The Secrets of the Notebook: A royal love affair and a woman’s quest to uncover her incredible family secret. Eve Haas

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СКАЧАТЬ handwriting, and your book would have belonged to him, the Prince August of Prussia, a member of the ruling Hohenzollern family and a nephew of Frederick the Great, the famous King. We can be quite certain of that. He would have written the inscription, although the actual signature would have been done by someone else. That would have been added by another hand afterwards. Such measures were often taken in those days to disguise and hide the truth of matters. It is this obsession with secrecy and disguise that makes historians’ jobs all the harder, but in the end, of course, all the more fascinating. Do you know much about the Prince?’

      ‘I have tried to find out a bit,’ I said, but he wasn’t really listening, eager to show off his own knowledge of the subject.

      ‘He wasn’t just the youngest nephew of Frederick the Great, he is also the forgotten hero of the Napoleonic wars. He was an immense historical figure of his time, incredibly wealthy and a mighty warrior prince. It would be impossible to overstate how important and influential a man he was, and this is most definitely his handwriting. How on earth did you come to own such a rare gem?’

      I explained the family connection and about how determined I had become to find out more about Emilie’s life despite my parents’ warnings that I would be wasting my time. They seemed to be amazed to find out about the liaison and an unofficial marriage. They didn’t seem to know anything about the Prince’s private life or about Emilie’s existence or the fact that they had a child together.

      ‘Well, Mrs Haas,’ he said when I had finished, ‘apart from Liechtenstein and the principality of Monaco, I can safely say that you are related to every royal family in Europe. Prince August, you see, was the great grandson of George I of England. You are also directly descended from Mary Queen of Scots and her son, James I.’

      At that moment I froze. What a revelation this was, but I didn’t want to reveal any of my real feelings. Ken was standing right next to me, what was he thinking?

      Then in his typical style Ken gave me a playful pinch. ‘I don’t remember it being in the marriage contract that I was marrying a princess,’ he piped up.

      ‘It’s Emilie I’m really interested in finding, Mr Finestone,’ I reminded him, ignoring Ken’s interruption. ‘And their daughter, Charlotte.’

      ‘Finding out anything about either of them will not be an easy task, Mrs Haas,’ he started gushing again, ‘not easy at all. At the end of August’s life, in the mid-nineteenth century, all evidence of his past completely disappeared in the most mysterious circumstances. And of course now we have the problem of so much of the archive being stored behind the Berlin Wall in the East. It seems incredible that a man who must have had every aspect of his life written about in so much detail should simply disappear from the records, but that is exactly what happened. The East Germans absolutely refuse to cooperate in opening up their files. Historians from all over the world have been trying to find out about him throughout the last hundred years, with no success whatsoever. It is as if there were nothing written about him at all, yet he was one of the greatest Prussians who ever lived. It’s quite possible the records have been destroyed but if there is anything still in existence no one has been able to find it.

      ‘You must go to West Berlin, Mrs Haas. I urge you to visit the archive in Dahlem and beg them for help. You really must try and find out what happened to your great, great grandfather and grandmother. You have an extremely rare piece of history in your possession here. For Prince August, a leading member of the royal Hohenzollern dynasty, to live for eleven years with the daughter of a Jewish tailor simply cannot be explained.’

      ‘It’s really just a family heirloom,’ Ken said when Mr Finestone eventually paused for breath. He was obviously not keen to see me being encouraged to go against my father’s wishes to keep our family secrets low-key and private.

      ‘Oh, it’s much, much more than that, Mr Haas,’ Mr Finestone assured him. ‘This book belonged to the warrior prince. He fought and defeated Napoleon and became the wealthiest man in Prussia. Your wife could have the key that unlocks the whole puzzle. A puzzle which has defeated all the most learned historians in the world.’

      ‘If this were my diary,’ Mr Williamson chipped in, ‘I would be attempting to analyse it completely. I would want to find out everything I could about it.’

      ‘You really should make this public,’ Mr Finestone said.

      ‘Absolutely,’ his friend agreed. ‘We would love to be part of it with you. Do please go public.’

      ‘My wife wishes this to be kept private,’ Ken jumped in, obviously surprised and realising for the first time just how significant the little book was. ‘She doesn’t want the whole world to know her private family business.’

      ‘That’s right,’ I assured them all. ‘It’s only Emilie, my great, great grandmother who I am really interested in at the moment. I want to find out how she came to be in this position and what happened to her after the Prince died.’

      ‘Indeed. Anti-Semitism was almost official in Berlin at that time,’ Mr Finestone said. ‘For a Prussian prince to get together with a Jewish girl …’

      He petered out, unable to find sufficient words to express the level of his amazement at such a thought.

      ‘Do go to Berlin, Mrs Haas. I would if it were me. You have an extremely rare piece of history here. This is really exciting. You mustn’t allow it to slip through your fingers.’

      I came away from that meeting high on excitement at the possibilities of the adventure that I could now see lying ahead of me. To have had the inscription verified as being from the hand of the Prince himself was an enormous step forward. It meant that the story my father had told me had not been a mere fairy tale, passed hopefully down the generations. I was genuinely linked to this great historical figure. He was my own blood, and I knew that now there would be nothing that could stop me from continuing my search. It was as if Mr Finestone and his friend had given me permission to set off on my quest. I put my father’s warnings about not pursuing the truth to the back of my mind, reasoning that they had been made because he hadn’t wanted me to make a fool of myself and from the perspective of a very different time in history, telling myself that Mr Finestone and his friend had more than confirmed that I wouldn’t be doing that and that it was my duty to Anna and to posterity as well. If I didn’t embark on this it was hardly likely that anyone else could or would and then the truth might never come to the surface. This book was genuine and it could hold the key to solving a great historical mystery. Without even asking him, I could tell that Ken was not nearly as keen as I was. I suspect that inside he was cursing Mr Finestone for giving me so much encouragement. I think he could see clearly that there was a danger that this hunt was going to take over both my life and his and that it could take us to dangerous places. He had been hoping for a quiet life after decades of working hard, the last thing he wanted was to stir up trouble for himself and his family.

      ‘You have the diary,’ he said when I eventually forced him to tell me what was going through his mind. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

      I knew better than to argue. I needed to save my ammunition for later. My spirits were riding too high for me to be willing to be discouraged now and I told myself I would work out how to bring Ken on board later. I was intending to contact every possible expert I could think of to try to discover where this missing information had been buried and to work out how it had all been hushed up so successfully. Who, I wanted to know, had instructed that Prince August and Emilie should be erased from the history books, and why?

      A few days after our visit to his flat, to my sheer delight I received a letter from Mr Finestone containing a СКАЧАТЬ