Per Olov Enquist

The Visit Of The Royal Physician

Translated from the Swedish by
Tiina Nunnally

First published with the title Livlakerens Besok,
by Norstedts Förlag, 2000
First published in Great Britain in 2002 by The Harvill Press
This electronic edition published in 2016 by

MacLehose Press
an imprint of Quercus Editions Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK Company

Copyright © Per Olov Enquist, 1999
English translation copyright © Tina Nunnally, 2001

Ebook cover photograph: Copy by Hans Hansen of an original portrait of Johann Freidrich Struensee by Jens Juel. Courtesy of The Royal Danish Collection, Rosenborg.

Lines on p.50 translated from the French by Steven T. Murray

Lines from Voltaire on pp.216–17 translated from the French by Cal Kinnear

The moral right of Per Olov Enquist to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Tina Nunnally asserts her moral right to be identified as the translator of the work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978 0 85705 554 5

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Enlightenment is the triumph of the human being over his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the lack of ability to make use of one’s own intellect without the guidance of someone else. This immaturity is self-imposed when the cause is not a lack of intellect but a lack of courage to make use of that intellect. Enlightenment demands nothing more than freedom – the freedom that consists in making public use, under all circumstances, of one’s reason. For it is the birthright of every human being to think for himself.

IMMANUEL KANT (1783)

The King confided in me that there was a woman who was secretly ruling the Universe. And that there existed a circle of men who had been chosen to commit all evil in the world, and among them were seven, of which he was one, who had been specially selected. For him to establish a friendship with anyone depended on whether that person was also a member of this chosen circle.

U. A. HOLSTEIN, Memoirs

Part I

The Four

Chapter 1 · The Wine Treader

1

Johann Friedrich Struensee was appointed Royal Physician to King Christian VII on April 5, 1768, and four years later he was executed.

Ten years after that, on September 21, 1782, by the time “the Struensee era” had become a term in common use, Robert Murray Keith, the British Ambassador to the Danish court sent a report to his government of an incident he had witnessed. He considered the incident puzzling.

That was why he reported it.

He had attended a dramatic performance at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. Also in the audience was King Christian VII, along with Ove Høegh-Guldberg, the true holder of power in Denmark and in practice the absolute ruler.

He had assumed the title of Prime Minister.

The report concerned the Ambassador’s encounter with the King.

He begins with his impressions of the King’s appearance, Christian VII being only 33 years old: “He looks as if he is already an old man, very short and gaunt, with a sunken face, his smouldering eyes testifying to the sickly state of his mind.” He writes that before the performance the “mad” King Christian began wandering around among the audience, muttering, his face twitching oddly.

Guldberg kept a watchful eye on him the whole time.

The strange thing was the relationship between them. It might be described as that of an orderly and his patient, or a pair of siblings, or as if Guldberg were the father of an unruly or sick child; but Keith uses the expression “almost loving”.

At the same time, he writes that the two seemed to be united in an “almost perverse way”.

What was perverse was not that these two, who he knew had played such important rôles during the Danish revolution, then as enemies, were now dependent upon each other in this way. What was perverse was that the King behaved like a frightened but obedient dog and Guldberg his stern yet loving master.

His Majesty acted as if he were cringing ingratiatingly, almost cowering. The members of the court showed no deference towards the monarch, but instead ignored him or retreated with a laugh whenever he approached, as if they wished to avoid his embarrassing presence.

As if he were a difficult child they had tired of long ago.

The only one who took any notice of the King was Guldberg. The King always kept three or four paces behind Guldberg, following him obsequiously, seeming anxious not to be abandoned. Sometimes Guldberg, with a gesture or look, would give the King a small signal. This happened whenever he muttered too loudly, behaved disruptively, or moved too far away from Guldberg.

At the signal, King Christian would hastily and obediently “come scurrying”.

Once, when the King’s muttering was particularly disruptive and loud, Guldberg went over to him, took him gently by the arm, and whispered something. The King then began bowing mechanically, over and over, with fitful, almost spastic movements, as if the Danish King were a dog seeking to declare his utter submission and devotion to his beloved master. He kept on bowing until Guldberg, with another whispered remark, brought the peculiar gestures of the royal personage to a halt.

