by Rose Tremain
Hans Mikkelson, the principal tutor, or “corrector” as he was officially known, was a man of strangely alternating moods. On certain days he could be patient with the boys, wrapped in his task of communicating to them his learning, as if that learning were a soft mantle that he patiently draped about their shoulders. At other times (and this was his more habitual mode) his thin face would wear a sour expression, he would be unnecessarily pedantic with his Latin corrections and he would make frequent use of a leather fly swat, slapping it viciously upon the boys’ hands or upon the pages of their work and sometimes upon their ears. At least one pupil at the Koldinghus complained that throughout his life his hearing had been impaired by the terrible swiping of his ears by Hans Mikkelson’s fly swat. Others would remember him with awe and affection, and fondly recall the affliction from which Mikkelson suffered: he had watery eyes.
This watering of the corrector’s eyes was of great fascination to Christian. He attempted to determine what conditions caused the greatest amount of watering. He noted, for instance, that Mikkel-son endured more trouble with his eyes in the mornings than in the evenings and that, if there was sunlight at the schoolroom window, the corrector had to position himself so that no scintilla of it fell upon his face. He likewise recorded that the teaching of Italian seemed to bring about abundant tears, as though the musical cadences of this language were so greatly at odds with his tuneless personality that some anguish was caused to him whenever he attempted to speak it.
If the lunch-time debate was in Italian, Mikkelson’s dinner napkin would be a sodden rag by the end of the meal. History, too, appeared to cause him trouble, as did the singing of cantatas. But his eyes watered most of all when he was angry. As he walked about the room swatting and scolding, a veritable cataract of tears would course down his pale face, and Christian formulated the theory, expressed once or twice to Bror Brorson, that Hans Mikkelson had entered a profession about the value of which he felt an anxious ambiguity. Learning he loved, this was certain. It was the passing on of this learning that he did not love entirely.
Bror Brorson was Mikkelson’s most detested pupil. He was the handsomest boy in the school, with a fine-boned face and eyes of a deep-sea blue and a thatch of thick blond hair. He could run very fast and ride well. Like Christian, he was physically brave. But what Bror could not do was write. It was not that he did not have in his mind the thing that he intended to write. He was no worse a Latin conversationalist, for example, than many at the Koldinghus. But when he came to transfer any thought, fact, or observation to paper, something impeded him from writing it correctly. What began in clarity ended in muddle. His work books were shameful. They might have been written by a child of four. And even his own name (easy as it was, with its satisfactory repetition) caused him difficulty. Sometimes, letters would be missing from it and it would appear as Ror Brsen or Brr Rosn. Most frequently all the letters were there but in some altered order, as Rorb Sorbron or Brro Rorbson.
“What is this?” Mikkelson would ask, swatting the word Rorbson as he stood by Bror’s desk. “What foul chaos is here?”
A slash at the ear. A swipe at the errant hand.
“I’m sorry, Herr Professor Mikkelson . . .”
“ ‘Sorrow’ we have already passed, Brorson. We are arrived at ‘despair.’ ”
“I’ll try again, Herr Professor.”
“Yes. You will. But this time, you will write your name correctly.”
My name si Rbor Sorren. Mye mane is Obr Somer . . .
A stinging slap of the cheek. A hard fist thundering down upon the desk. Tears filling Mikkelson’s eyes.
“Get out of this class! You will go to the cellar. You will stay there till night, until your fingers are numb. Go!”
Bror Brorson began to spend so many days—and even nights, because Mikkelson’s fury and exasperation with him increased with every day that passed—in the cellar that he soon appeared at lessons with a hurting cough so persistent that it interrupted the natural transfer of information from Mikkelson to pupils, whereupon he would be sent back to the cellar.
One night, Bror told Christian that he had begun to be afraid of the cellar. “I was not afraid at first,” he said. “There are some mice down there, but I don’t mind them. What I am afraid of is the place itself. I and the place are at war. Death is in it and wants to kill me, and I will not let it.”
