A Web of Misconceptions
“…Marquess.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Command, and I shall answer.”
The vast council chamber had, at some point, been emptied until only the two of them remained. In that hushed place, Queen Victoria tilted her head slightly, gestured toward the door through which the tiny child had just been led out, and put her question to Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, her Prime Minister.
“How did you find her?”
“Ah… you speak, I take it, of Her Highness the Princess…?”
“I do.”
The Marquess of Salisbury hesitated. He truly could not tell whether the Queen's question was a kind of trial set before him, a sovereign's assessment of her second-in-line heir, or merely the idle pride of a great-grandmother asking after her great-grandchild.
But one thing, at least, was certain.
“…I could scarcely believe she is of such tender years.”
“…Is that so.”
For a child of four, the very way she spoke set her apart. Had the Queen herself—had he, for that matter—been capable of such speech at four? He rather thought not.
To command, freely and fluently, the grammatical structure of the mother tongue, to select and wield the proper forms of honor and address to suit the moment, and then to lay out her opinions systematically before grown adults…
“…I would venture to affirm that she is markedly unlike any ordinary child of her age.”
And so the Marquess of Salisbury had, for quite some time, been deeply suspicious. This was a Queen who, after the death of her eldest grandson Prince Albert Victor and the sudden passing of his spouse, had spiraled into the paranoia that the Conservative Party and the peerage might well have assassinated Prince Albert Victor themselves.
It was for that reason the very existence of the Princess had been kept strictly hidden, that she was raised at Windsor Castle alone, her access even to her own grandparents—Edward, Prince of Wales, and Princess Alexandra—cut off entirely, with the Queen overseeing her upbringing single-handedly. Yet here was the four-year-old Princess, meeting the court for the first time, not only speaking at this level but brought into a privy council meeting by the Queen herself—even pressed, of all things, to state her opinion on the matter of the Boers of southern Africa.
The Queen's zeal for education was famous among the royal houses of Europe. She had subjected her own eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, to an intensive sovereign's education from the age of seven—providing a key reason why that prince went off the rails—and she had done the same with her eldest grandson, Prince Albert Victor.
Had it not been for that, the scandals of that luckless father and son, the Prince of Wales and Prince Albert Victor, might never have swept across the Empire as they once had. So from the very moment the Queen announced that a four-year-old who spoke like water flowing had been given a sovereign's education, Salisbury had suspected Her Majesty of disciplining the poor child with far too harsh a hand.
But that suspicion had now quite extinguished itself.
“Do you believe it, Marquess?”
“…I beg your pardon?”
“That Edward—or any of my other children. That the statesmen of the political world, and the prideful Nikolai and Wilhelm of Europe, would believe the girl is what she is.”
“…No, Your Majesty.”
Salisbury could hardly believe it himself, so how were others to believe it? Doubtless the other cabinet ministers who had sat in the council just now had seen it with their own eyes and heard it with their own ears—and would still refuse to believe it.
“…I trust, Marquess, that you have also heard the talk of the streets.”
“…Your Majesty, that is—”
“I am not ignorant of it either. Worry yourself no further.”
The talk of the streets—that would be the swirl of rumors surrounding the Princess.
That she was, in truth, a bastard conceived in the thick of Prince Albert Victor's scandals. That the Princess Ellen, a French harlot, had carried a Frenchman's seed into her womb in order to dye the British Crown French. That both her parents had died of a burning fever, so the child must have been born deformed and unnatural from the very moment of her conception…
Rumors too impious to even set one's lips against. But if a man like the Marquess of Salisbury—the Prime Minister of the realm, a nobleman holding a marquessate no less—knew of them, then they had surely spread beyond Britain to every corner of Europe.
And those rumors could all trace their origins back to the sordid private lives of Edward, Prince of Wales, and Prince Albert Victor, and to the questionable birth of the child's own mother, Princess Ellen. The grandfather and the father were both infamous for scandal-ridden, disorderly private lives, feeding endless gossip and wild fabrication; and the mother—not a princess of some other great house, but of all things a Frenchwoman, and not even of French royalty or nobility, but descended from the bloodline of a pretender to the throne of a fallen dynasty—
“…To be honest, I half believed it myself.”
“…Y-Your Majesty…?”
At that shocking remark slipping from Queen Victoria's lips, the Marquess of Salisbury's head snapped around. Both the Queen and Salisbury were men and women of venerable age, well into their later years—
but Salisbury was not yet so old that he would mishear the Queen at this distance. Which was precisely why he turned, all the more urgently, to read the temper of the woman who had just said such a thing.
“…What is there to be so startled by? Honestly, has there ever been a child so brilliant born into our house?”
“N-no… that may be so, but to say it so abruptly…”
“I honestly assumed she was a bastard my daughter-in-law had gotten by Albert's male lover. Until she was three, she would not open her mouth for love or money, so I called in the doctors, and she opened it as if by witchcraft. And then, look at her talk.”
“…Your Majesty…”
Queen Victoria sipped at the tea in her cup and continued.
“…At that age, I was pushed about by my mother and by John Conroy. Edward could barely string a sentence together, and Albert and George need not even be mentioned. Do you imagine a mere marquess would fare any better?”
“…I ask your forgiveness.”
The Marquess of Salisbury had to admit it too. That, frankly, no child he had ever laid eyes upon could be compared to her.
“…Haah. Still, I do wish she had leaned Conservative. Hearing her talk just now, she put me in mind of Gladstone.”
“…I am humbled, Your Majesty.”
Salisbury looked up at the Queen, wondering whatever could have brought that name into the conversation—but the expression on her face seemed utterly sincere, and he bowed his head once more.
“…What is Gladstone doing with himself these days?”
“I understand he is on a lecture tour, Your Majesty…”
“…I shall have to summon him.”
