‘Don’t be afraid, I am here to help you, and what you are undergoing is after all the most natural thing in the world. It is well to rest a little when the pains are at bay, so as not to exhaust yourself. I will make you up a tincture.’

‘I confess I am relieved to see you,’ said Alice. ‘The sensation was becoming so violent that I feared you would come too late.’

The medals were to be given out in alphabetical order, so that none could claim precedence nor perceive a slight. William was to stand close in line with his fellows, his family to one side.

A great crowd had assembled, the silk of the gentlemen’s top hats glinting in the sun, like starlings’ wings. A silver band played. The Queen and Lord Panmure and the Prince of Wales, with Prince Albert to one side and Prince Frederick William of Prussia to the other, were mounted, alongside other dignitaries. Equerries stood to Her Majesty’s left, one of them bearing the Royal Standard. Guards officers, tall in their bearskins, formed up at right angles to the Royal Party. Each man who was to be awarded took his turn to come to the right side of the Queen. None spoke, awed as they were by the pomp of the occasion and the nearness of Her Majesty. When his time came, William was so immoderately conscious of the smallness of her hands upon his breast that her face made barely an impression.

Dr Nolan applied a soothing compress to Alice’s brow with one hand and held both her hands with the other. Her grip was fierce. ‘It won’t be long now,’ he said.

The Queen’s cuff was white below the crimson of her coat. Her hands were as pale as unripe fruit. She spoke and William answered her. He stood very still while she stuck the dark medal’s clasp through the stiffness of his coat.

Dr Nolan took the infant and washed him in the basin of warmed water which the maid had brought up to Alice’s room. He had already cut the cord and delivered her of the weight of what came afterwards, a wide, slippery thing like an ox liver. Alice was shaking and he sent the maid back down to fetch tea for her, and something sweet for her to eat. He wrapped the child in a towel and brought him to his smiling mother’s arms.

William bowed before his Queen and stood back, the Cross upon his breast. He could not have said whether he had been a minute or an hour in her presence.

Dr Nolan, at Alice’s request, took William’s own pen, dipped it into the ink and wrote:

A fine and healthy boy has been safely delivered and his mother is quite well. I have the honour to be your obedient servant, Dr Edward Nolan.

6.