M Bennardo - [BCS297 S01]

by The Ordeal (html)

  Waller’s embarrassment only grew as the journey went on, as he began to feel that he was intruding upon a private moment. He felt somehow that it would have been easier to ignore Frau Fenster if she had been sobbing, or screaming, or pulling her hair out. As it was, anybody would think she was merely tired or bored—that she might turn at any moment and make one of those trite commonplace observations that travelers say to each other. “These benches get harder every year,” perhaps. Or, “At least there’s no trouble getting a seat this time of day.”

  But what was most horrible to Waller was the knowledge that behind her affect lay a wholly beaten woman who could only reproach herself (or her God, if she could bear such a blasphemous thought) for her husband’s death.

  At last, the train glided to a stop at a particular hamlet on the edge of a dark forest. Here, Frau Fenster rose mechanically and crossed the train to exit to the platform. As she did, Waller could not help but turn and look out the window at her. She stood alone on the platform, silent and stoic yet—not moving and not saying anything to the lazy porters who loafed by the station door.

  Seized suddenly by a sympathetic impulse, Waller rose and leapt down from the train. He disregarded it as it built its head of steam again, even though he had made accommodations to stay at the next village. Shyly but firmly, he took Frua Fenster by the arm and held her elbow in his hand. Her skin felt cool and frail underneath his fingers, like the discarded casing of a metamorphosised insect.

  “Come, mother,” said Waller gently, his hat in his hand. “Please let me assist you.”

  At that, Frau Fenster looked at him in confusion. There were tears now in her eyes. The tears of a homecoming to a home that would never be the same again. She said nothing, only shaking her head, the same look of agony on her face that Waller had seen when she had missed her step on the treadle during the ordeal.

  “Come,” said Waller again, holding out his arm. “You may lean on me until you are home.”

  A week later, Waller sat once more on one of the solid wooden chairs in the anteroom of the Grand Duke’s chambers, waiting for an audience with his Royal Highness. He could not help but remember his first visit to that anteroom, a mere seven days earlier.

  On that occasion, he had been excited and nervous in equal measure. After all, he had never met a monarch before and had not known what to expect of the man. But he had been carrying his father’s letter of introduction, and he had trusted that his father would not have befriended a boor or a tyrant.

  Waiting in the anteroom the second time, Waller was nervous once more. But this time, it was because he wanted something from the Grand Duke, and because he knew enough of the Grand Duke’s personality to know that even though he was neither boor nor tyrant, the thing he wanted was something very big and very difficult to ask for.

  But Waller had not come to plead his case alone. He was accompanied by Frau Fenster, who sat now ramrod straight in another solid wooden chair, her small body facing Waller’s across the anteroom in a strange repetition of their positions in the railway carriage. But even more importantly than that, Waller had also brought a valise with him—a valise full of evidence that would undoubtedly (though posthumously) exonerate Herr Fenster of the crime of poaching deer in the royal forest.

  When the door to the Grand Duke’s chambers at last opened, both Waller and Frau Fenster immediately jumped to their feet. The Grand Duke himself swept out into the anteroom, as if he could not wait a moment longer to greet his visitors. And he looked not at all put-out or even surprised to find Frau Fenster standing there; indeed, he crossed the anteroom and immediately took her hands in his, greeting her with solemn pleasure, as if seeing an old friend on an occasion of sadness.

  A moment later, the Grand Duke crossed the anteroom to welcome Waller as well. “Greetings, greetings, my young friend,” murmured the Grand Duke with a subdued voice, his tone finely modulated to register both pleasure at their meeting and respect for the new mourning of the widow standing nearby. “Frau Fenster has been telling me of your attentions to her. For that, you have our genuine gratitude. But was it wise to bring her here again, so soon after—?”

  A strange thrill ran through Waller’s body as the Grand Duke’s voice trailed off into polite ambiguity. The man spoke of events that he had arranged and overseen—the ordeal, the execution—as if they were astronomical observations or hands of cards dealt from a shuffled deck. The man seemingly had no notion that he himself had possessed the power to spare Herr Fenster’s life if only he had acted!

