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1738

Storms in Kiel start with cool, gusting winds from the bay. They smell of salt and, sometimes, seaweed. Dark, foreboding clouds lumber across the sky. For most people this is a sign to stay inside and retire early. But Peter, as Brockdorff ought to have known, has other ideas. After evening prayers, when they are left relatively alone in the last half hour before bedtime, Peter pulls one of his favorite kites out from under his bed and comes to perch on the armrest of Brockdorff’s armchair, making the other boy look up from the book he had picked up.

“Aren’t you tired of studying?” Peter complains and gives him a small shove. “I have a better idea.” He holds up the kite.

“Now?” Brockdorff glances around the room. “It will be noticed we’re gone.”

“No one is paying attention to us. We haven’t had a proper wind since the snows melted.” Peter bounces up, impatient as always. “Come on. Your Prince commands you!” He waves one hand imperiously in a summoning gesture. Brockdorff rolls his eyes but follows nonetheless. He has never attempted to find out what would happen if he told Peter no for real.

They sneak outside, stopping at the guardhouse to exchange teasing remarks with the men there, and proceed out onto the grounds of Kiel Castle, looking for a nice open area. Peter has a love for kites. Nothing like his love for parades, fireworks or music, but it occupies him enough that over the past summer they had built a couple dozen kites in different shapes, sizes and colors. They had gotten good at flying them too. But this escapade is cut short when, without any warning, the sky opens up and they suddenly find themselves drenched in a torrent of water. Their kite swerves violently and tangles in the branches of a nearby tree.

“Oh, hell! How are we going to get it down from there?” Peter shouts over the uproar of wind and falling rain.

Brockdorff squints. “Tomorrow. We’ll figure it out tomorrow!” If there’s anything left of it by then. “We need to get inside!” Peter gives the kite one last, longing look, then turns and runs toward the inner courtyard, struggling to keep up with Brockdorff’s longer strides.

They stumble into the front hall, throwing their wet cloaks at a dozing footman who snorts and flails wildly, making both boys double over with laughter. Brockdorff grabs Peter’s arm and says in a mock-whisper, “We ought to be getting upstairs before—“

“Karl Peter, is that you? For Heaven’s sake boy, I was about to send a platoon out to look for you!”

“Too late,” Peter mumbles, stepping away from Brockdorff and facing the large staircase leading to the upper levels of the castle. Karl Friedrich, Duke of Holstein, is bearing down on them, his frock coat unbuttoned and his wig in some visible disarray with a single candle in hand to light the way. Peter looks up to meet his father’s eyes, peering through the darkness of the poorly lit hall to try and ascertain his mood. Brockdorff comes to stand beside him, head lowered respectfully as the Duke slowly makes his way down the grand staircase.

“Papa, we were only trying to fly a kite. We were hereabouts; never even went to the docks.”

“The docks!” Karl Friedrich looks scandalized. “Dear God, boy, you’re soaking wet, it’s late and I was about to raise the entire household in search of you. If you had gone to the docks, I would have let Herr Brümmer have his way with you. Perhaps one of these days I will.”

Peter has his eyes to the floor by this point. Instinctively, he shifts closer to Brockdorff who stands as still as he can. “I’m sorry, father.” They wait. If the Duke is in a good mood or in a bad mood but at least sober, they will be sent off without too much fuss. Peter might even get a hair-ruffle from his father. If he is in a foul mood and drunk…

Finally, Karl Friedrich waves a hand in something like resignation. “Well, go on up to bed. You’ll have to wake the servants; most likely they’ve fallen asleep by now the devils.”

“There’s no need, Your Highness,” Brockdorff pipes up. “I can take care of him.”

Karl Friedrich pauses, as though noticing Brockdorff for the first time. “Brockdorff! Won’t your father be expecting you?”

“No, Your Highness. I told him I would be attending to mein Prinz tonight.”

“Ah, well, fine. Fine. Go on the both of you.” He waves them away and turns to head down the gallery leading to a different part of the castle.

