Very soon the carriages of the Archbishop, the Lord Chancellor and other ministers were on the road to Claremont.

They expected on arrival to hear that the child was born but the Princess’s ordeal was slow and laborious.

In the library which adjoined the Princess’s bedroom the eminent assembly waited for the cry of a child and the inevitable summons.

They went on waiting.

‘It’s slow,’ said Lord Eldon.

The Archbishop commented that he had been afraid he would not arrive in time but it seemed there was time to spare.

‘Sir Richard has told us that all is going as well as we could possibly wish,’ replied Eldon.

The waiting continued.

The day was well advanced when Sir Richard Croft, looking less confident than previously, announced that he and Dr Baillie had decided to call in Dr Sims, the well-known accoucheur.

Dr Sims arrived at three o’clock the following morning while the birth of the child was still awaited.

All through the day Charlotte’s labour persisted.

Everything was not as it should be. No one could shut their eyes to that now. The doctors were giving out reassuring bulletins but in the streets the people stood in little crowds, silent and solemn.

Poor Princess, what an ordeal for her. But it must soon be over now.

At nine o’clock the child was delivered – a boy, perfectly formed, but dead.

Leopold was at her bedside. She smiled at him.

‘So I have failed you,’ she said.

He shook his head, tears in his eyes. ‘My darling, you were so brave. Only one thing matters, you are here with me. I feared … how much I feared.’

‘Well, then I find I am not so unhappy. It will be as it was before and next time there will be a living boy.’

‘My dearest … don’t speak of it.’

‘I believe you suffered more than I.’

Mrs Griffiths came to the bedside with some chicken broth. ‘How smart you are looking, Griffiths,’ said Charlotte. ‘I see you have changed your dress. Why didn’t you put on the silk one? You know it is my favourite.’

‘I will wear it, Your Highness, on the day you leave your bed.’

‘I shall keep you to that. When shall I be able to comb Leopold’s hair again?’

‘When you have drunk this nice chicken broth and grown strong again.’

‘Griffiths treats me as though I’m a child,’ she said with a grimace.

It was the old Charlotte. Leopold was deeply moved, she saw, and she asked him why.

‘Because I feared so much …’

‘Dear Leopold, so you truly love me?’

He could not speak – he, the calm, the precise one, found that words choked him.

She was happy to lie there holding his hand, dreaming of the future. They would have children. Perhaps she had not taken enough care. Next time it would be different. She would make him understand this when she was stronger.

Now she would have him put his head on the pillow beside her. ‘I feel happier that way,’ she said.

And they stayed like this for some minutes when suddenly she cried out.

‘It’s a pain, Leopold … such a pain …’

Leopold ran from the room to call the doctors.

The doctors were round the bed. The Princess’s body was as cold as ice and they could not bring warmth back to it. They gave her hot wine and brandy; they applied hot flannels and bottles of hot water, to no effect.

Leopold stood by the bed gazing at her in an agony of distress. Charlotte’s eyes never left him and now and then she made as though to stretch out her hand to him.

She said to Sir Richard Croft: ‘Am I in danger?’

‘If you lie still and remain calm there will be none.’

She smiled wanly. ‘I think I know what you mean,’ she said, and she thought: This is the end then. This is where it all stops. My divided love for my parents, my destiny … I will never be like Queen Elizabeth now. All the time Fate was mocking me. I was learning to be a queen who never would be. And Leopold … who made me happy at last, my dearest Leopold will be all alone.

She wanted him to know what he had done for her, how he had brought her that security of love for which she had striven all her life … twenty-one years of living. Leopold, she thought, I am leaving you now.

She stretched out her hand. He took it and murmured her name.

But she could scarcely see him now.

Leopold, gazing at her, saw the glazed expression in her eyes, heard the death-rattle in her throat.

Time was playing strange tricks. He was in the Pulteney Hotel; he was handing her into a carriage, she was laughing at him, teasing her Doucement. Hundreds of pictures of Charlotte, anything to shut out the Charlotte he was seeing now.

Sir Richard Croft laid his hand on his shoulder.

‘Your Highness,’ he said, ‘it is over.’

And Leopold threw himself on to his knees, frantically kissing her hands as though by so doing he could bring her back to life.

Bibliography

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