Christian loved Bror Brorson; he was his closest, most trusted friend. He went to Hans Mikkelson and asked him “as a favour to me, your future King,” not to send Bror to the cellar any more. Mikkelson wiped his eyes, sighed and said: “I will cease sending him to the cellar when he ceases writing his name backwards. As my future King, you will surely understand the logic of this decision.”
In the winter of 1588 Bror Brorson grew ill. He was taken to the sanatorium and given raw eggs to eat and hot balsams to inhale. Around his sea-blue eyes dark shadows had begun to spread. Christian visited him there every day and read to him from the Bible. Brorson told him: “The people I like the most in the Bible are the disciples. They are simple fishermen and would have difficulty with words.” Both boys were eleven years old.
And then, as the class waited for Mikkelson in the schoolroom one cold February morning, some extraordinary news arrived.
Mikkelson entered the room and the boys stood, as was the custom. Usually, the professor sat down at his desk, facing them, but today he did not sit down. He stood very still, his eyes blinking as they always did when he attempted to control their vexatious watering, and then he spoke. “Word has reached us,” he said, “that yesterday afternoon, in Zealand at Antvorskov, His Majesty King Frederik II, our beloved King, was taken suddenly ill and there, despite all efforts by his doctors to save him, passed away, -God rest his soul.”
Christian did not move. He put his hands round the edges of his wooden desk and held on to it. His first thought was for his mother and he wished he might be at her side, floating on the lake at Fred-eriksborg in a flat-bottomed boat.
“Kneel!” said Mikkelson.
All around him, the boys of the Koldinghus school pushed back their chairs and knelt, with their faces turned towards Christian. Then Hans Mikkelson knelt also and all the company put their hands together, as if in prayer. Christian knew he should speak, but all he could manage to do was to nod, acknowledging the salutation.
“Long live His Majesty King Christian IV!” said Mikkelson.
“Long live His Majesty King Christian IV!” said the boys, almost in unison.
Christian nodded again. Then he found himself staring at the desk in front of his, which was Bror Brorson’s desk, empty of its occupant. He looked at Mikkelson, with only his head visible behind his enormous work table, and his eyes streaming with tears. “May I be excused from this lesson, Herr Professor?” he asked.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” said Mikkelson.
Christian walked slowly, his head held high, and opened the door to the schoolroom. He passed through it into the passage and then he began to run. Running was forbidden in the corridors of the Koldinghus.
He ran like the wind to the portal that led onto a cobbled courtyard. The snow was thick on the cobblestones and Christian was wearing only his schoolday suit of dark-brown wool with its shirt of white linen. He sprinted as fast as he could go across the courtyard and in through the wooden door to the gabled annexe of the Koldinghus that housed the sanatorium. He did not stop or even break his stride when one of the nurses asked him what he was doing, but hurtled on until he reached the little room where Bror Brorson lay.
Bror was sleeping. The grey shadows round his eyes were darker than they had ever been. When Christian put out a hand to touch his forehead, it was burning hot.
Christian sat down on a wooden chair by Bror’s bed. “Here,” he said aloud, “I take up my station!”
He knew that he had come not a moment too soon. There was a fight going on in the room—death had come up from the cellar and was fighting Bror here in a litt
le cell in the school sanatorium—and Christian had come to be on Bror’s side.
Thoughts of his father’s dying went from his mind. What he felt come into his being was a sudden rush of strength and power. In his mind, in the most beautiful writing he could perfect, he channelled this power into a rendition of Bror’s name:
Bror Brorson
He said it, wrote it in the air with his hand, said it again, wrote it larger and larger with a more perfect flourish.
Bror Brorson. Bror Brorson. Bror Brorson.
He had two weapons and death had one. He had the new power of his kingship and his undeniably beautiful rendition of Bror’s name. Death had only itself. He spoke to the sleeping Bror. “I am here now,” he said. “Your King is here. You must rest and I will fight.” Word spread quickly round the school of the death of King Frederik, and the Sister, who was in charge of the sanatorium, came into Bror Brorson’s room and knelt down by Christian and said: “Your Majesty must not be in the sanatorium. Your Majesty will, if it please you, leave this sickbed and return to school, where preparations are being made for your journey to Copenhagen.”
