Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

  ‘Jag har varit länge borte—’

  I could see them holding their breath! Swedish, the Queen was speaking Swedish! I had composed the little address, Count Löwenhjelm had translated it for me, and I had learnt it by heart. It was dreadfully difficult, and I felt relieved when I reached the last words: ‘Länge leve Sverig!’

  We drove through the streets in an open equipage, Josefina nodding graciously left and right next to me, Jean-Baptiste and Oscar facing us. I sat stiffly upright, smiling to the crowds till my face ached. But even then I continued to smile.

  ‘I was amazed,’ said Oscar, ‘at your speaking in Swedish, Mama. I am very proud of you.’

  I felt Jean-Baptiste’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. Why not? Because I realised how much I was still in love with him, still or again, I don’t know which.

  And all the time I was chuckling a little at the thought that he was a grandfather already, without knowing it!

  Drottningholm Castle. August 15th–16th, 1823

  At midnight to-night I was a ghost for the first time in my life. In my white dressing-gown I ‘walked’ the corridors of the castle as the ‘white lady’.

  We came here to Drottningholm for a rest after a strenuous summer in which Oscar and Josefina and I danced every night at some ball or other, in some castle or other, in South Sweden as well as here. And we had made Jean-Baptiste attend and dance too, in spite of all his excuses. Everything at court is new and fresh, new lords and ladies-in-waiting, new liveries, new furniture, new wallpaper and paint, and so is this regime of cheerfulness and new life and new contact with the people. But it has been strenuous! And so we have come here.

  Last night I went early to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. The summer nights here are so disturbingly light.

  The clock struck midnight. It’s the 16th of August, I remembered. I slipped into my dressing-gown and started ‘walking’. I wanted to go to Jean-Baptiste. It was completely silent everywhere, only the parquet floor creaked under my steps. How I hate castles!

  In Jean-Baptiste’s study I very nearly collided with Moreau’s white marble bust, but in the end I managed to feel my way to Jean Baptiste’s dressing-room door. I opened it and – stared straight at the barrel of a pistol! Someone hissed at me in French.

  ‘Who goes there?’

  I laughed. ‘A ghost, Fernand, that’s all!’

  ‘Your Majesty has given me a fright,’ said Fernand, offended. He was in a long nightshirt, and he still held the pistol as he bowed to me. His camp-bed was pulled across Jean-Baptiste’s door.

  ‘Do you always sleep in front of His Majesty’s door?’

  ‘Yes. The Marshal is afraid.’

  The door was flung open, and Jean-Baptiste, his green shade pushed up on his forehead, bellowed:

  ‘What does this mean?’

  I curtsied. ‘Your Majesty, a ghost requests an audience.’

  Fernand pushed the camp-bed aside, and for the first time since our arrival in Drottningholm I stood in Jean-Baptiste’s bedroom. Even there every inch of space seemed to be filled with leather tomes and files of papers. ‘He’s still studying,’ I thought, ‘as in Hanover, as in Marienburg.’

  Jean-Baptiste stretched himself wearily, and asked with a smile:

  ‘And what does the ghost want?’

  ‘It only wants to announce its presence,’ I said, and sat down comfortably in an arm-chair. ‘It’s the ghost of a young girl who, once upon a time, married a General and went into a bridal bed full of roses and thorns.’

  Jean-Baptiste sat down on the arm of my chair and put his arm round me.

  ‘And why does this ghost announce its presence on this particular night?’

  ‘Because it was twenty-five years ago to-night.’

  ‘Heavens!’ he exclaimed. ‘It is our silver wedding day, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, nestling close to him, ‘and in the whole of Sweden no one besides ourselves will think of it. No salvoes, no schoolchildren reciting poetry, no regimental bands! Isn’t it marvellous, Jean-Baptiste?’

  ‘We have travelled a long way,’ he said, tired, and put his head on my shoulder. ‘And in the end you came back to me after all.’

  ‘You have arrived, Jean-Baptiste. Yet in spite of that you are afraid of ghosts?’

  He didn’t answer. His head felt heavy on my shoulder.

  ‘Fernand sleeps across your bedroom door with a pistol in his hand. What ghosts are you afraid of?’

