by Rose Tremain
Not knowing how he is meant to respond, Peter Claire waits for the King’s laughter to subside. He knows that such bursts of ostentatious mirth are often swiftly followed by a sudden return to melancholy. And, as expected, a different mood arrives as the laughter fades and the King looks sadly at the lute player. “Do not for one moment think,” he says, “that I part with you willingly. But
I know that the English always yearn to return to their little island. And now . . . because my fortunes have turned . . . because Vibeke Kruse has enabled me to put the past behind me . . . why should I keep you? I must not keep you, Peter Claire. I must let you go.” Peter Claire waits in silence for a few seconds more. Then the lutenist says: “And if, in the night, you cannot sleep, who will play for you?”
“Yes. Who indeed? Krenze? Pasquier? I shall not find them as comforting as you. Perhaps I will wake old Ingemann himself?” Peter Claire nods. Then the King declares: “One hundred thousand pounds my nephew Charles is paying for you! Could you ever have believed you would be worth so much?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“No. But imagine the things that you shall become in Denmark: whaling ships, dykes and fortifications, spinning looms, paper mills and counting houses. What an extraordinary alchemy! Perhaps, in the end, you will even become the Numedal silver mine? So if ever, in England, you are homesick for Denmark, think on that, my dear angel. Envisage silver ore in your veins. Remember the Isfoss and all our carousing under the stars! Imagine how, all over this land, you will continue to work a magnificent alteration.”
Peter Claire’s trunk is packed. He buys as gifts for all the other members of the orchestra new candles that bum brighter and more slowly, to light their hours in the cellar.
When he goes to say goodbye to the King, a linen bag tied with a velvet ribbon is put into his hands. “Open the neck and put your hand inside,” says Christian.
He does as instructed and feels a quantity of small objects that might have been shells or coins but were not either of these.
“Buttons!” says the King. “I myself have assembled them for you. When you are agitated, let your hand wander in them and it may calm you. Some of them are valuable and some are worth nothing, so you may sell the bulk of them if you are moved to do so, but I counsel against it. For in their numbers they become something else, something greater than the sum of the constituent parts, and this is how I want you to remember me—as something more than I have ever seemed to you to be.”
His coach is waiting. King Christian clasps him in a momentary embrace and looks, for a last time, into the eyes the colour of the summer air. “Rest assured,” the King says, “that my stubborn belief in angels will persist!”
Now, a ship called the Sankt Nicolai is lying becalmed in the Kattegat, a few hours out from Copenhagen.
Peter Claire and the captain of the Sankt Nicolai stand side by side on the deck and contemplate the sky, listening and waiting for the wind.
“A peculiar sea,” says the captain, “very black, the colour of a storm sea, yet almost perfectly still. I was told when I was a boy that understanding light was one of the first tasks of the good mariner, but now and then one comes across conditions that are difficult to read.”
“And these are difficult?”
“Yes. What wind there is is from the north, just a little scented with rain, but I do not really know what this north wind is going to do.”
It is cold. Out of sight of land as they are, it feels to Peter Claire as if they had moved into a different season, as if winter had returned, as if this silent Kattegat might slowly turn to ice and make all further progress impossible. The ship rocks gently, the sails hang down like strange creatures of the air fallen suddenly asleep, the conversations of the crew seem loud in the absence of the wind.
The lutenist goes below and lies down on his bunk. The pain in his left ear torments him with its scratching and tearing. He wonders at the way pain hammers at thought, so that the brain seems incapable of holding to any one idea for more than a moment but is constantly in an agitation of unfinished things.
He falls asleep and has a dream of England. He is arriving at Whitehall Palace to take up his appointment with King Charles. He is brought into the presence of the King, who, he has been told, may sometimes have difficulty uttering the words he wishes to say. He waits politely, not daring to speak or move, while the King regards him, staring at his face in just the way King Christian stared on the night of his arrival at Rosenborg. And then he becomes aware that the King of England is struggling to speak or is speaking, but he cannot tell which because he can hear nothing. And the monologue or would-be monologue goes on and on, and yet the silence is absolute.
