The doctor’s silence was answer enough.

Victoria no longer protested at additional medical support. There were other doctors in attendance now, five specialists who aided Jenner, who spoke to each other in murmured whispers that the Queen could not hear. When she became upset Alice led her gently from the room, sent for tea.

For two days the Prince lay very still, his face a

shen, his breathing labored. Victoria never left his side, holding his pale hand with its weakening pulse. In mid-afternoon of the second day clouds broke and a ray of golden sunlight illuminated the room, touching his face with a sheen of color. His eyes opened and he looked up at her.

“The Trent Affair…” he whispered, but could not go on. Victoria wept silently, clasping his cold and limp hand.

At sunset the children were brought in to see their father. Beatrice was too young to be allowed to attend this depressing scene, but Lenchen, Louise, Alice and Arthur were all there. Even Bertie came by train from Cambridge for a final visit to his father. Unhappily Alfie and Leopold were traveling abroad and could not be reached. Vickie, pregnant again, could not make the exhausting trip from Berlin. Still, four of their children were present in the sick room, clutching hands, trying to fathom what was happening to their father. Even Bertie, always at odds with his father, was silent now.

The following morning, in bright sunlight, a military band playing faintly in the distance, Albert sank into a final coma, Victoria still at his side. His eyes were open now, but he did not move or speak. Her vigil lasted all of that day and into evening and night.

At a little before eleven o’clock he drew several long breaths. Victoria clutched at his hand as his breathing ceased.

“Oh! My dear darling!” she cried aloud as she dropped to her knees in distracted despair. “My Angel has gone to rest with the angels.”

She leaned over to kiss his cold forehead one last time. And unbidden the last words he had spoken sprang poisonously to her mind.

“The Trent Affair. Those Americans did this. They have killed my love.”

She screamed aloud, tore at her clothing, screamed again and again and again.

Across the Atlantic the winter was just as bad as that in England. There were thick sheets of ice in the river water that were struck aside by the ferry boat’s bow, to thud and hammer down her sides. It was a slow passage from the island of Manhattan. When the ship finally tied up in its slip on the Brooklyn shore of the East River, the two men quickly went from the ferry and hurried to the first carriage in the row of waiting cabs.

“Do you know where the Continental Ironworks is?” Cornelius Bushnell asked.

“I do, Your Honor — if that is indeed the one on the river in Greenpoint.”

“Surely it is. Take us there.”

Gustavus Fox opened the door and let the older man precede him. The cab, stinking of horse, was damp and cold. But both men were warmly dressed for this was indeed a bitter winter.

“Have you met John Ericsson before?” Bushnell asked. They had met at the ferry and had had little chance to talk before in private.

“Just the once, when he was called in by the Secretary of the Navy. But only to shake his hand — I had to miss the meeting, another urgent matter.”

Bushnell, although chairman of the navy committee funding the ironclad, knew better than to ask what the urgent matter was. Fox was more than the Assistant Secretary of the Navy; he had other duties that took him to the Presidential Mansion quite often. “He is a mechanical genius… but,” Bushnell seemed reluctant to go on. “But he can be difficult at times.”

“Unhappily this is not new information. I have heard that said of him.”

“But we need his genius. When he first presented his model to my Naval Committee I knew he was the man to solve the problem that is troubling us all.”

“You of course mean the ironclad that the South is building on the hull of the Merrimack?”

“I do indeed. When the Confederates finish her and she sails — it will be a disaster. Our entire blockading fleet will be in the gravest danger. Why she could even attack Washington and bombard the city!”

“Hardly that. And not that soon as well. I have it on good authority that while her hull and engines have been rebuilt in the drydock, there is a serious shortage of iron plate for her armor. There is no iron in the South and they are desperate. They are melting down gates and fences, even tearing up disused railroad sidings. But they need six hundred tons of iron plate for that single ship, and that is far from easy to obtain in this manner. I have men reporting from inside the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, the only place in the South where armor plate is rolled. There is not only a shortage of iron — but a shortage of transportation as well. The finished plates just lie there, rusting, until railroad transportation can be arranged.”

“That is most gratifying to hear. We must have our own vessel ready before she is launched, to stand between her and our vulnerable fleet.”

The cab stopped and the driver climbed down to open the door. “Here she is, the ironworks.”

A clerk took them to the office where Thomas Fitch Roland, owner of the Continental Ironworks, awaited them.

“Mr. Roland,” Bushnell said, “this is Mr. Gustavus Fox who is Assistant Secretary of the Navy.”

“Welcome, Mr. Fox. I imagine that you are here to see what progress we are making on Captain Ericsson’s floating battery.”

Tags: Harry Harrison Stars and Stripes Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net