolished it, to some extent. But travel is back in vogue. Englishmen and women are now flocking to Paris in vast numbers to take advantage of the peace and examine the results of revolution. The Amiens treaty is not good for us, though, and many don’t like it. We’ve given away most of our Mediterranean possessions on paper; yet as the time to hand them over to France officially approaches, we are prevaricating, throwing up obstacles. It’s been agreed that a third party will caretake Malta. The Knights who’ve owned it since the Crusades are now too effete and inept to run or defend the place. This third party will be Russia, which jumps at the opportunity to have a Mediterranean port. Czar Alexander is also nominal Grand Master of the Knights – although the position is purely honourary. Now we’re raising all manner of objections to this arrangement, and the new czar is not happy with us. Those who decry the peace maintain that Bonaparte is just buying time to build his invasion fleet and provision his troops. 

                 There is peace, however; and the Mediterranean is unusually tranquil. Excepting one small area. For obscure reasons, and after chopping down the American consulate’s flagpole, the Pasha of Tripoli has declared war on the United States.

                 ‘Not a big war,’ says Weatherall, reading the half-inch written about it in his paper.

              ‘No,’ Edward says, ‘and unlikely to concern us at Gibraltar. But at least something’s happening in the Med…’  

                He, the Duke of Kent has made it clear, in a memorandum to Mr. Addington, that he’s only prepared to accept the Gibraltar post if he’s guaranteed the full support of Addington’s Cabinet. His original letter from York had stated unequivocally that the garrison at Gibraltar is in an appalling state, and that all agree Edward is the only man suitable for the task of putting things in order. This peace is an ideal time in which to renovate the army; it badly needs renovation. Fresh from his victory at Copenhagen, Admiral Nelson is not a man to rest on laurels, and he’s now expressed his firm conviction that the Rock is utterly vital to the navy as both fortress and harbour. Without it we’d lose control over the whole Mediterranean. These thus are the conditions under which Edward accepts the post, and they’re readily agreed to. He’s further assured that his second-in-command, a man named Barnett, is wholly reliable and devoted to Edward’s service. On March 24^th the Duke of Kent was gazetted Governor and Commandant of Gibraltar; and on April 21^st his final orders come through from the Duke of York himself:

It is essential that Your Royal Highness should be made aware, previous to your assuming command, that too great a proportion of the garrison at Gibraltar has been usually employed in the duties of fatigue, and that in consequence discipline has been relaxed and drunkenness promoted, and that it will be the duty of Your Royal Highness to exact the most minute attention to all His Majesty’s regulations for disciplining, arming, clothing and appointing of the army, from all of which not the most trifling deviation can be allowed. I consider it my duty to make Your Royal Highness aware that much caution will be necessary to establish a due degree of discipline among the troops, in which I trust you will gradually be able to accomplish by a moderate exercise of the power vested in you.

               “There’s something wrong here,” says Weatherall, perusing the orders. 

                “Yes. I know,” he says. “The ambiguity…”

                 “It’s not so much ambiguous as downright treacherous. First, he tells you that ‘not the most trifling deviation’ from regulations can be allowed, outlining the shocking conditions you’ll be facing; then he closes with a clause allowing him to state, if accused of ordering you to be severe, that he urged moderation. He knows damned well that moderation with that rabble will achieve nothing.”

                “It’s perfidious, Fred; and, had I seen these orders before accepting the post, I would have thought twice… or thrice.”

               “You ought still to put it on record that the Duke of York must be well aware no moderate use of your powers will put that garrison back into fighting shape,” suggests Weatherall.

               ‘Right again…’ He does scribble out this letter to York, feeling certain his brother will conveniently lose it, should the need to produce it arise. This certainty is made all the more certain when no reply to his letter ever comes.

                “I suspect I shall be a little lonely,” says Julie, when he tells her she’ll be staying in London until he’s put the Rock in better shape. “I think the Prince of Wales has ordered Maria to stay away from me.”

               “To punish me?”

                “She ignores him so far; but she cannot do that indefinitely, can she? He blames you for her meddling in Caroline’s affairs.”

                “But that’s not the way things were,” he protests. “Christ! I had nothing to do with Maria’s friendship. It was she who asked you to ask me to help…”

               “I know, I know,” says Julie, “but he’s irrationally hateful when it comes to Caroline. Maria said he even plans to take Charlotte away from her… to be educated in an establishment of her own.”

                “Ah, dear. That poor little love. And fed lies about her mother, no doubt. But,” he adds after a pause, “it’s not so unusual for an heir to the throne. If George’s motives weren’t so dubious, I wouldn’t really question it. I must visit them both before I leave…”

                  “I got the strangest letter from Rose today,” Julie then informs him, handing over some sheets of paper.

                 He reads with increasing interest, since Rose’s tone is untypical: she’s clearly angry. Bonaparte, it seems, is having affairs with actresses from the Comedie Francaise under her very nose, in his private rooms at the Tuileries. Because she’s failed so far to give him a child, Rose believes, he’s trying to get one of his actresses pregnant so the baby can be passed off as her own, and become his heir, since he intends to make himself First Consul for life, with the additional right to name his own successor. Rose is now somewhat amused that life in the palace increasingly resembles the pattern of Bourbon times – except that ‘Napoleon is so ill-mannered and rude to guests.’ This scribbled assault on her husband continues, and you assume Rose has her own secure ways of sending out letters unread by Bonaparte’s censors. Even the handwriting is furious. Bonaparte is a terrible lover, she claims; his body is smooth and hairless, like a woman’s: he even has breasts. Rose dislikes intensely the way in which he’s overly fond of handsome men, many of who he keeps around him, affectionately pulling their ears and slapping their faces. Yet, all the same, she’s expected to wait for him each night in her bed and be awake when he arrives. But often he never does arrive. She then proceedes to describe a rather droll incident. Waiting one night with her lady, while Bonaparte was known to be in his rooms with an actress, Rose grew annoyed, suggesting that the pair of them slip upstairs to surprise the First Consul. The lady-in-waiting was highly dubious; yet, a candle shaking in her hand, she followed Rose up the spiral staircase to Bonaparte’s chambers. At some point, Rose mentioned that Rustam, her husband’s Mameluke servant – a blue-eyed Georgian ex-slave — who always guards his door, will probably not hesitate to slit their throats if they try to enter. The lady dropped her candle and fled back down the staircase. As she did, they both heard the most terrible screams – ‘as only an actress could make’ – coming from Bonaparte’s bedchamber. They dashed up again, finding Rustam already in the room, with the actress in hysterics. After finishing his love-making, the girl said, the First Consul had gone into convulsions and was now unconscious. By the time he came to, Rose says with obvious glee, the room is full of concerned staff members and the actress is still beside him in bed. ‘You can be sure he banished her for good,’ writes Rose, ‘since shame is one thing he simply cannot endure’. She concludes her letter with the most intriguing detail of all: Bonaparte now proclaims himself to have embraced the Mussalman faith of Islam: ‘no doubt to pursue some game with the Moors or Turks, since his embraces always involve some self-serving purpose’.

                 “Ah. Well,” says Edward, handing back the letter to Julie, “this is not her usual letter, is it? There’s quite a lot to digest here. Is he an epileptic then?”

                  “She has mentioned fits before,” replies Julie, “but they appear to be mild – what we call petit mal…”

              “I see. As it was with Caesar. And what is this about his body being like a woman’s?”

                 “I haven’t heard that before,” she admits, “but she did once say his private parts were unusually small. I was too embarrassed to mention it to you…”

               “God! I trust you don’t write about me to her in such a manner,” he says.

               “No, of course not, never,” she tells him stridently, adding, “Remember, she’s older than me, and she’s always liked to shock with stories about her amours. She’s truly a Creole, of the island, and their women usually speak freely like this…”

                “Well, I see. And she complains Bonaparte is ill-mannered!”

                “Oh, she would never speak that way at table or in court. She’s an aristocrat after all. She knows how to behave with grace and dignity. I think it’s why he married her: he needed her noble connections to offset his own lack of them. With me, though, she still uses the old island manner, the milieu in which we grew up and always used to speak together…”

              “Hmm. She seems confused to me. I hear she’s now responsible for pleading on behalf of the many émigrés who’ve been allowed to return and reclaim their property?” 

              “Yes, true. Forty thousand are said to have returned, and many owe their pardons to her. Including me…”

              “You can return!” He’s astonished, although he has no reason to be. “Are your lands returned too?” he asks her.

                 “Of course,” she says. “But they’ve gone to Charles-Louis’ brother, who hates me for being with you; so I shall receive no benefit there. Anyway, I live here now…”

                “But peace has been declared,” he reminds her. ‘You could visit; you could even see Rose…’

               “No, my love. Everyone views it as a ploy by Bonaparte to consolidate his position at home,” she says sadly. “In effect he’s made himself king for life, with the dynastic power to choose his heir. His creation of the Legion of Honour even allows him to reward service and loyalty in the same manner as the Bourbons… although apparently half the city now wears the sash…”

               “But don’t you wish to visit Paris now you can?”

                “No; the peace won’t last, and I could find myself trapped there…”

                ‘Ah. True enough…’

                She’s right about Bonaparte, though. You don’t doubt there will be more campaigns and conquests. The First Consul’s made more for battles than he is for legislation.

               “What of his alleged conversion to Islam?” he says.

              ‘I’ve no idea,’ she replies, ‘but he seems to do nothing without a good practical reason for doing it…’ 

                ‘Yes. Yes indeed…’

                 After making a brief report on Rose’s letter for the Duke of Portland, Edward asks him about the Islam conversion issue.

                “Well, well,” says Portland, scratching his chin in an immense effort of thought, “if he could ally himself with Moors, Algerians, and Turks, even having their corsairs harass our East India trade would cause enormous problems. But an alliance on land would potentially be devastating, providing him with a gigantic army – and the gold to pay for it. He could take the Balkans, and drive a wedge between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. He’s already made an unexpected peace with Czar Alexander, who may well ally his own massive army to Bonaparte’s forces in the north-east. That would leave the First Consul free to deal with us. This is valuable intelligence, Highness; and I thank you for it…”

                ‘Perhaps you’ll look a little more kindly on my recommendations for overseas postings in future?’ says Edward, smiling crookedly.

             ‘Yes. Perhaps I will…’ says Portland, bluntly returning to papers on his desk, one of which is now Edward’s report. Nothing will be done about its warnings, however. That’s one certainty amid a tempest of uncertainties.

-ii-

                 “He is go for to take my darling Lottie aways from me,” says Princess Caroline, when he pays yet another mournful last visit to her and Charlotte. Caroline’s eyes are red-rimmed, and her hair is a crumpled, untended tangle, like a yellowed birdsnest worn as a hat. “And now he is say me I must never to see her again – never ever…”

              I hope this isn’t the result of my interference, he thinks, saying, ‘Ah, well. George’s moods pass like weather…’

               ‘You terrible weathers here is never passing…’ She then tells him that Wales no longer communicates directly with her anymore – not since she published one of his more meanly persecutorial letters in a newspaper, thereby substantially increasing public sympathy for herself, and tightening the screws of public antipathy for him. “So, I being cut aways from everyones,” she says, “all what I am love. This Gorge is kill me wit his devil mind…”. She looks almost crazed with grief, although something is always making her crazy. You don’t have the heart to point out her own culpability in this perpetual Walesian misery.

               He tries his best to calm and reassure her, aware the effort is a waste of time. In a shipwreck, you can generally only manage to save one soul. Who would it be here? He has a few precious minutes alone with Charlotte, the one to be saved, the survivor, telling her once more that he’s soon to leave England for a long time. “But not so far away this time,” he tells her upon seeing the glum expression and wishing dearly that he could wipe away all her sorrows.

               “Then you can write more often,” she says, cheering herself with this small pleasure. “And maybe I can visit you?” Her huge blue eyes reflect the exotic vistas of an imaginary traveller.

              ‘Ah. No, my sweet: impossible. Far too dangerous…’. A pause, as his heart swells painfully and he needs a sweetener here. ‘But I promise I’ll write every week…’. Is this, he thinks, the sweetest I can manage?

              “And send drawings?” she asks, as if sensing he needs a suggestion. “For I shall soon be all alone myself, without Mama or any friends…”. She says this gaily, the way she’d mention a party or picnic; but the words themselves are impervious to gaiety. 

               They are words Edward knows as feelings and can never hear without his chest falling fathoms through the earth. “Oh,” he tells her, anxious to keep that lonely darkness away from her light, “you’ll soon make many new friends – people do… they do it all the time.” But, he hears that inner voice say, I wasn’t one of those people; so, what I speak is codswollop.

                 “I want my old friends,” she says, two tiny vertical lines appearing between her eyebrows, “not new ones. I hate new ones…”. She can sense chicanery, taste the flimflam, her visage of a sudden regal in suppressed outrage.

              Unlike my father, he thinks, she will be a monarch who insists on being told the truth. “We always fear the new,” he tells her, obliged now to find a more Stoic morsel, “but it soon becomes the old, and then we love it…” He wishes he’d memorized some Marcus Aurelius for such occasions – the new becomes old and we love it, indeed!

             “I love you,” she says tenderly and utterly sincerely. “Do not forget me when you have your new friends…” The woeful face is skillfully contrived, but she can’t hide the fact that it’s a mask.

              Glad humour hasn’t abandoned her, he plays along with it. ‘I swear I won’t forget you – not ever…’ And then he embraces her, smelling mint and roses. 

                He has another difficult farewell today, this time out at Windsor. After a fierce argument with several disagreeable doctors, he’s led to the King’s locked room and a truly awful sight. King George sits in his secured madroom wearing a chamber robe and staring fixedly at a blank patch of peeling wall. His hair and beard have grown considerably and are a careless sheaf of yellowy white matted tendrils. He obviously hasn’t heard Edward’s entrance, since he doesn’t turn or make any kind of acknowledgement, preoccupied with whatever his simmering mind has summoned up from its dungeon of illusions.

               “Papa,” he says loudly, “it’s me, Edward…”. Calmly, he tells himself; conceal the feelings where they can do no good.

               “He is stone deaf now, sire,” a doctor informs him usefully.

             ‘Please leave us alone!’ he tells the man angrily, appalled by the dreaded word’s reappearance.

               He walks to stand in front of the wall at which his father stares. The King’s clouded eyes seem to notice something, but it is not Edward.

               “I want no soup!” His Majesty shouts.

                Edward repeats his name loud into one crusty coiled ear, saying, ‘I leave for Gibraltar, Papa.’

              “Edward?” his father says, the old voice hoarse and crackling. “No, he’s in Quebec fucking some French bitch. Take the soup away, you shit-head! That soup tastes like spew. What’ve you done with my girls and my wife, you bum–kisser? Are you fucking them all now, eh? All of them, eh? And Sarah Lennox too?” His words reverberate in the cold stones; and then the tone changes into terror. “Will no one deliver me from this evil valley? All I hear is a nattering of devils coming out of this eternal fog.” A pause; and the snarl returns. “Take the bloody shit-ridden soup away, you catamite of Satan!”

                 Edward tries to hug and kiss this ghost of a man with huge fumbling arms; but he’s fought off with vituperative revulsion and unholy curses. Then his father tells him quite matter-of-factly, “Do not make such a trade of it in Gibraltar as you did in Halifax…”. Is that a smirk on his sunset face? Something like a smirk twinkles through the cloud of his glassy eyes. 

               Hearing this, Edward turns back, yet can see the King is lost again deep down in his fogged vault of jabbering confusions; so he whispers a loud benediction, he whispers love into the petrified ear of a papa who knew not long ago that love was one thing he’d taken too little care of on the journey through his blustering life. To amass a treasure of dross and then find out that love, the thing you’d overlooked, is the only treasure worth owning in all the universe – that, thinks Edward, might drive anyone mad. And then he leaves the terrible room with a heart sinking under the weight of what could well be the sorrowing globe itself. Love is the one thing you can take with you into the dateless night; but tell someone that if they’re not ready to hear it and they’ll brand you as mad. His love has a heft to it now, though, a thick rotundity that makes it difficult to lug down the chilled corridors of Windsor, let alone shoulder off through gates of pearl into paradise. He needs to ride around the Great Park for a half-hour to regain enough composure for his return to London; where he’ll be forced to rummage around for whatever composure’s left for his discomposed return to Gibraltar. 

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 11.3

-vi-

                Thursday morning. Ice falls from the sky and is swept up by a stiff northerly gale to rattle against windows and roof tiles. It is the first day of 1801, and the union of England and Ireland is finally complete. But the Duke of Kent will of course play no part in this piece of history. Mr. Pitt isn’t happy about it either, although for different reasons — Ireland is very far from united. Early in February, Pitt resigns and his government falls. He will be hard to replace, and the King will now have to be bothered by politics, steering the ship of state himself for some weeks. It’s not a good time to lack a government. Bonaparte signs the Peace of Luneville with Austria, bringing an end to the once-mighty Holy Roman Empire – not that it was ever holy, Roman or an empire. With Nelson’s defeat of the Danes at Copenhagen, Prussia feels safe in invading Hanover, where Edward’s father is in effect a king in absentia, further complicating an already confounding situation. Our responses have so far been limp. We reconquered Malta, thereby once more securing control of the eastern Mediterranean, and enabling our army to retake Cairo from the French — only to lose it again soon after, this time to the Turks. Alliances are forming as fast as they’re crumbling – a situation of which Bonaparte will assuredly take full advantage. Yet no one seems to grasp the danger this man poses, still engaged in their antiquated petty national squabbles, while he’s methodically gobbling up the states around them like a prowling wolf at the sheep pen.

                At least Edward discovers why the King hasn’t responded to his latest beseeching letters: his illness has returned. Far from well himself, Edward rides out to Windsor all the same, where he’s forbidden to see his father, since, according to the doctors, any form of excitement will only exacerbate the King’s condition.

