by Rose Tremain
The people of Christiania press forward in the cold morning.
They want to touch the King. They hold up their children for him to bless. Some of them remember him coming to Norway as a boy with his father, King Frederik, and his mother, Queen Sofie, and visiting the craftsmen’s guilds. They recall that the word “shoddy” became fearful and entered their nightmares. But they are impressed on this cold morning by the vastness of him. In his tall boots and his great brocaded cape, he seems like a giant out of the old legends. “Sir!” they call. “Sir! Sir!”
But Christiania is only an assembly station for the mine convoy. In covered wagons and on carts, the King’s party now makes its way north-west to the rocky valleys of the Numedal. The two musicians travel in a draughty contraption, clad with canvas and drawn by mules. Krenze, huddled under sacking, remarks: “Winter had almost begun to recede in Copenhagen; that we have caught up with it again is intolerable.”
Peter Claire doesn’t answer. The German stares at him and under this relentless gaze he feels himself entering once more a state of melancholy, which thickens and deepens as the miles pass and the convoy begins to struggle through drifts of snow. So great now seems to be the distance between himself and his former life that he feels as though a return to it has become impossible. If something of his old longings and dreams remained with him in Copenhagen, here in Norway they have finally deserted him. A man can travel too far from his point of departure and become lost and never find his way back. All that remains to him then is to keep moving forward and pray that hope does not desert him too.
And so, as the mule wagon lurches towards the lonely outpost which is to become the village of the silver mine, and Krenze’s unblinking eyes watch him from above the heap of sacking, Peter Claire understands that his life must be lived in its entirety without the love and companionship of his Countess. She will grow old in Ireland. Her daughters will grow up and inherit some of her beauty, but she herself—as she is and always will be in the mind of Peter Claire—will never again stand before him.
He tries to see her clearly, as if for one last look at her, before even the memory of her is snatched away by time. He lays her down beside him in the wagon and strokes her glossy hair, and hears her say, laughing, “Oh, Peter, what a lumpy bed you have brought me to!”
“His heart will burst, you will see,” says Krenze suddenly. And the fragile vision of Francesca lying here on the sacking immediately vanishes.
“Whose heart?”
“The King’s. For look at what he has to do: hire men; build a town; supply the town; explode the rock; extract the silver; transport the silver back along this infernal route. And then . . . the hardest thing of all.”
“What is the hardest thing of all?”
“Ha! You don’t know? You, who have been locked in your own reverie?”
“No, I don’t think I know.”
“Well, keep watch, lute player. You will no doubt eventually come to understand what it is.”
“Will you not tell me?”
“No. I merely observe that the King is embarked upon a course which will be fatal to him. Perhaps we shall sail back to Denmark with his body in a casket in the hold of the ship? What do you think, Herr Claire? Then, no doubt, you would be free. Free to return to whatever or whomever it was you have been dreaming about.”
“No,” says Peter Claire. “I would not be free.”
They journey all night, stopping once so that the mules and horses can rest while the cooks light fires in the snow and prepare a meal. King Christian now wears an enormous coat of leather, which creaks as he moves. He drinks three flagons of wine, declares that the snowdrifts illuminated by the fire resemble naked women crouched all along the route “and enticing me with their lovely hips,” and has to be helped to his uncomfortable bed in the royal wagon, protesting that sleep no longer gives him rest from care. As he is borne away, Krenze spits into the slush.
Peter Claire is woken by the cart lurching to a halt and the driver shouting to the mules. Krenze also wakes and starts to mumble that there are fleas in the sacking and by morning they will both be plagued with flea-bites, when one of the King’s gentlemen opens the door flap of the wagon and, holding a torch aloft, commands Peter Claire to bring his lute and follow him to the King’s wagon.
Warm at last in the sacking and reluctant to leave this makeshift bed, Peter Claire nevertheless obediently tugs on his boots, picks up his instrument and follows the man out into the frosty night. Above them is a chill clustering of stars and under these cold heavens the bodies of the poor mules and horses steam, and ice gathers on the beards and eyebrows of the coachmen.
