A Flaw in the Blood

“Alice, my dear child! What are you doing there, loitering in the woods?”

“I saw you leave the Lower Ward from my bedchamber window. I was—anxious. I did not like to see you quite alone, Mama.”

“And so you determined to spy upon me?”

“—To ensure, merely, that you came to no harm.”

“And is the threat of violence so general, on Windsor's grounds?”

Her hands twisted nervously. “Your ladies-in-waiting are searching everywhere for you, Mama. Conceive their apprehension—that in the depths of despair—in the first agony of Papa's passing—you might quite unconsciously do violence to yourself. When it was discovered that you were gone from the Castle—”

I drew myself up as much as possible, given my lack of inches. “I have been in the habit of visiting your dear grandmama's grave, surely, on any number of occasions since the Sad Event. I do not recollect that I have ever made of such visits a grand party.”

“No, Mama.” She studied my visage intently, her expression doubtful. “Can you assure me that you are quite well?”

“Despite the trifling matter of having lost my All-in-All—I am perfectly well.”

“You spoke to the under-gardener, I collect.”

“Consider of this, Alice: His name is Albert.”

“How very singular!” She stepped backwards a pace. “Was it for that reason you placed some artificial flowers on his fire? I observed you. Were they my flowers? Those Violet reported as missing?”

“Perhaps.” I shrugged. “I have no way of knowing.”

“Burnt them, Mama?” she cried, her pent emotions bursting forth in a hideously uncontrolled manner. “Did you think to save me from my worse nature? Can you truly believe me capable of wearing such gaudy stuff, when plunged in the deepest mourning for beloved Papa?”

“Alice, do you know where I found those flowers?”

She looked all her bewilderment. “In my dressing room, I must suppose.”

“I found them in Papa's little study—his cabinet, as he called it. Set into a vase of water. Is that not extraordinary?”

She turned her head abruptly, as though I had hurled an insult. “It is altogether absurd!”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Quite so. If you think a little—you will understand why I thought it expedient to burn your flowers.”

She met my eyes then, but doubtfully, and not without fear.

I swept on my way back up to the Lower Ward. I must hope that Alice will take from this a useful lesson— that she will no longer presume to dog my footsteps and overlisten to my private conversations. Or to suspect me of such a despicable crime as suicide.

“Have a care, Alice,” I threw over my shoulder in parting. “The air grows cold, and the place far too lonely. You might just catch your death.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The door knocker of the house in Great Ormond Street was wrapped in black crepe, but von Stühlen thought nothing of this; most of the houses in London were similarly shrouded with dusky bunting hung from windows and gas lanterns. Strange, to think that this morning an entire Kingdom wore black for Albert. Von Stühlen could no longer mourn him; his Albert had died long ago.

It was Tuesday, the seventeenth of December, and until the Prince Consort was buried on the twenty-third, no sign of gaiety or Christmas cheer would break the City's ochre-coloured gloom. That was a pity; because Albert had always loved Christmas. Loved winter. Von Stühlen had known him to build snowmen twice as high as himself—to pull his children shrieking on sledges—to challenge von Stühlen to bouts of ice hockey: the two of them slashing at each other's heads, shouldering each other into drifts as they'd done on the river in Bonn during their student days, their skates carving deep rifts in the soft English ice. Albert furious and laughing as he fell on his backside, until the early northern darkness made concession possible.

He felt a sharp stab of yearning for that vanished boy, who'd been awkward and tongue-tied as von Stühlen himself had never been; the boy so lost in ideas he'd found it difficult to speak. Albert had never made friends easily—so they meant the world to him. He'd cherished his rare connexions, accorded them an insane loyalty; there were times von Stühlen was convinced Albert would die for him. He understood nothing of that impulse; Albert's ideals were like another language, foreign to his friend's ear from birth.

Contrary to what the world believed, Albert and Wolfgang had almost nothing in common—except circumstance. They were both second sons of German nobles. Both raised without expectations by impoverished and high-living fathers. Wolfgang's had communicated almost every conceivable vice, along with an air of impeccable fashion and a refusal to be bested; Albert's had left him as innocent as a stray pup. Why they formed their inexplicable bond during their schooldays, von Stühlen could hardly say. He had been the leader, then; it was Wolfgang—popular, wild, confident—who had singled out the silent boy and carried him carelessly along in the train of his perpetual entourage, exposing Albert to the vagaries of the world with ruthless enthusiasm. The Duke's second son was an unwilling pupil. His virtue, von Stühlen remembered someone saying, is indeed appalling; not a single vice redeems it.

When he'd learned that Albert was to be sacrificed at twenty to an ugly little harpy—torn from his studies and shipped off as the British Royal stud—he'd tried to get his friend drunk and tuck him up with a whore. Albert had partaken sparingly of the wine and paid the woman off with gentle courtesy.

Why? von Stühlen demanded of himself now. Why did I ever waste a thought on so drab a soul? Albert's brother, Ernest, was far more his kind—a rakehell already nursing a mortal case of pox. Albert was kind-hearted and gentle, qualities von Stühlen despised. He intrigued and confounded von Stühlen; his pursuit of the ideal—his unswerving devotion to its demands—suggested something dangerously like the existence of God.

In all the stupidity of twenty, von Stühlen had actually pitied Albert as he sailed that October from Antwerp. He had rejoiced in his own freedom to make what he could of his fortunes. It was only later, watching as his friend came into his Kingdom—as all the realms of heaven and earth opened themselves at Albert's feet—that von Stühlen understood how bitterly Fate had cheated him. He was still an impoverished second son; Albert commanded the world.

He glanced the length of Great Ormond Street as he stepped down from his equipage and handed the reins to his groom. It was empty of life. Why leave the fire, when most of the shops were still closed? Ladies of quality collected in one another's drawing rooms, linen handkerchiefs at the ready, to debate the proper mode of mourning dress and how best to salvage the Season; their men posed uneasily in clubs. Talk was solely of this death: Even the bloody civil war in America had been consigned to the ash bin. Most of the predictions and chatter skirted one essential fear. Von Stühlen tasted it in the silence of every room he entered: All London was dreading the future with Victoria.

She was rumoured to be mad. Whispered reports from the intimates of Court let it be known that grief—the loss of a loved one—completely unhinged her. That she reveled in melancholy, retreated into sorrow, obsessed over death and her own pitiable loss until nothing and no one—particularly her children—could reach her. How would the Queen rule without the one man who had forced her to do so? That was the chief question in Pall Mall; neither Whig nor Tory had a cheerful answer.

She will follow him soon to the grave, von Stühlen said, when pressed for his opinion. That is all the consolation left her. His audience always nodded in relief.

He mounted the broad front steps of Septimus Taylor's house and lifted the muffled rod of brass.

* * *

“It's good of you to come, Count, I'm sure,” said the butler as he studied von Stühlen's card doubtfully