Читать книгу The Queen's Physician - Edgar Maass - Страница 10

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O NE SPRING DAY the Doctor’s carriage suffered a breakdown. A wheel gave way, the conveyance sagged to a standstill by the roadside. The coachman stared at the broken wheel and scratched his head, the Doctor looked idly about him. Great beeches grew along the highway, their new foliage a delicate bright green. Thrushes fluted a sweet song, hidden in the cover. Evening was drawing on.

The Doctor had an odd feeling that he knew the neighborhood, but could not place it. The beeches, the flowery meadows, the brook, the little arch of some bridge over it somehow seemed familiar to him. The coachman told Struensee that he doubted a wheelwright could be found so late in the day. The last village lay a long way behind. The best thing, he said, would be to try their luck at some country estate nearby. They would probably have some means of temporary repair.

The Doctor took his medical kit and slowly walked back along the road. He was not at all upset by the accident, though in Luetzelburg, some miles ahead, a lady patient was expecting him. He drew the cool, damp evening air into his lungs, he marched more briskly, with pleasure his eyes drank in the idyllic Holstein landscape. He had a foresense of something desirable and important.

Having gone a moderate distance the Doctor came upon a high, rather run-down yew hedge fencing off the highway at his right. Through the trees he could see the gleam of a pond, and, on a little rise, surrounded by a greensward, a round temple of love, with white columns and a pointed straw roof. Then almost at once he saw the house of the estate, and immediately took a liking to it. It was a long, two-storied structure with innumerable small-paned windows, built in an old-fashioned way. Some of the windows, he discovered, were merely simulated, painted on the walls to complete the impression of symmetry. This bit of architectural naïveté amused and pleased the Doctor. He noted that the house was badly in need of whitewash. The steep gray roof gave the house a habitable, but comical, air.

The Doctor came to a white wooden gate breaking through the yew hedge. It hung open at an angle, inviting trespass. He walked up the garden path over the flags. A sun-dial of gray stone stood in the middle of the unmown lawn, which was heavily sprinkled with yellow dandelion bloom and populous with fat thrushes in search of worms. For a moment the Doctor paused, again drew in long sweet breaths of air perfumed by the damp meadow grasses. The smell of new green things mingled with a faint brackish damp odor from the pond. Then he went directly up the path to the house, the door of which was also ajar. A delightful little shower of excitement ran down the Doctor’s spine. It was something like a fairy-story. Who would be the princess awaiting within, he wondered.

But the hallway showed no sign of life. Armor and lances hung on the walls, interspersed among huge stag antlers and old-fashioned hunting weapons. The Doctor hallooed, but no answer came except a hollow echo from the upper level of the house. Hesitantly the Doctor penetrated more deeply into the house and came to a large room filled with rickety furniture. On a couch a young man was lying sound asleep, resting peacefully. His composed features were both handsome and ugly in interesting combination. The mouth was nicely sculptured, the eyebrows nobly arched, the cheeks of delicate contour, but the forehead was low and the nose overly, though not altogether unattractively, long. The young man was an arresting sight and instantly, for some obscure reason, the Doctor felt a strong stirring of sympathy for him. His hose were ludicrously shabby and even the dim light could not diminish the shine at the knees. The heels of his once elegant shoes were almost worn away, one stocking hung down over the calf of his leg and his shirt, which was open at the neck, was badly frayed at the collar. Yet over a chair-back hung a brand new coat of the latest cut, contrasting grotesquely with the rest of the young man’s attire.

How very curious, the Doctor thought. I wonder if I know the fellow. He debated whether he should wake him, and finally decided to steal off as quietly as he had come. But he could not hold back an impulse to tiptoe closer and get a better look at the young man on the sofa. Under Struensee’s intent gaze the stranger suddenly opened his eyes, which proved to be very large and brown, as the intruder noticed despite his embarrassment. Huddling back the young man said to Struensee: “Who are you, sir?”

“I am Dr. Struensee,” he replied.

