Britannia Unleashed

Prelude

PRELUDE

“It is not an unreasonable request to ask if one’s life might be ended by one’s soulmate.” The Prince Consort eyed his Queen with cold, damp eyes, the sickness evident but expunged for a time.

“It is only unreasonable to end it without me,” she replied, her dour facade cracked by concern.

“Nonsense, Victoria!” Albert coughed into a monogrammed handkerchief and placed it to one side, the blood-spattered letters ‘A’ and ‘V’ entwined in a golden embrace. “I will not have your death on my conscience as I pass into eternity,” he heaved.

“We should share eternity.”

“Eternity is for lovers, not a queen and her consort.”

“You are ever selfish.”

“I am sorry you see it this way.”

“I do,” she said, rising to her feet.

“So, this is how it must end, in bitterness and regret.”

“You know my feelings. I have no life without you. There is no life without you. Only your refusal to acquiesce to my wishes, your queen’s wishes, sours our final moments. Your stubbornness, your unwillingness to accept me for what I am has cursed us both.” Victoria gave her bedridden husband a look for which words held no meaning, turned her back, and walked away.

“You only ever loved your country, and this country isn’t mine,” a final spittle-ridden riposte.

“I would have given it up for you,” said she, unmoved. “Goodbye, my once love. Godspeed.”

Victoria adjusted her crown, paused as if to catch a breath, then exited into the palace’s frostbitten corridors. By the time she’d nodded to Perkins, head of the household, to take over the prince consort’s tending, he had passed.

This was the last time she saw her husband’s body for Victoria refused to bear witness to it in death.

The Queen’s closest advisors saw to Albert’s removal, burial, and funeral, not she. Sir Magnus Monk, head of the Ministry for Empirical Advancement and chief scientist, dealt with the body, Lords Devonshire, Charlesworth, and Jackson, saw to the rest.

Victoria shed no tears, though history claimed she did, marking her husband’s passing in her own way, her assumed widow’s colours a permanent adornment. She refused to look upon Albert’s glass-topped casket, her face remaining impassive throughout. She refused everything, some claimed, even life.

Albert’s burial was to take place at the Frogmore Estate and the newly erected Royal Mausoleum. A date was set that Victoria cared not for, at a time she knew not when. Apparently, at whatever time and place and date it was, she had an appointment for a manicure.

Yet, if one was to have observed Victoria’s disdain in those intervening days, the chipped veneer, the changes, they might’ve noticed the signs of disintegration earlier: ragged breathing, squinted eyes, the lessening of self, and a slow separation of the spirit. Some might have called it time, the unavoidable progression of our march towards infinity. Mortimer Headlock, investigator extraordinaire and the Empire’s finest mind, did not.

Every word they uttered turned his stomach.

“He’s in a better place,” said one, an elderly dowager who claimed to be from somewhere south of London.

“Is there anywhere south of London?” replied the crinkled crone beside her.

“There’s Brighton,” said another.

The elderly dowager frowned so hard as to have resembled a newly ploughed field. “As I said, is there anywhere south of London?”

No one answered.

“Anyway, it’s probably for the best,” said a man dressed in full military regalia, his golden epaulettes twinkling in the gloom.

“Indeed, the best place for him, although you didn’t hear me say that.” A subdued Lord Devonshire lowered his usual booming self to a baritone whisper. Second only to Sir Belvedere Wainthrop in rank, tattling was not for such as he.

The inane banter shuttled back and forth at a funeral unfit for the Queen’s Consort, a ragged wind tearing at them, the incessant rain pounding out a dirge.

Mortimer Headlock recognised them all. He also recognised the contempt with which the servants attended to them. It was almost as though Perkins himself was there, head of the Queens household, but that was never likely to have happened, not whilst Victoria remained at the palace, anyway. If ever cups of tea were served with malice, those staff did. If ever cubes of sugar were administered with more of a plop than they ought, that was the instance. Only Field Marshal Sir Belvedere Wainthrop, lion of the empire, a giant of a man, stiff-backed and shovel-like fists balled, drew any genuine looks from the staff. He was ever the hero, ever the man to admire, even in such sombre circumstances. The big man had not long since lost a love of his own and Headlock thought it told upon him.

Mortimer Headlock wished the ageing manservant was there even more when viewing Belvedere’s saddened features. Perkins would have known what to have said. Time, however, was against Headlock and his regrets were dispelled. So, utilising the skills God had gifted him, namely the art of being unobtrusive, he faded first into the background, then the windswept scenery, and then simply away.

Prince Albert lay in stately repose, no less fierce in his departure, no less complicated. His coffin was a simple one, its lid replaced by glass so to better facilitate the mourners one last glimpse of Britannian royalty. Of course, a draped and rather elegant silk union flag hid his face; nobody wanted to see what remained of that. Tears were shed but ever were on such occasions.

The rain took hold with the force of an Indian monsoon. Those who had bemoaned Victoria’s nonattendance, instead, bemoaned their own lack of umbrellas. The Royal Mausoleum cleared out quicker than a church on Sunday and the place was left deserted of all but ghosts, at least, for a time.

Mortimer Headlock approached the coffin head bowed with the respect Victoria’s consort deserved, then began tapping upon its glass lid in a way he did not. To the untrained eye, one might have thought he appraised it out of loss or pain or some strange fetish. His reasoning was altogether direr. Headlock tapped twice in the same place, his ear close to the glass. Removing something that glinted in the candlelight, he drew his hands thrice across the transparent sheet. There was a slight ching as a triangular section of Albert’s window on the world fell inwards. Headlock glanced around, but he was alone. He remained unnoticed.

What happened next was bizarre. Far from being a religious man, Mortimer crossed himself, muttered a few words, then plunged the scalpel, for this was his tool of choice, deep into the chest of his once prince. There was no reaction. The coffin interior remained… well, dead.

Mortimer Headlock let out a relieved and very audible sigh. “My apologies, Your Highness, but I had to be sure for both yours and Britannia’s sakes.

He left in a swirl of coattails, a raven departing the corpses of the battlefield and vanished into the hell of the oncoming evening. Only the devil would have seen his departure.

Frogmore House’s curtains rustled, then twitched with hidden glee. A beaked face sneered from behind the purple drapes which concealed his small, hunched form. He watched the shadowed figure’s hasty exit from the mausoleum through narrowed eyes as the rain came down like an upturned bath. The deluge soon swallowed all, Britannia washed clean by heaven’s tears. The curtain stilled.

If one had listened closely in those intervening minutes, one might have heard a snort of derision from that room, or thought it the hiss of a spectre, self-satisfied elation of a monster. Britannia, however, heard nothing, and Prince Albert’s day was done.

PART ONE

BRITANNIA UNBOWED