We were notified about ten days after our Conclave that “Trafalgar still stands,” which was the code phrase for “Freddie is still safely in possession of all his body parts.” I received a quick text from him saying that he was learning firsthand that it was wise to shampoo a beard, and then came another long stretch of silence before we heard he was in Syria. It was wearing heavily on Nick. He tapped his foot or his fingers nervously every time Richard offered an update, and had started combing the morning papers for international news with a renewed vigor, as if half expecting his brother to pop up in one of them.

“What was he thinking,” Nick muttered one day over a piece about unrest in Jalalabad. “Agatha was right. You can’t cram all that training into one month.”

“He seemed ready, Nick,” I said.

“And how do you know that? Did he demonstrate it for you?” Nick snapped, and then looked surprised at himself. “Sorry. I don’t know where that came from. You didn’t ship him off.”

“Freddie wanted to go,” I said. “I think this is his Scotland.”

“Scotland didn’t involve live ammunition.” He shoved back his chair so firmly when he stood that it nearly tipped backward. I let him leave. We had drawn our boundaries, and this territory belonged to Dr. Kep.

It was helpful, emotionally, that the Palace arranged for Freddie to be extracted for two separate weekends of foreign appearances, to keep anyone from wondering where he was. First, he went to Belgium to represent the family at the hundredth anniversary of a World War I battle—the photos of which Nick examined closely before concluding his brother looked haggard—and then later to the Netherlands to open an exhibit of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British portrait artists who’d been influenced by Van Dyck. Daphne, in the know and considered a safe accomplice, had joined him in Utrecht for the opening.

Freddie seems well, but subdued, Daphne had written. I think he has found the operations to be more brutal than he imagined and I don’t press him to talk. He seems relieved by the silence.

That didn’t sound like a “well” Freddie to me, and I’d texted back and said so. Her reply: I suppose I know him differently than you do, of course.