A/N: I own nothing. You can't make this big a family up. Tante is German for aunt.
"Freddi? Ferdinand Philipp Grimm, are you mad? Do you want to kill poor Jakob?" It had been difficult to arrange this meeting, and Ferdi hoped that his sister wouldn't give it away by her sudden burst of temper.
"I'd be more worried about Will, myself," Ludwig said sardonically. Even in this dusty library, far from his work, the youngest surviving Grimm brother's shirtsleeves were splattered with jaunty hues of blue and yellow paint. Could Ludwig not afford a proper dress shirt, Ferdinand wondered in a mix of irritation and worry, or was he simply too careless to notice?
"Come, Lotte, it's no worse than they've done to others," Ferdinand insisted. None of his siblings had appeared particularly enthused about his plan, although Carl and Ludwig were warming to the idea of some form of payback for the nonsense that the eldest two brothers had gotten away with over the years.
"But it's cruel to sully the names of the dead like that. It makes you no better than they are," Charlotte fought back. "And besides… the beans…" She dipped pale fingers into her open palm, as if to count out invisible seeds. "You know how they are about it."
"Pah! What is it with them and their silly bean games? We'll scatter them all over the house, to make it more realistic." Ferdinand waved his sister's concerns away.
Carl coughed, gently, as if trying to get the others' attention. All too often his coughs had been raspier, louder; due to poor health rather than his unassuming mien. Ludwig nodded to him as the teacher pulled at his patched and fraying jacket sleeves. "You three are surely too young to remember it properly," Carl said softly, still reluctant to look them in the eye. It was a wonder he survived his lecture classes, as nervous as he was. "But surely you must remember some of it, if you would think to use it for revenge. The beans reference is no silly game for Jake and Wilhelm. It's a wonder we all made it through childhood, you know. Especially after Papa died." Carl paused, and Ferdi would have cut him off, were it not for Ludwig's hand on his arm. The third brother was easy to interrupt, and hard to get speaking again, but usually when he did say something, Carl had a point to make. "You know that there could have been more of us."
"Four brothers is about all a man can take, at times," Ferdinand grumbled.
"An amazement that Lotte can stand us all." Ludwig motioned for the eldest sibling present to continue.
Carl hestitated, but Ferdi, too, motioned for him to continue. "Mama sent Jake to sell the cow, so that we would have money for the doctor, when the fever infected us all. Tante Henriette helped us pay later, but Jake didn't come home with money that day. Some awful man had given him a fistful of beans for the cow; beans that he said were 'magical.' Jake thought they'd heal us, if Mama hadn't thrown them out the window. Will thought that Father and little Fredrick might have survived, if Jake had been quicker about getting the money and the doctor. It's a wonder that you made it, Lotte," Carl acknowledged.
"It's a wonder that we all did, Carl,"she replied, pale smile meeting pale smile. "But you see now, Ferdi, why I cannot condone such a trick?"
"It doesn't matter, Lotte." Ferdinand crossed his arms, feeling chilled despite the sunlight shining through the library's high windows. "I just want to make them see sense. Letters aren't working, so I must try something else. If words cannot convince them that truth is the best policy, let us see how the liars react to being lied to." He sighed, willing to offer at least a façade of sacrifice. His sister still appeared to be displeased with him. "I won't use Freddi then, if it bothers you so much. But they need a ghost to scare some sense into them."
"Perhaps we can create a ghost, then. But please, Ferdi, make it anonymous." Charlotte knew him too well.
"With your blessing, Lotte," Ferdinand bowed half-sardonically. "It's a pity that none of Will and Jake's craftsmen could meet us."
"Haven't you heard?" Ludwig raised an eyebrow, leaning against a shelf. "One of the Frenchmen's Italian flunkies arrested them for questioning. I'd be surprised if they've left any of Will's clever fellows alive." Carl grabbed at his throat, swallowing, and Charlotte paled.
"Are you sure this is such a good idea, Ferdi?" Carl asked. "The government may treat other tricksters the same."
"This isn't a scheme to cheat the government out of their overinflated taxes. This is a simple matter between family members. The French shall likely approve of us, given what our brothers have done." Ferdinand hoped he sounded much braver than he felt.
"Arrested for questioning" could very well translate into "tortured unto death," in less fancily worded terms. Why couldn't Jakob and Wilhelm have stuck with their original plan of listening to old governesses' stories instead of galvinating off across the countryside in search of "adventure?" Adventure might pay better, but books were less likely to get one arrested.
Ferdinand considered the texts that lined the walls around his siblings. Most were in French, with a few German texts pushed violently towards the rear, gathering dust. Well, perhaps that was not so. Books could be safe and sensible and appeal to all the right people, but they also had an ability that, if Ferdinand did not heavily deny the presence of the supernatural, he might have called magical. The rich and powerful could read and write books, dispensing information out over all of Europe. With knowledge of the written language, a man might pull himself out of poverty, even with limited or embarassing family connections. Writing had made Ferdinand's fortunes, such as they were, but it could also lead to his downfall, if he was not careful. He thought again of the copy that Jake had requested. Who would have thought a book of children's tales, many of which had already spread throughout France as well as the German states, could cause so much strife?
German literature was becoming increasingly harder to come by these days, as the language was out of favor with the French governors. Certainly, there were a fair number left that could read it; Kessel was hardly that backward. But children were learning French in school and saving German for home life. It was frightening to Ferdinand, to think that his language might be dying. It was even more frightening to the self-styled man of letters than the possibility of his own death by angered French authorites was. At least, should he die, he could get the last laugh at his trickster brothers.
"Are you with me, Carl? Ludwig? Lotte?" With varying degrees of nervousness, three heads nodded to the publisher in the library. "Then this is what we will do…"