              “It’s really because they have him restrained by a special jacket and tied to his bed,” Sophia says. “I don’t know what they do to him in there, but his cries are sometimes fearful to hear.” 

              “What can I do?” he asks helplessly. ‘There must be something…’

                  “It’s going to be Georgie and Fred in charge soon,” she tells him. “They will control your fate now. They’re always here these days, whispering with cronies behind closed doors about a regency bill. You have got to take care of yourself in this, Edward. Make an alliance with Bill, Ernest, Augustus, and Adolphus, if you can, so that Georgie doesn’t get to rule unfettered…”

                ‘Ah. Unfettered, yes… But you don’t know your 

brothers the way I do – and I’m monstrous glad you don’t…’ 

                ‘I know you’re not like them, are you?’ she says.

                ‘I’m so glad someone sees that, Soph…’

                  One day the Duke of Wellington will call his brothers ‘the biggest millstone around the neck of any government’ – although, unlike Sophia, he won’t specifically except Edward from this condemnation. 

              York has been the biggest millstone around Edward’s neck so far; but Wales is also soon to turn against him, for what he deems unwarranted meddling in his personal affairs. With Wales, this could mean anything, nothing, or even everything. No one will ever understand his moods, including himself.

-vii-

                  By mid-March the useless Henry Addington is named First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. In effect he’s Prime Minister; it’s just that no one wants to give him the lofty title. Our spies report that Bonaparte has held a review of his Grand Army on the coast near Boulogne; the troops stretched across the downs for nine miles. Nine miles of soldiers. You can’t picture it. 

                  As a desultory spring alleviates most miseries of winter, Julie has some interesting news of her own. Her new friend, Maria Fitzherbert, has now resumed the oft-interrupted relationship with Wales; yet she has also, somewhat astonishingly, formed a close friendship with poor Princess Caroline, whose financial affairs out at Montague House have by now, it seems, fallen into such disarray that something needs to be done to help her manage her funds more efficiently – or just efficiently at all. They’re Wales’ funds too, of course. Careless extravagance is the main culprit, along with its concomitants, like a retinue of worthless spongers. After listening to Maria’s pleas, Wales dispatched a Colonel Thomas to act as Caroline’s Controller. As with many of his gestures, this has a double-edge to it.

                “The problem now,” says Julie, “is that Caroline loathes Thomas, viewing him as a spy sent by her husband to catch her in some act that’ll justify a divorce. She also says the man’s more hopeless even than she at handling financial matters…”

                “Ah, dear. But how can I be of any help in this?” he says, sorry to hear more of Caroline’s endless problems, even though their nature is now not unlike his own.

                  “Maria suggested to the Prince that you should be sent in to investigate matters. George was reluctant at first – because Thomas probably is his spy – but he’s now agreed to allow an investigation of the domestic issues by you. Caroline trusts you, Edward. Will you please help her?”

                He’s nonplussed. “I? Well. Will my financial incompetence be of any help to another financial incompetent?”

                “Please!”

              ‘I thought you didn’t want me all alone with Caroline out there at Blackheath?’

                ‘Maria set me straight about her. I was silly. Please do it…’ This is surely more about her relationship with Maria, he concludes.

                He dutifully travels out the following day. He’s been too sick to visit Caroline or little Charlotte before now, and was intending to visit them shortly anyway.

                “I thank the God it is you who is come,” says the Princess of Wales, embracing him with an invasive reek of patchouli and something more pungent.

                    He spends some delightful minutes with little Charlotte, who fortunately happens to be visiting her mother, and has grown several inches. She immediately complains vehemently that he’d not written her enough letters from Canada; but she’s joking. Children don’t hold grudges, not usually. Time is on their side, time the healer and eraser. Soon their old affectionate relationship resumes as if time has vanished. She asks all manner of intelligent questions, and she tells him some sad tales of her own travails during his absence. The child, as always, is batted back and forth by her parents like a shuttlecock.

                  After this pleasant interlude – and these never last long, do they? — he sets to work examining the house accounts and records. After a few days of painstaking work, interspersed with Charlotte’s chatter and games, as well as surprisingly enjoyable dinners with her subdued mother, he soon finds that Caroline’s accusations about her controller’s inefficacy are largely true. He then recommends in a note to Wales that the bumbler Colonel Thomas be removed from his duties. A mistake.

              This evidently so infuriates Wales – who hates the very idea of his wife being right about anything at all – that for weeks thereafter he refuses to see Edward or even read his full account of Caroline’s affairs. Worried about alienating the man who might soon be king, Edward beseeches Maria Fitzherbert’s intercession on his behalf: ‘Tell George I only have his own best interests at heart… as always – tell him that too.’ 

                  Maria eventually softens her prince’s heart; and he fires the Controller, Thomas, but without really solving Caroline’s pecuniary dilemma. Wales has a talent for solving one problem by ignoring it and creating another. Thus, Edward spends further time at Montague House, showing Caroline how to run her establishment more efficiently. He amazes himself by the skill he is capable of marshalling for this purpose. You can do for others what you’re inept at doing for yourself, can’t you? Mostly, though, he enjoys his hours with Charlotte, who’s the brightest, most adorable child he can imagine. It is, he realizes, a daughter he was hoping for, not sons. Will I ever have one of my own? he thinks. He hates the thought of her going back to Carlton House, where he’s not invited these days. He begins to fear Wales who, if he discovered how fond of Charlotte Edward had become, would probably make certain they never saw one another again. An irrational man generates irrational fears, because nothing can ever be ruled out of his responses to anything.

                  The war in Europe flickers and flames, raging up then dying down, with Bonaparte in three places at once, and he, the Duke of Kent, left here with nothing tangible to occupy his wearisome hours, days, weeks and months. Nothing, that is, until he finds, as Earl of Dublin, that he’s automatically President of the St. Patrick’s Charitable Society. It’s normally expected a prince will just lend his name to the agency, of course; yet, on St. Patrick’s Day, 1802, he decides to accept an invitation to occupy the Chair at this Society’s dinner in the London Tavern. It’s a sprawling smoky place, all beams and beefsteaks; yet the kids are in awe of everything. They’ve never seen the like before. There are, as you might expect, speeches, and there are more speeches; yet what most engages his attention is the excellence in behaviour and recitations of poetry by the poor boys who the charity has educated. It vivifies his interest in and enthusiasm for mass-education, which has sadly waned since the Baron de Vincy’s change of heart, declaring that the rich, not the poor are most in need of learning. It’s a truth, he realises, but a truth that obviates a greater truth: everyone needs education. So deeply impressed with the work done by his Society is he that he donates a hundred borrowed guineas to its cause before the night is over and he’s made a speech of his own, as well as joining in the singing and general conviviality. It revives his spirits to realise that if the army doesn’t want him, there are institutions and causes which do. 

                   He has no idea that members of the press are present at this dinner, nor that they’ll write such glowing accounts of his conduct for the following day’s newspapers. In these reviews he’s called “a tower of rectitude” compared with his brothers’ “dissolute behaviour”. You know the press: it goes on, soon metamorphosing into outright fiction.

                “These articles should cheer you,” says Julie, as they sit reading them over breakfast, “yet you seem anything but cheered… as usual…”

                “Because my brothers will be anything but cheered to find my light shining so brightly,” he tells her, imaginig how Wales and York will be reacting to these unwelcomely effusive encomia at their own breakfast tables – with Wales it may still be dinner. Edward cannot afford to offend these men who may soon control England, and he with it.

                He doesn’t have long to wait for a reaction. A week later, an official document arrives from the Duke of York, via Sir Henry Addington, the nominal Prime Minister’s office. On account of Sir Charles O’Hara’s recent death, it states, he, the Duke of Kent, is herewith appointed Governor of Gibraltar. He will proceed thence immediately to take up the post. 

                ‘Christ!’ he groans despondently. ‘The Rock again: my eternal punishment…’

                ‘Not again,’ hisses Weatherall, his eyes wide with pained amazement. Then something occurs to him: ‘But at least as governor you might actually be able to do something there…’

          ‘With that midden?’ It does seem unlikely.

               Weatherall tries to keep the mood boyant. ‘A shovel? A tinderbox? Gunpowder?’

                ‘And no one to stop the march of reform?’ says Edward, a light now sparking in his eyes. ‘You have a point there, Fred…’

                    ‘And it’s in Europe too…’

                     ‘Another point… But let’s not go overboard; it’s still Gib – and barely in Europe…’

‘But the climate’s not bad,’ says his friend.

‘As I recall, it was the only thing about that damn place that was not wholly and irremediably bad.’

‘The fishing?’

         

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 11.2

-iv-

           Waking at dawn the next day, Weatherall and he take a leisurely stroll on the sands, admiring the flawless glory of shimmering rose-tinted waters under a sky turning from pink, through royal blue into pale aquamarine. Fishermen are already busy hauling in the night’s catch, repairing nets, and setting up their stalls by the esplanade. A surprising number are also milling around, chatting, picking up shells, smoking clay pipes, or simply gazing back at the house wherein their King now dwells. Curiosity is curiously mingled on their faces with a kind of awe. As friendly and approachable as he is, he’s still the King, with powers of which they cannot even comprehend.

                “I imagine His Majesty’s presence here must do wonders for business,” Weatherall says good-naturedly.

            “Yes. Well,” replies Edward, “they certainly show their gratitude.” He nods at the surfeit of welcoming banners and signs hung across every available space. The gold lettering on sky-blue backgrounds now glows, painted in sunlight, as they leave these early morning scenes and saunter back to dress for breakfast.

              The King’s daily sea-bath has by now become something of a folkloric rite. The moment he steps from Gloucester Lodge into the great canopy of dazzling yellow light, a group of fiddlers strikes up God Save the King, following Edward and his father across the fulvous sands down to bathing machines. These are spacious wooden huts on wheels, all decorated with fluttering blue and gold banners. A smart troop of dragoons holds cheering crowds at a respectable distance; while the Queen, her ladies, and his sisters proceede in His Majesty’s wake to sit in wicker chairs in the shade of a canvas awning.

               “Come,” says the King, “you and I will share my bath hut, what-what. Then we shall enjoy the waters together. Where is your man, Withergull, hey-hey?”

                ‘Weatherall? He’s relaxing in the house. You won’t get him in the sea…’

                  “Doesn’t know what he’s missing, hey-hey. You should get him in tomorrow.”

              ‘Ah. Unlikely…’

                They clamber up into the machine on removable wooden steps leading to a door. Inside is a dark cabinet with three benches, above which are hooks for clothing. The King unlocks an upper half of the door, so they now seem to be in a stable flooded by the sun.  You can hear the fiddlers still scraping out their anthem from somewhere behind the hut.

                  “There’s your bathing suit,” says his father, pointing to a loose linen shirt with breeches attached to it. “I just wear me nightshirt, what-what. I like to feel the water on me balls.”

                   He’s never seen the King naked before and has not even imagined his father’s ‘balls’. The sight unduly fascinates him, Edward. His Majesty’s belly is a sagging bag, far larger than it appears when clothed; his skin is a very pale ochre-pink, covered with curly hairs white as frost.

              “By heaven!” says the King, staring at his son’s robust frame. “But you grew into a young bull, what-what. And you keep yourself fit – not like that porcine Prince of Wales. But I don’t like the look of those bruises, my boy. That’s your rheumatism, I suppose. The sea will set you all right, hey-hey.”

                As soon as they’re dressed in the baggy linens, the King rings a small bell hanging from a string near the door; and immediately the cabinet begins to roll towards gently sparkling waves, pushed by unseen hands, with the fiddlers walking behind down into the surf. Edward has never been in the English sea before, and, like Weatherall, he suspects it will not be remotely warm, certainly not as warm as the Caribbean – and even there he only sat in shallow water near the beach. Unlike Julie, he cannot swim. Some twenty worrying feet out in the water now, the machine stops and his father flings open the lower door. A wave breaks in foam over the floor.

               “I will show you how it’s done,” says the King. “Just follow my example, hey-hey…” He steps back a little, and then runs through the door, jumping several feet out into water which comes right up to his chest. His agility, as always, is astonishing in one so decayed. But the depth of the sea has Edward concerned. He’d imagined they’d be in no more than one or two feet of water.

                “Ah-hah!” bellows the King, “This is why we come here, what-what! Get yourself in, my boy.”

                Knowing his father’s predilection for ice-cold rooms, it is with extreme trepidation that he takes his own plunge, landing in very salty water that, if not precisely ‘warm as a bath’, is very far from cold. The King now lies back, his nightshirt floating around him like a huge jellyfish, his arms slowly waving over the surface, rowing his ruddy face around in bubbling circles. Edward is amazed to find how buoyant the water in fact is. Swimming can’t be so hard, he tells himself.

                  ‘It’s the salts here,’ says the King jubilantly. ‘Very dense, hey-hey. Very good for you too. Easy to swim in…’

                  He demonstrates a few clumsy strokes, and Edward tries it. At length, they stop floundering about, and lie side by side, watching the crowded shore and the fiddlers still squealing away, now up to their knees in froth.

          “We’ve lost our European allies,” says the King abruptly. The nation’s business must go forward, even on holiday. “Russia, Prussia, Austria, and the rest all squabbling amongst themselves, what-what. We shall have to deal with France alone. But I keep out of it. Let Mr. Pitt deal with his problems. So long as that devil Boney doesn’t come here, I don’t give a damn what happens over there…”

                ‘Did you consider my request for a posting to Ireland, Papa?’ he says hopefully. But his father remains silent, gazing up at an impeccable cerulean sky.

                Then the King says, “You’ll have to deal with York about that. Fred’s your man, hey-hey. All these politics upset me too much, what-what. I keep meself out of them. Let the politicians solve the problems they create, what-what, eh?”

                Edward wants to complain that the Duke of York is keeping him down, but it’s the King’s favourite son, and he doesn’t want to poison the mood. This will be a holiday, nothing more; and he’ll grapple with his crumbling career when he’s back in London.

                He does feel somewhat restored by the time they’ve dressed and been wheeled back to join the Queen, seated under her canopy.

                  “I wish we could bathe,” Sophia grumbles. “It’s so unfair.”

                ‘Life’s very unfair, child,’ says the King dismissively.

                Just then, a Mr. Crabchurch, the town’s mayor, approaches, desiring to kiss the Queen’s hand. He’s led to Edward’s mother by Colonel Gwynne of the Dragoons, who tells him he must kneel before taking the Queen’s hand. Crabchurch walks over and simply bows, before respectfully kissing Queen Charlotte’s pale claw. As Crabchurch retreats, Gwynne seizes his arm. “You were told to kneel,” says the colonel severely.

                “I cannot,” says the mayor.

                “But everyone does,” Gwynne says.

              “I have a wooden leg,” explains Crabchurch, “thus such an action is impossible for me.”

                Gwynne flushes, and everyone looks mortified. The King now insists that the mayor be offered a chair to join them for some refreshments, and to repair the assault on his dignity.

                Shadows creep along the sand, as the little waves crawl in and out, in and out. Days are brilliant and blue, one folding into another like bedcovers, as time wafts by dreamily. His diary records many excursions to view local sights, including the ruinous Device Forts of Henry VIII, medieval cathedrals and churches, ancient stones propped up in the earth millennia ago, as well as several mediocre plays and amateur concerts in the cheerful town. His father eats voraciously, this everyone observes; and his relationship with the Queen is now so distant that they never speak to one another at all, and rarely remain in the same room, never alone. But the King also seems distant with the whole family, confessing to Edward that he now worries constantly over Amelia’s health. She’s his favourite daughter – such favouritism always made obvious, to the chagrin of his other girls – and she now remains confined to her room. Edward is only permitted to visit her once, and she’s too weak and wasted to do much more than smile wanly at him, a little round face on gazing up from a lacy pillow. As usual, the doctors argue with one another over the nature of Princess Amelia’s malady, none of their tinctures, bleedings, or cuppings having the slightest beneficial effect. Is it, he wonders, the astral dwarves again?

               During their bathing hours, his father often fluctuates between silent worry and an unnatural garrulousness, during which he sometimes expounds for sixty minutes or more upon such subjects as how birds build their nests, or why Stonehenge was constructed and by who. A whole hour once consists of how Sir Christopher Wren built St. Paul’s Cathedral with stone from Portland Island out there in the bay. It’s exhausting just trying to follow these monologues. It is as if he needs to release this torrent of words in order to relieve some form of pressure building in his brain. It’s making the whites of his eyes red as cranberry jam.

                 “D’ you think I am mad again?” he asks Edward of a sudden, his sparse white hair crawling in the sea around his rubicund skull like some anemic weed.

                  “You are talking excessively; but that’s because you have much on your mind, Papa.”

              “No, my boy; there is not much left of my mind. I am scared of it; I’m scared by my own self, what-what; and that is not the way it ought to be…”

                ‘Ah. No, it’s not…’

              But he seems normal enough in most other ways, apart from his insatiable appetite. As he wolfs down platter after platter, Queen Charlotte clucks and hisses her disapproval, eyes like knives slicing up her husband into more manageable portions. Edward notices how sad his sisters have become, and how interminably drab and empty are their lives. The subject of why they’re not allowed to marry never arises. It’s one of those locked rooms of the psyche which can never be opened – although Sophia opens it a crack, telling him disconsolately in private of their misery and boredom.

                   ‘My Julie intends to invite you to the opera, and to spend some weeks at the house in Knightsbridge,’ he tells her, expecting a little cheeriness.

                “Mama would never allow it,” she says with tearful certainty. “She believes the world should come to us, not we to the world. But the world never comes – or not the aspects of it I wish to see…” More tears well up, tears of helpless frustration.

