Music & Silence

by Rose Tremain

  My dear Kirsten,

  What! Am I to be your spy and Emilia’s in the Tilsen house ?

  My dear, I am astounded that you should ask such a thing of me! But you have no doubt remembered that spies do not come cheaply and that if I am to carry out this visit as you request, why then I shall feel free to ask of you some good turn in recompense. The duties of a spy are most disagreeable and dangerous, and I hope you will not refase me what I shall demand.

  Then, revealing nothing more, she sends a note inviting herself to take luncheon with the Tilsen family. She tells Johann she will bring her order for next summer’s berries. And she rides over on a spring morning, carrying a tiny silver pot filled with blueberry jam, intended for the child, Marcus.

  There is no sign of Marcus.

  The other boys look well and seem spirited. Magdalena Tilsen is huge with a coming infant. Johann is cordial. For luncheon a game pie is served.

  ^^en Ellen talks about her daughter’s fondness for Emilia, all the heads nod their approval and Magdalena says: “It was Johann’s wish that Emilia be parted from her family for only one year, but now that we understand how greatly the King’s wife has taken to her, we are reconciled to losing her for longer than that.”

  “Yes,” adds Johann, “we miss her, of course. But the honour she brings to us by being in your daughter’s employ outweighs all other considerations.”

  When lunch is over, Ellen goes alone with Johann to discuss what quantities of fruit will be brought to Boller as the summer goes on. Over the making of lists, she produces at last her silver pot of jam and lays it on the table between her and Johann Tilsen.

  “Ah,” she says, “I had forgotten this. It was a little present for Marcus, but his absence from the table made it slip my mind. He is not ill, I trust?”

  Johann does not glance up from the inventories.

  “His table manners are bad, Fru Marsvin. We are trying to correct him, but without success. Thus, when we have company, Marcus takes his meals in his room.”

  “Oh,” says Ellen, taking back the little pot. “I am so glad he is not ailing, for then I may see him before I go and give him this.”

  Now Johann Tilsen looks up at her. “If you give me the pot, I will make sure he receives it and is told that it is from you.”

  “No, no! You would not deprive me of a visit to Marcus, would you? When I have such a weakness for small children and their pretty ways.”

  “Marcus’s ways are not pretty.”

  “Really? But I remember him with Emilia, so happy on his pony ...”

  “Emilia spoiled him. Now we are paying the price.”

  “Well, never mind his ways, Herr Tilsen. I should like to see him very much.”

  “I am sorry,” says Johann. “It is not possible to see Marcus. He has a fever and is sleeping.”

  “A fever? And yet you said that he was not ill.”

  “A small fever. It will pass, but he must rest and not be disturbed. Your jam will be given to him when he is recovered.”

  So Ellen writes to Kirsten:

  . . . though I insisted as far as I could, Johann Tilsen would by no means let me have sight of Marcus and I did not see any sign of him about the house or garden as I left. I smell some secret. Is the child ill or not? Alas, on this visit I could not ascertain, but realising quickly that I must go there again so that I can uncover for you and Emilia what is being hidden, I pretended, all in the throes of compiling the fruit lists, that I had muddled them completely and ordered too many pounds of one berry and not enough of another and so forth.

  I snatched back the inventories, feigning a sudden flustering of my ageing mind and condemning myself for my dreadful habit of forgetfulness . . .

  In the second part of this second letter, Ellen Marsvin defined for Kirsten the favour she had mentioned in the first.

  She told her daughter that it had become impossible to find any diligent women of the wardrobe in Jutland and that she was therefore requesting that Kirsten lend her—until such time as some replacement could be found—her Woman of the Torso, Vibeke.

  She signed herself Your fond mother and spy, Ellen Marsvin.

  She was tired that night but could not sleep. Her brain brimmed with her hidden plans.

  FROM COUNTESS O'FINGAL'S NOTEBOOK, LA DOLOROSA

  My prayers to God asked: “How many continuations must there be before Johnnie O’Fingal can re-enter paradise?”

  Peter Claire lost count of the number he composed as the summer passed. He told me that in each and every case there would be a moment when Johnnie would say, “We are near, Mr. Claire. Oh, I do believe we are near!”

