The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  It didn’t burn. It wasn’t pillaged. It simply died of grief, and then it was no more. It was as if that infinitely happy summer had infected the castle with the plague; the castle belonged to Caroline Mathilde and to Struensee, and when catastrophe struck, no one wanted to set foot on that soil again, filled as it was with the contagion of sin.

  By 1774 all work at the castle had ceased; by the turn of the century its decline was complete. And when the palace of Christiansborg burned, it was decided to tear down Hirschholm and use the materials to rebuild Christiansborg. Everything was removed. The “sumptuous and tastefully furnished state halls” were plundered and taken away, the fabulous Knights’ Hall in the center of the castle was destroyed; every brick, every block of marble was carried off, every trace of the lovers was to be obliterated. Caroline Mathilde’s chamber had resembled a curio cabinet; she was passionately interested in all things Chinese, and that summer she filled her rooms with Chinese vases and dolls which she had the East Asiatic Company bring back for her. Even the beautiful fireplace which she had procured for the Audience Hall at Hirschholm, the one that “depicted a Chinese woman with parasol,” was torn down.

  The castle was a disgrace, tainted by the bastard and his mistress; it had to be removed, as when an undesirable face is erased from a photograph, so that history could be freed of something despicable, something that never existed, should never have existed. The island had to be cleansed of its sin.

  By 1814 not a trace was left of the castle. Hence its life had been equal to that of a human being from 1746 to 1814; the castle lived to the age of sixty-eight. In that sense Hirschholm Castle is the only castle that is completely identified with a summer of love, with love and death and the uttermost boundary of the forbidden, and therefore it was doomed to death and annihilation. Today only a small Empire church, built in the 1800s, stands on the castle island.

  Like a prayer. Like a final prayer for forgiveness to Almighty God; a prayer for mercy for the sins two depraved people had committed.

  Otherwise nothing but grass and water.

  Although the birds, of course, are still there, the ones she saw on that late evening when she arrived at Hirschholm Castle, saw as a sign that at last she was home, and in safety, among the sleeping birds, wrapped in their dreams.

  Once upon a time a castle stood here. This is where she came. She was with child. And she knew that it was his.

  Everyone knew.

  “I am with child,” she said. “And we know that it’s yours.”

  He kissed her but didn’t say a word.

  Everything had happened so quickly. He had carried out the Danish revolution in eight months; the reforms were signed and would now continue to be signed from that den of iniquity called Hirschholm Castle, which was why it later had to be destroyed, just as one burns the sheets of someone who has died of the plague.

  He had already issued 564 edicts during the first year alone. In the end there seemed to be no obstacles. It all went so smoothly and easily. The revolution was functioning splendidly, his pen scratched, things were put into effect, and he made love with this extraordinary girl who called herself the Queen of Denmark. He made love, wrote, and signed. The King’s signature was no longer necessary. He knew that the chancelleries and civil service departments were roaring with fury, but no one ventured to approach him. And so he continued on and on.

  The desk revolutionary, he sometimes thought. He had always despised that expression. And yet now everything seemed to function from his desk. Precisely from his desk. And it all became reality.

  He never left his study, and yet the revolution was put into effect. Perhaps all revolutions ought to happen this way, he thought. No troops are necessary, no violence, no terror, no threats; merely a mad king with absolute power, and a document of proxy.

  He realized that he was utterly dependent on this demented boy. Was he equally dependent on her?

  When she told him about the child, he was delighted, and he understood at once that the end could be near.

  They had been incautious in their lovemaking for so long.

  He had never met a woman like this young girl; it was incomprehensible. She seemed to lack any fear or shyness, she was inexperienced and had taught herself everything as if in one breath. She seemed to love her body and loved to make use of his. The first night at Hirschholm she sat on him and rode him slowly, with pleasure, as if at every moment she was listening to secret signals inside his body, obeying them and controlling them. No, he didn’t understand where this twenty-year-old little English girl had learned all this. Finally, as softly as a cat, she had rolled down to his side and said:

  “Are you happy?”

  He knew that he was happy. And that catastrophe was now very close at hand.

  “We must be careful,” he replied.

  “It’s too late for that,” she said in the dark. “I am with child. And the child is yours.”

  “And the Danish revolution? They’re going to find out that it’s my child.”

  “I have conceived the revolution’s child with you,” was her answer.

  He got up, went over to the window, and looked out at the water. Dusk fell earlier now, but it was hot and humid and the lake surrounding the castle was full of plants and birds and it smelled of the lake, heavy, full of lust, and sated with death. Everything had happened so quickly.

  “We have conceived the future,” he heard her say from the dark.

  “Or killed it,” he said in a low voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  But he didn’t know why he had said that.

  He knew that he loved her.

