by Mark Helprin
As Freddy sat by his mother’s bedside while she slept, the monarchy seemed stripped away, diminished, and reduced to nothing in light of his love for her. And yet he felt the monarchy also throbbing with life and rising to glorious proportions. The less he knew it to be, the greater it seemed. That it could have survived a thousand clarifying deaths, that it remained, so stubbornly, after those who made it had gone, forced him to see it in a new and admirable light even as it was diminished. Caught in such a cross fire, he was powerless. He had the distinct impression that something was happening, as if a wheel that had turned many times before was turning again, and that he was not actor but object. The primacy of family and the inescapability of death, both of which made monarchy look small, were as well its two great pillars, and as force drained out of it, force was flowing in. It was like the lock of a canal, in which the draining of one chamber lifts the boat in another, and the chamber that has been emptied is refilled by an ever-flowing stream.
With Philippa slipping away, speaking as beautifully and tenderly, perhaps, as George III, who believed that he conversed with angels, Freddy felt the world realign. He had been the end of a miraculous process, the promise of the future, the heir, and now he was moving to the middle rank, where he would be merely a custodian waiting his turn to depart. The miracle and heir was Fredericka’s unborn child. Although the power and whatever glory was left in the throne would be his, now he could not help but be as sober as his mother, with a full understanding in his heart of what was to come and what was demanded of him.
“I did not abdicate,” Philippa had told him not long before, while she lay in the bed in which she was now dying, “because of your father. It was difficult enough for him to be the husband of the monarch. To have been overshadowed by his son before my death would have been intolerable. And I did not abdicate because, to be a king, you must know . . . this.”
“Know what, Mother?” Freddy had asked, too quickly.
“This,” she repeated, with angelic calm.
All the while that he had been desperately thinking, comforted and afflicted equally by memory and regret, the sun had run its unvarying course and paused for nothing and no one, and now it was nearly dark. The newly cold air fell to the ground, displacing warm air laden with the perfumes of the grass, and this scented air invisibly unrolling and unfurling in the dusk now came through the windows.
Upon realising that several hours had passed, Freddy went to his mother. She breathed weakly and fast. When he kissed her, she opened her eyes and looked at him with such an otherworldly tranquillity that he knew she had begun to rise from her body. He could sense the slow but unmistakable progress of ascension. The lines had been cast off, as she had said, and he could almost make them out trailing gracefully like the weightless things they were. He told her that he loved her, and that he would get the others.
Then, concentrated and determined, he left to tell them that she needed them right away. The steps from her bedside to the door seemed like the distance between the stars, and by the time he opened the door, he could not speak.
The doctor passed Freddy on the way in, and Freddy, unable to say anything—for now he realised that he had seen her die, and that he had known it, and not known it—simply stood in place, tears falling silently from him, his world in full collapse.
Paul dropped his head to his chest. With his left hand, he hit his right shoulder. Freddy’s brother and sister wept. Now they were just a family, whose mother had died. They went in. Freddy would never understand how he had had the strength to turn. He would have no memory of how he had moved himself from facing one way to facing another, but he had, and, somehow, he and they had come into the room where Philippa lay.
The doctor was bent over her, with the understandable curiosity and efficiency of a physician making this, the last of determinations. It was his job, and he did it gently but fast. When he finished, he disengaged his stethoscope, let it clasp around his neck, and straightened.
He was an old-fashioned man, and the long history of Britain ran through his heart and his mind. A loyal subject, he acknowledged the others, and looked directly at Freddy. And then, bravely, but with great emotion, he said, “The queen is dead. Long live the king.”
CRAIG-VYVYAN AND CORONATION
ANY ESTEEM in which Freddy had been held by the public after Philippa’s death quickly vanished during her funeral in Westminster Abbey. Hearts primed for sympathy, all of Britain and a great deal of the world saw an extraordinarily self-contained new king whose expression revealed nothing. This was no longer the way even of the English, who had come to love public display of emotion. Still, the fleet of crows and jackdaws that provided commentary to accompany the televised images drew out their viewers’ disillusion and anger—for their stock-in-trade was prolongation—with the observation that perhaps Freddy was so distraught as to be dazed, and that he was undoubtedly overwhelmed by the prospect of being king and the possibility that, due to his chequered past, he might be called upon well before his coronation to give way in favour of his stable and boring younger brother.
For the first hour of the ceremony, the public vacillated between its views of Freddy the daft and Freddy the burdened, withholding judgement until some word, sign, or action would solidify opinion one way or another. This then came as Philippa’s coffin was lifted by the prime minister and other unworthies and borne past the new king as he knelt in his pew.
How shocked the world was, from Stockholm to Peru, to see the casket float past a son who did not even look in its direction. This was unforgivable, and when the scene was replayed and analysed, close-ups of his face showed an unmistakable indifference, as if the coffin visible over his left shoulder did not hold the remains of the departed queen, his mother.
