by Kate Johnson
When Clodagh stayed publicly silent, they called her aloof, and out of touch with her roots. When her mother or siblings spoke up—as they did frequently, somehow blissfully unaware that every friendly stranger they spoke to was a reporter—they were greeted with derision. The names her mother and her sisters had chosen for their offspring were ridiculed. Comedians did sketches about them. Cartoonists drew her as Vicky Pollard from Little Britain.
Every single person in the country seemed to have an opinion on the decisions she’d made as a scared fifteen-year-old. And not just in the country; politicians and lobbyists and advocacy groups all weighed in on what she’d done right and what she’d done wrong; mostly what she’d done wrong. Tabloids and clickbait sites all over the place kept offering rewards for information about the baby she’d ‘abandoned’.
There were days when she went out of her way to avoid it all, and still got smacked in the face with it. Days when she came home from whatever beautifying exercise had occupied her time, and wept in Jamie’s arms.
And then she straightened up, wiped the tears away, and told herself to be a fucking grown-up about it all.
Jamie checked his watch as they turned off towards Windsor, and pressed the intercom button. “Frogmore first,” he said, and got a reply in the affirmative.
“Frogmore?”
“One of the homes in the Home Park,” Jamie said.
“Ah yes. Why have one royal residence in the grounds when you can have several, all within an easy few hours of each other?”
“This was the dower house for Victoria’s mother. It’s only open for a few private tours in the spring. The mausoleum is where half the family are buried.”
“Oh, lovely.”
“It was bought by George III for Queen Charlotte. Shall we check for portraits?”
She’d been expecting something modest. Well, modest by royal standards. But Frogmore House turned out to be just as palatial as everything else.
“Don’t you people have small houses?” she said, as she craned her neck to see it all.
“However would we fit our egos inside?”
He led her inside, and Clodagh tried not to be shocked anew at the grandeur and scale of the place. She’d thought she was used to all the splendour now, but every time she saw something new a fresh sense of wonder, mixed with terror, settled over her.
“The family uses it for events sometimes,” said Jamie, leading her through rooms painted with flowers. The early evening sunshine glinted off the gilt accents present in several of the rooms—hell, present in every royal room Clodagh had been in. “But the public don’t come here often. I thought,” he said, coming to a halt in a gallery draped in red and taking her in his arms, “you could spend the night before the wedding here.”
“Here?” She looked around at the high windows giving out onto the picturesque lake and gardens. “I mean I suppose I could sleep in a chair…”
He kissed her ear. “Silly. I mean in one of the bedrooms. You could have one, and Oll could have one, and your mum could…” He paused as she winced, “…stay in a hotel in town.”
“Good, yes, I like that idea. Or the whole thing will be derailed by her insisting on a diamanté manicure because it looks well classy, and using my veil to wipe a toddler’s nose.”
Jamie laughed softly. He and Clodagh had made very polite excuses about being busy whenever Clodagh’s mum had offered to visit, and in the end scheduled a visit somewhere they could meet on somewhat neutral ground. None of her family knew about the wedding. Clodagh had begun idly wondering if they’d fall for an all-expenses paid holiday somewhere exotic for the whole duration.
“Are you sure you want Oll as your maid of honour?” Jamie asked her. “Shouldn’t it be one of your sisters?”
“No. No, no way, and never, which is incidentally what I might start calling them,” she said, resting her face against his neck. “Oh God, Jamie, they’re going to be a nightmare.”
“They’ll be fine. I mean, mad clothes and too much bling and incomprehensible accents are more or less what my family do, so yours will be no different.”
“Hah. That old cliché that common people and posh people are the same? You’re still in for a helluva shock.”
He stroked her face. “Good job I’m marrying you, then, and not them.” He kissed her softly. “Come on. Let’s go try out the bedrooms.”
They were grand, even the ones not kept roped off for the public tours. The beds were large and, Clodagh was pleased to discover, at least one of them was particularly bouncy.
“You are a wicked man,” she said as she lay beside Jamie, trying to get her breath back. Sweat cooled on her skin. It was a warm July day and the royal family didn’t seem to believe in air conditioning.
“You seemed to think I was quite good about five minutes ago,” he replied. He propped himself up on one elbow and traced a line with one finger between her breasts.
“Please tell me you locked the door.”
“There’s no one else here. Unless…” He cupped his ear as if listening. “Oh yes, that’ll be the WI private tour.”
Clodagh walked her fingers over his hip. “And here we have the Crown Jewels…”
“Now who’s wicked?” He captured her fingers for a kiss. “Just think, night before the wedding, you’ll have some good memories of this room.”
She smiled and pulled him towards her for a kiss, but they were interrupted by the buzzing of his phone.
“Yeah? Okay. Just… give us ten minutes, yeah?”
He cast her a sheepish glance. “It’s okay, there’s no public around.”
“Are you telling me I look a mess?” She sat up and groaned at her reflection. “Jamie!”
“You don’t look a mess, you look…” His gaze travelled her bare body, and he grinned.
“Yes, exactly. I’m not turning up at a royal palace, regardless of the public, looking like I’ve just been shagged.”
