William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

everything. But I think Waldo may be rather more realistic. He will not have us all drown trying to hold back a tide which he believes is bound to come in, whatever we do.”
    “And Gisela?” he asked yet again, as much to bring his own mind to the subject as hers.
    “Gisela has no patriotism!” she spat, her face tight and hard. “If she had, she would never have tried to be queen. She wanted it for herself, not for her people—or for independence or unification or anything political or national, just for the allure.”
    “You dislike her,” Rathbone observed mildly.
    She laughed, her face seemingly transformed, but the relentless anger was only just behind the amusement. “I loathe her. But that is beside the point. It does not make what I say true or untrue….”
    “But it will prejudice a jury,” he pointed out. “They may think you speak from envy.”
    She was silent for a moment.
    He waited. No sound penetrated from the office beyond the door, and the traffic in the street had resumed its steady noise.
    “You are right,” she admitted. “How tedious to have to consider such logicalities, but I can see it is necessary.”
    “Gisela, if you please. Why should she wish to murder Friedrich? Not because he was for independence, even at the cost of war?”
    “No, and yet indirectly, yes.”
    “Very clear,” he said with a whisper of sarcasm. “Please explain yourself.”
    “I am trying to!” Impatience flared in her eyes. “There is a considerable faction which would fight for independence. They need a leader around whom to gather—”
    “I see. Friedrich—the original crown prince! But he abdicated. He lives in exile.”
    She leaned forward, her face eager.
    “But he could return.”
    “Could he?” Again he was doubtful. “What about Waldo? And the Queen?”
    “That’s it!” she said almost jubilantly. “Waldo would fight against it, not for the crown but to avoid a war with Prussia or whoever else was first to try to swallow us. But the Queen would ally with Friedrich for the cause of independence.”
    “Then Gisela could be queen on the King’s death,” Rathbone pointed out. “Didn’t you say that was what she wanted?”
    She looked at him with gleaming eyes, green and brilliant, but her face was filled with exaggerated patience.
    “The Queen will not tolerate Gisela in the country. If Friedrich comes back, he must come alone. Rolf Lansdorff, the Queen’s brother, who is extremely powerful, is also for Friedrich’s return, but would never tolerate Gisela. He believes Waldo is weak and will lead us to ruin.”
    “And would Friedrich return without Gisela, for his country’s sake?” he asked doubtfully. “He gave up the throne for her once. Would he now go back on that?”
    She looked at him steadily. Her face was extraordinary; there was so much force of conviction in it, of emotion andwill. When she spoke of Gisela it was ugly, the nose too large, too long, the eyes too widely spaced. When she spoke of her country, of love, of duty, she was beautiful. Compared with her, everyone else seemed ungenerous, insipid. Rathbone was quite unaware of the traffic beyond the window, the clatter of hooves, the occasional call of voices, the sunlight on the glass, or of Simms and the other clerks in the office beyond the door. He was thinking only of a small German principality and the struggle for power and survival, the loves and hates of a royal family, and the passion which fired this woman in front of him and made her more exciting and more profoundly alive than anyone else he could think of. He felt the surge of it run through his own blood.
    “Would he go back on that?” he repeated.
    A curious look of pain, pity, almost embarrassment, crossed her face. For the first time she did not look directly at him, as though she wished to shield her inner feelings from his perception.
    “Friedrich has always believed in his heart that his country would want him back one day and that when that time came, they would accept Gisela also and see her worth—as he does, of course, not as it is. He lived on those dreams. He promised her it would be so. Every year he would say it yet again.” She met Rathbone’s eyes. “So to answer your question, he would not see returning to Felzburg as going back on his commitment to Gisela but as returning in triumph with her at his side, vindicating all he had ever believed. But she is not a fool. She knows it would never be so. He would return,