I, Alexandrina Read online

  “Being married gives one one's position like nothing else can.”

  -Queen Victoria

  I don’t remember when or why I started drinking. Ha ha! That is a lie. I remember very well. I was twelve years old. That’s the when, but don’t think me a continuous, overwhelming drunk. The need has come and gone in cycles. I’ve lasted years for a time without alcohol, yet I always return to the bitch. And a bitch she is, with whips and chains drawing blood. The opposite of the waiflike creatures Philip sometimes brings into his bed. And unfortunately, our first night in Marslavia, my husband and I were doomed to share a room for the first time in several years. It was thanks to his frugal mother and the nearly total lack of hotels in Wosnia.

  This night’s creature looked straight out of a horror movie. Malnourished, ribs sticking out, grimy, matted hair halfway down her back, dumpster fashions and the scent of garbage. Perhaps I exaggerate a wee bit, but you get the idea. I was repulsed. Was Philip so desperate for his vice that he had plunged to such depths? In England, he went through gleaming, professional agencies and got call girls in the same vein.

  “Philip, get her out of here!” My harsh words squelched his smile. Hers, too.

  “Why?” he whined.

  “Because.”

  “She wanted to meet you. She doesn’t care about me.”

  The girl nodded eagerly and weaved her way over. She curtsied with sharpness. “Your Royal Highness, I am a big fan.” Her accent was unmistakably that of Marslavia, but her English was up to snuff.

  I rolled my eyes and swilled from my vodka.

  “I know I look less than ideal,” she went on hurriedly. “Please do not hold that against me.”

  I chose not to answer, and my mind wandered to Victoria. Alexandrina, rather. Eighteen years old and full of innocence. The opposite of this prostitute who had seen the worst of the world’s offerings. I detected keenness in Alexandrina’s gaze. Layers. Intelligence. I had to keep her at an emotional distance. She was too needy, vulnerable and young. Too sweet. She would find a place in my heart, and that was trouble.

  “My name is Abasa,” the girl said. “Abasa Mehmedovic.”

  Exhaustion and drunkenness overpowered me. I hated the looks of this girl. She was young, smelly and desperately skinny, but she was lucky because all of a sudden, I was too weak to send her away. Where would she go, anyhow? Back to the rough streets that made her?

  A few moments later, I was settled in a corner chair. I watched my husband moan and groan as he thrashed inside this young girl, and it was so trifling, so damn boring and sad, I fell asleep.

  **

  Nothing shocked me after my first year of married life. I had heard stories and rumors about my husband. He loved orgies, for example. Had buggered a few lads at Eton. He had never been faithful in a relationship. I chose not to believe these rumors and comforted myself by thinking that even if they were true, I was different. I was THE woman. I was special. Unique.

  Wrong.

  I awakened to see the “less than ideal” Abasa Mehmedovic peering at me. Philip snored under her—plorf, plorf, pffflorf! She clambered off him, and her ribs squawked for sustenance.

  “Your Royal Highness?” she asked.

  I gulped down vodka. “Yeah?” My tongue was heavy, sour, dense. As was my life.

  “Would you like…can I do anything for you?”

  Snicker, snicker. I was dead sexually and had been for a while. Dead sexually, dead inside.

  “No, little girl. I want nothing to do with the likes of you.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “I came for you,” she protested. “Really. Not for him. You’re pretty, and…” She got on her knees and kissed my ankles. I liked my ankles. They were delicate and airy—deceptively so. They had to be strong to put up with me. I was wearing a white silk robe, so access to my feet was easy. Her touch was surprisingly hot and reassuring. I still did not want it, and I kicked her away. “Off with you.”

  “Can I come back tomorrow night? How long are you in Marslavia?”

  “Come back when finish preschool.”

  She showed me her Marslavia identity card, which proclaimed her as eighteen years old. “That’s nice,” I muttered. “Go away.”

  She stayed. Fine. Nothing but the truth would get her to leave. “It’s not you, it’s me. I am not interested in sex.”

  “We don’t have to. We could just talk.”

  I yawned. “Go away, Abasa Mehmedovic.”

