“Disgraceful!” Disraeli muttered. “The minister’s lack of respect plummets to yet greater depths.”
“We must indulge him,” the king answered, with a slight smile. “His eccentricities don’t undermine his value.”
“Just as long as that value remains intact,” Disraeli said. “Which, under the circumstances, remains to be seen.”
“Forgive me,” Burton said, glancing at the vacant chair between himself and Walpole, “but to whom are you referring?”
The king turned his blank eyes and answered, “The minister of mediumistic affairs.”
“Ah,” Burton replied. “I should have known.”
A dull pain throbbed just behind his ears. His mouth felt dry, his eyes hot. The acidic aftertaste of brandy still lingered at the back of his throat. He reached for the water and drained the glass in a single swallow.
I have discomfort enough. I don’t need the bloody minister of mediumistic mumbo-jumbo, too.
The king said quietly, “Well then, let us proceed. Mr. Disraeli, would you explain, please?”
Disraeli rapped his knuckles lightly against the tabletop, looked at Burton, and said, “Sir Richard, last Thursday evening, shortly after the Orpheus landed and while you were, I understand, at the Royal Geographical Society, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the head of the Department of Guided Science, walked into Penfold Private Sanatorium—you know the place?”
Burton nodded. “It’s where my colleague, Sister Raghavendra, worked before I commissioned her to join my expedition.”
“I see,” Disraeli said. “Well, Brunel walked into it and announced that, in two days’ time—that is to say, this Saturday past—he was going to have a stroke.”
“How could he possibly know that?”
“He received a warning from the Afterlife. The information was correct. At three o’clock on Saturday morning, he did, indeed, suffer an attack.”
“Is he all right?”
“We don’t know. At eleven o’clock that night, two men entered the sanatorium and attempted to kidnap him. They were prevented from doing so by two police constables. The men escaped. The constables removed Brunel from the building, telling the nurses they were taking him to a place of safety. He hasn’t been seen since. We haven’t been able to find or identify the policemen, and Scotland Yard’s Chief Commissioner Mayne says he knew of no threat to Brunel and issued no orders to protect him.” Disraeli paused, then continued, “It’s not the first unexplained disappearance involving persons of significance. Two years ago, as everyone knows, Charles Babbage mysteriously vanished. In March of this year, the engineer Daniel Gooch went missing. And, last night, a man witnessed two policemen forcibly removing Nurse Florence Nightingale from outside the Theatre Royal. She did not attend her morning appointments today and her whereabouts are currently unknown.”
“Nightingale!” Burton exclaimed. “She was there with Richard Monckton Milnes!”
“That fact has come to light. Commissioner Mayne has assigned a Detective Inspector Slaughter to the case. I understand he’s questioning Mr. Monckton Milnes even as we speak.”
“He’ll not learn much. My friend thinks she ran out on him halfway through the show.”
The prime minister grunted, leaned his elbows on the table, and steepled his fingers together. “Which brings us to Abdu El Yezdi.”
Burton looked around the table, from one man to the next. Their eyes met his but gave nothing away.
Sudden comprehension sent prickles up his spine.
Bismillah! This has nothing to do with the consulship of Damascus! Why am I here?
He said, “Who is he?”
No one answered.
After what felt like a minute’s silence, Disraeli said, in a very low voice, “We are about to discuss state secrets, Sir Richard. Is your confidence assured? I do not, at any point in the future, want to have to charge you with treason.”
Burton slowly nodded.
Prince Albert spoke. “Your Majesty, Prime Minister, gentlemen—already we haff chosen to trust Sir Richard, haff we not? We must proceed. I am sure that, once all the facts before him haff been laid, the need for secrecy he will recognise.”
There were murmurs of agreement.
King George nodded and addressed Disraeli. “His Royal Highness is correct. We must give Sir Richard all the facts if he is to fully appreciate the significance of what we are to ask of him. But I suggest we first review the relevant history. It will provide context.”
The prime minister bowed his acquiescence.
The monarch turned to Burton. “I understand you spent your childhood outside the Empire? Where were you on the day of The Assassination?”
The explorer was so stunned to be asked that particular question again, he could hardly respond, and stammered, “I—I—I was at sea. En route from—from Italy.”
“So you felt nothing?”
Burton shrugged and shook his head, then realised the king couldn’t see him and said, “Nothing at all.”
“Well then, um, Mr. Walpole, perhaps you would be good enough to describe your experience?”
Walpole, his face framed by whiskers and scored with a myriad of small wrinkles, straightened his back and said, in his characteristically terse manner, “Certainly. My diaries. Sir Richard, I’m rather a fastidious diary-keeper. It’s a discipline I’ve observed since childhood. During the hour before bed, I always record the day’s events and my opinions of them. I write in considerable detail, and have done so since 1822.”
He paused and glanced at Burton as if expecting to be challenged. The explorer, who was feeling completely bewildered, kept his mouth closed.
Walpole continued, “In the aftermath of The Assassination, I felt the need to consult what I had written during the months preceding it. I do not know why. Perhaps I was looking for some rhyme or reason for the crime. What I read in those pages made perfect sense. I remembered everything I saw reported. Yet—” He paused. “Yet something was amiss. I found myself hunting for accounts of other events—but exactly what events eluded me. What was I searching for? Why did I feel that material was missing? I looked back over three years’ worth of diaries before what I read started to feel complete.”
Walpole’s lips twitched as if he wanted to say more but couldn’t find the appropriate words.
“Thank you, Mr. Walpole,” the king said. “Yours is a typical example of what has come to be known as the Great Amnesia, which everyone inside the British Empire experienced to some degree or other. The consensus is that, during Victoria’s three-year reign, events occurred that were forgotten by everyone the instant she was killed, and which have somehow left no evidence behind them.” The king laid both hands palms down on the tabletop with his fingers spread. “It is also generally accepted that the Great Amnesia gave rise to the New Renaissance—a sensational outpouring of inventiveness by engineers and scientists throughout the length and breadth of the Empire.”
“Led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel,” Burton murmured.
“Quite right. But there is more to it than that. What very few people know is that, from its very start, the New Renaissance has been guided by a denizen of the Afterlife.”
Burton pressed his lips together. A sense of unreality crept over him. The world wasn’t making any sense.
The king sighed. “You’ll remember that, after the queen’s death, the foreign secretary of the time, Lord Palmerston, attempted to backdate the Regency Act to allow His Royal Highness—” he gestured toward Prince Albert, “—to accede to the throne. This in response to public opposition to my father, Ernest Augustus the First of Hanover, who, though the rightful heir, was believed to be as mad as his father, King George the Third.” Reaching out his right hand, the monarch groped until he touched Benjamin Disraeli’s forearm. “Prime Minister?”
Disraeli said, “Your friend Monckton Milnes, Sir Richard, has been rather more involved in affairs of state than you know. In 1840, a young prognosticator named Countess Sabina Lacusta approached him with the news that a spirit—Abdu El Yezdi—wished him to work against Lord Palmerston. Monckton Milnes should begin, the spirit advised, by talking to me.”