“But like they say, ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.’ Joanie and I didn’t push ourselves into your court; your secretary wrote to the superintendent of schools and asked for a teacher. We didn’t even ask to come to your court; when Ned Paxton got your letter, he asked us to come because our kids were grown and we didn’t have a lot of family obligations the way younger people do.
“We’ve done our honest best for you, Your Majesty. Joanie has tried to teach your children; I’ve tried to tell your advisers something about the work my dad is doing with aviation; we’ll fill out the terms of our contract because we signed it and we’re honest people. But if you don’t care to listen to what we say when, like the Bible says, we ‘speak the truth in love,’ there’s another truth and it’s that we don’t need you to make our careers; we’ll just go home at the end of it.”
November 1636
“Some say, M. de Ruvigny, that the up-timers are like nobles. But most nobles bow to Papa in public and plot against him in private, which is not how Miss Joanie and Mr. Hank held themselves. They stood in front of Papa as if they were the equals of kings themselves. Neither one of them liked being at a royal court. I cried when Miss Joanie left. Not where anyone could see me, of course, because someone could have taken advantage of knowing that I missed her, but I cried.”
✽ ✽ ✽
The next day dawned bright, clear, and cold, the previous day’s rain frozen into patches of ice underfoot. The ladies escaped the fug of the palace’s inadequate heating system by bundling themselves into layers of clothing and walking in the gardens again. Instead of falling behind the other women, a technique that could be used only so often without someone’s noticing and making pertinent comments to someone else, this time Sophia marched out ahead at a brisk pace with a dour comment that it wasn’t weather for moving slowly.
Bismarck had been called to the treasury office.
Ruvigny had specifically not been included in the invitation, which made him uneasy. He had no desire to do anything to undermine the subsidy negotiations and was beginning to be afraid that Sophia’s single-minded determination to use him to vent all of her grievances might well alienate Christian IV.
There were some occasions when it seemed harmless to be agreeable. He concurred with Sophia’s opinion that slamming a recalcitrant pianoforte pupil’s hand down on the keyboard so hard that it broke one of her fingers was really not the best approach to the matter. But, he pointed out, neither was it really desirable for an irritated pupil to do the same to the teacher’s hand.
Even such a mild statement had its pitfalls, though–as when one of the ladies-in-waiting, a connection of the Sehestads, he thought, suggested slyly that perhaps the general methodology of music instruction needed to be re-thought along lines of educational reform advocated by Professor Ratichius–Wolfgang Radtke, that is–of Anhalt, who was now serving as the Secretary of Education for the State of Thuringia-Franconia in the USE and did M. de Ruvigny approve of the changes that the up-timers were bringing so rapidly.
Ruvigny replied cautiously that, in his opinion, the initiation of less drastic measures and methods in the field of music education could scarcely make the overall political and military situation of Europe worse.
✽ ✽ ✽
“You might drop a word to your friend,” a partisan of Hannibal Sehested commented to Bismarck at the salle one afternoon. “It is entirely possible that the Lady Sophia is attempting to manipulate him for her own partisan purposes, or those of her maternal grandmother, Ellen Marsvin. Particularly, any tattling about the alleged abusive behavior of Lord Sehestad’s sister when she was governess to the king’s children is better ignored by those who wish to prosper at this court.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“Nothing kept Leonora from always telling other people how stupid I was, of course,” Sophia said. “She loathes me, I hate her, and I am so glad that she is gone that it makes me realize that I truly am as uncharitable and unchristian and unpleasant and every other ‘un’ that they say about me.
“All our lives, she despised everything that I liked to do. I loved my dolls. I had a little wooden wagon. In summer, the wagon became an imaginary carriage and my dolls went for picnics by an imaginary river. In winter, the wagon became a sleigh and my dolls went out in imaginary snow, ice skated on imaginary ponds, threw imaginary snowballs at each other, all in good fun, not to hurt anyone else.”
Interlude
Fredericksborg, spring 1633
Sophia stood behind the door to the schoolroom. Miss Joanie told the governess that Mr. Avery had gotten answers from the children’s previous governesses and tutors and had written back; had sent them something called an I E P. “I’m sorry, Lady Sophia,” she said, but he agrees that I am probably correct in being afraid that she is already too old, and the remedial efforts probably won’t help very much. However, it can’t possibly do any harm to try the program.
