Sex with the Queen (24 page)

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At court events, sometimes Knesebeck would give Königs-mark a sign and place a letter in his hat or gloves. One day he got the sign but found no letter. In great uneasiness he wrote Sophia Dorothea, “I swear to you that I looked in my hat, and, as to my gloves, I put them on, but there was nothing in them. I was angry at La Confidante, for she had given me the signal, and yet I found nothing.”18

Königsmark followed the princess on her rounds of visits to various palaces. After a rendezvous at the palace of Brockhausen, the count wrote, “I cannot forget those delectable moments at Brockhausen. What pleasure! What transports! What ardor!

What rapture we tasted together! And with what grief we parted!

Oh that I could live those moments over again! Would that I had died then, drinking deep of your sweetness, your exquisite ten-derness! What transports of passion were ours! . . . I will always be your true lover, absent or present, wherever you may be, and whatever may befall.”19

“What wouldn’t I give to hear midnight strike!” he wrote, ea-gerly anticipating a tryst. “Be sure to have smelling salts ready lest my excess of joy cause me to faint. Tonight I shall embrace the most agreeable person in the world and I shall kiss her charming lips. . . . I shall embrace your knees; my tears will be allowed to run down your incomparable cheeks; my arms will have the satisfaction of embracing the most beautiful body in the world.”20

In public, the lovers signaled their passion by eye contact, simmering glances redolent of hot embraces in the dark. “Our restraint has its charms,” wrote Königsmark, “for though the last few days I have seen you only in places where even the language of the eyes is scarcely possible, I have had many happy moments.

What a delight,
ma petite,
for us to be able to communicate with impunity in the presence of thousands of people!”21 But of course the lovers did not communicate with impunity; everyone noticed.

In 1692 the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I immeasurably raised the status of the duke of Hanover to that of electoral prince. The title “elector” went back to the twelfth century when 1 0 8

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German princes elected the Holy Roman Emperor by casting votes for various princely contenders. But the title of emperor, which carried an imposing cachet and little else, had remained firmly in the grasping hands of the Hapsburgs for centuries, and elections were social events where Hapsburg envoys dispensed bribes to electors.

Nonetheless, the freshly minted Elector Ernst August was bursting with pride in his honor. Watched closely by jealous rival kingdoms, he would not stand for scandal in his immediate fam-ily and took greater efforts to curb the love affair he had been observing for some time. It is likely that the love letters were in-tercepted beginning in 1692 and easily deciphered. We can imagine the elector’s frown as he read Königsmark’s gush of joy after having made love to the princess. “When I remember all our exquisite transports, all our sweet violence, I forget my grief.

What ardor, what fire, what love have we not tasted together!”22

And the especially damning “If I could kiss that little place which has given me so much pleasure. . . .”23

The elector, having discovered that Sophia Dorothea’s love letters went through Aurora von Königsmark’s hands, politely requested that Aurora leave his kingdom. His earlier fondness of the count became marked coldness. He ordered Königsmark to fight with the Hanoverian army against Louis XIV, sending him far away from the hereditary princess. Exiled from court, Königsmark had greater difficulty sending and receiving letters.

He would address the missive to Knesebeck and give it to a sol-dier or traveler returning to Hanover. Similarly, Knesebeck would give Sophia Dorothea’s letters to travelers heading out to the field. But many of these letters were misplaced or stolen, and both feared that they had lost their lover to someone else.

The princess grew pale and thin, weeping frequently. “Am I destined to sorrow all my life?” she lamented. “Shall I never be able to taste quietly the joys of loving and being loved?”24

While Sophia Dorothea sank into depression, her lover’s thoughts strayed in the direction of violence. “I have a consola-tion here close to me,” he wrote from camp. “Not a pretty girl, but a bear, which I feed. If you should fail me I will bare my chest t h e s e v e n t e e n t h c e n t u r y 1 0 9

and let him tear my heart out.”25 Some of his missives he signed with his own blood.

Königsmark composed a tribute to his own jealous writhing:
Alas! I love my own destruction,

And nurse a fire within my breast

Which will soon consume me.