Then Guldberg patted the King on the cheek and was in turn rewarded with a smile so full of gratitude and submission that the Ambassador’s eyes “filled with tears”. He writes that the scene was so charged with despair that it was almost unbearable. He made note of Guldberg’s kindness or, as he writes, of “his willingness to take responsibility for the ill little King”, also that the contempt and derision expressed by the rest of the audience was not evident in Guldberg. He seemed to be the only one paying any heed to the King.

Yet there was one recurring expression in the report: “like a dog”. The sovereign ruler of Denmark was treated like a dog. The difference was that Guldberg seemed to show a loving sense of responsibility for this dog.

“To see them together – and both of them were of remarkably short and stunted stature – was for me a strange and unsettling experience, since in a formal and practical sense all power in the land emanated from those two peculiar dwarfs.”

*

The report dwells most, however, on what happened during and after the theatrical performance.

In the middle of the play, which was Le Méchant, a comedy by the French playwright Gresset, King Christian got up suddenly from his seat in the front row, staggered onto the stage, and began behaving as if he were one of the actors. He took up an actor’s pose and recited what might be assumed to be lines; the words “tracasserie” and “anthropophagie” were the only ones distinguishable. Keith took particular note of the latter, which he knew meant “cannibalism”. It was clear that the King was very much engaged in the play and believed himself to be one of the actors, but Guldberg, in his calmness, went up on stage and kindly took the King by the hand. The monarch fell silent at once and allowed himself to be led back to his seat.

The audience, which consisted of members of the court alone, seemed accustomed to this type of interruption. No-one reacted with consternation. Scattered laughter could be heard.

After the performance, wine was served. Keith then happened to be standing near the King. He turned to Keith, whom he apparently recognized as the British Ambassador, and made a stammering attempt to explain the central theme of the drama. “The King told me that the play was about evil existing to such a high degree among members of the court that they resembled apes or devils. They rejoiced at each other’s misfortunes and bewailed their successes; this was what was called in the time of the druids cannibalism, anthropophagie. That was why we found ourselves among cannibals.”

The King’s “outburst”, coming as it did from a madman, was very well formulated from a linguistic point of view.

Keith had merely nodded with an expression of interest, as if everything the King said was interesting and sensible. He did note, however, that Christian had not given an entirely incorrect analysis of the satirical content of the play.

The King had spoken in a whisper, as if confiding an important secret to Keith.

Guldberg, from a distance of a few yards, kept a watchful or uneasy eye on their conversation. Slowly he approached them.

Christian noticed this and sought to bring the conversation to an end. Raising his voice, almost as if in provocation, he exclaimed:

“They’re lying. Lying! Brandt was a clever but wild man. Struensee was a fine man. I wasn’t the one who killed them. Do you understand?”

Keith simply bowed without answering.

Then Christian added:

“He’s alive! They think he was executed, but Struensee is alive. Do you know that?”

By this time Guldberg had come so close that he could hear the last words. He took a firm grip on the King’s arm and with a stony but soothing smile he said:

“Struensee is dead, Your Majesty. We know that, don’t we? Don’t we know that? We’ve agreed on that, haven’t we? Haven’t we?”

His tone was kindly but reproving. Christian at once began his strange, mechanical bowing again, but then stopped and said:

“But people refer to the Struensee era, don’t they? Not the Guldberg era. Struensee’s era! How odd!”

For a moment Guldberg regarded the King in silence, as if he had been struck dumb or was lost for an answer. Keith noted that he seemed tense or distressed; then Guldberg pulled himself together and calmly said:

“His Majesty must compose himself. We think His Majesty must soon retire for the night, to sleep. We are quite sure of this.”

He then gave a signal with his hand and withdrew. Christian started up his manic bowing again, but then stopped; as if in thought, he turned towards Ambassador Keith and in a voice that was quite calm and collected said:

“I’m in danger. That’s why I must seek out my benefactress, who is the Sovereign of the Universe.”

A few minutes later he was gone. This was the incident, in its entirety, as the British Ambassador reported it to his government.

2

Today there is not a single monument to Struensee in Denmark.

During his Danish visit a large number of portraits were made of him: engravings, pencil sketches, and oil paintings. Since no portraits were undertaken after his death, most of them are idealized and none are offensive. This is only natural. Before his visit he had no power, so there was no reason to immortalize him; after his death no-one wanted to be reminded of his existence.

Why should any monuments have been erected? An equestrian statue perhaps?

