Tyll

Kings in Winter

I

It was November. The wine supply was exhausted, and because the well in the garden was filthy, they drank nothing but milk. Since they could no longer afford candles, the whole court went to bed in the evening with the sun. The state of affairs was not good, yet there were still princes who would die for Liz. Recently, one of them had been here in The Hague, Christian von Braunschweig, and had promised her to have POUR DIEU ET POUR ELLE embroidered on his standard, and afterward, he had sworn fervently, he would win or die for her. He was an excited hero, so moved by himself that tears came to his eyes. Friedrich had patted him reassuringly on the shoulder, and she had given him her handkerchief, but then he had burst into tears once again, so overwhelmed was he by the thought of possessing a handkerchief of hers. She had given him a royal blessing, and, deeply stirred, he had gone on his way.

Naturally, he would not accomplish it, neither for God nor for her. This prince had few soldiers and no money, nor was he particularly clever. It would take men of a different caliber to defeat Wallenstein, someone like the Swedish king, say, who had recently come down on the Empire like a storm and had so far won all the battles he had fought. He was the one she should have married long ago, according to Papa’s plans, but he hadn’t wanted her.

It was almost twenty years ago that she had instead married her poor Friedrich. Twenty German years, a whirl of events and faces and noise and bad weather and even worse food and completely wretched theater.

She had missed good theater more than anything else, from the beginning, even more than palatable food. In German lands real theater was unknown; there, pitiful players roamed through the rain and screamed and hopped and farted and brawled. This was probably due to the cumbersome language. It was no language for theater, it was a brew of groans and harsh grunts, it was a language that sounded like someone struggling not to choke, like a cow having a coughing fit, like a man with beer coming out his nose. What was a poet supposed to do with this language? She had given German literature a try, first that Opitz and then someone else, whose name she had forgotten; she could not commit to memory these people who were always named Krautbacher or Engelkrämer or Kargholzsteingrömpl, and when you had grown up with Chaucer, and John Donne had dedicated verses to you—“fair phoenix bride,” he had called her, “and from thine eye all lesser birds will take their jollity”—then even with the utmost politeness you could not bring yourself to find any merit in all this German bleating.

She often thought back to the court theater in Whitehall. She thought of the small gestures of the actors, of the long sentences, their ever-varying, nearly musical rhythm, now swift and clattering along, now dying gradually away, now questioning, now bristling with authority. There had been theater performances whenever she came to the court to visit her parents. People stood on the stage and dissembled, but she had grasped at once that this was not so at all and that the dissembling too was merely a mask, for it was not the theater that was false, no, everything else was pretense, disguise, and frippery, everything that was not theater was false. On the stage people were themselves, completely true, fully transparent.

In real life no one spoke in soliloquies. Everyone kept his thoughts to himself, faces could not be read, everyone dragged the dead weight of his secrets. No one stood alone in his room and spoke aloud about his desires and fears, but when Burbage did so on the stage, in his rasping voice, his very thin fingers at eye level, it seemed unnatural that men should forever conceal what transpired within them. And what words he used! Rich words, rare, shimmering like cloth of gold—sentences so perfectly constructed that they were beyond anything you yourself could ever have managed. This is how things should be, the theater told you, this is how you should talk, how you should hold yourself, how you should feel, this is what it would be like to be a true human being.

When the performance was over and the applause faded, the actors returned to the state of paltriness. After taking their bows, they stood like extinguished candles. Then they approached, bending down low, Alleyn and Kemp and the great Burbage himself, to kiss Papa’s hand, and if Papa asked them something, they answered like people whom language resisted and to whom no clear sentences occurred. Burbage’s face was waxy and weary, and there was nothing special anymore about his now rather ugly hands. Hard to believe how quickly the spirit of lightness had abandoned him.

That spirit had itself appeared in one of the plays, which had been performed on Allhallows. It was about an old duke on a magical island, who captured his enemies only to spare them in the end. At the time she had been unable to understand why he had been lenient, and when she thought about it today, she still didn’t understand. If she had Wallenstein or the Kaiser in her power, she would handle things differently! At the conclusion of the play the duke had simply released his ministering spirit, so that he might pass into the clouds, the air, the sunlight, and the blue of the sea, and had remained behind like an old sack of flour, a wrinkly actor who now briefly apologized that he had no more lines. The leading dramatist of the King’s Men had taken on the role himself at the time. He was not one of the great actors, not Kemp and certainly not Burbage. You could even tell by looking at him that he struggled to remember his lines, which none other than he himself had written. After the performance he had kissed her hand with soft lips, and because it had been impressed on her that at such moments she must always ask some question, she had inquired whether he had any children.

“Two daughters living. And a son.”

She waited, for now it would be Papa’s turn to say something. But Papa was silent. The dramatist looked at her. She looked at him, her heart beginning to pound. All the people in the room were waiting, all the lords with their silk collars, all the ladies with diadems and fans—they were looking at her. And she realized that she had to keep talking. This was just how Papa was. When you were counting on him, he left you in the lurch. She cleared her throat to gain time. But you don’t gain much time by clearing your throat. You can’t clear your throat for very long, it hardly gets you anywhere.

And so she said that she was very sorry to hear of the death of his son. The Lord gave and the Lord took away, his will passed our understanding, and his trials made us strong.

For the blink of an eye, she was proud of herself. It takes quite a bit to manage something like that before the whole court, you have to be well-bred and quick-witted too.

The dramatist had smiled and bowed his head, and suddenly she had the feeling that she had made a fool of herself in a manner difficult to describe. She sensed herself turning red, and because she felt ashamed of this too, she turned even redder. She cleared her throat once again and asked him the name of his son. Not that it interested her. But nothing else occurred to her.

He answered in a soft voice.

“Really?” she asked in surprise. “Hamlet?”

“Hamnet.” He drew a breath, then said pensively and as if to himself that, although he could not pretend to have borne his trial with that fortitude she praised, yet today, when it was his great fortune to behold the future’s maiden face, he would swear that such a life as his, comprising such currents as had brought him to this sea, could not be counted among the worst, and that thanks to this moment in her gracious presence, he was disposed to accept with gratitude every pain and tribulation that lay in his past or, indeed, in days to come.

Here she couldn’t think of anything else to say for the time being.

All well and good, Papa finally said. But shadows were cast on the future. There were more witches than ever. The Frenchman was treacherous. The recent unity of England and Scotland was still untested. Doom was lurking everywhere. But worst of all were the witches.

Doom might well lurk, the dramatist replied, that was the nature of doom, yet the hand of a mighty ruler held it off, as the mantle of the air held off the heavy cloud and dissolved it into gentle rain.

Now it was Papa who couldn’t think of anything to say. This was funny, because it didn’t happen often. Papa was looking at the dramatist, everyone was looking at Papa, no one said anything, and the silence had already lasted too long.

Finally Papa turned away—just like that, without a word. He did this often, it was one of his tricks to unsettle people. Normally they wondered for weeks afterward what they had done wrong and whether they had fallen out of favor. But the dramatist seemed to see through it. Bowing as he walked backward, he departed, a faint smile on his face.

“Do you think you’re better than everyone else, Liz?” her fool had recently asked her when she had told him about it. “Have seen more, know more, come from a better land than we do?”

“Yes,” she had said. “I do.”

“And do you think your father will save you? At the head of an army, is that what you think?”

“No, I don’t think that anymore.”

“Yes, you do. You still believe that one fine day he will turn up and make you into a queen again.”

“I am a queen.”

At that he laughed derisively, and she had to swallow and push back tears and remember that it was his very duty—to tell her what no one else dared. That was why you had fools, and even if you didn’t want a fool, you had to consent to one, for without a court jester a court was not a court, and if she and Friedrich no longer had a country, at least their court had to be in order.

There was something strange about this fool. She had sensed it at once when he had first appeared, last winter, when the days had been especially cold and life even more impoverished than usual. At that time, the two of them had suddenly stood outside her door, the scrawny young man in the motley jerkin and the tall woman.

They had looked exhausted and haggard, ill from traveling and from the dangers of the wilderness. But when they had danced for her, there was a harmony, a consonance of the voices and bodies, such as she had not witnessed ever since she had left England. Then he had juggled, and she had pulled out the flute, and then the two of them had performed a play about a guardian and his ward, and she had feigned death, and he had found her lifeless, and in his grief he had killed himself, whereupon she had awoken and, her face contorted with horror, had seized his knife to now take her life too. Liz knew the story; it was from a play of the King’s Men. Moved by the memory of something that had once had great significance in her life, she had asked the two of them whether they wouldn’t stay. “We don’t yet have a jester.”

He had made his debut by giving her a painting. No, it was not a painting, it was a white canvas with nothing on it. “Have it framed, little Liz, hang it up. Show it to the others!” Nothing gave him the right to address her like that, but at least he pronounced her name correctly, complete with the English z—he did it as well as if he had been there. “Show it to your husband, the beautiful picture, let the poor king see it. And everyone else!”

She had done so. She had a green landscape painting, which she didn’t like anyhow, taken out of its frame and replaced with the white canvas, and then the fool had hung up the painting in the large room that she and Friedrich called their throne room.

“It’s a magic picture, little Liz. No one born out of wedlock can see it. No one stupid can see it. No one who has stolen money can see it. No one up to no good, no one who cannot be trusted, no one who’s a gallows bird or a thievish knave or an arsehole with ears can see it—for him, there’s no picture there!”

She hadn’t been able to help laughing.

“No, really, little Liz, tell the people! Bastards and dolts and villains and men ripe for the gallows, none of them can see anything, neither the blue sky nor the castle nor the wonderful woman on the balcony letting down her golden hair nor the angel behind her. Tell them, watch what happens!”

What had happened still astonished her, every single day, and it would never cease to astonish her. The visitors stood helplessly before the white picture and didn’t know what they were supposed to say. For it was complicated, after all. They knew that nothing was there, of course, but they weren’t sure whether Liz knew it too, and thus it was also conceivable that she would take someone who told her that nothing was there for illegitimate, stupid, or thieving. They racked their brains. Had a spell been cast on the picture, or had someone fooled Liz, or was she playing a joke on everyone? The fact that by then almost everyone who came to the court of the Winter King and Queen was either illegitimate or stupid or a thief or a person with ill intentions didn’t make matters easier.

In any case, not many visitors came these days. In the past people had come to see Liz and Friedrich with their own eyes, and some had also come to make promises, for even if scarcely anyone believed that Friedrich would rule over Bohemia again, it was nonetheless not completely impossible either. To promise something cost little: as long as the man was out of power, you didn’t have to keep your word, but if he reascended, he would remember those who had stuck by him in dark times. By this time, however, promises were all they received; no one brought presents anymore that were valuable enough to be turned into money.

With an impassive face she had shown Christian von Braunschweig the white canvas, too. Stupid, deceitful, and illegitimate people, she had explained, could not see the magnificent painting, and then she had observed with a pleasure difficult to describe how her tearful admirer had kept looking helplessly across at the wall where the picture, mocking and blank, withstood his pathos.

“This is the best gift anyone has ever given me,” she said to her fool.

“That’s not saying much, little Liz.”

“John Donne wrote me an ode. Fair phoenix bride, he called—”

“Little Liz, he was paid, he would have called you a stinking fish too if he had been given money for it. What do you think I would call you if you paid me better!”

“And I got a ruby necklace from the Kaiser, a diadem from the King of France.”

“Can I see it?”

She was silent.

“Did you have to sell it?”

She was silent.

“And who is John Dung anyway? What sort of fellow is that, and who is fearful Nick’s bride supposed to be?”

She was silent.

“Had to give it to the pawnbroker, your diadem? And the necklace from the Kaiser, little Liz, who is wearing it now?”

