The Summer Queen

by Margaret Pemberton

  A stretcher was brought. Other hands beside hers gathered up bloodied body parts and placed them on it. A blanket was brought to cover them.

  Still wearing her blood-soaked dress, still clutching his rings and the icon that Sergei had never been without, Ella stumbled behind the stretcher as it was carried into the Kremlin’s Chudov Monastery. And there, this time in prayer, she fell on her knees again to cry.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  NOVEMBER 1906, NEUES PALAIS, POTSDAM

  It was mid-morning and Willy was on the ground floor of the Neues Palais, standing legs astride in the little-used Grotto Hall. Encrusted with shells and with a marble floor decorated with sea-urchins and marine plants, the Grotto Hall reminded him of his grandmother’s sketching alcove at Osborne and was where he always came when, as now, he didn’t want to be disturbed.

  Nothing at the moment was going his way, and that it wasn’t was not his fault. It was all the fault of that arch-Satan: his Uncle Bertie, King Edward VII, King of England and Emperor of India.

  He breathed in hard, his nostrils flaring, the upward tips of his moustache quivering. Who would have ever thought that womanizing, pleasure-loving, surely-not-very-bright Uncle Bertie would have turned into such a competent, hands-on king? He was a constitutional monarch, for God’s sake. He was supposed to leave political conniving and real government to his ministers, not jaunt behind their back, forming alliances with other nations as easily as if he was playing bridge. Queen Victoria had never done so! When he thought of his much-missed grandmother – and of how different European politics were without her – Willy felt so emotional he had to ball his good hand into a fist to stop himself from weeping.

  He had, of course, had another bad night; a night when the recurring nightmares that he had never quite outgrown seized hold of him with such power that he’d thought, on waking, he was going to lose his reason. Now, in the Grotto Hall, he was trying to get a grip on himself. The person who had already lost their reason – the person who had begun playing the diplomat as if he were an autocratic ruler, not a constitutional monarch – was Bertie.

  Almost immediately after the Boer War had ended, Bertie had made what, on the surface, was yet another of the personal pleasure trips to Paris that he had been making for more than forty years; a trip that appeared to have no political ulterior motive.

  Except that it had, for devious Bertie had been laying the groundwork for an Entente Cordiale – a close, committed friendship between England and France. On his ‘pleasure trip’ he made impromptu public speeches (always, of course, in his fluent, flawless French) saying how he had always felt himself so very much at home in France. Everywhere he went – at a state banquet, at the races, at the theatre, at the Élysée Palace – he gave off-the-cuff speeches in his relaxed, affable manner. His charm-offensive and effortless bonhomie resulted in the Parisians cheering him to the rafters.

  It was the kind of popularity that Willy constantly craved for himself, and the sight of arch-Satan Uncle Bertie achieving it with such effortless ease had made him want to vomit. A year later, when the Entente Cordiale had been formerly signed in 1904 and England was firmly allied with Germany’s enemy, France, he had wanted to vomit even more, for it meant there was now no possible hope of an alliance with England.

  Bertie’s action had carved Europe in two, with England, France and Russia in one camp, and Germany, with her long-standing allies Austria–Hungary and Italy, in the other. And what use, Willy thought savagely, staring up at the Grotto Hall’s painted ceiling, would Italians be, when the chips were down?

  It was at fraught times like this that he needed his close friend Phili and the distractions of tomfoolery that his company provided. But Phili was hundreds of miles away, writing Nordic ballads on his Liebenberg estate.

  To his intense irritation, he heard footsteps approaching, and seconds later his eldest son walked apprehensively into the Grotto Hall, a newspaper held in a trembling hand.

  ‘Apologies for disturbing you, Papa, but I very much need to show you something.’

  Willy’s jaw tightened. Wilhelm was twenty-four, had been married for little more than a year and had already begun whingeing that he found his delightful young wife boring.

  ‘What is it now?’ he snapped, too concerned with Germany’s future safety to be bothered with Wilhelm’s gripes about married life.

