The Ludwig Conspiracy

  “You must go to Munich and show yourself to the people,” I begged him. “If you make only a gesture of approach to the people, they will take you to their hearts again as they did in the past. And that will destroy the ministers’ plan. No one will believe that medical report if you show how reasonable you are.”

  “So I’m to prove that I am not crazy?” asked the king. “How ironic. Do you think me . . . deranged, like my brother, Otto?”

  “No, Majesty. On my honor, I think you like to dream, and you are more sensitive than most people, but not deranged.”

  Ludwig was smiling again. “Sensitive.” He relished the word like a sweet plum. “I think you are correct there. Thank you, Marot. You have always been one of those dearest to me. I value your honesty.” He carefully steered the boat to the bank and climbed ponderously out. “Now, come with me. I want to show you something that will take your breath away.”

  As we left the grotto, the blue light inside it changed to a shade of red.

  XOIMLQI

  We walked over to the castle as the first light of dawn showed in the east. I followed the king in silence until we were on the dark forecourt.

  Early as it was, there were already some servants there, carrying a small table decorated with intarsia work, two chairs, and a silver tray laden with all kinds of delicacies on it. In surprise, I realized that they were approaching the tall old linden tree that stood not far from the basin of the fountain. When I looked at the trunk, I saw that roughly halfway up it was a platform to which a simple wooden ladder led. The servants now hauled the furniture and the tray up to this airy terrace with a block and tackle, and they arranged it all as if the table were not sixteen feet up in the air, but in the royal dining room.

  “My supper shall be your breakfast today, Marot,” said Ludwig, pointing with a smile to the platform. “Be so kind as to keep me company in my linden tree. I have the finest bedchamber in the world up there.”

  The wooden ladder creaked alarmingly as His Majesty and I climbed it. I clung to the rungs and tried not to look down. As so often, I had to shake my head over Ludwig’s eccentric notions. A king in a tree house! No doubt the servants were already gossiping about this latest whim.

  But once I was finally up on the platform, the view before me almost brought tears to my eyes.

  The Alps surrounded us, like mighty giants of rock, with the soft green of the forests at their feet. The park with its castle, the pavilions, the Temple of Venus, and the chapel lay below us like a child’s toy landscape. At that very moment, the sun rose behind the mountains in the east, bathing the scene in a warm, almost unreal light. In the shady canopy above our heads, the linden leaves rustled quietly.

  “Help yourself, Marot. You must be hungry after that ride.” The king had already taken his place on his chair and was serving himself from a dish of fragrant and particularly tender roast veal. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the magnificent landscape. As if at a secret signal, a mighty jet of water suddenly rose from the middle of the fountain below us, and a cool spray wafted up to me.

  “Out here in the mountains, far from the city, I am the king I would like to be,” said Ludwig, wiping his fleshy lips with his napkin. “A law of nature, like the sun and the moon. Do you understand now why I can’t go back to Munich?”

  “Majesty, times have changed,” I told him “You are not Arthur in Camelot, but the king of Bavaria. Laws have to be signed . . .”

  “Let the ministers bring their paperwork on pilgrimage here to Linderhof!” Ludwig interrupted me, pointing to the landscape around us. “What is real and what is false, Theodor? The dirty city of Munich with its intriguing and politicking, or this fairy-tale world? The people still love their king here, and here I am not a marionette.”

  “You need not be a marionette if you . . .” I began. But suddenly the words dried up in my mouth. Down below us, a boy, laughing, approached. Beside him was a young woman, wearing a plain bodice and linen skirt with an apron, such as the simple women of these parts often wear on festive days. Her black hair hung loose, fluttering behind her in the wind. The girl’s face was radiant; her whole appearance seemed designed to drive my gloomy mood away, like the sun dispersing the mists of a cold, damp morning. In his loud, cheerful voice, the child beside her was spurring her on to run a race with him.

  “Marot, what’s the matter?” I heard my king’s voice behind me. “Does the view up here take your breath away?”

  Dazed, I shook my head and sat down opposite Ludwig. “It’s nothing, Majesty. Probably only the long ride.” Surreptitiously, I looked down and tried to catch another glimpse of the unknown girl, but she had already disappeared from my field of vision. Only her laughter rose to me, clear as a bell.

