The Lost Queen: The Tragedy of a Royal Marriage

by Norah Lofts

  “Would Your Majesty eat a finger of toast?” He had occasionally coaxed her to eat that.

  “Anything,” she said. “You know, Mantel, Lazarus could not explain either; but you may take my word for it. What happened this morning made no difference. Everything is all right...”

  Mantel knew nothing of Lazarus; the Bible had played no part in his upbringing. Years before he was born, Germany had been torn by the religious wars; Catholic against Protestant and in the confusion a few people had slipped away, back to older gods, less controversial altars. His family had been amongst the renegades; every morning his old grandmother in her little inn at the forest’s edge sanded her floor in a pattern that ignorant people thought pretty; it was a guard against evil spirits. She had methods of attracting the attention of the good ones, too, and they appeared to work satisfactorily. She had never heard of Lazarus, dead for three days and come back, able, if he could have found words, to tell all.

  Running down the stairs to do battle with cross, flushed-faced cooks for a hook on which to hang a kettle, for a place at the fire to toast a bit of bread, Mantel attributed all that the Queen had said to the fact that she had been abruptly awakened from some happy dream. He must get her to eat and drink before misery clamped down again. He heard, in the kitchen, what had happened at dawn in the capital.

  Caroline knew that it was no dream. Dreams were communicable in a fashion, this was not. Dreams began to recede as the day opened and ordinary things displaced them. This was not a dream; it was an experience, part of her, forever. She knew. This world where everything seemed to matter so much, had no importance at all; it was a bridge to be crossed, a tunnel to be passed through.

  COPENHAGEN; APRIL 1772

  The Prince Regent asked, “Sir Robert, have you been to Aarbourg?”

  “No, Your Royal Highness. I have been busy here. But I did send one of my secretaries, a reliable and observant young man.”

  “And what did he report?”

  How difficult! She had been found guilty, just escaped a death sentence. Could one legally, rationally, complain about the place to which she was to be confined? There had still been no move from England; the whole situation was tricky and without precedent.

  “He is young,” Sir Robert said, “perhaps a little sentimental...He said it was no place for a Queen, but that is only his opinion.” The young Secretary had said it was a place hardly suitable to house pigs.

  “I sent a man, too,” the Prince Regent said surprisingly; “he is not young, he is not sentimental; his report disgusted me. There has been some attempt to render the place weatherproof, in part at least. What few drains there are run into an open cesspool two hundred years old—it is two hundred years, you know, since Aarbourg was lived in. The water supply is equally defective.”

  The situation is unbelievably remote and the aspect very bleak, so the young secretary’s report had concluded. The Regent’s man, blunter and briefer had said—fit for pigs, not horses.

  “Do you believe, Sir Robert, that His Britannic Majesty would wish his sister to live out the rest of her life in such a place?”

  “He may feel reluctant to interfere with the decision of the Tribunal.”

  “So am I. But she is not my sister.”

  Between them yawned the thing about which neither of them spoke. Aarbourg, disused for two hundred years, crumbling to ruin, had been repaired, in a limited way in February, before Struensee had confessed, before the Queen signed that reckless statement. And nobody knew by which order; some men had arrived, done some makeshift repairs and departed. Somebody knew; somebody had made provision, of a kind, foreseeing the verdict of guilty and its possible stopping short of the death sentence.

  “His Majesty of England has many houses,” the Regent said. She would be happy in England, roses, dogs, her other lovers?

  “It is not a matter of accommodation,” Sir Robert said, ashamed that this suggestion came from the wrong side of the gulf. “It is...as always...policy.”

  “With me, also. There is the law and the law must be up held by those who are upheld by it. I think that Aarbourg is completely unsuitable as a place of residence for a woman already in poor health, but for me to say so would seem a criticism of the Tribunal’s order. I feel that her brother could be informed, and he could offer some alternative accommodation, without risking criticism. Would you not agree?”

