Виктория Холт - The Widow of Windsor

She crowned it with a laurel wreath and sat by the bed looking down at it and weeping.

‘I have wept so much, dearest Albert,’ she said, ‘that I would seem to have no tears left.’

She could not sleep; she put out her hand and touched the portrait; then she rose, and finding one of his nightshirts in the drawer, she took it to bed with her and holding it in her arms was comforted.

* * *

It was midnight at Osborne, with the wild sea shrieking as though it knew what a tragedy had taken place. The Queen liked to hear it. She could not have borne it if it had been calm, blue and smiling. But she was shivering; she could not keep warm, which was strange really for in the past she had been so eager for fresh air and had enjoyed the cool keen winds. Her attendants had, she knew, continually complained of draughts from the windows she had insisted should remain open. Albert had been so much better in the spring and autumn than in the heat of summer; although he had so many colds in the winter.

How the days dragged! Could it really be only a week since that terrible day?

There was a commotion without, indicating that someone had arrived. She rose and went to the top of the stairs. Her brother-in-law Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, was below. He and his servants were dishevelled; they had just landed and the night was wild.

He saw her standing there and ran up the stairs to embrace her. They wept together.

‘Oh, Ernest,’ she cried. ‘He has gone. We have lost him!’

Ernest could only murmur brokenly. But it helped her a little to see that the visitors were well received and looked after. She became for a moment the ordinary little housewife she had sometimes told Albert she would have liked to be; and when living in small houses like Osborne she had been able to play at being.

Ernest sat with her, talking. He was a year older than Albert and he might so easily have been her husband. She shuddered at the thought. How different he was from that incomparable angel. One could hardly believe they were brothers. Ernest so dark and saturnine – Albert fair and angelic. Ernest resembled his father the late Duke, not only in looks but in his ways. There had been a horrible rumour about Albert’s birth and malicious people had tried to spread the story that he was not his father’s son, because his mother had been involved in a scandal with a member of her husband’s household, had been divorced and Albert had not seen her after he was four years old. What wicked stories people concocted about good people of whom they could only be envious. Albert certainly was different from his father and brother; she had become aware how different at the time of her marriage when Ernest had stayed with them and confessed that he was suffering from a horrible disease which was a result of his conduct in Berlin.

Dear Albert, how shocked he had been! He loved his brother, though, and had done everything to help him. That was years ago and now Ernest was married and had stepped into his father’s shoes and become Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; he had no children. Albert had told her that this was sometimes a result of this terrible disease which she reminded herself severely he had brought on himself. She very much doubted that Ernest had mended his ways. In any case this childlessness raised a problem because if he had no heir one of Albert’s sons would inherit the Dukedom – Alfred possibly. This was hardly a matter to be discussed at this time, though.

They sat up late talking of Albert. Victoria told Ernest of the happiness she had known with him, of the thousands of joys now lost to her, Ernest talked of the old days when they had been boys together, fencing, riding, hunting, roaming the forests and finding specimens for their museum. ‘The Ernest and Albert Museum, we called it. We were as one. We had never been separated in our lives until the time came for Albert to prepare for his marriage.’

They wept together and talked of lovely Rosenau where the boys had spent so many happy days and where Albert had delighted in showing Victoria the room he and Ernest had shared, the fencing marks in the wall, the trophies of their childhood, the mountains, rivers and pine forests.

When Ernest left for Windsor where he would attend the funeral she remained at a window waving until he could no longer be seen; and she shuddered to think how fortunate she had been to have chosen Albert.

That brought her back to the recriminations. I should have taken greater care of him. I should never have allowed him to go to Cambridge.

Oh, Bertie, Bertie, what have you done!

* * *

The Prince of Wales was dreading the ordeal. He was relieved, though, that his mother was not present. He knew what those reproachful looks implied. Papa should never have come to Cambridge on that wet and blustery day. Of what use had it been? The affair was over and he had promised not to behave in such a way again; but Papa need not have come tearing down to Cambridge on such a day to extract the promise.

Bertie was full of remorse naturally, but he could not help feeling that life might be a good deal more tolerable without his father’s supervision. Everything he had ever done had been criticised; even his recent success in Canada and the United States had been attributed by his parents to General Bruce, his governor.