  She squealed. “You remembered my name.”

  **

  The next night, my husband tunneled into Abasa Mehmedovic twice and fell asleep. Not her. She got out of bed and considered me with hungry dark eyes. Then her gaze fell to the photo I had been studying minutes ago. Wavy dark hair, impossibly deep green eyes, a brilliant smile. Albert. The man Alex was fated to marry, according to many a seer.

  “Oh,” Abasa said in an awed breath. “Is that Albert?”

  “Yes.”

  The photo entranced Abasa. “He is exquisite,” she said. “I love seeing him on TV.”

  “You’re far from alone. Everyone loves him.” And Alex would, too. Or at least, she should. Something about the way Alex looked at me set off alarms. She looked at me in the manner of a woman who wanted sex from another woman. It was not the same way Abasa looked at me. Her gaze was borne out of desperation more than anything else. Alex’s gazes were full of confused lust.

  Abasa set down the photo. “I would love to be queen of England one day,” she said with a wistful sigh.

  And I would love to have X-ray vision and to fly like Superman.

  “Or an actress!” Abasa’s eyes shone. “Oh, Your Royal Highness, how are you today? Fine, just fine! The weather is delightful. Roses are red, violets are blue.”

  I stared in wonder. The sentences she just uttered were done in nearly flawless English, the traces of Marslavia indistinct. Then Abasa launched into a few French phrases that were nearly as good.

  “How do you know that?”

  She blushed in pride. “I meet with people at the cafe across the street. We learn from one another. Plus sometimes I get TV the back way.”

  “Ah.”

  “May I go to England with you?” Abasa asked.

  I snorted. “You want out of this backwards hellhole, do you?”

  She shrugged. “Yes. I need more out of my life than this.”

  I had drunk more than usual—yes, it’s possible—and the girl nearly appeared pretty. Not pretty enough for me to take pity on her. “Philip and I aren’t in the business of smuggling people out.”

  “No one would notice I was gone. I have no family. My parents—”

  I held up a hand. “Stop.” I found few things more tiresome than family histories. “The answer is no. It will always be no.” Did this girl expect Philip and I would overlook her lack of a visa? And much more.

  She sniffled. “Thank you for listening, anyway.”

  I rolled my eyes. I hated when prostitutes got sweet and teary.

  “Your Royal Highness?”

  “Yes, Abasa?”

  “I don’t know what happened to make you sad and bitter. I hope you find happiness again one day. I plan to. I’m getting out of Marslavia. I’ll do what I have to.”

  “Good. Will you leave me alone now?”

  She frowned but gave a slight nod. “Yes.” She got back in bed with my husband, and I set down my vodka. Abasa Mehmedovic would never be happy. For a time, she could fool herself that she was happy when she found a thriving yellow flower amid the brown desolation of the city, but such discoveries would be only discoveries. Happiness, they would not be. I could have told her so, but she needed to find out for herself.

  I had no true bed, only a ratty cot. Oh, I hated Marslavia! Lower than third-world.

  “Please, ma’am,” Abasa whispered from my husband’s side. “Take me with you. Please. I will die, inside and out, if I do not get out soon. I will do anything you require of me.”

  I squeezed
my eyes shut, but I heard her.

  “You don’t need to decide right now,” she went on. “Work on it when you get back to England. I’m at the cafe across the street a lot. That’s where the people you send can find me. Anytime!”

  Oh, what a delusional soul. What persistence.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Oh!” A pause. “Do you truly mean it?”

  “Maybe.” Abasa leaving the country could not happen, but at least she had hope. It was something people like me no longer had.

  **

  I was on the verge of leaving my husband two and a half years earlier. A proper divorce, none of this silly separation stuff. Then his mother, Queen Louise, summoned the family to Buckingham Palace. She told us the news that Russ Brendel and John Jameson were about to release to the world. There was a group of fifty clones in Marslavia, all born within a month of one another, all with “official” birthdays of January 1. All nearly sixteen years old.

  One of them was named Victoria. Alexandrina Victoria.

