A Flaw in the Blood Read online

  But Papa had fallen ill in Avignon. By the time they reached Cannes, it was evident he would not be capable of caring for the child. Gunther—the young German doctor Prince Albert had sent as Leo's tutor—had looked increasingly anxious. His medicines helped Papa not at all. Hurried communications flew between Windsor and the consulate in Nice. Mama—who was Papa's second wife, and years younger than Sir Edward, with her daughter to think of; Mama, who had borne with the loss of the estate and the money troubles and this sudden uprooting to the Continent as a Royal guardian—had sunk daily into greater depression. Leo's amusement and care had fallen almost entirely on Louisa's shoulders—and she hadn't minded, really. It was a relief to put the sickroom to their backs, and head out on the donkeys into the vineyards and terraces. Together they discovered aqueducts, or the ruins of them. They took picnics with Gunther into the mountains. They climbed the rocky cliffs, Louisa's skirts bunched in one hand, and talked of botany.

  And then Papa had died.

  Leo was sent to a hotel while Sir Edward breathed his last, but the next day—another Sunday, Louisa remembered, with bells ringing from the churches among the dreaming white houses of Cannes—he had unexpectedly returned with Lord Rokeby, who'd arrived from the consulate in Nice. At first she thought Rokeby had come to take leave—that Leo would be torn from them, she and Mama left alone in this sun-baked foreign town to bury her father. But what Lord Rokeby had brought was Alice's telegram from Windsor.

  It became an unspoken bond between Leo and Louisa, this loss of their fathers on the same day.

  Mama was beside herself—unable to credit the working of Providence, which had bestowed Royal favour with one hand, only to take Sir Edward with the other, and abandon them in exile. Louisa, however, did not bother abusing the Fates. There was a quality to the light and air of Cannes that suspended time; she might exist solely in this moment, the creak of saddle leather and the pungent smell of sweating animal; the hot breeze tugging at her hair. Without the dizzying view beneath her she might think, instead, of the future—and she dreaded that almost as much as Leo did.

  He had pulled up his donkey on the trail ahead, and was almost standing in his stirrups, staring at Gunther. “What is it?” he demanded excitedly, in his high, cracking voice. “Have you found a tree?”

  Dr. Gunther—who was only in his twenties, absurdly formal in his German way, and lonely, Louisa thought, as all men of limited means must be—was standing stock-still in the middle of the trail. He held one hand at waist height, in a silent gesture of warning.

  She kicked Jacques forward and looked.

  They had reached the summit of the trail, which gave out onto the Fréjus road. Directly opposite, the waterfall tumbled whitely through a scattering of boulders spiked with juniper; it was one of these Gunther intended to cut. And to the left, on the brow of a hill, was a traveling coach pitched at a crazy angle. One of its near wheels was missing, and two men in shirtsleeves laboured with the axle. A young woman stood at the horses' heads.

  From something about the party's dress and general appearance, it was clear to Louisa that these people were not French. She caught a few words indistinctly on the breeze, and said aloud, “Why, they're English!”

  Leo came up to join her. His face was very white, suddenly, under the blazing sun; it was more than usually ugly, with fear.

  “I know that lady,” he whispered. “I've been to her house, in Russell Square. She's . . . acquainted with Papa.”

  He reached across the saddle horn and grasped Louisa's hand tightly in his icy paw.

  He's terrified, Louisa realised, that they've come to take him home.

  Together, they waited.

  Gunther hailed the strangers in his deliberate German way. One of the men straightened, and came forward to meet him; the other doggedly persisted in repairs to the carriage. Handshakes, gestures followed; Louisa interpreted a broken lynchpin. It ended with them all sitting down near the waterfall to share the food she'd brought in panniers strapped to Jacques's back. The French driver walked into Cannes to fetch a wheelwright.

  “Did Mama send you?” Leo blurted out almost as soon as they had sat down. “Is she desperately unhappy because of Papa?”

  “I am sure she must be,” the woman said. “But no. I have come to the south of France for my health—not on behalf of the Queen.”

