by Clio Gray
And up there in his castle was the Aethling Rupert, shivering in his massive bed. He was a Glücksburg, distant descendant of the Danish Monarchy, aspirant to the thrones of Sweden, England and Prussia, if only he could prove his ancestral claims. He’d sent out a public proclamation in the preceding months stating what everyone knew already: that these were confusing times, the need greater now than ever to unite the disparate populations who lived within his lands; to cement this union, his proclamation announced, he was hosting the biggest Frost Fair Schleswig-Holstein had ever seen and everyone welcome: Prussians, Swedes, Danes, even the English if any were to hand – all of whom had been fighting and forming allegiances the one with the other and back again for the past thirty years. But Christmas was a time for peace, Rupert stated, and he was the man to provide it, by presenting the largest, most exciting and inclusive spectacle ever witnessed hereabouts. His aims were to increase his personal popularity, create alliances, strengthen the slippery hold he had on his family’s lands and obscure titles and claims. In recent years the soil had begun to shift beneath his feet, as for so many in his position, and he needed the support of the good and the great, of powerful men and their merchant guilds. He had to know which way things were going, if the Danes or Prussians were thinking of invasion, the nature of the vacillations of the Swedish and English merchants, about where the loyalties of the people lay – to the north and Scandinavia or the German-speaking south – or if the tide was ripe for independence to win out after all.
For all these reasons Rupert, like Philbert, could not sleep easy that cold night and was standing huddled in an eiderdown by his window high up in the white walls of his castle, looking through the flurries of snow that were veiling land and lake. At the same moment he looked out, Philbert slipped back into his private warmth of pig and tent, leaving Rupert alone at his vigil, wondering what the next day would bring and how his Christmas Gift would play out, certain he’d advantage on his side: he had a castle, he had the brilliance of winter at his beck and call, he had an Ice Fair, for God’s sake, with hairy women and dancing dwarfs.
Nothing, thought the Atheling Rupert, can possibly go wrong, and soon my claims will be heard in the highest courts. He stood a while longer before withdrawing back to his bed, heart racing with anticipation, but barely had he nodded back into sleep than dawn was scraping the night from the blue bones of the sky and the Fair and its folk began to wake, and a couple of hours later all was in full swing, shouts heard across the frozen lake and the fields that ran down to the sea.
‘Roll up! Roll up! Kommen Sie, Meine Damen und Herren, my fun-loving friends, my companions in curiosity! Do you seek the Strange and Peculiar? Do you long to be confronted with the most stupendous spectacles nature has to offer? Are you brave enough to enter my World of Wonders, my living Cabinet of Curiosities? Tents filled with Puzzles and Anomalies just waiting to be explored. Roll up! Roll up!’
It was Harlekin, Master of Ceremonies, marching across his makeshift stage, tolling his bell, shouting out his wares:
‘Come see the Strongest Boy in all the World, and the Elfin Lady; or how about the Fattest Woman in all the land? We also have the White Jester, an albino from Peru, and his wife the Dog-Faced Lady who sings like the summer we’ve all just lost. And we have a boy with a head like you’ve never seen before, who makes his pig dance like a Court of Ladies’ maids. We have magicians to bamboozle you and soothsayers who will tell you your future, musicians to entertain your ears, actors to entertain your eyes. And if all that isn’t enough, ladies and gentlemen, then come visit the Carneous Mole. Yes, the Carneous Mole! Here, in our very midst! Give him meat crawling with maggots, give him slugs, give him last year’s donkey-chops. He will eat all before your very eyes! This Fair is a Box of Delights to be opened at your pleasure. Come and see it all, Ladies and Gentlemen, see it and believe it. For the Frost Fair is open! Die Winterfreudenfest is begun!’
Philbert would remember those words for many years to come, every nuance and shade of them, and all the people who were pouring in from every corner of Schleswig-Holstein. It was as if his whole life was a river beside which he walked, a river that kept the reflections of his memories true and clear no matter what disturbed the waters or how far along its banks he went. His head was a treasure trove of other people’s stories, a bottle into which the ships of their lives could be folded and stowed, as if he were a whirlpool at the centre of his universe, sucking in everything about him.
