Chapter 3
Finally back at Balmoral, Phillip confronted his trembling mother-in-law and had to tell her that Elizabeth had been taken. As they sat in the drawing room, Phillip held the luke-warm icepack in his hands that he had been holding against the egg-sized lump on his head. None of them spoke for several minutes before Phillip stood and crossed the room to the windows, staring blankly out of them as the sunset reached the horizon.
"Why would someone want to hurt grandma?" Harry asked softly.
"It could be any number of things, son," Charles said. "It could be some organization with a political agenda, it could be about money…"
"Blatant act of terrorism!" Phillip cried, turning back from the windows.
"Terrorism?" Charles echoed. "I'll admit I'm as angry about this as you are, but terrorism is a strong word."
"What else would you call it?" Phillip retorted.
"If they want money, why haven't they called looking for a ransom yet?" William asked.
"What if it doesn't have anything to do with money at all?" Harry asked. "What if it's some nutter who believes that grandma has damaged the image of the monarchy? If someone believed that strongly enough, don't you think they'd do something about it?"
"That wouldn't change a thing!" Phillip sputtered. "What good would it do to remove her and put Charles on the throne unless they thought that somehow Charles could be manipulated?" Charles let out a breath and leaned forward, lowering his head into his hands. William went to him and put his hand on his father's shoulder, turning to give his grandfather a scowl.
"That's not fair. You make it sound like this was his fault and no one's done it except those brutes that accosted you!" William cried defiantly.
"I never said it was his fault!" Phillip shouted back. He tossed the warm compress onto a table and sneered back at his family. "I'm going to bed. I need to get another ice pack and then try to get to sleep knowing that the last thing I heard before I blacked out was your grandmother screaming for me and I could do nothing!" The door slammed behind Phillip when he left the room, and the ensuing seconds of silence were interrupted when a shuddering sob escaped the dowager Queen. Charles patted William's shoulder as he stood and went to sit with her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and giving her hand a tender squeeze. Her lip quivered as tears slipped from her eyes, refusing to look up when Charles sat down.
"It's going to be all right, granny," Charles murmured. "We'll get her back."
"But in what condition?" the elder Queen Elizabeth muttered miserably. "She's not likely to cooperate with terrorists and how long do you suppose they'll let her live once she's of no use to them?"
"We can't think like that," Charles said. "We need to be positive." With that, she rose from her place and took a breath before she replied to him.
"As you wish," she murmured, bowing at the neck. "You are sovereign in her stead, Charles." With this, she hobbled from the room in silence leaving devastated Charles to be comforted by his boys.
Queen Elizabeth II sat quietly in the small room she had been roughly pushed into when she arrived at what she could only dimly see in the dark as some sort of military camp, a smattering of small buildings and a barracks. She hadn't said a word since being separated from her husband at Balmoral and none of the men who held her captive had attempted to speak to her. As she clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap, she bit her lip and looked around, observing that there were no windows in the room, and that it was occupied by only a plain table, a small bed, and the chair she sat upon. She had no idea what was going on and needed information, fast. She could barely hear the voices in the corridor and meekly went to the door to press her ear against the jamb and listen.
There were two men in the corridor. One talked like he had been there during her abduction, and the other was only now aware of it. She heard them talk about their plan to remove her from the throne in favor of her more easily coerced son, Charles, and the unfortunate mishap that occurred when they had first begun: the original idea had been to first bully Charles by threatening his sons, but Diana had discovered the conspiracy and her violent death in Paris was a little more than they had bargained for. Elizabeth's heart skipped a beat—Diana's death wasn't brought on by the paparazzi? It wasn't a result of her scandalous behavior being solicited by the media? And what of Dodi Fayed? Tragic collateral damage in the effort to keep them from revealing the plot to the press. The young gunman who had threatened the Queen a week ago was had been a deliberate scare tactic to make her rearrange her security detail and have them be spread too thinly when Elizabeth's first reaction was to protect her family rather than herself. Elizabeth was pale and shaking when she returned to her chair. Where had this plot come from? A much more important question was, what was she ever going to do to get free? Now that she knew what was really happening, she needed to do something drastic…but what? There was a small mirror on the wall near the door of the room and Elizabeth observed her reflection for a moment. She reached to wipe the smudges of dirt from her face and then stopped. She again studied her appearance and an idea came to her. If she could convince them that they had the wrong woman—convince them that she was not the Queen but a convincing look-alike…She quickly went back to her chair and forced herself to think, to create a new persona that was completely opposite of her own nature.
An hour later, a man entered the room wearing the same black garb that all of the others here seemed to be wearing. When Elizabeth looked up, she had completely transformed her expression from one of calm, to one of utter terror.
"It seems we have a lot to talk about, your majesty," the man said.
"What are you on about?" she wept, wringing the hem of her heavy sweater in her hands. She had removed and hidden her wedding ring, replacing it with a plainer one from her other hand, and her clear, careful English diction had been reduced to a Scottish brogue that would have made any true Scotsman blush with pride. Clearly, her interrogator was taken a little aback, and Elizabeth inwardly smiled. Her plan was working.
