A Flaw in the Blood (8 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

L
IKE EVERY OTHER ESTABLISHMENT
the length and breadth of England, The Bear was closed in respect of the Sabbath—as well as the Consort's death. But the publican was willing to let von Stühlen conduct his private business in a parlour upstairs of a Sunday—for a consideration.

The Bear dominated a corner of Milk Street, in the very heart of the unfashionable part of London known as the City. The bankers and merchants who made money there were officially beyond the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police. They disdained the protection of mere Bobbies. They maintained instead a private constabulary of toughs. The City's watchmen answered only to money, and they were ruthless in earning their wage.

Such men had no interest in justice or enforcing the law; they could be bought and used, and this was why von Stühlen cultivated them.

He had hired a few in the past—when a courtesan proved too demanding; when a friend failed to honour a debt. This was the largest undertaking he had ever attempted, however. His orders were clear: Find Patrick Fitzgerald and Georgiana Armistead quietly and quickly. Make certain they never posed a threat to Her Majesty again.

If he had a secondary motive, he kept it firmly to himself. That was von Stühlen's way. He made friends easily and widely, he was spoilt and sought after as a darling of Society—but nobody in England knew him at all. Not now that Albert was dead. He wore his fundamental loneliness like a well-cut coat, and the world mistook it for elegance.

By four o'clock that Sabbath, he was engaged in the final interview of the day.

Jasper Horan was stooped and simian; his teeth had rotted in his head, but his fists were as blunt as a blacksmith's. Most days he worked as a warehouse foreman for a reputable firm of tea importers, but in his hours of leisure he earned far more against his old age. Already that Sunday Horan and his toughs had found Patrick Fitzgerald's chambers, ransacked Miss Armistead's home in Russell Square, and hunted her down in St. Giles. Now he was back in Milk Street to tender his report.

“You lost them in Covent Garden?”

“I wouldn't go so far as to say
lost,”
Horan countered. “The Paddy put up a devil of a fight, he did. My blokes call him a murderin' savage, like what all them Irish are. Left one man fer dead on the rookery roof, and the rest scarpered.”

“Then I suggest you hire some Irish, capable of killing him,” von Stühlen said evenly.

“I've got them papers as you wanted from the Temple.” Horan tossed an oilskin packet on the table, nearly oversetting von Stühlen's claret. “And look what I pinched from the bird's 'ouse.”

The Count's eyes flicked up. “I believe I
told
you what to take. You were not to steal anything else.”

“Nor have I.” Horan reached into his vest and withdrew a packet of letters, tied with a narrow black ribbon. “These 'ere have the Royal crest, they do—fetch a pretty penny from the newspapers, I reckon. What'll you give me for 'em, then?”

With his good eye, von Stühlen studied the foreman. “Do you read the newspapers, Horan?”

“Sometimes.”

“Then you must be aware of the tragic end of the Queen's coachman?”

“Aye. Broke his neck on 'ampstead 'eath.”

“There are so many ways to die in the dark.” Von Stühlen extended one white hand for the stolen letters. “Don't haggle with me, Horan. I might consider too deeply how you failed me today—losing Patrick Fitzgerald in St. Giles.”

It was Alice who drafted the telegram to the consulate in Nice. She had sent one the previous night, at eight o'clock, when Papa was still alive.

Pray break to Prince Leopold that the Prince is very ill and we are in great anxiety about him.

During the past week she had sent letters and telegrams to brothers and sisters far from Windsor: to Affie at sea in the North Atlantic, and to Vicky in Berlin. Vicky was the most desperate for news, being Papa's firstborn and special pet. When Papa asked what she'd written, Alice said calmly:
I told her you were very ill.

He had looked at her with his heartrending smile.
You did wrong. You should have told her that I am dying.

Which made her press her hand to her mouth in agony and walk swiftly from the room.

He had known what was coming. He had looked over the black edge of the abyss, and hurled himself in.

Alice wished she had held his hand, and gone, too.