  Sir Robert agreed. “I will write to that effect,” he said; but he was dubious as to the result. His master had remained curiously detached, even when, for a time, it looked as though the poor girl’s life was in jeopardy.

  “There would be no opposition to any proposal His Majesty cared to make,” the Regent said. “Frankly…” Frankness was not a quality easily associated with this curious young man, Sir Robert reflected, but he was reasonable and not ill-natured, “...her removal would be welcome almost everyone. Opinion is not unanimous; the Queen has some vehement partisans.”

  “Your Royal Highness would wish me to draw His Majesty’s attention to that aspect of the suggestion?”

  “It might help him to reach a decision.”

  When Sir Robert left, the Regent eased his aching back in the tall chair and surveyed his performance with satisfaction. He had saved her from death, and he had saved her from drear incarceration at Aarbourg, and done it without revealing his hand. Once again he visualized her in England, the place for which, he had deduced from a chance remark or two, she had always been a little homesick.

  However, when in May Sir Robert went to inform Caroline of the change in her future, it was not of England that he spoke. It was of Zell in the Electorate of Hanover, not far from the city of Hanover.

  “An ancient but beautiful castle,” said Sir Robert who had never seen it. “And I understand that at the same time as my instructions were issued, orders were sent for urgent work to begin at Zell in order to make it a fit residence for Your Majesty.”

  Where and in what style she lived was no longer of any importance; but it would be a relief to be away from the disapproving Danish suite. And she felt grateful to George for this evidence of family loyalty. She well understood why he was unable to offer her a home in England.

  “I shall be happy to go to Zell,” she said.

  “I hope that you will be also gratified to know that—after some negotiation—the matter of your dowry has been decided. It is to be returned, intact.”

  With pride and triumph Sir Robert laid these trophies of victory before her, and he wore the same spaniel look—see-what-I-have-brought-you. To the dowry she had never given a thought, but plainly he had worked on her behalf. Warm gratitude washed over her; on impulse she put her arms about him and kissed his cheek.

  “All this I owe to you,” she said. “You are my deliverer. Thank you. Thank you.”

  He went rigid with embarrassment; his worst doubts about her nature confirmed.

  He said stiffly, “No thanks are needed, Your Majesty. It was my pleasure as well as my duty to protect your interests.” But the warmth had touched him. “I am more than rewarded.” He was angry with himself for sounding a little breathless. He went on to tell her that two or three English frigates would be sent to take her from Kronborg to Stadt.

  Back in Copenhagen—all the way thinking so warm, so impulsive, so young, small wonder she had come to grief, but actions can be misconstrued, anyone watching this afternoon might think that I—he wrote to his sister, the one person in the world to whom he could express himself freely. “Can you figure to yourself,” he wrote, “what I felt in passing through the vaulted entrance of Hamlet’s castle to carry to an injured and afflicted princess the welcome proofs of fraternal affection and liberty restored?”

  “Zell?” Mantel said astounded. “My home. My birthplace. It is so beautiful! Your Majesty will be happy there.” He knew that he had used the wrong word, or in the wrong sense; that kind of happiness for her was over. She was resigned and tranquil, free of distress, but he had known her in the days w
hen she was happy and he knew the difference. To cover the slip he proceeded to describe the castle and its environs; the moat, the drawbridge, the pepperpot turrets which he remembered with enchantment. “Better than this, Your Majesty; better than Aarbourg.” He had heard some doleful descriptions of Aarbourg; but he had been determined to go there, if the Queen went, and to mitigate so far as was in his power, the discomforts of the place.