Jamie stretched luxuriously, then swung to his feet. “It’s a good look on you.”
At least these days she had enough make-up—and decent stuff, at that—in her bag to do a repair job. Olivia was on at her to get her underarms Botoxed to prevent sweating, and on a day like this Clodagh could almost see her point.
A rushed ten minutes later, she was dressed and presentable, and Jamie was taking her back to the car, which thankfully did have air conditioning and let her cool down enough for the next thing.
“What is the next thing?” she said, as the car drove through the streets of Windsor.
Jamie motioned out of the window.
“I’m going to show you where we’re getting married.”
There were signs everywhere warning them that Windsor Castle was closed to visitors and that St George’s Chapel was holding no further services that day. The Range Rover, of course, ignored all that and drove straight in, clearly expected.
Clodagh stared around. It wasn’t what she’d expected, resembling more of a village green than a castle. Around it were crenelated cottages, arched cloisters and a herringbone redbrick house not unlike their own in Cambridge. And then there was a huge edifice with stained glass windows. Part of the castle, she supposed. These residences were huge.
“Your Royal Highness,” greeted a man in the robes of the clergy. “Miss Walsh. If you’ll follow me…”
He led them to a door in the castle. “We’d prefer not to be disturbed,” Jamie said, and the man hesitated. “This has been cleared by my security team and private secretary?”
He phrased it as a question, but it was clearly intended as a statement. The clergyman backed down, and Jamie winked at her as he led her inside.
“Welcome to St George’s Chapel,” he said, and Clodagh looked at him in confusion.
“Chapel? But this place is…”
She stepped inside and looked around the cathedral-like space. A soaring, vaulted ceiling. Side chapels gated off from the main nave. One entire wall made up of individual stained glass panels,
through which the last of the evening light flooded. Marble sculptures of astonishing size and beauty.
“…huge,” she finished, eyes wide. “You said it was a chapel!”
“It’s a large chapel,” Jamie allowed, striding out into the middle of the massive space as if he owned the place. Which he nearly did. “Look, the West Window, the third largest in England apparently. Fifteen by five panels, that’s seventy-five. Are you still impressed by my maths skills?” he joked, as Clodagh stood with her mouth open.
Her eyes tried to calculate the distance from the doors beneath the West Window to the altar. “It’s a long aisle.”
“Um,” said Jamie.
Clodagh narrowed her eyes, and he gave her a charming grin before towing her forward, behind what she’d taken to be the altar.
“Are we supposed to—oh, okay,” she said, as he tugged her under an elaborately carved archway into a whole new section of chapel beyond.
“That was just the nave,” he told her. “This,” he walked backwards and spread his arms, “is the Quire.”
Clodagh looked around. Dammit, she really should have looked all this up online before she said yes. Not that there was much alternative. The Queen had said Windsor, so Windsor it would be; and besides, it wasn’t as if Westminster Abbey or St Pauls were precisely small and intimate.
There’s a church just up the road from my mum. It’s not the ugliest Brutalist church you ever saw and some days it doesn’t even get vandalised. Let’s get married there.
There were carved wooden stalls either side of the black and white chequered aisle. Fashioned into seats, they were softly lit by little lamps. Beyond them was the proper altar, huge and impressive, backed with yet more exquisite carving and stained glass.
“What d’you think?” said Jamie.
Clodagh managed to close her mouth, swallow, and said, “I think I’m really not posh enough for this.”
He came back to her and put an arm around her shoulder. “Nonsense. You deserve it. My wife deserves it.”
Clodagh took another deep breath and let it out. “Your wife.” I will be his wife. Jamie’s wife. If she thought about it like that, and didn’t think about the whole duchess bit, it was okay.
“Yep. That’s what happens after we get married,” he explained helpfully. “You become my wife.”
“Hah.”
“And I become your husband. We belong to each other, you see.”
Clodagh laid her head on his shoulder and he pressed his cheek against her hair. I belong to you anyway.
Jamie began pointing with the arm not holding her. “Up there is the Oriole window built for Catherine of Aragon to observe services. Of course, that’s when the place was run by filthy Catholics and not good clean Church of England like what we are.”
Clodagh, whose grandmother had been a filthy Catholic, dealt him a look. She’d had to promise she didn’t adhere to that faith before wedding plans could go ahead; apparently it was fine if she had no particular faith, or if she was Jewish or Muslim or Jedi, so long as she wasn’t Catholic. Not for the first time, she considered that the Royal Family was utterly mad.
“Those are the crests of the members of the Order of the Garter, which is the—”
“Highest order of chivalry that can be bestowed,” said Clodagh, who had done some of her homework. “And the oldest.”
“Absolutely. See the crests, mounted on helms? That’s the King of Norway, and that’s the Emperor of Japan, and that’s Annemarie’s uncle. On the wall, see those plaques?Behind the stalls? Those represent the previous incumbents of that stall. The Order is for life, you see, and there are can only be twenty-four of them, plus supernumeraries for the family. So those plates there hold the crests of previous Knights. And a couple of ladies, too.”
