Gibbon was sobbing now, his eyes screwed closed. “You killed Master Theo,” he gasped. “Didn't you? And said Mr. Fitz done it. You bastard.”
“Gendarme—some salt, please.”
“No!”
Von Stühlen grasped the man's hair in his fist. “He left you here, didn't he? He ran—and you've had to suffer for it. You don't owe him a thing. Tell me why he came to Cannes.”
“To see the Prince,” Gibbon slurred. His eyes were barely focusing. “To meet young Leopold. Miss Georgie knows why the lad's ill.”
Von Stühlen frowned. He had assumed the Royal Household had drawn Fitzgerald south—there could be no coincidence in that coincidental meeting—but he'd suspected a kidnapping: the boy held hostage against a promise of clemency from Victoria. Von Stühlen still did not know why she was hunting Fitzgerald and Georgiana Armistead—the precious letters from Albert he'd used as a bargaining chip had told him nothing. Or at least, nothing he'd understood.
Leopold's illness. There had been one letter from Albert, requesting notes made at the boy's birth; and a second, he recalled now—so insignificant he'd barely read it—informing Dr. Armistead the notes had been burned . . .
Was it possible the Queen was mortally afraid of her own son?
Von Stühlen stared at Gibbon. “What about the illness?”
“I don't know. God's my witness, I don't know a thing.”
The man was shuddering violently, saliva pouring from his mouth.
“Von Stühlen!”
The voice was Rokeby's. The British consul stood at the edge of the courtyard, a mixture of disgust and outrage on his face.
“Cut him down,” von Stühlen ordered, and walked swiftly toward his carriage.
Chapter Forty
Monday, the thirtieth of December, and Lord Palmerston come all the way to Osborne—some three hours' travel by coach and steamer—with his despatch box and papers.
I would not see him at first, my indignation at this violation of my grief knowing no bounds. A note was sent in to my rooms, in the hands of Arthur Helps, the Clerk of the Privy Council—Lord Palmerston's respects, and would the Queen be so good as to attend the Privy Council meeting, the matter at hand being the successful resolution of the affront to British sovereignty on the part of the United States of America, in seizing two Confederate envoys from Her Majesty's ship Trent . . .
I tossed the Prime Minister's missive on the fire and said to poor Helps, “Indeed we shall not. You may inform Lord Palmerston he is to conduct his business through the agency of Princess Alice.”
“Mama!” that serpent's tooth cried in protest—she had led Arthur Helps to my door—“that cannot be proper. I am not the person the Government must address, on matters of State—”
“Very well,” I told the Clerk. “Pray inform Lord Palmerston he may speak to our private secretary—General Grey.”
“General Grey is . . . was . . . Papa's secretary, Mama,” Alice faltered.
“So he was. And now he is the Queen's. What better person to stamp the Government's papers for them? He will know exactly what Papa should wish. Very well, Helps—you may go.”
The unfortunate fellow bundled himself off, and Alice followed—without a word or a look for me. I gather from my daughter's air of disapproval that she regards me as indulging my sorrow—as requiring this fresh expression of melancholy each hour, as a child might demand a sweet. I am quite content to confound her hopes of improvement; to exercise every whim a pitiable widow might dream up; to ignore, in short, all who would urge me to fortitude.
Helps very quickly reappeared, with General Grey in tow, to protest the new arrangement—Palmerston delivering himself of a peroration on the nature of monarchy, and the power that resides in my person, which none other may assume. I suppose he is perfectly in the right—although he cannot possibly argue that My Sainted Angel did not often assume the duties of sovereign—that he governed in my place—that he pretended to all the powers of a king, without benefit of coronation. All these, no one would deny. It is Albert's absence—not mine—from the Privy Council, that has them in an uproar.
Grey seconded Palmerston's views.
We argued the point by exchange of letter for full half an hour.
It ended with the Council in one room and I in another, the connecting door open between. In this manner, they could record my presence; and I could avoid attending.
Helps carried the papers to and fro across the threshold.
