The Swan King

by Nina Clare

  ‘Why…?’ And then I understood. I beamed in delight. ‘Of course. Ziller! Come into the drawing room and I will send for refreshments. You will stay and dine, won’t you?’

  ‘Actually, if I may,’ stammered Christian, ‘I would like to speak to your father. Alone.’

  ‘To Papa?’ I was flummoxed. ‘Oh. Very well. I will arrange for tea for when you are ready.’

  Christian gave a tight smile and stood twisting his cufflinks. It was only then that I realised how smart he looked. I had never seen him so well dressed before. His hair was trimmed and groomed; the last time I had seen him it had been overgrown and he’d had two days of stubble on his jaw.

  ‘I will go then,’ I said unnecessarily, still puzzled.

  I looked back into the room before I closed the door. Christian still stood looking like a worried schoolboy, and Papa looked grim and uncertain. I shut the door, pressed my ear to it for a moment, then chided myself for listening in and turned away.

  It was almost half an hour before Christian came to find me in the drawing room. Whatever his talk with Papa was about, it had not eased him, for he misplaced the cup of tea I handed him, sending it crashing to the floor instead of the table.

  ‘Blast it!’ he cried, ‘I’m sorry!’

  ‘Don’t fret, it’s only a cup,’ I got up to ring the bell for the maid. ‘I wish you’d tell me what’s worrying you, Christian, you’re being very mysterious.’

  He sprang up and took my hand before it reached the bell. I looked at him in surprise. It was a little disconcerting to have him so close. It was also rather nice.

  He drew me closer and bent his head towards me, cupping my face with one hand. ‘I’ve missed you so much, it’s been agony.’

  ‘Then why did you stay away so long?’ His hand was warm and I leaned into it.

  ‘I had to settle affairs with my family. Reconcile with my father. Then the roads were too icy to travel on for a long time. I came as soon as I could.’

  I was sure he was going to kiss me. I tilted my face to meet his.

  ‘May I?’ he asked.

  Must he be quite so courteous!

  ‘You once said you would never kiss me,’ I reminded him.

  ‘I did? No—’

  ‘Yes. Those were your words, I remember them exactly. In the gardens at Swanstein, remember?’

  He looked sheepish. ‘What I meant to say is that I would never kiss you like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘In that sneaking way that he did. Trying to steal a girl’s heart without honourable intentions towards her.’

  ‘So, you would kiss me if your intentions were honourable?’

  ‘I would only ever kiss you with such intentions, Elsa. You deserve nothing less. I’ve asked your father for permission.’

  ‘To kiss me?’

  ‘To ask for your hand.’

  My stomach did a little flip at these words. ‘And what did he say? That you’re too poor for a baron’s daughter?’ In that moment I knew I could not let Christian go again. Not even for Papa.

  ‘I’m not so poor. My father is Prince von Hallerstein.’

  ‘A prince?’

  ‘Not terribly wealthy. And I’m not the heir.’

  ‘You’re the son of a prince?’

  ‘I will need to work, but there will be extra income, enough for a comfortable life, but not a city mansion, or a fancy carriage, or whatever other luxuries you are used to.’

  ‘You’re Prince Christian von Hallerstein?’

  ‘We could settle in whichever town you choose. As long as we can go to the mountains in the summer months—’

  ‘Why not all year round?’

  ‘There are no balls or concerts in the mountains.’

  ‘No—far better! There are mountains to climb and lakes to swim in, and meadows to walk though! How can we ever go back to the ordinary world, Christian, after what we have seen? I’ve been floundering around like a…a…’

  ‘A swan in a goose pen?’ finished Christian. We laughed. ‘I’ve been the same,’ he said. ‘Of course we can’t go back. We’re not the same people. We will always have a foot in each world, I think. We’re not the only ones.’

  ‘Is it a curse or a blessing?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘Would you choose not to have seen all you have?’

  ‘No. I have seen such beauty. I never knew there could be so much of it.’

