Page 6 of Hell to Pay
I laughed again. “No. He lived a good long time and had a good many mistresses. So I will sleep in the mistress’s suite tonight. My mother would have been horrified, but so amusing, do admit.”
“You are familiar with your history,” the desk clerk said.
“She’s absolutely familiar,” Alix said. “That’s because she’sthe Princess of Saxony. I feel like we need a drumroll here. Her father was the King. The last king, I guess. The lost princess returns.”
“No,” I said firmly. We would need this nonsense, I knew, in the days to come, but did it have to begin now? “The titles were abolished in 1918, as I’ve mentioned. My grandfather abdicated, and there it ended. An ersatz princess only, I regret to say, although in truth, I’m probably not a monarchist. One does see the pitfalls of a single ruler by this point. No, my granddaughter and I, and her mother, are all only ersatz princesses these days, but Augustus the Strongwasmy ancestor. He could break horseshoes with his bare hands and ride a horse balancing a child in each hand with the reins between his teeth. Or so they say.”
“Probably good,” Sebastian said, “if you’re trying to get to be the King of Poland. I had no idea it was an elected position.”
“The battle does not go to the strong, Ecclesiastes tells us,” I said. “Except that it generally does. Let’s see this suite, then. I’ve never been a mistress. I find I’m quite excited about it.”
“Gnädige Frau,”the desk clerk said, probably dating himself with the old-fashioned address, then adding a little bow to finish the job. “Or as I should say, Your Royal Highness. Allow me to fetch the hotel manager to escort you there. If we had known …”
“Nonsense,” I said. “No need for ceremony or titles. Frau Stark will do. If somebody will bring my bags up, though, I would be most happy. A cup of tea and a rest, I think. I am a very old lady, as you see.”
“A cup of tea andLebkuchen,perhaps?” the desk clerk said.
“Ah,” I said. “It’s been a long time since I had authenticLebkuchen.This much special treatment, I will happily allow. Thank you.”
“A tray, then,” the clerk said. “For the princess and herfamily. The Queen Suite will have a princess in it, for this brief time at least, who truly belongs there.”
Clearly a much better capitalist than he’d been a communist. If he sent meLebkuchenand tea, though, he could call me whatever he liked.
4
JEWELS AND BROKEN GLASS
So far, I hadn’t been as affected as I’d expected. Perhaps I’d finally found the serenity of extreme old age. More likely, I was just numb. My suite, to my secret relief, didn’t have a view of theResidenzschloss,which allowed me to wait until tomorrow to confront more of my past. The space, although rather ornate and boasting a most beautiful sage-green wallpaper in the bedroom, bore no resemblance to the palace rooms of my childhood—another relief. Tomorrow would be soon enough.
Alix helped me unpack my two cases, which I appreciated, and then we had our tea andLebkuchen,which Ben greatly enjoyed. “They’re, like, gingerbread cookies or something,” he said. “Except not. They taste kind of … complicated. Spicy and complicated. I really like the ones with chocolate on them. Maybe we could buy these from someplace when we get home.”
“Not possible,” I said. “Notder echteLebkuchen—real Lebkuchen. If you like, I could show you how to make them the next time you visit me, but you must have patience. They’re much better if you prepare your own candied citruspeel and your own spice mix, and few people want to do that now. It’s all shortcuts, as they rush about.”
“Well, to be fair,” Alix said, “not everybody lives in a palace with a cook and a … scullery maid or whatever.”
“Or plays for the NFL,” Ben chimed in. “You wouldn’t believe how much takeout we order at home, or how many different things we get, things I never heard of. I thought at first that Sebastian’s food was really weird, but I guess I’m getting used to it. I still don’t want to eat things with shells, though. Prawns are just gross. It’s like eating bugs, and there are their heads and legs and everything, right there. Gross.”
“Because Sebastian was working so hard, and so was I,” Alix said. “When I was working on the data center, I could barely manage to fix chili and beef stew for the week on my day off. Of course, I didn’t have a dishwasher.”
Sixty years ago, I might have been annoyed. Today, I laughed. Everyone stared at me, and I waved a hand and laughed more before saying, “It’s possible you will gain a new perspective on hardship during our time here. Although I will agree that you worked too much, Alix, for somebody not forced to it, and modern life does get more and more expensive, partly because the minimum requirements seem to grow every year. I was so happy to have two rooms and a bathroom to share with only my husband, and even when we added your mother, I felt nothing but fortunate. This modern mania for bathrooms is quite mad.”
“It sounds,” Sebastian said, “like you’ve lived your way up and down the entire realm of possibilities.”
“Probably so,” I said, “although I’ve never begged in the street. Quite. But before we examine those possibilities further, I think I must have a rest.”
Alix jumped up fast, nearly upsetting the coffee table, and said, “Fine. I’m going to go walk around and look at things, if you guys want to come. And we really should make a plan forhow we get your tiara back, Oma. We probably can’t just sneak into the cellars and go for it, huh?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t imagine the German justice system would look kindly on that.”
“We could do a guided tour of the palace tomorrow,” Sebastian suggested. “Scope things out, ask innocent questions, figure out our next step. I already bought tickets to the … whatever it’s called. The treasure chamber.”
“The Grünes Gewölbe,”I said, with something that was either coronary palpitations or excitement fluttering in my chest. “The Green Vault. A guided tour sounds like an excellent first step. And you are not,” I told Alix, “to tell anyone that we are princesses. Firstly, because I’ll start to believe that you’re a snob, and you don’t want that.”
Alix gasped. “A snob?Me? Excuseme? I was an electrician! In a hard hat and work boots! I own zero sets of engraved stationery. That would be my mother,” she explained to Sebastian and Ben. “The coat of arms of the royal house of Saxony has a crown and a shield and not one but two lions, and she writes thank-you notes to her clients on that paper! It also says ‘From the desk of Her Royal Highness, Princess Elise Alexandrina von Sachsen,’ in case anybody missed the point. In gold. Absolute cringe-fest. ‘Helpful for my work,’ my foot. I’m not doing that, Oma, and you must know it. I’m just trying to make sure people treat you right!” She looked truly upset. Accusations are most upsetting, in my experience, when they are a tiny bit true.
“Obviously,” I said, “you’re not your mother. I apologize for the implication. But it will be better to be incognito for now. And now,” I said, rising from my chair with the kind of effort that reminds one of one’s age, “I must rest.”
“Dinner in your room?” Sebastian asked. “Or would you rather join us downstairs?”
