The Lost Queen: The Tragedy of a Royal Marriage

by Norah Lofts

  He let out one of the whooping calls that accompanied the Kerhaus and squeezed harder. Nobody would have believed that any man, even a manual laborer, could have had such strength in his hands.

  She said into Brandt’s ear, “Shorten it, please. I have no breath.”

  He pretended not to hear; the more breathlessness, the more dishevelment, the better.

  Keeping her right hand in position on Count Brandt’s beautiful coat, she released her left and reached for Christian’s fingers; they were rigid, cataleptic. The sweat of agony broke out on her face and dripped down, like tears. She set her teeth and endured. But when the Kerhaus ended, what with pain and breathlessness, she was barely conscious and it was her despairing grip—I must hold on, I must hold on—which, growing heavier and more retarding on the flare of his beautiful coat, that eventually brought Brandt to a standstill.

  Then, in the general confusion, Brandt took Christian away and handed him over to Heer Reventil—Peppo hovering in the background—and said, “Not bad, not good either,” And Christian, backing away into his secret burrow, thought with satisfaction that anyone who forced him out of it would be sorry, would be punished, would say “please.”

  Ladies repaired the ravages of the premature Kerhaus; gentlemen quenched their thirsts. There was still some time to go before midnight and there was one waltz before the unmasking. She danced it with Johann and was restored. He had, she thought, giving her still aching body into his embrace, the truly healing touch.

  “Has it gone as you wished?” she asked.

  “It could not have gone better.”

  He sounded satisfied and she decided not to tell him now about what she had suffered in the Kerhaus. Instead she said, in time with the music, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  After midnight, masks removed, all pretense at anonymity discarded, she danced the second waltz of the evening with Prince Frederick who seemed quite unlike himself. He had what Caroline thought of as a pretty wit; for her he had enlivened dozens of dull functions. They had a silly private joke between themselves: every human being resembled some animal; it was silly, but there was enough truth in it to merit—afterward—a serious thought. Tonight there were no jokes, no comparisons to pussycats, butterflies, carthorses...

  She said, “That Kerhaus completely exhausted me. Did it tire you, too?”

  Juliana had never once, never once, admitted that he was not completely physically able and he, from early youth had adopted the same attitude. Let nobody pity me!

  “No. It was too early, that was all. But if you are tired...”

  “Not in the least. I have recovered my breath; and this is my favorite tune.”

  He felt like Judas Iscariot. No, that was a ridiculous comparison. Iscariot had had no power, or come to that, any wish to protect.

  One, two, three.

  He said, “I should not wish you to be overtired, or in any way distressed. Trust me; I am your friend.”

  She thought that, heated by the Kerhaus, he had taken a little too much of the ice-cooled wine. There was a kind of vehemence in the last words, utterly unlike his usual light, almost flippant way of talking.

  She said, “Then give the signal. I am tired.”

  It was part of the ritual. The gentleman dancing with the first lady present at any ball had only to lift his hand. The musicians recognized the sign and ceased to play dancing measures. Twenty minutes, at most half an hour, of pleasant little tunes, making a background sound for the departures, and then they would be done.

  Carriages, in strict order of precedence, lined up and rattled away. The musicians packed their instruments. Yawning pages doused candles and stoked stoves. Window by window the great palace darkened. It was a night of frost, the stars crystal clear and sharp.

  The guards, men specially chosen by Colonel Knoller, took the few steps allowed them, this way, that way, not enough to warm their feet, and blew on their fingers, and cursed the cold.

  Caroline listened by the nursery door. For this one evening the cradle had been taken from her bedroom lest her late return should wake the baby.

  Anna Peterson was waiting to help her undress and to brush her hair.

  “Just take it down Anna. No brushing. I am tired.”

  She was soon in bed and asleep.

  Struensee slept too; he had spent most of the previous night with Caroline, had been busy all day, had danced vigorously.