Before I signed, I glanced continually at Albert's portrait—whispering to him in German, all the while. Once or twice I nodded, as though in complete accord with his advice; and only then did I lift my pen.
I am not above appearing mad, if it ensures I am left in peace, and left alone.
The questions I might otherwise be forced to answer do not bear thinking of.
From one man at least, I may fear nothing.
William Jenner attended our party to Osborne, as is his custom at Christmastime; the man has no family of his own worth speaking of, and his anxiety for my reason is so acute, that he should never have been parted from me in my hour of need. I believe that the doctor dreads the possibility of blame, for having lost so august a patient—he dreads the idea that history will call him incompetent.
“Queries have been raised,” he mused last evening when I consented to see him—ostensibly to receive a copy of the death certificate he filed on the twenty-first of December—“theories, conjectures . . . in the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. It would seem they cannot reconcile my diagnosis with the medical bulletins issued from Windsor.”
“How should they?” I demanded reasonably. “We did not authorise a full disclosure of the Prince's condition. We saw no reason to make his agonies public. While there was a hope of his rallying, there was no cause to alarm our subjects with the spectre of his loss.”
“You will observe, Your Majesty, that I noted the cause of death as typhoid fever, duration twenty-one days. I marked the onset from the occasion of his fatal walk with the Prince of Wales, at Cambridge.”
“Yes,” I murmured. “He was struck down. Bertie! That dreadful cross—it was to escape him that we fled here to Osborne. But what possible objection should the medical journals make? You were upon the scene, Dr. Jenner—the editors of the Lancet were not.”
Poor Jenner hesitated. His face is grown puffy and grey; a decade of age has descended in a fortnight. “The Windsor bulletins referred only to a low fever, with a generalised depression. We did not say typhoid. And the fact that no one else at Windsor contracted the illness—”
“The Lancet is forgetting our nephew the King of Portugal,” I said comfortably, “who died of typhoid in November; and our Royal envoys, General Seymour and Lord Methuen, with whom Albert would meet, upon their return from Pedro's funeral. No doubt Methuen and Seymour bore traces of contagion.”
“But they met with the Consort less than a week before his death,” Jenner faltered. “And I cannot deny that the Prince was poorly for nearly a month.”
“Nonsense. We repose complete confidence in your diagnosis, Doctor—for why else should the Prince have died? He was a large and healthy man of but forty-two.”
When he continued to look troubled, and would have uttered still more devastating truths, I approached within inches of his person and spoke for his ears alone.
“No word of doubt or reproach shall ever pass my lips,” I said. “I make you the solemn promise of a Queen. You did for my Beloved what you could, dear Jenner—and I shall be forever grateful for your presence by his bedside, at the last. I believe we may consider the possibility . . . of a knighthood.”
Sir William Jenner. How well it sounds.
He went away a trifle cheered, and I, a trifle less so. Medical journals! Pray God that only medical people read them, and not the general run of my subjects! My seclusion, and the sympathy accorded a widow and queen, should end such trouble with time. What is essential, however, is that nothing more
be found to feed it.
“Don't you wish to know, Mama?” Alice said to me after dinner.
“Know what, my dear child?”
“Why Papa killed himself ? That is the burden of all your hints, I presume—that Papa was guilty of self-murder?”
“I do not need to ask myself such a question,” I returned. “I know how your Papa was destroyed. He was cast into an abysm of despair—by the horror, the knowledge of your brother's misconduct. I am in full possession of all the disgusting details of Bertie's sordid affair. Your Papa spared me none of them. I can only shudder when I look at the Prince of Wales. But your angelic Papa was too good to live with such wickedness.”
“Fustian,” she said calmly. “Stockmar's letter refers to Papa's accident last autumn, and that was more than a year ago—long before Nelly Clifden.”
The baron had said little that was explicit; but what he had said was enough. That is why I saved his letter. I might have quoted it to Alice, from memory.
