by Rose Tremain
The transformation of Martin Møller becomes a topic of conversation in the valley and his sermons are better attended than they have ever been. “Rats can be brave,” some people say with a smile. “We should not forget that.”
KIRSTEN: FROM HER PRIVATE PAPERS
We are at Boller in my mother’s house.
Everything in the world can be endured except my Lover’s absence. Otto has been banished to Sweden and there is nothing in my head except schemes and manoeuvres to bring him out of Exile and back to my bed or, if this is not possible, why then for me to leave Denmark for ever to join him in Stockholm. It is to these machinations that I give my days and my nights, my walks, my prayers and my dreams. When I am sewing, this is what I weave into my design—the flowers of my cunning.
I reason thus: King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, being my Husband’s chiefest enemy, would pay dearly for any Intelligence relating to matters at the Danish Court and, in particular, any Disclosures or Revelations of the supposed poor state of the nation’s Finances. And, knowing as I do that this accursed matter of Money is constantly on Christian’s mind, I am certain there are in his possession Private Papers which pertain most interestingly to this subject and from which his Great Enemy could derive such advantage as he chose—in return for Otto’s release into Jutland or my safe passage into Sweden.
But I am still at a loss as to how I am to procure these documents.
My Great Difficulty is that I can trust no one. The Danish Court is a cauldron of Venom and Spite, and I know that all who serve the King would, in their inmost hearts, like to boil me alive and melt down my bones for paste. It may be that even my erstwhile Messenger, James the Tennis Court Marker, though he once did everything at my bidding, is now also turned against me because I was expelled from Rosenborg in such a humiliating manner.
I dare not send any letter to him for fear that this is so. Indeed, it is possible to imagine that the very name of Kirsten has become a Forbidden Word in Copenhagen and that those who wish to speak of me must dream up some new Terms for me, such as “The Grand Adulteress” or “The Rhenish Count’s Whore” or “She Who Fled Away in the Fish Cart.”
I care not a jot for all this Gloating over my departure. What once could make me rage and weep now summons in my heart only a fine Indifference. I am glad to be gone from the Palace and to find myself in Jutland, which is a very silent place, with no Noise of people’s churning and fury but only the wind in the trees at night to keep me awake. If I were not so lonely in my bed, I do declare I would be tolerably happy. Merely, I must discover some means by which I can barter with King Gustav for Otto. And I have told my Mother: “If my lover can come to me here, we shall have need of this house—for us alone and for our child—and you will have to remove yourself to some other dwelling on the Estate.”
I inflame her by telling her I think a Cottage or Farmhouse quite sufficient for her needs and those of her Favourite Woman Vibeke. “Kirsten,” she says, “Boller is mine and you shall not put me from it.” But I reply that I am still, under the law, the King’s Consort, which is to say Almost Queen, and that I can do as I wish and must be obeyed. And she flies into a temper and tells me that I was always Hard of Heart, to which I say only that, in this World, Women must be so, or perish. And to this, of course, she has no Answer.
The rooms I inhabit here are tolerably large and light, but there is by no means enough Furniture nor Objects of Value in them for my taste or Tranquillity of Mind, and so I have writ to the King asking him—who has treated me like a Common Harlot—to despatch to me “some few Articles of luxury, so that my Spirit be not so melancholy all the while.” I have signed this note “Your Dear Mouse” in the hope that this alone will wake in him sufficient kindness to send me my ebony dressing case, my pair of silver mirrors, my
French walnut armoire, my golden Dutch clock, my oil paintings of flowers, my Flemish tapestries, my collection of fans and my bronze statue of Achilles.
I have also begged him to send me money, so that I am not “as a poor Mouse in my Mother’s scullery” and—as an afterthought, which came on me in my solitary nights, with the wind sighing to me and some Bird far away imagining Spring and letting out from its breast its mating call—besought him to let me have my Slaves, Samuel and Emmanuel, at Boller. I have declared that I want them here “so that at least I may be served Nicely and hold up my head, now that I am brought so low.” But I now confess that the reason for wishing them with me at Boller is that, if I cannot go to Otto in Sweden, then at least I shall have a little sport of Sex with my Black Boys.