Not even her poor king had dared to say anything about the picture. And when she had explained to him that it was only a joke and the canvas was not enchanted, he had merely nodded and gazed at her uneasily.

She had always known that he wasn’t the cleverest. From the beginning it had been obvious, but for a man of his rank it wasn’t important. A prince did nothing, and if he happened to be unusually clever, it was nearly a blot on his honor. Subordinates had to be clever. He was himself—that was enough, nothing more was necessary.

This was the way of the world. There were a few real people, and then there were the rest: a shadowy army, a host of figures in the background, a swarm of ants crawling over the earth and having in common with each other that they were lacking something. They were born and died, were like the flecks of fluttering life that made up a flock of birds—if one disappeared, you hardly noticed it. The people who mattered were few.

The fact that her poor Friedrich was not the cleverest and also somewhat sickly, with a tendency to stomach pain and earaches, had already become apparent when he had come to London at the age of sixteen, in white ermine, with a court of four hundred attendants. He had come because the other suitors had stolen away or had at the decisive moment made no offer; first the young King of Sweden had declined, then Maurice of Orange, then Otto of Hesse. For a while, there had then been the positively foolhardy plan of marrying her to the Prince of Piedmont, who may not have had any money but was the nephew of the Spanish king—Papa’s old dream of a reconciliation with Spain—but the Spaniards had remained skeptical, and all at once there was no one left but the German Electoral Prince Friedrich and his brilliant prospects. The Palatine chancellor had spent months negotiating in London before they reached an agreement: a forty-thousand-pound dowry from Papa to Germany in exchange for ten thousand pounds a year from the Palatinate to London.

After the signing of the contract Friedrich himself had arrived, rigid with trepidation. He had begun by garbling the words of his speech; it was noticeable how pitiful his French was, and to forestall keener embarrassment, Papa had simply walked up to him and embraced him. Then, with pursed, dry lips, the poor fellow had given her the kiss prescribed by protocol.

The next day they had taken a boat ride on the largest vessel of the court; only Mama hadn’t wanted to come with them, because she found a prince Palatine beneath their station. Although the Palatine chancellor had claimed with the help of silly official opinions by his court jurists that an elector had the rank of a king, everyone knew that this was sheer nonsense. Only a king was a king.

On the boat ride, Friedrich had leaned on the railing and tried not to let his seasickness show. He had had the eyes of a child, but he had held himself perfectly erect as only those taught by the best court tutors could. You must be a good fencer, she had thought, and: you’re not ugly. Don’t worry, she would have liked best to whisper to him, I am with you now.

And now, so many years later, he still had impeccable posture. Whatever else had happened, however much he had been humiliated and made the laughingstock of Europe—to stand up straight was something he could still do as before, his head tilted back slightly, his chin raised, his hands clasped behind him, and he even still had his beautiful calf eyes.

She was fond of her poor king. She couldn’t help it. She had spent all these years with him, borne him more children than she could count. They called him the Winter King, her the Winter Queen—their fates were indissolubly bound together. That day on the Thames she had had no such foreboding, she had merely thought that she would have to teach the poor boy a few things, for when two people were married, they had to talk to each other. With this fellow here it could become difficult; he had no idea about anything.

He must have been utterly overwhelmed, so far away from his Heidelberg castle, from the cattle of his native land, from the pointed houses and little German people, in a city for the first time. And here he stood right in front of all the shrewd, fearsome lords and ladies and, to top it all, in front of Papa, who frightened everyone anyhow.

The evening after the boat ride, she and Papa had had their longest talk of her life. She hardly knew her father. She had not grown up with him but with Lord Harington at Coombe Abbey; families of rank didn’t raise their children themselves. Her father had been a shadow in her dreams, a figure in paintings, a character who appeared in fairy tales—the ruler of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, the hunter of godless witches, the terror of Spain, the Protestant son of the beheaded Catholic queen. When you met him, you were always surprised that he had such a long nose and such swollen bags under his eyes, which always seemed to be pensively looking inward. He always gave you the feeling that you had said something wrong. But this was on purpose; it had become a habit.

It had been their first real conversation. How do you, my dear daughter? That was how he had usually greeted her when she came to Whitehall. Excellent, I thank you, my dear father. It pleases your mother and me to see you faring well. Hardly as much as it pleases me to see you in good health, my dear father. In her mind she called him Papa, but she would not have dared to address him like that.

That evening they had been alone together for the first time. Papa stood by the window, his hands behind his back. For quite a while he didn’t say a word. And because she didn’t know what to say, she too was silent.

“The oaf has a great future,” he finally said.

Again he was silent. He took some marble thing from the shelf, gazed at it, and put it back.

“There are three Protestant electors,” he said, so softly that she had to lean forward, “and the Elector Palatine—that is, yours—is the highest in rank, the head of the Protestant Union in the Empire. The Kaiser is ill, soon there will be a new imperial election in Frankfurt. If our side has grown even stronger by then…” He scrutinized her. His eyes were so small and set so deep in their sockets that it seemed as if he were not even looking at you.

“A Calvinist Kaiser?” she asked.

“Never. Unthinkable. But a formerly Calvinist elector who has found his way to the Catholic faith. Just as France’s Henry once became Catholic or”—he tapped himself with a gentle gesture on his chest—“we became Protestants. The House of Habsburg is losing influence. Spain has almost forfeited Holland. The Bohemian nobility has extorted religious tolerance from the Kaiser.” He fell silent once again. Then he asked: “Do you like him, then?”

The question came as such a surprise that she didn’t know what to say. With a faint smile she tilted her head. This gesture usually worked; people were then satisfied without your having had to commit yourself to anything. But it had no effect on Papa.

“It’s a risk,” he said. “You didn’t know her, my aunt, the virgin, the old dragon. When I was young, no one thought that I would be her successor. She had my mother beheaded, and she didn’t like me very much. They thought that she would have me killed too, but it didn’t happen. She was your godmother, you bear her name, but she didn’t come to the baptism, a sign of her aversion to us. And nonetheless I came after her in the line of succession to the throne. No one thought that she would permit a Stuart king. I didn’t think so either. I will die before this year is over, that’s what I thought every year, but then, at the end of every year, I was still alive. And here I am, and she is rotting in the grave. So, then, do not shy from risk, Liz. And never forget that the poor fellow will do what you tell him. He doesn’t measure up to you.” He reflected. Then he added as if out of nowhere: “The gunpowder under the Parliament, Liz. We could all be dead. But we are still here.”

That was the longest speech she had ever heard him give. She waited, but instead of continuing to speak, he folded his hands behind his back again and without another word left the room.

And she remained behind alone. She looked out the window he had just been looking out as if she could in this way better understand her father, and thought of the gunpowder. It was only eight years ago that the assassins had tried to kill Papa and Mama and make the country Catholic again. Deep in the night Lord Harington had shaken her awake and cried: “They’re coming!”

At first she hadn’t known where she was and what he was talking about, and when her consciousness had gradually freed itself from the mists of sleep, it occurred to her how improper it was that this grown man was standing in her bedroom. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before.

“Do they want to kill me?”

“Worse. First you must convert, and then they will put you on the throne.”

Then they had journeyed, a night, a day, another night. Liz had sat beside her lady’s maid in a coach that had jerked so much that she had to vomit out the window several times. Behind the coach rode half a dozen armed men. Lord Harington rode in front. When they took a rest in the early morning hours, he explained to her in a whisper that he himself knew almost nothing. A messenger had come and had reported that a band of murderers under the command of a Jesuit was searching for Mary Stuart’s granddaughter. They wanted to kidnap her and make her queen. Her father was probably dead, her mother too.

“But there are no Jesuits in England. My great-aunt drove them out!”

“There are still a few. They conceal themselves. One of the worst is named Tesimond. We have been searching for him a long time, but he has always escaped, and now he is searching for you.” Lord Harington stood up with a groan. He was no longer the youngest, and it was hard for him to ride for hours. “We must go on!”

Then they had hidden in a small house at Coventry, and Liz had not been permitted to leave her room. She had had only a doll with her, no books, and from the second day on the boredom had been so agonizing that she would have preferred even the Jesuit Tesimond to the desolation of the room: always the same chest of drawers, the same floor tiles she had already counted so often—the third in the second row, counting from the window, had cracked, as had the seventh in the sixth row—and then the bed and the chamber pot, which one of the men emptied outside twice a day, and the candle that she was not permitted to light, lest someone see the glow through the window, and on a chair next to the bed her lady’s maid, who had already told Liz the whole story of her life three times, though nothing interesting had ever happened in it. The Jesuit couldn’t be so bad. He didn’t want to hurt her, after all, he wanted to make her queen!

“Your Royal Highness misunderstands,” Harington said. “You wouldn’t be free. You would have to do whatever the Pope says.”

“And now I have to do whatever you say.”

“Correct, and later you will be grateful.”

By that time the danger had passed. But none of them had known. The powder under the Parliament had been found before the conspirators had been able to ignite it, her parents had survived unscathed, the Catholics had been caught, and the hapless kidnappers were now themselves hunted and were hiding in the forests. But because they didn’t know this, Liz stayed another seven endless days in the room with the two cracked tiles, seven days next to her lady’s maid telling her about her uninteresting life, seven days without books, seven days with only a doll that as of the third day she had already hated more than she ever could have hated the Jesuit.

She hadn’t known that Papa had meanwhile dealt with the conspirators. He summoned not only the best torturers of his two kingdoms but also three pain experts from Persia and the Emperor of China’s most learned tormentor. He commanded them to cause the prisoners every kind of agony that was known to be possible for a person to cause other people, and in addition he had tortures invented that no one had yet envisioned. All the specialists were ordered to devise procedures more refined and dreadful than anything the great painters of the inferno had dreamed. The one condition was that the light of the soul not be extinguished and that the prisoner not go mad: the perpetrators still had to name their confidants, after all, and they should have time to ask God’s forgiveness and to repent. For Papa was a good Christian.

In the meantime the court had sent a troop of one hundred soldiers to protect Liz. But her hiding place was so good that the soldiers could no more find it than the conspirators might have done. So the days passed. And even more days passed and then even more, and all at once the boredom had abated, and it seemed to Liz in her room as if she now understood something about the nature of time that she had not grasped before: Nothing passed. Everything was. Everything remained. And even if things changed, it always happened in the one, same, never-changing now.

During the flights that came later she often thought back to this first flight. After the defeat at White Mountain it seemed to her as if she had prepared for it early and as if fleeing were familiar to her from time immemorial. “Fold the silk,” she exclaimed, “leave the dishes behind, better to take the linen, it’s worth more on the road! And as for the paintings, take the Spanish ones and leave the Bohemian, the Spaniards are better painters!” And to her poor Friedrich she said: “Pay it no mind. You run away, you hunker down for a while in a hiding place, and then you come back.”

For that was how it had been in Coventry. Eventually, they had learned that the danger had been averted, and had come back to London just in time for the great service of thanksgiving. The streets between Westminster and Whitehall were filled with cheering crowds. Then the King’s Men performed a play that their leading dramatist had written specially for the occasion. It was about a Scottish king who was killed by a rogue, a man with a black soul, spurred on by witches, who lied by telling the truth. It was a black play, full of fire and blood and diabolical power, and when it was over, she knew that she never wanted to see it again, even though it had been perhaps the best play she had seen in her life.

But her poor stupid husband wouldn’t listen to her when they were fleeing Prague. He was too horrified by the loss of his army and of his throne and only muttered again and again that it had been a mistake to accept the Bohemian crown. Everyone who mattered had told him that it was a mistake, everyone, time and again, but in his stupidity he had listened to the wrong people.

By which he meant her, of course.

“I listened to the wrong people!” he said again, just loud enough that she could hear it, as the coach—the least conspicuous one they had—left the capital.

