William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

Lansdorff? Gisela’s son! That is surely provable?”
    Rolf looked one more time at the judge.
    The judge’s face was filled with regret but unyielding.
    “I am sorry, Count Lansdorff, but the charge you make is too terrible to go unproved, true or false. You must answer if you can.”
    “The affair was with Baron Bernd Ollenheim,” Rolf saidhuskily. “He took his child, and when he married, his wife loved the boy as her own.”
    He had nothing else to say, but the emotion of the court would not have permitted him to speak anyway. As suddenly as the breaking of a storm, their adoration for Gisela had turned to hatred.
    Harvester looked like a man who had witnessed a fatal accident. His face was bereft of color, and he made half movements and then changed his mind, opened his mouth as though to speak and found he had no words.
    Gisela herself sat like a woman turned to stone. Whatever she felt, there was no reflection of it written on her features. There was nothing that seemed like regret. Not once did she turn to see if she could recognize Bernd Ollenheim in the gallery, and she could hardly have failed to realize he was there—from Rolf’s steady gaze, filled with pity, and from the movement of the crowd as it too realized at whom he had gazed.
    Rathbone looked at Zorah. Had she known this? Had she been waiting for Rolf to expose it, hoping, trusting it would come?
    From the motionless amazement in her face he could only deduce that it was as shocking to her as it was to everyone else, except Gisela herself.
    It was seconds, minutes, before the hubbub died down sufficiently for Rathbone to be heard.
    “Thank you, Count Lansdorff,” he said at length. “We appreciate that must have been painful for you to have to reveal, in your regard for the innocent. However, it explains Queen Ulrike’s undying contempt for Gisela …” He too almost unconsciously omitted her title. “And the reason she could not, in any circumstances, permit her to return to Felzburg and become queen. Were this to become public knowledge after that event, the scandal would be devastating.It could bring down the throne. It was not possible that she should permit that.”
    He took a step back, turned, and then faced Rolf again. “Count Lansdorff, was Prince Friedrich aware of this past tragedy and of Gisela’s son?”
    “Of course,” Rolf said bleakly. “We told him when he first sought to marry her. He disregarded it. He had an ability not to see what he did not wish to.”
    “And the later abortion? I presume that is why she has not since conceived a child?”
    “You presume correctly. She now cannot. I doubt you will get the doctor to testify to that, but it is true.”
    “And was Prince Friedrich aware that his child was killed in the womb?”
    There was a gasp around the room. In the center of the gallery, a woman was weeping. The jurors were like a row of men at an execution.
    Rolf blanched even further.
    “I don’t know. I did not tell him, although I knew it then. I doubt she told him. Unless Barberini did. I think that unlikely.”
    “You did not use it to persuade him to leave his wife? I confess, I believe I would have.”
    “I would have too, Sir Oliver,” Rolf said grimly. “But only as a last resort. I did not want a broken man. As it happened, I did not have the opportunity, and after his accident it would have been brutal. It might have killed him. Whether I would have told him later, had he recovered, I cannot tell you. I do not know.”
    “Thank you, Count Lansdorff. I have no further questions for you. Please remain, in case Mr. Harvester has.”
    Harvester rose, swayed a little, as if caught in a great wind, and cleared his throat.
    “I … I assume, Count Lansdorff, that this monstrous story is one you could, and would, prove in this court if required to?” He attempted to sound brave, even defiant, but his ability failedhim. He was obviously as appalled as anyone in the room. He was a man quietly devoted to his own wife and daughters, and his emotions had been too profoundly outraged for him to conceal it.
    “Of course,” Rolf said dryly.
    “You may be required to do so. Naturally, I shall take instruction.” There was nothing he could say to rebut the charge, and to have spoken now of its irrelevance to Zorah’s slander would have been ridiculous. No one cared. No one was even listening. He sat down again a changed man.
    The judge looked at Rathbone, his face pinched with