                  It is hard to leave her in such a state; it is hard to leave everyone, except the Queen. My family, he thinks. Fifteen of us, including parents, and where is the love families are supposed to boast? There’s affection, given when appropriate, but you never sense any continuity. Nothing is solid, he thinks. I come, I go, and could be gone a lifetime without bring missed. Is something wrong with us, or is this how they all are, real families? He tries to connect – and he partially succeeds with Sophia. But at the moment of departure there’s no sign his absence will trouble anyone. He knows Julie will say it’s because he makes everything about himself. But he tells himself, who should it be about but me, the experiemncer? Who else is there?

-v-

                  The weather remains benign as they trundle off through England, past fields and forests already being burnished for autumn. Three days later they’re in London, which glows in the alien sunlight like a Mediterranean port. According to the newspapers they’ve read, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland has been created and will take effect the following year. A Treaty of Mortefontaine has been signed between France and America to end their quasi-war. And we’ve driven the French out of Malta… again.  

                  His baggage has been taken to the apartments at Kensington Palace, which are finally ready; so, he stops off here first. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘What were they like before the renovations if they’re like this now?’ He soon leaves Weatherall there, riding alone over to Knightsbridge and the arms of his love. Hyde Park teems with picnickers, everyone from mudlarks to merchants enjoying the unfamiliar but welcome yolky late sunlight. 

                  Julie has spent the weeks of separation in a rather solitary manner, just reading and overseeing work in the garden. He asks her why she’d not been out in company or even entertained at home.

                “It’s no longer so innocuous a thing here to be French,” she replies with a strained expression.

              ‘What on earth do you mean?’

              “I suspect my letters from Rose are being intercepted,” she says, staring blankly at the wall. “There are always men watching the house too. You must have noticed the mood of apprehension now pervading your country?” There is a challenge in her voice.

              “Apprehension over what?”

              “Surely your father gave you news of Bonaparte’s victories in Europe? He now rules Austria and Italy; and he’s retaken Egypt… sent your so-called allies running for cover. Everyone here believes he’ll defeat Prussia next, and then form an alliance with Russia to invade England. Surely you have heard all this after weeks with the King?”

              “Ah. No. I fear my father’s mind is deteriorating again, so they keep anything too troublesome from him…”

                Loving concern returns to her tone. “I’m sorry to hear that, my love; just as you’ll be sorry to hear I’m rumoured to be a French spy.”

                ‘What the hell!’ Edward feels the blood start boiling in his head.

                  He immediately sets about seeking out the root of this slander — and he doesn’t have to look far or for very long. Weatherall follows one of the men watching the house back to where he obviously writes his daily reports: an office in the Duke of York’s headquarters at Horseguards’ Barracks. He, the Duke of Kent, goes over there in a fury, pushing into his brother’s private quarters, ordering the men meeting with York to leave, and, leaning over his desk until he’s mere inches from his face, telling York in a low growl to leave Julie alone.

                “She receives letters from someone in Paris very close to Bonaparte,” says York, who swallows nervously and looks rather scared, as cowards tend to do when confronted, especially by someone Edward’s size.

                “In fact,” Edward tells him, “they’re from Bonaparte’s wife, who is Madame Julie’s childhood friend. And I have encouraged her to maintain the correspondence to see if we can learn anything useful that she may let slip – so there…” He stands glowering down at York, murder in his eyes.

                “What about anything useful Julie may let slip?” York asks  smugly, regaining some of his composure.

                “Do I look like an idiot, Fred?”

                “Not especially…”

                  “Because she has been instructed to plant misinformation in her replies – which I doubt Bonaparte bothers to read anyway.”

                “So, what have we learned from this… um…  this correspondence?” York now inquires, wiping a quill on his handkerchief.

              “I have learned that you are not a very kind or generous brother. You are jealous, petty, two-faced, hypocritical… and unworthy of your position – that’s what I’ve learned…”

              “Hypocritical!” York exclaims incredulously. “Coming from you that’s a midge’s piss…”

                 “A what? But I did not get up in Parliament to speak in favour of a bill against adultery, did I? And I only have one mistress, who I happen to love; whereas you have more than you can count – and of course your wife, wherever she is. You use them the way you ought to be using your hand if you weren’t so damned lazy!”

                  “That was Bill in the House not me,” says York triumphantly. “I wouldn’t speak about anything to Parliament.”

              “Because you’re too idle and arrogant,” snaps Edward, annoyed with himself for the error of confusing York with Bill, the Duke of Clarence, whose speech to Parliament was also hypocritical for that matter. These brothers, he thinks, they blend in with one another as time passes like the days of summer swallowed up by winter’s clouds. 

                “I could have you court-martialled for this,” York tells him, pointlessly shuffling papers on his gilded desk, which looks unused to seeing much in the way of work.

                  “I dare you, Fred, because I’d be only too happy to repeat this conversation on record before a panel of peers. So why not avoid that embarrassment and, instead, make me C-in-C in Ireland? Or grant me some similar position here, where I can do some good for my King and Country. Why not, eh?” He refuses to let the futility of these words show in his blazing blue eyes.

              “Ah-hah, well,’ says York, taken aback by this. ‘I will think it over and see if I can’t find something appropriate for you.” He avoids Edward’s relentlessly searching gaze.

                  “Yes. I shall save my thanks until I hear what you’ve come up with, what you’ve found appropriate for me.” Short of breaking a chair over his head, thinks Edward, what else can I do here?

              “Excellent,” says York, making the word not sound it. “Well, if you’ll excuse me now, I have work to do…”

                “Just make sure it doesn’t entail watching Madame de St. Laurent’s house,” Edward says, turning to leave, “or I shall be back here faster than you could retreat from Dunkirk!”

                York’s rage at this insult burns up behind the door. You can feel it all the way down to the stables, like a fiery ghost following you crackling and snapping.

                But there is a good deal of work for the Duke of York these days, whether he’s used to it or not. The war’s disruption to trade is now beginning to punish our coffers. Costs are soaring; and many are out of work – a dangerous situation defused to some extent by thousands of unemployed joining the army. Everyone, it seems, wants to fight Boney the Ogre, to play a role in what none doubt is history. Everyone, that is, except him, the Duke of Kent. He yearns to fight, of course, yet no one will let him. To compensate for the glorious summer, a suddenly arrived winter is brutal, with the Thames even freezing over – something it hasn’t done in two hundred years.

                ‘Are diabolical winters following me like evil spirits?’ he asks. Steeped in the Greco-Roman world, he also frequently wonders if he’s offended the gods in some way. 

                 The bitter chill has brought on his rheumatic attacks, which are now ferocious, unremitting, debilitating. Julie has a cold that lasts three months, merely shifting camp from nose to throat to ears to stomach, then returning to her head and sinuses.

                 ‘Will it ever go?’ she says a dozen times each day in a nasal drone.

                  They’re both laid up in bed well into 1801, and the sole activities recorded by his diary are reading newspapers and writing letters — more importuning letters to the King, of course: his life’s work. This used to be said in jest, but it no longer seems remotely amusing. 

                    By the Third Treaty of Ildefonsco, Spain has now returned Louisiana to France, in exchange for Tuscany. ‘Lord,’ he says, smacking the Times, ‘my namesake’s been seized…’ The corvette Confiance, a French privateer, has captured the Kent, a British East Indiaman, in the Indian Ocean. At the Battle of Hohenlinden the French defeat armies of the Hapsburgs and Bavarians. ‘And I am stuck here uselessly,’ he says angrily, has said it before, will say it again, and yet again.

                  ‘And hors de combat with your rheumatism,’ Julie tells him testily.

                 On Christmas Eve, Bonaparte narrowly escapes an assassination attempt, an enormous bomb that kills a dozen people as he’s on his way to the opera in his coach. We’ve had something to do with this, funding exiled royalists and supplying an infernal machine to detonate the device. We’re not supposed to assassinate heads of state, but we do, as quietly as possible, of course. This is the first Christmas to be declared a public holiday across Christendom – although Edward and Julie are not in a celebratory mood. He receives an outraged letter from Louis de Salaberry stating that the seigneur has been relieved of his post at Quebec as head of Indian Affairs. In response, Edward writes a similarly outraged epistle to the Duke of Portland, who now handles our foreign affairs:  Why has my appointment been overruled? He complains of the many mortifications he’s suffered in recommending able men for positions whose exigencies he understands far better than Portland, having served several years in the places with which they’re concerned. He knows instinctively that York is behind this undermining of his authority; yet he’s too weak and sickly to do much more than recite his catalogue of wrongs on paper and send them to everyone he can think of who might be sympathetic to his plight. He also writes to his banker, Mr. Thomas Coutts, expressing the desire to set up an annuity for Julie, so she won’t have to go begging her bread if anything happens to him, to Edward. Coutts expresses dismay over his debts, when he replies, yet says it should nonetheless still be possible to put aside a little money each year from Edward’s few sources of income, while still paying off interest on the old loans, the ancient loans which still nag and bray from a past that’s ever present in them. For money, the past and future are present now, because when you owe it is always now.

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 11.1

CHAPTER  ELEVEN

Restoration

England: September 1800- April 1802

-i-

                  The size and firepower of HMS Assistance indicates that trouble is expected on their voyage across the Atlantic’s roiling grey tyranny. He wouldn’t be so nervous about the French Navy if he knew now what he will later learn. Bonaparte, like the early Romans he so admires, is a poor sailor, on board a ship invariably confined to his bunk with nausea. Consequently, he dislikes seas, oceans, rivers, even lakes. Indeed, the only form of water he does like is that in a hot bath, which he sometimes orders drawn for him three or four times a day, wallowing for hours at a time, the hot water regularly replaced, as he reads reports or dictates letters. It thus comes as little surprise to find that his uneasy relationship with our element leaves him with little knowledge of ships and the navy in general. Where he knows every tiny detail of every single activity upon which an army depends – from how many loaves of bread a field oven can bake each day, to the exact weight in powder and shot an army wagon can safely carry – he knows only the most basic things about naval matters; although he always acts as if he knows more. This ignorance festers into outright scorn, especially after Nelson destroyed his entire fleet, apart from three schooners, at Abukir Bay. More naval catastrophes followed that one; and many more French ships have been built only to be sunk or siezed. In response to this, as is his wont, Bonaparte decided to make himself Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, as well as of the Army – besides being, at the time, Minister of Police, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chief Engineer, Chief Architect, Attorney-General, and Head of State.  He believes firmly and fervently that nothing can function properly unless he personally oversees every speck of it. In this he is not unlike Edward. Yet one incident emphasises the difference between these two men. Bonaparte had ordered a display and maneuvers from one of his major fleets; but the Admiral in command announced that he’d called off the exercise due to dangerously inclement weather. Furious, Bonaparte demanded that the display take place no matter how bad the weather. Again, the Admiral refused to carry out the order, saying he would not put the lives of his men in danger. Defied, refused, slighted, Bonaparte dismissed the admiral, putting his vice-admiral in charge of the fleet, and again ordering the exercise to commence as scheduled. So rough was the storm-tossed sea that several ships were wrecked during the exercise, and two hundred sailors lost their lives. Despite the expert advice given him, Bonaparte had to have his way. He, who relied upon expert advice in every other area, shrugged off this disaster, blaming it on incompetence.  The orginal admiral never regained his command, because Bonaparte never forgets a slight, storing them up for future use, to justify retribution or warrant abuse as required. He often acts more from emotion – usually rage –than reason; hence many good men suffer unjustly on account of it; and, of course, millions die. Hearing of this incident, Edward will realise that he himself would never have acted in such a foolhardy manner. In fact, even most of Bonaparte’s victories never resemble his own accounts of them. He embellishes; he distorts; he lies outrageously. Part of his annoyance with the navy is that he knows he needs it in order to invade Britain. From an island himself, he’s aware of the protection and strategic advantages offered by water. It makes any invasion extremely hard if there are sufficient land forces to repel the invaders. Therefore, he has the entire English coastline surveyed by vessels disguised as fishing boats. All he needs to do, he keeps convincing himself, is land his “Grand Army” – as the vast force has now been mawkishly renamed — and England would be his within days. Yet Britannia still rules the waves; it is simply not possible to sail a large enough fleet to any place where an entire army could feasibly be landed without being spotted, with its horses, artillery, ammunition, provisions, and so forth. The Royal Navy would be on them in no time, attacking both French flanks from out at sea, and the army waiting in position near the shore to pick off landing parties and pound the fleet to splinters from concealed batteries. This frustrating knowledge makes Bonaparte begin to view his navy as useless; and it also blinds him to great nautical opportunities. For example, he is presented with designs for a ship powered by steam rather than wind, as well as a vessel able to sail under water and fire self-propelling shells into any ship’s hull, sinking it without ever being noticed. Tests in the Seine aren’t very impressive, yet a man of genuine vision would have leapt at these innovations, realizing that, when perfected, they would virtually guarantee control of the oceans. Bonaparte simply ridiculed the inventor and had him kicked out of the Tuileries. He dreamed only his own private dreams; and he is an inveterate dreamer. His ultimate fantasy is to make himself Sultan of the East, defeating Britain in India on land, where he feels secure, and then going on to take China. Deprived of her enormous empire, he’s certain, England would shrivel economically and cease to be any kind of international threat. And he’s right in thinking this. Had he not been repelled by Admiral Smith at Acre, he intended to continue through Syria and conquer the Turks at Constantinople; from there he’d march to India, he imagined, with a huge force, now bolstered by Turks and Russians. He had even allied by mail with the Shah of Persia, who was to subdue the Afghan tribes for him, permitting safe passage through the Khyber Pass and down into the Punjab. You wonder what he pictured France doing during the long years of her First Consul’s absence. You wonder if he planned ever to go back. He does see himself as the return of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Both in one. But Alexander was dead at 33, and Caesar’s acheivements did not prevent him being stabbed to death by members of the Senate who accused him of becoming a tyrant. Bonaparte’s conquests will exceed those of both men combined, as does his military and administrative genius. Yet his dreams are always of more. More. You wonder if the great globe itself will be big enough for him. 

                   Had Edward known about his adversary’s scorn for the navy, the voyage to England would have been less tremulous, and Julie wouldn’t have been frightened out of her wits for weeks on end by his premonitions of danger. The only other ship they see is an Irish shrimper blown off course by storms and containing three very hungry fishermen who are mighty glad of some vittles and some good navigarional advice. 

-ii-

                ‘Are we sure this is England? he says, as they surge through sparkling foam in the harbour. ‘It looks like Portsmouth, but this weather!’

                The cloudless sky is azure blue, and you can see the gods desporting themselves in silver chariots. The sun is a burning gold sovereign that winks out a warm breeze smelling of freshly-baked bread. Even the gulls look clean and serene, gleaming white corsairs resting langorously on their soft ledges in the air. There is not much of a welcome, though. One tattered banner reads God Save the King; seven elderly men and women shade their eyes with hands as they squint into the endless blue light. They may well have just happened to be there.

                ‘Hast ‘ou come t’save us from Boney the Ogre, your dukeship?’ asks a tattooed sailor on the quay, near the Hulk Stairs.

              ‘From who?’ Edward asks.

                ‘He mean Bonaparte,’ a harbour official explains.

                ‘Ah. Well, yes, sir; I suppose I have…’

              ‘Then bless thee, sire…’

                He’s handed a letter with the King’s seal on it. ‘What is it?’ Weatherall asks uneasily.

              ‘Hmm,’ says Edward, having trouble with his father’s deterioting hand. ‘He says don’t go to Cheltenham; come and join him at Weymouth instead. The sea-bathing’s apparently excellent; water warm as a bath; the locals are exceptionally friendly; and he has a house reserved for us…’

              ‘That’s it?’ Weatherall says, looking as if he still expects a thunderbolt to hit him.

              ‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘So, Weymouth it is…’

                ‘For me too?’ asks Julie hopefully.

              ‘Ah. No…’ As before, she will have to head for London, but this time to Knightsbridge, where the house is still rented in his name. No one remembered to terminate the lease; or perhaps he did this deliberately, as occult leverage to assist his return?   

                “Have you ever been to Weymouth, Lieutenant?’ Weatherall asks a driver named Riggers, as they step into the coach.

                “No, sir,” Riggers replies in a parade-ground manner.

                “But you do know the way there?”

                “No, sir.”

                “This would appear to pose a difficulty, would it not?”

              “No, sir.”

              “And why not, Lieutenant?”

                “There’s only one coast road, sir. It’s just a question of heading either east or west, sir.’

              ‘And which is it to be? That seems to me to be rather crucial…’

                ‘Yessir.’

                ‘And?’

              ‘I’ll have to ask, sir.’

             ‘A sound idea. Ask away…’

             ‘Sir!’ 

             The consensus proves to be west.

              On a rack in the coach they find a rolled-up map. It’s dark and rather greasy, yet nonetheless they have little trouble locating Portsmouth, and only slightly more in finding, to the west, Weymouth, whose lettering is so much smaller than that of a Melcombe Regis, which all but overlaps it. Their journey is a mere five-hour gallop from Portsmouth along the coast road to Dorset, which vanishes for a quarter of an inch on the map, bitten off or fallen into the sea. There is no way of opening the windows, so they edge to the side farthest from where a solar effulgence lords it over the flashing southern sea, blazing through the glass to make a travelling oven of their coach. 

                  ‘Phew,’ he says, ‘this is soon going to be torture…’

              ‘But,’ says Weatherall, ‘why would you make windows to open in a country where the weather’s only like this for a day once in five centuries?’

            ‘Ah. Reason not the need…’

              ‘Those windows are abnormally large, aren’t they? You’d think this rattletrap was a mobile hothouse…’

            ‘It’s intolerable,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to arrive drenched in sweat and red as a carrot…’

            ‘A carrot? Well,’ says Weatherall, ‘what’s the alternative?’

            ‘This is…’ Edward takes out his pistols and blows both windows clean off their frames. He then uses one weapon as a hammer to knock out remaining wedges of glass.

