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  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 w
as 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 wha
t, 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?”