“You’re who?” The young man blinked and propped himself up on his elbows. “You aren’t the Struensee, by any chance, who cured my dear Aunty Rantzau, are you?” He smiled with fine irony. “Are you the fellow who made me quarrel with Cousin Isabel? Or, I should say, are you the gentleman that Alvina is in love with?” The more he talked, the more confident and flippant he was. “Of course, of course,” he continued, “you must be the one they’re all in love with.”

“If you say so,” said Struensee. “All sheer nonsense, of course.”

“Nonsense?” The young man was now wide awake and alert. He proved it by jumping up off the sofa entirely. “That’s not the way I’ve heard it at all,” he objected. “Such amazing luck! Every petticoat in Holstein begins to quiver when the Doctor comes along. Tell me, sir, just how do you get such happy results?”

The Doctor cleared the discomfiture from his throat. “Forgive me, sir,” he said flatly. “I’ve just broken a wheel on my carriage and I came here to see if you have anything to offer me in way of a wheelwright.”

“Well, a lucky accident for me,” exclaimed the young man, ignoring Struensee’s request. “I’d enjoy your company for the evening. You can teach me your trade, that is, certain parts of it. If you’re of a mind, of course. I suppose your mysteries are rather sacred. Do you know who I am?”

“I have no idea,” said Struensee.

“Indeed, why should you,” said the young man. “In any case, I’m the crazy one.” He told this quite proudly, hitching his stocking into place and stuffing his shirt-tail into the top of his pants.

“The crazy one?”

“Crazy Brandt, they call me, otherwise Enevold von Brandt. At your service, Doctor. My people are all out amusing themselves somewhere on the grounds. You know, music, dancing, girls and afterwards love in the hay. It’s Sunday today, in case you haven’t noticed. Surely you wouldn’t want me to interrupt my peoples’ day off just to fix your wagon wheel, sir!”

Struensee laughed good-humoredly. “I have heard about you, Brandt,” he said. “But I must admit you’re even more ... what shall I say ...”

“You think so?” Brandt was visibly flattered. “My aunts and those cousins of mine have no originality,” he explained to Struensee. “They jog along the same old paths. When the chickens hop up on the roost, they take the hint and go to bed. If you don’t play faro, you know, they actually believe something’s wrong with you. They’re museum pieces, my dear Struensee.”

“Well, I’m another who can’t play faro,” smiled Struensee. “So there you are.”

“It’s a different matter with you, Doctor,” said Brandt. “When you don’t play faro they excuse you on account of your learning. You had the best damned luck imaginable to come into this world a bourgeois. But I, well, I come from one of the oldest families. There are Brandts by the dozens all the way from the North Cape to the Straits of Messina. And yet I’m on my own, for my particular Brandts, my parents, I mean, departed this earth at a horribly indecent date. They scooted off and didn’t leave me a single brother or sister to keep me company. And it would have taken so little effort! And so, you see, when I have enough money—which is not very often—I prey on the hospitality of my well-fixed relatives. Oh, there are hordes of them. I try to entertain them, I sing for my supper, Struensee. They’ve drunk so much beer and stuffed in so much ham and cabbage that it has thickened their blood. Well, I do what I can to stir it up. I’m their maître de plaisir, you might say. Still, it’s not very polite, is it, for me to gabble on about myself. Actually I’m about the least important and certainly the unluckiest person who ever set foot on earth. Dubiosum est, Doctor, everything’s in a fog. But don’t worry about that broken wheel. My smith will tack it together for you. In the meantime consider this house your own, sir. Stay here with me overnight and let me have your company for dinner. I think we can find a fresh fish somewhere or other, and there’s bread and wine, at least, to go with it. What more do two philosophers need, may I ask!”

Brandt offered his hand to the Doctor, rather timorously despite his easy language, and smiled an ingratiating smile. Struensee accepted the proffered hand and shook it heartily.