In newspapers and over the air, in living rooms and in the pubs, one commentator after another said more or less the same damning thing. What kind of a king is he? What kind of a man is this former Prince of Wales? When his mother’s coffin was borne past him, it was as if she were not in it.
And, in fact, she was not. In a mystery for archaeologists a thousand years hence, who would wonder what had become of this millennial queen whose recorded burial place was false, the coffin lowered into the floor of the abbey held her weight in sandbags. Her family would go to their graves without mentioning Philippa’s last deed, though for years to come they would catch each other’s eyes—at stifling dinner parties or in royal ceremonies—and, in the triumphant smile that only the eye can smile, communicate to one another their delight at her escape.
IMMEDIATELY UPON her death, the family had been shepherded by their father into her sitting room. Numbed or weeping, they settled into chairs and sofas. Paul rested his head upon his hands. Everyone thought he would say nothing and that time would continue to pass grievously. But soon he raised himself in his chair and pulled a thick envelope from his jacket pocket.
“She wanted me to read this,” he said, fielding his reading glasses, “to all of you. I don’t know what it is.”
He held one of her envelopes, sealed with her seal, and this he opened like a householder unveiling an electric bill. Inside was a slightly smaller envelope, also sealed, and a sheet of notepaper, from which he read: “ ‘Only the immediate family should hear this. You must, all of you, agree to keep what follows with you forever, and never divulge it—even on your deathbeds, even to your beloved children. The beauty of a secret actually kept is how it purifies the heart that keeps it.
“ ‘Make sure the doors are locked and that no one is listening. At this moment, your privacy will be respected, and no servants should be about. Freddy, now king of England, make a fire in the fireplace. As I write I can picture you, in your special way, cutting the kindling into beautifully hewn sticks, halving them, building a structure like a house, sweeping up the chips and shavings to light first. Never since you were a very young man have I seen you miss with the hatchet, and your force and judgement with it have given me comfort that eve
ntually you would have the force and precision required of a king. I know that Craig-Vyvyan has yet to fly, and that you may not remain a king, but, Freddy, now you are one, so make this fire accordingly.’ ”
Paul looked up at his son, who moved toward the fireplace. They watched him as he followed his mother’s command slowly and with the satisfaction that she was still speaking to him, and that, at a time when it felt as if things had come to an end, the act of building a fire would lead on. With each ring of the hatchet, the practical placement of the newly hewn sticks, and the elevation of split logs upon the structure Freddy had built, the grief of a small family had first begun to subside. When the new king was done with cutting the wood and building the fire, he heard his father say, “Light it.” Freddy struck a match, staring for a moment into the flame. Then he touched it to the shavings, which were quickly transformed into light and smoke. The light had come as if from nothing, and the light and heat grew until the fire burned as the queen had commanded.
Freddy stayed at the hearth, his arms around his knees in the manner of a flexible adolescent. Fredericka went to join him. It was an extraordinary picture, the king and queen by the fire, both ordinary and blessed, in the full stream of life, powerless and waiting, as the bereaved husband read.
“ ‘The fire is for burning this and the letter that follows after they are read. Now burn this and the envelopes, so that only the letter remains. And when you see them take flame, remember that life is short, and let nothing keep you from the truth. As I write in anticipation of death, I regret every moment that I could not stay steady in truth.’ ”
Paul cast the note and envelopes into the fire. The family watched in silence as the heavy paper momentarily resisted the flames, browned, was surrounded by a small storm of combustion, and then lost its substance as it rose up in bright yellow light on its way to somewhere beyond reach. He replaced his glasses and, holding the letter in a way that showed that he knew that it, too, would soon be gone forever, read the familiar and impressive script.
“ ‘All my life, except when I was a very little girl, I have stayed at my station on behalf of Britain, the Empire, and the Commonwealth. Though accustomed to comforts and privileges, I would have preferred to do without them if that had been the price for escaping a life lived entirely according to the expectations of others. I believe that I have been put in this position by God—otherwise, how could I have got here?—and although one cannot say so these days, I believe in the divine right. I do not, however, find the system of aristocracy, with its thousands of prissy, rotted, and rarified layers, either justified or attractive. Fortunately and unfortunately, we are at the head of that system, and as a family we continually sink back into it, for, as there is only one sun, there can be only one monarch.
“ ‘Many times, I have wished to abdicate, but in view of the last crisis of succession I could not, and stayed to make the best of it. Having served during the war and been relatively free before my father’s death, I know enough of the world to understand how foolish it is for people to direct their curiosity, envy, and dreams at us. It is they who possess the wide world, not we, they who go freely beyond the garden walls, in a vast, rich, ever-changing hive, and we who are trapped in strange costumes and drafty rooms.
“ ‘I find unbearable the thought of lying forever within a royal tomb and hearing for eternity, were I able, the murmur of tourists piecing out my epitaph. That would be like writing one’s name on a blackboard twenty million times in a strange alphabet. I would prefer to avoid the indignity of serving as the bones in an architecture of momentary and superficial curiosity, although that is what the government and people will demand.