  But then, as the seventy-ninth or the eighty-second or the one hundred and twentieth continuation was repeated and modified, the veil of disappointment would once again begin to cloud my husband’s eyes and he would put his hands to his head, covering his ears, and declare that the real music was lost for ever.

  I thought that he would grow weary of the process and in a short time send Peter Claire away, but he did not. He told me that his work with the lutenist had given him hope: “Just enough of it, you see, Francesca, to make me believe that the search is not futile.”

  His health improved a little. The psora on his face healed up. He still kept to his room at nights and never visited me, but his behaviour could occasionally be tender, and I persuaded him to set in train the most urgent repairs to properties on the estate. And the people of Cloyne amazed me by their kind inclination to forgive him. “Oh, to be sure, he has been sorely ill, the poor man,” they said to me. “But, God willing, everything will now begin to go better . . .”

  One day in high summer, Johnnie announced to me that he was going to Dublin to visit his pipe maker. He would stay for one week. His pipes, in his hours of torment, had afforded him some small consolation, but by now he had sucked and bitten the stems all into pulp, and he wanted to put in an order for twelve new ones. It worried me that Johnnie—for so long a stranger to the city and to any great gathering of people—might become confused or lost in Dublin and I offered to accompany him, but he told me that he preferred to go alone. He would put up at an inn well known to him. He would see what concerts were being performed in the great churches of the city. He would dine upon oysters.

  And so I let him go. As the carriage took him away, I felt that a burden had been lifted from me.

  That same afternoon, a band of Gypsies came clamouring down the driveway. The children ran out to meet them and see what wonders and inventions they had brought. Giulietta was shown a hoop made of willow, so finely turned that it was impossible to discover where the join in the circle occurred. Maria seized upon a little watering pot no bigger than her hand. Vincenzo and Luca put on strange painted masks and ran about the garden shrieking at each other like devils and causing great mirth to the Gypsy troupe.

  I found money for these objects and ordered that beer and cake be brought to the travellers, and I sat with them upon the grass while they brought out from their cart the creations of which they were the proudest and which they had saved until last, their trays of silver jewellery.

  There were brooches, crosses, necklaces, bracelets and rings. All these things had been made by the man calling himself Simeon, who knew the blacksmith’s trade. I regarded his large hands, very rough and with burn marks here and there on the palms, and marvelled that these hands could fashion articles of such delicacy.

  I told the Gypsies that, alas, I had no money to spend on silver. I explained to them that since their last visit, trouble had come to Cloyne and that they found me in a state of some dejection. They looked at me with their black eyes. “Trouble and dejection,” Simeon said. “These things follow us all our days, Countess O’Fingal, yet here we are, still. Perseverance is in the sinews of man. We are destined to go on.”

  I was silent as they began packing up their wares. I had enjoyed their company. And then, as they took their leave, Simeon pressed a tiny object into my hand. “Take this, Countess
,” he said, “and it will bring better fortune by the time we pass this way again.”

  I opened my palm. In it lay an ear-ring made of silver and containing in it a single jewel as small as a grain of sand.

  That night, again I dined with Peter Claire. Our only companion was the sweet summer night, which crept in through the window and scented the room.

  In this midsummer darkness, which was not quite darkness but only a luminous blue above the woods and fields, I felt as though I had begun to float—to float like a swimmer above myself and look down with pity and scorn on the great weight of propriety and resolution tethering me to the earth. I threw back my head and laughed at all these old burdens of mine.

  “Why are you laughing?” asked Peter Claire.

  “I am laughing,” I said, “because I have decided to be free.”

  And so I took Peter Claire to my bed. We loved each other silently, in case any sound should wake the children, and when it was done, I looked at the young lutenist, deep into his eyes the colour of cornflowers, and knew that, after this night, my life would never be the same.

  THE AMBASSADOR'S CONCERT

  Towards the end of June, King Christian returns to Copenhagen.

