Chapter Text
When the beginning of the end came, Crown Prince Wilhelm was paging through the Bible, trying to make some kind of sense out of the last year. His flesh burned and his joints ached, and he could find no relief in body or soul.
Matthew 5:6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
What irony. What bitter, bitter irony. And yet, if he couldn't hope for justice in life, he should remember that life was not the end. Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small.
All the more reason he would embrace death when it came for him. He shivered, and not only because of the cold, or because of the fever that had plagued him for weeks.
"Letter for you, Your Highness!"
Wilhelm accepted the letter from his page, and forced himself to give the boy a smile that he didn't feel. None of this wasn't the boy's fault, after all.
The seal on the letter was Heinrich's. Out of habit, Wilhelm began breaking it eagerly. There was no one dearer to him than this beloved brother, and he missed him terribly. Then, a split second later, Wilhelm remembered, and his fingers froze in place.
Ever since Friedrich, their king and brother, lord and master, had dismissed Wilhelm from the army last year, reamed him in front of his officers, and sent him home in disgrace, family correspondence had to be handled like a live grenade. Overnight, letters from Wilhelmine, the oldest sister, had gone from interesting and affectionate notes to desperate attempts to reconcile him with Friedrich.
If that was hard, correspondence from Heinrich was a hundred times harder, precisely because he was a hundred times more important to Wilhelm than anyone else. For all his love and unstinting support in this harrowing time, Heinrich's very existence shamed Wilhelm. Despite being younger and not the heir to the throne, he'd received an independent military command before Wilhelm had, and what was more, he'd held onto his.
Worst of all, he was currently in winter quarters with the King, so any news from him was as likely to be incendiary as it was to be welcome.
And if those rumors that Friedrich had gone on another diatribe directed at Wilhelm's military incompetence had any truth to them...
Wilhelm had to turn the piece of paper over and over in his hands, taking a deep breath to brace himself.
Of course Prussia needed someone as bright and driven as Heinrich, in a war in which the nation was fighting for its very existence. Nor had Friedrich's favor stopped Heinrich from siding furiously with Wilhelm after the public cashiering. But it still hurt, seeing him not only survive but thrive at Friedrich's side.
You can't put this off forever. Abruptly, Wilhelm unfolded the paper and began to read.
He was dizzy nearly to the point of losing consciousness when he set it down.
It was true, then. All those rumors hadn't been exaggerated in the telling. If anything, what Heinrich reported was worse than Wilhelm had pictured. And--this was news to Wilhelm--it was Heinrich himself who had inadvertently brought Friedrich's diatribe on, arguing with him about Leuthen.
Leuthen had been Wilhelm's last hope. Before the battle, none of his pleas with Friedrich for a second chance had ever been heard. But surely, after the intended surprise attack had been met with the Austrians somehow knowing exactly where the Prussians were, and the confrontation had ended the campaigning season with much of Silesia in Austrian hands, Friedrich would be desperate enough to need his heir at his side again.
The reverse had happened. When Heinrich had launched into a recitation of Friedrich's mistakes and concluded that surely His Majesty could admit that a commander should be allowed to learn from his mistakes, a commander such as, say, the Crown Prince of Prussia, Friedrich had doubled down and met accusation with accusation. Now it was Wilhelm's fault that Leuthen had even needed to be fought, it was Wilhelm's fault he wasn't there serving his country, it was Wilhelm's fault that morale had sunk as low as it had.
He would have blamed the war on you if he could have. We can only hope now that the sheer absurdity of his claims creates a backlash among the other generals, and they unite with me in demanding your return.
Hope? Hope was for fools. Wilhelm had hoped and hoped, and look where it had led him.
He had started drawing up his will when his sister barged in.
The last unmarried sister and thus the only one to still live in Berlin, Amalie had come, not at all to Wilhelm's surprise, to nag him again about allowing a doctor to treat him. He appreciated that his family--his family, not the king who didn't seem to want to remember they were brothers--was standing by him, but no woman could understand what it was like to be a Prussian man and know his entire worth was judged by his military performance.