Of all the rulers of Denmark who were so often immortalized on horseback, he was no doubt the most capable horseman and the one who loved horses the most. When Struensee was led to the scaffold at Østre Fælled, General Eichstedt, perhaps as an expression of contempt or subtle cruelty towards the condemned man, had come riding up on Struensee’s own horse, a white mare which he had named Margrethe, an unusual name for a horse. But if the intention was to cause the condemned man further pain, it failed. Struensee’s eyes lit up, he stopped, raised his hand as if he wanted to pat the horse on the muzzle, and a faint, almost happy smile passed over his face, as if he thought the horse had come to bid him farewell.

He wanted to pat the horse on the muzzle but was unable to reach that far.

*

But why an equestrian statue? Only victors were honoured this way.

It’s possible to imagine an equestrian statue of Struensee in Østre Fælled where he was executed, portrayed astride his Margrethe, whom he loved so much, in the park that is still there today, now used for demonstrations and public events, next to the athletic field. A park for games and festivals that almost resembles the royal parks Struensee once opened for a populace that until then had been shown little favour. The park is still there today, a marvellous open expanse where, on an October evening in 1941, Niels Bohr and Heisenberg took their famous stroll and had that mysterious conversation, as a result of which Hitler never managed to build his atomic bomb. One of history’s crossroads. It is still there, although the scaffold is gone, just as is the memory of Struensee. There are no equestrian statues to commemorate a loser.

Guldberg was not awarded an equestrian statue either, and yet he was the victor and the one who crushed the Danish revolution. But equestrian statues are not given to a little upstart whose name was Høegh before he took the name of Guldberg and who was the son of an undertaker from Horsens.

Indeed both of them were upstarts, but few have left as clear a mark on history as they did; for that matter, they both deserved equestrian statues. “No-one refers to the Guldberg era” – that was obviously unfair.

Guldberg could justly take offence. He was the victor, after all. Posterity would indeed speak of “the Guldberg era”. It lasted twelve years.

Then it too came to an end.

3

Guldberg had learned to handle the scorn with composure.

He knew his enemies. They spoke of light but spread darkness. His enemies assuredly believed that the Struensee era would last forever. That’s what they thought. That was their characteristic infamy, and it had no relation to reality. They wished for it to be so. But he had always known how to hold himself in check, as when the British Ambassador was within earshot. That was necessary in a person who was slight in stature.

Guldberg was slight in stature. Yet his rôle in the Danish revolution and the period that followed was not slight. Guldberg had always wished that his biography would begin with the words: “There once was a man named Guldberg.” This was the style of the Icelandic sagas, in which a man’s greatness was not judged by his outward appearance.

Guldberg was four feet ten inches tall; his face was grey and prematurely aged, criss-crossed with tiny wrinkles that he had acquired as quite a young man. He seemed to have been transformed into an old man prematurely; that was why at first he was scorned and overlooked because of his insignificance, and later feared.

After he came to power, people learned to ignore his physical lack of significance. After he seized power he had himself portrayed with an iron jaw. The best portraits of him were done while he was in power. They express his inner self, which was considerable. The paintings give weight to his brilliance, education, and brutality, laying less emphasis on his outward appearance. And that was only proper. In his opinion, that was the purpose of art.

His eyes were icy grey like a wolf’s and he never blinked as he fixed his gaze on the person who was speaking. Before he crushed the Danish revolution, they called him “the Lizard”.

Afterwards they no longer did.

There once was a man named Guldberg, of slight physical stature but filled with inner greatness; that was the proper tone.

He himself never used the expression “the Danish revolution”.

*

In the existing portraits from the time everyone has unnaturally big eyes.

Since the eyes are regarded as the mirror of the soul, the eyes were painted larger than life, much too large; they seem to be forcing their way out of the face, they are gleaming and shrewd; the eyes are meaningfully, almost grotesquely insistent. A subject’s innermost self is documented in the eyes.

The interpretation of the eyes is then left to the beholder.

*

Apparently Guldberg himself dismissed with disgust any thought of an equestrian statue. He hated horses and harboured a real fear of them. Not once in his life had he ever sat on a horse.

His books, his writings, what he created before his days as a politician and afterwards, were monument enough. In all the portraits of Guldberg he is depicted as strong and robust, never as prematurely old. He controlled the way he was portrayed by possessing power; he never had to give instructions about the nature of the portraits. The artists invariably complied without being told.