  Christian was the first to be awakened and he took it badly. For inside the comfortable cave, there was yet another, sleep; and from this inner sanctum he was dragged by voices, by lights, by somebody shaking his shoulder. Jerked into the open he recognized the three people by his bedside; his stepmother, his half-brother, Count Rantzau. Waking him, shaking him, by candlelight. He did not speak but he made a gesture of dismissal, brushing them away.

  Juliana said, “You must wake up, Christian and sign some papers.”

  She was the first woman—the only woman—to whom he had been attracted; dark haired, voluptuously curved, sweet-scented and often seeming to be on his side. But what a wicked thought that was; your father’s wife! Wicked, wicked boy. Then Knut; wicked again. But he’d finished with all that. Mentally backing away and taking refuge in his cave, he said, “No.”

  Juliana said, “Christian you must sign. There is a plot. A plot to kill you. Do you understand me? Unless you sign your name you will be killed.”

  “Tell Struensee,” Christian said and turned into his pillow, away from the lights and the faces and the voices. “Go away.”

  Heer Reventil who slept in the adjoining room came padding in, his nightcap awry, asking what was the matter; asking it once without ceremony and then with little bows.

  “His Majesty must sign these orders,” Juliana said. “There is a plot to kill him which we have just discovered.”

  “To kill..?”

  “It is an order for an arrest,” Prince Frederick said.

  “Come, come, now Your Majesty,” Heer Reventil said,; upset by this talk of killing but not averse to exercising his; power. “You have only to write your name. Just write your, name. You do it so well. You write your name very nicely. Write it for me.”

  Reluctantly Christian came to the opening of his cave and reached out that long arm that he imagined and wrote his name twice. Seeing him do it, without a question or a glance at what he was signing, justified them all in their own eyes. And they felt even more justified when, drawing back into his refuge, Christian remembered that he was King of Denmark.

  “Now go away. Leave me to sleep or I’ll have all your heads off tomorrow.”

  Colonel Knoller had not even waited for the order of arrest to be signed. He went, with two soldiers, one carrying a lantern, into the room where Struensee slept, took him by the shoulder and said, “Get up. You are under arrest.”

  Struensee had the trained doctor’s trick of passing from sleep to full consciousness in half a second. Three armed men, and behind them his personal page, Arild, with a newly lighted candle in his shaky hand.

  “Arrest?” he said. “Show me your warrant.”

  “That will be forthcoming. Get up.”

  “Arrest without warrant is now illegal in Denmark,” Struensee said.

  “That can be argued about tomorrow. Will you come, or be taken?”

  Three of them, armed—even the one with the lantern had his hand on his sword hilt.

  “You have the better of me. Allow me to get into my breeches.”

  Calm began to desert him as he dressed under their hostile eyes. What had happened? What did it mean? What of Caroline? What of the King?

  “Can you tell me why I am being arrested?”

  “There are several charges; they all amount to the same thing—Treason.”

  “Ludicrous,” he said. “His Majesty has no more loyal...”

  “That I prefer not to discuss.”

  Struensee thought he understood it. Knoller and a few other malcontents, upset about the reduction
of the army, had staged a coup. Kidnap the Prime Minister; show him what a few determined soldiers could do. Such tricks had worked in the past, but this one would not; not in a progressive, properly governed country like Denmark in 1772.

  “Where are you proposing to take me?”

  “To the Blue Tower.”

  Many of his recent laws had been designed to take the dread out of that ill-reputed place; it and all the other prisons in the country were now places where men awaited trail or took their just punishment. A man could no longer simply disappear...Nevertheless, the name had, from long association, a sinister sound.

  “In that case, Arild, I’ll need my topcoat.” He caught sight of the boy’s bleached and stricken face and said quickly, “There’s no need to look like that, Arild. Law will be back in the saddle by dinner-time tomorrow.”

