The Lost Queen: The Tragedy of a Royal Marriage

by Norah Lofts

  “I shouldn’t mind; if you were run out, too.”

  “I shouldn’t be. They’d have my head.”

  She said, “Listen, before we go through this masquerade let us consider an alternative. I’ve thought of it often lately, could take Freddy and go on a pretended visit to Aug You could make some excuse about seeing your father we could meet in Hamburg and disappear. We could go America; they say that Virginia is a pleasant place...Johann, why not? No more lies or subterfuges. Just ourselves,

  Her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed; looked like a child planning a delightful outing. How could he say to her: My work here is only just begun.

  “Queens and Crown Princes are not allowed to disappear like that, my love. Think of the hue and cry. Think of your brother. Think of Freddy. Even if we succeeded we should be depriving him of his heritage. Equally important we should be robbing Denmark of a King sound in mind and body and properly trained for his job.” He intended to train young Frederick himself.

  “I never wanted to be a Queen,” Caroline said. “I am not happy at the thought of Freddy being a King. My brother George would have been far happier as a simple farmer and even poor Christian might have managed better if he had been a cobbler or a chimney sweep.”

  Sometimes her acumen surprised him.

  “That may be true. But here we are, and here, I am afraid, we must stay. There is no escape. We must, if we can, avoid any real cause for scandal.”

  She thought of Edward saying that they were all born into a trap. And the sad little phrase, “We never got to Rusha,” ran before her eyes again.

  “Very well. If it is the only way, I will wear a black wig and lie in a bed and see that in the morning I am seen there, without disguise. What I loathe about it all is the parody...Only those who know nothing of love can regard it, or anything to do with it lightly. I believe you that Christian will fall asleep. But morning will come and I shall be sickened to be found in a position, justified by law, approved by the Church, and quite meaningless, whereas found in that very same position with you, whom I love, with whom I am one...I should be run out on a hurdle. It’s wrong, Johann.”

  “It is one wrong, among many. Some, if we are clever and patient can be put right. A real scandal next July could set back the liberal cause in Denmark for a century. And it is only by freeing people that we free manners and habits of thought. Even about love. If once we can free the people, Queens will be enabled to love common people like me. I am convinced of that. But you and I must beat down a path. We must survive July.”

  Knut said to Christian, “It’s the best trick we ever played on Them. Right under Their noses. She’s black as a crow and knows every trick in the trade.”

  Muddle on muddle on muddle. Christian had almost given up; there was a refuge from the head trouble and it was simple. Take no notice. He had discovered that it was possible to go to sleep, standing up, eyes wide open. And in this somnolent state his heads and their diverse intentions did not trouble him anymore. No pain at all. Nobody, not even Struensee knew, of course, because he was too clever for them. Clever enough to have found and taken occupation of a darkish, comfortable kind of cave or a burrow, like rabbits. From time to time he was called out, “Sign here; and here; and here.” He always signed, get it over and done with and I trust Struensee completely.

  The passive, painless times of retreat were interspersed by others; short but hurtful. I am King of Denmark; I have only to write my name and you’re exiled, or in the Blue Tower. I can write my name and if that is not enough I can smash you with anything handy. I can kick and bite, too.

  He was still responsive to Knut, to his voice, to his presence; still anxious to please him. He saw no point in this trick, this joke, but if Knut said so...And at the back of the muddle on muddle on muddle there was the glimmer of a thought—if the woman they’d given him had been dark instead of so horribly fair, and if she had known every trick in the trade instead of being a lump of codfish, things might have been different; but like the sums and the maps what did it matter now? A man had only to back away into his burrow.

  “Yes,” he said. “That would be a joke.”

  He still remembered in a vague, broken way other jokes, in another time. When we were young...a bag of gold. Knut, I’ll make you a Count; you shall be First Gentleman of the Bedchamber. What went wrong? The one true friend and two the heads; the easy retreat into sleep with your eyes open; the painful emergences—I am King. What I say is law.

