by Rose Tremain
Hearing a commotion, suspecting thieves, servants come running to the plate room. One of them points a musket at the King, who is wearing a brocaded gown and has no shoes on his feet. When the King sees this gun levelled at him over the chaos of the silverware, he flings wide his arms, like the God of old, like Moses on the mountaintop, and roars. Words come out of him like cannon fire. Denmark, he bellows, is sinking into the sea and he, her King, is falling with her, falling so deep into a stygian suffering that he feels he will never emerge again into the light. And why is there no one to save him and save their precious land? Why is he betrayed and let down at every turn? What climate of depravity reigns in the state that the King’s wife commits treason with a German mercenary? Why does no one but he understand that honour is gone from all human dealings and has been replaced by covetousness and greed? How many times must he say these things before anyone begins to listen?
The musket is lowered and the servants stand gaping there. They feel that this volley of words might kill them, that their hearts might cease to beat, that they might never go from this room alive.
“Take up the plate!” orders the King. “Carry it to the mint and let it all be melted down! Dalers must be struck—as many as can be got from this continent of tableware! And I will go to the shipbuilders myself with the money. And if any man steals so much as one sugar spoon from this store he shall be hanged!”
After this, King Christian goes to his rooms and tries to ascertain by arithmetic what sum can be realised from the plate and how many whales it might bring to Denmark’s shores. Across the complex columns of the mathematics, he calls to the creatures who are not fish and are not animals, but some other thing that can live in cold and darkness and yet make fountains on the surface of the sea: Come to me. Save my kingdom.
But then there is the question of manufacture. Do Danish craftsmen know how to fashion stays and farthingales from bone? Will they be finely made or merely shoddy? Could these garments be sold in Paris and Amsterdam or would the French and the Netherlanders laugh at them and send their mockery echoing and tittle-tattling around Europe? Ma chère, have you heard the finest jest? The Duchess of Montreuil is found not to be defonned after all. She was but wearing a Danish corset!
These fears are interrupted by the arrival of a letter. The messenger tells the King it is a letter from the Numedal and, when he hears this, he forgets about the explosion there and imagines that the letter is going to announce the imminent arrival of a consignment of silver. But in the next moment he remembers the dead of the mine and the seams of ore buried under an unimaginable weight of stone.
He begins to read. He notes that the sender is a certain Martin Møller, a preacher, and this at first fills the King with weariness. He is about to lay the missive aside, when he notes that Møller’s words are not feeble—as the words of so many preachers are feeble—but filled with the same passionate despair as that which he himself is feeling.
If you had not come here and given us hope, Møller writes, then surely we would have lived out our lives without any complaint. But you did come. You lifted us up. You gave us visions of what might be . . .
The King repeats this last phrase silently to himself, recognising that he finds in it a sudden consolation that he cannot explain. Visions.
Visions of what might be.
THE THOUGHTS OF MARCUS TILSEN,
AGED FIVE, PLUCKED FROM THE AIR
Magdalena says baby Ulla is a little bit of heaven come down to us for we are good.
My father says now you have a new sister Marcus and you must be kind to her and love her and I say why didn’t baby Ulla kill Magdalena when she came out of her and he slaps my eyes. I say I saw that red thing in the water that came out of Magdalena and that is dead eaten by the fishes and my father says there is evil in you Marcus and we shall bring a holy man to get the evil out of you and if it cannot be got out then we shall have to send you far away.
I wanted the Holy Man to come and be a messenger and bring me something from Emilia but he was old and thin. He said now Marcus we shall rebaptise you in the waters of the lake and cast out the devil from you and my father said we are Beyond Despair with this boy.
Beyond Despair is not a village. It is what Ingmar calls a wilderness he is learning about wildernesses and he says there are creatures there you have never seen.
I say to the old thin man if you take me to the lake I shall kill baby Ulla I will let her be eaten by fishes but my father whips me and I fall down. Otto I cry. Otto my cat.
In the lake it is cold as ice when the water comes over me.
Now they say Marcus we are waiting and praying that all the evil is gone from you and when we are sure that it is gone why then you shall be welcomed back into this family once again but we are not yet sure and so you must be locked away so that you do not harm baby Ulla.
My harness is put on and I am in my cot and the night comes. I am in a wilderness and I know what is in a wilderness now there are huge creatures called buffaloes and I have seen them in a picture. I say buffaloes come here at once do as you are bid and they are warm and they breathe like the cows breathe and I whisper to them good-night.
And when I am downstairs and my harness is off and baby Ulla is there in her cradle and Wilhelm says we are all watching you Marcus I am still with these buffaloes in my wilderness even though the morning has come. I am counting them.
LETTER TO PETER CLAIRE FROM COUNTESS O'FINGAL
My dear Peter,
I do not know if my letter ever reached you.
That any letter—which is so insubstantial a thing— reaches its destination, when I consider what routes it must take and what weather may fall upon its bearers, does make me marvel.