The evening meal was simple, as the host had promised, but Brandt managed to spice the fare with amusing observations in endless variety. Bons mots fell from his lips one after the other. Drinking the wine he slumped back at ease in his chair, his leg hanging over the arm. His carelessly barbered hair was all awry and again one of his stockings slipped down. It might have been the heavy sweet wine, or perhaps the host’s vivacious manner, or his laughter, which barely concealed the melancholy and sensitiveness behind it. Or it might have been the soft light of the candles in the old silver candelabrum, the sheer comfort of the room with the spring night dreaming outside the windows. In any event, Struensee’s tongue wagged with an eloquence which surprised himself.

He told young Brandt about his literary venture. How laughable it was in retrospect. He told him about his belief that man was primarily a machine which is built to enjoy and enjoy again, squeezing experience from life like juice from an orange. He talked about the future, about his fond hope of discovering a wider field of operations. And as he talked on Brandt retreated, became more taciturn and at last completely silent. He simply slumped there with his head bowed and thoughtfully stared at his guest out of deep brown eyes.

“A man must take a chance,” said Struensee smoothly. “It’s absurd to be afraid. Not only to be afraid of other people, but of oneself. How idiotically we struggle to make ourselves exactly like other people, even though in our lucid moments we may despise them! Why is it so many of us lack the courage to be and do what we will? It’s pitiful.”

“Thieves think the same,” Brandt reminded him.

“Well, then, in a way I take my hat off to thieves,” Struensee retorted. “Is it not stupid to endure hunger simply because the distribution of goods in our society happens to be what it is? Is not a thief a man who corrects gross inequalities. At least so far as his own person is concerned, he restores the original and natural condition of mankind. Great men, you may have noticed, are always criminals from the standpoint of the society they attempt to supplant. Caesar, Luther, Cromwell, Voltaire and Newton—were they not all renegades, in a sense? One defied the Roman republic, another the Church, another the King’s party, another social orthodoxy, another scientific prejudice. So it goes. Did they not, to a man, pit themselves, their own person and will and insight against infinitely stronger established forms? And were they not great just on that account, just because they dared to live out their lives as they saw it, and think as they wanted to think?”

“One could look at it that way, I suppose,” said Brandt, and poured out his guest another glass of wine.

“But it must, I insist, be looked at that way,” Struensee said. “There’s no point in regarding history as something done, dead and finished. One must make use of its lessons. We are not dealing here with an herbarium, or with a museum choked with curiosities. The river of time flows on, and we have to navigate with the stream, or perish beneath it. And the time has come, I believe, to move into positive action. The order in which we live, the beliefs that are groaned out from our pulpits are hopelessly out of date. Are the ideas of Montesquieu and Voltaire nothing but playthings for young ladies, who would really be a great deal better off wrestling with hot young men among the potted plants? Do you presume to imagine that our world is so good it cannot stand improvement?”

“That’s right, quite right,” murmured Brandt. “However...”

“However what?”

“All you say rather rubs me the wrong way,” said Brandt. “It’s too strenuous, for one thing. You look forward to the end of a world. But this world, I know perfectly well, is my own world, however much I may mock it. Nothing attracts me less than revolution, my good fellow. Revolutions are desperately vulgar affairs, and also extremely exhausting, so I’ve been told. Now, what I’m looking for is beauty. I’d like a change of scene once in a while, a little real pleasure. Actually, what I really would like is the position of maître de plaisir in Paris, or Petersburg or even in Dresden. Anywhere but this silly Holstein. Then I could honestly enjoy life. In my declining years I could relive it all again and amuse myself by writing memoirs.”

Struensee laughed at this frank confession and Brandt joined in. As the hours moved along the conversation became more egoistical and disjointed, and Brandt finally brought it to a close with a last dusty bottle of wine fresh from the cellar. Long after midnight the young man lighted his guest up the stairs. They went up together tipsily, arm in arm, laughing over everything and nothing. The Doctor was given a small white room. He could hear the treetops whispering and rustling in the night wind. It was almost like the murmur of the sea. A hound belled far off on the heath. Gradually everything was still.

