Виктория Холт - The Third George

Dear George, he was too conscientious. But how pleased he was to hear that they might expect another child.

The King was extremely upset. He paced up and down his apartments. He did not wish to see anyone, but Charlotte went to him.

"George. You must tell me what is wrong.”

George looked at her blankly as though he did not know who she was. She took his arm and looked into his face.

"Hannah ..." he said. "Hannah ...”

Her heart leaped and then seemed to stop for a second before it raced on. He was looking at her so oddly, as though he thought she were another person. And Hannah! That name which she had heard whispered before. Hannah Lightfoot, the Quaker.

"George ... I beg of you, tell me what is on your mind.”

His eyes seemed to come into focus. He looked more like himself.

"Charlotte," he said. "Charlotte, my wife ... the Queen.”

"What has happened, George? You are ill.”

"Oh, yes, yes..." he said.

"Pray sit down. I will call the doctors.”

He shook his head but allowed her to lead him to a chair. "Call no one," he said. Then as though speaking in a daze, "She is dead. Hannah is dead. This time it is true.”

Charlotte knelt at his feet and taking his hand looked up pleadingly into his face.

"You must tell me," she urged and added: "If it will help you.”

He seemed to consider this. His brow was wrinkled, his eyes wild. Then he spoke a little incoherently: "Perhaps I should tell. Better. Charlotte, oh, Charlotte. It was wrong. It was wicked.

I never should ...”

She waited in breathless anxiety. What was the secret of Hannah Lightfoot? She must know.

"George," she said, 'perhaps you should lie down.”

"I feel dizzy," he said. "I can scarcely stand.”

She took him to the bedchamber and he lay down while 'she sat beside the bed holding his hand.

"Charlotte, you are a good wife ... a good queen.”

"I want to be everything you wish me to be, George.”

"All these years. What did Hannah think...?”

And then he was telling the story, somewhat incoherently, it was true, but she saw him as a young boy of thirteen passing through St. James's Market and being aware of the beautiful Quaker sitting in the window of the linen draper's shop.

"The people had gathered to see us ... my grandfather, my mother, myself ... we were all going to the theatre; and the linen draper had taken the bales of linen from the window that his family might watch the procession pass by. Hannah told me that... afterwards.”

"Yes, George.”

"She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

Charlotte winced, but the pressure of his hot fingers on her hand reminded her that however plain she was, he needed her; and he trusted her enough to confide in her.

"So we met. It was arranged for us and I loved her and she bore my children.”

"Children, George? Where are they?”

"Being well cared for. I am assured of this, but I do not see them now. They are growing too old.

It would not be safe. But I know they are well cared for. That is taken good care of.”

There was silence while Charlotte thought of her little nursery and compared it with that of another presided over by a woman ... the most beautiful he had ever seen, a woman who merely had to sit in a shop window to make him fall in love with her and risk all sorts of danger to be with her. Very different that must have been from marrying a plain princess who had been chosen for him. But it was over. It was of the past and now he was king with a queen and two sons and another child on the way. She told him this gently.

"Yes, it is over, but it haunts me, Charlotte. I think of her ... What must she have thought of me ...

for allowing it...? And in my heart I knew she wasn't dead.”

She listened to the incoherent fantastic story of how he had gone to the house ... their house in Islington ... and found that she was no longer there. She and the children had disappeared. The story they had told him was that she had died and been buried and the children were being taken care of.

"They showed me her grave, Charlotte. But it had another name over it. They cheated me. They told me she was dead ... and I knew in my heart that she was not. It was a ridiculous story. They had buried her under another name to avoid scandal, they said. I should have asked questions, but I didn't, Charlotte ... because I knew in my heart ... And I understood what it would mean. I was the King and I had married the linen draper's niece.”

"Married!" she cried aghast.

He nodded. "We went through a form of marriage. She was already married to Isaac Axford, but she said that was no true marriage and he thought so too for he had married again. It was never consummated. She ran away after the ceremony ... ran away to me.”

"Married!" repeated Charlotte.

"It satisfied her. She thought she was near death. It was after the child was born ... the last one ...

and she feared the weight of sin. So I married her ... and that made her happier. She was no longer afraid to die.”

He had closed his eyes; the telling had exhausted him mentally and physically. He seemed to sleep and she sat by his bed, thinking: "Married! So they went through a form of marriage!”

Charlotte could not sleep for thinking of the strange confession her husband had made to her.

When she had tried to broach the subject again he had looked at her coldly as though he did not know what she was talking about. A great fear came to her then. Was he pretending that he did not know or had he really been unaware of what he had said to her?

He was acting very strangely. There were times when he seemed bemused. He had changed in the last weeks. Could it be the result of the information he had received about Hannah Lightfoot's death? Who had told him? She imagined a letter arriving from Hannah herself, begging him to look after their children as she was dying. Was that not what any mother would do?

And George had actually gone through a ceremony of marriage with Hannah Lightfoot. So that wedding ceremony between herself and George in the Chapel Royal performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury was not the first George had undergone.

She thought she felt the child move within her and with that a faintness came to her, for with the movement of the child had come a thought. If George had been married before and that marriage of his had been legal, then he was not married to her, Charlotte; and little George and Fred were illegitimate and so was the child she carried in her womb. She clutched the table. No, she thought.

It is impossible. That could not be true ... not of the Queen of England. But the doubt persisted. It haunted her. It seemed to her that everywhere she went Hannah Lightfoot was mocking her.

"I was his true wife. Some child hidden away somewhere in the country is the true King of England, not your little George whom they call the Prince of Wales." It was unbearable. She could not endure it. She, Charlotte, Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, brought to England to be the King's concubine, her children bastards. Oh, no! It was a nightmare. Yet he had told her of that marriage.

My God, she thought, I shall never be safe. My children will never be safe. In the years to come some young man could present himself to the Government, to the Archbishop, and say: "I am the true King of England.”

There would be documents ... She must find out. She tried to talk to George.

"You must tell me the truth. We cannot let this matter rest.”

"Hannah is dead," he said. "I have evidence of that now. She was not before, but she is dead now.”

"But you were married to her.”

"It was not a true marriage.”

"Why not? Why not?”

"She was married before.”

"But she thought that was not a true marriage.”

"It was at a Marriage Mill which was illegal.”

"Then ...”

"It was declared illegal, but the law had not been entered in the statute book at that time. It was a few months later. That was why she thought it was illegal.”

"It frightens me.”

"Don't think of it. Don't speak of it.”

"But what if it were a true marriage? Then I am not your wife. What of our sons ... What of them?

What if they say that George, the Prince of Wales, is a bastard?”

"Stop," cried the King. "It is driving me mad.”

And so it seemed. His doctors were anxious. The rash had broken out on his chest and he had a fever. They purged him and he was a little better.

Charlotte was hollow-eyed too. The people of the Court said: "The Queen is anxious about the King. He certainly seems to have a strange illness.”

Charlotte thought, we must do something. If we were not truly married before then we must be married now. But how? If they announced that they would be married again there would be immediate gossip and scandal. Those who had wondered about the Hannah Lightfoot story would begin to speak of it as a fact. Nothing could be more dangerous. Charlotte could not think clearly if the King was incapable of doing so.

The name of Hannah Lightfoot must never be mentioned at Court if she could help it. Those children must never know who their father was. A great wrong might have been done to Hannah and her children, and Charlotte and hers, but silence was the best way to right it. She must speak to George. She must discover more; she must find a way out of this difficulty if not for her own sake for that of those two boys in her nursery and the one who would be born later this year.