When Johnnie O’Fingal once read to me the sad drama of Romeo and Juliet and I understood that all was lost because that Friar Lawrence’s letter to Romeo was lost, I remarked to Johnnie that we are ever and always searching for ways by which we can be joined to those we love across the immensity of space and time, but that these ways are fragile and surely on the winds and tides must move a great quantity of lost things that will never be found.
I write, now, of a journey I am to make when Christmas is past.
As you will remember, my father, being a paper merchant, endeavours to sell his wares not only in Italy but across the further world. And it has come to his attention that there might be a great fortune to be had by the establishment of a paper mill in those northern countries that have a vast abundance of firs, which is the best tree for the manufacture of good paper. And from this mill, the paper of Francesco Ponti might find its way westwards even to Iee-land and eastwards to the Russias, and this thought makes my father exceedingly content.
He is to travel to Denmark in the New Year. When I heard that it was to Copenhagen that he was going—there to get permissions from the King for the setting up of his mill—I asked him if I might travel with him, to assist him in all his negotiations, for as you will recall, he speaks very lit-tie of any language except Italian. And he is overjoyed that I should do this and says to me, “Francesca, you shall be at my right hand and together we shall see what is in this great kingdom of Denmark, and on this journey you will put from you all the sufferings of recent years and regain your joy in the world.”
I did not tell him that you were in Copenhagen. In truth, I do not even tell myself that you are there, for it may be that you are no longer there but in some other court—in Paris or Vienna—but only, in the quiet of the night at Cloyne, ask God to let me see you once more and hear you play and, if I dare to speak such things, to hold you in my arms.
I shall come with my father alone. My dear friend Lady Liscarroll will take my children into her household and be as a mother to them. She is a woman of gentleness and kindness, and I have no fears that my Maria and her sister and brothers will not be cared for very well. And they, because that Lord Liscarroll’s house is very magnificent and with an abundance of children there and toys and ponies,
and even a falconer who may teach my boys how to command these birds, and a dancing master for the girls, say to me, “Oh, we do wish you to go, Mama, because you shall get well by this journey!”
I know, of course, that they are dreaming already of dane-ing, riding and falconry, and do not dwell so much on my melancholy as they pretend, yet also I find their concern for me very sweet and affectionate, and I tell them that in all my hours away from them they will be in my thoughts.
And so they will. Only if I should find myself with you again would all the world and they in it (upon their cantering ponies and calling to their falcons through the air!) disappear from my mind, which would have no room in it for anything but you.
My dear Peter, I know not whether this letter will come to you, or if it will be lost in the deep. If it does come to you, then pray forgive me all my boldness and want of scruple.
From your affectionate friend,
Francesca, Countess O’Fingal
A WALK IN AUTUMN
The lane is bright with sunshine.
Strolling arm in arm along it are the Reverend James Claire and his daughter Charlotte, and they have walked this lane so many times that they almost know how every stone of the pathway sits and where each tuft of ragwort grows and how the leaves will lie when they fall.
They stroll in the hope that the anxiety they are both feeling will be assuaged a little—by the fine day, by the gentle activity of walking—and that when they return to the vicarage they will be able to tell Anne Claire, who sits and sews in the parlour, that some altered feeling has risen up in them, that, after all, they have begun to believe that all is going to be well.
What weighs on them (on Charlotte most heavily, but on her father, too) is what has come about in the life of Charlotte’s fiancé, Mr. George Middleton.
Ever a large man, George Middleton has, in the last two months, begun to lose his hugeness. Ever a loud man, this noisiness of his has begun to fade.
At first, Charlotte worried that some melancholy she could not account for had overtaken her future husband’s mind. But she knows now that this is not the case. George Middleton is ill.
Being courageous, he has struggled to master his pain, but he has at last admitted to Charlotte that the agony in his gut is so intense as to make him feel faint and the Reverend Claire is privy to an additional suffering poor Mr. Middleton has not liked to mention to his future wife: he is plagued by an almost constant need to piss. He cannot lie in bed for an hour without the need to get up again. He can no longer go into company for fear that the room in which he finds himself be too far from a close-stool.
And so he has stayed at home in Norfolk, from where he has written letters to his “dear Daisy,” telling her every morning and afternoon how much he loves and esteems her, and how he longs for their wedding. But the moment has not yet come, cannot yet come, because George Middleton is a sick man and, in this state, he cannot marry.
Now, on this fine autumn day, word has come from him that his physician has diagnosed a stone in his bladder. This stone, he writes, might be the size of an apple and what is a whole apple to do in me but roll about as it will and so it brings me agony. Be gone! I tell it. Thou rotten apple, break and dissolve and pass through me and set me free.
But it has not yet broken nor dissolved and George Middleton’s life has been enslaved to it. And now, alone with his pain, waiting for the cutting, which will kill him or release him, he understands that the life he planned with Charlotte Claire may never happen. Even as he day-dreams of rearranging the rooms of his Norfolk house to suit her needs and fancies, he knows that such rearrangements may never come about, or if they come about that she may never see them; never entertain her friends in the small south-facing chamber that overlooks the rose garden, never see the name Mrs. George Middleton engraved upon a visiting card, never unbraid her hair in the soft candle-light of a shared bedroom.
