by Rose Tremain
Feeling thus dejected by the impossibility of procuring the wretched Antelope’s Hoof, I was about to summon one of my Women to go after the Sorcerer and inquire what he would have me do, if not voyage to the Plains of Africa or to the Mountains of Nepal in search of the animal, when I noticed that Herr Bekker had left his quill pen behind on my writing table.
I picked it up, thinking to return it to him with my Woman, and, when I held it in my hand, found it to be an object of startling and strange beauty with which, following a natural inclination, I began to caress my own cheek.
The quill feather is black, but with a sheen upon it the colour of mother-of-pearl and a bunch of soft feathers at its base that have arranged themselves into a little curl, like the curls on a baby’s head.
The caressing of my cheek with the quill so lulled and soothed me that I quite forgot to send after Herr Bekker. And I decided that I would not return the quill but, on the contrary, pretend that it had never been left in my room, so that I can keep it for myself. For I think it has some magical property. The skin of my cheek felt very warm and a kind of happiness came into me that seemed to have its beginning there, in my face. When I heard a knock upon my door, I was startled out of my reverie and quickly secreted the quill in the drawer of my writing table, where I keep these papers and to which no one has any key except myself.
My Woman of the Feet, Hansi, entered then. With her was a young girl of very sweet and pleasing appearance whom I had never before seen. “Madam,” said Hansi, “your new Woman is arrived, given to you by your Mother, and this is she. Her name is Emilia Tilsen.”
“Ah,” I said.
The girl, Emilia Tilsen, curtsied to me and bowed her head. I crossed to her and raised her up and bade her welcome into my service. Though the King calls me a Vain and Shallow Vessel and the Count, while he lashes my bottom with a silken cord, screams that I am a Very Vile Hussy, I know that I can still be kind and lovely when I am at peace with my life, and on the instant this girl Emilia engendered in me a feeling of gentleness and calm that was very marked and the like of which I had not felt for some time.
She has a pale, oval face and hair neither dark nor fair. Her smile is very pleasing and her eyes the colour of the grey sea. Her hands are small.
“Well,” I said, “you have come from Jutland, if I remember, so I expect you are tired and would like to rest.”
As I said this Hansi looked at me with amazement, she believing that, because I pay not the slightest attention to her Need for Rest, I am incapable of being considerate, whereas the truth is I can be exceptionally considerate and careful of others if I am moved to be so. The fact that I am so seldom moved is not my fault, but attributable to the fact that I am hedged about with gross and idle people for whom I feel not one jot of love.
“Oh, no,” said this sweet Emilia, “I am not tired, Madam. If there is any task that I can perform for you, then please let me set about it.”
She was wearing a little dress of grey silk. It was very plain, but it suited her well. Round her neck was a locket on a velvet ribbon. She had about her a fragile, pleasing perfume that reminded me of the smell of summer fruit.
“Very well,” I said. “There is one small task that you might do for me, but first, if you are not tired, I should like to talk to you and hear about your life in Jutland, where I was myself born. So, Hansi, send for a little wine and some caraway cake, and Emilia and I will converse here for a while. Come here, Emilia my dear, and sit down on this chaise while we wait for the wine.”
Hansi gaped at me. Never in her life had I spoken thus nicely to her. She turned tail and went away, letting the door bang rudely after her.
I have now discovered that my sweet Emilia has had a tragic life. She wears her Mother’s picture in the locket round her neck and says nothing will part her from this one possession.
I was very moved when I heard how her Mother died, ready indeed to weep—which thing I scarcely ever do, preferring to rail at Life rather than snivel at it. “Oh, my poor girl,” I said in a choked voice, and took her in my arms, and laid her head on my shoulder and stroked her hair. And together we cried, and after a few minutes of weeping, I said: “Let me tell you straight away, Emilia, that I am also in an unhappy condition here at Rosenborg. You may observe my sumptuous rooms and count my great quantity of dresses and furs, and all my golden ornaments and jewels. But for all this I am a wretched woman. By and by, you will come to see why and to understand how much I am despised.”
