A Flaw in the Blood (17 page)

“—If the appearance of a nose, or a pair of eyes, or a facility for writing poetry can be inherited,” Georgie said patiently, “then, too, can be a
weakness for disease
. This is a point of some
debate,
Patrick. Uncle John was adamant that disease is created by squalour, and infects the water or air, as with cholera and typhoid. In Prince Leopold's case, however, one cannot point to a source of infection. His malady has been present from birth.”

“Inherited? From the Queen? Or the Consort?”

Georgie's eyes were suddenly alight; he had hit on the point of the whole conversation at last. “Prince Leopold's malady is exclusively found in males, Gunther says—at least, in Germany.”

“So it came from Albert?”

She shook her head. “A man with the disease never has a son with the same disorder.”

“So it
isn't
inherited?” Fitzgerald asked, bewildered.

“Please, Patrick—allow me to explain. A man who bleeds will have a healthy son. Males cannot pass it to males. But a bleeder's
daughter
will quite often have a boy with the bleeding malady.”

“The illness skips a generation?”

“And is apparently
passed through the mother
.”

“Victoria.” Fitzgerald kneaded his temples, trying to comprehend what this might mean. “You're saying the Queen caused the flaw in the boy's blood?”

“As much as anyone can, when the thing is so entirely in God's hands.”

“But she's had three other sons! And none of them—”

“None of them got the Duke's nose. That's the way of it, with families.”

His footsteps slowed as they neared the hotel. Something she'd said, just now—something she'd said a week ago, in London . . . “Georgiana, have you thought of what you're saying? About the heritability of Leo's disease?”

She looked at him searchingly. “What is it, Patrick?”

“The poor lad got his flaw from his mother. Well and good. But where did
she
get it?”

“Who knows?”

He shook his head. “That won't fadge, love. I've never heard a
whisper
of a British Royal with this kind of malady. We'd have known. You know how people talk—how the gossip sheets speculate. The wild rumours on every front. Princess Sophia's bastard. Prinny's marriage to Maria Fitzherbert. Cumberland's lust for boys. Something as ripe as unchecked bleeding could
never
have been suppressed.”

Georgiana frowned. “There's something in what you say. The Hanoverians have always been known for a lurking madness—old King George, for example. But not this frailty in the tissues. The Duke of Kent certainly wasn't troubled by it, at all events. But his wife—Victoria's mother?”

“What did Prince Albert think? He'd have known. The Duchess of Kent was his aunt.”

“I have no idea what he thought,” she said quietly. “I only know what he
said
. They're often different things.”

Fitzgerald waved one hand dismissively.

“He had never encountered Leopold's disorder before,” she conceded. “Among his own people, I mean. That's what he
said.
That's why he asked for Uncle John's notes.”

“And burned them.”

“Yes. Patrick—”

“If Victoria's mother didn't carry it, and her father didn't carry it, then the disease must have come from somewhere else.”

“But it's not an illness you just . . .
catch,
” Georgiana protested.

“No. You have to inherit it.”

“You're saying—”

“—That perhaps Victoria's father
wasn't really her father.
”

Georgiana drew a rapid breath.

Fitzgerald grasped her shoulders with both hands. “Is that it? Is
that
why she's hunting us? —Because she thinks you know what she's tried to hide from the rest of the world—what has forced her to send her son into exile—
that the Queen of England has no right to be queen at all?
”

“It can't be,” Georgie said. She twisted out of Fitzgerald's grasp and began to walk hurriedly into the hotel. “It's too fantastic, Patrick!”

“Does Gunther know what he's told you? —What possible danger he's in?”

“Obviously not.”

“But your Albert hired him!”

“At the recommendation of a certain Baron Stockmar, a Coburg doctor who has been the Consort's advisor for years. He's quite old now, Gunther says, but has all the family secrets in his keeping—”

She stopped short, her expression changing.

“
All
of them?” Fitzgerald said softly. “—Then why in God's name hasn't the Queen murdered
him
?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I
 
TELL THE WORLD THAT I
made Baron Stockmar's acquaintance on my eighteenth birthday, when Uncle Leopold sent him to wish me many happy returns of the day; but the truth is otherwise. It was a morning in June, when I can have been no more than six years old, and was engrossed in fashioning a daisy chain with dear Lehzen in the park at Kensington Palace, where our household then lived. The stems of the daisies were slippery, and the sun was hot upon the back of my neck; I wore white muslin, as was my invariable habit—a strange thing to consider of, now, when I shall certainly never in my life wear white again.

