Was this the correct answer? Even Hilda did not know. But she did know one thing: it had been the only one she could give. For Reinhard, the situation was different. Hilda was, she knew, but a single straw at which he was grasping in desperation on a stormy sea. But tonight, for his sake, she resolved to be the best straw she could.
IV
August 30.
Hans Stettelzer, the von Mariendorfs’ butler, had been visibly unsettled and anxious since the previous evening. Fräulein Hilda, his pride and joy, had not come home that night. At six in the morning, he caught a glimpse of her short, dark-blond hair as she emerged from a landcar at the front gate, and hurried out to meet her.
“Fräulein Hilda! Where in heaven have you been?”
“Good morning, Hans. Up and about early, I see.”
Her reply only sowed new seeds of anxiety in the faithful servant. Hans had known Hilda since she was a baby, and regarded her vigor and clarity of thought with both pride and admiration. The scioness of the House of Mariendorf was not like the sheltered daughters of other noble lines. She did not fritter away money on gowns and shawls; she did not play at romance with her piano tutor, or seek out the scandals of her peers to pin in a mental specimen case.
The only disappointment Hilda had ever caused Hans was in not being male. As a man, she might have become secretary of state or an imperial marshal; after all, of all the children of the aristocracy, she was the most sagacious and even of temper. So Hans had thought, only to watch Hilda rise to the position of chief advisor to Imperial Headquarters, far beyond the abilities of any male mediocrity—and then, almost as an afterthought, become secretary of state, too.
During the Goldenbaum Dynasty, the House of Mariendorf had been far from the center of aristocratic society. Today, descendants of that once plain and undistinguished line stood at the core of the system of authority that ruled the galaxy. This, too, was all Fräulein Hilda’s doing.
And here she was, not only coming home at six in the morning, but looking more distracted than Hans had ever seen her.
But what Hans saw was not the truth. Hilda’s apparent distraction was a pretense to hide the vague feeling of shame that prevented her from looking him in the eye. She stole up the stairs to her bedchamber, showered, dressed, and came back down for breakfast at half past seven.
Her father, Count Franz von Mariendorf, was already at the table. Hilda knew that if she did not break fast with him it would only deepen his concern, but having taken her seat she could not look him in the eye either. Mustering all her abilities as an actor, she greeted him and began forcing meal into a stomach that did not seem to be even on speaking terms with hunger.
Suddenly her father turned to her and said, “I gather you were with His Majesty last night, Hilda?”
Hilda’s mind seemed to echo with his quiet, calm voice. Her spoon slipped from her right hand and into the soup with a splash that sent droplets as high as her chin.
Hilda had long known how wrong they were who sneered at her father, saying that he owed his current position entirely to her—that there was nothing to commend him personally but sincerity. The wisdom and insight that informed his sincerity might not offer much in the way of spectacle, but they ran deep. The very fact that he had never sought to curtail her intellectual development, even in that earlier age when the fetters of noble convention were crueler, made his true merits apparent to any who cared to see.
“Father, I…”
“I understand, child.” There was a hint of loneliness in his face, but also gentle understanding. “At least, I think I do. You need not say it aloud. I only wished to make sure.”
“I’m sorry, Father.”
Hilda had done nothing wrong, but she had no other words even for her cherished father at that moment. It was as if her powers of expression had entered an epoch of drought.
Footsteps outside the dining room broke the silence between father and daughter. Hans flew in, gigantic form quivering.
“Sir! There is—the entrance hall—a visitor—” Hans gasped, chest spasming, before he was finally able to report who had arrived. “When I opened the door, I saw H-His Majesty the kaiser! His Majesty was right there! He wishes to see both of you.”
The count’s eyes shifted to his daughter. Hilda, gifted and beautiful chief advisor to Kaiser Reinhard, whose mind was said to be worth more to the military than an entire fleet, was gripping the edge of the tablecloth and staring down into her soup, petrified.
“Hilda?”
