The Lost Queen: The Tragedy of a Royal Marriage

by Norah Lofts

Christian said to Knut, “Well, that job is done with. Now we can take a holiday. Conrad, Enevold, you and me and no formality. We’ll go to the Duchies. I shall travel as Prince of Travendahl and have a gay time.” He laughed and then scowled. “Mention of the Duchies reminds me...but I cannot remember. Help me. It makes my head ache.” He put his hand to his head and looked pitiable.

  “If you could give me some indication.”

  “It has to do with this head. And the Duchies.”

  “You feel that you need a holiday?”

  “I need a new head.” He laughed again. “And that would make three! Wait a minute, don’t speak, don’t move. I have it. That doctor. The clever one. In Altona. I shall consult him about my head.”

  In Knut something stirred, something akin to the instinct that had enabled his peasant ancestors to look out on a bright morning and know that it would rain before night.

  “He happened to have the newest cure for that particular thing. There’s no reason to suppose that he could deal with a headache better than any doctor in Copenhagen.”

  “I should like to go to his house and consult him. And then reveal myself and tell him that he was to be my personal physician.”

  “As a joke?”

  “Not if he had a headache cure and understood about the two. Oh, I know, you think it is rubbish; so does everybody else. And it’s all inside here, so nobody can see; but there are two, and they pull apart, and it hurts. It hurts now.”

  “I don’t think you’d like him,” Knut said. “He struck me as an awkward man; arrogant, difficult to get on with.”

  The head always hurt more when there was a decision to be taken, and worst of all when there were arguments on the other side. That was one reason why Christian could not tolerate opposition; it was also, paradoxically, why he so often allowed himself to be dictated to. Easier. But today, with the head, the heads, already so painful, he could afford a little obstinacy.

  “What was his name?”

  “How should I know? I was told that in that one thing he was clever, and told how to find his house. I doubt if I could find it again.”

  With his eye which missed nothing, his memory where nothing was ever for a moment mislaid, he could have found the house in the dark. And the man’s name was Struensee. Johann Frederick Struensee.

  “We’ll hunt him down,” Christian said, “and ask him about heads.”

  FREDERICKSBORG; COPENHAGEN; JUNE 1767—JANUARY 1768

  The King and his friends went holidaying in Schleswig-Holstein and Caroline retired to Fredericksborg, one of the royal residences for summer use. Here in the heart of the country—and taking advantage of her condition—she was able to institute something of the easy, informal life of Kew. The country around was beautiful and far more prosperous than some she had seen. Christian’s father had used the castle as a place of entertainment for visiting royalties and other important persons and had realized the value of show. A system of subsidies had resulted in snug cottages replacing clod hovels, sleek oxen at work in the fields, some large houses in a good state of repair. Sometimes by carriage, often on foot, she moved about, watching the hay, and presently the harvest, being gathered in, and practicing her rapidly improving Danish on the peasants who regarded her at first with awe and then with affection.

  In all that she did now, she had the support and approval of Frau von Plessen. In the early part of the year—a period to which she looked back with distaste, wondering how on earth she had borne it—she had emerged from the night with a livid bruise, a puncture of the skin on the upper half of her left breast. She had concealed it, as she had concealed other marks, during the process of being dressed, but when she stood before her glass she realized that just above the edge of her bodice the extreme fringe of the bruise showed, looking like a dirty mark. Wondering to herself, a lace scarf perhaps or a brooch so pinned as to lessen the décolletage, or a different dress altogether, she fumbled at her bodice, pulling it up.

  Frau von Plessen, who was present said, “It is not a perfect fit, it needs...” Before Caroline could stop her she had both hands on the dress, ready to show what it needed; she was inclined to be critical of Madame Brisson whom she regarded as an exhibitionist. What the gown needed was never told; Frau von Plessen’s words ended in a little gasp. She turned herself about and said to Alice, “Bridgit. Here.” Alice knew Bridgit who occupied much the same position in relationship with Frau von Plessen as she did with the Queen, and the gesture explained the errand. Alice went away, moving at the leisurely pace she always adopted when she obeyed an order from anyone but her own mistress.