“No,” said Christian. “I have taken up my station here.”
He did not know how long he would have to fight. He knew that whatever he had to do in Copenhagen could wait, but that his friend Bror Brorson could not. He asked to be left alone with his fight. He took up Bror’s burning hand and held it in his. Then, with Bror’s hand, he traced his invisible name. The boy’s fever was intense and the little room smelled foetid, and Christian knew that death was crouching in the folds of the bedding, like the devil crouched over a sleeping infant not yet come to baptism, waiting to swat Bror Brorson’s life away.
The short day’s light began to fade and the snow fell unseen outside the window, but Christian did not call for a candle. He said to death and to the coming night: “I am darker than you. I am ink. I am pure and faultless calligraphy and there is no degree of blackness with which I am not familiar!”
The Sister came again to try to prevail upon Christian to leave, but he would not. Hans Mikkelson came, but he refused to let the corrector into the room and he knew that, now, he would have to be obeyed.
All night he fought death in the name of Bror Brorson. Death slithered from the folds of bedding and lashed the walls of the room with its tail. It breathed a mephitic stench into the air.
In the first light of dawn Christian felt a change come over the sleeping boy. The burning abated. But he knew that it must not abate too much, that he must not let Bror go cold. He called for a nurse to bring more blankets and these he placed over Bror, while death began its daylight cries, like a street trader tempting souls to pass its way. He said aloud: “This is the moment when all is won or lost.”
Bror Brorson Bror Brorson!
Bror opened his eyes just after the great clock on the Koldinghus tower struck seven. Finding Christian there, holding his hand, he said: “What’s happening? Where have I been?”
“I do not know,” said the eleven-year-old King.
Then Christian stood up and laid Bror’s hand gently on his chest. “Sister will take care of you now,” he said. “I must go to Copenhagen, to my father’s palace, for since yesterday morning I am King of all the realms. I am going to give order that you travel to Frederiksborg when you are well enough. Will you like that? We shall ride in the forests and go fishing in the lake when the ice has gone.”
“Will it be allowed?” asked Bror.
“Yes,” said Christian. “An order is an order.”
KIRSTEN: FROM HER PRIVATE PAPERS
As February arrives, certain Things that do please me excellently well have come to pass.
The King has gone away. That he should be gone is enough for me and I really had no desire to be told where he was going or why, but such is his habit to burden me with every detail of every Scheme that enters his mind that he bored me for at least an hour with some story concerning the discovery of Silver in the mountains of the Numedal in his Norwegian kingdom and how he must go there at once to find Men to hack and mutilate and blow up the rock to get all the Silver out of it.
I said to him: “Silver is very pretty, but I really do not wish to hear about hacked rock and men with gunpowder and picks; I prefer the Silver to arrive freshly polished in my room in the form of a hairbrush.” Knowing how one comes by a thing, though it may be edifying, does not always make one feel merry.
I made this last observation also to my Lord and Master, but he, being a person who must always understand the How and Why and Wherefore of everything on this Earth, flew immediately into one of his rages with me. He called me a Vain and Shallow Vessel and a Bad Mother. He accused me of caring for no one and nothing but Myself. But I was not moved by any of this. I declared that I did not understand what my reluctance to hear about the dreadful workings of a Silver Mine had to do with my being a Bad Mother. And here I saw that I had for one moment got a little advantage over him in the argument, for he paused and shook his head and found no words for an instant or two.
And so I took the opportunity here to press home my ascendancy and cried out in a Pitiful Voice: “As to being a Shallow Vessel, women would not be vessels at all if men did not treat them as such! We would prefer to be Ourselves and Human, and no mere receptacle for men’s lust, but what choice do we have? And if we are, in these miserable times, found to be Shallow, it is because we are filled to the brim with the products of men’s licentiousness and cannot bear to take into us one single droplet more!”