At that moment she realized that he would not forgive her for this. But he would still love her, just as she loved him. The nature of marriage consisted not only in the fact that you had children, it also consisted of all the wounds you had inflicted on each other, all the mistakes you had made together, all the things you held against each other forever. He would not forgive her for persuading him to accept the crown, just as she would not forgive him for having always been too stupid for her. Everything would have been simpler if only he had been somewhat quicker-witted. In the beginning she had thought she would be able to change this, but then she had recognized that nothing could be done. That disappointment had never entirely faded, and whenever he entered a room with his well-bred firm steps or she looked into his beautiful face, she felt at the same time as love a slight pang.

She raised the curtain and looked out the coach window. Prague: the second capital of the world, the center of scholarship, the old seat of the Kaiser, the Venice of the East. Despite the darkness, the contours of the castle could be made out, illuminated by the glow of countless tongues of fire.

“We shall return,” she said, although even now she no longer believed it. But she knew that the only way to endure a flight was to cling to a promise. “You are the King of Bohemia, as God wills. You shall return.”

And as awful as it was, there was still something about this moment that pleased her. It reminded her of the theater: acts of state, a crown changing heads, a great lost battle. All that was missing was a speech.

For here too Friedrich had failed. When he had hastily taken leave of his followers, who were pale with worry, that would have been the moment for a speech; he would have had to climb onto a table and speak. Someone would have committed it to memory, someone taken it down and passed it on. A great speech would have made him immortal. But naturally nothing had occurred to him, he had mumbled something unintelligible, and then he and she were out the door, on the way into exile. And all the noble Bohemian lords whose names she had never been able to pronounce, all the Vrshvitshkys, Prtshkatrts, and Tshrrkattrrs that the court tutor responsible for the Czech language had whispered in her ear at every reception without her ever being able to repeat them, would no longer live to see the dawn of the new year. The Kaiser was not playing games.

“It’s all right,” she whispered in the coach, without meaning it, for it was not all right. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

“I should not have accepted the damned crown!”

“It’s all right.”

“I listened to the wrong people.”

“It’s all right!”

“Is it still possible to go back?” he whispered. “To make a change? With an astrologer? It would have to work, wouldn’t it, with the help of the stars, what do you think?”

“Yes, perhaps,” she replied, without knowing what he meant. And when she stroked his tearstained face, she thought, strangely enough, of their wedding night. She had known nothing, no one had deemed it necessary to explain such things to a princess, whereas someone had apparently told him that it was quite simple, you just had to take the woman, she would be shy at first, but then you seized her; you had to meet her with strength and determination like an adversary in battle. He must have been trying to follow this advice. But when suddenly he grabbed hold of her, she thought he had gone mad, and since he was a head shorter than she, she shook him off and said: “Stop this nonsense!” He made another attempt, and she pushed him away so hard that he staggered into the sideboard: A carafe shattered, and for the rest of her life she remembered the puddle on the stone inlays, on which three rose petals floated like little ships. There had been three—that she remembered clearly.

He straightened up and tried again.

And since she had noticed that she was stronger, she didn’t cry for help, but only held him firmly by the wrists. He could not break free. Gasping, he pulled; gasping, she held him; their eyes wide with fear, they stared at each other.

“Stop it,” she said.

He began to weep.

And as she would later in the coach, she whispered: “It’s all right, it’s all right!” and sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked his head.

He pulled himself together, tried one last time and grabbed at her breast. She slapped his face. Almost with relief he gave up. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. He sighed. Then he curled up, slipped so deep under the blanket that even his head could no longer be seen, and fell asleep immediately.

Only a few weeks later they conceived their first son.

He was a kind child, alert and as if suffused with light, he had bright eyes and a clear voice, and he was beautiful like his father and clever like Liz, and she remembered distinctly his rocking horse and a little castle he built out of little wooden blocks and how with a high, strong voice he had sung English songs, instructed by her. At the age of fifteen he drowned under a capsized ferryboat. They had lost children before, but never so late. When the children were little, you expected it almost daily, but they had become accustomed to this one for fifteen years, he had grown up before their eyes, and then, all at once, he was gone. She found herself thinking about him all the time, and always about the moments when he was trapped under the overturned vessel, yet when she managed to put him out of her mind, he only haunted her dreams all the more vividly.

But she knew nothing about this yet on their wedding night; nor did she know it later in the coach when they were fleeing Prague; only now did she know it, in the house at The Hague that they called their royal residence, even though it was only a villa with two floors: downstairs the sitting room, which they called the reception hall and sometimes even the throne room, and a kitchen, which they called the servants’ wing, and the little annex, which they called the stables, and on the second floor their bedroom, which they called their apartments. In front was a garden, which they called the park, surrounded by a hedge too infrequently trimmed.

She could never keep track of how many people were living with them. There were lady’s maids, there was a cook, there was Count Hudenitz—an old idiot who had fled Prague with them and whom Friedrich had without further ado appointed chancellor—there was a gardener, who was also the stable master, which didn’t mean much, since they had barely any animals in the stable, and there was a lackey, who announced the guests with a loud voice and afterward served the food. One day she realized that the lackey and the cook didn’t merely resemble each other, as she had previously thought, but were one and the same—how had she not noticed it before? The servants lived in the servants’ wing, except for the cook, who slept in the foyer, and the gardener, who spent the night in the throne room with his wife, if she was his wife, Liz was not sure, it was beneath the dignity of a queen to concern herself with such things, but the woman was round and winsome and a dependable minder of the children. Nele and the fool slept upstairs in the corridor, or perhaps they didn’t sleep at all; Liz never saw them sleep. Housekeeping not being her forte, she left it to the majordomo, who, incidentally, also cooked.

“Can I take the fool with me to Mainz?” asked Friedrich.

“What do you want with the fool?”

He had to appear there like a ruler, he explained in his awkward way. A court simply required a fool.

“Well, if you think it will help.”

And so they departed, her husband and the fool and Count Hudenitz and then also, so that the retinue wouldn’t look too small, the cook. She saw them receding against the gray November sky. From the window she watched them until they were out of sight. Some time passed. The movement of the trees in the wind was scarcely perceptible. Nothing else stirred.

She sat down in her old favorite spot, the chair between window and fireplace, in which there had not been a fire in a long time. She would have liked to ask her lady’s maid for another blanket, but unfortunately her lady’s maid had run away the day before yesterday. A new one would be found. There were always some commoners who wanted their daughter to serve a queen—even if it was a mocked queen, of whom funny little pictures circulated. In Catholic lands it was claimed that she had slept with every nobleman of Prague; she had long been aware of this, and she could do nothing about it but be especially dignified and kind and queenly. She and Friedrich had been placed under the imperial ban, and anyone who wanted to kill them could do so without any priest denying him blessing and salvation.

It began to snow. She closed her eyes and whistled softly to herself. People called her poor Friedrich the Winter King, but when it grew cold, he froze quite terribly. Soon the snow in the garden would be knee-deep, and no one would shovel the path, for her gardener too had disappeared. She would write to Christian von Braunschweig and ask him for a few men to shovel snow pour Dieu et pour elle.

She thought of the day that had changed everything. The day when the letter had come and, with it, doom. All the signatures: in sweeping strokes, one name as unpronounceable as the next. Lords she had never heard of were offering the Elector Friedrich the crown of Bohemia. They no longer wanted their old king who, in personal union, was also the Kaiser; their new ruler should be a Protestant. To seal their decision, they had thrown the imperial governors out the window of Prague Castle.

Only they had fallen into a pile of shit and had survived. There was always a lot of shit below castle windows due to all the chamber pots being emptied every day. The stupid thing was that thereupon in all the land the Jesuits preached that an angel had caught the governors and set them gently on the ground.

No sooner had the letter arrived than Friedrich wrote to Papa.

Dearest Son-in-Law, Papa replied by mounted courier, don’t do it under any circumstances.

Then Friedrich asked the princes of the Protestant Union. For days messengers came, breathless men on steaming horses, and every letter said the same thing: don’t be stupid, Your Serene Electoral Highness, don’t do it.

Friedrich asked anyone he could find. One must think it through carefully, he explained time and again. Bohemia was not part of the Empire’s territory; to accept the crown was thus, according to the opinion of authoritative legal scholars, not a violation of the oath of allegiance to the Imperial Majesty.

Don’t do it, Papa wrote again.

Only now did he ask Liz. She had been waiting for it; she was prepared.

It was late in the evening, and they were in the bedroom, surrounded by little flames standing motionless in the air—only the most expensive wax candles burned so still.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said too. Then she let a moment pass and added: “How often is one offered a crown?”

That was the moment that had changed their lives, the moment for which he never forgave her. For the rest of her life she would see it before her eyes: their four-poster bed with the coat of arms of the House of Wittelsbach on the canopy, the candle flames reflected in the carafe on the bedside table, the enormous painting of a woman with a little dog on the wall. Later she couldn’t remember who had painted it—it didn’t matter, they hadn’t taken it with them to Prague, it was lost.

“How often is one offered a crown? How often does it happen that it is a deed pleasing to God to accept it? The Bohemian Protestants were given the letter of tolerance, then it was taken back, the noose keeps tightening. You alone can help them.”

All at once she felt as if this bedroom with the four-poster bed, wall painting, and carafe were a stage and as if she were speaking before a hall full of spectators in spellbound silence. She thought of the great dramatist, the hovering magical power of his sentences; she felt as if she were surrounded by the shades of future historians, as if it weren’t she who spoke but the actress who later, in a play in which this moment occurred, had the task of portraying Princess Elizabeth Stuart. The play was about the future of Christendom and a kingship and a Kaiser. If she persuaded her husband, the world would take one course, and if she didn’t persuade him, it would take another course.

She stood up, walked up and down with measured steps, and delivered her speech.

She spoke of God and of duties. She spoke of the faith of the simple people and of the faith of the wise. She spoke of Calvin, who had taught all humanity not to take life lightly but as a test that one could fail every day, and once you had failed, you were a failure forever. She spoke of the obligation to take risks with pride and courage. She spoke of Julius Caesar, who, with the words “The die is cast,” had crossed the Rubicon.

“Caesar?”

“Let me finish!”

“But I wouldn’t be Caesar, I would be his enemy. At best I’d be Brutus. The Kaiser is Caesar!”

“In this analogy you are Caesar.”

“The Kaiser is Caesar, Liz. Caesar means Kaiser! It’s the same word.”

Perhaps it was the same word, she exclaimed, but that didn’t change the fact that in this analogy Caesar was not the Kaiser, even if Caesar meant Kaiser, rather he was the man who crossed the Rubicon and cast the die, and looking at it that way, Caesar was he, Friedrich, because he wanted to defeat his enemies, and not the Kaiser in Vienna, even if he bore the title Caesar!

“But Caesar didn’t defeat his enemies. His enemies stabbed him to death!”

“Anyone can stab anyone, that doesn’t mean anything! But they are forgotten, and Caesar’s name lives on!”

“Yes, and do you know where? In the word Kaiser!”

“When you’re King of Bohemia and I’m Queen, Papa will send us help. And when the Union of Protestant Princes sees that the English are protecting Prague, they will rally around us. The crown of Bohemia is the drop that makes the ocean—”

“The barrel! A drop makes the barrel overflow. A drop in the ocean, that stands for futility. You mean the barrel.”

“For God’s sake, this language!”

“That has nothing to do with German, that’s logic.”

At that point she had lost her patience and shouted at him to be quiet and listen, and he had murmured an apology and gone silent. And she had said everything once again: Rubicon, the die, God with us, and she noticed with pride that it sounded better the third time; now she had strung the right sentences together.

“Your father will send soldiers?”

She looked him in the eyes. This was the moment, now everything was up to her: everything that would happen as of now, all the centuries, the whole immeasurable future, everything hinged on her answer.

