Bride to the King (8 page)

She found the ‘thumbnail sketches’ which the Regent had given her the night before, very helpful, although they seemed surprised that she should know how many children they had and, in the Prime Minister’s case, that his wife was French.

They were soon talking animatedly and answering Zosina’s questions about Dórsia in a manner that told her they were extremely gratified by her interest.

“Thank you very, very much!” she enthused, as she said goodbye to the Prime Minister. “It has been the most thrilling luncheon I have ever attended and I shall never forget it.”

“You have made it a memorable occasion for me, Your Royal Highness,” the Prime Minister replied, “and I can only assure you that you will find Dórsian hospitality is as boundless as our affection.”

He spoke with an obvious pride in his voice and, as Zosina smiled at him, he told himself that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life.

When he said goodbye to the Regent, he added,

“I can only thank you as well as congratulate you, Sire, on your choice. You were far wiser than I was. I am therefore prepared in the circumstances never again to doubt your judgement, especially when it concerns women!”

The Regent’s eyes twinkled.

“Shall I say I am thankful not to have made a fundamental mistake in this particular instance?”

“That I can now say categorically is an impossibility,” the Prime Minister replied.

The Regent was still smiling as he hurried down the steps to take his place in the Royal carriage.

When they arrived back at the Palace, the Queen Mother announced that she was going to her private apartments.

“I hope, Gyórgy, you will join me,” she said to the King. “We have had no chance to talk intimately with each other since I arrived, so this is a welcome opportunity.”

Zosina thought the King looked as if it was not a very welcome one to him, but it was obvious that there was nothing he could do but agree.

Having taken off her bonnet, Zosina went to the Queen Mother’s sitting room to find her grandmother waiting for her and seated beside her, looking very sulky, was the King.

Zosina curtseyed and when she had done so, the Queen Mother said,

“I am going to do something very unconventional, but I feel, as no one will know about it except ourselves, we can forget protocol for a moment. I want you two young people to get to know each other and so I am going to leave you alone without being watched by curious eyes and listened to by inquisitive ears.”

She gave the King and Zosina her famous smile before, with a quickness of movement which belied her years, she went from the sitting room, closing the door behind her.

Zosina, realising that the King had said nothing, looked at him nervously.

He rose and walked across the room to stand at the window looking out and there was an awkward silence until she said,

“Grandmama – always tries to make things as – easy as possible.”

“
Easy
!” the King replied, his voice rising on the word. “I see nothing easy about your being here or this damned marriage!”

Zosina started when he swore, because, although she knew it was a swear word, she had in fact, never heard a man use it in her presence.

“Do you – hate the idea so – much?” she faltered after a moment.

“Hate it? Of course I hate it!” the King snapped. “I have no wish to be married. All I want is to be free, free of being ordered about, free of being told what to do from morning until night.”

“I can understand your – feeling like that,” Zosina said, “but you know why our marriage has been – arranged?”

“I know why they say it has been arranged,” the King answered, “but the real truth is that Uncle Sándor wants someone to take his place, someone who will manipulate me, as he has always done.”

“I am sure that’s not true,” Zosina cried, “and if it were, they would not have chosen me!”

“That is
why
they have chosen you,” the King said. “It is well known that your mother bosses your father and that Lützelstein has a petticoat Government.”

“That is a lie!” Zosina protested. “Whoever told you that has deceived Your Majesty with a lot of rubbish!”

The King laughed and it was not a pleasant sound.

“It is a fact whether you know it or not,” he said, “and if you think you are going to rule my country I promise that you will be disappointed!”

“I have no wish to rule anything or anybody!” Zosina said.

She saw the King did not believe her and after a moment she said more quickly,

“I did not wish to – get married either – I was merely told – that I had to do so.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?” the King asked. “Every woman wants a crown on her head.”

“Then I am the exception. I want to –
love
the man I marry.”

The King laughed jeeringly.

“Love is a cheap commodity – ” he said. “There is plenty of it about, but one cannot marry it. Oh, no! That is arranged by one’s Councillors or in my case by my uncle.”

He spoke in a manner which told Zosina that he hated the Regent.

She had been standing while they were talking, but now she sat down in a chair as if her legs would not carry her. “What – can we – do ?” she asked helplessly.

“Do?” the King questioned. “What we are told to do, of course! Uncle Sándor has it all neatly tied up, while the Prime Minister and all those idiotic creatures who kow-tow to him behave as if I was a performing animal in a circus. ‘Jump through a hoop, Your Majesty! Turn a somersault, Your Majesty! Fly on the trapeze, Your Majesty!’ You don’t suppose I have any chance of refusing them?”

Zosina clasped her fingers together.

“I know it seems – unfair – and perhaps cruel,” she said in a small voice, “but the menace of the – German Empire is real – very real!”

“That is what they tell you,” the King answered. “Personally I don’t care a damn if the Germans do incorporate us in their Empire. We would very likely be better off than we are now.”

“No! No!” Zosina cried. “How can you say such a thing? We have to keep our independence. How could we be ruled by the Prussian Emperor?”

“He would leave me on my throne.”

“For as long as you did as you were told,” Zosina said. “If you think you are badly off now, it is nothing to the position you would find yourself in under the Germans.”

“Now you are talking like Uncle Sándor,” he sneered. “I think it’s all a lot of ‘bogey-bogey’ thought up by politicians who have nothing better to do!”

“Oh, it
is
real – it
is
true,” Zosina insisted. “I read the newspapers and I have also heard what my father says about the menace of the German might. We cannot let Lützelstein and Dórsia come under Prussian rule!”

“All I want,” the King replied, “is to enjoy myself and to have a good time. If I tried to interfere in politics, they would soon stop me, so what is the point of my wasting my time on trying to understand them?”

Zosina gave a little sigh.