Her father had never been a man to cling to false comfort. He spoke the absolute truth, no matter how brutal. Which made the words he'd muttered into her ear, in his final hour, all the more disturbing.

There is no one I can talk to,
she thought. Not Vicky, far away in Prussia. Not Bertie, already burdened with guilt. Never Mama.

She looked up from her paper and pen, overwhelmed with the sharpness of loss, with the terror of being alone. She missed Leopold acutely; despite the ten-year difference in their ages, they were fond of each other. What would Papa have said to her eight-year-old brother? What should she write to a child, so utterly alone?

Stay away from this place, my darling. There is no home here anymore.

But she could not send such a telegram over the wire. They would think her mad, at the consulate in Nice.

Please break to Prince Leopold that the Prince Consort passed away at ten minutes before eleven last evening. . . .

Mad.

Alice closed her eyes. She would have to tell someone. But who?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
HESE ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF
typhoid fever, as I have observed them in the wasting frame of my Beloved: stomach pains, a general weakness, persistent aching of the head, loss of appetite. And fever, naturally—although Albert's was not so high as is often seen, Jenner tells me. My Dearest was sleepless, and spent much of the last week of his life in roaming about the halls of Windsor, murmuring under his breath, which Jenner also declares is not generally associated with the malady. Albert failed altogether to throw out the characteristic typhoid rash of flat, rose-coloured spots. I asked Löhlein whether he had observed such a thing in his washing and dressing of the Prince, when I met the valet in the Blue Room this evening; he replied in the negative, his dear face quite contorted with emotion. Albert suspected Löhlein was his natural half brother—the old Duke his father being a dissipated and corrupt man, much inclined to exercising his
droits du seigneur
among the household servants, of which Löhlein's mother was one. The intimacy of blood would perhaps explain the valet's devotion.

I had gone to the Blue Room just before dinner to strew flowers about the bed on which Albert expired. His remains have been moved to the neighbouring one, and he looks very fine in his uniform—although rather like a wax figure out of Madame Tussaud's. Jenner would not allow me to touch the corpse or kiss it for fear of infection, which I know to be sheer nonsense—no one else in all of Windsor has contracted typhoid—but I submitted to his strictures, as being the best course of conduct for the Kingdom.

It was only a few weeks ago that our dear nephew, the King of Portugal, was carried off by typhoid, along with his brother; it is this, I must suppose, that has given Jenner the idea of it. Stomach pains, weakness, persistent aching of the head—it might have been any kind of disorder that killed that Angelic Being. But Jenner is an acknowledged expert in typhoid; he sees it everywhere. For my own part, I will maintain Albert died because he preferred it to living.

“Do you feel at all indisposed, Mama?” my daughter inquired as we met before the door of my rooms. “You look decidedly unwell.”

“That is to be expected, dear child, is it not?” I attempted. “I have lost the
All-in-All
of my existence. I cannot long endure on this earth without the support of my Beloved. You will understand a little better, Alice, when once you have been married.”

She took a step closer, and searched my countenance keenly. “Perhaps you should take dinner on a tray, Mama.”

“I have no appetite. My head aches acutely. But if you would be so good, dear child, as to order a pot of tea, and perhaps some gruel—and a few of the Scotch oat cakes—to be sent up to my rooms, I should wish for nothing more.”

“Very well.” She turned away, then hesitated a moment. “Violet informs me, Mama, that some of my silk flowers—for the dressing of my hats—have gone missing. She found them absent from the wardrobe when she turned out my gowns.”

I stared all my bewilderment. “I must suppose that such things are often gone missing! In a household so large as this— And who is Violet, pray?”

“My dresser, Mama,” Alice faltered. “We were to meet with the seamstress, to prepare my mourning clothes—and it was then Violet noticed. She thought perhaps my little sisters had taken the flowers for playthings.”

“I know nothing of trumpery trimmings,” I returned, with a commendable hold on my patience, “—other than that you cannot expect to require them for the next twelvemonth. I do not suppose the flowers were
black
?”

