Betrayal at Lisson Grove (Treason at Lisson Grove)

“I should think so!” Victoria said, regarding them with a very slight approval. “To quote one of my greatest soldiers, Sir Colin Campbell, who said at the battle of Balaclava, ‘Here we stand, and here we die.’ ” She smiled very slightly. “But since it may be some time, you may sit, if you wish.”

PITT RETURNED TO LISSON Grove knowing that he had no allies there except probably Stoker, and that the safety of the queen, perhaps of the whole royal house, depended upon him. He was surprised, as he walked up the steps and in through the doorway, how intensely he felt about his responsibility. There was a fierce loyalty in him, but not toward an old woman sitting in lonely widowhood in a house on the Isle of Wight, nursing the memories of the husband she had adored.

It was the ideal he cared about, the embodiment of what Britain had been all his life. It was the whole idea of unity greater than all the differences in race, creed, and circumstance that bound together a quarter of the earth. The worst of society was greedy, arrogant, and self-serving, but the best of it was supremely brave, it was generous, and above all it was loyal. What was anybody worth if they had no concept of a purpose greater than themselves?

This was very little to do with Victoria herself, and most certainly nothing to do with the Prince of Wales. The murder at Buckingham Palace was very recent in his mind. He could not forget the selfishness of the prince, his unthinking arrogance, and the look of hatred he had directed at Pitt, nor should he. Soon the prince would be King Edward VII, and Pitt’s career as a servant of the Crown would rest at least to some degree in his hands. Pitt would have wished him a better man, but his own loyalty to the throne was something apart from any personal disillusionment.

All his concentration now was bent on controlling Austwick. Whom did he dare to trust? He could not do this alone, and he must force himself not to think of Charlotte or Vespasia, or even of Narraway, except insofar as they were allies. Their danger he must force from all his conscious thoughts. One of the burdens at the core of leadership was that you must set aside personal loyalties and act in the good of all. He made himself think of how he would feel if others in command were to save their own families at the cost of his, if Charlotte were sacrificed because another leader put his wife’s safety ahead of his duty. Only then could he dismiss all questions from his mind.

As he passed along the familiar corridors he had to remind himself again not to go to his old office, which was now occupied by someone else, but to go back to the one that used to be Narraway’s, and would be again as soon as this crisis was past. As he closed the door and sat at the desk, he was profoundly glad that he had retrieved Narraway’s belongings and never for a moment behaved as if he believed this was permanent. The drawings of trees were back on the walls, and the tower by the sea, even the photograph of Narraway’s mother, dark and slender as he was, but more delicate, the intelligence blazing out of her eyes.

Pitt smiled for a moment, then turned his attention to the new reports on his desk. There were very few of them, just pedestrian comments on things that for the most part he already knew. There was no information that changed the circumstances.

He stood up and went to find Stoker rather than sending for him, because that would draw everyone’s attention to the fact that he was singling him out. Even with Stoker’s help, success would be desperately difficult.

“Yes, sir?” Stoker said as soon Pitt had closed the door and was in front of him. He stared at Pitt’s face, as if trying to read in it what he was thinking.

Pitt hoped that he was a little less transparent than that. He remembered how he had tried to read Narraway, and failed, at least most of the time.

“We know what it is,” he said quietly. There was no point in concealing anything, and yet even now he felt as if he were standing on a cliff edge, about to plunge into the unknown.

“Yes, sir …” Stoker froze, his face pale. On the desk, still holding the paper he had been reading, his hands were stiff.

Pitt took a breath. “Mr. Narraway is back from Ireland.” He saw the relief in Stoker’s eyes, too sharp to hide, and went on more easily, a darkness sliding away from him also. “It seems we are right in thinking that there is a very large and very violent plan already begun. There is reason to believe that the people we have seen together, such as Willy Portman, Fenner, Guzman, and so on, intend to attack Her Majesty at Osborne House—”

“God Almighty!” Stoker gasped. “Regicide?”

Pitt grimaced.

“Not intentionally. We think they mean to hold her ransom in return for a bill to abolish the hereditary power of the House of Lords—a bill that of course she will sign before, I imagine, her own abdication …”