for her, or for those who allied themselves with her … unless she could be proved innocent—in intent, if not in fact.
It was not easy to choose a time when anyone would be receptive to a conversation about Zorah. Robert’s tragedy overshadowed anything else. Hester found herself growing desperate. Rathbone was almost always on her mind, and the urgency of the case became greater with every day that passed. The trial was set for late October, less than two weeks away.
She was obliged to contrive a discussion, feeling awkward and sinkingly aware that she might, by clumsiness, make future questions impossible. Dagmar was sitting by the open window in the afternoon light, idly mending a piece of lace on the neck of a blouse. She did so only to keep her fingers busy. Hester sat a little distance from her, sewing in her hand also, one of Robert’s nightshirts that needed repair where the sleeve was coming away from the armhole. She threaded a needle and put on her thimble and began to stitch.
She could not afford to hesitate any longer. “Will you go to the trial?”
Dagmar looked up, surprised.
“Trial? Oh, you mean Zorah Rostova? I hadn’t thought of it.” She glanced out of the window to where Robert was sitting in the garden in a wheelchair Bernd had purchased. He was reading. Victoria had not come, so he was alone. “I wonder if he’s cold,” she said anxiously.
“If he is, he has a rug,” Hester replied, biting back her irritation. “And the chair moves really quite well. Please forgive me for saying so, but he will be better if you allow him to do things for himself. If you treat him as if he were helpless, then he will become helpless.”
Dagmar smiled ruefully. “Yes. I’m sorry. Of course he will. You must think me very foolish.”
“Not at all,” Hester replied honestly. “Just hurt and not sure how best to help. I imagine the Baron will go?”
“Go?”
“To the trial.” She could not give up. Rathbone’s long, meticulous face, with its humorous eyes and precise mouth, was very sharp in her mind. She had never seen him doubting himself before. He had confronted defeat for others with resolution and skill and unflagging strength. But for himself it was different. She did not doubt his courage, but she knew that underneath the habitual composure he was profoundly disconcerted. He had discovered qualities in himself he did not care for, vulnerabilities, a certain complacency which had been shattered.
“Will he not?” she went on. “After all, it concerns not only the life and death of people you knew quite well but perhaps the murder of a man who could once have been your king.”
Dagmar stopped even pretending to sew. The fabric slipped out of her hands.
“If anyone had told me three months ago that this could happen, I would have said they were ridiculous. It is so completely absurd!”
“Of course, you must have known Gisela,” Hester prompted. “What was she like? Did you care for her?”
Dagmar thought for a moment. “I don’t suppose I did know her, really,” she said at length. “She was not the sort of woman one knows.”
“I don’t understand …” Hester said desperately.
Dagmar frowned. “She had admirers, people who enjoyed her company, but she did not seem to have close friends. If Friedrich liked someone, then she did; if he did not, then for her that person barely existed.”
“But Friedrich did not dislike you,” Hester said, hoping profoundly that was true.
“Oh, no,” Dagmar agreed. “I think in a slight way we were friends, at least better than mere acquaintances, before Gisela came. But she could make him laugh, even when he had thought he was tired, or bored, or weary with duty. I could never do that. I have seen him at the kind of long banquets where politicians make endless speeches, and he was growing glassy-eyed pretending to listen.” She smiled as she remembered, for once forgetting Robert in the garden below, or the slight breeze stirring the curtains.
“Then she would lean across and whisper something to him,” she continued. “And his eyes would brighten; it would all matter again. It was as if she could touch his mind with just a word, or even a glance, and give him of her vitality and laughter. She believed in him. She saw everything that was good in him. She loved him so very much.” She stared into the distance, her face soft with memory, and perhaps a touch of envy for such a perfect closeness of heart and mind.
“And he must have loved her,” Hester prompted. She tried to imagine it. With the people she cared about most, she seemed to be always on the brink of some misunderstanding or other, if not a downright quarrel. Was it a shortcoming in her? Or did she choose the wrong people to be drawn to? There was some darkness in Monk which every so often would close her out. It seemed unbreachable. And yet there were moments when she knew, as surely as she knew anything on earth, that he wanted never to hurt her, whatever the cost to himself.
“Absolutely and without reservation,” Dagmar said wistfully, cutting across Hester’s thoughts. “He adored her. One always knew where she was in a room, because every now and then his eyes would go to her, even if he was talking to someone else.
“And he was so proud of her, her grace, and wit, and the way she carried herself, her elegance and style of dress. He expected everyone to like her. He was so happy if they did, and could not understand it if they did not.”
“Were there many who did not?” Hester asked. “Why did the Queen dislike her so intensely? And, it seems, the Countess Rostova?”
“I don’t know of any reason, except that, of course, the Queen wanted him to marry Brigitte von Arlsbach,” Dagmar explained. “Gisela did encourage him to kick over the traces rather.” She smiled at some memory. “He was very used to doing everything he was told. Royal protocol is pretty rigid. There was always some equerry or adviser to remind him of the proper attitude, the correct behavior, whom he should speak to, spend time with, compliment, and who should be ignored, what was improper. Gisela would just laugh and tell him to please himself. He was Crown Prince; he should do as he liked.”
She shrugged. “Of course, that is not the way it is. The higher one’s calling, the more one must obey one’s duty. But she was not born even to aristocracy, let alone royalty, so she did not understand that. I think for him that was a great deal of her charm. She offered him a kind of freedom he had never known. She poked fun at the courtiers who ruled his life. She was witty and outrageous and full of fun.” Dagmar took a deep breath and let it out
