The very size of the Palace, its unused rooms, its long and rambling corridors, its rambling wings and ancient turrets, was against its safety.
Since the demonstration against Karl, the riding-school hour had been given up. There were no drives in the park. The illness of the King furnished sufficient excuse, but the truth was that the royal family was practically besieged; by it knew not what. Two police agents had been found dead the morning after Karl’s departure, on the outskirts of the city, lying together in a freshly ploughed field. They bore marks of struggle, and each had been stabbed through the veins of the neck, as though they had been first subdued and then scientifically destroyed.
Nikky, summoned to the Chancellor’s house that morning, had been told the facts, and had stood, rather still and tense, while Mettlich recounted them.
“Our very precautions are our danger,” said the Chancellor. “And the King—” He stopped and sat, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair.
“And the King, sir?”
“Almost at the end. A day or two.”
On that day came fresh news, alarming enough. More copies of the seditious paper were in circulation in the city and the surrounding country, passing from hand to hand. The town was searched for the press which had printed them, but it was not located. Which was not surprising, since it had been lowered through a trap into a sub-cellar of the house on the Road of the Good Children, and the trapdoor covered with rubbish.
Karl, with Hedwig in his thoughts, had returned to mobilize his army not far from the border for the spring maneuvers, and at a meeting of the King’s Council the matter of a mobilization in Livonia was seriously considered.
Fat Friese favored it, and made an impassioned speech, with sweat thick on his heavy face.
“I am not cowardly,” he finished. “I fear nothing for myself or for those belonging to me. But the duty of this Council is to preserve the throne for the Crown Prince, at any cost. And, if we cannot trust the army, in what can we trust?”