William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

easy in its physical work. It was simply a matter of nursing, keeping him as comfortable as possible, trying to reduce his distress and discomfort, seeing that he drank broth and beef tea frequently and gradually began to take greater nourishment. The doctor called very regularly, and she was left no important decisions to make. The difficulty lay in the concern for him and the fear that lay at the back of all their minds as to how complete his recovery would be. No one spoke of paralysis, but as each day went by, and still he felt no sensation and gained no power of movement below the waist, the fear grew.
    She did not forget the extraordinary case with which Monk and Rathbone were involved, and once or twice she overheard Bernd and Dagmar discussing it when they were not aware she was close by.
    “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 andbecame 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. “Knowingwho 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