“That’s Bjårk’s fault.”

The hairy creature didn’t stir.

“Do you recall what happened last night at the state banquet?”

Konstantin screwed up his face. “The snowball fight,” he said finally. “Yes, wasn’t it brilliant?”

He remembered the palace windows blazing light as they ran about outside, exhausted, freezing, and soaking, but laughing their heads off.

“It was not brilliant,” said his father. “You hit the archbishop on the ear.”

“Well, he should have joined in.”

“You put snow down the neck of my financial adviser.”

Konstantin shrugged. “He’s an old stick.”

His father shook his head. “No. You behaved like a thug.”

“We were having fun!”

“And worse than that, you behaved like a bully to people older and weaker than yourself.”

“With a snowball .”

But the older man wasn’t stopping now. “This is after the ice races.”

“I accidentally tripped up—”

“The entire professional team.”

“They were in the way!”

The boy pouted out his lower lip and suddenly looked a lot younger than twenty-four. His father shook his head. “You know, if your mother were still with us, she wouldn’t have stood for this.”

The boy pouted more. “That’s not fair,” he said, but now his voice was quiet and sad.

“We were too soft on you . . . afterward,” the man went on. “I didn’t want to upset things . . . didn’t want to make you study too much or get a job or work hard. And look at you now. Twenty-four years old and in bed in the middle of a Tuesday.”

He shook his head sadly.

“I got it wrong. I got it so wrong.”

He turned round, his younger years at Sandhurst still apparent in his gait. Konstantin stared after him, stricken.

At the door, his father turned round one more time. “I’m tempted to disinherit you.”

“You wouldn’t! For a snowball? Don’t be silly, Pappa, you can’t mean that.”

“This is a big job. And you do nothing, you learn nothing, you work at nothing except drinking champagne and playing with that fat idle hound of yours.”

Konstantin frowned and covered Bjårk’s ears.

“Be as mean as you like to me, but don’t upset Bjårky.”

“It’s all a joke to you, isn’t it?” said the older man. “All a joke. And I am going to fix that.”

And he opened the heavy white door with its gilt handle and let it slam behind him.

KONSTANTIN SAT UP in bed, Bjårk snuffling underneath his hands. It would blow over, wouldn’t it? Surely. His father was always getting these ideas into his head, insisting he should go to college or into the military, or get a job, and nothing ever came of it in the end. The much-loved only child who’d come along late in life, whose mother had died when he was fourteen . . .

Mind you, there was no Johann. That was odd. He looked at the grandfather clock in the corner. No breakfast either. Normally he needed four strong cups of coffee and some excellent rye bread thickly spread with sm ør before he could even think about a steaming-hot bath and a read of the sports pages. His paper wasn’t even here. He frowned and reached over to ring the bell. But nobody came.