  ‘The ghosts of Vasa. During the Congress of Vienna the last Vasa King, the exiled one, you know, put in his claims to the throne for himself and his son.’

  ‘But that’s eight years ago. The Swedes deposed him because he was crazy. Is he really crazy?’

  ‘His policy certainly was. The allies rejected his claims, of course. They couldn’t very well do anything else after the way I, during that horrible campaign—’

  ‘Jean-Baptiste, don’t let those memories torment you. The Swedes know exactly what you did for them. They know that you made their country prosperous and rich.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but the opposition—’

  ‘Does the opposition ever mention the Vasas?’

  ‘No, never. But let an opposition that calls itself Liberal exist, and it is only one more step to revolution!’

  ‘Nonsense, the Swedes know what they want. You’ve been proclaimed and crowned King.’

  ‘And can be killed or deposed to make room for the last Vasa. He is an officer in the Austrian Army.’

  I decided there and then to lay that ghost. Then he would be able to sleep at all events.

  ‘Jean-Baptiste, the Bernadotte dynasty rules in Sweden once and for all, and you are the only one who is not convinced of that.’

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘But unfortunately there are people who maintain that in your fear of the opposition you don’t stick to the Constitution.’ I turned my face away. ‘The Swedes set great store by their freedom of the press, dearest. And every time you suppress a paper there are one or two people who might take it into their heads to compel you to abdicate.’

  He winced. ‘Is that so? There, you see that my ghosts are not imaginary ones. The Prince of Vasa—’

  ‘Jean-Baptiste, no one ever mentions the Prince of Vasa. The only one they mention is – Oscar, the Crown Prince!’

  I heard a sigh of relief. ‘Is that true? Look at me, is that really true?’

  ‘No one is dissatisfied with the Bernadotte dynasty. It has come to stay. Tell Fernand to sleep from now on in his own bedroom.’

  When Jean-Baptiste later drew the curtains aside from the windows the park of Drottningholm lay in bright golden light.

  I went up to him by the window. ‘As far as Oscar is concerned,’ he said, gently stroking my hair, ‘I gave him what I never had myself, a good education, education for kingship. Sometimes I feel sad that I myself shall never see him King. Come along, let’s have breakfast together as we did twenty-five years ago.’

  In the study we stopped before Moreau’s bust. ‘Moreau, old friend!’ said Jean-Baptiste thoughtfully, and tenderly I touched his marble face. ‘They don’t dust very well,’ I thought, ‘in these royal castles.’ Then we went on, clasping each other tightly.

  ‘I am glad,’ said Jean-Baptiste suddenly, ‘that I gave in and let Oscar marry Josefina.’

  ‘If you had had your way he’d have married some King’s plain daughter, and old Miss Koskull would have been his only excursion into romantic young love, you unnatural father!’

  In my boudoir a great surprise awaited us. On the breakfast-table laid for two was a fine bunch of roses, red, white, yellow, and pink. A piece of paper leaned against the vase. ‘Our very best wishes to Their Majesties, Marshal J.-B. Bernadotte and wife. Marie and Fernand.’

  Jean-Baptiste laughed, and I cried.

  Stockholm Castle. February 1829

  Old Princess Sofia Albertina, the last Vasa in Sweden, is dying. Since her brother’s deat
h the old Princess has been living in the so-called Crown Prince’s Palace, and although Jean-Baptiste saw to it that she was regularly asked to the court table, Oscar was the only one who took any interest in her. He calls her Aunt, and says she used to give him sweets when he was a boy. Yesterday I heard him say that she was ill, and this morning one of her octogenarian ladies-in-waiting came to me with the message that it was Her Highness’s last wish to speak to me – to the silk merchant’s daughter, of all people! – in private.

  When I came to her she was dressed in my honour in grande toilette, lying on a sofa, and she tried to get up as I entered.

  ‘Don’t trouble to get up,’ I said, horrified at the sight of her sallow, wrinkled skin, her hollow cheeks, and the dull stare of her eyes in their deep sockets.

  Her drawing-room was full of pink roses embroidered on purple. The poor thing had done nothing all her life but embroider roses, and always the same pattern!

