The Lost Queen: The Tragedy of a Royal Marriage

by Norah Lofts

  Christian came toward her, moving with something of the wariness with which a dog will approach another. Only those closest to him knew that he was extremely shortsighted; it was a defect, like his lack of height, which he did his best to conceal. When he was almost within arm’s reach of her he said loudly and in a tone of surprise, “Oh, but you’re pretty. How pretty you are! How lucky I am!” He took both her hands and pulled her toward him and kissed her with a kind of violence, on her cheek, on her mouth, just below her ear. His mouth, like his hands, was very hot and the kisses were wet and slobbery. And his breath was fetid. But it was a warmer and more enthusiastic welcome than she had dared count upon and she was gratified.

  “That Your Majesty should approve of me gives me great happiness,” she said. It was true; to be approved, to be pleasing, that was all that mattered for the moment. Relief flooded in; the worst was over now and she was in sufficient control of her wits to note that Christian’s German was different from that of her mother; she must adjust. She smiled at him.

  Still holding her hands he leaned back so that she was obliged to brace herself against his weight; then he leaned forward again and peered into her face, turned her to left and right and laughed a little and said again, “Very pretty.”

  The feeling of detachment which had enabled her to make her entrance with calm dignity left her; she was no longer watching herself from outside; she was within herself and beginning to feel an odd discomfort, a sense of something gone wrong. Christian swung on her hands again and, as she yielded to the pull, she caught a glimpse of Baron von Dehn’s face; he stared straight ahead of him, as though on parade, his profile stony with disapproval.

  “Am I not to be congratulated?” Christian demanded. “I have the prettiest Queen in Europe.”

  Baron von Dehn who had bowed deeply as he led Caroline in bowed again and said, “Your Majesty, permit me to congratulate you and to wish you happiness.”

  Now surely, Christian would release one of her hands and either lead her forward and present her to the half circle of men, or stand beside her while they approached, one by one, to be presented. But he still held both her hands and said again, “Yes, the prettiest Queen in Europe.” Everyone was aware that this was carrying things a little too far; the sense of something amiss filled the whole room. A swift glance past the side of Christian’s head—exactly level with her own—informed her that all but two faces at the far end of the room wore exactly the expression of Baron von Dehn’s. The exceptions were those of a young man to the extreme left of the group, who looked amused, and of the hunchbacked boy who now stood in isolation to the fore. He looked sick? angry? sick and angry? She had hardly time to notice for, almost as though he had caught some signal, he moved forward, three precise steps and brought his heels together with an audible click. And as though that were another signal which Christian recognized, he said, “Oh, yes. Yes. My half-brother, Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Denmark...My brother-in-law, Prince Charles of Hesse...Count Bernstorff...Count von Moltke...Count von Thott, Count Rantzau, Count Brandt, Count Holmstrupp...” It seemed to be, could it be, a parody of a presentation, the line of men, set in motion by Prince Frederick’s action, hurried past her so fast that there was no chance at all of doing what was absolutely incumbent upon royalty, pairing a name and a face and remembering them together forever. It was like running a stick along a row of railings. All she could do was to smile without ceasing, and by the end the smile felt like a mask, stiff, suspended from her ears.

  “And that’s that,” Christian said. “And you do not wish to see a lot of stuffy old burghers in their best clothes, do you?”

  “I wish to do whatever Your Majesty wishes me to do.”

  “Well spoken,” he said. “They’re so rich they lay their best clothes away in pepper to frighten off the moths. And with this cold upon me I can sneeze without that!”

  She had noticed that his eyelids were red and puffy and his complexion blotchy, but she had attributed it to his having ridden in the wind. A cold would explain the hot hands, the tainted breath and the something-not-quite-usual in his manner. He was probably feverish.

  With swift compunction, she said, “It was very good of Your Majesty to ride to meet me while suffering from a cold. I trust you have not worsened it. I hope it will soon be better.”

