And just at this completely inopportune moment someone folded back the flap to the adjacent room, and a man in the red uniform of the majordomo stepped out and scrutinized the King with a look of condescending curiosity.
“His Majesty will see you now.”
“Finally,” said the King.
“Excuse me?” asked the master of ceremonies. “What was that?”
“It’s about time,” said the King.
“That’s no way to speak in the anteroom of His Majesty.”
“This creature shall not talk to me!” The King pushed him away and entered the neighboring room with a firm step.
He saw a map table, he saw an unmade bed, he saw gnawed bones and bitten apples on the ground. He saw a short, fat man—round head with a round nose, round belly, scrubby beard, thinning hair, shrewd little eyes. The man went straight up to the King, seized him by the arm with one hand and struck him so hard in the chest with the other that he would have fallen over if the man hadn’t pulled him to him and embraced him.
“Dear friend,” he said. “Old dear good friend!”
“Brother,” gasped the King.
Gustav Adolf was pungent, and his strength was astonishing. Now he pushed the King away and eyed him.
“At last we meet, dear brother,” said the King.
He could see that Gustav Adolf didn’t like the form of address, and this confirmed his fears: the Swede didn’t regard him as his equal.
“After all these years,” the King went on with as much dignity as he could, “after all the letters, all the messages, finally face-to-face.”
“I’m glad too,” said Gustav Adolf. “How goes it, my friend, how are you faring? What about money? Have enough to eat?”
It took the King a moment to realize that he was being greeted in the familiar form. Was this really happening? It must have been due to this man’s poor German; perhaps it was even a Swedish quirk.
“Concern for Christendom weighs heavily on me,” said the King. “As it does on…” He swallowed, then brought himself to use the familiar form. “As it does on you, my friend.”
“Yes, right,” said Gustav Adolf. “Something to drink?”
The King reflected. The thought of wine nauseated him, but it probably wasn’t wise to decline.
“That’s the spirit!” Gustav Adolf exclaimed, clenching his fist, and even as the King was hoping that he wouldn’t be subjected to it this time, Gustav Adolf struck.
The King couldn’t breathe. Gustav Adolf handed him a cup. He took it and drank. The wine tasted disgusting.
“It’s terrible wine,” said Gustav Adolf. “We got it from some cellar, can’t be choosy, that’s war.”
“I think it’s turned,” said the King.
“Better turned than none,” said Gustav Adolf. “What do you want, my friend, why are you here?”
The King looked into the bearded, shrewd, round face. So this was the savior of Protestant Christendom, the great hope. And yet once it had been he himself. How had it come to pass that it was now this fellow here, this fat-gutted man with the scraps of food in his beard?
“We’re winning,” said Gustav Adolf. “Is that why you’re here? Because we’re defeating them, at every encounter? Up in the north we defeated them and then during the advance and then down in Bavaria. We’ve been victorious every time, because they’re weak and disorganized. Because they don’t know how to drill the men. But I do. How is it with your men, I mean, how was it when you had some, did they like you, your soldiers, there outside Prague, before the Kaiser killed them? Only yesterday I tore the ears off one who wanted to desert with the cashbox.”
The King laughed uncertainly.
“Really. That’s what I did, it’s not so hard. You grab, then you tear. Something like that gets around. The soldiers find it funny, because it happened to someone else, but at the same time they take care from then on not to do anything of that sort. I have barely any Swedes with me. Most of them out there are Germans, a few Finns too, along with Scotsmen and Irishmen and who knows what. They all love me. That’s why we win. Do you want to join me? Is that why you’re here?”
The king cleared his throat. “Prague.”
“What about Prague? Drink!”
The king looked into the cup in disgust. “I require your support, brother. Give me troops, then Prague will fall.”
“I don’t need Prague.”
“The old seat of the Kaiser, restored to the true faith. It would be a great sign!”
“I don’t need signs. We’ve always had good signs and good words and good books and good songs, we Protestants, but then we lost on the battlefield, and it was all for nothing. I need victories. I must prevail against Wallenstein. Have you ever met him, do you know him?”
The King shook his head.
“I need reports. I think about him all the time. Sometimes I dream about him.” Gustav Adolf went to the other side of the tent, bent down, rummaged in a chest, and held up a wax figure. “This is what he looks like! This is Friedland. I always look at him and think: I will defeat you. You’re shrewd, I’m shrewder. You’re strong, I’m stronger. Your troops love you, mine love me more. You have the devil on your side, but I have God. Every day I tell him that. Sometimes he replies.”
“He replies?”
“He has diabolical powers. Of course he replies.” With a suddenly morose expression Gustav Adolf pointed to the whitish face of the wax figure. “Then his mouth moves, and he mocks me. He has a soft voice because he’s small, but I understand everything. Stupid Swede, he calls me, Swedish scum, Gothic brute, and he says that I can’t read. I can read! Shall I show you? I read in three languages. I will defeat that swine. I’ll tear his ears off. I’ll sever his fingers. I’ll burn him to death.”
“This war began in Prague,” said the King. “Only when we take back—”
“We’re not doing it,” said Gustav Adolf. “It’s decided, we’re done talking about it.” He sat down on a chair, drank from his cup, and looked at the King with moistly gleaming eyes. “But the Palatinate.”
“What about the Palatinate?”
“You have to get it back.”
It took the King a moment to grasp what he had heard. “Dear brother, you will help me reclaim my hereditary land?”
“The Spanish troops in the Palatinate, that won’t do, they have to go. Either Wallenstein calls them off or I kill them. They shouldn’t flatter themselves, they may have their invincible infantry squares, but you know what? They’re not so invincible at all, the invincible squares.”
“Dear brother!” The King reached for Gustav Adolf’s hand.
He leaped to his feet, squeezing the King’s fingers so tight that the King had to suppress a yelp, put his hand on his shoulder, pulled him to him. The two of them embraced. And they were still doing it, and now that it was still going on, it had been going on for so long that the King’s emotion had disappeared. Finally Gustav Adolf let go of him and began to walk up and down in the tent.
“When the snow is gone, we’ll come across Bavaria and at the same time from above, a pincer movement, crushing them. Then we’ll make the advance to Heidelberg and drive them out. If all goes well, we won’t even need to fight a big battle before we have the Electoral Palatinate, and then I’ll give it to you as a fief, and then the Kaiser will kick himself.”
“As a fief?”
“Yes, how else?”
“You want to give me the Palatinate as a fief? My own hereditary land?”
“Yes.”
“That won’t do.”
“Sure it will.”
“The Palatinate doesn’t belong to you.”
“When I conquer it, it will belong to me.”
“I thought you had come to the Empire for God and the cause of faith!”
“I could smack you, of course I have! What do you think, you mouse, you pebble, you trout! But I want something out of it too. If I simply hand over the Palatinate to you, what’s in it for me?”