The ship is not sailing to England. The Sankt Nicolai is bound for Horsens in Jutland.
Peter Claire has one image and one only in his mind, and it is towards this that he is travelling: Emilia Tilsen.
She stands, not by the aviary with the sun on her face, but in the cellar by the chicken coop. She looks up from the starved hens scratching in the dust and lifts her face towards him, and her hair, which is neither dark nor fair, looks darker in the shadows that live perpetually there. And her look says: Peter Claire, what are you going to do about the world?
He does not know. But he believes that if he can only arrive at wherever she is he will know then, at that moment. And if he has lost her, then he will probably never know. He will live to be old, never ever knowing.
While he dozes on his bunk the north wind begins to rouse the sleeping sails and the captain orders the crew to scurry about the Sankt Nicolai, to bring her round into the wind. And Peter Claire, feeling the ship turn, and hearing the water pushing and slapping at her sides, thinks how, whenever he is on the sea, his mind seems perpetually dancing between expectation and dread.
It is almost night when the Sankt Nicolai enters the port at Horsens.
Suddenly worried that he might arrive too late—by a day or by an hour—and find Emilia gone away or married to some other man, Peter Claire informs the captain that his trunk is to be sent on after him and that he is going to set out for Boller straight away.
“Boller is not far,” the captain says to Peter Claire, “but why don’t you wait until morning when we can find a horse for you?”
“I prefer to leave now,” he says. “In this way, I shall arrive with the sunrise.”
The captain warns him that the roads in Jutland can be dangerous at night and suggests that it would be better to sleep on the ship, but these words vanish as a spell of deafness comes on and all that can be heard is the noise in the lutenist’s head like that of tearing cloth. Peter Claire cradles his ear, fighting the pain, nodding at the captain, pretending to take note of what he’s saying, then bidding him goodbye and setting out with no further ceremony through the dark streets of the little town.
As he walks, with the moon almost full and whitening the clouds the wind sends racing across the sky, Peter Claire tries to conquer the agony in his ear by humming quietly the tune of the song begun for Emilia and never finished. After a while he feels the pain retreat and the song emerge to make a sudden addition to itself, an addition without words but which seems to have an unexpected kind of beauty.
Peter Claire knows that he should stop to write down the music, but he does not want to stop. He is no longer cold. He has found a pace that does not tire him. He thinks about the miles that separated him from Emilia for so long, about that distance so much greater than itself which could not be crossed, even as words on paper, and how, on this moonlit night, it is being subdued, vanquished step by step by step, by his shadow and by his will. He almost dares himself—he who came searching for his future in Denmark—to believe that it is now within his grasp and that it will only take the coming of the day to reveal it. Without really noticing what he is doing, but filled with a determination to move more swiftly towards the sunrise, he begins to run.
He thinks later that if only he had not been running, if only
he had just walked quietly on, then nobody would have heard his approach. He does not know what possessed him—when all the night lay ahead of him—to start running like a child. But no doubt it is the sound of hurrying footsteps that sends the two strangers out into the road. He sees them standing there, in front of their house, which is low, with a thatch of reeds. They stand and watch him come on and he slows to a walk once more.
In their shapeless garments, which might be night-shirts or cloaks of some pale material, they look ghostly, but their shadows cast by the moonlight are long and fall across the road. And this is all that Peter Claire can remember, that he walks on until he is almost level with the two shadows. He cannot properly recall the people, not enough to say if they were two men or a man and his wife, nor whether anything is said by him or by them. He feels sure, afterwards, that something must have been said, but knows also that whatever it was may never return to him. There are merely these things: his running, the sudden appearance of the strangers, and then the slow traversal of ground between him and the shadows falling across his path. And then there is silence.