The Doctor slept fitfully, woke up, dozed again. In his dreams Caesar came to him, wearing a red-seamed toga, a baldheaded, severe man. Luther came to him, with a Bible and finger lifted in admonition and the devil grinning over his shoulder. Cromwell in iron armor rode a heavy brown horse over the Doctor’s laboring breast. Diabolic Voltaire sat on the edge of the bed and deliberately spattered ink over the sleeper’s face. Then Luther became Newton, crashed open a window and shouted his “hypotheses non fingo” into space. Outside the stars and all seven planets revolved, turning smoothly in their paths. A thin celestial music sounded in the ears of the sleeping Struensee, a broken, tinkling sound like that made by an old striking clock. “Enjoy your life, while the lamp glows, pick lovely roses, while the bloom blows,” it seemed to be saying.

The Doctor awoke with a violent start and began to smile, thinking about Brandt where he had left off. Though he was clear-headed enough, considering the wine, the evening’s argument seethed in the back of his head. At last he had freely spoken thoughts that had troubled him for years. His own words had a power over him, now they were uttered, the unfathomable magic of the spoken word, which presentiment with form and permanence, fixes fleeting moments of illumination. What hitherto had been merely possible suddenly moved from a misty limbo into noontime reality, into a foreground of decision, from which vantage newly won beliefs could be easily projected into the objective world. Fate had done the trick. Fate, Struensee told himself, had led him to this particular house, to this particular young man who was so sympathetic and ridiculous at the same time. He had loosened the Doctor’s tongue, without really trying lured him into baring his inmost thoughts.

Lying in bed on his back Struensee shuddered as he listened to the mighty soughing of the old beech trees girding the estate. It seemed as if they were talking to each other in their own tree language, talking with each other and the night about past and coming things, in deep alien voices and strange accents. Not until the first streaks of dawn when the crowing of the barnyard cock dispelled all nocturnal spooks from the scene did Struensee fall into a black, dreamless sleep.

He awoke with a little start and saw by the warm flecks of sun playing on the bedcovers that the forenoon was already well along. He dressed hurriedly, washed and went downstairs, to find the house empty. He walked outside in the garden, where the birds were singing loudly. A warm wind moved like a caress over the lawn and grassy places about the house and ruffled the mirror of the pond. From the barnyard came strong peasant shouts and the laughter of a milkmaid. A feeling of great happiness was in Struensee, a profound sense of health, solidity and comfort. It seemed to him as if the birds were singing in his heart and the sun actually shining warmly throughout his inner parts. Taking long steps, smiling to himself, he strode through the garden, and sought out the belvedere. There he found Brandt.

They looked at each rather shyly at first. The heated conversation of the evening before was a barrier, now that the sun was out. Yet only for a moment. They embraced cordially.

“My good friend,” said Struensee, “I’ve just had the most frightful dreams. I was tossing about in bed all night long. I couldn’t get my own thoughts out of my head.”

“I didn’t sleep any too well myself,” said Brandt. “I was making up all sorts of schemes in my sleep. And would you believe, I think I’ve found a way.”

“A way?” said Struensee. “What do you mean?”

“A way for us to get somewhere, my friend,” said Brandt. “I can deluge my aunts in Copenhagen with letters. I can present myself at court. I can start currying friends there and make such a nuisance of myself that they’re bound to give me some sort of post to get rid of me. Once I have my foot in the door, it will be simple enough to keep it open while you slide in. Struensee, we’re perfect complements, you and I. I’ll leave the serious people to you, the ones who batter their brains over the future. For my part, I’ll deal with the present. How will that be?”

Struensee looked carefully at Brandt. “And money?” he asked. “How are you fixed for money?”

“Well, well,” he muttered. A shadow of discouragement passed over his face. “I’d quite forgotten that point,” he said. “Just like me.”

Struensee laughed and Brandt ruefully laughed in chorus. Then they both composed themselves and Struensee said: “Just lately I’ve been doing very well. In fact, though I’m not a rich man by any means, I have more than enough to get along. I can support you in Copenhagen for a time, my dear fellow.”

“But can I do it?” said Brandt, more to himself than to Struensee. “This is a very doubtful proposition, if you come right down to it.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing done,” Struensee reminded him.

“Sleep alone, beget no son,” echoed Brandt.

“It’s agreed, then,” said Struensee. “We’ve made a partnership.”

