The Queen's Secret: A Novel of England's World War II Queen

by Karen Harper

  I hugged him hard as we went inside and hurried down to our royal prison. And as we rushed into that solid cell of a room in the dim light, I nearly stumbled over a body—no, two!—on the floor.

  Bertie grabbed my hand and righted me. Oh, our royal Norwegian guests, Bertie’s uncle by marriage and his son, asleep—indeed, both snoring!

  Prince Olav stirred and sat up. A handsome man in his late thirties, he was here in London with his father and their government in exile. He was the king’s heir and only child and, had he been much younger, would have been a good prospect for Lilibet, however much I wanted her to marry British nobility.

  “Oh, sorry, Uncle and Aunt Windsor,” Olav said, obviously shaking himself awake and scrambling to his feet with a slight bow as his father snored on. “Best, we thought, to sleep down here once the noise began.”

  “A blessing you can sleep,” I said, “but perhaps not so near the door. And I have very good news for you both, especially since the palace is an obvious target. I’ve arranged for both of you to move into Lord Harewood’s house in Green Street, Mayfair, where I hope things will be cozier and quieter. Better for sleeping.”

  “We are so grateful for your hospitality, Aunt Elizabeth, so grateful, and I’ll tell Father right now when I wake him to move him.”

  “No—later will be fine, if we all make it till dawn in this jail cell,” Bertie said. “We’ll know to step over you next time—and step harder on those damned Nazis, yes?”

  * * *

  Christmas 1940 and New Year’s 1941 were quite bleak, not only for the continued night bombing and bitter weather. We now faced the second year England must stand alone on our island under fierce air attack. Of course, our allies across the Channel were in enemy hands; German aeroplanes launched the night attacks from French bases. Yet we tried to make the holidays as cheery as we could for our daughters and our people.

  We were heartened by our continued closer partnership with Winston. In January he wrote the king, Your Majesty’s treatment of me has been intimate and generous to a degree that I had never deemed possible. And when I had walked him to the palace door after one of our “picnics,” he had repeated the same words to me, adding, “It is a truth that neither the king nor I could do without you, ma’am.” I cherished that moment.

  February brought a bit of sun, but no real hope of American help. At least their Congress was debating a Lend-Lease Act that would give Britain extended credit so we could afford to purchase equipment, oil, and other goods and not have to pay for them until the end of the war. Perhaps even more good could come from a meeting Winston hoped to have with President Roosevelt somewhere neutral this coming summer—if summer even came. There were, however, new fears of invasion.

  Yet I managed to keep my chin up, at least in public. Our nights and weekends at Windsor Castle gave me some respite in a weather thaw that February.

  I walked into my bedroom at the castle, ready to ring for Bessie for my facial cream routine, when from behind a curtain a man I did not know appeared and grabbed me by the ankles and toppled me to the floor.

  His expression was distorted by rage. He looked quite insane, distracted and unkempt, and kept mumbling something that made no sense. My first instinct was to scream, but he set me free and sat back on his heels, glancing around the room while I righted myself as far as getting to my knees. Though he seemed to have no weapon, I had the feeling that if I screamed he might do more.

  God forbid, but he did look mad, with his eyes darting about the room. I calmed myself, biding my time to get to my feet and flee, or at least to be able to ring the bell for Bessie. Strangely, I felt I had seen that wretched, distracted look on some of the wounded I had visited recently, or even years ago on some of the soldiers we tended at Glamis in the first war, including two of my own brothers, Jock and Mike.

  “Tell me about it,” I said, quietly, recalling how I had calmed those others. “Tell me what happened.”

  “My family was killed by the Blitz. I deserted from the Army, had to see for myself. Nothing left, them in unmarked graves. I . . . I been hired here to fix the lights, but there’s no lights where my wife and two sons been buried.”

  “I am so sorry,” I told him, getting carefully to my feet and edging away toward the bell to ring for help. “And you’ve been hired here as an electrician?”