  She smiled at me as I sat down, and sent her ladies away.

  ‘I am very grateful to Your Majesty for your visit,’ she said. ‘I am told that your time is very fully occupied.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘we are very busy.’ I told her about Jean-Baptiste’s full days and Oscar’s promotion to Admiral of the Fleet and his plans for prison reform and the book he is writing on the subject.

  ‘A strange occupation for an Admiral,’ she said.

  ‘And for a musician,’ I added.

  She nodded, bored. Somewhere a clock was ticking.

  ‘Your Majesty does a good deal of hospital visiting,’ she said unexpectedly.

  ‘Naturally, that is one of my duties. Besides, there’s lots of room for improvement.’ Soon that subject was exhausted in its turn, and I heard the clock ticking again.

  ‘I am told that you speak a bit of Swedish, Madame,’ she said a little later.

  ‘I’m trying to learn it, Your Highness. Jean-Baptiste has no time to learn languages, and nobody thinks any the less of him for that. But I receive all deputations in Swedish as best I can.’

  The Princess seemed to be asleep and she looked as white as her powdered hair. I felt very sorry for her loneliness in her last moments. Suddenly she said:

  ‘You are a good Queen, Madame!’

  ‘We are doing our best, Jean-Baptiste, Oscar and I.’

  The ghost of the malicious smile of former days flitted over her face. ‘You are a very intelligent woman.’

  I looked at her in amazement.

  ‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘at that time when poor Hedvig Elizabeth stigmatised you as being only a silk merchant’s daughter you left the room in high dudgeon, and only returned as Queen. Hedvig Elizabeth has never been forgiven for that. A court without a young Crown Princess!’ She giggled gleefully. ‘To the end of her life Hedvig Elizabeth had the reputation of the bad mother-in-law, hee hee hee!’

  These recollections seemed to revive her. ‘Oscar brought the children to see me, little Charles and the new-born baby, what’s his name?’

  ‘Oscar,’ I said proudly.

  ‘Charles is very like you, Madame,’ she said. ‘I should have liked children of my own, but they never found a suitable husband for me. Oscar says you would have no objection if his children married commoners. How do you imagine that would work, Madame?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about that. But Princes can renounce their titles, can’t they?’

  ‘Of course they can—’ She broke off and fell into another doze. Somewhere the clock was ticking. Then she spoke again.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about the crown, Madame.’

  ‘Which crown?’ I asked, thinking that her mind must be wandering.

  ‘The crown of the Queens of Sweden.’

  Her eyes were wide open, and she spoke calmly and clearly.

  ‘You were not crowned when His Majesty was. Perhaps you do not know that we have a crown for our Queens, a very old one, not big but quite heavy. I have held it in my hand several times. You are the mother of the Bernadotte dynasty. Why won’t you be crowned?’

  ‘Because up to now nobody has thought of it,’ I said softly.

  ‘But I am doing so now. I am the last Vasa alive in Sweden and I am asking the first Bernadotte to take care of the old crown.’

  ‘I don’t like these ceremonies,’ I said.

  She opened her bloodless fingers and waited for me to give her my hand in token of consent. ‘I have not much time left to ask.’

  I could not but respond to that appeal.

  I remembered that at a coronation long ago I had had to carry a handkerchief on a velvet cushion, to the ringing of the bells of Notre-Dame.

  Did the old Princess guess the way my thoughts had turned? ‘I had the memoirs of this Napoleon Bonaparte read to me.’ She looked at me quizzically. ‘How strange that the two most important men of our time should have fallen in love with you, Madame. After all, you really are no beauty!’

  Then she sighed, very softly:

  ‘A pity I was born a Vasa. I should have preferred to be a Bernadotte and marry a commoner and have some fun in life.’

  When I left I bowed deeply to her and kissed the old hand. The dying Princess smiled, astonished at first and then a bit malicious. For, truly, I am no beauty.

  Stockholm Castle. May 1829

  ‘His Royal Highness regrets that it is quite impossible for him to find a free afternoon during this week.’ So Oscar’s lord-in-waiting reported to me.

  ‘Tell His Royal Highness that it is a question of fulfilling a wish of his mother’s.’ After some hesitation the gentleman disappeared.