“No, indeed,” Alice said. She curtseyed dutifully, and quitted my presence without another word.

I studied her the length of the hall, until she turned at the landing and disappeared from view.

I shall have to speak to the Master of Household about Violet.

Once in the privacy of my own bedchamber, I withdrew Albert's nightgown from his wardrobe and pressed my face into its dear folds, drinking in the scent even as it vanished—that ineffable, unforgettable odor of a distinct and irreplaceable human being. It was then, at long last, that the dreadful sobs were torn from me—the stricken grief of one who has lost the core of strength from the very centre of her being. I did not bother to undress; I did not admit my personal maid; I lay in a paroxysm of weeping in the centre of the great bed, my husband's linen entwined in my arms, until all light had failed and a discreet knock at the door informed me my tea and gruel were arrived.

I have written frankly, in these secret pages, of the intensity of my passion for Albert; how I craved the touch of his hands, the alabaster smoothness of his body—the muscles of his legs, firm and etched like a stallion's. I cannot entirely comprehend that no hand will ever touch me in an intimate way again—that no one will call me
Victoria
any more. Once our marriage vows sanctioned physical love, I abandoned myself to the enjoyment of his body—little dreaming that Albert regarded my passion as unseemly.
Liebchen,
he would mutter, face flushed with embarrassment, his erection surging despite his distaste,
a little conduct, if you please. Remember who we are.

It became a habit between us: Albert aloof and cold, fastidious as a cat, until my appetites whipped him to heat.

All my life, I have been cursed by fits of despondency—a habit exacerbated by the excesses, so my doctors hint, of childbearing I have endured. When my fits of temper frayed Albert's patience, he would retreat to his study and write long lectures in German. Remote as Zeus upon Olympus, he denied me his sex—and I would fall sobbing on our bed and sulk behind locked doors. Albert treated me as he might an unruly child, sick from greed and sweets.

Your passions will kill you,
Albert wrote.
They are unbridled. Sinful. Beneath the dignity of a woman, much less a queen.

And worse—Bertie inherited every one of them.

Gradually, I understood that I was wanton, a whore like Mama—that I possessed a flaw in the blood I could not fight.
A whore like Mama.
The Demon Incarnate in the upstairs room, the low suggestion of Mama's laughter, the coarse Irish hand sliding along the leg and the stink of the semened bed— With the intensity of my love came a jealousy of all Albert touched, all those to whom he spoke. To give to
them
the attention denied to
me
was insupportable.

When I learned, perhaps a month before our final visit to Coburg, that he had gone so far as to cultivate
that woman
—Miss Georgiana Armistead—who could boast of no marriage vow; who threw every outrage in the face of public decency, through her way of life; who had the impertinence to write his
Adored Name
on a piece of common writing paper—oh, my darling, how could you desert me so?

He is beyond the reach of my sobs now. But Miss Armistead—she might be exposed, she might be made to answer for her crimes before the public view, and know what it is to deprive the frailest of women of that peace and security found only in the arms of her Beloved.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
HE BOY DAVEY WAS EXHAUSTED
that night as he entered the rookery in St. Giles. It had been a fruitless and dispiriting day—first Lizzie so ill, and the lady doctor butchering her like a side of beef; then the gentleman sending him down to stand watch at the back door, where he'd been cuffed in the head by one of the coves who'd torn through the tenement. Davey had slipped outside, not wanting to be kicked like a ball of India rubber among the lot of them. He realised the fight had moved to the roof only when the gentleman's topper came spinning over the tiles to the street below. Scooping it up, he'd run off immediately to sell it in the Garden.

Three shillings richer, courtesy of a bank clerk with an eye for quality, he spent his largess on a pork pie and a tankard of ale in Bow Street—then wasted several hours in such jobs as boys of his ilk were fitted for: walking horses or sweeping crossings. When customers proved scarce on the ground, he tried cadging pennies in St. Paul's churchyard—with the Consort dead, the nobs' hearts might've softened. But he ended the day only a few coppers richer, and just as hungry.

