“Russell, after such a long journey it would be courteous if Their Royal Highnesses received us immediately,” said a tall, thin man, still wearing his top hat.
“Patience, Graham. The queen is likely retrieving her husband from the grounds. He’s forever busy with one project or another,” the prime minister replied.
“Why not simply converse with her?”
“No point. Haven’t you heard me say it a hundred times? She has the title, he does the work.”
All the men chuckled.
Vicky didn’t like that, the sound of their laughing about the queen.
“She works, too, doesn’t she?” Vicky asked Papa later, recounting the exchange.
“Indeed she does, and she has much good sense,” he said.
“But sometimes Mama says she wouldn’t know what to do if you were not here.”
“Mama didn’t have the education I did, Vicky, so it is important that I advise her. What is more, I am a man, and I watch out that those other men, the ministers, they do not try to be a little pfiffig—tricky—with her.”
“She is queen! She orders them what to do!”
“It’s not so simple. Sometimes they are sneaky. They propose plans that are not wise. Or pretend that they can do what they want without consulting her.”
“They would dare?” She put her hands on her hips and looked up, indignant.
“As queen she rules together with the prime minister, the Parliament, and the ministers. It’s a delicate dance, and when everyone dances the correct steps, then things are smooth. But I look carefully at what they do and keep them from treading on Mama’s toes or taking the wrong steps.”
“You have to guard her against naughty ministers?”
“Protect and defend her. Also uphold standards. The sovereign cannot expect to long enjoy his, or her, elevated position without doing that.”
“I would do that if I were queen.”
“Perhaps it will fall to you, as it has to me, Vicky, to share in the work.”
“And keep things correct?”
“To use your life and your position for the general good,” he said, smiling his lovely, kind smile.
ON A HOT day in June Papa announced a special guest was arriving. His name was Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Papa said the children should call him Uncle Prussia, because he was royal as they were, and a distant cousin. Vicky imagined a jolly, affable man in a suit of bright blue, like the color of Prussia in Papa’s map book. Instead Uncle Prussia turned out to be bulky and stern, with large bushy gray side whiskers, wearing a gray army uniform.
Papa urged her to talk to the prince and make him feel welcome. So she told him about her pony Trixie, her lessons with Laddle, and how Papa had taken them to the farm next door to Osborne House to see the sheep being washed before shearing.
“Those sheep hated their baths and they squealed, and tried to get away,” she told Uncle Prussia, paddling her arms to show how the animals scrambled. “One escaped and went running down the lane, and only after the farmer’s boy ran after and jumped on top of its wet back could he drag it back.”
Bertie and Alice remembered that naughty sheep, and they laughed and laughed. But Prince Wilhelm appeared perplexed by everything she said.
When Papa came to the nursery to say good night she told him the prince must be hard of hearing or didn’t understand her German.
“No, Puss, I believe you surprise him,” her father said. “He’s not sure what to make of such a lively, confident girl as you are.”
“He doesn’t like girls like me?”
“He definitely should. But, liebe Vicky, you are einmalig—like no one else.”
“Is that good?”
“Very, very good.”
UNCLE PRUSSIA WAS restless indoors and preferred to be out riding and hunting, always wearing his same gray uniform. He insisted on taking the largest horse from the Osborne stable. Papa and the grooms organized a special Prussian-style shoot for him: lots of deer from all over the island were herded together in a pen, and then when Uncle Prussia was ready, the grooms drove the deer toward him and he shot them. He killed a tremendous number.
Bertie had gone with Papa to watch, and he came back to the nursery very sad. “Those deer didn’t have a chance,” he said.
In the evenings Papa talked to Prince Wilhelm for hours about Germany. “It’s all very interesting,” Papa told them one morning after Uncle Prussia had gone out. “We discuss the united nation that must come into being. Prussia should take the lead.”
“Angel, do you think he is actually listening to what you have to say?” Mama asked.
“Of course he is listening. What could be more important to him than the attainment of liberty and prosperity for all Germans?” Her father looked miffed.
“I only notice that Wilhelm is a very traditional man, and given that he was essentially chased out of Berlin, these modern notions of yours may not be in keeping with his own,” Mama said.
“Nonsense,” said Papa.
Vicky couldn’t imagine the formidable prince’s being chased out of anywhere. “What happened to Uncle Prussia?” she asked.
“He was the senior general on the spot when, three months ago, uprisings broke out in Berlin, Prussia’s capital,” Papa said.
Mama shivered. “We’re so fortunate to have had no such uprisings here.”
“Indeed, Weibchen, and that’s because your government is basically sound, and includes the people’s representatives,” Papa said. “The same cannot be said of Prussia. Yet.”
“I still don’t understand why Uncle Prussia left,” Vicky said.
“He ordered his troops to fire on the rioters and three hundred were killed. Afterward, his brother, the king, forced him to leave the country for his own safety. The revolutionaries wanted him executed.”
What a nasty, frightening word—execute. “They wished to chop off his head?” she asked anxiously.
“Or some such,” said her father, flicking his hand, surprisingly unconcerned.
“So he can never go home? He’ll stay with us forever?” she asked, not pleased.
“The Prussians have to sort themselves out.”
“Doesn’t he have his own family?”
“He does, but they stayed behind in Prussia,” said Papa.
“We dined twice with his wife when she visited London a few years ago,” said Mama. “She’s called Princess Augusta and she’s from Weimar.”
“Weimar is where the writer Goethe was born, Vicky,” said Papa. “Some of the most famous poets, musicians, and artists in the whole world are German. Yet when it comes to governance we Germans have not been fortunate. We must pray things improve.”
THE PRINCE DID depart Osborne some weeks later. Papa said he’d gone to London, to live at the Prussian legation, where he could follow events in Berlin more closely.
And later Papa told them Prince Wilhelm had returned home. He shook his head. “For a brief moment it looked like things were really progressing in Prussia. Now they are going backward.”
“Don’t fret, angel,” Mama said. “The old ways can’t last forever. Don’t you always say that?”
“Yes, but it’s no good if the new ways are just the old ways dressed up differently,” her father said.