  Although he has tried, in the time remaining to him in Numedal (when the first silver ore is brought out and the King’s party carouses joyously with the villagers of the Isfoss under the stars), to consign Kirsten Munk to that part of his heart which is indifferent to everything in the world, she keeps escaping from this confinement and returning to the place she has occupied for fifteen years—at the centre of the King’s yearning. And even this (so perfectly in keeping with Kirsten’s mercurial nature) amuses and fascinates him. The Kirsten that he loves is a woman who resists all attempts to imprison her. To Peter Claire, King Christian confesses: “Your counsel was good, but it is as if Kirsten knows I am trying to cure myself of my love for her, and she simply will not let me do it!”

  It is night when the King’s party arrives at Rosenborg. To Christian’s astonishment, Kirsten comes to his bedchamber, blows out all the candles and lies down beside him. He can feel, as his hands hold and caress her, that she has grown fatter while he has been away but he does not find this displeasing and her skin is as soft as he remembers it. As he makes love to her, he whispers that when the first barrels of ore arrive from the mine, he will commission a statue of his beloved Mouse in solid silver.

  “Oh,” she says, “then I hope it will frighten all the scheming cats of the palace!” And she laughs her wild, cackling laughter.

  Peter Claire is glad to be back in Copenhagen. He regains his room over the stables with something like happiness and he realises how deep into his consciousness had crept the idea that he would never return from the Isfoss. He stares at his hands, at his face in the looking-glass. He is alive. Premonitions can err.

  A letter awaits him informing him that his sister Charlotte is to marry Mr. George Middleton in the month of September and begging him to make the passage to England for the wedding. This news raises his spirits still further, reassuring him that life in the Harwich household so dear to him is going on very well and that the sister everybody regarded as plain has found a rich and kindly husband.

  Straight away, he writes to her: My dear Charlotte, Mr. Middleton is the luckiest man in England. And he sends her, upon impulse, a gift. It is the silver ear-ring given to him by Countess O’Fingal on the day he left Cloyne and which he has worn ever since. And when he has removed the little jewelled ring from his ear, cleaned, polished and wrapped it for Charlotte, he feels a satisfactory lightness of heart.

  Christian sends for the musicians and orders them to begin practising for a concert to be performed in the rose garden for the English Ambassador, His Excellency Sir Mark Langton Smythe, whose visit to Rosenborg will take place at the end of the month.

  Jens Ingemann bustles about in search of English music (ayres by Dowland, songs and pavans by Byrd and Tallis) and assembles the orchestra in a field, where, it is decreed, “all rehearsals shall take place, so that we shall adjust our sound to the vastness of the air and sky.”

  In the field is a flock of sheep.

  “Sheep now!” snorts Pasquier. “As though chickens were not bad enough! Wherever we go, we are plagued by livestock.”

  “They will not come near us nor pay us any attention,” says Jens Ingemann nervously, but this proves not entirely true, for from the moment the orchestra begins to play, the sheep raise their heads and listen, forgetting to graze for long periods of time.

  But the playing is good, nevertheless. And once again, Peter Claire hears the sweet complexity of the sound made by this group of men. Thin and dry by comparison now seem his duets with Krenze in the Numedal. He is ready to swear that no other orchestra in Europe produces harmonies that teeter upon such perilous perfection.

  Returning from the field one afternoon, towards an evening which has not yet announced itself by any noticeable diminution of the sun’s brilliance, Peter Claire sees a young woman in the garden. She is gathering flowers. As the musicians come towards her, she raises her head and smiles at them, and Jens Ingemann and the other players bow to her and she nods to them and they walk on. But Peter Claire stops.

  He stands by a sundial, pretending to read time from the shadow of the brass pointer, but in reality staying only that he may say a word to this person whom he has never before seen at Rosenborg. She wears a grey silk dress. Her hair is brown, neither dark nor fair. He notices that her hands are so small that she has difficulty holding the quantity of flowers she has gathered. “Shall I ... may I ... assist you?” he stammers.

  “Oh,” she says, looking up at Peter Claire and on the instant faltering as if she is taking in the striking beauty of his face, “no, there is no need.”

  But he goes to her side, lays down his lute, and holds out his hands so that she may give the picked flowers to him while she gathers some more. And so the flowers pass from her arms to his and he feels in their stems, where her hands have held them, something of the warmth of her.