              ‘That certainly is one solution,’ remarks Weatherall. 

              The carriage immediately comes to a halt, and Riggers, unruffled, appears at a shattered window. “I heard shots, sir,” he says.

            “You did, Lieutenant. Well done. Now drive on. Double-quick!”

              ‘Yessir!’

                The large open windows now admit such a frenzy of hot wind that they have to seat themselves side by side, with their backs to the road ahead, thereby avoiding the torrents of dust and grit now gushing in. Riggers is driving at such a rate that wayfarers, farmers carrying bales of hay, farm girls with baskets of apples, and indeed anyone in their path is obliged to jump clear of the coach’s thundering progress.

                 ‘Christ,’ he says, ‘tell him to slow down…’ Passing a small village, he notices a bookseller’s establishment with various newspapers and journals on view. Weatherall shouts for Riggers to halt, and they buy all the most recent papers available. ‘Hmm,’ he says, ‘rumour, gossip, slander, and the usual claptrap… where’s the bloody news? Ah…’ 

               They bump and crash over ruts. England slides by their windows, yellow and green, gilded by a frantic sun, whose light falls from heaven like a golden coverlet. 

                “It appears that sea-bathing is now the summit of fashion. Read this.” Weatherall slaps down a folded copy of the Times. It seems sea-bathing is indeed now a veritable mania, with doctors wildly lauding its efficacies: a cure for all ills. The article even includes an enthusiastic poem by Mr. Cowper on the subject:

          Your prudent Grandmas, ye modern belles,

            Content with Bristol, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells,

            When health required and would consent to roam,

            Else more attached to pleasures found at home;

          But now a light, gay widow, virgin, wife,

          Ingenious to diversify dull life,

            In coaches, chaises, caravans and hoys,

          Fly to the coast for daily nightly joys;

            And all impatient of dry land agree

          With one consent to rush down to the sea.

           ‘Ugh!’ he says. ‘You wonder if this sea-bathing craze has more to do with the weather than the fashion…’

                ‘Yes,’ says Weatherall. ‘And it doesn’t really suit England, does it? Too much dust; and you can see things too clearly. This country is designed to be seen under low cloud through a haze of drizzle. I don’t want to see anything this clearly…’ 

               ‘Every five centuries a little clarity can’t hurt…’

              “Would you say Cowper was our greatest poet? That’s what the editor calls him…’

              ‘God, no,’ he says. ‘What balderdash! The poem itself disproves that… Have you found any actual news yet? What of Boney the Ogre?”

                “Well,’ says Weatherall. ‘A fellow here claims that all of Paris knows Bonaparte’s wife kept a lover named ‘Hypolite’, a Dragoon captain, kept him in her chateau while her husband was away in Egypt. She even entertained distinguished guests there with the man.”

              “Now that, sir, is imbecility,” he says, mimicking Weatherall’s voice. “I don’t imagine his military career will exactly thrive, will it? What happened to this idiot when the big bad cat returned?”

              “It doesn’t say.”

              “No, I’m sure it doesn’t. Because all the First Consul’s horses and all his men couldn’t put Hypolite back together again…And we might not manage to put Europe back together again, either – yet that doesn’t merit a mention? God! Disgraceful, these so-called newspapers. And didn’t we hear this story last year?”

          ‘Well, at least it’s news. That, sir, is rectitude. By God, it is!’

-iii-

              ‘Will you look at that,’ he says, pointing. 

                 The nearer to their destination they are, the more evidence of a royal welcome they encounter through their rushing windows. Shops and houses are festooned with blue banners bearing, in gold lettering, variations on a theme of: God Save the King. Small boys they see  often wear miniature versions of this on bandeaux tied around a hat or around a head. Many a gentleman’s cap is decorated with the royal blue cockade. An arch of branches interwoven with flowers has been erected over the road into Melcombe Regis, a banner proclaiming: The King Restored!

              “Has that been there since the return of Charles II?” inquires Weatherall, who’s now charmed by the festive atmosphere visible everywhere.

                 Labourers with billhooks are returning from the fields, singing as they roll along the lanes. Farmers in billowing smocks wipe perspiring brows, sitting in haywains laden down with golden bales. Small children playing with spinning tops in the dust wave frantically and halloo as they pass by, roaring, clanging and creaking, a monster of the road.

              “I suspect it celebrates the restorative virtues of His Majesty’s sea-bathing,” he says, hoping it doesn’t celebrate his father having recently suffered another bout of madness.

                  ‘Yes,’ says Weatherall. ‘The King was restored here – and you should come to be restored here too…’ The heat is making him dizzy. His thoughts swirl like midges.

                  A team of strong horses arduously drags a heavy plough across dry sandy soil, while a country wife sits weaving baskets in the shade of a spreading oak, a cloth laid out at her feet with cheese, bread, and a jug of something.

                “It’s hard to imagine this will all come to an end if Bonaparte invades, isn’t it?’ he says. “It all seems so permanent and tranquil…”

              “As do battlefields at dawn,” Weatherall says, wondering if he’s making sense. “If just one day can rip a world to shreds, think what a hundred years could do…”

                As they soon learn, Weymouth is merely an extension of Melcombe, a village that has rapidly expanded into the larger town due to the King’s steady patronage. He rents Gloucester Lodge, a sizeable mansion, recently built by his brother, the Duke of Gloucester. It’s of a pleasingly modern design, in limestone and wood, with large windows facing the yellow sands and huge curving bay, which is further sheltered by an island, Portland Island, making the sea here exceedingly calm, almost like a lake. His father also rents several nearby houses for servants and guests; although none of these dwellings possesses so fine a view as his, nor so splendid a design. As Riggers drives them up to the doors of Gloucester Lodge, the sky further west has just begun to turn a rosy orange below its turquoise cupola, threading wavelets with glittering chains of carmine and pink. The bay is in fact a peninsula concealing the island with its graceful curl. An esplanade stretches along this shore, where fishermen sell the daily catch, and various other vendors ply their wares from little huts. The entire vista, with its broad beach of fine sand, and its gaily decorated bathing machines, is completely delightful to him, to Edward. He looks forward to his stay, praying that his father’s mood will not mar it. The heat has made him groggy, weak-kneed.

                  A genial footman, dressed casually in shirtsleeves, greets them at the door, only to find himself shooed off by Sophia, who embraces Edward so tightly he can scarcely breathe. Weatherall is left to supervise their occupation of the smaller house not a stone’s throw from the King’s. Other carriages bearing their baggage are due to arrive within the hour.

              “How has he been?” he says to Sophia, says it in an anxious tone.

              “Come and see for yourself,” she tells him brightly. “He has eagerly awaited your arrival all day.”

              The King sits in his drawing room, reading sheet music through thick pince-nez. He looks up as the door opens, peering quizzically at whoever has entered.

                “It’s Edward, Papa,” Sophia cries out very loudly.

              “Majesty,” he says, bowing formally.

                He comes bounding from his chair, the King, dropping the music carelessly onto bare boards, and hugging him in his thick arms. Although his face and eyes are unnaturally flushed, red as strawberry jam, he seems fit and full of energy. He smells of salt, powerfully. “Don’t you  ‘majesty’ me here, what-what,” he booms. “Here we are just common folk on holiday. How I have missed you, my boy, hey-hey…” He bids Edward sit, sending Sophia to request tea be served, and then he asks about Canada; he asks about Edward’s health; and he asks about his voyage over. 

                   Edward relates coming across the Irish shrimpers, which has the King staring out over the diamond bay and ruminating in silence for some minutes. “Ay,” says his father eventually, as if weighed down by mysteries, “there are too many occurrences for which we have no explanation, what-what. I meself have witnessed marvels no man has ever recorded seeing….”

              A shrimp boat lost at sea is hardly a marvel, he thinks, urging the King to reveal some of these wonders.

            “You mustn’t tell another soul, though, what-what,” he says in a hoarse whisper.

            ‘I promise, Papa…’

              “I once saw Hanover through a perspective glass at Windsor, hey-hey,” the King says, nodding in confirmation. “That, sir, defies explaining; yet it is so.’ He leans closer to continue: ‘At Bath, once, I found a talking horse, with whom I conversed all day – and none but I could comprehend the equine language, what-what…”

              “Remarkable!” Edward exclaims. He’s heard of these “marvels” before, assuming now that they’re but symptoms of the madness. Too sad; really, too sad.

              “Indeed,” King George continues, leaning even closer towards him. “And there are many more, hey-hey. I discovered the King of Prussia was able to transform himself into an oak tree; and the scoundrel walked all the way over here to sink his roots in at the Great Park — and for the clear purpose of spying on me, what-what. But I found him out, what-what! Oh, yes, I found him all right, and gave him a tongue-lashing for his impertinence, what-what. The Glastonbury Thorn blooms at Christmas, you know, boy,’ he says; and he says, ‘I saw it with me own eyes, hey-hey. And it was there I met some of them little folk, what-what. Yes, I did; and they told me some secret things, hey-hey. You know Our Lord was at Glastonbury as a child — yes indeed.  But you tell most rascals these mysteries and they don’t believe you, hey-hey. Keep your Irish shrimpers to yourself, my lad, or they’ll have you tied up, beaten and burned like me…” 

               He recounts his “marvels” as if they’re true. You wonder how true they really are. You experience a great unease while he’s talking, that sense of listening to a madman but striving to act as if he’s sane. But this makes both of you seem mad.

                He’s glad when a scratching at the door announces a footman with their tea.

            “We don’t want this,” snaps his father, as the servant places their tray on a side table. “Away with it! My son and I shall walk upon the esplanade. He’s never visited us here before. Come!” the King tells him, rising from his seat and heading for the door with celerity.

              Sounds of “Chop-chop, the King!” echo from without, warning staff of his imminent presence.

              Taking a battered straw hat from a stand in the hall, his father urges him on. Doors are opened, and before long they’re walking arm in arm along the wodden path, recognized by surprisingly few, and even these merely courteous, bowing or offering kindly greetings. They’re now used to his presence, it seems, and they all respect his privacy.

              “How much is turbot today?” the King asks a startled fisherman, but without pausing to hear the man’s answer. He’s impressing on Edward his casual familiarity with these people. Illuminations are appearing all over the little town now, and can even be seen on fishing boats bobbing out on waters glittering gold and crimson in the deepening sunset. The sky is an enormous indigo hat, banded at the brim with rainbow hues. A few stars twinkle hesitantly in the darkling east. After the torrid heat of day, the air is sweet and balmy, as close to ideal as it ever gets in England. Through this perfect evening, with its matchless seascape, he’s walking arm in arm with his father — he, the Duke of Kent. They’re talking of little things again; they’re admiring the weather, the view, the wares for sale, and the amiability of those who sell them. There’s a dreamlike quality to everything; yet he still has the ominous sense that this moment is attempting to burn itself into his memory, for it will never again be, and he’ll need its sweetness to shore up a dreadful ruin which lies ahead, hidden by hours and days, waiting to scream out, leaping on you with fangs and claws. Destiny bides its time, while lives crumble into dust.

                  Walking west into the crimson grandeur increases his melancholy mood; and the King falls silent too, huffing and puffing occasionally, as the night slithers down from the vast stadium of sky.

             “Beautiful as it is,” his father says after some minutes, “there always seems to be something sad about a sunset, what-what. Is it an intimation of one’s own mortality?”

              “Your sun will not set for many, many years,” Edward tells him, not believing a word of it.

              “Ah, my boy, I wish I were sure of that.” He sighs, his voice partially lost in the splashing of larger waves coursing in from the darkness. “But there are times when I feel my days are heading westward, to the last horizon.’ A pause; and then he goes on more animatedly: ‘Did you know the Black Death first landed right here, back in 1348; came with some army, or on board a spice ship, what-what?”

            “Truly, Papa?” He’s not sure if this is madness talking, although he will later learn it is not.

            “Yes, truly, my boy, hey-hey. Very ancient settlements, these, what-what. Place was registered as an official wool port in 1310, don’t y’know. But the damned French found the place so easy to raid we had to move the wool trade to Poole, hey-hey. I know the story; yes, indeed I do. Henry VIII built Device Forts around here in the 1530s to fend off invasion, what-what. We’ll see some over the days ahead; and, from what I hear, we’ll soon be needing to build more to fend off that Corsican monster. Melcombe and Weymouth used to be rivals, what-what, but they got themselves incorporated as a borough in 1571, yes, so the difference is only illusory. I like the history, what-what – it gives me comfort to know a place has seen many centuries. They sailed from here in Cromwell’s time to found another ‘Weymouth’ in Massachusetts, hey-hey; and later to found one in your Nova Scotia, what-what.’ Edward hasn’t come across a Weymouth in Nova Scarcity. ‘Religion drove them out,’ says the King. ‘Religion, y’know? One has to admire that sort of dedication…”

              He doesn’t like it being referred to as his Nova Scotia. He’s never going back there. It can be your Nova Scotia, he thinks, but it isn’t mine.

              As they turn, strolling back towards the great flood of a smooth inky night, the King falls silent again. Stars peep down at them from a black immensity. The cheerful illuminations of town now blaze brighter, banners of salutation welcoming them back to life. A group of small boys, all wearing sailor caps with bandeaux reading God Save the King, are halted by a governess and told to bow as they pass by. Then the lads are instructed to sing the anthem in their sweet treble voices.

              “Y’see,” says the King happily, “the people love me here, hey-hey!”

              “They love you everywhere, Papa.” More rank insincerity.

            “Not everywhere, my boy” says the King in a matter-of-fact tone. “In London they hate me…”

            Edward’s not sure whether he means Parliament or his brothers, but he doesn’t press the issue. It requires no pressing. The King is just stating his reality – real or not.

              Back at Gloucester Row, his father waves the wretched old straw hat at a group of local well-wishers, before disappearing into the house, where he, Edward, finds his mother seated in the drawing room with most of his sisters. She welcomes him so formally he feels like a stranger; while his sisters shower him with affection. The King announces he will now rest before dinner, advising Edward to do the same. He glances over at Queen Charlotte to add more meaning to his recommendation.

              “Just wait for the sea-bath tomorrow, what-what,” he says, departing briskly. “That will elevate your spirits and heal your body miraculously, hey-hey.” Edward’s limp is still noticeable.

        “Ach, him und his zea bart!” remarks the Queen, when the King has gone, declining to elaborate on her comment, but emitting a clucking noise. She’s a vulture on her velvet perch, waiting for something to die, waiting for dinner. She’s always waiting, in her waiting room, where life burns lower and yearns to be snuffed out.

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 10.3

-x-

                  It is not until July 17^th that his orders come through, proffered by a panting Robert Wood, who he thanks heartily. Although he wouldn’t have done if he’d first read the letter. It’s signed by his father, but the text is not in the kingly hand. It merely grants him permission to return to England for reasons of health, to take the remedial waters – which are evidently now at Cheltenham, for some reason, rather than at Bath. Has Captain Smollett’s diatribe had some effect after all? This is all the note has to say. Nothing else. No mention of Ireland. No special attachment with his new posting. Nothing. It’s familiar, familial. Fuck, he thinks – he would never say it.

                ‘Well,’ he says to Wood, ‘don’t kill the messenger, I suppose…’

                ‘Beg pardon, sire.’ Wood looks fearful; he hadn’t known that messengers could be murdered if they brought bad news.

              “He wants me in tip-top shape before I go to command in Ireland,” he tells the marble bust of Cicero in his study. “That would be his meaning here, surely?”

                Cicero looks doubtful, his vaunted eloquence silent. 

              “Why would I ask you anyway?” he says to the impassive white head. ‘You had your hands nailed to the Senate doors…’ 

                   All his clocks appear to have stopped now; their springs, wheels, cogs and levers convey a sense of hesitation, a lack of faith in time.

                   “To hell with you all!” he hollers. “May no one ever wind your springs again! I won’t. I’ll be gone!”

                “What in the name of God is going on here?” says Julie, who has entered the room unnoticed.

                He hands her the note, saying dully, “Don’t even dream of saying you told me so, told me I’d be disappointed… because I am so disappointed at this moment that I fear for anyone within a mile of here.”

              “Chop a tree,” she says, most unsympathetically, “ride a horse; have some soldiers flogged – or, better still, have them flog you! Because I ache from skull to toe, and am in no mood for your ridiculous disappointments from a man who has done nothing but disappoint you for thirty years – except for a half-hour last Christmas…” With this, she limps painfully from the room, and he sweeps a favourite clock off the matlepiece and onto a marble hearth. My God, he thinks, it’s what I do when I’m angry with my father, isn’t it? He has no time for me, so I destroy time itself. He did it when he was five, and he’s doing it now. Are his emotions no more mature or governable a quarter-century later? But at least he’s returning to England. He decides to hold a farewell banquet for himself and invite all the Haligonians he’ll never have to see again.

              “You’ll feel idiotic when orders send you back here,” is Julie’s sole comment on this plan of his.

                  When he tells Weatherall both the good and bad news, he learns that Bonaparte has crossed the Alps through deep snow at the Great St. Bernard Pass, with 40,000 men, cavalry, cannon and materiel to invade Italy. It took Hannibal and his elephants longer.  

 

-xi-

                  On the night of his banquet, the drooping sky looks as if it’s been punched dizzy, with clouds like contusions and a lacerated horizon in the expiring west. Lieutenant-Governor Wentworth rises from his seat at table, clinking his glass for silence with a knife until, unfortunately, it breaks the goblet, spilling blood upon the linen.

