By the King's Design

by Christine Trent

  Too bad Belle’s regained favor with the Crown had not extended to the provision of cloth for the coronation itself.

  As the great doors to the old Gothic cathedral slammed shut behind the procession, a group of burly liveried men spread themselves out in the street across from the entry, as though daring anyone else to approach.

  Yet someone did approach. A finely wrought closed carriage pulled by two magnificent plumed horses came barreling down the street to the abbey, its driver shouting at dawdling spectators to remove themselves. He pulled up in front of the guard line, and the carriage had barely stopped rolling when the door facing the crowds was flung open from the inside. The driver and a footman scrambled down to assist the occupant out, but a corpulent woman in a feathered headdress, her face mottled scarlet, stumbled out on her own.

  Caroline, the queen.

  As if just now realizing that she was on a parade route, the woman looked up at the spectators in the stands. She waved a pudgy hand at the Londoners, who were too shocked to do anything other than collectively gasp. Everyone knew about the queen’s show trial, and although she had enjoyed immense popularity throughout it all, the people had since grown weary of the queen’s antics. Parliament had agreed to pay her a fifty-thousand-pound annuity if she would simply go away. She’d agreed to it, but here she was today.

  Belle looked at Put, who shook his head in amazement.

  “She shouldn’t be here,” Belle whispered.

  “No, and this might prove her undoing. The people want to witness a coronation, not a fishwife’s waspish demands.”

  “But she is still the queen.”

  “Only in her own mind.”

  What became clear was that Caroline was out of her mind.

  After waving and blowing kisses to the crowd, she lifted her skirts and ran on her stocky, jiggling legs past the ferocious-looking guards, who were initially too shocked to react. She spoke to the liveried man posted in front of the door, gesticulating wildly.

  He shook his head at her.

  Caroline waved even more passionately and shouted incoherently.

  The man put his hand on his sword hilt.

  She shoved the man aside and began beating on the abbey’s door, screaming volubly so that London’s citizens were treated to an unexpected circus event.

  “Let me in! I am the queen! Open this door immediately!”

  Everyone outside was hushed as Caroline continued her rampage.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! She beat her fists repeatedly against the door.

  “I will be permitted entrance! I am the queen! I will be crowned today, too! I am Her Majesty, Queen Caroline!”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “I demand that the king open this door to his wife!”

  By now, the guards had sufficiently recovered their wits to surround Caroline and nudge her away from the door. She struggled against them, shrieking about her right to be part of the coronation ceremony. But the burly men encircled her and led her back to the carriage, unceremoniously pushing her back inside.

  Even where Belle sat, she could see that the driver and footman were white as sheets and anxious to be gone. The moment the door was shut again, the driver snapped his whip and the carriage drove off wildly, with the queen’s voice still at an ear-shattering volume, screeching about her rights and privileges as Queen of England.

  When the king himself reappeared later after his ceremony for the walk to his coronation banquet at nearby Westminster Hall, the crowds had sufficiently recovered themselves to remember to cheer for their newly crowned monarch.

  “God save the king!”

  “God save me from that woman! May He strike her dead!”

  Lady Elizabeth Conyngham murmured soothingly as she cut a piece of bread and held it between her fingers, “May He indeed, Your Majesty.”

  “I tell you, dearest lady, I tolerated much from her, when I was in no manner obligated to do so. So many arrows have I had in my quiver, and so few have I let fly.”

  “Of course, my love, of course. You must try this cheese brioche.” She popped it in his mouth, and allowed him to nibble the crumbs from her hand.

  “Yes, most excellent. Where was I?”

  “Your full quiver.”

  “Yes. And Liverpool warned her that she wouldn’t be welcome at my coronation, yet she defied me again. Again! At least she wasn’t able to interfere with my dearest Lady Elizabeth’s presence inside the abbey, but no matter, no matter.

  “I am a patient, tolerant man, full of love and goodwill for my subjects, as you well know, but I have finished with her, Lady Elizabeth. She is done in my kingdom forever.”

  Something in his tone caused Lady Conyngham to put down the serving knife she was using to cut another piece.

  “What do you mean, Your Majesty?”

  “As I said, my quiver is not nearly empty, and my bow begs for one more shot. Let’s have done with the sweets, dearest. I have other delicacies in mind that you’ll want to enjoy with your newly crowned sovereign.”

  She rose and made preparations to join the king in his chamber. A mistress’s work was never done.

  July 21, 1821

  Brighton

  Knowing the king would be busy in London immediately following his coronation, Belle left the shop in Molly’s good hands and returned to Brighton, traveling together with Put for the first time, so she could introduce him to Mr. Nash and the dour Mr. Crace, and to view progress on the palace.

  So many rooms were finished now: the Entrance Hall, the Great Corridor, the Music Room, the Banqueting Room, and the Great Kitchen were all finished to Nash’s and the artist-designers’ exacting standards.

  The North Drawing Room would be finished soon, as would the Saloon. The new stucco-and-stone exterior had about a year until completion, but workers swarmed all over it to ensure it was finished at the earliest possible date.