The day wears on, the Frost Fair going great guns and, as the afternoon draws to a close, Harlekin leaps onto his stage and stands amidst the yellow smoke to reveal his play. The place is here, in Schleswig-Holstein, and the feeling is for rebellion, the people tugged between the Danish crown and the Prussians, not knowing which way to go, though either might end badly. Harlekin holds Hannah on one arm to represent the beauty of Schleswig, and an able lad – alas not Hermann – on the other for the delights of Holstein. He tells them they have Queen Dämpfdorf of Denmark and King Prügelbaaden from Prussia in the wings; these are Tingelburg and Tangelrichter, in disguise as usual: one spike-thin and warty in an aureole orange dress, the other with his boots too big and a helmet of iron pinned precariously upon an enormous wig.
‘If only these two young lovelies could be married they would be happy and there would be no tale, but “if only” never gave a story and you would not listen.’ Harlekin wears black velvet, reminding Philbert of the Westphal man who ushered him, Kwert and Ullendorf into destruction. Philbert watches up front with Lita, just as they used to do; Oort, the strong-boy who can lift a donkey above his head, has taken a liking to Philbert and his pigs and is with them too. Harlekin stands centre stage with Hannah, her handsome beau at her side, cupping a hand to his ear as the ugly Queen comes in from the left and screams:
‘Give them to me, give them to me, I say! Give me, give me, give me!’
Harlekin cups his other hand to his other ear as the King enters stage right, preceded by his enormous wig.
‘What is that witch saying now?’ he growls. ‘I’ve told you before, they are mine, all mine, and I will have them both!’
Harlekin moves further down the stage and lets out a huge sigh and many of the crowd sigh too, for they understand perfectly the analogy that is playing out upon the stage, and how the whim of politics is destroying people’s lives without doing them the courtesy of letting them know why it is happening.
‘Always it is like this,’ continues Harlekin sadly. ‘Those would-be lovers separated by others who want what they cannot have and, seeing harmony in the offing, must rip it apart.’
And so the crowd reacts: as the Queen comes in from one side and the King approaches from the other, they begin to boo and hiss; it doesn’t stop the actors, for they’ve done all this before in other places to other audiences and have their part to play. They hook their fingers into their belts and stamp their boots and Hannah and her young man cower, as they must do in the face of tyranny. Harlekin turns against the audience and accuses them with his finger.
Just like Von Ebner, Philbert thinks, the spoon that stirs the milk until it curdles.
‘Is all you can do is boo?’ Harlekin shouts. ‘Will you let this evil take place? Will you allow your daughters to be ravished and your sons humiliated? No? Did I hear you say?’
‘No, no, no, NO!’ cries the audience. They are angry, their fists are raised.
‘Did I hear you?’ provokes Harlekin. ‘Will you really let this happy union be dissolved before it has properly begun?’
‘NO, NO!’ The audience have begun to stamp their feet, the men getting so worked up they’re almost ready to storm the stage as if this was real, as if this was not a representation of what is happening to their country but taking place now, in front of their very eyes, and then comes a huge explosion that stops them in their tracks, and through the billowing clouds of purple sparks and green smoke Harlekin re-emerges waving a bann
er of red, white and blue – the self-declared insignia of the independent parliament of Schleswig-Holstein – his troupe of actors suddenly appearing behind him carrying prop-pitchforks and saucepans as they surround Hannah and her prince, grabbing the King and Queen by their arms and clamping them in chains, leading them off stage in abject and angry humiliation. But the audience has already gone wild and Harlekin’s voice is barely heard as he finishes off his tale of successful revolt and matrimony and the crowd whoop and stamp and clap their hands, throw their hats in the air, drowning out his shouts with their own songs, swinging their own home-made banners. It is the winter of 1847 going into 1848 and this is happening all over Europe. There are Ruperts everywhere who don’t know which flag is safe to fly; but for Harlekin this is the cue to begin his troupe’s singing and dancing and he waves Hannah back onto the stage and the music strikes up, dancing girls at the ready.