After a moment, she said, “Father, I cannot stand.”
“It seems His Majesty has something to discuss with you.”
“I’m sorry. Please, father.” Hilda’s words were devoid of both intelligence and spirit.
The count muttered to himself as he rose from the table and walked to the entrance hall.
There he found the greatest conqueror in human history waiting patiently and cradling an overlarge bouquet of flowers. Roses in full bloom, red, white, and pale pink. The last roses of the summer, no doubt. When Reinhard saw the master of the house, his fair visage suddenly turned as pink as the flowers.
“Your Majesty.”
“Ah—ah. Count von Mariendorf.”
“It is an honor to receive you in my humble dwelling. Might I ask what brings Your Majesty here this morning?”
“The honor is all mine. I apologize for the early hour.”
If such an expression may be forgiven, the golden-haired king of conquest appeared to be blushing from nerves. His misty eyes met the count’s. “For Fräulein von Mariendorf,” he said, thrusting the bouquet at him.
“Your Majesty is too thoughtful,” the count said. He accepted the flowers, and his upper body was engulfed in a cloud of perfume so intense that for a moment he could not breathe.
“Marshal Mittermeier once told me,” said Reinhard, “that when he asked Mrs. Mittermeier to marry him he brought her a huge bouquet of flowers.”
“Indeed, Your Majesty?” The count’s vague reply belied his total discernment of why the young emperor was here. Still, thought the count, he might have chosen a better mentor in the art of courtship than Marshal Mittermeier, of all people.
“So,” Reinhard continued, “I wanted to do the same—no, I realized that I must do the same. And so I took the liberty of choosing those. Does the fräulein care for flowers?”
“I do not imagine that she dislikes them, Your Majesty.”
Reinhard nodded. For a moment he seemed lost in a maze that lay between him and his goal, but then he spoke the decisive words: “Count von Mariendorf, I wish to take your daughter as my empress. May I have your permission to marry her?”
Von Mariendorf recognized the sincerity of the man who stood before him, less emperor than unsophisticated youth. Such sincerity was not to be disdained, although the count did think it rather hasty to request Hilda’s hand in marriage the very morning after whatever had happened between them.
To von Mariendorf, this visit was proof of something he had long suspected. In both the military and political spheres, Kaiser Reinhard’s successes were unprecedented in scale and breathtaking in rapidity. Yet his gifts were grossly unbalanced, and in other areas, and particularly what lay between men and women, the boy genius was remarkably naive.
Reinhard spoke again, still blushing. “If Fräulein von Mariendorf had—that is, if things had turned out as they might have, and I had shirked responsibility, I should be no better than the debauched emperors of the Goldenbaum Dynasty. I—I have no intention of joining their number.”
The count allowed himself a rueful sigh that was highly unsuitable for a retainer before his lord. There were many ways to feel responsibility. Reinhard’s was no different from that of a punctilious and idealistic young boy.
“Mein Kaiser, responsibility need not be worn so heavily. I am sure that my daughter acted of her own will. She is not the sort to use the events of a single night as a weapon to ensnare Your Majesty for life.”
; “But…”
“For today, Your Majesty, please let her be. She does not seem to have put her own feelings in order yet, and I fear she may speak or act disrespectfully. She already enjoys a position far higher than could have been expected. I will be sure to send her to Imperial Headquarters when things have settled.”
Reinhard was silent.
“Forgive my impertinence, but please leave matters here to your humble servant while Your Majesty takes his leave.”
It was less a conversation between a brilliant emperor and a dull minister than counsel from a mature adult to a callow youth.
“Very well,” said Reinhard. “I leave it in your—in the count’s hands. I apologize not only for the early hour of my visit but also for troubling you with a request you cannot immediately grant. I shall return at a more opportune time. Please forgive my many discourtesies.”
Reinhard was about to turn on his heel when he hesitated and added one final remark.