He regarded artists and portraitists as the servants of politics. They were required to shape the facts, which in this case meant the inner truths that were disguised by his external slightness.

And yet for a long time this slightness proved useful. He was the one during the Danish revolution who was protected by his insignificance. Those who were significant fell, destroying each other. Until only Guldberg remained, insignificant and yet the tallest thing in the landscape of fallen trees all around him.

He found the image of the huge but fallen trees insidious. In a letter, he writes about the relative smallness of the great living trees and about their demise. For many hundreds of years the Crown had been cutting down all the great trees in Denmark. This was particularly the case with oak trees. They were felled for shipbuilding. Until what remained was a kingdom with no mature oaks. Guldberg tells of growing up in this devastated landscape, like a shrub rising above the stumps of the fallen and vanquished great trees.

He doesn’t put it into writing, but the meaning is clear. This is how greatness springs from insignificance.

*

He considered himself an artist who had given up his art and chosen the realm of politics. That was why he admired and disdained artists.

His dissertation on Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, which was published in 1761 during his time as professor at Sorø Academy, is a study that repudiates fictional depictions of heaven; fictional in the sense that the poem takes liberties regarding the objective facts that were established in the Bible. Milton, he writes, was a magnificent poet, but he must be rebuked for being speculative. He takes liberties. The “so-called sacred poetry” takes liberties. In Chapter XVI he presents pointed arguments to repudiate as “fabricators” the “apostles of emancipated thinking”. They create ambiguity, causing the dikes to burst and the poem’s filth to defile everything.

The poem should not distort the document. The poem is a defiler of the document. Though in his view a painting is not.

It was often the case that artists took liberties. These liberties could lead to unrest, chaos and filth. For this reason the pious poets also had to be rebuked. And yet he admired Milton, albeit reluctantly. He labelled him “magnificent”. He is a magnificent poet who takes liberties.

Holberg he despised.

The book about Milton brought him success. It was particularly admired by the pious Dowager Queen who praised its razor-sharp, pious analysis. For that reason she appointed Guldberg as tutor to the Crown Prince, who was King Christian’s half-brother and feeble-minded, or, to use the word often employed: moronic.

Thus began his political career: through a study of the relationship between facts, as clearly evidenced in the Bible, and fiction, as represented by Milton’s Paradise Lost.

4

So, no equestrian statues.

Guldberg’s paradise was what he conquered along his path from the undertaking business in Horsens to the palace of Christiansborg. It made him tenacious, and it taught him to hate squalor.

Guldberg’s paradise was something he conquered on his own. He did not inherit it. He conquered it.

He was hounded for some years by a nasty rumour. People had maliciously interpreted his unassuming appearance – the same appearance that in the end was corrected and enhanced, with the help of artists, after he seized power in 1772. According to the rumour, when he was four years old and his singing voice filled everyone with amazement and admiration, he was castrated by his loving but impoverished parents who had heard that in Italy there were great opportunities for singers. But to their disappointment and sorrow, he refused to sing after he turned 15 and instead entered the political arena.

None of this was true.

His father was a poor undertaker from Horsens who had never seen an opera and never dreamed of earning money from a castrated child. Guldberg was convinced that this smear had come from the Italian opera divas at the court in Copenhagen, who were all whores. All the blasphemers and men of the Enlightenment, particularly in Altona, which was the vipers’ nest of the Enlightenment, made use of the Italian whores. From them came all filth, including the filthy rumour.

The peculiar premature ageing which, however, manifested itself only outwardly, had set in early, at the age of 15, and could not be explained by the doctors. For this reason he despised doctors. Struensee was a doctor.

Regarding the rumour of his “operation”: he could not get rid of it until he came to power and no longer appeared insignificant. He knew that the assertion that he had been “cut” affected everyone with a feeling of discomfort. He had learned to live with this.

And yet he seized hold of the rumour’s inner meaning, although untrue. The essential truth was that his pious parents had assigned him the rôle of undertaker, and he had rejected it.

He chose for himself the rôle of politician.

*

The British Ambassador’s account of the King and Guldberg from the year 1782 is astonishing and yet contains an inner truth.