But life had become easier in the last year or so and this was entirely due to the fact that he was growing up. They could not treat him as a child for ever – much as they would like to. And Bertie knew that he had some quality which that dead saint had lacked. The people saw it – those in the streets, those he had met on his tour. They warmed to him. He smiled readily; he could not remember seeing his father smile. Bertie had a way of saying something to people which amused them or endeared him to them in some way. He had a sneaking feeling that those who knew of the Curragh Camp escapade thought it ‘only natural’ and liked him none the less for it – perhaps a bit more. Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, for instance, had refused to give General Bruce the honour Bertie’s parents had asked for him to have. ‘It was the success of the Prince of Wales,’ Palmerston had replied, ‘not that of General Bruce, and Your Majesty’s Government would never agree to give honours where it did not consider them due.’ Good old Palmerston! He had winked once at Bertie when he was leaving the Queen’s presence after, Bertie was sure, having heard a diatribe on the reprehensible behaviour of the Prince of Wales. Palmerston had been a rake himself in his youth – and later. He understood that a young man had to break out sometimes.

Bertie was, of course, sorry that his father’s fever had increased through his journey up to Cambridge in foul weather, but it was self-imposed and unnecessary – and Bertie refused to blame himself.

There was muffled bustle throughout the castle appropriate to the occasion. He would be glad when it was over.

The Guard of Honour of the Grenadier Guards, of which Prince Albert had been Colonel, was at the entrance of the State Apartments and members of the royal family and the heads of foreign states were assembled in the Chapter Room of St George’s Chapel, waiting to be taken to their places in the procession.

It was time to set out.

Behind the coffin walked Bertie, chief mourner with his eleven-year-old brother Arthur and Uncle Ernest; members of the royal houses of Europe followed and the solemn procession began.

Bertie’s features were serious; he was trying to think of the goodness of his father and he could only see that stern face which had also been so cold when turned towards him. He had been different with Vicky and the Queen and some of the younger children. But always he was the mentor, critical of others’ weaknesses because he was so good himself. He had rarely smiled; he had frowned often at Bertie’s laughter which had overflowed far too frequently according to his father.

‘It was all for my own good,’ Bertie told himself. It was the best he could think of.

The choir were singing the opening sentences of the burial service. Outside in the Long Walk minute guns were firing.

The ceremony progressed.

At last they had placed the coffin at the entrance of the royal vault where it would remain until the mausoleum at Frogmore was ready to receive it. The funeral of the Prince Consort was over.

The Queen had decided that Albert’s wishes should be carried out as though he were still with them; his rooms naturally should remain as though he occupied them; his clothes should be laid out every evening; she was determined to keep his memory fresh.

His greatest concern before he had died had been for the welfare of his son and he had thought that a visit to the Holy Land might have a sobering effect on Bertie. The Queen had agreed. Did she not agree wholeheartedly with all Albert’s plans for the children? And never before, in spite of his very difficult childhood, had Bertie shown such need for guidance and care as he did at this time.

Alice was with her constantly. What a dear devoted daughter! So pretty too. Albert had said she was the beauty of the family. Her marriage should take place as arranged, which would be later in the year, though what a travesty it would be without her father’s presence!

Alice was sympathetic and gentle – far more so than Vicky had ever been; but Vicky was now a woman of the world; and it was only to Vicky, of all her children, to whom she could talk of Bertie’s deficiencies. Vicky, alas, was far away in Berlin, with problems of her own; but she did not shirk her duty and wrote constantly to her sorrowful mother. Perhaps Vicky more than any understood her grief and shared it to some extent, for Vicky had loved her father more than any of the others, as he had her. But Vicky now had her Fritz, who was kind and gentle, and her children Wilhelm and Charlotte. Darling little Wilhelm with his poor sad arm! His shoulder had been dislocated at his birth and he would carry that deformity through life, she feared. Not that it affected the dear child, who was bright and clever and, as Vicky said, so full of his own importance. Vicky also had to contend with a certain amount of hostility at the German Court. She was the foreigner there just as her precious father had been when he came to England. How many times had the Queen been hurt and angered by the constant references to him in the Press as ‘The German’. So Vicky was her confidante at this time and to her she wrote of her distress over Bertie.