She was very disappointed.
Leonora got hold of the letter and read it to everyone in the nurseries when the governess wasn’t watching, saying, “See, I told you so, she’s never going to be able to learn; all she’ll ever do is play with those stupid dolls.”
Miss Joanie found out and said that there wasn’t anything wrong with playing with dolls. She sang a song from up-time about Jolly Old St. Nicholas, whom they called Santa Claus, and a little boy who was saying what his brother and sisters wanted for presents on Christmas Eve, which is when the up-timers have presents instead of properly on St. Nicholas Day. It went:
Johnnie wants a pair of skates
Susie wants a dolly;
Nellie wants a story book;
She things thinks dolls are folly.
Miss Joanie said that it was just that there were two kinds of girls: the ones who liked dolls and the ones who didn’t. And that Nellie was a nickname for Eleonore, which was Leonora’s name in French when we had French lessons. So she was just an un-doll girl and I was a doll girl, so I should ignore her.
November 1636
“Leonora is pretty hard to ignore,” Sophia continued. “Our governess thought that if I was going to play with dolls, I should dress them and learn to make elegant clothes for them. Leonora is wonderful at needlework, just like she is at everything else. I’m clumsy with it, just like I am with everything else. She can do beautiful embroidery; I can barely put a hem on a handkerchief.
“Frøken Lykke, the governess we had before Frøken Sehestad, read to us sometimes from a book by Erasmus called The Praise of Folly, so I know who Dame Folly is. I thought that Frøken Lykke was much nicer, but Leonora tattled to Papa, claiming that the two of us teased her and made fun of her because she spent so much time bragging that Corfitz Ulfeldt was not just her betrothed but truly her suitor and came to visit her because he admired her. If you want stupid, ask me and I’ll tell you that she was stupid about that. No grown man is seriously going to act as a suitor to an eleven-year-old child. He was ensuring his position at court, that was all.
“But just because Leonora can act dumb, too, that doesn’t make me able to embroider.”
Interlude
Friesland, 1626
Sophia was seven years old now. Tutor Hassebart was really Leonora’s tutor; he had come to Friesland with Leonora, a year after Papa sent Sophia and baby Waldemar there. He was a good man; a kind man.
“You should get the girl spectacles,” she heard him say to her aunt.
Uncle Ernst spoke up, agreeing, but Leonora told Aunt Sophia that I was careless and clumsy and would just break them.
“Nothing kept Leonora from always telling other people how stupid I was, of course,” Sophia said. “She loathes me, I hate her, and I am so glad that she is gone that it makes me realize that I truly am as uncharitable and unchristian and unpleasant and every other ‘un’ that they say about me.
“All our lives, she despised everything that I liked to do. I loved my dolls. I had a little wooden wagon. In summer, the
wagon became an imaginary carriage and my dolls went for picnics by an imaginary river. In winter, the wagon became a sleigh and my dolls went out in imaginary snow, ice skated on imaginary ponds, threw imaginary snowballs at each other, all in good fun, not to hurt anyone else.”
Interlude
Fredericksborg, spring 1633
Sophia stood behind the door to the schoolroom. Miss Joanie told the governess that Mr. Avery had gotten answers from the children’s previous governesses and tutors and had written back; had sent them something called an I E P. “I’m sorry, Lady Sophia,” she said, but he agrees that I am probably correct in being afraid that she is already too old, and the remedial efforts probably won’t help very much. However, it can’t possibly do any harm to try the program.
She was very disappointed.
Leonora got hold of the letter and read it to everyone in the nurseries when the governess wasn’t watching, saying, “See, I told you so, she’s never going to be able to learn; all she’ll ever do is play with those stupid dolls.”
Miss Joanie found out and said that there wasn’t anything wrong with playing with dolls. She sang a song from up-time about Jolly Old St. Nicholas, whom they called Santa Claus, and a little boy who was saying what his brother and sisters wanted for presents on Christmas Eve, which is when the up-timers have presents instead of properly on St. Nicholas Day. It went:
Johnnie wants a pair of skates
Susie wants a dolly;
Nellie wants a story book;
She things thinks dolls are folly.
