The most important thing: don’t ask questions and don’t hesitate. No gesture of impatience, no movement that looked like doubt. Her parents and her poor Friedrich, who had now been dead so long that she had to look at portraits to remember his face, had stood so straight that it seemed as if no rheumatism, no weakness, and no worry could ever touch them.
After she had stood straight for a little while, surrounded by whispering and astonishment, she took one step and then another toward the gilded double doors. There were no other doors like this in the Westphalian provinces, someone must have brought them here from far away, just like the paintings on the walls and the carpets on the floor and the curtains of damask and the silk wallpaper and the many-armed candelabra and the two chandeliers, heavy with crystals, in which, even though it was broad daylight, every single candle burned. No duke and no prince, indeed not even Papa, would have transformed a residence in a small city into such a palace. It was the sort of thing only the King of France or the Kaiser did.
Without pausing, she walked toward the doors. Now she could not afford to hesitate. The briefest hint of uncertainty would be enough to remind the two lackeys standing to the right and the left of the doors that it was also entirely conceivable not to open them for her. If that should happen, her advance would be staved off. Then she would have to sit down on one of the plush chairs and someone would appear and tell her that the ambassador unfortunately had no time, but that his secretary would be able to see her in two hours, and she would protest, and the lackey would say coolly that he was sorry, and she would raise her voice, and the lackey would repeat it unimpressed, and she would raise her voice further, and more lackeys would gather, and thus she would all at once no longer be a queen but a complaining old woman in the anteroom.
That was why it had to work. There would be no second attempt. One had to move as if the door weren’t there, not be slowed down by it; one had to walk in such a way that if no one opened the doors, one would crash into them at full force, and since Quadt was following her at two paces’ distance, her lady’s maid would then crash into her back, and the humiliation would be unbearable—for that very reason, they would open them; that was the whole trick.
It worked. With confused expressions the lackeys reached for the handles and heaved open the doors. Liz stepped into the reception room. She turned around and gestured to Quadt with her hand not to follow any farther. That was unusual. A queen did not make visits unaccompanied. But this was not a normal situation. Taken aback, her lady’s maid stopped, and the lackeys closed the doors in front of her.
The room seemed huge. Perhaps it was due to the skillfully arranged mirrors, perhaps it was a trick of the Viennese court magicians. The room seemed so large that one couldn’t quite comprehend how the house could contain it. It stretched like a hall in a palace, and a sea of carpets separated Liz from a distant desk. Far beyond, open damask curtains revealed a suite of rooms, even more carpets, even more golden candleholders, even more chandeliers and paintings.
Behind the desk rose a gentleman of small stature with a gray beard, who looked so inconspicuous that it took Liz a moment to notice him. He took off his hat and gave a courtly bow.
“Welcome,” he said. “May I hope, madame, the journey was not arduous?”
“I am Elizabeth, Queen—”
“Forgive the interruption, it is only to spare Your Highness the trouble. Explanations not necessary; I am informed.”
It took her a while to understand what he had said. She drew a breath to ask him how he knew who she was, but again he was quicker.
“Because it is my profession, madame. To know things. And my duty to understand them.”
She furrowed her brow. She felt hot, which was partly due to the thick fur coat and partly due to the fact that she was not used to being interrupted. He now stood bent forward, one hand on the desk, the other on his back, as if afflicted by a sudden pain there. Quickly she walked toward one of the chairs in front of the desk. But as in a dream the room was so large and the desk so far away that it would take a long time before she reached it.
His addressing her as Your Highness meant that he did acknowledge her status as a member of the English royal family, but did not recognize her as Queen of Bohemia, for otherwise he would have had to address her as Your Majesty; indeed, he did not even recognize her as an electress, for then he would have called her Your Serene Highness, which might not be worth much at home in England but here in the Empire was worth more than even the royalty of a king’s child. And precisely because this man knew his trade, it was essential that she sit down before he invited her to, for whereas he naturally had to offer a princess a chair, in the case of a queen it was not his place to do so. Monarchs sat down uninvited, and everyone else stood until the monarch permitted them to sit.
“Would Your Highness—”
But since the chair was still far away, she interrupted him. “Am I speaking with him who I assume he is?”
This brought him up short for a moment. For one thing, because he had not expected her German to be so good. She had made good use of her time, she had not been idle over the years, she had taken lessons with a kind young German whom she had liked and with whom she almost could have fallen in love—often she had dreamed of him and once even drafted a letter to him, but such a thing was not possible, she could not afford a scandal. For another thing, he was silent because she had affronted him. An imperial ambassador was to be called Your Excellency—by everyone but a king or queen. He thus had to insist to her on a form of address that she could under no circumstances grant him. For this problem there was only one solution: someone like her and someone like him must never encounter each other.
When he began to speak, she darted sideways, went to a stool and sat down; she had beaten him to it. She enjoyed this small victory, leaned her cane against the wall, and interlaced her fingers in her lap. Then she saw his look.
She went icy cold. How could she have made such a mistake? It must have been because she had been out of practice for years. Of course she could neither remain standing nor let him invite her to sit, but a chair without a backrest, that should not have happened to her under any circumstances. As a queen, she was entitled to sit on a chair with a backrest and armrests even in the presence of the Kaiser, a mere armchair would be an indignity, but a stool was out of the question. And he had deliberately placed stools all around the reception room, yet only behind his desk was there an armchair.
What should she do? She smiled too and decided to pretend it was of no consequence. But he now had the advantage: All he needed to do was to call in the people from the anteroom, and word that she had sat on a stool in his presence would spread through Europe like wildfire. Even at home in England they would laugh.
“That depends,” he said, “on what Your Highness deigns to assume, but since it is not the place of Your Highness’s humble servant to assume that Your Highness could make anything but the correct assumption, I in turn do not hesitate to answer Your Highness’s question with yes. It is I, Johann von Lamberg, the Kaiser’s ambassador, at Your Highness’s service. A refreshment? Wine?”
This was another skillful injury of her royal dignity, for one offered nothing to a monarch—he had rights over the household, it was up to him to demand what he wanted. Such things were not unimportant. For three years the ambassadors had negotiated only matters of who had to bow before whom and who had to take off his hat first before whom. He who made a mistake in etiquette could not win. So she ignored his offer, which was not easy for her, because she was very thirsty. She sat motionless on her stool and gazed at him. She was good at that. She had learned to sit calmly, she was practiced in it—in this, at least, no one surpassed her.