  ‘The newspaper Die Zukunft, Papa.’ His voice was unsteady, his face unnaturally pale. ‘It is hinting that Count zu Eulenburg and the friends close to him – the members of what he calls his Liebenberg Circle – are . . . are . . . are homosexual.’

  Willy’s jaw dropped. ‘Homosexual? Homosexual?’ His eyes nearly popped out of his head. ‘What libel and utter nonsense! Phili is a married man. He has eight daughters. I’ll demand a retraction immediately. I’ll have the paper shut down. On dear Phili’s behalf, I will demand a very public apology. Who is the editor?’ He snatched the newspaper from Wilhelm’s hand. ‘Harden? I’ll have him castrated! That my poor, dear Phili should be so publicly and wrongly maligned . . .’

  The very thought brought tears to his eyes.

  Wilhelm was at a loss. It had never occurred to him that his father might be unaware of Phili zu Eulenburg’s sexual preference. His father had, after all, counted Eulenburg his closest friend for the past eighteen years. Eulenburg and members of his Liebenberg Circle had been his father’s guests aboard the imperial yacht countless times. Several times a year they went on hunting trips together. Several times a month they met up for evenings of drinking and practical jokes. How could his forty-seven-year-old father not have known?

  ‘Because your father is an innocent!’ his mother said to Wilhelm when, after Willy had blundered into his study to telephone Phili, her son had shown the newspaper article to her. ‘He takes people at face value. Your dear, dear papa never thinks! What other horrible things are now going to be printed?’

  On the telephone a near-hysterical Willy was saying agitatedly to Phili, ‘That it is all lies, beloved Phili, doesn’t matter. They are lies that must be refuted. You must sue for libel! You must emerge from this farrago of nonsense with your reputation intact.’

  Stunned, Phili said he was going to take court action immediately, and Willy collapsed in relief – but it was relief that was short-lived.

  Dona, thick-waisted and stout, stared at Willy disbelievingly. ‘And you think the threat of a libel action will put an end to these rumours about yourself and Philipp zu Eulenburg?’

  ‘Gott im Himmel!’ He wanted to tear his hair out in frustration at her stupidity. ‘There are no rumours about me. The filthy, lying rumours are all about dear Phili.’

  ‘But they are NOT!’ There were times when Dona found her husband’s inability to see the wood for the trees almost unendurable. ‘Your name is not mentioned – how could the Kaiser’s name be mentioned? But it is implicit in every line that, if Count Philipp zu Eulenburg and his close circle of friends are all . . . are all . . .’ she struggled to say the word ‘homosexual’ and couldn’t bring herself to utter it, ‘are all deviant, that you are deviant as well. The accusation of unholy, illegal practices isn’t being levelled solely at Phili. You are the person at whom the accusations in Die Zukunft are truly being levelled. And the only person who doesn’t realize it is you!’

  Willy had thought her certifiably mad. It was his sister-in-law, Irène, who matter-of-factly pointed out to him that if Phili was homosexual, then, as his closest friend, it was only to be expected that people assumed he was well aware of it.

  But he hadn’t been, and he did what he always did whenever he was faced with something utterly unpalatable and hadn’t the slightest idea how to deal with it. He shut himself away in his rooms in a state of nervous collapse.

  This time his period of collapse was a long one. Phili’s original court case led to the public disclosure of several liaisons, the most salacious being an ongoing relationship with Count Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler, who, on Phili’
s recommendation, Willy had made chief of his military Cabinet, and whose private performances in a pink tutu he had always, in the past, so innocently enjoyed.

  ‘When and where is it all going to end?’ he said piteously to Irène, as one court case led to another and Die Zukunft revealed that the Liebenberg Circle had feminine nicknames for each other and that his, the Kaiser’s, was ‘Sweety’.

  Irène had had no answer for him, for by now there could be no doubting the truthfulness of the insinuations that were being made.

  The country was scandalized. Willy was thunderstruck.

  ‘How could I have known?’ he said pathetically time and time again. ‘I thought only that we were all the best and truest of friends – and the horseplay we indulged in was surely only the horseplay that all men indulge in, when no ladies are present to be offended?’