And Charlotte and her father understand this, too: George Middleton may be going to die. How many men survive a cutting? They do not know.
The Reverend Claire wishes he were a physician and might perform the operation himself, so that in his safe hands would lie George Middleton’s life, so that he would be prevented from dying by the sheer force of James Claire’s will. As it is, all he can do is to pray. While he walks with Charlotte in the old familiar lane, the whimsical thought comes to him that the fairness of the autumn morning is such as to suggest that the great cloud they see on the horizon may not, after all, obscure their sun. “Charlotte,” he says, “I do feel a sudden certainty that George will not be taken from you.”
Charlotte says nothing. What loving father does not, in his eagerness for all to come to rights, offer hope as certainty? She tightens her grip on his arm, as if to say: “If he is going to die, then at least I am safe, at least I am protected by you. And for this I am grateful.”
After a while, as they reach that part of the lane where their feet rustle the fallen chestnut leaves, James Claire says: “I have been thinking what strange pathways our minds do travel in respect of all that is dear to us. It is so often the case that those matters which at first cause us some anguish, when or if they are reversed, put us deeper yet into misery, so that the first ‘anguish’ does not seem as anguish at all, but as something else, which is more akin to happiness.”
Charlotte smiles. It is well known among the congregation of the church of St. Benedict the Healer that the Reverend Claire sometimes finds himself tangled in some strange convolutions of speech. “What can you mean, precisely, Father?” she asks.
“Well,” he replies, “when I heard that you were to be married to George, why then I saw as my chiefest sorrow the fact that you would be gone from the family and that when I looked down from my pulpit I would not see your sweet countenance looking up at me. But now I see that this was no sorrow at all, compared with the possibility now before us, that you may not be married to George! For in the future, when you are George’s wife and in Norfolk with him and all is well, then I shall look down at the congregation and think, My beloved Charlotte is not here with me because she is with her husband and in her own house, and this is where I would wish her to be, and what I shall feel is happiness and no sorrow at all.”
Charlotte laughs. At her feet, she feels something hard against her toe and they pause in the walk as she bends down and picks up the first of the fallen chestnuts in their green husks, the “tree furniture” she so loved as a child and used to polish with oil.
On the return walk, as both start to feel a pleasant hunger for their lunch, James and Charlotte’s conversation turns towards Peter Claire.
A lively man by the name of Lionel Neve is now choirmaster at St. Benedict’s. Peter’s reply to his father’s offer of the post was affectionate and complimentary about the quality of the music in this church, yet please understand, it said, that my position here in Denmark prevents me from returning to England for some long while. The King has shown me great trust and favour and I must stay with him and fulfil my tasks, which are many, and not desert him.
“He was right to refuse,” says James Claire. “And I was wrong to ask this of him. What is a country church compared with a royal orchestra?”
“It is not that, Father,” says Charlotte, “it is that Peter has not found the thing he is searching for. It might be the music inside him, or it might be something else, but I do believe he knows that he would not find it here.”
The Reverend Claire nods. And he sees again that look in his son’s eyes, which is like a staring out to sea, not to the grey sea of England, but to a blue sea that is far off, that has about it a kind of infinity, a sea that no ship could ever quite cross over to come again within sight of land.
Lionel Neve, on the contrary, is a person who seems entirely content with each day’s modest curve. He darts about the place like a scurrying lapwing, with a tuft of black hair sticking up wildly in the middle of his bald pate. When he speaks about music, so distracted with enthusiasm and deli
ght does he sometimes become that flecks of spittle appear at his lips’ edge. His conducting is so energetic that it often lifts him clean off the ground in little jumps.
“Lionel was the right man,” says James Claire.
“Yes,” says Charlotte. “Lionel was the right man. What Peter is right for and what is right for him cannot be known yet.”
They are at the gate to the rectory garden and they open it and begin to walk across the lawn. Of the single piece of “tree furniture” she has kept, Charlotte says that she will shine it and not let it grow dull, so that it will be like a light kept burning for George Middleton. She adds that she knows that this is foolish, but she does not care.
LA PETIZIONE
While the summer lasted, the royal orchestra played most frequently in the garden or in the summer-house at Rosenborg, but now, as the nights begin to draw in, the King goes back to the Vinterstue and the musicians go back to the cellar.
King Christian has told Peter Claire why he must insist that they remain there. He understands that it is cold for them, that the light is poor, that they might imagine themselves forgotten, “but this is what I always intended,” he says, “that you should be forgotten. That you should be invisible! And then, when visiting princes and ambassadors arrive at Rosenborg and are seated in the Vinterstue, and lo and behold, there is music coming to their ears from they know not where, that is when I know how unique in the world this arrangement is. Because it makes people marvel! They look around them, asking themselves how it is that a pavan can float into the room from out of the bare walls. And then I see that, from that moment, they begin to think well of Danish ingenuity and so of Denmark. For this is precisely what people long for in a clamorous world.”
“What do they long for, Sir?”
“To be filled with a sense of wonder! Do you not long for it also, Mr. Claire?”
Peter Claire replies that he had not defined this longing in himself, but nevertheless supposes that it is there.