  “I’m afraid that Frau Fenster’s presence is unavoidable,” said Waller in reply. “There is something of great importance that we wish to discuss with your Royal Highness—”

  The Grand Duke smiled and patted Waller’s arm. “Yes, that was explained to us. You understand that we must dress for the banquet? But please come and talk to us as we do so.”

  The arrangement proved to be an awkward one, but Waller pressed on the best he could, shouting his arguments over the folding screen that the Grand Duke soon disappeared behind. As the Grand Duke was bathed and dressed in privacy, Waller drew sheaf after sheaf of paper from his valise, reading from each one the testimony of certain persons who lived in the same village as Herr and Frau Fenster.

  For almost an hour, no response issued from the Grand Duke, except for an occasional assurance (“Please continue, I am attending your words closely!”) whenever Waller paused for longer than usual. Even worse, Waller could not see either the Grand Duke’s facial expressions or his physical comportment, so at last when the Grand Duke emerged from behind the screen in his dressing gown, now impeccably washed and coifed, his face pale with powder and a mole artfully drawn onto his cheek, Waller could scarcely contain his curiosity about the monarch’s opinion of the matter.

  “My boy,” began the Grand Duke discouragingly, “it is evident that you have made a very thorough investigation, after the fashion of your country’s legal customs, of Herr Fenster’s regrettable crimes... But the matter has been decided! What is the purpose of revisiting it?”

  Waller suppressed an exclamation of indignation. Did the Grand Duke really not understand anything about modern criminal investigation? Did he really hold such things as testimony and evidence in such low regard? Or was he simply playing dumb, since he did not like to be proved wrong?

  “I beg your Royal Highness’s pardon,” answered Waller with difficulty. “But can your Royal Highness not see that the testimony tells a different story from the one the gamekeeper related...?”

  For indeed, Waller’s investigations had soon uncovered that it was an open secret that the gamekeeper himself was in the habit of appropriating half a dozen deer from the royal woods each winter—taken as a kind of unofficial bonus to his salary, with the expectation that the takings would be covered by the natural culling of the herds that occurred during the cold months of winter. But during the most recent spring, the Grand Duke’s auditors had pressed him harder than usual on the losses, and the gamekeeper had at last in desperation thrown suspicion on Herr Fenster instead by inventing the story of the rifle (which numerous others had testified was nothing more than an old fowling piece loaded with birdshot—unable to bring down anything more substantial than a duck or a grouse).

  “What we have heard,” said the Grand Duke, “is a lot of contradicting and confusing statements. Which is why it is so imperative that we—when we dispense justice—listen only to the clear and undiluted voice of God.”

  At this proclamation, Frau Fenster at last opened her mouth, but she said no more than: “Ha!”

  The Grand Duke turned to look at her. His face was angry for an instant but soon softened. His voice, when he spoke, was soothing and consolatory. “Please, Frau Fenster. It is natural that you are upset, but you can have no doubts about the truthfulness of what God tells us—”

  “God does not speak,” answered Frau Fenster abruptly, cutting the Grand Duke off in the middle of his sentence.

  The
Grand Duke did not bother to finish what he had been saying, or indeed to take any further notice of Frau Fenster. Instead, he turned back to Waller, his face now drawn and troubled. “You had better take Frau Fenster away from here at once,” he said quietly. “She is treading the line of blasphemy. If she persists, we will not be able to ignore it—!”

  Waller stood for a moment, considering his options. His presentation to the Grand Duke had been a failure so far, but he had not yet brought out the one piece of physical evidence that he possessed. It was a broken and discarded butchering knife that he had discovered after careful searching among the bones of one of the poached deer in the woods. The haft and the blade had been miraculously protected from the elements by the skin of the animal, and Waller had succeeded in lifting two fingerprints from the tool and matching them to the gamekeeper’s own prints, which he had obtained through a bit of ordinary subterfuge with a cigarette case.