I see no harm in this. My belly being already fat with Otto’s child, I am at no risk from conceiving an infant who might be the colour of a walnut armoire. Kirsten cannot live unless her Desires be accommodated very frequently—she is made thus and cannot Help it and I do declare that it will ever be so. And these Boys, being from a wild, uncivil place, where they say men do keep female monkeys in cages and copulate with them for anyone to see, and where Magic Women do come as snakes to glide into the vulva of Young Girls to teach them what Pleasure is, why then I do not think that Samuel and Emmanuel would refuse to gratify the Almost Queen of Denmark. Indeed, I predict, rather, that they might prefer this particular Duty to any other.
Emilia has brought a hen with her to Jutland!
This hen, whose name is Gerda, was the scourge of our journey, constantly breaking away from Emilia’s arms to flap round the Fish Cart, squawking and spattering us everywhere with its revolting grey Excreta. “Emilia,” I said at last, “pray open the flap of this stinking cart and put that hen out into the night!” But she would not. She told me instead how she had nursed this Gerda back to health in her room—in remembrance of her Mother, who had once done this very same thing—and so did not wish to part with it “on some lonely road that it would not recognise.”
“My dear,” I said, “it is a hen! Hens recognise nothing! They do not know if they are in Odense or Pomerania! It will find grain and water, and that is all that a hen requires.”
“No,” said this sentimental Emilia. “Gerda knows me and she will die if I do not care for her.”
Had anyone but Emilia chosen to bring a living Chicken on this long and terrible journey to Jutland, I would have taken up the bird in my hands and thrown it into the road, or I would have wrung its neck and plucked it and roasted it by the wayside. But there is something about Emilia’s requests that I can never refuse. And so I endured the hen. I watched as Emilia stroked its neck to calm it. When we stopped to rest the horses, water was given to it. And for much of the time it lay asleep, wrapped in Emilia’s skirts, quite as if it were a kitten or even an infant who finds itself at peace on the lap of its Mother.
Now it has a little house or Hutch of its own in the courtyard. But when Emilia and I go for walks, as we often do (for this is all that a person can do in Jutland: walk about it and look at what Nature has put here), Gerda accompanies us and steps along at our feet very daintily, never straying far from Emilia’s side. It is so tame and Domesticated, I declare it would submit to being attached to Emilia’s hand by a Leash. I think it has forgotten what it is.
We seldom talk about Peter Claire.
I brought with me the sheet of music on which I wrote down what was in the Countess’s letter to him, but I have not made use of it yet. If it should ever come into Emilia’s head to try to leave me and return to Rosenborg for the sake of the Lutenist, then I shall show it to her and inform her that she is cruelly deceived.
But I doubt that day will ever come. Emilia does not ask me what it was I screamed out to him on the night of our departure. I do believe she must have heard the words, but she is silent on the matter and so I respond with an answering silence.
The person we talk of most frequently is her little brother Marcus, who is tantalisingly near to us now and must be stolen away from Johann Tilsen and brought to us here. For Marcus, too, we have our schemes! I have decided that he will be raised as my Child and, w
hen my baby is born, become its playmate and friend and be to it like a Brother. And when Otto comes to me, and my mother is sent away, my lover and I and Emilia and Marcus and the Child will be as some marvellous Family, which I shall keep always by my side, and I do declare that then, at last, I shall be happy and at peace.
THE BOUNDARY
The last stage of the journey to Boller, made as dawn arrived and the sun began to break through the morning mist, had taken Kirsten and Emilia along the edge of the Tilsen estate.
The fish cart had been exchanged for a rickety black coach, which smelled fusty and unfamiliar, like some forgotten parlour where the old had once lived and trapped mice, and sweetened their last summers with lavender.
