Prologue

The Battle of Königgratz, Austria

September 1866

Lieutenant Matteo von Ritter, of the Austrian Fifth Cavalry, lay in a dirt culvert, and surveyed the situation. They were hemmed in on all sides. Blood streamed from his head where a bullet had grazed his temple. He tasted the sulfurous gunpowder. Smoke choked him and burned his eyes. The ground vibrated with the hail of shelling. Shrapnel whistled overhead. Screams of men and horses mixed together in a symphony of death. Tree trunks, blasted apart by artillery fire, lay like matchsticks, their sap sizzling as they burned.

The dead and dying, both Prussian and Austrian, littered the forests and fields and low-slung rock formations around the villages. Fighting had commenced at sunrise. By four in the afternoon, Matteo knew that only a humiliating retreat to the other side of the Elbe could save the Austrian army. Neither side held their ground for long, beaten back by the inaction of timid generals and driven forward by the arrival of reinforcements.

A sheer rock wall blocked advance. To the right, dirt and rocks sprayed into the air, pounded by Austrian artillery. In the dense forest on the left, Prussians with their new breach-loading needle guns lay on the forest floor and picked off the Austrians when they stood to reload. Escape or advancement was impossible.

Against impossible odds, Matteo was determined to carry out the mission: find a way around the Prussian flank. Matteo and two infantrymen from his regiment, Kurt and Luther, lay belly-flat in the dirt. Matteo pointed to a cluster of boulders and scorched scrub around a depression in the field.

“Run!” Matteo shouted.

Kurt bent low and sprinted toward the boulders. Luther lumbered after him. Matteo launched himself out of the dirt.

Two Prussian cavalrymen, astride enormous black Mecklenburgs, galloped full tilt out of the forest. Swords flashed against the sky. Their eyes were wild with battle lust.

Luther drew his pistol, fired, missed. His target wheeled his horse and pinned Luther’s torso against the rock wall. He held Luther there to watch him suffer.

The horse crushed bone to stone, forcing the breath from Luther’s body. His face turned red, purple. The Prussian aimed his pistol at Luther’s head. The horse shied. A shot resounded.

 Luther collapsed, screaming and holding his face in his hands. Blood spurted through his fingers and ran down the front of his uniform.

Matteo fought the cold white horror flashing through his chest.

Lungs burning from the smoke, the taste of his own blood in his mouth, Matteo ran and leapt onto a smoldering tree trunk. He unsheathed his sword, the grip as familiar as a dinner knife. Muscles straining, he extended his arm, forearm rigid. With a roar, he swept his sword in a wide arc at Luther’s attacker.

Sword sliced flesh, caught at bone, carried through. The soldier’s head rolled off into the blackened undergrowth. The Mecklenburg careened towards the forest, dragging the corpse from one leg hung up in the stirrup.

Matteo spun around. Where was Kurt?

The second Prussian knocked Kurt on his back. The soldier reared his horse. Hooves descended with a sickening crunch.

Kurt let out a blood-curdling shriek and bucked off the ground. He cradled his mangled hand and writhed on the ground. The Prussian raised his sword to spike Kurt. Matteo struck a blow to the Prussian’s midsection, unseating the rider. The attacker pulled his pistol, but with one thrust of his sword, Matteo pinned him to the ground like a stag beetle. 

Matteo put one arm around Kurt’s waist, looped Kurt’s arm over his shoulder, and hauled his screaming friend off the ground.

 “We have to bring Luther. Get back to the horses,” Matteo shouted above the din, dragged Kurt beside him.

Through the murk of smoke, Matteo spotted Luther leaning against the rock wall, his breath heaving.

“Horses,” Luther sputtered, eyes wide. “Horses. Black monsters.”

Muscles twitching with exhaustion, Matteo grabbed Luther by the shirt front and helped him to stand. “Luther,” he shouted into the man's face and gave him a shake until Luther's eyes fixed on him. “Follow me.”

Blood streamed from a jagged gash on Luther’s forehead. He staggered, fell. “Don't leave me,” he gasped. “The horses.”

“Get up! Not a moment to lose,” Matteo shouted. “Run! Now!”

Matteo half-dragged, half-carried Kurt as they dodged burning trees, swamps of blood, bodies piled upon one another. “Not much further,” Matteo repeated over and over. Bullets whistled past. Mud sucked at his boots. Blood soaked his shirt.

“Should have turned back,” muttered Kurt. “Impossible.”