  Even if the Grand Duke could not be swayed by testimony, surely he would not ignore evidence such as that! Waller expected that he would have to explain the theory of fingerprinting before the full import of the evidence would be understood, but surely the Grand Duke would soon see that justice had not been served by executing Herr Fenster!

  “Of course,” said Waller quickly, not wishing to lose the Grand Duke’s attention. “But if I may impose upon your Royal Highness’s patience for just a moment longer—”

  And as he drew the knife out of the valise with a trembling hand, Waller considered that he was about to destroy a man’s faith in his God. The God that that man believed not only infallible but also active and interested in the world, speaking audibly through the success or failure of champions at their ordeals. It was a serious thing, ending a faith such as that! A child’s faith, practically: the very sort that Christ had praised in the Gospels. But in this case, as Waller reminded himself, sadly perverted in a way that allowed the innocent to be punished and the guilty to go free. So perhaps he would not be destroying the Grand Duke’s faith in God so much as correcting it—

  “This knife—” began Waller, as he gingerly held the blade before the Grand Duke. “This knife—”

  But he got no further. For Frau Fenster had appeared suddenly at his elbow and wrapped her hand around his own, pushing it hard toward the Grand Duke’s chest, carrying the knife precipitously forward, point foremost, and striking a glancing blow into the Grand Duke’s right side—

  And the Grand Duke had stepped back, surprise and pain on his face—

  And Waller himself had wrestled Frau Fenster away, preventing her from striking a second blow—

  But by then, the Grand Duke’s attendants had rushed to intervene, and there was chaos in the room.

  It was not until almost sundown the next day when Waller next saw the Grand Duke. By then, Waller was standing before the three chief magistrates responsible for exercising the law in the capital of Alpinia. The three of them all sat stone-faced and impassive as Waller addressed them, having shown no emotion other than boredom for the entire day.

  Waller, however, was not on trial, nor even accused of anything. Instead, he was standing as Frau Fenster’s champion, undergoing his own ordeal on her behalf, just as she had been for her husband when he had first seen her.

  In the aftermath of the stabbing of the Grand Duke, Waller was fortunate that there had been no question about the role he had played in the event. Everyone present had clearly seen him wrestle the knife away from Frau Fenster’s hand and prevent her from making a second, surely fatal, blow.

  Frau Fenster herself fared less well.

  In fact, when Waller first sued for permission to represent Frau Fenster in an ordeal, the chief magistrates had laughed him away. “What need is there for an ordeal?” they had asked. “When the crime was committed, the crown itself was present in the person of the Grand Duke, so there can be no question about the facts of the case.” The familiar slim volume of Alpinian law was even produced and the relevant section was read aloud in Waller’s presence in formal German, as the chief magistrates looked on in tolerant patience.

  But Waller had not given up, and ultimately his petition had been carried to the Grand Duke himself. Nor was Waller disappointed by the Grand Duke’s response. Indeed, he had begun to truly marvel at the seemingly limitless reservoirs of generosity that were apparently contained within the Grand Duke (in seeming contradiction to the travesties of justice that he allowed to be committed by adhering to the cruel laws of his country). Indeed, Waller reflected that it took a certain optimism and magnanimity for the Grand Duke to permit Frau Fenster (a near regicide!) any trial at all, when the law called for nothing more than a summary judgment.

  Yet here Waller stood, by the grace of the Grand Duke, in the seventh hour of his ordeal.

  Because Waller was trained in the law, the ordeal that had been offered to him was to argue for one day in front of the chief magistrates of Alpinia. If, at the end of that day, his arguments resulted in a change to any law of the land, Frau Fenster would be released immediately and sent home. But if Waller failed, she would be executed at dawn the following morning.

  So far, judging from the expressions on the faces of the chief magistrates, Frau Fenster seemed destined to die.