And suddenly, there he was: a stranger with an oddly-shaped head who looked at me like a familiar. He had walked up the carriage sweep as though he had a right to be there; and Lehzen actually ran a little toward him, with a glad cry, speaking in German. This surprised me so much that I crushed the daisies beneath my heels, and rose to stare at the man.

He approached me without the stupid condescension of those who think children know nothing. Because he treated me with respect, I concluded he was safe. When he said, “Let me see your teeth, Princess,” I opened my mouth obediently; when he lifted my dress and ran his hands over my shift, I let him feel the strength of my abdomen and bones.

When he had smoothed my skirt to my knees and said in a sober and judicious way, “She will do very well, Baroness. She has childbearing hips,” I suddenly felt ashamed. And burst into tears in Lehzen's apron.

Nothing of Albert's life or death would be comprehensible if one were unacquainted with Baron Stockmar. He is above seventy years of age now, but his first steps on these shores lie far back in the mists of time—to the years before I was even thought of. He came to London as advisor to my beloved Uncle Leopold—who at twenty-five was nothing more than a beautiful face and a fine figure of a man; the third son of the old Duke of Coburg, Albert's grandfather, who could give him nothing.

In the year of Waterloo, having fought against the Monster Buonaparte and been much admired among the English for his excellent looks, Uncle Leopold aspired to win the hand of the richest heiress in the world—my cousin Charlotte, Princess of Wales. They married, and were deliriously happy, until Charlotte died in childbed a year later, along with her stillborn son. But it was Baron Stockmar Charlotte cried for, in her last moments; Stockmar who held her cold hand as the life ebbed from her fingers; Stockmar who broke the news of his double loss to my Uncle Leopold in the wee hours of the morning.

Stockmar understood all too well that Charlotte's death meant more than a crisis for his protégé, Leopold; it meant a crisis for the entire British world. For there was no other legitimate heir to the throne of England then in existence. And Charlotte's death is the only reason I was ever born.

It was essential to secure the succession by producing a legitimate Hanoverian heir; and nobody expected Charlotte's father to do it. He was too old and too fat. His brother Edward, the Duke of Kent, was a betting man who rather fancied his chances—provided he could secure the hand of a proper princess. It was
there
that Baron Stockmar once again proved his worth.

My father was more than fifty, and had kept a French mistress for nearly thirty years. It would be as well, therefore, if his prospective wife were a hardened cynic, quite past her first bloom of youth. Stockmar observed that Uncle Leopold's elder sister, Victoire, the Princess of Leiningen, admirably fitted this bill: She was thirty-one, widowed, and had already produced an heir to the Leiningen principality. There could be no objection to her quitting Germany in pursuit of greater fortune.

My father wrote Victoire a letter; visited her court some once or twice; found her complaisant on the subject of marriages of convenience—as indeed she ought to have been, never having looked for anything else—and the thing was done.

Within a few months of the wedding, Mama was pregnant; within a year, I was born. And though she may have suffered disappointment, as my father's consequence and fortune were far less than his accumulated debts—Mama had in the end no cause to repine. Rivals to the throne died in infancy; and the way to power was clear for
me
.

Having made a Coburg girl Heiress Presumptive of England, Stockmar returned to the Rosenau, where another child had recently been born:
Albert,
the second son of the present duke, whose wife was unhappy and would soon flee Coburg with her lover, never to be seen again.

Like a faery godfather, Stockmar watched over the motherless boy's rearing; reported on Albert's schooling and athletic progress to his uncle, Leopold; and when the hour was ripe, dispatched the Beautiful Teutonic Youth to London, where the most powerful Princess in the world fell in love with him at first sight.

There is something of the Brothers Grimm in the tale, is there not? A little of enchantment, and also of necromancy—of strings pulled and lives crossed, for ends that only the Maker divines. Stockmar has been the canny wizard of such scenes, turning dross to gold with his alchemic wand, his chessman's plotting; and it is Stockmar I must ultimately blame for Albert's death.

