Kingdom Day

“One coronation a year is my limit,” said Theo, at the bike racks, on Thursday.

He had been asked. Not by the Household; by Alexander, in a letter in December, in the careful English: Lukas would like you to come, and so, if I may say so without its being an instruction, would I. Theo had read it at the Hartigans’ table four times and written back on Sunday in pencil, two lines, and shown Frederick before he sent it.

Dear Alexander, thank you. One coronation a year is my limit. Tell Lukas to look at the train and not the steps. Theo.

“He’ll understand,” said Frederick.

“I know he’ll understand. He’s Alexander. He understands everything and then writes you four pages about it.” Theo put his bag down on the wall. “And Lukas doesn’t carry a train. I asked. It’s a cloak. It’s short. There’s no train in Prussia.” He looked faintly betrayed. “Lukas just walks behind him. A yard behind on the left. That’s all he does.”

“That’s all you did on Charter Hill.”

“That’s different. That was ours.” Theo picked the bag up again. “Tell Lukas I said the yard’s the hard part. He’ll know.”

---

His mother flew at six on Thursday evening, an hour ahead, and he flew at seven, and his father stayed at the kitchen table in the north wing with Niamh and the blue book, which Bridget had said she would read to him at a quarter to five on Friday, the arrivals, in the voice from the tannoy, and had been practising, Niamh said, in the scullery.

Sceptre, said the tower, and he did not think about it.

The dark under the wing. Gander, very faint, good evening. A grey shine. Then the morning over the Baltic, white, the sea frozen in long plates along the shore, and a city on a river with snow on every roof.

Königsberg was fourteen degrees.

He had never been so cold. The air hurt the inside of his nose. The river, the Pregel, was frozen at the edges in grey ridges with black water moving fast in the middle, and on an island in the river, among bare trees, with snow on its steep red roof, a cathedral of dark brick, very old, with a single square tower.

---

He sat in the front row on the south side as King of Hanover, which he was, and as Alexander’s cousin, which mattered more.

His mother beside him, in black, with fur at her collar, as Queen. Beyond her, the Kings of Saxony and Bavaria and Württemberg, and a great many grand dukes, and an Austrian archduke, very upright, and the British ambassador. Across the aisle, in the front row on the north side, alone in a dark blue coat with no fur, a young woman of twenty-four with Alexander’s dark hair and a very straight back and her hands folded in her lap.

Princess Charlotte. Regent until this morning. His cousin too.

She was looking at the altar, at nothing. He had met her four times. She had never said very much. Alexander said she was the cleverest person in Prussia and should have the Crown, and had said it in letters since he was fourteen, and she had said, Alexander reported, that she would rather have the library.

The cathedral was cold. The breath of nine hundred people went up in the air in a faint mist under the brick vaults. There was no heating. There had been none in 1701 either, the programme said, in German and in English, as though it were a point of honour.

---

The organ.

The west door opened and the procession came.

Not like Westminster. No train. No pages at the corners. The heralds in their tabards. The Order of the Black Eagle in orange and blue, old men, walking very slowly. The regalia on cushions, carried: a sceptre, an orb, a sword, a crown. A small crown, he saw as it went past, older and plainer than the one in London, with a great many pearls, made, the programme said, for 1701, and not worn by anybody since 1861.

Then Alexander.

Sixteen this morning. In a dark blue uniform with a cloak of purple velvet lined with ermine, short, to the knee, no train. Bareheaded. Very pale. Walking at a pace that was not quite the pace you would walk to somebody’s door, but faster, because he was Alexander and could not help it.

A yard behind him on the left, in a plain black coat, hands behind his back, looking at nothing: Lukas.

Frederick watched him come.

He had never seen it from outside. He had been inside it twice, on Charter Hill and at Westminster, and both times he had seen only what was in front of him. He had not seen this: a boy walking up an aisle in a cloak, very alone, with a great many people on either side who were looking at him and only at him, and a yard behind him on the left, one person who was not looking at him at all, who was looking at nothing, so that the boy would not have to be looked at by everybody.

Theo had done that. A yard behind on the left. On Charter Hill, at the foot of the steps of the Throne, looking straight down the chamber at nothing. In the nave at Westminster, at the corner of the train.

