Love Conquers War Read online

  Her eyes were on the Queen and they were full of interest.

  “I got out of bed,” the Queen went on, “and went into my sitting room alone wearing only my dressing gown. Lord Conyngham, the Lord Chamberlain, then acquainted me with the fact that my poor uncle, the King, was no more and consequently I was the Queen.”

  Tilda drew in her breath.

  “It must have been a shock, ma’am!”

  “It was!” the Queen answered, “but I was determined that I would be good!”

  As if suddenly she realised that she had been almost too familiar in her reminiscing she added sharply,

  “And that is what you must be, Victoria – good! And always loyal to your country. Remember whatever name you have, however important your position, there is English blood – my blood – running through your veins!”

  “I will remember, ma’am.”

  There was little more conversation before Princess Priscilla and Tilda were dismissed from the Royal presence.

  They partook of a light meal with two of the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting before the carriage carried them to the station and they were once again on the train travelling back to London.

  “Well, that is over!” Princess Priscilla exclaimed.

  She settled herself comfortably in the corner of their reserved carriage and let out a sigh of relief.

  “You are scared of her, Mama,” Tilda said. “I cannot think why.”

  “Everyone is frightened of her,” Princess Priscilla answered. “You were lucky. She was charming to you. She can be very awe-inspiring.”

  “That is what a Queen should be,” Tilda said, then laughed, “but I doubt, Mama, if anyone would be scared of me!”

  “You will not be a Queen, Tilda, only a reigning Princess,” Princess Priscilla corrected. “Although I cannot understand why with so many Kings and Grand Dukes in Europe, Obernia has never had a King.”

  “I expect it is too small,” Tilda suggested.

  “You sound very disparaging about the country that is soon to be yours,” Princess Priscilla remarked reprovingly.

  “It is small, Mama.”

  “But of great significance and the Queen told you why.”

  “Papa had already said much the same,” Tilda said. “What I really wanted to ask was whether amongst all those photographs and pictures on the desk there was one of Prince Maximilian.”

  “I have already told you, Tilda, there are no photographs of him. He does not like being photographed. He will not permit it.”

  “Why?”

  “I am sure that he has a very good reason for his reluctance to be portrayed in the modern fashion for all and sundry to see,” Princess Priscilla answered.

  “But you don’t know the real reason,” Tilda persisted.

  “I am sure when you meet the Prince he will tell you about it himself,” Princess Priscilla replied.

  Her tone told her daughter all too clearly that she had her own ideas as to why the Prince had no wish to have his features immortalised by the camera.

  It seemed strange to Tilda when everyone else was fascinated by their own likeness.

  In every house photographs like the Queen’s stood in silver frames on grand pianos, on small tables, on mantelshelves and cluttered writing desks until it was almost impossible to find room for pens and paper.

  “I should like at least to have some idea of what he looks like,” Tilda persisted.

  “I have not seen him since he was a boy,” Princess Priscilla said quickly. “But then he was very good-looking and I believe from all reports he is considered extremely handsome.”

  ‘If he is,’ Tilda thought to herself, ‘why should he be so shy and reserved about letting other people look at him?’

  There was silence for the moment except for the noise of the railway wheels and the hoot of the engine.

  Then Tilda asked,

  “Has the Prince seen a photograph of me?”

  “Your father enquired when the arrangements for your marriage were first discussed if there was to be an exchange of portraits,” her mother replied, “but, when he was told the Prince had never been painted or photographed, he thought it would be embarrassing if he sent him those photographs that were taken of you in January.”

  “You mean then that like me the Prince is buying a ‘pig in a poke’?” Tilda remarked.

  Her mother sat up sharply.

  “Really Tilda, that is an extremely vulgar and unseemly expression. I cannot think where you have heard it!”

  “It is very apposite all the same, Mama, is it not?”

  “I am not going to discuss the subject any further,” Princess Priscilla said firmly, “If you want to talk about your marriage, Tilda, we can go over the lists of items for your trousseau, which is not yet completed.”

  “I certainly do not wish to do that!” Tilda answered. “I have so many clothes, far too many already. They will last for years and years and years!”

  She sighed.

  “Can you imagine anything more dismal, Mama, than to think that ten years from now I shall still be trying to wear out my out-dated unfashionable garments?”

  Princess Priscilla drew in her lips.

  “I cannot think what has happened to you lately, Tilda,” she said, “You have become almost revolutionary. I only hope that your Papa will not hear you speak like this. It would annoy him.”

  “Tell me, Mama.” Tilda said, “did you ever when you were young feel like doing something quite different from what people expected you to do?”

  Her mother did not reply and she went on,

  “Did you ever want to run away for instance when you were told that you had to marry Papa? Did you ever want to stop being yourself and be someone quite different for a change?”

  “No, Tilda!” Princess Priscilla said firmly. “I was very grateful and very happy to marry your father. Unlike you I had five sisters and my father and mother continually worried as to where they could find suitable husbands for us all.”

  Her voice softened as she continued,

  “I was twenty-five before I was permitted to make a marriage that did not involve my wearing a crown and I was very lucky indeed that I could become the wife of such a kind and good man as your Papa.”

