The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  Caterine was not part of these images that signified vice and guilt.

  He caught sight of her bed, the pictures came, then he made himself hard, the pictures disappeared. Caterine had given him the sign. The milk and rolls were a sign. When he looked at her he was back in the warm womb again, with no pictures. She asked no questions. They undressed.

  No lines to forget.

  They made love. He crept over her like a slender white flower stalk above her dark body. He remembered the incomprehensible thing she had said to him, that he was like a flower. Only Caterine could say such a thing without making him laugh. For her, everything was pure. From him, and from herself! from herself!!!, she had driven out the hawkers of impurity.

  It meant that she was a temple.

  Afterward, when he lay on top of her, sweaty and empty, he began to whisper and ask questions. Was I strong? he asked. Caterine, you must tell me, was I strong, strong??? Idiot, she said at first, but in such a way that it made him happy. Then he asked her again. Yes, dearest, she told him. Hush now, you must learn not to ask questions, not to talk, do you ask those kinds of questions at the palace? Hush, sleep now. Do you know who I am? he asked, but she merely laughed. I am! I am! A peasant boy born eighteen years ago in Hirtshals of poor parents, and I’m somebody else, somebody other than you think. Yes, yes, she whispered. Don’t you think I’m like a peasant boy, you who know so many?

  There was utter silence for a long time.

  “Yes,” she said at last.”You seem like a little peasant boy I once knew.”

  “Before … ?”

  “Before I came here.”

  “Before?”

  “Before I came here.”

  “Caterine, before …”

  The sweat had dried, but he was still lying on top of her, and then he heard her whisper:

  “I never should have left him. Never. Never.”

  He began to mutter, at first incomprehensibly, but gradually more clearly and furiously; not addressed to her but regarding the idea of leaving, or was it about being left? How difficult it was being a changeling. He muttered on. That he had been exchanged, that he couldn’t sleep at night. And about his vice and that he had seen her coming toward him one night in the dark, hand in hand with Sergeant Mörl, who demanded that the big punishment be exacted from Christian.

  Since he was a stray.

  “Do you know,” he said, right before sleep overwhelmed him, “do you know whether there exists a sovereign of the universe who stands above the God of wrath? Do you know whether such a benefactor exists?”

  “Yes,” she told him.

  “Who is it?” he asked from the depths of sleep.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “And you will be my benefactor? And you have time?”

  “I have time,” she whispered. “I have all the time in the universe.”

  And he understood. She was the Sovereign of the Universe. She had time. She had time.

  It was after midnight when a pounding on the door was heard. The royal guards had grown uneasy.

  He rolled off her body. The pounding continued. She got up, wrapping a shawl around herself.

  Then she said to him:

  “They’re looking for you. Make yourself hard, Christian.”

  They both dressed quickly. He stopped at the door, as if terror had taken hold of him and he felt overwhelmed. Then she stroked his cheek. And he cautiously opened the door.

  The two livery-clad servants regarded the ill-matched pair with undisguised curiosity and greeted the monarch deferentially, but one of them suddenly started to laugh.

  Bottine Caterine slipped her hand almost imperceptibly into her pocket, a very thin knife became visible in her grasp, and with a swiftness that caught all of them by surprise she brushed the knife, as gently as if it were a bird’s wing, across the cheek of the man who thought the situation worthy of laughter.

  The livery-clad man lurched backward and fell. The cut was bright red and the blood ran briskly and steadily; he howled with astonishment and rage and reached for the hilt of his rapier. But King Christian VII—for at that moment they all thought of him as such, as the absolute ruler chosen by God—began to laugh.

  And thus the rapier could not be drawn; not when the King chose to laugh in that manner.

  “And now, Christian,” said Bottine Caterine calmly,“now we’re going to paint the town red.”

  Afterward a great deal was said about what went on. The King’s will was everyone’s command, and Caterine was the Queen of the Night.

  She accompanied him all the way home. He had stumbled, was covered with mud, and dead drunk. One of his hands was bloody.

  She was still beautifully dressed. At the gate the guards discovered that it was the King who approached;thus she could leave him in good hands and be gone. Where she went was not their concern, but when he realized that she was gone, Christian seemed quite inconsolable.

  The guards thought they heard him say “beloved … beloved,” although later they could not attest to this.

  They carried him inside.

  6.

  Their relationship lasted almost six months. He was convinced it would never end.

  Yet it was bound to end.

  The turning point occurred at a performance in the Royal Theater of Cerill’s comedy The Wondrous Garden. The King had often accompanied Bottine Caterine to masked balls at court; she would sit in his box at the theater, they would play a game of cards called “Farao,” in full view of everyone, and afterward they would stroll among the members of the court. This time she took off her mask. The King had his arm around Caterine’s waist,and they were laughing and conversing with great familiarity.

  The court was in shock.

  Not because of the existence of a coquette among them. It was because of the growing suspicion that this woman,if accepted as the royal mistress, was not going to be content with her influence over His Majesty in bed;she had greater and more dangerous ambitions.

  She had laughed in their faces.