  Despite his love of risqué jokes and coarse horseplay, he was essentially a prude, and the revelations as to the true nature behind all the good times he had so enjoyed not only embarrassed him, but appalled him – and they did so because he knew how very near the truth the hints about his own sexuality were.

  He had always preferred the company of men to the company of women. Although as a youth he had indulged in a couple of paid sexual encounters with women, he had done so more out of curiosity than desire. The only woman he had ever felt genuine love for was Ella, and Ella had rejected him for Sergei – the irony being that, up until the day of his horrific death, rumours about Sergei’s sexuality had been rife.

  Other than Ella, women had never held any great emotional appeal for Willy. Dona, who had been pretty as a young woman and was reassuringly admiring and docile, had been a momentary aberration, and one he had grown bored and exasperated with even before their honeymoon was over.

  He had always been happiest amongst his Hussars. And then he had met Phili – old enough to be a father-figure, debonair and sophisticated, creatively gifted, highly cultivated – and his entire world had changed. The huge social gap between them had meant nothing. In Count Philipp zu Eulenburg he had met his soulmate and, like the soulmates in the medieval poetry that the two of them so enjoyed, the union between them had never descended into coarse carnality. It had been a thing of spiritual beauty. And now, thanks to the editor of Die Zukunft, all the beauty had been destroyed and he, Germany’s All-Highest, had been made a laughing stock.

  He had been unable to bring himself to bear the pain of seeing Phili again and, coward-like, had ended their relationship by letter. All connections with the Liebenberg Circle had been severed. All the prestigious high public and political appointments that he had, at Phili’s suggestion, showered on his former friends were terminated.

  It was over, and his heartbreak was so extreme that his ministers began speculating that the damage caused to his arm at birth had not been the only thing that had been damaged. They suspected his brain had also been damaged, and it wasn’t long before gossip as to the Kaiser not being quite right in the head spread to the courts of England and Russia.

  Alicky was far too worried about Alexei’s terrifying bleeding episodes to care about unkind gossip about Willy.

  May, however, let everyone in Marlborough House know exactly how she felt about such gossip. ‘Bosh!’ she said forcefully, using one of George’s favourite expressions.

  Privately, though, and knowing Willy as she did, she wondered if there was any truth in the gossip and, on Willy’s behalf, felt deep concern.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  APRIL 1910, PARIS

  It was the end of April and Paris was at its best. In the Champs-Élysées the chestnut trees were thick with blossom and flower-sellers were out in full force, the scent of tulips and anemones filling the air, as sweet and spicy as a drug.

  Accompanied by Margaret, Dolly’s wife, May was strolling down the avenue des Champs-Élysées on her way to the art exhibition that was the purpose of her visit. At forty-two, she still had a neat figure and, beneath her pleated silk hat, her hair, although no longer possessing a coppery glint, was still wheat-gold and she wore it the way she had always worn it – high and tight at the sides and with a distinctive poodle fringe.

  ‘And was the artist whose works we are going to see a very great friend of yours when you were a girl and your mama and papa lived in Florence?’ Margaret asked as they turned out of the Champs-Élysées and into the narrow but elegant rue Saint-Honoré, where the gallery was situated.

  ‘Yes.’ And then, mindful of the crush she had had on Thaddeus when she was seventeen, and not wanting her sister-in-law to guess at it, she added, ‘A very great family friend. When we knew him, he went by his birth name of Henry Thaddeus Jones, but he later changed it to Henry Jones Thaddeus – the surname Thaddeus being much more memorable for an artist, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, much!’ May was so knowledgeable about things artistic, Margaret wouldn’t have dreamed of disagreeing with her.

  As they approached the gallery May was pleased to see that the exhibition was being very well attended. The gallery hadn’t been advised of her visit beforehand – something that was her habit when visiting small galleries, otherwise she would have to suffer the annoyance of being formally met and escorted from picture to picture, instead of being able to wander at will and browse undisturbed.