Miss Joanie said that it was just that there were two kinds of girls: the ones who liked dolls and the ones who didn’t. And that Nellie was a nickname for Eleonore, which was Leonora’s name in French when we had French lessons. So she was just an un-doll girl and I was a doll girl, so I should ignore her.
November 1636
“Leonora is pretty hard to ignore,” Sophia continued. “Our governess thought that if I was going to play with dolls, I should dress them and learn to make elegant clothes for them. Leonora is wonderful at needlework, just like she is at everything else. I’m clumsy with it, just like I am with everything else. She can do beautiful embroidery; I can barely put a hem on a handkerchief.
“Frøken Lykke, the governess we had before Frøken Sehestad, read to us sometimes from a book by Erasmus called The Praise of Folly, so I know who Dame Folly is. I thought that Frøken Lykke was much nicer, but Leonora tattled to Papa, claiming that the two of us teased her and made fun of her because she spent so much time bragging that Corfitz Ulfeldt was not just her betrothed but truly her suitor and came to visit her because he admired her. If you want stupid, ask me and I’ll tell you that she was stupid about that. No grown man is seriously going to act as a suitor to an eleven-year-old child. He was ensuring his position at court, that was all.
“But just because Leonora can act dumb, too, that doesn’t make me able to embroider.”
“Do you think that spectacles might help with some things such as needlework?” Sophia asked. “When we came back to Denmark, after we had been with my aunt and uncle during the worst stage of that part of the war, I asked. Both Grandma Ellen and Mama said that I should not have them, because they would make me unattractive and it would be even harder for Papa to find me a husband some day.
“Mama worries about me. I’m her favorite, but I’m nowhere near to being as beautiful as she is. I’m certainly not beautiful enough that a king would want me so much that he would make a morganatic marriage with me instead of simply taking me as a mistress.” Sophia frowned doubtfully. “I’m pretty sure that I’m not even beautiful enough that a king would want to take me for his mistress.” She gestured at her thin body.
Ruvigny had to concur. Lady Sophia would not provide an attractive model for the painter Rubens. He was unlikely ever to meet her mother, the exiled Kirsten Munk, but the descriptions of the woman that circulated among the courtiers, plus portraits made of her when she was a young woman, indicated that she certainly would have been.
Chapter 37
The king, at one remove, through extra eyes provided by miscellaneous ladies’ maids and footmen, maids of honor and pages, ladies-in-waiting and courtiers, observed his daughter’s conversations benignly.
He didn’t think to check with Hille Larsdatter; he didn’t know that she existed.
Partisans of the various noble factions at the court continued to poke and prod. Corfitz Ulfeldt’s coterie was in the lead, but the Sehestad faction was active, still secure in Lord Hannibal’s betrothal to ten-year-old Lady Christiane.. The Lindenovs were determined that 20-year-old Lord Jan would not miss his chance with the 13-year-old Lady Elisabeth. Another party of Ulfeldts, bearing the banner of their son Ebbe’s unbroken betrothal to the other twin, ten-year-old Lady Hedwig, sniped at Corfitz. Friends of the still-aggrieved Christian von Pentz often had something to say, whether to Ruvigny himself or to Bismarck.
Fräulein von Blixen, the current governess, liked the three younger girls well enough but thought that Lady Sophia was a semi-royal pain. She passed on to Corfitz Ulfeldt everything that she observed, every hint that she obtained, every whisper that she overheard. It wasn’t that she wished any harm to the king. It wasn’t that she viewed Ulfeldt with any degree of favor. It was that she despised him precisely as much as she despised Lady Sophia and believed, in her heart, that the two of them deserved one another. By facilitating their marriage to one another, she would be saving two other hapless unfortunates from the sorry fate that marriage to either of them would entail.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Earlier in the war,” one of the Lindenov family’s partisans whispered to Ruvigny, “back when Lady Sophia and her younger brother and sister were sent to Friesland for safety, they were at the court of Prince Ernst Casimir von Nassau-Dietz-Orange and his wife, one of the king’s cousins on the Brunswick side. That court must have been quite a place.” He nudged an elbow into Ruvigny’s ribcage. “If you ever get a chance, take a look at the portrait of Sophia Hedwig von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel by Paulus Moreelse, the one painted of her and her three boys. She’s a passionate partisan for mothers’ breast-feeding their own children, rather than hiring wet nurses or feeding them pap. She used the portrait to ‘make a statement’ as some of the up-timers working on the airship project say about things. You’ll get an eyeful! She’s old now, of course. Heinrich Casimir is of age, but both he and his brother are mostly away in the military, so she’s effectively his regent, running the government on a daily basis.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Their conversations continued here and there, as opportunity allowed. The young people of the court went ice skating on an ornamental pond. Sophia volunteered to be the chief guide for several enjoyable, if usually damp and chilly, sight-seeing expeditions of the younger members of the court around the city, undertaken, of course, for the entertainment of her father’s guests.
