Bride to the King (16 page)

“I find His Majesty’s behaviour incomprehensible. Prince Vladislav, as I am well aware, is a great landowner and one of the most important Noblemen in Dórsia. I only hope he will not be offended that the King is not present on such an auspicious occasion.”

“I am sure that His Royal Highness will make His Majesty’s excuses very eloquently,” the Lord Chamberlain replied.

He was an elderly man who Zosina had already learned had been at the Palace for many years and in attendance on the previous Monarch.

The Queen Mother smiled as if to take the sting out of her words as she said,

“When the Prince Regent retires, you will have your hands full.”

The Lord Chamberlain shook his head.

“I too am retiring, ma’am, as are most of my colleagues.” “Retiring!” the Queen Mother exclaimed. “Is that wise?” “It is wise from our point of view,” the Lord Chamberlain replied, “to leave before we are dismissed.”

The Queen Mother looked shocked, but Zosina thought that she was actually aware of the King’s intention to have his own friends about him.

She could only think once again in horror of the chaos they would create everywhere.

The outside of Prince Vladislav’s house was almost as magnificent as that of the Palace, but inside it was a conglomeration of good and bad taste, ancient and modern.

It was, however, difficult for Zosina to notice anything because, as they entered the huge reception room already crowded with guests, she saw the Regent standing beside their host and her heart turned over in her breast.

If he had looked breath-taking on other occasions, she thought now that he looked like a Mediaeval Knight, wearing the uniform of the order and a wide blue ribbon across his heart, from which hung the decoration of St. Miklos that was worn by all the other men in the room.

But none of them were as handsome or outstanding as the Regent.

Zosina only hoped, as she walked behind the Queen Mother, that she looked like the flower with which he identified her.

She had taken a great deal of trouble in choosing her gown with this in mind and it was of a very pale leaf green tulle decorated with bunches of snowdrops.

The same flowers were arranged in a wreath on her hair instead of the flower tiara she had worn on other occasions.

She looked very young, very innocent and very pure, but she did not know that to the Regent it was like being struck by a thousand knives to see her eyes looking shyly at him and know that he could never again hold her in his arms or touch her.

The dinner was superlative, the company intelligent and amusing, the speeches very short.

Afterwards there was soft music as a background to the conversation and it was with a sincere feeling of regret that at eleven o’clock the Queen Mother rose to leave.

“This evening,” Zosina heard her say to the Prince, “has been more enjoyable than any other. I can only thank Your Highness for a most delightful time and I know my granddaughter has enjoyed it as much as I have.”

“It was a great privilege to have you here, ma’am,” the Prince replied, “and may I beg that for the Princess this will be the first of many such visits.”

“I hope so, Your Highness,” Zosina replied.

She could not help knowing that the King would think the Prince’s hospitality dull and boring. She was also sure that he would, as he had tonight, refuse his invitations if it was possible to do so.

Zosina wanted to ask the Regent what she should do in such circumstances.

Should she be strong-minded enough to go without the King or would she just agree to confine herself to being his wife and associate only with the people who amused him?

It would be intolerable to endure the impertinence and familiarity of the King’s friends night after night!

Then she told herself reassuringly at least he could not have them at the Palace, not all of them at any rate. That would be too outrageous even for him to contemplate.

Perhaps gradually she could have her own friends, men like Prince Vladislav, who, although he was old, was charming and interesting.

Her whole being cried out at having to make such decisions on her own and, after what the Lord Chamberlain had said tonight, she wondered apprehensively if there would be anybody stable and sensible left in the Palace.

To her relief, when they were escorted to the front door, she found that the Regent was accompanying them home.

The Lord Chamberlain therefore changed to another carriage and, as the Regent sat opposite her, Zosina felt that if she was not careful her hands would go out towards him and she would be unable to prevent herself from holding onto him.

‘I am frightened!’ she wanted to say, ‘frightened of tomorrow, of having my engagement to the King announced to the world, of knowing that then there will be no going back, no escape and, when I return to Dórsia, it will be as a bride.”

She felt her heart crying out to the Regent with an irrepressible agony and, although he did not look at her, but only at the Queen Mother, she knew he was feeling the same.

There were huge crowds outside the Palace and the Regent said,

“I thought we would not go in by the main entrance, ma’am, but once we are in the Palace, if you and Her Royal Highness would appear on the balcony, it would give the people who have been waiting for hours for a glimpse of you, very great pleasure.”

“Of course we will do that,” the Queen Mother replied.

Zosina thought it was a sensible idea that instead of the crowds seeing only their backs walking up the steps to the Palace, they would see them waving and smiling from the balcony on the first floor.

Inevitably her mind told her that the King would never think of greeting the people in that way, then she rebuked herself again for being critical.

They stepped out at the side door which, in fact, was very impressive and was used on formal occasions for those being entertained in the Throne Room.

There was a wide passage covered with a red carpet and as the Queen Mother walked ahead followed by Zosina and the Regent, a second carriage drew up to the door.

The Lord Chamberlain and other members of the Prince’s party staying at the Palace, began to alight.

By this time the Queen Mother had reached the huge painted and gilt doors which led into the Throne Room itself.

As she did so, there was a sudden loud noise of voices and laughter, followed by several pistol shots.

It was so unexpected and so startling that the Queen Mother stopped and looked back to the Regent.

“What can have happened, Sándor?” she asked. “Who can be shooting inside the Palace?”

As if the Regent was also perturbed, he walked forward and opened one of the Throne Room doors.

Both the Queen Mother and Zosina followed him to look inside.

What she saw, made Zosina draw in her breath.

The gaslights were lit, but not the huge chandeliers, which, as in the State Banqueting Room, hung from the centre of the ceiling.