  Louise suffered frequently from heavy, quite incapacitating colds and Caroline knew many homely, comforting remedies, but perhaps this was not the moment...After their real marriage she would take good care of his health.

  “I shall be well for the wedding,” he said. “If I take care now.” His voice had gone flat, his manner preoccupied as though mention of his indisposition had depressed him. “I will take leave of you now.” He lifted her hand and brushed his lips against it and turned and walked away. All the men bowed and then followed him out in the exact order in which they had been presented to her, except for the young, amused-looking man in the mulberry coat who broke line and fell into step beside the King and said something of which Caroline caught only the phrase, “...back to bed.” His doctor?

  It could have been worse, Baron von Dehn supposed. The King’s behavior was so unpredictable that almost anything might have happened. As it was, however, it was far from correct. His Majesty had behaved not like a man meeting his bride but like a child presented with a new toy. How long would the hiatus have lasted had Prince Frederick not stepped in? That abrupt departure, too, leaving the Queen and her party virtually discarded. Grant that he had risen from his sickbed to come here—the kindest thing to think was that he was still unwell—another five minutes to see the Queen to her carriage and on her way wouldn’t have harmed him. Failing that, he should have detailed half his suite to ride as escort. Bernstorff, von Moltke, Rantzau, all the real counts, members of the old nobility, must have known that as well as he did; but nobody dare say anything or make a suggestion. In God’s name, what had come over them all in a mere ten months? Scared to death; incredible as it sounded, it was true. Solid statesmen like Bernstorff, brave soldiers like von Moltke, frightened of a half-grown boy!

  You, too, von Dehn? You have Her Majesty in charge; you have not lost your voice; you should have given no real grounds for offense by suggesting...There was the rub, no real grounds; yet offence might have been taken and next week another man would be Viceroy of Schleswig-Holstein and von Dehn in the Blue Tower languishing for so long as was His Majesty’s pleasure to keep him there. Autocracy the wrong hands was a very terrible thing.

  “Your Majesty will be glad to reach Fredericksborg,” said. “We will leave immediately.”

  CHRISTIANSBORG; NOVEMBER 1, 1766

  “Well, is she pretty?” Juliana, the Queen Mother, asked.

  “I would say more than pretty; quite beautiful,” Prince Frederick said, “despite the cold and the traveling dress which included an unbecoming little hat. I felt sorry for her. Christian behaved execrably. He fell on her, slobbering and pawing, pulling her this way and that, and I believe, but for me, he would never have made any presentations. When he did, he did it like a peasant chasing sheep through a gateway and then he said he must get back to bed.”

  Juliana looked at her son and knew once again the sickening, maddening sense of the injustice in the world and of her own failure to right it. If his father had lived a bare three years more. She had been obliged to move so cautiously. It had not been easy to convince her husband that his son by his first wife was a simpleton, unfit to rule, but she had worked away, and only a month before he died, Frederick V had said, “I will consider the appointment of Frederick as Regent, King in all but name, when he is sixteen. To move before then would be folly since the Senate would see little to choose between a King who was simple-minded and a Regent who was a minor.” He’d given his sour little smile and added, “In the event of my untimely death.”

  She had said, “I was thinking of the far future. Do not speak of your death. I pray God you may survive me, for without you I could not live.�
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  It was completely false; his infidelities shamed and angered her; she blamed her son’s malformation upon his excesses; she detested him; she wished him to live long enough to decree that Christian, his heir, was unfit to rule and should be shuffled away somewhere with a keeper and that her son should be Regent. Then he could die and she would know nothing but relief.

  But he had died, to use his own word, “untimely,” and Christian was King. For Frederick, so clever, so phenomenally mentally precocious, so dignified—despite his poor physique—so tactful, so royal, the future held little, except as some reigning monarch’s brother-in-law, another Prince Charles of Hesse. And the courts of Europe were full of handsome, well-setup young men from whom Kings’ younger daughters and sisters were free to choose since their marriages were not of dynastic importance. Who would choose Frederick?

