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  “Would Your Highness—”

  But since the chair was still far away, she interrupted him. “Am I speaking with him who I assume he is?”

  This brought him up short for a moment. For one thing, because he had not expected her German to be so good. She had made good use of her time, she had not been idle over the years, she had taken lessons with a kind young German whom she had liked and with whom she almost could have fallen in love—often she had dreamed of him and once even drafted a letter to him, but such a thing was not possible, she could not afford a scandal. For another thing, he was silent because she had affronted him. An imperial ambassador was to be called Your Excellency—by everyone but a king or queen. He thus had to insist to her on a form of address that she could under no circumstances grant him. For this problem there was only one solution: someone like her and someone like him must never encounter each other.

  When he began to speak, she darted sideways, went to a stool and sat down; she had beaten him to it. She enjoyed this small victory, leaned her cane against the wall, and interlaced her fingers in her lap. Then she saw his look.

  She went icy cold. How could she have made such a mistake? It must have been because she had been out of practice for years. Of course she could neither remain standing nor let him invite her to sit, but a chair without a backrest, that should not have happened to her under any circumstances. As a queen, she was entitled to sit on a chair with a backrest and armrests even in the presence of the Kaiser, a mere armchair would be an indignity, but a stool was out of the question. And he had deliberately placed stools all around the reception room, yet only behind his desk was there an armchair.

  What should she do? She smiled too and decided to pretend it was of no consequence. But he now had the advantage: All he needed to do was to call in the people from the anteroom, and word that she had sat on a stool in his presence would spread through Europe like wildfire. Even at home in England they would laugh.

  “That depends,” he said, “on what Your Highness deigns to assume, but since it is not the place of Your Highness’s humble servant to assume that Your Highness could make anything but the correct assumption, I in turn do not hesitate to answer Your Highness’s question with yes. It is I, Johann von Lamberg, the Kaiser’s ambassador, at Your Highness’s service. A refreshment? Wine?”

  This was another skillful injury of her royal dignity, for one offered nothing to a monarch—he had rights over the household, it was up to him to demand what he wanted. Such things were not unimportant. For three years the ambassadors had negotiated only matters of who had to bow before whom and who had to take off his hat first before whom. He who made a mistake in etiquette could not win. So she ignored his offer, which was not easy for her, because she was very thirsty. She sat motionless on her stool and gazed at him. She was good at that. She had learned to sit calmly, she was practiced in it—in this, at least, no one surpassed her.

  Lamberg was still standing bent forward, one hand on the desk, the other on his back. He was doing so apparently so that he would not have to decide whether to sit down or remain standing: In the presence of a queen he would not be permitted to sit, but before a princess it would be a violation of etiquette for an imperial ambassador to stand when she was sitting. Since, as the Kaiser’s ambassador, he did not recognize Liz’s royal title, it would be consistent to sit down—but at the same time also a severe insult, which he avoided in this way, out of politeness and because he did not yet know what weapons and offers she had in her hands.

  “With Your Highness’s kind permission, a question.”

  All at once his manner of speaking was just as unpleasant to her as his Austrian intonation.

  “As Your Highness knows very well, we are in the midst of a diplomatic congress. Since the beginning of the negotiations, no royal personage has set foot in Münster and Osnabrück. As delighted as Your Highness’s faithful servant is to have the privilege of welcoming Your Highness’s gracious visit to his poor domicile, he nonetheless fears just as much—” he sighed as if it caused him great sorrow to say so—“that it is not proper.”

  “The count means we should have sent an ambassador too.”

  He smiled again. She knew what he was thinking and she knew that he knew that she knew it: you are no one, you live in a small house, you’re buried in debt, you’re not sending any ambassadors to congresses.

  “I’m not even here,” said Liz. “That way we can talk to each other, can’t we? The count can imagine he is talking to himself. He is speaking in his head, and in his head I reply to him.”

  She felt something she had not expected. For so long she had been making preparations for this encounter, mulling it over, fearing it, and now that the day had arrived, something strange was happening: she was enjoying it! All those years in the small house, far from notable people and important events—all at once she was again sitting as if on a stage, surrounded by gold and silver and carpets, and speaking with a clever person before whom every word counted.

  “We all know that the Palatinate is a perpetual point of contention,” she said. “As is the Palatine electoral dignity, which was held by my late husband.”

  He chuckled.

  This flustered her. But that was his aim, of course, and for that very reason she had to persevere.

  “The electors of the Empire,” she said, “will not accept the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach keeping the electoral dignity of which the Kaiser wrongfully stripped my husband. If Caesar can dispossess one of us, they will say, then he can do it to all of us. And if we—”

  “With Your Highness’s kind permission, they have long since accepted it. Your Highness’s husband was placed, along with Your Highness yourself, under the imperial ban, which, incidentally, anywhere else would obligate me to have Your Highness arrested.”

  “Which is why we have come here and not anywhere else.”