On the throne sat the King and at her first glance Zosina realised that he was very drunk indeed.

His white tunic open to the waist was stained with wine and his legs were thrust out in front of him and, seated partly on his knees and partly on the arm of the throne, was the same girl who had been with him last night and who was even drunker than he was.

Her skirt was up above her knees and her bodice had fallen from one shoulder to reveal her breast.

On the floor in front of them were the King’s friends and Zosina saw they were lying on the red velvet cushions from the gilt chairs and stools which stood against the walls.

She recognised most of the men who had been with the King the night before, and they were the same women who had surprised and shocked her with the dyed hair and crimson lips.

Even in her innocence Zosina was aware that the men and women on the velvet cushions were behaving in a grossly immoral manner, the majority of the men having discarded their coats and in some cases their shirts.

She seemed to take everything in, in the passing of a second, then the King lifted his hand that was not encircling the woman on his knee and there was a pistol in it.

He shot at one of the gas lamps and the glass from it crashed down on the polished floor and this shot was followed by two more, while the men not too engaged with the women in their arms shouted encouragement.

There was a yell of triumph as another gas bulb crashed to the ground. It was a sound, Zosina thought, like that of wild animals baying at the moon.

Then sharply the Regent shut the door.

“His Majesty is entertaining his friends privately,” he said, but he was unable to repress the anger in his voice. They went on down the corridor in silence.

The Lord Chamberlain escorted the Queen Mother and Zosina to the reception room on the first floor, footmen opened the huge centre window and gas lamps illuminated them as they stepped out onto the balcony.

A great roar of sound like the breaking of waves on a rocky shore went up as the crowd saw them and hats, flags and handkerchiefs fluttered in the air as the Queen Mother and Zosina waved.

It would have been an inspiring and exciting sight if Zosina had not felt as if someone had struck her on the head.

By the time she reached her own bedroom, she felt physically sick.

All she could think of was the scene in the Throne Room. She had no idea that men and women could look so degraded, so utterly disgusting.

Last night had been bad enough, but tonight, with the King’s friends behaving in a manner that she had never been able to imagine, let alone see, she was disgusted to the point where she herself felt degraded because she had witnessed their behaviour.

She only knew, when at last Gisela had left her and she was alone, that she wanted to hide because she could no longer face the world or rather the people in it.

‘How can he be like that? How can any man, let alone a King, think that sort of behaviour enjoyable?’ she asked herself.

The King’s puffy face and half-closed eyes, his mouth slack and open, his soiled and crumpled clothes and the woman on his knee were vividly pictured in her mind and would not be erased.

It seemed as if in a split second of time when the Regent had opened the door the whole scene was fixed in her memory so that she would never be able to forget it.

She tried not to think of what she had seen, the women half-naked, the men’s bare backs, with overturned bottles of wine rolling about on the floor.

It was all horrible, disgusting and vulgar and she was ashamed.

Ashamed for the King, ashamed that any man could so debase himself when he was the Monarch of a country as beautiful as Dórsia.

Then her own personal involvement was there to frighten her even more than she was already.

‘His
wife
!’ she whispered to herself. ‘Oh, God. How can I be his wife when I loathe and despise him?’

Because there was no answer to the question, she buried her face despairingly in the pillow and felt that even God had deserted her.

*

All through the night Zosina, unable to sleep, tossed and turned and tried to escape from her own thoughts.

No exercise of willpower, she thought now despairingly, could change the King, and it had been only a child’s idea culled from Katalin that anything she could say or do could improve him.

Zosina was, in fact, so deeply shocked by her first encounter with impropriety that it was impossible for her to think clearly or be certain of anything except the longing to escape.

The hours were ticking by and she told herself that soon it would be the morning of the day when her engagement would be announced to that foul creature she had seen sitting on his throne.

After that it would be only a short time before she became his wife and would be competing for his interest, if that was the right word, with the women he obviously preferred, women unashamedly naked who would debauch the Palace as he was doing.

‘What can I do?
What can I do
?’ Zosina asked and again there was no answer.

Finally because she could not sleep and felt as if she could not breathe, she walked to the window to pull back the curtains.

It was still very early, the mountains were silhouetted as the first faint glow of the dawn rose behind them. There were still stars in the sky.

There were no longer crowds outside the Palace, only a deep quiet while the City slept.

It was then that Zosina felt as if the Palace was closing in on her, the walls crushing her so that, like a rat in a trap, she was slowly being suffocated by them.

‘I must think! I must think!’ she told herself.

But her brain seemed a jumble of impressions and nothing was clear except wherever she looked she saw the King’s drunken face.

Hardly aware of what she was doing, driven by a wild desire to leave the Palace and the man she loathed, she went to her wardrobe.

The first thing she saw was one of the riding habits she had brought with her to Dórsia, but which she had not had the opportunity of wearing.

She was so used to dressing herself at home without the help of the overworked Gisela that it only took her a short time to put on her habit, find her short summer riding boots, her hat and her gloves.

She glanced at the clock and saw it was only a little after four o’clock.

The sky was lightening every moment and the stars were receding until there were only a few of them visible.

Zosina opened the door of her bedroom and went down the passage.

She realised that there would be a night footman on duty in the hall, just as there would be sentries outside the main doors.

She knew in which direction lay the stables and rather than ask for a horse to be brought round for her, she intended to choose one for herself.

The side door was heavily bolted, but the key was in the lock and with some difficulty Zosina managed to pull back the bolts.

She found herself in the garden and saw the roofs of the stables in the distance. She walked there quickly.

As she expected, everything was very quiet.

Then, as she opened a double door of the main stable building, a young groom appeared rubbing his knuckles in his eyes and yawning.