by Norah Lofts
Stirring the logs about noisily he asked, “What is the trouble this time?”
“Sums,” Christian said, with his mouth full. He nodded toward the table where the paper lay. Knut rattled the ash pan, skipped to the table and saw four simple multiplication sums of the kind that old Fräulein Thaarup had set him as mental exercise when he was seven. Paperwork, since paper was expensive, had played little part in his education. He went back to the stove and said, “The answers are 48, 66, 148 and 900.”
Christian scrambled from the bed.
“Say it again. Tell me...”
“Wipe your hands,” Knut said, clanking the lid of the stove. “If you make greasy marks they will know.”
“Tell me again, please.”
Knut told him the answers again and Christian scribbled them in.
“When I am King,” he said, “I shall give you a bag full of gold.”
“If you remember,” Knut said, skeptically.
“There are some things I never forget,” Christian said. “I shall never forget this.”
“Put the bones in the stove,” Knut said, “when you’ve done.” Carrying the empty log basket he went away.
It was a mere incident; a page of the backstairs giving tiny proof of his inborn superiority; the heir to the throne grateful for an offhand kindness; but it had results altogether disproportionate.
“You see,” Count Reventlow said to Heer Reventil, “it worked. Bread and water until these sums are correctly done, and they are correctly done.” The bread-and-water treatment was, after that, frequently applied, with varying results; and if Heer Reventil saw a certain rhythm in the business—the Crown Prince locked in with an exercise and his bread and water and producing a satisfactory answer, and the Crown Prince locked in with his exercise and bread and water and producing nonsense, or even nothing at all—he never made the connection between these contradictory performances and the rota of duty of the pages of the backstairs. He thought it was the moon. He believed Christian to be a lunatic; and that was why he was glad that he was no longer beaten.
And Christian, with his promise to Knut, had taken a step forward toward a positive attitude with regard to his Kingship one day. He had entertained thoughts—When I am King I will put Count Reventlow in the Blue Tower and have him beaten every day—but such thoughts were not sufficient to sustain him in moments of misery. The thought that Knut was his friend who must one day be rewarded was far more heartening. “Knut, when I am King you shall be a Count. You shall be First Gentleman of my Bedchamber, Knut, when I am sixteen I shall have my own household and you shall be the head of it. Knut, look at this map...London, Paris...which is Vienna?”
For Knut the whole business became a game, a fascinating pitting of his wits against authority and entrenched power. Every move he made—introducing Christian to the pleasures of alcohol and then of sex—served a double purpose; it increased Knut’s confidence in his own superiority and it strengthened his hold on the Prince who would one day be sixteen, and have his own household and have appointments in his gift.
Christian never attained the semi-independent state of which he and his one true friend so often talked. Juliana, working away like a mole, had convinced Frederick V that the boy was still too immature to have his own establishment, that he must be kept in the background for another year or two. At the same time, and for the same reason, she advised that his formal education should cease; she had been alarmed by Count Reventlow’s occasional mention of slight improvement; it served her purpose to say that what learning a boy had failed to acquire by the time he was sixteen was unlikely ever to be attained.
There was a little space during which Knut found escapades too easily planned to be exciting and he focused his attention on the provision of funds for more and more expensive pleasures. He found a Jew in a waterfront hovel who would buy anything and ask no questions: Easily portable treasures were removed from cabinets and tables, and never missed. “All will be yours one day,” Knut said, “and a man cannot steal from himself.”
And then, without preparation or warning, Christian was King.
He had been kept so resolutely in the background and Juliana’s propaganda—disguised as concern—had been so successful that most people were pleasantly surprised to find that their new young King was not only normal-looking but handsome; that he had dignity and enough good sense to realize that he was a novice in affairs and would sit in Council, apparently listening and saying little. He enjoyed considerable popularity for a brief time. Then the rumors began, concerned now not with inability to learn or to behave, but with bad company, undesirable influences, midnight orgies in the palace, excursions to low dives on the waterfront. And even if rumor could be discounted, it was a fact that Knut Bagger, a serf’s son, a page of the backstairs had been ennobled, created Count Holmstrupp, given an estate of rather over a thousand acres to the southwest of Copenhagen and made First Gentleman of the Bedchamber. Between four and five hundred peasant families went with the land, so did a great stone house, where Knut’s mother sat with her workworn hands restless in the lap of the first silk dress she had ever owned, directing others in the tasks that had been hers. His father, believing that the master’s foot is the best manure, was still out of doors from dawn to dusk, making certain that if his serfs failed to produce enough to pay their dues it would not be through lack of advice and exhortation; but now he rode on a fine horse. Every now and then one of them would say, “I always said, did I not, that the boy was different?” They were decent people, and had they known by what devious ways their son had advanced himself, they would have been shocked; but they would have wished nothing undone. Security was very sweet.
