by Norah Lofts
Anger clanged in his head.
“Get out! Leave me alone,” he shouted. He pulled his arm free and jabbed his elbow at her. It could have been no more than a gesture of repudiation, but it hit her on the cheekbone, jolted her teeth, and rocked her as she knelt.
“Call Axel,” Christian said, “and tell him to conduct Her Majesty back to her apartments.”
“Pray do not bother,” Caroline said. “I can make my way back. Go on with this important game!”
She tried to hurry; to get back to the child; not to waste a moment of what little time was left. How long would it be? Fredericksborg, a summer palace, disused since September would take some little time to make ready. The Household, with all their high-sounding titles, would require some time to assemble. A week? Ten days? Hurry! Hurry! But such a stitch in her side had developed and her heart was beating so rapidly and so unevenly that she was obliged to stop to catch her breath and to bend down to touch her toes, an infallible cure for stitch in the side. Tonight it did not work. She had said that her heart would break and it seemed that it had, in reality; that a part, sharp as a fragment of shattered glass, had fallen and lodged behind her lower ribs and that the maimed part remained, working at double speed. And it was true what Mamma had said—self-control, once lost, was difficult to regain. Tears were still streaming down her face when she stumbled into the nursery where Alice sat sewing by the cot.
She jumped up and asked what was the matter.
“In a moment...I’ll tell you everything,” Caroline gasped. She took a self-punishing look at the child who slept with his dimpled hands thrown up on each side of his head. His hair was like Edward’s, true gold; so were the eyelashes that lay in crescents against the cheeks, still flushed from his last exercise. Who at Fredericksborg would look on him with love? The hirelings, concerned with their office and salary? His step-grandmother?
“Here,” said Alice, “lean on me.” She put her arm, meagerly fleshed but strong as iron, around Caroline and helped her into the bedroom and to a chair.
“What happened?”
Caroline told her—not mentioning the jab of the elbow but ending, “This I cannot bear. I’ve borne a lot, but this is unbearable.”
It all fitted in with what Smith had said only yesterday. “Come back in a rare funny temper by all accounts. Sackings right and left; even old Bernstorff is expecting the order of the boot any day. Everybody useful, out!”
And Princess Caroline had been useful; she’d made the poorest specimen of baby that even Alice had ever seen into one of the best. So she had virtually got the sack.
“He might think it over and change his mind,” Alice said.
“He won’t. He is determined to hurt me. Why? What did I ever do? God, what did I ever do to make him hate me so?”
“They’ll look after him well,” Alice said, determined on comfort. “He’s their Crown Prince.” She was sorry for Caroline, a doting mother; but she had no concern for the child. Children, she knew from first-hand experience, were tough as nettles; they’d flourish anywhere given the minimum of nourishment.
Then Alice saw on Caroline’s white, stricken face the red mark which tomorrow would be a bruise; it was already slightly swollen as well as discolored and Alice in her day had seen its like many times.
“What happened to your face?” she asked in a tight voice.
“Oh, that? Nothing. I managed, as I told you, badly. And I...well, I clutched at his arm and he thrust me awry and his elbow hit me. It’s nothing. Nothing compared to the blow he dealt my heart.”
You may think so; I don’t, Alice thought to herself, were luxuries, very nice if you could afford them. But a in the face was a clout in the face; and that little runt dared!
“I wasn’t counting on your company again, so soon,” Smith said, pouring boiling water into the chipped brown teapot.
“It must be the weather,” Alice said. “I felt kind of low. Very low. I got a glimpse of the King the other day thought he looked poorly. And, you know what, I found myself wondering what’d happen if he died.”
“You was low,” Smith said. “Don’t you fret about that.” He put a blunt dirty finger to the side of his head and made a screwing motion. “Live to be a ‘undred. Look at Bedlam.”
“But if he did. What’d happen to her?’
“She’d be all right. Top dog I reckon, till the boy was old enough to take over.”
He decided not to mention the alternative, because it was only the echo of an echo, one of the stories he’d heard grandfather tell. The old boy had had a rare memory for tales; he could make a thing that happened long ago sound like yesterday. Something about some little Prince who should have been King of England being killed and buried by his wicked uncle.
And the wicked uncle was a hunchback. So was Prince Frederick.
“Blimey!” Smith said, feeling the heritage of the illiterate and seeing the possible repetition of a pattern.
“Blimey what?” Alice asked.
“The things women can think up. To worry theirselves with. Beats me. You musta been low.”
“I feel better now. There’s nothing like a good cuppa tea. I’d look better too if I could get some of the stuff I used to put on my face when I was London.”
Smith studied her face; nothing’d alter it much, and in his opinion, it was all right as it was; but women were always fussing and prinking.
“You could send for it.”
“And pay customs. Not to mention the nosiness. You don’t know how we live. Twenty people pawing everything over. ‘Vot is dat? Parcel vrom England?’” Heartlessly she mimics the one or two people who had tried to communicate with her in her own tongue.
“Well, if that’s your only worry,” Smith said, “I could get you anything you wanted, within reason. No questions, no customs. I get stuff in, for the horses. So long as it wasn’t bulky.”