  I had never seen Louise so upset and confused. The prime minister, Harold Hawkins, was there too. Preliminary DNA proof seemed on the up and up. There was that break in at Queen Victoria’s mausoleum nearly twenty-two years ago. Did we remember that?

  There were photos and videos that Russ and John planned to release along with their announcement. One was of a tiny teenage girl with huge, gorgeous brown eyes re-enacting Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne. The girl did not seem happy. Oh, she went through the motions just fine, hitting her notes.

  “She’s a dead ringer, innit?” said the prime minister.

  But her eyes. Her eyes. They spoke to me. They called to my heart. Help me, she said.

  It hardly seemed the proper time to file for divorce, but I had to do something. Philip and I agreed on separation, and Louise did not press us to stay intact like she would have otherwise. I suspect she felt guilty for not doing enough to warn me of Philip’s rumored tendencies.

  I had a feeling that someday this young Alexandrina with the haunting eyes would need her family, and the royals, Louise, her husband, Nicholas, Albert, and Philip, were not up to the task. Louise and Nicholas were too busy and too powerful to expend much time worrying about a clone. Albert was a man about town spreading oats far and wide. He would never marry, I was sure. Never sire a legitimate heir. As for my own husband, he was a creep, as had become evident during our first year of marriage. Furthermore, Louise’s sisters would not want to be responsible for a clone.

  I knew my husband often saw me as crazy and unpredictable, but in this matter, I was the sanest person for Victoria. When Philip came to me to say that representatives for his mother and the prime minister had begun tentative talks to buy rights to the young woman, I kept silent. When the news leaked two months after that and the Daily Mail ran a huge expose on the talks, the people of Britain were not happy. Spending as much as hundreds of millions of dollars on a clone, a monster? When several districts of London had come under violent attack lately due to yet another shooting by a police officer? When tax burdens kept rising?

  Amid all these problems, the government had the money to buy a woman who died on January 22, 1901?

  “They don’t understand the alternative,” Louise said, wringing her hands. “If Prince Faizal gets her, he will set her up as queen. He will build palaces for her across the country. That will throw England into even more chaos.”

  Maybe Louise was right. I suspected that Faizal, the heir to a very elderly king, wanted Alexandrina for mostly sexual reasons. But, yes, Louise could be right, and letting the young woman fall into foreign hands would not do. Someone in the palace leaked the news about Faizal, but it never went far. We did not want to piss off the Saudis, and the British people did not pay much attention to the implications of Saudi Arabia getting an incarnation of the beloved Queen Victoria.

  Then, almost imperceptibly, the tide began to change. While the people had yet to fully acclimatize to the idea of a clone, the marvelous timing of a Queen Victoria existing with another Albert, Britain’s favorite prince, was too marvelous to overlook.

  Louise called me one day, worry riddling her voice. “Madame Bratislovia says that Albert will marry Victoria. Madames Polytchenka and Fortune say the same.”

  “Do they now?”

  I had been unfortunate in my choice of husband, but I made out pretty well as far as mothers-in-law went. My husband’s mother listened to me. She considered my opinions, sometimes even sought them out. She fully included me in the family right away, even though I was an American. She had no daughters, so I was the closest she had.

  “I have an appointment next week with Madame Ural,” Louise said. “I’ve never been to see her, but the Duchess of Kent swears by her.”

  “Then you must go.”

  “I should like you to come with me.”

  “Me?”

  “I know you put little stock into the words of fortune tellers, Caroline, and perhaps you are correct to do so. I cannot fathom how Albert is supposed to marry a clone!”

  “How does me going with you help?”

  “I want Madame Ural to read your fortune too. If you, being such a skeptic, are satisfied with it, then I will have no choice but to lend credence to what she tells me.”

  Or Louise could simply allow her son to live his life, but one does not say such things to your mother-in-law, especially if she happens to be the queen of England. “Let’s do it,” I said.

  **

  In my mind’s eye, Madames Bratislovia et al. worked in small, dim and windowless rooms. They gazed into crystal balls that lit up with electricity, and they read all manner of palms.

  In reality, Madame Ural’s operation was sleek. Louise and I, under the cover of darkness and in slight disguises, walked into an ultramodern gray building on the outskirts of London. Much of the time, Louise’s fortune tellers came to her, but Madame Ural never made house calls (not even for the queen).