I am well aware of my own perdition,

Because I have dared to love

What I should have only worshipped.
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While other soldiers were routinely given leave to visit Hanover, Königsmark was not. It had become official court policy to separate him from the electoral princess. On several occasions he feigned illness, pitifully moaning and begging for sick leave, which was firmly denied. Exasperated to the point of madness, one night he deserted his post and rode wildly for six days to arrive in Hanover covered in mud and sweat. Without bathing or changing his clothes, he secretly visited Sophia Dorothea.

The next day he called on Field Marshal Heinrich von Podewils who served Ernst August as president of the council of war, confessed his breach of duty, and begged for leave to stay awhile in Hanover. Taking pity on the distraught man, the field marshal, sighing, agreed. But he beseeched Königsmark to end the affair or leave the country. So many factions at court were aware of it that both he and the princess were in great danger.

“My dear friend, may God guard thee,” the field marshal said,

“but take this advice from me, do not let thy love ever hinder thee from thinking of thy fortune.”27

Podewils also warned Königsmark that he was being watched by spies employed by a certain lady of the court. And indeed Count-ess Platen had never forgiven Sophia Dorothea her youth and beauty, though she would perhaps have limited her revenge to merely destroying the princess’s marriage had not both women fallen in love with the same man. Her hatred of Königsmark was 1 1 0

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far more deadly, however; he had left her crumbling altar to worship at the pure shrine of Sophia Dorothea.

Hearing of Podewils’s remarks, Sophia Dorothea grew agi-tated. “I fear we are betrayed,” she wrote. “I am trembling on the edge of a precipice, but my own danger is the least of my anxi-eties. I scarcely think of the misfortunes, inevitable and un-avoidable, which surely await me if discovered; you, only, occupy my thoughts.”28

“I pray always that my passion may not become fatal to me,”

Königsmark wrote.29 “We are treading on dangerous ground, but when people love as we love they do not consider trifles, and if one holds the loved one, what matters the cost? Were I to see the scaffold before my eyes I would not swerve.”30

He began having nightmares about getting caught in flagrante delicto. He wrote, “I hope that what I dreamt last night will not happen, for I had my head cut off because I was surprised with you. . . . My greatest worry was what had become of you. . . .

On waking up I was bathed in sweat and my valet told me that I had shouted with a sobbing voice, ‘Where is she? Where is she?’

I did not fear death, but my greatest suffering was being deprived of news of you and not being able any longer to find out what had become of you. This sort of thing makes one realize how much one loves people.”31

In a last-ditch effort to connect herself to Königsmark, Countess Platen offered him her daughter in marriage. It was not a bad offer, considering the influence, rank, and property of the girl’s parents, and Sophia Charlotte Platen, though short and dumpy, had a sparkling wit and vivacious personality. But Königsmark, who had bedded the mother, was disgusted at the thought of wedding the daughter and didn’t bother disguising his feelings.

Furious at being spurned again, the countess convinced the elector to exile the count from Hanover. Politely Ernst August told Königsmark his decision, and politely Königsmark de-parted. He rode straight to Dresden to take part in the corona-tion ceremonies of his good friend Augustus who had just t h e s e v e n t e e n t h c e n t u r y 1 1 1

become the elector of Saxony. The new elector gave his friend a post as major general in the Saxon army.

One evening in Dresden, at an officers’ mess party to honor Königsmark, the count drank too much and began entertaining the guests with intimate descriptions of women at the court of Hanover. He told ribald tales of Countess Platen ruling through her lover, the weak elector. He titillated his audience with details of her raucous parties which inevitably became drunken orgies.

They roared with laughter to hear of the milk baths she took to aid her wrinkled skin, after which she doled out the milk to the poor as townspeople commended her Christian charity. The sol-diers slapped him on his back and sent him drinks when he de-scribed the fat ugly daughter Countess Platen had tried to foist on him. And then, to the sound of loud guffaws, he talked of George Louis’s bony mistress Melusina von Schulenburg who towered over her royal lover. Unfortunately for Königsmark, someone in the group that night—a laughing soldier, perhaps, or a bustling servant—was a spy in the pay of Countess Platen.