“He is my father, he won’t abandon me.”

And even though she knew that they would have the same conversation again the next day and the day after that, she also knew that the decision had been made and that she would be crowned in Prague’s cathedral and that she would have a court theater with the best players in the world.

She sighed. Unfortunately, she had never made it that far. She hadn’t had the time, she thought between the window and the cold fireplace as she watched the flakes falling. The one winter had not been enough. To build a court theater took years. Still, their coronation had been as sublime as she had imagined, and afterward her portrait had been painted by the best artists of Bohemia, Moravia, and England, and she had eaten from golden plates and led parades through the city, and boys dressed as cherubim had carried her train.

Meanwhile Friedrich had sent letters to Papa: the Kaiser will come, dear Father, he will come without doubt, we need protection.

Papa had written back and wished them strength and fortitude, he had summoned God’s blessing down upon them, he had given them advice on health, on the decoration of the throne room, and on reigning wisely, he had assured them of his eternal love, he had promised always to stand by them.

But he had not sent any soldiers.

And when Friedrich had finally written him beseechingly that he needed help for God’s and Christ’s sake, Papa had replied that never would even a second go by in which his dearest children were not the content of all his hope and trepidation.

But because he hadn’t sent any soldiers, the Protestant Union hadn’t sent any either, and thus all that remained to them was the Bohemian army, which had gathered outside the city in splendor and steel.

From the castle she saw them marching, and with cold horror it became clear to her that those flashing lances, those swords and halberds were not simply any mere shiny things but blades. They were knives, sharpened for the sole purpose of cutting human flesh, penetrating human skin, and shattering human bones. The people marching in step down there so beautifully would thrust these long knives into others’ faces, and they themselves would have knives thrust into their bellies and necks, and quite a few of them would be struck by lumps of cast iron flying fast enough to tear off heads, crush limbs, smash through bellies. And hundreds of buckets of blood that was still flowing in these men would soon no longer be in them, it would spray, spill, finally seep away. What did the earth actually do with all that blood, did the rain leach it out, or was it a fertilizer that made special plants grow? A doctor had told her that the last sperm of the dying begat little mandrake men, root creatures trembling with life, which screamed like infants when you pulled them out of the ground.

And all at once she knew that this army would lose. She knew it with an assurance that made her dizzy. Never before had she seen into the future, nor did she manage to do so ever again, but at that moment it was not a presentiment but the clearest certainty: these men would die, almost all of them, except for those who would be crippled and those who would simply run away, and then Friedrich and she and the children would flee westward, and a life in exile would lie ahead of them, for they wouldn’t be able to return to Heidelberg either, the Kaiser would not allow it.

And that was exactly what had happened.

They moved from one Protestant court to the next, with a dwindling retinue and dwindling money, under the shadow of the imperial ban and the revoked electoral dignity, for Friedrich’s Catholic cousin in Bavaria was according to the Kaiser’s will now Elector instead of Friedrich. Under the Golden Bull the Kaiser did not even have the authority to make such a decree, but who was supposed to prevent him? The Kaiser’s commanders won every battle. Papa could probably have helped, and indeed he wrote full of goodwill and concern, regularly and in the finest style. But he didn’t send soldiers. He also advised them not to come to England. Due to the negotiations with Spain the situation was not favorable at the moment. After all, Spanish troops were now stationed in the Palatinate to continue the war against Holland from there—keep waiting patiently, my children, God is with the righteous and fortune with the decent, don’t lose heart, not a day goes by when your father James is not praying for you.

And still the Kaiser won battle after battle. He defeated the Union, he defeated the King of Denmark, and for the first time it seemed possible that Protestantism would vanish again from God’s world.

But then the Swede Gustav Adolf, who had not wanted to marry Liz, landed and won. He won every battle, and now he was in winter quarters outside Mainz, and after long hesitation Friedrich had written to him, in a sweeping hand and with a royal seal, and only two months later a letter with an equally large seal had arrived at The Hague: We are pleased to know that you are well and hope that you will visit.

It was not the best moment. Friedrich had a cold, his back ached. But there was only one person who could get them back to the Palatinate and perhaps even back to Prague, and when he summoned you, you had to go.

“Do I really have to?”

“Yes, Fritz.”

“But he cannot give me orders.”

“Of course not.”

“I am a king as he is.”

“Of course, Fritz.”

“But do I have to go?”

“Yes, Fritz.”

And so he had set off, with the fool, the cook, and Hudenitz. It was about time too that things changed; the day before yesterday there had been groats for lunch and bread for dinner and yesterday bread for lunch and nothing for dinner. The Dutch States General were so weary of them that they hardly gave them enough money to survive anymore.

She squinted into the snowstorm. It had grown cold. Here I sit, she thought, Queen of Bohemia, Electress of the Palatinate, daughter of the King of England, niece of the King of Denmark, grandniece of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth, granddaughter of Mary, Queen of Scots, and can’t afford firewood.

She noticed that Nele was standing next to her. For a moment this surprised her. Why hadn’t she gone with her husband, if indeed that’s what he was?

Nele curtsied, placed one foot pointed in front of the other, spread her arms, and splayed her fingers.

“There won’t be dancing today,” said Liz. “Today we will talk.”

Nele nodded submissively.

“We’ll tell each other things. I’ll tell you, you’ll tell me. What do you want to know?”

“Madame?”

She was somewhat unkempt, and she had the coarse build and the crude face of her lowly station, but she was actually pretty: clear, dark eyes, silky hair, curved hips. Only, her chin was too broad, and her lips a bit too thick.

“What do you want to know?” Liz repeated. She felt a pang in her chest, half fear, half excitement. “Ask whatever you want.”

“It’s not my place, madame.”

“If I say so, it’s your place.”

“It doesn’t bother me that people laugh at me and Tyll. For that’s our job.”

“That’s not a question.”

“The question is, does it hurt Your Majesty?”

Liz was silent.

“That everyone is laughing, madame, does that hurt?”

“I don’t understand.”

Nele smiled.

“You have decided to ask me something that I don’t understand. As you wish. I have given you an answer. Now it’s my turn. Is the fool your husband?”

“No, madame.”

“Why not?”

“Does there need to be a reason?”

“There does need to be one, yes.”

“We ran away together. His father was condemned for witchcraft, and I didn’t want to stay, I didn’t want to marry a Steger—that’s why I went away with him.”

“Why didn’t you want to marry?”

“Always filth, madame, and in the evening no light. Candles are too expensive. You sit in the dark and eat groats. Always groats. And I didn’t like the Steger son either.”

“But Tyll?”

“I’m telling you, he isn’t my husband.”

“Now it’s your turn again to ask a question,” said Liz.

“Is it bad to have nothing?”

“How should I know? You tell me!”

“It’s not easy,” said Nele. “No protection, through the land without a home, no house to keep the wind at bay. Now I have one.”

“If I send you away, you won’t have one anymore. So, then, you fled together, but why isn’t he your husband?”

“A balladeer took us along. In the next market town we met a traveling entertainer, Pirmin. We learned the trade from him, but he was cruel and didn’t give us enough to eat, and he hit us too. We headed north, away from the war, almost made it to the sea, but then the Swedes landed, and we turned west to avoid them.”

“You and Tyll and Pirmin?”

“By then it was the two of us again.”

“Did you run away from Pirmin?”

“Tyll killed him. May I ask a question again now, madame?”

Liz was silent for a moment. Nele spoke a strange peasant German; perhaps she had misunderstood something. “Yes,” she then said, “now you may ask a question again.”

“How many maids did you used to have?”

“Under my marriage contract I had forty-three servants for myself alone, among them six noble ladies-in-waiting, each of whom had four maids.”

“And today?”

“Now it’s my turn again. Why isn’t he your husband? Don’t you like him?”

“He is like a brother and parents. He is all I have. And I am all he has.”

“But you don’t want him as a husband?”

“Is it my turn again, madame?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did you want him as a husband, madame?”

“Whom?”

“His Majesty. Did Your Majesty want His Majesty as a husband to Your Majesty when Your Majesty married him?”

“That’s different, child.”

“Why?”

“It was an affair of state. My father and two ministers negotiated for months. And therefore I wanted him before I had ever seen him.”

“And when Your Majesty saw him?”

“Then I wanted him all the more,” Liz said with a furrowed brow. She was no longer enjoying this conversation.

“His Majesty is indeed a very majestic gentleman.”

Liz looked her sharply in the face.

Nele returned her gaze with eyes wide open. It was impossible to tell whether she was making fun of her.

“Now you can dance,” said Liz.

Nele curtsied. Then she began. Her shoes clacked on the parquet floor, her arms swung, her shoulders rolled, her hair flew. It was one of the most difficult dances in the latest style, and she did it so gracefully that Liz regretted not having musicians anymore.

She closed her eyes, listened to the clatter of Nele’s shoes, and thought about what she should sell next. There were a few paintings left, among them her portrait, painted by that kind man from Delft, and the one by the self-important wretch with the large mustache who had brandished his brush with such pomp; she found his painting somewhat clumsy, but it was probably worth a great deal. She had already given away her jewelry, yet there was still a diadem and two or three necklaces; the situation wasn’t hopeless.

The clatter had stopped. She opened her eyes. She was alone in the room. Where had Nele gone? How could she be so presumptuous? No one was permitted to leave the presence of a sovereign without having been dismissed.

She looked outside. On the lawn there was already a thick layer of snow, the branches of the trees bent—but hadn’t it just begun to snow? All at once she was no longer certain how long she had been sitting here, in this chair by the window beside the cold fireplace, the patched blanket on her knees. Had Nele been here just now, or was that a while ago? And how many people had Friedrich taken with him to Mainz? Who had remained with her?

She tried to count: The cook was with him, the fool too, the second lady’s maid had asked for a week’s leave to visit her ailing parents, she probably would not come back. Perhaps there was still someone in the kitchen, perhaps not, how was one supposed to know, she had never been in the kitchen before. There was a night watchman too—so she assumed, but since she didn’t leave her bedroom at night, she had never seen him. The cupbearer? He was a fine elderly gentleman, very distinguished, but now all at once it seemed to her as if he hadn’t appeared in a long time; either he had remained in Prague or died somewhere on their way from exile to exile—just as Papa too had died without her having seen him again, and suddenly her brother reigned in London, whom she hardly knew and from whom there was even less reason to expect anything.

She listened. In the next room something rustled and clicked, but when she held her breath to hear better, she could no longer make it out. It was completely silent.

“Is someone there?”

No one answered.

Somewhere there was a bell. When she rang it, someone appeared. So it had always been, as was proper, so it had been her whole life. But where was it, this bell?

Perhaps everything would change soon. If Gustav Adolf and Friedrich, that is, the man she had almost married and the one she then actually had, came to an agreement, then there would again be celebrations in Prague, then they could return to the high castle, at the end of the winter, when the war resumed. For that was what happened every year: when snow fell, the war took a break, and when the birds came back and the flowers sprouted and the ice released the streams, the war too got going again.

A man was standing in the room.

That was odd—for one thing, because she hadn’t rung, and for another, because she had never seen this man before. For a moment she wondered whether she ought to be afraid. Assassins were cunning, they could sneak in anywhere, nowhere was safe. But this man didn’t look dangerous, and he bowed as was proper, and then he said something that was far too strange for a murderer.

“Madame, the donkey is gone.”

“What donkey? And who is that?”

“Who is the donkey?”

“No, who is that. Who is…that there?” She pointed to him, but the idiot didn’t understand. “Who are you?”

He spoke for a while. She found it hard to understand him, for her German was still not good, and his was especially coarse. Only gradually did it dawn on her that he was trying to explain that he was responsible for the stable and that the fool had returned and taken the donkey. The donkey and Nele—he had taken her too. The three of them had departed together.