“You’re an excellent tour guide,” said Clodagh, who knew he was doing it to relax her. Hiding in history always made her feel better.
“Behind us,” he swivelled her around, “is Granny’s box, all in royal blue, of course, and that is where my Dad traditionally sits.” He pointed at the banners hanging above them, the Royal Standard and the Prince of Wales’s Standard, and then at the versions flanking them, each differenced by a white label, its small symbols identifying it much as Jamie’s identified him. “Grandpa, Uncle Charles next to him, then I think that’s Great Aunt Elizabeth, and…”
He broke off, and slightly abruptly turned to the other side of the entrance. “Aunt Penelope, Great Aunt Georgina, Great Aunt Mary. Edward VIII appointed all his children, and then Granny appointed hers, and then there wasn’t much space so it was just…”
Clodagh looked at him, and realised there was a gap in the banners on one side that wasn’t there on the other.
“It was just Ed,” Jamie said. “Vicky and I used to joke we’d have to wait for someone to die before either of us got appointed. I, ah…”
Clodagh turned and put her arms around him, and Jamie pressed his face against her hair and sighed.
“Two months and it still hasn’t… I still keep thinking of him. Like a joke I want to share or some memory I want to ask him about and then I remember…”
Clodagh stroked his hair. There wasn’t much she could say that hadn’t already been said.
“Come with me,” Jamie said, and marched her out of the Quire, through the Nave and towards one of the side chapels, gated and locked. He pointed to a starkly fresh tomb. Prince Edward of Wales 1982-2018.
Clodagh stood with Jamie, looking at the tomb of his brother, which was supposed to have been kept for his grandparents and been used too early.
“It’s just so weird how he’s in there.”
“It’s always weird when someone’s gone. There’s something left but it’s not them any more,” Clodagh said. She hadn’t been allowed to see her nan after she’d died, but they’d been taken to see Duke, laid out and looking like a waxwork version of himself. Clodagh had cried when the coffin was lowered, because even though she’d understood he wasn’t coming back, the burial seemed so… final.
“I keep thinking he’d hate to be in a stone box. He was always so active, so unrestricted. Had to be moving and doing, hated being still. He could never understand how I could spend so many hours reading or playing games.”
“One of those people who enjoys exercise,” Clodagh said, in tones of faint wonder.
“Yeah.” He cuddled Clodagh close. “He’d have liked you, I think. He’d be glad I’m marrying someone I love, because God knows he couldn’t.”
Clodagh kissed his tears away. “Did Annemarie bring Dai here?”
“Yes. She says… she says one day, when the children are older, when the dust has settled, she’s going to tell the truth.”
“No more secrets.”
“No more secrets.”
The sound of a door opening made them both turn. The same clergyman from before stood in the darkened doorway of the chapel.
“Your Highness?”
“Yes.” Jamie swiped at his eyes. “Yes, we’re ready. Thank you. Oh—no, one more thing.”
He walked Clodagh down to a monument by the West Door. It depicted mourners draped in veils at the bedside of a shrouded corpse, one frighteningly realistic hand just showing under the sheet. Above it soared three angels, one of them carrying an infant.
“Princess Charlotte,” Jamie said. “Daughter of—”
“George IV. Died in childbirth. And the baby too. The doctor killed himself out of guilt, so I’ve read,” Clodagh said. She studied the veiled mourners, so real she expected them to get up and move, and the figure lying under the shroud, not neatly set out but sprawled as if at the moment of death.
“We don’t go in for that kind of thing any more,” Jamie said, taking her hand, but she could see the sadness in his face at the difference between this and Edward’s stark white box.
“Your Highness?” said the voice behind them again, and Jamie squeezed Clodagh’s hand and led her away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The photos were mildly excruciating. Clodagh had never been good at smiling for the camera, and all the pictures of her that had appeared in the press so far had her looking mildly constipated.
They’d been offered various royal locations, but Cambridge seemed the most logical and, with the whole family obsessed with symbolism, the most appropriate. The photographer was so fashionable Clodagh had never heard of him. Stylists descended on the rose garden of the Master’s House, and her new assistant Sarah was dispatched to spread rumours it was for an outdoor Shakespeare production.
Photos were taken in the Lady Mathilda library and in King’s College Chapel, which after all did bear a certain resemblance to St George’s. All of them felt stiff and posed, her wrist at a weird angle as she attempted to display her ring. As Clodagh was changing into yet another outfit, Jamie got a thoughtful look on his face and disappeared.
“New location,” he said when he came back, and the photographer, frustrated with Clodagh’s apparent lack of natural ease in front of the camera, threw up his hands and agreed.
They got in the car, drove about fifty yards round the corner, and stopped. “Um?” said Clodagh, and Jamie grinned.
Outside, the PPO’s sheltered them from curious onlookers as Jamie led her into—
“Are you kidding me?” Clodagh said, looking up at the faded pub sign of the Prince’s Arms.
Jamie winked. “Why would I be kidding? This is where I fell in love with you.”
The pub had evidently been closed in a hurry. Oz and Marte were still clearing up glasses, and in the other bar the extra security drafted in for the day were patting down regulars.