“His Majesty is not well,” says the gentleman, whose speech is so perfectly articulated that it might be the voice of an English nobleman. “His stomach plagues him and he is much afflicted by small fears.”
The royal wagon smells foetid and the King’s breath, when Peter Claire comes near to the pile of brown furs from which His Majesty’s troubled head protrudes like a potato from the earth, stinks of vomit. A bowl has been set near him and a servant waits with damp rags and clean cloths. Peter Claire feels his own stomach rebel at the thought of passing the rest of the night in this malodorous confinement, but he strives to master his discomfort and settles himself, as instructed, at the King’s side.
“This is how my father died,” says King Christian. “From a sickness of the stomach and bowel. I was eleven years old, so I did not witness it, but this is what the physicians told me.” Then he takes a sip of water and adds: “Of course he did not have an angel to keep watch.”
Peter Claire is about to reply that very few people have any power against disease or the slow failure of the body’s internal organs, when the King says: “We are consoled as much by our delusions and imaginings as by any real or verifiable thing. Is that not true, Mr. Claire?”
Peter Claire thinks of the way in which—for a time—he deluded himself about the possibility of a future life with Francesca O’Fingal and says: “Well, Sir, my feeling is that all delusions, if they are to console us, must come in a kind of relay, one after another, so that we do not have to linger too long with one only, lest we suddenly perceive the stark truth of it.”
The King gapes at him and a look of terror suddenly crosses his face. He swallows several times, as if mastering the rise of sickness to his throat. The servant offers the bowl to His Majesty and stands ready with his cloths.
But he seems to recover, enough to gesture at Peter Claire’s lute, and the gentleman, crouched near them with a candle, whispers: “Play, Mr. Claire. Nothing fierce nor strained.”
He tunes the lute, leans forward, as though he might be listening for a sound that is going to come out of the reeking darkness of the wagon, and begins upon an ayre by the German composer Matthias Werrecore. As he plays, he can hear the horses sneezing and stamping outside, but the convoy remains where it is on the road and doesn’t move on, as if the whole company of men and mules had paused to listen to this song.
When the piece ends, the King nods and gestures for him to continue with something else. From his time at Cloyne he remembers an Irish pavan with which he used to comfort Francesca O’Fingal, but which he has not played since coming to Denmark, and he has already picked out the opening bars of this before he realises how greatly the sound of this melody is going to deepen his own feelings of melancholy. Held living and breathing in this music is the remembrance of the Countess’s head, leaning upon her arm as she listens, and of her brown eyes, large and luminous yet heavy-lidded with desire, caressing him as they watch him play. So all he can do is surrender to this memory and, even as it engulfs him, swear to himself that this will be the last time he will ever think of her.
Just as the pavan ends, shouts from the coachmen and the jingle and chafing of harness are heard, and slowly the convoy begins to move.
To Peter Claire this night seems now to be frozen, not just in the empty spaces of the starlit Numedal, but also in a sudd
en immobility of time. And when the King pushes the bowl away from him, it is as if he is setting aside his own illness in order to understand what is happening in the mind of the man he has chosen as his angel. Peter Claire lets his lute rest at his side and the two men stare at each other, each with a quantity of questions forming inside his exhausted head.
KIRSTEN: FROM HER PRIVATE PAPERS
Since the King’s departure into Norway, now that I can no longer see him, nor hear, nor smell him, my mind has felt a great and enduring Solace. In short, I do begin to thrive in his Absence, and when I contemplate my own Reflection in my new (more flattering) Looking-glass, I do see with much satisfaction that I am daily growing more beautiful.
I pray that he will be away for a long time. The digging out of a Silver Mine is a colossal Business (as he was at pains to explain to me) and my Husband—having the disposition to oversee and master everything in the Universe—will, I suppose, wish to stay to supervise the Miners and return with his ship so loaded with silver that it will be at risk from sinking in the Skagerrak.