  Such hatred, and it frightened them so! What manner of revenge was she brooding over? What sort of wrongs were concealed in her silence and smiles? What had she endured to motivate such hatred? It frightened everyone. What was it that shone in her eyes as she walked among them,with the arm of the little King-like boy around her waist?

  What promise did her eyes hold?

  Since the Dowager Queen Juliane Marie—who was Christian’s stepmother but who wanted her own son Frederik to inherit the throne—had seen what those eyes promised, she summoned Ove Høegh-Guldberg to discuss, as she wrote in her message, a matter that demanded the utmost haste.

  She arranged to meet him in the palace chapel. The choice of meeting place surprised Guldberg. But, as he writes,“perhaps Her Majesty wished for the utmost secrecy, and that could only be achieved under the watchful eyes of God.” When Guldberg arrived, he found the chapel deserted except for a solitary figure sitting in the front pew.

  He walked forward. It was the Dowager Queen. She invited him to be seated.

  The problem turned out to be Bottine Caterine.

  The Dowager Queen quickly laid out the problem, with surprisingly crude bluntness and in a language he would hardly have expected, especially in a church.

  “My informants are quite certain. He goes to her almost every night. It has become common knowledge in Copenhagen. The King and the entire royal family, yes, even the court, have become a laughingstock in the eyes of everyone.”

  Guldberg sat very still, staring at the crucifix with the suffering Savior.

  “I too have heard about this,” he replied. “Your Grace, I’m afraid that your informants happen to be correct.”

  “I beseech you to intervene. The young consort has no share of the royal seed.”

  He could hardly believe his ears, but that’s what she said, and then she continued:

  “The situation is serious. He’s pouring his royal seed into Bottine Caterine’s filthy wo
mb. Nothing unusual about that. But he must also be forced to service the Queen. They say it happened once, but that’s not enough. The succession to the throne is in danger. The succession to the throne.”

  He now turned to face her and said:

  “But your own son … in that case, he might succeed to…”

  She didn’t say a word.

  They both knew how impossible that was. Or did she? Was she trying to ignore what she knew? Her only son, the Crown Prince, the King’s half-brother, was physically deformed, his head pointed and twisted sideways; he was regarded as easily led by those who were kind,as hopelessly moronic by others. The British ambassador, in a letter to George III, described his appearance. “His head was deformed,he drooled constantly, and whenever he spoke he uttered odd little grunts and kept on smiling with an idiotic expression on his face.” It was cruel but true. Both of them knew it. Guldberg had been his tutor for six years.

  He also knew how great her love was for this misshapen son.

  He had seen her love excuse everything, but had also often observed her tears. Surely even the loving mother didn’t truly believe that this poor, misshapen “monster,” as he was sometimes called at court, could ever become Denmark’s King.

  Yet he couldn’t be certain.

  But the other things she said! Everything she said was,in truth, so extraordinary that he hardly dared reply. Her indignation over the squandered royal seed seemed peculiar: Dowager Queen Juliane Marie had spent her life married to a King who emptied his royal seed into almost all the whores in Copenhagen. She was not ignorant of this fact. She had tolerated it. Her King had also been forced to service her, and she had forced herself to submit. This too she had tolerated. And she had given birth to one son, who was moronic, a poor, drooling child whom she loved.

  She didn’t merely “tolerate”her son’s deformity. She loved him.

  “My son,” she said at last in her metallic, clear voice, “would no doubt make a better monarch than this… confused and lecherous… my son would… my beloved son would…”

  Suddenly she had nothing more to say. She fell silent. Both of them sat quietly for a long time. Then she drew herself up and said:

  “Guldberg. If you will lend me your support. And support for… my son. I will richly reward you. Richly. I see in your sharp intelligence a means of safeguarding the realm. You are, like my son, an outwardly… insignificant… figure. But inside…”

  She did not continue. Guldberg was silent.

  “For six years you have been the Crown Prince’s teacher,” she finally whispered.“ God gave him a lowly appearance. For that reason many people despise him. But I beseech you—would it be possible for you to love him as much as I do?”

  The question was unexpected and seemed much too sentimental. After a moment, when he didn’t reply, she repeated:

  “For you henceforth to love my son as deeply as I do? Then not only will the almighty and beneficent Father reward you. But I will too.”

  And after a moment of silence she added:

  “The three of us will save this poor kingdom.”

  Guldberg replied:

  “Your Grace. Let it be so, for as long as I live.”

  She then took his hand and pressed it. He writes that this was a great moment in his life, which was changed forever after. “From that moment I embraced the unfortunate Crown Prince Frederik with such unconditional love that not only he, but also his mother the Dowager Queen, came to have a consummate trust in me.”

  Afterward she spoke once again of Bottine Caterine. And finally, the Dowager Queen said, practically snarling, but in a voice loud enough that the echo could be heard for a long time in the palace chapel:

  “Get rid of her! PERMANENTLY!!!”

  On the eve of Epiphany,January 5,1768,Caterine was seized in her home in Christianshavn by four police officers. It was late at night, and a cold rain was falling.

  They arrived around ten o’clock and dragged her outside, where they then threw her into a closed coach. Soldiers saw to it that any curious spectators were kept away.