"I always knew that looking like her would get me into trouble someday!" Elizabeth wailed. "I've bloody well been mistaken for the Queen herself!"
"Wait a minute…you're not her?" the man stammered.
"No! Of course not!" Elizabeth cried, fearing at any moment that she might make some slip up and he would see through her charade.
"What's your name?" he demanded.
"Elsie…Elsie Keith," Elizabeth whimpered. "We're visitors to a neighboring estate and we'd gained permission to be on the grounds." Elizabeth was even beginning to impress herself. She was an accomplished public speaker to be certain, but she hadn't been sure at the beginning that her acting skills were going to be up to the task. She sobbed into her handkerchief and waited for the man to say something else. Instead, he went to the door and shouted into the corridor for two other men. When they arrived, they asked their superior what was going on.
"It's not her," the interrogator said.
"What do you mean it's not her?" the first man echoed.
"We did exactly as the plan stated—the land rover, the estate, everything!" the second man added.
"You cannot tell me that sniveling puddle of mush over there is our Queen," the interrogator insisted.
"What do you want to do about her? She's been here, she can't just walk out!" the second man argued.
"If she's got enough money and clout to be a guest at an estate like that, someone's going to miss her," said the first man.
"I think you're lying, Elsie," the interrogator said, turning back to Elizabeth. Her heart nearly burst in her chest—had he figured it out? "I think you and your old man sneaked onto the property, didn't you? You're not a guest of a neighboring estate at all." The feeling that her heart was being squeezed by a fist eased a little at this and she played along.
"Yes, you're right! We did sneak in!" Elizabeth admitted with blatant embarrassment. "We'd heard that the lake on Balmoral was so lovely!" The interrogator took a breath as Elizabeth dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief and added, wailing, "My poor husband! He's bound to be still lying in the road where all of you left him!"
"Get her out of here. Take her out back by the sheds and shoot her," the interrogator said. Elizabeth looked up at her captors as the interrogator called a third man, another that Elizabeth didn't recognize as one of the men who had abducted her, and assigned him the gruesome task. Elizabeth was speechless as the man dragged her by the arm down one corridor and around the corner to where a door lay at the end of another narrow corridor. Their breath made soft white puffs in the night air and the man gave her a small push toward a metal storage shed making her collapse to her knees. Shaking uncontrollably and forgetting her act, Elizabeth folded her hands and sobbed as she prayed. The young man pulled a pistol from a holster on his hip and checked it for ammunition and to make sure the safety was still on.
"Tell me something," the man said suddenly. Elizabeth looked up at him, awaiting this final question. "What's your maiden name?"
"What?" Elizabeth wept.
"Your maiden name. What is it?" he repeated. Elizabeth was at a loss. What did it matter what her maiden name was? She gave him the first surname that came to mind.
"Mountbatten," she finally answered. The young soldier lowered his weapon and replaced it in its holster. Elizabeth looked at him in shock as he offered her his hand to get up.
"I don't understand," Elizabeth said, stumbling to her feet.
"Elsie is short for Elizabeth. The name Keith means forest, referring to the woods of Balmoral, where they took you from. All of that could have been coincidence, but it was the last that confirmed it: Mountbatten—Prince Phillip's last name," the young man replied, "Your Majesty."
The young soldier took Elizabeth to a jeep nearby and drove off into the night with her, bound for Balmoral. When they got close enough to the estate, hours later, Elizabeth had fallen asleep and her savior eased the jeep into the woods surrounding the castle. He knew that search parties were still making their way through the thousands of acres of woods, hills, and lakes on foot and with dogs and had not made it very far despite the hours that they must have been at the task. The woods were dense, and he had an idea. Stopping the jeep miles from the reach of the flashlights of the searchers, he carefully lifted the sleeping sovereign into his arms and walked a distance into the trees, choosing a soft bit of ground to lay her down. He knew that soon they would have to call off the search for the night and he was counting on it. He reverently kissed her hand and with this, he left her, making his way back to the jeep and speeding away into the night. When she woke in the morning, she would wonder if it had all been a dream and, he hoped, she would recover from this harrowing ordeal.
When Prince Phillip awoke the next morning, his head was still throbbing, but he dressed anyway and joined Charles downstairs to go out with the search parties. Charles tried to convince him to stay at the castle with the boys and the Queen Mother, but there was no persuading him. The servant who handed Charles his coat was smiling as the elder Prince left the castle, and Charles asked her why she smiled.
"I meant no disrespect, your highness," she said sweetly. "It's just…it's very romantic." Charles smiled for the first time since all of this happened. After all, she was right about his parents; they seemed to have been destined for one another, and Prince Phillip never let his queen forget that he loved her more than anything else.