Now I saw, to my satisfaction, that the King appeared a little discomfited. He knows how much I have suffered, bearing him so many children that the skin of my stomach is wretchedly puckered and my breasts, which once were as round as apples, do droop almost to my waist (so that when I am abed with the Count I must always keep remembering to position my body in such a way that the Droop be not emphasised). He knows, too, that I am in a state of great unhappiness in my life with him, but yet Denies this to himself, so that he is in reality no more honest than I, who cannot bear to look upon the toil of a Silver Mine, because he cannot bear to look upon me and see me as I am and know what I am feeling in my heart.
But this last I did not say, preferring then to go from the room and lock myself away in my chambers until he and his party (which contains every manner of Person from Cooks to Musicians) departed on the first stage of their journey towards the Numedal. I stood at my window, watching them go through the gates at Rosenborg, and no sooner were they out of my sight than I sent my Woman Johanna to the Count’s house with the following message in the playful code Otto and I have adopted:
My Noble Count,
Morgana the Queen begs to inform you that her Cat is missing and begs you to bring a big Mouse to amuse her while it is away.
No man in my life was like Count Otto Ludwig. Such is my delight when we are engaged in the Act of Love that I do not seem to take note of any time passing, but be in a World Apart, which world is composed only and entirely of his body and mine and the draperies and light of the room around us.
To sleep in his arms is very soothing and lovely. I do think that I have never known such a sleep as this. But immediately on waking, on discovering where I am, I do feel as naughty as a Vixen again. I cannot help it. I know that sometimes I should let him rest and not in a single afternoon insist upon more than two or three Moments—which I shall admit I do, because this is the only man I have known with whom I can have any real Moment at all and my health is suffering through a great lack of them, and why should I, who am the Queen in all but Title, suffer bad health through a sorry lack of Moments?
Yesterday afternoon, when I had had more than four or five Moments (and he but two), the Count suddenly complained that I was too avid for my pleasure. I did not like the sound of this at all. But instead of being angry with him I feigned some girlish tears and cried to him: “Oh, Otto, you are right! How shameful and lascivious I am! What a scarlet wretch you have chosen as your Mistr
ess! You must punish me now, immediately. Oh, go to, with all speed, take up your belt or the curtain cord or any flagellating object of your choosing. And look, here I expose my naked bottom to its terrible lash. Delay not, but punish me without more ado!”
I need not set down the degree of alacrity with which the Count responded to my entreaties, for I do think all men love to chastise women and do get a great Excitement from it. And, although if the King or any other man were to beat me on any part or limb of my body I would detest it, and scream so loudly that all the servants at Rosenborg were woken from their idle beds, the passionate beatings given to me by the Count put me into a kind of delirium, and in this Delirium when I arrive at a Moment, it is of such intensity and long duration that I have begun to think the Count and I are still low down on the graph of Absolute Pleasure and that we could arrive, through experiment and invention, at a degree of Ecstasy that normal men and women never experience in their lifetimes, nor imagine to be possible.
So absolutely does my mind turn to Matters of the Bedchamber that I have cast about me, while the King is still far from Copenhagen and unlikely to return until next month, for every Means that I can devise to make the Count become more besotted with me, so that he be tied only to me with a knot of love and never look elsewhere for his pleasure.
Today—a day of sudden sun that began to melt the snow at Rosenborg—Herr Bekker, the Sorcerer, came to my summons and wrote down for me the ingredients of a Love Potion. He informs me that this Potion is very strong and I must administer it to my man (Bekker believes I am referring to the King, my husband) in small doses, “Or else, Madam,” said Herr Bekker, “he could die of a surfeit of delight and this would be a black day for Denmark.”
I made no comment on this last remark of his but ushered him speedily out in case he should begin upon some premature valedictory address to his Great Master. Alas, only after he had gone did I fall to reading the List of Ingredients and discover that one of these is a Thimbleful of Powder from the Grated Hoof of an Antelope. I do not think that any Apothecary in Copenhagen will have ready for me a convenient quantity of grated Antelope’s Hoof, nor do I know how any Antelope can be found, to whose foot a grater may be speedily applied. From this it immediately became apparent to me that Sorcerers live in a World of their Own Invention and not in the Real World with the rest of us mortals. And this is profoundly irritating.