“Despised?” said Emilia. “How could anyone despise a person as beautiful and kind as you?”
“Oh,” I exclaimed, “is this how you see me? Beautiful and kind?”
“Yes. You are very beautiful. And look how, in my first hour at Rosenborg, you have been so tender and gracious towards me . . .” “I was!” I said, beginning to weep again. “I was both these things when I was younger, before I was driven insane with carrying children and pushing them out into a spiteful world. But all my kindness was used up. And now I am so angry with my fate that I would ... I cannot tell you what I would do. I do not know what terrible thing I am capable of doing!”
We sobbed a little longer. I had forgotten what a marvellous thing weeping can be. Then I poured us some more wine and found a kerchief with which to wipe our eyes, and I said to Emilia: “My Mother gave you as a gift to me and I can see that she chose very well. My other Women have specific tasks, but I will give you none other than to ask you always to come when I call you and undertake whatever foolish thing it is that has entered my mind. And I, in my turn, will try always to be gentle with you, as your own Mother would have been, and not ask of you anything that might cause you vexation or pain.”
Emilia thanked me and promised she would do for me anything whatsoever that I asked of her and so I patted her small hand and we drank the wine and ate the caraway cake. Then I said: “Very well, Emilia. Now I want you to write a letter for me.”
I then dictated the following:
Dear Herr Bekker,
Upon perusing the List you put into my possession today,
I do find that you have mentioned the words “Hoof of Antelope.”
Please be good enough to call on me tomorrow and explain to me how in the World I am to come by any such extraordinary Thing.
Yours in expectation,
Kirsten Munk, King’s Consort
I noted that Emilia Tilsen’s writing is round and neat. She did not comment on the words Hoof of Antelope, but only, when she had completed the letter, looked up to me with a little worried frown.
NORTH
King Christian’s vast gilded ship, the Tre Kroner, travels northwards towards the ice floes of the Skagerrak. The Tre Kroner is the largest of the ships of the fleet. It weighs fifteen hundred tons. Its main mast is one hundred and thirty feet from main deck to crow’s nest. Silk banners fly from the yards and the mast-heads, and billow in the wind. On the tall quarterdeck the royal coat of arms, painted gold and blue, catches the gleaming of the late winter sun.
With its fatness of sail and its mighty tonnage, this ship is more magnificent than anything ever seen on these waters. In all these ways, it resembles the King himself—exactly as he wished it to. To its Scottish builder, Christian commanded: “Give me bulk and bravery. Give me hugeness and a stout heart.”
Now it ploughs towards Norway across the cold seas of the icy spring. Its cargo is barrels of gunpowder and the iron utensils for breaking rock and stone, together with ropes and tackle and chains. But when King Christian is escorted down into the hold to inspect these tools of the mine, it is not picks and shovels that he sees in the torchlight: he has already replaced them in his imagination with ingots of silver. And the barrels are filled with silver dalers.
The King’s retinue is large, but this ship can accommodate one hundred and fifty souls. Cabins on the quarterdeck are given to the engineers, the people the King calls the geniuses of the mine, men who can look at a hill and know where the seams of precious or
e are likely to run. The geniuses of the mine sit in a huddle on the lofty quarterdeck and fret and compare notes, and lay maps of the N umedal across their knees.
The King has included two musicians among the cooks, vintners, surgeons, apothecaries, geographers and launderers because he doesn’t know how long he will be away from Copenhagen and he considers that a life without music—even life on a far-away hillside under a Norwegian sky—is a life where the cold indifference of the universe may hold absolute sway. And he is in no mood to hear its uncaring silence.
One of the musicians is his “angel” Peter Claire and the other is the German, Krenze, the viol player. Their quarters, shared with the surgeons, on the uppermost of the three gun decks are lightless and noisy, and as the ship passes Frederikshavn and begins to feel the west winds of the Skagerrak rouse the seas from their Kattegat slumber, the Tre Kroner's size affords her little protection from being hurled about in the angry water.