Even in England a true member of the horseman’s association would go to five different apothecaries’ shops, on five different occasions, to get what was needed, lest anyone should guess; and some items were unobtainable in Denmark. So he had established his contacts.
“It ain’t bulky,” Alice said. “A very little of it’ll go a long way.”
PART FOUR
COPENHAGEN, HIRSCHOLM; JANUARY—SEPTEMBER 1769
In the grief of separation pride came to her rescue and enabled her to put up a show of not caring. There were some men about the Court who had seen her kneeling, weeping and being repulsed. They would have talked, she felt and probably within forty-eight hours everyone knew. Juliana made no attempt to conceal her triumph, and though she took her duties as head of the new Household very lightly she mentioned them often and was always ready to volunteer to Caroline the latest information about the child. It was necessary, therefore, not to go about with lowered head, sagging shoulders and a gloomy face, admitting that one had been hurt. It was necessary to appear to be on good terms with Christian.
Christian was almost equally anxious to appear to be on good terms with her. Knut had been furious and very outspoken; an interrupted card game and the onset of a headache were no excuse, he said, for behaving like a drayman and hitting your wife in the face. “I did not hit her, Knut. She clawed at me and I pushed away. That is all.”
Knut asked who had witnessed this pretty scene, and as soon as he knew the men’s names he sought them out. The King, he told them, deeply regretted that he had spoken and acted impatiently to the Queen; it was because he had been suffering from a blinding headache and hardly knew what he! was doing or saying. But if a word was spoken about the, matter reprisals would be instant and ruthless. The King was King and the Blue Tower waited.
Doctor Struensee disapproved of taking a child from his mother. Children needed their mothers and the Queen had proved herself to be a mother in a million. “Had you consulted me,” he said, “I should most strongly have advised against it. Is it too late to cancel the arrangement?”
That Christian was un
willing to do; but he was anxious to show that the arrangement had caused no permanent breach and that the Queen was resigned to it. So, when they appeared in public together and she smiled at him, he smiled back; when she tried to engage him in animated conversation he did his best to listen and respond. Until one day a very strange thought struck him.
He had taken away her child, put a deliberately malicious limit to her visits, rejected her pleas and struck her in the face. Yet she seemed to bear him no grudge, why? Trying to get him back into her bed? Anxious for another baby? The thought alarmed him. Not for anything, not for anybody, would he go through that again.
Four months passed. Caroline made her visits, trying not to betray to those who now had charge of her child anything of her constant misery and growing consternation. Usually, in the carriage coming back to Copenhagen, she cried and then, in order to face the cruel world and deceive it, was careful to repair the damage the tears had done. Only Alice knew. Only Alice understood.
On a lovely day, she made her heart-wrenching visit, and returned to the capital, where, in the evening, behind a false face, and splendidly robed and bejeweled, she sat beside Christian at a performance of an opera in the private theater. She was now so near hating him that his little mannerisms jarred almost unbearably. Every time he gave that stupid cackling laugh she had to grip her hands together and draw and hold her breath. Yet, during one of the intervals she leaned toward him and said, with deliberate sweetness, “Afterward, may I have ten minutes’ private conversation with you.”
“Afterward there will be presentations. And supper. Late. Could it wait till tomorrow?”
She compelled herself to speak amiably, not pleadingly—she had seen where pleading led—but amiably. “It is of some urgency—and it concerns us both.”
“After supper, then,” he said, unwilling but a little curious. In a previous interval he had seen her talking to the British Minister, Mr. Gunning, and it was possible that something had been said about a visit from one of her brothers. George would not stir from England; Edward was dead; but there were two others whom he had not liked at all when he met them in England, but to whom he would be bound to make hospitable gestures.
However, at the supper table, his earlier suspicion revived. Later he said to Knut, forgetting or ignoring the one true friend’s uncompromising attitude toward the marriage, “I think she has designs upon me, Knut: at table she was flirtatious.” He giggled. “I shall receive her here and I want you to stay in the next room and save me if she becomes too demanding.”
“She can’t please you, can she?” Knut said musingly, “Once you complained of her coldness.”
Christian made an effort to explain.
“When you don’t like a person, the more often you see her the more you dislike her. You don’t know; you’ve never been in my position. It’s seeing two sides to everything that is the trouble.”
“And what other side is there to being married to a lady who is beautiful and amiable and well-disposed toward you?”
“It’s the other side of me,” Christian said cryptically.
This time Caroline was properly dressed and calm and whatever happened she was determined not to lose her self-control.
“It concerns our son,” she began. “I visited him today.”
“I saw him, not long ago. He looked well. He has gained in weight.”
“Because he has no exercise and is overfed. Apart from getting fatter, Christian, he makes no progress at all. You would not notice on one visit, but nobody talks to him, or plays with him. They treat him like an idol, and he is turning into one. A fat, torpid idol, made of tallow. It frightens me. That is why—at the risk of displeasing you—I must ask once more will you not make some different arrangements?”
“We’ve had this all out before. I thought he looked well. Every report has been satisfactory.”
