The Darwin Affair

by Tim Mason

  “I am English, I should do,” she said tartly.

  Field beamed. “Of course you are, my dear, and a credit to your race, I’m sure. If I might ask, my English rose, who was it sent the message you just now give the Prince?”

  “Sir Horace Dugdale,” she replied, walking on toward the castle, “and none of your gammon, if you please!”

  Field walked on irresolutely. He slowed to a stop, listening. He heard voices from below, the Prince’s and another’s. Cockney? A boy’s voice. Field changed course and made for the stables where he found Peter Sims, grease-smeared, in a chaos of springs and coils.

  “What the devil?” said Field.

  “Well might you ask, sir. I can’t think how we broke a spring, just from Rosenau to here.”

  “Who’s taking the Prince to Coburg?”

  “Thomas. Pass me that spanner, would you, Mr. Field?”

  “Who’s Thomas?”

  “New stableboy. London-born, by the sound of him, but we took him on in Frankfurt, him and his master’s horse, the chestnut.

  “What master? Where is he, then?”

  Peter shrugged. “Thomas is a sound lad. He asked to go so I sent him.”

  So now a London-born boy named Thomas, picked up in Frankfurt, is employing his master’s horse to carry the Prince off, alone, at the request of Sir Horace Dugdale. Merciful Christ.

  “Peter, we’ve got to go after them.”

  “I can’t very well do that, now, can I, Mr. Field?”

  “It’s urgent!”

  “I serve at the pleasure of Her Majesty the Queen, sir, not you!”

  Field felt his scalp tingle. He turned and stepped out of the stable, at a loss. Then he sprinted across the castle grounds, stopping at a stone parapet that bordered the upper terrace. Below, the road was a looping ribbon of switchbacks descending delicately to the plain, threading back and forth between orderly farms, meadows, and copses. It looked like a painting he and his good wife had seen at the National Gallery, thought Field: a man struggled behind an ox-pulled plow; beyond was a brook, and yonder a shepherd and his dog were moving a flock toward town; in the distance a train puffed and hooted.

  Directly beneath him, the ornate carriage bearing Prince Albert moved sedately, pulled by a gray and a chestnut and driven by the young top-hatted groom named Thomas, taken on in Frankfurt. As it rounded a switchback, passing out of Field’s line of sight, the carriage seemed to be slowing abruptly. Was it stopping? Why should it stop? Field looked directly down and gauged the drop. He stepped up onto the parapet and leapt.

  Theresa Charlotte Luise, Queen Consort of Bavaria, died of cholera after attending a service of thanksgiving in Munich, celebrating the end of a cholera epidemic. This carriage, a small dress barouche, had been hers. It seated two passengers, facing forward. It had a window at the front and on either side. There was a raised backseat behind the cabin for footmen. It was an elegant little carriage, better suited to formal occasions of state than this simple errand, to deliver one man without pomp a distance of four or five miles, even if the passenger were the Prince Consort of the United Kingdom.

  Albert opened the window on his side and leaned out. “Boy? Why are we stopping?”

  Tom took no notice, gently reining in Lily and the other horse. The Prince lowered the glass of the front window, just behind Tom’s head. “Boy! Driver!”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Tom as he brought the barouche to a stop.

  The door on the left-hand side of the carriage opened and Decimus Cobb stepped in, seating himself gingerly next to the Prince with a courteous smile. He was dressed in a gray uniform with red piping. He carried a wooden attaché case.

  “Who are you?” said Albert.

  “Drive on, Thomas,” said Decimus, removing his gray cloth cap. The boy flicked the reins and the barouche jerked into motion again.

  Albert’s heart raced. “Leave the carriage at once!”

  “I feel I need to explain, Your Highness, what is about to transpire, and why. You are going to have an accident, but have no fear: you won’t be in a position to feel it. Faster, Thomas, if you please—His Highness is thinking of jumping.”

  Albert’s throat went dry. He struggled to master himself.

  “You have no business here,” said the Prince.

