The old man leaned towards her. Though there was no one in the room but those two, he subdued his voice to a whisper.
“Clara, what would you do?”
“Seize him! Arrest him! Hold him imprisoned here in the Palace, until you have decided upon his punishment.”
Ernst Augustus pushed out his heavy lower lip and never took his eyes from his mistress’s face.
“That is all?”
Was there a note of disappointment in his voice? Clara von Platen made a shift to hear one. She nodded her head at him eagerly.
“That is all.”
“You promise me secrecy.”
“Yes.”
“And no...” he lowered his voice until it was no more than a breath “no execution.”
Clara von Platen held up her hands in horror at the thought that she should take so grim an authority upon herself. Ernst Augustus said: “Will you call the Lieutenant of the Guard?”
Madame von Platen was in the ante-room the next moment. She had wasted no time in her interview with the Duke. But there was no time to waste. Lovers’ meetings after long absences might, to be sure, seem miserably short to them and yet be surprisingly long if measured by the clock. But there was no average of time to be assigned to them. Lovers were unaccountable people. They quarrelled for the mere spice of quarrelling, they abandoned each other eternally today for the thrill of tomorrow’s reconciliation.
“If you are dealing with people in love, you must allow yourself wide margins.” Clara von Platen reckoned and she was abrupt with the Lieutenant of the Guard.
“His Highness wants you.”
The Lieutenant buttoned his coat and replaced his sword in his belt.
“I will follow you, Madame.”
His Highness was almost as abrupt. He had told Clara the conditions on which he lent her his authority. He had been quite explicit — brief but quite explicit — and if she overrode them the blame was not his.
“Lieutenant Hansen,” he said, “a crime has been committed. An arrest must be made. You will take your orders tonight from Madame von Platen and you will be as secret as the dead.”
Lieutenant Hansen saluted and turned upon his heels.
“I am at your command, Madame,” he said and he and Clara von Platen went out of the room.
The Elector fell back upon his pillows. He had cherished a liking for Sophia Dorothea. She was young and lovely and of a blithe spirit and certainly George Louis had treated her abominably. But she had taken her revenge too flamboyantly and Königsmark — well he had liked Philip Königsmark too — Philip Königsmark had been a distinction to Hanover — but he was dangerous now — dangerous to the good name of the House of Brunswick-Lüneberg. He must disappear or there would be worse to come.
Clara von Platen led the way out of the Elector’s apartment and along a corridor to the great Rittersaal with the banners of the Knights projecting side by side from the walls. A single lamp lit dimly a small space before the great hearth. Beyond the room was cold and empty and full of shadows. The high roof was lost in darkness, the banners swinging beneath it with every breath of air, seemed not so much the emblems of the Knights as the pale ghosts of Knights who had died. The back of the fireplace yawned black as a cavern and about the hearth lay a litter of bricks and trowels and mortar ready for mixing. A new heavy iron fire plate engraved with the Elector’s arms was propped against the side of the chimney.
A sly smile flickered over Clara von Platen’s face as she saw these preparations. But she spoke as though she was puzzled and a little put out.
“I didn’t know these repairs were being done,” she said doubtfully.
“They were necessary,” said Hansen. “The wall was broken through this morning. It was crumbling. There is a great cavity behind and a possibility of a fire.”
Clara von Platen bent down and stared into the hollow. It was large and black as a coffin. And again she smiled. But the face she showed to Lieutenant Hansen was disturbed.
“You will not be disturbed, Countess,” said Lieutenant Hansen. “No work will be done here till tomorrow.”
“You are sure of that?” she insisted. “You heard what His Highness said? What happens in the Palace tonight must never be known by a soul outside these walls.”
She saw Lieutenant Hansen’s face grow pale. He was a young man, little more than a boy and this woman with the cruel face ghastly beneath its mask of paint, and the fierce restless eyes searching the dark corners of the great hall, lest anyone should be hidden there, daunted him.
“I am quite sure,” he replied and the quick nods of the head and the grin with which she welcomed his answer added abhorrence to his fear. Smiling and nodding her head, she was like an old witch with the palsy. His stomach turned over as she laid her hand upon his sleeve. He felt that her touch fouled him like that of some unclean beast born in the slime before man was.
“I want every door leading out of the Palace locked and the key removed from the lock,” she said.
“I’ll bring you the keys,” said the Lieutenant.
“It must be done quickly and quietly.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“There’s a small door opening on the river.”
“I’ll begin with it, Madame.”
The Lieutenant turned away upon his errand, but Madame von Platen stopped him.
“Wait! As soon as the doors are locked I want all the lamps in the corridors and the public rooms extinguished.”
“The Palace is to be in darkness?”
“Complete darkness.”
“As you will,” said the Lieutenant doubtfully. “But the man to be arrested may suspect.”
“It is better that he should suspect than escape,” said Clara von Platen. “Choose four men from the guard to help you, amongst them one Luders.”
“Luders?” Hanson asked. He repeated the name again. “Luders?”
“Yes,” said Clara von Platen impatiently. “Choose four men you are sure of, but one of them Luders.”
“If he is on duty here tonight,” said Hansen.