When Luther stumbled, Matteo bellowed, “We have all sworn the oath to love the name of honor more than fear death. Get up! I got us here. I’ll get us back.”

Luther staggered upright and lurched after Matteo.

Grimly, Matteo pressed ahead through the smoke and gunfire. When he couldn't go further, they found the place where they had been forced to tie their horses and advance on foot.

Matteo’s horse, Reinhold, a steady, battle-hardened mount, was still alive, though squealing in fear. Kurt and Luther's horses lay snorting and pawing the ground, mortally wounded and suffering horribly. Matteo pushed Kurt and Luther up on Reinhold, then pulled out his pistol and put the two animals out of their misery.

A shell exploded nearby. Dirt shot skyward in a volcano of dirt and rocks.

Matteo hurtled to the ground. Something tore through the back of his jacket. Pain sheared across his shoulder blade, and wet oozed down his back. He gritted his teeth, got up, and took hold of Reinhold’s bridle.

He led Reinhold through the carnage, blast holes, and dead soldiers until they reached the village of Predmaritz. A few remaining medics had taken refuge in an old granary and set up a field hospital. Prussians had taken most of the medics prisoner, leaving men who might have survived with medical treatment to die on the battlefield.

Matteo stumbled the last few steps into the granary and grabbed a young medic by the collar. “Help,” he gasped. “Help. Them.”

He collapsed.

Two days later, in a hospital on the other side of the Elbe river from where the Fifth Cavalry had been evacuated, Matteo remembered nothing of the Battle of Königgratz.

Chapter One

Vienna, Austria

1867

Gräfin Zdenka Waldner tugged at her gentleman's evening jacket. “Cousin Thomas's suits are becoming a bit snug. I can’t button it.”

“Your bosom is growing.” Gräfin Arabella, Zdenka’s beautiful older sister, giggled.

Zdenka moaned. “Just what a boy like me needs. I don’t mind being your brother…” She squirmed and pulled at the tight wrappings. “But these bindings are bothersome.”

“After the Coachman’s Ball in a few weeks, you can give up being a boy and return to your rightful gender,” Arabella said, trying, Zdenka knew, to nudge her toward respectability.

“I’m not eager to return to being a woman. I’ve rather come to enjoy the freedom I have as a gentleman. I can do as I please, walk about unescorted, ride when and where I please.” Zdenka pressed her nose to the windowpane of the fiaker and watched as the houses and apartments, lit by gaslight, became elegant houses and then palais.

The Waldners had been in Vienna since January, through snow, rain, and sleet. The city was beautiful but noisy, with sooty air from coal fires, dwellings crowded together, and women like Arabella hunting for husbands. It all made Zdenka want to steal a mount and gallop the distance back to their run-down, indebted estate in Hohenruppersdorf with its fields of wheat and pine forests, its pastures, the cows, sheep, and chickens. Back to where she was most herself and no one cared if she wore pants or petticoats.

“Don't become too fond of being my brother,” Arabella said, using her big sister know-it-all voice that chafed Zdenka. “Galloping about in trousers on the farm is one thing, but next Fasching, you’ll be looking for your own husband and you’ll have to wear a dress.”

Fasching, the Viennese social Season that commenced in November and ended on Shrove Tuesday, consisted of endless parties, balls, soirees, and general carousing—all meant to foster advantageous matches between the upper classes. The Coachman's Ball was the final ball before the gloomy descent of Lent when all of Catholic Austria refrained from life’s pleasures—even drinking hot chocolate. The Season’s best matches were often made at The Coachman’s Ball.

“I like dresses fine, but they’re impractical for birthing lambs, riding, pitching hay, and bringing in crops.” Zdenka scratched behind her ear where a blob of pomade had lodged. Mama had shorn her hair so she could pass as a boy, but the pomade used to control her curls was the consistency of horse glue. “You, of all people, know how much I want to go home and rebuild the farm.”

With Papa having gambled away most of their fortune, there wasn’t money for two debuts. Zdenka didn’t want a debut anyway. There wasn’t even money for Mama to buy a new gown, and the ones she had were out of date and threadbare. Mama dreaded going out in a Society where she had once been young and beautiful but was now grey-haired and as worn-out as her dresses.

Arabella had only this one Season to make a good match, so Zdenka, dressed as a young man, was pressed into service as Arabella’s chaperone for every tea, soiree, dance, theater, orchestra, and opera performance. Zdenka was willing to do anything, including stand on her head on the Platz in front of the Stephan’s Dom, if it meant Arabella found a rich husband who could save the farm—Zdenka’s farm—from the debt collectors.

