Page 9 of Hell to Pay
“Of course I like Germany,” I said. “It’s my homeland. I didn’t like what it became.”
“Oh,” he said. “OK, I’m confused. Soareyou excited?”
I said, “I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when we get there.”
When we got there, though, I still wasn’t sure.
Things started out easily enough, with Ben saying, the minute we crossed the street between theTaschenbergpalais—our hotel, I should say—and the palace, when I saw the familiar stone walls and my heart seemed to expand and contract at the same time—“Cool. There’s a museum of armor! I’ll bet it has weapons, too. See,thisis the kind of museum I can get behind. Can we stop for a minute?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “We’re doing the tour of the main palace and the vaults right now, with Marguerite. You can come back and check out the armory later. Your ticket lets you in everywhere for two days.”
“Or I could stay here,” Ben said, “and let you guys look at furniture or whatever.”
I had to laugh. “It will be more than furniture. I promise.”
“Plus,” Sebastian said, “I bought you a ticket for the tour. Let’s go.”
But, oh, the sight of the place. Not blackened and ruined, but miraculously whole, from the ridiculously embellished gables to the hundreds of enormous windows, the red roofs, the domes and copper-topped turrets, and the tower of theHofkirchebehind rising to the sky, “because,” my mother had said, “the place God lives must always be the highest.”
“Even for the King?” I’d asked.
“Especially for the King,” she’d said firmly, and here it was, the highest still.
We couldn’t take it all in, of course, from here. It was too big for that. You had to be across the river or in the Zwinger gardens. But I knew what it looked like, down to the imperfection of the weathered sandstone, which should never be as blandly golden as on the restoredTaschenbergpalais,but darkened by centuries. The very cobblestones under my feet were familiar, even through the thick soles of the ugly black walking shoes I had resigned myself to for today.
Sebastian said, as we made our way over to the sign thatmarked the start of our guided tour, “If you get too tired at any point, Marguerite, tell me. I’m sure they have wheelchairs here.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.” How could it be that I would be unable even to walk the corridors and rooms of my home, where I had once run so happily and freely? I walked at least two miles each day, even if I had to break that up into two walks to manage it, but what were two miles compared to all of this?
Ben’s face, when the tour actually commenced, made me laugh. “I didn’t think it would be so fancy,” he told me in the Audience Chamber, where the golden throne of Augustus the Strong stood resplendent, with its cushions and curtains of crimson embellished with cloth of gold. Original or restored, I didn’t know, but the enormous ceiling fresco overhead must have sustained damage. It was odd that I didn’t know. There it was again, though, white clouds drifting across a cerulean sky, and hefty, exuberantly naked angels and cherubs in their draperies floating along most happily and serenely. Gilt chandeliers that spanned meters, exquisite parquet floors—theymusthave restored those—paintings and gold and mirrors and all, because “restraint” was a concept wholly unfamiliar to the Baroque architect and craftsman, and scarcely an inch was left unadorned in this most important room, literally built to impress.
“Wow,”Ben breathed, as the tour guide explained on and I stayed where I was, because I knew the history already. “It must have cost, like …” He stopped. “I can’t even think how much. Millions of dollars. Billions of dollars? I can’t believe youlivedhere. Was this, like, the living room? Did you have couches or something? It’s pretty empty now. Oh—did your dad sit on the throne?”
I laughed, but when he looked hurt, I squeezed his arm and said, “No. The palace has five hundred rooms, and no, Inever saw him sit on the throne. I sat on it, though, one day when I was being very naughty. How Nanny did scold. I doubt my grandfather ever sat in it either, except perhaps at his coronation. The throne dates from more imperial times.”
“So you didn’t hang out in here,” Ben said, sounding disappointed.
“No,” I said, “we lived in fewer and fewer rooms as the war went on. Coal was hard to come by, you see, and palaces can get cold, or they could in those days. There were increasingly fewer staff, too, to maintain it all. The young men all went to the war, of course. The middle-aged men as well, eventually, leaving us with a very old butler and a very young underbutler named Franz, who’d been sent to the Eastern Front and lost a leg there, and so was allowed to return. A housekeeper, also, a cook, my mother’s maid and my father’s valet—also old, or maybe he just seemed old to me, because Herr Kolbe had been my father’s batman during the Great War and couldn’t have been more than ten years older than Father, which would have made him, what? Sixty at most. Intensely loyal man. He’d been gassed in the trenches before serving my father, and his lungs were even worse than Father’s, which was why he couldn’t be called up to fight, but he refused to retire.”
“What’s a batman?” Ben asked.
“A servant. Officers had them in those days. Not in the second war, but in the first, they had them. Three male servants, then, and all the rest women—maids, gardeners, and all. My father even had a female chauffeur, which struck me as so funny as a child. We spent most of our time in the very pretty Yellow Morning Room, which had the loveliest silk wallpaper, and took our meals in the breakfast room, though there is a very fine and very large State Dining Room that you may see later. That room had crimson wallpaper and many gilt-framed mirrors and two beautiful chandeliers, equal tothe ones in here, and could seat over sixty guests. All of it done by Augustus the Strong, of course. I’d call him ‘Augustus the Energetic,’ with all he did. A busy man.”
“So you went from using five hundred rooms to using, what, four?” Ben asked. “Because two bedrooms? I bet that was a comedown.”
“Oh, more than four,” I said. “My parents had their bedrooms and dressing rooms, and I had mine—though I didn’t have a dressing room. I was too young for that, not out in society yet. I never would have been, come to that, as there was no ‘society’ anymore to be out in. How things changed over just those few years.”
“Wait,” Ben said. “Your parents had a bedroom each? Didn’t they like each other?Anda dressing room? What the heck is a dressing room?”
“You’d call it a closet, I expect,” I said. “A large one, as one could sit in there also. Noblewomen would receive their guests there, write letters, all those sorts of things. It was a lady’s private space. So that’s, I suppose, seven rooms in all that we used. I was in the nursery first—they won’t show us that, I dare say, as it’s on a higher floor, and I’m glad enough of it, as all my toys and books will be gone, which would make me too sad, even though it doesn’t matter now, does it? Odd, the pang that my lost dollhouse and rocking horse can bring. It was a lovely dappled gray, and had real horsehair for the mane and tail, and the dollhouse was …” I sighed. “Enormous, and so beautiful, made just for me. It was a miniature version of the palace, and the dolls were my parents and me, and some of the servants as well. I was certainly trained to be a princess, wasn’t I? Once I was ten, though, I left all that behind and moved out of the nursery to my own bedroom. The servants had the kitchens, the housekeeper and butler had their private sitting rooms, and they all slept in the attics, I’m afraid.”
“Is that bad?” Ben asked. “The attics?”
“I’m afraid they were probably very cold in winter,” I said, “and hot in summer, under the roofs. Small, too, and really a great many stairs to get there. I don’t know whether there was a bath up there, either. I wonder why that never occurred to me?”
“I’ll bet they didn’t have fancy wallpaper,” Ben said. “If you had all those rooms, maybe the servants should have moved downstairs.”
“Maybe they should have,” I said.