  Which am I? And what went wrong?

  Caroline lay in the King’s bed, the black wig, detestable evidence of perfidy, of all that was shameful and disgusting, upon her head, and her face pressed against the pillow, away from the light of the seven-branched candlestick. Christian stumbled in and said, “Black. He was right,” and then practically fell into the bed, made some soft rather happy noise and was asleep. Just as Johann had promised.

  He had not even had time to blow out the candies, so cunningly and strategically placed. She got out of bed, very quietly and went round to his side of the bed to retrieve the stand and once she was in bed, blow out the candles. But on Christian’s side of the bed she paused and looked down on him. In his drugged slumber he looked young, and like any sleeper, vulnerable.

  What went wrong? If only he had been kind, she thought. I was so young and inexperienced, kindness would have been enough. I should never have looked elsewhere. No, that is a shaggy, a self-exculpating thought; wherever and in whatever circumstances I had met Johann, we should have fallen in love. The lightning would have fallen.

  She thought of what life would have been had she never known love, and pitied all the people in the world who had missed it, and they must be the majority, otherwise the rules would not be so harsh and she would not have been forced into this horrid little masquerade in order to justify the birth of a child begotten in love. How odd that one must prove this poor demented boy had been the father and not Johann, so strong and clever and good. What a topsy-turvy world!

  She got into bed and blew out the candles. Then she remembered the wig and dragged it off reaching out and by feel alone finding her robe and pushing the disgusting thing into the pocket.

  She slept in little snatches, troubled by dreams. She rode an unruly horse, which was exhilarating until she was thrown and landed back in the bed where Christian moaned softly.

  She worked in the Copenhagen china factory and made a beautiful vase for Mamma and just as she was about to present it she let it fall and Mamma began to cry. This time Christian was snoring. Toward morning she fell into a heavy, dreamless slumber out of which she woke abruptly to find Axel drawing back the curtains to let in the leaden morning light. Count Holmstrupp and Count Rantzau stood halfway between the door and the side of the bed where Christian lay; in the door way itself were Count Brandt and a young officer, dressed for riding.

  Count Rantzau begged a thousand pardons for the disturbance; His Majesty’s signature was needed on a dispatch; November days were so short, the courier was anxious to get started.

  Caroline smiled and said, “I am afraid we have overslept.”

  Christian woke, confused by the heavy sedation; but the request for his signature was a familiar one. He wrote it.

  It had all gone like a well-rehearsed play; between them Johann and Holmstrupp had managed very well. No one would dream of doubting Count Rantzau’s word, his family was a byword; “loyal as a Rantzau,” people said; and no doubt the courier had been equally well chosen—I saw, with my own eyes, Their Majesties in bed together, sometime in November.

  There was one small hitch. Christian, having signed his name, turned in the bed and saw her. He looked at her for a long time as though he had never seen her before. Then he said in a loud shrill voice,

  “What did I tell you? Knut, Enevold, Axel. Look for yourself. There are two. Two heads! I’d done with it. Now look!”

  Black as a crow against the white pillow; silver fair in morning light; and the pai
n he thought he had done with cleaving his own skull once more like an ax. He put his hands to his head and moaned.

  Caroline slipped away, feeling as though she had been caught in the act of adultery.

  Heer Reventil arrived that day. He attributed his sudden recall to a burst of gratitude—belated but welcome—on behalf of his ex-pupil. At the sight of him, being an emotional man, he burst into tears; being a man of good heart, he quickly pulled himself together and resolved to do his very best for the boy whom he hid always regarded as a lunatic. Here also was a first-hand chance for him to prove his theory about the moon’s effect on lunacy. He must make some full notes.

  Christian, completely baffled by the problem of another person’s two heads, backed away into his cave. Occasionally, under Heer Reventil’s kind handling, he would emerge and sometimes complain about a black crow. Heer Reventil took this as a reference to Peppo, who was very black, but also very strong, a fact for which Heer Reventil was sometime grateful—especially, he noted, at full moon.

