I do not think I exaggerate when I say that I witnessed a surfeit of unpleasant episodes when I was young. Only a courage native to my breeding stood between me and a despairing death. When I recounted for dear Melbourne the sort of perfidy to which I was subjected, and all at the hands of those I ought to have been able to trust, he could barely credit the tale! But the truth of it is set down, day by day, in my private journal—the one dear Lehzen never saw. Indeed, she did not even suspect its existence.
When I removed to Buckingham Palace some three weeks after my accession to the throne, the builders still in residence, the rooms not even done up, I saw my private volumes safely stowed where nobody should find them. I shall instruct the undertakers to place the entire collection in my coffin before it is nailed down. I would not have these words exposed to another human being—not even He Whom I Loved with All My Heart —for all the empires on the globe. It is essential to the peace of mind of a monarch that some part of her soul remain hidden.
It was near dawn when I emerged from the painful doze to which Albert’s death consigned me, and drawing back the heavy green velvet hangings at my window, recollected his private cabinet. How feeble was the light of this Sunday morn, my first without my Beloved! The hour must be barely past six, and if my private attendants were as yet abroad, none had seen fit to disturb the sacred quiet of my bedchamber—which must, today and every day henceforth, be as devoid of animation as the tomb. No fire burned in the grate, no tea was waiting on a tray, and it was with the weakness of a very old woman that I attempted to draw back the seven layers of draperies that shrouded the outer world from my own. Albert’s cabinet, I thought; it was his term for the private study where he spent so many happy hours. And so many painful ones, too—the room to which he retreated when our relations were unsettled, so that he might write to me in the quiet so vital to his studious, inward-looking mind. There he kept his essential correspondence—of a kind never permitted to fall under the view of his secretaries. It was as though he had spoken to me as the draperies parted, and the feeble December morning graced my brow with benediction; it was as though a whisper of the Hereafter instructed me: Go, my little one, and burn them.
I tarried only to don one of the sad black gowns I have worn ever since Mama’s passing last spring—how dreadful to find oneself a belated survivor of those one has cherished, utterly unloved by another human soul!—and moved in rustling agitation through the hallways. Below me and at every side, Windsor slept—as though that Perfect Being had never suffered, and struggled, and breathed his last in the Blue Room but a few hours before! I shuddered to consider of the coming day—the counsels that must be held, over the Departed’s body; the morbid attentions of Bunting’s, the undertakers; the officious pieties of the Master of Household. Bertie should be left to manage the business; it should be his penance, for having broken his father’s heart and soul so completely, that the Grave was the last comfort remaining in the world!
A turning in the corridor brought me to Albert’s room—quite dark, and chill, and desolate. A very brief search revealed to my grateful eyes the letters I sought: bound up with ribbon and secured in a japanned box. He had left it, quite carelessly, among his books. Some of the letters were from that woman—and the rest from Baron Stockmar, a man whom once I had believed my friend. I did not pause to read them. I had a fair idea already of what they contained—the seeds of my Beloved’s destruction. The horrid fodder of his final madness.
I flew back along the corridor and lit the match with my own hands. It was necessary to unfold the letters, in order to crumple them. One only I saved—from Stockmar, written in the first weeks after our return from Coburg last autumn. Of the woman’s, I kept nothing. Her handwriting, sloping across the cream-coloured laid; her extraordinary confidence, as she shattered my Darling’s world—I felt much better for watching them go up in flames.
By the time von Stühlen rode in from Hampstead, I was having my breakfast on a tray.
He told me what he could of the ruin of poor Fyfe, our coachman, and of Fitzgerald’s escape. It will be best to avoid all scandal for the present—the Metropolitan Police are not to be informed—dear von Stühlen is to manage everything. I endeavoured to convey to the Count the depth of my gratitude, tears standing in my eyes. How fortunate I am that Albert’s beloved friend has not deserted me in Death! Indeed, I feel even his Divine Presence hovering near, just beyond the range of sight, gone the very instant I turn to look for him. I move, now, in an extraordinary kind of peace—his guidance consoles me.
Not even the intelligence von Stühlen could supply—that Miss Georgiana Armistead was injured last night in Fitzgerald’s company—could overset that peace. Clearly, Providence has ordered events according to Its will—I am but an instrument.
If only dear Albert had accepted as much, while he yet lived—
Chapter Six
The German count had spoken the truth, as far as it went, Fitzgerald thought: no evidence of the deadly palisade was to be found on Hampstead Heath.
He had seen Georgiana safely into a carriage bound for Russell Square, then set out on foot to view the wreckage himself. It was easy enough to find—perhaps a half mile back along the rutted carriageway meandering toward the village from the north. In the darkness of the previous hours his breathless struggle to carry an insensible woman had felt endless; in daylight, he’d managed the short distance in a few minutes.
A welter of churned mud announced the place. The carriage still lay where it had overturned, down the side of a ditch half-buried in the Heath; its shafts were shattered like straws. Fragments of wood and glass littered the bracken, and two of the four-horse team lay dead on the slope, legs splayed and eyes staring. The remaining pair, presumably, had broken free of the traces and run off into the night fog, suffering God knew what fate.
Torning’s party of men—three labourers from the village—were busy collecting rubbish; one of them was securing canvas tackle to the chest of a dead horse, preparatory to dragging it away.
“Poor beast,” Fitzgerald said.
The man glanced up. Sandy hair, a face indeterminately middle-aged, the nose blunt and veined. A drinker in Torning’s pub; a man of solid substance, with the neatly-mended clothes of a family prop.
“Terrible accident, it was. Coachman was drunk as a lord—broke his neck. And the Queen’s coachman, at that. As if they hadn’t enough of death, last night, at Windsor.”