Arabella seemed not to hear her. “Next year, you'll return as my distant cousin, and no one will be the wiser. You’ll have a brilliant Season, and we’ll find you a tolerant, indulgent husband.”

Zdenka knew how to quiet her sister. “As far as I can tell, men only want a mindless vessel for their children.”

“Zdenka, how vulgar,” Arabella chided. “This is what comes from reading all those foreign newspapers and essays by those so-called emancipated women. It makes you appear unattractively intelligent. Really, you mustn't forget you are still a lady underneath those trousers.”

 “Intelligence isn’t a bad characteristic in a lady. And I haven’t forgotten I’m female, but marriage isn’t necessary for running a farm.” Or for much else, as far as Zdenka could see from her parent’s marriage.

“You do need marriage,” Arabella said, with an edge to her voice. “Mine. Don’t forget my marriage will save your beloved farm from Papa’s gambling.”

Guilt washed through Zdenka. “I want you to marry someone you love, not just to save the farm. I appreciate your sacrifice for the family.”

But Zdenka had made a promise to her grossmutti to keep the farm in the family, and she intended to keep that promise, even if it meant pushing Arabella toward the altar. Zdenka could still feel her grandmama’s knob-knuckled hands gripping her own small, dirty hands. In a quavering voice, Grandmama had said, ‘You are the last hope of our ancestors. Promise me you’ll never let the land leave our family. You can be whoever you want here at Friedenheim. I know you love the farm as much as I do. My destiny was here and yours is too.’

A week later, Grandmama died in her sleep. Zdenka swore on her grave she would never let Friedenheim leave the Waldner family.

Arabella’s feet tip-tapped a rhythm on the floor of the fiaker. “To think the Coachman’s Ball has been held for two hundred years. That our parents attended the same ball.”

 “By the last night of Fasching, you have to make up your mind which of the Grafen you will marry.”

“I know you think it’s silly, my waiting for the right man,” Arabella said with a wistful note in her voice. “But it’s all I’ve ever wanted since I was a child.”

Arabella could be such a giddy featherhead. Except for her obsession of finding the right man, ideas floated in and out of her mind like dandelion puffs.

“And what if he’s not rich, like one of the Grafen?” Zdenka asked. Because if the right man wasn’t rich, the once wealthy and noble Waldners would be homeless, as well as penniless. And Zdenka was determined to not let that happen.

“Then I'll make a practical and good match. I know what's expected of me, and I'll live up to my obligation,” Arabella said, affecting the more elevated tone and accent pervasive of Viennese upper class.

She had changed into a husband-hunter again. Zdenka missed the carefree sister who laughed from her belly, skipped when she was happy, and let her hair trail down her back. This Arabella, in her heavy emerald brocade gown that fit her like a second skin, was almost unrecognizable.

The fiaker jostled over a hole in the cobblestones. Arabella’s head bumped against the side of the carriage, mussing her hair. “I’ll have to make a trip to the ladies robing room to straighten myself out.”

“Not a problem I have.” Zdenka touched her curls and winced, missing her once-long braids. Sacrificing her waves of russet hair was the only thing she disliked about being a young man. She consoled herself with the certainty her hair would grow back.

Their carriage pulled up to the palais of one of Vienna's most infamous hostesses, Gräfin Thea Prokovsky. Arabella gave her fluttery Viennese laugh. “Let's not spoil the evening mooning a marriage of necessity. Let's enjoy ourselves, shall we, brother?”

Zdenka leapt out of the carriage, flipped the step down, and helped Arabella descend. As usual, heads turned to watch her. With Arabella on her elbow, the two started up the marble stairs. In front of them, an elderly man slipped and collapsed down on one knee with a groan of pain.

A strapping soldier quickly brushed past them, took the stairs two at a time, and helped the man to his feet. The soldier bent his head to speak to the old man. He brushed the knee of his trousers and steadied the man until he resumed climbing the stairs under his own power.

The soldier turned. For a moment, he peered—not at Arabella—but for once, at Zdenka. Lamplight fell across his face, turning his features to sharp angles and shadows. His narrow-eyed gaze seemed wary and challenging.

Something in Zdenka bubbled like hot butter on a griddle. The sensation was not altogether unpleasant, but it was unfamiliar and confusing.

Men were unnecessary.

Weren’t they?