  “Who else has seen?” Frau von Plessen demanded.

  “Nobody. It is nothing. As I have told you, I bruise very easily. And this I did by being clumsy. I ran into...” What could even a clumsy woman run into to make a bruise at that particular point?

  Their eyes met.

  “As Your Majesty wishes,” Frau von Plessen said. “But in this case the skin is broken. It could fester. I have, however, some ointment which Bridgit shall fetch.”

  Self-control and reticence were qualities which Frau Plessen valued highly. She had been inclined lately to that in some respects Caroline lacked the ultimate dignity incumbent to her position; she sometimes invited people to sit when Court protocol demanded that they should stand; there had been the horseback riding, the slightly too exuberant dancing, the slightly overenthusiastic reception of any entertainment; and there had been the remark, “It is not necessary to address me as Your Majesty every time you speak.”

  But now Frau von Plessen recognized the true dignity which repudiated the sympathy almost any woman would have sought, and the fortitude which could make light of a painful situation. From that moment Frau von Plessen’s manner, and her whole attitude toward Caroline, changed, took on a new and real respect and became maternal; as far as she was capable of making it, indulgent.

  So it had been a good summer, and before the end of it, sometime early in September, Edward would arrive. He had chosen the time well; she would not yet be ungainly, and the Danish summer would not yet have suffered its sudden collapse. In Denmark there was hardly any spring or autumn; there were just a few days in late April or early May when winter loosed its hold and retreated—she had seen that for herself—and Frau von Plessen said that autumn was about ten or twelve days in mid-October when the woods blazed and then were stripped by the wind and the night frosts.

  She looked forward to Edward’s visit with an intensity that surprised herself. She had written regularly to her mother, less regularly to Louise; cheerful letters, as regularly answered; but there were a thousand small things, too trivial to I merit mention on paper; and a few large. It would be possible to tell Edward that the lightning had not fallen, either on her or on Christian, but that she had survived. Perhaps being a man, Edward could explain why Christian had taken such a dislike to her. Why not? She was a married woman and Edward was a man of the world. To whom else could she speak frankly? In ten months she had not had a real talk to anyone. Also she was curious. Edward had written to her twice since he started his tour, and although he was so responsive to scenery, to architecture, to anything old and beautiful and strange, he had described nothing, made hardly any mention of where he had been, what he had seen. His letters were indeed short and stilted; but perhaps he was saving up everything to tell her. In fact the last one, saying that he would be with her early in September—the exact date he would let her know—said, “I have much to tell you,” and she had some things to tell him, and to ask him.

  She had hoped that Edward would be in Denmark before Christian returned and the formal reception of his Royal Highness, the Duke of York, by His Majesty of Denmark could start on its arid, crowded, formal course. She would have liked to have received Edward alone, at Fredericksborg, where the last of the harvest was being brought in. But Christian returned in the third week of August, went to Christiansborg and sent her an order, couched in civil terms, for her to join him, �
��In order to receive Your Majesty’s brother, His Royal Highness, the Duke of York.”

  Edward liked flowers and was fond of fruit. Every day, the step a little heavier, the breath coming a little shorter on the stairs, she went to look over the apartments where Edward would be housed. Momentarily she expected the arrival of a courier. Daily she went into the rooms that Edward would occupy to see that all was in readiness. Daily—or so it seemed—she increased in girth; and among all the other things that she had to ask Edward was that he would be the child’s godfather.

  One morning, coming back to her own apartments, she found the younger Queen Mother awaiting her. Juliana had a country home, Fredensberg, where she spent the summer, but now she was back.

  The chocolate and the pastries were served.

  “You must excuse me, Juliana. Anything rich or sweet...I live, these days on bread and apples and cheese.”

  “My dear Caroline, there is no need to explain to me. For four months, before Frederick was born I could eat nothing but rye bread and the sausage they make in Wolfstein-Buttel. What we suffer in order to attain motherhood!”