“It may seem so. But listen to me, please. When he was moved he was on the verge of walking and trying to talk. Now he makes no attempt at either. On my first visit, and my second, he roused himself and stirred a little; on my third visit he seemed not to know me. He leads a vegetable existence and he is becoming a vegetable. I am terrified that if something is not done he will become a simpleton.”
The word was ill-chosen. It had been used in the past, with reference to the man who had the cleverest head in Denmark.
“You say that, of your own child?”
She pressed on. “When he lived with me he had a name and knew it. Now nobody calls him by his name. His Roya Highness means nothing to a child of that age; nor do bowings and curtsies. The constant change of attendants, and the number of them, confuse him. There is no personal touch at all. So he is slipping backward.”
Christian’s clever head had an answer for that.
“You say all this because you and all your family were brought up like wild ponies. My son is being reared and treated as a prince should be.”
“A prince is a child, like any other child.”
“Ha! You’ve been talking to Struensee. And Struensee read a book. French.” He wished he could recall the name, but that was too much to ask, even of his clever head.
“I have never discussed our child with Doctor Struensee. But, Christian, I am trying to discuss him now, with you, his father. He is sixteen months old, and once he was a lively child. Now he sits there, sunk in apathy and if he shows a sign of life at all they say he is hungry and cram in more food as though they were fattening a goose. Do believe me. He is slipping backward all the time.”
“I am quite satisfied with the way he is handled; so is Juliana.”
“She has seen him twice in four months,” Caroline said bitterly.
The clever head was very active this evening.
“I think your complaint is that he did not remember you. A fortnight is a long time to a child.”
She knew that she was making no progress. She changed her plea.
“Then may I go more often? Once a week?”
There was a perfect answer to that.
“Then he might miss you and pine.”
“Would you permit me to reside at Fredericksborg? Just for the summer?”
“You are Queen of Denmark. You have other duties.”
She looked at him, at the set stubborn face and the moonstone eyes—now a little wild because the effort to keep up with the clever head was a strain. She had made no impression at all: she never had; she never would.
“Nothing I have said has made any impression at all, has it? I am his mother. I know. I can see what is happening. My child is being ruined. I try to explain and you take no notice. You treat me as nothing. What did I ever do to you that you should treat me so spitefully? In every respect I have served you as well as any woman could do, God be my judge. As for my duties, as you call them, I repudiate them absolutely.
If I am to be nothing, nothing I will be. I will not make other appearance, I will not stand...”
The door to the inner room opened and Count Hoi: came in. Christian’s back was toward him, and over King’s head the favorite made a warning, silencing sign, was so taken aback at the realization that this, a prearranged and private talk, had, like the other one, been overheard, she stopped, the final threat unspoken.
“Your Majesty will permit me to conduct Her Majesty back to her apartments?”
“Yes,” Christian said, very loudly and definitely. Thank God for Knut who had never failed him, except in the one and most important way.
The red rage boiling up in her had been momentarily stemmed by that warning gesture. But what had she to lose now? Rage, reinforced by the certainty that Christian had arranged for a private conversation to be overheard, choked her, but she managed to say,
“You will be sorry for this...”
Knut put his left hand on her left arm, his right behind her waist and literally ran her out of the room. For what he seemed—a pretty boy—he had amazing strength. But she was strong too, and very angry; she pulled herself f
ree and said, “How dare you? I shall call the guard.”
“He could not help with this,” Knut said. “I have just saved you from a gross error.”
“Acting the spy! Listening to a private conversation? Laying violent hands on me?”
“Forestalling His Majesty’s next order, which would almost inevitably have been to forbid you any further visits to the Crown Prince.”
She was silent, thinking what that would have meant.
“How well you know him,” she said in a low, bitter voice,
“I have been with him now for many years, in one capacity and another. And in any man a threat provokes a counter-threat, if the power is there.”
“My visits are extremely painful, but I think that without them I should die. I am indeed very grateful to you, Count Holmstrupp.”
He offered her his charming, lop-sided smile and said, “It was nothing. Mere self-preservation. When the master is angered, the nearest dog is kicked.”
In the early days of her marriage, perhaps influenced Frau von Plessen, she had been inclined to blame Christian’s lapses on his little gang of favorites, Holmstrupp, Holcke and Brandt; she had therefore, while preserving courtesy, remained aloof from them, faintly disapproving. Very seldom indeed had they found upon their dressing tables the coveted little invitation to dine at the royal table. Christian had never grumbled at the omissions: it was as though he were anxious to keep the formal and informal parts of his life separate. She now perceived that Count Holmstrupp had charm and good sense and seemed not to be inimical toward her; and his influence on Christian was evident.
She had just lost another contest with a stubborn, unkind, and unpredictable man and in this moment of loneliness and defeat she clutched at the slightest crumb of comfort.
“You heard it all,” she said. “Everything I said—and more—is true. The child is being ruined. Could you, perhaps, make him see...”
Knut took refuge in formality.
“Your Majesty, it is not a subject upon which I could even express an opinion. I never interfere with politics or policies. There is this to be borne in mind: every child, prince or peasant, has the handicap of his upbringing. Most survive.”