  “Your Majesty. Your Royal Highness.” Madame Ural greeted us with a flourish of a curtsy, and Louise beamed. It was nearly three decades after her coronation, and she never tired of being addressed as “Your Majesty.”

  Still, her stress showed. “Let’s get right to the readings,” Louise said.

  She went first. We sat in a comfortable office with plush, red furniture all around. Reminded me of what a psychiatrist’s office would be like. There were no crystal balls. No readings of palms. No tea leaves.

  Madame Ural put her hand atop Louise’s and asked Louise to close her eyes. She did.

  “Tell me why I am here,” Louise said.

  “You are…troubled.”

  I stifled a snort. Why else would people go to fortune tellers?

  “Yes,” Louise said eagerly, and my heart went out to her. Each person has his or her weak spot. Louise, ordinarily logical in many areas, simply went to mush when it came to men and women who could tell the future.

  “It is your son. The elder,” Madame Ural said.

  Again, no big deal. Newspapers had been filled with the latest headlines on Albert and his then-girlfriend, a model. ANOTHER SPAT BETWEEN PRINCE AND GORGEOUS JEMMA! ALBERT TELLS JEMMA TO TAKE A HIKE!

  “His love life,” Madame Ural said.

  Yawn.

  “I want him to be happy,” Louise said. “Can you tell me if he will be?”

  “I am trying.” Madame Ural lit a candle, and the scent of coconuts filled the room. “Come, let us start again.”

  Hand over hand. Closed eyes.

  “Yes,” Madame Ural said momentarily. “I am receiving fuzzy images, but all signs point to a very satisfactory marriage.”

  She knew her Magic Eight ball lines. Good for her.

  “Can you tell me about her? The bride?” Louise’s voice held a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

  “Indeed. Yes. Yes. I am seeing Albert and his bride on the balcony of Buckingham Palace hours after they wed. They are waving to jubilant crowds. Her hair is a
shiny, shiny beautiful brown. They kiss. Oh, they are so in love!”

  “Who?” Louise said hoarsely. “Who is she?”

  “She is the one in the newspapers. The woman whom people want him to marry. The one called Alexandrina Victoria.”

  **

  Well. Louise fled in tears, but I stayed behind. The bodyguards would handle Louise, and if I left too, Louise would despair about whether the reading was credible.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said.

  “Ah. Do we have a skeptic in our midst?”

  “All signs point to yes.”

  Light chuckle. “You know the drill, Your Royal Highness. I will place my hand on top of yours, and I want you to close your eyes. Breathe and relax to the best of your ability. Clear your mind.”

  I accepted her hand. I closed my eyes, breathed, relaxed and cleared. Tried to, anyway. My future had never been read, and to be honest, I was more than a bit intrigued to see what bollocks Madame Ural would come up with.

  “Oh,” Madame Ural said after a moment. “You are troubled.”

  Good Lord. The woman did not even have the imagination to vary her opening lines.

  “It is your husband. He has two faces, and you found out too late about his true face.”

  “Which you in no way could have ascertained by the fact that we have separated,” I said drily.

  “Please, no negativity.”

  “Oh, excuse me.” Sarcastic.

  I nudged my right eye open. Madame Ural’s eyes were closed, her forehead furrowed in intense concentration.

  “I see a woman,” Madame Ural said. “In fact, it is the clone Alexandrina Victoria, but she looks different. Older. Her hair is dyed red.”

  “Oh?”

  “The two of you are about to get married to each other.”

  Whoa. Full stop.

  “She is in love with you, this Alexandrina Victoria is, and you are very much in love with her.”

  I opened my eyes. So many problems with this scenario. First, my love life and sexual experiences were decidedly limited and did not include encounters with women. Second, after I found out the true character of my husband, I swore to never marry again. I was not against falling in love and living together. I simply would not marry again. Third, I was in a place right now where my insides were so dead that it was a rare occurrence that caused my heart to feel anything. Perhaps most importantly was the fortune that Madame Ural had just told my mother-in-law.