“Not much. But I have read the beautiful song in which he urges Your Highness’s father to finally support the King of Bohemia: No man is an island.”
She looked up. The reception hall had the amateurish ceiling frescoes commonly seen in German lands—usually the work of a second-class Italian artist who had never made it in Florence. A ledge bore statues of serious-looking saints. Two of them held lances, two held crosses, one clenched his fists, one held a crown. Below the ledge, torches were mounted, and in four large chandeliers burned dozens of candles, multiplied by mirrors. At the rear wall stood six musicians: four violinists, one harpist, and one holding a strange horn unlike any Liz had ever seen before.
She listened. Even in Whitehall she had heard nothing like it. One violin made a melody rise from the depths, another violin took it up, gave the melody clarity and force, and passed it on to the third, while the fourth violin played around it with a second, lighter melody. Suddenly the two melodies merged and were taken up by the harp, which now came to the fore, while the violins, as if in a quiet conversation, had already found a new melody—and at that very moment the harp gave them back the other melody, and the two melodies coalesced, and above them soared the joyful cry of a third melody, steely and pulsating, the voice of the horn.
Then it was silent. The piece had been short, but it felt as if it had lasted much longer, as if it had borne its own time in itself. A few listeners clapped hesitantly. Others stood still and seemed to have turned their ears inward.
“On the way here they played for us every evening,” said Wolkenstein. “The tall one there is named Hans Kuchner, he comes from the village of Hagenbrunn, he never went to school and can hardly speak, but the Lord has blessed him.”
“Your Majesty!”
A couple had come up to her: a gentleman with an angular face and a large jaw, a lady on his arm who looked as if she were freezing.
Liz was sorry to see that Wolkenstein, who was apparently forbidden even to take notice of the man’s presence, took a step back, folded his hands behind his back, and turned away. The man bowed, the woman gave a courtly curtsy.
“Wesenbeck,” he said, pronouncing the crack at the end of his name so harshly that it sounded like a small explosion. “Second envoy of the Elector of Brandenburg. At Your Majesty’s service.”
“How nice,” said Liz.
“Demanding an eighth electoral dignity. Quite bold!”
“We have demanded nothing. I am a weak woman. Women do not negotiate and do not make demands. My son for his part currently has no title that would permit him to demand anything. We can only relinquish. I have offered this in all humility. No one else can relinquish Bohemia’s crown, we alone can do that, and we will do it in exchange for the electoral dignity. Demanding the crown for us is what the Protestant imperial estates must do.”
“Us, that is.”
Liz smiled.
The envoy nodded thoughtfully.
And all at once the thought came to her that she had not yet dared to think. It would work! When she had had the idea of renting the coach, traveling to Osnabrück, and intervening in the negotiations, it had at first struck her as a completely absurd whim. It had taken her almost a year to begin to trust herself and a further year to really set it in motion. But at bottom she had expected all along that they would laugh at her.
Now, however, standing opposite the man with the large jaw, she realized confusedly that it could actually succeed: the electoral title for her son. I was not a good mother to you, she thought, and I probably loved you scarcely as much as I should have, but there is one thing I have done for you: I did not go back to England, I stayed in the small house and pretended it was a royal court in exile, and I have refused all men after the death of your poor father, although many wanted me, even very young ones, for I was a legend and beautiful to boot—but I knew that there must be no scandal, for the sake of our claim, and I never forgot it for a moment.
“We’re counting on you,” she said. Had she struck the right tone, or was that too solemn? But he had such a large jaw, and his eyebrows were so bushy, and when he had said his name, tears had almost come to his eyes. For him the lofty tone was probably appropriate. “We’re counting on Brandenburg.”
He gave a bow. “Then count on Brandenburg.”
His wife was regarding Liz with an icy gaze. In the hope that the conversation was now over, Liz looked around for Wolkenstein, but he was no longer to be seen. And now the Brandenburg couple too had moved on with deliberate steps.
She was standing alone. The musicians began anew. Liz counted the beats and recognized the latest fashionable dance, a minuet. Two lines formed, the gentlemen here, the ladies over there. The lines moved away from each other, then they walked toward each other. Partners took each other by the gloved hands. After a spin, they separated, the lines moved away from each other, and everything was repeated, while the music varied the previous theme lightly and liltingly: apart, together, spin, apart. In the notes vibrated longing, which you could feel without understanding whom or what it was directed at. There was the French ambassador stepping beside Count Oxenstierna: the two of them did not look at each other, but they moved, carried by the beat, in step. There was Contarini, whose lady was very young, an enchantingly slender beauty, and there was Wolkenstein, his eyes half closed, abandoning himself to the music, and apparently no longer thinking about her.
She was sorry that she could not participate. She had always liked to dance, but all she had left was her rank, and it was too high to fit into one of the lines. Besides, she could hardly move, her fur coat was too thick for a hall heated up by so many torches, nor could she take it off easily, because the dress she was wearing underneath was too simple. This ermine coat was all that remained of her old wardrobe, everything else having been pawned and sold. She had always wondered why she had kept it. Now she knew.
The lines came back together, but all at once there was disorder. Someone was standing in the middle of the hall and apparently making no move to get out of the dancers’ way. At the edges they were still moving to the music—there was Salvius, over there the Brandenburg envoy’s wife—yet in the middle the lines could no longer merge: Dancers crashed into each other, dancers lost their balance, everyone was trying to get past the standing man. He was scrawny, his cheeks hollow, his chin very sharp, a scar on his forehead. He was wearing a pied jerkin and baggy breeches and fine leather shoes. On his head was a colorful cap and bells. Now he began to juggle too: steel things flew into the air, first two, then three, then four, then five.
It took a moment, but then everyone realized at once: those were blades! People shrank back, men ducked, ladies covered their faces protectively with their hands. But the curved daggers kept returning to his hands, right side up, always with the handle at the bottom, while he now began to dance too—with small steps, forward and back, at first slowly, then more quickly, which in turn changed the music, for he did not follow it but it him. No one else was dancing anymore, they had made room to see better how he whirled around himself, while the flashing blades flew higher and higher. This was now no longer a deliberate, elegant dance, but a wild hurtling toward a breathless, galloping beat, which grew faster and faster.
Then he began to sing. His voice was high and tinny, but he hit the right notes and did not lose his breath. His words could not be understood. It was probably a language he had invented. And yet it seemed as if you knew what it was about: you understood it even though you could not have put it into words.
Now there were fewer daggers in the air. Only four left, now only three—one after the other was stuck in his belt.
A scream went through the hall. The green skirt of a lady, it was Contarini’s wife, was suddenly speckled with red. Apparently one of the blades had grazed the palm of his hand, but you could see nothing of it in his face. Laughing, he hurled the last dagger so high that it flew through the arms of a chandelier without touching a single crystal, and as it whirled down, he caught it and put it away. The music stopped. He bowed.