The First Minister

The carriage drew up before a small doorway in an ivy-covered courtyard. One of the policemen helped Ella alight while the other rapped a rhythm on the door. It opened immediately from within. She was ushered up a narrow, dimly lit staircase. At the second landing, they faced another door and sounded another rhythm. Again it opened from within and the gentlemen extended their arms to indicate she was to enter. Her skirts rustled as they brushed the narrow doorjamb. Their noise was deafening in the stony silence. The door closing behind her was perhaps the most terrible sound she had ever heard.

Candles in wall sconces and a fireplace burned at opposite ends of the room. They sufficed to dispel the darkness, but did not give light. Two men conferring in the center of the chamber turned their faces in her direction as she entered. She recognized the seated member of the pair as King Karl Anton, and she curtseyed. "Fräulein von Ackern?" The king addressed her in a tone neither kindly nor unforgiving. Dim light reached him from both sources, leaving a swath of black shadow to darken the center of his visage. Ella nodded. "You would probably do well to listen carefully before speaking." He turned his head toward the second man. "Minister – ?"

The older man spoke straightforwardly. "Fräulein, tonight we have raided the university coffee house and arrested Professor Scaltramente and his adherents. You have been connected with them in two ways. You have been observed in their company and have been heard by our king himself quoting their anti-royalist polemics. However, since your family is one of the most venerable in the kingdom, I have advised proceeding cautiously in your regard as we continue our inquiries. Can you tell us how you came to be connected with this revolutionary cell?"

"Your Highness – Your Majesty – " Ella stared at the floor, struggling to control her emotions and martial her thoughts. When she spoke, it was in an uncharacteristically thin and rushed voice. "You must accept my sincere apologies for my tasteless faux pas at the University Ball. When I realized what a fool I was making of myself, I had no other thought but to run." But this was not the answer to the question the minister had put to her. She inhaled deeply and began afresh at a more measured pace.

"I admit I have been greatly affected by Dr. Scaltramente’s speeches – or rather his speech, for I have heard only one. I attend his lectures in medieval history – as I attend lectures by more orthodox teachers. I encountered him on a stairway, and he invited me to come to a meeting at the coffee house. I remember it as the day you returned from the country. You waved at us as you drove across the square." Once again, she had strayed from her objective, and she paused to redirect herself as the minister continued his accusative stare.

"What I wished to communicate to the king – and in my agitation I fear I was not at all successful – was my alarm for him."

"Alarm for us?" Karl Anton made an expansive gesture. "You delude yourself. You see how well we have the situation in hand."

"But – " She paused, hesitant to contradict her sovereign.

The minister of police raised an eyebrow. "Go on," he said through a sly smile.

Every word placed her in greater danger, but her scholarship required no compromises. "The professor’s speech convinced me that the revolutionaries are wrong for trying to foment upheaval and that royalty is wrong for trying to forestall it."

The smile that budded on the king’s face at the beginning of her remark withered as she concluded it. He gripped the arm of the chair. "Do you presume to instruct us in kingship?" His words dropped cold and heavy onto the floor.

Ella at last buckled under the king’s stern gaze and sank to her knees in a billow of skirt. Unwelcome rivulets of tears coursed down her cheeks. The minister signed to the police agent guarding the door to fill a water goblet from a carafe on the sideboard and offer it to her. She clung to it as though it were the Grail.