"I mean it, Wilhelm: you're playing with fire, trying to make yourself sicker so the King will take you seriously. If you keep putting off treatment, you risk waiting until it's too late. You don't have to do it this way. Wilhelmine's practically Friedrich's twin sister, she's bound to get through to him eventually. Give her time!"
Wilhelm sighed. She still believed, or wanted to believe, that his refusal to be treated was part of a power play and that he meant to recover. "Amalie, the Firstborn won't let me redeem myself by throwing myself in front of an Austrian bullet. If my body's doing me the favor of collapsing here in Berlin, why on earth would I try to fight a blessing from God? No doctors."
"Why? Because you still have a family that loves you. If you don't care about me, or your children, or Mina, how is Heinrich going to take this? He was trying to help!"
Mina. Wilhelm felt a sharp pang at the thought of the sister-in-law he wished were his wife, but he steeled himself. Kinder not to let her continue pining after a man regarded by his future subjects as worthless and cowardly. Kinder to her to end it quickly.
"Some help," Wilhelm returned tonelessly. "No, I know Heinrich meant well. It's not his fault. Tell him that." Heinrich, like Friedrich, like Amalie, had a core of iron. He would grieve, but he would endure.
"You tell him that!"
"I'll write to him, but reading forgiveness isn't the same as hearing it. He loves you too. Tell him I didn't blame him, the next time you see him."
Amalie was about to protest, when the meaning of his words dawned on her. "No, you're not going to die. You're not going to die on me!"
Wilhelm would have replied, but instead he had to snatch at a handkerchief and hold it to his face, as blood began to pour from his nose.
At each blow of the hammer, Amalie, royal Prussian princess, abbess of Quedlinburg, and bereaved sister, felt her heart beat in time with it. When the last nail had been driven into her brother's coffin and the pounding stopped, she felt that her heart would stop as well.
In the silence that fell over the mourners, she held very still for a long second, as if waiting to see if it would. It kept beating, of course. Was it possible to die of a broken heart?
If such a thing was possible, Wilhelm had. Her once healthy, sunny brother had returned in despair to Berlin, where Amalie watched his body and his spirit compete over which could deteriorate faster.
Standing before his coffin, Amalie could hear the royal condemnation being read aloud as clearly as though she'd been there that fatal day. I would be justified in cutting off your head...Rule a harem if you like, but never again will I entrust you with a body of ten men. No one who knew Wilhelm could say he'd ever been the same after that.
Yet Amalie was still convinced she could have dragged Wilhelm back from the brink. Friedrich would have let Wilhelmine wear him down in time, and Amalie would have found some way to make Wilhelm hang on until then.
But then. That second humiliation. That was when his lack of will to live had turned into a will to die. As his body broke down, he took to his rooms, shut everyone out, and compounded refusing doctors with refusing food.
In his own way, he'd outfought Amalie. She'd pitted her will against his, raging and pleading, ordering and strategizing, and he'd won by the simple expedient of doing nothing. In a cruel victory, he died choking on his own blood, just exactly as though he'd been granted that death by Austrian bullet he'd wished for.
Amalie had been the one holding his hand when the choking turned to stillness. Before that, Amalie had been the one to send for the pastor, so Wilhelm could feel he was dying justified in God's eyes, if not in the King's.
And now Amalie would be the one to write the letters.
Friedrich's wouldn't be the hardest. He had brought this all on them, and he would have to take what he could get in terms of having the news broken to him sensitively. Heinrich's, though…Heinrich's letter was going to be brutal to write.
Amalie tensed just thinking of it. She might not be as close to Heinrich these days as she was to Friedrich, but they'd grown up close in age and often in companionship, and the bonds still held. She respected him even when she fought with him, they appreciated each other's quick wit, and there were always those moments of solidarity when the Firstborn was driving his siblings crazy.
But Heinrich and Wilhelm had been inseparable since Heinrich was old enough to toddle after the big brother he worshipped. Then, as they grew up, he evolved into Wilhelm's most trusted advisor. They'd shared a bedroom, a childhood governor, and a lifetime of confidences.