                 “Even glasses are shattered by the departure of His Highness,” says Sir John,  embarrassed. “Our grief over losing the Duke of Kent – who, to us and his lovely island, will always remain ‘Prince Edward – as well as the most excellent and charming Madame de St. Laurent, knows no bounds. None. It is the same with our gratitude for the comfort and security his command has given this province.” He turns to him, to the prince, to the duke, and to Julie, bowing, and then continues, “To your benevolence the indigent have owed their support; the tradesmen and mechanics employment; and the industrious of every description means of reaping the recompense of their skill and diligence. To quote Mr. Shakespeare: he is the most noble Haligonian of us all, and his forts shall stand guard over our harbour longer than the forums of Rome…” His speech is rapidly disintegrating on him, and he knows it, saying, “No words can convey our love, thanks, and great…um… missing; thus, I propose a toast…” Wentworth goes to raise his glass, realizing this will prove impossible. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I am…um…’

                  Edward hands him his own glass; then someone offers theirs to him. ‘Thank you, he says, ‘but unnecessary: one doesn’t toast oneself…’

               ‘Speech, speech,’ people mutter.

                  So, he’s obliged to rise. “It is with no small degree of pride,” he says, with no idea where this will lead, and a stabbing headache to assist its progress, “no small degree of pride at all, that I perceive the many beneficial effects which you are so good as to ascribe to my residence among you. But…indeed, but I have not vanity enough to flatter myself that my absence will be so severely felt as you have the kindness to intimate. It is a circumstance which I shall always consider one of the most flattering of my life, that I may be certain of carrying with me your good hearty wishes and good opinion, that I have not failed in my endeavours to maintain the tranquility and promote the prosperity of your province, in which I shall always remain with you as a most beautiful and bountiful island…” A what? he thinks. Is there no escape from this metaphorical maze? He now proposes a toast.

Sir John is obliged to hand him back his original glass for the toast, and then search for one of his own with which to participate in it. 

                This fiasco over, he suggests to Sir John a walk in the darkened gardens, to which the governor readily agrees. They both lament the ineptitude of their speeches; and then they chat about local matters, the war, and Bonaparte. It is amazing how much you don’t know about someone you know quite well. When he was Governor of New Hampshire, before the rebellion, Sir John had a town named after him in the state. It’s still there. This, he tells Edward, is also where he married Lady Frances, who proves to be his cousin. They married six weeks after the death of her first husband, who had been her cousin too. This period, before his flight to Canada as a Loyalist, seems to have been Wentworth’s golden age. Life isn’t so good for him anymore. It never is, is it? The gold becomes lead; the lead becomes mud. He thinks: what will my golden age turn to be – and when was it?

                “You know,” says Sir John, as they reach the Chinese pavilion, “I’ve come to love this place… I’ve been here so often…”

                ‘You have?’ It hasn’t been that often, has it?’

            ‘Yep, I used to come when your workers were building it. I was fascinated by the inventiveness of your designs…’ Sir John, of course, has always had a keen eye for excess in design.

                ‘I shall be sorry to lose it,’ says Edward, meaning the house, not the province.

              ‘I too.’ Sir John inhales deeply. A black wind buffets their faces rudely. Bells in the temple rattle and clang. ‘You know, Edward,’ he goes on, ‘I fantasize about having my little mulatto girl out here – Lucy, if you recall – and making a home…’

          ‘A home?’

              ‘Yes, I feel at home here…I don’t with Lady Frances…’

              ‘Ah. No…’ As they return towards the house, the dancing has begun, and he hears his Fusiliers band playing a waltz. Hears them, he thinks, for the last time ever. He says, ‘I never felt at home here, Sir John. Let’s go in to my study. I have something for you…’

              ‘What’s that, sire?’ asks Wentworth, not expecting much.

                It is the deed to the estate and house at Bedford Basin. A gift.

-xiii-

              ‘The last quality is leaving us,’ wails Lady Frances, as they say farewell. ‘I shall be left here entertaing riffraff into the twilight of my years…’

              ‘I know how you feel, ma’am,’ Edward says. ‘I know exactly how you feel…’

                  ‘I hope you don’t, sire,’ says Sir John. ‘Her twilight will never come…even if she has to wrestle the calendar, nay the sun itself into submission…’

                   ‘You must visit us, Frances,’ Julie tells her. ‘You’ll always be welcome…’

                   ‘I don’t need to be told that twice,’ says Lady Frances.

               ‘You usually don’t need to be told it once, dear,’ says her husband.

                   A 50-gun warship, the H.M.S. Assistance – who names these vessels so aptly? — has been prepared for their journey, and now sits at anchor in the harbour. To avoid the equinoctial gales, they’ve been advised to sail by August 15^th. On the morning of this very day he now walks through cheering crowds down to the quayside, the plume of his Fusiliers’ hat making him over seven feet tall, perhaps for the benefit of those people pressed to the back of the throng. His last act in Canada is to issue a pardon for eleven men due to be hanged   for desertion  at the garrison later that day. He wonders if reforms like Bonaparte’s will come to his army; for treating the men so harshly is achieving little or nothing. Rabbi Gordon was right. 

                  Boarding the warship, he does not look back this time. The land he’s leaving is now all it can ever be: memories — some good, some bad, most indifferent. The country called Experience only comes in two flavours, both bittersweet. Clockwork, building work, drill, he thinks. But there was also education work — and education worked. I believed in it. I believe in it. I will not give up. I promised, he tells himself.

                I offer you both good and bad. Choose the good.

‘Penny for them,’ says Weatherall, as they gaze ahead at an ocean like undulating black ice.

‘If I took a farthing, I’d be robbing you, Fred,’ he says. ‘I’m wondering if I’ll ever be out of debt…’

                                                          

 

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 10.2

-iv-

                    In his office at the barracks, he inspects the records kept during his absence in England, coming across many infuriating discrepancies, yet also finding a mention of powder, ammunition and some muskets supplied to the fensibles. These are a volunteer force of militia, ostensibly designed for any eventuality requiring the defense of areas where they themselves dwell. They have all received some basic military training, as well as instructions in the use of firearms and small artillery. It now occurs to him that these loosely-organized and localized forces could be expanded, and further trained for readiness to fight anywhere in Nova Scotia. New Brunswick too, should coastal attacks warrant more assistance. Since the Duke of York is not inclined to send him any reinforcements, the fensibles are his only real option… unless he starts conscripting women and children to defend the colony. Thus, he dictates orders for the reorganization of fensibles. After this there are several letters to London, some requesting new armaments and special, seasonally-appropriate uniforms for all British forces in North America. Other letters contain his designs and orders for buckles, buttons, and a new series of medals rewarding valour, loyal service and exceptional conduct. Yet another letter is to Mr. Pitt, assuring him that Canada is now better defended than England; and, on account of the climate’s deleterious effects upon his, Edward’s, health, stating that he ought to be summoned back home and assigned to some more challenging and useful position in the war effort. A final letter today is to the King, and closely resembles the one written to Pitt, yet containing more details of his rheumatism and bilious attacks – both a result of the appalling weather here – as well as florid effusions of filial affection, and the hope that such sentiments should not be deprived  for much longer of proximity to their object. It is pure sugar, and he knows it; but, unlike the futile letters of long ago, this will not be rewritten. Even Captain Sawyer, now his secretary, seems to be grimacing at the page. Why not coat it in marzipan too?

                 ‘I think,’ he says, ‘add something to the effect that Almighty God should keep watch over His Majesty’s health and happiness…’

                ‘If you insist, sir,’ says Sawyer.

                He signs the letter with a filial flourish. On his way out, he collides with Lieutenant-General Weatherall, who seems inordinately startled, as if Edward is the last person on earth he expects to meet in their garrison. “Fred,’ he says, ‘Have you ever felt the urge to pour out expostulations of affection in a letter to your father?” Only after speaking it does he realize the question is a little odd – if not more than a little.

                “No,” Weatherall replies with finality. Then he adds, “He’s dead, for a start; and even when he was still at loose in the world, I loathed every atom in his body; I hated his shoes and hat; I despised his very footprints in the mud. So, I think we can be certain that my answer to your peculiar question is not possessed of ambiguity: No sums it up quite succinctly.”

                “Ah. Yes… I’m left in no doubt… But you must be in some doubt over why I asked such a question –am I wrong?”

              “In fact, Edward, no, you’re not,” Weatherall replies. “But now you know why I never mention my childhood. And I should prefer to keep things that way…’ 

                “I was writing to my father,” he explains. ‘To the King…’

                “Yes, your father. Of that I was never in doubt…”

                  He then mentions the idea of utilizing the fensibles as reinforcements.

              ‘I was pondering the same problem,’ says Weatherall, laughing silently. ‘But all I came up with was paying Indians to put on uniforms. When I contemplated how that would work, I realized it wouldn’t work. The fensibles! Brilliant. You’re actually good at this job, aren’t you, Edward?’

                “This godforsaken pen-pusher’s job? This sarcophagus of a career? Brilliance? Alas: in fact, it was all due to serendipity.”

                  ‘My journal shall choose to regard it as brilliance all the same…’

                ‘Well, chacq’un a son gout, Lieutenant-General…’

‘French has a knack for making platitudes sound profound, doesn’t it?’

‘Je m’en fou…’

 

-v-

                  ‘Have I angered Neptune, do you think?’ he says, placing the letter on his desk. ‘Or Poseidan?’

                 ‘Neptune?’ says Weatherall, puzzled, as he often is with Edward these days.

                 ‘Or whatever the sea god is now called…’

                ‘Angered him? I shouldn’t know. Why?’

                 ‘Look at this, Fred…’ He passes him the piece of folded paper. 

                It’s a note from the Admiralty, written in a style indicating grammatical economy – as if words are now expensive. Perhaps the war has raised their price too? ‘HMS Amelia,’ reads Weatherall, ‘lost mid-Atlantic. All hands and cargo down. Your suite on board. Regrets, etc. Ah,’ he says, ‘they don’t waste words, do they?’

                  ‘No, only paper. I’m surprised they didn’t write it on an old noserag. But it was no ordinary suite, Fred,’ he says. ‘It was eleven thousand pounds’ worth of military equipment and personal necessities, five thousand books, weapons, several hundred uniforms, exploding cylinder shells, with the new type of cannon to fire them, customized furniture, a special carriage designed for bad roads, and to act as a travelling office and bedchamber. Christ, I can’t bring myself to think of all the other stuff now somewhere on the sea-bed, in – what do they call it? – Davey Jones’ locker. Eleven thousand pounds, Fred. Seven suites now lost in the same fashion! Seven. Surely this is beyond the realms of probability, isn’t it?’

                ‘Well,’ says Weatherall, ‘it’s happened, hasn’t it? That means it’s more than probable…’

               ‘God. Well, I certainly have no intention of covering this catastrophic loss…’ He had no intention of covering the six others either, yet they’re all on his tab.

               ‘Was it not insured, Edward?’

               ‘They’re the Royal Navy. They regard insurance as a breach of faith. To them, it’s like planning for a ship to be lost. The Navy doesn’t lose ships, Fred. It rules the waves, and won’t countenance any rebellion in those waves…’

                 ‘So: no insurance…’ 

                Insurance exists, of course, but it is nothing like as ubiquitous as it will become.

                  He calls in Captain Sawyer to write immediately to the King, several ministers in his government, as well as the Admiralty:

                Loss of Amelia your fault. Need suite urgently. Replace at your cost. Resend on seaworthy vessel. Build one if necessary. Regret naval incompetence now so egregious. Yours, etc. Kent.

‘Do we have a discarded noserag to write it on?’ he says. ‘Or some used underlinen?’

                   ‘Sir?’ 

-vi-

                ‘Our Lord seems to have changed his mind about the virtues of fishermen,’ says Weatherall, who looks as if he’s been swimming in his uniform.

                A storm of such ferocity has been punishing Halifax for days. Fishing boats are being smashed against the cliffs; and the cliffs are cracking apart too, falling in rumbling avalanches onto fishermens’ huts. You wonder if this is supposed to be early summer. You wonder about this climate in general: is it serious? He says, ‘Well, you’re designed to weather all, aren’t you? And they’re obviously not…’

              ‘Nor are our men, I fear, Edward…’

                The rank and file are beginning to show signs of falling back yet again into old and dissolute ways. He wishes another war with America would start up. Or that the French would attack. But even wars need to wait for better weather. ‘Is this what the 19^th century looks like?’ he asks the rain-soaked windows, with their sliding pearls of water and views of a world bent out of shape.

-vii-

                  Perhaps his mission in life is to be a supplicant? All he seems to do these days is write letters to the King begging his father to recall him home before his health in this appalling climate breaks down entirely. Affectionately, Edward. Naturally, mail from England is sporadic, because of the war, and now because of this evil weather too. Well, it’ll prevent a French attack, won’t it? It also prevents his men from roaming the streets and bothering citizens; so, they stay inside the taverns and bother each other instead. There are deaths. Yet when he goes to inspect the barracks and assess the level to which morale has fallen, he discovers something very surprising. A considerable number of men, perhaps out of sheer desperation, have started to dabble with the educational activities he has laid on, in accordance with his promise to Rabbi Gordon. He always keeps a promise, and he never forgets one – even when he’d be better off forgetting it.  Some men are learning to read and write; others are taking up carpentry or stone-masonry, realizing there’s money to be made in town with such skills, not to mention a livelihood awaiting them back at home – where many now long to be once more. Like me, he thinks. We’re all the same under our clothes. Only a few men are troublesome; and he accepts this will always be the case in any society. It is heartening to see his efforts finally paying off. Finally, after a decade hawking these wares. He imagines the whole army like this: literate, skilled, ambitious; with nothing to say that a conscript cannot rise to be a general — if he’s determined enough. It’s all about education. This, he thinks, is what seperates the classes, is it not? It’s been ablaze in his mind, education, with a capital E, for as long as he can remember. His time at Vincy, Gibraltar, Quebec, here – it was always burning. And here’s why. Christ, he thinks, this is all it takes to transform society, the nation, the world! Education. No wonder we’ve restricted it to the clergy and ourselves. 

-viii-

                ‘They’ve had 250 popes,’ says Weatherall, scanning a battered copy of the Times. ‘Now they’ve got another one…’

                ‘Who have?’ he says.

                ‘Cardinal Chiamonti has been elected Pope Pius VII…’

                 ‘How do they choose those names?’ he asks. ‘It’s surely confusing to have so many with the same one?’

                ‘We’re not much better, are we: George, George, George, and another George to come…’

                  ‘Ah.’

                  ‘Good God,’ says Weatherall, squinting at his paper, ‘here’s some awful news: HMS Charlotte caught fire off the coast of Capraia. 673 dead! Dreadful…’

                 He pictures his mother on fire, a crown of flames on her head, Buckingham House strewn with corpses, as she totters about barking and setting the furniture alight. He says, ‘Where’s Capraia?’

                  ‘God knows.’

                  The Duke of Kent has his own torn and yellowed newspaper, and he soon also finds something of interest: ‘Listen to this, Fred. The Royal Society has received a letter from a fellow named Alessandro Volta describing his new piece of invention. Know what it is?’

               ‘Probably not…’

                ‘Nor do I. He calls it a “voltaic pile”, though…’

               ‘Sounds like an old house…’

                ‘No. It’s a sort of box containing a chemical solution that produces electricity…’

                 ‘What’s the use of that?’

                ‘God only knows. The Royal Society certainly doesn’t say…’

               The Boston papers have already informed them that voting in the 1800 United States presidential election had begun in early April. It will go on until October, but the result won’t be announced until next February. Democracy is having teething trouble.

                 The first letter Julie receives from Rose, after her confession, arrives in early July. Much of it is idle banter about fashions, jewels, balls, and so forth. But, as he’d hoped, there are some intriguing snippets of information scattered innocently throughout the twaddle. There had, for instance, been several assassination attempts on Bonaparte, all foiled by Joseph Fouchet, now Minister of Police. Yet one of them was very nearly successful. Fouchet, “Butcher of Lyons” during the Terror, had also been Minister of Police under the Directoire; but, it seems, he’s now Bonaparte’s personal Minister, charged solely with protecting the First Consul. He does this with an extensive network of spies and informers, all of them convinced royalists were to blame for the near-successful attack. However, Bonaparte believes it was radical  Jacobin elements who’d tried to kill him, no matter that Fouchet’s evidence points unequivocally to royalists… royalists aided by England. This disagreement between them resulted in  Fouchett’s dismissal. The Bonapartes have also evidently moved into the Tuileries Palace. Not really the abode of a mere consul, he thinks, not even a first one. Rose finds the thought of occupying Marie-Antoinette’s old bedroom ‘mournful’. Her husband is, among his many activities, apparently also busy rewriting the French legal code, enshrining in it the rights fought for in 1789, while creating hundreds of new laws affecting every area of society. Rose doesn’t like the ones affecting rights of women, which, she says, ‘are a Corisican man’s ideas: submission to the husband’. Yet there is also now a right to divorce for both men and women. He finds some of what he hears to be most enlightened, though: freedom of worship for all; mass education; promotion by merit, not birth; abolition of torture; and an end to corporal punishments in the military. As a soldier and putative reformer himself, he finds these measures admirable. Who would not want such a legal code? If these are the ideas Bonaparte is spreading across Europe, then it will not be surprising to find the masses in many countries rising up in support of him. If what she says is true, which it might not be. Could Rose be slipping in some disinformation of her own, perhaps with her husband’s guidance? He still can’t help thinking this man would make a much better ally than he does an adversary. Bonaparte is beginning to bestride this age like a colossus. You don’t fight such a man; you befriend him and learn. In another world, he thinks. 

                  “It’s exactly the sort of news I’d hoped for,’ he tells Julie. ‘Reply quickly, asking her what life in the Tuileries is like; of what the other new laws consist, and how they’ve been received. Ask if she ever travels with Bonaparte, or plans to, and whence it might be they’d go. Express deep regret over the attempts to kill him. Tell her I said England would never aid such an abominable act. We admire his reforms, good governance, and so on. Tell her some of our news too: the U.S. capital has been moved from Philadelphia to Washington, and so on. What do she and her husband think of America? Say our relations with the Americans are now so improved that I have moved my forces to protect the east coast alone. Say I greatly admire Bonaparte’s military genius, and only wish our two nations were at peace, so I could have the honour of serving with him as an ally. Play her; flatter him. You know what we’re trying to achieve here…”

              “I just find it all so distasteful and deceitful,” says Julie, quietly and dejectedly.