  It wasn’t just her body, her astounding talent for love, what he thought of as erotic talent. It was also the fact that she was growing so rapidly, that every week he could see that she was someone else, it was the sheer explosiveness of this little innocent English girl. Soon she would catch up with him, and perhaps even pass him, becoming someone that he couldn’t imagine. He wouldn’t have thought it possible. She truly had many faces, but not a single deranged one, like Christian. There was no black torch inside of her that would send its fatal darkness over him; no, she was a stranger who seduced him at that very moment when he thought he was seeing her, but suddenly realized that he wasn’t.

  He recalled her phrase “like a branding iron on an animal.”

  But was that the way love should be? He didn’t want it to be like that.

  “I’m just a doctor from Altona,” he said.

  “Well? So what?”

  “Sometimes it feels like a pure-hearted, reluctant, and inadequately educated doctor from Altona has been given a task that is much too big,” he said in a low voice.

  He was standing with his back to her because this was the first time he dared say this to her, and he was rather ashamed. That was why he was standing with his back turned, not daring to look at her. But he said it, and felt ashamed, although it felt right to say it.

  He didn’t want to seem haughty. It was almost a deadly sin to be haughty; that’s what he had learned as a child. He was just a doctor from Altona. That was the basic fact. But added to this was the presumptuous idea that he knew he had been given a task, and he didn’t think himself too lowly, even though that’s what he should have thought.

  The arrogant people at court would never have hesitated. Those who were not upstarts. They found it completely natural to be presumptuous, since everything they possessed had been inherited and none of it had been acquired through their own efforts. But he wasn‘t arrogant; he was afraid.

  That was what made him ashamed. They called him “the Silent One.” Perhaps that frightened them. He was quiet, he was tall in stature, he knew how to keep silent; that frightened them. But they didn’t understand that he was basically just a doctor from Altona who presumed to believe that he had a calling.

  The others were never ashamed. That was why he stood with his back to her.

  One day, toward the end of the summer, af
ter she had given birth to the child, she came to him and said that Bernstorff, who had been sent away and had now returned to his own estate, must be called back.

  “He hates us,” Struensee told her.

  “That makes no difference. We need him. He must be placated and used. Enemy or not.”

  And then she said:

  “We need flank protection.”

  He merely stared at her. “Flank protection.” Where had she gotten that term? She was unbelievable.

  3.

  It was a magnificent summer.

  They abolished all protocol, they read Rousseau, they changed their manner of attire, they lived simply, they lived in nature, they made love, they seemed urgently obsessed with compressing all the elements of happiness so that not a single hour would be wasted. Visitors were shocked by their free customs, which were nevertheless, as they noted with surprise in their letters, not manifested in indecent language. All regularity was abolished. The servants would often, but not always, serve the food at meals. Responsibility for the cooking was shared. They went on excursions, staying out late into the night. Once the Queen, on an excursion to the beach, pulled Struensee into the dunes, unfastened her clothing, and they made love. The attendants noticed the sand in their clothes but were not at all surprised. All titles were abolished. The system of rank disappeared. Everyone was on a first-name basis.

  It was like a dream. They discovered that everything was much simpler, more tranquil.

  That was what they discovered at Hirschholm: that everything was possible, and that it was possible to escape the madhouse.

  Christian was happy too. He seemed to be very far away, and yet quite close. One evening at the dinner table, he said to Struensee with a happy smile:

  “It’s late, it’s time for the King of Prussia to visit the Queen’s bed.”

  Everyone was startled, and Struensee asked in a light tone of voice:

  “The King of Prussia? Who is that?”

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” replied Christian in surprise.

  Her pregnancy became more and more visible, but she insisted on riding through the woods and refused to listen to the concerned objections of those around her.

  She had become a very capable rider. She never fell. She rode swiftly, confidently; he followed apprehensively. One afternoon someone did fall from a horse. It was Struensee who was thrown. His horse threw him, he fell, and he lay on the ground for a long time, with a great deal of pain in one leg. Finally he laboriously got to his feet.

  She supported him until the summoned assistants arrived.

  “My love,” she said,“did you think that I was going to fall? But I didn’t fall. I don’t want to lose this child. That’s why you were the one to fall.”

  He merely replied:

  “Perhaps my luck has run out.”

  He delivered the child himself.

  On crutches, at the Queen’s bedside and on crutches, Struensee witnessed the birth of his little daughter.

  He pulled out the child, that was how he expressed it, he pulled out his child, and suddenly he was overwhelmed. He had delivered children before, but this one, this one!!! He leaned on the crutches under his arms, but the crutches fell and he assumed that his injured leg must have hurt terribly, he didn’t remember, and he began to sob.

  No one had ever seen him like that before, and they talked about it for a long time; for some people it was clear proof.

  But he sobbed. It was the child. It was eternal life that he had pulled out of her; their daughter, who was his eternal life.