Now Heinrich must be tearing himself apart over how badly he'd miscalculated in trying to restore Wilhelm to favor, nearly as much as he must be tearing himself apart in the need to remain loyal to Friedrich while blaming him for Wilhelm's demise.
What on earth was she going to say?
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. Wilhelmine cried aloud when she realized what the letter in her shaking hands was telling her.
Wilhelm was gone. Dear, dependable, lovable Wilhelm. Always the family prop, quietly helping out any way he could, smoothing over misunderstandings, tying everyone together. Until his sudden fall from grace last year, when Wilhelmine had found herself in the unaccustomed position of family mediator.
Trying to convince herself this was real, she reread the first part of the letter from Friedrich. Written in what state of blind shock and disbelief she could only imagine, it opened with a description of Wilhelm's good nature and Friedrich's grief at losing him...and then immediately launched into a list of his failings, culminating in his refusal to reconcile with Friedrich.
As one of the people who'd spent months frantically trying to help Wilhelm heal the damage that had been done, Wilhelmine knew firsthand just how skewed this picture was. She understood that from Friedrich's perspective, it looked like Wilhelm hadn't tried, but he simply hadn't been able to find the right words to win Friedrich's favor back, without degrading himself past a point he couldn't live with.
Couldn't live with. And hadn't. Now she'd never be able to bring her two brothers back together. She'd had her chance, and the chance had passed. That realization made her weep almost as much as Wilhelm's death did.
She knew, she knew, that Friedrich hadn't intended for his brother to die still in disgrace. That was why he was so insistent that Wilhelm just hadn't tried. Given time, Friedrich would have played the role of benevolent shepherd welcoming back his errant sheep, just as he once had with Wilhelmine. But time was exactly what had run out.
Now he was dead, and she could see Friedrich struggling to come to terms with that fact in his letter. In a jarring segue after the list of failings--or perhaps this was meant to be another way he'd let Friedrich down?--her brother lamented the fact that by dying, Wilhelm had left a minor as the heir to the throne. Now Friedrich had to abandon his plans to abdicate in Wilhelm's favor and live a peaceful private life after the war. This was the first Wilhelmine had heard of such plans, but with the grief racking him and an endless war buffeting him, she understood why her brother needed to tell himself that.
Friedrich concluded the letter with a plea for pity for a man old before his time, bent under the weight of his cares, unable to refuse the needs of the state at any cost to himself.
Wilhelmine's shaking hands set the paper back on the desk.
People were too complicated. Looking down at the spaniel curled up on her lap, Wilhelmine stroked his fur. He seemed to sense her turmoil, and raised his head to first nose, and then lick, her hand.
"Thank you," she whispered through her tears. On this day when all the world seemed gray and bewildering, a single wet nose came as a beam of light shining through.
Alcmene, Wilhelmine could only hope, was doing the same service for Friedrich, far away on the Silesian border. She and her brother had always praised dogs for their unwavering loyalties, and now she found herself envying the simplicity of their lives. Alcmene would never be asked to stare at a blank page, wondering what words she could conceivably call on to comfort the brother who was her other half for letting another brother die unforgiven.
Friedrich would have to depend on Alcmene for a few hours longer, then, while Wilhelmine tried to find her way through a tangle of emotions to a letter that would somehow substitute for crying into each other's arms.
For the moment, she set aside that daunting prospect and instead picked up her pen to compose a very different letter. This one was for another man she honored with the title of "brother": Voltaire. Together, they'd been trying to use their connections to negotiate a peace between Prussia and France, and now, more than ever, they needed to end the war, whatever it took. It's tearing Europe apart, and it's tearing us apart.
"Out, out! The King says out!" Rudely awakening her, the tall man shooed Alcmene toward the door with the other dogs. Half asleep, she obediently started trotting away, but gradually, a few facts dawned on her. She'd assumed she was being ushered out because it was morning, but it was barely evening. What was more, her human was already in bed. When she looked back just before crossing the threshold, she saw him staring at her from where he lay, eyes wide and glassy.
This was all kinds of wrong. Why was she being kicked out at bedtime, when she wasn't even causing trouble? And why was the tall man acting like it was morning, when her human was acting like it was night?
