by Norah Lofts
Side by side they trotted through the western allée which bounded the city on one side, and along a suburban road, lined with new houses, the homes of prosperous merchants and then into the woods where leaves of so clear a green as to be almost transparent were breaking out on every bough and the cuckoo was calling.
By this time the horses had lost their first friskiness and conversation was possible. He had his subject; the inoculation of the Crown Prince against smallpox. The connection between smallpox, the killer, and cowpox, the mild inconvenience, had now been well observed, he said. The phrase, “skin like a milkmaid’s,” had sound basis. Milkmaids contracted cowpox and escaped smallpox; so the procedure was to inoculate, to deliberately infect a child with the harmless complaint and give him immunity for life from the other.
“Would you agree?”
“Everything that you have ever suggested for the child has been of benefit, Doctor Struensee. I am confident that this, too, will be beneficial. Yes, let it be done at the earliest opportunity. Smallpox is rampant in summer.”
With other things; many of them the result of accumulate filth and clogged drains. He had in hand a bill that, put into effect, would make Copenhagen the cleanest city in the world. Others would copy. The diseases that flourished in filth and stench would diminish. He intended also to do something drastic about supplies of sound drinking water, the disposal of night soil, the keeping of pigs within the city’s boundaries, the regulation of brothels, the setting up of proper abattoirs. He had a thousand plans and he thought about them resolutely as he rode through the woods on sunny afternoon alone with the woman who attracted more than any woman had ever done. He refused to be sentimental about his own feelings and sometimes told himself that they were largely due to her inaccessibility; people always craved, with a particular fervor, the thing that was forbidden. The taboo in this case was not moral—he had flung away the old morality that his father preached—nor was it a matter of status—he had a good enough opinion of himself to think he was fit to mate with any woman alive. It was a thing of strategy and expediency; he and Caroline now worked together and a love affair would be an unnecessary, probably a dangerous, complication.
The path along which they rode was wide enough to take three horses abreast; it ended in a belt of larches through which two much narrower paths, hardly more than trails, led off. Always, at this point they turned around and went back.
Today Caroline said, “It is such a lovely afternoon, Doctor Struensee; shall we ride on a little and explore? We’ve never tried either of these paths.”
He was aware of reluctance.
“They probably lead nowhere,” he said. “And they are very narrow. I have work awaiting me. We might not be able to turn.”
She laughed. “I can turn a horse on a dinner plate; and so can you.”
He had reached the state—knowing it to be crazy—when he would have given her one of his arms if she asked for it, so he said, “Very well. Ten minutes only. Which way, right or left? And will you ride ahead or shall I, in case of obstructions?”
“This way,” she said, and chose the left-hand path and rode first. She was to remember for a long time that it was she who chose the way.
As he had supposed, the path led nowhere; it ended quite soon in an abrupt drop down to cultivated land. Between the wood and the tillage great beeches stood on either side of the path, driving their gray roots down as though seeking foothold on the lower level. The spaces between the roots formed a series of caves. In two of them pigs were rooting; in others some scarecrow children, gathering handfuls of something and cramming it into a sack. Her eyes took them in at a glance and then looked across the field toward where something moved. It was a plough. A man leaned upon its antler-like handles, bearing down, guiding the share which turned up the soil just liberated from frost; and in front of it, supplying the motive power was a woman. She was tethered to the plough by a rope which went over her left shoulder, across her breast and under her right arm. Both her hands were clenched at the point where, but for her hands, the rope would have bitten into her shoulder. A woman, harnessed to a plough; and to add the last touch of horror, she was very heavily pregnant; as she lunged forward, straining, her swollen belly almost touched her knees.
As Caroline stared, appalled, Struensee forced his horse alongside under the beech boughs, took a glance, reached for her horse’s bridle and turned it about.
“That,” he said in a low, fierce voice, “is the kind of thing I mean to do away with.”
