Viennese Waltz: Distant Drums
Instant pandemonium reigned in the cafe, until somebody shouted everyone else down. "What are you talking about?" the young man was asked.
Before he could reply, though, the cafe owner simply flipped on his radio, and turned the volume up as high as it would go. Everyone crowded around, listening to the wrenching broadcast, the details as they trickled in relayed in hushed and disbelieving tones to the shocked and grieving audience.
…Emperor Franz Joseph, ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for the past sixty-six years, dead at eighty-four...
...a bomb exploded under his car en route to his home...
...another tossed in immediately through the broken windows before the police escort shot the assailants dead...
...the Emperor killed instantly by the second bomb, along with his aide and driver...
...heir apparent Archduke Franz Ferdinand rushed to the palace to oversee the investigation...
...the assassins believed to be Serbian ultra-nationalists, yelling irredentist slogans as they threw the bombs, possibly the same ring which attempted to assassinate the Archduke the previous June...
The entire cafe remained utterly silent for an untold time, huddled around the radio. Finally, they announcer said no more news would be forthcoming that night, and signed off by asking the nation to say a prayer for the soul of the late Emperor, and for divine guidance and protection of the new one.
The patrons looked at each other, seeing their own shock reflected on every face. Conversation consisted only of a few murmured, broken words. Soon people began drifting silently away towards their homes, and Alex took Rose's arm to do the same.
Out in the street, he stopped and turned towards her, concerned. "Are you all right, Rose? You're as white as a sheet!"
She looked at him, dazed, feeling the earth ripple under her feet, the air by turns freezing and searing her lungs. Her hands crept to his chest and she huddled close, wordlessly asking for him to hold her – and he did, his arms circling her firmly, anchoring her to reality.
Finally, she gathered enough wit to whisper, "I'm afraid of war. I'm afraid of seeing the whole world go up in flames."
He scoffed, gently. "There's no talk of war... Where did you get that from?"
She pushed back a few inches so she could look directly into his face. "Alex... think. If those were Serbian nationalists, if they were from Serbia, what will happen? What will Austria do?"
He hesitated, floundering a bit. "Make demands for restitution, justice..."
"And if Serbia can't, or won't, agree?"
He shook his head. "We'll probably attack. But only a limited, punitive engagement. That's hardly involving the entire world, Rose."
"So Austria and Serbia will be at war – and do you really think it will stay a limited engagement, with both sides looking for an excuse ever since Bosnia was annexed?" She shook her own head back at him. "No, it will be a full-out war as soon as it starts. They murdered our Emperor, Alex. The army won't hold back. They'll be out to slaughter the enemy in revenge. And then Russia will join in because they have a treaty with Serbia, and then France will start making noises because they have one with Russia, and Germany will step in on Austria's side and attack France and then Russia, and the British, and the Italians, and the Americans... Alex the entire world is interconnected, with treaties, and secret agreements, and national interests..." She stopped suddenly, biting her lips. "They'll all fall like dominoes..." she ended in a prophetic whisper, bereft of hope, echoing her words to the Archduke so many months before.
Alex's face had slowly drained of blood at her recitation, the truth of her words dolefully tolling in his mind like a cathedral bell. He stood silently for a full minute, absorbing it, then took a good, close look at his companion again, his eyebrows knitted together. "Why do I have the strangest feeling, that you actually know what you're talking about?" He winced, giving his head a quick shake. "Sorry, that came out wrong – "
She cut him off with a dismissive wave of her hand. She knew what he meant. Still looking earnestly, deeply into his eyes, she told him with quiet emphasis, "Because I do."
He stared at her a moment longer, then finally took a deep, painful breath. "Well," he said, searching for a way out. "I pray God you're wrong, and that our new Emperor – God save him – can chart a course between the dominoes, so that they do not fall." Reaching up between them, he took her hands in his and squeezed them.
She nodded agreement, squeezing his hands back, then letting go of one and turning with him to continue down the street towards home. "Pray God he can – he's the only one who can stop the machinery of war."
^..^
After they reached home and silently went to bed, holding each other close for comfort, Rose waited until he was sound asleep and then crept softly back out from under the blanket again. Opening the door of the wardrobe, she carefully dug into the pile of clothes at the bottom, located her old blue jeans, and reached into the pocket for the time jumper she'd hidden there months before. She held her breath a moment, almost in prayer, and then flipped open the leather cover and unlocked the keypad.