"Diane, hold still! Phyllis, come back here!"
In the confusion while the other dogs ran up and down and all round the antechamber and corridor, barking and chasing each other, and people tried to catch them, Alcmene saw her chance. When no one was looking, she turned around, bolted back through the bedroom door, and made a running leap onto the bed. In the cold winter air, she burrowed under the blankets, making a den for herself. She pressed herself against her human's thigh, and put her head right by his hand. If he was awake, he was always good for pets and scritches. Even when he was sick, even when he was yelling at the other humans, she was his best dog, and he always had time for her.
But his cold and clammy fingers barely twitched, and he moaned a couple of times. Resigning herself, Alcmene settled in for the night. It was all right, she was sleepy anyway. She could smell her human, feel his body, and hear him breathe, and that was all the comfort she needed. Everything would be back to normal in the morning.
Waiting for her makeshift den to warm up, she listened to the sounds from the room. They too were comforting in their familiarity, at least for a while. The door closing. Boots tapping on the floor as the tall man moved around in the room. The hushed sounds as he picked up scattered clothes, the clank of objects being set on and removed from the table. She was nearly caught when he came over to the bed to help make her human comfortable, but she was just another lump in the bunched-up blankets, and she went unnoticed.
So when he was finished, the tall man went to the desk, where he made some papers crinkle. Alcmene's ears pricked up at that. What was he doing there? But then he left, closing the door on his way out, and Alcmene was at last alone with her human.
For a while, her breaths slowed in time with his as she started to drift off. When his breathing stopped altogether, she was on the edge of sleep and only half noticed.
In the morning, her hopes were dashed. The sun was coming up, yet she was the only one awake. Her human should be up by now, feeding and playing with her. He liked it when she and the other dogs competed for his attention while he drank his bitter-smelling morning drink. Then the tall man would come and take her and the other dogs outside for food and exercise.
Instead of all this, her human was lying motionless in bed, while she got hungrier and hungrier, and no one was doing anything about it. Worse, even when she stood on his chest, frantically licking and nudging and barking in his face, he didn't respond. Wake up wake up wake up!
Finally, she gave up and jumped onto the table. She knew that made her a bad dog, but no dog could be good on an empty stomach. Spotting half a bread roll that had been left behind, she inhaled it and looked around for more.
There was a cup of dark, sweet liquid that she normally would have gulped down the moment she found it unsupervised, but today it gave off a strange smell that repelled her. Had he started making his nighttime sweet drink bitter too? That was so unfair that she whined in protest.
After a few disappointed sniffs at the drink, hoping it would change, she turned back to the table surface in vain. Just a couple of crumbs and one sticky spot tasting of apple.
When she accepted that that was all there was, Alcmene leapt off the table and tried again to wake her human. She barked, ran around the room, jumped on the bed, pushed at his chin with her nose, and barked again.
Then the door opened. It was the tall man, here to take her outside. Finally! Somebody understood the routine. But he seemed startled to see her standing over her human's body. "Bad dog!" he yelled. It was the angriest voice anyone had ever used with her.
Hungry dog confused dog scared dog! she whined at him, moving her tail imploringly and begging him to understand.
"Your Majesty?" The tall man ran over to the bed, shoved Alcmene away from her human, and began shaking his limp body, trying to wake him. "Your Majesty!"
Alcmene didn't know a lot of words, but she knew that was a word for her human. She also knew, suddenly, that her barking would never wake him up again. Putting her paws on his chest for the last time, she threw back her head and howled despondently.
The King is dead, long live the King. The King is dead, long live the King.
Whatever Mina tried to do--read, embroider, play--the sentence kept bouncing around meaninglessly in her head, drowning everything else out and yet not making any sense at all. Friedrich had been the star around which they had all revolved for so long that it had seemed he was immortal, that there could be no Prussia without him.
Yet his funeral was tomorrow.