  All her plans had come to nothing and now it looked as though her one remaining hope—that Christian should die young and childless—were about to be wrecked; the English girl came of a prolific family; she would be pregnant almost before Christian had his breeches off.

  “How did he look? In health, I mean.”

  “Not well; very red-eyed and his skin was mottled.”

  “He could never recover from a cold in less than a fortnight and his colds were always disgusting,” Juliana said.

  “He spoke with some confidence of being well for his wedding,” Frederick said, giving the words an undertone. He wondered whether she had heard the rumor concerning Christian’s indisposition; probably not since she always made a great show of being Christian’s friend. Only when she and Frederick were alone together did she allow her bitter enmity to show. She had conducted her long campaign against her stepson with masterly duplicity saying, “for his own good,” “in his best interests.” She had organized punishments for him while never administering more than a mild verbal rebuke herself; and occasionally, when he had been punished, she would sympathize with him, so that Christian believed that his woes were due to his father and his governor; she had managed to retain Christian’s confidence and even her enemies—of whom she had her share—never accused her of anything more positive than a mild neglect of her stepson and a preference for her own child—human, almost inevitable, behavior.

  The whole business had borne a result which she had not foreseen and did not suspect; Frederick, sharply observant from a very early age, distrusted her profoundly. He was fond of her—she was pretty, entertaining and indulgent and she always appeared to be his champion—but when she said, “You should have been King,” or “If only your father had lived long enough to make you Regent,” he suspected her of regretting the loss of opportunity of being the power behind the power. This suspicion had been confirmed since Christian’s accession; a woman who made a pretense of consulting, and of advising one whom in private she called “that imbecile” was capable of being deceptive in other spheres. He had fully made up his mind that in the unlikely, but not completely impossible, event of his ever having any power at all, she would have no share of it. He would love and cherish her—she was his mother—but he would see to it that she had no influence either on him or anyone else.

  “I must go down and visit him again tomorrow,” Juliana said. “The last two times that Holmstrupp fellow was on guard and said he was asleep, which I did not believe. I must find out when Brandt is on duty.” Of Christian’s three favorites and boon companions Brandt was her favorite; he was well-born and he cherished political ambitions which he looked to her to forward; they would come to nothing, she would see to that, but while he had hopes he could be used.

  There was a slight commotion outside the door and Juliana said, “This will be your grandmother, all agog for news.”

  A little bit of news, a crumb of gossip, a sweetly acrimonious exchange of words with her daughter-in-law were about the only pleasures, except those of the table, left to the elder Queen Mother these days. She was sixty-six and growing stiffer in the joints every day.

  She creaked in, leaning heavily upon the shoulder of a little Senegalese boy who wore a silver collar around his neck and full Court costume in peacock colors. He was the third to wear the collar, to serve the old woman as a substitute for a stick, and to bear the name, Peppo. She lowered herself into a chair and the boy took his place behind it, his arms folded.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Her Majesty arrived safely. We met her at Roskilde and Christian appeared to be delighted with her,” Frederick said.

  “So he should be; if she is anything like poor Louise.”

  During the lifetime of Christian’s mother, Sophia-Magdalene had shown no great affection for her, but to praise her, to refer to her always as “poor Louise” or “dear Louise” was a certain way of planting a barb in the hide of her successor. In Sophia-Magdalene’s opinion there had been absolutely no necessity for her son to marry a second time. Denmark had an heir—a very silly little boy, but proper handling would improve him—and it had, if not a Queen Regnant, a lively and active Queen Mother. And Frederick, Heaven only knew, had mistresses enough. However, Frederick had chosen to marry again and his new wife had displaced his mother, and never been forgiven.

  “On the contrary,” Juliana said, “Frederick says this child is very pretty.” Which no one could say of Louise.

