And then I said, ‘To tell the truth, Mr Jones, I avoid Cumberland Gate. I dislike any place or person with that name attached.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘That is interesting.’ He saw me to my door.

He said, ‘My father doesn’t go about much. His health is quite broken down these days. But I wonder though if you would think of calling on him? He has a story, concerning the Duke, concerning King Ernest. In the right hands I believe it might help him get the pension he deserves.’

‘You’ve been in Hanover, so you’ve no reason to know the story is common knowledge here. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be worth a farthing.’

His face fell.

He said, ‘You mean he’s been named?’

‘As good as. The child, Cumberland’s natural son, or some might say his unnatural son, began an action in Chancery to be recognized and paid an allowance. Let me tell you, all it brought him was ruin.’

‘A natural child?’ he said. ‘But all the Royalties have those. My father’s story isn’t about a child. It’s about a crime that has gone unpunished.’

I took his card. Then I lay awake for many nights arguing with myself about what to do. Extortion is a dirty business. It demeans those who practise it and it doesn’t always succeed. Whatever mud was flung at Ernie Cumberland (I still cannot bring myself to call him King Ernie) slid off him. If all those caricatures about him—hinting at Sofy, mocking Lady Graves—if they hadn’t shamed him when he was riding about London, why should any revelations trouble him now he was installed on a throne in Hanover? Could a sick old adjutant fleece a king?

There was Sofy to consider too, who could never, ever think ill of him. She had decided, back in 1800, to redraw Ernie, to make him her valiant cavalier, only prevented from being her husband by a pettifogging canon law. Making a hero of Ernie was her way of accommodating the sad facts of her life and I had given up disturbing whatever peace she’d found. And then there was Tommy. Fatherhood appeared to have made a man of him at last. He’d taken a modest house in Brompton and employed a nurse for little Georgiana, but I foresaw the risk that any new scandal about Cumberland might reignite his own hopeless claim for money.

Put together, these points were a strong argument against hearing what Major Jones had to say. But then, listening can be a neutral thing, done out of politeness, or to relieve the teller of the torment of secrecy. Repeating what’s been heard, using it maliciously, inciting others to use it, that would be a wholly different matter. And so, partly suspecting Major Jones was a lonely old man who just wanted someone to talk to, and partly because I could never resist the promise of a good story, I set off one afternoon for Montagu Street.

41

A weakness of the heart had robbed Major Jones of any soldierly bearing or vitality but he wasn’t so very old. I could have given him ten years at least. He had fought in the campaigns in Flanders and Corunna and at Waterloo. Then, after the peace, he’d been summoned to Hanover to be Ernie Cumberland’s personal aide. There seemed to have been a manly bond of affection between them, as is commonly the case with army men. Garth had often spoken lovingly of men who’d served under him.

Several times Jones paused from what he was telling me to say, ‘You understand, Mrs Buzzard, I have always tried to do my duty. You understand, only need has brought me to the point where this burden is too heavy for me to bear. My wife …’ His wife was a delicate, gentle person. She knew little of the wicked ways of the world and was inclined to see everyone in the best possible light. This quality had allowed her to ignore the gossip and become quite dedicated to Frederica Cumberland. It was therefore unthinkable for the Major to share with his wife what he was about to tell me.

Major Jones had arrived at Herrenhausen Castle in the winter of 1815 and found Ernie in a brooding, bitter mood. He’d been kept away from Waterloo and so deprived of glory in battle. He had been passed over for the vice-royalty of Hanover in favour of Dolly Cambridge. And, to heap insult upon injury, our new Queen Victoria had ruled that his dear duchess should never be received by herself or any of the Royal Highnesses. Ernie had nothing to do all day except fume and rant and find himself cruelly used.