He was cursing his hard luck as he mounted the stairs of his tenement, fists thrust into his pockets and eyes on the filthy treads. So great was his self-absorption that he failed to see the hand before it snaked out at the landing, grabbing his neck.

“You dirty little frog-spawn,” the man muttered, his black eyes boring into Davey's choking face. “Thought you could nobble Jasper Horan, did ye? Take yer prize villains up the roof and diddle an honest man? A mate o' mine 'as been coshed in the head, and ain't likely to wake this side of Judgment. Murder's a hangin' offence, I'm told. I think I just caught me a murderer.” He swung Davey hard against the cracked plaster wall, stunning him, then released his punishing grip on his throat. “Where've they got to? Yer lady doctor and her fancy man?”

“Dunno.” Davey staggered, gasping.

Horan hunkered down on the landing beside him. “Tell me where they've gone, boy, or by all that's holy, I'll see you swing for my mate.”

“I was never on the roof!”

“Sing it to the magistrate! Yer old whore of a mother might not care if you dance on the nubbing-cheat, but yer sister will. If she lives, that is. Last I saw, she were right poorly. Comes of poking around where ye didn't oughter.”

Davey hurled himself without warning at Horan, his thin fingers clawing at the man's face, and with a cry of pain the watchman teetered back against the banister. Quick as lightning the boy darted down the stairs and out into the foggy dark, making once more for Covent Garden.

Horan let him go. He'd already found Button Nance and her girl—and knew all he needed to.

“Evening, Mr. Fitz—and a pleasure to see you again, miss, if I may be so bold,” Gibbon said as he drew off Georgiana's wraps in Bedford Square. In all the confusion of her ravaged home, she hadn't bothered to change her twilled silk gown. The valet preserved a serene countenance; perhaps he was accustomed to ladies sporting muddy and torn attire.

“Have you anything for us to eat?” Fitzgerald inquired. “We're famished.”

“Couple of nice soles and a brace of partridges in half an hour, with leg o' mutton to follow.”

Fitzgerald glanced about at the tidied rooms. “Well done, lad. A glass of sherry for Miss Armistead, when you have a moment. She's chilled to the bone.”

Georgiana was already standing before the roaring fire in the sitting room, her hands extended to the warmth. It was probable, Fitzgerald thought, that she had not yet accepted the necessity of flight; although she had a satchel of hastily-packed clothes, she had refused to bring her maid. If they were to flee London together, he would have to take care her reputation wasn't ruined.

She's safe enough with you,
John Snow barked in his head;
you're old enough to be her father. Don't flatter yourself she's fighting shy of your Irish charm.

“I'll need you to run an errand for me, Gibbon, when you've carved the mutton—and tell me: Have any shady characters come nosing about?”

“Couple of coves holding vigil over a nice bit o' fire in an ashcan,” the valet returned promptly, “but they're beyond the square. Happened to clap eyes on 'em when I returned from the butcher.”

“Did ye now?” The gate that barred traffic in Bedford Square was manned by a private watchman, and only known tradesmen and residents were admitted—but such watchmen could be easily suborned, in Fitzgerald's experience. He would have to look to the pair of strangers.

“I won't lie to you, my Gibbon,” he said. “Miss Armistead and I have been set upon. A nasty scrap of it we had, but gave as good as we got. I'm thinking it's possible the same devils attacked Mr. Taylor in chambers this morning.”

Gibbon halted on his way to the pantry, brow furrowed. “Then the murderin' louts will be disappointed, sir, for they shan't be admitted here.” He drew a letter from a silver salver. “Speaking of Mr. Taylor, this come round from Great Ormond Street about an hour ago. Private messenger.”

Fitzgerald took the envelope; the direction was penned in an unfamiliar handwriting.

“What is it?” Georgie asked as he entered the sitting room.

