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“Sweet Mary and Jesus,” he muttered, and crossed to Taylor's room.
    He was lying on his stomach, one arm trapped beneath him, the other flung over his head; he had been struck a hideous blow from behind, probably as he rose from his chair. The ooze of blood through Sep's sparse grey hair testified to a cracked skull. Fitzgerald's stomach lurched with sick despair as he probed the wound; the bone beneath his fingers was fragile as eggshells, the scalp spongy with blood. He bit off a curse and rolled Sep carefully on his side. His friend gave no sign of consciousness; not even pain could recall him to the world.
    Fear, sharp and jagged, knifed through Fitzgerald. Had Sep surprised the searchers when he entered the chambers? Or had
they
surprised
him
? Probably the latter, given that he'd never gotten farther than a yard from his own desk.
    “Sep,” Fitzgerald called urgently, searching for a pulse in the neck, “for the love of Christ, who did this to you?”
    His friend did not reply. But he was still warm, and there was a flutter of life in his veins. For the second time in the space of eight hours, Fitzgerald ran in search of aid.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    M Y DARLING DID NOT ENJOY an easy night's sleep for weeks before he died. He was haunted, I believe, by a conviction of unworthiness—which must always be Duty's sneak thief, robbing us of the pleasure we ought to derive from sacrifice. It was Albert's habit to answer every call, no matter how humble: he directed Boards, governed Universities, patronised Science; effected economies in the household accounts, set limits on the use of candles, decided the servants' quarrels; drafted architectural plans for each of our homes, and oversaw the design of gardens; averted war, or made it, throughout Europe, and brokered entire Cabinets here at home; mended dolls and shoveled the moats of toy fortifications—in short, he made himself indispensable to me, to his children, to the English nation—only to discover, in middle-age, that
there was no one in the world who could replace him.
    If he lay sleepless of nights, it was in agony at his inevitable failure:
He would die,
and the son that must follow him was not one-hundredth of Albert's quality.
    You will think me harsh, and utterly lacking in the sentiment proper to a mother—but I am a monarch
first,
and mother as well to all the Kingdom.
    “Dashed bad luck,” Bertie stammered, as he stood before me in that dreadful room, with his father's body cooling beside me. “Never thought the Governor would take off—the most
trifling
cold! All the betting in the clubs was odds-on for the Old Man's rallying!
Assure
you!”
    Even in the face of death, my son and heir was incapable of frankness. No word of the tortures his father suffered at the knowledge of Bertie's
affaire
with that sordid Irish trollop. No remorse at the disgusting headlines that have surfaced throughout the Continent, or the damage to his reputation. Bertie is incorrigible. He cultivates excuses. Although the entire world knows that Albert contracted typhoid through walking in the rain with his son at Cambridge a month ago—anxiety having driven him to confront Bertie about the debauchery with Miss Clifden, the dire consequences that must result, the possibility of a disease or bastardy, etcetra, etcetra,
all
of which was to have been kept from me, and all of which Albert shared—Bertie insists his father died of a
trifling cold.
    He was mortified, I suppose, at his father giving him a trimming before his schoolfellows, and suggested a walk through country lanes in an attempt to snatch at privacy. It is a scene so entirely typical of Bertie: a November storm coming on, his utter confusion in the landscape, Albert steadily more morose, the silence and misery growing between them. Bertie never learned his way around Cambridge, it would seem, never having spent much time at his studies—and the betrayal of his ignorance could only sink him further in Albert's