KIRSTEN: FROM HER PRIVATE PAPERS
In this wilful Spring that is not properly a Spring, but a mere Extension of Winter with here and there some leaves and flowers shivering like girls in the bitter air, there is, I note, a great deal of Coming and Going at Boller.
These things happen one by one, in an Unpredictable way, so that it is impossible to perceive some kind of Pattern or Order at work, but yet when I walk about the house I do see that it is much changed from what it was but a short while ago, as though it might be some moving conveyance like a ship, from which both passengers and cargo arrived and departed all the while.
First of all, I have given away my baby, Dorothea.
If any should accuse me of Heartlessness, I shall defend myself vehemently, for truly I think what I did was a Kind Act and one that will earn me rewards in Heaven; and if people say otherwise, then it shows merely that they have no Imagination.
It happened in this way. A Friend of my Mother’s, believing Ellen still to be in residence here, arrived last Tuesday with her daughter, whose name is Christina Morgenson and whom I have seen once or twice in my Life.
I did not truly wish to invite these Women in and give myself the Wearisome Task of making conversation with them, and indeed I was on the point of suggesting to them that they put up at some Convenient Inn, when—for reasons which I cannot deter-mine—I changed my mind and made a Marvellous show of welcoming them to Boller and saying “Oh, please do be my Guests” and “Oh, what a Great Pleasure it is to find you here” and so forth. All of this was nothing but a Froth of Lies and I still do not understand why I came out with such Falsehoods, except that I have sometimes noticed how the Voice may occasionally decide, on a whim, to Mutiny against the Mind and to articulate all manner of rebellious Words that the Mind has not sanctioned, or which indeed it believed it had expressly Forbidden.
And so it was that I found myself Burdened with these People whom I had not invited and whom I suddenly remembered I did not like, but rather Detested and hoped never to see again in the years remaining to me. What an Utter Fool you are, Kirsten! I said to myself. What Insanity came upon you that you professed such Friendship for poor Christina Morgenson and her Insufferable Mother? And all that now preoccupied me was how quickly I might persuade them to leave.
It was during the evening of their arrival that a Beautiful Plan came into my mind. Christina Morgenson is my age and married to a Merchant from Hamburg but, through all the years that have passed since her Betrothal, has never given birth to any infant. In short, she is barren. And this Barrenness of hers is as a Wound to her, so that whenever the Subject of Children is mentioned she has the look of a person in great Pain and even kneads the area of her heart with her fist. And this kneading of Christina’s heart first of all (kind-hearted as I am becoming as I grow older) made me sorry for her and then, almost on the instant, brought about the bursting forth of my Plan.
I ordered that Dorothea (who is now out of her Swaddling bands and does sit up a little and try to make sounds and blow bubbles out of her mouth) be brought into the Dining-room where we sat. I took the child, who in certain lights begins to look tolerably pretty, in my arms and then I rose and walked with her to Christina and laid her in Christina’s lap, on top of her table napkin. I said: “Here is Dorothea. She has two Fathers, but no Real Devoted Mother. So why do you not take her, Christina, and call her Your Own? For I declare I cannot abide any Baby in this house, for I have had too many and am weary of them, and it will not greatly upset me if I never lay eyes upon Dorothea again.”
I need not note the Quantity of Protestations that Christina and her Mother pretended to make: “Oh, Mercy, but we could never do such a thing!” and “Oh, heavens, but what Crime we would be committing to take away your child!” and so forth, la-la-la and tra-la-la. But I knew that these would run their course and end at last, for Christina’s Countenance was quite Transformed when she held Dorothea in her arms, and the child in her turn reached out her arms to her New Mother and blew some of her famed bubbles into her face.
And when they had agreed, I said: “I merely think it is wise that you leave with Dorothea early in the morning, before I have woken, and in this way I shall not be tempted to change my mind.”
And so when I rose on Wednesday there was no sign of my Guests and Dorothea was gone, and I felt much eased in my mind, as though some terrible Coming Event would now no longer be arriving.
Another much less agreeable Subtraction from Boller is the sudden Removal of a great quantity of my Mother’s furniture.