The King, she thought, was more than ever like a truculent schoolboy and she had the feeling he was so angry that whatever she said he would never understand the seriousness of the situation or that she was not trying to manipulate him in some manner.

She rose to walk across the room and stand not beside him but at the next window looking out as he was.

The sunshine made the snow on the peaks of the mountains a dazzling white against the blue of the sky and she thought she could see the cascades of water running down the sides of the hills.

In the distance like a silver streak, the river which passed through the City flowed towards the distant horizon.

“Dórsia is so lovely!” she said, “and it is
yours
. It belongs to you!”

The King laughed loudly.

“That is what
you
think, but the person who rules it is Uncle Sándor and everyone from the Prime Minister to the lowest crossing-sweeper knows it.”

His voice had a jeering note in it as he went on,

“Have you not been told by now that I am an unfortunate ‘afterthought’? The son of an Albanian gypsy who ought never to have got into Dórsia in the first place?”

“You are the King,” Zosina replied, “and surely it is up to you to gain the love and respect of your people? When you have done that – and kept your country free – you may justifiably feel very proud of yourself.”

The King laughed again and this time there was a note of genuine amusement in his voice.

“Now you are really starting in the way you mean to go on,” he said. “‘You must be a good King! Be kind to your people! They must learn to love you! You must do the right thing!’”

He threw up his hands in a gesture that was somehow derisive.

“Uncle Sándor has done it again!” he jeered. “He has picked the right ‘petticoat’ to rule Dórsia – and who could have learnt how to do it better than a Princess who comes from Lützelstein?”

Zosina felt her temper rising.

“I think you are being needlessly insulting!” she asserted. “If I could do what I wish to do, I would go back to Lützelstein, stay with my father and tell him I will not marry you, when everything I say or do is suspect.”

“So you have got a temper!” the King said. “Well, that’s better than all that mealy-mouthed preaching anyway.”

Zosina suddenly realised that she was being almost as rude and angry as he was.

“I am – sorry,” she said with genuine humility. “I do not wish to preach – and I promise you I don’t wish to coerce you into doing anything you don’t want to do.”

“But you will all the same,” the King said, “and you will do it for my own good.”

Again his voice was jeering before he went on,

“That is what Uncle Sándor always says, ‘I am only telling you this for your own good!’ If you want the truth I am sick to death of my uncle and everyone else for that matter! I want to be left alone! I want to enjoy myself, have fun with my own friends, make love to the women I choose – and let me tell you once and for all – you are not my type!”

Zosina was tempted to snap back that he was not her type either, but she knew it would sound very childish.

Instead she just stood staring blindly out of the window feeling that this could not be happening. In fact, the whole conversation was like something in a nightmare.

“I will tell you one more thing,” the King said loudly. “If we
have
to marry and I cannot see how I can get out of it, the moment I am properly a King and can send Uncle Sándor packing, I shall go my way and you can go yours!”

As he spoke, he walked across the sitting room and left the room slamming the door behind him.

Zosina put her hands up to her face feeling this could not be true and if it was, then perhaps it was all her fault.

‘How did I manage to upset him? Why did I make him angry?’ she asked herself.

She could feel her hands trembling against her cheeks and knew that her whole body was trembling too.

She found it difficult to think or really to believe that the King had been so rude.

Never in her life had a man, with the exception of her father, spoken to her in a horrible jeering voice that seemed to set her nerves on edge like a squeaking saw.

‘How can I marry anybody like that?’ she thought and felt a sudden panic sweep over her.

It was then the door opened and a servant announced, “His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, Your Majesty!” Zosina put out her hand to hold onto the window ledge. She could not turn round. She could not face the Regent and yet she knew that having entered the room, he must be staring at her back, in surprise.

Then she heard the door shut and after a moment his voice, quiet and calm, said,

“What has happened? Why are you alone? I saw the King coming away from here.”

Zosina tried to find her voice and failed. Then she was aware that he had crossed the room.

“You are upset,” he said quietly. “I am very sorry if the King has done anything to disturb you.”

He sounded so kind that Zosina felt the tears come into her eyes.

Then, as if she could not prevent the words, she heard herself say,

“He
hates
me! He is very – angry because you – brought me – h-here!”

She felt that what she had said surprised the Regent.

“I cannot believe the King said that he hates you,” he replied. “What did he actually say?”

“I-I c-cannot repeat it,” Zosina said quickly, “but he resents having – to – marry and he thinks that you chose me because – I would – boss him as he said – M-Mama does Papa.”

The words came out without her really meaning to say them and as she spoke a tear from each eye ran down her cheeks.

She hoped the Regent would not notice and went on staring blindly ahead at the mountains which now she could not see.

The Regent came nearer still and now he was standing at her side looking at her and she felt for some strange reason, that she could not explain, that she must not move, must not even breathe in case he learned too much.

“I am sorry,” he said at length in his deep voice. “Desperately sorry this should have happened and to you of all people.”

“Please – can I go – home? Perhaps you could – find somebody else?”

She was afraid as she spoke the last words and yet she had said them.

“You know that is impossible,” the Regent answered. “Although it seems a hard thing to say, this marriage, because it concerns our two countries, is more important than an individual’s likes or dislikes.”

“The – King does not seem to be – aware of that,” Zosina murmured.

“He must understand it by now,” the Regent said and there was a sharp note in his voice. “The whole situation has been explained to him over and over again.”

“He wants to be – free.”

“Which is something he certainly would not be under the Emperor Wilhelm.”

“That is – what I told him – but he would not listen.” The Regent sighed.

“I think perhaps he is just being difficult.”

“Surely you could have – allowed him to – find his own wife?” Zosina questioned. “Perhaps he would have – fallen in love with – one of my sisters, if he had come to – Lützelstein.”