Victorian Boy || l.s. ✔︎

CHAPTER II

❦ FOUR YEARS LATER ❦

In August, before the harvest and after the mass for John the Baptist, the unthinkable happened, the thing they had feared and guarded against since the day Harry was born.

Typhoid fever.

Harry's father had gone into the village alone to worship with the citizens of their land holdings while Harry escorted his mother to mass at the private chapel on the Somerset estate.

When the Duke returned later that evening, his head burned with fever and blood dripped from his nose like spilled ink.

The Duchess turned to her son: "Go."

Harry froze. He couldn't leave his father. Two footmen dragged him away to the east wing of the manor kicking and screaming.

He was locked up like a prisoner in his bedroom for weeks. No matter how much he protested they wouldn't let him out.

It struck him after some time that life as a prisoner wasn't much different from his ordinary life. He had books instead of conversation and his coin collection instead of friends. He composed a piece of music to keep him company but without his piano this sharpened his loneliness instead of assuaging it. He stared out the window. Stared at same view he'd been staring at for seventeen years.

During the day he would press his ear to the floor and listen to the hurried footfall of physicians and nursemaids. Listening for a sign. Were these anxious steps? Calm steps? The steps of someone tending to a strong patient? A dying patient?

It happened in the night.

He didn't hear footsteps at all, just his mother's helpless scream. It pierced him like lightning. He was desperate to go to her but the door was bolted from the outside.

"Let me out!" he cried.

They didn't unlock the door until the next evening after the body had been prepared. His valet, Charles, came in carrying Harry's mourning clothes in a neat square pile on his forearms. Harry hadn't slept. He let Charles remove his nightshirt and gently dress him.

"He went peacefully, your grace."

This was little consolation to a son without a father.

Charles helped him into a pair of trousers and buttoned a shirt over Harry's pale chest, nimble fingers working quickly. He tied a black cravat around his collar and slipped on his black vest, waistcoat and gloves. Then he presented him with one more article of clothing.

"Your mother wants you to wear it." It was a black satin surgical mask. Harry had only seen them pictured in French medical journals that discussed germ theory.

He protested but his anger quickly dissipated into soundless sobs, like those a sleepy child who'd worn himself out fussing. He turned and bowed his head, letting Charles tie on the mask. He looked sinister with half his face obscured.

"Should you be wearing one?"

"The aim is to protect you, your grace. It's simpler if you alone wear the mask than entrust the task to the entire staff."

Charles opened the door for him.

For the first time in weeks, Harry exited his bedroom.

Though not as himself.

He was now the Duke of Somerset.

♞

The body was in the parlour room. Every funeral custom was observed: curtains were drawn, clocks stopped at the time of death, mirrors covered to prevent the deceased's spirit from getting trapped inside the looking glass. His father's body was propped up with pillows on the settee and surrounded by laurels of yew and candlelight to mask the odor. He was dressed in his military uniform. Someone had placed his pipe in his hand and tinted his cheeks with rouge. Yet, he didn't look like himself, he didn't look like anyone. The face of death was that of a doll, a mere rendering of who one used to be.

Harry's mother clutched a handkerchief and rosary to her breast. She was in a heavy black frock, the track of tiny pearl buttons down her back like a second spine. A black veil covered her face. He couldn't tell if she was crying. Harry wanted to hold her but knew that she found affection cloying.

"Mother." He took her gloved hand in his.

The wake lasted three days and was attended by few relatives, but the burial was quick, Harry and his mother joined only by their servants. His father was laid to rest with his head to the West and his feet to the East. There was a chill in the air but the earth retained the warmth of summer. Loose soil fell over the coffin like a blanket.

For days afterward they were listless, without knowing what to do and with the will to do nothing.

The Duchess was more protective of her son than ever before. He indulged her neurosis and always wore his mask and never left the manor, not even to visit the stables or his father's grave. Paradoxically, she was also adamant that he marry quickly and produce an heir. Harry did not know how he could manage to court a woman let alone marry one when she wouldn't let him leave the house.

He performed all his daily rituals under her watchful eye and when he was idle she invented new rituals. Together they opened and read the condolence letters every afternoon at tea.

The letters arrived en masse in near-identical ivory stationary with black trim. His mother would read each one aloud, perched on the edge of his father's leather chair in her iridescent black mourning frock like a raven.

"Isn't that kind of them," she would say folding the paper and tucking it back in its envelope. They all sounded the same to him. The poetic turn of phrase. The empty platitudes.

Harry chose the next one. He reached down into the satchel and instead of an ivory envelope, he'd picked one that was blood red.

He broke the seal and his eyes scanned the letter inside.

"Red... Who is it from?" his mother asked.

Harry's throat was dry. "The Duke of Warwick."

She brushed a crumb that had fallen on her lap. "The boy who stole your Bertie?" she teased. "Thoughtful of him to send his condolences."

"He hasn't."

The words were embossed in gold, the ink fresh, sent after his father's passing but with no mention of it.

"It's an invitation."