Lieutenant Hansen was a young officer who took a pride in knowing as much as he could discover of the men he commanded. But Luders? He could not fit a face to the name.
“He is,” said Clara von Platen shortly. “When the doors are locked and the lights out bring the four to me here!”
Lieutenant Hansen saluted. He was generous enough to dislike his task intensely. There was too much of the ambush and the trap for his taste. He had moreover an inkling as to the man for whom the ambush was set. But he had his orders and he went off without delay to carry them out.
There were few corners of the Leine Palace with which Clara von Platen was not familiar. She could have found her way blindfold from the still-room to the servants’ attics. And long before Lieutenant Hansen had completed his silent work, she was back in the Rittersaal with a silver kettle, a spirit lamp, cloves and spices and a jar of strong wine. When Hansen returned with the four soldiers treading softly behind him, she was already mulling the wine in the kettle.
“These are the men, Countess,” said Hansen in a low voice. “Luders, Bushmann, Marten, Sachs.”
Clara von Platen looked them over by the dim light of the single lamp. They were all four, men of brawn and muscle, burly, broad-shouldered fellows armed with swords. Clara von Platen smiled running her tongue over her lips. The modish Philip with his slender form and beautiful face would have a rough awakening when he stumbled, warm from the embraces of his passionate mistress, into the arms of these lusty fellows.
“They know their orders?” she asked.
“To obey you without question,” Hansen replied.
“And after they have obeyed me?”
“To hold their tongues.”
Clara von Platen heard the reluctance in the young Lieutenant’s voice and realised his repugnance from her midnight ambuscade. But she shrugged her shoulders and uttered a callous little laugh. Of what account was his disap
proval? He was an impudent boy and she would remember to break him in the morning.
“That will do then, Lieutenant. You have other duties,” she said and with the ghost of a bow he turned on his heel and made his way back through the dark corridors to the Elector’s ante- room.
Madame von Platen called softly to the four men.
“Come near to me!”
They gathered about her with something of young Hansen’s reluctance, twice his age though every man of them was. They were all peasant-born, and in this vast shadowy room the woman with her piercing eyes and her paint-plastered face had the look of a goblin, malevolent and older than nature itself.
“You are Luders,” she said to the biggest of them all.
“Yes, Madame.”
“Show me your sword,” and as the stretched it out towards her, her fingers felt the strong blade with a horrible amorous touch whilst a long low hiss issued from her lips. Luders seemed to hear the sword cutting through flesh, and hardened as he was by a hundred battles, he shivered.
Clara von Platen looked at his face sharply.
“A traitor will come this way tonight. You are to arrest him. If he resists, strike without fear. Fling him to the ground and bind him hand and foot. I want his confession before he dies.”
She made them each drink a cup of the strong mulled wine.
“There shall be another brew to hearten you if he keeps us waiting,” she said with a gruff laugh. But as they passed the cup about, not one of the four could find a laugh to answer hers.
“Now, come with me.”
She led them from the Knights’ Hall to the lobby by which they had entered. At the end of the lobby on the left hand, two great doors stood open. Beyond them the Palace stretched black and silent and empty, room after room, a Palace of the Dead. Luders and Marten she placed on each side of the doorway.
“You will not move until the traitor has passed you,” she ordered.
Opposite to the entrance to the Rittersaal a fireplace was built and a great chimney stood out from the wall. In the angle of that chimney, hidden from the entrance into the lobby, she set the two remaining soldiers.
The lamp was still burning in the Hall of the Knights, and enough light came from it through the open doorway to show the two soldiers like statues beside the door; and to shine on the white faces of the two in the angle of the chimney. Those two, at all events, were still uneasy and afraid. Clara von Platen rallied them impatiently.
“Are you children?” she cried. “You are four to one and there’s not a man amongst you but could with his own hands break that one across his knee.”
Clara had forgotten the soldier who had won a name for gallantry and courage on the battlefields of Flanders and Morea. She was remembering only the silken courtier with the winning smile and the dark, brilliant eyes, “The little Philip” who had once begged Bernstorff for mercy on his knees.
“You have nothing to fear. Wait without a word, without a movement till the moment comes. Then strike and strike hard!”
She left them and went back into the Rittersaal. She relit the spirit lamp and then extinguished the candles burning in a sconce against the wall. There was no light now in the corridors of the Leine Palace but that one faint blue flickering flame over which Clara von Platen bent as she heated her brew of wine. And the silence was as deep as the darkness. Clara listened and the lines on her face grew sharper and her eyes more anxious. There was no outlet which she had forgotten. “He must come this way,” she assured herself. “He must!” But the minutes passed. Once a floor- board creaked. “It will be Philip,” she whispered with a sigh of delight. Once the panel of a wall cracked like a pistol shot. “He has killed himself,” she thought with despair that her vengeance was thwarted. Then again came silence — hours of it, years of it creeping one after the other like mutes at a funeral — whilst voices whispered in her ears and the ghosts of men crept about her. At last the sound for which she waited came. In the distance someone stumbled against a chair.
