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“Then I shall have to make an unreasonable choice,” she said flatly. “Do I assume this is your very proper way of retreating from my case?” Her eyes were level and cold, a flare of challenge in them, and acute disappointment.
Rathbone was irritated, and if he were honest, a little stung. “If you do assume it, madam, you do so wrongly,” he snapped. “It is my duty to advise you as to facts and my considered opinion as to what they may mean. Then I shall take your instructions, providing they do not require me to say or do anything that is contrary to the law.”
“How terribly English.” There was both laughter and contempt in her face. “It must make you feel impossibly safe—and comfortable. You live in the heart of an empire which stretches all ’round the world.” She was angry now. “Name a continent and your British redcoats have fought there, carried by your British navy, subdued the natives and taught them Christianity, whether they wished to learn it or not, and instructed their princes how to behave like Englishmen.”
What she said was true, and it startled him and made him feel suddenly artificial, violated and rather pompous.
Her voice was charged with emotion, deep and husky in her throat.
“You’ve forgotten what it is like to be frightened,” she went on. “To look at your neighbors and wonder when they are going to swallow you. Oh, I know you read about it in your history books! You learn about Napoleon and King Philip of Spain—and how you were on the brink of invasion, with your backs against the wall. But you beat them, didn’t you! You always won.” Her body was tight under its silk gown, and her face twisted with anger. “Well, we won’t win, Sir Oliver. We shall lose. It may be immediately, it may be in ten years, or even twenty, but in the end we shall lose. It is the manner of our losing that we may be able to control, that’s all. Have you the faintest idea what that feels like? I think not!”
“On the contrary,” Rathbone said sardonically, although his words were only a defense against his own misjudgment and vulnerability. “I am imagining losing very vividly, and I am about to experience it in the courtroom.” He knew as he said it that his own small personal defeat did not compare with the defeat of nations, the loss of centuries-old identity and concepts of freedom, however illusionary.
“You’ve given up!” she said with a lift of surprise which was contempt rather than question.
In spite of determining not to be, he was provoked. He would not let her see it. “I have faced reality,” he contradicted. “That is a different side of the same coin. We have no alternative. It lies with me to tell you the facts and give you the best chance I can; and with you to choose.”
Her eyebrows rose sharply. “Whether I surrender before the battle or fight until I may be beaten? What a nice irony. That is exactly the dilemma my country faces. For my country I think I do not choose assimilation, even though we cannot win. For myself I choose war.”
“You cannot win either, madam,” he said reluctantly. He hated having to tell her. She was stubborn, foolish, arrogant and self-indulgent, but she had courage and, after her own fashion, a kind of honor. Above all, she cared passionately. She would be hurt, and that knowledge pained him.
“Are you saying I should withdraw my charge, say that I lied, and ask that creature’s pardon for it?” she demanded.
“You will have to eventually. Do you want to do it privately now, or publicly, when she proves you incapable of supporting your charge?”
“It would not be private,” she pointed out. “Gisela would make sure everyone knew or there would be no purpose. Not that it matters. I will not withdraw. She murdered him. The fact that you cannot find the proof of it alters nothing.”
He was galled that she should place the responsibility upon him.
“It alters everything in the law!” he retorted. “What can I say to make you understand?” He heard desperation rising in his voice. “It seems very likely that we may be able to give serious evidence to the theory that Friedrich was murdered. His symptoms are closer to yew poison than internal bleeding. We may even be able to force an exhumation of his body and an autopsy.” He saw her wince of distaste with satisfaction. “But even if that proves us correct, Gisela was the one person who had no access to yew leaves. She never left his side. For heaven’s sake, ma’am, if you believe he was assassinated for some political reason, say so! Don’t sacrifice your own reputation by making a charge against the one person who cannot be guilty, simply in order to force the matter to justice!”
“What do you suggest?” she asked, her voice tense, cracking a little under the strain of effort to be light. “That I accuse Klaus von Seidlitz? But he is not guilty!”
She was still standing, the firelight reflecting red on her skirt. It was growing dark outside.
“You know it was not Klaus. You have no proof it was Gisela.” Hope suddenly lifted inside him. “Then withdraw the charge, and we will investigate until we have enough evidence, then we’ll take it to the police! Tell the truth! Say you believe he was murdered but you don’t know by whom. You named Gisela simply to make someone listen to you and investigate. Apologize to her. Say you now realize you were wrong to suspect her, and you hope she will forgive your error of judgment and join with everyone to discover the truth. She can hardly refuse to do that. Or she will indeed look as if she may have colluded. I will draw up a statement for you.”
“You will not!” she said fiercely, her eyes hot and stubborn. “We shall go to trial.”
“But we don’t have to!” Why was the woman so obtuse? She was going to cause such unnecessary pain to herself! “Monk will learn everything he can—”
“Good!” She swung around and stared towards the window. “Then let him do it by the time we meet in court, and he can testify for me.”
“That may not be in time …”
“Then tell him to hurry!”
“Withdraw the charge against Gisela. Then the trial will not take place. She may
ask damages, but I can plead on your behalf so that—”
She jerked back to glare at him. “Are you refusing to take my instructions. Sir Oliver? That is the right term, is it not? Instructions.”
“I am trying to advise you—” he said desperately.
“And I have heard your advice and declined it,” she cut across him. “I do not seem able to make you understand that I believe Gisela killed Friedrich and I am not going to accuse someone else as a device. A device, I may add, which I do not believe would work.”
“But she did not kill him.” His voice was getting louder and more strident than he wished, but she was trying him to exasperation. “You cannot prove something which is not true! And I will not be party to trying.”