  “So, after all, England has remembered her prodigal daughter,” Juliana said sourly. She had suffered another, she felt final, disappointment. On the morning of Struensee’s execution she had stood by one window of her rooms in the Christiansborg, and watched, through a seaman’s glass, the whole gruesome business. There goes the last of my enemies! Frederick was Regent as she had always intended, and she visualized the long happy years through which they would work in close accord. The enticing fruit of fulfilled ambition had hung for so long, almost, never quite, in reach; now, in her hand at last, it was a wasp-hollowed shell. The Prince Regent was not the loved and loving son for whom she had planned and schemed and worked. Instead of the slavish devotion to which she felt entitled, there was animosity; he seemed to be against her, to take a perverse delight in being awkward. That was bad enough, but worse was the realization that she no longer loved him; that his call to power gave her no delight now. She saw that she had not, in fact, been ambitious for him at all, but for herself. He seemed to know it, too; and he had inherited her skill at dealing verbal wounds. Too often he mentioned, in a casual tone, the possibility of Christian remarrying, the possibility of his own marriage; in other words saying that her time as first lady was limited. The barbed remarks she launched at him he parried with skill. She continued to make them. She made one now.

  “For her a most advantageous move. The Hanoverians are among the most well-set-up and amorous men in the world. And a divorcée, with no reputation to lose...” One of her unfinished sentences.

  “You are the first person I have ever heard hint that she was promiscuous,” he said calmly. “Have you access to information denied the rest of us?” Have you been working behind my back?

  “I only know what was brought out at the Tribunal.”

  “That surely pointed to the opposite of promiscuity.”

  “It indicated lack of opportunity. In her immediate circle the temptation was slight. She took as her lover the first proper, well-set-up man who entered it.”

  “Oh,” he said, “were you also an admirer of Struensee?”

  She knew nothing of how he felt; she would never know; nobody ever would. But she had used the words “well-set-up” twice in two minutes. He’d heard and resented them; and in due course all such jibes would be paid for.

  KRONBORG; MAY 27—30, 1772

  Captain John MacBride had the disciplined, cool, stolid exterior of a typical naval man and his appearance did not belie his nature; his hasty, even violent temper had been so controlled that now few people guessed at its existence; he was cool in danger or emergency; nobody had ever seen him excited or unsure of himself. But in secret there had survived in him one tiny thread of boyish romanticism almost atrophied for lack of exercise, but still capable of seeing, in his latest errand, something of a crusade. He was, in effect, a knight going to the rescue of a damsel in distress.

  That the distress was largely of her own making, he did not consider. Newspaper reading and tavern gossip were things with which sailors, early in their careers, learned to do without; he had little knowledge and less interest in what the Queen of Denmark had done, or was said to have done. She was an English Princess in the hands of foreigners and he had been dispatched to rescue her. Foreigners, of whom the world was full, foreign parts being anything outside territorial waters, were liable to do anything and the Danish foreigners had shut an English Princess in the Castle of Kronborg and he had orders to take her off, to make her as comfortable as possible aboard the Southampton and conduct her to Stadt.

  The frigates arrived and anchored in the lingering light of a late May evening; and within an hour Captain MacBride’s temper was aroused. In proper fashion he sent an officer ashore to ask four simple questions; first, if he fired a salute of guns, would it be civilly returned; second, was Sir Robert Keith at Kronborg; third was Her Majesty being treated respect: and fourth, could he call upon her?

  The officer came back; a salute would be returned; Sir Robert was in Copenhagen; nobody could be allowed access to Her Majesty.

  Captain MacBride put on his best uniform and had himself rowed ashore, as soon as the salute of seventeen guns had been fired, and returned. He also went through the vault entrance, but having profited little from his education, he not think of Hamlet; he thought it a dreary place and chilly, even on this warm evening. The commandant of the castle Lieutenant General von Hauch and Count Holstein receive him civilly enough. Conversation was difficult; Captain MacBride knew no German and his French had been learned in the wrong places and from the wrong people. Count He stein’s—he had had a French tutor—was so fluent and rap that Captain MacBride was convinced that he was a French man and in his report to the Admiralty referred to him as “Compte de Holstein.” It was made quite clear however no orders had come from Copenhagen to allow anyone, even Captain MacBride, access to Her Majesty. Most probably would be allowed to see her in the morning. He would be formed.

