Falling for Prince Charles Read online

  She listened for a moment to the creaking of the ancient wooden structure. If a palace could be said to quiver, then this one was doing it.

  Okay. So, maybe it was all a trifle over-the-top; just a tad bit Orson Welles on a plaid acid trip. But Daisy decided that she liked it.

  Stooping, Daisy snatched up the surprisingly thick pamphlet. She flipped through the glossy pages that made it look as though the sun shone over Holyrood at all times. She was thinking that some tiny tourist’s mommy or daddy had forked over a pretty pence for this souvenir, only to have it tossed aside, along with the gummy candies that she had found tucked up under the hem of the curtain.

  Well, why the heck not? Daisy asked herself, fishing out the red candies first, with the intention of leaving the licorice ones for last, an eventuality of final resort that would be called into service only in the event of absolute sugar privation.

  Charley had said that she should make herself at home, mi casa es su casa and all of that. And what better way for a Silverman to make herself at home than wrapping her hands around some printed matter and reading her way through it? She would take herself on a self-guided tour, she decided. Surely, she could amuse herself for a few short hours. After all, she had never needed a Sturgess to take care of her before. And, even if you were only planning on stopping at a certain place for a short period of time, it still always made sense—at least, to her way of thinking—to find out something about where you were, so that later on you would always know where you had been.

  Hmm. Let’s see…

  Holyrood was located at the Canongate eastern end of the Royal Mile, which began at Edinburgh Castle. Peppered with interesting old structures—replete with turrets, gables, and chimneys—the quaint little shops that now studded the Mile sounded to Daisy to be no more than an aesthetically pleasing architectural device, employed to wean people from their own presumably hard-earned cash.

  Adjacent to Holyrood Abbey and dating back to the early 16th century…

  Yawn. Chomp, chomp. Flip the page.

  Mary, Queen of Scots had moved there from the French Court, already a widow for the first time at the age of nineteen. Well, now, that was a bit more interesting.

  Chew, chew.

  Daisy paused in her strolling and reading to study a marker that recorded the spot where David Rizzio had died on 9 March, 1566.

  Nothing like having a veritable tombstone smack in the middle of your home, Daisy thought.

  Mary’s Italian secretary, Rizzio, had been murdered, assassinated some said by Lord Darnley—Mary’s second husband—along with his cohorts. The dirty deed had taken place in this, the audience chamber of Holyrood. The rather—as all reports agreed upon—shrimpy form of Rizzio was said to have been stabbed fifty-six times. A nice round number, that.

  The syphilitic Lord Darnley (the brochure didn’t exactly refer to his medical condition in so many words, but Daisy had remembered reading something once) had been, in his just turn, also murdered. The same some, who always seemed to be saying something, this time said that Mary’s hand was the guiding force behind the plot.

  So, plenty of murder and mayhem. A little grim, perhaps, but nothing really out of the way there either.

  Yuck, how bland: an orange one. Daisy swallowed. Flick of the page.

  Bonnie Prince Charlie had hosted one whale of a rip-roaring ball there in the mid-eighteenth century.

  Now, that sounded a little more uplifting.

  But then, not long after that, the circumstances of his own existence had undergone a distinct reversal of fortune.

  And, of course, Mary had also wedded her beloved Bothwell there, an obscenely short time after the murder of Darnley. This union was the signal event that many historians agreed had precipitated her downfall, but it was also one that Daisy had always found to be romantic, if only in a remotely ‘other time’ sort of way.

  The way that Daisy had always figured it, Mary’s first husband—the childish French King—had probably played with her; Darnley had provided her with great sex—at least, initially; while Bothwell had, in all likelihood, been the only one who had actually listened to her (for about five minutes, at any rate), thereby explaining just about everything.

  But, as anyone at all familiar with Scots history knew, practically even before the third honeymoon was over, Mary’s own life took a decided turn for the worse.

  In fact, Daisy thought as she flipped the pages more rapidly, it would appear that quite a few people who had entered at the portals of Holyrood had found themselves meeting their own untimely demise. Was it not possible to, having once walked in, walk out again?