“Very well,” said Brandt. “Next week I’ll visit you in Altona.”

“I must be getting along,” said Struensee. “My patient will be very angry with me, I’m afraid.”

“Let’s hope she’s young,” said Brandt. “And not too ugly.”

The two shook hands on it and walked through the spring morning to the road, where the carriage, its wheel repaired, was drawn up waiting for the Doctor.

A week later Brandt arrived in Altona, and Struensee took him to his own quarters. Brandt was delighted with the rooms, even with the man of bones.

“That fellow is a grim one, isn’t he,” he said appreciatively.

“He was a thief, and a very good one, they say,” said Struensee.

“So good, I take it, that he ended up by being hanged,” Brandt suggested.

“The cards were stacked against him, my good boy,” objected Struensee. “He hadn’t a ghost of a chance, if you examine the situation.”

“Quite right, not a chance,” said Brandt. “In short, it pays to play in tune, as I’ve been telling you right along.”

Struensee stifled the retort on his lips, and shut the closet door in death’s face. Brandt began to tell him about his plans for making a success in the capital. Opportunities were rather scarce for the reason that everyone with any power was incompetent and lazy. Just the same it was necessary to attract the attention of some highly placed personage, Brandt explained enthusiastically, and secure his protection. To break into the circle of influence it was additionally necessary to make endless acquaintances and be invited everywhere. One had to be charming, perform small services for others. One had to be able to talk well and understand how to make oneself liked by the women. For women, Brandt expounded to Struensee, so long as they were not too plain, nor too morally inclined, were social coin, so to speak, moving freely from hand to hand. Women, then, were highly acceptable in an intermediary role, providing they were adequately frivolous, or so to outward appearance, and had a fine complexion, an interesting bosom and a graceful manner of speech.

“In the Koenig von Preussen,” Brandt went on to say, “two ladies are stopping over right at this moment. One of them is a certain Frau von Gaehler—her husband is a major in the Danish army—and the other is Frau von Ahrend, whom I know slightly. We should do something about making their acquaintance. Try our hand out, you might say.”

Brandt was right; the two young women from Copenhagen were bored to tears at the Koenig von Preussen. They were only too happy to have two personable young men, that is, more or less young men, do them homage. Frau von Gaehler was all but swept off her feet by Struensee.

“Yes, but Annette,” her friend cooed, “the little one is very nice, too, don’t you think?”

“All right, you take him,” said Frau von Gaehler. “You like him, so you have him. And do please keep your hands off the dear Doctor, will you?”

“That suits me,” said the other. “I do hope this business turns out to be a little adventure, don’t you? Something we can dream about. That is, when our beloved husbands are snoring away the watches of the night.”

The four ate together, and found the dishes and the wines splendid, especially the wines. They drank Ruedesheimer, then Beaujolais and finally Sekt. Frau von Gaehler coquettishly dipped her strawberries in the Sekt, to show the men how it was done in the capital. But the conversation was the best part of it all, the witty questions and the wittier answers, which floated like feathers all about the table. Brandt was extremely diverting. His jokes were a little strong and made the ladies gasp, but, after all, blushing and gasping were delightful in themselves. And Struensee’s glance was so warm when it sought out Annette von Gaehler’s dark eyes. The wines did their work. Annette let the tip of her toe play over Struensee’s shinbone, telling small secrets all of its own. Casually he allowed his hand to fall on her knee and feel out the outline of her garter under the smooth silk of her dress.

It was still early in the afternoon when the last tickly glass of Sekt had disappeared down their throats. Thereafter they decided to go boating on the nearby Alster. Emerging from the inn the warm spring air was refreshing to their faces. The women could feel their own bodies under the billowing dresses. They seemed to themselves larger and more sinuous than usual, their breasts firmer, larger and more erect. They were happy, bursting with youth. The champagne bubbled in their brains and made their hearts sing, the warm sweet perfume of the blossoming lindens addled their sense exquisitely. A brilliant clarient timbre came into their voices.