  And all through that winter and the spring of the next year, Struensee said in his reliable, firm voice, “Just sign her There is no need to read it. It is in order and needs only your name.”

  Sign here; and here; and here; don’t bother about the Cabinet meeting if you are tired; it’s boring; I can convey your wishes. Just sign here.”

  Christian had discovered that it was possible to reach out from the comfortable place to which he had retreated and sign his name. In one of his better moments he had recognized Heer Reventil, the one of his tutors who had been kind, and he had a muddled notion that by signing his name clearly and well he was pleasing him. Once he said, with heartbreaking pathos, “I write well. Show it to him.”

  He put his good, firm signature to the statutes governing the Order of Matilda which was to be part of his birthday celebration on January 29, 1771. He put it to the patent of nobility which made Johann Frederick Struensee a count. He would sign anything; his arm was so long that he could sign his name without emerging from his retreat.

  But there were times when they dragged him out and dressed him up and pushed him about a bit; on most of these occasions he found his talent for sleeping with his eyes wide open, and even standing up, very valuable.

  Knut said, “If this becomes law it will be the end of you. It is nothing but highway robbery and...” he made a significant, jerking gesture with his neckcloth.

  Struensee laughed: “But I have already taken the precaution of abolishing the death penalty for robbery,” he said.

  “Serfs are property.” It was a flat statement.

  “Serfs are men. Lately, by iniquitous laws they have been forced back into feudal slavery. I should have thought that you...”

  “Being born one! Don’t be absurd. Mine are well-treated, well-housed and I never exact from them more than is due. But they belong to me. I earned them. How would you feel if everything you had earned was taken from you by a stroke of a pen? Your title, your position, your salary, the favor of the King...and of the Queen?”

  There was a leer in the last words. Struensee chose to ignore it. Even Knut knew nothing as a certainty.

  He said, “You take entirely the wrong approach to this problem. England has had no serfs for four hundred years; the landowners flourish there. Rents are real money; far more valuable than day labor, unwillingly performed, or the right to beat a man, or to take away from a moderately prosperous fellow his best beast or to demand, when his daughter marries, a tally of six geese. Holmstrupp, it’s medieval, a system completely outworn because it is bad for everybody. Peasants fear to look prosperous, fearing exactions, whereas they should be proud. The really energetic ones hide their money under the hearthstones or in their mattresses—money that should be in circulation. It cuts both ways; some eat what they could sell; some sell what they should eat. A system of reasonable rents would benefit all.”

  “You may be right,” Knut said. “I happen to be open-minded and some of your arguments hold water, for me. In an academic way. But it will be the end of you.”

  But it was for this that he had left Altona, Struensee thought. Everything that had happened since had sprung from his wish to help the oppressed, from his seizing the unexpected opportunity. He did not believe in his father’s God, but there were times when he felt the finger of destiny.

  He went ahead. Sign here; just your name. The new laws forbade any public office to be bought, sold or bequeathed; such Offices were the perquisites of the dwindling middle class and represented money invested. There was resentment about that, and about the policy of retrenchment in both public and private spending.

  Madame Brisson wrote to her faithful friend who had always sent her patterns and descriptions of the latest Parisian fashions and whims. “It is hardly worth your trouble to inform me anymore. Her Majesty seems to be content with hunting dress in the morning and in the evening a gown a year old. It would seem invidious for any other lady to appear more fashionable. My business is almost at a standstill.”

  General Gähler who had succeeded Von Moltke as Commander in Chief of the Army, approved the new laws, far as they affected him. “Clodhoppers, pulled away from mothers. Give me the volunteer, every time. Volunteers don’t chop off their thumbs in order to get back to Mother and her apple dumpling.”

  The bill making the serfs free, abolishing day labor and any other imposition except reasonable rent and taxes paid direct to the State was passed. Sign here. And Christian signed, writing the one word that made most of his subjects free men again.

