Weighed in the Balance Read online

  “Will Prince Friedrich’s death make a great deal of political difference?” she asked one day about a week after her arrival. She and Dagmar were putting away clean linen the laundry maid had brought up. Ever since she first met Monk and became involved in the murder of Joscelin Gray, she had asked questions almost as of second nature.

  “I think so,” Dagmar replied, examining the embroidered corner of a pillow slip. “There is considerable talk of uniting all the German states under one crown, which would naturally mean our being swallowed up. We are far too small to become the center of such a new nation. The King of Prussia has ambitions in that direction, and, of course, Prussia is very military. And then there are Bavaria, Moravia, Hannover, Bohemia, Holstein, Westphalia, Würtemberg, Saxony, Silesia, Pomerania, Nassau, Mecklenburg and Schwerin, not to mention the Thuringian states, the Electorate of Hesse, and above all Brandenburg. Berlin is an immensely tedious city, but it is very well placed to become the capital for all of us.”

  “You mean all the German states as one country?” Hester had never really thought of such a thing.

  “There is much talk of it. I don’t know if it will ever happen.” Dagmar picked out another of the slips. “This needs mending. If one caught a finger in this it would ruin it. Some of us are for unification, others against. The King is very frail now, and possibly will not live more than another year or two. Then Waldo will be king, and he is in favor of unification.”

  “Are you?” Perhaps it was an intrusive question, but she asked it before thinking. It seemed to spring naturally from the statement.

  Dagmar hesitated several moments before replying, her hands motionless on the linen, her brow furrowed.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I’ve thought about it. One has to be reasonable about these things. To begin with, I was utterly against it. I wanted to keep my identity.” She bit her lip, as if laughing at her own foolishness, looking directly at Hester. “I know that may seem silly to you, since you are British and at the heart of the largest empire in the world, but it mattered to me.”

  “It’s not foolish at all,” Hester said sincerely. “Knowing who you are is part of happiness.” Unexpectedly, a sharp thought of Monk came to her mind, because he had been injured three years before in an accident and had lost every shred of his memory. Even his own face in the glass woke no familiarity in him at all. She had watched him struggle with remnants of his past as they flashed to his mind, or some event forced upon him evidence of who and what he had been. Not all of it was pleasant or easy to accept. Even now it was only fragments, pieces here and there. The vast bulk of it was closed within recesses of his mind he could not reach. He felt too vulnerable to ask questions of those few who knew anything. Too many of them were enemies, rivals, or simply people he had worked with and ignored. “To know your own roots is a great gift,” she said aloud. “To tear them up, willingly, is an injury one might not survive.”

  “It is also an injury to refuse to acknowledge change,” Dagmar answered thoughtfully. “And to hold out against unification, if the other states seem to want it, could leave us very isolated. Or far worse than that, it could provoke war. We could be swallowed whether we want it or not.”

  “Could you?” Hester took the slip from Dagmar and placed it in a separate pile.

  “Oh, yes.” The Baroness picked up the last sheet. “And far better to be allied as part of a larger Germany in general than to be taken over in war as a subject province of Prussia. If you know anything of Prussian politics, you’d think the same, believe me. The King of Prussia isn’t bad at heart, but even he can’t keep the army under control—or the bureaucrats or the landowners. That is a lot of what the revolutions of ’48 were all about, a sort of middle class trying to obtain some rights, some freedom for the press and literature, and a wider franchise.”

  “In Prussia or in your country?”

  “Everywhere, really.” Dagmar shrugged. “There were revolutions in just about every part of Europe that year. Only France seemed to have succeeded in winning anything. Certainly Prussia didn’t.”

  “And you think that if you try to remain independent there could be war?” Hester was horrified. She had seen too much of the reality of war, the broken bodies on the battlefield, the physical agony, the maiming and the death. For her, war was not a political idea but an endless unfolding and living of pain, exhaustion, fear, hunger, and heat in the summer and cold even to death in the winter. No sane person would enter into it unless occupation and slavery were the only alternatives.

