The Widow of Windsor by Jean Plaidy Read Free Book Online Page A

worry about. The country was no longer on the edge of revolution and the new King was even more benevolent than the old.

    There was tension throughout the Yellow Palace. Fredy knew why. It was war. He whispered it to Alix in the little room which she shared with Dagmar. Funny Uncle Frederick would put on his beautiful coat with all the gold braid and buttons and the medals and march to war. Papa would go with him because he was a soldier.
    ‘Bang, bang,’ said Fredy. ‘Then Uncle Frederick and Papa will come home and all the bands will play and we’ll stand on the balcony and watch.’
    Alix listened wide-eyed to Fredy’s account of what war meant.
    In the privacy of their room Louise tried to conceal her anxiety even from her husband. Christian, with his particular buoyancy and innocent outlook on life, believed that the war would soon be over. Louise, more realistic, was not so sure.
    She tried to assess what would happen to her family if Frederick was defeated. Also she feared for her husband. Christian, good soldier that he was, had no desire to go to war because it meant leaving his family. His idea of being a soldier was to report to the barracks daily and come home to teach gymnastics and bring his children up with the aid of their clever mother. To leave them now was a tragedy. His great consolation was that they would be in the capable hands of their mother.
    ‘It was bound to come sooner or later,’ said Louise. ‘Schleswig-Holstein has always been a source of anxiety to Denmark. It has been boiling for years.’
    ‘And now, of course, with Frederick’s accession, the Holsteiners have used this as an opportunity.’
    Louise nodded. The position of Schleswig-Holstein, lying to the south of Denmark as a border to the German states, was in itself provocative. The trouble was that while Schleswig was content to be under Danish rule, Holstein was not. The Holsteiners preferred to consider themselves Germans, so there was friction and the Holsteiners were constantly attempting to persuade the people of Schleswig to their way of thinking.
    One member of the royal family of Oldenburg, a branch of the royal family, was the Duke of Augustenburg, who had in fact a claim to the Danish throne. With German support he decided to make a bid for it. Hence the war which had broken out.
    ‘If the people of Holstein should win …’ began Louise.
    ‘That’s impossible,’ declared Christian.
    ‘It’s all very well for you to be loyal to your country,’ said Louise rather impatiently, ‘but what if they get help from some of the German states? Could Denmark stand up against that? And what sort of commander is Frederick going to be?’
    Louise could not bear to think of the defeat of the Danish armies. If Duke Christian of Augustenburg defeated Frederick he would most certainly become at least heir to the Danish throne which would mean that Louise’s husband and her son would be passed over. She realised how dear that project had become to her since it had been suggested to her by her mother through the last King. There was a more immediate problem. If the war were lost what would become of her family? They would most certainly be turned out of the Yellow Palace and Christian would no longer have a post in the Army.
    It was a gloomy prospect.
    ‘Let us pray,’ she said, ‘that this war will soon be over.’
    The children assembled in the music room while Louise sat at the piano and they all sang hymns. The ‘God help us’ kind of hymns, said Alix to Fredy, which meant that people were frightened because they always asked God’s help then in a special sort of way.
    Their father read to them from the Bible and that too was all about God’s helping them in their battles.
    Fredy had made war sound rather glorious but Alix sensed that her parents’ attitude was rather different.
    Shortly afterwards their father left with the Army.
    ‘I’ll soon be back,’ he told them.
    But the war dragged on, and it was three