Page 12 of The Last Kingdom

She finished zipping her dress and scooped up the euros. Smartly, she said nothing and merely smiled, slipped on her heels, and waved goodbye as she strutted from the hotel suite. Chitchat was not part of their bargain.

He’d definitely hire her again.

He stood from the bed and approached the suite’s outer windows, standing naked before them. The eighth floor of the Charles Hotel offered a panoramic view of a darkened park, then, beyond the trees, a jumble of rooftops surmounted by the lit twin copper spires of the Frauenkirche, upthrusting through the mist. A stunning sight. By municipal law, no building in Old Town could be taller than those two towers.

Munich was lovely at night. A bustling metropolis, the most populous city in Bavaria, sitting on an upland plateau straddling the banks of the river Isar. Started by Benedictine monks in the twelfth century, it had grown into a thriving center of politics and culture, still regarded, as in medieval times, as an intellectual place, clothed in the royal habiliments of stately buildings, splendid streets, and beautiful parks.

Once the capital of the sovereign kingdom of Bavaria, its most notorious claim to fame came from Hitler and his supporters, who staged their famed Beer Hall Putsch to overthrow the weak Weimar Republic there. The revolt failed, but ten years later, after the Nazis rose to power, Munich became theirHauptstadt der Bewegung, capital of the movement. No coincidence that the first concentration camp sprouted at Dachau, just a few kilometers to the northwest. Nazi Party headquarters and many of theFührerbauten, the führer-buildings, still survived as a cancer on a great city’s legacy. The White Rose student resistance movement to Hitler also rose here, its core members all arrested and executed. But at least they tried. Seventy-one air raids by Allied bombers had done their share of damage. Three quarters of the buildings were obliterated. But it all had been rebuilt, hard now to tell the old from the new.

The city survived.

Just like himself.

And his family.

Who harbored nine hundred years of Wittelsbach lineage.

He checked his watch.

6:30P.M.

Time to start the revolution.

But first he should dress.

Stefan entered the Jesuit Church of St. Michael. A sixteenth-century masterpiece that had nearly not made it past World War II, reduced to little more than a few walls and rubble. Most of the decor around him was a 1948 restoration with some 1980s touch-ups. It was now a prominent fixture on Munich’s main pedestrian-only way, a bustling route that led from the Karlsplatz to the Marienplatz, both sides of the cobblestones surrounded by a sea of commerce. And while the nearby Frauenkirche, the Cathedral of Our Lady, belonged to everyone, St. Michael’s had always been held privately, created by Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria, as an embodiment of his family’s ruling position.

Stefan’s ancestor.

A Wittelsbach.

Famous too.

Time had even bestowed him a title—the Pious—thanks to a daily routine of prayer, Mass, contemplation, devotional reading, and pilgrimages. Nothing like a noun attached to your name to foster immortality. Which one would history add to his?The Restorer? The Bold?Or maybe just the all-purposethe Great.

What a time Wilhelm V had lived in. When Catholics and Protestants fought each other in bloody wars, trying to establish the one true Christian faith, whatever that might be. The building of a new church had seemed like a good way for Wilhelm to show his preference for the Catholics. So he created a huge house of worship with the largest overhead vault in the world at the time, save for St. Peter’s in Rome.

What a visionary.

But old Wilhelm had also been reckless. He spent so much money on church-related projects that he strained the Bavarian treasury to its breaking point. He’d been forced to abdicate in favor of his son, then retired to a monastery where he spent the remainder of his life in contemplation and prayer. Another Wittelsbach three hundred years later, a similar romanticist who’d lived within an enchanted realm of the past, had not been so fortunate.

Ludwig II died.

Or was murdered.

Just over a day after his crown had been stolen.

Which was exactly why Stefan now found himself standing within this olden church on the brink of revolution.

He acknowledged the prior who’d opened the side door for him, then stood silent for a few moments in the dimly lit nave, both hands stuffed into his coat pockets. Wilhelm’s mighty barrel-vaulted ceiling spanned unbroken above him. Galleries and side chapels encircled on all sides. A nave without aisles cast an airy appearance. Even today, centuries later, the faithful still gathered to hear the gospel proclaimed from a freestanding pulpit, the first in Munich to ever be set among a congregation.

Another of his ancestor’s many innovations.

He savored the hush, the dance of shadows thrown by the sloping banks of votive candles, and breathed in the warm, dry air. Once the entire building was owned by the Wittelsbachs. Now they controlled only the crypt beneath. All part of the deal after World War I that cost his family their heritage, their kingdom, and most everything they possessed.

A wrong he intended to rectify.

“Is it open?” he asked.

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