  ‘Then it must be a blessing. Besides, we saw it together. It brought us together.’

  ‘Yes. It did. Now are you finally going to kiss me?’

  ‘We will live in the mountains,’ he said as we sat close together, the tea grown cold and undrunk, our fingers twined together as we talked of our future life.

  ‘What of your work? An architect must work in towns and cities.’

  ‘I don’t want to be an architect. I never liked all those straight lines and calculations. I shall be an artist.’

  ‘You are an artist. A true one. You see the inside of things.’

  ‘Shall you be happy living as an artist’s wife on a modest income, Elsa? Won’t you miss the comforts you’ve been brought up in?’

  ‘We shall be ridiculously rich in the things that matter. But I don’t know about being anyone’s wife.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘How can I? No one has ever asked me.’

  ‘I haven’t?’

  A second thing he had to remedy; and he did that very well too.

  We returned to New Swanstein after our wedding. I promised Alexi he would see it when he came, but it was right for Christian and me to be alone the first time.

  We wandered around the deserted courtyard. No saws, no hammers, no chisels, no songs.

  The doors were shut up, so we could not see inside. I did not wish to. There were ghosts enough in the memories outside.

  ‘I wonder if the new king will open it up and finish it,’ I said.

  ‘I think the new king likes the city too well,’ said Christian. ‘Not everyone likes to be so far from ‘civilisation’.’

  ‘The lilies are gone,’ I said. We had seen a few drifts of crocuses as we climbed the mountain path from the village of Swanstein. But they had been very ordinary crocuses, as would be expected in April. The great, golden, riotous swathes of flowers had sunk back into the earth beneath.

  ‘The magic is gone,’ I said.

  ‘Not quite. Look.’

  One spray of silvery jasmine bobbed in the spring breeze. I put out a hand to take it, then drew it back. ‘It should stay here,’ I said. ‘Nothing should be touched.’

  We ventured down the steep stairs to the foot of the waterfall, looking for the door to the underground cave. But we were not surprised to find that there was no longer any door.

  We traced the familiar walk around the lake; memories of the great-aunts made me smile, as I remembered their impish ways. The black swans seemed very ordinary. They came paddling up as I stood at the water’s edge. ‘I don’t have any basket of bread and lettuce today,’ I apologised to them. Christian tore up one of the bread rolls the innkeeper’s wife had given us for our picnic lunch and threw it on the water.

  ‘Let’s build our house somewhere where we can see the lake,’ I said. ‘Not too far from Hansi and Ziller, when she comes. A guest room for Alexi, and one for Papa. And for your father and brother,’ I added. I had yet to meet Christian’s family. That was our next stop on our wedding journey.

  We wandered slowly back to our lodgings in the village. It was amusing to see how many people stared at us as if they thought they knew us, but could not quite remember where from. Prince and Princess von Hallerstein were very different from the strange girl with no memory who had fed the king’s birds, and the overworked architect’s apprentice who had been there in the days of the king.

  I woke very early the last morning of our visit to Swanstein Village. Christian still slept, so I dressed and wandered down to the lakeside. The early morning mist lingered above it like a clou
d of tulle. I watched it lift, inch by inch. I heard the call of a duck echoing across the water from the little island where they nested. The sun gilded the horizon; the moon still lingered faintly in the west. A breeze blew across the water. A lone white swan sailed just beyond the curtain of mist. I could glimpse its long neck, its red-gold beak. I watched it, wondering if the mist was playing tricks on my vision, or if the swan seemed very large, with the gleam of a gold crown about its neck. I moved nearer, keen to see. The sun rose higher, the mist dissolved, but there was no crowned swan on the water. Only the spirit of one.

  ‘Goodbye, King of the Swans,’ I whispered. ‘I will never forget you.’