It is all there, in his last letter: the collusion between the two. How fortunate for me that the baron showed his hand, in a few lines of shaky script—and that I might with impunity press the letter upon my curious daughter. Confessions may be infinitely useful—when salvaged, carefully, from the fire.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

W
OLFGANG, GRAF VON STÜHLEN, STOOD
at the entrance to Wolsey's Chapel on Monday the twenty-third of December, listening to the melodious voice of the organ. “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The old Lutheran chorale Albert loved so well. The Prince Consort was being borne into St. George's, Windsor, by the gentlemen who had surrounded him for most of his exile in England—followed respectfully by his son. Von Stühlen had only the barest sufferance for the Prince of Wales, who reminded him strongly of Victoria, but on this occasion Bertie's demeanour was above reproach. There were Lord Torrington, and Sir Charles Phipps, and Biddulph and Grey and of course Disraeli and Palmerston . . . all of them freezing in the chill of that stony place, a welter of black, of shining silk top hats removed in deference; a sea of men. Ladies did not attend funerals; not even the Queen.

Von Stühlen stared at the sarcophagus in which his childhood friend—his childhood self—lay rigid and cold.
I wish you no peace,
he thought;
no happy repose of the soul
. Albert had gone silently to this grave—he had confided nothing as the most bitter anxiety killed him. That silence told von Stühlen exactly how little, in the end, he had ever mattered to the man he called friend.

Years of following in Albert's wake, as though the role of courtcard and careless hanger-on had been fulfillment enough, as though he'd rejoiced in his useless days and desperate cadging for money—had ended in nothing. He still had no idea why
Albert
had been blessed, and not Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen, when the world abused one as maladroit, and celebrated the other for his charm. Had Fate rewarded Albert's obsession with ideals? His devotion to what he called
Duty
? From time to time von Stühlen thought he glimpsed an answer—in the immensity of Albert's pain. Fate slowly devoured Albert alive; in its boredom, it never even glanced at von Stühlen. His anger and bewilderment were immense. His mouth tasted of ashes.

The champagne flowed freely after the ceremony; that would be Bertie's touch. The same group of men uttered the same tired platitudes, about dignity and nobility and sacrifice, as they drank to the dead man's health and the wretched Queen's sorrow. Von Stühlen stopped only once as he made his way through the crowded reception rooms, still hung in black silk—to answer a question of Disraeli's.

“Von Stühlen! What you've endured, old fellow! A nasty business, that, in Sheerness—”

“Yes,” he agreed. “A nasty business.”

He reached Paris the day after Christmas.

A rough ferry crossing from Dover, and an interminable rail journey to the capital made tedious by an unexpected fall of snow. He was unruffled by these delays, however; there was no longer any need for haste or stealth in the hunt he pursued. Theo Fitzgerald-Hastings had changed everything.

When the boy lunged for his pistol and attempted to wrest it from his hand, von Stühlen had experienced one of those odd moments that intersect a life, from time to time: an instant of clarity that would hang, persistent as a mirage, before his mind until he died. The duel in which he had lost his eye was one of these. So, too, was the childhood vision of his mother returning from a morning call, with her left stocking laddered—he had seen her depart the house a few hours earlier with the same ladder on her
right
leg, and understood, in a flash of pain, that she had somehow removed her clothes quite carelessly during the interval. In that single image was contained all he need ever know about women: their betrayals, their fundamental whorishness, their stupidity. Theo's death was a crystallised revelation, like all of these.

He had watched the pistol discharge into the boy's collarbone, had seen the mouth open in agony as the young body went down; had known, without hesitation, what must follow. The pool of blood growing on the stones of the ancient forecourt. Jasper Horan seizing the bridle of the plunging horse and the other men hanging back, all of them afraid.

He could have staunched the bleeding. Driven Theo to a doctor in Sheerness in his hired fly. But the boy would have told everyone how he came to have his wound, and von Stühlen saw no point in that. Compassion had never been his failing.

He stood over Theo while his life bled away, the pistol still leveled. At first the boy thought he was toying with him—that he merely wanted some kind of information—but von Stühlen made no answer to his desperate questions. When Theo finally stopped pleading, von Stühlen had the horse put into the stable and the body laid nearby, in the straw.