                “You’d find a traitor’s death far worse than that,” he tells her coldly. “And, remember, this is a war we’re in…”

              “I know, I know!” she cries. “But I’m still allowed to have my own feelings, am I not? You certainly allow yourself plenty of those!”

                   He excuses himself to send the information in Rose’s letter off to England, where he doubts if much of it will come as any real news. His main purpose is to establish the loyalty of his French lady, who is now even betraying her best friend – and all for England. He then begins to think about Julie’s situation. Were she back in France, she’d now be enjoying all the benefits, perquisites and pleasures associated with being a close friend of the First Consul’s wife, wouldn’t she? Instead she endures the meagre benefits of being a fourth son’s mistress. Does she regret the way things have turned out? Perhaps she’s contemplating a return to Paris? Her property there would assuredly be returned, with such powerful friends in control. She no longer needs his protection. Perhaps she no longer needs me? Such dark thoughts rise over him in choking clouds; the words are bolts of lightning that crackle in his skull. How frail a thing is love. It’s always threatening to depart, to evanesce like a snowflake in the ravening fires of this world. 

-ix-

                  You can’t call it summer. The leaves tried, but now they sag on their branches, dripping. The wildflowers tried, but they were flattened by cascades of rain spat down from clouds like gigantic microbes prowling through the muddled air. At night these bloated organisms gobble up the moon and stars. At Bedford Basin the birds no longer sing; they sit, drenched and despondent, blaming men for all this weather. He understands their mood, as he busies himself with repairs, with letters, and with replanting trees downed by the pugnacious winter.

                   In late July, Julie slips on a patch of mud, badly twisting her ankle, dislocating a shoulder, and breaking her left wrist. This accident keeps her in bed for weeks, with daily visits from Dr. North, who, while there, also treats Edward for rheumatism and biliousness. But is there a treatment for boredom, for ennui? Although they’re glad to be prevented by ailments from going into the city, it is a low period. He yearns to be away from Nova Scarcity, wracking his brains for a feasible excuse to sail for England, never to return. 

                 Weatherall is staying in the country with them, and he has an idea. The proposed union of Britain with Ireland is moving ahead at a surprisingly fast pace, or so the papers say, and it is likely to be settled finally within the year.

                “Propose yourself as an ideal Lieutenant-Governor for Ireland,” Weatherall suggests, his bright eyes brimming with enthusiasm. They haven’t done that in months.

                ‘As usual, Fred, you’re right… or as used to be usual…’ Thus, he scribbles a letter to his father proposing himself for the upcoming position; and then adding a catalogue of ills caused by the climate here, and currently initiating a rapid deterioration in his health. Rapid. He’s no longer able even to exercise daily, which, he points out in the letter, had been the mainstay of his previously robust constitution. He’s failing fast. Help!

                  This is my mission, my whole career, he thinks, experiencing that same pathetic hope when a letter is sent, the hope that had not given up hope since Geneva. The hope deemed hopeful on that memorable Boxing Day. Ah, he thinks, yes: it was hope in that box, the only thing left there. 

                   Robert Wood is now poised at Halifax harbour to meet every packet from England; while Edward positions himself out at Bedford Basin in view of the signal flags, which will inform him of mail from the King within ten minutes of it arriving. If there ever is any such mail. Hope is in the box. After last year’s meetings with the King, he has high hopes for the Ireland posting; so he waits expectantly to open that box. He even postpones a visit to the Salaberrys at Quebec, just in case his new orders come through – for they will come, won’t they? 

                Julie’s injuries are unusually slow to heal, and she’s one of those people who become annoyed with themselves if their bodies break or something ceases to function properly. She’s also one of those people who, when their bodies let them down, become annoyed with everyone else. 

                “I wish you would lower your expectations about Ireland; that is what I need,” she tells him frostily, as he’s fluffing her pillows and inquiring if she needs anything. “Your unwarranted optimism over this feels like a spike nailed into my skull at this point in time.”

              “Everything with the King is different now,” he says, affecting an air of monstrous confidence. “I know he’ll reward me with the post, because I know he’s pleased with my achievements here…”

                “Everyone else in London says that, with your father, nothing is known or knowable. His mind changes faster and still less predictably than our weather. If he claims to be drinking coffee, they say, then have a look in the teapot…”

                “I won’t have my father discussed in such a disrespectful manner! Who said this? I shall have them horse-whipped…”

              “Then your arm will ache,” she tells him blandly, “because it’s virtually everyone we know — certainly your entire family, including the Queen…”

              ‘Ah…’

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 10.1

CHAPTER TEN

The Adversary

Nova Scotia: September 1799 – August 1800

-i-

                  It is always useful, if not vital, to know who your enemies are; and his period in England had, if nothing else, revealed that the Duke of York, his Commander-in-Chief, his brother Fred, could no longer be counted as a friend. In spite of his failures and disgraceful behaviour, though, York is still his father’s favourite son. Such things cannot be explained; they are mysteries of the heart, every bit as perplexing as the mystery binding a man to a woman – and with the same irresistable force. York’s will held its sway over the King’s with a strange and occult power that was unbreakable. Go back to the wilderness where you belong… Whenever he thinks of this rebuke he wonders if his posting back to Nova Scotia had not been purely a result of York’s connivance and nothing to do with the King at all.

                    ‘He knows how to manipulate our father,’ Edward tells Weatherall on the quarterdeck, ‘and knows how to do it so deviously that he would have been perfectly capable of making the posting sound like an honourable promotion – even one of strategic importance…’

                 ‘Yes,’ says Weatherall, ‘and he knows far better than the King what it really is…’

                ‘True, he does: it’s a place where careers go to die…’ Edward’s hand slaps the rail – splat!

                  ‘Oh, is that what’s happening to me?’

                  ‘I don’t mean that, Fred. I mean were I in England, I’m certain, it would be impossible to prevent me leading a regiment into glory against Bonaparte – with you at my side, of course. York knows that; just as he knows I’ll languish in Nova Scotia with drills, parades and the only war to wage the one against restless, resentful and idle bloody men…’

                  ‘For both our sakes, you must write to His Majesty,’ says Weatherall. ‘Now that you’re on good terms with him he might listen…’

                   ‘He might…’ 

                   ‘I was told by wagging tongues in London,’ says Weatherall, ‘that York’s poor performance against the French is causing not a few generals to suggest that you might be better suited to his post than he…’

                    ‘I know, Fred. I got a torrent of abusive letters from him on the subject. He even said my relationship with Madame Julie was reason enough to deny me any high posting in England. Can you believe the hypocrisy! He threatened to reveal the scandal in the press unless I left the country as soon as possible…’

                   ‘The man’s a devil! But he must feel very threatened himself to behave in such a fashion…’

                  ‘Ah, he does, he does. But what can I do about that, eh?’

                  The ocean looks like liquid slate, hills of it rising and falling all around their vessel. Seabirds have nested in the masts; they spend all day circling overhead and crying at the wind and rain, at the relentless swollen waves that won’t give up any fish, that may well not have any fish. The empty hours and days and weeks remind him brutally of even emptier hours awaiting on the uninviting shores of Canada. It is, as always, a life of exile. 

                    “What did Mr. Smollett have to say about the waters at Bath?” says Julie, as the frigate battles a wicked nor’-easter, which ploughs furrows fifty feet deep through water now greener than summer, greener than England.

                  “Since the cure did me so much good,” he replies, clutching a timber for support, “I saw little point in reading about its ‘inefficacies’; but curiosity got the better of me, and I glanced it over last night.”

                      “And?”

                      “You know that sense you get with Captain Smollett’s novels at times?”

                “What sense?”

                “That he is raving mad — or he is occasionally — when he writes.”

                “Oh,” says Julie, her deep blue eyes reflecting the dark storm outside their slanting window, “I thought that was his humorous style.”

              “I suppose it is; but at times it seems to be galloping out of his control.”

                  “Possibly. But what has this got to do with his opinion of Bath’s waters?”

                  A prodigious fist of the sea punches hard at the protesting wooden hull beneath them. The distant sound of pots and pans clattering onto boards out in the galley. An officer calls sternly for order. The ship pitches to one side and then to the other. Port to starboard, starboard to port – it’s all the same. She remembers giving birth to Jean de Mestre, tied to a dining table, bound to a wheel of woe, having children who are doomed to be lost.

                “The pamphlet,” he says, “reads like the splenetic ranting of a lunatic, written in one session on a full moon night, whilst drinking brandy mixed with gunpowder. It has little to do with the waters, and more to do with grievances Smollett harbours – if that’s the right word, since nothing is anchored – against proprietors of certain establishments… along with their staff, who he believes tried to poison him with water from a stagnant cistern. He then inveighs against the whole city for its pomposity, peacock frivolity and general lack of civility.”

                “It seemed clear to me from the novel that he detested the place,” Julie says. “One wonders why he returned to it at all…”

                “It’s not really clear that he did. Indeed, nothing is very clear in this diatribe. You wonder why he doesn’t run yodelling down the street naked instead of writing…”

                “I’m sure he’s glad he chose the pen instead…”

              “I might try the naked yodelling myself at Horseguards if my pen continues to fail me with the King and York…”

              ‘Ah, dear Horseguards: will we ever see London again?’

                  ‘Not if York can help it…’

                ‘Well,’ she says circumspectly, ‘at least Lady Frances is back in Halifax…’

                ‘Imagine my joy at that…’ He’s already there. Much against his will, he’s back in the land where rumours are the only news and the great war is very, very far away.

-ii-

              The most impregnable port city on earth squats diagonally in a brown rain. Seagulls spin in gyres over the haul on glistening fishing nets, waiting to swoop down and steal a supper. In Paris, Bonaparte is waiting to steal France with a coup d’etat that will appear legal. But he, the Duke of Kent, won’t hear about this until next year. 

                   Late in September, a great welcome awaits them at Halifax, with the Wentworths dressed like the King and Queen of Nova Scotia, and the Fusiliers band dripping beneath the cover of trees, with their sodden drums and gurgling pipes.

                  As they stand formally acknowledging the salute, Julie whispers in his ear: “I did manage to discover what your brother, Clarence, finds so irresistible about Frances. Should I tell you?”

                “You should have told me the moment you found out,” he whispers back, smiling artificially at the crowd, “and in a more private situation than this. But, damn it, yes of course I must know… and now…’

                  “Are you sure you want to know?” she breathes into the shell-like chamber of his hot ear. “It is a tiny bit embarrassing, and highly improbable. But Frances swore it was the truth…”

                “Stop teasing me,” he hisses between the gritted teeth of his professional smile, “and cut to the chase.”

              “You must be a reader of minds,” she says, having trouble with the consonants issuing from her own taut lips, “for a chase is involved. Your brother likes to pretend he’s a horse, with Frances on his bare back applying her crop ferociously to his buttocks in order to urge him on after a toy fox she dangles ahead of him from a stick. He can only catch the fox when she decides he’s finally exhausted enough. She then rubs him down with a rough cloth, curry-combs him all over until his skin is raw, and then she rubs in lineament, wrapping him in a huge nappy. After this she sings him lullabies until he falls asleep…”

                “You jest,” he says.

                  “I do not. That is verbatim.”

                “What about the…ah… the love-making?” he inquires, he, the prude.

                  “I think that is the love-making.”

                  “Christ! I’m so glad I don’t have to look Bill in the eye for… well, perhaps for years,” he says. ‘My God! What’s the matter with him?”

                “I imagine he finds it hard to get anyone else to play with,” Julie suggests.

                “And now I have to look Lady Frances in the eye, knowing she’ll be certain you’ve told me this…”

                  “I promised her it would remain a secret,” Julie confesses, “and I had intended not to tell you. But seeing her there looking like the Queen of Sheba… I don’t know — I couldn’t resist it…’

                  ‘Everyone knows there aren’t any secrets in a marriage…are there?’

                 ‘Then I’m such a bad girl,’ she says. ‘Even now I picture her riding your brother down to the quayside with her fox and crop…”

              “Stop it,” he says. “I’m already fit to burst. I only wish it could have been the Duke of York…”

                  ‘I shall have to ask her about that…’ 

                   London has made her gayer than she’s been since fleeing France. This easier mood of hers has loosened Edward up too, loosened him up despite himself. Whenever he thinks of it, their marriage seems real and permanent. But he knows it is not. It cannot be; and this is a fact he tries not to think about.

-iii-

                  Heartbreak awaits her, though, as it awaits all of us. The Government Hall apartments look shabby, dust over everything: it isn’t Knightsbridge. But this is not the heartbreak. She’s been looking forward to seeing little Jean de Mestre; but when Robert and Chloe Wood bring him over, and she goes to take him in her arms, the child screams in fear and hides himself in Chloe’s shawl. He won’t stop crying, so the Woods, for want of another solution, take him away again.

                Edward says, ‘He’s become attached to them. Perhaps we should leave him there, so he doesn’t become confused by two mothers?’

                ‘But I’m his mother,’ she says, feeling the dart in her heart, feeling the heart break in two.

                  ‘Ah…’

                  Several letters await him, some from England, come on a packet that had left after they had, yet arrived here a week earlier. Two are from Louis de Salaberry, and again rather brusque in tone, pressing Edward to use his influence in finding lucrative positions for himself, and even for a few of his friends. Why has his need become so urgent? Edward wonders. Once more he resents the lack of affection accompanying Salaberry’s requests, which the seigneur makes sound more like obligations Edward hasn’t fulfilled. There are such obligations, of course, so he writes immediately to Beauport, since he has in fact managed to arrange something for Louis. It is essentially the position as Minister for Indian Affairs that he’d conceived when first arriving in Nova Scotia. He thinks this is a cause close to Salaberry’s heart, and thus one at which he’ll excel. He adds a postscript saying he’ll do whatever he can for the Widow Dambourges and Dr. Lloyd, whose needs, according to Louis, are now extreme. Edward also suggests that Eduard, his ‘godchild’, should be gazetted an army ensign as soon as he’s fourteen:  Nothing would give me more pleasure than to oversee his military career, hastening promotions through the ranks as swiftly as I did for Charles de Salaberry…

                There is also a letter from Mr. Pitt, the Prime Minister, briefly informing him that General Bonaparte now controls a vast army that is threatening all of Europe. He views England as his especial enemy, however, and is believed to be intent on an invasion. This increasing tendency towards aggression, Pitt writes, bodes ill for any chances of a peace in our war. Since the French navy is belligerently active in the West Indies, Pitt cautions, there is every reason to expect an attack on Canada. As Commander in North America, he, the Duke of Kent, thus ought to prepare for an assault on Halifax, as well as attempts at invasion all down the east coast. The St. Lawrence must be protected by island batteries and as large a fleet of warships as it is practicable to assemble there. It’s the same old story, the same as before; but Pitt’s letter also hints obliquely that a successful attack on Canada would only be possible with American collaboration. It’s plain to see the Prime Minister places little faith in American neutrality. The letter ends on an ambiguous note, leaving Edward uncertain whether he’s being told to defend or attack. If the latter, he will certainly have to find himself more forces from somewhere. But where?

                He resumes the activities of simulating attacks and manning redoubts, the dull quotidian tasks that had been so enervating the previous year. This year, indeed, the entire eighteenth century, slouches towards its end, with weather of such profligate malevolence that you’d think the gods were angry. You would also think they were testing out a new range of weaponry. First it rains so hard and for so long that roads become rivers, fields are flattened, and animals drown, their swollen bodies drifting through villages like furry ice floes. Then the rain turns to hail, with stones the size of grapeshot. Windows and hothouses are shattered; few folk dare to venture out. A man on Cogswell Street is killed by a blow to the head from heaven. Next comes snow, a few feet of it, falling in great quarto sheets, piling up like dead sheep around barns and farmhouses, making roads impassable. Roofs cave in from the weight. The city is paralyzed. After this comes a sickly-sweet warm breeze from the south; and the thaw causes more flooding, more livestock deaths, more despair. This is followed by a deep freeze so severe that the streets are made of ice. Every other person wears a cast or brace from falls. Even horses collapse as they turn corners or navigate hills. The only good news comes on December 16^th: George Washington, America’s first president, had died a couple of days earlier. That’s one less enemy, he thinks, as another Christmas hovers in the glacial air, a phantom shaking its frozen fist at the dying century. The Preston road, best in the province, is impossible, with drifts as big and solid as brns. They will have to spend the week in town, since Bedford Basin is unreachable. His rheumatism has returned with a vengeance now, accompanied by bilious attacks and a cold that lasts for a month. No one feels much like celebrating the advent of 1800. The old century seems to be leaking over into the new one like effluent from a cesspit.  

                   ‘Well,’ says Sir John Wentworth in Government Hall on Tuesday, as his many clocks announce midnight, ‘here’s to the nineteenth century then…’

            ‘And all who sail in her,’ says Edward, looking mournfully over at Julie.

                ‘Personally speaking,’ says Lady Frances, gulping down champagne, ‘I had a great year, and I’m looking forward to another one even better…’

            ‘No doubt you are, dear,’ Sir John remarks. ‘No doubt you are…’

                They can’t get out to the country until mid-January, when another thaw has dissolved the roadblocks. A decomposing cow sprawls across the entrance to their estate, with ravens idly pecking holes in its belly, and then scurrying in and out with yellow beaks full of putrified flesh. The house at Bedford Basin is in a ruinous state, a roof collapsed, the conservatory shattered, his office now damp and mildewed from the flood. So, they return to Halifax in low spirits. 