Pedestrians filled the streets this merry spring afternoon, all shapes, sizes and occupations; scurrying ladies’ maids, fishwives in stiff costume, solemn merchants’ wives in white lace coifs, pretty strumpets in highheeled shoes. It did not escape Annette that many of these last wenches shot quick, appraising looks at Dr. Struensee as he passed them by, those instinctive looks which women give men in whom they sense the power to bestow intimate satisfactions. And Annette noted, too, that she received similar compliments from the men along the way. The dandies, lazing haughtily through the crowd, and the men of commerce, stumping along soberly in grown fustian and tricorn hat, all had an eye for her. We must be a striking couple, she thought. The world’s hunger for both their persons kindled urgent wishes and longings in Annette’s heart. The random lust of the passersby titillated her and heightened her half-drunken euphoria.

Once in the boat it was even better. The soft gliding through the water, the gentle rocking of the boat seemed not quite real. It reminded Annette, so she said, of Watteau’s picture, the “Journey to Cythera.” Sympathetically she recalled the distress of the lost and loving pairs on the canvas. The towers of the city over the steep rooftops against a soft blue sky, the splashing of the water, the heavy river smell added to the enchantment of the situation. Delightedly she watched the swans paddle by, followed by their little gray brood. She saw country houses in the distance, shining white amidst the fresh verdure of their grounds.

Nobody talked much in the boat excepting Brandt who, like a wound clock that must tick itself down, chattered on incessantly. The others hardly heard him and did not mind his buzz. The water was bluer than the sky. Struensee drove the boat with strong strokes farther and farther over the blueness. From other craft came the sound of low voices. Now and then they heard the song of a bird from the shore, or the sigh of a little wave on the sandy beach. Drifting through the spring afternoon, the boat came to the other end of the lake at Harvesthude. There they landed on a damp meadow bank, forcing their way ashore through the reeds, moored the boat and the gentlemen offered the ladies their hands for a lift up.

Beyond the wet meadows, where ancient oak trees grew, was the Harvesthude Cloister. For many years it had no longer been used as a cloister and, indeed, was not recognizable as an ecclesiastical edifice. The buildings had been turned into barns and now smelled strongly of hay and stored potatoes. In the courtyard lay a plough tipped on its side, like a child’s abandoned toy. A black cat slunk lazily across the flags, found a likely place to rest, lay down and stretched. Not a soul was stirring about the place.

Struensee and Annette, who had drifted apart from the other pair, agreed that they were tired and sleepy. They went up creaky stairs into one of the barn lofts. Sweet-smelling hay was piled up high in one corner to the beams. They kicked up a cloud of hay dust and the motes danced wildly in the shafty light. Outdoors hens clucked and tame doves cooed. They lay down together in the warm hay. Annette closed her eyes and pretended to breathe gently and evenly as in sleep. Struensee bent over her and admired her white forehead. He examined the black, steeply curved eyebrows, the little beauty patch on her right cheek, the swell of her breasts. At this point Annette opened her eyes, looked into his and read his desire. She stretched out her arms, hugged him about the neck and drew him down to her.

In actual fact Annette was not so casual about love-making as appearances might have indicated. When she came to herself about an hour later, and propped herself straight up on the heels of her hands, she was more than a little shocked to discover herself so suddenly in a lover’s possession. Thoughtfully she sized up the man at her side, who had really fallen asleep. The damage was done and nothing could be done to remedy it. She would continue, she told herself, with an affair of such great promise. Time, she thought, that I pay a little attention to my own needs. Up to the present her husband’s career had always taken first place in her considerations. It was her burning ambition to make Major Gaehler, though he was neither much of a soldier nor much of a bureaucrat, into a general. To this end she had consistently sacrificed her own pleasure. Up to meeting Struensee, whenever she dallied with a lover, it had always been some man who might push along her husband, either with gifts of money or with political influence.

She blushed, she looked very pretty and naïve in the hay as she thought how primitively she had lain down for Struensee. In the hay, mind you, just like a peasant girl. Then she felt a trifle sick with apprehension when the thought occurred to her that concupiscence might have serious consequences. After all, she was by no means sterile. Already she had borne her husband two little girls.