The horses jostled in the narrow space, their riders as near together as though they shared a sofa. There was the wood with its bright young leaves, the windflowers, the cuckoos. Lovely as ever. Unheeding.
The pent up emotion found its focus. “That poor woman,” she said, and burst into tears, crying for the woman, harnessed like a donkey, for Edward and Louise who would never know spring again, for the cruel contrast between this scene and that, and for herself, eaten hollow by a passionate hunger that could never be admitted, much less satisfied.
Struensee said, “Don’t cry. My dearest, my darling. I can’t bear it. Don’t cry.” He put his arm out and clasped her. She yielded to it and in an awkward posture—one they were to laugh about later—put her head against the edge of his shoulder and cried harder, but with different tears. It was true. The lightning could fall upon two people simultaneously. Oh bliss. Oh joy. Happiness, in love, forever. And Johann would do something about children rooting beech mast and women harnessed to ploughs. He was the most wonderful, the most admirable, the most deserving-to-be-loved, the most loved man who had ever lived.
They said all the things that lovers say. When did you first...? It was intended from the beginning...If this, if that hadn’t happened...But it did, it did! Like all lovers they were transported out of mere human state into something different; they were the chosen, the elect, brought together by forces unimaginable. Even his rooted skepticism yielded a little to the influence of the first physical contact, the first kiss. He felt himself to be singularly blessed—by whom, or by what, he could not say. Singularly blessed, much work to do, the ability and the power, always increasing, to do it; and now to all that this was added.
He was the first to recover his sense of reality. “We must be very careful,” he said.
And Caroline, feeling that the first kiss had made him her lover forever was aware of the peril that threatened such as they. “We must indeed be very careful,” she said.
COPENHAGEN; MAY 1770
Sophia-Magdalena lay high, propped with pillows. One window stood wide to the mild Maytime air, and between it and the bed was a brazier on which stood a small cauldron which bubbled and gave off an aromatic steam. Despite all these attempts to ease it, her breath came with difficulty, making a noise like pebbles being rattled together. Her lips, the tips of her nose, the ends of her fingers were blue.
Two ladies and the ever-attendant Peppo were in the room when Caroline entered. The old Queen Mother, sparing her breath dismissed them with a slight movement of her hand. The ladies went, glad of the release; Peppo stayed. He could be patient for a few more days; he would soon be released permanently. His mistress was dying and when she drew her last rasping breath he would go to the man Smith and be trained to be this thing called jockey and go to England.
“You too,” Sophia-Magdalena said. “Keep the door. Outside.”
As soon as they were alone she said to Caroline, with no sign of fear, or distress or self-pity, a plain statement of fact: “I am going to die, my dear.”
That was all too plain; she wore Death’s colors already; but one never admitted such things; it was the duty of a sick-bed visitor to bring cheer.
“Oh no,” Caroline said in a false, sick-visiting voice, “you must not talk of dying. With the good weather here and the remedies that Dr. Struensee has suggested...” She broke off, seeing the change on the old woman’s face; suddenly alert, knowing, sharp. What have I said?
“Aah! It
is true then. You foolish, foolish, unfortunate girl...” She made an effort and pulled herself a little higher in the bed. “You cannot even say his name without betraying yourself!”
And what might that mean? Surely no one, least of all this old woman, for months immobile from rheumatism and for weeks kept to her bed...
Caroline said, “If I speak Dr. Struensee’s name in any particular way it is because I have confidence in his skill. He cured me...”
The noise that Sophia-Magdalena made could have been a laugh, had there been enough breath for it.
“I’ll warrant! Ruin you, too, unless you listen to me. You must listen...” She lifted one blue and white hand and hit herself on the chest and made a hawking noise. “No time,” she said, “to tell you...except that you are a fool. A lover, yes, but far away, not a man you see every day, talk to, look at, speak of. Far away, that is the way to do it and stay safe. Ordinary women commit adultery; Queens commit treason. Do you realize that? And you so guileless! No defense at all, give yourself away by a look, a tone of voice, bound to come to grief.”