“Just a donkey? The other animals are still there?”

He answered, she didn’t understand, he answered again, and she comprehended that there were no other animals. The stable was now empty. Which was why, the man explained, he was standing here before her: he needed a new job.

“But why did the fool come back at all, what about His Majesty? Did His Majesty come back too?”

Only the fool had come back, said the man who due to the empty stable was no longer a stable master, and then he had gone again, with the woman and the donkey. He had left the letter behind.

“A letter? Let me see it!”

The man reached into his right pants pocket, reached into the left, scratched himself, reached into the right again, found a folded piece of paper. He was sorry about the donkey, he said. It had been an unusually clever animal. The fool had had no right to take it. He had tried to prevent him from doing so, of course, but the fellow had played a nefarious prank on him. It was very embarrassing, and he didn’t want to talk about it.

Liz unfolded the piece of paper. It was crumpled and stained, the black letters were smudged, but she recognized the handwriting at one glance.

For a moment, in which she had skimmed it with one part of her mind already and with another part not yet, she was inclined to tear the letter up and simply forget that she had ever received it. But she couldn’t do that, of course. She gathered her strength, clenched her fists, and read.

II

Gustav Adolf had no right to keep him waiting. Not only because it was impolite. No, he literally wasn’t permitted to do it. How one behaved toward other royal personages was not at one’s discretion, it was governed by strict rules. The crown of Saint Wenceslas was older than the crown of Sweden, and Bohemia was the older and richer of the two lands, thus the ruler of Bohemia enjoyed seniority over a king of Sweden—not to mention the fact that an elector too had royal rank, the Palatine court had once had an official opinion issued on it, it was proven. Now, it was true, he had been placed under the imperial ban, but the Swedish king had declared war on the Kaiser who had imposed the ban, and the Protestant Union had never accepted the revocation of the electoral dignity, therefore the King of Sweden was obliged to treat him as an elector and as such he had equal status to him—an equal status in general princely rank, and if one took into account how far back the family traced its lineage, the Palatine House clearly outranked the House of Vasa. Thus, however you looked at it, it wouldn’t do that Gustav Adolf was keeping him waiting.

The king had a headache. He had difficulty breathing. He had not been prepared for the smell of the camp. He had known that cleanliness didn’t prevail when thousands upon thousands of soldiers along with their supply train were camping in one place, and he still remembered the smell of his own army, which he had commanded outside Prague before it disappeared, seeping away into the ground, dispersing like smoke, but that had been nothing like this—this was unimaginable. You smelled the camp even before it came into view, a whiff of sourness and acridity hovering over the depopulated landscape.

“God, how it stinks,” the King had said.

“Awful,” the fool had replied. “Absolutely awful. Winter King, it’s time you took a bath.”

The cook and the four soldiers the Dutch States General had reluctantly given him for protection had laughed stupidly, and the King had considered for a moment whether he should put up with it, but that’s what fools were for, in the end, such conduct was proper when you were a king. The world treated you with respect, but this one person was permitted to say anything.

“The King needs a bath,” said the cook.

“He needs to wash his feet,” cried a soldier.

The King looked at Count Hudenitz riding next to him, but since the count’s face remained impassive, he could pretend he hadn’t heard it.

“And behind his ears,” said another soldier, and again everyone laughed except the count and the fool.

The King didn’t know what he ought to do. It would have been appropriate to strike at the shameless fellow, but he didn’t feel well, for days he had had a cough, and what if the man struck back? The soldier was ultimately answerable to the States General, not to him. On the other hand, he certainly couldn’t let people insult him who were not his court jesters.

Then they had seen the camp from a hilltop, and the King had forgotten his anger, and the soldiers had no longer thought to mock him. Like a white city wavering in the wind it had lain at their feet—a city with a gentle movement going through its houses, a back and forth, a gliding and undulating. Only at second glance did you realize that this city consisted of tents.

The closer they came, the stronger the smell grew. It stung your eyes, it pierced your chest, and when you held a cloth over your face, it penetrated the fabric. The King squinted, he gagged. He tried to take shallow breaths, but in vain, there was no escape, he gagged more violently. He noticed that Count Hudenitz wasn’t doing any better, and the soldiers too were pressing their hands over their faces. The cook was deathly pale. Even the fool no longer had his usual impudent expression.

The earth was churned up. The horses sank in, trudging as if through deep mire. Muck was heaped up dark brown on the roadside. The King tried to tell himself that it probably wasn’t what he suspected, but he knew it was precisely that: the excrement of a hundred thousand people.

That wasn’t all it stank of. It also stank of wounds and sores, of sweat and of all diseases known to man. The King blinked. It seemed to him as if you could even see the smell, a poisonous yellow thickening of the air.

“Where are you heading?”

A dozen cuirassiers were blocking their way—tall, composed-looking men with helmets and breastplates, such as the King hadn’t seen since his days in Prague. He looked at Count Hudenitz. Count Hudenitz looked at the soldiers. The soldiers looked at the King. Someone had to speak, had to announce him.

“His Bohemian Majesty and Serene Highness Elector and Count Palatine,” the King finally said himself. “On the way to your supreme commander.”

“Where is His Bohemian Majesty?” asked one of the cuirassiers. He spoke Saxon dialect, and the King had to remind himself that only a small number of Swedes fought on the Swedish side—just as there were hardly any Danes in the Danish army and merely a few hundred Czechs had stood outside Prague during the battle.

“Here,” said the King.

The cuirassier gave him an amused look.

“It’s me. His Majesty. That’s me.”

The other cuirassiers grinned too.

“What’s so funny?” asked the King. “We have a letter of safe conduct, an invitation from the King of Sweden. Bring me to him at once.”

“All right, all right,” said the cuirassier.

“I will tolerate no disrespect,” said the King.

“Very well,” said the cuirassier. “Come along now, Majesty.”

And then he had led them through the outskirts of the camp into the interior. As the stench, which had already been so pestilential that you might have thought it couldn’t grow any stronger, grew ever stronger, they passed the covered wagons of the supply train: drawbars jutted into the air, sick horses lay on the ground, children played in the filth, women nursed infants or washed clothes in tubs of brown water. These were the buyable soldiers’ brides, but they were also the wives with whom many a soldier traveled. A man who had a family brought them with him to war; where else should they have stayed?

Here the King saw something horrible. He looked at it, didn’t realize at first what it was, it defied recognition, but when you looked at it longer, it took shape, and you understood. He quickly looked elsewhere. He heard Count Hudenitz groaning next to him.

It was dead children. Probably none of them older than five, most of them not even a year old. They lay there heaped up and discolored, with blond, brown, and red hair, and when you looked closely, many pairs of eyes were open, forty or more, and the air was dark with flies. When they had passed, the King was tempted to turn around, because even though he didn’t want to see it, he did want to see it, but he resisted the temptation.

Now they were in the interior of the camp, among the soldiers. Tents stood beside tents, men sat around fires, roasted meat, played cards, slept on the ground, drank. Everything would have been normal if you hadn’t seen so many sick men: sick men in the mud, sick men on sacks of straw, sick men on wagons—not merely wounded men, but men with sores, men with bumps on their faces, men with watering eyes and drooling mouths. Not a few lay there motionless and bent; you couldn’t have said whether they were dead or dying.

The stench was now hardly bearable. The King and his escorts pressed their hands over their noses. They all tried not to breathe. Only when there was no other choice did they gasp for breath behind their palms. The King gagged again, he gathered all his strength, but he gagged even more violently, and then he had to vomit off his horse. Immediately Count Hudenitz and the cook and then even one of the Dutch soldiers had the same reaction.

“Are you finished?” asked the cuirassier.

“It’s Your Majesty,” said the fool.

“Your Majesty,” said the cuirassier.

“He’s finished,” said the fool.

As they rode on, the King closed his eyes. This helped a little, for you actually smelled less when you didn’t see anything. Still, you smelled enough. He heard someone saying something, then he heard shouts, then he heard laughter from all sides, but it didn’t matter; let them make fun of him. All he wanted was not to have to endure this stench anymore.

And so he had been brought with his eyes closed to the royal tent, in the center of the camp, guarded by a dozen Swedes in full uniform, the king’s bodyguard, who stood here to fend off dissatisfied soldiers. The Swedish crown was always behind in its payments. Even if you won all the battles and took everything the defeated land offered, war was not a business that paid for itself.

“I bring a king,” said the cuirassier who had led them.

The guards laughed.

The King heard his own soldiers join in the laughter. “Count Hudenitz!” he said in his sharpest authoritative tone. “This insolent behavior must come to an end.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the count muttered, and strangely enough it worked and the stupid swine went silent.

The King dismounted. He was dizzy. He bent forward and coughed for a while. One of the guards folded back the tent flap, and the King entered with his escorts.

That had been half an eternity ago. Two hours, perhaps three, they had been waiting, on low little benches without backrests, and the King no longer knew how he was supposed to go on overlooking the fact that he was being left sitting here; but he absolutely had to overlook it, because otherwise he would have had to stand up and leave, yet no one but this Swede could bring him back to Prague. Might it have had to do with the fact that the fellow had wanted to marry Liz? He had written dozens of letters, swearing his love countless times, again and again he had sent his portrait, but she hadn’t wanted him. That was probably the reason. This pettiness was his revenge.

Still, perhaps his need for retaliation would now be sated. Perhaps this was a good sign. Possibly the waiting meant that Gustav Adolf would help him. He rubbed his eyes. As always when he was agitated, his hands felt clammy, and in his stomach was a burning that no herbal tea could assuage. During the battle outside Prague it had been so strong that he had had to remove himself from the battlefield due to his attacks of colic; at home, surrounded by servants and courtiers, he had waited for the outcome, the worst hour of his life up to that point—except that everything that was to follow, every single hour, every moment, had been far worse.

He heard himself sigh. The wind above them rustled the tent. He heard men’s voices outside. Somewhere someone was screaming, either a wounded man or a man dying of the plague. In all camps there were plague victims. No one spoke of it, for no one wanted to think about it; there was nothing anyone could do.

“Tyll,” said the King.

“King?” said the fool.

“Do something.”

“Is time going by too slowly for your liking?”

The King was silent.

“Because he’s keeping you waiting so long, because he’s treating you like his renderer, like his barber, like his stool groom, that’s why you’re bored, and I’m supposed to offer you some entertainment, right?”

The King was silent.

“I’d be happy to.” The fool leaned forward. “Look me in the eyes.”

Hesitantly, the King looked at the fool. The pursed lips, the thin chin, the pied jerkin, the calfskin cap; once he had asked him why he wore this costume, whether he was perhaps trying to dress up as an animal, to which the fool had replied: “Oh no, as a person!”

Then he did as he was told and looked him in the eyes. He blinked. It was unpleasant, because he wasn’t accustomed to holding another person’s gaze. But anything was better than having to talk about the fact that the Swede was keeping him waiting, and he had asked the fool for entertainment, after all, and now he was also a little curious what he was up to. Suppressing the desire to close his eyes, he stared at the fool.

He thought of the white canvas. It hung in his throne room and had at first given him much pleasure. “Tell the visitors that stupid people don’t see the picture, tell them only the highborn see it, just say it, and you will witness a miracle!” It had been hilarious how the visitors had pretended, looking at the white picture discerningly and nodding. Of course they hadn’t claimed to actually see the picture, no one was so maladroit, and almost all of them were very well aware that there was nothing but a white canvas hanging there. But first of all they simply were not completely sure whether some magic wasn’t at work, and secondly they didn’t know whether Liz and he perhaps believed in it—and to be suspected by a king of stupidity or lowly origins was, in the end, just as bad as being stupid or of lowly origins.