The Ambassador seems to express surprise at Guldberg’s “love” for the King, whose power he had stolen and whose reputation he had destroyed. But hadn’t Guldberg himself always been astonished by the manifestations of love? How could it possibly be described? He had always asked himself this question. Those handsome, imposing, distinguished people, those who had a knowledge of love and yet were so blind! Politics was a mechanism that could be analysed and constructed; in that sense it was a machine. But those strong, prominent people who possessed knowledge of love, how naïvely they allowed the clear-cut political game to be obscured by the hydra of passion!

That ceaseless confusion of emotion and reason on the part of the intellectual men of the Enlightenment! Guldberg knew that this was the soft, vulnerable point in the monster’s belly. And he realized how close he had once been to succumbing to the contagion of this sin. It had come from “the little English whore”. He had been forced to his knees at his bedside.

He would never forget it.

It is in this connection that he speaks of the mighty oak forest where the trees were felled and only the lowly shrub remained as conqueror. Then he describes what happened in the felled forest and how he, stunted and insignificant, was allowed to grow and prevail from the site where he watched everything happen, among the sprawled trunks in the felled forest.

And he thought he was the only one to see it.

5

Guldberg must be treated with respect. He is still nearly invisible. Soon he will make himself visible.

He saw and understood early on.

In the autumn of 1769 Guldberg writes in a note that the young queen is to him “an ever-growing mystery”.

He calls her “the little English whore”. He was quite familiar with the impurities at court. He knew its history. Frederik IV was pious and had countless mistresses. Christian VI was a Pietist but lived a lecherous life. At night Frederik V frequented the Copenhagen whorehouses, and spent his time with drinking, gambling, and vulgar, lewd conversations. He drank himself to death. The whores flocked around his bed. It was the same everywhere in Europe. It started in Paris and then spread like a disease to all the courts. Filth everywhere.

Who would defend purity?

As a child he had learned to live with corpses. His father, whose profession it was to tend to the bodies, had allowed Guldberg to assist him in his work. How many rigid, ice-cold limbs had he clutched and buried? The dead were pure. They did not roll in muck. They awaited the great purifying fire that would either deliver them or plague them in eternity.

He had seen filth. But never so squalid as at court.

*

After the little English whore arrived and was married to the King, Fru von Plessen was appointed chief lady-in-waiting. Fru von Plessen was pure. It was her nature. She wished to protect the young girl from life’s filth, and for a long time she succeeded.

One occurence in June 1767 had particularly disturbed Guldberg. It was important that before this date, no sexual relations had taken place between the royal couple, despite the fact that they had been married seven months.

On the morning of June 3, 1767, lady-in-waiting Fru von Plessen came to complain to Guldberg. She entered the room he used for his tutoring unannounced, and without mincing words, began castigating the Queen’s behaviour. Guldberg is said to have held Fru von Plessen to be a thoroughly repulsive creature but, because of her inner purity, of value to the Queen. Fru von Plessen smelled. It was not the odour of a stall, of sweat, or of any other secretion, but rather the odour of old woman, like mildew.

And yet she was only 41 years old.

The Queen, Caroline Mathilde, was 15 at the time. As usual, Fru von Plessen had gone to the Queen’s bedchamber to keep her company or to play chess, and by her presence ease the Queen’s loneliness. The Queen was lying on her bed, which was quite large, and staring up at the ceiling. She was fully dressed. Fru von Plessen asked the Queen why she did not speak. The Queen was silent for a long time, not moving either her fully-dressed form or her head, not replying. Finally she said:

“I’m feeling melancholy.”

Fru von Plessen then asked the Queen what was weighing so heavily on her heart. The Queen said at last:

“He doesn’t come. Why doesn’t he come?”

It was chilly in the room. Fru von Plessen stared at her mistress for a moment and then said:

“No doubt the King will see fit to come. Until then Your Majesty should enjoy her freedom from the hydra of passion. She ought not to grieve.”

“What do you mean?” the Queen asked.

“The King,” Fru von Plessen elucidated with that extraordinary terseness which her voice could summon so well, “the King will undoubtedly overcome his shyness. Until then, the Queen can take pleasure in being free of his passion.”

“Why take pleasure?”

“When thus afflicted, it becomes a torment!” Fru von Plessen said with an expression of unexpected fury.

“Leave me,” was the Queen’s surprising response, after a moment of silence.

The offended Fru von Plessen then left the room.