  The pictures were of a variety of subject matter. There were pastoral scenes and European landscapes – May recognized Lake Trasimeno in Italy and Lake Garda in Switzerland. There were Orientalist paintings: one of a gateway in Samarkand, another of a street market in Cairo. There was a historical painting of a Scottish family being evicted at the time of the Clearances, and then last, but by no means least, there were the portraits.

  As they moved out of one of the gallery’s small rooms and into another room, May was just telling Margaret how, many years ago, Thaddeus had painted portraits of her parents, and of how the portraits had been exhibited at the Royal Academy, when they walked straight into Ducky, arm-in-arm with an exceedingly tall and good-looking gentleman whom May knew could only be Kyril Vladimirovich.

  May gasped in surprised delight. Ducky gave a squeal of joy. Kyril looked bemused, and Margaret, who had never previously met either Ducky or Kyril, was very quickly introduced.

  ‘Dearest, darling May! How long has it been?’ Ducky said rapturously, uncaring that their little group was causing disapproving heads to turn. ‘It must be ten years at least since we last met. You and Georgie were living at York Cottage, and I was still married to Ernie!’

  As more heads turned in their direction, Kyril gave a meaningful cough.

  Ducky removed her hand from his arm and linked arms with May, saying to Margaret, ‘Do forgive me, but I so want to have a long family chat with May, and here is quite obviously not the place to do so. Would you think it horrendously bad-mannered of me if I suggested I stole her away for half an hour?’ Without waiting for a response, she said to May, ‘The Hotel Bristol is only a few yards down the street, and we can catch up over tea and cakes while Kyril escorts Margaret around the rest of the gallery.’

  Kyril, accustomed to Ducky’s lack of regard for accepted etiquette, proffered Margaret his arm. ‘It would be my pleasure,’ he said disarmingly, and before Margaret could agree or disagree, she found herself being escorted by a Russian she had heard of, but had never previously met, towards a large painting bearing the ominous title: A Woman Led Astray.

  ‘Goodness, this is fun,’ Ducky said as, in the Hotel Bristol, they settled themselves in a small lounge that gave them complete privacy. ‘What subject shall we hit on first, before Margaret and Kyril decide they have had enough of each other’s company and come to join us? My divorce from Ernie and marriage to Kyril? Your having become the Princess of Wales? The children we have had since we last met? Alicky, and the disaster she is making of being Tsarina? Ella having become a nun? It’s your choice, dear May. But let’s do it over champagne. I only mentioned tea and cakes when we were at the gallery in case your very pro
per-looking sister-in-law thought me too outrageously fast.’

  ‘Let’s start with your divorce and marriage to Kyril.’

  A waiter deferentially approached. Champagne was ordered.

  Ducky, whose olive skin and raven-dark hair made her look stunningly exotic, leaned back in the red-velvet armchair she was seated in and said, ‘Once Granny Queen had joined Grandpa Albert in a Happy Land Far, Far Away, the divorce was easy. We didn’t get married immediately, though. Kyril takes his time over things. However, once Russia had so thunderingly lost the war with Japan – Kyril nearly died once from war injuries, and then a second time from shame – we married in Paris, without even troubling to ask for Nicky’s permission, which we knew he would have refused.’

  Their champagne served, Ducky said, ‘Nicky’s reaction to Kyril marrying a divorced woman was typically petty. He stripped Kyril of his titles and honours and his naval decorations for bravery, and said that neither of us would be allowed to enter Russia again, but what Nicky had forgotten was how close Kyril is to the throne. Since his father’s death, Kyril is third in line. It finally gave Nicky pause for thought, and last year we were invited not only to live in Russia again, but to be given a house at Tsarskoe Selo within spitting distance of the Alexander Palace. So there you are. That is number one on the list taken care of. What was number two?’

  Number two had been her present title of Princess of Wales, and as May didn’t want to waste precious time talking about herself, or discussing subject number three, which had been the children they had had since their last meeting, she took a drink of her champagne and jumped straight to subject number four. Alicky.