‘Mölcke refused to lie. He is innocent of this charge, and he would not lie even to save his life. Well? What are you going to do?’
‘What is there to do?’
‘Is it nothing to you that your wife is plotted against?’
‘You said he refused to implicate you.’
‘But someone tried to tempt him to do so.’
‘He didn’t. And that’s an end of it.’
‘I … I don’t understand you.’
‘Why should you?’
She looked at him in exasperation. ‘And is it nothing to you that I have enemies who would dishonour me … who would plot my ruin?’
‘It’s no concern of mine,’ mumbled George Lewis.
She left him in an agony of rage; and she wept for Count Mölcke when his head was cut off in the Royal Mews.
She had lost a friend – a gallant chivalrous gentleman; she turned to Königsmarck for comfort.
Banishment from Celle
ERNEST AUGUSTUS HAD at last attained his heart’s desire. Hanover was created an Electorate and he its Elector. All the scheming of years had borne fruit. He could not have done it, he knew, without the help of his brother George William’s wealth and without the aid they had been able to give to the Emperor. But the glory was his; he was richer, more powerful than he had dared hope. And for a time he forgot his worries. He did not wonder what Maximilian was doing in Wolfenbüttel; how far his brother Christian was with him; he suppressed his disappointment in Sophia Dorothea for whom he had always had a tender spot. He gave himself up to the joy of celebrating his great achievement. Clara was only too happy to help him.
Königsmarck was uneasy. He was no coward, but the Mölcke affair had shaken him. He knew that he was living dangerously as Sophia Dorothea’s lover. He continually cursed himself for having made an enemy of Clara von Platen. There were times when he was sure that he would willingly die for Sophia Dorothea and others when he was unsure. If he could have married her, willingly would he have done so, and he was sure that he could have been a faithful husband. When he was with her he was the chivalrous and single-minded lover she believed him to be. There were times when he was not with her, when he was unsure.
He was an adventurer, an opportunist; he could not change his character because he was in love. How he fluctuated! There were times when he planned to run away with her; others when he planned to run away without her.
Because she was romantic and he was calculating, because she in her simplicity loved him for that ideal manhood with which she alone had endowed him, she could not truly know him. But he knew himself; and because she meant more to him than any other living person ever had, desperately he tried to live up to her ideal.
Creeping into her apartments by night, romantically scrambling from her window in the early morning … all this was romance. But he was always aware of the dangers he ran and wondered whether this or that night’s adventure would be the last. Sometimes he told himself he was a fool.
Thus it was with Königsmarck – torn between the wisdom of flight from danger and the ecstasy of living with it.
Hildebrand, Königsmarck’s secretary and confidant, was waiting for him when the Count entered the house. There was a messenger, he told his master, from Saxony.
Königsmarck said he would see the man at once and when he came to him and handed him letters he took them to his private apartments to read at once.
One of the letters was from his friend Frederick Augustus, heir to the Electorate of Saxony; but as Königsmarck read the letter he realized that his friend had come into his inheritance.
His brother George Frederick had died of smallpox and Frederick Augustus had succeeded him. He needed his friends about him and there would be a welcome for Königsmarck in Dresden.
This was unexpected. The Elector George Frederick had been in his prime – a lusty man who had at this time been ruled by his beautiful mistress the Countess von Röohlitz, an imperious young woman of twenty-one who had haughtily declared that she would not live at the same court as her lover’s wife; as a result the Electress had been asked to leave. She had seemed invincible until an enemy had confronted her whom she could not vanquish. The smallpox had killed her, and in his devotion to her, for he would not leave her side, her lover had caught the disease, and died less than a fortnight after her.
‘I should be with my friend Frederick Augustus at such a time,’ said Königsmarck.
An absence from Hanover, he believed, would give him time to decide how he should shape his life, for he could not go on for ever in this unsatisfactory state. Sophia Dorothea would be ready to elope with him, he believed, and he wanted to go away for a while to explore this exciting but highly dangerous possibility.
Within a few weeks of receiving those letters, Königsmarck was on his way to Dresden.
Sophia Dorothea missed him sadly. Life was empty without him, she told Eléonore von Knesebeck.
‘Sometimes I think he will never return,’ she said. ‘He will see the wisdom of staying away now that he has put some distance between us.’
‘He’ll come back.’
‘If you loved me you would pray he never would.’
‘When you yourself will pray that he will?’
‘Have done! I want to get away from the palace. Let us go for a walk in the gardens.’
It was pleasant walking in the gardens which, although not so tastefully arranged as they were at Celle, were more colourful.
People curtsied as she passed, and among them was one woman who had been in great poverty and to whom she had ordered that food and clothes should be sent. She recognized the woman, looking affluent now, and paused to express her pleasure. The woman dropped a deep curtsey and murmured that she would never forget the service done to her by the Princess. She was a midwife who had recently improved her fortunes when she delivered a very important child.
‘I am pleased to hear it,’ said Sophia Dorothea.
‘But,’ declared the woman, ‘I should never forget my true benefactress and if there was aught I could do for Your Highness I should first wish to serve you.’
Eléonore von Knesebeck could not allow this enigmatic remark to pass and later went to see the woman to discover what she meant. She was told that the woman had recently delivered Fraulein von Schulenburg of a daughter whose father was George Lewis. It was kept a secret, but if it was to the good of the Princess to know it, the woman had no intention of keeping it from her.
Eléonore von Knesebeck could not keep such a piece of information to herself and went back to tell the Princess what she had discovered.
Sophia Dorothea listened with a stony expression, and when she considered how she and Königsmarck had considered it wise to part while George Lewis flaunted his mistress at court and in secret she gave birth to his child, she was suddenly very angry, and without stopping to think she went to her husband’s apartments.
She found George Lewis alone and said impulsively, ‘I have just discovered that your Schulenburg friend has presented you with a daughter.’
‘It surprises you?’ he asked.
‘No, but it shocks me.’
‘You are a fool.’
‘And you are a lecher.’
George Lewis did not answer. He yawned and kept his mouth open.
‘You have the manners of a stable boy and the morals of a cockerel. You are crude, uncouth … and I cannot understand why even that foolish creature can pretend to have some affection for you. She has not, of course. She thinks it clever, I suppose, to have the whole court laughing at your antics. She likes the rewards … and of course if you pay highly enough …’
George Lewis had lumbered towards her.
‘Shut your mouth.’
‘I will speak if I have a mind to. Someone should tell you what everyone says about you behind your back. Your place is not in a court. It’s … Oh!’ He had brought up his hand and slapped her face.