  He nodded, seeming to look through me rather than at me. He muttered, “Was repairing Spitfire motors at the aerodrome if they got shot up. I’m good as shot up.”

  My pulse pounded harder as he produced a pistol. He held it loosely, but his finger was on the trigger. Would he shoot himself or me? At Glamis years ago one shell-shocked soldier had killed himself with a gun.

  I stopped shuffling toward the pull cord that rang for Bessie and my dresser Catherine. I prayed neither Lilibet nor Margot would come bouncing through the door right now, but they must be in bed. I did not believe Bertie would come in, for he had made it clear he wanted me to come to him for comfort. He was even wooing me for more, but with the war . . .

  “I know how to shoot a pistol too,” I told the man. “May I hold it to see if it is like mine?”

  “Not a war weapon. It was my father’s and made it through the bombs,” he said and started to sob.

  Rather than rushing for the pull cord, I approached him and took the pistol from his trembling hand. I sensed he was not going to harm me but shoot himself, perhaps here with the king and queen nearby in some sort of warped protest.

  I walked as calmly as I could manage to the bell cord and pulled it.

  “I’m locked up with them in the grave,” he muttered so low with sobbing that I could barely make out his words.

  I understood. How I missed my darling mother Cecilia and my dear, dear brother Fergus who had met a terrible fate.

  When Bessie came in and I whispered for her to bring guards, wide-eyed she darted out to seek help.

  Our guards took the limp and sobbing man away with his pistol. Bertie ran in, quite incensed, but I calmed him down. It turned out that the man had been hired through the Ministry of Labour and his background had not been thoroughly checked, so we had a bit of a mess over that. I blamed bureaucracy and men overly busy with the war for that security slip.

  We tried to keep that news private, but Winston and the cabinet knew of the breach. Even, somehow, the Australian prime minister who visited London that next week knew. According to Winston, Robert Menzies had pronounced me “as wise and shrewder than all in the cabinet.” Winston said if he meant that as a slam on our war cabinet, so be it, but he happened to agree.

  And that comment, I felt, despite the fact I had visions of that poor man locked up in some sort of institution for mental defectives, almost made the frightening encounter worthwhile.

  * * *

  That night, when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of the monster of Glamis, locked up in a windowless, airless room, or was it a shelter from the bombs, or even a room in an institution for the mentally ill?

  But the monster had a face—two faces—not that of the man who had invaded my rooms at Windsor, but of my own nieces, daughters of my brother Jock. I had not seen Nerissa and Katherine Bowes Lyon for several years, for they suffered from a mental disease that was rumored to have run in our family for generations, and they were kept close at home. But their faces and fate were locked in my mind.

  Even though I was lost in heavy sleep, I knew Nerissa would be about twenty-one years now and Katherine fourteen or so, near Lilibet’s age. I dreamed of playing with them again, tending them during family reunions, trying to ignore their halting, jerking movements. They made strange faces over nothing—or was it over the bombing of their brains, their fear of the man with the pistol?

  I pulled myself from sodden sleep and sat bolt upright in bed and looked around my dim bedroom at Windsor. Had bombs awakened me? No, a thunderstorm with lightning, but how unusual in February, how strange.

  I was perspiring and yet felt wracked with cold. I
pulled my knees up nearly to my chest and huddled under my down comforter but found no comfort. I turned over, wishing Bertie were here, but that was my own fault. Was I somehow a mental defective too? How that fear had haunted me, especially because I knew my nieces’ parents were considering placing them in the Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives in Surrey. Nerissa, Jock had told me, had been legally declared an imbecile.

  I tossed and turned, finally sitting up in bed and wrapping myself in my comforter like a cocoon. I would simply die if Lilibet or Margot were ill like that. And was that curse on our family truly passed down from the monster of Glamis? But did Bertie’s family too have a tinge of mental disease? His youngest brother, Prince John, had some epilepsy and other problems, so the family had partly hidden him away on the Sandringham estate, and the boy had died quite young.

