Weighed In The Balance Part 29

"I must ask you," Rathbone insisted. "It is a harsh charge, Count Lansdorff. You cannot expect the court, or anyone, to believe you unless you can substantiate it!" He smiled a trifle wryly at the irony.

Rolf remained silent.

Harvester rose to his feet, his face flushed. "My lord...this is iniquitous! I..."

"Yes, Mr. Harvester," the judge said quietly. "Count Lansdorff, you will either retract your remarks about the Princess Gisela, and admit them to be untrue, or you will explain your grounds for making them and allow the court to decide whether they believe you or not."

Rolf stood to attention again, straightening up and squaring his shoulders. He looked beyond Rathbone and the plaintiff's and defendant's tables to somewhere in the gallery, and without thinking, Rathbone turned and looked also. The judge followed Rolf's eyes, and the jury swiveled to stare.

Rathbone saw Hester, and next to her a young man in a wheelchair, his fair brown hair catching the light. Behind him, also in the aisle, were an older man and woman of unusually handsome appearance. Presumably, from the way they regarded him, they were his parents. This was the patient Hester had spoken of. She had said they were from Felzburg. It was not unnatural they should feel compelled to come to the trial, after what the newspapers had said.

Rathbone turned back to the witness stand.

"Count Lansdorff?"

"Gisela is not barren," Rolf said between his teeth. "She had a child from an illicit affair many years before she married Friedrich-"

There was a gasp of indrawn breath around the room so sharp it was a hiss. Harvester shot to his feet, then found he had no idea what to say. Beside him, Gisela was as white as paper.

One of the jurors coughed and choked.

Rathbone was too stunned to speak.

"She did not want it," Rolf went on, his voice stinging with contempt. "She wanted to get rid of it, abort it-" Again he was forced to stop by the noise in the courtroom. The gallery erupted in anger, revulsion and distress. A woman screamed. Someone called out curses, random, indiscriminate.

The judge banged his gavel, his eyes puckered with distress.

Harvester looked as if he had been struck in the face.

Rolf's voice, harsh and loud, cut across them all.

"But the father wanted the child, and told her he would expose her if she destroyed it, but if she bore it, alive, he would take it and love it."

There was sobbing in the gallery.

The jurors were ashen-faced.

"She gave birth to a son," Rolf said. "The father took it. He struggled for a year to care for the boy himself, then he fell in love with a woman of his own rank and station, a woman of gentleness and n.o.bility who was prepared to raise the boy as her own. Conceivably, the boy has never known he was not hers."

Rathbone had to clear his throat before he could find his voice.

"Can you prove that, Count Lansdorff? These are terrible charges."

"Of course!" Rolf's lips curled in scorn. "Do you imagine I would make them from the witness stand if I could not? Zorah Rostova may be a fool...but I am not!

"Her second child was not so fortunate," he continued, his voice like breaking ice. "She conceived to Friedrich, and this one she succeeded in aborting herself. Apparently, she had some knowledge of herbs. It is an art some women choose to cultivate-for health or cosmetic reasons, among others. And to concoct aphrodisiacs or procure abortions. She was ill after this, and was attended for a short time by a doctor. I do not know if you can force him to testify, but he would not lie to you under oath. The matter distressed him profoundly." His face was contorted with emotion. "But if his profession seals his tongue, ask Florent Barberini. He will swear to it, if you press him. He has no such binding loyalties." He stopped abruptly.

Rathbone had no alternative. The court was hanging on a breath.

"But the child you say she bore, Count Lansdorff? Gisela's son! That is surely provable?"

Rolf looked one more time at the judge.

The judge's face was filled with regret but unyielding.

"I am sorry, Count Lansdorff, but the charge you make is too terrible to go unproved, true or false. You must answer if you can."

"The affair was with Baron Bernd Ollenheim," Rolf said huskily. "He took his child, and when he married, his wife loved the boy as her own."

He had nothing else to say, but the emotion of the court would not have permitted him to speak anyway. As suddenly as the breaking of a storm, their adoration for Gisela had turned to hatred.

Harvester looked like a man who had witnessed a fatal accident. His face was bereft of color, and he made half movements and then changed his mind, opened his mouth as though to speak and found he had no words.

Gisela herself sat like a woman turned to stone. Whatever she felt, there was no reflection of it written on her features. There was nothing that seemed like regret. Not once did she turn to see if she could recognize Bernd Ollenheim in the gallery, and she could hardly have failed to realize he was there-from Rolf's steady gaze, filled with pity, and from the movement of the crowd as it too realized at whom he had gazed.

Rathbone looked at Zorah. Had she known this? Had she been waiting for Rolf to expose it, hoping, trusting it would come?

From the motionless amazement in her face he could only deduce that it was as shocking to her as it was to everyone else, except Gisela herself.

It was seconds, minutes, before the hubbub died down sufficiently for Rathbone to be heard.

"Thank you, Count Lansdorff," he said at length. "We appreciate that must have been painful for you to have to reveal, in your regard for the innocent. However, it explains Queen Ulrike's undying contempt for Gisela..." He too almost unconsciously omitted her t.i.tle. "And the reason she could not, in any circ.u.mstances, permit her to return to Felzburg and become queen. Were this to become public knowledge after that event, the scandal would be devastating. It could bring down the throne. It was not possible that she should permit that."

