Chapter Forty-Three
Now
The takedowns continued the following week, arriving with the regularity of the morning papers.
A profile in the Telegraph pulled quotes from three unnamed courtiers who expressed concern about the sovereign’s “focus and temperament” in the wake of sustained public scrutiny.
A Mail columnist ran twelve hundred words on the decline of national institutions, illustrated with a photograph of James at the Commonwealth service in which the angle made his smile look strained.
An evangelical blog with a modest but vocal readership published a “prayer list” for members of the Royal Family that named James first and added, in parentheses, (for his struggle).
Marina tracked it all. She kept a media grid on her tablet: outlet, headline, angle, reach, sentiment score. She updated it three times a day and went through it with James at their EOD briefings.
Marina always led with the numbers. The YouGov tracker held steady at sixty-eight per cent favourable, which was higher than any of his predecessors had managed at any point in their reigns.
The hashtags on the socials were warm. The constituency letters arriving at the Palace mail office were running four to one in his favour, and Cecil had arranged for a selection of the most heartfelt to be placed in a folder on James’s desk each morning.
He read them all. A retired nurse in Hartlepool had written to say her grandson had decided to stop hiding and had brought his lovely boyfriend of two years round for the Sunday family lunch.
James kept that letter propped against the lamp on his desk, where he could see it during Marina’s briefings.
Tristan began coming to his Kensington apartments more often.
He would arrive, drop his bag in the hall, and come to find James wherever the day had deposited him.
They would do the de-roling, which was by now so well worn that they’d developed one they could run in under a minute on the nights when James was too tired to commit to the full version, or was feeling randy and just needed to get on Tristan.
Most nights, James was too spent to do much more than eat whatever Tristan put in front of him and migrate to the sofa, where he’d pull Tristan against his side and let the television fill the room with noise that neither of them was really following.
They watched cooking competitions in which people wept over sponges, and nature documentaries with David Attenborough narrating the private lives of creatures whose mating rituals were considerably less complicated than James’s own.
? ? ?
Marina arrived on Thursday with her tablet and a printed summary that she set face-down on his desk, which was never a good sign.
“Let’s go over the overnight coverage first,” she said, settling into the chair opposite.
“BBC Breakfast aired a segment on the Commonwealth response to the handshake incident that was largely balanced. They gave the Szarovian ambassador forty-five seconds, and he used all of them to waffle and say absolutely nothing at all, so that was fine. Sky led with the Bishop Harland clip for the third consecutive morning.”
“He’s become something of a fixture.”
“He’s the figurehead of the backlash,” Marina said, which was as close to editorial commentary as she ever got.
“The issue isn’t Harland himself; it’s the fact that Harland gave people a respectable way to express discomfort without saying anything that reads as prejudice.
‘I’ll pray for him’ is now the prestige version of ‘Not My King.’ You can say it at a dinner party and make it perfectly clear how you feel about the situation, without anyone calling you a bigot.
“Moving on to print media.” Marina turned the summary over.
“The Times ran a feature on the constitutional implications of a male consort, framed as legal analysis. The tone was academic rather than hostile, but the subtext was clear: it raised questions about the Act of Settlement, succession planning, and surrogacy law. The Guardian published a response from a constitutional historian at UCL who called the Times piece ‘historical scaremongering dressed up in footnotes,’ which was rather satisfying.”
“How charitable of UCL.”
“The Mail had a double-page spread. They’ve moved past the opinion section and into personal territory. The headline was ‘THE KING’S GAY ETON POSSE,’ and it named the Marquess of Ashworth and Mr Montcada.”
James gripped the edge of his desk. “They’ve named Barnaby and Vidal?”
“Yes.”
“They have nothing to do with any of this. Barnaby is a married man living his life, Vidal happily coupled, and they’re being ripped apart in the media because they made the mistake of being my friends at school?”
“The piece frames your friendship group as a closed, privileged circle of gay and bisexual men who have been ‘shielded by wealth and title.’ It mentions Barnaby’s wedding to Lex, Vidal’s relationship with Beauchamp, and draws a line from the three of you back to Eton.
The suggestion, without ever quite stating it outright, is that your sexuality was shaped by proximity rather than nature. ”
“Influenced by association,” James said. “Rather like catching a cold.”
“That’s precisely the register they’re operating in, yes.
” Marina set the tablet aside. “I’ve spoken with the Fitznorman-Bicester press office.
They’ve prepared a response that they’d like our office’s approval on.
The Montcada people rang before breakfast to ask whether we’d like them to hold or respond.
I told them to hold until I’d briefed you. ”
Through the study window, the April sky sat low and grey over the Kensington roofline. “Barnaby will want to respond, and I can’t begrudge him that,” James said. “He won’t let that stand.”
“No. I rather suspected he wouldn’t.”
“And Vidal will say something entirely off-message.”
“Also anticipated.” Marina’s mouth compressed. “I’ve asked his team to clear a draft with us before publication, but I should tell you that Mr Montcada’s definition of clearing a draft tends to involve sending things to Cecil fifteen seconds before they go live.”
“Thank you, Marina. Please do what you can to minimise the damage from Vidal.”
She gathered her things. At the door, she turned.
“The favourable numbers are holding, Sir. I want you to remember that. You have more support than you have opposition, by a significant margin.”
“I know.”
“What we’re dealing with is a loud, well-funded minority that’s been given permission to feel righteous.” She paused. “That’s a different problem, and it’s one we can manage.”
“I know, Marina. Thank you.”
? ? ?