  Daisy shuddered. The implications of history could be frightening.

  Feeling somewhat relieved, she found herself at the last number in the brochure. The entry pointed her attention to a curious piece of needlework, executed by Mary during her twenty years spent as the “guest” of Elizabeth I, while waiting for her own execution. The stitched scene was that of a cat-and-mouse game, with Elizabeth I sewn as being the cat.

  Daisy immediately thought of the present Queen.

  It must be trying after a while, to always be seeing your progenitors depicted as being wantonly cruel or in any of a number of other despicable lights. Surely, it must make you begin to wonder what they would all be saying about you once you were safely in the ground.

  Never having given much of a damn before about what others thought of her, Daisy gave a second shudder, this time in sympathy for the woman whose image appeared on all of the coins in her pocket.

  Happily, she discovered that her guided steps had soon led her back to the point from which she had begun, just as Charley was making his own return from another doorway in the room.

  “It seemed as though I was gone forever,” he said. “Did you have any trouble keeping yourself occupied?”

  Not waiting for an answer, he crossed to the window that they had been looking out of earlier.

  “Oh, look,” he said, parting the curtains. “Mother is back from work as well.”

  Daisy ducked her head under his arm and peeked out, watching the Queen’s approach. From the slight droop in the normally military bearing, it looked as though the Ruling Monarch had experienced a particularly trying day at the office.

  Doesn’t her left wrist ever get tired of holding that handbag up? Daisy wondered. Surely, there must be a permanent mark tattooed onto it.

  Daisy realized, with a mental thud, that the Queen must have been about eleven years younger than Daisy was now at the time that she had ascended the throne. Why, she’d been a baby! What must that have felt like?

  Still feeling very much a kid herself, she couldn’t imagine.

  5

  It was payback time for the Queen.

  Hostesses in Scarsdale knew about payback time; in Frankfurt, the social laws governing it were followed to the embossed letter, and the French had their own phrase for it: l’argent de la derriere.

  It was therefore inconceivable that the Queen, being the world’s most commonly hosted and hosting woman, should not be aware of a tradition that was practiced even by the Inuit who knew enough to reciprocate in terms of whale-blubber barbecues outside of their igloos.

  One could hardly expect less from the Queen.

  In exchange for the countless teas enjoyed at the domiciles of others during the course of the year, the Queen herself hosted four Garden Parties during any given twelve-month period, and one of these was always held during the week that she was in residence at Holyrood. But, more than just a tit-for-tat affair, stocked solely with nobles and dignitaries, it was also an opportunity for the Queen to acknowledge the good works of ordinary citizens. Also invited were any number of riffraff, all for no apparent reason other than the fact that they had either enough pull or enough push to wrangle their way in.

  This year, the Queen was having 4,000 guests over for her July tea.

  And they were all going to have to fit under the tents that had been set up all over t
he back lawn of Holyrood and which would, pray God and Queen, protect their coifs and top hats from the torrential downpour.

  The men, for the most part, knew enough to show up wearing the expected morning suits. The ladies, for their part, were attired in hopeful light dresses and flowery hats, behaving as though they had been delivered of the perfect summer day that they had every right in the world to expect.

  The aristocracy was therefore, as was required of them on this occasion, rubbing shoulders with the so-called “little people.” Or, to put it more bluntly, with people like Daisy.

  For a personal introduction to the Queen—for even that capable little Stateswoman could not be expected to greet each of four thousand individuals in a single afternoon—a card was supposed to be filled out weeks in advance and delivered to the Lord Chamberlain. But today Daisy Silverman would be meeting the Queen, having leapfrogged such banal formalities. For the first time in her life, Daisy could be said to be well connected.

  And she—standing nervously with her own entourage of Charley, Miss Chance, and Sturgess—along with everyone else squeezed in under the canvas, was impatiently awaiting three o’clock and the expectedly prompt arrival of the Queen.