*

Guldberg’s indignation springs, however, from what happened later the same evening.

He was pretending to read, sitting in the corridor between the Royal Chancellor’s antechamber, on the left, and the library of the King’s secretary. He doesn’t explain why he writes “pretending to”. The Queen appeared. He rose to his feet with a bow. She gestured with her hand and they both sat down.

She was wearing the pale rose gown that left her shoulders bare.

“Herr Guldberg,” she said in a low voice, “may I ask you a very personal question?”

He nodded, uncomprehending.

“I’ve been told,” she whispered, “that in your youth you were freed from . . . from the torment of passion. Because of that I would like to ask you . . .”

She stopped. He remained silent but could feel a tremendous rage welling up inside him. With the utmost resolve, however, he managed to keep his composure.

“I just wanted to know . . .”

He waited. Finally the silence grew unbearable, and Guldberg said:

“Yes, Your Royal Highness?”

“I just wanted to know . . . whether this freedom from passion is . . . a great relief? Or . . . a great emptiness?”

He did not reply.

“Herr Guldberg,” she whispered, “is it an emptiness? Or a torment?”

She leaned towards him. The curve of her bosom was near to him. He felt indignation “beyond all reason”. He had seen through her at once, and this insight, during the events that later followed, would be of the greatest use to him. Her malice was evident: her naked flesh, the curve of her bosom, the smoothness of her young skin, it was all very close. This was not the first time he understood that throughout the court malicious rumours were being spread about the reason for his physical insignificance. How helpless he was to combat them! How impossible it was to point out that castrati resembled fattened cattle, swollen and bloated, and that they completely lacked the grey, sharp, thin, and practically wizened physical clarity possessed by him!

Gossip was circulating about him, and it had reached the Queen’s ear. The little whore thought him harmless, someone to be confided in. And with all the intelligence of her young malice, she now leaned very close, and he could see her breasts in almost all their fullness. She seemed to be testing him, trying to see whether there was any life left in him, whether her breasts held any enticement that could summon the remnants of what might be human inside him.

Yes, whether this might entice forth the remnants of a man in him. Of a human being. Or whether he was merely an animal.

Then she looked at him. Like an animal. She exposed herself to him as if she wanted to say: I know. She knew that he was stunted and despicable, no longer human, no longer within the reach of desire. And she did this now with full consciousness, with malicious intent.

On this occasion her face was very close to Guldberg’s, and her nearly exposed breasts screamed their insult at him. As he tried to regain his composure he thought: May God punish her, may she suffer the fire of hell for all eternity. May a vengeful stake be driven up into her wanton womb, and may her spiteful intimacy be rewarded with eternal pain and agony.

His agitation was so great that tears welled up in his eyes. And he feared that the young, wanton creature would notice this.

Yet he may have misinterpreted her. Because next he describes how she swiftly, almost like a moth, touched her hand to his cheek and whispered:

“Forgive me. Oh, forgive me, Herr . . . Guldberg. I didn’t mean to . . .”

Guldberg then rose hastily to his feet and left.

As a child he had an exceedingly beautiful singing voice. That much is true. He hated artists. He also hated impurity.

He remembers the rigid bodies as pure. And they never caused chaos.

*

God’s greatness and omnipotence manifested itself in the fact that He chose even those who were small, lowly, stunted, and disdained to be His instruments. That was what was so wondrous. It was God’s inexplicable miracle. The King, the young Christian, seemed small, perhaps mentally deficient. But he was chosen.

To him had been given all power. This power, this selection, came from God. It had not been given to the beautiful, strong, or distinguished; they were the ones who were the real upstarts. The lowliest were the chosen. That was God’s miracle. Guldberg understood this. In a certain sense the King and Guldberg were part of the same miracle.

This filled him with satisfaction.

*

He saw Struensee for the first time in Altona in 1766, on the day the young Queen arrived there on her way from London to Copenhagen, shortly before her marriage. Struensee was standing there, hidden by the crowd, surrounded by his enlightened friends.

But Guldberg saw him: imposing, handsome, and lecherous.

*

Guldberg himself had once emerged from the woodwork.

The person who was once inconsequential emerged from the woodwork; anyone who does this knows that all woodwork can be an ally. It was simply a matter of organization. Politics involved organization, making the woodwork listen and report.