The yard’s the hard part. He’ll know.

---

At the steps of the sanctuary, Lukas stopped.

Alexander did not. He went on alone. The last twelve paces, up three steps, across the stone, to the altar, by himself, as the Teutonic Knights had done, the programme said, which Frederick doubted, and nobody walked with him.

He did not hurry them. He had a dictionary in his head. Frederick could see it in the way he held his neck.

At the altar he knelt. The court preacher of the Prussian church, an old man with a white beard, said the prayers in German, and Alexander answered in German, and took the oath, the old one, in a clear voice that did not go thin, to rule according to the constitution and the laws of the kingdom, and kissed the book.

Then the crown.

The preacher did not lift it. Nobody did.

Two old men of the Black Eagle brought it on its cushion to the altar and held it out, and stepped back, and Alexander stood up, and turned round to face the cathedral, and picked the crown up off the cushion with both hands.

He held it for a moment at the height of his chest, looking at it. The small crown with the pearls, not worn since 1861.

Then he put it on his own head.

Nobody had put it there. That was the whole point. That had been the point in 1701, the programme said: that the royal dignity came from nobody, from no Emperor and no Pope, and so nobody crowned the King of Prussia. He crowned himself.

The cathedral made the sound Westminster had made when the Archbishop held up the crown. Low. Not words.

---

In 1701, the programme said, the King had then crowned his wife.

Alexander had no wife. He was sixteen.

Frederick had wondered, on the aircraft, reading the programme in the dark under the reading light, what would happen at this point in the rite. The programme did not say. It went straight from the King crowns himself to the homage of the Estates.

Alexander stood at the altar in the small crown and looked down the length of the cathedral.

Then he looked across, to the north side, the front row, to a young woman in a dark blue coat with no fur, sitting very straight with her hands in her lap.

He did not crown her. He could not; there was nothing to crown her with, and no law, and he would never have done a thing the law did not allow, because he was Alexander.

He bowed to her.

From the neck, once, slowly, the way Theo bowed to the Duke of Cumberland on an apron. A King of Prussia, crowned two seconds ago by himself, at the altar of Königsberg cathedral, in front of nine hundred people and every camera in the German Empire, bowing to the Regent who had held it for him.

Princess Charlotte looked at her brother.

She did not move. Then she stood up, alone, in the front row on the north side, and curtsied to the King of Prussia, very low, all the way down, as nobody in the cathedral had curtsied to anybody that morning.

And then, rising, she smiled. It was the first time Frederick had ever seen her do it.

Only then, as in 1701, the anointing: two bishops at the altar, forehead and wrists, with a thumb, quickly, in front of everybody, not behind any screen, as though nothing in Prussia were done in private. The crown came first and the oil after, because the first King had wanted it plain that the oil added nothing.

---

Afterwards, in a long cold room in the castle with tapestries on the walls and a fire at each end that made no difference, Alexander found him.

Still in the uniform. The crown gone, to wherever crowns went. The cloak gone. His hair standing up slightly at the back where the crown had sat.

“You saw,” said Alexander.

“I saw.”

“It was not in the programme.”

“No.”

“I did not tell the programme.” Alexander looked pleased with himself. “I did not tell anybody. Not Mama. Not Lukas. Not her.” He looked down the long room at his sister, by the far fire, talking to an Austrian archduke. “I thought, if I tell them, somebody will say it is not done. And then it will not be done.” He looked at Frederick. “So I did not tell them. It is the second arrangement I have made that went exactly as arranged.”

“What was the first?”

“That you went first,” said Alexander. “In May.” He looked at the fire. “I watched it on a laptop in a school library. I knew then I could do this. Because you had.”

Lukas had come up behind him, a yard off, on the left, in the plain black coat, with his hands behind his back.

“Lukas,” said Frederick.

“Majestät.”

“Theo says the yard’s the hard part.”

Lukas looked at him.

Then he looked at Alexander, a yard in front of him, with his hair standing up at the back.

“Ja,” said Lukas. “Er hat recht.” He’s right.

He said nothing else for the rest of the afternoon, which, Alexander said, was more than he usually said at an occasion.