Виктория Холт - The Widow of Windsor

Bertie shook his head. ‘Oh no.’ Alix sighed. As long as there was nothing wrong with the children she could feel relieved. ‘It’s … Alix, I’ve got a thing called a subpoena. They’re going to take me to court.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘It’s Lady Mordaunt. She’s gone mad, I think. She’s made some sort of confession to her husband and he’s trying to divorce her …’

‘And you …?’

‘Oh no. It’s Fred Johnstone and Cole. They’re cited as co-respondents, but she’s made some wild statements about me and her lawyers have sent this thing.’

‘Oh God!’ said Alix.

‘Well, she must be mad.’

‘But she has named you.’

‘She’s mentioned me. The woman’s insane …’

‘But you were friendly.’

‘Oh come, Alix, I’m friendly with so many. It’s part of my duties.’

He was bland even though very anxious. Alix’s voice was trembling a little as she murmured: ‘And she has no reason …’

‘Of course not,’ said Bertie indignantly.

She felt wretched and miserable. She thought of Lady Mordaunt – young, twenty or not much more, very pretty, very gay. Bertie had called on her frequently, she knew. He must have visited her often when her husband was absent.

‘I’ve spoken to Hatherley,’ said Bertie. ‘He said I must tell Mama without delay.’

* * *

The Queen re-read Bertie’s letter. It was his painful duty, he had written, to tell her that he had been subpoenaed to appear as a witness at the court of Lord Penzance …

Her son! The Prince of Wales! Ordered to go to court! A divorce case and Bertie’s name mentioned! She could feel almost thankful that Albert was not here to suffer this.

Bertie declared that he was innocent. Of course there were malignant people who were ready to make the most cruel accusations against royalty. Unkind things had been said against her and John Brown. Poor Bertie! Strangely enough when she came face to face with real disaster she found she could be very strong. It was only when she contemplated something alarming that her spirits quailed. So Bertie was commanded to appear in court because a loose woman had mentioned his name. Very well, Bertie must appear in court and if he told her he was innocent she believed him. She sat down at her desk and wrote a tender letter. She believed that he had been maligned; she had the utmost confidence in him; and she wanted him to know that his mother was with him.

Bertie was touchingly grateful and was more frank than he had ever been before. He told her that he feared Sergeant Ballantine, whom Sir Charles Mordaunt had engaged to act for him, would twist everything he said and try to compromise him. He was in a terrible dilemma. To go into the box and have his words twisted by a brilliant lawyer or to stay out and let people impute his absence to guilt.

The Queen was anxious. She could not explain her fears to Mr Gladstone. How she wished dear Mr Disraeli was her Prime Minister now. Of course Bertie was wrong to have put himself in such a position where this was possible. If he had not moved in ‘fast’ circles no one would have been ready to believe this whatever that mad woman and her clever Sergeant Ballantine said. Whatever happened Bertie had done himself a great deal of harm.

The Lord Chancellor agreed with her. The monarchy was not so firm that it could afford such scandals as this. Mr Gladstone thought that the Queen’s love of seclusion had already irritated public opinion; for the Prince of Wales to be connected, however innocently, with such an unsavoury divorce case would not improve it.

‘How difficult it is for royalty,’ said the Queen with some asperity. ‘I am blamed for living too quietly; my son for living too riotously. People are never satisfied.’

* * *

There was great excitement when the case opened. It was the first time a Prince of Wales had ever been summoned to the witness box. The majority were certain that he had been Lady Mordaunt’s lover. Albert Edward – Teddy as he was beginning to be called by the people – was another such as his great-uncle George IV who had amused the people with his scandalous love affairs.

The Mordaunt story was gradually revealed to an avid public. Lady Mordaunt had given birth to a child and a few days after its birth it had been discovered that there was something wrong with the child’s sight and it would almost certainly be blind. This had so upset Lady Mordaunt that she had become hysterical.

When her husband came into her bedroom she cried out: ‘It is my fault the child is blind. You are not the father. Lord Cole is the father. I have been wicked and done wrong.’

‘You are distraught,’ said Sir Charles, trying in vain to soothe her.