  To think that I’ve been a part of it all. It was too much to contemplate.

  It was marvelous to immerse herself back in the heady world of the Pavilion once again, especially with Put at her side.

  A piece of bad news fluttered down to Brighton while they were there. Queen Caroline was ill and had taken to her bed. The Boyces and the Nashes expressed best wishes for the queen’s health, assuming she was merely tired from the turmoil surrounding the trial and her resulting disappointment at the coronation.

  A few days later, on August 7, the queen was dead.

  August 14, 1821

  On the road from Hammersmith to Harwich

  The funeral procession had been stopped for nearly a half hour. Lady Anne Hamilton, Caroline’s most devoted lady-in-waiting, leaned out the open window of her mourning carriage, one in a train of ten behind the queen’s glass coffin hearse. One of the five hundred mounted soldiers assigned to attend the cavalcade was coming down the procession line, and stopped next to the polished black carriage draped in matching bunting to acknowledge her.

  “Why have we been at a standstill for so long?” she asked. “We’re hardly out of Hammersmith. Isn’t that Kensington Church up in front of us?”

  “Yes, Your Ladyship. There’s just a small disturbance ahead. Some carts placed in our path. It’s just a few drunkards and rovers trying to divert the train back into the city instead of letting us proceed north toward Islington. Nothing to worry about; we’ll have them dispersed shortly.”

  “Divert the train? Why? Have they no respect for their queen?” And had they no respect for how unbearably hot it was in a closed carriage with no air moving around them?

  As if in response to her complaint, rain began misting over the area. She quickly tucked her head back inside, where Lady Jane Hood was clucking her tongue at the news.

  The soldier made no reaction to the rain. “That’s just it, madam. The people want to pay their respects. They think the king is sending her off too mysteriously.”

  Lady Anne nodded in understanding, and the soldier moved on. She turned to Lady Jane. “Even
the common people understand what a jackanapes he is.”

  “A final humiliation is what it is.” Lady Jane followed up her noises of disapproval with a resounding sniff.

  “I shouldn’t wonder that the king would be avoiding any inquiry by the public.”

  “So you still think the queen’s death was unnatural?”

  “Come, Jane, you were with me at her bedside. You saw how quickly her body swelled and turned black.”

  “Within just a couple of hours. It certainly was suggestive of a poison, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, and the king showed not a whit of regret at her passing. As though he expected it.”

  “It’s treason what we’re suggesting.” Lady Jane’s voice implied that she wasn’t sure if she was more fearful of being caught or thrilled to be gossiping in such a manner.

  “I know. We dare not speak of it outside this carriage.”

  “Do you think there might be another investigation? Just imagine the king on trial this time!”

  Lady Anne smiled at the other woman’s thought, but knew better than to think it could be reality. “Place not your trust in princes,” she murmured.

  She leaned against the plush, tufted-leather seat and stared up at the mythological scene painted on the ceiling. At least they were given a fine carriage with good springs for the seventy-five-mile journey that lay ahead of them. There were planned stops in Chelmsford and Colchester, then their queen would be taken aboard a ship in Harwich and from there sail back to Brunswick. Queen Caroline had specifically stated that she wanted to be buried in her homeland, and government officials had been so fearful of demonstrations in London that they’d concocted this convoluted plan of overland travel with her body from her home in Hammersmith to the Harwich launch point in Essex.

  And although Lady Anne had packed enough trunks to support a sea voyage, she still hadn’t made up her mind whether to accompany her mistress all the way back to Brunswick.

  The carriage started off again with a lurch. Finally they were to make some progress. But they’d not gotten as far as Hyde Park Corner when the two women saw members of the Life Guard galloping past them, pistols drawn, toward the front of the procession.

  And they halted once again.

  “What has happened now?” Lady Anne asked.

  “More troublemakers, I’m sure. If they respect Queen Caroline, they should let us pass freely.”

  And the carriage lurched forward once again, amid distant shouting and the crashes of overturned carts. Lady Anne stuck her head out the window to ascertain what mishaps lay ahead. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still dark and gloomy. Ideal, really, for the funeral of the queen she’d loved so well.

  Their carriage passed the gates into Hyde Park and picked up a reckless amount of speed, careening past others as their driver cracked his whip violently overhead. The dignified funeral procession was now a stampeding commotion. Dirty, angry faces were now pressing forward, trying to reach the procession. Shouts of “Give us our queen!” and “Only a murdered queen would be taken out in secret! Let us see her!” Protestors at the back of the crowd were hurling bricks and stones at the soldiers, who were trying their best to reorganize the procession and quell the disturbance.

  Lady Anne quickly retreated back inside the carriage and turned to Lady Jane. “Jane, if you are the praying type, this might be an opportune moment to employ your skills.”

  Her last words were cut off as shots rang out, followed by the noises of outrage in the crowd. A soldier galloped past her, his pistol still smoking. “Got one!” she heard him shout as he passed.

  But it had the desired effect of quelling the crowd, and the carriages slowed back to their decorous pace. As they passed back out of Hyde Park, she witnessed Sir Robert Baker atop his horse, reading the Riot Act of 1715 to the assembled crowd.