Later, at the funeral in Kent—the Earl of Monteith entombing his heir, a collection of somber men walking behind the black horses and carriage—von Stühlen recounted what had happened. How he'd arrived at Shurland intending to pay a call upon Lady Maude—an old acquaintance—and had found the house empty and the boy bleeding to death in the straw, half-conscious. He had done what he could, of course. It had not been enough. But before he died, young Theo had named his killer.

“I would not have thought it of him,” Monteith said brokenly, shaking his head. “Even an Irishman ought to cherish his son. Even an Irishman cannot be so entirely a stranger to decency—”

“There was bad feeling between them,” interjected the Frenchwoman, Madame duFief, when she met von Stühlen later, at the Earl's seat. “On account of my Lady Maude. Theo could not abide his father, you know. He blamed him.
Poor child
. So much tragedy, so young—it is a family destined for unhappiness, is it not?”

She would, von Stühlen thought, be a useful witness at Fitzgerald's trial.

The afternoon of his arrival, he paid an informal call at the British Embassy.

It was a beautiful old
hôtel particulier
in the Palladian style, just off the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, with a court embraced by two wings and a garden out back. The Queen's envoy to Paris, Henry Richard Charles Wellesley, Earl Cowley, was a stranger to von Stühlen—he had been at his post for the past nine years. But that meant nothing; the Earl was Wellington's nephew and von Stühlen was everywhere recognised as one of the late Consort's intimates. He was accustomed to doors opening without hesitation.

“An Irishman? Wanted for murder?” Cowley sniffed. His own extended family was Irish born and bred, and the scandal must be felt. “I've had no wind of him—
no,
sir! Nor his woman neither. Had all the local community of English into the embassy, of course, for wassail and waits—burning of the Yule log and lighting of the festive tree, don't you know—a few days back; but an Irishman? Not a hair. Should've remembered that. And the lady's beautiful, you say?”

“In her way,” von Stühlen agreed. “Highly-cultivated—with an air of intelligence and breeding. Her name is Georgiana Armistead.”

“Damme if I don't know what gels get up to these days,” Lord Cowley muttered. “Have one or two of my own, and couldn't get them married soon enough. Well! You've escaped parson's mousetrap clear enough, hey? And more power to you. What's the rogue's name, then?”

“Fitzgerald, my lord.”

“Fitzgerald! No relation to Leinster's family?”

Henry Wellesley, thirty years before, had married one of the Duke of Leinster's granddaughters—Olivia Fitzgerald. Von Stühlen smiled faintly at the notion of a barrister being related to a duke.

“He's a Papist. No possible connexion of yours.”

The Earl blinked owlishly, as though debating whether to resent this German's display of family knowledge—then abruptly slapped his hand on his mahogany desk.

“If the man's a murderer and this Armistead woman is in his keeping, we shall have to do our
all
to apprehend them. I shall speak to the Minister of Police, naturally—but the pair mayn't still be in Paris. You've thought of that, I suppose?”

“Perhaps a telegram, to your consulates,” von Stühlen suggested. “Fitzgerald will have submitted his intended route of travel to a
mairie
somewhere, upon landing in this country. There should be a trail we may follow. The consulates will find it—or their local police.”

“Damme!” the Earl said again. “A cloak-and-dagger business, enough. Yes, Wentworth—what is it?”

“Lord Rokeby's report from Nice, my lord,” said a junior political officer, breezing into Lord Cowley's office. “He appears to have enjoyed an admirable Christmas feast with the ladies at Château Leader.”

“Ah! Indeed. Excellent man, Rokeby. Played cricket with his father at Eton, you know. He's standing unofficial guardian to the little Prince sent down to Cannes for his health, now that Sir Edward Bowater has most unfortunately stuck his spoon in the wall. P'raps you're acquainted with the lad?”

“Leopold?” von Stühlen repeated. “Naturally I am acquainted with him. How does the boy fare, in France?”

“Well—hear for yourself!” Lord Cowley settled a pair of spectacles on his ears and commenced to read aloud, to his guest's increasing interest, Lord Rokeby's report of everything—and everyone—who had celebrated Christmas with the Prince in Cannes.