The Dust That Falls From Dreams

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THIS WAS THE day that Daniel vaulted the wall.

Not many weeks previously the tiny Queen had begun to lose her appetite. In Marseilles, President Kruger of South Africa, fleeing into exile laden with wealth stolen from his own people, raised the rabble to new frenzies of anti-Britishness, and hotels where British travellers were thought to be staying were besieged.

The Queen grew drowsy. She had never before shown any lapse of energy or attention, but now she nodded off even at crucial moments. She received a letter from a boy bugler in the Devons, telling her how he had been the one to sound the charge at Waggon Hill, and she managed to reply to it.

The Queen travelled from London to Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight. She loved it there, and had long considered it to be her real family home. She had her own little beach with a bathing hut, and there was a miniature house where her children, now scattered across Europe, used to play when Albert was still alive. Across the Solent she could visit the vast military hospital that she had set up at Netley, bringing the scarves that she liked to knit for the wounded soldiers.

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