He took a step back, turned, and then faced Rolf again. "Count Lansdorff, was Prince Friedrich aware of this past tragedy and of Gisela's son?"

"Of course," Rolf said bleakly. "We told him when he first sought to marry her. He disregarded it. He had an ability not to see what he did not wish to."

"And the later abortion? I presume that is why she has not since conceived a child?"

"You presume correctly. She now cannot. I doubt you will get the doctor to testify to that, but it is true."

"And was Prince Friedrich aware that his child was killed in the womb?"

There was a gasp around the room. In the center of the gallery, a woman was weeping. The jurors were like a row of men at an execution.

Rolf blanched even further.

"I don't know. I did not tell him, although I knew it then. I doubt she told him. Unless Barberini did. I think that unlikely."

"You did not use it to persuade him to leave his wife? I confess, I believe I would have."

"I would have too, Sir Oliver," Rolf said grimly. "But only as a last resort. I did not want a broken man. As it happened, I did not have the opportunity, and after his accident it would have been brutal. It might have killed him. Whether I would have told him later, had he recovered, I cannot tell you. I do not know."

"Thank you, Count Lansdorff. I have no further questions for you. Please remain, in case Mr. Harvester has."

Harvester rose, swayed a little, as if caught in a great wind, and cleared his throat.

"I...I a.s.sume, Count Lansdorff, that this monstrous story is one you could, and would, prove in this court if required to?" He attempted to sound brave, even defiant, but his ability failed him. He was obviously as appalled as anyone in the room. He was a man quietly devoted to his own wife and daughters, and his emotions had been too profoundly outraged for him to conceal it.

"Of course," Rolf said dryly.

"You may be required to do so. Naturally, I shall take instruction." There was nothing he could say to rebut the charge, and to have spoken now of its irrelevance to Zorah's slander would have been ridiculous. No one cared. No one was even listening. He sat down again a changed man.

The judge looked at Rathbone, his face pinched with sadness.

"Sir Oliver, I feel, regrettably, that you had better provide whatever substantiation is open to you. We do not impugn Count Lansdorff's testimony, but so far it is still only his word. I think it were better the issue were closed now, if that is a chance available to us."

Rathbone nodded. "I call Baron Bernd Ollenheim to the stand."

"Baron Bernd Ollenheim!" the usher repeated.

Very slowly, Bernd rose to his feet and made his way forward from the gallery, across the floor and up the steps of the witness stand till he turned at the top and faced the court. He was white, his eyes sick with distress. He looked over Rathbone's head towards Gisela as if she were something that had crept out of a cesspool.

"Would you like a gla.s.s of water, sir?" the judge asked him gently. "I can send an usher for one with no difficulty."

Bernd recalled himself. "No...no, thank you, my lord. I shall be quite in command of myself."

"If you wish for a.s.sistance, you may request it," the judge a.s.sured him.

Rathbone felt like a man stripping another naked. He did it only because the question must be answered now, and finally.

"Baron Ollenheim, I shall not keep you long." He took a deep breath. "I regret the necessity for calling you at all. I simply wish to ask you either to substantiate or to deny the testimony of Count Lansdorff regarding your son. Is he indeed also the son of Gisela Berentz?"

Bernd had difficulty in speaking. His throat seemed to have closed. He struggled to fill his lungs with air, and then to master the anguish which overwhelmed him.

The entire courtroom was silent in shared distress.

"Yes..." he said at last "Yes, he is. But my wife...my wife has always loved him...not only for my sake, but for his own. No..." He gasped again, his face twisted with the pain of memory-and fear for her now. "No woman could love a child more."

"We do not doubt it, sir," Rathbone said quietly. "Nor the agony this must have cost you, both then and now. Is Count Lansdorff also correct that Gisela Berentz wished to destroy the child"-he used the word intentionally, but having seen Robert Ollenheim through Hester's eyes, it came easily-"but that you forced her to carry it to term and to give birth?"

The silence deafened the room.

"Yes..." Bernd whispered.

"I ask your pardon for the intrusion into what should have been able to remain a purely personal grief," Rathbone apologized. "And I a.s.sure you of our respect for you and your family. I have nothing further I need to ask you. Unless Mr. Harvester has, that is all."

Harvester rose. He looked wretched.

"No, thank you. I do not believe that Baron Ollenheim has anything relevant to the issue at hand which he could tell us."

It was a brave attempt to remind the court that the case was one of slander between Zorah and Gisela, but no one cared anymore. The issues were abandonment, abortion and murder.

The day ended in uproar. Police had to be called in to escort Gisela to the carriage and protect her from the fury of the crowd, now surging in on her with an even fiercer rage and potential for violence than they had showed towards Zorah just two days before. They were shouting, pelting Gisela with refuse; some of them even hurled stones. One rock clattered against the carriage roof and ricocheted against the wall beyond. The cabby shouted back at the crowd, afraid for himself and his horse, and lashed his whip over their heads.