The Major said, ‘The Duke came to me one evening, very agitated. I thought he might have a fever but he wouldn’t have a doctor sent for. He said he began to wonder if his misfortunes were a kind of judgment on him, that things he had tried to bury kept rising to the forefront of his mind and he had no friend he could confide in. He said he must have relief or go mad. What could I do but offer him my ear? He made me swear not to tell another living soul.’

I said, ‘And did you?’

‘Never,’ he said. ‘My boy knows a little of it. He believes I should profit from it, but as a last resort, you understand? I’d hoped His Majesty would remember my loyal service and help me in my difficulties. But Mrs Buzzard, more than that, I feel the need to share what I know, to dilute the hold it has on me.’

I said, ‘I’ve known the Royalties since I was a girl. Nothing you tell me about Ernie Cumberland will surprise me.’

‘Very well,’ he said.

Then he sat in silence for an age, gazing into his cup. I think he had to put up one last struggle before he surrendered his secret.

Eventually he said, ‘It concerns an unlawful death. That evening His Royal Highness said to me, “Jones, I once killed a man, and now he haunts me.” I replied that we were soldiers and it was our business to kill. “In war, yes,” he said. “But not in the bed chamber.” Then he gave me a full account.’

I knew at once what name I was going to hear. Joseph Sellis.

He said, ‘It was many years ago. The Duke was a young man. In youth the appetites often outrun prudence. Is there a man alive who hasn’t something foolish in his past?’

Well, when Sellis died Ernie Cumberland must have been approaching forty, which is stretching the notion of youth even for Royalties, who are famously slow to mature. I said nothing. The next part of his account was what seemed to give Major Jones the most trouble, far more than the slaughter or the covering up.

‘His Royal Highness,’ he said, ‘had been tempted into perversion. I cannot say how it came about. Perhaps in drink. Perhaps an ungovernable urge after a romantic reversal with a lady. Or a bout of playful wrestling that had grown too warm. One can imagine that. The fact remains that he was discovered in a certain act, with a valet. The discoverer was another valet. It was an aberration, admittedly, but it was committed in a private household, not in some common molly house. The matter should have gone no further.’

I have heard that men do such things, though how it’s achieved I have never managed to understand.

I said, ‘You mean an act of sodomy.’ Poor Jones shuddered.

He said, ‘I can only call it an ill-advised shirt dance.’

And so I heard, at second hand, Ernie’s confession. Joseph Sellis had witnessed something he should not have seen and had tried to profit from it. He had threatened to go to the press, to the King even. Ernie had had no choice but to silence him.

I tried to recall what had been said about Sellis. That he was a Sardinian, yes, as though that alone were a hanging offence. But also that he had been a devoted servant, and a family man. His wife and children shared the advantages of his position. They had a comfortable place to live and perquisites. What more could Sellis have hoped to gain? The Royalties probably take as long to pay their extortioners as they do their tailors. And then, who would have believed him? If there was talk at all about Ernie Cumberland it was that he was a ruthless ladies’ man.

Jones said, ‘The Duke didn’t act alone, you see. The valet Neale assisted him, the same that had been discovered … well … let’s say no more about that. Neale arranged the items that were found by the constables: a lantern, a pair of cloth slippers with Sellis’s mark on them, and the empty scabbard of His Highness’s regimental sword. The wounds the Duke received were inflicted by himself, before or after, I don’t know. And when the time came to raise the alarm, Neale played his part, word perfect. The worst of it is this: when His Royal Highness went to despatch Sellis he found he lost all command of himself. He was possessed by a rage he still cannot explain—“not myself, Jones”—those were his words. When the terrible deed was done he found he had attacked Sellis with such force, that he had cut him so deep, from ear to ear, that his head was almost severed.’

I had read something of the sort. It was the reason people had queued to see the body.

I said, ‘Where is the valet Neale now?’

‘In Kensington,’ he said. ‘Living quite high. His lips are sealed by a handsome pension.’

Poor Jones. Anyone could sympathize with his position. Neale, who had been an accomplice to murder, lived in comfort and he, who had done neither more nor less than hear a man’s confession, had nothing.