XXXIII. THE NIGHT OF JULY 1ST:
PHILIP’S APOLOGY
THERE COULD NOT have been a pair of lovers more carefree than were Count Tercis and his Leonisse upon that first night of July. Philip ran up the stairs, a boy again. Eleonore von Knesebeck was on the watch in the corridor, Sophia Dorothea within her little drawing-room with its walls of pale blue and its golden hangings — was she waiting for the moment when the page would be released from his duties and the rehearsal of Iphigenia begin? She stood with shining eyes and parted lips and the years had fallen away from her. She knew Philip was at the door before she heard his step. There was a sudden mist before her eyes and he came through it to her arms with the light of the new dawn upon his face.
“Dearest, I love you.”
There was no music in the world for her which could match the passion in his voice. She pressed her face against his breast, her breath breaking from her throbbing heart in little sobs of happiness. He tried to lift up her chin with his hand.
“No!” she whispered and he kissed her hair. There were small white carnations caught in its dark wealth.
“They are like stars shining in an ebony sky,” said Philip.
“A poet!” she cried. She stood away from him holding his hands, her cheeks dimpling and her dark eyes bright with laughter.
“To be sure,” he answered stoutly. “But blame yourself sweetheart! Who made me one but you? Even on the march in Flanders — have you forgotten?”
For a moment her eyes were veiled.
“Forgotten,” and a wistful smile made her lips tender. She was living again those long anxious days when any post might bring her news that her lover had fallen at the head of his battalion or in some wild unnecessary exploit for which he had volunteered. She recited a verse which he had sent to her before the battle of Steinkirk,
“La beauté qui le jour se couvre
Pendant la nuit ne cashe rien
Les yeux fermés je vis un bien
Qui disparaît quand on les ouvre.
Dieu pour soulager mon amour
Faites que je dorme toujours!”
It was not verse which could challenge the pre-eminence of Monsieur Racine and its grammar was faulty as a gentleman’s should be, but Sophia Dorothea spoke it from a full heart, her eyes upon her lover; and her voice gave a melody to its faltering rhythm and a yearning to the meaning of its words which would have made it enchanting to a Professor of Poetry.
“I used to cry myself to sleep whilst repeating those lines,” she said and she threw back her head. “To think that those woeful days are gone forever! A miracle, Philip! You will never again have to wait for sleep and a dream before you see me. You will only have to stretch out a hand. I shall be at your side.
“Sophia!” he cried and caught her close to him. “The letter! You must show it to me, so that I too can be sure. The letter, sweetheart! Our passport to Arcadia.”
Sophia set the palms of her hands against his breast and laughing tried to push him back.
“And how shall I show you the letter, sir, if you hold me so?”
He let her go and opening a drawer in her writing table, she brought out a letter. They sat down together on a couch, he with his arm about her waist and she leaning her cool cheek against his and held the letter between them.
“It was the most wonderful thing,” said Sophia. “There was I sent back by my father with a flick on the ear like a truant child to school, and there was my dear love in Dresden twisting round and round like a bear in a pit — and suddenly the letter. Read!”
The letter was from old Ulrich, Duke of Wolfenbüttel, the monkey. News had come to him which caused him great distress. He had always loved his little Sophy —
“And that’s true,” said Sophia Dorothea. “He was a darling to me.”
His little Sophy had only to make her escape to Brunswick. He would never give her up. She could make her home in his Duchy and secure a divorce from George Louis and then marry again acc
ording to the message of her own heart. Ulrich von Wolfenbüttel put his offer of service all down to the account of his love for his little Sophy; and no doubt that love was its chief incentive. But he had never forgiven George William of Celle for his cavalier treatment of himself and his son at the time of Sophia Dorothea’s betrothal to George Louis. And he was always pleased to put a spoke in the wheel of Ernst Augustus’s chariot, especially since Ernst Augustus had been granted the Electoral Hat. He had thus three reasons for his letter. But the two lovers were not concerned with his reasons. Here was their passport to Arcadia fluttering down from the Heavens to their feet.
“Tomorrow then at eight at the corner of the market-place,” said Philip.
“We drive straight to Brunswick?”
“We should be there by nightfall.”
“And whilst I seek my divorce, you will go to Sweden and make your peace with the King.”
“When I have left the service of Hanover, that will not be so difficult,” said Philip.
There was not a flaw, it seemed, in that smooth sunlit sea upon which they were to embark at eight o’clock tomorrow morning for the Islands of the Blest. Yet when the Princess had replaced the letter in her drawer and turned back to Philip, she saw that the expression of his face had quite changed. The confidence and the happiness had passed from it. It was grave — nay troubled and Sophia’s heart sank within her breast. She had a foreboding that once more and for the hundredth time all the mass of their dreams and hopes was poised upon the tiniest fragile point. A boulder fixed on the crest of a ridge by the thinnest pin of rock; the rising sun is enough to split it off and it goes thundering down the precipice, starting a whole avalanche of ice and stone to carry destruction in its train. Philip was sitting with his eyes set upon the wall in front of him conning over something that must be said, forcing himself to meet a moment long foreseen and dreadful.
Sophia Dorothea set herself quietly at his side.
“Tell me, dear heart.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 724