Sex with the Queen (49 page)

overturned, red stains soaking the snowy white tablecloths. Plates were heaped with bones, and chairs were askew. Here was a mask on the floor, its sightless eyes staring at the ceiling. There was a silken cape dropped by a tipsy reveler. Matilda and Struensee, warmed by wine and dancing, went to the queen’s apartments and made love by the fire’s glow. Sweet and urgent, their shadows dancing on the wall, the lovers clung to each other. It was to be the last time.

Juliana, meanwhile, strode briskly through dark palace corridors. She knew that to effect a coup she must first force Christian to sign the arrest warrants of Struensee and his allies, and then take possession of the king himself. For whoever had Christian ruled Denmark. When she roused the sleeping monarch, Christian sat up with a shriek. “For God’s sake! What have I done? What do you want?” he cried. Juliana told him that a revolution was forming against Struensee and the queen, and the people were going to storm the palace.

The king burst into tears. “Terrible, terrible,” he moaned.

“Where shall I go? What should I do?”

“Sign these papers,” Juliana urged, “and Your Majesty’s life will be saved.”

Christian looked at the papers but, seeing his wife’s name, cast aside the pen and tried to get out of bed. Juliana pushed him back and forced the pen back into his hand. Suddenly docile, he signed everything—the arrest warrants of his wife, Struensee, and their friends, and the appointment of two of the conspira-tors to supreme command.

The order for Matilda’s arrest stated, “Madame, I have found it wisest to send you to Kronborg, as your conduct obliges me to do so. I am very sorry, it is not my fault, and I hope for your sin-cere repentance. Christian.”79

Juliana bade her stepson to dress quickly and hustled him off to the security of her own apartments. There she harangued him on the dangerous plots of Struensee and Matilda to murder him and rule Denmark themselves. It took only moments to convince him that those he had loved most were actually his bitterest ene-2 2 4

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mies, and he signed a pile of new orders repealing all of Stru-ensee’s laws.

With the king safely in hand, officers were sent to arrest the dictator. Roused from a deep slumber by men storming into his bedroom, Struensee had trouble clearing his head of wine and music and sleep. Given two minutes to dress, he flung on the clothes he had worn at the ball. “What crime have I committed?”

he asked.80 But there was no answer.

In prison, Struensee was sent to the cell used for the most vio-lent criminals. Faced with a cold dark room furnished only with a pallet and chamber pot, Struensee lost his composure, ranted at the jailer, rushed past him, and tried to reach the door. Informed of his tirade, the prison governor had him chained to the wall.

When the soldiers first stomped into Struensee’s rooms, which were directly below Matilda’s, she heard the noise but thought it was more after-the-ball revelry. She sent one of her ladies down to Struensee’s rooms to request quiet, as she wanted to sleep. The lady never returned, and Matilda fell asleep.

At 4:30 a.m. another lady woke the queen urgently whisper-ing that the hall was full of uniformed men. “Count Rantzau is there, with several officers,” she said. “He demands admittance in the King’s name.” “In the King’s name!” Matilda gasped. She realized what was happening—a coup. She ordered her woman to slip downstairs by the secret staircase to warn Struensee. “The Count has been arrested,” cried the woman upon her return. “I am betrayed—lost!” Matilda moaned. “But let them in—traitors!

I am ready for anything they may do.”81

Count Rantzau, followed by several officers, entered Matilda’s antechamber, took out Christian’s letter, and read it aloud. Matilda grabbed it to see for herself and threw it on the floor, crying that the king had had nothing to do with the letter.

Count Rantzau sat down and stretched his legs. “I must beg your majesty to obey the king’s orders,” he said. “His orders!”

she cried, laughing bitterly. “He can know nothing of them—your villainy has made use of his madness. No, a queen does not obey such a command!”

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The count motioned the soldiers to grab her. The soldiers held back. “Where is Count Struensee?” the queen asked.

“There is no longer any such person,” came the reply.