Your desire for death, revealed to me during our talks at the Rosenau, is one you must fight to your last breath. Whatever the nature of your doubts about your children, my dear Prince, you can do nothing to alter the past. Let us have no more accidents with carriages, no dramatic runaways. Make of each day what you can, by ensuring that it is not your last.
I rose from my chair. “For most of your brother's life, poor dear Papa regarded him as unfit to rule. He strove to improve Bertie's mind and character, throughout his childhood; but to no avail. Bertie's flaws broke Papa's heart. It was the recognition of failure—for the Kingdom and the world—that drove your Papa to his grave. And I shall never forgive your brother for it. Never.”
“Bertie's flaws,” Alice repeated. “The flaw in his blood?”
“If you will,” I flashed. “Yes. The blood of our Hanover line. You know what the Regent was! And my Uncle William, with his ten bastard children! No amount of whipping could beat the tendency out of Bertie. We tried every method possible to break your brother's spirit.”
“Thank you, Mama,” Alice said. “I see matters quite clearly, now.”
And she left me without another word—chastened, I hope and pray, by the evidence all about her of masculine frailty.
Chapter Forty-One
They reached Coburg a few minutes past four o'clock on the last day of the year.
The red-tiled roofs of the stucco houses tumbling down from the great castle on the hill were wrapped in shadow, and there was snow in the cobblestoned streets.
The weather had turned steadily colder as Fitzgerald and Georgie left the Mediterranean behind them, climbing north from Toulon, where Fitzgerald—dangerously low on funds—sold his watch, and Georgie her dress. They embarked on a train for Lyon at nightfall, and by dawn had veered east to Dijon. From there, they went north through Reims, east again to Namur in Belgium, and finally crossed the Rhine into the great city of Cologne—which Protestant Prussia had claimed from the French after Waterloo. Cologne was several hundred miles away from Prussia, across a clutch of autonomous duchies, and its people were steadfastly Catholic. Constant strife between rulers and ruled was the result—so that Fitzgerald, a scion of another colonized people, felt immediately at home there. The bells of the Angelus tolled and the great cathedral of the archbishopric loomed blackly against the sky. They spent the night in an inn near the river, and pressed on again to Mainz in the morning.
There the direct route ended, and the rails became local affairs, halting endlessly at every Thüringen station between Mainz and Coburg. They were aching and dispirited as they stepped down from the coach at last. Georgiana shivered in her French peasant's clothing, though they had spent precious coins in Namur to purchase a coat for her. She had insisted on posing as Fitzgerald's manservant—and demanded that he call her George.
She had settled into her role and grown more remote with each mile they traveled into central Europe. Perhaps it was her lingering illness, or her sense of urgency. Fitzgerald could not be sure. Once, when they found themselves completely alone in a train car, they had debated what they knew.
“If the Queen fears for her own legitimacy—if she thinks that Leopold's disease betrays her dubious parentage, and threatens her right to rule—I understand why she wants to silence me,” Georgiana said. “But any number of people might stumble on the truth. She cannot fight science forever, Patrick.”
“Few of us understand your theories, lass,” he said gently. “And there's no proof. What we suspect is sheer guess—with the truth sealed by a parcel of tombs. Victoria's devout enough; she'll trust to Providence, and some sort o' Divine Right of Queens, to carry her through.”
She looked out through the train window at the rolling landscape of Flanders. “But you, Patrick. I don't understand why she's hunting you. That business about Edward Oxford—the assassination attempt in 1840—how can it matter now?”
“I've given it some thought,” he said. “You remember the conspiracy behind the murderous lad? The pistols marked with the Duke of Cumberland's initials?”
“Victoria's uncle—yes.”
“Cumberland said he was the right ruler of England. He called Victoria usurper in Oxford's letters. Most people dismissed the word, but—”
“You think Cumberland knew something?”
“Or thought he did. Victoria's old dad—Cumberland's brother—had a girl in keeping for thirty years, a Frenchwoman he acquired while playing soldier in Gibraltar; but she never produced a child. Maybe Kent couldn't father one.”