  She was certainly thin with illness, and her voice was guttural in her throat.

  “You're looking remarkably well, Your Royal Highness. Cannes agrees with you. I should not have known you for the boy I saw in Russell Square.”

  “It is all the exercise I'm taking,” Leo said proudly. “Gunther insists upon it. He's a doctor, too.”

  “Too?” Louisa interjected.

  “I qualified in Edinburgh,” Miss Armistead said apologetically. “The Consort was so gracious as to request that I . . . visit with Prince Leopold. But that was at least a year ago. How extraordinary that we should meet again, in a foreign clime!”

  “Yes,” Gunther murmured. “Quite extraordinary. I once spoke with your late guardian, Miss Armistead—I should say, Dr. Armistead—regarding the statistical manifestation of scrofula among able seamen in the Royal Navy . . .”

  They walked off a little way together, among the junipers.

  The Irishman called Fitzgerald smiled down at Leo. He was too old to be handsome, Louisa decided—forty if he was a day—but there was a charm to his tousled head and a humour in his looks that were oddly winning. Was this what Mama termed a rake? she wondered suddenly. Was the stranger, despite the decent cut of his clothes, not quite a gentleman?

  “What if the three of us were to find this Christmas tree, while the others talk of Science?”

  Louisa smiled. She could see that the roguish Mr. Fitzgerald did not approve of women pretending to medicine.

  After that, they were able to enjoy the piney sunlight and the cool sound of water over stone. Louisa felt perfectly comfortable inviting the strangers to Château Leader, for Christmas.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I am Tired, and the hour is late; but I must not sleep: I must not drink the sedative dear Jenner has sent to me. In the silence of an Osborne Christmas Eve, I may compose myself, and write, as I must, to the precious ones who are far away. Vicky, of course, in whom it is as natural as breathing to impart the most sacred thoughts of the hidden soul, and to Affie at sea, and to Leopold.

  My wretched, miserable existence is not one to write about, I began—and then set down my pen.

  Poor orphaned boy! To be left fatherless, at such a season and at such an age—when one is far from home and lodged among strangers, however kindly disposed toward one—however well paid! What to say to little Leo, of the awful stillness of the Blue Room, when once that dear soul had departed? He is unlikely to comprehend very much, after all.

  You are an affectionate little Boy—& you will remember how happy we all were—you will therefore sorrow when you know & think that poor Mama is more wretched, more miserable—than any being in this World can be!

  Impossible to write the truth. I have never regarded Leo as particularly intelligent. His temper is so very bad; he is unlikely to feel his loss as he ought. He is the least dear to me of all my children—being so delicate, and giving rise to such anxiety and trouble in his father's breast and in mine, he has never been anything other than tiresome.

  I pine & long for your dearly beloved precious Papa so dreadfully . . .

  I do not think poor Leo ceased crying in rage from the first hour of his existence until the close of his first twelvemonth; and even at two, he was so frequently given to fits of screaming that I once remarked he ought to be soundly whipped. He resembles a frog in his features, and his posture is generally stooped, so that I have never been moved to sketch him in any manner other than the grotesque— Indeed, I avoid the necessity of drawing him at all. I find better subjects in Arthur, who is so charming and well-favoured that everyone adores him; and in the pretty ways of Louis
e and Beatrice.

  Leo's frequent clumsinesses and the resultant confinements to bed—here with bruised knees, there with an oozing lip, yet again with a swollen elbow—make him a pitiable object; but one cannot help feeling exasperation at his endless demands for attention. Not even the best of governesses could make him more like other children—by the time he reached the age of five, I had despaired of any improvement in looks, bearing, manners, or disposition. His speech was marked by an impediment, and his tantrums not to be endured. These past several months in which he has been absent, in the south of France, should have been the most restorative of my life—but I am doomed to find the prospect of peace and happiness forever set at a remove. They are not for me; or at least, not this side of the grave.

  I shall enclose in Leo's letter 2 photographs of beloved Papa, wh you can have framed—but not in black,—a Locket with beloved Papa's hair & a photograph—wh I wish you to wear attached to a string or chain round your neck . . .