From this carriage Emilia had looked out at her father’s land and watched it slowly pass, and remarked to Kirsten that to find herself here in Jutland—in the very place she had left and thought not to see again for a long while—was so curious, so perplexing, that it was as though time itself were mocking her.
Kirsten had yawned and said: “That’s time’s chiefest delight, Emilia: mockery. If you didn’t know this before, then now you do.”
Along one side of the boundary ran a thick line of beech trees. Their leaves had begun to take on that elusive alteration which it is almost impossible to describe, and yet which is suddenly there in the September light and speaks of the cold winter to come. Looking at these trees, where the mist still lingered, unable to take her eyes from them, Emilia felt herself invaded by a memory so long buried that even as it surfaced in her mind some part of it remained obscured.
She is with her mother, Karen. They are walking along under the beeches and it is the beginning of autumn, for Karen is wearing a woollen shawl and the colour of the shawl is grey. Emilia is small, perhaps five or six years old.
They have a destination and it is not far off. The destination is the largest of the trees. When they arrive there, Karen crouches down and takes Emilia’s hand, and together they begin to sweep aside the new-fallen leaves until their hands arrive at the soft earth beneath. It is earth that is dry and light, and scratchy with the old husks of beechnuts. And in this place something has been buried. Karen whispers: “There!” and Emilia gazes down. Whatever it was that has been placed there gleams suddenly in the cold sunlight.
This was all that Emilia was able to remember. She tried concentrating very hard on the moment of discovery, as though by this means the object in the ground would suddenly become visible to her. She could see Karen by her side, hear her voice, even remember the soft grey shawl. But when she stared at the earth and the leaves pushed aside, she had no recollection of what had been there.
The room Emilia is given at Boller looks east—in the direction of her father’s estate. Nothing of it is visible to her, but there is something fearful about knowing that where the park ends the Tilsen fruit fields begin. The horizon absorbs Emilia. She stares at it for hours, imagining the great trees as sentinels, keeping her hidden from the eyes of Johann and Magdalena. She feels that the very sight of them would petrify her, so that she would not be able to move or speak.
But Kirsten has told her that word of her presence at Boller will already have spread to Ellen Marsvin’s neighbour. News, in Jutland, travels along the sandy paths with the tinkers, with the charcoal burners and with the blacksmiths. “And so,” Kirsten has said, “the best course we can follow, Emilia, is to pay your family a visit. They will have to receive me! They would not dare to refuse. And you will be by my side as my companion. And then we can ascertain what is going on there and how things stand with Marcus.”
To bring Marcus to live at Boller, to care for him and supervise his lessons, to take him away from Magdalena’s influence, is a fine dream that Kirsten (who does not really like children, nor sympathises with their terrors) has dreamed for Emilia’s sake. Emilia feels both gratitude towards Kirsten and apprehension on her own account. Anxiety about Marcus has tormented her ever since she left home. To have her brother here with her would be a joy and a deliverance. But to spirit Marcus away from his father and brothers appears to her as an impossible endeavour—as something which has reality only in Kirsten’s mind, all cluttered as it is with never-ending plans and contrivances.
And there is something else. Emilia also knows that part of her has imagined a future far away from Jutland, a future as the wife of the lutenist. And how could Marcus Tilsen be made to fit into that? If she and Kirsten are really to become “mothers” to Marcus, then this is the way they must remain for ever. Could the day ever arrive when she would have to choose between Marcus and Peter Claire?
On the subject of Peter Claire she is silent, even to herself.
CONCERNING WHALES
A strange spectacle is taking place in the courtyard at Rosenborg.
The King has commanded that a large piece of stone be brought in there and propped against the fountain, which has been turned off. The servants complain to each other about the silencing of the fountain. The women lament the lost sound of the water falling and splashing, which “was a cheerful noise and could quite gladden your heart when the days were dark.” Certain of the men simply grumble that “now there is nowhere to piss when you need to, returning late at night,” and that pissing in doorways dirties the boots and attracts vermin and flies. They mutter that all the decisions made by the King these days are bad.