  Arild doubted it. Armed men didn’t take a man out of his bed at three in the morning, and say “Treason” and say “The Blue Tower” in order to turn him loose the next morning. He snatched at Struensee’s hand and kissed it and gulped out some valedictory words, “The best and kindest master…”

  “Get out of the way,” Colonel Knoller said.

  When they had gone, Arild remembered that written words could be dangerous; and Struensee’s apartments, even his wardrobe, held many papers. Arild gathered them together quickly and pushed them into the stove which belched and smoked under the load, and had to be poked. Most of them were government papers, but alongside them into the stove went Struensee’s almost completed book about inoculation, quoting the Crown Prince of Denmark as an outstanding example of its efficacy; and there were two little notes from Caroline, saved because they were of an uncompromising nature; and there were some minatory letters from Struensee’s old father, the pastor in Altona. They had been saved because it amused Struensee to see how very wrong the old man had been: “My son, you have not the strength of character to support power”; and “Your ambition has always exceeded your ability.” Echoes of his underrated, repressed and harshly criticized youth, he had preserved them as proof of how wrong even a godly man could be.

  They all went into the stove and were consumed. And only just in time. Arild was not alone in realizing the importance of words on paper. When, within an hour, others came searching they found nothing and went away empty-handed.

  Caroline was accustomed to wakening suddenly; a child crying, Johann able, after all, to come. So, abruptly disturbed, she was instantly alert, not frightened and said “Yes, Alice,” as was her custom. Then, focusing her eyes, she saw Mantel, her favorite page, lighting candles, and just inside the door Count Rantzau, General Eichstadt and Heer Guldberg. Am I dreaming? No. Three men, one of whom she looked upon as a friend, two known and recognizable, but virtual strangers, in my room. Why?

  She raised herself on her elbows, and saw that by the nursery door, Alice stood, barefooted in her nightgown.

  She said, “What is the matter? Why are you here?”

  January nights were long; January mornings very dark. Have I overslept?

  The three men jostled each other; a step this way, a step that. Then General Eichstadt came forward, a paper in his hand and said,

  “Madam, we have an order for your arrest.”

  “Show me,” she said. “Mantel, please bring a candle nearer.” She was, far inside herself, surprised at her calm; had Alice, from the other side of the room, spoken of a child coughing, wakeful, she would have been out of bed, barefoot, agitated, out of breath. But this was different; she took the paper, read the horrible charge—criminal communication with Count Struensee—and recognized it as the polite, legal term for adultery. She heard again the old Queen Mother’s rasping voice—ordinary women commit adultery, Queens commit treason.

  Fear clamped down.

  “You will find it in order,” Heer Guldberg said. “And it is signed.”

  As had happened with her before, fear produced its own antidote. It would never do to show her fright. She looked up and said, “You are not in order, Heer Guldberg. Until this charge is proved, or I give you permission to do otherwise, you will address me correctly.”

  In the big bed she looked small; her face, blurred with sleep and surrounded by the unbrushed hair, had little beauty, but there was something about her at that moment that roused the first doubt in Count Rantzau’s mind. His fanatically royalist blood ran hot, ran cold, ran thorny, recognizing the mystique of divine right. He knew then that he should have sided more firmly with Prince Frederick. It should not have been done in this way.

  He said, “Your Majesty, this is little more than a formality. I swear that you will suffer no discomfort or indignity.”

  She was already thinking of Johann.

  “Withdraw while I dress,” she said. The door had hardly closed behind them when she was out of bed, running to the nursery door. Alice was almost dressed.

  “Alice—out the other way. Warn Count Stru...”

  Alice made a little sound to show that she understood, ran to the outer door, opened it cautiously, closed it noiselessly.

  “Guarded.”

  “This way, then,” Caroline gasped, and ran to the mirror panel and worked the catch. “Take a candle...’

  Alice scuttled up the spiral stairs and almost immediately descended them again, moving at breakneck speed.