Krenze lies in his hammock, sipping ginger tea to ward off seasickness. Peter Claire’s body begins to ache from the effort of trying to keep his balance, and it seems to him that this ache of his and the creaking and sighing of the ship confuse themselves and become one and the same. His world is shrunk to this, to bone and sinew, to wood and rope, all protesting against the inhospitable sea. It is only a few weeks since his journey from England and Peter Claire never expected to be aboard a ship again so horribly soon. He sleeps fitfully and dreams of his Irish Countess. “Gone,” he says aloud, “and for always.”
Krenze overhears this, but doesn’t question or comment. Green-gilled, his thin hands nurturing his bowl of tea, he remarks acidly: “I am surprised His Majesty did not put us in the hold with the powder. What has become of his cherished concept of underneath?”
Peter Claire, his mind still filled with images of Countess O’Fingal, seeing in the tormented Skagerrak the slate-blue seas of the west coast of Ireland, says pedantically: “The hold is too deep. There are only two of us and, even on the main deck, he wouldn’t be able to hear us.”
Krenze smiles, despite his sickness. “You know we are a floating explosion?” he says. “One lick of fire down in the depths there and we will all be blown to hell.”
“Why are you so sure it’s hell, Krenze? Why should it not be paradise?”
“Look at us—how wretched we are! Foul weather at sea strips men of their dignity and makes them nothing. Hell is all we are fit for.”
And so Peter Claire is silent and, not for the first time, asks himself what he is doing so far from his home and wonders, if he should drown in this freezing sea, what living souls would mourn him and what the sum of his life might be seen to be. He thinks of his kind parents, his father the Reverend James Whittaker Claire and his mother, Anne. He imagines them sighing for the loss of him, lamenting secretly that he had done so little with his life, only bind himself to a musical instrument and wander about the world—so far from his father’s church of St. Benedict the Healer, so far from his mother’s bounteous table—in search of new harmonies and strange company.
He knows they would pray for his soul, yet also find themselves wondering what kind of soul it was they prayed for. For all his life he has been quiet, secretive and solitary. As if he had been biding his time, always biding his time. Telling nobody what he hoped and feared because he knew that the things that he feared and the things that he hoped for were not the things that would come to matter. Something else waited for him. Something he could not yet see. But was it yet in sight? Peter Claire decides that, when or if they reach the Numedal, he will write his parents a letter. In it, he will say:
King Christian has bound me to him more closely than I anticipated. He has acted out of superstition and not out of affection nor from any knowledge of who I really am. It seems, simply, that I resemble the angels he imagined as a boy. But I confess that I have been affected by this and do come to believe—or come to hope—that something of great importance will happen to me in Denmark.
Peter Claire watches the King. The King does not appear stripped of any dignity. On the contrary, his heavy frame seems to have acquired an agility it didn’t possess at Rosenborg. And the workings of the ship are of eternal fascination to him. He doesn’t stay in the fastness of the quarterdeck, but roams about the forecastle and the main deck, scrutinising everything and everyone. For minutes at a time he stares up at the topsails, his gaze resting on the midshipmen strung out aloft on the yard-arms—resting with an expression of awe, even of envy, as though in that universe of sky and sail there might be found a moment of release from all his earth-bound trouble.
“Oh, this is a wonderful ship!” he is heard to cry out, and at that very moment a mountainous wave comes rearing up at the Tre Kroner's prow and water comes pouring over the gunwales, so that the King loses his footing on the deck. Men stagger to his aid and help him to stand, but he is not hurt, and once he is up again he refuses to go to his cabin. He holds fast to a shroud. Rain begins to beat down on him and the wind whips his elflock around his neck like a noose, but he pays none of this any heed. In moments, his gaze has returned to the men high above him. They are beginning to furl the topsail, dismantling their airy kingdom inch by inch. And when at last they climb down, some of them boys no older than twelve, King Christian holds out his hand to them in a gesture of admiration. And his eye scans the space of sky where the topsail flew and the rain clouds sweep in, billow upon billow.
