Felix von Falken had learned to walk late.
At eighteen months he still preferred furniture to his own legs, moving around tables with both hands gripping polished edges. By two, he walked with an awkward outward turn in his knees. At three, the curve had become visible even beneath wool stockings.
Eleanor worried.
Matthias dismissed it.
“He is small.”
“He falls constantly.”
“Boys fall.”
“He says his legs hurt.”
Matthias looked over the top of his newspaper.
“He is three.”
“As though three-year-olds cannot feel pain.”
Matthias lowered the paper.
“Do you want me to send for Hartmann?”
Eleanor hesitated.
That had become another subject between them. Dr Elias Hartmann had served Schloss Falken for nine years. He was thirty-seven, unmarried and had studied medicine in Munich before spending time in Vienna. Unlike the older physicians Matthias preferred, Hartmann washed his hands compulsively, distrusted bloodletting except in rare cases and had once offended Matthias’s uncle by suggesting that brandy was not medicine merely because aristocrats enjoyed prescribing it to themselves.
Eleanor trusted him.
Matthias had once trusted him too.
“Yes,” she said.
Matthias folded the newspaper with unnecessary precision.
“Then send for him.”
Hartmann arrived before noon.
He examined Felix in the nursery while Eleanor stood beside the window. He pressed gently along the boy’s ribs, tested his wrists, watched him cross the carpet and frowned when Felix stumbled.
“Again,” Hartmann said.
Felix looked at him suspiciously.
“I already walked.”
“I noticed.”
“Then you saw.”
Hartmann almost smiled.
“Your argument is excellent.”
Felix climbed onto a chair.
“I am finished.”
Eleanor said, “Felix.”
Hartmann raised a hand.
“Let him sit.”
He examined the boy’s legs again and then asked about his diet, the hours he spent outdoors, the illnesses he had suffered as an infant.
Matthias entered halfway through.
“What is it?”
Hartmann stood.
“I cannot be certain yet.”
Matthias hated uncertainty from servants, physicians and politicians equally.
“What do you suspect?”
“A weakness in the bones. It is sometimes called the English disease.”
“Rickets?”
Hartmann nodded.
Matthias looked offended, as though Hartmann had accused the castle of poverty.
“That disease belongs in city alleys.”
“It belongs wherever children develop it.”
“He eats meat every day.”
“That does not settle the matter.”
Matthias’s eyes moved toward Felix.
The boy was turning a wooden horse upside down and examining its wheels.
Hartmann continued. “He needs more daylight. More time outdoors when weather permits. Cod-liver oil may help. I would also like to see him again after Christmas.”
Matthias said nothing.
Eleanor looked relieved.
“So it is not inherited?”
Hartmann glanced at her.
“Not necessarily.”
The answer should have ended the matter.
Instead, Matthias’s attention shifted to Hartmann’s face.
Eleanor saw it happen.
Hartmann had unusual eyes. Not yellow, as people sometimes described them, but brown with a gold ring around the pupil that became almost copper in strong light.
Felix had the same colouring.
Matthias stared.
Hartmann noticed.
“So does the boy’s father,” Eleanor said sharply.
Matthias looked at her.
His own eyes were dark hazel. In sunlight, they showed gold.
That had never mattered before.
It began to matter then.