“Give my regards to Fräulein von Mariendorf…”
The comment was devoid of all grace, but von Mariendorf allowed that his young lord might have had no other way to say it. He watched Reinhard’s back recede down the entry hall until Kissling, head of the kaiser’s personal guard, opened the door for him and followed him out.
The count entrusted the giant bouquet to Hans and returned to the dining room still smelling of roses. In response to Hilda’s gaze, which was part question and part plea, he said, “All is probably as you imagine, Hilda. His Majesty said he wants to take you as his empress.”
He heard a quiet gasp from his daughter.
“I…I’m not worthy of such an honor. Marry His Majesty! That’s preposterous.”
“Be that as it may, someone will become his consort one day,” said von Mariendorf, although not in the hopes of fanning the flames of his daughter’s womanly ambition. He revered Reinhard as kaiser, but his standards for a son-in-law were different. “You know, Hilda,” he continued, “in the seventeenth century AD, there was a king known as the Shooting Star of the North. He was crowned at fifteen and soon recognized as a military genius. Under his rule, his tiny country held its own against the vast armies of its neighbors. And reportedly he knew absolutely nothing of the physical passions, be they for the opposite sex or his own, right up until he died in his thirties.”
Hilda said nothing.
“Unusual talents seem to require some kind of equivalent flaw in another area. I am reminded of this when I look at Kaiser Reinhard. Although I suppose I should just be glad that our ruler is not an outlier in the other direction.”
“The kaiser does not love me,” Hilda said, suddenly but firmly. “Even I know that much. He sought my hand in marriage solely out of a sense of duty and obligation, father.”
“Maybe so. But what about you, Hilda?”
“Me?”
This confirmed the count’s suspicion that his daughter’s sagacity had developed a nick in its edge.
“I wonder if you do not love him, childish sense of duty and obligation and all.”
Father has finally asked me outright, thought daughter. I finally asked her outright, thought father. It was the sort of question one was loath to ask—but also the sort that would, left unasked, linger forever as a seed of regret. The rage and grief of the would-be assassin whose wife and children had been senselessly killed had, in the end, forced a decisive choice on three men and women at the heart of the Galactic Empire.
Hilda shook her head, trying to escape the mists of fantasy. She was not successful.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I respect him. But do I, as a woman, love him as a man? I don’t know.”
The count exhaled a deep sigh. “I see Kaiser Reinhard is not the only one who means to vex me. Darling daughter, my pride and joy, sometimes it is better to listen to your heart than your head. Not always, but sometimes.”
Instructing his daughter to take her time thinking through the confusion she had dragged behind her since the night before, the Count von Mariendorf left the dining room. He settled himself into the easy chair in a corner of his library and gazed at the unlit fireplace.
“I wonder how well the two of them did get on last night,” he murmured with a rueful grin. He could not recall a time when such a serious proposition had been in balance with one so comical.
As far as statecraft and war went, the galaxy had never seen the likes of Reinhard and Hilda before. But there were surely many couples with far less spectacular careers who nevertheless had matured more in their private lives.
Speaking to his daughter, the count had mentioned only Reinhard’s flaws, but in fact his total lack of physical desire was a characteristic Hilda shared. Her interests had always leaned more toward political and military studies and analysis than romance. Just as society contains individuals of excessive physical lust, it also includes those at the other extreme. How fortunate that Reinhard and Hilda, both at that very extreme, should have safely found each other—even if external causes had played a rather large role.
For the past three years, the fortunes of the House of Mariendorf had been seized by a violent whirlpool. They had safely ridden the waves only through Hilda’s genius. This was fact, and the count recognized it as such.
You are a better daughter than I deserve, Hilda, he thought. But—pointless as it would be to say so—if you had only fallen for a more average man, a less ambitious one you could admire from closer at hand, I could perhaps have lived a simpler life more suited to my lot…
It was almost time for the count, too, to begin his duties as minister of domestic affairs. He returned to his bedchamber to dress with the help of his servants. Somehow, he thought, I doubt I will be minister for long.
