by Norah Lofts
Sir Robert, prepared to sleep late on the morning after the ball, had been wakened and told the news and was horrified. He realized the delicacy of his position; the Queen, his master’s sister, an English Princess, had been accused of a shocking crime; but until she was proved guilty she must be assumed to be innocent, and at the same time it was his duty to maintain diplomatic relationships with those who presumably thought her guilty and had locked her up in Kronborg. He had been in Denmark only a short time; he was aware of the rumors which he had discounted, having quickly realized that Struensee had enemies who would have accused him of cannibalism if they had thought of it. It was a very awkward situation and he was anxious to handle it well, for he had ambitions; he hoped, one day to be Ambassador in Paris or Vienna.
It took him a little time to obtain an appointment with Prince Frederick, now Regent. By whom appointed, Sir Robert wondered. That poor crazy King who one day would sign anything and the next nothing? One day Struensee, quaintly calling himself Prime Minister, in complete power, backed by a Cabinet, a gang of his friends; the next day, a Regent backed by a Council, a gang of his friends. Very tricky.
But when at last he obtained audience with the new Regent, Sir Robert was favorably impressed; he was sensible and sympathetic.
“It is a grave charge,” Frederick said, saying what he sincerely believed, “but against the Queen it will not be pressed.”
“And against Struensee? Your Royal Highness, no man commits adultery alone.”
“It was necessary to remove Struensee, quickly and for good. There are other charges against him, but the evidence takes some time to prepare. But it will be found. The charge of criminal communication with the Queen will then be dropped.”
“And her reputation ruined forever?”
“Talk, far more damaging than any direct accusation, which after all, can be refuted, has been going on now for two years. Last spring—you may not realize this—nineteen out of twenty people believed that Struensee had fathered the child born in July. And so long as Struensee was free, and she blindly played his game, such talk would continue. This direct confrontation will end it. Struensee will certainly deny any charge that might take him to the block; her name will be cleared.”
“And I shall be permitted to see her?”
“But of course. Her imprisonment is merely...symbolical.”
“About communications,” Sir Robert said. “Is Her Majesty allowed to write letters?”
“But of course,” the Prince Regent said again. “Why not? She would be well advised not to write to Count Struensee; words of sympathy are easily misread. And another thing—this would come well from you, Sir Robert—she is not legally bound to answer any question put to her by anyone but the King. Forgive me, you probably knew that and would have told her. She is Queen; in Denmark she has but one superior, the King, and he alone has the right to question her.”
From this rather curious interview—what a devious, inscrutable young man!—Sir Robert went to Elsinore and Caroline cried, “Oh, how glad I am to see you. Nobody here knows anything. What is happening in Copenhagen? This whole absurd thing...I was whisked away...nobody could tell me why, or by whose order. In the middle of the night. And my son left behind. He must have missed me. Tammi too, he looked on me as his mother...Sir Robert, tell me everything, please.”
The jerky, quick, unfinished sentences were so like her brother’s whenever anything upset him that Sir Robert who had met her only a few times, in formal circumstances, was a little taken aback. He sought refuge in his most official manner.
He told her about the change of government; he told her that so far as he knew the King and the Crown Prince were well.
That, so far as he knew, was true. In actual fact, father and son, though in good health were suffering a very similar affliction. The loss of familiar faces. Christian missed Struensee and Brandt; Freddy missed Mamma, Struensee and Alice. Christian, muttering, retreated a little farther back into his cave; the Crown Prince, not yet supplied by experience, lashed about, yelled, sulked, refused his food. This was certain proof that Struensee’s way of child-rearing was faulty, and they would have taken Tammi away, too, and put him back into the orphanage but for the fact that he was the only one who could persuade the Crown Prince to eat.
Of this, Sir Robert, knowing nothing, could make no report; he said that husband and son were well and then, perched astride the uncomfortable diplomatic fence wondered whether he should mention Struensee, or whether to leave it to her.
She said, bluntly, “You know why I am here? You know of what I am accused. I am extremely concerned about the person accused with me. Count Struensee...what happened to him?”
Poor girl, he thought, poor child; guilty or not, the last forty-eight hours must have been an ordeal.
“He was arrested and is now in the Blue Tower.”
She seemed to grow smaller, to collapse inwardly.
“I hoped he might have got away,” she said, and put her hand to her face for a moment. Then she lowered it, folded it with the other in her lap and straightened herself.
“It is a ridiculous charge. Purely political. Count Struensee has made enemies and they have concocted this tale to bring him and his government down. In that they have been successful...but Sir Robert, having accused him, they must try him. And I assure you, there is not, there cannot be, one crumb of evidence. He will be cleared.”
“One hopes so. I ought, perhaps, to point out that your own conduct may well be the subject of scrutiny.”
“It will bear it. In fact, in view of the manner in which Count Struensee and I have been treated, investigation will be welcome.”
Her confidence impressed him.
“I understand that other charges will be preferred against Count Struensee. Count Brandt is also in prison, concerned with these other charges.”
“That in itself proves to me that the plot is directed against Count Struensee,” she said with a surprising shrewdness.