  The problem, Waller had discovered during his ordeal, was not in communicating the features or even the benefits of a modern criminal justice system, such as he was familiar with in America. The magistrates all easily understood those points, and indeed had no doubt studied such things before when examining the laws of Alpinia’s neighbors. Instead, the difficulty lay in convincing them that their existing system was lacking in any way. Time and again, the chief magistrates responded to Waller’s arguments by simply saying:

  “Our nation, alone among all nations, has been blessed with a legal system of God’s own devising. Our system may not work in other lands, for God may not care to intervene in the affairs of the Swiss or the Germans or the Americans. In your nation, you may have no choice but to rely on these other inferior methods you describe. But here, in Alpinia, we have no such need.”

  And so, for seven hours, Waller had thrown himself and his arguments upon this unassailable cliff—and had been beaten back every time.

  It was to be expected then that Waller was exhausted in body and clouded in mind when the Grand Duke entered the hall late in the day. For a moment, Waller lost his train of thought and allowed his sentence to trail off into incoherence as he stared at the Grand Duke. He looked, he felt, with the eyes of a man who had already failed. But how could it be otherwise? Had he not known that the ordeal set before would be something judged to be beyond his mortal abilities? Tradition held that Alpinian law had never been altered from the moment it had been set down in print. How could Waller expect to be the exception?

  “Please continue,” said the Grand Duke as the silence stretched on. “Do not let me interrupt you.”

  And so Waller turned once more to the chief magistrates and tried to pick up the thread of his last argument. But his aching tongue was no less stiff than the bloodied fingers of Frau Fenster; no matter how he tugged or pulled at his phrasing, he could not seem to pick out the knot in his reasoning.

  He was beaten, crushed, at the end of his endurance.

  Waller slumped down on the stool that had been provided for him and buried his face in his hands. Soon, he was shaking with silent sobs.

  From behind him, in the hall, a murmur ran through the gathered spectators. He heard the Grand Duke distinctly say, “Good Heavens!” in a tone of genuine concern. Then, before Waller knew what was happening, he felt hands on his shoulders as the Grand Duke himself bent down next to him.

  “Kneel with us, my young friend,” murmured the Grand Duke. Waller flowed forward off his stool and onto his knees, having no strength to resist. The Grand Duke gestured upward, as if pointing through the ceiling. “Give yourself over to God. For Frau Fenster’s sake, you must!”

  Then together they began to pray.

>   And whether it was the kind touch of the Grand Duke, or the reminder of Frau Fenster’s looming fate, or the clarifying rhythm of the prayers they spoke... Waller all at once saw the answer. All at once, he understood.

  He understood what Frau Fenster had understood at last as well. What she had realized, and what had driven her to her desperate act. It was this:

  That faith was the key.

  The faith, in particular, of the Grand Duke. That childlike and unquestioning faith. It was a potential source of infinite cruelty but also a potential source of infinite compassion. It was what drove the Grand Duke to follow the ancient laws and beliefs of Alpinia, as well as what drove him to treat his subjects with such boundless mercy and love outside the iron restrictions of the law.

  And that was why Frau Fenster had prevented Waller from presenting the evidence of the knife to the Grand Duke. That was why she had prevented the destruction of his faith.

  For if the Grand Duke had stopped loving God, so too would he have stopped fearing God—

  And his acts of tyranny would no longer have been balanced by any act of mercy. He would have become a true despot: selfish, suspicious, disillusioned altogether with any notion of justice. Using his power not to serve his idea of God but rather to serve only the continuation of power itself.

  But though Waller understood this now, he could not believe that assassination was the answer; that the Grand Duke could not be taught to replace a fear of an invisible God with a love of his very tangible fellow men. Nor could Waller believe that any law established at the point of a knife would remain uncorrupted itself. No, Waller would bring a change a different way: a better way.

  Rising to his feet, he turned once more to face the chief magistrates and addressed them in a strong and clear voice. “Learned gentlemen,” he said. “Keepers of the law. My brothers in faith—”