Together, the three of us removed Madame Aurore from the sarcophagus, carefully covering her with a linen shroud. Mornaday retrieved the crate he had used to transport her, a simple box of suitable dimensions, and we placed her within it, cushioning her with reams of linen. A lavish application of quicklime drove back the worst of the odor, and Mornaday nailed the lid into place. He pasted a label on the top with the direction of the nearest mortuary.
“I have a doctor who will sign a death certificate of natural causes for a few pounds,” he said, sighing heavily. “She will be buried as a Jane Doe.”
“A wretched end for such a glamorous creature,” J. J. put in.
“At least it is a Christian burial.” Mornaday bristled. “We have discovered that she met Archibond some months ago and he brought her into the plot with de Clare. Archibond was surveilling the prince in order to find some snippet of scandal to use against him. When he realized the prince was frequenting the Club de l’Étoile, he made a point of cultivating her, of discovering her vulnerability.”
“Which was?” I asked.
“Money,” was J. J.’s succinct response. “She lived lavishly, and she was generous to her friends and servants, more generous than she could afford. She had exhausted her credit in this country and was beginning to feel the press of her debts. Archibond promised her a fresh start in the Argentine if she helped him. She was not a bad woman,” she said, her expression wistful. “I like to think that she might have refused to hand Eddy over to them in the end.”
Mornaday’s lips tightened. “She ended a pawn in Archibond’s schemes, but let us not forget, she conspired to overthrow the monarchy. It is no worse than she deserves.”
J. J. and I exchanged glances. How like a man not to understand.
Before we left, I collected the post that had come in our absence. Amidst the bills and circulars and begging letters, there was one envelope, larger than the rest. It was stiff and crested, with my name on the front but no address. It had been delivered by hand. There was no note, only a photograph. It was His Royal Highness, Prince Albert Victor, resplendent in the uniform of the Tenth Hussars, moustaches waxed and curled, gaze steady as he looked to the middle distance. Our future king, I mused. I turned it over to find an inscription.
To Veronica Speedwell, the bravest woman of my acquaintance. If you have need of me, you have only to ask. Eddy
On a whim, I went to the bookshelves in the snuggery, dusty and sagging with the weight of the volumes stacked there. It took only a moment to find the one I wanted. It was a guide to the royal and imperial families of Europe, complete with subsidiary titles. I flicked through the pages until I came to His Royal Highness, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. I traced the lesser titles with a fingertip. Duke of Cornwall. Duke of Rothesay.
Earl of Chester.
I slipped my hand into my pocket and retrieved my little velvet murine companion. Eddy might have been given a Chester of his own, but his would always be the second, I reflected. I replaced the book and went back downstairs, tucking Chester the First away in safety. I smiled to myself and propped Eddy’s photograph on my desk where I could look at it from time to time as I worked. Our paths would take us very different places, but they had crossed once. And that was enough.
* * *
• • •
It was a cool and windy day in November when we decided to return the Templeton-Vane jewels to Tiberius’ house. The fox-tooth tiara had been cleaned, albeit with a broken fang or two, but the armillae shone as brightly as ever. We had both of us enjoyed our time at Mr. Pennybaker’s house. It had been a holiday of sorts, a respite from the real world and all its attendant horrors. We had rested in comfort and security as our wounds healed. Stoker had taken up a needlework project, and I had read aloud to him from the latest natural history journals, although to be entirely honest, these were often cast aside in favor of Stoker’s favorite French novels. Mr. Pennybaker spent a good deal of time with us, telling entertaining tales of his own adventures—most of them quite unexpected for such a diffident little man. (And one or two so delightfully salacious that I was sent out of the room on an errand during the telling. I prevailed upon Stoker to relate them later, which he did in lurid detail.)
We left him with a pang of regret, but it was time. The wind had risen, sharp and laced with the first frost of the season. The spiderwebs in the hedgerows were dotted with pearls of ice, and each lovely ruby berry was sheathed in a thin, diamond-hard layer of the stuff. The whole world sparkled that morning, and we returned to the Belvedere with a sense of homecoming.
Of course, the place was absolute bedlam. The dogs—Vespertine included—were outraged at the fact that Cook’s cat had escaped the kitchens and was sitting on top of Lady Rose’s hermitage, scolding them all as she sat, just out of reach of their most determined efforts to drag her from her perch.
Patricia the tortoise, whose wedding day had arrived at last, was destined for disappointment when the crate bearing her bridegroom had finally been released from Customs. Procured at great trouble and expense by his lordship, the male tortoise proved much more youthful—and smaller—than his fearsome wife. She outweighed him by some sixteen stone and he was so tiny as yet she might have worn him for a hat.
She moaned her disapproval and lumbered away just before Lady Rose’s efforts with her brother’s tea bore fruit of the most noxious variety. Charles was busy being sick in the shrubbery amidst the howling dogs and the moaning tortoise and the sound of the earl remonstrating with his youngest child when Stoker took me firmly by the hand. He retrieved the biscuit tin with the tiara and the armillae and whistled up a hackney, giving the driver Tiberius’ address.