The King hears none of this grousing (or, if he hears it, is indifferent to it). Consulting with his Dutch stonemason, he has acquired a set of fine chisels. And now he is to be seen kneeling in front of the block of stone and laboriously carving letters and numbers upon it in a calligraphy quite as exquisite as anything he writes with a quill upon paper. And all the world seems to know what it is that he’s writing: he is carving Kirsten’s name and the date upon which she went away.
He doesn’t like people to watch him at work. Servants bring him lemonade and retire. But he is observed from attic rooms, from half-open doorways. His own children stare out of windows and wish that he were not kneeling. Many of them are old enough to know that humiliation should be concealed, not blazoned, that unhappiness is best endured alone indoors or else in some wild place where the clouds pattern the earth, where the wind muffles all human sound.
King Christian speaks to no one and seldom looks up from his labour. He certainly does not see the children at their window. It is as though he were engaged upon a work of art, as though this carving of the stone were the only matter in the kingdom worthy of his time. But after several days he sends for Peter Claire and, when the lutenist arrives at his side, commands him to kneel down beside him. The King informs him that the task is complete.
Together, the two men stare at the stone.
“That is the sum of it,” says Christian. “That is the ending.”
Peter Claire nods. He does not say that the ending is his, too, that the loss of Emilia has deprived him of all his plans and dreams. What he says is that the stone writing is so fine that, were the King not the King, he would surely find a vocation carving headstones or Latin mottoes over the portals of institutions.
For the first time in a long while the King smiles. “Yes,” he says, “if I were not the King!”
Then he lays the chisels aside. He dusts his hands, which are rough and blistered from the work. He looks around him at the sunshine falling on the cobbles and at the place where they are greenish, from where the water used to fall wider than the fountain bowl. He looks perplexed, as if he were seeing these things for the first time, or else afresh and trying to remember what once they signified.
Christian keeps to his bed for more than a week. His clocks inform him that time is passing, but he has no real sense of it doing so, for every minute seems to him to be precisely like the one which preceded it.
Kirsten fills his soul. Where God once was, now there is Kirsten.
She laughs and dances; she carouses and shrieks; she rolls on the log pile; she stamps and bellows; she bleeds into the bed. She is
a white breast, a rounded stomach, a crimson mouth. She is past and present; she is loneliness and fever; she is solitude and sleep.
Food is brought to the King. He complains that he needs no food. He is consuming Kirsten and Kirsten is consuming him. “And at the end of all,” he whispers aloud, “there will be nothing and no one.”
When he resumes his life (but only awkwardly, stumblingly, like an invalid) it is to his want of money that his thoughts return. He has been told once more that there is a great fortune to be made in whaling ships, that the bodies of whales can be converted into so many different commodities they could save the economy of the nation.
And he remembers that three whaling ships were being built in Copenhagen, but that now work on them has slowed or even ceased altogether, because there is nothing with which to equip them, nor to pay the shipbuilders. And the King curses and pulls at his elflock and goes to his commode and strains to void a stool, as if this might lessen the agony that he feels in his heart.
Seated there, ready to weep from the pain of his exertions, he imagines the blue whales arriving silently in the waters of the Skagerrak from the Norwegian Sea and being slaughtered by the Swedes and turned into Swedish soap and candles, into Swedish walking canes and corsets. And he damns these strutting Swedes in their whalebone finery. He sends them to hell, to suffer for all eternity.
When the stool is out, he determines that the Danish whale boats will be finished and will set forth, and that the whales will come to Denmark’s rescue, because something must happen soon, relief must arrive, life cannot go on as it has gone on this year. . .
King Christian goes down into the plate room. Out from their cabinets and cases he hauls a multitude of royal gifts dating back to the day of his coronation and his marriage to Anna Catherine of Brandenburg. He piles them up on the floor: silver soup tureens, samovars, slop bowls and fish platters, golden goblets, chalices, dinner plates, wine coolers and jugs. The piles topple and crash. Plates are accidentally kicked and go spinning across the floor. Christian no longer sees them as objects with any use or function, but only as currency.