  “I tell myself it is worth it.”

  “We all do.” The talk ran hither and thither for a while; how well Christian looked, having benefited from his holiday; how well Caroline looked, and the small but special party which Juliana and Frederick planned to give in Edward’s honor.

  “Do you know the day of his arrival?”

  “I expect a letter hourly. Unless it comes soon, he will arrive first. Edward is not usually...” At that moment the door opened and there was an attendant with a letter on a silver salver. Taking no notice of the seal or the superscription, Caroline snatched it up, crying, “Here it is! At I can tell you...” She broke the letter open.

  It was from George. Heartbroken himself, he informed her, in the gentlest and most sympathetic terms that Edward had died in Monaco.

  She said, in feeble protest, “Oh no! No!” and fell huddled to the floor.

  Juliana picked up and read the letter which had fallen from Caroline’s flaccid hand. She reflected that such a shock, in the fifth month, might well bring about a miscarriage. And the girl herself might die.

  She did nothing. She carried, as most ladies did, a pretty toy of gold filigree full of grated hartshorn in her reticule, she did not reach for it, nor for the bell rope. Caroline lay rather as though she had been kneeling and pushed over sideways. A bad position and the longer she stayed in it the better. On a side table a clock ticked away; five minutes, ten, fifteen. For a mere swooning fit, a long time. Eventually Juliana moved, unstoppered her hartshorn bottle, wetted her handkerchief in one of the flower bowls, disarranged her hair a little and pushed the letter under Caroline’s skirt.

  “It was a letter,” she said to Fräulein von Ebhn, the first to arrive. “She read it, cried out and fell. I did my best to revive her.”

  Caroline was unconscious for four hours. When she came back to herself, she was in her bed and knew a moment of confusion; then she remembered and turning her head on the pillow began to weep for Edward whom she would never see again; twenty-eight years old; the dearest, the most positively alive person. A voice silenced forever; a smile gone from the world.

  Crying, Frau von Plessen allowed, was good, it brought relief; she handed one dry handkerchief after another, replaced a soaked pillow and made sympathetic noises when Caroline’s misery threw up such disconnected sentences as “Poor George, he will miss Edward so much,” and “I intended to ask him to be godfather,” and “How does one catch a chill in Monaco at the end of August?” and “He said he had something to tell me; now I shall never know.”

  But when, well on into the evening, Caroline who had eaten nothing since breakfast, refused to take a sip of wine or a spoonful of nourishing broth, Frau von Plessen said, “Your Majesty, you must think of the child. Loved ones die, and it is like losing a limb; but life goes on. There is life in the unborn and it must be nourished. Refusing food,” Frau von Plessen said, “cannot avail the dead and could injure the child in the making.”

  There was truth there, and Caroline acknowledged it. There was such a link between unborn children and their need for nourishment that any gravid woman was advised to indulge her fancies, to ask for foods out of season and get them if she could. Her unborn child had so far made no demands, she had craved nothing out of the ordinary.

  She forced down a few spoonfuls of the broth and then Frau von Plessen presented her with an apple. She looked at it, remembered the bowl put ready for Edward, the apples they had eaten together, the small apples Edward had carried in his pocket and given to horses.

  “Not that,” she said. “I shall never eat an apple again.”

  “Never mind,” Frau von Plessen said. “You took your broth bravely. Now drink this and you will sleep.”

  Frau von Plessen—off duty for the day—had been entertaining a few close friends in her own apartments. From this small corner of private life which a Mistress of the Robes could hope to maintain, she had been rudely jerked and brought to confront Juliana, the Queen Mother, almost hysterical, Fräulein von Ebhn, on the point of collapse, Her Majesty huddled on the floor and a number of people running about and saying “What to do?”

  Her Majesty had her own physician, but his house was some little distance away: it was possible however that the King’s new physician—and favorite—Dr. Struensee, would be in the palace. His post did not entitle him to have rooms under its roof, but he was there every day and often spent the night in a borrowed bed. Frau von Plessen sent a servant running to fetch him and another to bring back Caroline’s own doctor.