Agitation had worsened her condition; now her breath sounded not like pebbles rattled together in a sack but like heavy, heavy footsteps walking through pebbles, ankle deep. And what could she know? It was only a month, in fact rather less than a month; in that time they managed, with the utmost carefulness, to be twice together, truly together. What had been done and noticed to bring to this old woman’s death chamber, such certainty? Dared she ask? Dared she demand to know who started, who carried the tale? Or would that be an admission? How would she take this if she were innocent?
The word had a weight and a significance that it had never held before; a word for a condition lost forever. Lost before the first kiss or the first tender word—there was something in the Bible about lust in the heart being as bad as the act itself. Because it was lust, not love. Love such as she and Johann knew could never be wrong, whatever the circumstances. Even now, realizing the loss of innocence she could feel no guilt.
“I’ve lived just long enough,” the old woman said. “I can tell you how such things are managed. The world is full of men, better born, better looking; pick another. Take a dozen, but not here. Not even in Denmark. There! You see, your face betrayed you. Very well, then send him away. And take to traveling...never the same place twice, and never the same suite. If he’s a true lover he’ll go wherever you are.”
It was the method she had adopted herself; up and down Europe, once, twice a year, generally to spas, seeking relief from the pretended pains which later had, ironically, become genuine. It had not lasted long, only a little more than six years; but those six years had been her real life; now that she was dying she saw that with extreme clarity. Those six years shone with a light which passing time, nor even grief could blur. He’d been a soldier, so handsome, killed at Minden, and when the news eventually reached her there had been nowhere to cry...
Caroline said, “What my voice, or my face, conveys this morning puzzles me.” That was true; she had determined that not by a glance or a gesture would she give a sign. “I spoke, as I explained, with confidence of Dr. Struensee and perhaps I did look a little...taken aback by the mention of a dozen”—better not say “lovers,” too near, too almost holy—”paramours. In the four years that you have known me have I ever given any indication that I desired one, leave alone a dozen. I know that you have been unwell; I know that as my senior you are entitled to respect from me, but I should be obliged if you would tell me who started this tale and why you are speaking as you do.”
Sophia-Magdalena put her hand to her chest again and made that same hawking sound, clearing the clogged voice.
“Open the door,” she said. “Not like that! Go softly, open it quickly. They tempt that black imp away and listen. All right? Then push this pillow higher. Good. Listen; they have been waiting; they know that Queens, under the trappings, are women. Von Bulow? Schimmelmann? My grandson, Frederick? One of Christian’s pretty boys? As you say, you gave no indication, disappointed they said English, cold as codfish. Then—it must be about a month ago, you rode out with him alone and came back; you had been crying, but you looked happy. You allowed him to inoculate the child; you commended him to me. It was enough, more than enough. When a fire is laid, only a spark is needed. I had my doubts,” she said, her voice weakening. “You are very young, very foolish...but my dear, a man of no breeding, pleasant enough, but not...” Not anything like the man I loved, the man who loved me. “Not a man to take such a risk for. I ridiculed the gossip; but when you said his name, I knew. Love, if you must, but not here...”
But his work is here; the aim that brought him from Altona; and my work is here, the proper rearing of my child, restored to me, by him.
She looked at what the bed held, some stiff set bones, some flesh, here shriveled, here bloated; the sparse hair and the hues of death. Did this poor ruined body ever know the rapture? Shall I, will he, ever come to this? God forbid. From this place, where death hovers, as over us all, regardless of our years—Edward lived less than half a lifetime—let me go away; let me lose this terrible, terrible feeling of human mortality in the clasp, the look, the voice that is life itself.
She stood up.