The manner of his death was equally incomprehensible. A cup of poisoned chocolate, and a note left beside it saying how much he regretted Wilhelm. Wilhelm. She hadn't even gotten used to her beloved being gone forever, and now she was supposed to remember that the King was dead, long live the King. The King is dead, long live the King. She couldn't get the jingling refrain out of her head.
She shook her head, trying to clear it.
Not only were all these facts true, they were so true that her husband had even returned from the front to Berlin. In the coming days, Heinrich would bury his brother, see Wilhelm's young son acknowledged as king, and take up the mantle as regent.
Wilhelm's son--the thought of him never failed to generate a maternal hunger. He should have been mine. Married to Heinrich, Mina was doomed to be childless forever, and Wilhelm and his wife had been nothing to each other but breeding animals, generating royal heirs on demand. But she and Wilhelm could have been parents together.
Before she noticed what she was doing, Mina's hand had plunged into the front of her bodice for the thousandth time and pulled out a ribbon, from which a ring and a miniature hung. Opening the latter, she found herself gazing deeply into Wilhelm's portrait, as though the locket could swallow her up and pull her back into a world where he existed.
King Friedrich she missed mostly as a protector, but Wilhelm as a man. His contagious laughter crinkling around his eyes, the warmth and understanding in his expression, and his sheer physical presence. For a man as tall and robust as he was, she'd always been struck by how easily he carried himself, how obviously comfortable he was in his own skin. It couldn't be possible that someone so alive could simply vanish from the earth.
Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.
Never again, Mina realized in dismay, would she have to remind herself that she was married, and that both her wedding vows and Wilhelm's loyalty to his brother stood between her and happiness. Now she was free from temptation. A bitter kind of freedom. It was just her and Heinrich now: Heinrich flaunting his male favorites, and Mina still a virgin after five years of marriage. She was too sensible to expect the world to be made for women, and too well-bred to let resentment show, but she would have had to be more than human not to feel any.
And yet she would have had to be less than human not to pity Heinrich today. If Mina was feeling thrown off balance by Friedrich's absence, how much more overwhelmed her husband must be, having to step into those shoes. And how he must be aching for the brother he'd grown up with. She should go to him. It would be better than wallowing in her own sorrow, and who knew. Bereavement and shared grief might be a heaven-sent opportunity to make something grow in the barren wasteland that was their marriage.
And not a moment too soon. Through all the years of her husband's neglect, Friedrich's distant benevolence toward Mina had oftentimes felt like the only bulwark standing between her and utter shame at court. The courtiers took their cue from the King, who treated his favorite sister-in-law like a friend. And so her lot had been bearable. Now she wondered what the future would hold for her, the unwanted wife of the Regent.
Resolutely, Mina put her locket back inside her bodice, set down her undone embroidery, and rose.
She found Heinrich sitting forlornly in a chair in his music room. Unbidden, her heart went out to him. Then she saw that he was holding his violin idle in his lap, while gazing at a portrait of Wilhelm that sat behind his snuffbox on the mahogany table. She took it as a sign.
"Heinrich," she said as she came up to him from behind, her voice low and solicitous. She put her hand on his shoulder. "Heinrich, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?"
His head jerked up, startled, and he stiffened. "No. Madam." His voice was thick, as if he'd been crying.
Shaking off her hand, he stood and put his violin back in its case, keeping his back firmly to her and taking as much time about it as possible. He even moved the snuffbox and portrait aside to make room on the table, although there was plenty of room. Anything to avoid looking at her.
Perhaps if she just kept trying a little more...She held out her hand again, although she didn't touch him this time. "Heinrich. I loved them too. Wilhelm filled up so much space in our lives, I understand how much you must be grieving him. And then to lose the King and in the same moment find out how remorseful he felt-"
Heinrich finally faced her then, whirling around on her so quickly she took an involuntary step back. He held the silk scarf he used to cover his violin in his hands, and he was pulling it so taut his knuckles were white. The hatred in his tear-filled eyes made her recoil. "Don't pretend you know the first thing about it! You understand nothing!"