“ ‘I would rather that you set me free, and have arranged that you may do so. When we were young, in a different era—unplasticised—your father and I spent several weeks on the island of St Rose in the Leewards. I was the heir to the throne, but as I had not ascended—and mightn’t have—far less attention was devoted to me, and we could break from our escort and motor up into the mountains. This we did on more than one occasion, and, once, we found a river with a fall that had a deep pool at its foot, an hour from the road.
“ ‘We forged through the brush, and when we arrived we were scratched and bleeding in hundreds of places, our clothes torn, sweat and dirt on our faces as if we were miners. But we were alone. The water washed us clean and cooled us, and the continuous sound as it thundered down brought us somewhere we had never been before and have not been since. We stayed there the whole day. We ate the fruit that hung on the trees and drank the water in which we swam. No palace and no luxury I have seen in my long life can compare.
“ ‘It is, nonetheless, not where I have chosen to spend eternity. I do not wish to be taken up into the vines and fragrant soil of that place, and spread among the mangrove roots and the mud where the river flows into the sea. I would rather be in the sea itself, in the warm translucent glass of waters that surround the island with blue and green. I am unusually familiar with sapphires and emeralds, but whereas in their purity these are cold, the sea is not. They are still, and it moves. They are dead, and it is alive, flowing without cease, and that is where I want to be, drifting free across windblown waves, sparkling in the sun, riding the foam in storms, or sleeping in the silence of the deep. If I may have it.
“ ‘I knew upon my coronation that such rest would not be allowed to me, so I have taken various steps, though you must take for me the last. Soon after my coronation, I started the much resented practice of taking on ancient chamberlains and other staff, and then, after a year or two of their service, setting up their families upon their deaths. This was inefficient, frowned upon by the monsters of the Civil List, and apparently without purpose, but it was excellent charity, and these old fellows, the last of whom passed on fairly recently, connived with me and then took to their graves the knowledge of what we had arranged.
“ ‘Thus, you will find a simple pine box in the room next to the room where my elaborate casket lies in wait. No one has been in that room and no one knows what is there. The keys for each coffin are taped to the upper left undersurface within the large drawer of the hunt table in my study, the one where I keep books that are next to be read. In the pine box you will find, for a Mrs Wicks—a maid long in my service who, needless to say, never existed—a death certificate, cremation order, transport directive, etc. You will also find some bags of sand to weight the more elaborate of the two coffins.
“ ‘I know from experience that it is not too unpleasant to be near the body of someone familiar even after the soul has departed. There is no horror, but a comfort that comes of love. Know that even if my hand falls like a semaphore, I appreciate now that you will carry me. It is my wish. I trust you to honour it, and hope that swimming in the same sea in which I will stay for the rest of time will be as satisfying for you as it is for me to anticipate it here in England—which I love beyond measure—now that, as I write, the leaves have fallen and are flattening beneath a cold driving rain.’ ”
IT SEEMED TO FREDDY that the plane that carried the royal family ascended all the way across the Atlantic. Though they had reached cruising altitude less than an hour after departure, still it felt as if they rose gradually and without cease. He listened to the sound of the engine, and thought carefully upon it. It was an all-encompassing, wind-like roar that seemed somehow to be green (Freddy associated all words, sounds, ideas, and sights with other things, and was unable to exist for even a second without a flood of images that multiplied the glories and wonders of the world). He saw in his mind’s eye the turbines spinning in a blur of jungle colours. That is what the frequency and pitches, combining, said to him. He knew that to keep the four turbines rotating, a thousand things had to go right, that forces, stresses, and chemical reactions by the trillion had to be disciplined to one purpose, and that as the plane lifted through the clouds its forward momentum contributed to the certainty of such things, overriding what might have been explosive anarchy.<
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He was the king of England now, and even though it did not know it, all England paused a little in his absence as his procession took him overseas. How many illustrations had he seen of the monarch proceeding with a train of splendid horses and retainers under flags as uncountable as wild flowers in a field? As a child he had watched from the royal train as it steamed through the countryside and people stopped, turned, and put down their tools, shielding their eyes from the sun, to salute the queen even when they could not see her. While the queen was on it, that train, trailing a lariat of white steam as it rushed north to Scotland or out to Bristol, was the centre of Britain, because the people had decided that it would be.
Freddy was born at the tip of an ancient, fast, and steady arrow that nonetheless was falling to earth. To stay steady upon it, he had to master the art of stillness, of doing nothing, of the unquestioning acceptance of the fate that had put him in such a position. It was hardly a coincidence that his life heretofore had been a study in waiting, for the job of the king was to be the unmoving centre of countless orbits. Immense power merely flowed through him, and was not his to exercise. The object of his life was to be the exemplar of restraint. Freddy thought to write a letter to the emperor of Japan, discussing this, but he then realised that neither he nor the emperor would ever write such a letter, that duty and restraint prevented it, but that, still, the emperor knew, and he knew, and that when they met they would not even allude to such a thing.
