A Flaw in the Blood (20 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

T
HEY 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 foreigners,” 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

W
OLFGANG, 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.

It was a hunch that drove him toward Coburg: a seed in the gut that Gibbon planted unwittingly in the courtyard of a French gendarmerie. It grew during an interlude at the Château Leader in Cannes and would flower, von Stühlen felt certain, in a day or two at most.

He had not tried to wring information from young Leopold—who clearly had helped Fitzgerald escape; the loss of the donkeys was common knowledge in the Bowater ménage. Nor had he approached the girl Louisa, who seemed frightened of him. He assumed he had his eye patch to thank for this—and Lady Bowater, who clearly knew his reputation and treated him with chill civility. Gunther, however, was different. Gunther was German.

Von Stühlen talked to the young medical man of his training in Bonn—recounting his own student days with Prince Albert—and then of the boy in Gunther's charge. He had never really paid attention to Leopold before; Windsor's nursery set held little interest for him.

“This woman doctor,” he mused, as though he knew nothing of Georgiana Armistead. “She was acquainted with Prince Leopold?”

“She had examined him—at the Consort's request.”

“So she claims.”

“Leopold volunteered the fact. I find nothing singular in Prince Albert's confidence; despite her sex, Dr. Armistead is highly regarded in British scientific circles.”

“A pity, then, that she should throw herself away on such a disreputable fellow as Fitzgerald.”

“Ye-es,” Gunther agreed doubtfully. “I must assume we have an imperfect understanding of the facts. I cannot believe a lady of Miss Armistead's—I should say
Dr.
Armistead's—intelligence and character should be capable of duplicity.”

They spoke in German, of course, as they walked against the force of the mistral, on the château's terrace: two men shoulder to shoulder, von Stühlen nursing a cigar.

“I see you were susceptible to her charms, my unfortunate Theodore,” he said with amusement. He had decided to treat Gunther like a younger brother. “My condolences. But you are not the first to be flummoxed by a pretty face.”

“It wasn't like that,” the doctor protested. “We talked of theory, always. The heritability of disease.”

And as they walked in the weak December sun, waves booming off the Esterelles, Gunther told von Stühlen exactly why Georgie's mind was so stimulating.

By the time von Stühlen made his farewells, the name
Stockmar
had reached Gunther's lips. The Count was intimately acquainted with Albert's old friend.

Three hours later, he was on the road to Coburg.

*    *    *

Christian, Baron Stockmar lived with his wife in the Weber-Gasse, not far from Fitzgerald's hotel.

It was the baroness who led them to her husband's study. In all the years he had spent in England, he had always traveled without her; and she seemed resigned to this secondary role of messenger, of a life spent in subordination to the demands of the Saxe-Coburgs, barely meeting the baron's eye as she opened the double mahogany doors. She left them to face the dragon: an elderly man with sparse white hair, his neat clothes entirely black.

His hands shook as he took off his spectacles, and he braced them against his knees when he bowed to Georgiana. For this one important call she had abandoned her servant's clothes and donned a bombazine dress and sober bonnet Fitzgerald had purchased for her, second-hand, from a Coburg mourning warehouse.

“I had formed no intention of receiving visitors, and had you been anyone else, I should not have been at home.”

“You have our gratitude, sir,” Georgie said.

“You may thank your late guardian, Dr. Armistead. Oh, yes—I was acquainted with John Snow. We met in London, during the summer of the Great Exhibition. He was a rising man, then—but already marked by genius. A tragedy, to die as he did!”

Georgiana's lips parted; for an instant, she seemed at a loss for words. “We might say the same of the Consort.”

Stockmar smiled thinly. “I have lived too long, when I must bury a man who might have been my son. There are those in Coburg who feel compelled to offer condolences to me—to Stockmar!—who is nothing but an old man with one foot in his own grave. But
you
will hardly be so stupid. Albert spoke of you, some once or twice; and as he rarely spoke of anyone other than himself, in his letters to me, I comprehend what an impression you must have made. Your intelligence.” He cocked his head and studied her keenly. “Yes—your intelligence. It is a supreme mark of respect, that he should have admired it.”

“I knew how to value his good opinion, sir.”

“Of course you did. You are not a fool, like most women. And this gentleman with you—he is your guardian also?”

“At Dr. Snow's request.”

“At your age, Dr. Armistead, I should not think you required any.
Fitzgerald
.” Stockmar wrapped his spectacles over his ears—which protruded rather like a monkey's from his bony skull—and consulted a folded bit of notepaper. “You sent me this note from the hotel.
Fitzgerald.
As I recall, it was a barrister of that name who defended the Queen's would-be assassin, some twenty years ago. Are you the same?”

“I am, sir,” Fitzgerald said, astonished.

Stockmar frowned at him. “In Coburg, you should never have been allowed to present your case. But that is by the by. Why have you come all this way to talk to me?”

“Because the Prince Consort is dead,” Georgiana said. “And because we cannot believe it was typhoid that killed him.”

They had agreed, that morning at the hotel, that no word of the Queen's pursuit would pass their lips. It was essential that Stockmar know nothing of their true position; his being Albert's confidant did not necessarily make him theirs.

“Typhoid.” The baron began to hunt among the papers on his desk, his palsied hands touching and discarding things with the frustration of age. “I disregarded the bulletins from Windsor—they were pure nonsense—and telegraphed directly to Squires, the Royal apothecary. They told me which medicines the Consort's doctors prescribed. I, too, am a doctor, you realise.”