“A note from Sep's doctor.” His eyes flicked up to meet hers. “The skull is fractured. But the sawbones says he's not without hope of eventual recovery—”

He broke off, crumpled the note in his fist, and tossed it into the flames. “God, I'm in want of a drink.”

“Had the blow been going to kill Sep, it should probably have done so well before you even found him,” she said gently. “He's fortunate you did.”

“If the man dies, Georgie, I swear—”

“He will not die.”

“If he dies,”
he repeated with sudden savagery, “that's two lives we put down to your German princeling's account. And by all that's merciful—”

“He's not
my
German princeling.”

“—yours won't be the third life he takes.”

Gibbon appeared in the doorway with sherry. Fitzgerald tossed off a glass, though he'd have preferred good Irish whiskey. He knew this feeling, as though the slightest pressure might cause him to snap; it invariably preceded one of his momentous rages.

She waited until the valet quitted the room to say, “I have decided to trust you, Patrick.”

“You'll leave London tonight?”

“I will go to a hotel, if Gibbon will be so good as to secure me a room—and thence to my cousin's home in Hertfordshire. It is nearly Christmas, after all—I might spend the interval among family . . .” She broke off. “You do not look as though you approve! I thought you would pay me vast compliments, Patrick, on my humility and good sense!”

Abruptly, he set down his glass; the crystal clanged like a bell. “
Georgie
— Forgive me, darlin', but I cannot let you out of my sight. The key to this coil is in your hands—and if I'm to unravel it, you must help me.”

“What do I know of Windsor that you do not? It was
you
the Queen summoned last night, Patrick.”

“Those letters. Why should the thieves take
them,
above all else?”

She did not reply. There was mutiny in her looks, as though Fitzgerald had trespassed on private ground.

“You did not summon the police,” he persisted, “though your house was robbed and your things were destroyed.”

“Of course I did not inform the police.” She said it scornfully. “You have yet to report the coachman's murder, though you fear murder was done.”

She was too protective, too combative, for a woman whose home had been plundered. Jealousy flared in Fitzgerald's gut. “Were they von Stühlen's letters? Bound up in pink ribbon? Are you in love with the rogue, Georgiana?”

“How
dare
you,” she retorted, her fists clenching. Her fine grey eyes sparked with sudden contempt.

“I
will
know,” Fitzgerald said through his teeth.

“By what right? You don't
own
me, Patrick. You're not even my guardian! You're a man I keep about me on sufferance—to honour the wish of one who is dead. But if you try to
rule
me, so help me
God,
Patrick Fitzgerald—”

Her words cut as cleanly and deeply as one of her lancets. He wanted to cry out that he loved her, that he'd ever loved only her, that from the time she was a wee lass he'd watched her grow in strength and intellect and beauty as though she were meant only for him, for his arms and his bed and his delight—and now she had scorned him.
A man I keep about me on sufferance.
Why stay at heel then, tugging on her leash? —So that she could use his blind, doglike devotion to keep other hunters at bay? His passion for her clouding his senses, while she pursued bigger game? Was she holding out for that dandyish German count to
marry her
?

She saw that he was stunned. A ready flush suffused her delicate skin and for an instant, remorse flooded her eyes. But she did not run to him, as she might have done at seventeen. She merely bit her lip and clasped her arms under her breasts, as though suddenly chilled.

“I did not mean that. Patrick—I should not have said such ugly things. You have been my dearest friend, my dearest . . .”

“Slave.”

Her lips compressed. “I am sorry. What I said was unforgivable. It is just that you
assume
a
right
—”

“—I have no right to assume,” he finished. “Granted. It's become a habit in me to offer advice—though the Lord knows you never take it. But as a lawyer, my fine girl, I'd say those letters were stolen for one of two reasons. To be destroyed, by one who fears them—or used, by a canny blackmailer. Which are we to expect in the coming days?”

She studied his angry face, the self-control he was barely managing. Fitzgerald could see her striving for balance: so much weight of argument on this side, so much on that.
The scales of justice.