  “There might.” Dagmar’s voice came from far away, although she was standing only a yard from Hester in the corridor with the sunlit landing beyond. But Hester’s mind had been in the rat-infested, disease-ridden hospital in Scutari, and in the carnage of Balaclava and Sebastopol. “There are many people who make money from war,” Dagmar went on somberly, the sheet forgotten. “They see it primarily as an opportunity to profit from the sale of guns and munitions, horses, rations, uniforms, all kinds of things.”

  Unconsciously, Hester winced. To wish such a horror upon any people in order to make money from it seemed like the ultimate wickedness.

  Dagmar’s fingers examined the hem of the sheet absent-mindedly, tracing the embroidered flowers and monogram.

  “Please God it won’t come to that. Friedrich was for independence, even if he had to fight for it, but I don’t know who else is who could lead us. Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. Friedrich is dead, and he wouldn’t have returned without Gisela. And it seems as if the Queen would not have allowed him back with her, no matter what the cost or the alternative.”

  Hester had to ask.

  “Would he ever have gone without her—if it were to save his country, to keep Felzburg independent?”

  Dagmar looked at her steadily, her face suddenly tense, her eyes very level.

  “I don’t know. I used to think not … but I don’t know.”

  A day went by, and another, and another. Robert’s fever was gone now. He was beginning to eat proper meals, and to enjoy them. But he still had no sensation or power of movement below the waist.

  Bernd came every evening to sit and talk with his son. Hester naturally did not remain in the room, but she knew from the remarks she overheard, and from Robert’s own attitude after his father had left, that Bernd was still, at least outwardly, convinced that complete healing was only a matter of waiting.

  Dagmar kept up the same manner on the surface, but when she left Robert’s room and was alone with Hester on the landing, or downstairs, she allowed her anxiety to show through.

  “It seems as if he is not getting any better,” she said tensely on the fourth day after their discussion of German reunification politics. Her eyes were dark with anxiety, her shoulders stiff under her fine woolen day bodice with its white lawn collar. “Am I expecting too much too quickly? I thought he would have been able to move his feet now. He just lies there. I dare not even ask what he is thinking.” She was desperate for Hester to reassure her, waiting for the word that would ease her fears, at least for a while.

  Was it kinder, or crueler, to say something that was not true? Surely trust also mattered? In the future it might matter even more.

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t ask,” Hester replied. She had seen many men face maiming and loss of limbs, disfigurement of face or body. There were things for which no one could offer help. There was nothing to do but stand and wait for the time or the depth of pain when another person was needed. It might come sooner or later. “He will talk about it when he is ready. Perhaps a visitor would take his mind from thinking of it. I believe Lady Callandra mentioned a Miss Victoria Stanhope, who has suffered some misfortune herself and might be of encouragement …” She did not know how to finish.

  Dagmar looked startled and seemed about to dismiss the idea.

  “Someone who is less close, less obviously anxious, may be helpful,” Hester urged.

  “Yes …” Dagmar agreed hopefully. “Yes,
perhaps she may. I shall ask him.”

  The following day, Victoria Stanhope, still thin, still pale and moving with slight awkwardness, paid a call upon Hester, who conducted her to Robert.

  Dagmar had remained uncertain about the suitability of a young, single woman’s visiting in such circumstances, but when she saw Victoria, her shyness and her obvious disability, she changed her mind. And apart from that, the girl’s dress immediately proclaimed her lack of means or social position. The fact that she spoke with dignity and intelligence made her otherwise most agreeable. The name Stanhope was familiar to Dagmar, but she did not immediately place it.

  Victoria stood on the landing beside Hester. Now that the moment had come, her courage failed her.