  About The Swan King

  Schloss Neuschwanstein in the Bavarian mountains is the archetypal fairy tale castle brought to life, not least because Walt Disney used it as the inspiration for his Sleeping Beauty palace. The builder of Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig II, is as famous as his creation, remembered as der Märchenkönig – the Fairy Tale King, also the Swan King, the Dream King, the Moon King…and the Mad King.

  I’ve called The Swan King a historical fairy tale, with emphasis on fairy tale; many of the details, settings and events are biographical and historical, but ultimately it is a fantasy with dates, details and characters elided and altered. What is factual is that Ludwig was born in 1845. He was a sensitive, imaginative child who loved the heroic myths and legends that adorned the walls of his summer home at Schloss Hohenschwangau: a Gothic Revival castle by the Schwansee (Swan Lake). Despite his privileged birth, he endured an austere childhood, with a gruelling regime of study, designed to toughen him up and make him fit to be a ruler. But no one could have foreseen that he would be suddenly thrust onto the throne at the age of eighteen. He was young, he was shy, he would rather immerse himself in designing fantastical retreats than dealing with endless government business and facing the harsh realities of war with Prussia, France, and the rise of the new German empire under Bismarck.

  Ludwig worked hard to fulfil his duties, but his ministers eventually decided they’d had enough of their reclusive king, and when Ludwig decided he’d had enough of them, and was going to replace them all – a coup was hatched. Ludwig was forcibly taken from Neuschwanstein, certified as insane by a doctor who had never examined him, and incarcerated in Schloss Berg, south of Munich. The evening after his deposition, Ludwig went for a walk with the psychiatrist who had certified him. They never returned. Their bodies were found in the shallow lake. Ludwig was declared drowned, yet he was a strong swimmer, the lake was only three feet deep, and there was no water in his lungs. A tragic accident? An attempted escape gone awry? An assassination? To this day no one knows what happened.

  One of the accusations against Ludwig was that he had bankrupted the treasury with his building projects. He had indeed spent all his own fortune, and amassed massive debt, but he had not spent the treasury’s money. Immediately after his death his castles and palaces of Neuschwanstein, Linderhof, and Herrenchiemsee were opened to the public. The revenue from tourism quickly recouped the cost of the buildings and has contributed to making Bavaria one of the wealthiest economies in the world. Ludwig left his people a generous legacy, both artistically and financially, albeit perhaps unintentionally, in part.

  Something about the complex, troubled life and person of Ludwig moved me enough to want to write a story about him, and to give him a happier ending than he had in reality. He was a man of artistic vision, stirred by beauty, who believed in promoting the arts and advancing culture in his kingdom. As an introvert he struggled as a public figure, but he loved the Bavarian countryside and people. He might find ministers and dignitaries difficult, but he had no problem talking with the local farmers and villagers, who loved him in return, calling him their Fairy Tale King as he rode through the snow in his gilded sleigh, having moonlit picnics. He was certainly eccentric, and there was madness in the family, perhaps due to generations of inter-marriage; but I’m inclined to agree with his cousin, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria who declared, "The King was not mad; he was just an eccentric living in a world of dreams. They might have treated him more gently, and thus perhaps spared him so terrible an end”

  "Alas, he is so handsome and wise, soulful and lovely, that I fear that his life must melt away in this vulgar world like a fleeting dream of the gods." So said the composer, Wagner, whom Ludwig was patron to, and who was my inspiration for the character of Herr Weimann (who was a lot of fun to write!).

  As a deeply private person, Ludwig most likely would have been appalled at having his royal retreats filled with tourists, as they are today. But I hope he wouldn’t mind being the Muse for a fairy tale and a loose telling of Lohengrin – one of the Arthurian legends he loved from his childhood and throughout his relatively short life.

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed The Swan King

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  Also by Nina Clare

  THE RELUCTANT WIFE

  A retelling of King Thrushbeard

  THE MILLER’S GIRL

  A retelling of Rumpelstiltskin

  BECK: A fairy tale

  A historical fairy tale

  THE THIRTEENTH PRINCESS

  A retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses