Chapter One 1 January 2023 #2
“Breathe, ma’am,” he murmured. “Just breathe.”
Palace aides are forbidden from touching members of the family.
But Stewart had always been around when I was growing up, always giving me sweets and helping me onto my horse, and I adored him.
He had constantly implored me to stop hugging him, but we both knew I held all the power and if I wanted to wrap my little arms around his knees and squeeze, I would.
It was nice to feel his touch again. It was almost enough to stop the walls of my mind caving in.
“Here, ma’am,” he said, his hand still on my shoulder. “This will calm you.”
I looked up and he was holding the bottle of amber liquid.
I hadn’t seen it since the week Mum died, all those photographers in boats bobbing in the waves just beyond the villa’s dock.
Back then, Stewart had drawn the blinds as I sat trembling on the edge of the bed, and then he came towards me as he pulled liquid into the dropper.
It was meant to taste like blackcurrants, but it had burned my throat, and I wanted to say I didn’t like it.
But then the cold rush was back. It was as if the floor opened below me and I was falling, falling through black nothingness.
I took the bottle from Stewart’s hands and tossed it as hard as I could. It landed somewhere among the pinot vines, and I imagined Jack finding it days or weeks later, wondering how a bottle of diazepam elixir had ended up on his property.
“Don’t touch me again, Stewart,” I gasped, my chest heaving.
I was almost myself again by the time the jet took off from Hobart Airport. Stewart put his phone down and settled his elbows on his knees, his trouser legs riding up so I could see his compression socks. He was getting old.
“You should prepare yourself, ma’am. They were under the snow for more than twenty minutes. Prince Louis had a small air pocket, which is how he was able to survive being buried, but it’s not… it was probably not enough,” he said.
We need 3.3 millilitres of oxygen for every 100 grams of brain tissue.
I remembered writing that equation down again and again before exam time: 3.
3 ml per 100 g. I’d made a rhyme of it: three-point-three per one hundred g, three-point-three per one hundred g.
If that number drops, the body redirects blood flow to the brain to try to save it.
After five minutes in an oxygen-deprived state, brain cells start to die.
That’s when the permanent damage sets in, and it accelerates until the brain just stops.
My brother’s brain.
“He was in extreme cold, though,” I heard myself say. “It happens sometimes—a child falls in an icy lake and the temperature sort of flash-freezes the brain cells, and they come back with all function intact.”
Stewart looked down, and the bespectacled girl with the nail polish remover held my hand tenderly.
“I’ve read about it,” I told them.
“Yes, ma’am,” Stewart said. “We pray for Prince Louis. But I do not want you to get your hopes up.”
An unspoken “this time” hung in the air between us. I felt tears simmer in my eyes. Louis was the only one who’d hugged me after Mum died, even though he was furious with me. I didn’t know then it would be one of the last times a family member took me in their arms and held me.
Unbidden, another memory: The four of us on a ski trip to Courchevel.
Louis and I wore matching red jackets. Mum looked resplendent in a white Fendi snowsuit, her chic mirrored goggles hiding her tear-stained eyes.
I’d heard our parents arguing again in their suite that morning.
The slamming of doors, Mum’s quiet sobs.
The photographers were assembled a respectful distance away on a snowbank as she helped us with our poles and jackets.
When Papa kneeled in front of me and tightened my already fastened buckles, the whirr of the camera shutters sounded like crickets all around us. He looked up at me and grinned.
“There you are, mignonette,” he said with the stagy brightness of a man who’d been fighting with his wife all morning and was holding it together for both the kids and the world’s press.
The photograph of that moment was often run alongside stories about our deteriorating relationship.
That was when things were good, the tabloids claimed.
Often they’d include a picture from the day Louis and I were born, Mum looking young and overwhelmed with a baby in each arm, Papa beaming and relieved to be discharged of his duty.
The photo from Mum’s funeral was always there too, showing me and Louis, aged seventeen and completely blown apart.
I didn’t really remember anything from that day—the picture was the only proof I had that I was even there.