  “I have no business at all,” replied Decimus. His eyes moved over Albert’s face, scalp, and shoulders, studying them. “Do you think,” he said evenly, “I am a monkey?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There were those who thought they employed me to do their bidding in this matter. They deceived themselves. I serve the truth, not them. They are moved by considerations of commerce and power. Not I. I am truth’s warrior, and you are truth’s enemy. Your true father is the father of lies, and you, if you’ll forgive me, are the bastard son of the father of lies.”

  Albert, never taking his eyes from the intruder, slowly lowered his right hand out the window on his side and made come-hither motions surreptitiously—to whom, God only knew; he did not.

  “If you don’t wish to lose that appendage straightaway, Highness, I should take it in and keep it in for safekeeping.”

  Albert quickly did so.

  “It only makes sense to stop you. You would spread a disease; I am the surgeon who will excise the disease.”

  Decimus laid the wooden case across his lap. Albert stared at it. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” said the Prince.

  “Imperial monarch. Empress of India. Defender of the Faith. If a man say a thing, his words travel only a short distance and die. If the monarch say a thing, the word travels round and round the globe like the sun, forever and ever. They got you to remove the demon’s name from Her Majesty’s list a year ago—we know it was you placed Darwin there—but we know that you are still determined to honor the demon, this year or the next or the next.”

  “I will not. We will not. Darwin will never be knighted, I give you my word.”

  “Do you think I am a monkey?” Decimus said again.

  Tom glanced over his shoulder into the carriage. He saw Master open his kit. The face of the Prince was paper white. Tom turned his eyes back to the road.

  Could Tom do it?

  You’ll only get one chance, you won’t get no more.

  Charles Field hurried, limping across the fields. He imagined he had entered the painting he had seen from above. He passed the plowman and the ox, he crossed the brook over a small wooden bridge. The hay had been gathered and tied into shocks, which stood about the field like pilgrims in solitary prayer. Somewhere in the distance the train sounded its horn. There was a pain radiating from Field’s right ankle that he promised to think about later. He put a hand to the breast pocket where he carried his pistol and realized it was not there.

  Fell out when I jumped, didn’t it. Well done.

  Was he timing it correctly? He had crossed one switchback and should have found her by now.

  Ha! There she is!

  He put two fingers to his lips and whistled. A half-dozen crows flew up out of the long grass, and the dog stopped in her tracks, confused. She tilted her head quizzically. The inspector beamed and nodded and whistled again. She looked between Field and her master. Field pointed commandingly, whistled again, and the dog sprang into action.

  “No one,” said Decimus, “who has ever dissected a hand, or opened a torso, or examined so much as a feather, can believe that creatures change from one thing into another.” He was sorting through the instruments in his neatly ordered case, choosing one, examining it critically and then replacing it with a shake of his head. “In the plunder of Egypt, the great Napoleon brought back . . . what, your Highness? Do you know?”

  Albert whispered, “No.”

  “Cats. Mummified cats from the pharaohs’ tombs, cats two thousand years old. Can you tell me in what way they differed from present-day cats?”

  The Prince shook his head.

  “In no way!”

  Al
bert opened the door on his side and lunged, but as fast as a snake Decimus had his left wrist in his grip.

  “Pull shut the door, Highness.”

  Decimus produced a brass corkscrew from the box and held it to Albert’s left eye; Albert closed the carriage door. Almost playfully, Decimus danced the sharp end of the corkscrew about the Prince’s nose, drawing little points of blood. “You are destined to suffocate, but the accident will cause lacerations and contusions, so I have some freedom to enjoy myself here, do you understand me?”

  Albert whimpered faintly.

  “Do you think, Highness—you, who have never dissected so much as a cat—do you think because a man may have a unique feature, that that man has crawled up from something low and vile? Do you think his unique feature is a sign that he is changing into something else? Into something other than a man? Do you?” Decimus’ face was inches from Albert’s. “It is a lie!”

  The carriage suddenly jolted and slowed.

  “Thomas?” said Decimus sharply.

  “Sheep, sir.”