Georgie knit her brows. “The world would know if he had. All the Royal by-blows are acknowledged. I suppose Kent's mistress might have been barren—”
“So she might. Cumberland couldn't prove anything wrong with Victoria's parentage. And he's been dead now at least ten years. But the Queen still feels unsafe—there's Cumberland's son to think of, the present King of Hanover. He might want to rule Great Britain. And if someone gave him cause—”
“You're the only person who remembers that old conspiracy, Patrick.”
“I'll lay money Cumberland's son has not forgot! Think, Georgie! To rule the empire that rules the world! He'd be a fool not to watch for his chance.”
When she still looked doubtful, he persisted. “Why else summon me to Windsor and make me swear I'd never revive the story? Albert's dying must have stirred the poor Queen's fears, all her vulnerability. I'm Irish, Georgie. She assumes my kind want her torn from the throne. And if she learned somehow of my friendship for you—”
“—von Stühlen again—”
“She may have believed I'd carry your theory direct to Cumberland. We're both dead dangerous.”
They were speaking very low despite the privacy of the carriage, their faces mere inches apart; and regardless of her boyish clothing or perhaps because of it, Fitzgerald was sharply aware of Georgiana's body. His gut constricted; his hand rose to her cheek. Her eyes were dark wells, unblinking; her lips parted; she stunned him then by reaching for him hungrily.
Roaring in his ears, and a wave of heat; the tightness of her arms on his shoulders and the sense of falling into her, like falling into night. Everything in his being—grief, love, the wildness of frustrated touch—came to life and he might have taken her there in the empty compartment without hesitation. But a porter thrust open the passage door, proclaiming the next station in heavy Flemish; Georgiana broke away, gasping.
She was harder than ever to reach after that. Fitzgerald was careful not to touch her again.
The river Itz ran through the heart of Coburg, which was larger than he'd expected. The castle looming on the heights was uninhabited; Ernest, Duke of Coburg—Albert's syphilitic brother—preferred the Rosenau. It lay dreaming beyond the city's edge, wrapped in its forests above the river.
“We shall have to ferret out this baron of yours,” he told Georgie.
“That shouldn't be difficult. He's rather well known.”
“But we've got no German, lass. We'll be marked as foreigne
rs,” Fitzgerald muttered. “That could be dangerous, if von Stühlen is on our heels.”
“I'll use my French,” she said brusquely. “It got us this far.”
There had been no hint of pursuit, during the long hours of relentless travel; and it was just possible, Fitzgerald thought, that they had escaped—that von Stühlen was still in Paris, watching the Channel ports in the belief that they would double back to England.
But the suspense—the constant watchful apprehension—was taking its toll on them both. Fitzgerald's deepest desire was to turn and face his enemy: make von Stühlen scream his crimes aloud, as he died in pain for Theo's sake. He continued east only by an act of will. The part of his mind still unconsumed by rage recognised that the answers lay in Coburg. If Georgie was ever to be allowed to live her life in peace, the answers must be found.
For his own part, he cared nothing for the future. He could not think past the moment when he confronted von Stühlen in the flesh, and tore his life from his frame.
They stumbled on an inn several streets off the main square. Servants were expected to sleep on the floor of their masters' rooms; hiring a separate one would excite comment. Georgie had accepted this prosaically; Fitzgerald gave her the bed, and took the pallet on the floor. That first afternoon in Coburg she threw herself on the mattress and slept in her clothes like a dead thing.
Fitzgerald studied her inert form, then closed the door gently and made for the taproom. Unlike Georgie, he spoke no French. He thought, however, he could find someone who knew where Stockmar lived.
But would the Baron consent to see them?
Chapter Forty-Two
Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen, was only a day behind Patrick Fitzgerald, and gaining on him every hour.
He knew the roads and towns of the Rhineland and Thuringia, the border lands of Bavaria, as well as he knew his father's estates. He rode hard, on horseback, avoiding the delays of railways and weather; his baggage and his valet followed more slowly behind.
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