‘No,’ cried Lady Mordaunt. ‘I have been unfaithful to you with Lord Cole, Sir Frederick Johnstone, the Prince of Wales and that’s not all …’

Sir Charles, very distressed, tried to comfort his wife.

‘She has some fever,’ he told the nurse. ‘She doesn’t know what she is saying. I believe women suffer in this way sometimes after having a child.’

Two of the nurses replied that during her confinement before the birth Lady Mordaunt had told them quite seriously that the child was not her husband’s and that she had committed misconduct with the men she had mentioned.

Sir Charles went to his wife’s bureau and found bills which showed that she had stayed at hotels with Sir Frederick and Lord Cole, and as there were also letters to her from the Prince of Wales, Sir Charles believed he had a case.

* * *

People recalled the trial of Queen Caroline. This was of less importance than that, of course, but very diverting. ‘Gay old Teddy’ was the universal comment. ‘Well, he was bound to get found out sooner or later.’

There was a great drive to prove Lady Mordaunt insane. Her own father stated that he believed this to be so, and that she was suffering, as several doctors affirmed, from puerperal mania.

The mention of letters from the Prince of Wales caused a great deal of excitement but disappointment followed when these were published in The Times and proved to be somewhat innocuous, even though they did show that the Prince was on terms of cosy friendliness with Lady Mordaunt although not with Sir Charles, apparently, for the outraged husband told the court that he had never invited the Prince to his house in spite of the fact that His Royal Highness was a frequent visitor there in his absence. Teddy’s visits, laughed the public, were made when Sir Charles was out of the way naturally.

The excitement reached its climax when Bertie took his stand in the witness box. Calmly and clearly he answered the questions put to him.

Yes, he was acquainted with Lady Mordaunt before her marriage. She had visited Marlborough House. He had seen a great deal of her both before her marriage and after.

At last came the all-important question: ‘Has there ever been any improper familiarity or criminal act between yourself and Lady Mordaunt?’

The Prince threw back his head and answered firmly: ‘There has not.’

The court broke into applause which the Judge repressed and Bertie left the court with relief. The case was over – dismissed on account of Lady Mordaunt’s insanity.

* * *

Bertie felt jaunty. He had come through that with honours, he believed. Even Ballantine had not dared to go too far with the Prince of Wales.

‘The gross implications which have been wantonly cast on me are now cleared,’ he wrote to his mother.

The Queen read his letter and sighed. It was not as simple as that. She knew well enough that whatever the outcome of the case people were going to believe Bertie guilty. His conduct was not without reproach. There were all those gambling debts and the rumours of how he was always in the wake of some woman. Vicky had heard it said on the Continent and so had Alice. Bertie was a gambler, he drank too much and was too interested in food; but his besetting weakness was women.

The Lord Chancellor shook his head over the affair and Mr Gladstone was not very happy about it, while Reynolds’ Newspaper was asking whether a young man who paid visits to a young married woman in her husband’s absence was really innocent.

There was the expected spate of cartoons. A paper was being sold in the streets called The Infidelities of a Prince; and although this recounted in florid terms the adventures of George IV when Prince of Wales it was bought by many on the understanding that it was an account of the exploits of their own Teddy.

Bertie pretended to shrug it aside. Alix was quiet and rather sad. It was all so different from what she had dreamed in the Yellow Palace.

It was a sad spring. Alix felt depressed and her rheumatic pains increased. There was restraint between her and Bertie and sometimes when he reproved her – very gently – for her unpunctuality, she had to stop her temper from flaring up and demanding the truth about the Mordaunt affair.

She told Bertie that she thought she would like to get away to the country for a while. Sandringham? suggested Bertie. No, she decided; she would like to go on a visit. The Duchess of Manchester had invited her to Kimbolton and she would like to accept. Bertie was almost pathetically eager to meet her wishes. In fact she believed that he was silently imploring her to put the Mordaunt affair from her mind and not ask embarrassing questions.

It was pleasant at Kimbolton, but wherever she went people cheered her and she fancied that their show of friendship was tempered with sympathy because of Bertie’s infidelities.