He had always believed in justice, and he knew that evil would be crushed by a very small, overlooked person whom no-one took seriously. That was his inner driving force. God had chosen him and made him a spidery grey dwarf because God’s ways were inscrutable. But God’s deeds were full of cunning.

God was the foremost politician.

Quite early on he had learned to hate impurity and evil. Evil meant the dissolute, those who scorned God, the wastrels, the worldly, the whoremongers, the drunkards. All of them were present at court. The court was evil. That was why he had always adopted a tiny, friendly, almost submissive smile whenever he observed evil. Everyone thought that he watched the orgies with envy. Little Guldberg probably wanted to join in, they thought, but he couldn’t. He lacks . . . the instrument. Just wants to watch.

Their little, derisive smiles.

But they should have taken note of his eyes.

And someday, he used to think, the time for control will come, when control will conquer all. And then smiles will no longer be necessary. Then the time for cutting will come, the time for purity, then the barren limbs on the tree will be cut away. Then evil will at last be castrated. And then the time for purity will come.

And the time of the wanton women will be over.

What he would do with the wanton women he didn’t know. They couldn’t be cut, after all. Perhaps the wanton women should sink down and dissolve into decay, like mushrooms in the autumn.

He was very fond of that image. The wanton women would sink down and dissolve, like mushrooms in the autumn.

*

His dream was purity.

The radicals in Altona were impure. They despised those who were cut and small, and they dreamed the same secret dreams of power which they claimed to be fighting. He had seen through them. They spoke of light. A torch in the dark. But from their torches fell only darkness.

He had been to Altona. It was significant that this Struensee came from Altona. Paris was the vipers’ nest of the encyclopedists, but Altona was worse. It was as if they were trying to put a lever under the house of the world: and the world was teetering, and anxiety and nausea and fumes drifted up. But the Almighty God had chosen one of His smallest, the most disdained, Guldberg himself, to confront Evil, to save the King, and to cut away the filth from the one chosen by God. And, as the prophet Isaiah has written:

Who is this that comes from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bozrah, he that is glorious in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength?

“It is I, announcing vindication, mighty to save.”

Why is thy apparel red, and thy garments like his that treads in the wine press?

“I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no-one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their lifeblood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my raiment.

“For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and my year of redemption has come.

“I looked, but there was no-one to help; I was appalled, but there was no-one to uphold; so my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath upheld me.

“I trod down the peoples in my anger, I made them drunk in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.”

“And the outcast shall become the rulers”, as it says in the Holy Scriptures.

He was the one who had been called by God. The little Lizard himself. And a great fear would come over the world when the Lowliest and the most Scorned came to hold the reins of vengeance in his hands. And God’s wrath would kill them all.

When the evil and the lecherous were cut away, then he would exonerate the King. And even if evil had harmed the King, he would become like a child once again. Guldberg knew that deep inside, Christian had always been a child. He was not insane. And when it was all over and the child chosen by God was saved, the King would once again follow him like a shadow, like a child, meek and pure. He would once again be a pure child, and one of the outcast would once again become one of the rulers.

He would defend the King. Against them. For the King was also one of the most outcast, and the most disdained.

But equestrian statues are not given to wine treaders.

6

Guldberg had been present at the deathbed of Christian’s father, King Frederik.

He died in the morning of January 14, 1766.

During his last years King Frederik had become heavier and heavier; he drank steadily, his hands shook, and his flesh had swollen up, becoming doughy and grey; his face resembled that of a drunkard – it looked as if you could pluck pieces of flesh from his face – and hidden deep inside were his eyes, pale and runny with a yellow discharge, as if his body were already beginning to seep.

The King had also been seized with agitation and dread, and he constantly demanded that whores share his bed to assuage his dread. As time passed, more and more of the priests who stood at his side were outraged by this. Those who were commanded at his bedside to say the prayers that would assuage his fear became sickened by this. The King, thanks to his physical flabbiness, was no longer capable of satisfying his fleshly desires; yet he demanded that the whores who were brought to him from the city should share his bed naked. That is when the priests felt that their prayers, in particular the ritual of Holy Communion, became blasphemous. The King would spit out Christ’s Holy Body but drink deeply of His Blood, while the whores, with ill-concealed revulsion, fondled his body.

Even worse was that the rumour of the King’s condition had spread among the public, and the priests began to see themselves sullied by common gossip.

The last week before his death, the King was in great fear.

