by Norah Lofts
“My face,” she said, putting her hand to it. “This is something that happens in my family, from time to time. My sister understands...”
ZELL; LONDON; FEBRUARY—MAY 1775
The little posthouse at the forest’s edge was a humble place which made no pretensions to catering for the “carriage trade.” But on this bleak February afternoon, with the candles lighted within and the shutters not yet closed it was a welcome sight to Nicolas Wraxall, who for the sake of caution had made the final stage of his journey on a slow, jolting post wagon. It had been an uncomfortable day and more tedious than it might otherwise have been, for now, traveling in the guise of a Frenchman he had thought it advisable not to use more German than was necessary to get along with, so he had refrained from chatter. His fellow travelers were not talkative, except about the weather; such steady rain had not fallen, day after day, within living memory. Every river and stream flooded, houses washed away, people and animals drowned. Nicholas Wraxall could have told them that in all his journeys, from Naples to the borders of Lapland he had never experienced such weather or such discomfort. He was soaked to the skin and somewhat regretted that in his anxiety to look and play his part properly he had abandoned his heavy English topcoat with its three-tiered cape off which even this rain would have shed as from a duck’s back. But he was being thorough, and in a way he was enjoying himself, though even before becoming one of the proletariat, he had had vicissitudes; he had crossed one swollen stream on the back of a carthorse, another by boat, and then, on a quagmire of a road, his hired carriage had overturned.
All the other post-wagon passengers save one had alighted, generally at some crossroads with flooded fields on all sides. When the wagon lumbered into the yard behind the Sand Krug Wraxall forcibly restrained himself from bustling ahead of the other man, from entering the place as though he owned it and setting everybody and everything astir by his demands, as in the ordinary way he would have done. For him this night no private room, no cans of steaming hot water, no jugs of rum punch.
The mercy of a room to himself was granted him; and in it he rubbed himself down with an inadequate towel and opened his valise himself and dressed in dry clothes and then, since his room had no stove in it, carried down his soaked ones and approached the fierce-looking old woman who seemed to own the place, with the request that they might be put somewhere to dry. She said grudgingly that it might be possible when supper had been served. He ignored the surly manner, bowed and smiled, and told her in what he sincerely hoped was German spoken in a French way that she was very gracious.
“I am from France,” he said. “My name is Rolland. And I hope you have a duck on the spit.”
“No duck,” she said. “Stuffed cabbage tonight. You understand me? No duck. Unless Monsieur wishes to give a special order and pay for it. Canard, Monsieur Rolland? Montrez votre monnaie!”
He took out a handful of mixed coins, selected a guinea and held it out.
She also was skilled in her part. Grumbling about people who made unreasonable demands, and telling him he would have to wait, you understand, wait, because the duck must be killed and dressed, you understand, she retired toward the kitchen quarters, taking the guinea with her.
He waited; by now he was almost accustomed to the exercise. When the duck was finally placed before him, it was beautifully roasted, stuffed with apple and onion: and with it came a bottle of Burgundy wine, as good as he had ever sampled, something he would never have dreamed of ordering in such a humble hostelry.
“To compensate,” she said, “you understand me, for the waiting. The waiting is necessary.”
His fellow traveler and the two men who had been there when he arrived had eaten their stuffed cabbage with every evidence of satisfaction, and gone to bed.
The waiting was necessary; so he waited, and so did the old woman and the formidable-looking dog that had never left her side and had backed away from Wraxall’s advances. But at last the dog rose, ran to the door and wagged his tail and made whining noises.
“The waiting is done, you understand,” the old woman said. She rose and opened the door and admitted the young man whom Wraxall vaguely remembered having seen at Zell. He wore one cloak, carried another on his arm, and as he entered, closed and shook in the doorway a large umbrella. He then closed the door, bowed to Wraxall and embraced the old woman, calling her grandmother.
“This was right?” she asked.
“You were right. Now, sir, if you will come. It still rains, but by the shortcut it is not far.” He held the second cloak for Wraxall and the old woman fetched his hat, already half dried.