We arrived to find the house shrouded in darkness.
“Locked up tight as a drum, she is,” the driver said shrewdly. “Won’t be no one to look after you, it seems.”
“No matter,” Stoker said, handing me from the carriage. “I have a key.” He paid the fellow and sent him off. I followed Stoker not to the front door, which was heavily barred and bolted, but down the stairs to the area door. He fitted his key to the lock and in a moment we were inside the sleeping house, the very air muffled.
“Hungry?” he asked as we passed through the kitchens.
“It would not do much good if I were,” I observed, peeking into the pantry. “The larders are bare. Tiberius must have given orders to clear them out to avoid mice whilst he is away.”
Stoker grinned. “But I’ll wager the wine cellar is full.” He vanished down a narrow stairway to a little cellar where Tiberius stored his prized vintages. He emerged with a dusty bottle of great antiquity.
“Chambertin, 1803,” he said with a flourish.
“Is that good?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. But he kept it locked up, so I know it must be valuable.”
“You seem intent upon robbing Tiberius blind,” I pointed out.
He tipped his head. “I think, after our escapade in Cornwall, he rather owes us.”
“I quite agree,” I said as he retrieved his knife. In a moment, he had sliced through the wax seal and pulled the cork. He poured us each a measure of wine, and it ran red as rubies and smelling of berries and smoke.
“To another successful adventure,” he proposed. We touched glasses and sipped, and that wine was like nothing I had ever tasted. There was a silken quality to it, and a ripeness that beat like wings in my blood, and I looked at him over the rim of the glass and realized we were alone, entirely alone, with no prospect of interruption, no duty, no obligation.
He drained his glass and picked up the bottle. I said nothing, but there was no need. I followed him as he made his way through the house, the town home he had known since boyhood. He needed no illumination to find his path, and it was not until we reached Tiberius’ guest suite that he lit a candle.
“Tiberius always orders the gas to be rest
ricted whilst he is away,” he explained. “But there are plenty of candles and the water will be hot if you want a bath.” The plumbing at the Roman baths at Bishop’s Folly had still not been repaired, and I longed for a proper soak, but Stoker was playing for time. He was a little nervous, as I was. We had no excuses save fatigue to keep us apart. This then was the moment we must choose to move forwards together—or remain forever divided, friends but nothing more.
I, too, played for time. I went into the bathroom, a luxuriously tiled little chamber where a massive copper bath stood in splendor. It filled quickly and I hurled in great handfuls of salts with trembling hands. I was aware of a new wakefulness, an urgency that caused my limbs to shake. I stepped out of my clothes, noting the fresh pink scars like tiny stars on my shoulder, marks of a warrior, I decided. Great clouds of steam rolled through the room as I unpinned my hair, letting it fall until the ends trailed in the foaming water.
I lay back in the bath, the water lapping my shoulders as I closed my eyes. I thought of all the dark times Stoker and I had both endured. I thought of the risks we had taken for one another, the bullets and knives and near drownings, the fires and furies we had faced down because we would always stand, back to back, against the world. If I ever lost that stalwart devotion, I did not think I could survive it. I had never in the whole of my life known such perfect companionship, the quarrels and the laughs, the moments of complete and unspoken understanding. He was not another half, for I was whole unto myself. But he was my mirror, and in him I saw reflected all that I liked best in me. I saw honesty and pride, loyalty, and a willingness to stand, however difficult, in service of one’s principles. He was a twin soul to my own, and if I had not loved him so much, I would never have feared so much losing him.
My cheeks were damp with steam and tears, and I took up a washcloth to wipe them. This would never do. I had gained nothing I valued in life from sitting back, I told myself firmly. I had never shrunk from a challenge; I throve on it. I thrust myself to my feet, water cascading over the sides of the bathtub and onto the floor. There would be no more waiting, no more hesitation. From this moment forwards, I vowed, we would be together in all things. We belonged to each other. I reached for a towel, but before I could grasp it, the door opened. Through the clouds of steam, I could see him, mother-naked and the most glorious thing I had ever beheld. I knew, as I so often did, that the course of his thoughts had brought him to the same conclusion as mine. The time for questioning and doubt was past. We had chosen.
He said not a word; there was nothing to be said. He simply strode across the marble floor, certain as a king, and came for me.
* * *
• • •
The well-informed reader will already be aware of the practices of the lion of the African savannahs. These noble beasts, when mated, will consummate their union numerous times in the course of several hours, until the male is thoroughly exhausted and the female is content. I say, with all possible modesty, that Panthera leo might have learnt a thing or two from us. I had always experienced a certain hectic pleasure when Stoker and I kissed, but that was the merest prelude to what we achieved that night. We began in the bathroom, where the steaming tub and its attendant luxuries provided several opportunities for amatory investigations. When the water cooled we meant to remove ourselves to the guest bed, but we had to pass through the dressing room, where a lushly upholstered black velvet chaise proved eminently worth our diversion. Then I think there was a chair, at just the right height for a particularly pleasurable activity that even now draws a blush to my cheek. We finished in the bed, having wrought a path of modest destruction from the bathroom—water flooding the floor—to the writing table, where the blotter betrayed a thoroughly salacious imprint of someone’s backside, and on to the great four-poster bed itself, the tester knocked askew and the slats weakened.