  He sees that he has caused her some confusion and that she is blushing, so, to calm her, he tells her about the concert rehearsal in the field and the way the sheep interrupt their grazing to listen to the music.

  “Well,” she says, “I have been told that the royal orchestra plays very finely. Perhaps the sheep had not before heard anything as excellent?”

  That she should have the courage, in her confusion, to make a little joke moves him more than he can express. He laughs and then he asks her if she will be attending the Ambassador’s concert.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Madame does not always like to attend public events.”

  “Madame?”

  “Lady Kirsten.”

  “Ah,” says Peter Claire, “so I work for the King and you work for his wife. Then perhaps we shall frequently be in each other’s company?”

  She hesitates, rearranging the flower stems. “I don’t know,” she says.

  He longs to reach out and touch her, just touch her cheek or enfold her little hand. He senses that perhaps the moment has come for him to leave her, but he can’t bring himself to do this. He has seen in her a fineness of spirit, a gentleness of heart, that he feels he has never before encountered. He is a breath away from telling her, there and then, that he loves her, but stops himself, realising just in time how utterly foolish this would make him seem.

  He waits there, unable to move from his place at her side. To his delight, she raises her face and looks at him, and in that instant, as Peter Claire becomes aware that the shadows of the day have lengthened unnoticed while he has been with her, some understanding which neither can put into words passes between them.

  “What is your name?” he whispers.

  “Emilia,” she says. “Emilia Tilsen.”

  Sir Mark Langton Smythe, as is the custom, arrives with a great quantity of gifts for His Majesty King Christian IV of Denmark from his nephew, His Majesty King Cha
rles I of England. The gifts are taken to the Long Hall and there offered to the King, seated on his silver throne with Kirsten beside him.

  The presents include a fine oak dressing-table, an armoire made of maple and walnut, a tapestry footstool, an exquisite set of pewter drinking cups, a ship’s model made of ivory, a longcase clock and a leather saddle. The last gift, however, walks into the Long Hall of its own accord and kneels down at the King’s feet. It is a pair of Negro boys. This gift is wearing two jewel-encrusted turbans and two suits of coloured velvet, and when Kirsten sees it she lets out a cry of surprise and delight. “Ah,” she exclaims, “slaves! How very excellent!”

  Langton Smythe informs her that they have been given the names Samuel and Emmanuel and that they were brought to England by the owner of a cotton plantation on the island of Tortuga.

  “Their trick, Madam,” he says, “is to carry great weight—as it might be a sack of cotton—upon their heads.”

  Kirsten claps her hands and turns to the King. “I would like them to serve me,” she says, “carrying the platters aloft on their turbans. It would make dinner so much more entertaining. Will you give them to me for this purpose?”

  The King smiles. Since his return, Kirsten has visited his bed four times; the fires of his adoration have been stoked and fed, and bum with a jealous yellow flame. “Anything you wish, Mouse,” he says. “Oh, then I am happy! Do the slaves speak, Sir Mark?”

  “Why, yes, Madam, they do. Their own language is peculiar—a singing kind of patois. But at His Majesty King Charles’s court they have learned rudimentary English and I am sure you would be able to coax them to learn Danish words.”

  “I have an excellent idea. We shall permit them to play with my youngest children, who are never silent, but gabbling all the livelong day. Samuel and Emmanuel will learn Danish in the nursery and then they will be able to communicate with me.”

  The Ambassador’s concert in the rose garden is to be preceded by a banquet. Fifty-two hens, nine swans and an ox have been my Pleasure. “Stefan!” I cried out. “Oh, let me die!” But Otto hissed at me not to scream for fear of discovery and then, while the Card Players waited downstairs and the minutes began to tick away, he pinioned me standing upright among the Cleaning Utensils, undid himself and took me in this way, with magnificent haste and brutality, while I thwacked his naked loins with the riding crop and he whispered, “Harder, Brigitte, harder!” so that all was over almost before it had begun and he fell against me gasping for breath. I felt his heart beating wildly against mine. I said: “Otto, my dearest lover, we shall never be free of each other. Never.”