“I smell stuffed cabbage,” Mantel said. “We shall be back in an hour.”
“It will be hot,” the old woman said.
Outside, Mantel opened the umbrella which was a large one, and side by side they plodded through the rain and the sucking mud. To one accustomed to it the distance might not seem far, to Wraxall it was a long way. At last they reached a gateway set in a wall, entered, crossed a cobbled yard and came to a high, arched doorway, beyond which was a passage, dimly lighted and a short flight of stone stairs. At the top of these Mantel removed Wraxall’s cloak and took his hat; then he opened another door and stood back.
It was a pleasant room with an open fire, some shabby, comfortable-looking chairs and enough books to justify it being called a library. Wraxall regretted the muddy state of his boots.
Caroline came in and greeted him with a warmth that was almost affectionate.
“Pray be seated, Mr. Wraxall; no, take the chair nearer the fire. This is vile weather for traveling. I’m afraid you had a most uncomfortable journey. I cannot possibly express my gratitude. If things go well, I shall immediately restore the Order of Matilda and you shall be the first to receive it. Do things go well?”
His observant, gossip’s eye detected a change in her appearance—though she wore the same red silk dress—and in her manner and in her speech. She was thinner, more animated and spoke quickly.
“Well enough, but slowly, His Majesty needs more time to make a decision, and more information.”
“Did you see him? How did he look? Is he well?”
“He is well. I was unfortunately unable to obtain an audience with him. I tried to make an approach through Lord Suffolk, but he was laid up with gout; so I went to Baron von Lichtenstein to whom Count von Bulow had recommended me. He is certainly in his Majesty’s confidence too, for the next instruction I received was to avoid Lord Suffolk entirely and to communicate only with Baron von Lichtenstein, “So we are no farther forward.”
“Oh yes, we are indeed. Revolutions are not made in a day, Your Majesty. His Majesty himself enjoins you to be patient. This is the situation, now. He feels that he cannot risk a breach between England and Denmark by giving you his open support. Nor, for various reasons can he give financial aid; but this is his promise. The moment you are restored his government will recognize the government set up by you as the legal government of Denmark. That, Your Majesty, is a great step forward.”
“A very halfhearted step,” she said almost violently. And immediately she regretted the words. They were critical of—and therefore disloyal to, George, and they sounded ungrateful to this man who had taken so much trouble and was now looking at her with a spaniel’s eyes, look-what-I-lay-at-your-feet.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wraxall. Of course it is a step, a great step. I am not sufficiently patient. Or political.”
“I am of the opinion that you will find in the end, far more support from England than this message indicates. His Majesty is anxious to have more particulars. If he could be convinced that the majority of the people was in favor of your restoration he would move sooner and more positively. England is, after all,” Wraxall said, smiling, “a constitutional country, dedicated to the belief in majority rule. Vox populi, vox Dei.”
“In Denmark the people have no voice,” she said bitterly. “That was to have been the next thing. The autocrats saw it coming; so th
ey murdered him—and me.”
The little note-taking machine at the back of his mind registered her avoidance of the dead man’s name; very significant. Happy lovers could not keep the loved name off their tongues, unhappy ones could not speak it.
“They murdered your reputation, Madam, and your heart—by separating you from your children. But you are alive, and if I may be permitted to say so, looking better and younger than I have yet seen you.”
Men always confuse health with prettiness and said one looked well when they meant handsome, and better when they meant less plain.
“Thank you, Mr. Wraxall. I will admit that the thought of seeing my children again, of continuing the program of reform, and of rewarding my friends, has rejuvenated me. And the exertions of men like you and Count von Bulow and Baron Schimmelmann are very...heartening to one in my position.”
He noted that she made no mention of being revenged on her enemies. A truly noble person.
“My exertions have so far been small and few; but I assure Your Majesty that my time and my labor and what ingenuity I possess are completely at your service.” He would have added, under the impact of a novel emotion, that he would have died for her, gladly. But English gentlemen did not make melodramatic statements.