  “With Your Highness’s kind permission—”

  “We grant it, but first we shall be heard. The Duke of Bavaria, who calls himself Elector, illegally bears our husband’s title. The Kaiser has no right to revoke an electoral dignity. The electors elect the Kaiser, the Kaiser does not elect the electors. But we understand the situation. The Kaiser owes the Bavarians money; the Bavarians, in turn, have the Catholic estates firmly in their hands. That is why we are making an offer. We are the crowned Queen of Bohemia, and the crown—”

  “With Your Highness’s kind permission, for one winter thirty—”

  “…will pass to our son.”

  “Bohemia’s crown is not hereditary. If it were, the Bohemian estates would not have been able to offer the throne to the Palsgrave Friedrich, Your Highness’s husband. The fact that he accepted the crown means that he knew that Your Highness’s son could assert no claim.”

  “One can see it that way, but must one? Perhaps England will not see it that way. If he asserts claims, England will support them.”

  “There’s a civil war in England.”

  “There is, and if our brother is deposed by the parliament, the English crown will be offered to our son.”

  “That is unlikely at best.”

  Outside, trombones blared: a tinny call, which rose, hung for a while in the air, and died away. Liz raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  “Longueville, my French colleague,” said Lamberg. “He has them blow a fanfare when he sits down to eat. Every day. He is here with a retinue of six hundred men. Four portrait painters are entrusted with the sole task of painting him. Three woodcarvers are crafting busts of him. What he does with those remains a state secret.”

  “Has the count asked him?”

  “We are not authorized to speak to each other.”

  “Is that not a hindrance to negotiation?”

  “We are not here as friends, nor to become friends. The ambassador
of the Vatican mediates between us, just as the ambassador of Venice mediates between me and the Protestants, for the ambassador of the Vatican is in turn not authorized to speak to Protestants. I must now take my leave, madame, the honor of this conversation is as great as it is undeserved, but pressing duties make demands on my time.”

  “An eighth electoral dignity.”

  He looked up. His eyes met hers for only a moment. Then he looked at the desk again.

  “The Bavarian shall keep his electoral dignity,” said Liz. “We formally relinquish Bohemia. And if—”

  “With Your Highness’s kind permission, Your Highness cannot relinquish something that does not belong to Your Highness.”

  “The Swedish army is standing outside Prague. The city will soon be back in the hands of the Protestants.”

  “Should Sweden take the city, Sweden will certainly not give it to you.”

  “The war is nearly over. Then there will be an amnesty. Then the breach…the alleged breach of the imperial peace by our husband will be pardoned.”

  “The amnesty has long since been negotiated. All acts of the war will be pardoned with the exception of one person’s.”

  “I can guess whose.”

  “This endless war began with Your Highness’s husband. With a palsgrave who set his sights too high. I’m not saying that Your Highness is to blame, but I can imagine that the daughter of the great James did not exactly try to urge her ambitious husband to be modest.” Lamberg slowly pushed his chair back and straightened up. “The war has been going on so long that most people alive today have never seen peace. That only the old can still remember peace. My colleagues and I—yes, even the idiot who has fanfares played when he sits down to eat—are the only ones who can end it. Everyone wants territories that the others would under no circumstances part with, everyone demands subsidies, everyone wants mutual-assistance pacts terminated that the others consider permanent, so that instead new pacts result that others find unacceptable. All this is beyond the abilities of any human being. And yet we must succeed. You and your husband began this war, madame. I shall end it.”

  He pulled a silk cord over the desk. Liz heard the sound of a bell from the next room. Now he is summoning a secretary, she thought, some gray cipher who will usher me out. She felt dizzy. The room seemed to rise and sink as if she were on a ship. Never before had someone spoken to her that way.

  A ray of light captivated her. It fell through a thin crack between the curtains, specks of dust whirling in it, a mirror on the opposite wall catching it and casting it to the other wall, where it made a spot on a picture frame gleam. The painting was by Rubens: a tall woman, a man with a lance, above them a bird in the azure. A hovering serenity emanated from it. She remembered Rubens well, a sad man, who audibly had difficulty breathing. She had wanted to buy one of his paintings, but it had been too expensive for her; nothing seemed to interest him except money. But how had he been able to paint like that?

  “Prague was never for us,” she said. “Prague was a mistake. But it is for the sake of the Palatinate that I did not go back to England. My brother invited me time and again, but Holland is formally still part of the Empire, and as long as I live there, our claim endures.”

  A door opened, and a corpulent man with a kind face and shrewd eyes came in. He took off his hat and bowed. Although he was young, he had hardly any hair left on his head.

  “Count Wolkenstein,” said Lamberg. “Our cavalier d’ambassade. He will provide you with accommodations. There are no rooms left in the inns here, every corner is packed with the envoys and their retinues.”

  “We don’t want Bohemia,” said Liz, “but we will not cede the electoral dignity. My firstborn, who was clever and lovable and on whom everyone would have been able to agree, died. The boat overturned. He drowned.”

  “I’m sorry,” Wolkenstein said with a plainness that touched her.