With the coming of nightfall the storm dies down. A gentle wind from the south-west still ensures that the Tre Kroner makes headway, but the seas are quieter and above the ship a thin moon slides into view as the clouds race away northwards.
Peter Claire and Krenze are sleeping at last, when one of the ship’s crew wakes them and orders them onto the quarterdeck “by command of His Majesty.” They struggle into their boots, Krenze cursing that the King is “a destroyer of a man’s health and sanity,” take their instruments out of their cases and hurry to answer the summons. They find King Christian, not in his cabin, but on the deck itself, out under the moon, seated in an elaborate wooden chair like a throne and wrapped in a sealskin coat.
He looks tenderly at his lutenist. “Nature,” he says, “has given us a little respite, Mr. Claire. You and Krenze will now record the gratitude of the ship’s company with some sweet ayres.”
It is very cold. The musicians sit side by side on a wooden crate and begin upon a cycle of German songs—the very music with which, in his mind, Krenze has tried to console himself in his hours of sickness. As the songs start to be heard around the ship, more and more people emerge onto the quarterdeck to listen. The captain leans against some rigging and fixes his eyes on the moon and stars, but the geniuses of the mine gaze intently at Peter Claire and Krenze, as if the sounds they make contained some precious metal as yet unknown to them.
Now, with Emilia gone, Magdalena Tilsen rules over a house of men. There are six of them, including Johann, and Magdalena has come to recognise an extraordinary phenomenon: it is not only Johann who is in love with her, but also his two eldest sons, Ingmar and Wilhelm.
They have ceased, it appears, to pine for their mother. They are sixteen and fifteen years old, and Magdalena knows, from the way they cling to her and the habit they have adopted of asking her to kiss them good-night and then giggling as they both try to kiss her on the lips, that she arouses in them something more than simple affection.
The two boys next in line after Ingmar and Wilhelm are too small to be in love with her, but already Boris and Matti are, in their ways, possessive about her. They like to hold her hand. They like to take a furl of her ample skirt and enfold themselves in it, bound to her body, laughing. When she bakes cakes, they sit on the table and dip their fingers into the bowl and, when they have eaten mouthfuls of the creamy egg and butter mixture, persuade her to lick their little fingers clean. Sometimes they unbraid her hair and hold it over their faces.
She has converted them all. She overhears Wilhelm say to Ingmar th
at he envies his father and Ingmar whispers in reply that the smell of her “is fearful in that way.” And the thought enters her mind that when the summer comes she may take Wilhelm and Ingmar to the woods that border the strawberry fields and show them everything they will ever need to know about a woman. Magdalena is from peasant stock. Her father’s family motto (from whence it came, nobody remembers) was “Guiltless Are We” and all his clan took the words to heart in the way they arranged their lives.
Magdalena’s uncle, a poultry man, showed her all the ways of pleasing men when she was a child of fourteen. (“There is no shame in it, Magdalena, but only a little learning.”) Before she met and married Johann Tilsen, she still regularly slept with this uncle (of whom she remained extremely fond) and with her cousin, the poultry man’s son. There was more than once talk of a child, but no child was ever born and now no one remembers what was said or done on the subject. Guiltless Are We.
So sure of her supremacy in the Tilsen house has Magdalena become that, relishing her many luxuries and satisfactions in this new life of hers, she walks about with an unsurpassed air of confidence. She reflects that it only needed the departure of Emilia to bring about this extraordinary augmentation of her power.
There is often a secret smile coming and going about her lips. And she’s taken to spoiling herself with all the delicacies that can be procured in the neighbourhood, easily persuading her husband to purchase goose livers and cream, capons for stuffing, quail eggs, partridges, lambs’ tails and pigs’ trotters. Her flesh expands. Her cheeks are fat and rosy. That “fearful” perfume of hers seems to increase in intensity. She reigns and the men follow after, always yearning and then again yearning: Touch my forehead Magdalena, kiss my lips Magdalena, lick my fingers Magdalena, wrap me in your skirts Magdalena, Magdalena come with me to the lake . . .