  As she poked her head out from under the tent, Daisy could see that the cats-and-dogs thing that it had been doing out there had devolved to the inevitable dismal drizzle. Well, she thought, looking at the gray sky, at least it isn’t plaid.

  Like clockwork, the Queen could be seen to be making her slightly sodden way across the lawn, trailing her own ambulatory flotilla of hangers-on. The Queen had never been one to disappoint the fans.

  There were bands playing under the tent, and a small fanfare went up, as Daisy watched the Royal entrance.

  The Gentlemen Ushers leapt to attention, stepping to the front to escort the Queen and other important female persons, and deliver them from the moment of their entrance to the individuals selected for special introduction who were waiting amid the throng. Those flanking the Queen, on this occasion, included the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. The latter had grown bored early with the London season and, at the last moment, had elected to motor up to Edinburgh, springing a surprise visit on her sister and keeping one eye out for a spot of fun.

  As she tracked Margaret’s (only mildly teetering) progress around the perimeters—not to mention Margaret’s covert glances at her sister, the Queen—Daisy decided that she must be witnessing the Guinness World Record case of Longest Maintained, and Most Justifiable Reason for, Sibling Rivalry. But, all voyeuristic cheap thrills aside, a part of her longed to reach out and, grabbing the sure-to-be-startled shadow-dweller by the shoulders, urge her to “just get over it!”

  Daisy found herself wincing now as the Princess caught her low heel in the muck. Perhaps reinforcements would be required before the day was out.

  At any rate, the primary function of the Ushers as a unit was apparently to ensure the Queen’s most efficient and accurate advancement through the waiting four thousand. Once she had successfully traversed the line and, having achieved the end of the marquee, the Queen might accept a cup of tea, but she would never eat anything, not wishing to be stared at should it prove necessary for the Heimlich Maneuver to be called into play. So, that was where Charley got it from, Daisy thought.

  As Daisy observed the slow but steady progress, measured out at a rate that was sure to win the ultimate race, Daisy thought that there were times when the Queen looked peculiarly like an ingénue in an off-Broadway play: hopelessly trying to hit her mark and unsure where she was supposed to place the prop; or, to put it in Drury Lane terms, uncertain if her smile were too wide for the pits or not wide enough to play to the gods.

  • • •

  If the Queen, whose color could be said to be royal red, was having a tea party, then it would appear to be a requirement that there would have to be at least one mad—in the sense of angry—gentleman present who also happened to be in possession of a hat. In this instance, that Mad Hatter would be Prince Philip (Prince of Corfu by birth; Prince of England only by way of a politely accidental reference on the part of those who really could be expected to know no better; Duke of Edinburgh by created title and, especially, here).

  Or, to flip the coin in the other direction, the Queen Mother was attempting to sneak a cigarillo in plain sight at her daughter’s tea party, and her son-in-law—a rabid anti-smoker—was royally pissed.

  In fact, the claim could be made with complete accuracy, that the two—lashed together in this world solely by the marriage of the one to the daughter of the other—were both fuming.

  The Q.M. (as she liked to refer to herself in her own mind, feeling that a good acronym could help define one, as P.M. had done for Margaret Thatcher, or J.R. on that American soap import a few years back) thought, not for the first time, that the world would be a happier and healthier place were it not for the presence of nonsmokers, who were always getting so worked up over everything, thereby causing heart attacks in themselves as well as in everybody else. But, with the way that the world happened to be turning, at present—especially in America where, if rumor could be equated with accuracy, people were practically bearing arms over the issue—it would appear more likely that the anti-smokers would succeed in forcibly excising the other side, before the smokers woke up and smelled the tobacco.

  The Q.M. had of late been mulling the issue over. She still couldn’t quite figure out what the Antis would do once they had finally succeeded in jettisoning all smokers right off the face of the planet and were forced to face the fact that they were still mortal themselves, but now they had millions fewer people to blame for that unfortunate byproduct of life: that they still suffered from heart disease and cancer, having never given much thought to personal responsibility or—say—giving up double mocha lattes (whatever they were) or taking up regular walks out of doors; that they were, ultimately, no closer to happiness than they had ever been, only now there was just one less excuse for it.