Peter looks mildly forlorn at being so easily dismissed by his father. Brockdorff grabs his hand. “Come, before the entire household does wake up. It’s better we manage ourselves than Brümmer to come about.”

The prospect of potentially facing Brümmer snaps Peter out of his stupor and he follows Brockdorff eagerly at a sprint, up the staircase and down the labyrinth of halls to his rooms. Once they are safely tucked away in Peter’s bedchamber with a set of candles burning, Brockdorff throws off his own coat and begins to unlace and unbutton Peter’s. They fuss around for some time with their clothes and finding their night things. Brockdorff is looking forlornly at the empty fireplace, torn between simply hiding under all the blankets they can find or actually finding a footman who would light it for them when Peter speaks up, quietly: “Father has been drinking much again lately.”

He’s ill, Brockdorff wants to say. Surely, Peter has noticed the recent stampede of surgeons and court medics who have overrun the place. Brockdorff has heard his parents talking in quiet voice of what will happen if the Duke dies – mostly they seem in agreement that they would stay at court, though their reasoning is different. All Brockdorff can think of is what would happen to Peter. He would then inherit but… Nothing good ever came to those who inherit before the age of majority, or so it seems to Brockdorff from all of his history lessons.

“And he’s always in a foul mood.” Peter throws a blanket over his shoulders and shuffles over to the window. The shutters and curtains are drawn open. Outside, the rainfall has become a storm, with howling winds and streaks of lightening painting the horizon a pale violet. Brockdorff comes to stand behind Peter; by now he’s almost a head taller and can easily look over his friend’s shoulder. “Are you staying the night?”

“As always.” Peter always asks it as a question, as though it’s Brockdorff’s choice, an idea he has come up with, when in truth it is merely a habit they have formed – for him to sleep in Peter’s room whenever there is a storm – arising out of a request once made so long ago that neither of them could accurately recall how the conversation had gone.

“Do you think he will die soon?” Peter asks after a while, still staring into the darkness of the courtyard.

“Who?”

“My father.”

Brockdorff bites his lip. He’s heard the gossip and seen the medics and, when he thinks of it, the Duke has not looked well in months. “Don’t say that. I’m sure His Highness will live long and happily. He did promise you that when you are older he would take you with him to campaign against the Dutch, did he not?”

He feels Peter’s slow smile rather than sees it; it leaks into his tone as he says, “Yes he did.” Then after a pause, “But sometimes I’m afraid… When I am the Duke I could do whatever I want, I’d think.”

“Parades. Every day.” Brockdorff nearly giggles at the prospect.

Peter offers him an indulgent huff of laughter in return. “But I’m afraid they won’t let me. Because I’m not old enough yet. I see the way they all look at me. Not just Brümmer – he’s merely a Schweinigel. But, I mean…father’s ministers. Those sorts. Even…” Peter glances back at him, half-challenging, half guilty. “Even your mother.”

Brockdorff wants to deny it but he can hardly deny the truth. His mother thinks little of Peter, he is well aware of that. Everyone perhaps is. “Whatever my mother’s intentions I do not share them,” he says as calmly as possible, though something is clenching tightly and uncomfortably in his stomach.

“Well—“ There is a loud, sudden whip crack of thunder. Brockdorff gives a start while Peter stumbles backward into him. Without thinking, Brockdorff wraps his arms around Peter’s waist, taking a small step backwards in order to not knock them both off balance.

“Bloody hell—that was—“

“Sudden—“

“A-hah. Sorry—“

“It’s fine.” Brockdorff realizes that he’s still holding on to Peter, his face half-buried in the other boy’s hair. He is also aware that he has no desire to let go.

“What are you doing?” Peter asks, squirming a little but apparently not attempting to move further away.

Embarrassed but obstinate, Brockdorff only hugs him closer. “Protecting you.”

Peter scoffs. “From what?”

“The storm.”

Peter laughs as another crash of thunder makes the glass on the windows shudder and vibrate.