  Tom brought the carriage to a complete stop. Decimus peered cautiously out the front window over Tom’s shoulder. A line of sheep was indeed crossing the road just ahead, a dog worrying them across, two shepherds moving up and down the line, guiding the flock with shouts and whistles. Decimus sat back in his seat and turned somberly to the Prince.

  “We’ll take our time,” he said, dropping the corkscrew into the box and lifting out a cloth-covered, padded garrote. And then, to Albert’s wonder and horror, Decimus began to sing.

  Tom’s mind was racing. He had lain awake nights, plotting how he might ride Lily out of his nightmare and into a new life. The plan he hatched was solely for him and the horse; saving the life of a prince had no part in it. Tom scanned the way ahead. Something wasn’t right about one of the shepherds—the limping one, he wasn’t dressed right—but the shepherd was the least of his concerns. Ahead were open fields and a railroad crossing, on the other side of which dense woods closed in on the road. Tom cautiously leaned forward and edged his way out over the rear of the horse named Lily, to the harness hitch he had doctored days earlier and brought with him, just in case. He worked feverishly, his fingers trembling. He couldn’t stop Master; no one could. He could only save himself.

  “What’s that you’re doing, Tom?”

  The boy scrambled back up and around, springing a knife from his right sleeve. But it wasn’t Master who had spoken. Crouching on the left side of the driver’s perch was the wrong shepherd, clinging to the pole that held the ornamental lamp. The man put a large finger to his lips, listening to the singing coming from the coach, his brow furrowed.

  Tom recognized him: it was that policeman. The one who thought he could get the better of Master; Tom had encountered him before. He was a fool, that policeman. The dog was racing back and forth before the carriage, moving the sheep off the road. The other shepherd was running away, across a meadow.

  “Give us the knife, Tom,” said Field quietly. “I need it.”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Are you with him, then?”

  Tom looked at Field for a moment, then detached the knife in his hand from the metal guide that held it. He passed it handle first to Field.

  “When I give a shout, get this rig going again, and fast.”

  A line of worry crossed Tom’s brow. He looked back over his shoulder at Lily.

  “Here we go, then,” said Field.

  Using the lamp pole as a pivot, Field swung round to the side of the carriage, slammed into the door, flung it open, and climbed in.

  Decimus turned from the Prince, grabbing in his box as he turned. The corkscrew dug into Field’s left thigh, just below the groin, and Field ran Tom’s knife across Decimus’ face, opening a bright red line. He reached across the Prince to the opposite door, unlatched it, and pushed it open. Albert was gasping for breath, the padded garrote looped round his neck, a lurid red mark on the skin beneath it.

  “Oi, Tom!” shouted Field. “Go!”

  Decimus turned the corkscrew in Field’s thigh with one hand while his other hand found the inspector’s throat. At that moment the carriage lurched into crazy motion, swerving to the right, then left, the horses whinnying loudly, tossing the occupants into a jumble. As Decimus’ fingers tightened round his throat, Field plunged Tom’s knife into the hand that turned the corkscrew. Decimus screamed and Field yanked the screw out of his thigh, along with a chunk of his own leg.

  Lily, her harness released, pulled away from the carriage at a gallop. The gray raced to keep up with her, the carriage jolting along the road with Tom struggling to control it. He watched Lily pulling ahead without him on her and felt something in him die. Then he saw the train approaching the level crossing. Lily might just make it; the barouche would not. From a side lane, a farm wagon pulled up and stopped before the tracks, directly in their path.

  Decimus was rooting in his kit; Field was shoving Albert inch by inch out of the barouche. Suddenly Tom was there, clinging to the open carriage door with one hand.

  “Pull, boy!” shouted Field.

  “Monkey!” shouted Tom.

  What in God’s name . . . ?

  “Tom, pull!” cried Field.

  “Filth!” screamed Decimus, clutching his bleeding right hand, blood running from his face.

  “Show them your tail!” Tom was shouting at the top of his lungs. “Your tail, show them! He’s got one, you know!”

  “Scum!”

  “Tom Ginty,” shouted Field, “pull this man out of the coach!”

  The barouche was jolting wildly. With his free hand, Tom grabbed Albert under his right shoulder and pulled.

