Music & Silence

by Rose Tremain

  At the same time I have taken the dangerous step of writing again to the English Lute player.

  Just before Christmas, some few days before Emilia found the boy Marcus, there comes another letter to her from Peter Claire and once again I was able to intercept it.

  I declare this Lutenist is more foolish and Soft than I had at first assumed. This Softness of his may mean he is too cowardly to effect my intructions with regard to the King’s Financial Papers, in which case all my Schemes fall to nothing. But I do so yearn for Otto, my beloved Stallion and Marvellous German man, I have resolved to try everything to come to him again.

  The letter that the Lutenist sends to Emilia is full of sighs.

  In the quiet of my room, I hear them. I imagine that is how England must be—full up with these sounds of Lamentation.

  Peter Claire asks Emilia why she does not answer his first letter and begs her to say that she still loves him, because without her love he may be beginning to “lose his Reason.” All lovers exaggerate and Peter Claire is no exception. Much to my vexation, he pretends that he and Emilia are innocent victims of the times and caught within what he calls “the Great Shadow of the King’s Separation from his Wife,” thus implying that if it were not for me, they could be entirely happy and free as larks. And this Distortion of Events helps me to harden my heart as I hide the letter. For I tell myself that I am saving Emilia from a man who may be somewhat Foolish and Sentimental, and not all that she believes him to be, and in any case what should she want with living in England with its exaggerated weather? Far better for her that she should stay with me here or come with me to Sweden and be part of the House I shall set up with Count Otto Ludwig of Salm. Perhaps there is some handsome cousin of the Count’s whom she might marry? And in this way, she and I shall never be parted.

  And so I compose a short note to Mr. Claire, reminding him of my previous instructions to obtain me “important papers showing how the King’s Finances do stand, so that I may know what Future I can expect.” I tell him that if these shall be quickly despatched to me, then I shall overlook his rudeness in pretending to ignore my first letter. I shall furthermore—at such a time—pass to Emilia those “words and sighs” intended for her, but if nothing comes to me directly from him, why then no letter of his will ever find its way into Emilia’s sight.

  In matters such as these it is best to be plain and concise. We are coming into a new year, 1630, when I shall be older than I was. I must play this card, for I cannot devise any other. Yet when I give my letter to the Bearer and see him place it in his bag, I do notice that my hand is shaking.

  The great matter of Emilia’s brother Marcus has taken a vexatious turn.

  When, on Christmas Eve, she rode home with him and together we outsmarted his Father and all the Brothers with our subterfuge of being absent from Boller, why then I was exceedingly merry and said to Emilia, “Everything shall come right now that we have found Marcus and made a Fool of your Father, and you shall see what a marvellous life we are going to have!”

  But this “marvellous life” is not yet come. I do not know what I had imagined in regard to this child, but I do not think my mind had anticipated what a great Trial he would be to me. In truth, I have almost begun to wonder whether I can continue to have him with us in the house, so Strange and Irritating do I find him.

  First of all, he refuses to speak. We do not yet know whether he was sent to the House of Correction or no, and whether it was from there that he escaped or whether he was never at Arhus at all. Though I question him on these matters—very patiently—he will only gaze at me in bewilderment with his mouth hanging foolishly open and then, without warning, turn from me and run away and hide in all the most extraordinary places, so that for hours on end we cannot find him.

  I tell Emilia that we must cure him of this Habit of Hiding, but she explains to me that it was from his stepmother Magdalena that he always hid and, until he is certain she is not here, he will continue with this practice. He is so small that he can hide in a drawer. Yesterday he concealed himself in an empty log basket. I never knew any person so ghostly.

  And he clings to Emilia. He almost cannot bear to be absent from her and I now repent me that I warned her not to let Marcus out of her Sight, for she is forever lifting him onto her lap and cradling him like a Baby. I say to her, “Emilia dear, call one of the Servants that Marcus may be entertained in the kitchen or in the scullery, so that we may play our cards uninterrupted,” and so she does this, but then Marcus refuses to go, breaking into tears and calling out, “Emilia! Emilia!” And so our Game is quite spoiled.

  And all this tries my Patience. I have never been able to love children. They are barbarous monkeys. They make no attempt to learn any of the Rules by which Man endeavours to live.

  But that I love the darkness of Boller as it is at present, I do declare I would open the doors and shutters again, and if Johann Tilsen arrived here searching for Marcus, I would be seriously tempted to GIVE HIM BACK. For I cannot bear to see Emilia transformed into a Little Mother, when formerly her only concern was my welfare and my happiness, and I think lovingly of the hours we spent in the garden at Rosenborg, doing our water-colour painting together, without any of the present distractions.

  Yet what can I do about Marcus, after all my promises to Emilia? I told her we would be a Contented Family. I said I would care for this boy “as my own Child.” I said he would be made happy at last. But he shows no sign of being happy. At night, he cries in his bed and Emilia must forever be getting up to comfort him, and under her grey eyes are appearing dark pouches because she is so deprived of her sleep. Though he says a few more words than at first (one of which is “Otto”) he comes no nearer normality in his speech or behaviour. He eats but little. He is afraid of me and will not take my hand. He pisses in his bed. And—worst of all—he has to be kept apart from Dorothea, for everyone can clearly see that a bitter Hatred of her appears in his eyes when he looks at her and I do declare he would like to smite her Dead with a fire-iron or kick her cradle down the stairs or set fire to her coverlet.