Had the great ones, members of the old nobility, been able to bring themselves to accept the new count, even with the coolest civility, Knut would have continued to exercise the restraint upon Christian to which his two-months’ impeccable behavior was so largely due. Knut was practical; he did not expect Count Bernstorff to greet him as a brother, or ask him to dinner; he was a realist and there was no profit in dining at Count Bernstorff’s table. But their attitude toward him, often verging upon the positively rude, instead of invoking resentment that could be worked off in a burst of temper and an insistence upon his rights, invited another, far more dangerous game of wits. Christian was now accepted and secure; nothing short of revolution could unseat him. Knut had his patent of nobility and the title deeds to his estate; nothing short of the loss of favor could reduce him. So, how far could Christian be pushed or coaxed in the business of reducing the pride of the proud? Already a long way. Everybody must bow before speaking to His Majesty, even when answering a question; everybody must bow when he entered, and when he left. The words “Your Majesty” must be included in every sentence, silly as it sounded in a prolonged conversation. And this was only a beginning; presently there would be dismissals, sudden and arbitrary.
He changed the cloth on Christian’s head twice, spoke of this and that, told Christian about the meal he had ordered.
“But you’re not to eat a mouthful. I will dispose of it.”
Christian groaned.
“It is essential,” Knut said, “that you should be completely well by your wedding. Only a week more to work in. It could hardly have happened at a more awkward time.”
For that was another aim he had set himself—to see that Christian’s marriage was conspicuously successful; another blow at dirty rumor. He intended to establish himself with the Queen and to use his influence on Christian to her advantage. One day—not too soon—but one day, he was going to need a wife, and if all went well, the Queen would appear to choose that wife for him.
He looked at his watch, one of Christian’s gifts and said, “That is near enough to an hour.” He pulled aside the sodden towels and offered his arm, knowing that after every treatment Christian turned dizzy when he stood up.
Christian, in the cool smooth bed, revived a little.
“She is pretty, isn’t she?
”
“Very pretty. I told you; I think you are enviable.”
“Now,” Christian said with some emphasis. “I sometimes think...” He hesitated; thought took many forms. Of Knut’s manner of thinking, inventive, shrewd, purposeful, he knew himself to be incapable; whenever he tried to think in that fashion a kind of fog closed in. But sometimes through the dim, hazy, passive mind there were flashes; it was like the sun shining out from the edge of a cloud. “I sometimes think there is a balance, Knut. A year ago. Who envied me then? And even now...Knut this I would not say to anyone but you. The truth is that sometimes I feel like a man with two heads. One says one thing, one another. It’s been worse lately, with the sweating and the pills. It is most unpleasant. Because which am I? You’re so clever. You tell me. Which am I?”
Knut was at the table where there were decanters of wine, red Spanish wine, forbidden to sufferers from syphilis, part of the deceptive show, and one full of fruit juice, which looked like wine and which Christian could drink with impunity. He carried a glassful of this and put it into Christian’s still-clammy hand. Then he sat down on the foot of the bed and looked at his King sharply. He knew him to be stupid, slow-witted, dull and slow of apprehension—and thank God for it; had he been otherwise Knut would still be Knut Bagger, page of the backstairs, his third livery outgrown, his beard, however closely shaved, obvious; too big, too old, out into the street with him...Christian’s stupidity and his wretched situation had been Knut Bagger’s lifebuoy—combined with his own talent. But the earnest, and repeated question, “Which am I?” sounded like raving. Like fever talk. “Which am I?” What did he mean?
“And there’s a question,” Christian said, “to fox you, my dear friend. When my two heads get to work...But nobody could have guessed, could they? You were there. You saw me. And she is pretty. It wasn’t difficult. I...I behaved as you told me, Knut. You said yourself, an impressive performance. But there are two jugs, you know...I mean two heads. And one ached all the time because there was a cannon ball in it, thumping about. It is melted now in the heat of the stove. That at least is something to be thankful for. But there again, what is good for the one is bad for the other...”
There was no point in trying to follow such talk; probably Christian was slightly fevered.
“At Vidborg,” Knut said, “there are, as you know, the hothouses where my father hopes to grow flowers for market all through the winter. I will send Axel, very early in the morning to fetch what he has. That should please her; women like flowers. And I think it would be a good idea if you sent a poem, too. In the old style.”
Christian looked blank.
“I don’t know any poems. Worse than sums.”
“That need not worry you,” said Knut who had learned from Fräulein Thaarup at least two hundred of the measured, rhymeless, repetitive verses that told of Denmark’s long history and the exploits of such heroes as Harald Bluetooth. He thought for a moment. “How is this?
The wind from the sea is a cold wind,
The sky in the west is clouded,
But the cold wind from the sea and the clouds from the west
Brought me a rose.
Pink-petaled, sweet scented, the dew fresh upon it,
The rose came to me, out of the west.
Out of the wind and the cloud of the west
Came my bride.”
Not bad, he thought, for the spur of the moment; worthy of a more appreciative audience. Christian looked baffled, but he said, “Oh, very good, Knut, very good. Yes, I see. England is west isn’t it, and the wind was certainly cold.”
“I made it. But you must write it out and sign it; as though you had made it yourself.”
“Couldn’t you write it and just let me sign?”
“It must all be in your hand. Look, it is not so much to do. She’s young and homesick, and she’ll be lonely at Fredericksborg, with you laid up here. You want to please her and make her happy, don’t you?”
