After my lackluster adventure on the Thames, I returned to our house in Park Lane and retreated to the library, where, comfortably ensconced in my favorite chair near the large fire roaring in the hearth, I opened The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival, the latest novel from sensationalist author Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Her work never failed to distract me, and I laughed aloud when she referred to Madame de Pompadour—The existence of such women is, of course, a disgrace to civilization, but while their wicked reign lasts persons of quality must dress like them—who would not adore a writer capable of such wit and insight when describing society? Delightfully buried in my reading, I was aware of nothing around me until I felt Colin’s hand on my shoulder. I had not even heard him open the door.
“Bent on pleasure again, my dear?” he asked, a wicked smile on his handsome face as he looked at the book and leaned over to kiss me. I’d known him for more than a decade, and the man only grew handsomer as he aged.
“I have grave concerns about the fate of Antonia Thornton, our intrepid heroine, a devotee of Voltaire,” I said, closing the novel and placing it in my lap. “I fear she will come to a tragic end.”
“I’m confident Mrs. Braddon would have it no other way,” Colin said, dropping into the chair across from mine. “You’ll be glad to know you’ve succeeded in traumatizing poor Inspector Gale. I had to all but physically restrain him to keep him from running off to the king to report your appearance at Traitors’ Gate.”
“However did you manage that?”
“I reminded him that His Majesty was most likely at that very moment kneeling before his mother’s coffin and wouldn’t like to be disturbed.” He pulled a cigar from his pocket and clipped the end before lighting it.
“Why would he think Bertie—I should say the king, but I shall never get used to someone other than his mother being the monarch—would be interested in any of my activities?”
“It’s down to the nature of the murder at hand, manufactured to look like the death of Henry VI. The timing of the crime has raised a great deal of concern in the palace.”
I nodded. The queen is dead, long live the king! For someone to choose the day of Victoria’s funeral to stage a death to look like the heinous murder of an earlier sovereign was bound to raise the alarm with the new monarch’s protection detail, but I did not see how that pertained to me.
“Have you any clue as to where the murder took place?” I asked. “And, have you identified the victim?”
“We believe him to be Edmund Grummidge, a shopkeeper in the East End. His wife reported him missing and is going to confirm his identity after viewing the body today.”
“His wife? Not on her own, I hope. Perhaps she would appreciate the comfort of having another woman present at such a difficult moment.” Do not think, Dear Reader, that my motives were altogether selfish, for although I did want my part in investigating the crime, more important at this moment was to offer whatever assistance I could to the widow left behind.
“Gale will not let you near the morgue,” Colin said. “As for location, we’ve nothing as of yet. The body was posed before rigor mortis set in. We believe he was killed this morning.”
He appeared more tired than usual, but as I have already explained, he had not had much sleep since the queen’s death. There was something else, though. Something that had etched worry onto his noble brow. I leaned forward and brushed a tumbled curl from his forehead. “What’s troubling you?”
He sighed. “This murder, obviously. The manner in which the corpse was displayed.”
“I know you well enough to realize that is not all.”
“When I met with the queen at Osborne, she gave me a note.” He reached for his cigar, took a drag, held the smoke in his mouth, and slowly exhaled. “I was to tell no one of this, you understand.”
I said nothing, respecting his reluctance to break a confidence. This is not to suggest that I waited patiently for him to decide what—and how much—to tell me. Anyone who knows me is all too aware that I cannot claim a close acquaintance with the virtue of patience, despite numerous attempts to woo it. I could hear the clock on the wall and the traffic in Park Lane. I chewed on my bottom lip. I avoided making eye contact. In short, I did everything possible not to pressure my husband to speak. And then, when I could stand it no longer, I crossed to his chair, sat on its arm, and dropped my head onto his shoulder, hoping the intimacy of the gesture would remind him that sharing a confidence with his wife was hardly a betrayal. Were we not, after all, joined by God, one soul in two bodies? I may mix my religious metaphors, but have never objected to a touch of the pagan at appropriate times.
At long last he spoke. “The queen was not herself. Our conversation was muddled and she was confused. But she gave me this”—he removed an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to me—“and led me to believe it was a set of instructions I should follow.”
“Une sanz pluis,” I read aloud. “One and no more. One and no more. Why is this familiar?”
“It was a French motto used by Henry V at the time of Agincourt. You may have seen it on one of the tombs in the chapel at Anglemore Park.”
“Of course,” I said. “I remember it now. The alabaster with the knight standing on a dog.”
