A Princess Runs Away

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1885-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1885“Now tell me who else there is?” Queen Victoria asked sharply.

The Marquis of Salisbury, who was then standing in front of her, replied in his deep quiet voice,

“I am afraid, ma’am, we have come to the end of the more obvious Princesses available.”

“I am well aware of it,” the Queen answered, “but there must be someone. After all it is most important that Prince Godelov should not lose Saralovia.”

The Prime Minister knew it only too well.

In fact he had pointed it out to Her Majesty in the first place, but he was too tactful to say so.

“I agree with you, ma’am,” he said, “and, of course, it would be ideal for the Prince to have a British wife at this particular moment.”

There was a short silence.

He recalled how the Russians had been infiltrating their agents into the Balkans during the last few years.

One after another the small Sovereign independent Principalities were coming under their influence.

The Russians as usual had been exceedingly subtle and clever about it and they had planted agitators to work up the population against their Rulers.

This eventually ended in chaos with the result that the Russians could move in on the pretext that they were preserving peace.

As the Queen and the Prime Minister knew, in most cases the Ruler of a country when there had been such a rebellion had fled and this had made it available for the Russians to set up a Ruler of their own choice.

There were actually exceptions when the legitimate Ruler stood his ground. And then the Russians tried every means they could think of, even resorting to kidnapping, to ensure his abdication.

The only real safeguard was for the Principality to be under the protection of the Union Jack.

The Czar of Russia had no wish to go to war with Great Britain and he therefore avoided making trouble in those countries where the Queen or the Ruler was British.

Queen Victoria herself was already being called the ‘Matchmaker of Europe.’

However, even she with her large family could not provide an unceasing line of young women to reign with a Balkan husband.

At this moment the Queen was feeling worried.

Prince Godelov of Saralovia had urgently requested her help in finding a bride for him.

She had already informed the Prime Minister in no uncertain terms what was needed and he had promised to search diligently for a suitable Princess.

The Marquis of Salisbury had enlisted the help of Members of his Cabinet and associates in the Parliament most especially the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the Earl Granville.

As it so happened it was eventually the Earl who had come up with a solution at the very last moment.

In fact the Marquis had been thinking ruefully of the distinctly uncomfortable interview he would soon have with Her Majesty.

He knew only too well how irritated and difficult she could be when she did not get her own way.

He had searched high and low.

Yet he had not been able to find in the records a single candidate of the Royal blood, however remote, from the Queen’s family, who was either free or old enough to marry Prince Godelov.

Then late last night Earl Granville had come to call on him at Number 10 Downing Street.

The Prime Minister had not expected him and he was in fact considerably surprised when it was announced that the Earl wished to see him at such a late hour.

He glanced at the clock and muttered,

“Very well I will see him, but I wish to go to bed as soon as possible.”

“Everything is ready, my Lord,” the butler replied.

He then admitted the Earl to the drawing room and closed the door.

“You are very late,” the Prime Minister greeted him in a somewhat rebuking tone.

“I know that,” the Earl replied. “But I bring you good news and I thought that you should have it before you leave in the morning for Windsor Castle for an audience with Her Majesty.”

“Good news?” the Prime Minister questioned with a hint of disbelief in his voice.

He could not imagine that the Earl really did bring him the news that he required as he had given up hope.

Earl Granville, without being asked to, sat down in a chair next to the Prime Minister.

“I have found you a Princess,” he began slowly.

The Prime Minister stared at him.

“I don’t believe you.”

“It is true and I admit that it was very remiss of us to have overlooked her.”

“Who is it?” the Prime Minister demanded.

“Princess Vasila.”

The Prime Minister looked blankly at him and Earl Granville explained it to him.

It was the trump card that the Prime Minister now had up his sleeve for Her Majesty. He felt he had worked very hard on this particular case and had worried a great deal over it.

He thought it only fair that the Queen should have to worry too.

“There must be someone available,” the Queen had asserted imperiously at the beginning of his audience.

She spoke in a positive tone as if she dared not only mankind but the elements to defy her.

“I must be frank, ma’am,” the Prime Minister said, “and tell you that I had in fact given up hope. It was Earl Granville, who late last night brought me a suggestion that I know will delight Your Majesty.”

“Are you really saying that after all this fuss and commotion you have found me a Princess with some Royal blood in her?” the Queen asked him pointedly.

When she was interested in a subject close to her heart, she liked to get to the point quickly.

“I think, ma’am,” the Prime Minister said, “ that we have been remiss in forgetting all about Princess Vasila.”

The Queen gave an exclamation.

“You mean the daughter of Princess Louise?”

“Exactly, ma’am.”

“I had no idea that she was old enough,” the Queen remarked.

“She is eighteen,” the Prime Minister answered. “I think, ma’am, you will recall that, after Princess Louise’s death, Your Majesty arranged for her to be brought up by Baroness von Bergstein in one of your Grace and Favour houses at Hampton Court.”

“Of course, I remember,” the Queen said positively. “But I had no idea that she was eighteen. I considered her, but believed that she was still only a child.”