“So far,” she said, “everything has been tentative and done by word of mouth. If I wrote to my brother, urging him to be...to have a little more faith in my popularity with the ordinary people, could you undertake to deliver it?”
He put his I-will-die-for-you feeling into his assurance, “I will deliver it, Your Majesty.”
She went quickly to a table, sat down and began to scribble, very rapidly but with pauses during which she gnawed the quill and once or twice snapped the fingers of her left hand.
Like most other communities strictly supervised, the family of the Princess Dowager had evolved secret means of communication, based on a simple code. Unused for ten years or more it came back to her now, easy as the alphabet, but phrases like, “the poor oppressed people” had not figured in the game played at Kew; the business of translation hindered her, made her slow where she wanted to be quick; and the need for speed was always at the back of her mind these days. She thought of her son, seven years old now; her daughter three and a half; how were they shaping? Once, from the beginning of her exile until the moment when she read, in her lap, the secret letter, she had been resigned to the fact that they would not be reared as she wished; when this world was nothing, and everything was bound to come right in the end, detachment was possible. But that letter had changed everything and she no longer saw herself as something discarded, making a slow progress to the grave; she had not yet played out her part; the world was only a tunnel, but as one went through it one must bear any burden laid upon one’s shoulders; the world was only a bridge, but as one crossed it one made any repair within one’s power to make.
She was anxious, excited, impatient and always aware that time was short. Why short she did not know.
“This letter,” she said, handing it to Wraxall, “could never, whatever the circumstances, compromise you, Mr. Wraxall. Only my brothers could understand a word of it. Where do you go from here?”
“To Hamburg, Your Majesty. I must acquaint Count von Bulow and Baron Schimmelmann with His Majesty’s decision and receive from them the proof which His Majesty requires that the restoration is the wish of the people. They will, I am sure, be encouraged by His Majesty’s promise to acknowledge the new government, once it is established. But all these negotiations take time. A little might be saved if I could assure their Excellencies that Your Majesty would be willing to return to Copenhagen at any time that they deemed appropriate.”
Her first impulse was to say, I will come at any time. But immediately she thought of George.
“I cannot move from Zell without my brother’s permission. I live here under his protection, in his castle, in his dominion; I cannot leave without his consent and approbation. I have made that clear in my letter...Mr. Wraxall, I must leave you now; my absence may be noticed. Please believe that I know and fully appreciate what you have done and are about to do for me.” She gave him her hand and smiled. For one wild moment Wraxall thought that she was about to kiss him—in which case he would never again wash the place on his face where her lips had rested. But she did not. She opened the door for him; she opened the door, and outside Mantel stood, the cloak and hat in his hands.
“God speed you,” she said, “and guard you.”
She leaned against the edge of the door feeling, inexplicably, that she would never see him again, never hang around his neck the rose-and-silver striped ribbon bearing the glittering Order of Matilda. This, after all, was a risky business. If the implacable people now in power in Denmark ever even guessed, something horrible would happen to this delightful, high-hearted young man.
She stepped out to the head of the stairs and called sharply, “Mr. Wraxall!”
“Your Majesty?” he said, halting, turning, looking up to where she stood.
“Whatever happens, don’t set foot in Denmark. I will send for you as soon as it is safe.”
Spoken loudly like that, in the open; enough to ruin all. The English gentleman and the German page made identical gestures to silence her.
Unheeding, she said, “Promise me.”
“I promise,” Wraxall said. Seckendorf had said an ear at every keyhole; and in the passage that led away from the library there were many doors. Mantel cocked his head and listened; had one of the doors closed softly? Had he heard an indrawn breath?
Wraxall, halfway down the stairs, bowed again. Mantel said, “Come, we must not be seen,” and hurried him away.
It was still raining, and huddled together under the umbrella, plodding back through the mud to the Sand Krug, Mantel said, “That, sir, was a pity; but she spoke from concern for you. She is a lady whose heart has always ruled her head.”