“Very well,” she said at last. “I will tell you. The stolen letters were written by the Prince Consort. You understand now my reticence. I would not expose His Royal Highness to the impertinence of strangers if he lived—and shall never do so, now that he is dead.”

“I'm afraid,” Fitzgerald returned with bitter irony, “the time for discretion is over. Your letters are gone. You can no more conceal their existence now than you can raise Albert from the grave.”

They stood for a moment in utter silence, Georgie's hands defiantly on her hips, as though she intended to do battle. The enemy, however, was beyond her reach. Fitzgerald had no intention of serving as proxy.

“Is there scandal in the letters?” he demanded. “Is that why a body went the length of stealing them?”

“Scandal? They were almost entirely about the nature of the London poor!”

Fitzgerald made a sharp sound of annoyance, unable to believe her, and threw up his hands.

“Prince Albert honoured me,” she said with difficulty, “by soliciting my opinions on a range of subjects. The condition of housing, for example—he had designed a model tenement himself, for the use of charitable organizations. Or reform of the waterworks, and the construction of Mr. Bazalgette's new system of sewers—you will have seen the works of the tunnels presently being undertaken . . . the Middle Levels near Piccadilly are actually complete. I toured them in the Consort's party only a few weeks ago—”

“Sewers,” Fitzgerald repeated sardonically.

“They are
vitally important,
Patrick,” she persisted. “Recollect that Uncle John established that the transmission of cholera is through tainted water; indeed, were it not for his researches, I am sure Bazalgette should never have been commissioned to embark on this massive reform—or at least, not in my lifetime. It requires an Englishman to fear for his life before he will consider of his drains. Prince Albert wished me to consult with Mr. Bazalgette regarding the sewers' outfall. They are far down the Thames, almost to the sea, where the chance of contamination with drinking water must be minimal. The various London waterworks are also undertaking programs of filtration, which should go far in improving public health.”

“Your Prince cared about public health?”

“He was intelligent enough to know the Crown would pay for trouble, soon or late,” she returned crisply. “Better sewers now, than an epidemic later. And water hit home—Buckingham Palace, to my knowledge, has some of the very worst in the city. And Windsor's drains are not to be spoken of. It is no wonder that he died of typhoid fever—it, too, is a disease of fouled water. Poor man.”

“Did the Prince seem ill, when you toured the Middle Levels?”

She considered an instant. “I didn't notice. Not that afternoon—there was too much to be viewed and decided. And I am never entirely at my ease, you know, in such a company of gentlemen—all of them distinguished in some field or another, and drawn to the Consort because of his power. Only
he
accorded me the kindness of listening to my observations—and because he did so, Bazalgette was forced to attend. I wonder how many of them believed me to be Albert's paramour?” she added on a note of bitterness.

“And were you?”

He had not been able to stop himself; he needed to know the answer too badly.

She turned and stared at him. “I should strike you for such a question, Patrick.”

“You should strike me for any number of reasons, Georgie—but not my frankness. Look you, there's never been a breath of scandal about Albert and the ladies, but you'll admit it's dodgy business to be adding a girl like yourself to a company of engineers! I never met the man. I want to know how deeply he went with you. How much pain his death has caused.”

She drew a shaky breath. “One need not have . . . intimate relations with a gentleman . . . to mourn his loss.”

“No.” Fitzgerald rubbed his hand over his eyes. Why hate a dead man so much? It was he, Fitzgerald, who was dining with her, after all. But Georgie's voice, whenever she spoke of Albert, was taut with respect. And something else. Was it
yearning
?

“So he looked well,” Fitzgerald said with effort. “And yet, a few weeks later—”

“I did not say he looked well,” she broke in quickly. “Indeed, I do not think he has been in health for some months. That particular afternoon I should describe him as preoccupied. He listened to Bazalgette—he asked all the appropriate questions—but there was no Albert in his eyes.”