Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  “Forgive this intrusion, Princess,” Walter said to Bea. “I had to visit our consulate in Cardiff—a tiresome business about German sailors who got into trouble with the local police.”

  That was rubbish. Walter was a military attaché: his job did not involve getting sailors out of jail.

  “Good morning, Lady Maud,” he said, shaking her hand. “What a delightful surprise to find you here.”

  More rubbish, she thought. He was here to see her. She had left London so that he could not badger her, but deep in her heart she could not help being pleased by his persistence in following her all this way. Flustered, she just said: “Hello, how are you?”

  Bea said: “Do have some coffee, Herr von Ulrich. The earl is out riding, but he’ll be back soon.” She naturally assumed Walter was there to see Fitz.

  “How kind you are.” Walter sat down.

  “Will you stay for lunch?”

  “I would love to. Then I must catch a train back to London.”

  Bea stood up. “I should speak to the cook.”

  Walter jumped to his feet and pulled out her chair.

  “Talk to Lady Maud,” Bea said as she left the room. “Cheer her up. She’s worried about the international situation.”

  Walter raised his eyebrows at the note of mockery in Bea’s voice. “All sensible people are worried about the international situation,” he said.

  Maud felt awkward. Desperate for something to say, she pointed to The Times. “Do you think it’s true that Serbia has called up seventy thousand reservists?”

  “I doubt if they have seventy thousand reservists,” Walter said gravely. “But they are trying to raise the stakes. They hope that the danger of a wider war will make Austria cautious.”

  “Why is it taking the Austrians so long to send their demands to the Serbian government?”

  “Officially, they want to get the harvest in before doing anything which might require them to call men to the army. Unofficially, they know that the president of France and his foreign minister happen to be in Russia, which makes it dangerously easy for the two allies to agree on a concerted response. There will be no Austrian note until President Poincaré leaves St. Petersburg.”

  He was such a clear thinker, Maud reflected. She loved that about him.

  His reserve failed him suddenly. His mask of formal courtesy fell away, and his face looked anguished. Abruptly, he said: “Please come back to me.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat seemed choked with emotion, and no words came out.

  He said miserably: “I know you threw me over for my own sake, but it won’t work. I love you too much.”

  Maud found words. “But your father . . . ”

  “He must work out his own destiny. I cannot obey him, not in this.” His voice sank to a whisper. “I cannot bear to lose you.”

  “He might be right: perhaps a German diplomat can’t have an English wife, at least not now.”

  “Then I’ll follow another career. But I could never find another you.”

  Her resolve melted and her eyes flooded.

  He reached across the table and took her hand. “May I speak to your brother?”

  She bunched up her white linen napkin and blotted her tears. “Don’t talk to Fitz yet,” she said. “Wait a few days, until the Serbian crisis blows over.”

  “That may take more than a few days.”

  “In that case, we’ll think again.”

  “I shall do as you wish, of course.”

  “I love you, Walter. Whatever happens, I want to be your wife.”

  He kissed her hand. “Thank you,” he said solemnly. “You have made me very happy.”

  { VI }

  A strained silence descended on the house in Wellington Row. Mam made dinner, and Da and Billy and Gramper ate it, but no one said much. Billy was eaten up with a rage he could not express. In the afternoon he climbed the mountainside and walked for miles on his own.

  Next morning he found his mind returning again and again to the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery. Sitting in the kitchen in his Sunday clothes, waiting to go with his parents and Gramper to the Bethesda Chapel for the service of the breaking of bread, he opened his Bible at the Gospel According to John and found chapter 8. He read the story over and over. It seemed to be about exactly the kind of crisis that had struck his family.

  He continued to think of it in chapel. He looked around the room at his friends and neighbors: Mrs. Dai Ponies, John Jones the Shop, Mrs. Ponti and her two big sons, Suet Hewitt . . . They all knew that Ethel had left Tŷ Gwyn yesterday and bought a train ticket to Paddington; and although they did not know why, they could guess. In their minds, they were already judging her. But Jesus was not.

  During the hymns and extempore prayers, he decided that the Holy Spirit was leading him to read those verses out. Toward the end of the hour he stood up and opened his Bible.

  There was a little murmur of surprise. He was a bit young to be leading the congregation. Still, there was no age limit: the Holy Spirit could move anyone.

  “A few verses from John’s Gospel,” he said. There was a slight shake in his voice, and he tried to steady it.

  “‘They say unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.’”

  Bethesda Chapel went suddenly quiet: no one fidgeted, whispered, or coughed.

  Billy read on: “‘Now Moses in the Law commanded us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as if he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted himself up, and said unto them—’”

  Here Billy paused and looked up.

  With careful emphasis he said: “‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’”

  Every face in the room stared back at him. No one moved.

  Billy resumed: “‘And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her: Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said: No man, Lord.’”

  Billy looked up from the book. He did not need to read the last verse: he knew it by heart. He looked at his father’s stony face and spoke very slowly. “‘And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.’”

  After a long moment he closed the Bible with a clap that sounded like thunder in the silence. “This is the Word of God,” he said.