                In a vain attempt to elevate the mood, back in their depressing apartments, he calls her attention to a newspaper article: ‘Here’s a challenge for you,’ he says. ‘Look at this. A woman named Labrosse has become the first female ever to jump from a hot air balloon by parachute!’

                ‘And why would I want to do that, pray?’

                ‘It’s three thousand feet,’ he tells her. ‘That’s quite a height…’

                ‘That’s quite stupid is what that is…’ With this she hastens from the room on brisk, angrily efficient legs.                     Lieutenant-General Weatherall now enters at great speed, red-faced and out of breath.

                “There’s been a coup in France,” he manages to say between gasps. “An American packet got the news from a French trader just come from Marseilles.”

              “Who?” He tries to collect his thoughts.  

                    “Bonaparte, of course,” Weatherall replies, seating himself heavily to recover from his run. “He dissolved the Assembly by force and had a remnant of it vote him First Consul. There are two others, but they’re washed-up nonentities. Bonaparte is now effectively dictator of France – and the people support him in this completely, it seems.”

              “No doubt they do; and his army too. They’ll crown him king next…”

              “Surely they don’t want another king?”

                  “What they’ll get is an endless war, because France is bankrupt, and all Bonaparte knows about raising money is ransacking other countries. Tell the garrison we expect a French assault at any moment. Paris is now ruled by the army. I ought to give Madame Julie the news…”

                Weatherall leaves hastily; and Edward goes to Julie’s bedchamber, where she lies upon a chaise longue reading.  

               “Dear God in heaven, no!” she says, when she hears of events in France. “This is awful, awful, awful!”

                He agrees, although he doesn’t find it quite so awful. She has some news of her own, though, which he will find infinitely more awful than anything he’s ever heard.

                “But you don’t understand,” she says, regarding him with a strained expression.

              “Don’t understand what, my love?”

              “There’s something I have kept from you,” she says quietly. “I ought not have done so, and you are going to be very angry with me.”

                He recalls her confidences shared in the chateau at Vincy. “What is it? I promise I won’t be angry with you…’

                “I won’t hold you to that,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t have promised if you knew…’

                ‘Knew what?’

               ‘My friend, Rose…” she says tentatively.

              “Yes? What about her?”

                “Her proper names are actually Marie-Joseph Rose…she’s Josephine…’

                  ‘What do you mean?’

                   ‘She’s now married to General Bonaparte…”

                  He can scarcely take this in. His head aches; his joints ache; his thoughts swirl. He remembers the letters about an artillery general adept at mathematics; he remembers the little chest full of gold; he remembers these things well – too well.

              ‘Devastation,” he manages to say, his heart thumping dangerously. “This is utter ruin for us…”

                    “I am so sorry,” she says in a voice so small it tumbles down to be lost in the pile of a rug. “I should have told you as soon as you mentioned the war…but I was too scared… scared you would abandon me…”

                “You must never mention this to a living soul,” he tells her, his mind more collected now, but fear fizzing like vitriol in his veins. “I hope to God you haven’t already told anyone. Have you? Lady Frances?”

                “No, I promise, not a soul, no one…”

                “I could never abandon you,” he assures her tenderly. “But we could find ourselves charged with high treason. Oh yes. If York ever finds out… Christ, it doesn’t bear thinking…You must destroy all her letters and gifts; cut off all communication – is that clear?”

                  “Yes, yes, I will do it.”

                  Then a thought crosses his twisting mind. He says, “No, destroy the letters, but keep writing to her. We shall see what can be gleaned from her of their internal affairs; and in return you’ll plant in your letters misleading information about my activities and my knowledge of British war plans. This may prove to be a very valuable disaster. If not, it will at least provide us some legal defense if your contact with… with Rose is discovered.”

                  “I would feel wrong lying to her,” Julie says woefully. “She’s my dearest friend. Of thirty years…”

                “Yet you had no compunction about lying to me! Your dearest husband…”

                “I will do as you say,” she then resolves, “if only to convince you I know it was wrong to deceive you.”

              “Wrong does not quite cover it, my darling. A son of His Britannic Majesty, King George III, paying off debts with money from Bonaparte – a gift from our most hated enemy – that, Madame, goes a distance further than mere wrong, wouldn’t you say?”

                “Yes, I know you’re right. I just did’nt dare tell you…I was scared.”

                  “Calmly, calmly,” he says, sitting himself beside her and attempting a stilted embrace. “No harm has been done; and Bonaparte is not yet king. We can turn this around quite favourably, if we go about it in the right manner. I want you to write your ‘Rose’ a letter – in your own words – congratulating her husband on being elected Consul — you must write ‘elected’ — and asking how this has changed her life; how it will change the way France is governed, and so on. In your usual affectionate manner, asking as many questions as seems normal. Then tell her that I am busy expecting an American attack, often away with forces along the US border and, also, that England is glad to see some stability return to French government, hoping it augurs well for peace. That sort of thing. Can you do that?”

                “Yes,” she says, relieved to find there’s a way of extracting silver from the lining of her impenetrably dark cloud. “I will do exactly as you suggest, making it sound innocuous, a normal letter.”

                  “Good, good. Because you gave me the greatest shock of my life.” A pause, and then he says: “What do you know already, and have not told me about this Bonaparte?” The name bubbles up in his brain, Leviathan surfacing. 

                “Not much,” Julie confesses, still pale and trembling. “He’s from Corsica, so he’s more Italian than French. They both speak with a strong accent…”

                “Why her? I thought she was French…”

                “Yes, but, unlike me, she was born on Martinique, and thus acquired the Creole accent. He’s from a large family – seven, I think – and has an older brother, Joseph.’ ‘Surface’, he thinks. How like me is he? ‘The mother seems to dominate family affairs, though; and Napoleon is not her favourite. A younger brother, Lucien, is; and he now leads the Assembly, which is probably why Bonaparte was voted First Consul. Rose said the mother was much opposed to their marriage, and to this day is cold and hostile toward her.’ I know that too, he thinks. ‘Napoleon sounds like an odd choice for Rose, though. He’s small, skinny, with lank black hair, and not very attractive – until he smiles. She said his smile can light up a room, and he turns it on or off at will. His eyes also have a luminous, penetrating quality – they’re like an eagle’s, she said – and, despite his size and scrawniness, he commands respect and attention from men, and is found very attractive by the women who meet him. She says he has great energy, works long hours, sleeps little, and is often lost in deep thought. I… I think you’d like him for such qualities…under different circumstances of course…’ He thinks: Yes, but the circumstances will never be different. We are destined to be enemies forever. ‘But,’ she adds, ‘he’s still not Rose’s type…”

                “Her type? I thought she was the widow of General de Beauharnais? How can she have a type?”

                  “There are things you should know about Rose,” replies Julie, nervously fiddling with the cuffs of her dress.

                How much has she hidden? he wonders. “It would seem there are many things you’ve not been truthful about,” he says sternly.

                  “After her imprisonment during the Terror – she narrowly avoided the guillotine herself, remember? – she changed…”

                “Yes, so you’ve said. She became a penniless widow with two young children to support — was that not the change?”

                “That is true; but she also did what many women of quality did in her situation: she had affairs with men of influence in the new regime…”

              “I see. She was a courtesan then? Which ‘men of influence’ are we talking about?” He is increasingly irritated by all of this.

              “No!” Julie objects indignantly. “Rose was never that! But she has a languorous island nature and can flirt in a most provocative manner. Men find her irresistible; and she always finds rich, powerful, good-looking men hard to ignore. She had a long affair with Paul Barras, one of the Directoire leaders…”

              “Yes, I know who Barras is…”

                “She may still be seeing him,” says Julie, her head bowed.

                “She marries Bonaparte, yet she still sees her old lover?” He’s incredulous. “Are your friends over there all this immoral?”

                “Don’t scorn me for telling the truth!” she snaps back, a little spirit returning to her depleted manner. “You asked for the truth – and this is it! Times changed there, and people have obviously changed with them. Rose still sees other men as well; she likes to be desired, wanted, wooed. She’s extravagant; she likes nice clothes; she adores jewels; she wants to be seen in all the fashionable places; she’s vain, and needs to be admired…

                ‘So, she’s shallow and superficial?’

                     ‘No, she’s also gentle, kind, generous, affectionate, witty and very charming…”

                “And what does Bonaparte think of all these affairs his new wife is having? I thought he was a man, not a mouse?” He thinks immediately of the mouse who’d dutifully knocked at La Dulaque’s door each day, bearing gifts for her and debts for himself. That creature has vanished now, hasn’t he? Times have changed here too, so it seems.

                  “Bonaparte’s away most of the time,” Julie explains. “She never knows if he will return. There are wars here, wars there: Italy, Austria, Germany, and then Egypt, where many reports said he had died. She gets lonely. She wants to go out to balls, the opera… Can you blame her for that?”

              “I imagine Bonaparte can,” he says, avoiding his own judgment. “Aren’t those Mediterranean men famed for their possessiveness and jealousy?”

                  “He’s insanely jealous, she says, and he writes to her nearly every day in the most intimate and passionate manner…”

              “Yet she betrays him anyway?”

              “It’s as I said. He’s not her usual type. He’s not of noble birth; he’s not handsome; and, until recently, he was not powerful or rich. But she’s obviously a shrewd judge of character, if, as you tell me, he’s now the ruler of France…’

                ‘The dictator…’ He thinks: But she’s right. Rose must have an unerring instinct. He has one too, when it comes to Bonaparte. Something about that man rattles his cage.

                 Julie mistakes his silence for disapproval, saying, ‘You have no idea what it’s like to be a woman alone in the world, with children, and no man to protect her. What right do you have to judge the actions of someone you don’t even know, in a situation of which you have no comprehension?” She stands for this, a tower of righteous indignation, wagging her reproving finger in his face.

              “You’re right,” he admits sincerely. “Taking offence was wrong; and I understand why you would keep these things from me. Too often I react without first thinking. In her situation, hard as it is for me to imagine, I may well have done the same. But her questionable loyalty to Bonaparte may well prove very useful to us…”

                  “Why?”

                   “She may have less reluctance to divulge his secrets…she may even wish to undo him in some manner – if she finds a more suitable and attractive lover. After all, it’s power and influence which attract her, is it not? And Bonaparte must now be acquiring many rivals, men only waiting for their opportunity to pounce on his position. Write as I told you, and then we shall see what manner of reply comes back.”

                “You men!” Julie sighs. “Your lives are just about rivalries, wars, schemes, strategies, betrayals, and power, power, power! It must be like living on a chess board!”

                “Which is preferable to dying on one,” he says, needing to end this conversation.

                He is heartened only by one single scrap of news in the Halifax paper. Back in December, the Royal Navy had seized a Spanish frigate off the coast of Vigo. On board were 54 million pounds in gold. That’s 54 million pounds those Bourbons in Madrid don’t have.

Queen Victoria’s Secret: Chapter 9.6

-xiv-

                     The news is all of Bonaparte. We are instinctively scared of him; and when scared we sometimes react in the pettiest of ways. The word in Paris is that Bonaparte’s wife, Josephine, had been unfaithful to him while he was in Egypt. We seize on these rumours and magnify them. She has even entertained guests at her country estate, Malmaison, in the company of one lover, a young cavalry officer named Hippolyte Charles, who she’s also heavily involved with in that stupendously festering sink of venality and peculation, the army supply business. She has revived an old love affair too, with Paul Barras, a leading member of the flamboyantly corrupt Directoire. We bandy these scandals around London because Bonaparte’s political significance is clearly burgeoning, and we are uncertain what the result of this will be. We see him as a jumped-up arriviste, a peasant-nobody from an island barely even French. And we know how to deal with such men: humiliation, and then more humiliation. You must know your place in England, and know it even if you’re just thinking of coming here. When the French last invaded it was a Norman duke who came, not a Corsican corporal.

                       Like everything else that belongs here, the rain knows its place: it falls from the charcoal cloudscape of a monochrome heaven;it clatters down from the stacked towers and gritted teeth of crenellations; it falls in buckets, in firkins, in barrels, or in sheets flapping like tattered sails in the bitingly relentless east wind.

                   This is a wind that can howl through the marrow of your bones with its steel claws. Yet after Bath his rheumatism is substantially better, and he can even proceed to deal with what he thinks of as his Great Matter: the outstanding loans and by now outlandish interest on these debts, growing by the minute like a fungus in the vaults of usury. When viewed as stark numbers on a page, the amount he owes is downright frightening. The spidery digits have a, baleful aspect; to owe such an amount is horrendous; for him it is acidic and ultimately nauseating. But even snared in this tangled web of fiscal fecklessness there is, believe it or not, some respite. On March 11th, Parliament votes him an annual allowance of twelve thousand pounds. There is of course, as he’s certain there will be, a “but” – yet this too is relatively benign. At the same time as its members agree to fund the Duke of Kent, the House votes an identical amount for his brother, Augustus. His younger brother, whose only mark on this world so far is more like a stain.

                    ‘Yes, I do find it inequitable; in fact, it’s unjust, more of the same endless injustice. He’s four years younger than me, and already Duke of Sussex,’ he points out to Mr. Pitt, the Prime Minister, in a private meeting at Number 10 Downing Street. ‘If this abuse is punishment, I ought to know what for, oughtn’t I? And here’s another slight, since I’m on the subject: I still have no allowance for a proper establishment. What allowance? you say. Well, an allowance such as the Duke of Clarence has obtained for himself and his ten ba…’ He stops mid-word as his glance meet Pitt’s.

                       ‘Ba-Ba black sheep?’ suggests Pitt. The Prime Minister is looking harried, his eyes bloodshot, his long fingers drumming on the desk. ‘I see,’ is all he adds to this. ‘I see…’

                      Edward feels he’s being barely tolerated here, but he goes on all the same: ‘It’s monstrous unfair for me to be expected to meet the cost of six suites sent out to Canada and all either lost at sea or below Lake Champlain. It’s surely not my fault all that equipment was lost, is it? On top of the exigencies and supply-shortages of my posts, am I to be blamed for accidents and unseaworthy ships? Christ!’ He looks about for something resilient to thump with a fist, yet sees nothing and has to content himself with an equine stamp, which leaves his spurs tinkling unimpressively.

                    Pitt looks to ascertain the floorboards are still intact beneath a Turkey rug now exhaling a few years’ dust. Are cleaners forbidden this office for security reasons? ‘I see. Hmm…’ The PM scratches his thinning grey hair with a quill, and regards the duke intently for an inordinately long time before continuing in a sermonizing tone: “You have served abroad for so long,” he says, measuring out the words, costing them, “that I fear your needs have been overlooked…’. A pause. Shouts and the rattle of carriages from somewhere down in Westminster. ‘Yes, indeed; and you’ve been unfairly burdened with pecuniary losses that ought not to have been laid upon your shoulders. Yes. I see it. I shall personally make sure this unfortunate situation is corrected, freeing you of such financial worries; freeing you, indeed, to do the work for which you’ve been selected. All right?” A smile creates parentheses for his dry blue lips.

                    ‘Really?’ he says, unused to such a response and suspecting he’s misheard or possibly hallucinating.

                     Pitt gives a taciturn nod to this. His word is his bond. Edward’s problems have been solved, just like that, in a trice. Life is like this, isn’t it? Many months will pass, as months do, but Pitt’s pledge is not honoured. Indeed, it will never be honoured. His bond was just a word or two. There is no shortage of excuses in the political pantry, no danger of a dearth in more urgent matters – and what matters are less urgent than impecunious princelings? Anyway, the Prime Minister’s government will soon fall over the Irish question, and Pitt will be just another citizen again, scarcely able to solve his own problems let alone those of others. This is why politicians hold on to their jobs with cracked teeth and bleeding fingernails. It’s not the work; it’s the power. 

                      Edward wonders how his father would respond to being of a sudden voted off the throne. Not well. His Majesty would refuse to leave his majesty behind. His promise of debt-relief wasn’t worth the air that breathed it either, was it? But Edward no longer confides his pecuniary worries to Julie, allowing her to continue on oblivious, entertaining in her habitually sumptuous old-regime manner. If he told her the dismal truth, she’d worry; and her worries would add to his worries. Is omission still a sin when there’s nothing to be gained truth-telling? For the rest of his life he will wonder charitably whether Pitt was forgetful or just a liar. The charitable part was overlooking the issue of Pitt’s famous memory, whose fame lay in being elephantine in its prodigiousness. It was said that, when he commanded a regiment, he knew the name, birthday and place of birth of every man, as well as any special interests or talents they might possess, any difficulties in their lives, and the names of their family members, along with wants, needs and idiosyncrasies. Yet he still may have forgotten the enormous debt owed by his government to the Duke of Kent, who invariably gives everyone the benefit of doubt?  

                      Oblivious to the fathomless pit she is helping Edward excavate beneath their life, Julie soon becomes a fixture on the London social scene, holding a salon in the French mode, a salon frequented by some of the most distinguished men and women of the day. Edward is rarely among these luminaries, however, usually in his study at the rear of the house, still shy and lacking the self-confidence to feel at ease among such accomplished people. He is not hiding to brood, though. He is back at his old task – his true calling perhaps? — of writing importuning letters. As you might expect, these letters are now sent to Sir William Pitt; and, besides being maniacally precise about dates, times, pounds, shillings and pence, they’re also rather grumpy: 

                   If I should be treated as well as the Duke of Clarence, I am now owed ninety-six thousand pounds; and if only treated as well as the Duke of Cumberland, I am still owed forty-eight thousand… Having to pay for lost suites containing only items necessary for my army duties is grossly unfair…etc.

