“Do they still play?”
“Yes. Every evening.”
“And have they ever forgiven you for not filling their big house in the country with children?”
Again, Melody shrugged.
This was not the conversation she had expected to have with the Queen Empress of Spain in Exile; sometimes, life was full of surprises. So, she went with the flow.
“No,” she shook her head, “I think they got used to that around the same time that I did.”
Queen Sophie gestured for her to walk with her.
Together the two women emerged into the afternoon sunshine. Nearby, there was a sisterly squabble in progress between the two royal princesses.
The Queen looked to her companion.
“You are not at all like me,” she said, sighing a little laugh.
“Oh, I don’t…”
“Forgive me. It is just that I was afraid that you would be exactly like me. But I am glad that you are not.”
Melody halted, unable to do anything about the spontaneous frown forming on her lips or the questions in her eyes.
“You’re the Queen of Spain and I’m a lawyer turned detective turned spook who just wants a quiet life,” she said, despite her best intentions, a little peevishly.
Queen Sophie nodded, seemed to inadvertently chew her bottom lip for a moment.
“You must understand that Alonso and I grew up together, or rather, when we were teenagers, we moved about within the same fringes of the same court society. In another age we would have married and lived happily ever after but,” a waving away motion of her right hand, “it was not and could never be. It would have been, literally, the death of us both. But I still remember the way I felt about him; and I am confident that his recently expressed, foolishly suicidal loyalty to my person, reflects that he too shares that memory. But…”
“But,” Melody echoed, utterly confused.
Am I really having this conversation?
She was tempted to pinch herself.
The other woman took pity on her.
In fact, Melody got the distinct impression, that she was a little guilty to be unburdening herself to a stranger.
“I will never again be the Queen of Spain,” the other woman said, “and while I live, there will be no government in exile, or pretender to the Catholic Throne of Madrid. Not in my name. In time, I will negotiate a truce, and accept whatever penance must be served to guarantee the safety of my daughters. Alonso must accept that. I will have no more bloodshed in my name to recover a throne which almost certainly cannot survive another generation. To be frank, I tried my best to nudge and to tempt my country into the modern world, and I failed. I must live with that. Even if it breaks my dear Alonso’s brave heart.”
The women began to walk, very slowly down aisles bordered with freshly planted shrubs and colourful borders. They were in a walled garden with lemon and lime trees interspersed around the walls, and the spring air hummed with the buzzing of bees.
“This palace was the seat of the House of Braganza. The last King of the Portuguese of that house, gifted it to the nation when he went into exile in London. His grandson practices law, at the Lower Bar of Lincoln’s Inn, I believe. Perhaps, one day my family will find something useful to do with themselves. Presently, I am an embarrassment to the government in Lisbon, reliant wholly on the charity and forbearance of the present Royal House of Portugal.”
They reached a corner and began to walk back towards the Orangery.
“A Papal Bull has been promulgated excommunicating my person, and that of Alonso, and his heirs, in perpetuity from the Grace of God and the communion of the Mother Church. The King, my husband, has already seized the estates of the Medina Sidonia family, and taken Alonso’s former wife, the Duchess Amelia, under the protection of the Crown.”
Melody tried to work out what all that meant in practice; coming to the general conclusion that things had worked out as badly for Alonso as she thought they had.
Queen Sophie sighed.
“Alonso is no longer married to his wife. Ironically, he only married her because my husband, Ferdinand, willed it. I think that at the time, he was terrified that I would elope with him. Amelia is pious to a fault, a beauty of the cold, dreary sort and she and Alonso’s two daughters have maintained a separate house for the last ten years. My husband, the King is also a similarly pious, not very clever man and I would not be surprised if he does not, at some stage, seek to set Amelia up as some kind of platonic mistress cum confessor.”
Melody was starting to think she had had a reality bypass.
“In any event, in the sight of God, and the Spanish state, Alonso is no longer married to Amelia. He is a free man. Free to re-marry. His old career is over. His new life is before him and now that he has been reunited with his son, I can have no further claim on him. At least not as his Queen, if not his friend for that I can never cease to be.”
Queen Sophie, realising Melody was a little bit shell-shocked by all of this, took sympathy on her.
“So, for his sake and for Pedro’s sake, Alonso must marry a strong woman to keep him on the straight and narrow. Plainly, it seems to me that this is a thing much complicated, and obliquely, much simplified by the self-evident fact that he is clearly bewitched by two such women!”
Melody was blinking uncontrollably.
The exiled Queen Empress smiled, halting at the door to the Orangery, her gaze following the progress of her daughters, the two Infantas, as yet just children unaware of the maelstrom they had escaped, gleefully chasing each other around the garden.
“You will need to discuss this with Lord De L’Isle’s daughter, obviously,” the other woman said, taking Melody’s right hand in her own and fixing her with a stare that was nothing if not regal, “but please, do not delay overlong. People will begin to talk and that would cause us all much pain which frankly, is best avoided at this time.”
Melody did not remember walking back into the Orangery, or sitting down, or a footman materialising to pop the Champagne cork, or to half-fill the fluted glasses with the bubbling, fizzing issue from the chilled bottle.
The Infantas had run in, breathless.
They had been allowed a sip of Champagne each and dismissed, indulgently, so that they could continue their chasing game outside.
“To what are we drinking?” Alonso, who had drifted into the Orangery, materialising by Melody’s side, asked of his Queen.
“Miss Danson and I have had a very interesting conversation,” he was informed in a gently teasing voice.
“I am intrigued.”
“I am sure that Melody will tell you all about it, in due course. In the meantime, I want to hear all about her adventures in the Mountains of Madrid with the Lady De L’Isle!”
Chapter 12
Friday 28th April
Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin
Eleanor, Queen Consort and Duchess of Windsor, never really felt relaxed in Berlin. Partly, this was because her command of the German language was ‘schoolgirlish’, and unlike her husband, she was not actually closely related to anybody of any importance in the city. There was also the fact that in Berlin most German men of a certain class – the ruling class – treated women with barely veiled condescension or as ignorant, pretty faces to be ‘talked at’. Whereas at home, or practically anywhere in the Empire no invitation to her husband would have specifically excluded her; here in Germany, other than in respect of wholly social events, or designated political ceremonies, she was automatically excluded, ignored as if she did not exist.