David Dickinson - Goodnight Sweet Prince

‘I’ve got three, actually,’ admitted Rosebery, ‘maybe four. I can’t remember. But what’s going on in this one here?’ He pointed to the Old Master taking dim shape on the railway carriage window.

‘Here,’ said Powerscourt, drawing an ill-defined blob at the bottom of the frame, ‘is the fantastic palace, the grand pillars, the colonnades, the battlements, flags waving in the sunshine. And here, on an elaborate and bejewelled royal throne, we find the little Queen, resplendent not in a bonnet as so often, but in a proper crown. Around her are disported the usual crew, the courtiers, the secretaries, the equerries, the waiting servants – a mass of uniforms and all the decorations in the kingdom. I think Claude would have fun with that.

‘But here, behind them, in the park,’ Powerscourt’s finger added a series of semicircular blobs to the window of the Great Eastern, ‘we have a series of statues. Some of them lurk invisible at the end of a terrace until you turn the corner, some of them are in semicircles, standing rigidly to attention waiting for time’s last roll call. Right at the back we find some of Royalty’s distant predecessors, Henry VII, Richard II, two small princes in the Tower, a reminder to their successors in the big house down here at the bottom of the picture, that their ancestors waded through rivers of blood to sit upon a throne. And threw a previous monarch out to get there.

‘At the back of the semicircle, here, Charles I on execution day. Kings of England can lose their heads, even on a balcony above Whitehall. Then, slightly closer to the house we find Robespierre, the man who struck Terror not just into the hearts of the French, but into the hearts of every crowned head in Europe. In his left hand he holds a model guillotine and at his feet, a tumbril, with the powdered heads of the aristocrats already overflowing. Do you not like the tumbril, Rosebery?’

‘No tricoteuses, Powerscourt?’ said Rosebery with a smile. ‘No room for Madame Defarge and the knitting needles of death?’

‘No room on the plinth,’ said Powerscourt, turning back to the window. ‘The picture is nearing completion. At one edge of the semicircle, nearest the house, we place the Queen’s relation and colleague in Royalty, His Most Serene Majesty Alexander II, Czar of all the Russias, blown to pieces by a terrorist bomb twelve years ago and with a face so disfigured that his relatives fainted when they went to kiss him a last goodbye in his coffin.

‘On the other side we have Lord Frederick Cavendish, Her Majesty’s appointed representative, Viceroy of Ireland, stabbed to death by Fenian assassins in Dublin’s Phoenix Park in 1882, just ten years ago.

‘And last of all, right here,’ Powerscourt added another artistic blob, ‘we have a bearded agitator, pamphlet in hand, fist raised in defiance, cap on head, speaking of troubles yet to come. At the far left-hand corner of the picture’ – Powerscourt’s hand almost reached the emergency cord – ‘a small black cloud threatens the blue serenity of Claude’s landscape, a thunderstorm perhaps, a stroke of lightning.’

They found the Duke of Clarence and Avondale shortly before seven o’clock in the morning. The front of his night-shirt was saturated with blood.

Blood red.

There was so much blood that Shepstone, veteran of many a battlefield, described the room later as smelling like a cross between a butcher’s shop and an abattoir.

Eddy’s bedroom was on the first floor of Sandringham House, looking out over the gravelled sweep of the main entrance. It was not completely flat, but sloped gently downwards to the window. Below the sash was a small lake, whose surface glistened eerily in the candlelight.

Blood scarlet.

Tributaries flowed from the end of the single bed across the floor towards the lake, matting the carpet and, where the floor was bare, seeping through the floorboards.

Blood river.

On the dressing-table was a copy of the Bible and Eddy’s diary, open on the day of his death. Hanging on the back of the door was his full dress scarlet uniform, last worn on his birthday just a few days before. Both of his wrists had been viciously slashed. From them both trickled a small but regular flow, running down into the mattress.

Blood crimson.

The main arteries in the legs had been severed too, adding to the blood river traffic towards the lake by the window. And his head was barely attached to his body. The murderer had slit his throat from ear to ear, leaving it lolling dangerously off the pillow. At the age of twenty-eight, Albert Victor Christian Edward, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, second in line of succession to Victoria’s throne, had breathed his last. Clarence was a corpse.

Blue blood.

Blood royal.

The Prince of Wales was in torment. On him, and on him alone, rested the responsibility of what to do about the murder of his son. What would happen if this death and the manner in which it occurred were made public?

There was only word that came into his mind, and it came in letters as high as the rooftops of Sandringham itself.

Scandal.

Scandal as the newspapers began to speculate about the murder of a Royal Prince asleep in his own house, in his own bed, surrounded by members of his own family. Scandal about his own private life that had threatened to erupt before Christmas with revelations about his affair with Daisy Brooke.

Scandal about his dead son.

Waves of anger at the death of Prince Eddy were sweeping through the Prince of Wales. For ten or fifteen minutes he would feel overwhelmed, drowned in anger. Then it would subside, only to reappear at a time of its own choosing.

The Prince of Wales was always restless. He marched out of his study and down to the billiard room on the far side of the house where he knew he would not be disturbed. Somebody had left the balls on the table. It was an easy shot. The Prince of Wales picked up a cue. He bent over the table, his stomach pressing against the side. He missed.

He tried another cannon on his billiard balls. Surely, he thought to himself, the red and the white will not dare to disobey their master’s will. They did. He missed again.

Scandal lay around his family like the covering of some very expensive diamond from one of those great jewellery houses in the fashionable Faubourgs of Paris. Heaven and his bankers knew, the Prince of Wales had bought enough favours with their products over the years. The gems came in boxes, wrapped in layer upon layer of the most exquisite tissue paper. As you peeled off each rustling layer, you felt sure that here, at last, was the treasure, only to be cheated of your prey.

Eddy lay at the bottom of the box. Or the bottom of the coffin. Edward remembered his conversation with Alexandra about Eddy’s future, some months before, with another wave of scandal threatening to break.

‘Send him away! Send him away, for Christ’s sake! Europe, the colonies, I don’t care. Anywhere, as long as he’s out of this country for at least two years!’

And Alix, pleading softly, ‘Oh no you don’t. Not this time. You did that years ago, and it nearly broke my heart. This time Eddy is staying here.’

Against his better judgement, he had given way. Eddy had stayed here. Now look where it had got them. Of all the scandals, the ones surrounding Prince Eddy were the most serious.

Prince Edward knew a lot of it, he thought he knew most of it, but even he did not know if there were other layers, waiting to be unpeeled in the unforgiving light of publicity and a nation’s fury. Layer upon layer of the tissue papers of scandal.

The billiard balls lay in their pools of light, the dark green baize a pitch waiting for another match. Death stopped play.