‘Give us our duchies and principalities!’ shouts Harlekin, as he marches his players about the stage;
Hoorah! shouts the crowd;
‘Let us own our own land!’ interposes somebody from the crowd –
Hoorah!
‘And our rights!’ shouts another –
Hurrah! Hurrah!
‘Give us our liberty!’ yells someone else, all agreeing with the sentiment –
Hurrah, hooray, hurrah, hooplah!
And then it’s too late for Tangelrichter, the acting King of Prussia, and he’s dragged bodily from the stage and across the ice, kicked and cudgelled for what he represents, for what he tried to show them, saved only by Hannah and her dancing troupe flinging out their frills and unterblumen and the musicians laying in with drumsticks and bows in defence of their colleague.
‘Play up!’ Hannah yells to the members of the orchestra who still have instruments not lost in the scrum. ‘Play up quick and lead out!’
The big bass drums boom and the bagpipes drone, and the fiddlers play – those who have broken their bows beating time out on their instruments’ bridges – and all across the ice they go, Hannah at the fore, her dancers behind, clutching hands to waist, legs going in and out like metronome rods, encouraging the crowd until at last, like a snake caught by the head, the men and women of Schleswig-Holstein slither and slide themselves into a laughing line across the frozen lake, shouting and singing, slipping and sliding, yelling out drunken songs of patriotism and revenge, all thoughts of Tangelrichter, King of Prussia, forgotten. They don’t know what they’ve done in this petty charade, nor what will be done because of it; they have no awareness of the hard men camped silently amongst the trees not two miles distant, nor that their spies and scouts are dispersed amongst the crowds, heads already filled with what their mouths will say later.
‘Mein Gott!’ groans Tangelrichter, ex-King of Prussia, as his friends prise him and his bruises off the ice and bear him away. ‘Are things so bad here that they have to take it out on me? Look at my helmet! And Mein Gott, my wig! Someone rescue my wig!’
His cries disappear into the night as his wig is stamped apart without mercy at its carefully crafted seams, never to be mended.
And so the scene is set: here is the Frost Fair and the castle and the baying crowds and the men lying wait in the trees. And here is Philbert, become his own Harlekin, one of the few people in attendance who will exit stage left and still remember the script as it plays itself out. He will wonder later about all that led him to this time and place, and all the what ifs the real Harlekin previously mentioned; for if Philbert hadn’t had a taupe then maybe his mother and father would have stayed long together and he would have remained in Staßburg, working in the salt mines like his father; and if that had been the case he would never have met Lita and never left Staßburg to join the Fair; he would never have met Hermann and Hermann would never have been cured and then uncured, his only way to peace being his jumping off the bridge; and if that hadn’t happened the Fair would never have left early for Finzeln, and if they hadn’t been at Finzeln when they were then Philbert’s head would never have been subjected to Corti’s carillon and he would never have met Doctor Ullendorf, and would never have gone to Lengerrborn; and if he hadn’t been there when he had then neither more would Von Ebner, Federkiel and Schnurrhenker, and what happened to them – and what happened to the Schupos afterwards – would never have been, and the revolution Philbert had unwittingly unleashed in Lengerrborn would never have rippled out beyond its borders as it had; nor would he have met Petitorri or Goffaggino, and Petitorri would never have had cause to shout out so loud about the boy with the big head who had murdered yet another man in cold blood and for no reason other than escape; and without Petitorri’s witness – for he was exactly the vengeful man Philbert had assumed him to be – the soldiers might have turned back at Bremen, flyers and rewards forgotten, trail gone cold.