“I understand that she was eighteen last month and since Prince Godelov is arriving today, I thought, ma’am, naturally with your permission, that we should invite her to come here to Windsor Castle.”

“Of course, of course,” the Queen replied, “and I hope the girl has something decent to wear. From what I hear the Prince has somewhat of a reputation where women are concerned and, of course, he is a good deal older than Princess Vasila.”

The Marquis thought that that was putting it mildly.

The Prince’s love affairs had been repeated round the Embassies of Europe and they had not lost anything in the telling when the stories reached London.

Prince Godelov had buried his first wife over seven years ago and he had not been anxious to marry again until he realised how the Russians were undermining his rule in his Principality.

Then he panicked and immediately sent an Envoy over to London to beg the help of Her Majesty

the Queen.

It would have been, the Marquis of Salisbury knew, somewhat humiliating to admit that on this occasion, and it was certainly the first, the Queen was helpless to assist in any way.

He could see by the expression on Her Majesty’s face that she was as glad as he was that the Prince’s plea could be satisfied.

As if she was thinking aloud, the Queen then said,

“Send someone to Hampton Court at once to collect the Princess and I think you had better talk to her as soon as she arrives. And I will, of course, see her later in the afternoon.”

“Very good, ma’am. Your Majesty’s wishes will be carried out immediately,” the Marquis said. “I admit I am extremely relieved that we have thought of the Princess even if it has taken a little time.”

“Of course,” the Queen observed meditatively, “my grandmother was her mother’s first cousin and her father, Prince Nicholas of Kazana, was a Russian.”

“And he was Georgian, ma’am,” the Prime Minister corrected her. “If you remember, he was killed during a revolution in his Principality because he refused to become a mere puppet in Russian hands.”

“It was disgraceful, utterly disgraceful!” the Queen exclaimed. “Just as the way that they are behaving now is seriously appalling.”

The Prime Minister had heard all this many times.

“I do agree with you, ma’am, and at last they have woken up in India to the danger that the advance of the Cossacks over Asia is threatening.”

“I am aware of that,” the Queen said, “and I have written very strongly to the Viceroy, saying that he must be on his guard and that much more attention must be paid to our frontier defences there.”

The Marquis of Salisbury well knew that India was ‘the jewel in the Crown’ of the Britain Empire and was coveted above all else by the Russians.

Their activities in the Balkans had merely been the first step in the insatiable ambition of the Czar and no one in England had paid very much attention at first.

The fast-riding Cossacks had begun to sweep across Asia and one by one the Khanates and Caravan towns of the Old Silk Road fell in their path.

The Czar’s Empire was expanding at a rate of fifty-five square miles a day.

It was only this year, the first one since the Prime Minister had taken office, that he had drawn the Cabinet’s attention to the dangers that were threatening India.

At first the Ministers had thought it impossible.

How could the Russians even conceive so fantastic a plan?

Then came the reports of the Cossacks being nearer than they had previously thought!

They learned of the unrest that the Russians were stirring up against the local tribesmen on the North-West Frontier and their infiltration into Afghanistan made even the most complacent member of the Cabinet take notice.

Strict instructions had been sent to the Viceroy, the Marquis of Dufferin, to be on his guard and secret reports from India were reaching the Prime Minister almost daily.

In the meantime the problem of Russian infiltration in the Balkans was no less important and it was, of course, nearer home.

There was a short silence between the Queen and the Prime Minister and now she said,

“I expect that I shall have to give Princess Vasila her trousseau and it would be sensible, Prime Minister, for the marriage to take place just as soon as possible.”

“I shall carry out Your Majesty’s commands,” the Prime Minister replied.

He bowed and started to back out of the room.

He was thinking, as he had often before, that it was a difficult manoeuvre since the room was so congested with furniture.

Anyone entering Queen Victoria’s sitting room for the first time was usually surprised into silence.

The state of confusion in what was a private room was unbelievable.

The Royal furniture, which was fairly impressive, was almost completely concealed under a large profusion of books, photograph-frames and bibelots of all kinds.

On two large wooden cabinets were statues, models of favourite animals, flowers and, of course, photographs.

It was with great difficulty that the Prime Minister, who was a large man, managed to reach the door. He had rather skilfully avoided falling over one waste-paper basket and several stools.

He had actually brushed against a small table which held leading books of reference for the coming year. They were uniformly bound in red Morocco and stamped with Her Majesty’s cipher in gold.

It was with an air of relief that he managed to reach the door and, when he was outside, he drew a deep breath as a man might have done who had swum a wide river.

Then he walked quickly down the corridor to give his orders.

*

Completely unaware that her future life was being planned for her by the Queen at Windsor Castle, Princess Vasila duly said ‘goodbye’ to her French teacher.

Swinging her lesson books, she began to walk back to the small Grace and Favour house at the far end of the Courtyard where she lived with Baroness von Bergstein.

All the people living in Grace and Favour houses in Hampton Court were very old. But as Princess Vasila had lived there for the past four years she thought of them as her friends.