Seeing a path clear to the door, Matilda raced past the soldiers and out of the room, running for her life down to Christian’s apartments, and banged on the door. But the doors had been locked by Juliana an hour before, and Christian was nowhere to be found. Five officers were close on her heels and seized her, but she flung them off with such violence that her dress was ripped from top to bottom, leaving her half naked. Count Rantzau appeared and, looking her up and down, said sarcasti-cally, “Your Majesty must excuse me, but my duty forces me to resist your charms. Pray dress yourself.”82

The count agreed to allow the six-month-old Princess Louise Augusta to accompany her mother to prison. The child was still nursing and, after all, was not related to the royal Danish family in any way. But Matilda’s son, Frederick, the heir to the throne, was the property of the crown of Denmark and this child she would never see again.

And so Matilda, holding her infant, accompanied only by a nurse and a maid, entered the carriage that would take her to prison. She sat facing a guard with his sword drawn. Thirty sol-diers rode around the coach. Her destination, the royal castle of Kronborg, also called Elsinore, was the gloomy fortress of mists and ghosts that Shakespeare had used as the setting for
Hamlet.

The trip lasted three hours, during which the coach passed the island palace of Hirscholm, the romantic idyll where she had romped with Struensee, where he had held her hand as she gave birth to his daughter. She sat silently, in shock.

She entered the fortress expecting to use the royal apart-ments, but spiteful Juliana had assigned her to a small octagonal turret room, its foundations beaten by icy waves. It had no fire-place and no shutters to keep the January winds from penetrat-ing the thin glass. It was furnished only with a low bed, two stools, and a prie-dieu for her devotions. Matilda sat on the bed and wept.

Her thoughts flew to Struensee. “Is he in chains?” she asked 2 2 6

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her attendant, tears sliding down her face. “Has he food to eat?

Does he know that I am imprisoned here?”83 The woman an-swered that she did not know, secretly made notes of Matilda’s interest in her lover, and sent them to Juliana.

Fearing the retribution of the British Empire, Juliana moved Matilda to the state apartments of Kronborg, gave her better meals, and allowed her to walk in the palace gardens. But the rumblings from Britain came from its outraged people, not from its king. George III, well aware of his sister’s adultery, did not step up to fight for her. George saw no reason to interfere with the punishment his sister so richly deserved for her behav-ior. He ignored all her impassioned pleas and later burned her correspondence. Queen Charlotte went into retirement out of pure shame, she said, for her sister-in-law. After hearing the news of her daughter’s arrest and disgrace, Matilda’s mother, the princess dowager, who had been ill for some time, stated that she never wanted to hear Matilda’s name spoken again. “I have nothing to say,” she said, “nothing to do, nothing to leave,” and died.84

Chained to the wall, Struensee tried to commit suicide by bashing his head against the stones. Unwilling to lose such a valuable prisoner who had yet to confess to his adultery with the queen, Juliana put him under a suicide watch, forced him to wear an iron cap, and had his meat cut by a man who fed it to him one piece at a time.

During two days of interrogation, Struensee denied an illicit relationship with the queen even under threat of torture. The third day he was told of Matilda’s arrest and imprisonment and her confession of adultery. This last was, in fact, a lie. But hear-ing of her confession, Struensee lost his cool manner, covered his face with his hands, and began to cry. Through his hands, mingled with sobs, the commissioners heard him mumble, “The person I loved best in the world. . . . What have I done . . . dis-grace . . . shame.”85

When Struensee composed himself, he said he did not believe that the queen had confessed, that it was a trick. Then they showed him a counterfeit confession, apparently signed by the e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y e u r o p e 2 2 7

queen, which thoroughly betrayed him. He read it and said sadly, “It is true. Our intimacy began in the spring of 1770, and has continued ever since.”86 He then began to supply details of the relationship and said that they had first had sex in the queen’s cabinet, a small room in her apartments.

“I plead guilty to the charge,” he said, “and I would gladly suffer any agony as long as the Queen and my friends could be spared.”87

Holding Struensee’s confession, the commissioners con-verged upon Kronborg and sat down in the guardroom with pa-per and quills at the ready to interrogate the queen. Their hopes of finding a weepy pliable girl were dashed when Matilda walked in arrayed in royal robes and crowned with regal composure.