HS02 - Days of Atonement

Days
of
Atonement

 
MICHAEL GREGORIO

M
INOTAUR
B
OOKS
  
  N
EW
Y
ORK

Also by Michael Gregorio

Critique of Criminal Reason

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS
.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

DAYS OF ATONEMENT
. Copyright © 2007 by Michael Gregorio. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.minotaurbooks.com

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Gregorio, Michael.

Days of atonement / Michael Gregorio. — 1st ed.

    p. cm.

ISBN-13:978-0-312-37644-4

ISBN-10:0-312-37644-8

1. Police magistrates—Germany—Prussia—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation— Fiction. 3. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804—Influence—Fiction. 4. Prussia (Germany)— History—1806–1815—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6107.R447D39  2008

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-54517-8 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 0-312-54517-7 (pbk.)

First published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited

First Minotaur Books Paperback Edition: March 2009

10    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

For our parents,

A
GNES
and
W
ALTER
J
ACOB
,

R
OSINA
and
G
IUSEPPE
D
E
G
REGORIO

For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that of which I was afraid is come unto me. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet, yet trouble came.

B
OOK OF
J
OB
, 3.25–26

Days
of
Atonement

 1 

‘O
CTOBER THE FOURTEENTH
 . . .’

Helena’s voice faded away, her figure partly hidden by the heavy drapes of green velvet. She was looking out on the garden, where evening was turning rapidly into night. I did not need to see her face to know that she was deeply offended. Like every other Prussian, she was wounded by the reduced state of our nation, by the changes that the French had forced upon us, as defeat followed defeat, and rout followed rout. It had all begun in October the previous year.

‘Jena?’ she insisted. ‘Is that what they mean to celebrate?’

The invitation from Count Aldebrand Dittersdorf had arrived by post ten days earlier. Before the war, the annual dinner and ball had been as fixed a point on our calendar as the falling of the autumn leaves. Should we go, or might it be wiser to stay at home? I had spent hours debating the question. Helena had not been out of the house in more than two months. Her third pregnancy had been difficult, the weeks leading up to the delivery had tried her strength greatly. She had lain in for a month afterwards, though the daily sight of little Anders—a plump look of satisfaction on his tiny mottled face as Helena tucked her swollen breast away inside her wet-smock—had more or less restored my wife to her former bloom. When the embossed card from the Dittersdorfs arrived, I instinctively pushed temptation away behind the large Dutch clock on the oak mantle-shelf in the kitchen.

But the fateful day was almost upon us, and the question had to be faced.

Memories were still strong of 13 October the year before, when we had all risen heavily from the Dittersdorf dinner table and made our way home cheerfully beneath a brilliant starlit sky, unaware of the fact that our troops were manoeuvring into position to face the French at dawn.

‘I suppose
they
will be there in force,’ Helena murmured, pressing her nose up against the glass, frowning out at the darkness, as if that were the true cause of her indisposition.

‘Probably,’ I answered.

‘There is nothing probable about it, Hanno,’ she corrected me pettishly. ‘They will certainly be there.’

‘It is certainly most probable that they
will
be there,’ I replied with a sigh. ‘They are everywhere else in Prussia. And Count Dittersdorf is the District Governor. He can hardly hold a secret dinner party for Prussian nationals alone. Our safety depends on peaceful coexistence with the invaders.’

Helena turned to stare at me. The cut-crystal bulb of the Bohemian oil lamp on the side-table cast delicate diamond patterns on her cheeks and forehead.

‘Can you offer me no more comfort than that, husband?’ she whispered. The proud tension had gone from her voice. ‘One hears such terrible stories of those who are foolish enough to socialise with the French. The rebels care not for peaceful coexistence. They show no pity.’