Salisbury was consumed with misgiving—what on earth did she intend, dragging a man who had retired even from politics back into the light?—but for now he simply bowed his head. What would happen to anyone who provoked the Queen while she wore that particular face had already been proven by his own senior, Disraeli—and proven again by Gladstone, the Queen's bitterest enemy, who had suffered for it right up until last year.
“…Now then. What is your thinking on the Boer question?”
“Ah… there is reason in Her Highness's opinion, Your Majesty, but the war party still holds the ascendancy in both the party and the cabinet…”
“You see? She has set me and you—which is to say, two men who opposed no war nor particularly favored one—seriously thinking. A child of four, no less.”
The Marquess of Salisbury had the distinct feeling that the Queen was about to unspool her boasting over her great-granddaughter at truly magnificent length. Old men and women of that age, after all, lived for nothing so much as the pleasure of watching their grandchildren. He was no different himself, and so the certainty only deepened.
“…In any case. You will dismiss Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner.”
“Pardon?”
“Are your ears failing? Cut them both, bring them to London, and set them up modestly at the Royal Geographical Society as—oh, 'authorities on South Africa,' something of that sort.”
“…Your Majesty, with the utmost deference… Prime Minister Rhodes and Governor Milner wield considerable influence over the Cape Colony. If Your Majesty forces their dismissal so heavy-handedly, the very armed conflict Your Majesty fears may well—”
“Carry out the order before I send you off to be Governor of the Cape Colony.”
The Marquess of Salisbury folded at once.
Well, what could he do?
If those two truly had been preparing machinations against the Transvaal Republic on the Cape Colony's own authority, without so much as informing their own Prime Minister and their Queen at home—then the fault was theirs, was it not…?
“Then… their successors…?”
“…Sending another Conservative would only breed fresh trouble, I suspect…. Ah—since I am summoning Gladstone anyway, I shall entrust the post to his youngest son.”
“As Your Majesty wills and pleases…”
“And the Colonial Secretary is to be censured as well… and roughly—tell them to instruct the Transvaal and the Orange Free State that the residency requirement is to be fixed at three years.”
The Marquess of Salisbury, having committed every one of Queen Victoria's instructions to paper, bowed his head deeply.
And when at last he withdrew from the royal presence, the Marquess of Salisbury, watching the Queen murmur those words to no one in particular, quietly took his leave.
“Mmm. Rose.”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“The tea's gone lukewarm. Take it back and make it hot.”
Granted, the nineteenth century was sorely lacking in dopamine—but surely, I thought, the fact that I'd turned into a cute little girl and now got to hold tea parties was a perfectly adequate dopamine supply in itself?
At least, that was how I saw it.
Granted, too, that my tea-party companions were exclusively maids a good decade or more my senior, and a set of elderly butlers…
“Sometimes, Your Highness, you really don't seem like a child at all.”
“…Mm.”
I very nearly sprayed out the tea I'd just sipped.
“And little wonder, when Your Highness doesn't look the least bit four—”
“Rose, I would like some silence, before I flip this table over.”
“…Yes, Your Highness.”
It wasn't that I entirely disagreed with Rose's opinion. Honestly, what four-year-old rattles on like this and goes mad for tea parties?
But tell me—stuck in this wretched nineteenth century with no Shorts, no Reels, not a single blessed thing—what else was I supposed to do with myself? It's not as though I could regress into babyhood, lisp my way through the day, and ply everyone with aegyo.
Ah, but the Sherlock Holmes series was magnificent. Perhaps because British English had become my mother tongue, reading it in the original really did have a flavor all its own.
Rose and Florence tried again and again to confiscate it, declaring it unfit reading material for a little girl—but after I flipped the bathwater over five or six times, they went quiet.
Well… at this point Holmes is dead and the series is on indefinite hiatus, so I'd have to wait a good while for the next installment anyway. I wonder if the stones have stopped flying at the author's house yet…
The way I see it, my grandfather (Edward VII) needs to go find Arthur Conan Doyle in person and threaten— no, he absolutely must go threaten him into bringing Holmes back to life. Otherwise a modern soul stuck living out the end of the nineteenth century has no amusements left in this world at all…
“In any case, I'd like to call today's tea party to a close here.”
“Oh—Your Highness. There is something I must tell you.”
“…What is it.”
Suddenly, I felt uneasy. Whenever Rose had something to tell me, it was almost always a summons from Great-grandmother.
“Her Majesty has called for a visitor, and she says she will receive them here.”
“…I'm sorry, what?”
What on earth? Why would my great-grandmother be receiving a guest inside this castle…? Was one of my great-aunts coming, perhaps?
If it were Grandmother Louise, at least we'd manage a proper conversation. She also lights up a cigarette, so I could get my secondhand-smoke fix as well…
I was busy re-brewing the tea, trading idle chatter with Rose, when—
“Her Majesty approaches!”
“Long live Her Majesty the Queen! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”
““Long live Her Majesty the Queen! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!””
Whenever Great-grandmother made her rounds, it was always the same: the guardsman announcing her approach would cry out, the eldest-seeming old butler would lead the three cheers, and everyone would follow suit. And then, presently, all would bow their heads toward the Queen in respect.
So I bowed my head too—
“…Huh?”
Beside the Queen—that is, beside my great-grandmother—an unfamiliar old gentleman was walking along with her.
I didn't recall anyone who looked like that in our royal family…
The closer the two of them drew, the more it didn't seem like they were on bad terms at all. If anything, they looked rather like they were bickering back and forth.
What is going on here…
Was he the Queen's secret lover? Or… great-grandmother's "number two"…?
I was beginning to understand why people loved gawking at royal families as if they were trainwreck soap operas. After all, even I couldn't hide my own burning curiosity about those two.