“Yes,” he said, remembering his conversation with the Prince Regent, “it is possible that the unfortunate...business which brings you here, Your Majesty, may be heard no more of. But, if anyone attempts to question you, on any matter whatsoever, you are within your rights to refuse to say anything. As Queen of Denmark you are answerable to the King, and to him alone.”
“I did not know that, and I thank you for pointing it out. I will remember. Now, there is another thing. I have written some letters, but the Governor of this Castle said he had received no orders about dispatching my mail. Could you undertake to send them for me?”
“Family letters only.”
“I have written to my brother, my mother and my sister. I could hardly write to him—to Count Struensee—not knowing where he was.”
Sir Robert found his mind divided. Face to face with her he found it impossible to believe her guilty of a sordid intrigue which would have involved, over a period of two years, connivance with menials, subterfuge, furtiveness; she had too much dignity, too much candor. Yet the news of Struensee’s whereabouts had been a blow to her; and her last remark held significance. He compromised; she was fond of, perhaps in love with the fellow, but not an adulteress.
The letters had not been easy to write. George, Mamma and Augusta—if they wanted to hear from her at all—would want angry, downright rebuttals of the charge; she had not written vehemently enough. “I have committed no crime,” she had written; love was not a crime; nor, in Denmark any longer, was adultery; one of Johann’s new laws decreed it as a misdemeanor. “I have many enemies, eager to believe the worst.” That was true enough. “I beg you to believe that infidelity and licentiousness are foreign to my nature.” Ag true; her fidelity to Johann had never wavered, and it been love, not lust, that had motivated her. But even as she wrote she was aware of sophism and feared that the fundamental dishonesty would show through, especially to Mamma.
It was possible that Mamma never read the unsatisfactory letter. Next time Sir Robert
came it was to tell her that her mother had died on February 8. “Very peacefully, Your Majesty.” Would Mamma have died peacefully knowing that her daughter was confined to Kronborg with such an accusation leveled against her? Had someone had the good sense to close the sickroom door against the poison? Had Mamma been too ill, perhaps unconscious?
She wept bitterly, thinking of their last meeting, deceit a barrier between them. “You must give him up.” If only she had. But how, having once experienced such joy, could one deny, retract, opt for the old sterile loneliness?
She said, through her tears, “I wish she could have lived to see my name cleared.”
Sir Robert, who in the intervening days had been in the capital, close to events and alert even for gossip, felt a little pang. There had been no whisper, no hint of the major charge against Struensee being dropped; somewhere someone in authority was determined to have his head. The revelations, it was rumored, would be scandalous. Perhaps it was as well that the Dowager Princess had died when she did.
He applied what comfort he could.
“Her Royal Highness, your mother may never have known of your...involvement, Your Majesty. I reported immediately, as I was bound to do. Simply the facts. But westerly gales were blowing, the crossing would take longer than usual. And in January the roads...”
She acknowledged his attempt to console with a little watery smile, very touching, but disturbing, too. Such an emotional, responsive, warm creature; and married to that poor demented boy. All too easy to believe, but one must not!
“I have other news,” he said presently. “Count Struensee has been unwell, but he has made a recovery and will soon be well enough to be examined.”
Johann would deny everything, completely and categorically. And apart from themselves nobody knew.
Sir Robert was not sure what anyone knew, some fantastic stories were circulating; but he also was confident that Struensee would deny everything—he had his head to consider. But under and behind it all, Sir Robert’s sharp diplomat’s sixth sense was aware of something dangerous and infinitely malicious, something determined to ruin not Struensee only, but this poor child. Yet even he never suspected the form this rooted hostility would take. When he said “examined” he thought of interrogation, some tricky lawyer’s questions. He was English and it was a very long time since physical means had been employed in English legal procedure. Even the rough usage of those suspected of witchcraft had been largely disapproved and finally forbidden.
The idea that Struensee might be tortured never once occurred to him. Nor, mercifully, did it to Caroline.
With renewed expressions of sympathy with her loss and the assurance that he would come again and keep her informed, he took his leave.
Cuddling the baby Louise-Augusta, now successfully weaned, Caroline was bound to think again about mother-daughter relationships. Suppose that sometime in the future she should be obliged to put out her own thin, brown speckled hand and plead, and this child, grown to womanhood should, in her heart, grudge the time, anxious only to be back with her lover. For that was how it had been at Lüneberg. But no! That pattern could never be repeated, since she would see to it that Louise-Augusta married the man she loved, for her love’s table would be openly spread, she would not be forced to dangerous devices in order to have a crumb.
Alice said, “She was a good lady, very charitable. If there’s a Heaven, she’s in it now.”
Caroline did not question Alice’s use of the word “if as she would at one time have done. Johann’s atheism, seldom explicit, but always there, part of him, had affected her thinking, so that her own philosophy was now a matter of “if.” She had never, however, cut adrift entirely, as he had done; and now she said, “I hope that there is a Heaven, and that Mamma is there and happy.”
Alice once more congratulated herself on always being able to hit on the right thing to say.