Some Men arrived with carts, despatched by the Dowager Queen at Kronborg, and into the carts, despite my Protestations, were loaded tables and chairs, pictures, candlesticks, china, chaises, linen and even beds. The Larder was ransacked and all Ellen’s pots of Jam taken away, so that not one remains, and this petty removal of the Jam (which was the only Sweet Thing my Mother ever manufactured) put me into such a Fury that I clawed the face of one of the Removal Men with my nails and, after this, they all fled away with their carts piled high and I stood at my door screaming Curses upon them and upon Ellen, who has never given me Any Thing except Life itself, but has rather sought to Take Away from me all that I possess.
I walked about the empty rooms, remembering how, when I was at Rosenborg, I could ask the King for any Object that my heart had set itself upon and he would give it to me and how, in this new and changeful season, it is to Vibeke’s whims that he attends and I am forgotten. And such was my Melancholy that I could almost make myself believe I had been Happy all my Days with the King and never conceived for him any loathing whatsoever nor longed with a raging longing like a Thirst for my Freedom from him.
I sat down upon the floor in the room that Vibeke occupied while she was here and which now contains nothing except a carpet from the Orient and a large oaken chest in which Vibeke used to hide stolen food. I looked down at my hands (which I think are still soft and white and admirable) and saw Blood under my nails and thought to myself how even the drawing of Blood can sometimes avail one nothing at all.
But as the cargo of furniture leaves, as Dorothea vanishes out of my sight, so there are also Extraordinary Arrivals here . . .
Yesterday, in the early morning, I see a carriage coming up the drive and I recognise the King’s Livery on the Coachman. I stand at a window, waiting and watching, and very soon do I spy, to my great Astonishment and Delight, my Black Slaves, Samuel and Emmanuel, descending from the carriage.
I go down to the door and the Coachman hands me letters from the King, which I know shall certainly contain Instructions about his Divorce from me, and so I lay them aside and go at once to
Samuel and Emmanuel, who do, notwithstanding their Blackness, look a little Pale from their journey.
I lead them into the house, holding each his hand in mine, the Black upon the White and the White upon the Black, and tell them h
ow much I have looked for their Return to me and how, here at Boller, our hours shall be filled with stories of Magic and Spirits from their island of Tortuga and how, when we are weary of Tales, we shall devise our own Entertainments to while away the hours.
They smile at me. I notice they have grown a little since I last saw them and now seem not as Boys but as marvellous young Men, such as I never thought ever to see. And I cannot stop myself from yearning to touch them—their faces, their ears, their hair, their finger-nails like shells, their gilded uniforms—as though they were composed of some Other Substance than mere flesh and which would never change nor die.
On a whim, I lead them not to the Servants’ Quarters but into Vibeke’s former room, and tell them that this is where they will sleep—upon the Oriental carpet—and stow their few possessions in the oaken chest. And suddenly I relish the Emptiness of the room. I imagine that in such a space I shall, with Samuel and Emmanuel, create a Miniature Universe within the greater one and in this Miniature World become utterly lost.
So engrossed was I with looking at my Slaves and beginning to devise in my mind all manner of Wildness with them, that I did not realise until a little later, when the Coachman brought this to my attention, that there had been a Third Occupant of the Carriage.
It appeared that as the coach passed through the village of Høgel the Coachman came upon a Man lying in the road, across the path of the horses. The horses were pulled up and the Coachman descended and saw that the man was one whom he recognised—“One,” he said, “who was part of His Majesty’s Orchestra.”
As he said this, my eyes grew large with Anticipation, for I knew that there was only one Musician who would be travelling to Jutland and that it must be Emilia’s sometime lover Peter Claire.
And now he was about to fall, like a gift from the sky, into my hands entirely! I could not stop a little smile from creasing my face, for when the Truly unlooked-for Thing comes to pass, an irrepressible Excitement starts up within me, just as though I had been told that I could have all my life again.