V
Reinhard returned from the von Mariendorf residence to Imperial Headquarters, but he entered his office in no mood for statecraft.
He was ashamed. What weakness he had shown—he, the emperor of all humanity, the greatest conqueror in history! Hilda’s intellect was incomparable, her will indomitable, but she was younger than him, and a woman besides. Reinhard did not look down on women, but he had never imagined that he might be dependent on one—with one exception.
As Count von Mariendorf had perceived, as Mittermeier had feared, there was indeed a certain lack within him. “Despite the kaiser’s beauty and power, he maintained strict self-control, even to the point of abstinence”—such historical assessments were erroneous, or at least overgenerous. It was not that Reinhard imposed abstinence on himself. His physiological desires, although not entirely absent, were simply very weak. Beauty and power he might have, but to lust he had always been a stranger. This was, perhaps, beyond understanding for a normal person—a man of the common herd.
To those who lived for pleasures of the flesh, as well as those who believed the folk wisdom that heroes did so, Reinhard must have seemed a baffling character. We can understand those of more powerful lusts than our own, but we struggle to do so when faced with someone whose drives are weaker.
Nevertheless, however impoverished Reinhard’s desires were, it is true that he did exercise self-discipline so as not to abuse his power in private life.
From around the time he had inherited the title of Count von Lohengramm, women had flocked to him. When he became supreme commander of the Imperial Military and then imperial prime minister, dictator in all but name, the surviving nobility fought over the right to present their sisters and daughters to him. There were even those who, having no daughters of their own, adopted comely girls from other families specifically to offer the kaiser. Reinhard never plucked a single bloom from this dizzying array of beauties. One man even offered his own wife to the kaiser, but this despicable display only incurred Reinhard’s wrath and contempt.
Ever since losing his dear friend Siegfried Kircheis, Reinhard had remained partly in the thrall of that shock and regret. This, perhaps, was what cast a shadow over his heart and placed a seal of guilt over the desires of the flesh he did
feel.
Kircheis had left the world without even marrying. To save Reinhard’s life, he had given his own. He had only been twenty-one years old.
And yet, here I stand, alive solely through his sacrifice, seeking marriage myself. Can this be forgiven? Not just by the living, but also by the dead?
Reinhard was gripped by the sense that he was on the verge of committing a wrong so great it could hardly even be expressed. But if he did not take responsibility for the night he had spent with Fräulein von Mariendorf, he would be no better than the lecherous emperors of the Goldenbaum Dynasty, who had been despised, derided, and ultimately toppled. The young kaiser did not notice the change in Count von Mariendorf’s eyes when he had voiced such thoughts to him. By this point his psychological blindness could only be called willful. At the very least, he was conscious solely of how others would judge his sincerity as a public figure.
He swept his golden hair back from his forehead and felt the late-summer breeze on his skin. His melancholy eyes were like crystal vessels filled with moonlight. Of their beauty there could be no question, but it was not without an unstable fragility. Until this day, he had not realized how immature he truly was. In politics, in war, he was wise and magnanimous, able to flawlessly mend the gap between subject and object. But when it came to romantic relationships, he was exactly the opposite.
It was only when he faced a great enemy that Reinhard’s heart truly sang. Only he and a handful of others knew this. An enemy of sufficient power could drive the heat of Reinhard’s passion. When this happened, Reinhard glowed from within. But he no longer had any such enemies…
Just after ten o’clock, Senior Admiral Kessler, his commissioner of military police, arrived with a sad and solemn expression. The kaiser’s would-be assassin, he reported, had committed suicide in his cell.
“You did not force him, I hope?” Reinhard asked, voice trembling as the shock came back to him. Kessler denied this firmly. And his denial was true: he had not lifted a finger to help the man take his life. However, neither had he made any effort to prevent him from doing so. Even pardoned for his crime by the kaiser himself, Kessler knew the man would have no other choice.
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