Even Liz had said nothing. Even she, his wonderful, beautiful, but ultimately not always very clever wife, had looked at the picture and remained silent. Even she had not been sure, of course not, she was only a woman.

He had wanted to speak to her about it. Liz, he had wanted to say, stop this nonsense, don’t put on an act for me! But suddenly he hadn’t dared. Because if she believed in it, only a little bit, if she too thought a spell had been cast on the canvas, then what would she think of him?

And if she spoke of it to others? If she said something like: His Majesty, my husband, the King, he has seen no picture on the canvas, then how would he appear in their eyes? His status was fragile, he was a king without a country, he was an exile, he was utterly dependent on what people thought of him—what should he do if word went around that in his throne room hung a magic picture that only the highborn could see, but he couldn’t? Of course there was no picture there, it had been one of the fool’s jokes, but now that the canvas hung there, it had developed its own power, and the King had realized with horror that he could neither take it down nor say anything about it. Neither could he claim that he saw a painting where there was no painting, for there was no surer way to prove himself an idiot, nor could he declare that the canvas was white, for if the others believed that an enchanted picture hung there with the power to expose the lowly and stupid, then that was enough to disgrace him completely. He couldn’t even speak of it to his poor, sweet, dull-witted wife. It was maddening. The fool had done all this to him.

How long had the fool been staring at him now? He wondered what the fellow might be planning. Tyll’s eyes were completely blue. They were very bright, almost watery, they seemed to glow faintly of their own accord, and in the middle of the eyeball was a hole. Behind it was—well, what? Behind it was Tyll. Behind it was the soul of the fool, that which he was.

Again the King wanted to close his eyes, but he held the fool’s gaze. It became clear to him that what was happening on one side was happening on the other too: just as he was looking into the fool’s innermost depths, so the fool was now looking into him.

Completely incongruously he thought of the moment he had looked his wife in the eye for the first time, the evening after their marriage. How shy she had been, how fearful. She had held her hands in front of the bodice he had been about to unlace, but then she had looked up and he had seen her face in the candlelight, up close for the first time, and at that moment he had sensed what it’s like to truly be one with another person; but when he had spread his arms to pull her to him he had struck the carafe of rose water on the bedside table, and the tinkling of the shards had broken the spell: The puddle on the ebony parquet floor, he could still see it before his eyes, and drifting on it, like little ships, the rose petals. There had been five petals. That he remembered clearly.

Then she had begun to weep. Apparently no one had explained to her what had to happen on a wedding night, and so he had let her be, because although a king had to be strong, he had above all always been gentle, and they had fallen asleep side by side like brother and sister.

In another bedroom, at home in Heidelberg, they had later discussed the great decision. Night after night, again and again, she had dithered and cautioned, in the age-old manner of women, and he had repeatedly explained to her that one didn’t receive an offer like this without the will of God and that one had to accept one’s fate. But the Kaiser, she had cried time and again, what about his wrath, no one rose up against the Kaiser, and he had patiently explained to her the argument his jurists had so persuasively presented to him: that the acceptance of the Bohemian crown would not be a breach of the imperial peace because Bohemia wasn’t part of the Empire.

And so he had finally persuaded her, as he had persuaded everyone else. He had made clear to her that Bohemia’s throne rightfully belonged to whomever the estates of Bohemia wanted as king, and therefore they had left Heidelberg and moved to Prague, and he would never forget the day of the coronation, the vast cathedral, the huge choir, and to this day it echoed within him: You are now a king, Fritz. You are one of the great.

“Don’t close your eyes,” said the fool.

“I’m not,” said the King.

“Be quiet,” said the fool, and the King wondered whether he could let that pass, never mind fool’s license, that went too far.

“What’s going on with the donkey anyway?” he asked, to annoy the fool. “Can he do anything yet?”

“He will soon speak like a preacher,” said the fool.

“And what does he say?” asked the King. “What can he do now?”

Two months ago he had spoken in the fool’s presence about the wondrous birds of the Orient that could form complete sentences so that you’d think people were talking to you. He had read about them in Athanasius Kircher’s book on God’s animal world and he had not been able to get the thought of talking birds out of his head ever since.

But the fool had said that it was nothing to teach a bird to talk; all it took was a little skill to make any animal chatty. Animals were smarter than people, which was why they kept quiet: they were determined not to land themselves in trouble over trivialities. But as soon as you offered an animal good reasons for speaking, it broke its silence. He could prove this at any time in exchange for good food.

“Good food?”

Not for himself, the fool had protested, but for the animal. That’s how you do it: you stick food in a book and put it in front of the animal again and again and again, with patience and strength. In its voraciousness it turns the pages and in the process picks up more and more of human language. After two months you get results.

“What kind of animal?”

“It can be done with any kind. As long as it’s not too small, otherwise you won’t hear its voice. With worms you won’t get far. Insects aren’t good either; they’re always flying away before they’ve finished a sentence. Cats are always argumentative, and colorful Oriental birds like the ones the wise Jesuit describes aren’t found here. So that leaves dogs, horses, and donkeys.”

“We have no more horses, and the dog has run away.”

“He’s no great loss. But the donkey in the stable. Give me a year, then I can—”

“Two months!”

“That’s not much time.”

Not without gloating, the King had reminded the fool that he himself had just spoken of two months. That was how much time he’d have, no more, and if there was no result to be seen in two months, he could brace himself for a thrashing of biblical proportions.

“But I need food to put in the book,” the fool had replied almost sheepishly. “And not a small amount.”

The King was indeed aware that they never had enough food. But he had gazed at the wretched white canvas on the wall and with sly anticipation promised his fool, who had for a while now loomed larger in his mind than was reasonable, that he could have as much food as he needed for the undertaking, provided that the donkey would speak in two months.

The fool had actually kept up the pretense. Every day he had disappeared into the stable with oats, butter, and a bowl of honey-sweetened groats along with a book. Once, the King’s curiosity had become overwhelming and against all seemliness he had gone to take a look and had found the fool sitting on the floor, the book open on his knees, while beside him the donkey stared good-naturedly into space.

Things were progressing quite well, the fool had immediately asserted, they had already done I and A, and by the day after tomorrow the next sound was to be expected. Then he had let out a bleating laugh, and the King, now feeling ashamed of his interest in all this nonsense, had withdrawn without a word to devote himself to affairs of state, which in dismal reality meant that he had drafted a further request for military support from his brother-in-law in England and a further request for money from the Dutch States General, as always without hope.

“Well, what does he say,” the King repeated while looking into the fool’s eyes, “what can he say now?”

“The donkey speaks well, but what he says doesn’t make much sense. He has little knowledge, he’s seen nothing of the world—give him time.”

“Not a day more than agreed!”

The fool giggled. “In the eyes, King, look me in the eyes, and now tell everyone what you see!”

The King cleared his throat to reply, but then he found it hard to speak. It was dark. Colors and shapes assembled themselves. He saw himself standing before the English family again: the pale James, his feared father-in-law; his Danish mother-in-law, Anne, rigid with arrogance; and his bride, whom he hardly dared to look at. Then a whirling and swaying grew stronger and abated again, and he no longer knew where he was.

He had to cough, and when he recovered his breath, he realized that he was lying on the ground. There were men standing around him. He saw them only blurrily. There was something white above them—it was the tent, held up by poles, rippling slightly in the wind. Now he recognized Count Hudenitz, pressing his plumed hat against his chest, his face furrowed with worry, next to him the fool, then the cook, then one of the soldiers, then a grinning fellow in a Swedish uniform. Had he fainted?

The King reached his hand out. Count Hudenitz grasped it and helped him to his feet. He staggered, his legs gave way again, the cook held him from the other side until he was standing. Yes, he had fainted. At the most inappropriate time, in the tent of Gustav Adolf, whom he had to persuade with strength and shrewdness that their fortunes were linked, he had fallen over like a woman in a tight bodice.

“Gentlemen!” he heard himself saying. “Applaud the fool!”

He noticed that his shirtfront was soiled, his collar, his jacket, the decorations on his chest. Had he been sick too?

“Clap for Tyll Ulenspiegel!” he cried. “What a feat! What an amazing thing!” He grabbed the fool by the ear. It felt soft and sharp and unpleasant. He let go of it again. “But watch out that we don’t give you to the Jesuits. That borders on witchcraft—what a trick!”

The fool was silent. He had a crooked smile on his face. As always the King couldn’t interpret the expression.

“He is a magician, my fool. Fetch water, clean my garments, don’t stand around.” The King forced a laugh.

Count Hudenitz set to work on his shirtfront with a cloth; as he wiped and rubbed, his wrinkled face hovered much too close to the King’s.

“One must be careful of the fellow!” the King exclaimed. “Clean faster, Hudenitz. One must be careful! No sooner has he looked me in the eyes than I’ve fallen over—what a magician, what a trick!”

“You fell over on your own,” said the fool.

“You must teach me the trick!” the King cried. “As soon as the donkey has learned to speak, I want to learn the trick too.”

“You’re teaching a donkey to speak?” one of the Dutchmen asked.

“If someone like you can speak and if even the stupid King is constantly speaking, then why shouldn’t a donkey speak?”

The King would have liked to slap the fool’s face, but he felt too weak, so he joined in the soldiers’ laughter, and then he was overcome with dizziness again. The cook supported him.

And just at this completely inopportune moment someone folded back the flap to the adjacent room, and a man in the red uniform of the majordomo stepped out and scrutinized the King with a look of condescending curiosity.

“His Majesty will see you now.”

“Finally,” said the King.

“Excuse me?” asked the master of ceremonies. “What was that?”

“It’s about time,” said the King.

“That’s no way to speak in the anteroom of His Majesty.”

“This creature shall not talk to me!” The King pushed him away and entered the neighboring room with a firm step.

He saw a map table, he saw an unmade bed, he saw gnawed bones and bitten apples on the ground. He saw a short, fat man—round head with a round nose, round belly, scrubby beard, thinning hair, shrewd little eyes. The man went straight up to the King, seized him by the arm with one hand and struck him so hard in the chest with the other that he would have fallen over if the man hadn’t pulled him to him and embraced him.

“Dear friend,” he said. “Old dear good friend!”

“Brother,” gasped the King.

Gustav Adolf was pungent, and his strength was astonishing. Now he pushed the King away and eyed him.

“At last we meet, dear brother,” said the King.

He could see that Gustav Adolf didn’t like the form of address, and this confirmed his fears: the Swede didn’t regard him as his equal.

“After all these years,” the King went on with as much dignity as he could, “after all the letters, all the messages, finally face-to-face.”

“I’m glad too,” said Gustav Adolf. “How goes it, my friend, how are you faring? What about money? Have enough to eat?”

It took the King a moment to realize that he was being greeted in the familiar form. Was this really happening? It must have been due to this man’s poor German; perhaps it was even a Swedish quirk.

“Concern for Christendom weighs heavily on me,” said the King. “As it does on…” He swallowed, then brought himself to use the familiar form. “As it does on you, my friend.”

“Yes, right,” said Gustav Adolf. “Something to drink?”

The King reflected. The thought of wine nauseated him, but it probably wasn’t wise to decline.

“That’s the spirit!” Gustav Adolf exclaimed, clenching his fist, and even as the King was hoping that he wouldn’t be subjected to it this time, Gustav Adolf struck.

The King couldn’t breathe. Gustav Adolf handed him a cup. He took it and drank. The wine tasted disgusting.

“It’s terrible wine,” said Gustav Adolf. “We got it from some cellar, can’t be choosy, that’s war.”

“I think it’s turned,” said the King.

“Better turned than none,” said Gustav Adolf. “What do you want, my friend, why are you here?”

The King looked into the bearded, shrewd, round face. So this was the savior of Protestant Christendom, the great hope. And yet once it had been he himself. How had it come to pass that it was now this fellow here, this fat-gutted man with the scraps of food in his beard?