“I promise you,” Brockdorff continues, suddenly overcome by some feverish need to say things into the darkness, confess his strange childish dreams. Now, now, because it is easier to be honest in the middle of a storm, when the wind and torrents of water can wash away all the words and thoughts like in a bad dream if it all goes wrong, if he is misunderstood. He would never be brave enough to say these things in the morning. “No matter what happens – to your father, at court, anywhere ever – and no matter what anyone thinks or intends, even if they are my family, I will always be here to protect you. Always. From anything. You are my Prince and my best friend and…” He breaks off, burning up from excitement and embarrassment, overcome by a sense of awe that he means all of this.

He is only ten years old and hardly knows what protect you from anything always actually entails, but he is certain that sooner or later they will find out, and finding out will not change a thing.

*~*

June 1762

Brockdorff wonders if it would be easier to bear if they had not had forewarning. He wonders if he would feel less guilty, less like a failure. He doubts it.

But he does not have even that excuse, for this is a storm they had seen coming. The reports were there, the suspicions, Catherine’s strange behavior. Shuvalov, though formally deprived of his expansive powers to spy on everyone everywhere still had spies and managed security affairs and he knew something was happening. But somehow they had been doped into a false sense of security. Peter had been too distracted with the peace treaty and his upcoming wedding to pay much attention to anything else – he was ready to be free and happy. Why in the world the rest of them had allowed themselves to be so careless was unfathomable.

Brockdorff wonders if Peter would have even listened to him if he had brought up the matter. Probably not. But it should not have mattered. I should have made him listen; I should have made him see.

He knows deep inside that it’s over – they have lost before the fight even began. He can see that Peter knows it as well, though he makes a show of lining up his men and putting up a brave façade. Brockdorff goes to stand with the rest of the company. He does not have a musket or a sword, but those were never the things Peter truly needed – what he has always needed most is to know that people are on his side. That is something he rarely got in Russia and it is the only thing Brockdorff can truly offer him now.

He watches, numbly, as Peter paces distractedly then dismisses the soldiers, ordering them to put down their arms, as Brockdorff knew he would. For all of Peter’s caprices, he would not have good men die for him in a fight they could never win. He is not that kind of man; he never had been. And Brockdorff loves him desperately for it. It is only the three of them now – him, Peter and Liza – so he says, unable to help himself, “Go, Your Majesty. I’ll delay them.”

Peter comes to stand beside him and looks up to meet his eyes. For a moment, everything fades and it is only the two of them, a couple of boys from Holstein who flew kites in the summer and buried under blankets during storms. Peter’s curls are a mess, just like the day Brockdorff had first met him, and his eyes are just the same shade of misty crystal grey. He looks so young in that moment that the years melt away between them, exposing a myriad of hopes and promises and might-have-beens.

I will protect you. Always. From anything.

It had gotten harder and harder to keep that promise with every year. First came Brümmer, an adult while Brockdorff was still a child. Then the lonely foreignness of the Russia court and the distance, which separated them for far too long before Brockdorff could finally get to Petersburg. Then, Empress Elizabeth’s constant disapproval, the failed marriage to Catherine, Saltykov’s betrayal – which drove Brockdorff mad with jealousy when he realized how deeply it had hurt Peter – the constant fear. Things Brockdorff did not know how to shield his friend from; things no one man could stave off or resolve. But he fought against that tide the best and only way he knew how. Sometimes, he wondered if Peter ever realized that, if his efforts had been even remotely adequate.

And in the end, he had failed.

“No, no, my friend,” Peter says, blinking rapidly and struggling to meet his eyes. “You go. Save yourself.” He puts a hand on Brockdorff’s arm, a rare gesture of affection these days, gives him one last, longing look. He’s saying goodbye, Brockdorff realizes and everything inside him cries out to not let go, to take Peter’s hands in his and pull him close, wrap him up in his arms and hold him so close that no one would be able to tear them apart.

It had not worked when they were fourteen and the Russian envoys came. It certainly would not work now.

He watches Peter leave with Liza on his arm and feels the dryness in his mouth, the bursting pressure in his chest of all the words he wants to say but never has and never will. Then heads for the small canon in the fortress’ entry arch.

It will hardly make a difference, but it’s all he has to offer. And he had promised, after all – always.