  “Not one little thought of rebellion, Mama?” Tilda coaxed.

  “Not one!” Princess Priscilla responded firmly, “and you must promise me, Tilda, that you will not allow yourself to even think of such outrageous and wicked ideas.”

  Tilda did not reply and she went on,

  “You have no idea how fortunate you are in being married so young and to a Royal Head of State.”

  “Do you think that Prince Maximilian wants to marry me?” Tilda asked.

  “It is the ambition of every small state in Europe to have one of our Queen’s relatives as the wife of their reigning Sovereign. England is a great power in the world, Tilda, as you well know. Every country wants our goodwill, our friendship and, if necessary, our financial aid,”

  “Even Germany?” Tilda asked.

  “Even Germany!” Princess Priscilla replied, but her tone did not sound quite so positive.

  “Prince Bismarck must be a very exceptional man,” Tilda went on. “He has formed the Federation of Germany and now Hanover is no longer independent, nor Hesse-Kassel, Bavaria or Brunswick.”

  “I am glad to see you are so well read,” the Princess remarked.

  “It is what the Professor has been teaching me,” Tilda answered. “You told him to instruct me about the history of Europe and he has been stuffing me with information like a Strasbourg goose!”

  “I have the greatest respect for Professor Schiller,” her mother replied, “and I intend that he shall travel with you on your journey to Obernia.”

  “Oh no, Mama! I don’t want to spend the whole journey doing lessons!”

  “It will be to your advantage, Tilda, and your Papa has asked the Dowager Lady Crewkerne to act as your chaperone and Lady-in-Waiting until you r
each Obernia.”

  “Not Lady Crewkerne!” Tilda cried plaintively. “She is old and dull and disapproves of everything. I have never heard her say a kind word about anybody.”

  “But she is well-travelled, Tilda. Her husband was at one time our Ambassador in Vienna. She knows all the protocol which is so essential for you to learn so that you do not make any mistakes when you reach the Principality over which you are to reign.”

  “Lady Crewkerne and Professor Schiller!” Tilda exclaimed. “Well it will certainly be a dull journey. Whatever he is like, I shall jump into Prince Maximilian’s arms with joy!”

  “I hope you will do that, Tilda, and I am sure you will be very happy,” Princess Priscilla said.

  She gave a deep sigh.

  “I only wish I could accompany you myself, but you know I cannot leave your Papa.”

  “No, of course not, Mama. At the same time it would be very much more amusing for me than travelling with the two companions you have chosen for me.”

  “It is very important that you should arrive with a respectable and respected entourage,” Princess Priscilla said. “But you do appreciate, Tilda, that a journey such as you are about to embark on is very expensive.”

  She sighed again.

  “We really cannot afford at this moment to send more people with you than is absolutely necessary. As it is, two coaches each with six horses will involve a considerable amount of money.”

  Although he was extremely rich, the Duke was well known to be parsimonious and close-fisted when it came to spending money outside his estates.

  The Princess had experienced some difficulty in extracting from him what she considered enough money for Tilda’s trousseau.

  “Two coaches, Mama?” Tilda asked.

  “There will be a coach for the maids and your luggage and apart from your trousseau you will receive many wedding presents which will have to be conveyed somehow to Obernia.”

  She held up her hand and started to count on her fingers and then continued,

  “So that involves – two coaches each with two coachmen and two footmen. That makes eight servants. You will also require four outriders. Even in this enlightened age, travellers can be held up and robbed by bandits on the roads.”

  “That sounds exciting!” Tilda said, a sudden light in her eyes.

  “It is an excitement that I hope you will not experience,” her mother replied. “The outriders that your father will send with you are experienced pistol shots and will ensure that you reach your destination in safety.”

  “I do indeed have a long way to go.”

  “That is true,” the Princess answered, “but you will break your journey by visiting various of our relatives en route, starting in the Netherlands where you will disembark. After a visit to King Ludwig of Bavaria, you will cross the border into Obernia.”

  “He is the one person I have always wanted to meet,” Tilda enthused. “He sounds fascinating!”

  Princess Priscilla started to speak and then pressed her lips together, which told Tilda all too clearly that her mother disapproved of King Ludwig II.

  Tilda had always been fascinated by hearing about him, his passion for music and the theatre he had built for Wagner.

  She had seen portraits of him looking pale and handsome and rather ethereal, as if, she thought, he was a being from another world.

  To stay in one of his castles about which there had been so much talk and so much criticism would, Tilda thought, be almost as thrilling as seeing the Palace that would be her home, and more important, her future husband.

  “I do hope, Tilda, that you will remember to behave properly!” Princess Priscilla exclaimed. “You heard what the Queen said. You are an Ambassador for England and only by keeping yourself strictly under control will you ever be able to fulfil all our hopes of you.”

  She looked at her daughter and thought that it would be far more suitable to be planning a school treat for her or a picnic by the river rather than a Royal marriage.

  Tilda was lovely in a childlike fragile way that made one think of dolls and flowers, but certainly not of responsibility, of political machinations or of being a married woman.