He said, ‘After the Duke had given me his account he seemed much calmer. He said, “I shall sleep tonight, Jones. Sellis has been haunting me these recent weeks. Every time I closed my eyes I saw his lolling head. But tonight I shall sleep. He’s lost his power over me. I can feel it.” Then he shook my hand and went very cheerfully to his supper. He came back to me twice before he retired, begging to be assured that I should never tell another person what he had told me. In the end he went off quite happy, and I saw a change in his mood from that day forward. So did the Duchess. He whistled. He was like a boy set free from school. But the torment that had weighed him down seemed shifted to me. In my dreams I saw Sellis with his lolling head, as though I had been there. I still do.’

I said, ‘And now I suppose, so will I.’

I wasn’t too fearful. I’ve never allowed dreams to trouble me and since my sister Eliza I’m very firm with phantoms. They may visit me for the first year. After that they must go to their glory. The rule seems to work. Papi I smelled whenever I sat at my desk. Laundry soap and Old Paris snuff. Morphew was on the back stairs, an unmistakeable blend of horse and beer and rancid wig. Sally I saw reflected in the window of the Pink Lemon. Jack Buzzard never manifested himself, perhaps because he didn’t believe in such nonsense. And Garth? I neither saw nor smelled Garth, and yet many times that first year I knew he was there beside me, as sure as this pen is in my hand.

Major Jones asked my opinion. My advice was that if he needed financial relief he’d do better to invoke the comradeship of Waterloo and apply to Lord Anglesey or to Wellington himself. The Duke of Cumberland, the King of Hanover if you please, was a man any sensible person would avoid. I wasn’t convinced though that Jones was sensible. He looked to me to be on the very brink of madness. I never saw him after that day and his story cost me no sleep. His son did cross my path again, but not for some time. First there is another Royal Highness I must lay to rest.

Our young Queen was married on February 10th 1840, to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. He was a cousin, inevitably, and very young and green, but everyone was happy with the match. The wedding took place in the chapel at St James’s Palace. Annie had no interest in seeing the procession, she thought it all bread and circuses. I would have gone down to the Mall if the weather had been kinder but as it was it rained without a break all morning so I took a growler to Kensington instead and sat with Sofy.

At about four o’clock Minny Gloucester and the Dowager Adelaide came in from the wedding breakfast and gave us their report. Victoria had worn white satin, with a veil of Devon lace and a garland of Kew orange blossoms in her hair. Albert was in a Field Marshal’s uniform. Both had looked very bonny, everyone had remembered their place and their lines, and the Queen had seemed not in the least nervous about becoming a wife.

Minny said, ‘Quite raring for it, I’d say. Not like when Royal married Fritz. Remember Sofy? She was so terrified she could barely walk.’

Sofy said, ‘That was because she’d had A Talk from our Illustrious One. I’m sure she was expecting torture by strappado.’

‘When in fact,’ Minny said, ‘in Royal’s case, it was torture by being laid on by an elephant.’

Adelaide said, ‘But Minnychen, tell about poor Gusta.’

Princess Augusta had shocked them by her appearance. Her face, that had always been round and rosy, was gaunt and grey, her arms were thin, and her belly was swollen.

‘Und she eats nussink,’ Adelaide said. ‘Only liddle trink off brandy. Oh Sosie, I sink Gusta iss ver bad. I sink ve lose her.’

And lose her they did, though she confounded all her doctors and lived fully two months longer than they said was possible, consumed by a growth in her bowels and whispering for more opium. Sofy and Minny were at her side when she died, and Adelaide and the physicians and Dolly and Gussy Cambridge too. There can hardly have been elbow room.

‘A good sort’ was the spoken epitaph from her surviving sisters. She had been a private, uncomplaining woman, a passionate gardener, a hearty walker, and an attentive aunt.