He used this simple word “fear” instead of “dread” or “agitation”. His spells of vomiting now occurred more often. On the day he died, he commanded that Crown Prince Christian be called to his sickbed.

The bishop of the city then insisted that all the whores be removed.

For a long time the King stared in silence at those in attendance, which included his valets, the bishop, and two priests. Then in a voice filled with such extraordinary hatred that they almost recoiled, he shouted that the women would one day be with him in heaven; he hoped, on the other hand, that those now flocking around him, especially the Archbishop of Aarhus, would be afflicted by the eternal torments of hell. The King had misunderstood the situation, however: the Archbishop of Aarhus had already returned to his congregation the day before.

Then he vomited and with effort returned to his drinking.

After an hour he again grew intractable and shouted for his son, whom he now wished to bless.

Christian, the Crown Prince, was led in to see him towards nine o’clock. He was accompanied by his Swiss tutor, Reverdil. At the time, Christian was 16 years old. He stared at his father in horror.

The King finally noticed him and motioned him closer, but Christian remained where he was, petrified. Reverdil then took him by the arm to lead him to the King’s bedside, but Christian clung to his tutor and uttered a few inaudible words; his lips clearly moved, he was trying to say something, but no sound came out.

“Come . . . here . . . my beloved . . . son,” the King then murmured, and with a violent thrust of his arm he flung aside the empty wine tankard.

When Christian refused to obey his command, the King began shouting, wild and plaintive; when one of the priests took pity on him and inquired if there was anything he wanted, the King repeated:

“I want . . . by Satan . . . to bless the little . . . the little . . . wretch!”

After another brief pause Christian, almost without resisting, was led forward to the King’s deathbed. The King grabbed Christian by the head and neck and tried to pull him closer.

“How will it all . . . turn out . . . for you . . . you little . . . wretch?”

The King then had difficulty finding words, but in a moment his speech returned.

“You little worm! You have to be hard . . . hard . . . HARD! You little . . . are you hard? Are you hard? You have to make yourself . . . invulnerable! Otherwise . . .”

Christian couldn’t say a word since he was being gripped by the neck and pressed against the King’s naked flank. The King was now panting loudly, as if he couldn’t breathe, but then he seethed:

“Christian! You have to make yourself hard . . . hard . . . hard! Otherwise they’ll swallow you up! Otherwise they’ll devour . . . crush . . .”

Then he sank back against the pillows. There was utter silence in the room. The only sound to be heard was Christian’s vigorous sobbing.

And the King, now dozing and with his head on his pillow, then said in a very low voice, almost without slurring:

“You’re not hard enough, you little wretch. I give you my blessing.”

Yellow fluid ran out of his mouth. A few minutes later King Frederik V was dead.

Guldberg saw everything and remembered everything. He also saw how the Swiss tutor Reverdil took the boy by the hand, as if the new King were still a little child; he led him by the hand, like a child, something that surprised everyone and was later much discussed. They left the room in this manner, they walked down the corridors, passing the principal guard, who all presented arms, and went out into the palace courtyard. It was now midday, the sun was low in the sky, a light snow had fallen overnight. The boy was still sobbing forlornly and tightly clutching the hand of the Swiss tutor Reverdil.

In the middle of the courtyard they abruptly stopped. Many people were watching them. Why did they stop? Where were they going?

The boy was slender and short. Members of the court, upon learning the news of the King’s tragic and unexpected demise, had streamed into the palace courtyard. A hundred people stood there, silent and curious.

Guldberg was among them, still the lowliest of them all. He was still without distinctions. He was present only by right of the title of teacher to the moronic Crown Prince Frederik; with no other rights, with no power, but with the certainty that great trees would fall, that he had time and could wait.

Christian and his tutor stood still, apparently in deep confusion, and waited for nothing. They stood there with the sun low over the palace courtyard, which was covered by a light snow, and waited for nothing as the boy wept on and on.

Reverdil held tight to the young King’s hand. How small the new King of Denmark was, like a child. Guldberg felt a boundless sorrow as he looked at them. Someone else had taken the place at the King’s side that belonged to him. A great deal of work now remained to conquer that position. His sorrow was still boundless. Then he mustered his courage.

His time would come.

*

And so it was that Christian was blessed.

The same afternoon Christian VII was proclaimed Denmark’s new King.