“You diagnosed his illness from their prescriptions,” Georgie concluded. “And what was Prince Albert given?”

“Almost nothing but tea and brandy, at the end,” Stockmar returned sardonically. “Old women, all of them—Holland. Watson. Sir James Clark. They got him drunk in his final hours, so he wouldn't feel the pain. For years Albert complained of gastric disorders, Dr. Armistead—a perpetual weakness brought on by the cares of his station—but the inclination took a morbid turn as lately as November. The Prince lost the will to fight. Let me read you something.”

He settled his spectacles once more, and licked his forefinger to aid in thumbing the pages. “This is from Albert—the very last letter I received of him, dated the fourteenth of November last.
I am fearfully in want of a true friend and counsellor, and that
you
are the friend and counsellor I want, you will readily understand.
You see in what despair he was.”

Georgiana glanced at Fitzgerald. “Are you suggesting, sir, that he died of unhappiness?”

“Unhappiness—overwork—disappointment—doubt. A year ago I told his brother, Duke Ernest, that if anything happened to Albert—he would die. His mind was so given over to melancholy, he had not the resources to survive. But surely you cannot have come so far to learn what you already know? Having been acquainted with the Consort, Dr. Armistead, surely you observed his decline over the past twelvemonth?”

“To a degree,” she replied guardedly. “But what can have occurred in November to make him lose all hope?”

Stockmar shrugged. “I have had a letter from his wife, the Queen. She blames some trifling indiscretion of the Prince of Wales's. As though Albert had not grown up in the Rosenau! Where every kind of vice was encouraged and displayed— Bah! It is nonsense, again.”

“You knew him better than anyone alive, I think,” Georgiana said gently. “Surely you must have an idea.”

“Love is no protection against death, my dear.” Stockmar rubbed at his eyes fretfully. “One can see what is best for another soul—one can fear for him—offer counsel . . . and in the end: One is powerless to save him. That is the agony of being human.”

Theo,
Fitzgerald thought. He rose from his chair and turned restlessly about the room, his agony so physical he could not contain himself. Had he even tried to save his son? Or had he thrown him to the dogs without a second thought? He deserved this Divine retribution. This ripping of his soul in half. He wanted to drown his pain in drink so stupefying he would feel nothing of love or sorrow until he died; but he would not do it with Georgie watching.

She had fallen silent. Stockmar waited without a word, his eyes following Fitzgerald's jerky course about the room. Fitzgerald stuttered, “Sure and I beg your pardon—a brief indisposition only. Pray continue.”

Stockmar inclined his head austerely.

“Might the Prince have been anxious about his youngest son, rather than the eldest?” Georgiana suggested. “We understood he sought your opinion regarding Prince Leopold. That you recommended a man of your acquaintance—one Dr. Gunther—to care for the boy in Cannes.”

“I did,” the baron answered impatiently. “But what of Leopold? He was absent for the whole of his father's final illness. He can have had no effect on Albert whatsoever.”

Fitzgerald had the strong impression that the baron was surprised—that the conversation had taken an unexpected turn. Stockmar was unsure how to meet their questions. He stared at them frowningly.

“Leopold's disorder is generally regarded as a family one,” Georgiana observed. “The Prince asked me, more than a year ago, whether any cure was possible—and required me to examine the child. In some wise, I feel responsible for him—my inability to reassure the Consort . . .”

She smiled at Stockmar faintly. “As a medical man, you will no doubt understand. Leopold's condition demonstrated the limits of my science; his fate has haunted me. I suggested that the Consort search for the illness among ancestors of his own line, or the Queen's, to understand the progression of his son's disorder. It appears to be a disease manifested only in males, but passed most often through females.”

“Victoria,” Stockmar said.

“Yes. Her mother being a Coburg—can you tell us anything at all about the family, sir? Whether Leopold's illness, or something like it, is known among its various branches? Is it possible that the Duchess of Kent, Victoire—”

Stockmar rose. He took off his glasses. His mouth had set in a forbidding line. “There is nothing I can tell you, Dr. Armistead. My service to the august family of Saxe-Coburg was limited to two men—Leopold, King of Belgium, and his nephew Albert. The women interest me not at all. And now I believe I must bid you both good day—I am an old man, worn down by grief, and I guard my privacy closely.”

“We understand, of course,” Georgiana murmured, “and are grateful for your time. Perhaps tomorrow—”

“I travel to Erfurt tomorrow, on a matter of business,” he said with finality. “It has been the greatest pleasure. Mr. Fitzgerald—”

The baron clicked his heels together, bowed, and reached for the bellpull beside his desk.

The mahogany doors opened so swiftly, Fitzgerald was certain the baroness had been waiting just outside, in readiness for this summons. She stood as still as a statue on the threshold, her aged hands folded over her skirts. Had she listened to their conversation? Did she understand English? She watched impassively as Georgiana curtseyed to Stockmar. Then she turned and swept to the front door.

It was only as they said goodbye that the baroness spoke at last.

“He thinks I see nothing, understand nothing. He thinks I am
only a woman.
Pah!” She spat venomously at their feet. “It is to Amorbach you must go,
natürlich
. Inquire of the equerry's
frau
.”

And the heavy door shut with the softest of thuds behind them.