  Would he drink a glass of wine with them? His temper, rearing, dictated an impossible retort—that he had no order from the Admiralty that obliged him to drink with a couple of old wooden figureheads, who could, he was convinced, have let him go to the Queen had they wished. However, temper had been mastered long ago, in his midshipman’s days, and he thanked them, but he must get back to his ship; the loading of the Queen’s baggage must begin first thing in the morning.

  Nothing happened next day; no message, no baggage. By four o’clock in the afternoon he was furious; but he knew the rules. He was in charge of this expedition and it would be improper for him to expose himself to a further rebuff. He sent for Captain Davies of the Seaford and said, “Look here, Taffy, you talk Froggie. Go ashore and tell them from me that I’m waiting to know what’s happening. Did the Queen get my message? Where’s this Keith fellow? Where’s the baggage? You can tell them I think they’ve been rude. Rude and worse. I don’t even know how many people will be coming aboard. They’re either bloody inefficient, or they’re up to some trick.”

  Captain Davies came back, again with unsatisfactory replies. Sir Robert Keith had just arrived from Copenhagen and would receive Captain MacBride at noon the next day and present him to the Queen. About twenty people would be embarking with her. Twenty! Take all day to stow.

  Without employing any arithmetic, in which he was expert, Captain McBride had thought of the distressed damsel as young and pretty: he was not disappointed; nor had he been wrong in the matter of distress. She was calm, amiable, even smiling, speaking English with a slight hesitation and apologizing prettily, “Except with Sir Robert, it has been a long time...” When she smiled or spoke with animation she looked very young; at other times there was a look of settled sadness and resignation which made her seem older. He was convinced that the foreigners had not treated her well; and then, as he was leaving the castle, he was not treated well himself. A Danish Commodore, plainly chosen for the job because he spoke English, came up and greeted him and said that he had been ordered to inspect the accommodation allotted to Her Majesty aboard the Southampton.

  This was another of the sad little misunderstandings that bedevil good intentions. It was the Regent, Frederick, who was anxious that on a voyage lasting seven days Caroline should be as comfortable as possible; he had feared that “the prodigal daughter” might be received as such and put into cramped and inconvenient quarters. But he had, as always, moved under cover and the English-speaking Danish Commodore said to Captain MacBride that the inspection was to be made by the King’s orders.

  “And they,” said Captain MacBride, “mean absolutely nothing to me. Un
less you come as part of Her Majesty’s suite you don’t set foot on my deck. All you can do is to show me the exact place from which Her Majesty will embark. And when she crosses the high water mark she will be in my charge.”

  In his opinion they had all been as he wrote in his report, with a capital letter, “Awkward.” And he could be awkward too.

  He had marked the spot around the point of land on which the castle stood to which he intended to take his frigates in order to make the Queen’s embarkation easy; but he did not move to it in order to facilitate the loading of the baggage. Let the beggars sweat it out! He developed a fanatical tenderness and concern about the paintwork of his vessels. Teach the beggars to be careful!

  Finally everything was stowed and the three frigates rounded the point, beautiful and precise as birds in flight. If all the Lords of the Admiralty, if the King himself had been expected aboard the vessels could not have been in better trim; everything that could be scrubbed and scoured had been scrubbed and scoured, every bit of metal polished to a blinding brightness; the sailors themselves were so clean and neat and wooden-faced that they looked like out-size children’s toys. The Navy, at least a small bit of it, was here.

  Caroline was ready. She was leaving, forever, the country where, among some miseries, she had known the happiness of love and this could have been an emotional moment. But though Johann’s skull, picked clean, still stood, impaled upon its post and his larger bones lay on the wheels in the western allée, she did not feel that she was leaving him here. She was leaving her children, the son whom she had intended to bring up so well, the daughter whom she had meant to save from the kind of loveless marriage that she herself had known. This was sad, and she was sad, but not in the way that would have been sad before. Everything would be all right the end, when the life sentence, whatever shape it took, been served. Of her own life sentence she had served twenty-one years, crammed with varying experiences; hoped it would end soon. In the meantime there was not to do but to wait, to be amiable, calm, even cheerful-all would be right in the end.