  Decimus, slick with blood, lurched over Albert’s legs, snatched Tom by his collar, and yanked him into the carriage. He threw himself across the tangle of legs, brought his mouth down on the boy’s left ear, and ripped. Just as fast, he pulled back, a bit of ear between his teeth and an expression of surprise on his face. Decimus looked down at himself. He shoved his open medical kit aside, but the scalpel was embedded in his abdomen to the hilt. Field got his boot in the man’s face and kicked, and all at once Field and the Prince were tumbling out of the speeding carriage, rolling into the ditch below. For an instant Tom looked at Decimus, who was staring at the blade in his gut.

  “I am not the new you,” said the boy, and then he leapt.

  The onrushing train blew its horn. The gray horse swerved abruptly, just short of the wagon at the crossing. The Queen of Bavaria’s barouche tipped on its side and slewed onto the tracks where the locomotive burst it asunder.

  History records that Colonel Henry Ponsonby, seeing a runaway horse galloping through the streets of Coburg, came to the remarkably prescient conclusion that Prince Albert had been injured or killed on the road to town. Ponsonby located a doctor and hired a carriage to take them to the scene. They arrived within a half hour of the extraordinary events, greeted by the barking sheepdog.

  The Prince insisted that the doctor treat the others first. Field’s bleeding thigh was bound up. (Good job it missed that femoral artery, sir, said the doctor, but it wasn’t by much!) Although the young groom, Thomas, had lost half an ear in the mêlée, the damage was not deemed life-threatening. He was shivering, so they wrapped him in a horse blanket and gave him whiskey. Finally the Prince, too, was given whiskey and a blanket. The real shepherd had cautiously returned for his dog and his flock; he was sent off to fetch help.

  The fiction began to be written on the spot, authored by Albert with assistance from Colonel Ponsonby. There had been no attempted assassination of the Prince in his own homeland, his brother’s duchy, less than five miles from his birthplace, at a time when German unification discussions were at such a delicate pass. Albert’s cuts and bruises would be explained by his leaping from an out-of-control carriage. A young groom also had been injured in the accident and would be sent back to London to recover. Inspector Field had not been present, having been dismiss
ed by the Prince and sent away earlier, as witnessed by the Queen and the Princess Royal. Hauptmann Klimt of the German Police Bund and his men would be quietly engaged to recover the remains of Decimus Cobb and make them disappear.

  Eventually a wagon arrived. The injured were laid in it and driven off to Rosenau. Ponsonby continued on to Kallenburg Castle, where he informed Victoria that her husband had been hurt in a carriage mishap. The Queen, highly distraught, was driven to Rosenau where she found the Prince lying in a darkened room, his injuries bandaged. She wept copiously. Albert, weak and still in shock, found himself, as usual, comforting her rather than the other way round. Victoria finally left him to his rest. Her Majesty adored her husband, but she had spent the entire day out of doors and was hungry for her supper.

  A few moments after she left, the Prince said, “Mr. Field?”

  “Your Highness.” The inspector emerged, limping from the shadows at the far end of the room. The dressings on his thigh were covered by his trousers; there were bruises on his face and a bandage across his scalp.

  “How is the boy?”

  “He is concerned about the horse. If I could assure him that she will be looked after, it might help him sleep, which is what the doctor says he must do.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. They still have not located the body?”

  “Not as far as I know, sir, but they will do. The impact may have hurled it some distance from the tracks.”

  Albert lay silent for some time.

  “Colonel Ponsonby?” he whispered, finally.

  “I feel, sir, I may have been premature in my suspicions of the Colonel. I did not like that he seemed to know all about a carriage accident involving Your Highness in advance, as it were. But then, that chestnut mare is a splendid beast. We’ve all taken notice of her. It’s quite possible the colonel simply recognized the runaway horse as one in your service.”

  “And Sir Horace Dugdale?”

  Field shook his head. “Remove him, sir.”

  “However am I to do that, with the Queen so fond of the man?” Albert sighed. “I have told my people to take pains for your comfort as you travel to London, you and the boy.”