  Oh, what the hell, the Q.M. thought. Once that had all occurred, the sourpusses would, in all probability, then take up the long overdue crusade of forming a witch-hunting party, with a view to running to ground the rascal responsible for the invention of the Twinkie.

  If other people hadn’t acquired the sense to make the connection yet that it was undue anxiety that killed, then more fool them.

  Being a naturally peace-loving individual herself, the Q.M. was more than willing to do her part to avert the inevitable Armageddon. And so, in order to avoid her son-in-law’s further wrath, she would make good her escape into Holyrood in search of a fast game of snooker.

  Besides, there was a blasted hole in the tent, and her cigarillo was getting soaked. Not to mention, that they never served anything to drink but tame tea and soft drinks at these ridiculous afternoon affairs.

  She glanced out at the downpour, vaguely remembering a schoolgirl quote, something along the lines of there being “water, water all round, but not a drop to drink,” but she gave up on trying to recall the origins of the reference when her head began to ache from the effort.

  A body could certainly use some fortifying libation, to go along with the snooker, if it were intended that the body in question were to be later thrown back in like a sardine with the rest of the Prohibition Four Thousand.

  Now, then, she thought with a renewed sense of purpose—the only really effective device known to mankind that kept a body going strong for over a century. Where was Charley’s new little friend hiding herself?

  • • •

  The Queen Mother had slipped into something a trifle more comfortable.

  Considering herself to be too old to have to worry about the newfangled concept that was embodied by the acronym of P.C., the Q.M. thus wore her ermine proudly in spite of the Royal—and politically correct—eschewal of fur. There were an awful lot of dead animals from the Queen’s own old wardrobe at B.P. that were now inhabiting the cold storage room back in London, and they would probabl
y never see the light of day again.

  Having donned a royal purple full-length stole with ermine trim, along with an evening tiara, the Q.M. was now chalking her cue stick, as she waited impatiently for her turn. She might have known that the American girl wouldn’t be up to snuff on the rules of snooker. Still, Charley’s girl seemed a nice enough sort and, having confessed after the second snort of whiskey to being something of a “pool shark” back in the States, she really did have quite a deadly aim on her.

  Observing Daisy as she sank another ball, the Q.M. decided that it was time to create another diversion. She pulled the sterling silver flask from out of her voluminous purple robes.

  “Single malt, this,” she said, proffering the flask and inviting Daisy to take another swig. “Couldn’t get through one of these ghastly affairs without it.”

  She keenly eyed Daisy’s post-third-shot befuddlement. “Well, then, whose turn is it?” she asked innocently, stealing opportunity and moving towards the table herself.

  Daisy stepped back and monitored the Queen Mother’s progress to the green baize of the billiards table, its mahogany sides gleaming, the leather mesh pockets gaping enticingly. She couldn’t quite decide if it was her own vision that was wobbling or if that was just the natural stride of her opponent.

  Back home in Danbury, Daisy’d had a friend—well, more like a pool hall acquaintance, actually—of whom the Queen Mother was oddly reminiscent. It was eerie the resemblance between her and Taffy, the forty-seven-year-old grandmother of five, who still liked to wear mini-skirts and thigh-high leather boots and who believed in family, friendship, and Harley Davidson, but just barely in that order. Taffy liked to shoot pool, liked to shoot it with one cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth, and was impossible to beat.

  The remarkable thing about getting beat regularly by Taffy, at a game that had the two basic requirements of luck and some sort of aim, was that the woman was a souse. Along with the dangling cigarette, there was an ever-present smudged glass of whiskey at her elbow which, as she bent over the table, could have come from anywhere along the continuum of the fifth that she liked to consume daily. And it was often a tough call to make, which was more precarious: the glass perched on the very edge of the table, or Taffy, tottering woozily up to it to take her shots.