  Once it was done Struensee became conscious of the lassitude that followed achievement. But laws must not only be passed, they must be enforced. He recognized his own bone weariness; lawmaking by day, lovemaking by night. Had he been his own patient he would have said: Into bed with you; and stay there for forty-eight hours. But there was no rest yet. The law was so revolutionary and so far-reaching that the autocrat who supposedly had passed it must be cajoled into making public appearances; a somnambulist, hedged about by the watchful. Hardly anyone outside the immediate circle realized the King’s true condition.

  And then there was Caroline. If Struensee missed so trivial a thing as a hunt, or a drawing room, she would say, not with complaint, easy to deal with, but with love: It was not the same without you; or, I should have enjoyed it more had you been there.

  There were times, not frequent, but a trifle too often to be comfortable for an idealist, in love, when a voice at the back of his mind asked: Is it possible for a man to have too much of love?

  PART FIVE

  COPENHAGEN, HIRSCHOLM; NOVEMBER 1770—JULY 1771

  Alice had never, in all her life, received a letter. Now, on a lovely June morning, she received one from William Smith, in Germany.

  It was written in his voice.

  “Dear Alice, a nod being as good as a wink to a blind horse, I trust you get my meaning. There is bad weather brewing and why should you go down? If you come here I’ve changed my mind about marrying. Thursday is the Hamburg ship. They’ll take you on to pay at this end. But any other would do. Be quick. Your sincere friend, W. Smith. It is very comfortable here and I will do right by you.”

  She had never had a surname, or any family or sweetheart; never anything for herself, but here, laconic and offhand, was a proposal.

  She remembered their last meeting; nine months ago, in September last year. She’d gone in for a cup of tea and found Smith sorting out what he considered useful things from the accumulated rubbish of years.

  “It’s come,” he said. “Old Bernie got the sack. Not that he need worry, acres and acres in Germany. And we’re taking all the nags.”

  She said, “I shall miss you.”

  He grinned. “You mean you’ll miss the tea. Cheer up. I’ll leave you the pot.”

  The rest of the visit was occupied by his telling her how he had at last shipped young Peppo off to Sir William Craven, with a label round his neck, with the address and an announcement that al
l charges would be paid on delivery; he reckoned, he said, that that was the best way of making sure the boy got there; and he reckoned, he said, that once Sir William had seen Peppo up he’d be grateful to W. Smith.

  Finally they had shaken hands and parted; and here he was, asking her to marry him.

  She got his meaning all right. Bad weather had been brewing ever since it became obvious that the Queen was again pregnant. (Mother of God, don’t let it be like last time!) Some people said that it couldn’t be the King’s; other people said vehemently that it was. Bad weather would strike if that poor loony had one of his sensible spells and said, This is none of mine. And if that happened, Alice would be there, in the thick of the fight.

  She wrote, “Dear William, bad weather is when you stand by, so thanking you, I’ll stay here. I’m glad where you are is comfortable. I hope young Peppo worked out all right. Your sincere friend, Alice. I use the teapot every day.”

  That was a He; in palaces it seemed that the one thing you couldn’t be sure of was a freshly boiled kettle of water. So the brown pot stood on a shelf and only very rarely did it remind Alice of the donor.

  The talk that had reached Smith in Germany was loud and acrimonious in Denmark.

  Young Axel von Staffeld’s mother was a great gossip, and she was listened to because Axel was in a position to know. He said to her, “You are not to say that again, or to allow anyone to say it in your presence. With my own eyes I saw Their Majesties in bed together; in November.”

  Count Rantzau, when he took the trouble, could make himself heard in a large and crowded room. “I deplore the man’s politics as much as anybody: but this is calumny. Their Majesties were cohabiting in November, as I can bear witness. I entered the bedroom with a dispatch.”

  “Yes, I did call Karl out,” Count Schimmelmann said. “And I saw the color of his blood. Any other gentleman who repeats such filth may expect my seconds to call upon him.”

  Juliana said to Prince Frederick, “One is now inclined to wonder who fathered the boy.”