By mid-morning, Prince Charles's group of searchers had not turned up anything significant. Dogs had been brought along to try to track by scent, and they pulled on their long leashes excitedly as they sniffed and snorted at the ground. Charles walked along with the long line of searchers, a fretful look on his face and one of his mother's silk scarves in his coat pocket. They had used it to help the dogs get a scent to work from and it gave Phillip some hope, however small. Even if his clever mother found a way to outsmart her attackers and escape, there was no telling where they had taken her or if she would have been able to find her way back. There was also the chill of the autumn nights to think about. Neither of his parents had been wearing a coat in the early afternoon, when the day was warmer. How long would it have taken for the cold to do her in anyway? Charles tried hard not to let these thoughts pervade his determination but it was difficult to do when the odds were stacked against the strong, sensible woman who had brought him into this world. He owed it to her to hope.
An hour later, the dogs tugged hard on their leashes and whined as they seemed to pick up something familiar. The handlers jogged to keep up with them as they led the group toward a small clearing up ahead. Charles jogged along and despite warnings not to, charged into the clearing anyway. There on the ground, slumbering heavily in the still, chilly morning air like a forgotten Snow White was his missing mother. He knelt beside her and picked up her hand moments before she awoke.
"Charles!" she gasped, letting him slowly help her up as the search party cheered. She leaned heavily on his arm as Charles embraced her and begged her to let him carry her.
"No," she said hoarsely but gently. "Just guide me." Charles nodded and aided her as they walked to a land rover that had been following the search party. A doctor climbed out, helping Charles to bring the gentle queen to the back of the rover, where he briefly examined her and determined that she was uninjured. With help, Elizabeth climbed into the back seat of the rover with Charles, and they were promptly driven back to the castle, where servants waited inside the door to whisk their queen upstairs to her rooms, where they could help her bathe and change, and one brought up a tray with a light lunch on it for her. Charles had been left standing at the foot of the staircase when his boys came running.
"You're back!" Harry cried.
"What happened?" William asked. Charles proceeded to tell them that their grandmother was alive and was going to be all right and their explosion of happy relief made Charles grin broadly as they threw their arms around him.
"Where's Grandpa? Someone called the other search party to tell them, right?" William asked.
"I'm on my way to do just that," Charles said, squeezing William's shoulder. "Why don't you go and tell Queen Elizabeth that grandma's all right?" The boys nodded and jogged out of the room, leaving Charles to find his cell phone and locate his father.
By the time the servants left the queen to rest, she had eaten everything on the tray and was warm and refreshed, sitting on the edge of her bed ensconced in her floor length nightgown and dark rose colored robe. William, Harry, and her mother had all been in to see her, and despite feeling much better, she was exhausted. She eased herself to her feet and walked to the window, sitting now on the window seat where she looked out over the gardens and started to cry. She had been home for hours and none of the other members of her family had mentioned anything about Phillip. She could only surmise from this that her fears had been correct and her dear Prince had indeed perished from his injuries. Why had none of them told her? What difference would it make if they told her now or later?
Elizabeth's heart broke as she recalled that the last time she saw him, he was wide eyed and struggling to help her right before the man struck him in the head. Now the next time she would see him was going to be his funeral. He would never again be there to hold her, be her shield against the world that frequently misunderstood her, nor would he be there for her to confide in, love, honor, and cherish. Her tears fell freely the more she recalled: their drive to the lake, his surprise picnic, dancing with her to the music of that little radio, going for a walk around the lake and then making love on a bed of blankets in the sunshine and warm breeze near the sparkling water's edge.
Truly alone, the queen wrapped her arms around herself and continued to sob, doubled over in misery and left cold by the loss of the man who had been her knight for 50 years. As she wept she didn't hear the doorknob turn or the footsteps of the person who entered the room but looked up moments later and discovered her visitor, the only one in her life that could ever get away with not knocking before he entered, and pulled herself to her feet, rushing across the room into his arms. Both Queen Elizabeth and her Prince collapsed to their knees, kissing, embracing, stroking one another's faces and arms and doing their best to dry each other's mourning tears.
"Oh, my Elizabeth!" Phillip murmured. "I'm here, my darling! I thought I'd never see you again!" Phillip couldn't resist holding her tightly and rocking a little as he pressed kiss after kiss to her crown, forehead, cheeks and lips. Elizabeth relaxed into his arms, the bone-chilling emptiness she'd felt ebbing as she returned his eager, joyful kisses.
"I was so sure that they'd killed you!" Elizabeth murmured as they wobbled to their feet. Once they were standing, Phillip softly cupped her face in his hands and ducked to kiss her again, this one sending little tingling sensations all the way to his bride's toes. She rested against his chest and let him hold her for an infinite time before he urged her to sit down and rest while he went to change his clothes. When he returned minutes later, Elizabeth was yawning. Phillip held the covers for her to cuddle down into bed and then promptly joined her there, hugging her snugly against his chest and virtually hiding her from view. They'd spent the previous night apart and Phillip had every intention of making up for lost time.