  “He’s gone. There’s only Arild, burning papers.”

  “Thank God!” His room empty and a page burning papers offered a hope that Johann had been warned.

  “Did you shut the door at the top?”

  “It shut itself; nearly caught me by the skirt.”

  “Did the boy see you?”

  “No. He was by the stove, rattling away with the poker.”

  Nothing in the girl’s face or manner showed that she had just been precipitated into the middle of a secret, or that she had sustained the shock of her life. She’d known what was being said, but she had always argued with herself that it was impossible; miles of corridor, flights of stairs, guards everywhere, how could it have been done? People who spread such tales didn’t know what they were talking about. Now she understood and thought, And me in the next door room!

  She gave no sign.

  “Help me to dress, please,” Caroline said. How much warning had he received? In which direction had he gone?

  “Will they be moving you?” Alice asked.

  “I suppose so.” Where did they lodge Queens accused of treason?

  “Better dress warm, then,” Alice said, just as though Care line proposed to take a walk on an inclement day.

  She was almost dressed, her own ice-cold fingers fumbling with buttons, Alice’s equally cold, pinning her hair into some sort of order, when she thought of the children, especially baby. Not yet weaned. She caught her breath. Alice said “What about the children?”

  “I do not know. I shall try to insist on taking the baby. Wherever I am will be the best for her. The boys might be happier here. And Alice, please make up some tale you are so good at inventing, and I am so distraught just now, but make up some tale. Whatever anybody else says, tell them I shall be back soon.”

  As of course she would be; nobody knew; nobody could prove anything. Only Alice knew about the staircase.

  “I suppose I must ask about the baby,” she said, as the last button, the last pin went home.

  She went into the next room where the three men waited.

  “I assume that you propose to remove me.”

  “To a safe and comfortable place,” Count Rantzau said. “All that Your Majesty could possibly need...”

  “I must take the Princess with me. Because she was unwell she was not weaned at six months. The process—vital in a child’s life—-has only just begun.”

  No plans had been made for the immediate future of the little girl suspected of being Struensee’s daughter. Heer Guldberg resenting his recent snub, said, “We have no instructions, Your Majesty. His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince, naturally remains in the custody
of his father, the King.”

  Who was himself in the charge of a keeper.

  “My daughter, the Princess Louise-Augusta, has only just recovered from measles,” Caroline said. “If in her present state a premature weaning is enforced, and anything untoward should happen to her, you will be held responsible.” Her steady, level stare included them all. And again Count Rantzau flinched inwardly.

  “I am sure,” he said hastily, “that in the circumstances nobody would wish. •. Your Majesty may certainly take her Royal Highness.”

  And there, as though she had been waiting for the word, was Alice, cloaked and hooded, carrying the baby, warmly wrapped and sound asleep in the crook of her left arm and carrying in her right hand a bulging, bulky valise, its gaping top revealing some of the articles needed by a baby of six months old.

  “We’re ready,” she said, addressing Caroline.

  “But Alice...I thought...I wanted you to stay and see to the boys and explain.”

  “They’ll be all right, Your Majesty. I did not come to Denmark to...” Blimey, she almost said to tend brats. “...to tend children. I came to serve Your Majesty. His Majesty of England and the Princess Dowager of Wales approved my appointment and if I remained here while you were taken to another place I should have failed in my trust.”

  Alice so seldom used titles that when she did they rang like new-minted coins. And behind the words there was the defiance of integrity. Let them hear it. Princess Caroline’s brother was King of England; her mother was Dowager Princess of Wales. Let them all remember that.

  “So,” Alice said, “with Your Majesty’s permission, I will carry Her Royal Highness, but the bag...” She had intended to hand it to Mantel, but he’d scuttled off. Typical, Alice thought. She ran her sardonic eye over the three men and fixed upon General Eichstadt because he was splendid his uniform. “If you would be so obliging,” she said, pushed the gaping valise into his hand.