“It’s a lion, my dear, and it is beneath his feet as he reclines. He is not standing on it.”
I frowned and vowed to take a closer look at the tomb the next time we went to the country. “Sapere aude … dare to know? My Latin is not what it ought to be. Margaret would be scandalized.” One of my closest friends, Margaret was a devoted Latinist, currently living in Oxford with her husband. I had met her more than a decade ago, soon after having embarked on my study of all things ancient Greek. Although firm in her belief that my time would be better spent focusing on the Romans, she had nonetheless encouraged my intellectual pursuits, the first of my friends to do so.
“She is well aware of the gaping holes in your education,” Colin said. “Too much Greek, too little Latin. She reminds me of it whenever I see her. Sapere aude was a phrase common during the Enlightenment, championed by Kant, although I believe Horace was the first to use it, centuries earlier.”
“You can always rely on the ancients,” I said. “Even the Romans. But what could the queen have meant by giving you this?”
“I have not the slightest idea. I had hoped that your rampageous imagination might provide some insight.”
“And it is intended as an instruction?”
“Yes, so she said. I was inclined to dismiss it as a product of her illness until I found this when I arrived home today.” He handed me a second envelope. It and the three sheets of paper inside matched that given to him by the queen. The first page was covered in a sketch of a medieval-looking lance. The second, a map of the Tower of London. The writing—bold and confident—that covered the third had come from the same hand as that on the note he received at Osborne House.
“The queen is sending you notes from beyond the grave?”
“Don’t get so excited,” he said. “Neither is in the queen’s hand.”
Again, I read aloud. “Lead me, thus wounded, to the front line so that I may, as a prince should, kindle our fighting men with deeds not words.” I read it to myself, silently, a second and a third time. “I do not recognize this at all.”
“It is a translation of a life of Henry V written by Tito Livio Frulovisi, commissioned by the king’s brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Vita Henrici Quinti it was called.”
“More Latin.” I wrinkled my nose. “How is it that you know so much about all this? I’ve never known you to have a particular interest in Henry V.”
“You know perfectly well the land on which we live at Anglemore Park was given by Henry to an ancestor of mine who distinguished himself at Agincourt. Can you imagine there is any English boy who would not be obsessed by such a thing? I was quite taken with it when I was young.”
“I’m picturing you getting into a great deal of trouble with a longbow.”
“No, the ancestor in question was not an archer, but a man-at-arms, so I played with swords.”
“Promise me you will not breathe a word of any of this to the boys until they are at least twelve years old,” I said. The three of them would soon turn five. Tom, our adopted ward, had a saintly disposition, and I thought it unlikely he would ever get into an awkward scrape. Richard and Henry, our twins, were altogether different. While Richard would likely be more interested in studying the method of manufacturing swords—he had already begun to show great proficiency for building, analyzing, and all things mechanical—I did not doubt for a moment that Henry could cause a great deal of chaos in a shockingly short span of time the instant he learned of any family connection to Agincourt.
“You cannot stop little boys from reenacting battles,” my husband said, in a tone that signaled no room for debate. “The passage in the note refers to the Battle of Shrewsbury, where Henry, then Prince of Wales, took an arrow to the cheek. Despite the severity of the wound, he made a full recovery, although he was left with a not insignificant scar.”
“I’ve never pictured him with a scar,” I said. “More like a shining example of English goodness. Golden hair, bright eyes, polished armor, rallying his troops to follow him once more unto the breach. Who would not do the bidding of such a man?”
“He had brown hair, my dear, and you’re getting carried away. What do you think it can all mean? Particularly in the context of the queen’s death followed by a murder staged—in the Tower, no less—to mimic the violent demise of another king.”
“Another king who just happened to be Henry V’s son.” I studied the map of the Tower, but no location was marked on it. “It would be less confusing if the murderer had reenacted Henry V’s death.”
“Dysentery would not make for such a visually effective scene.” Colin crossed his arms over his chest. “As I said, Henry was Prince of Wales when he fought at Shrewsbury. Bertie, er, King Edward, was Prince of Wales when the queen gave me the first note.”
“Do you think it is a warning of some sort?” I asked. “The queen’s mind was failing when you saw her. Perhaps she received the note, recognized it as a threat to her son, and passed it on to you, not realizing that she failed to give you the necessary context to understand. Although why the drawing of a lance instead of a sword?”
“That I cannot explain. Regardless, your notion that it’s a threat to the king is the same conclusion I reached. If we’re correct, Bertie could be in a great deal of danger.”