Three days later, James was at his desk with the briefing papers fanned out around the red box when Marina took the chair opposite and opened her tablet to the media grid.
“The responses have landed,” she said. “Both of them. The Fitznorman-Bicester statement passed through the proper channels, as agreed. Mr Montcada’s went live on his personal Instagram forty minutes ago, accompanied by a photograph of the three of you at Eton in which you all look deeply overprivileged, and as though none of you has yet grown into your ears. ”
“Of course it did.”
“The article was published this morning in the Telegraph, framed as a follow-up to the Mail piece. Both statements are quoted in full.” Marina scrolled the grid.
“Initial pickup is significant. The Fitznorman-Bicester statement is leading the cycle. It’s been quoted by the BBC, Sky, ITV, and every broadsheet.
The tone across the board is sympathetic. ”
“And Vidal’s?”
“Mr Montcada’s statement is trending on three separate social platforms.” Marina’s expression gave nothing away. “I’ll come back to that.”
James rolled his eyes skywards. “How did Barnaby’s read?”
“Measured. Dignified. The tone was personal without being confessional.” Marina met his eye. “It was very good, Sir. His team drafted it well, but the fondness in it was his own.”
Marina covered a constituency MP who’d broken ranks to table a Commons motion in James’s support, and a request from the Archbishop’s office for a private meeting that Cecil was inclined to accept.
James listened, took the relevant papers, and by half past six they were discussing the final items when the study door opened without a knock.
Tristan walked in still in his coat, a folded newspaper in one hand and his bag slung over his shoulder. He’d come straight from Berkshire, which put him at Kensington a good ninety minutes earlier than usual. Marina remained seated opposite James, her tablet open on her lap.
James looked up. “You’re early.”
Tristan dropped his bag by the door, came around behind James’s chair, and draped himself across James’s back with both arms hooked over his shoulders. His chin landed on the top of James’s head, and then he pressed a kiss to his temple in full view of Marina.
James held very still beneath him. Tristan had never done this in front of staff.
Marina’s gaze dropped to her tablet as she tapped away on the BBC website with an enormous amount of concentration.
“Marina,” James said. “I believe you know Mr Whitlock.”
“Good evening, Mr Whitlock.” Marina didn’t look up from her screen.
“Hey, Marina.” Tristan’s voice was too bright. His arms tightened around James’s shoulders.
James lifted one hand to Tristan’s forearm where it crossed his chest, and his fingers registered the tremor in Tristan’s arm before anything else. Then he turned, just enough to catch Tristan’s face in profile, and felt the dampness against his own temple where Tristan’s cheek had been pressed.
“Marina, I think we can call it there for tonight.”
Marina was already gathering her things. “I’ll have the polling summary on your desk by eight tomorrow morning, Sir. Lambeth will need an answer by noon.”
“Thank you.”
She left. The door clicked shut behind her, and the study was quiet except for the faint ticking of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece.
James reached up and covered Tristan’s hand with both of his own. “Tris.”
Tristan’s arms didn’t loosen. He stayed where he was, folded over James’s back, his weight warm and heavy. He’d gone fully limp, as though he’d run out of the energy required to hold himself upright and only James could hold him up now.
It looked like Tristan had spent most of his drive to Kensington crying. James stood and cupped Tristan’s jaw in both palms, running his thumbs under his eyes to wipe the damp from his lashes.
“What’s happened?”
Tristan held up the Telegraph, folded open to an inside page, and James could see the edge of a photograph beside a column of text: Barnaby’s official portrait, the one taken after Tokyo, with Meridian in the background.
“I stopped for gas at the Heston services,” Tristan said. His voice was thick. “And this was on the rack by the register. I bought it, and I pulled over to read it, and I…” He looked at the paper. “I read Barnaby’s statement…”
Tristan unfolded the paper, smoothing it flat against his thigh, and found the paragraph he was looking for.
“‘It is my sincere hope,’” Tristan read, “‘that His Majesty’s courage in claiming his identity so publicly means that young men no longer need to find each other in secret the way we did.’” His voice caught on the last three words, and he pressed his lips together until they blanched before continuing.
“‘We were three boys who were frightened, in a place that gave us no room to be ourselves. We held each other up.’” He looked at James over the top of the page. “‘I fail to see the scandal in that.’”
James took the first full breath he’d managed in weeks. He looked up at the ceiling, taking in the original plasterwork, and studied the medallion of acanthus leaves surrounding a central rose.
“James, are you looking at the ceiling so you don’t cry?”
“No.”
“This is what you do during visits to hospices and children’s hospitals, James. You’ve told me that Marina tells you off about it constantly.”
James dropped his gaze from the ceiling and took the paper from Tristan. He scanned down to Vidal’s contribution, printed below Barnaby’s in the same column, and laughed.
“‘When approached by the Telegraph for comment, Mr Montcada, a former prince of the Catalan microstate of Cardona, responded: Darlings,’” James read aloud, in Vidal’s register, “‘we were fabulous together.’”
“Vidal will dine out on this for the rest of his natural life,” James said.
“We’ll be hearing about the time he single-handedly defended the honour of the British Crown with a one-sentence quote until we are old and grey and begging him to stop.
” James tapped the paper. “He could have chosen a better photograph for Instagram, though. You could pick up satellite television off those ears of mine.”
Tristan turned James’s head and kissed the rim of an ear. “You grew into them,” he murmured against the cartilage, and bit down gently on the lobe. Then Tristan’s tongue traced the inner curve of his ear in a slow stroke, and James forgot all about Marina’s media briefing.