  He did not sit down. Instead he walked to the exit. The congregation stared, rapt. He opened the big wooden door and walked out.

  He never went back.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Late July 1914

  Walter von Ulrich could not play ragtime.

  He could play the tunes, which were simple. He could play the distinctive chords, which often used the interval of the flatted seventh. And he could play both together—but it did not sound like ragtime. The rhythm eluded him. His effort was more like something you might hear from a band in a Berlin park. For one who could play Beethoven sonatas effortlessly, this was frustrating.

  Maud had tried to teach him, that Saturday morning at Tŷ Gwyn, at the upright Bechstein among the potted palms in the small drawing room, with the summer sun coming through the tall windows. They had sat hip to hip on the piano stool, their arms interlaced, and Maud had laughed at his efforts. It had been a moment of golden happiness.

  His mood had darkened when she explained how his father had talked her into breaking with Walter. If he had seen his father on the evening when he returned to London, there would have been an explosion. But Otto had left for Vienna, and Walter had had to swallow his rage. He had not seen his father since.

  He had agreed to Maud’s proposal that
they should keep their engagement secret until the Balkan crisis was over. It was still going on, though things had calmed down. Almost four weeks had passed since the assassination in Sarajevo, but the Austrian emperor still had not sent to the Serbians the note he had been mulling so long. The delay encouraged Walter to hope that tempers had cooled and moderate counsels had prevailed in Vienna.

  Sitting at the baby grand piano in the compact drawing room of his bachelor flat in Piccadilly, he reflected that there was much the Austrians could do, short of war, to punish Serbia and soothe their wounded pride. For example, they could force the Serbian government to close anti-Austrian newspapers, and purge nationalists from the Serbian army and civil service. The Serbians could submit to that: it would be humiliating, but better than a war they could not win.

  Then the leaders of the great European countries could relax and concentrate on their domestic problems. The Russians could crush their general strike, the English could pacify the mutinous Irish Protestants, and the French could enjoy the murder trial of Madame Caillaux, who had shot the editor of Le Figaro for printing her husband’s love letters.

  And Walter could marry Maud.

  That was his focus now. The more he thought about the difficulties, the more determined he became to overcome them. Having looked, for a few days, at the joyless prospect of life without her, he was even more sure that he wanted to marry her, regardless of the price they might both have to pay. As he avidly followed the diplomatic game being played on the chessboard of Europe, he scrutinized every move to assess its effect first on him and Maud, and only second on Germany and the world.

  He was going to see her tonight, at dinner and at the Duchess of Sussex’s ball. He was already dressed in white tie and tails. It was time to leave. But as he closed the lid of the piano the doorbell rang, and his manservant announced Count Robert von Ulrich.

  Robert looked surly. It was a familiar expression. Robert had been a troubled and unhappy young man when they were students together in Vienna. His feelings drew him irresistibly toward a group whom he had been brought up to regard as decadent. Then, when he came home after an evening with men like himself, he wore that look, guilty but defiant. In time he had discovered that homosexuality, like adultery, was officially condemned but—in sophisticated circles, at least—unofficially tolerated; and he had become reconciled to who he was. Today he wore that face for some other reason.

  “I’ve just seen the text of the emperor’s note,” Robert said immediately.

  Walter’s heart leaped in hope. This might be the peaceful resolution he was waiting for. “What does it say?”

  Robert handed him a sheet of paper. “I copied out the main part.”

  “Has it been delivered to the Serbian government?”

  “Yes, at six o’clock Belgrade time.”

  There were ten demands. The first three followed the lines Walter had anticipated, he saw with relief: Serbia had to suppress liberal newspapers, break up the secret society called the Black Hand, and clamp down on nationalist propaganda. Perhaps the moderates in Vienna had won the argument after all, he thought gratefully.

  Point four seemed reasonable at first—the Austrians demanded a purge of nationalists in the Serbian civil service—but there was a sting in the tail: the Austrians would supply the names. “That seems a bit strong,” Walter said anxiously. “The Serbian government can’t just sack everyone the Austrians tell them to.”

  Robert shrugged. “They will have to.”

  “I suppose so.” For the sake of peace, Walter hoped they would.

  But there was worse to come.

  Point five demanded that Austria assist the Serbian government in crushing subversion, and point six, Walter read with dismay, insisted that Austrian officials take part in Serbia’s judicial inquiry into the assassination. “But Serbia can’t agree to this!” Walter protested. “It would amount to giving up their sovereignty.”

  Robert’s face darkened further. “Hardly,” he said peevishly.

  “No country in the world could agree to it.”

  “Serbia will. It must, or be destroyed.”

  “In a war?”

  “If necessary.”

  “Which could engulf all of Europe!”

  Robert wagged his finger. “Not if other governments are sensible.”

  Unlike yours, Walter thought, but he bit back the retort and read on. The remaining points were arrogantly expressed, but the Serbs could probably live with them: arrest of conspirators, prevention of smuggling of weapons into Austrian territory, and a clampdown on anti-Austrian pronouncements by Serbian officials.