  At first she cried,then furiously cursed the police;not until she was sitting in the coach did she become aware of Guldberg, who was personally overseeing her arrest.

  “I knew it!” she screamed.“You wicked little rat, I knew it!”

  Guldberg stepped forward and tossed a pouch of gold coins onto the floor of the coach.

  “You’ll get to see Hamburg,” he said in a low voice. “And not every whore is so well paid.”

  Then the door was slammed shut, the horses started moving, and Bottine Caterine set off on her journey abroad.

  7.

  The first few days Christian refused to believe that she was gone. Then he began to understand. And he grew nervous.

  To the surprise of the court, and without prior invitation, he called on Count Bernstorff and there, without offering any explanation, he ate his dinner. During dinner he talked in great confusion about cannibals. This was interpreted as a manifestation of his nervousness. After all, the King had a reputation for melancholy, nervousness, and violence; and all without any explanation. The following days he wandered ceaselessly through the streets of Copenhagen at night, and it was understood that he was looking for Caterine.

  After two weeks,when the general concern for the King’s wellbeing had become enormous, the King was advised in a letter that Caterine had undertaken a journey abroad without indicating her destination, but she sent her greetings.

  For three days the King kept to his room. Then one morning he disappeared.

  The dog was gone too.

  A search was begun at once. After only a few hours word came that the King had been found; he was observed wandering along the beach of Køge Bay, and soldiers were keeping watch over him from a distance. The Dowager Queen then sent Guldberg to explain the contents of the letter and to persuade the King to return to the palace.

  He was sitting on the beach.

  It was a pathetic sight. He had his dog close beside him,and the dog growled at Guldberg.

  Guldberg spoke to the King as he would to a friend.

  He told Christian that he must regain his royal composure, for the sake of the country. That there was no reason for despair or depression. That the court and the Dowager Queen—yes, everybody!—thought that the King’s benevolence toward Caterine had become a source of uneasiness. That this benevolence might well make the King’s unquestionably tender feelings for the young Queen fade, and thereby threaten the future of the throne. Yes,perhaps Frøken Beuthaken had even thought of this herself! Perhaps that was the explanation. Perhaps her unexpected departure was due to a desire to serve her country, the Danish kingdom, and she thought she stood in the way of the entire realm’s wish to have an heir who would secure the line of succession. He said he was almost certain this was the case.

  “Where is she?” Christian asked.

  Perhaps she’ll come back, Guldberg told him, if the country’s succession to the throne is secure. Yes, he said, he was practically convinced that her unselfish concern for Denmark, her surprising flight, that this uneasiness would then be calmed. And that she would return and could then resume her deep friendship with the King, which…

  “Where is she?” the King shrieked.“Do you know how they laugh at you? Such a little, insignificant … such a … Do you know they call you Gold-Lizard?”

  He then fell silent, as if he were frightened, and he asked Guldberg:

  “Will I have to be punished now?”

  At that moment,writes Guldberg,he was seized with great sorrow and great sympathy.

  He sat down next to Christian. And it was true what the King had said: that outwardly he—like the King! like the King!—was insignificant, despised, that the King was ostensibly the foremost of men, but in reality he was one of the most wretched. If he had not complied with the royal requirements for deference, had not obeyed the rules of ceremony, he would have liked to tell this young boy that he too was one
of the most wretched. That he hated impurity, that the impure had to be cut away, just as a member should be cut off that leads a person astray, yes,that the time of cutting would come when the lecherous court with all those parasites would be cut away from God’s great work, when the squanderers, atheists, drunkards, and whoremongers at the court of Christian VII would be given their just punishment. The security of the Crown would be guaranteed, the power of the monarch would be strengthened, the purifying fire would rage through the stinking realm. And then those on the bottom would become those on the top.

  And that he, along with the one chosen by God, would then rejoice at the great purifying work the two of them had carried out.

  But he merely said:

  “Yes, Your Majesty, I am a small and completely unimportant person. But a human being, nevertheless.”

  The King looked at him with an expression of surprise on his face. Then he asked again:

  “Where is she?”

  “Perhaps Altona … Hamburg … Paris … London … She is a great and affluent personage, worn out with worry about Your Majesty’s destiny … and about her duties to Denmark… but perhaps she will return if she hears the news that the succession to the throne has been secured. Has been saved.”

  “Europe?” the King whispered in despair. “The Continent?”

  “Paris … London …”

  The King asked:

  “Will I have to search for her in … Europe?”

  The dog whimpered. Fog hovered over the waters of Øresund; the Swedish coast was invisible. Waving his hand, Guldberg summoned the waiting soldiers. Denmark’s King was saved from the uttermost distress and delusion.

  8.

  No change in the King’s mood. But at a special session of the Council that was called unexpectedly, the King announced his desire to undertake a grand European journey.

  He placed a map of Europe on the table in the Council chambers. Three Councillors of State were present in the room along with Guldberg and a certain Count Rantzau; the King, in an unusually decisive and focused manner, described his travel route. What he described was quite obviously a grand cultural tour. The only one who seemed oddly pensive was Guldberg, but he didn’t say a word. The others agreed that the sovereigns of Europe would assuredly welcome the young Danish monarch as an equal.