Fall of Giants

The Russian maid, Nina, was unpinning the elaborate hat Bea had worn for the journey. Fitz caught sight of Bea’s face in the dressing-table mirror, and his heart skipped a beat. He was taken back four years, to the St. Petersburg ballroom where he had first seen that impossibly pretty face framed by blond curls that could not quite be tamed. Then as now she had worn a sulky look that he found strangely alluring. In a heartbeat he had decided that she of all women was the one he wanted to marry.

Nina was middle-aged and her hand was unsteady-Bea often made her servants nervous. As Fitz watched, a pin pricked Bea’s scalp, and she cried out.

Nina went pale. “I’m terribly sorry, Your Highness,” she said in Russian.

Bea snatched up a hatpin from the dressing table. “See how you like it!” she cried, and jabbed the maid’s arm.

Nina burst into tears and ran from the room.

“Let me help you,” Fitz said to his wife in a soothing tone.

She was not to be mollified. “I’ll do it myself.”

Fitz went to the window. A dozen or so gardeners were at work trimming bushes, edging lawns, and raking gravel. Several shrubs were in flower: pink viburnum, yellow winter jasmine, witch hazel, and scented winter honeysuckle. Beyond the garden was the soft green curve of the mountainside.

He had to be patient with Bea, and remind himself that she was a foreigner, isolated in a strange country, away from her family and all that was familiar. It had been easy in the early months of their marriage, when he was still intoxicated by how she looked and smelled and the touch of her soft skin. Now it took an effort. “Why don’t you rest?” he said. “I’ll see Peel and Mrs. Jevons and find out how their plans are progressing.” Peel was the butler and Mrs. Jevons the housekeeper. It was Bea’s job to organize the staff, but Fitz was nervous enough about the king’s visit to welcome an excuse to get involved. “I’ll report back to you later, when you’re refreshed.” He took out his cigar case.

“Don’t smoke in here,” she said.

He took that for assent and went to the door. Pausing on his way out, he said: “Look, you won’t behave like that in front of the king and queen, will you? Striking the servants, I mean.”

“I didn’t strike her, I stuck a pin in her as a lesson.”

Russians did that sort of thing. When Fitz’s father had complained about the laziness of the servants at the British embassy in St. Petersburg, his Russian friends had told him he did not beat them enough.

Fitz said to Bea: “It would embarrass the monarch to have to witness such a thing. As I’ve told you before, it’s not done in England.”

“When I was a girl, I was made to watch three peasants being hanged,” she said. “My mother didn’t like it, but my grandfather insisted. He said: ‘This is to teach you to punish your servants. If you do not slap them or flog them for small offenses of carelessness and laziness, they will eventually commit larger sins and end up on the scaffold.’ He taught me that indulgence to the lower classes is cruel, in the long run.”

Fitz began to lose patience. Bea looked back to a childhood of limitless wealth and self-indulgence, surrounded by troops of obedient servants and thousands of happy peasants. If her ruthless, capable grandfather had still been alive that life might have continued; but the family fortune had been frittered away by Bea’s father, a drunk, and her weak brother, Andrei, who was always selling the timber without replanting the woods. “Times have changed,” Fitz said. “I’m asking you-I’m ordering you-not to embarrass me in front of my king. I hope I have left no room for doubt in your mind.” He went out and closed the door.

He walked along the wide corridor, feeling irritated and a bit sad. When they were first married, such spats had left him bewildered and regretful; now he was becoming inured to them. Were all marriages like that? He did not know.

A tall footman polishing a doorknob straightened up and stood with his back to the wall and his eyes cast down, as Tŷ Gwyn servants were trained to do when the earl went by. In some great houses the staff had to face the wall, but Fitz thought that was too feudal. Fitz recognized this man, having seen him play cricket in a match between Tŷ Gwyn staff and Aberowen miners. He was a good left-handed batsman. “Morrison,” said Fitz, remembering his name. “Tell Peel and Mrs. Jevons to come to the library.”

“Very good, my lord.”

Fitz walked down the grand staircase. He had married Bea because he had been enchanted by her, but he had had a rational motive, too. He dreamed of founding a great Anglo-Russian dynasty that would rule vast tracts of the earth, much as the Habsburg dynasty had ruled parts of Europe for centuries.