  But there was a forty-eight-hour deadline for reply.

  “My God, this is harsh,” said Walter.

  “People who defy the Austrian emperor must expect harshness.”

  “I know, I know, but he hasn’t even given them room to save face.”

  “Why should he?”

  Walter let his exasperation show. “For goodness’ sake, does he want war?”

  “The emperor’s family, the Habsburg dynasty, has governed vast areas of Europe for hundreds of years. Emperor Franz Joseph knows that God intends him to rule over inferior Slavic peoples. This is his destiny.”

  “God spare us from men of destiny,” Walter muttered. “Has my embassy seen this?”

  “They will any minute now.”

  Walter wondered how others would react. Would they accept this, as Robert had, or be outraged like Walter? Would there be an international howl of protest or just a helpless diplomatic shrug? He would find out this evening. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. “I’m late for dinner. Are you going to the Duchess of Sussex’s ball later?”

  “Yes. I’ll see you there.”

  They left the building and parted company in Piccadilly. Walter headed for Fitz’s house, where he was to dine. He felt breathless, as if he had been knocked down. The war he dreaded had come dangerously closer.

  He arrived with just enough time to bow to Princess Bea, in a lavender gown festooned with silk bows, and shake hands with Fitz, impossibly handsome in a wing collar and a white bow tie; then dinner was announced. He was glad to find himself assigned to escort Maud through to the dining room. She wore a dark red dress of some soft material that clung to her body the way Walter wanted to. As he held her chair he said: “What a very attractive gown.”

  “Paul Poiret,” she said, naming a designer so famous that even Walter had heard of him. She lowered her voice a little. “I thought you might like it.”

  The remark was only mildly intimate, but all the same it gave him a thrill, rapidly followed by a shiver of fear at the thought that he could yet lose this enchanting woman.

  Fitz’s house was not quite a palace. Its long dining room, at the corner of the street, looked over two thoroughfares. Electric chandeliers burned despite the bright summer evening outside, and reflected lights glittered in the crystal glasses and silver cutlery marshaled at each place. Looking around the table at the other female guests, Walter marveled anew at the indecent amount of bosom revealed by upper-class Englishwomen at dinner.

  Such observations were adolescent. It was time he got married.

  As soon as he sat down, Maud slipped off a shoe and pushed her stockinged toe up the leg of his trousers. He smiled at her, but she saw immediately that he was distracted. “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “Start a conversation about the Austrian ultimatum,” he murmured. “Say you’ve heard it has been delivered.”

  Maud addressed Fitz, at the head of the table. “I believe the Austrian emperor’s note has at last been handed in at Belgrade,” she said. “Have you heard anything, Fitz?”

  Fitz put down his soup spoon. “The same as you. But no one knows what is in it.”

  Walter said: “I believe it is very harsh. The Austrians insist on taking a role in the Serbian judicial process.”

  “Taking a role!” said Fitz. “But if the Serbian prime minister agreed to that, he’d h
ave to resign.”

  Walter nodded. Fitz foresaw the same consequences as he did. “It is almost as if the Austrians want war.” He was perilously close to speaking disloyally about one of Germany’s allies, but he felt anxious enough not to care. He caught Maud’s eye. She was pale and silent. She, too, had immediately seen the threat.

  “One has sympathy for Franz Joseph, of course,” Fitz said. “Nationalist subversion can destabilize an empire if it is not firmly dealt with.” Walter guessed he was thinking of Irish independence campaigners and South African Boers threatening the British empire. “But you don’t need a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” Fitz finished.

  Footmen took away the soup bowls and poured a different wine. Walter drank nothing. It was going to be a long evening, and he needed a clear head.

  Maud said quietly: “I happened to see Prime Minister Asquith today. He said there could be a real Armageddon.” She looked scared. “I’m afraid I did not believe him—but now I see he might have been right.”

  Fitz said: “It’s what we’re all afraid of.”

  Walter was impressed as always by Maud’s connections. She hobnobbed casually with the most powerful men in London. Walter recalled that as a girl of eleven or twelve, when her father was a minister in a Conservative government, she would solemnly question his cabinet colleagues when they visited Tŷ Gwyn; and even then such men would listen to her attentively and answer her patiently.

  She went on: “On the bright side, if there is a war Asquith thinks Britain need not be involved.”

  Walter’s heart lifted. If Britain stayed out, the war need not separate him from Maud.

  But Fitz looked disapproving. “Really?” he said. “Even if . . . ” He looked at Walter. “Forgive me, von Ulrich—even if France is overrun by Germany?”

  Maud replied: “We will be spectators, Asquith says.”

  “As I have long feared,” Fitz said pompously, “the government does not understand the balance of power in Europe.” As a Conservative, he mistrusted the Liberal government, and personally he hated Asquith, who had enfeebled the House of Lords; but, most importantly, he was not totally horrified by the prospect of war. In some ways, Walter feared, he might relish the thought, just as Otto did. And he certainly thought war preferable to any weakening of British power.