  I have told Emilia that a Nurse must be engaged for Marcus and his own room found for him at a greater distance from mine. She, being so attached to this little wraith of a Brother, weeps at my sternness and begs me to have patience. “Emilia, dear,” I tell her, “do not talk to me about Patience, for you know perfectly well that I have none.”

  FIGURE IN A LANDSCAPE

  The arrival of the new year, of the new decade, is celebrated in the streets of Copenhagen with flagrant pageantry.

  Some of this has been arranged—musical capers, performing animals, tumblers and stilt-walkers—and some of it merely arises from the people’s enthusiasm for the idea of newness, which in turn awakes in them an enthusiasm for liquor.

  In this state of intoxication they become clowns, magicians and acrobats. They daub their faces with flour and mud. They conjure whores out of virgins and drabs out of old maids. They try to dance on the patient rumps of their cart-horses. They take it into their heads that they can climb to the high pinnacles of the city and fly.

  And when the New Year carnival is over—or rather, when it is exhausted, for some obstinate minds admit of no “ending” to these wild revels—the streets are ugly with damage. The sick are dragged home. The dead are carried away. Broken tiles and chimney pots remain to silt up the already foul and choking gutters. And the citizens gaze out at the city and at the winter day, and crouch in their rooms and wonder why it is they are alive in this time and what it is that God conceals from them, and what it is that He will in time reveal.

  Their King is also staring at confusion. He stares inward and he stares out. And in both places he finds destitution.

  He longs for things he cannot name. Much of the time he translates this longing into a desire for food and drink. He orders his chefs to perfect new ways of cooking the wild boar he hunts in the forests at Frederiksborg. He drinks until he can no longer speak or stand and has
to be carried to his bed. His servants notice that his breath is foul and that his gums are bleeding. His gut is like a barrel filled with damp powder; explosions gather there and cannot come to any release, and the pain of this sometimes causes him to snivel like a boy.

  And in some ways he resembles the acrobat citizens—poised on a galloping horse or on a high gable, hesitating between the earth and the air, between opposing states and beliefs in violent opposition. One moment he is euphoric, optimistic, scribbling down ever more outlandish ideas for the salvation of his country, and the next cast into a gloom so deep that he prays to fall to the ground and die.

  At these times he realises with dismay that his life these days is so mired in the physical and temporal that he is no longer able to feel the presence in his soul of the divine. He mumbles prayers and knows them to be futile. God is elsewhere and hears nothing. More and more, King Christian looks to his angel to watch over him and assuage his sadness with sad songs.

  It is during this time of the New Year that a group of merchants from Hamburg arrive at Frederiksborg.

  They are some of the richest men in Germany, holding between them a proportion of their country’s wealth so far in excess of their rightful share that nobody can comprehend how such a fortune can be amassed by so few.

  King Christian does not even seek to comprehend it. It is immaterial to his plans. He has invited the Hamburg merchants to Frederiksborg and now he lays before them a proposition: they are to act as pawnbrokers. He informs them, as they assemble in the Great Hall, where Jens Ingemann and his orchestra play portions of Die Schlacht vor Pavia by Matthias Werrecore, that the object to be pawned is Iceland.

  No expression of surprise or agitation greets the King’s announcement. These soberly clad brokers have perfected the ability to assimilate the unexpected while betraying no feeling whatsoever; that is an essential part of their skill. They do not even glance at each other.

  “Iceland?” asks one. “With all rights and patents for mineral exploration?”

  “With what proportion of its coastal waters?” asks another.

  “For how long a term?” asks a third.

  King Christian takes up a paper he has prepared in German and orders that this be read out to the merchants. They sit perfectly still and silent on their chairs as they listen to its contents. The paper sets out a demand for the sum of one million dalers. In return for this, the group is to be given the land, its hills and mountains, its glaciers and valleys, its rivers and lakes and that girdle of ocean which surrounds it to a distance of twelve miles, for a period of ten years, or until such time as the King of Denmark shall redeem the pledge and return the sum with all interest that shall be accruing upon that distant day.

  The merchants rise as one, bow to the King and ask that they may retire to discuss “this interesting proposition.” The King nods. The men file out to an ante-room and Christian orders the musicians to cease playing.

  Peter Claire looks up. Nothing is heard, now, in the Great Hall but the retreating footsteps of the brokers. Nobody moves. The King sits motionless on his gilded throne with, at his feet, the two silver lions that appear to plead with him for their reprieve from the melting furnace. Jens Ingemann lays down his baton. Peter Claire notes that every face is grave. Only the German viol player, Krenze, is laughing silently.

  Informed that his contract for the pawning of Iceland lacks sufficient detail and must be redrawn according to German law, King Christian is now nevertheless sure that the transaction will be completed and that the one million dalers requested will soon be his.

  At first he feels exhilaration and a sense of wonder at his own daring. Why did he not think of such a plan before? Now, with this large sum of money, the new expedition to the Numedal can be financed, more whaling ships commissioned, more manufactories founded, more alms paid to the B0mehus, more streets and highways and fortifications repaired, more trading missions sent out to the New World. In short, the restoration of Denmark can now begin. Within a year he will once again reign over a prosperous nation.

  He dreams of this time to come, when the flesh of the nobility is encased in whalebone, when the streets of Copenhagen are orderly and clean, when the silver from the Isfoss arrives at last. And then these dreams vanish without warning and are replaced by a new realisation: he imagined Iceland, where he has never set foot, as an almost empty landscape, and in this he is of course mistaken. There is no mention of the people of Iceland in the Hamburg document, yet people are surely there in considerable numbers, just as they are there in the valley of the Numedal. And what will happen to them when their country falls into the hands of the brokers? How will everything be altered?

  He begins to set out a new clause, to be included in the agreement, which seeks to protect the homes of the Icelanders, their possessions, their fledgeling enterprises, their sea defences, their fishing fleets, but the wording—if it is not to put in jeopardy the dalers—is almost impossible to phrase and the King soon becomes aware of a returning darkness falling across his mind, like a shadow across the paper on which he writes.

  He lays down his pen and calls for wine. He drinks until he falls asleep in his chair. The paper falls to the floor.

  King Christian discovers himself in a dream of Iceland, where the sky is black above a shining white glacier and from all the surrounding hills the wolves are calling.

  He is wearing snow-shoes.

  His mission is to trudge on, until the glacier is crossed and the hills are reached. The wind howls in his head and his snow-shoes begin to split and fall apart.

  And then he notices a figure ahead of him, small in the white expanse, alone like him, but walking towards him. And this sighting of the figure comforts and reassures him. They will meet and exchange a greeting. The stranger will tell him how to mend his shoes. He will share with him the thimble of schnapps he keeps in his coat pocket against the cold . . .

  On he goes.

  On and on.

  Darkness begins to fall across the snow and the figure is almost lost to his sight.

  Now, the King begins to call to the stranger, who should be near him by now, but no answering call comes. And it is at this moment that he understands who it is.

  It is Bror Brorson.

  Bror Brorson did not die at Lutter. Everything that was witnessed there and which has never been forgotten is now contradicted by the unalterable fact that Bror is alive and walking through Iceland under a black sky, and in moments he will appear by his side and the two men will embrace.

  The King increases his pace. He is trying to run, even as his snow-shoes disintegrate further and splinters of wood pierce the snow crust and make him trip and almost fall. “Bror!” he calls louder. “Bror!”

  But it is dark, too dark to see anything. And now a new understanding dawns in the King’s exhausted mind: Bror Brorson was not walking towards him; he was walking away from him. And his pace is faster, was always faster and will always be, because Bror was a strong, athletic man, because his snow-shoes are not broken . . .

  No matter if Christian walks all night, Bror will always be ahead of him and always unreachable.

  The King wakes and sends for Peter Claire.

  He describes the dream to him and tells him that, just before he woke, he heard Bror’s voice saying to him: “Everything dear to us that dies, dies a second time.”

  “What does that mean?’’ he asks the lutenist. “Tell me what it means.”

  Peter Claire replies that he does not know, that it might refer only to memory, or it might suggest that man, in his search for love, will always make the same mistakes and therefore suffer the same derelictions.

  The King nods and looks up. “I am tired of love,” he says.

  He shifts his heavy body in the chair, resumes his drinking, gulping the wine as though his thirst were unquenchable.

  Peter Claire asks the King if he should play something, but the King ignores this and says in a low voice: “I have lost all sense of the divin
ity in things. When I was young, I used to feel it every-where—even in my own handwriting. Now it is everywhere absent.”

  Servants have banked up the fire and the room is warm, almost hot. Seed pearls of sweat appear on the King’s forehead and he wipes them away with his sleeve. Peter Claire says nothing, only tries to decide what he should play if he is requested to.

  “We had your Mr. Dowland at court,” the King says after a while. “And he was a man so full of his own importance that this great importance weighed him down and made him miserable. He made nothing but enemies here. Yet his music was sublime, was it not?”

  “Yes,” replies Peter Claire.

  “Sometimes I used to talk to him, late at night, as I am talking to you. I was trying to discover the point at which he let his own importance be subsumed beneath the notes he heard in his mind.”

  “And did you discover it?”

  “No. And yet it had to occur, did it not, that surrender, or the music would not have had that degree of perfection?”

  “Yes. It had to occur.”

  “But I could not gauge it. I could not see it. Dowland was always and ever vengeful and jealous and puffed up. And only once did he say something to me which showed me a different side of him, and it comes to me now. He said that man spends days and nights and years of his life asking the question ‘How may I be brought to the divine?’; yet all musicians instinctively know the answer: they are brought to the divine through their music—for this is its sole purpose. Its sole purpose! What do you say to that, Mr. Claire?”