  “I can’t go in,” she whispered. “What can I say to him? He won’t remember me, and if he does, it will only be that I rebuffed him. Anyway”—she gulped and turned, white-faced, to Hester—“what about my family? He’ll remember that, and he won’t want to have anything to do with me. I can’t—”

  “Your family’s situation is nothing to do with you,” Hester said gently, putting her hand on Victoria’s arm. “Robert is far too fair to make such a judgment. Go in there thinking of his need, not your own, and I promise you, you will have nothing at the end which you can look back on with regret.” The moment she had said it, she realized how bold she had been, but Victoria’s smile prevented her from withdrawing it.

  Victoria took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, then knocked on the door again.

  “May I come in?”

  Robert looked at her with curiosity. Hester had prepared him for the visit, naturally, and had been surprised how clearly he had recalled their one brief encounter over a year before.

  “Please do, Miss Stanhope,” he said with a slight smile. “I apologize for the hospitality I can offer, but I am at a slight disadvantage right at the moment. Please sit down. That chair”—he pointed to the one beside the bed—“is quite comfortable.”

  She walked in and sat down. For a moment her fingers moved as if to rearrange her skirts. The new concertina-type steel hoops could be quite awkward, even if they were better than the old bone ones. Then, with an effort of will, she ignored them and let them fall as they would.

  Hester waited for the inevitable “How are you feeling?” Even Robert looked prepared for the traditional answer.

  “I imagine now you are over the fever and most of the pain, you are thoroughly bored,” Victoria said with a little shake of her head.

  Robert was startled, then his face broke into a wide smile.

  “I didn’t expect you to say that,” he admitted. “Yes, I am. And terribly tired of assuring everyone that I feel all right—far, far better than I did a week ago. I read, of course, but sometimes I can hear the silence prickling in my ears, and I find my attention wandering. I want a sound of some sort, and something that responds to me. I am weary of being done to, and not doing.” He blushed suddenly, realizing how forthright he had been to a young woman who was almost a complete stranger. “I’m sorry! You didn’t come here out of kindness just to hear me complain. Everyone has been very good, really.”

  “Of course they have,” she agreed, smiling back, tentatively at first. “But this is something they cannot alter. What have you been reading?”

  “Dickens’s Hard Times,” he replied with a grimace. “I admit, it doesn’t cheer me much. I care about its people,” he added quickly, “but I’m not happy for them. I go to sleep and dream I live in Coketown.”

  “May I bring you something different?” she offered. “Perhaps something happy? Are you”—she drew a deep breath—“are you familiar with Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense?”

  His eyebrows rose. “No. But I think I might like it. It sounds like an excellent refuge from the world of Coketown.”

  “It is,” she promised. “You’ll find in it the Dong with the Luminous Nose, and Jumblies, who went to sea in a sieve, and all sorts of other oddities, like Mr. Daddy Longlegs and Mr. Floppy Fly, who played at battlecock and shuttledore in the sand.”

  “Please do bring it.”

  “And there are drawings, of course,” she added.

  Hester was satisfied. She turned and tiptoed away and went down the stairs to where Dagmar was waiting in the hall.

  Victoria Stanhope visited again, on two more occasions, staying longer each time.

  “I think she does him good,” Dagmar said when the maid had shown Victoria upstairs on the fourth time she called. “He seems very pleased to see her, and she is a most agreeable child. She would be quite pretty, if she were—” She stopped. “Oh, dear. That is very uncharitable of me, isn’t it?” They were standing in the conservatory in the early autumn sun. It was a charming room, full of white-painted wrought iron furniture and shaded by a mixture of potted palms and large-leafed tropical plants. The air was filled with the sweetness of several late, heavily scented lilies. “That was a terrible business about her family,” she added sadly. “I expect it has ruined her chances, poor thing.”

  Naturally, she was referring to Victoria’s chances of marriage. There was no other desirable life open to a young woman of breeding, unless she had a great deal of money, or some remarkable talent, or excellent health and a burning desire for good works. Hester did not tell her that Victoria’s chances for any of these things had been ruined long before her family’s disgrace. That was Victoria’s secret to keep or to tell as she wished. Were Hester in her place, she felt she would never tell anyone at all. It was about as private a tragedy as could be imagined.

