George Washington's Ghost

The most conspicuous member of the Portuguese Royal Family was Carlos’s eldest son, the Prince Royal, now in his mid-thirties who often stood in for his father on overseas forays, and actually, seemed to enjoy the public notoriety he enthusiastically cultivated as ‘the People’s Prince’, attending sporting events and generally living the celebrity lifestyle the King, plainly, despised. It was said that the Prince Royal’s French wife, Princess Antoinette Johanna, a willowy blond Austrian-born apparition, who might have stepped straight off a Parisian catwalk, had a knack of invoking mild apoplexy in her regal in-laws; in any event, the couple never stayed at Vila Viçosa.

Melody had imagined her first audience with Queen Sophie would be her last one. Which only went to show that she had been wrong about a lot of things lately.

On her second visit to the Palace, Queen Sophie had introduced Melody to sixty-three year-old Queen Elisabetta, who turned out to be as bubbly and energetic as her public persona, and to Melody’s discomfort had instantly started asking her astonishingly perceptive and well-informed questions about the cases she had solved working as a detective in the Crown Colony of New York!

It transpired that the Queen Consort of the Portuguese, an avid reader of detective non-fiction, and fiction and, a fluent English-speaker, liked nothing better than to sit down in front of the television set and watch taped recordings of British and new England crime dramas and whodunnits!

It was all a little bit overwhelming…

Yesterday, Melody had marshalled the courage to press Queen Sophie further about what she had said to her during their first bewildering encounter. In retrospect, everything had seemed unreal that day, and Melody badly needed a little clarity.

Today, Alonso had had to go to Lisbon.

Apparently, the Spanish Government – if such a thing meaningfully existed at present, which was a moot point – had started legal proceedings to sequester the Medina Sidonia estates in Portugal. Or rather the authorities in Madrid had commenced actions to pass the administration of those estates to the Mother Church in Portugal, disregarding the fact that under Portuguese Law a Papal Bill of Anathema – ex-communication and disinheritance, etcetera – had no foundation in Civil Law within the borders of Portugal or its overseas dominions, territories and protectorates.

Nevertheless, the futile cases still had to be disputed in the courts.

Thus, Alonso had had to stop pleasuring her at the crack of dawn that morning, to set off for the capital, over ninety miles away, a think Melody resented more than somewhat.

“I’m not ordering you,” the exiled monarch laughed, “to marry Alonso. Either you, or your friend, Lady de L’Isle. I’m just saying that it would be the best outcome for Alonso, and whomsoever took him on in matrimony.”

Recently, there had been times when Melody suspected her life was turning into a series of scenes from a Restoration comedy of errors.

“Look,” she tried to explain, “I’m Alonso’s mistress. We’re fairly discreet about it but it is not exactly a state secret,” she had reminded the Queen, whom, even though she was never anything less than regal, had demonstrated a wickedly dry sense of humour and self-evidently, intuitively seemed to treat Melody like a kindred spirit. “So, obviously, I’m middlingly stupid about him. But Henrietta…”

“Ah,” the other woman sighed. She thought for a few seconds, and seemed to come to a decision. “Throughout our lives, and especially when Alonso was on his travels in the Philippine lands and in New England, he wrote to me, and I to him. The farther away he was the more often he wrote. Almost daily, these last few years, after he was banished to New England…”

“Banished?” Melody interjected.

“Oh, yes.”

“Because of Pedro?”

The Queen was thoughtful.

“Let us just say that when the circumstances of the child’s birth were brought to the attention of the King’s ministers,” she shrugged, smiling tight-lipped, “there were consequences. Poor Alonso became, unofficially, you understand, persona non grata at the Escorial. What with one thing and another his posting to the Philippines and later to Philadelphia was for the best.”

Alonso had never said anything to Melody about writing letters to his Queen but then she had always allowed the men in her life their little secrets; that was the deal, she had her secrets, they had theirs.