“I am afraid that my visit and the subject of this talk has exhausted you. Rest now. I will come again tomorrow. And please, please, have no concern for me. You know how ill-founded most gossip is. It is true that Dr. Struensee and I rode alone together one day; it just so happened. And I did cry, because I saw a very sad sight. And then having cried I may have looked happy because he promised me that the reforms he planned would do away with such sights forever.”
She saw, from the look in Sophia-Magdalena’s eyes that she did not believe a word.
“You think to put me off, to die in peace. I need no soothing.” Even through the rasping, difficult breathing the resentment, the near hostility showed. “I’m less concerned for you—especially if you are going to be foolish and stubborn—than with what may happen to the Queen of Denmark! I bore that title, too. I had enemies; all that gossip about poison...It came to nothing because there was no truth in it. It is the gossip that has truth in it that is the danger. So bear in mind what I have been saying; or you’ll regret it.”
Getting annoyed must be bad for her, too.
Caroline touched the blue-tipped hand.
“Try to rest now. I shall come tomorrow and hope to find you much improved.”
She was spending her usual late-afternoon play hour with the children; a quieter time than it usually was because Freddy, after his inoculation had been a little listless, with slight fever. Johann had said he should stay in bed for a day or two and Tammi upon whom the inoculation had made no impression at all, had taken to his bed, too, emerging every now and then, because he was healthy and therefore restless, to pretend that he was Freddy’s doctor, and administer “medicine,” a sip of fruit juice and water. All that Caroline was required to do was to ask from time to time, “And how is my poor little boy today, Dr. Tammi?” The answer was always as monotonous; he would be better if he took his medicine. Johann also had great faith in fruit juice.
Presently the Crown Prince, feeling better, tired of his passive role, threw back the covers and announced that it was his turn. “Tammi be poor little boy. Dr. Freddy make well. Tammi take medicine.” The switch was made amicably.
Alice, who had been down to oversee the making of more fruit juice, came in with the jug and the news she had just heard. The Queen Mother, Sophia-Magdalena had died that afternoon.
“Oh no!” Caroline said, stricken with guilt. Had the exertion hastened her end? Ridiculous idea; the old woman had been on the verge of death for some time. But the thought stayed, and with it the memory of the way they had taken their last leave of one another. She had hesitated about kissing the ravaged face, feeling that if she did so, after the scolding and the unbelieving look, Sophia-Magdalena would take it as a sign that there would be no tomorrow. Oh d
ear, how very sad.
She felt the tears gather in her eyes and turned away to the window to hide her distress from the children.
“Her time was up,” Alice said, not meaning to sound callous; simply wishing to console. “Nothing to fret over, really.”
“Drink it,” Dr. Freddy said sternly. “Nice medicine.” He then added, because he had reached the imitative stage and the ability to acquire not merely words, but whole phrases from other people’s conversation, “Nothing to fret over, really.”
Caroline was poised between tears and laughter when Struensee came in to see how his young patient was doing. He solemnly took two pulses, laid a hand on two foreheads, applied his wooden stethoscope to two chests.
“Both doing well,” he said. “They can resume normal life tomorrow. There is one little thing, though, which I had better not mention here, or that will be incorporated in the game.”
“If you will come this way, Dr. Struensee,” Caroline said, and led the way into her own adjoining bedroom.
They did not close the door. Alice wished that they had. This game had gone on quite long enough; the children were getting what she called out of hand, as they always did if she was absent for more than ten minutes; and sticky orange juice all over the place! She said in a voice no less dominating for being muted,
“That’ll do! Shut up and stand still while I wash you ready for supper.” They knew that with Alice there was no argument; meekly Dr. Freddy and Dr. Tammi lifted their faces, held out their hands.
On the other side of the not-quite-closed door, Caroline and Johann met in one of those impulsive, compulsive embraces to which the secrecy which might at any second be disturbed lent a particular flavor.
Breathless from the grip and the kiss Caroline said, “Say something. Anything. Alice...”
“You looked disturbed—on the verge of tears again, just now. What is it?”