“When next you see her, assure her that nothing could possibly happen to me. It is for her own sake that she must be more careful.”
“I will be careful for her,” Mantel said. He was now the only one of her confidence at Zell; Baron Seckendorf had felt that he could serve her better by joining the conspirators in Hamburg—Altona.
Mantel’s old grandmother and her dog were both awake and watchful and the stuffed cabbage was hot. Wraxall was invited to share this late supper and did so, and to his surprise enjoyed a dish of which he had formerly fought shy. The dog remained unfriendly, and it was the first one, in all his travels, that he had known to be inimical after five minutes. He’d been so successful with dogs, everywhere, that he had evolved the theory that all dogs understood English.
Mantel sat at the place where his grandmother wished him to sit for the next forty, fifty years; at the head of the white-scrubbed table. He was home and she intended that he should stay there. She had been kept in ignorance: she had simply been told to look out for a French merchant, demanding roast duck and paying for it with an English guinea and when he arrived, to let her grandson know. But she had guessed a great deal and suspected more. She resented her grandson’s attachment to the Queen in the castle, an attachment that had prevented him from coming home when a boy’s curiosity about the outer world had been satisfied; she resented the idea, engendered by suspicion, that something was afoot that would take Wolfgang away again. You let them go when they were young and restive, but you wanted them back. They were loaned, not given to the world. The amiable, good-looking young man who pretended to be -French merchant, but seemed to her far more like an England milord, was, she concluded, merely a messenger; do away with him and there would be another and another. But the dog hated him, and this confirmed her suspicion that the young man’s errand, whatever it was, was inimical to her. And she thought, watching the two men eat cabbage, that cutting twigs and branches was a wasteful business; it was at the root that one must strike. She prepared herself, with all the skill and experience acquired in seven decades, to strike at the ro
ot.
“Go to the gentleman, then,” she tested the dog, as Wraxall held out on the palm of his hand a little of the meat and liver with which the cabbage had been stuffed. The dog growled and backed away.
Wraxall said he must go to bed; he would be leaving early in the morning. He saw a delicious, busy time ahead. He would shuttle between Hamburg, London and Zell. The least that the conspirators would ask would be that, whatever happened, even civil war, the British Minister would stay at his post and the ministry’s doors remain open. The least that George III would ask would be a list of the names of the nobles prepared to rise in his sister’s cause and some assurance that the main body of popular opinion was behind them. A lot of running to and fro; this time with a purpose, devotion to the woman who had stood at the stairtop in her worn red silk dress and urged him to be careful.
He rather regretted that he had promised not to set foot in Denmark; he felt that, reverting to his role of simple English traveler, he could have gathered useful information, tested public opinion. But he had given his promise.
“They eat so well in the castle kitchen?” the old woman asked drily.
“Nobody makes stuffed cabbage as you do,” Mantel said.
“So!” she said, and smiled at the compliment while discontent seethed in her. The boy, through associating with fools, had become foolish, willing to occupy a menial position in another’s house while his own place stood empty. He must be brought home.
For Caroline waiting became harder and patience more difficult to maintain. She realized that George did nothing in a hurry and that even her urgent appeal in the childish code would not change him. He would collect information and brood over it; he would ask advice, accept this, discard that, brood again. In the first flush of hope she had hoped to be back with her children by Christmas; now she thought Easter, perhaps, Whitsun, midsummer...The small flowers of spring bloomed and faded; the daffodils flowered and after them the stately Dutch tulips with their ponderous, commemorative names, Admiral von Enkyen, General van Eyck, and while they still lined the garden paths the lilac broke into flower. Her sense of urgency quickened; she felt that if something were not done quickly it would never be done at all. Baron Seckendorf sent her the kind of letters suitable to the circumstances, missives anyone could read. Invariably he mentioned the weather. “The weather is improving,” meant that things were progressing well. “A storm yesterday,” meant a setback. With such snippets she must be content; and wait, and wait.