“We’re winning,” said Gustav Adolf. “Is that why you’re here? Because we’re defeating them, at every encounter? Up in the north we defeated them and then during the advance and then down in Bavaria. We’ve been victorious every time, because they’re weak and disorganized. Because they don’t know how to drill the men. But I do. How is it with your men, I mean, how was it when you had some, did they like you, your soldiers, there outside Prague, before the Kaiser killed them? Only yesterday I tore the ears off one who wanted to desert with the cashbox.”

The King laughed uncertainly.

“Really. That’s what I did, it’s not so hard. You grab, then you tear. Something like that gets around. The soldiers find it funny, because it happened to someone else, but at the same time they take care from then on not to do anything of that sort. I have barely any Swedes with me. Most of them out there are Germans, a few Finns too, along with Scotsmen and Irishmen and who knows what. They all love me. That’s why we win. Do you want to join me? Is that why you’re here?”

The king cleared his throat. “Prague.”

“What about Prague? Drink!”

The king looked into the cup in disgust. “I require your support, brother. Give me troops, then Prague will fall.”

“I don’t need Prague.”

“The old seat of the Kaiser, restored to the true faith. It would be a great sign!”

“I don’t need signs. We’ve always had good signs and good words and good books and good songs, we Protestants, but then we lost on the battlefield, and it was all for nothing. I need victories. I must prevail against Wallenstein. Have you ever met him, do you know him?”

The King shook his head.

“I need reports. I think about him all the time. Sometimes I dream about him.” Gustav Adolf went to the other side of the tent, bent down, rummaged in a chest, and held up a wax figure. “This is what he looks like! This is Friedland. I always look at him and think: I will defeat you. You’re shrewd, I’m shrewder. You’re strong, I’m stronger. Your troops love you, mine love me more. You have the devil on your side, but I have God. Every day I tell him that. Sometimes he replies.”

“He replies?”

“He has diabolical powers. Of course he replies.” With a suddenly morose expression Gustav Adolf pointed to the whitish face of the wax figure. “Then his mouth moves, and he mocks me. He has a soft voice because he’s small, but I understand everything. Stupid Swede, he calls me, Swedish scum, Gothic brute, and he says that I can’t read. I can read! Shall I show you? I read in three languages. I will defeat that swine. I’ll tear his ears off. I’ll sever his fingers. I’ll burn him to death.”

“This war began in Prague,” said the King. “Only when we take back—”

“We’re not doing it,” said Gustav Adolf. “It’s decided, we’re done talking about it.” He sat down on a chair, drank from his cup, and looked at the King with moistly gleaming eyes. “But the Palatinate.”

“What about the Palatinate?”

“You have to get it back.”

It took the King a moment to grasp what he had heard. “Dear brother, you will help me reclaim my hereditary land?”

“The Spanish troops in the Palatinate, that won’t do, they have to go. Either Wallenstein calls them off or I kill them. They shouldn’t flatter themselves, they may have their invincible infantry squares, but you know what? They’re not so invincible at all, the invincible squares.”

“Dear brother!” The King reached for Gustav Adolf’s hand.

He leaped to his feet, squeezing the King’s fingers so tight that the King had to suppress a yelp, put his hand on his shoulder, pulled him to him. The two of them embraced. And they were still doing it, and now that it was still going on, it had been going on for so long that the King’s emotion had disappeared. Finally Gustav Adolf let go of him and began to walk up and down in the tent.

“When the snow is gone, we’ll come across Bavaria and at the same time from above, a pincer movement, crushing them. Then we’ll make the advance to Heidelberg and drive them out. If all goes well, we won’t even need to fight a big battle before we have the Electoral Palatinate, and then I’ll give it to you as a fief, and then the Kaiser will kick himself.”

“As a fief?”

“Yes, how else?”

“You want to give me the Palatinate as a fief? My own hereditary land?”

“Yes.”

“That won’t do.”

“Sure it will.”

“The Palatinate doesn’t belong to you.”

“When I conquer it, it will belong to me.”

“I thought you had come to the Empire for God and the cause of faith!”

“I could smack you, of course I have! What do you think, you mouse, you pebble, you trout! But I want something out of it too. If I simply hand over the Palatinate to you, what’s in it for me?”

“You want money?”

“I do want money, but money isn’t all I want.”

“I’ll bring you the support of England.”

“Because of your wife? Hasn’t done you any good so far. They’ve left you in the lurch. Do you think I’m stupid? Do I look like someone who believes the English are suddenly going to come running now just because you call them?”

“When I reclaim the Electoral Palatinate, I’ll be the head of the Protestant faction in the Empire, and then they’ll come.”

“You’ll never again be the head of anything.”

“How dare—”

“Quiet down, poor fellow, listen. You played for high stakes, that’s good, I like that. Then you lost, and in the process you set off this whole terrific war. These things happen. Some play for high stakes and win. Like me. A small country, a small military, over in the Empire the Protestant cause seems lost, and who advised me to stake everything on one card, to raise the army and march to Germany? Everyone advised against it. Don’t do it, let it be, you can’t win—but I did it, and I won, and soon I’ll be in Vienna and will tear off Wallenstein’s ears, and the Kaiser will kneel before me, and I’ll say: Do you still want to be Kaiser? Then do what Gustav Adolf tells you! But it could have turned out differently. I could be dead. I could be sitting in a boat and rowing back across the Baltic Sea in tears. It doesn’t do any good to be a real man, strong and clever and fearless, because you can lose anyway. Just as someone can be a fellow like you and can win all the same. Anything is possible. I took a risk and won, you took a risk and lost and then what were you supposed to do? Yes, you could have hanged yourself, but that’s not for everyone, and besides, it’s a sin. That’s why you’re still here. Because you have to do something. And so you write letters and make requests and demands and come to audiences and speak and negotiate as if you still had any relevance, but you don’t! England isn’t sending you any troops. The Union isn’t coming to your aid. Your brothers in the Empire have abandoned you. There’s only one person who can give you back the Palatinate, and that’s me. And I’ll give it to you as a fief. When you kneel before me and swear allegiance to me as your lord. So what do you say, Friedrich? What’s it going to be?”

Gustav Adolf crossed his arms and looked the King in the face. His bristly beard trembled. His chest rose and sank. The King could hear his breathing clearly.

“I need time to think,” the King stammered.

Gustav Adolf laughed.

“You can’t expect…” The King cleared his throat, didn’t know how to continue the sentence, rubbed his forehead, implored himself not to lose consciousness again, not now of all times, not now at any price, and started over: “You can’t expect me to make a decision like that without—”

“That’s exactly what I expect. When I called together my generals to intervene in the war for better or worse, do you think I mulled it over endlessly? Do you think I consulted with my wife? Do you think I prayed first? I shall decide now, I said, and then I decided, and immediately forgot why, but that didn’t matter either, because it was decided! And now the generals were standing in front of me and shouting ‘Vivat!’ and I said: I am the Lion of Midnight! That just occurred to me.” He tapped himself on the forehead. “Things like that just come. I’m not thinking about anything, and suddenly it’s there. The Lion of Midnight! That’s me. So accept the Lion’s offer or decline it, but don’t waste my time.”

“My family has had sovereignty over the Electoral Palatinate as well as imperial immediacy since—”

“And you think you can’t be the first of your family to be given the Palatinate by the Swede as a fief. But you’ll see, I’m not a bad fellow. I’ll tax you lightly, and if you don’t feel like coming to Sweden for my birthday, send your chancellor. I won’t hurt you. Take my hand, put it there, don’t be a shoe!”

“A shoe?” The King wasn’t sure whether he’d heard correctly. Where had this man learned German?

Gustav Adolf had stretched out his arm, and his small, fleshy hand was hovering in front of the King’s chest. All he had to do was clasp it, and he would see Heidelberg Castle again, see the hills and the river again, see the thin rays of sun again that fell through the ivy in the colonnades, see the halls again in which he had grown up. And Liz would be able to live in a manner befitting her again, with enough lady’s maids and soft linen and silk and wax candles that didn’t flicker and devoted people who knew how to speak to royalty. He could go back. It would be like before.

“No,” said the King.

Gustav Adolf tilted his head as if he were having trouble hearing.

“I am the King of Bohemia. I am Elector of the Palatinate. I won’t take what belongs to me as a fief from anyone. My family is older than yours, and it is not proper for you, Gustav Adolf Vasa, to speak to me like this or to make me such a despicable offer.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Gustav Adolf.

The King turned away.

“Wait!”

The King, already on his way out, stopped. He knew that in doing so he was destroying any effect he had, and yet he couldn’t help it. A spark of hope flared in him and couldn’t be smothered: it was actually possible that he had so impressed this man with his strength of character that he would now make him a new offer. You’re a real man after all, he might say, I was wrong about you! But no, the King thought, nonsense. And nonetheless he stopped and turned around and hated himself for it.

“You’re a real man after all,” said Gustav Adolf.

The King swallowed.

“I was wrong about you,” said Gustav Adolf.

The King suppressed a fit of coughing. There was a pain in his chest. He was dizzy.

“Go with God, then,” said Gustav Adolf.

“What?”

Gustav Adolf punched him in the upper arm. “You have it in the right place. You can be proud. Now shove off, I have a war to win.”

“Nothing else?” the King asked with a strained voice. “That was the last word, that’s all: Go with God?”

“I don’t need you. I’ll get the Palatinate either way, and England will probably even stand by my side sooner if you’re not with me; you only remind them of the old disgrace and the lost battle outside Prague. It’s better for me if we don’t do it. It’s also better for you—you keep your dignity. Come!” He put his arm around the King’s shoulders, led him to the exit, and pulled the flap aside.

When they stepped into the waiting room, everyone stood up. Count Hudenitz took off his hat and bowed deeply. The soldiers stood at attention.

“What sort of fellow is that?” asked Gustav Adolf.

It took the King a moment to realize that he meant the fool.

“What sort of fellow is that?” the fool repeated.

“I like you,” said Gustav Adolf.

“I don’t like you,” said the fool.

“He’s funny. I need someone like that,” said Gustav Adolf.

“I find you funny too,” said the fool.

“What do you want for him?” Gustav Adolf asked the King.

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” said the fool. “I bring misfortune.”

“Really?”

“Look who I came with.”

Gustav Adolf stared at the King for a while. The King returned his gaze and fell into a fit of coughing, which he had been suppressing the whole time.

“Go,” said Gustav Adolf. “Go quickly, shove off, hurry up. I don’t want you in this camp a moment longer.” He backed away as if suddenly afraid. The flap fluttered shut; he was gone.

The King wiped away the tears that the coughing had brought to his eyes. His throat hurt. He took off his hat, scratched his head, and tried to understand what had happened.

This had happened: It was over. He would never see his home again. And he would never return to Prague either. He would die in exile.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“How did it turn out?” asked Count Hudenitz. “What was the outcome?”

“Later,” said the King.

Despite everything he was relieved when the army camp was finally behind them. The air was better. The sky was high and blue above them. Hills arched in the distance. Count Hudenitz asked him twice more what the results of the discussion had been and whether a return to Prague was to be expected, but when the answer never came, he gave up.

The King coughed. He asked himself whether it had been reality: that fat man with the fleshy hands, the horrible things he had said, the offer he had wanted to accept, with all his strength, and yet had had to decline. And why, why had he declined it? He no longer knew. The reasons, just a short while ago so compelling, had dissolved into mist. And he could even see this mist; bluish, it filled the air and blurred the hills.

He heard the fool telling stories from his life, yet all at once it seemed to him as if the fool were speaking inside him, as if he weren’t riding next to him, as if he were rather a feverish voice in his head, a part of himself he had never wanted to know. He closed his eyes.

