He jumped to his feet, red in the face, blocking out the meagre light that filtered in through the tiny window at his back. ‘How can you ask me that?’ he exploded. ‘Those children were Prussian, Hanno. They had no father to care for them. I could not leave the bodies one minute more in the hands of atheists. I knew what I had to do, and I did it.’ ‘Without consulting me, sir? Without a word to Lavedrine?’ He glared at me angrily. ‘What’s done is done,’ he said dismissively, pointing to the chair. ‘Let us waste no more time.’ The French had requisitioned the district governor’s palace, but Aldebrand Dittersdorf’s sense of his own power was not diminished. All they had left him was a couple of chairs and his magnificent desk, which filled the tiny, dank closet where he had been relocated. Made of solid oak, it sprouted a Prussian eagle at each corner, his coat of arms in the centre. For generations, Dittersdorfs had signed and sealed the lives and the deaths of thousands of mortals who dwelt between the Wista and the Pasteka rivers.