There was only one way out to restore her moral equilibrium and right the wrong done her deserving husband, and that was to deceive herself into believing that she had played with Struensee only to advance her husband’s career, and by corollary, of course, her children’s prospects. Major Gaehler, as a matter of fact, was not jealous about his wife’s physical gratifications. They had often discussed this possibility pro and con when some exploitable lover had chanced along. In fact, not so long ago a rich military contractor had been seriously considered by common consent of the married couple as third member in a ménage à trois.

Presently Struensee awoke and smilingly craned his neck, the better to have a look at his new beloved’s profile. She looked down at him, in that comical, doubting way that young wives have when they look at their husbands upon first realizing they are not trusted with a single real thought or emotion. He drew her, protesting, down to him and kissed her lustily.

“No, no, dear,” she said firmly and pried herself loose. “Not any more. We have to be serious. Please!”

“I am serious,” he said. “I do believe I love you.”

“Of course you do,” she said. “However, we’ve got to be practical!”

“Practical?” he said. “What a miserable thought to have in the hay!”

“You’ve got to come to Copenhagen,” she said.

He stiffened with annoyance and was about to contradict her when he remembered that it was for the very reason of getting to Copenhagen that he and Brandt had approached the ladies. But he still pretended not to be interested. “What would I do in Copenhagen,” he complained. “I haven’t the means to live a life of leisure, you know.”

“What’s to prevent you from finding patients in Copenhagen?” she asked.

“That takes a long time, my sweet,” Struensee told her. “One doesn’t build up a practice overnight.”

Annette considered this objection. “Gaehler has good connections,” she said, but not very enthusiastically. Then suddenly she let out a pretty shriek of joy. “I’ve got it,” she said. “I can’t imagine why it didn’t come to me before.”

“Well, what is it?” he asked.

“You’ve got to be made the King’s physician-in-ordinary, my darling,” she said. “Then all doors will be open to you.” She was so happy about it that she damped his face all over with kisses.

“Upon my word,” said Struensee, “I believe I’ve met an ambitious woman!”

“I am ambitious, terribly,” Annette confessed. “I have to look out for my men, you see.”

“Men?”

“Why, yes,” she said, “for you and Gaehler. He’s really a decent fellow and I’m sure you’ll like him. I’m sure it won’t be long before you’re as fond of him as you are of me, darling.”

“God forbid,” said Struensee. “I certainly hope not.”

“You’re not jealous, dear,” said Annette. “Are you?”

“Jealous?” said Struensee. “Why, no. Should I be?”

“He’ll be so glad to meet you,” said Annette. “How lucky I am, don’t you think, to be able to call two such intelligent men my own!”

“What firmer bond of friendship than a lovely lady,” said Struensee.

“Of course, that’s just it,” said Annette. “Idyllic, isn’t it. We shall be one happy, tender family.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Struensee. He was tiring of the game. “But what makes you think that the King needs a physician-in-ordinary? Isn’t Dr. Berger good enough for him?”

Annette looked away and did not reply. The barn loft was growing dark and the oaks out in the meadows now cast long shadows of deep green on the gold-fuzzed carpet of grass.

“Come, my friend,” Annette said at last. “We must leave. But you’ll come and stay with me tonight, won’t you, dear? Sleeping alone is such a dreary business, I think, and such a sinful waste. Don’t you think so, too? Tonight I’ll tell you so many things. You’ll be amazed, beloved, I promise you.”

Struensee reached down and hauled Annette to her feet. “Yes, you’ll be astonished,” she said again as she adjusted her dress, smiling quizzically into his face. “In Copenhagen there’s all sorts of troubles you’ve never even heard of. And all they need to cure them is a good doctor. I think I’ve found him. I’m sure he could cure anybody. Of practically anything. Am I not a clever woman, darling?”

“You overwhelm me,” said Struensee. He kissed her so ardently that her knees slacked and he had to hold her up. “You are indeed a desirable little woman,” he assured her, wiping the wet of the kisses from his mouth. “We had better go before the sun sets altogether.”