Just as she knew it would be, the backlight was still white – although it was a dull, clouded white now, seeming in the reflected moonlight to be pulsing in time with her heartbeat, the tiniest, barely perceptible tinge of color trying to infiltrate the snowy field – and failing. She was still in Alpha. Preventing Franz Ferdinand's assassination hadn't stopped the tide of history; the inertia of the timeline, struggling to return to its rightful channel, was impelling the continent toward the war it needed to continue, but that so few of its inhabitants wanted to see.
She sighed, and locked the keypad up again – but instead of returning the jumper to its hiding place, she strapped it back onto her wrist, hiding it with her winter-long sleeves from that moment on.
^..^
"Rose..." Alex said hesitantly the next morning. "I've been thinking about something, a phrase you said last night. I can't get it out of my head. 'The machinery of war...' "
"Well, it is a machine," she replied. "Not just the army itself, and every man in it – though that's huge enough – but every part of the government that oversees it; the vast, interlocking industries that support it, arm it, supply it; all the so-called diplomats that work behind the scenes in every country to keep it going..." She paused a moment to let that vision sink in. "Once it gets started, once it's in motion, it can't be stopped – not very easily. Maybe not at all."
He stared thoughtfully across the room. "I never though about it that way," he admitted softly. She could almost see the proverbial wheels turning in his head, as he considered his world from an entirely new angle.
She gave him a moment, then nudged his side. "Come on. Let's go get breakfast, and find out what's new."
^..^
One week later, they joined what seemed to be the entire population of Vienna on the street, lining the route of Franz Joseph's funeral procession in silent, still, respectful masses tens of thousands strong. They lined each street, packed in elbow to elbow, and stretched back down the cross-streets for a block on either side. Rose would not have thought so many people could be so quiet, but the horses drawing the military caisson bearing his ornate casket clopping down the cobblestones, and the slow, measured, unison tromp of hundreds of boots from the military escort, were literally the only sounds aside from the occasional muffled sobs from the crowd as the body passed.
Immediately following the caisson and the Royal Guardsmen surrounding it came the long procession of imperial and international mourners who had gathered to lay the Emperor to rest: a glittering collection of kings, emperors, tsars, presidents, and every rank from every country on the continent and beyond. They rode to the Cathedral on row after row of prancing horses, interspersed with old-fashioned, ornate horse-drawn carriages, each vehicle's top respectfully folded down even in the cold. The heavens had blessed the late Emperor with a perfect winter day for his funeral: a brilliant but distant sun shone in the pale blue sky, keeping the temperature above freezing – but not by much, while the air was not stirred by even the tiniest breeze.
The first carriage, of course, carried the new, as-yet-uncrowned Emperor, Franz Frederick, and his wife, the Duchess Sophie, both staring regally straight ahead, their faces expressionless, but their mournful dignity almost palpable. The slightest, tiniest murmur swept through the watching crowd in their wake, only barely enough to register in anyone's hearing until it reached them. The second they were past, Alex leaned over and breathed into Rose's ear, "Oh, my, my. That will set the cat among the pigeons."
"Why? What...?" She was genuinely perplexed, having seen absolutely nothing that struck her as wrong, but instantly aware that Alex would not have broken protocol – let alone the thousands around them likewise murmuring – for anything truly trivial.
"She's riding with him. That's not been allowed."
Rose was shocked. "But she's his wife."
"Morganatic." When that word obviously meant nothing to her, he went on. "She's not of royal blood. She was given a title, though not a royal one, and she's never been allowed to take any precedence. He had to swear an oath that she would never be Empress, and their children would never be in the line of succession, before he was even allowed to marry her. Up until today, she's always had to be at the back of the line, while he was up front."
"But she rode with him in Sarajevo."
He shook his head. "That was different. That was a military visit, so the normal rules didn't apply." Alex tipped his head at the first of the Austrian nobles in the carriages following the royal couple, their faces stony – but angry-looking. "He's upset a whole lot of apple carts today. Looks like he's setting some new precedents."
"Good for him," Rose replied emphatically with a small, approving smile, seeing in her mind's eye how much the couple had obviously loved, respected, and depended on each other, back in the hut on the hill above Sarajevo.
Then she sighed, quietly. He's going to have to do a whole hell of a lot more than elevate Sophie if we're going to get out of this mess – and I'm ever going to get home again.