“Yes; she is pretty.” Then from the dull bafflement light struck and Christian said with an air of triumph, “It must be written in German, you realize.”
Everybody else was so very clever, and Knut the cleverest of all, but every now and then, even in Council, Christian saw something that everyone else had missed.
“That I hadn’t thought of,” Knut admitted. “It wouldn’t sound so well, though. Well send it in Danish with a request that Frau von Plessen read it as it is and then translate.”
Frau von Plessen was one of those who highly disapproved of Count Holmstrupp and regarded him as a bad influence; but she was not a stupid woman and even if she could so far delude herself as to imagine that the verse was of Christian’s making, she would know that only from Vidborg could come a bunch of roses in November. That would show her. Between favorites, in the sense that many people regarded Knut as a favorite, and wives there was never anything but bitter animosity.
“I shall now unlock the door and leave,” he said. “You would be wise to say that the cold ride put you back a bit. I’ll look in later and dispose of your supper for you.”
FREDERICKSBORG; NOVEMBER 2, 1766
When the flowers and the verses were delivered, Caroline was entertaining the two Queen Mothers who, to their chagrin, had arrived together, and the diversion was welcome, for the visit had struck, and sustained, a note of awkwardness, neither formal nor intimate, and both ladies had said things, outwardly smooth and courteous, which revealed their antagonism and seemed to be inviting Caroline to side with one or the other.
Caroline herself was ill-prepared; Frau von Plessen had said that it was unlikely that any callers would come before afternoon; so she faced the pair both painted and powdered, splendidly attired and much bejeweled, in her loose morning sac and with her hair tied back with a blue ribbon and spilling haphazard curls. Also, despite her exhaustion, she had not slept well.
They had exchanged the ritual curtsies; then the old woman had let go of the shoulder of the little black boy, stretched out her clawlike, ring-laden hands and embraced Caroline and kissed her. She had a curious dry, dead smell about her.
“You are so like dear Louise,” she said. “It is as Louise’s niece that I welcome you to Denmark, and hold you dear.”
The other one, Juliana gave a little laugh, a pleasant tinkle. “You must not think that a dubious compliment. No portrait ever did your aunt justice—or so we are told. And naturally one forgets...”
“My memory is excellent,” the old woman said.
Caroline was much the youngest, but she was a reigning Queen and therefore responsible for the direction of the conversation; but no matter what she tried, sooner or later the veiled bickering broke through. Both were to blame, she decided; and by the strict standard of her own upbringing, both were rude; the purpose of this visit was surely to make her welcome, to make her feel at home; it was having the opposite effect. She cast round in her mind for a subject new enough not to be riddled with old enmity and said, “I should be very pleased if you would call me by my name.” It seemed silly for three women to sit about addressing one another as “Your Majesty.”
“I will most gladly,” Juliana said. “I so well remember when I arrived in Denmark. Nobody called me by my name. My husband, of course, used endearments, but I longed for someone to say Juliana.”
Sophia-Magdalene said, “Humph,” in a very disbelieving way and added, “I always called Louise by her name. But she was a King’s daughter and had no need to stand on her dignity.”
“Caroline is a very pretty name,” Juliana said.
“If you use it you will make confusion; she is to be called Matilda,” Sophia informed her.
“Oh, am I? Nobody informed me.” She had always disliked her second name thinking it had an elderly sound.
“The person most nearly concerned is always the last to be told anything—or that is my experience,” Sophia said. Her voice and the look she cast in Juliana’s direction told Caroline plainly that there had been some occasi
on in the past when something had been concealed by the younger woman.
“Why am I to be known by my second name?”
“As I understood it, some nonsense about Caroline being derived from the French. Popular feeling in Denmark at the moment is anti-French. And Matilda is a good old English name. In the old times the English and Danes were good friends.”
“So good,” Sophia said, “that the English used to pray in churches to be delivered from the Danes. They’re very conservative; perhaps they still do.” It was not exactly the most tactful thing to say, but as she spoke, the painted, monkeyish mask of her face creased and shifted into a delightful smile which said that, if they did, it would be rather comic, wouldn’t it?
“I shall call you—if I may—Caroline,” Juliana said.
At this point Frau von Plessen entered, followed by a page who bore a bunch of roses. They were yellow and white, the pink one was only just in bud and Knut had changed “pink-petaled” to “soft-petaled.” He had an eye to detail.
Frau von Plessen, rather self-consciously, read Knut’s effusion, in Danish, then as requested, in German. She knew where the flowers had come from, she knew who had composed the verse, but she was, nonetheless, elated. The influence of a good woman was already making itself felt and Christian was using that clever, mercenary little rogue who had so often used him.
Caroline said, “That is beautiful. So are the flowers. How exceedingly kind of...His Majesty.” Alone with his grandmother and his stepmother she would have used his name, but he was His Majesty to Frau von Plessen and the blank-faced page.
Almost reverently Frau von Plessen laid the sheet of paper on the table by Caroline’s chair and said that she would fetch a bowl. Caroline lowered her face to the flowers; they had no scent; no, that was not quite true; they did not smell like roses; they smelt very faintly of manure which had warmed and nurtured their roots.