  Struensee arrived first and, apart from ordering that the Queen should be put to bed and all restrictive clothes loosened and heated bricks put to her feet, he had done nothing, made no attempt to restore her to consciousness. “It’s the most merciful thing that could have happened,” he said. Frau von Plessen thought his manner casual, his attitude unprofessional—but it matched all that she had heard about him—and she was glad when the proper doctor arrived and began to apply, ineffectually, all the tried methods of restoration. The room still reeked of ammonia, vinegar and burnt feathers, and Caroline’s hands had been slapped until they were scarlet.

  As soon as the Queen’s own physician arrived, Struensee had retired; but perhaps he was less casual than he seemed, for much later, when Caroline was conscious and crying wildly, he had come to inquire how she was, and then, diving into one of his sagging pockets, produced a small phial.

  “It’s a harmless, mild sedative,” he said. “If she can sleep for twelve hours, time will have begun its healing work.”

  This was, Frau von Plessen realized, unorthodox behavior the Queen not being his patient, and she was for a time two minds about administering the dose; but Her Majesty was so greatly distressed, and then, reminded of her duty had been so amenable and tried so hard with the broth; and there was something in what Dr. Struensee had said about time and its work. Twelve hours sleep would act as a buffer.

  The King had not come near, though he had sent a message saying that he commiserated with his wife’s grief and shared her distress. The crack in Frau von Plessen’s loyalty widened a little more.

  That night she spent uneasily on a sofa in the next room with the door open, dozing off for a few minutes, waking with a jolt, listening, tiptoeing in. Waking, twelve hours later to a sense of misery and loss, not immediately identified, and when it was, falling like a blow, Caroline found her Mistress of the Robes seated near her bed, her face a little drawn, her eyes hollowed.

  She began to cry again, but less violently, and what she said was sensible. “I know it has happened. I must bear it. Crying does no good...” But she continued to cry. In the next moment of calm she said, “I must write to Mamma. And to George. Edward could always make them laugh.” Edward would never laugh again.

  “Your brother,” Frau von Plessen said presently, “would be grieved by your grief. And he would wish
you to have a strong healthy baby. The baby may resemble him; and Ed-ward could be one of his names.”

  Thus patiently, adding word to word, she tried to direct Caroline’s attention to the future, to the baby. She trotted out all the old beliefs about prenatal influences on birthmarks—the strawberry-colored disfiguration which showed that the mother had craved strawberries out of season and not been able to obtain them, the mouse-shaped, mouse-colored mole that resulted from the mother having been frightened by a mouse. And on disposition, a mother who cried and was sad would bear a querulous, ill-thriving baby, and vice versa.

  It had a cumulative effect and time began its work and her condition helped; the placidity and euphoria of advancing pregnancy muffled her mind and emotions, just as its physical manifestations slowed her step and shortened her breath. When Christian finally braced himself to visit her and indulged in the fantastic pretense that nothing had happened except that she had fainted and fallen, she was conscious only of the mildest irritation and could even see something faintly comic in the fact that the King of Denmark and all the Court were in mourning for the King’s brother-in-law whose name, whose demise, were not mentioned once during a half-hour visit. A loving husband would have made some effort to share her grief, even though he had never met the man she grieved for; a loving wife would have been stricken to the heart by the not-sharing; but partners in a marriage such as theirs, though they missed some joy, escaped some forms of misery as well.

  And she had Frau von Plessen; and she had Alice—much more of Alice than formerly; for on the day after the news came when Frau von Plessen said that she must change her clothes and have her hair rearranged, and would send Fräulein von Ebhn to sit with Her Majesty, Caroline had said, “I would much prefer Alice. She knew him.”

  By Frau von Plessen’s strict standard of etiquette there had always been something not quite correct in the relationship between Her Majesty and her femme de chambre; typically English, she supposed, but to be regretted and contravened as much as possible; but to her now completely compassionate heart the last three words made a certain appeal.