When my nails were clean, I excused myself and walked to the bathroom, where I could check my phone.
I’d been clear-headed enough while we packed my suitcase for London to stick the phone in the waistband of my leggings when Stewart wasn’t looking.
Fifty-seven text messages had arrived in the space of twenty minutes.
Seven missed calls from those old-fashioned enough to try to phone someone who’d just endured a family tragedy that already had its own Wikipedia page.
Most were from Uncle James. If I’d picked up, he would have begged me not to get on this plane.
I tapped on the little nesting dolls of news alerts on the screen so I could start from the beginning.
brEAKING: Prince Frederick injured in ski accident in Switzerland, palace says.
brEAKING: Prince Frederick, son Prince Louis and Duchess Amira’s brother Krishiv Shankar injured skiing in Zermatt, Switzerland. Follow our live blog for updates.
brEAKING: Heir to the throne Prince Frederick dead at 63 after avalanche, confirms Queen. Prince Louis in “critical condition.”
brEAKING: Prince Louis reportedly critical and brother-in-law Krishiv Shankar “brain dead” after Prince Frederick’s death in ski accident.
WATCH LIVE NOW: UK PM Jenny Walsh addresses nation after darkest day in British monarchy’s history. Follow our updates.
brEAKING: No sign of Princess Alexandrina after ski tragedy kills her father and leaves brother critical.
I whisked the remaining news alerts away and took a shaky breath. My text messages were all condolences and exclamation points and question marks.
Text me when you land okay? Call if you’re up to it, I don’t care what time it is, Jack had written just before we took off from Hobart.
Stewart hadn’t allowed him or Finn onto the chopper, insisting he only had space for me.
As the chopper darted away, I watched the two of them standing there, growing smaller.
I suppose they ended the trip then, packing up the tents and taking the ferry home.
I imagined them sitting in our cosy living room with the news on the TV—sleeping bags and boots on every surface, where they’d stay for weeks on end without me to insist they be dealt with immediately.
The mess would still be there when I returned, perhaps in a month.
Six weeks tops. Finn would smirk and say, “Sorry, dolly,” as I slipped back into my old skin and pretended to worry about the proper care and storage of expensive camping gear.
Jack would be leaning against the doorjamb, smiling at me.
Papa would still be dead, but Louis would be awake by then, his snap-frozen brain cells thoroughly thawed.
The rightful heir spared, his aides would shoo me back to Australia in no time, I was sure of it.
The jet punched through the clouds over the island and into the light above. I looked down the list of missed calls and texts. I spotted a message from Amira, the first she’d sent me in three years.
Lexi, please come home now. I need you.
Louis and I were the first twins born in the line for more than three hundred years.
In 1660, King Charles II fell in love with our ancestor, Barbara Villiers, who was tall and luscious, with a tumble of dark hair and insouciant hips.
She was from a noble but impoverished family and already married.
So the king made Barbara his royal mistress and instead made a politically advantageous match in Catherine, a Portuguese Infanta who spoke little English and couldn’t seem to bear him a child.
Barbara might have remained a footnote in history, but three years later an outbreak of smallpox tore through Whitehall.
First, Barbara’s husband died. Then, Queen Catherine was overcome.
The next day, Charles married his mistress, and Barbara was England’s “uncrowned queen” no more.
Within months, she was pregnant with twins, and the woman once deemed a royal whore was transformed into a vessel for the heir and spare.
Only one twin survived childbirth. There was something wrong with the girl, who was born very small and grey. Her brother, William, must have been feeding off her strength, because he arrived teeming with health, all dimpled knees and bread dough cheeks.
In delivering a healthy male, Barbara had catapulted herself into that most vaunted of all positions: the mother of a future king.
But fate wasn’t done with her yet. A few years later, when smallpox returned to London, Charles succumbed to the disease, making three-year-old William the new king.
Barbara, who had spent years consolidating her power in court, became Queen Regent, ruling until her son was old enough to accede the throne.