  After that he got hold of himself and did what he had to do. He went to King Christian VII and informed him that Caroline Mathilde, his Queen, had given him an heir, she had given birth to a girl. The King seemed uninterested and did not want to see the child. Later that evening he again suffered an attack of nervousness, and together with the Negro page Moranti he amused himself by toppling statues in the park.

  The little girl was christened Louise Augusta.

  4.

  Within twenty-four hours the court in Copenhagen knew that the child of Struensee and the Queen had been born. The Dowager Queen summoned Guldberg at once.

  She was sitting with her drooling and babbling son, to whom she now, at this perilous moment, never cast a glance though she kept a firm grip on his left hand the whole time. She began by saying that the whore ’s bastard was a disgrace to the country and to the royal house, but that she now wanted to see the whole picture.

  She requested an analysis of the situation, and she got it.

  Guldberg presented a report.

  After the Algerian incident, when a Danish fleet was sent to the Mediterranean and was largely decimated, there was a great need to rebuild the navy. The problem was presented to Struensee, and he replied with two communiqués. The first prohibited the production of grain-based liquor and all private home distilling. The second announced that not only was he going to cut the royal household by half, but he would also reduce the military organization of the navy. This meant that the shipyard at Holmen would have to cease its work. The workers, especially the sailors who had been called up from Norway, were now seized with anger. Guldberg had been in contact with them several times. A delegation had also paid him a visit.

  They wanted to know whether the rumor was true that claimed Struensee was holding the King prisoner, with the intention of killing him.

  Guldberg had then, by means of “gestures and facial expressions,” hinted that this was indeed true, but that it was necessary to plan and devise actions carefully for the defense of the kingdom and the royal house. He told them that he shared their distress about losing their jobs at the shipyard. As for Struensee’s whoremongering, he prayed to God every evening that a bolt of lightning would kill that man, for the sake of Denmark.

  They were now planning an insurrection. The workers were going to march on Hirschholm.

  “And what then?” asked the Dowager Queen. “Are they going to kill him?”

  Guldberg merely replied, without smiling:

  “An insurrection by discontented people against a tyrant is never predictable.”

  And then, as if in passing, he added:

  “It can only be initiated, and directed.”

  The newborn little girl was asleep, taking breaths that he could hear only if he put his ear close. He thought she was so beautiful. Now, at last, he had a child after all.

  Everything was very quiet that summer.

  Oh, how he wished that it might always be that way.

  But at nine o’clock at night on September 8, 1771, a coach came driving across the bridge of the lake to Hirschholm Castle; it was Count Rantzau, who wished to speak to Struensee at once. Rantzau was furious, and he said he wanted to “have it out with him.”

  “You’re completely mad,” he said. “Copenhagen is full of pamphlets that openly discuss your relationship with the Queen. There’s no longer any sense of shame. The ban on distilling has made them furious. Certain sections of the army are trustworthy, but those very sections are now on home leave. Why are you sitting here and not in Copenhagen? I have to know.”

  “Whose side are you on?” asked Struensee.

  “I want to ask you the same question. You know that I have debts. So that’s why—that‘s why!!!—you institute a law that says “legal rights shall be exercised in all debt disputes, without regard to the debtor’s status or personal reputation,” which sounds splendid except that I think it was done just to ruin me. The ulterior motive! The motive! Whose side are you on? I want to know, before … before …”

  “Before everything falls apart?”

  “Answer me first.”

  “I don’t write laws for your sake. And I won’t change them for your sake either. The answer is no.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  A long silence followed. Then Rantzau said:

  “Struensee, you’ve come a long way since Altona. An inconceivably long way. Where are you thi
nking of going now?”

  “Where are you thinking of going?”

  Rantzau stood up and said simply:

  “To Copenhagen.”

  Then he left, leaving Struensee alone. He went into his bedchamber, lay down on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling, trying not to think about anything.

  Yet he kept thinking the same thing over and over. And it was: I don’t want to die. What am I going to do?

  “Flank protection,” she said.

  But how many flanks could not be protected? And then this weariness.

  He had not left the royal expedition in Altona. He had chosen to visit reality. How could he go on?

  CHAPTER 12

  THE FLUTE PLAYER

  1.

  OF THE GROUP of young enlightened men who once met at Altona, only one remained close to Struensee. Enevold Brandt.

  He was Struensee’s last friend. He was the flute player.

  After being banished, Élie Salomon François Reverdil—”the despicable little Jew,” as Rantzau called him—was summoned back from Switzerland. He had corresponded diligently with friends in Denmark during his years of exile in his native country. He felt great sorrow and bewilderment at what had happened, he didn’t understand what his beloved boy had meant, he didn’t understand anything. But when the offer to return arrived, he didn’t hesitate for a second. His task would be to explain the plans, once halted, for the abolition of serfdom.

  He would end up with other tasks, however. Nothing would turn out the way he had thought.