Perhaps it will sink in the Skagerrak?
Perhaps I am to be a Happy Widow before the year is gone?
Oh, dear Lord, but it is not hard to picture the great weight and tonnage of the Silver Ore pulling like boulders at the keel of the ship, while the sails still strive to keep it flying through the wind, but yet they cannot and so the masts begin to tilt and the ship to list and the men below to feel the vessel going down and endeavour for as long as they have breath to take up the Silver and hurl it out into the water, but yet they cannot, they neither, for their breath is gone and they are drowned and white and floating in the sea . ..
Yet if none of this comes to pass, what am I to do?
Last night I had a dream that I walled myself up in a high Tower, with guards at the gate and stationed before the door of my chamber, and only those who knew my secret Password, which was phantasma, were admitted into my presence. But alas, everyone, Count Otto included, had forgotten the pestilential Password and could by no means bring it to mind, and so I was left all alone for the remainder of my life to grow old in unremitting Solitude.
(Dreams such as this one are utterly vexing and of no help to me in my predicament whatsoever.)
If only I could pass my days as I pass them now, left alone to do as I will, and every night visited by my Lover, then I should be content.
Otto and I, I here set down, have become so enamoured of Chastisement of each other while we are engaged in the Act that we are veritably addicted to these Practices and cannot resist them, even though our bodies are now showing secret signs of bruises and lacerations. Otto tells me that he can, when he is not with me, come to a state of brimming excitation just by the mere thought of the beatings I shall inflict upon him and he has commanded to be made for us a quantity of silken Whips (the curtain cords of my bedchamber and of its adjoining closet all being used up and frayed into pieces).
I know that when I shall see these lovely Whips I shall so pant to use them upon Otto that I may in my frenzy tear his breeches and find upon my lips some flecks of Foam, such as Mad People do give forth. And from this I see that my enslavement to Otto, and his to me, is indeed a veritable Derangement, as though we two were inhabitants of some Other World where no one walks but us and where no ordinary matters are considered, but only this one Thing, which binds us and which we cannot renounce for anyone or anything upon the Earth.
Our Flayings and Whippings are now refined and perfected further into Absolute Lust by the means of Words. I do not dare to set down what Insults we have screamed out to each other, only to record that if Otto accuses me of being “a verit. wh. & strump., a fomic. troll . . . etc. etc. . . .” these terms are quite habitual, even mild and courteous, and we are gone so far into Abuse of each other’s Names that I do declare we need some Dictionary to help us come by some new terms that have not staled with use.
Ah, Otto, my lover, my Only Satisfaction, what is to become of us?
Shall we die from our heavenly Wounds?
When Otto is not with me I like to pass my time in Sleep or, for some part of each day, engage in some gentle Pastime such as Embroidery or games of Shove-Halfpenny or short walks in the gardens with my sweet Floating Woman Emilia.
Her alone, among my Women, can I endure for the reason that she does not hate me. I have come to believe that all my Nastiness stems only from this burden of Hate and that were I loved and prized by the Nobility and the Dowager Queen, and by my own Children, instead of being loathed and detested by every one of them, why then I would be Different and Good, and the name Kirsten would be associated only with Virtue.
For we are, in some measure, what others believe us to be. And because Emilia likes me and believes I am Honourable and Considerate, so then can I indeed be these things when I am with her and show towards her nothing but affection.
Lest her excellent opinion of me be disturbed by news of my Amours with the Count, I have sworn my other Women to secrecy upon this matter and, in giving her a chamber very far and distant from mine, ensured that she does not overhear any Noise which would betray to her what I was doing with the silken Whips and so forth.