The puppets of revolution are many and varied but every puppet needs its strings, and Philbert had unknowingly pulled them hard and kept others tugging at them long after he and Kwert had left the scene. Possibly Maulwerf’s Fair of Marvels might have wound up at Schleswig-Holstein anyway; possibly Rupert’s political ambitions and hard-done-by peasants would have provoked a small uprising here upon the ice without anyone else’s help; but without Philbert there would have been no bounty-hunters and mercenaries hunting the length and breadth of Europe for the boy with a monstrous bauble for a head, seeking out both him and his murderous associates, those responsible for the gaol-break at Lengerrborn and the murder of multiples of policemen, not to mention the brutal slaying of a visiting Italian nobleman’s trusted groom. Every story travels as it grows and grows as it travels and Philbert’s story got to Schleswig-Holstein before he ever did, as did the band of men who were carrying it. They were no revolutionaries, only men thrown away by other wars, men who liked money and having a good time who had no care for Princes who lived in castles any more than was Rupert the kind of man to look around the next corner to see what his actions might precipitate, whose Christmas Gift Box, as he called the Frost Fair, was to be his rallying cry and its own reward, though not as he’d planned. If asked, Philbert could have told Rupert that things were never what you wanted once you found them, but Rupert would never have asked and certainly wouldn’t have listened to the answer if he had.
So here it was: Christmas Eve, the year of 1847 spilling into 1848, and now come the puppets, ready to walk upon the stage.
38
The Night of the Wolf
Everyone who was anyone had been invited and all accepted, eager for the spectacle of the Frost Fair, if not the Prince’s patronage. It was the Happening of the Year. The local grandees passed over the bridge into the confines of the castle walls for Prince Rupert’s Weihnachtsgeschenk without qualm. He’d organised a gathering of something similar every year: a ball or feast to inculcate the loyalty of neighbours and peers, and this year was to be the greatest yet. When Rupert heard that Maulwerf and his Fair of Wonders was in the vicinity he knew it was just what he needed to make this year’s celebrations stand out from the rest. Schleswig-Holstein was being ripped down the middle and Rupert had one foot either side of the divide. He’d dithered for weeks over which flag to fly: blue for Prussia, red for Denmark, or the red, white and blue of independence. In the end his flagsmen came up with a design all of their own that included everything relevant: lion rampant, white nettle, field one half blue, the other red, Rupert’s family motto emblazoned in gold above: Aut Bibat, Aut Abeat: Let Him Drink with Us or Leave. He approved this new design, felt it served the sentiment of the moment, and it was time to let these people know who they were dealing with. He was a Prince, by God, and one who was heir apparent to not one, nor two, but three royal thrones.
Rupert stood on his balcony, leaning over the balustrade, watching as his guests arrived throughout the afternoon. He wouldn’t greet them yet. He wanted them to settle, ease in, have a few jiggers of rum from the jugs placed in each of
their rooms. He knew how impressive the approach to his castle was; how it shone like a sail above the trees as you rode in towards the east; how the frozen lake stretched away from the track and on down to the sea; how his castle stood suddenly revealed as you came out of the forest, shining white as if it had been carved from the moon, great arms of ghost-thistle and teasel-heads standing straight against the stone, thick stalks of fennel, lovage and monkshood sculpted by the ice encasing them, keeping them upright, lacing the edges of the moat pools, reed-blades piercing the mounds of snow at their feet. And now, this early evening, with the Frost Fair camped out upon the ice and the surrounding fields, the place was the tapissery of winter: sparkles of light from torches and bonfires, the outlines of huts and stalls, the braziers with their curls of scented smoke hinting at haunches of beef and mutton being cloved, spitted and dripped over with honeyed bastes.
It couldn’t look better, thought Rupert, as he went inside to dress for dinner. This was his night, of that he was absolutely certain. He knew nothing of the other men out there who hadn’t been invited, that there are always other men out there somewhere, no matter if you’re a prince with ambition or a boy with a head that is sucking in the world around him. You never know who’s going to come out of the forest and break into your life even when you thought you’d locked all the doors and drawn the bolts and pulled the shutters across the windows; even when you’d sat down to warm by your fire, imagining yourself the centre of the universe, for even then – maybe especially then – the universe is never thinking of you, and doesn’t even know you exist.