  Leopold is flawed—dreadfully flawed, in every aspect of body and soul. My darling Albert searched, to the very hour of his last breath, for causes he could name—enemies he could accuse—demons he could exorcise. My heart whispers that in pursuing the Truth—in daring to question the goodness of Providence—Albert tasted a bitterness that broke his heart. But for Leopold, we should all have gone on as before—innocent in our happiness.

  Is it any wonder I quite detest the child?

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Have you ever seen a sea so glorious?” Georgiana exulted as they walked up the Toulon road together at noon the next day. Her voice was still husky with disease, and she had certainly grown thinner; the bones of her face looked fragile as porcelain beneath the tissue-wrap of her skin. Illness had honed her beauty so that it became almost terrible. Fitzgerald could not stare at her enough.

  “Never,” he said, “though I will always prefer the view from Cobh.”

  “You miss Ireland so much?”

  “The view was precious, because I was looking away.”

  She grasped his hand and shook it slightly; the warmth ignited his fingertips, and for an instant, he could hardly breathe. The need to take her in his arms—potent and ravaging—had been growing in Fitzgerald for most of the past week, when Georgiana had never been out of his thoughts and only rarely out of his company.

  We'll tell people I'm your niece, she had suggested when they landed at Calais, so that no one makes a fuss about arrangements.

  Arrangements. Train compartments and carriages. Tandem hotel rooms. Fitzgerald lying awake during the long hours of the night in the hope of hearing her movement through the wall.

  “That's how I feel right now,” she said. “That I've escaped. Everything. I'd no idea life in London had grown so dreary.”

  He tried to smile at her, tried to catch her lightness of tone; but most of him was still on guard, for von Stühlen and the men who did his killing.

  They had taken ship by night in Sheerness—a private vessel, the skipper quite willing to cross the Channel once Fitzgerald showed him his purse. No papers were required to enter seaports, which were open to all for purposes of trade; but once in Calais they had to stop at the town hall, and list the villages they intended to visit—an internal passport being necessary for travel through France. Fitzgerald hated this unavoidable disclosure of their plans: It left a calling card, he thought, for anyone who might follow them.

  He had been to Paris a few times before—but in Maude's company, Maude's circle: buffered from want and responsibility. He avoided the capital altogether this time, heading south from Calais, feeling his way toward Cannes, with Georgie persistently sick, unable to travel swiftly. In this Gibbon was invaluable: He struck up conversations in back rooms, accepted the wisdom of potboys and ostlers. Gibbon found them good inns at modest cost, in Orléans and Avignon and Vidauban. He chose horses when they needed them. Fitzgerald guessed that he also watched their backs—he, too, was tensed for the first sign of pursuit. None had come.

  The absence of threat made Fitzgerald's skin crawl.

  “My deepest sympathy, Lady Bowater, on the loss of your husband,” he said, as he bowed over the hand of the faded woman in the Château Leader's drawing room. In her black silk dress and crinoline, hastily procured from an establishment in Nice, she would not have looked out of place in a great English country house—a dark paneled room with heavy red hangings, fussy with ferns. Here, awash in strong sunlight, marooned in the midst of a marble floor, she was as anomalous as a bat among butterflies.

  “How delightful,” she breathed, clasping his hand between two of her mittened ones, “to hear a voice from home, even if you are only Irish! One grows so tired of French! Is that not so, Lord Rokeby?”

  This gentleman had driven over from Nice to wish his compatriots a happy Christmas; a peer's younger son—elegant and distinguished. All that Fitzgerald was not.

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” Rokeby observed somewhat distantly, “—and may I add that the lady requires no introduction. What a pleasant surprise, Miss Armistead, to find you in the south of France! And Mr. Fitzgerald is by way of being . . . a relation of yours?”

  “I call him my uncle,” Georgiana said simply, “as he has served as guardian since the untimely death of Dr. John Snow. But I might as fondly call him a father—for all the consideration he has shown, in recent years. It was anxiety for my poor health which urged Mr. Fitzgerald to bring me to Cannes.”