The fool was talking about how he had run away with his sister: their father had been burned for witchcraft, their mother had moved to the Orient with a knight, to Jerusalem perhaps or to distant Persia, who could know.

“But she’s not your sister at all,” the King heard the cook saying.

He and his sister, said the fool, had at first wandered around with a bad balladeer, who had been good to them, and then with a traveling entertainer from whom he had learned everything he knew—an eminent jester, a good juggler, an actor who needn’t have feared comparison with anyone on the stage, but above all he had been a wicked man, so cruel that Nele had thought he was the devil. But then they came to understand that every traveling entertainer was a little bit devil and a little bit animal and a little bit harmless too, and as soon as they understood this, they no longer needed Pirmin, that was his name, and the next time he was especially nasty, Nele cooked him a mushroom dish that he did not soon forget, or rather, he forgot it immediately, that is, he died from it, two handfuls of chanterelles, one fly agaric, a piece of a black death cap, that was all you needed. The art consisted in using fly agaric and death cap, because although each of the two was deadly, individually they tasted bitter and attracted attention. Cooked together, their flavors merged into a fine, pleasant-tasting sweetness, arousing no suspicion.

“So you two killed him?” asked one of the soldiers.

Not he, said the fool. His sister had killed him. He himself couldn’t hurt a fly. He let out a ringing laugh. There had been no choice. The man had been so terrible that even in death they weren’t rid of him. For quite a while his ghost had trailed them, had snickered behind them at night in the forest, had appeared in their dreams and offered them one sort of bargain or another.

“What do you mean, bargain?”

The fool was silent, and when the King opened his eyes, he noticed that snowflakes were falling around them. He took a deep breath. The memory of the pestilential stench of the army camp was already dissolving. He licked his lips, thinking of Gustav Adolf, and had to cough again. Were they perhaps riding backward? The idea didn’t strike him as particularly odd, he just didn’t want to go back to that stinking camp, not among those soldiers again and to the Swedish king, who was only waiting to mock him. The meadows around them were now covered with a thin layer of white, and over the tree stumps—the advancing army had felled all the trees—mounds of snow were forming. He tilted his head back. The sky was flickering with flakes. He thought of his coronation, he thought of the five hundred singers and the eight-part chorale, he thought of Liz in the jeweled cloak.

Hours had passed, perhaps even days, when he found his way back into time—at least the terrain had once again changed. There was now so much snow that the horses could barely proceed. They lifted their hooves carefully and set them down slowly into the high mass of white. Cold wind lashed his face. When he looked around coughing, it struck him that the Dutch soldiers were no longer there. Only Count Hudenitz, the cook, and the fool were still riding alongside him.

“Where are the soldiers?” he asked, but the others took no notice of him. He repeated the question louder. Now Count Hudenitz looked at him uncomprehendingly, squinted, and turned his face back into the wind.

Must have run off, thought the King. “I have the army I deserve,” he said. Then, coughing, he added: “My court jester, my cook, and my chancellor of a court that no longer exists. My army of air, my last faithful!”

“At your command,” said the fool, who had apparently understood him despite the wind. “Now and forever. You’re ill, Majesty?”

The King realized almost with relief that it was true: hence the coughing, the dizziness, his weakness in the face of the Swede, the confusion. He was ill! It made so much sense that he had to laugh.

“Yes,” he cried joyfully. “I’m ill!”

As he bent forward to cough, he thought for some reason of his parents-in-law. He had known from the outset that they didn’t like him. But he had won them over, with his elegance and his chivalrous demeanor, with his German clarity, his inner strength.

And he thought of his eldest. The beautiful boy everyone had loved so much. If I don’t return, he had told him, the child, then you will return in my stead to the principality and to the high status of our family. Then the boat had capsized and he had drowned, and now he was with the Lord God.

Where I’ll soon be too, thought the King, touching his burning forehead. In eternal glory.

He turned his head sideways and adjusted the pillow. His breath felt hot. He pulled the blanket over his head. It was dirty and didn’t smell good. How many people had slept in this bed?

He kicked the blanket away and looked around. Apparently he was in a room at an inn. On the table stood a jug. On the floor lay straw. There was only one window, with thick glass; outside whirled snow. On a stool sat the cook.

“We must go on,” said the King.

“Too ill,” said the cook. “Your Majesty cannot, you are —”

“Balderdash,” said the King. “Nonsense, foolishness, piffle. Liz is waiting for me!”

He heard the cook reply, but before he could understand him, he must have fallen asleep again, for he found himself back in the cathedral, on the throne, facing the high altar, and he heard the choir and thought of the fairy tale about the spindle that his mother had once told him. Suddenly it seemed important, but his memory wouldn’t put it in the correct order: when you unwound thread from the spindle, a piece of life was unwound too, and the quicker you turned it, say, because you were in a hurry or because something was hurting you or because things were not the way you wanted, the quicker life went by too, and the man in the fairy tale had already come to the end of the thread, and everything was over and yet had hardly even begun. But what had happened in the middle the King could not remember, and so he opened his eyes and gave the command that they now had to go onward, onward to Holland, where his palace was and his wife was waiting with the court, attired in her silks and diadem, where the festivities never ended, where every day there were the theatrical productions she liked so much, performed by the best players from all over the world.

To his surprise he was on the horse again. Someone had wrapped a cloak around his shoulders, but he still felt the wind. The world seemed white—the sky, the ground, even the huts to the right and left of the road.

“Where’s Hudenitz?” he asked.

“The count is gone!” exclaimed the cook.

“We had to go on,” said the fool. “We had no more money. The innkeeper threw us out. King or not, he said, everyone has to pay!”

“Yes,” said the King, “but where’s Hudenitz?”

He tried to count how large his army still was. There was the fool, and there was the cook, and there was himself, and there was the fool as well, that made four, yet when he counted a second time to be safe he came up with just two, namely the fool and the cook. Because that couldn’t be right, however, he counted once again and came up with three, but the next time it was four again: the King of Bohemia, the cook, the fool, himself. And at that point he gave up.

“We have to dismount,” said the cook.

And indeed, the snow was too high; the horses could bear them no farther.

“But he can’t walk,” the King heard the fool say, and for the first time his voice didn’t sound derisive but like that of an ordinary person.

“But we have to dismount,” said the cook. “You see, don’t you? We can’t go on.”

“Yes,” said the fool. “I see.”

While the cook held the reins, the King, propped up on the fool, dismounted. He sank into the snow up to his knees. The horse snorted with relief when it was rid of the weight, warm breath rising from its nostrils. The King patted its muzzle. The animal looked at him with dull eyes.

“We can’t just abandon the horses,” said the King.

“Don’t worry,” said the fool. “Before they have frozen to death, someone will eat them.”

The King coughed. The fool supported him from the left, the cook from the right, and they trudged on.

“Where are we going?” asked the King.

“Home,” said the cook.

“I know,” said the King, “but today. Now. In the cold. Where are we going now?”

“Half a day’s march westward there’s supposed to be a village where there are still people,” said the cook.

“No one knows for sure,” said the fool.

“Half a day’s march is a whole day’s march,” said the cook. “With so much snow.”

The King coughed. He trudged while he coughed, he coughed while he trudged, he trudged and trudged, and he coughed, and he marveled at the fact that his chest hardly hurt anymore.

“I think I’m getting better,” he said.

“Definitely,” said the fool. “It shows. You are indeed, Majesty.”

The King could tell that he would have fallen down if the two of them hadn’t been supporting him. The snowdrifts grew higher and higher. It became harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open in the cold wind. “Where’s Hudenitz, then?” he heard himself asking for the third time. His throat hurt. Snowflakes everywhere, and even when he closed his eyes he saw them: gleaming, dancing, whirling dots. He sighed. His legs buckled. No one was holding him. The soft snow received him.

“Can’t leave him behind,” he heard someone saying above him.

“What should we do?”

Hands reached for him and pulled him up. A hand stroked his head almost tenderly, which reminded him of his favorite nursemaid, who had raised him, in those days in Heidelberg when he was only a prince and not a king and all was still well. His feet trudged in the snow, and when he briefly opened his eyes, he saw next to him the contours of cracked roofs, empty windows, a destroyed well, but people were nowhere to be seen.

“We can’t go inside any of them,” he heard. “The roofs are broken. Besides, there are wolves.”

“But we’ll freeze to death out here,” said the King.

“The two of us won’t freeze to death,” said the fool.

The king looked around. And indeed, the cook was no longer to be seen; he was alone with Tyll.

“He tried a different way,” said the fool. “Can’t be held against him. Everyone fends for himself in a storm.”

“Why won’t we freeze to death?” asked the King.

“You’re burning too hot. Your fever is too high. The cold can’t do anything to you, you’ll die first.”

“Of what, then?” asked the King.

“Of the plague.”

The King was silent for a moment. “I have the plague?”

“Poor fellow,” said the fool. “Poor Winter King, yes, that’s what you have. You’ve had it for days now. You haven’t noticed the lumps on your neck? You don’t feel it when you inhale?”

The King inhaled. The air was icy. He coughed. “If it’s the plague,” he said, “then you’ll get infected too.”

“It’s too cold for that.”

“Can I lie down now?”

“You’re a king,” said the fool. “You can do what you want, when and wherever you like.”

“Then help me. I’m going to lie down.”

“Your Majesty,” said the fool, supporting him by the back of the neck and helping him onto the ground.

The King had never before lain on such a soft surface. The snowdrifts seemed to be glowing faintly, the sky was already darkening, but the flakes were still a bright shimmer. He wondered whether the poor horses might still be alive. Then he thought of Liz. “Can you deliver a message to her?”

“Of course, sire.”

It didn’t suit him that the fool was speaking so respectfully to him, it wasn’t proper—that was why you had a court jester, after all, so that your mind wasn’t lulled to sleep by all the adulation. A fool was expected to be impertinent! He cleared his throat to scold him, but then he had to cough once again, and he found it too difficult to speak.

But hadn’t there been something else? Ah, yes, the message to Liz. She had always loved the theater, the appeal of which he had never understood. People standing on the stage and pretending to be someone else. He had to smile. A king without a country in a storm, alone with his fool—something like this would never happen in a play, it was too absurd. He tried to sit up, but his hands sank into the snow and he slumped back again. What was it he had wanted to do? Oh, yes, the message to Liz.

“The Queen,” he said.

“Yes,” said the fool.

“Will you tell her?”

“I will.”

The King waited but the fool still made no move to mock him. And yet it was his duty! Annoyed, he closed his eyes. To his surprise, this didn’t change anything at all: he still saw the fool, and he saw the snow too. He felt paper in his hands—apparently the fool had slid it between his fingers—and he felt something firm, probably a piece of coal. We shall see each other again before God, he wanted to write, in my life I have loved only you, but then everything became muddled and he was no longer certain whether he had already written it or had only wanted to write it, and he also didn’t remember clearly to whom the message was to be sent. Therefore he wrote with a shaky hand: “Gustav Adolf will soon be dead, I know that now, but I will die first.” Yet that wasn’t the message at all, it was completely beside the point, hence he added: “Take good care of the donkey, I give him to you,” but no, he hadn’t wanted to say that to Liz but to the fool, and the fool was here, he could say it to him personally, while the message was for Liz. And so he started over and was about to write, but it was too late, it was no longer possible. His hand went limp.

He could only hope that he had already written down everything that was important.

Effortlessly he stood up and walked. When he looked back once more, he noticed that they were again three: the fool, kneeling in his calfskin cloak, the King on the ground, whose body was already half covered with white, and he. The fool looked up. Their eyes met. The fool raised his hand to his forehead and bowed.

He lowered his head in parting, turned, and walked away. Now that his feet no longer sank into the snow, the going was swift and easy.