  ‘But, Aunt, you know that Oscar is so terribly busy,’ said Marceline, not quite discreetly.

  Oscar’s lord-in-waiting returned. ‘His Royal Highness regrets that it is quite impossible this week.’

  ‘Then tell His Royal Highness that I am expecting him at four o’clock this afternoon. He will accompany me on an excursion.’

  ‘Your Majesty, His Royal Highness regrets—’

  ‘I know, my dear Count, my son regrets that he is unable to fulfil my wish. Therefore tell him that it is no longer a wish of his mother but a command from the Queen.’

  Promptly at four o’clock Oscar was announced, together with three gentlemen of his suite. On the sleeve of his Admiral’s uniform he wore the mourning band for Princess Sofia Albertina, who had died on March 17th. I myself wore mourning.

  Oscar behaved very formally, to show me how furious he was. I told him to dismiss his gentlemen, I wanted to go on this excursion without any escort. I put on my hat and we left, on foot, to Oscar’s surprise and dismay.

  ‘We are going to the Västerlånggatan,’ I said, and Oscar led the way. He hadn’t said a word yet, he was too furious with me. But that didn’t prevent him from saluting and smiling to the passers-by who recognised him and bowed on meeting him. I had pulled the mourning veil over my face and was dressed so plainly and consequently looked so uninteresting that no one thought I belonged to His Highness.

  ‘Here is the Västerlånggatan,’ said Oscar at last. ‘May I ask Your Majesty where we are going now?’

  ‘To a silk shop belonging to a man called Persson. I have never been yet, but it shouldn’t be difficult to find.’

  Oscar’s patience broke. ‘Mama, I cancelled two conferences and an audience because of your command. And where are you taking me? To a silk shop! Why don’t you let the man come to you?’

  ‘Persson isn’t appointed to the court. Besides, I’d like to see his shop.’

  ‘But surely you don’t need me?’

  ‘You can help me choose the material for my coronation dress. And I want to introduce you to Monsieur Persson.’

  Oscar was speechless. ‘Introduce me to a silk merchant?’

  I felt sad. Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to take Oscar along. I keep forgetting that my son is a Crown Prince.

  ‘Persson was an apprentice in your grandfather Clary’s shop in Marseilles. He even lived in our house,’ I s
aid with emotion. ‘Oscar, don’t you understand, there is a man in Stockholm who has known my father and my home!’

  Oscar bent down to me quickly and pushed his arm through mine. Looking round, he stopped an elderly man and asked for Persson’s shop. After a good deal of bowing and scraping the man managed to give Oscar the information.

  It was a comparatively small shop. But I saw at once that the silks and velvets in the window were of excellent quality. Inside there were a lot of customers, prosperous middle-class women who were so busy fingering the silks they paid no attention to Oscar’s uniform. Consequently we were pushed around till our turn came. Behind the counter three young men were serving, one of them with an equine face and fair hair who reminded me of the young Persson of bygone days. It was this one who asked us what we wanted.

  ‘I should like to see your silks,’ I said in my broken Swedish. He didn’t understand me at first, and I repeated my request in French. ‘I’ll call my father, he speaks French very well,’ said the young man, and disappeared.

  Looking round I noticed that we were now quite alone in front of the counter, and to my horror I saw all the other customers pressed against the wall behind me, awestruck. I heard their murmur:

  ‘The Queen!’

  They had recognised me because I had put up the veil, the better to see the silks.

  At that moment a side door opened, and Persson appeared, Persson from Marseilles, our Persson. He hadn’t changed much. The fair hair had turned a dull grey, the blue eyes looked no longer timid but full of quiet self-confidence, and he smiled obligingly and showed his long yellow teeth.

  ‘Madame wishes to see some silk?’ he said in French.

  ‘Your French has gone from bad to worse, Monsieur Persson. And to think of all the trouble I took with your pronunciation.’

  The long lean figure stiffened. He opened his mouth to say something, but his lower lip trembled and he couldn’t speak a word.

  ‘Have you forgotten me, Monsieur Persson?’

  He shook his head, slowly, as if in a dream. I tried to help him and said cordially: