“It might be,” he suggested “that Count Philip sent no message and received none. It might be that he meant to burn his papers and slip out of Hanover as secretly as he slipped in.”
“Well?” Clara von Platen asked with a smile.
“Would it not be well,” he asked “to make sure that a summons to the Palace did reach him?”
“From the Princess?”
“Yes.”
“A forged letter?”
Monsieur de la Cittardie did not like these frank and uncompromising phrases. He preferred equivocations and stratagems and hints.
“Something of that kind,” he answered uncomfortably.
Clara von Platen shook her head with decision.
“I thought of it. But there’s no greater folly than to invent when nature will do your work for you. It does it so much better. The Electress is at Herrenhausen. The Elector is ailing and keeps his bed. The Prince is at Berlin. The children are at Celle. There is no Court. The Princess had the Leine Schloss to herself. Of course she will write. Of course the little Philip will obey,” and her hands closed tight so that her finger nails bit into her palms.
Monsieur de la Cittardie stood up and bowed.
“There is a small circumstance, Countess, which intrigues me,” he said.
“Indeed?”
“It was observed at Dresden that Count Philip carried about with him, as though he feared lest it should ever be out of his sight, a small yellow casket of wood tied up with a ribbon.”
Madame von Platen looked up with a sharp interest.
“Did you yourself see it?”
“Often.”
“Did you handle it?” she asked with a sly laugh.
“I had never the chance,” replied Monsieur de la Cittardie. “But it looked as if it might hold letters.”
Clara von Platen nodded her head.
“A yellow casket — tied up with a ribbon. I thank you”; and as he bent his head and kissed her hand, she added warmly, “There will be some new appointments to complement His Highness’s new dignities. An additional Chamberlain will be wanted. Whatever poor influence I have, Monsieur de la Cittardie, I hold at the service of my friends.”
Monsieur de la Cittardie walked upon air back to his meagre lodging in the city. Clara von Platen stayed along in her great reception room with its glass chandeliers and its golden draperies. Was there a single flaw in her scheme of revenge? One possible outlet from the net? One miscalculation? There had been a miscalculation but Clara was not aware of it and indeed it did not modify the event. She sat adding up the score item by item against the two lovers, until the summer morning poured into the room and the birds sang upon the lawn. Sophia Dorothea and Königsmark. Twenty-four hours and they would have paid their bill in full.
XXXII. THE NIGHT OF JULY 1ST, 1694:
CLARA VON PLATEN
MADAME VON PLATEN had never felt either the ecstasy or the humility of a great love but she knew better than Monsieur de la Cittardie how great lovers behaved. At eight o’clock of the same morning, the first of July, Eleonore von Knesebeck in the dress of a servant with a hood drawn forward over her head, left a letter at Königsmark’s house and with a glance over this shoulder and another over that, took a roundabout way back to the Leine Schloss. The news was brought to Clara von Platen at Monplaisir by one of Heinrich Muller’s watchmen a quarter of an hour afterwards. Madame von Platen ordered her coach and drove in to her town house in the Schmiede Strasse. Her arrangements were complete, and she had all of the long day in front of her with nothing whatever to do except to rehearse again and again delightedly the pitiless expiation with which the dark hours of the night were to provide her. She was so occupied with that rehearsal and she so tingled with pleasure from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot that the shadows of the evening took her by surprise.
Philip, though he too stayed at home, was busier. This was to be his final day in Hanover. The Opera house, the Parade ground, the Assembly Rooms, the horn-beam hedges of Herrenhausen, its cascades, and its famous fountain — he had seen the last of them. But in the course of five years such a heap of dusty papers had accumulated in his lodging as would occupy the tidiest householder for a week. Philip did his best with them. There were old bills paid to be collected into one heap, old bills unpaid into another, letters from business agents and lovelorn ladies to be destroyed, letters to be written to his brother-in-law Count Lewenhaupt for the forwarding of such of his possessions here as he wished to retain and for the disposal of the rest. Then there were orders to be given to his staff. A travelling carriage without any indication upon its panels, and with his four best horses harnessed in the shafts was to be in waiting before eight o’clock in the morning at the corner of the Marktplatz and the Brunswick Road. His personal servant would be on the box and his luggage would be in the boot. Philip was writing these instructions down when he was told that a visitor waited upon him below.
“A visitor?” cried Philip.
He had slipped into Hanover at a late hour the night before. Who knew of his return?
“I expect no one,” he said.
“It is a Mr Craston of the English Embassy,” his servant replied.
“Anthony Craston,” Philip repeated sullenly.
Anthony Craston had tried to push himself forward in the way between Philip and the Princess. Anthony Craston had denied him, years before that occurrence, when he had saved his brother from the hangman and his family from disgrace. Anthony Craston, once his dearest friend, was now a bitter enemy. And Anthony Craston knew that he was in Hanover. How did he know? And why did he force his company upon him? A spy perhaps? Very likely Clara von Platen had enlisted him. Philip thought it prudent to make sure.
“Let him up,” he said.
Philip was sitting at his writing table when Craston was shown into the room. He was as cold and aloof as on that day when Anthony burst into his study at Monsieur Faubert’s Academy, and Anthony was just as nervous and troubled.
“How did you know I was here?” Philip asked abruptly.
“I passed through this street last night. There were lights moving across some of the windows. .It was late. I thought it likely that you had returned,” said Craston.
Philip drew a head upon the sheet of paper under his hand. He was not really aware that he was drawing it. A note of remorse had inflected Craston’s sentences and Philip was trying to adjust its value.
“Did Judas speak with that bitter note of self-reproach after his treachery? Had Craston somehow betrayed him?” he asked himself; and the head which came to life on the sheet of paper was the strong aquiline bearded face of a Jew.
“You saw the lights in my windows late last night?”
“Yes.”
“It is now six o’clock in the evening.”
“Yes.”
Philip laughed scornfully.
“You have not been idle all the day, I take it,” he said. He was, indeed, expecting Platen’s police to enter upon Craston’s heels. A charge of treason would be brought against him. Bernstorff had used his power at Celle with less justification than Platen had now in Hanover. And Philip, hemmed in by his sudden poverty, was just as helpless now as he had been in the Castle Chapel. “You have made your arrangements, I suppose?”
“As completely as I could,” Craston answered ruefully. He did not notice the harsh irony of Philip’s voice. He was too occupied with the recollection of a shameful hour in Bernstorff’s office.
“I had not much time,” he continued “I had to be careful, besides, of the reason I gave for borrowing. I had not enough myself to be of much help.”
As he spoke Craston lifted from a big pocket in the flap of his coat a heavy canvas bag and placed it on the writing table in front of Philip.
Philip thrust his chair back in his astonishment and the legs grated on the floor.
“Money?” he said, staring at Craston.
“Two hundred and fifty pistoles,” Anthony answered. “It’s a
ll in gold. It will take you into Sweden — or wherever you wish to go. I’m not asking any questions.”
Philip rose to his feet. He touched the bag as though he doubted its existence.
“But why?” he asked. “You of all people? Why?”
He was not aware that on the night when he had rowed across the Aller River and climbed the slope above the French garden to his mistress’s room, there had been someone who watched and the next day talked. He only recollected that here in Hanover he and Anthony Craston had quarrelled bitterly and that since that day there had never been more between them than the most formal greeting.
“There was a time when we were friends — Philip,” said Craston awkwardly. “It is said that you are hard pressed for money. I know that you are in danger here. I hope that you’ll take it.”
Philip was moved by the revulsion of his feelings and for a moment he could not speak. Then he put out his hand and all the coldness had gone from his face.
“Thank you, Anthony,” he said and Craston wrung his hand warmly and fled from the room.
Philip smiled with a wistful recollection of those past untroubled days at Monsieur Faubert’s Academy in the Haymarket and told his servant to pack the bag in one of his portmanteaus. It was quite true that he was pressed for ready money and the two hundred and fifty pistoles reached him at their most serviceable moment. But the unexpected revival of an old friendship moved him more than the actual gift and he took heart from it as from a promise of excellent augury.
He took his supper at eight o’clock and seasoned it with the pleasant fancy that this was the last time in his life when he would eat it alone. This night too was to be the last night when he must creep secretly into the Leine Palace to visit his adored mistress. With a flourish of defiance he arrayed himself for the visit as delicately as a bride for her bridal. He had so often slunk in with the grime of a long journey on his face and hands and the rough clothes of a peasant on his body. He was minded on this night which was in truth not the night at all but a golden dawn to show her every circumstance of honour.
He put on a fine shirt of batiste with lace ruffles at the breast and the wrists. He tied about his throat a cravat of white satin in a great triple bow and drew carefully over it the lace- edged fall of a cambric steinkirk. He dressed himself in a suit of flesh-coloured velvet with diamond buttons, silk stockings of the same shade clocked with gold, and red-heeled shoes fastened with big diamond buckles. He combed out the tangles of his thick brown hair till it hung in orderly ripples to his shoulders, but — alas for him! — he only girded his waist with a fragile dress sword, a pretty toy with a gold hilt and a white scabbard of cordovan leather. He slung about his shoulders a white cloak with a hood and walking down his garden to the water’s edge stepped into a flat-bottomed skiff moored against the bank.
The heat of the day had brought up a white mist which lay low upon the river and in his boat gliding noiselessly with the stream he passed like a wraith. Once it seemed to him that he heard a faint splash of oars near to him, as though someone else was out upon a secret adventure like his own. But he saw no one, and no one hailed him and in a few seconds the sound died away. He passed under the bridge and guided the skiff to the stone steps which led up to the small private door below Sophia Dorothea’s apartment. Philip made fast the skiff to an iron ring bolted in the stone. A moon in her first quarter lit the upper storeys of the Palace with a silver radiance, but here the river, the steps, and even the door to which they led were still as hidden below the mist as the world is when looked down upon at daybreak from an Alpine peak. Philip left his cloak behind him in the boat. Though the mist might have vanished, the moon would have set before he needed it again. He ran up the steps. The door gave as he turned the handle. He went in and closed the door behind him. In front of him the narrow staircase rose steeply, dimly lit by a lamp upon a bracket just beyond the bend. To his right a long straight corridor ran to the offices on the ground floor. This too was faintly lit by a chain of small lamps. Königsmark stood by the door and listened. Not a sound reached his ears. He might have been standing in some ancient Palace of dead Kings. But above white arms and tender lips and the warm slow smile of love most lovely awaited him. He want up the stairs quickly, stealthily, two steps at a time and his heart beating like a boy’s upon its first adventure.
But whilst Philip was fastening his skiff to the ring-bolt, another boat was driven ashore at the boot of the Beginen Tower; and whilst Philip hurried up the dim staircase to the apartment of the Princess, a man was racing as fast as his feet could carry him to the house of Madame von Platen on the Schmiede Strasse. When he reached the door, he saw a carriage drawn up at the kerb and the coachman ready upon the box.
The man who ran was Heinrich Muller. Since nightfall he had kept the river watch. The river was the most secret approach and therefore the most likely. He was admitted to the house without question. He burst into the parlour unannounced.
“Madame, he is in the Palace,” Muller cried, his features working, his stolidity all lost in excitement.
“By what door?”
“The little postern on the water.”
“Keep watch on it, good Muller.”
“Have no fear.”
Madame von Platen was out in the Schmiede Strasse and stepping into her carriage. Muller shut the door, the coachman had his orders and drove off without a word. Muller went back to his boat under the Tower and pushed out again into the stream. He was doing more than serving his master and his master’s friends tonight. Heinrich Muller had a grudge of his own to satisfy. One night a fine young gentleman had recoiled from him with a cry of terror and in his dull way he had enjoyed it. On a morning afterwards the same young gentleman had stared him down with a grin of derision and, again in his dull way, he could not forgive it. The mist still hung low over the water. He let his boat glide down to the Palace steps, unfastened Philip’s skiff from the iron ring and towed it back behind him up the stream. He dropped the blades of his sculls into the water very cautiously. No one was on the watch. When he was opposite to the garden of Königsmark’s house, he drew into the bank and moored the skiff at the spot where it had lain all the afternoon. It would be cold before his watch was ended. With a chuckle of amusement he took the white cloak out of the skiff and set it at his feet. Then he rowed into the middle of the stream and lay upon his oars just above the bridge.
Meanwhile Madame von Platen drove through the Marktplatz and down the Grupenstrasse to the great pillared entrance to the Leine Palace. It was eleven o’clock at night but Clara von Platen’s comings and goings were not challenged at the Leine Palace at any hour. She hurried up the grand staircase to the Elector’s apartment. Outside the great double doors two halberdiers stood sentinel. They saluted her and she passed into an ante-room where a Lieutenant of the Guard, his coat loosened and his heavy sword on a table beside him, drowsed in a chair. He rose to his feet and with a bow opened an inner door. In the room beyond, a valet and a nurse were on duty.
“His Highness is sleeping, my Lady,” said the nurse.
“He must be wakened.”
Two doors led out of this room on opposite sides. Madame von Platen walked straight to the door on the left hand and opened it gently.
Followed by the nurse she passed into a bedroom. A small lamp under a shade shed a dim light. In a great four-post bed covered in with heavy curtains the Elector lay in an uneasy sleep. Clara von Platen drew the curtains aside and with a gesture dismissed the nurse. When the door was closed, she bent over the Elector and shook him gently by the shoulder.
“Ernst!” she called in a low urgent voice. “Ernst! You must wake up.”
Ernst Augustus awoke. He looked at his mistress for a moment without recognition. Then he smiled: “You, Clara?”
He stretched out a hand, patted her arm and turned on his side. In another second he would have been asleep again. But Clara von Platen was pressed for time. She shook his shoulder again.
“
Ernst, you must listen! Philip von Königsmark is in the Palace.”
Ernst Augustus was awake now. But he was an old and ailing man and his mind sluggish.
“He has right of entry. He is my Colonel of Guards.”
“But he’s in the rooms of the Princess.”
The Elector started upon his elbow. A little gilt clock stood on a table by the bed. He looked at it quickly.
“At this hour?”
“He’s alone with her.”
Clara von Platen might have been purity’s only prop in an obscene world, she spoke with so virtuous an indignation. The old Duke looked at her fixedly. He shrank nowadays from swift action. Second thoughts and even third ones were best and the night was a hasty councillor. Moreover Clara von Platen had always been jealous of Sophia Dorothea, jealous of her youth, of her beauty, of her jewels — had always been forward to set him against his daughter-in-law with stories of her indiscretions, her contemptuous epigrams, her intrigue with Königsmark — above all her intrigue with Königsmark.
“Are you sure of this?” he asked sternly. With his night cap half pushed back from his bald head, his heavy face shining with perspiration and his gross corpulent body thrusting up the bed clothes, he had yet enough of dignity to compel a truthful answer from his visitor.
But Clara von Platen had tonight no need to embroider.
“Philip Königsmark arrived secretly from Dresden late last night. Today Eleonore von Knesebeck brought him a letter. Tonight he rowed from his garden in a boat to the Palace steps. The little private door upon the river was open. He went in by it.”
“He shall be arrested tomorrow.”
“And the talk, the scandal!” cried Clara von Platen.
She was prepared for the Duke’s hesitation. She had ready the one argument which would persuade him. “Before noon all Hanover will have the story on its lips. But take him tonight quietly, as he leaves the Princess’ apartment, no one need know one word more than they know already. Lend me four of your halberdiers! Order the Captain of the Guard to lock all the Palace doors!”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 723