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always complaining about the expense of keeping up his Court.’
    ‘Don’t worry about that. My brother, King Albert of England, will send me one. That would be amusing, an English equerry.’
    ‘What nonsense you talk.’
    ‘Why I am only being amiable and sharing in yours. Don’t think too much about this marriage. The grandmothers were only romancing.’
    ‘And Uncle Leopold?’
    ‘Everyone knows he has plans for marrying the family all over Europe. You’ll probably end up in Spain or Portugal. Imagine that. It would be very hot in the Peninsula. You’d fall asleep at midday instead of after supper.’
    ‘Of course it’s true that one can never be sure what’s going to happen,’ agreed Albert. ‘You remember when we had whooping-cough.’
    ‘A trying time,’ said Ernest.
    ‘And when we were better everything was changed. It was like a dividing line neatly drawn through our lives; all the nurses went and Herr Florschütz came. Our mother went …’
    Ernest glanced at his brother and his glance was sober.
    ‘Let’s tie up here, Albert,’ he said rather solemnly.
    They did, and Ernest threw himself down and, plucking a blade of grass, started to chew it.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Albert, stretching out beside his brother.
    ‘It’s about our mother,’ said Ernest. ‘They didn’t tell you because they thought it would upset you.’
    ‘What about her?’ asked Albert.
    ‘She’s dead.’
    Albert did not speak. He stared up at the sky through the leaves. He felt the sudden rush of tears to his eyes as he thought of her looking round the nursery door, showing him the pictures in a book, giving him that fierce sweet-scented hug. He had never given up the hope that she would come back; when he had talked of the future he had unconsciously seen her there, for when he was a man and the King he was certain he was going to be, he would have brought her back to be with him. And now Ernest was saying that she was dead.
    ‘Why did they tell you and not me?’
    ‘I am the eldest,’ said Ernest.
    Albert sprang to his feet in sudden anger and Ernest said quickly: ‘No, I’m teasing. It was because they feared it might upset you. They told me to break it to you gently.’
    ‘They didn’t … kill her.’
    ‘Kill her! What a notion! She had been ill for years.’
    ‘They should have told us.’
    ‘Of course they shouldn’t.’
    ‘She was too young to die.’
    ‘She was thirty-two and she was very ill.’
    ‘She would have been thinking of us at the end, Ernest.’
    ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘But of course she would. We were her sons.’
    ‘We couldn’t have been important to her or she wouldn’t have left us.’
    ‘She didn’t want to leave us. I am sure she cried and cried.’
    ‘Everyone doesn’t turn on the tears like you did, Albert.’
    ‘She loved us.’
    ‘You were the favourite.’
    ‘I know,’ said Albert softly.
    ‘Well, she’s dead and she was unfaithful to our father. That was very wicked and she had to take her punishment.’
    Albert was silent. She had been wicked, he admitted; and because of that, she had left them. What a terrible thing wickedness was! Every time he looked at a woman he would think of the wickedness which had separated him from her and had brought her to her sad and lonely death.
    ‘She lived in Paris,’ said Ernest, ‘which we all know is a very wicked city.’
    Albert shivered, but Ernest had jumped to his feet.
    ‘Come on,’ he said, his relief obvious because his duty was done.
    But Albert could find no pleasure in the forest that day. His thoughts were far away in the past with his beautiful mother; he could not get out of his mind the belief that temptation was lurking everywhere and if succumbed to could ruin lives. He would never forget what had happened to his beloved mother who had become a bad woman. Wickedness had its roots in that subject which Ernest found so interesting but which filled him with abhorrence: the relationship between the