                     And so on, and on, the same grievances he’s been trying to get mediated for a decade now. This endless complaining goes against his asult grain, however; it makes him sick, sick of it and sick of himself for the inability to get settled something so fundamentally simple. He knows his abilities, what he can do when given the chance He should be engaged in something worthwhile, not this eternal griping over pennies.  But money is base and stark; the stark fact is that his old Gibraltar debts are coming due, and he’ll soon have to find twenty thousand pounds to cover them. If he can’t obtain the money, he’ll be very publically ruined, tarred and feathered in the press and public as a royal bankrupt. So, he’s growing desperate now, very desperate.

                      ‘Will no one loan it?’ asks Weatherall, whose ruin will accompany his friend’s as certainly as plague claims bedfellows.

                       ‘No one will even meet me to discuss a loan,’ he says. ‘I suspect the Duke of York is putting it about that I’m a bankrupt wastrel and shouldn’t be loaned money… or even sympathy.’

                         ‘But why?’

                         ‘Why? It’s what York does, Fred. It’s what he does. He doesn’t ask himself why any more than nettles wonder why they sting…’

                      ‘Well, he should.’ Weatherall pauses to weigh a thought. ‘Or maybe I should ask him?’

‘You’re going to ask the Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces – my boss, your boss – why he’s such a malicious, petty, worthless, fratricidal sack of manure, are you?’

Weatherall gives the impression of considering an answer to this, but his voice isn’t part of the plan. 

-xv-

                     In April Edward is officially created Duke of Kent and Strathern, as well as Earl of Dublin. On May 7th, he takes his seat in the House of Lords for the first time. Glad of having some happier news for once, he writes to Louis de Salaberry, saying also, for some reason, that he expects to remain in England, possibly taking command of the Army of the Interior, charged with the defense of Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight against French naval attacks. His headquarters, he states with barmy conviction, will be in the heart of Hampshire. In trying to seem more optimistic, he has perhaps overstepped the mark a little. Yet the posting is not a complete fantasy. If anyone but York were the military chief, the idea would be feasible. On May 10th, he’s gazetted General in the army, news that under other circumstances would presage a significant command in the offing.

                      He tells Weatherall self-complacently, ‘I sense this promotion is going to have a sting in its tail…’

                       ‘York’s a Scorpio, is he?’

                      In fact, he’s not, but the promotion is. A week later it bites savagely into his roiling guts. He’s been appointed, presumably on his father’s suggestion, Commander-in-Chief of all forces in British North America – the Halifax exile, an elevation that takes you down. Two thousand pounds is granted for an outfit, a new suite. Even the money is illusory, vanishing into Debt Canyon before he ever sees it. But even if this wasn’t so, the grant hardly compensates him for another banishment across the Atlantic. Especially now, when the great war’s bonfire is being whipped up into a universal conflagration by the winds of change over in France. Bonaparte is here, not over there. Commanding officers wait lifetimes for an opportunity like this, for the chance of glory. He has proved his mettle as one of the four or five most competent commanders in the field; he ought to be off to Spain or the Low Countries; and were it not for the insane jealousy of a brother he’s never harmed in any way at all he would be assembling the suite for Europe even now. It hurts in the heart, in the place where such things must be locked away in a manly fashion. The pressure there builds and may well burst. What, he thinks, will I do then? Cry is what; and to avoid it now he sucks in air like Aeolus. 

                     Julie also takes the news badly. ‘Finally, I’m living a decent life again,’ she says, looking up from a letter she’s writing, ‘and it’s all to be torn away? At last I have friends who enjoy all the things I enjoy, persons who I can discuss anything with; and I’m to bid them all farewell? You don’t know what it’s like to be isolated and unappreciated…’ Her well also brims.

                     ‘Ah. I think I do,’ he says, wondering why she isn’t glad to be returning to little Jean de Mestre, wondering why she’s changing; little and little, but she’s changing. Is he changing too? There are times when nothing changes, and other times when everything changes.

                     ‘But you have your work wherever you are,’ she tells him ruefully. ‘Here I have the life I once had. I read the latest books and meet their authors in my salon. I’m even painted by the most acclaimed artists of the day; and I have the greatest composers play their own newest works in my drawing room. I am who I ought to be, who I was meant to be. I’m finally myself. And I’m happy, Edward. I’m happy. I can’t go back to life over there – I just can’t do it…’

                      ‘Ah, dear. I feel the same way, my love,’ he says. ‘But what choice do I have? None. I have none…’ This thought has just occurred to him, and it too bites. When free will is an illusion, everything bites.

                       ‘Can’t you beseech the King?’

                      ‘Hardly. When we were in Canada, I beseeched him for what he’s just given me. He’d be furious if I changed my mind…’ Although, he tells himself, Papa can change his like linen thrice daily if he wants. This is the man who has imprisoned his will.

                        ‘Then I shall beg the Queen to intercede…’

                        ‘God, no. Don’t do that. She won’t interfere with Papa’s business anyway. But listen, Jules: at least you’ll be near the children again, won’t you?’

                       Her eyes droop, filling with dull tears. ‘You have no idea what a heartache that is,’ she says.

                     ‘I clearly have no idea about most things these days, do I?’

                     She regards him like a fascinated reptile for some moments before saying, ‘It’s always about you, isn’t it?’

                    Lieutenant-General Weatherall is more philosophical, though hardly pleased himself by the news. “I’ve seen all my friends,” he says, “and viewed all the places I missed so much. Why prolong a stay at the risk of finding everything and everyone growing stale? Better to be fondly missed than barely tolerated, no?”

                       A sigh. ‘No, Fred, I think you’re wrong… for once in your life…’ 

                    He writes again to Louis de Salaberry at Beauport, telling him of changed plans, and reassuring him that the new command, though not in a civilian office, ought to be able to acquire for him, for Salaberry, some post suited to his station and outstanding abilities. Edward has to admit to himself, however, that Salaberry’s letters are too often more about importuning influence to secure a higher position than they are of conveying his family’s affection or inquiring after Edward and Julie’s condition. It’s always about you, isn’t it?  Yet he owes the man much. He will always think this. Always. Thus, he feels an obligation to help further Salaberry’s situation at Quebec in any way he possibly can. If only he could help himself the way he helps others, you think, his life would be less vexatious.

                      ‘I love Souris,’ says Julie, ‘but the thought of sitting out there at Beauport with the wretched flies or the endless snow terrifies me. It’s so empty. But the thought of Bedford Basin is even worse. I have no friends in Halifax, no one I can talk to…’

                     ‘Lady Frances?’ he suggests, wishing to God he hadn’t brought the name to mind.

                     ‘I don’t think she’s ever going to return…’

                       ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘Poor Sir John…’

                        ‘From what she says, he’ll be over the moon if she never returns…’

                        The expression brings to Edward’s mind the lacy bedclothes, Sir John and the mulatto girl, one full mocha breast, a chocolate moon perched on the horizon of covers a second before she was torn from her slumbers. The image stirs him. Either his blood is overheating, or sap is rising.  

-xv-

                     By now the hawthorns are blooming, and England’s green acres are all foison, all abundance. Plump white clouds sail importantly through the middle air; the rolling shires are verdant, lush, packed thick with explosive foliage. Sparrows on invisible branches warble exquisitely to one another, and to the skylarks winging above. A nightingale sings, not in Berkeley Square, but outside his window in Knightsbridge. 

                   Work on the bachelor apartments in Kensington Palace has not yet been completed. As we have heard, the royal residences are most shockingly ill-served. Nothing is ever completed; so, he has lived all this time with his love. No hardship there, you say. 

                       True to his word, he visits Princess Caroline regularly, trying to find something positive to convey to Wales, something to make him reconsider the rift. But her behaviour grows increasingly worse, and he sees Lord Dorset’s point, sees it all too clearly. At one of her dinners, she leaves the table, after the first course,  accompanied by a handsome young officer — and she doesn’t return for nearly two hours.

                   ‘We are reading the poetries in my Blue Room,’ she tells her guests. But then she laughs so brazenly that her explanation loses all credibility. Rumours abound in London that she’s pregnant, something she handles by saying: ‘I am have nine childrens, since I hating dogs, cats, and the birds…’ 

                    In fact, she does have nine children now: orphans she’s adopted. But these kids are not housed at Blackheath. She has another place for them, where, at her expense, they’re taught to read and write, with a view to entering useful trades. The Duke of Kent can’t fault this philanthropy, but he can fault much else. One urchin does live with her, however: Willikin, who she’s especially fond of. The child is usually brought in during a dessert course, and he’s held up by a footman, who grabs him by the seat of his breeches and swings him horizontally over the table so he can snatch up any pastry, biscuit or cake he fancies, and then carry this booty off to his room. It’s a disgraceful spectacle, causing even Lord Byron, who’s often present nowadays, to mutter a defamatory comment loud enough for everyone to hear: “Once more unto the breeches,” he says, “and fill your stomach with our English bread… Appalling!”

                     Caroline hears the comment, yet she merely shrieks with mad laughter, adding, “Childe Byron want his arse grabbed — fi-fie and he’s no fun…”

                     ‘You want alot of credit for the scandals you create, don’t you, Caroline?’ Edward says to her quietly. ‘But it’s no way to get what you really want – no way at all…’

                     ‘And what is I really wanting, Edvard Kent Duke?’

                     ‘Your child and your husband, ma’am. But they are both shamed by your conduct…’ He even wags a reproving finger at her.

                   ‘Pah! I have my life to be living, so I will living it.’ With this, she moves to another chair, one next to Byron, whose cheek she pinches.

                      He, Byron, says aloud, ‘Highness, why are your dinner guests invariably all men? It’s not fair to those of us who admire a pretty face – the more the merrier…’ He’s habitually solemn when he speaks what is most on his busy mind.

                      Lady Jersey is of course still there, but in the shadows, taking mental notes, scribbling on her scalp with poison ink.

                    ‘Pretty face needings pretty soul,’ Caroline tells everyone. ‘I hating the coldness of your English womens.’ She glances over at Lady Jersey, whose imaginary quill is scratching hectically. ‘It is wonder to me any mans can break through her ice – not mentioning the head maiden…” She concocts an expression of crazed self-satisfaction, a cat whose mouse still wriggles vainly in its jaws. 

                    General hilarity, except from Lord Glenbervie, who’s recently suffered a terrible loss. Caroline’s jest has slyly alluded to this — slyly yet very cruelly.

                    Edward falls into a conversation with Ezra Crabbe, recently returned from the East India Company in Calcutta. ‘How’s warfare in the south going?’ he says. ‘My father tells me Tpu Sultan is a formidable foe…’

                    ‘Not any more,’ says Crabbe, his face cracked from the sun and resembling dry mud. ‘He was killed at Seringapatnam on May 4th. The south is ours…’ We’re now after French possessions on the east coast too, and we’ve taken Pondicherry. ‘There’s been a bit of a naval battle,’ adds Crabbe. ‘In the mouth of the Houghly…’

                    ‘The what?’

                     ‘Bay of Bengal,’ Crabbe explains. ‘Ganges is called Houghly there, y’see? HMS Sybille took the frigate Forte as a prize. Small stuff, but the Frenchies are being pushed back…’  On his return voyage, sailing from Calcutta, and then travelling overland from Aden to Haifa, Crabbe had witnessed the siege at Acre. ‘Amazing place,’ he says. ‘Men have lived there for four thousand years, y’know? It’s a crossroads of east and west – that’s why Bonaparte was after it. But his troops were all sick and his cannon had been abandoned in the desert sands. When Smith arrived with his ships, the French knew they’d lost. Bonaparte behaved like a savage too. He had four thousand Albanian prisoners shot – and all because he didn’t have the means to feed or care for them. Disgraceful!’

                    He’d passed Corfu as well, where a Turko-Russian siege had forced the French garrison to surrender. Our faith in the new Czar is being vindicated all over the place. An Anglo-Russian force is preparing to invade the Batavian Republic — or at least it is according to the well-informed Mr. Crabbe.

                     ‘Would you say, sir,’ says Edward, ‘that the Princess of Wales behaves herself properly at these dinners?’

                     ‘This is the only one I’ve attended,’ Crabbe replies. ‘Well, at least they’re not stuffy. I had my fill of stuffy dinners at Calcutta. You wouldn’t believe how our people behave! They’ve all been there for so long they’ve forgotten how we do it here. Everything’s multiplied by ten – including the clothes. Women are trussed up like ambulatory sofas. In that godawful heat too!’

                     ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘I know about heat…’

                     Caroline is now creeping her fingers up Lord Byron’s sleeve, walking them towards his ear. The poet speaks in a purr now, and she smiles, almost at every word he utters, a smile for each. 

                    ‘I leave for Canada soon, ma’am,’ Edward tells her. ‘So, I shall not see you again for quite some time…’

                      She’s not happy to be interrupted in her performance, but she says, ‘Then I shall sending to you all of the best of new books… when the Byron he write one…’ She tweaks the poet’s ear. She never sends Edward any books, though, and he never thought she would. 

                     As he leaves, he finds Montague House, despite its raucous gaiety and implied depravity, a place of aching loneliness, a place of bitter regret. Caroline seems bent on a self-destructive course that will not end well. Such courses never do. This concerns him – but not for her sake. He has also been making very regular visits to little Princess Charlotte, the daughter of Wales and Caroline, at Carlton House and elsewhere, becoming deeply attached to her. She’s become very fond of him too, always gleefully excited when he appears. Children invariably like him; and he has an affinity for them, able to play their games as if he’s one of them. He always brings gifts as well, which helps. Charlotte is a perfect child, he finds, polite, witty, very observant, and charmingly stubborn when she wants to be. Good qualities in an heir to the throne; good qualities in anyone. He’s come to despise Wales for his neglectful treatment of her. Edward is probably trying to compensate for this lack of a father with his own devotion and love. Wales seems in many ways to be turning into his own father; although he has many of the King’s faults yet few of his virtues. Little Charlotte reminds Edward of himself as a child, except no father-figure stepped in to help him out in his loneliness and lovelessness. Now, alas, he needs to tell the child he’s going away and won’t be able to see her for a long time. She stares at him in silence, carefully assessing his words. He thinks she might be about to cry, or perhaps yell with rage.

                      But she’s smarter than that. “When you come back,” Charlotte says, after a minute or two, “I shall be bigger, and you shall be balder. But we shall still be the best of friends, won’t we?” Her voice is very adult, very resigned — as all adults ought to be, he thinks.

                     It makes his heart leap behind its cage of bones. “Of course, we shall, my sweet,” he tells her. “Of course, we shall. And you must write to me… as soon as you learn how, I mean…”

                    “I know my letters,” she protests, “and now I expect to know your letters too. I want pictures as well as words, for a thousand pictures are worth a word.” Her little frown is so grown-up, like her wretched little life.

                      “I think it’s a picture which is worth a thousand words, my dearest.”

                     “No, you’re wrong. A thousand words by Mr. Shakespeare are worth all the boring pictures in this rotten house.” She’s adamant about it, her little waving arm taking in a Titian, a Franz Hals, a Vermeer and two Holbeins.

                    “Don’t tell your papa that,” he says.

                    “But I can tell Grandpapa anything I want,” she proclaims, “because he’s the king and he knows everything; and he says everything I say is right. What-what!”  She giggles at her mimicry, which is extraordinarily accurate for one so young.

                     This parting is becoming harder for him. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘ask him the value of Shakespeare’s words…’

                    ‘I most assuredly shall. And I shall miss you terribly, Uncle Edward…’

                    ‘And I you…’. He swallows.

                    ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘do you know what Papa calls you?’

                     ‘Ah. Yes, I do…’ He presses a forefinger to his lips, looking into her huge clear eyes, blue as the tropical seas, big as the sky, deep as the chasm between her mother and her father. 

                      He cries as he rides back to Knightsbridge. He cries while saying farewell to the King too. ‘I love you, Papa,’ he tells the rotund old man, whose filmy eyes are fading fast — like everything these days, he thinks.

                  “And love,’ says the King, ‘I have come to see, hey-hey, is all that matters in this hard world… and all we can understand of its Creator. I have not loved enough, my boy, and I know it. It is undoing me, what-what. Regrets are terrible things, terrible; especially at my age, when nothing can be mended, what-what. I love you, though, and I wish you never to forget this, no matter what happens, hey-hey. For I am a very foolish old man, one who has taken too little care of those things that truly have meaning. Fare thee well, what-what, dear boy; and may God be ever with thee.” 

                     He embraces Edward, who can smell rancid sweat and raw alcohol, mixed in with a pungent aroma of cut grass and ordure. Papa.

-xvi-

                     The world is bubbling over; every day brings fresh reports, some to the Court of St James, others you see in the press. The War of the Second Coalition has begun, with an Anglo-Russian force invading Holland. The Prussians and Austrians are at the gates of Strasburg. Bonaparte will soon be surrounded. The Republic will be overthrown – it will all come to an end, that revolution of theirs. New York has passed a law that will gradually lead to abolition of slavery in the state. Perhaps America is headed in the right direction after all? Even if it’s only gradual, it’s the direction that counts, not the speed of progress towards it. In the Punjab, Ranjit Singh has captured Lahore, a first step towards the Sikh empire of which he’ll be maharajah. For a while.

                     ‘All these armies in need of commanders and I’m sent to Canada,’ says Edward. ‘It’s all York’s doing – sorry to be so repetitious…’

                     ‘Let’s hope it’s also his undoing then,’ Weatherall says dolefully.

                    ‘How could that be?’ he says. ‘What glory is there for me to be won in Canada?’ The only way to undo York would be to score another military triumph.

                       ‘You never know…’

                       ‘You do in Halifax,’ he says. ‘Why are you so often wrong these days, Fred? It’s disturbing…’

                    Watching England’s rolling green patchwork recede into a charcoal haze — and for who knows how long? — it disturbs something deep inside of him, prodding that thing awake, goading it into life, a hollow aching life. It feels more like a kind of death.

‘By God,’ says Weatherall, ‘isn’t the day gloomy enough without you daubing soot all over it?’

‘Is that a question?’ he says.