KRONBORG; FEBRUARY—APRIL 1772
Caroline’s next visitors were four members of the new Council; and although Baron Juel-Wind, Chief of the Judiciary, was one of them they had chosen Baron Schack to be their spokesman. They were all men who, two months earlier, I would have regarded it as an honor to be invited to her table; they were all men who had been opposed to Johann’s reforms.
When they had greeted her, Baron Schack said, “We are here to ask Your Majesty a few simple questions.”
“On what authority?”
“That of the Regent and the Council. The government of Denmark.”
“I am sorry, your Excellencies, but I can answer no questions except those put to me by His Majesty.”
They looked at one another and shared a thought. That damned interfering British Minister, he put those words into her mouth; he should never have been allowed to visit her. They had all said so at the time; so had the Queen Mother. Juliana said that in permitting Sir Robert’s visits the Prince Regent had acted unwisely; one must beware of plots. The Prince Regent had retorted that one must also beware of anything that looked like pre-judgment: not to allow the Queen a visit from her brother’s appointed representative in the country would be a breach of international convention. The situation with regard to England was ticklish enough, anyway. To refuse the Queen a service available to any drunken sailor in any foreign port might have unpleasant repercussions. The English government might recall the Minister, close the Ministry doors and thus declare its non-recognition of the new regime.
The Prince Regent presented his argument well; and it was soundly based.
But this was one result of his policy.
Baron Schack said, “But as Your Majesty must be well aware, His Majesty is in no condition to make an inquiry into anything.”
His condition was indeed shocking; with no Struensee to manipulate the puppet, no Brandt to exercise tact, it had been fully exposed. Since the night of the Palace Plot the moon had twice been full. Juliana had offended Heer Reventil by treating him as a person of no importance—a hired keeper, as once he had been a hired tutor—and he had not thought it necessary to disclose to her the secret of the little black book. She, in a forked stick, anxious on the one hand that Christian should be thrust aside and a Regency established, equally anxious to show that the King, so far as he willed anything, was in agreement with the new regime, had taken him out in a carriage, to ride around the city and its suburbs, so that everyone might see that he was alive and well and on good terms with her. Halfway through the drive he had become violent and tried to throw himself out of the carriage.
Caroline said, “I understand my husband’s condition. But he is still King of Denmark. I am Queen; answerable only to him.”
“The questions we wished to ask Your Majesty are directly concerned with the conduct of Count Struensee,” Baron Schack said.
Even spoken in that way, the mention of his name affected her; but she gave—she thought—no sign.
She said, “The conduct of Count Struensee? I can answer no questions—as I have explained—but about his conduct I am prepared to make a voluntary statement. It was, down to the smallest thing, concerned with the welfare of His Majesty—and of Denmark. His Majesty’s health and happiness, the welfare of the country, of everybody in it down to the poorest peasant, they were his main concerns. That I can say; I was always there; I saw everything.”
“Would Your Majesty be prepared to comment upon Count Struensee’s behavior toward you?”
“But of course. It was invariably kind, considerate, and respectful. There were times when His Majesty was unwell, or one of the children ailed, when strict formality was impossible; even so he never once failed in respect.”
On the way back to Copenhagen, Juel-Wind said, “Her claim to be answerable to the King alone is valid. We shall get nothing useful from her.”
Count von Thott said, “The Prince Regent may have been right in urging that this charge should be dropped. It is unsavory, it is calculated to set England by the ears, and it may be unsuccessful. It might have been better to stick to f
orging of the King’s signature.”
“I must repeat,” Juel-Wind said irritably, “that Struensee did not forge. Let us have some exactitude in this. There was no attempt to imitate a signature.”
“Undue assumption of power, then,” Count von Hosten said.
“Too vague. And with the King in the state he is...Someone must govern. Undue assumption of power is a charge that could be brought against all of us. Someday. What we want now is proof of criminal communication; and she has been shown how to take advantage of a legal point.”
“She is vulnerable,” Schack said. “Press hard enough on Struensee and she will change the tune.”
Three days later Schack returned to Kronborg, alone.
“I have not come to bother you with questions, Your Majesty,” he said, producing a paper. “We thought this document deserving of your attention.”
Out of all the close clerkly writing his name leapt out, Johann Frederick Struensee; and before she read anything else her face betrayed her again. Struensee had persuaded her to abandon the thick pink and white applied completion behind which a woman could blush or turn pale with impunity. He said the white lead which was its base was a poison, responsible for the death of many women. So Schack saw her color flare and die away and flare again as she read the terrible statement, signed in Johann’s hand, shaky but unmistakable.
My dear one, my darling, what did they do to you to make you say and sign this? “Guilty relationship began spring of 1770” ... “Intimacy with the Queen as far as it is possible to go.”
She said, “What this means I cannot know. I do know that Count Struensee would never have said such things.”
“You deny the truth of this confession?”
“Absolutely. There is no truth in it at all.”
“It was taken down as it was spoken, word for word; in the presence of six witnesses—I was there myself. It is signed, as you will have observed.” Signed in an old man’s quavering scrawl.
