Heinrich and Hilde. Hilde and Heinrich. Like the title of a play: a romance or tragedy, or a comedy perhaps.

She was a thousand times more gifted, more brilliant, more deserving of life’s riches, even now when she was gone.

BLOODLINES

The Tricolore flapped brightly over Charlottenburg Palace.

Inside, the Prussians were grim and lost. Their good King Frederick was gone, fled to Osterode with Queen Louisa and a thin cabinet of ministers. Their hearts ached for their king and they moved dejectedly among the striding French. Up and down the magnificent hallways of the palace and inside the magisterial rooms and chambers, the French! Enemy messengers, aides-de-camp, adjutants, soldiers and officers, instantly familiar, right at home, moved about with purpose, ignored them. Salt in the wounds. And yet, even in their whispering, defeated huddles, each man desired to see their conqueror in the flesh. To be tied to history, to have a story to tell their grandchildren. They looked up at every sound of footsteps and click of door latches, hopeful for a glimpse. He’s here, somewhere! Right now! they all thought. Napoleon!

The loyal, the shamed but not defeated (the truly loyal), were of course appalled by their fickle compatriots. They held the fight to the French. They’d hidden the wine and the brandy. They’d taken the firewood away in carts (as much as they could shift in the short time they had) and they’d stolen the candles and chamber-pots and the sugar, and they’d opened all the windows to let the cold evening air into the vast palace hallways and rooms. They’d be damned if Bonaparte would pass any comfortable days here.

Their heroism, inevitably, amounted to not much. They were only a small group. Most of their fickle compatriots thought them absurd and idiotic. The French paid no attention to their childish sabotage. They had plenty of brandy and pissed out the windows.

At the palace now, it was gossip and rumours at their zenith, every subject imaginable. The future of Prussia, the fate of Europe, the Emperor’s luncheon menu, his favourite cologne. A chambermaid had seen his penis.

‘Small,’ she’d said. ‘Like a little snail lost its shell.’

Every keyhole an eye.

Bonaparte had instructed the fires be lit in his chambers (the palace was like a tomb, he said). He was still waiting for someone to come. His fearful staff eventually broke the furniture and piled the mahogany splinters high. In the early morning he would depart for Poland.

The Empress Josephine had written that she was pleased for him, his great triumph. She’d sent him more liquorice from the confiseur on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Paris was grey without him, she wrote. And, no, she wasn’t pregnant.

INTRODUCTIONS