In any case, not many visitors came these days. In the past people had come to see Liz and Friedrich with their own eyes, and some had also come to make promises, for even if scarcely anyone believed that Friedrich would rule over Bohemia again, it was nonetheless not completely impossible either. To promise something cost little: as long as the man was out of power, you didn’t have to keep your word, but if he reascended, he would remember those who had stuck by him in dark times. By this time, however, promises were all they received; no one brought presents anymore that were valuable enough to be turned into money.
With an impassive face she had shown Christian von Braunschweig the white canvas, too. Stupid, deceitful, and illegitimate people, she had explained, could not see the magnificent painting, and then she had observed with a pleasure difficult to describe how her tearful admirer had kept looking helplessly across at the wall where the picture, mocking and blank, withstood his pathos.
“This is the best gift anyone has ever given me,” she said to her fool.
“That’s not saying much, little Liz.”
“John Donne wrote me an ode. Fair phoenix bride, he called—”
“Little Liz, he was paid, he would have called you a stinking fish too if he had been given money for it. What do you think I would call you if you paid me better!”
“And I got a ruby necklace from the Kaiser, a diadem from the King of France.”
“Can I see it?”
She was silent.
“Did you have to sell it?”
She was silent.
“And who is John Dung anyway? What sort of fellow is that, and who is fearful Nick’s bride supposed to be?”
She was silent.
“Had to give it to the pawnbroker, your diadem? And the necklace from the Kaiser, little Liz, who is wearing it now?”
Not even her poor king had dared to say anything about the picture. And when she had explained to him that it was only a joke and the canvas was not enchanted, he had merely nodded and gazed at her uneasily.
She had always known that he wasn’t the cleverest. From the beginning it had been obvious, but for a man of his rank it wasn’t important. A prince did nothing, and if he happened to be unusually clever, it was nearly a blot on his honor. Subordinates had to be clever. He was himself—that was enough, nothing more was necessary.
This was the way of the world. There were a few real people, and then there were the rest: a shadowy army, a host of figures in the background, a swarm of ants crawling over the earth and having in common with each other that they were lacking something. They were born and died, were like the flecks of fluttering life that made up a flock of birds—if one disappeared, you hardly noticed it. The people who mattered were few.
The fact that her poor Friedrich was not the cleverest and also somewhat sickly, with a tendency to stomach pain and earaches, had already become apparent when he had come to London at the age of sixteen, in white ermine, with a court of four hundred attendants. He had come because the other suitors had stolen away or had at the decisive moment made no offer; first the young King of Sweden had declined, then Maurice of Orange, then Otto of Hesse. For a while, there had then been the positively foolhardy plan of marrying her to the Prince of Piedmont, who may not have had any money but was the nephew of the Spanish king—Papa’s old dream of a reconciliation with Spain—but the Spaniards had remained skeptical, and all at once there was no one left but the German Electoral Prince Friedrich and his brilliant prospects. The Palatine chancellor had spent months negotiating in London before they reached an agreement: a forty-thousand-pound dowry from Papa to Germany in exchange for ten thousand pounds a year from the Palatinate to London.
After the signing of the contract Friedrich himself had arrived, rigid with trepidation. He had begun by garbling the words of his speech; it was noticeable how pitiful his French was, and to forestall keener embarrassment, Papa had simply walked up to him and embraced him. Then, with pursed, dry lips, the poor fellow had given her the kiss prescribed by protocol.
The next day they had taken a boat ride on the largest vessel of the court; only Mama hadn’t wanted to come with them, because she found a prince Palatine beneath their station. Although the Palatine chancellor had claimed with the help of silly official opinions by his court jurists that an elector had the rank of a king, everyone knew that this was sheer nonsense. Only a king was a king.
On the boat ride, Friedrich had leaned on the railing and tried not to let his seasickness show. He had had the eyes of a child, but he had held himself perfectly erect as only those taught by the best court tutors could. You must be a good fencer, she had thought, and: you’re not ugly. Don’t worry, she would have liked best to whisper to him, I am with you now.
And now, so many years later, he still had impeccable posture. Whatever else had happened, however much he had been humiliated and made the laughingstock of Europe—to stand up straight was something he could still do as before, his head tilted back slightly, his chin raised, his hands clasped behind him, and he even still had his beautiful calf eyes.
She was fond of her poor king. She couldn’t help it. She had spent all these years with him, borne him more children than she could count. They called him the Winter King, her the Winter Queen—their fates were indissolubly bound together. That day on the Thames she had had no such foreboding, she had merely thought that she would have to teach the poor boy a few things, for when two people were married, they had to talk to each other. With this fellow here it could become difficult; he had no idea about anything.
He must have been utterly overwhelmed, so far away from his Heidelberg castle, from the cattle of his native land, from the pointed houses and little German people, in a city for the first time. And here he stood right in front of all the shrewd, fearsome lords and ladies and, to top it all, in front of Papa, who frightened everyone anyhow.
The evening after the boat ride, she and Papa had had their longest talk of her life. She hardly knew her father. She had not grown up with him but with Lord Harington at Coombe Abbey; families of rank didn’t raise their children themselves. Her father had been a shadow in her dreams, a figure in paintings, a character who appeared in fairy tales—the ruler of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, the hunter of godless witches, the terror of Spain, the Protestant son of the beheaded Catholic queen. When you met him, you were always surprised that he had such a long nose and such swollen bags under his eyes, which always seemed to be pensively looking inward. He always gave you the feeling that you had said something wrong. But this was on purpose; it had become a habit.
It had been their first real conversation. How do you, my dear daughter? That was how he had usually greeted her when she came to Whitehall. Excellent, I thank you, my dear father. It pleases your mother and me to see you faring well. Hardly as much as it pleases me to see you in good health, my dear father. In her mind she called him Papa, but she would not have dared to address him like that.
That evening they had been alone together for the first time. Papa stood by the window, his hands behind his back. For quite a while he didn’t say a word. And because she didn’t know what to say, she too was silent.
“The oaf has a great future,” he finally said.
Again he was silent. He took some marble thing from the shelf, gazed at it, and put it back.
“There are three Protestant electors,” he said, so softly that she had to lean forward, “and the Elector Palatine—that is, yours—is the highest in rank, the head of the Protestant Union in the Empire. The Kaiser is ill, soon there will be a new imperial election in Frankfurt. If our side has grown even stronger by then…” He scrutinized her. His eyes were so small and set so deep in their sockets that it seemed as if he were not even looking at you.