  I was haunted by another thought. Bessie had told me of a man cut in half by one of the night bombs, before she apologized for telling me. But I told her I had heard such things in my hospital visits, and I was glad she shared that, for she looked ashen and haunted. Weren’t we all now?

  But it wasn’t that I had merely heard of some stranger being so horribly murdered by the Germans. It was my keen memory of what had happened to my dear brother Fergus that truly tortured me.

  With the coverlet wrapped around me, I hugged my knees hard, seeing him again in my head and heart. How I had loved him, even above my other, older brothers, even more than Mike who had been shell-shocked. Fergus used to ride me on his shoulders. He would tickle-wrestle little David until the child laughed so hard he could not breathe.

  So handsome in his Black Watch uniform was Fergus at his quickly arranged wedding to dear Christina before he left for the war. And those happy five days he had at home on leave at Glamis were the last time I ever saw him. He was twenty-six, and I fifteen.

  But we had dreadful news from the front that not only was Fergus declared dead but his body was missing. It was reported that a comrade said that Fergus had been leading an attack on the German lines in the Battle of Loos when his leg was blown off.

  I jolted now at the mere memory of first hearing that. I stretched my legs out, for my left calf muscles had cramped, so I scrambled out of bed onto the cold floor to try to walk it off. I could not fathom it then and still could not now: handsome, laughing, teasing Fergus blown apart then hit with bullets in his chest and shoulders, those strong shoulders.

  Even after the war, his body was not found and that obsessed me too. He had a daughter I tried to spoil with birthday and holiday gifts. But since there was no body, I sometimes pictured Fergus walking the vast halls and lawns of Glamis at night—or maybe even up in the hidden rooms we could never quite find.

  “Stop it!” I told myself as I paced madly, even stomping about a bit in my bare feet, trying to ease the leg cramp.

  Finally, I collapsed back in bed and drew a pillow to my chest in a hard hug. How I wished someone was here, but I would not ring for anyone. And say what, that I had a bad dream? That this current war with its maimed and dead made my thoughts turn to my long-lost brother? That the Prince of Wales, my husband’s brother, had so resembled dear Fergus that I suppose that’s why I once loved him from afar, and then up close?

  Perhaps if not for that last wayward thought, I would have gone down the hall to Bertie’s bed. I needed comforting, but I just grasped my pillow to me until my tears made it too wet to hold.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ghosts

  March began as a blustery month, and we wondered if the stiff winds ever made a Luftwaffe bomb miss its target or helped one of our little Spitfires or Hurricanes to catch up with the Messerschmitts. Winston had given one of his energizing speeches last year thanking the RAF: “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.” But the bombing went on.

  Yet my heart had been temporarily soothed, not so much by those stirring words as by a short poem sent to me by a lady in the United States, from Chicago, no less.

  Bertie laughed at it and Winston—despite his usual gloom in private lately—chortled when I read it to them. Both men were short-tempered but weren’t we all? I thought Winston might even have lost weight. I wished the war had that effect on me for I tended to eat more, especially sweets to keep my energy up and as a reward for getting through another dreadful day—that is, when I didn’t have a Dubonnet and gin nearby.

  The little poem made it into a newspaper. Now I wonder who released that to them through a new contact, the young woman photographer and reporter Rowena Fitzgerald. Perhaps someone, I thought, who had once released a certain dossier amongst the ruling classes of the Empire. The poem read,

  Be it said to your renown

  That you wore your gayest gown,

  Your bravest smile, and stayed in Town

  When London Bridge was burning down,

  My fair lady.

  “That’s a good one,” Winston had said behind his wreath of cigar smoke, which quite outdid Bertie’s constant puffs of cigarette clouds. “But what I really like, as well as a correct reading of our bold, bright queen, is that it indicates the American populace are quite aware of our troubles and our willingness to face them, but it is utter rubbish if they think we don’t desperately need their help.”