  A father, Fitzgerald thought violently. A father, by all that's holy.

  “Ah,” Rokeby murmured. “Exactly so. And how was London, when last you saw it?”

  “Plunged in mourning, I need hardly say.”

  They moved toward the hearth, engrossed in the kind of polite nothings which Fitzgerald found so difficult to master; Georgiana managed them effortlessly, an artifact of her breeding—or the finishing school she had abandoned as soon as she was decently able.

  “Lord Rokeby is attached to the consulate in Nice,” Gunther supplied, “and was charged with breaking the news of the Consort's passing to young Prince Leopold. I believe he may take the child off Lady Bowater's hands, with time. In the meanwhile, his delightful manners and conversation are a great comfort to her ladyship—in being less foreign than my own.”

  The German doctor gave no particular edge to the words, but Fitzgerald detected a circumstantial bitterness. He had worn Gunther's boots in his time. He would have liked to have drawn the man out—established a certain understanding—but Georgie had made her tactics plain. You had better leave Gunther to me, she had said. It is fortuitous that he was acquainted with Uncle John; and besides, I shall know what to ask him about young Leopold.

  “Have you seen my fretsaw?” the boy asked Fitzgerald suddenly, holding out the tool. “I have all sorts of building things. Gunther gave them to me as a Christmas present. But Papa ordered them, he said. Papa thought of me. Though he was quite ill.”

  The boy's fingers were clenched on the saw's handle. Fitzgerald took it from him: a well-balanced tool of wood and steel, proportioned for small hands. The blade was a marvel of precisely jagged teeth.

  And they had given it to a child who bled at the slightest provocation.

  He glanced at Leopold. “It's grand! Have ye tried it yet?”

  “No.” He looked uncertain, half-scared. “I have some wood, though—on the terrace.”

  “Then let's show your papa,” Fitzgerald suggested, smiling, “what his saw is made of. Come along, lad.”

  There were other gifts as well, which Gunther had procured on instruction from Windsor, well before the seriousness of the Consort's illness was understood. Lead soldiers, a pocket compass. A battledore and shuttlecock. Numerous books, some in German. A fabulous kite, fanciful and clearly French, made of silk and covered in fleurs-de-lys. A miniature violin, perfect as the fretsaw, for an eight-year-old's hands.

  “Ten pounds I was given!” Gunther exclaimed, clearly shocked. “Ten whole
pounds, for a child's gifts!”

  Princess Alice had sent a game of table croquet, all the way from London.

  “She must have read Leo's letters,” Louisa explained, as though this were unusual among the Royal Family. “He has developed a positive mania for croquet. We play tournaments, in teams, when the weather is fine. You must join us tomorrow.”

  “I've been winning,” Leopold observed. He looked up from the small wooden box he was crafting carefully with hammer and nails. “Gunther and I are allies. The French know nothing of the game. Fancy being ignorant of croquet!”

  After dinner—beef and an approximation of Yorkshire pudding, which failed miserably to suit, owing, as Lady Bowater said, to the “stupidity of the servants, who insist upon cooking in the French style,”—there were charades, and tableaux vivants.

  Lord Rokeby began, with an interpretation of The Sorrows of Young Werther, which the entire party comprehended almost at an instant. Louisa followed, animating the word belle, by alternately swinging her skirts vigourously and pretending to flirt with every gentleman in the room, to the visible disapproval of Lady Bowater. Leopold disappeared after this, and when the drawing room draperies were once more parted, materialised in a black cape and the heavy worsted cloth of a French peasant, stooping and shuffling about the room in search of alms.

  “It is that beggar who followed us,” Louisa whispered soberly to Fitzgerald, “the whole of our first day in Cannes. Leo and I were quite alone, and this sinister figure—we knew not whether man or woman—dogged our footsteps, muttering scraps of French, hand held out all the while. It made quite an impression on Leo; he could not shake the idea that the figure was Death. And indeed—”

  Her voice trailed away uncertainly.