We lay, entwined, hearts beating against one another, one of his hands wrapped in my hair as the dawning sun gilded the edges of the draperies.
“It’s morning,” he murmured sleepily. “The first morning.”
He said nothing else, but I understood him. This was the first morning we had awakened in each other’s arms, but it was more than that. This was the first morning ever, the beginning of all creation as far as I was concerned. A new life for us had begun, hand in hand, arm in arm, facing down the rest of the world. What adventures would await us!
We lazed like leopards, my fingertips tracing his scars old and new like contours on a map. “But this is an end, Veronica,” Stoker said severely. “No more exploits, no more bullets, no more investigations. A man can only stand being shot or stabbed or half-drowned so many times before he begins to take it rather personally. Now, promise me, this is an end to it.”
I opened my eyes very wide. “I promise.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Are your fingers crossed behind your back?”
I grinned. “Of course they are.”
He sighed. “Very well, then. I suppose I must surrender to my fate. Because you are clearly destined for adventure. And I am destined for you.”
I kissed him then, properly and with real gratitude for his understanding. Ours would never be a small and staid existence. Wherever we went, we would go together, making our way side by side, as equals in every adventure. Excelsior!
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Mary Ann Nichols. Annie Chapman. Elizabeth Stride. Catherine Eddowes. Mary Jane Kelly. These are the names of the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper. In the fascination with one of the world’s most notorious serial killers, the names of these women are often lost, and there are many misconceptions about them, most notably that they were prostitutes. Women at the poorest levels of society often engaged in periodic sex work in order to make up the price of a bed or meal, without identifying themselves as prostitutes by trade—Scotland Yard’s own criterion for determining who was a sex worker. These women used sex work to supplement their meager earnings in a system that was designed to crush the poor. Their lives were far too complicated and nuanced to be explained in a short author’s note or a few scenes depicting their reality. History is reclaiming the stories of the women of Whitechapel as more than victims of heinous crimes, and anyone interested in reading more about them cannot do better than Hallie Rubenhold’s groundbreaking collective biography of them, entitled The Five.
The mention of London homeless sleeping rough or setting up tent cities in 1888 in Trafalgar Square is factual. The hysteria surrounding the Ripper murders focused attention and resentment on a variety of targets: immigrants, the poor, the rich, the mentally ill, the Jewish community. Newspapers were flooded with letters demanding social reform, urging the wealthy to admit their responsibility in creating a system that disadvantaged the poor and kept them trapped in a cycle of want, ignorance, and—far too often—violence.
The idea that His Royal Highness, Prince Albert Victor, was a possible suspect in the murders did not appear in the annals of Ripperology until the 1970s. There are still those who entertain this notion, but it has been proven that the prince had an alibi during the killings. The prince was guilty of being spoiled and perhaps not terribly bright, but he was not homicidal by any stretch of the imagination. He was most often described as charming and sweet and disinclined to exert himself mentally or socially, leading some to believe he had a learning disability or shared his mother’s deafness, although there is no concrete evidence for either.
Two other rumors that have also persisted for decades are that the prince was involved in the Cleveland Street scandal in 1889 that exposed an establishment at that address as a brothel specializing in homosexual activity and that he was a transvestite, dressing in drag for parties during which he answered to the name “Victoria.” Unable to trace a reliable source for the latter story, I have used female dress solely as a masquerade costume for the prince rather than as a means of personal expression. As to his sexual orientation, it remains a com
plicated—and perhaps unanswerable—question at this date.
From letters written by Eddy to family members in the autumn of 1888, we know he was deeply in love with his cousin Princess Alix of Hesse—the first of at least two strong heterosexual romantic attachments in his life. He was created Duke of Clarence in 1890 and died in January of 1892 of complications from influenza at the age of twenty-eight, plunging his mother into profound mourning although many newspapers abroad were unflinching in their editorial relief that he would never reign. His fiancée at the time of his death, Princess Mary of Teck, went on to marry his brother, George, and together they guided the United Kingdom through the dark days of World War I as King George V and Queen Mary. For the most recent and exhaustive inquiry into the prince’s connection to the Cleveland Street scandal as well as a thorough biography, Prince Eddy: The King Britain Never Had by Andrew Cook is highly recommended.
Eddy’s first love, Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, refused his advances on the grounds that she had already fallen in love with Tsarevitch Nicholas of Russia, later Tsar Nicholas II. Upon her marriage, Alix changed her name to Alexandra Feodorovna, and she and Nicholas—along with their five children—were executed in 1918 during the Russian Revolution. She was canonized as Saint Alexandra Romanova in 2000 by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales—later Queen Alexandra—did have a collection of diamond stars from Garrard. They are believed to remain in the collection of the British royal family today.
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