  Bertie said, “I think more Yanks are keen to help us than before. I say, I understand the fear of getting in with both feet after the so-called war to end all wars we’ve been through when they helped us over here. Surely, your summer meeting with President Roosevelt will help, Winston. We need troops as well as supplies. The thing is, with Roosevelt’s physical condition, it will be difficult for him to fly here, though he wants to. Actually, his crippled legs are mostly kept from the people there, and the press goes along with it. Elizabeth, go ahead and tell him your suggestion.”

  “Of course,” I said, turning toward Winston, “it would not be quite like having the president here, but what do you think about our—all three of us—inviting Mrs. Roosevelt to visit? It is well known that she is a strong, well-informed, and opinionated woman and has a say in things with her husband. And perhaps it would not annoy the Germans as much as if he were here himself, so that, during her visit, they might not go bomb crazy on the palace again.”

  “Humph,” Winston said, and I thought he would dismiss the idea, but he added, “Bomb crazy—that’s a good one. The blasted, bloody, bomb-blasting Germans are just plain crazy to follow that madman. Yes, let’s pursue that idea through royal and governmental channels. Perhaps your brother David, ma’am, who is serving us so well but low key in Washington, would be the best liaison for this invitation.”

  “A bully idea,” Bertie said, but Winston winked at me.

  “Of course, ma’am,” Winston went on, “you would think of that. Eleanor Roosevelt—a woman who has her powerful husband’s ear—is well informed and has ideas of her own. A lady who is, I hear, popular with the citizens there. Yes, Your Majesty,” he said, turning toward Bertie, “it takes one to know one, does it not?”

  * * *

  One evening at dusk, I walked through the rooms of the palace that we had made our living quarters, especially the ones that had rung with our girls’ laughter, for I was missing them awfully during the weeks we were in London. Lilibet and Margot had been very upset that the palace mews had been hit by a bomb, but at least we had long ago sent the horses into the countryside. Several state carriages and the girls’ pony carts were harmed, though.

  Just three days before that, Lilibet had given a talk on the BBC Children’s Hour radio program to the nation’s children. She had ended her short talk with words that now echoed in my mind: “We know, everyone of us, that in the end, all will be well.”

  But did we know that? Did Lilibet and Margot believe that now since the “home for their ponies” had been hit and our northside rooms, where we had lived here, had been thoroughly shaken?

  Lighting my way by electric torch, I strolled past the girls’ bedrooms, opening the doors and peeking
in each as I passed. The bombing of the north façade had interrupted lighting here, though slashes of dying daylight still filtered through the curtains. The wind moaned in the chimneys like human voices, and the smell of dust snagged in my nose, so I sneezed.

  How warm, light, and lively these rooms had seemed before the war. I could picture my dear ones snuggled up under their covers as I read them a story before they went to their own rooms to be tucked in. As soon as the war ended, when we had the funds, we must install central heating, for this winter had been cold, and this month of March had not improved things. If winter comes, can spring be far behind? This year it was far behind.

  Bertie had given me such a compliment when we had moved into this vast palace, reluctantly leaving our cozy London home. “Elizabeth could make a home anywhere!” he had boasted to our friends. But was this vast building really home when our girls were away? And when bombs ravaged its history and beauty?

  Again, I almost felt as if I heard high, childish voices and those of the nannies and governess. Years ago, Lilibet: “Mummy, Papa, look at what I drew on this paper, but Margot drew on the wall when Crawfie wasn’t looking!” More recently, Margot: “I don’t care if people say she will be queen, she’s not queen now, and she’s always telling me what to do!” And Lilibet, just before the girls had to leave London: “Be sure to tell Constable Robertson I will still walk the corgis after dinner at Windsor, even if he has to stay here to guard the palace. But when I come back, he can help again.”

  Dear, loyal Crawfie had once said living here was like camping in a museum. I jumped and squealed as a mouse skittered across the floor and disappeared under Margot’s bed frame, now stripped of linens.

  I moved on to the dark study above the Balcony Room. Poor Bertie and David had faced harsh lessons here, so Bertie had decreed it would only be a room to practice piano for our children. We both wanted their studies to be enjoyable, not grueling.