  “ ‘Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies.’ ”

  Sir Robert folded up his copy of the law. “God save the king!” he added, as the crowd, mindful of the severe penalties to be suffered for disobedience after being delivered this formal warning, melted away.

  Lady Anne believed the fracas to finally be over, but she was wrong. For although the cortege was finally put on the road to Islington, yet another mass of carriages and carts were chained together at Tottenham Court Road, forcing them back again. Another soldier came by to inform them that the procession would indeed be returning to the city for a slow walk through the streets before going on its originally planned route.

  “The people are such brutes. If they don’t get this mob under control, we’ll be as harassed and persecuted as Marie Antoinette on the road back from Varennes,” complained Lady Jane. “And it will take us days to reach Harwich at this rate. Our queen deserves burial.”

  But for all of her fear of the demonstrators, Lady Anne was secretly pleased. In the end, the people loved their queen, despite her imperfections, and were willing to go to great lengths to pay their last respects. Yes, she deserved burial, but she deserved the accolades more. After the great final injustice that Lady Anne suspected had been heaped upon Queen Caroline, the very least the queen’s devoted lady-in-waiting could do was suffer the long journey to Harwich in silence.

  And Lady Anne right then made up her mind. She would accompany the queen’s body back to Brunswick from Harwich. For if her devotion to Caroline was greater than anyone else’s, how could she do less? If only there were other subjects as suspicious of the queen’s death as she was.

  Belle and Put stood at a distance under an umbrella, somberly watching the queen’s funeral cortege struggle to make its way through the crowds.

  “The Riot Act? The king is using the Riot Act? I can’t believe this, Put. Why is he treating his people so dreadfully?”

  Put draped his arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. “He’s certainly aware of his own unpopularity. Perhaps he suspected the people might riot over their queen’s loss.”

  “But that’s just it. The people were generally tired of her conduct and not as likely to cheer her on. But we’ve always paid our respects to our dead monarchs, openly and together. What’s the purpose of this secret run to the coast to deposit her body on a barge? What is he hiding?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  Belle didn’t answer, instead asking more questions. “How could the queen have died so suddenly? We just saw her at the king’s coronation, and she was certainly in fine form then.”

  “People get sick and die, sweetheart.”

  She dropped her voice. “Do you remember when I told you that I thought Wesley was involved in a plot to discredit the queen?”

  “Yes. You thought he was helping the king manufacture evidence against her, evidence we know was produced for her trial, but that Wesley had no real hand in.”

  “But what if the Cato Street Conspiracy wasn’t what it seemed? What if it really was about the king’s desire to discredit the queen—or even to concoct a way to kill her—and the conspirators involved thought they were accomplishing their goals when really they were just providing cover to His Majesty’s plans?”

  “Belle, you’re talking nonsense.”

  She rushed on as though she hadn’t heard him. “The Cato Street Conspiracy occupied the public for months, during which the king was gathering, or manufacturing, evidence against his wife. What if he was doing even more beyond anyone’s notice? He knew the public’s opinion of his wife and that he couldn’t rationally compete with her in that department. For heaven’s sake, Put, maybe even the trial was intended for show while the king followed through on plans to poison the queen.”

  “If the king planned such a thing, surely it would have been impossible to carry through with it. He had no direct access to her,
and no one would have been party to such a scheme.”

  Belle’s fears were not assuaged.

  She was even more concerned to read that on August 17, just three days after the queen’s funeral debacle, the king had decided to still take his planned trip to Dublin so his Irish subjects could lay eyes on their monarch and he was now happily touring and receiving their accolades.

  “It’s terribly convenient that the king had this trip planned on the heels of the queen’s death, isn’t it?” Belle asked as she passed the newspaper article to Put over the breakfast they shared with Frances. He quickly scanned it.

  “I’m worried,” she said. “I think the king may have gotten away with murdering his wife, and this trip distracts the public from what he’s done.”

  “Annabelle Boyce, why all of this obsession about the king? Caroline is dead and buried back in Brunswick. What is the point of gnawing on this soup bone?” He handed the newspaper back to her. “Involving us in a scandal like this would only serve to ruin our lives again, and we’ve been close enough to the edge as it is.”

  She sighed. “You must think I’ve gone totty.”

  Frances shook her head. You aren’t crazy.

  “More totty than when you refused my sincere and gentlemanlike advances?” Put asked.

  “Even more than that. But shouldn’t even a king be called to account for murdering his wife?”

  “Belle, it’s not our place to be the king’s conscience, nor his trial judge.”

  “No, no, of course you’re right.” She sighed. “These biscuits are truly heavenly, Frances. I’ll be a stout old fishwife in no time by living with you.”

  Frances beamed.

  Yet the situation continued eating away at Belle. When Nash summoned her again to Brighton to reveal the finish of the North Drawing Room, she went alone. Easily enough managed, since Put and his workers were furiously trying to finish an entire houseful of furniture for a newly married woman given free rein by her husband to refurbish the family home.