  “Louise’s portraits do not do her justice. She had a very sweet nature, a heart of gold. So Christian was pleased? Good. Well, well, I may yet see my great-grandchild.” Another life between your hunchback and the throne! The old woman, clear-sighted from hatred, was one of the few whom Juliana had never deceived. She blamed her, almost entirely, for the way in which Christian had turned out. He was a very silly, backward little boy and the proper thing to do was to admit it and make allowances, mark time a little, postpone formal lessons, let him, at six, learn what was ordinarily learned by a child of four, and so on. That, left in control, was what the grandmother would have done. But his stepmother, pretending concern, had urged earlier lessons, longer lessons, “He is so slow...It is essential that his French should be fluent...How will he ever sign a document?...A King must know something of history, and geography...Imagine a King who cannot add or multiply.” It had all sounded very well; tutors, lessons, punishments, had proliferated; Christian’s backwardness had daily become more exposed, and more genuine, because each failure to perform satisfactorily had eroded hope and confidence and damaged the boy’s character. For, after all, he was not a peasant, to take shame and failure as part of his lot; in his veins ran the royal blood of Denmark, and of England; naturally it had asserted itself and made him rebellious and difficult, and, once he was on the throne, intensely autocratic.

  She said, knowing that it would annoy Juliana, “Next thing we know we shall be looking for a pretty bride for you, Frederick.” Her voice made it sound as though the search would be long, hard and probably unsuccessful.

  “He is not yet fourteen,” Juliana said sharply.

  Frederick said, with good humor and dignity, “When your hopes are fulfilled, Grandmamma, my marriage will concern no one but myself. I shall do my own looking.” He excused himself, mentioning an appointment, and went away.

  His mother said, “Whether Frederick marries as heir prospective or not, I should favor his choosing for himself. These prearranged marriages are seldom successful.”

  “My son was very happy with Louise.”

  “She died young; before he tired of her,” Juliana said cryptically. “The strain tells later, as you know.”

  In Sophia-Magdalene’s case the strain had become so severe that she was rumored to have poisoned her husband, the grandfather of Christian and Frederick. She had never been openly accused and the rumor was now almost forgotten, except by Juliana.

  The old woman winced, but inwardly. She said, “I hope that Frederick, when the time comes, looks far afield. Inbreeding can be carried to extremes. I have two grandsons; one had great difficulty with his lessons, the other is crooked as a co
rkscrew.”

  They could keep up this kind of conversation for hours. They had been at it for years. Both enjoyed it.

  CHRISTIANSBORG; NOVEMBER 1, 1766

  In another part of the palace which was as high and wide and populous as a town, Count Holmstrupp, First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, wrapped His Majesty in a robe and said, “Back into the bakehouse.” He opened the door of the adjoining dressing room and a blast of fierce heat emerged. Christian looked toward the wide bed, spread with fresh cool linen and piled with pillows and said, almost whiningly,

  “Oh, Knut! After all that...”

  “Come along,” Knut said, speaking in a roughly encouraging, father-to-fractious-child manner which sat oddly on his youth, “we’ve done pretty well so far. Though I say it myself, riding out to meet her was a stroke of genius.”

  “And I played—did I play?—my part well.”

  “You gave a most impressive performance. But it was an interruption and the time must be made up.”

  He hustled Christian into the small apartment where the stove was almost red hot, sat him in a chair covered with towels, wrapped other towels about him and handed him two pills and a glass of water.

  “They make me feel sick,” Christian said, having gulped the pills down. “The cure is worse than the disease.”

  “Not in the long run. You can lose your nose.”

  Already the white islands in Christian’s mottled face were disappearing as the crimson ones spread. Perspiration broke out on his forehead. Knut’s face was moist, too and he mopped at it.

  “Plain water in the blue jug, salt in the yellow,” he said indicating the two receptacles on a handy table.

  “Don’t go, Knut. Time goes so much more quickly if we talk.”

  “I have to show myself occasionally—if you want your secret kept. And I shall lock the door behind me. Then Enevold can’t admit even Juliana. We want no more interruptions.”