By this time, Mina was starting to get angry herself. She would have excused an emotional outburst, but this was too much. All she was doing was trying to behave decently toward her own husband. "Heinrich, you're not the only one who misses them. I have feelings too, you know. I've never been so distraught as when Wilhelm died." Now she was crying too. She didn't want to talk any more about Wilhelm. "And the King, I admired and respected him to no end. When the news came, it was like everything stopped. I was so stunned."
"Oh, were you? Well, if you were so enamored of the late King, would you like to keep the snuffbox he used to kill himself, as an heirloom?" As Heinrich gestured at the table, his voice rose into a biting crescendo. "It'll go nicely with that engagement ring of Wilhelm's that he left you in his will."
Mina gasped and pressed her hand to her chest, where the hidden ring hung. Her husband's indifference she was used to, but not such deliberate cruelty.
Against her will, her eyes followed his toward the snuffbox on the table. Before, it had been only a lovely blue and white piece of porcelain shaped like a chest of drawers, but now it loomed with a more sinister meaning. Was Heinrich saying he'd be happier if she took her life too?
Or worse? Her face grew hot with anger. "If you're implying that I had an affair with both your brothers…or why not all three?" Sarcasm felt like her best defense right now.
Unwillingly, Heinrich laughed once, coldly. "No, not even you could interest Friedrich in a woman. But Wilhelm had a weakness for beautiful ladies, though I would have thought he'd have spared mine."
'Mine.' As though they had ever been husband and wife in more than name. For a marriage to fall apart and both parties to live as strangers was nothing new, but for it to start that way was a distinction Mina could have done without.
Heinrich continued, "I didn't want to believe it of him, but then he left you his children in his will, cutting out their mother entirely. Now, why would he do that? Is there one more on the way I don't know about?" He looked pointedly at her waistline.
I didn't ask him to do that! she might have protested, but she wanted to hurt Heinrich. She couldn't deny that she and Wilhelm had committed adultery in their hearts, and that they'd yielded more to temptation than they should have, but she'd drawn the line at outright infidelity, nor would she take all the blame for the failure that was her marriage.
"How could there be?" she taunted him. "No one would believe for a second it was yours."
For one moment, she hoped he would prove her wrong. He stood up, a certain gleam in his eye, and, if sympathy didn't work, then maybe the heat of anger, just maybe...
"Get out."
"I meant-"
"Out."
With what was left of her dignity, Mina curtsied and left.
Later that night, when tempers had had a chance to cool, she returned to the wing where he kept his apartment, as far away from hers as possible. She knew she'd said things that she shouldn't have, and he couldn't have meant all he'd said. He wasn't usually like this, and little wonder, on a day like today. And of course, it was the woman's place to make the first apology.
As Mina walked up the corridor, she heard muffled shouting.
One voice was Heinrich's, and the other she recognized after a moment. It was Christian Glasow, his new valet since the cream of the King's staff got divided up by his siblings, while the rest had to look for work elsewhere. She recognized the tone, too. It was what she'd been half-hoping to elicit earlier: not only did everyone know Heinrich favored handsome young men, but rumor had it he picked ones who found a good fight sexually exciting. Unfortunately for Mina, it seemed that trick only worked for men.
"He was your brother!"
"Ferdinand was my only brother after that monster killed Wilhelm!"
And then an unmistakable silence fell. The wall, in its mercy, blocked out any other, fainter sounds from inside the room, but it couldn't block out her imagination.
Schooling her face not to let on to the servants that anything was amiss, Mina continued walking as though she were on some other errand entirely, and forced herself to think about Heinrich's words rather than what Heinrich and Glasow might be doing right now.
The King killed Wilhelm?
Mina couldn't believe it. Not the man whom she'd primarily remember for the little kindnesses he'd shown her. The King had made Wilhelm's last days miserable, indubitably, but killed him? The doctors had found blood in Wilhelm's brain during the autopsy and declared that the cause of death. Such an accusation could only be more proof that Heinrich was out of his mind with grief. Yet even if the King had contributed in some way to the death of the man she loved, no one could deny that it had been inadvertent, nor that Friedrich had paid for Wilhelm's life, offering up his own in return.
I wouldn't have asked for such a price, Mina thought. Please rest now, both of you.