Rathbone stood on the outside of Zorah and hustled her away, fearing that she too would be a focus for their wrath. It was she who had instigated this entire collapse of dreams, and she would be hated for it.

Robert Ollenheim had asked his parents for privacy, at least for an hour, and it was Hester who sat in the carriage next to him on the way home to Hill Street. Bernd and Dagmar had stood by helplessly as the footman a.s.sisted him up and then Hester after him, but they made no attempt to argue or remonstrate.

He sat immobile, staring ahead as the horses picked up speed. The footman rode on the box. The young man and Hester were alone, moving through the milling, jostling streets.

"It's not true!" he said over and over again, grating the words between his teeth. "It's not true! That...woman...is not my..." He could not even bring himself to say the word mother. mother.

Hester put her hand over his, and felt it balled into a fist under the blanket which covered his knees. It was extremely cold in the carriage, and for once he did not resent being tucked up.

"No, she isn't," she agreed.

"What?" He turned to look at her, his face puzzled and slack with disbelief. "Didn't you hear what my father said? He said that woman...that woman..." He took a difficult, jerky breath. "Even before I was born, she didn't want me! She wanted to have me...destroyed!"

"She isn't your mother in any sense that matters," Hester said gravely. "She gave up that right. Dagmar Ollenheim is your mother. She is the one who reared you, who loved you and wanted you. You are the only child she has. You simply have to think of her at any time during all the years you have been alive to know how deeply she loves you. Have you ever doubted it before?"

"No..." He was still having difficulty catching his breath, as if something were crushing his chest. "But that...that other woman is still my mother! I'm part of her!" He glanced at Hester with wide, agonizing eyes. "That's who I am! I can't get away from it, I can't forget it! I came from her body! From her mind!"

"Her body," Hester corrected. "Not her mind. Your mind and your soul are your own."

A new horror dawned on him.

"Oh, G.o.d! What will Victoria think of me? She'll know! She'll read it on some...some sandwich board, hear it from a newsboy in the street. Someone will tell her! Hester...I've got to tell her first!" His words tumbled over each other. "Take me to where she lives! I've got to be the one to tell her. I can't let her find out from anyone else. Where does she live? I never even asked her!"

"She has lodgings in Bloomsbury. But you can't go there now. You must wait for her to come to you-"

"No! I must tell her. I can't bear..."

"You must," she said firmly. "Think of your mother...I mean Dagmar, not that other woman, who has no claim on you at all. Think how Dagmar must be feeling now. Think of your father, who loved you even before you were born, who fought for your life! They need your support. They need to know that you are all right and that you understand."

"But I must tell Victoria before-"

She held his hands hard. "Robert! Do you not think Victoria would most want you to do what is right, what is gentle and honorable and loving to those who have loved you all your life?"

It was minutes before he relaxed. They lurched and swayed through the darkening streets. The level of light in the carriage flickered as they pa.s.sed the lampposts and moved into the mist and shadows between.

"Yes...I suppose so," he conceded at last. "But I must see her tonight. I must send a message to her. I must see her before she hears it somewhere else. Otherwise I may never have the chance to tell her I love her. She will know my mother is...G.o.d knows what! I am...I am part of that woman and I don't want to be, so desperately I almost wish I had never been born. How can it happen, Hester? How can it be that you can be born part of someone you loathe and abhor? It is so unfair it is unbearable."

"You are not part of her," Hester said firmly. "You are you...whatever you choose to be. Whatever she has done, it is not your fault. It is wretched for you, because people can judge cruelly-and you are right, it is unfair. But you should know better than to blame yourself."

She waited a moment while a dray rattled past them. "Nothing she is has anything to do with who you are, unless you want it to," she went on. "Sin is not an inherited disease. You cannot pa.s.s it from parent to child. Nor can you pa.s.s the blame. That is one thing about responsibility...you cannot ever take anyone else's, no matter how you love them, and no one can give you theirs. We each stand alone. Whatever Gisela did, and she couldn't have killed Friedrich, you are not answerable to anyone for it...not to society, not to Victoria, and not to yourself."

Her grip tightened on his arm. "But listen to me, Robert! You are responsible for what you do now, for how you treat your father, or Dagmar. You are responsible if you think now only of your own pain and confusion, and turn away from theirs."

He bent his head in total weariness, and she put her arms around him, holding him as tightly as she could, reaching up and touching his hair with her hand, gently, as if he had still been ill, or a child.

She told the coachman to go slowly, so Bernd and Dagmar would get to Hill Street before them.

When they arrived and pulled up, Robert was ready. The door was flung open and Bernd stood there, white-faced, Dagmar a step behind him.

"h.e.l.lo, Father," Robert said calmly, the ravages of emotion not visible in his face in the rain-spattered lamplight. "Would you give me a hand down? It's fearfully cold in here, in spite of the rug. I hope there's a decent fire in the withdrawing room."

Bernd hesitated, searching Robert's eyes as if he could barely believe it. Then he almost fell forward and put his arms out to lift him, awkwardly at first, trying to look as if he were only helping him, but in the coach light the tears were bright on his cheeks and his hands trembled.