The Queen's Husband Read Online Free PDF Page A

forget it. Something terrible and shameful had happened in his family; he knew this was so because of the manner in which no one would explain it to him. Looking back he could see the little Alberinchen who had loved his mother more than he had loved anyone else except himself. She had been so beautiful – more beautiful than anyone else, more loving. No one had conveyed to him in quite the same way how precious he was; no one had made him feel, merely by being close, happy and secure in the same way as she had.
    Something had happened when she went away. He was not sure what, but it was for this reason that he had accepted Herr Florschütz so wholeheartedly and was glad the nurses had been dismissed. He did not want to look at women; they reminded him of his mother and something shameful. He loved her as he always had. Whatever she had done, and Ernest implied that it was terrible, he believed that he could never love anyone as he had loved her. He kept the little pin she had given him and he looked upon it as his greatest treasure. But his discomfiture in the company of women persisted because they made him think of vaguely shameful things.
    He was happy, though, in the woods and mountains; and his father wished him to excel at all manly sports so he and Ernest spent a great deal of time fencing, riding and hunting. He began to love the beauty of the countryside and became an expert on flora and fauna. There was plenty of opportunity to study these, for their father’s pleasant little castles were situated among the magnificent scenery of forests and mountains. Rosenau, his birthplace, would always be his favourite, but he also loved Kalenberg, Ketschendorf and Reinhardtsbrunnen: and, provided that Ernest was with him, he was happy in any of the family residences. Sometimes they visited one grandmother, sometimes the other. These ladies vied with each other for the affection of the boys; and when Albert could forget his mother, he was happy.
    In the early days following her departure she had been constantly in his thoughts, but because of the attitude of those about him he had not spoken of this. Often he complained of pains to the grandmothers and they would hustle him to bed and send for the doctors. He knew that his illnesses terrified them and, as they gave him such importance, he enjoyed them.
    ‘Oh, Grandmama,’ he would pant. ‘I have such a pain here …’ And it was a great joy to see the alarm leap up into Grandmother’s eyes.
    He knew there were conferences about Albert’s health. He was known to be ‘delicate’ – ‘not robust like Ernest’. Ernest was inclined to despise Albert’s delicacy until reproved by his elders for this attitude. Somewhere at the back of Albert’s mind was the thought that if he were ill enough his mother would have to come back to him.
    The situation did not persist because at the early age of six he started to keep a diary and, when this proved to be little more than a detailed account of his ailments, shrewd Grandmother Saxe-Coburg felt that they had been unwise to worry so much about his health.
    ‘The child is obsessed by illness,’ she declared to her son. ‘He appears to take a pride in it. If this goes on when he grows up he will make a point of becoming an invalid.’
    It occurred to her then that a good part of Albert’s fragile health might be due to his imagination.
    ‘Get them out into the fresh air,’ she advised. ‘We’ll let him see that Ernest’s rude health is more admirable than his delicacy. We’ll watch over him as usual but we won’t let him know it.’
    The Duke soon began to realise the wisdom of his mother’s council, for although Albert would never be quite the sturdy boy Ernest was, he was fast forgetting about his illnesses and in spite of a weak chest and a tendency to catch cold his health immediately began to improve.
    The fresh country air agreed with him and, as the Dowager Duchess said, to see those two boys coming in from the