Amalie was sick and tired of funerals, and she couldn't believe that it wasn't even the war's fault. A year ago, it had been her mother. The Queen's death at age seventy hadn't come as a surprise, but it had still hurt, more than Amalie expected. Not less because of their lifelong strife, but differently.
Then Wilhelm, felled like a mighty oak struck by lightning. Like an oak, he hit the ground with a resounding crash, landing squarely on Friedrich. Hardly sooner was Wilhelm laid to rest than Friedrich's remains were being lowered into the quiet plot at Sanssouci he'd designed for himself. Amalie had watched, shaking, tormented by fears that she was to blame. If she'd just waited until she was a little less angry to break the news of Wilhelm's death to him, perhaps her letter would not have provoked his suicide. But she'd spoken to no one of her fears and guilt.
Now Wilhelm was being moved from his country palace to the family crypt in the Berlin Cathedral. It wasn't customary for women to attend this particular service, but Heinrich looked so lost that she'd put her hand on his shoulder and said, "I'm coming with you."
He'd nodded gratefully, and so here she was, back at Oranienburg, where she'd held Wilhelm's dying hand. Wilhelm and Heinrich had been the closest in age to her, and she'd grown up playing with her brothers as much as she was allowed, sometimes wishing she were one of them. It had seemed the boys had so much more freedom; yet today, all she could see was the shackles they bore.
In a way, you could say both Wilhelm and Friedrich were casualties of the war after all. Wilhelm, of course, had been humiliated for his performance on campaign, and while Friedrich's suicide note might have referred only to Wilhelm, no one who knew him, not even Amalie in her worst nightmares, believed that his brother's death was anything but the last straw after watching first Silesia and then East Prussia slip out of his hands.
The most Amalie could hope for was that Heinrich achieved peace quickly. He'd promised her he meant to open negotiations as soon as possible. If there had to be someone to replace Friedrich's firm and unquestioned hand on the tiller, she was glad it was Heinrich, whom Friedrich had sometimes called his other self.
The three siblings, Amalie, Heinrich, and Ferdinand, entered the Oranienburg church together. The plain wooden coffin lay where Amalie had left it the last time she was here.
As they caught sight of it and moved to pay their private respects, before the removal ceremony began, Heinrich met Amalie's eyes.
"You're the abbess," he reminded her softly, with an ironic quirk. "What shall our text be?"
Amalie's own mouth twisted to match his. She grasped the gallows humor immediately, for being abbess was no more than a source of income for her, but for once her normally quick tongue was at a loss. She could quote chapter and verse as well as any child of Friedrich Wilhelm, but religion for comfort? That had never been part of her life or Heinrich's, as children or as adults. She'd always envied Wilhelm that he could find any such comfort.
Heinrich pressed her hand in his, understanding without words, and then turned toward the coffin. He gazed at it, walked around it, touched it, asked a couple of questions too quietly for Amalie to hear, and then, suddenly, gave the order for it to be opened. "I want to see his face one last time."
While the lid was raised, Amalie averted her eyes. Wilhelm's face was the last thing she wanted to see. She prayed she'd one day be able to get the sight of it out of her mind, twisted into agonized contortions for a full day and night, until death finally came as a release. Heinrich was fortunate not to have witnessed that.
Instead, she watched her living brothers. She noted Ferdinand's obvious grief, but also his concern, as his eyes kept darting from the coffin to Heinrich. Heinrich had eyes only for the dead. With the intensity blazing in every line of his body, he could have been ready to crawl in beside Wilhelm, or ready to set the world on fire.
He was still blazing when he reached into his pocket and pulled out something small and hard, then reached to put it in with his brother. He tucked it into the pocket of Wilhelm's coat, then ordered the coffin sealed again. After a moment, the glimpse of blue that Amalie's eye had caught resolved itself in her memory into a Meissen snuffbox, one of the spoils of war Heinrich had brought back from Saxony. So Heinrich wanted to leave his brother with one last gift, something he'd carried on his body for a year.
Then the tears pricking at Amalie's eyes swelled into a flood, and she could see no more.