  Suddenly Princess Priscilla felt unexpectedly maternal.

  “Oh, Tilda,” she said with a throb in her voice, “I do want you to be happy.”

  Tilda smiled.

  “‘Don’t worry, Mama,” she said. “I am sure that it cannot be as bad or as frightening as it all sounds.”

  Chapter Two

  “It is lovely! It is exactly what a Royal Palace should be!” Tilda cried when they arrived at the Linderhof.

  She found herself saying it again and again as they went round the fantastic Palace that King Ludwig had built in the green Graswang valley,

  “The place owes its name to an ancient lime tree,” the King’s aide-de-camp explained. “Originally on this site there was only a little hunting-box.”

  “Now it is fantastic!” Tilda exclaimed.

  “It has only been finished this year,” the aide-de-camp went on. “His majesty, inspired by the French buildings of Versailles and the Trianon was determined to create something unique, a jewel amongst the mountains!”

  “I have heard,” Professor Schiller interposed, “that His Majesty in a letter to Baron von Leonrod said,

  ‘It is essential to create such Paradises, such poetical sanctuaries, where one can forget for a while the dreadful age in which we live’.”

  “This really is a Paradise!” Tilda said in an awed voice.

  It was a compact, very white building designed in an exaggeratedly ornate baroque style and was, she felt, like a Fairy Palace that could only exist in a dream.

  The King’s huge canopied blue velvet bed, enriched with fantastic gold carvings and surrounded by cupids holding up a crown was such a bed, she thought, as she personally would like to sleep in.

  The exquisite yellow, mauve, rose and blue porcelain cabinets to separate the bigger rooms, the Moorish kiosk, the Grotto of Venus and the unbelievable carved gold sleigh in which the King could journey from the Linderhof to his castle at Neuschwanstein, were all breathtaking.

  It was, however, extremely disappointing to find that King Ludwig himself was not at the Linderhof to greet them.

  She was so looking forward to seeing him and envisaged him a romantic figure such as one could only meet in books.

  Because he was known to be elusive and disliked meeting strangers and also because, Tilda thought, she was not of any particular importance, she was not really surprised to find on her arrival that the King was at the lake of Chiemsee.

  He was in fact supervising the building of a new Palace, which was to rival the wonders and glories of Versailles.

  But with the King or without him, the Linderhof was certainly a change from the other places Tilda had stayed at on her journey across Europe.

  She had found it tiring and on the whole extremely boring since, except in the Netherlands where the roads were good, the coaches were obliged to go slowly.

  The Posting inns where they changed horses were often dirty and unobliging, and the Palaces of her relatives were, to say the least of it, disappointing.

  Tilda had not quite known what she had expected, but there was an undoubted air of gloom and perhaps of despondency about them.

  This was especially true where the Kings and Grand Dukes had been absorbed into the German Federation and their powers and privileges were being whittled away from them.

  Her mother had warned her that she might find this.

  “Show all your relatives in those countries more respect than you would accord even to the Queen herself,” she said. “They will be very touchy about protocol and want to be reassured as to their status.”

  Tilda had found that this was exactly the case.

  She stood for hours because the King and Queen with whom she was staying would not allow the familiarity of people being seated in their presence.

  She found their conve
rsation stilted and to introduce a topic or venture a question was to receive a blank stare of disapproval.

  The only person who enjoyed herself was the Dowager Lady Crewkerne, principally because each new place at which they stayed gave her an opportunity to disparage the hospitality they received.

  She also acquired more material for her spiteful and uncharitable gossip.

  However, most of what she said Tilda could not help feeling was fully justified.

  Only when she laughed and sneered at the marriage of King William III of the Netherlands to Princess Emma of Waldeck-Pyrmont did Tilda disagree with her criticisms.

  It was true that King William was forty-one years older than his wife, whom he had married the year before. But Tilda realised that the new Queen was happy with her elderly husband and she sensed a happiness in this Palace that she did not find in many others.

  Most of her relatives seemed to her to be very old.

  Only Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden was young and good-looking, but it was impossible for her to talk to him alone.

  Once again protocol made any conversation seem formal to the point where one yawned almost before one spoke.

  ‘Can I bear a lifetime of this?’ Tilda asked herself as they trundled through Hesse-Kassel into Baden, on to Württemberg and across the border into Bavaria.

  The Linderhof made her spirits rise.

  The beauty of the little Palace made her feel that strange surging excitement within her that she had felt when she looked at the Grinling Gibbons carvings in Windsor Castle.

  Could anything be more romantic than the Grotto of Venus that King Ludwig had constructed on the slopes of the hillside and where the electric light – the first full-scale installation in Bavaria – could be made to change at will.

  On the lake, which could be ruffled by artificial waves, the King kept two swans and a gold cockle-boat in which he could be rowed by a servant.

  The garden was also a delight with a fountain whose jet rose to the height of nearly one hundred feet and there were hedges of bleached hornbeam, pyramids of box, cascades, pavilions and a temple.

  ‘Will I find anything like this in Obernia?’ Tilda asked herself.

  With a little shiver of fear she remembered that however romantic or beautiful the Palace might be she would have to share it with the Prince.