  “My second son, the next in the line of succession, is neither clever nor lovable, but the electoral dignity of the Palatinate is rightfully his, and if the Bavarian simply won’t hand it over, an eighth must be created. The Protestants will not tolerate anything else. Otherwise I will go back to England, where the parliament will depose my brother and make my son king, and from high upon the English throne he will then demand Prague, and the war will not end. I will prevent it. All by myself.”

  “We don’t need to get worked up,” said Lamberg. “I will pass on Your Highness’s message to His Imperial Majesty.”

  “And my husband must be included in the amnesty. If all acts of the war are to be pardoned, then his too must be pardoned.”

  “Not in this life,” said Lamberg.

  She stood up. She was boiling with anger. She sensed that she had turned red, but she still managed to draw up the corners of her mouth, set her cane on the floor, and turn to the doors.

  “A great and unexpected honor. A splendor in this poor house.” Lamberg took off his hat and bowed. Not a hint of mockery could be heard in his voice.

  She raised her hand for the careless royal wave and walked on without a word.

  Wolkenstein overtook her, reached the doors, and gave a knock—immediately the lackeys outside pulled them open. Liz stepped into the anteroom, followed by Wolkenstein. With her lady’s maid behind them, they walked to the exit.

  “As for Your Royal Highness’s accommodations,” said Wolkenstein, “we could offer—”

  “The count shouldn’t trouble himself.”

  “It’s no trouble, but rather a great—”

  “Does the count seriously believe I would wish to lodge somewhere that is teeming with imperial spies?”

  “If I may speak plainly: Wherever Your Royal Highness finds accommodation, the place will be full of spies. We have so many of them. We’re losing on the battlefields, and there are not many secrets left. What are our poor spies to do all day?”

  “The Kaiser is losing on the battlefields?”

  “I was just there myself, down in Bavaria. My finger is still there!” He raised his hand and moved his glove to show her that the sheath of the right index finger was empty. “We have lost half the army. Your Royal Highness has not chosen a bad moment. As long as we are strong, we never make concessions.”

  “It is a favorable time?”

  “It is always a favorable time, when you begin correctly. Take pleasure in yourself and do not bow to sorrow, though fortune, place, and time may be in league against you.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “That is by a German poet. There’s such a thing now. German poets! His name is Paul Fleming. His works are so beautiful that they bring tears to one’s eyes; unfortunately he died young, from disease of the lung. One doesn’t dare to imagine what might have become of him. Because of him I write in German.”

  She smiled. “Poems?”

  “Prose.”

  “Really, in German? I once gave Opitz a try—”

  “Opitz!”

  “Yes, Opitz.”

  Both of them laughed.

  “I know, it sounds like a folly,” said Wolkenstein. “But I think it’s possible, and I have decided to one day write my life in German. That’s why I’m here. Some day people will want to know what it was like at the great congress. I brought a traveling entertainer from Andechs to Vienna, or actually he brought me to Vienna—without him I would be dead. But when His Imperial Majesty then sent him to appear before the envoys, I seized the opportunity and came here with him.”

  Liz gave her lady’s maid a sign. She hurried out to have the coach drive up. It was a beautiful carriage, fast and to some extent befitting her station. Liz had spent her last savings to rent it for two weeks along with two strong horses and a reliable coachman. This meant that she could remain in Osnabrück for three days, after which she had to set off for home. />
  She stepped outside and pulled her fur hood over her head. Had it gone well? She didn’t know. There was so much more she would have liked to say, so much else she would have liked to bring up, but that was probably how it always was. Papa had once said that one could always deploy only a fraction of one’s weapons.

  Rumbling, the coach drove up. The driver climbed down. She looked around and realized with a peculiar regret that the fat cavalier d’ambassade had not followed her farther. She would have liked to speak a little more with him.

  The coachman clasped her around the hips and carried her to the carriage.

  II

  The next morning Liz called on the Swedish ambassador. This time she had announced her visit. Sweden was a friendly power and the element of surprise unnecessary. The man would be glad to meet her.

  The night had been terrible. After searching for a long time, she had found a room in an especially filthy inn: no window, brushwood on the floor, instead of a bed a narrow straw sack, which she had to share with her lady’s maid. When she had after several hours finally fallen into a restless sleep, she had dreamed of Friedrich and their days in Heidelberg, before people with unpronounceable names had pressed Bohemia’s crown on them. They had walked side by side through one of the stone corridors of the castle, and she had felt to the core of her soul what it meant to belong together. When she had woken up, she had listened to the snoring of the coachman sleeping outside the door and thought about how she had now lived almost as long without Friedrich as she had formerly been married to him.

  When she entered the envoy’s anteroom, she had to suppress a yawn; she had slept far too little. Here too there were carpets, but the walls were bare in Protestant fashion; only on the side wall hung a cross adorned with pearls. The room was full of people: some were studying files, others walking restlessly up and down. They had apparently been waiting for some time. How did it happen anyway that Lamberg’s anteroom had been empty? Did he have another, perhaps even several?