  “Yes,” she said bluntly. “I expect it has.”

  “How very unfair.” Dagmar shook her head slightly. “You never know what is going to happen, do you? Six weeks ago I could not have imagined Robert’s illness. Now I don’t know how much it will change our lives.” She was not looking at Hester, perhaps deliberately. After only a moment’s hesitation, as though she did not want to allow time for an answer, she hurried on. “Poor Princess Gisela must feel the same. This time last year she had all she cared about. I think every woman in the world envied her, at least a little.” She smiled. “I know I did. Don’t we all dream of having a handsome and charming man love us so passionately he would give up a kingdom and a throne simply to be with us?”

  Hester thought back to being eighteen, and the dreams she had had then.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” she said reluctantly, oddly defensive of the girl she had been. She had felt so wise and invulnerable, and she had been so naive.

  “Most of us settle for reality,” Dagmar went on. “And find it really quite good in the end. Or we make it good. But it is still natural to dream sometimes. Gisela made her dreams come true … until this spring, that is. Then Friedrich died, which left her desolated. To have had such a … a unity!” She turned to Hester. “You know they were never apart? He loved her so much he never grew tired of watching her, listening to her, hearing her laugh. He still found her just as fascinating, after twelve years.”

  “It would be natural to envy that,” Hester said honestly. She would not have found it easy to watch such happiness and not wish it for herself. And if she had at one time been in love with the Prince, it would never really stop hurting. She would wonder why she had not been able to awake that love in him, what was lacking in her. What gaiety or charm, what tenderness or quickness to understand, what generosity or honor did she fail to have? Or was it simply that she was physically not pleasing enough, either to look at or in those areas of intimacy of love in which her only experience lay in the imagination and the longing of dreams? Was all that the wound which had festered in Zorah Rostova all these years, and perhaps driven her a little mad?

  Dagmar was absentmindedly picking off the occasional dead leaf and fiddling with the bark around the palms.

  “What was the Prince like?” Hester asked, trying to picture the romance.

  “To look at?” Dagmar asked with a smile.

  “No, I meant as a person. What
did he like to do? If I were to spend an evening in his company—at dinner, for example—what would I remember most about him?”

  “Before he met Gisela, or afterwards?”

  “Both! Yes, tell me both.”

  Dagmar concentrated her memory, forgetting the plants. “Well, before Gisela, you would think first how utterly charming he was.” She smiled as she recollected. “He had the most beautiful smile. He would look at you as if he were really interested in all you said. He never seemed to be merely polite. It was almost as if he were half expecting you to turn out to be special, and he did not want to miss any opportunity to find out. I think what you might remember afterwards was the certainty that he liked you.”

  Hester found herself smiling too. The warmth rippled through her at the idea of meeting someone who gave so much of himself. No wonder Gisela had loved him, and how devastated she must feel now. And on top of the loneliness and the loss which darkened everything had come this nightmare accusation. What on earth had possessed Rathbone to take up Zorah’s case? His knighthood had gone to his wits. When the Queen touched him on the shoulder with the sword she must have pricked his brain.

  “And after he met Gisela …” Dagmar went on.

  Hester jerked her attention back. She had forgotten she had asked that question also.

  “Yes?” she said, trying to sound attentive.

  “I suppose he was different,” Dagmar responded thoughtfully. “He was hurt that people wouldn’t accept Gisela, because he loved her so much. But he was never so very close to his family, especially his mother. He was sad going into exile. But I think he believed in his heart that one day they would want him back and then they would see Gisela’s worth and accept her.” She looked along the passage between the leaves and fronds towards the windows. “I remember the day he left. People were lining the streets. A lot of women were weeping, and they all wished him well, and cried ’God bless you!’ and waved kerchiefs and threw flowers.”