“Ulfeldt has a mistress. Not that I have any good reason to complain about that, I guess, since the reason that I’m a ‘king’s daughter’ rather than a princess is that Mama was only Papa’s morganatic wife: a wife on the left hand, they call it; a left-hand marriage. Mariage à la gaumine, in French. When I was younger, people said it in French when they knew I was listening because they thought I wouldn’t understand just because everyone knows I can’t read French at all well.
“Technically, I shouldn’t even be called ‘king’s daughter,’ even though I am one, obviously. Papa raised Mama into the titled nobility as countess of Schleswig-Holstein when he married her, so we inherited that lesser title from her and are counts–well, Waldemar is a count; there’s just one boy–and we girls are countesses. It’s just an honorary title. There’s another set of dukes of Schleswig-Holstein who carry a German title; it came from the Holy Roman Empire that has been abolished now. Well, Papa holds a title as duke of Holstein; also as duke of Schleswig. That’s why he can create noble titles there. He only has a two-thirds interest though
; the other one-third share belongs to a cadet branch of the family who actually have lands there and govern their part from Gottorp. The duke there now is Friedrich III and he’s married to the sister of my brother Christian’s wife; they’re both daughters of John George of Saxony who got blown up. Schleswig-Holstein is a complicated place, two different duchies that are sometimes treated as one, all mixed up with German fiefs and Danish claims. Hardly anyone understands it.[1]
She stopped abruptly. “You’re French, aren’t you, even though you are here from Frederik Hendrik in the United Provinces?”
“Yes,” Ruvigny admitted, “that is so. I am French.”
“Do they create political messes like this in France?”
Ruvigny smiled, a little ruefully. “As much as I would wish to claim better on behalf of my country, I have to admit, yes, they do.”
Sophia looked vaguely disappointed. “That’s too bad. It makes a lot of things that a person has to memorize.
“A lot of the court ladies say behind my back that since Papa didn’t marry Mama in a church, but just by contract, I’m actually illegitimate and Corfitz is a better match than I have any reason to expect because I’m probably a slut like my sister Anne Cathrine who went off with that up-timer Cantrell. But I don’t think Corfitz is as good a match in this world as he was in the other one, because now Papa knows all the evil things he did.”
“It’s best to ignore gossip,” Ruvigny suggested tentatively.
“If you ignore gossip at this court, you are likely to find that others have undermined your position and in the best of circumstances, you’re in exile somewhere in the godforsaken sticks,” Sophia retaliated. “In the worst of circumstances, you’ve lost your head. Things have been very, very marginal for all of us since Papa repudiated Mama. Leonora was able to coax and flatter herself into his favor. I’ve never been able to. The hardest thing for me to accept has been that I’m really not bright and clever. Nothing I can do will ever make Papa proud of me, because all the time I was growing up, the governess and tutors told him how poorly I performed at my lessons, which is true. But even if Papa despises me because I’m no graceful ornament to his court, Grandma Ellen points out that I’m still better off than than his children by women who were just mistresses, with no kind of marriage at all, if only because Mama is noble, if untitled, like you are untitled, and Grandma Ellen is very, very, rich. That can be perilous too, though, if a king decides that a subject is so rich that it would help the royal coffers if the property came in to them. That is the route that leads to trials, condemnations, beheadings, and confiscations.”
Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence Page 29