My Woman of the Head, Johanna, was the most reluctant to swear, saying impertinently to me: “Madam, I do not see how we are supposed to keep secret a Thing which is not conducted in Secrecy,” and this so enraged me that I took up the gold statue of the King on his Tilt-horse and only prevented myself from hurling it at her head by the sudden realisation that this might cause her to fall down utterly Dead. But I would not be surprised to find that she plots against me. I believe she is deluded into thinking, because her appellation is “Woman of the Head,” that she is intelligent and cunning, but I do not spy any intelligence in her, only jealousy and spite.
During my embroidery hours with Emilia she has told me something more about the family she has left behind in Jutland and how all her brothers save one are caught in the spell of the vulgar peasant Stepmother Magdalena, and how she fears for Marcus, “the only one who is outside the spell,” imagining his melancholy since her coming to Copenhagen. Emilia has such a tender heart that she is more moved by the plight of her brother than I have ever been by any plight of my own Children. And so I, in turn, do feel moved to comfort her. I put a kiss upon her soft hair and call her My Little Pet. And then we make plans together to buy some pretty bells and send them to Jutland for Marcus to put on his pony, so that he knows Emilia has not forgotten him.
And Emilia turns to me with a look of adoration in her grey eyes and says to me, “Madam, you are so kind and thoughtful, I do not know how I can repay you,” and I am so astonished that I feel almost like weeping.
So agreeable do I find the presence of Emilia that I have lighted upon an Idea, which may be of assistance to me on that ill-fated day when the King returns from Norway. I have told her that there are certain nights in the month when cruel fears and hauntings do enter my mind and at such times I like to have near me some gentle person with whom, if it moves me, I can hold Midnight Conversations.
Thus, I have arranged it that, when I have my Menses and the Count does not come to me, a little cot is put in the chamber next to mine (through which all who wish to enter my own room must pass) and Emilia sleeps there at my door. I have told her to admit no one. I have said to her, “Emilia, you must promise me that not a soul in the land—not even the King, were he to request it—shall be allowed to come past you on these nights, because my mind is horribly discomfited and I cannot endure to converse with anyone in Denmark except you.”
And so she brushes my hair and warms my bed with a warming pan, that the pains of the Menarche may be lessened by the soothing heat, and I see her arms going about these tasks so lovingly that I am moved to stroke them and find that her skin is as soft as a child’s. “Emilia,” I say, “I hope you will not leave me.”
In the night, if I wake with my brain boiling with Terror, remembering anew my Great Predicament with reg
ard to Otto and the King, I cry out and Emilia comes to me with a candle and we send for hot milk and hazelnut cake and build up the fire in my room and furl the drapes against the cold night air. Emilia, without showing any disgust, helps me to change my bloody rags. And then we talk of the Cruelties and the Nastiness of the world and how, in the corridors of this very palace, whispers against me may be heard passing from mouth to mouth.
AN ORDINARY HOUSEHOLD
The herring fleet is going out.
Softly, into a calm sea, with the wind blowing from the south, the fishing boats set sail from Harwich quayside, where a few people, the early risers of the little town, stand and wave until the vessels are lost to sight in the morning mist.
The people wander away, each to his own house or place of work, each to his own task, until only one man is left standing there, as the sun rises higher and gulls begin to cluster and circle, following the boats, and the church clock of St. Benedict the Healer strikes seven.
The man is the Reverend James Whittaker Claire. He doesn’t move, but continues to look out to sea, as though he planned to wait out all the hours until the herring fleet’s return. But he is not thinking about herrings. What occupies his mind is the future. He is fifty years old and his hair and beard are grey. He has passed the night in a sleepless despondency that he did not anticipate and already he has been standing here for an hour, since well before sunrise, in the hope that the salt air and the banter of the fishermen would act as a balm upon his agitated spirits.
His wife, Anne, and his daughter, Charlotte, are at home in the vicarage and he knows that they will be going about their morning tasks, overseeing the baking of bread and the laying of the table for breakfast, calling to the hens in the yard and scattering corn. He understands that these women of his are happy and serene on this February morning and he longs mournfully to share in this serenity, but he cannot. He rubs his eyes and turns away from his contemplation of the sea. He begins to walk towards his church.