  “Do you hear that?” said Ludwig, heaping another portion of steaming roast veal on a porcelain plate with a pattern of swans. “That laughter is music to my ears! Not the music of Wagner, perhaps, but more beautiful, in any event, than the whistling of locomotives and the ringing of bells in those newfangled horse-drawn streetcars in the city.”

  “The . . . the young woman down there,” I asked tentatively, trying to show as little interest as possible. “Is she a governess?”

  Ludwig laughed, almost choking on a mouthful of veal. “Governess? Oh God, no! That’s Maria from Oberammergau. Daughter of a peasant woodcarver.” A smile played around his lips. “I like to have her near me. She keeps me company, helps a little in the kitchen, and tells me what the people are thinking. You see, Marot, I am not indifferent to the world.”

  “If you are not indifferent to the world, Majesty, then promise that you will come to Munich.”

  “What liberties do you think you can take, Marot?” he snapped. “I do not have to promise you anything. Who do you think you are?”

  I humbly bowed my head. “Majesty, it is only because . . .”

  “Be silent, before I regret bringing you up here at all!”

  Without another word the king rose to his feet. His chair fell over with a crash, and Ludwig climbed down the ladder to the ground. He did not deign to favor me with another glance and disappeared into the castle.

  I struck my forehead and cursed myself for my thoughtlessness. Ludwig was well-known for cultivating an almost fraternal relationship with his social inferiors, but it could change into icy coldness from one moment to the next. I ought to have known! Instead, I had been incautious and endangered my mission. I dared not think what Count Dürckheim would say when I told him about my faux pas. Now how was I going to convince the king that he must go to Munich?

  Gritting my teeth, I made my way down the ladder hand over hand, wondering how I could mollify Ludwig. My game of hide-and-seek, my flight—perhaps it had all been for nothing.

  “Don’t be downcast,” said a clear voice behind me suddenly. “Sometimes the king is like an angry child. His tantrums are like storms. They come suddenly, but they disappear again just as fast.”

  Startled, I turned around and found myself looking straight into the face of the black-haired girl whose looks had taken my breath away. Now, at close quarters, the young woman seemed if anything even more beautiful than she had appeared from the platform in the tree.

  “Oh . . . I didn’t know . . .” I stammered. She shook her head, laughing.

  “I couldn’t help hearing your quarrel. Think nothing of it. You got off lightly; the king has been known to push other men into the fountain from up here.”

  I smiled, while I went on surreptitiously looking at her.

  “You seem to know His Majesty well. Does he allow you an audience, ma’am?”

  Her clear, bell-like laughter rang out again, and my heart beat faster. “Never mind the formality, sir,” she said, chuckling. “I am only the daughter of a simple peasant woodcarver from Oberammergau.” Suddenly her voice was grave, and a small frown of annoyance appeared on her brow. “But you are right, I do know the king well. Better, anyway, than many a minister, state secretary, or councilor. To you, co
ming from Munich, Ludwig is only a dreamer, am I right? A wayward oddity who won’t do what you all tell him.” She pointed to the forests stretching up into the mountains behind the castle. “But ask the common people here in the Graswangtal, and they will tell you a different story. The king talks to us, asks how we are. And when one of his grooms has a birthday, he serves him a festive meal with his own hands.”

  I said nothing but looked in admiration at the young woman who had spoken with so much feeling. Her face was fine-featured, with high cheekbones and clever eyes that hardly suited a maidservant. But for the simple linen skirt and apron that she wore, I would have taken her for a court lady, or a merchant’s daughter. Her whole appearance had something playfully ladylike about it; she had a natural elegance lacking in most of the ladies of high social standing whom I knew.

  “The king was right to be angry with me just now,” I said at last, hesitantly. “I was a fool. Perhaps it would be a good thing if someone were to take me to task more often.”

  “Well, don’t expect me to do it. Two scamps are quite enough for me.” Her eyes twinkled at me, and I felt a slight shiver down my back all of a sudden. This girl could reduce me to the state of a naïve, stammering peasant with her glances alone.

  “Two . . . er, scamps?”

  “Well, the king and the naughty little boy shooting sparrows out of the trees there.”

  She pointed to a group of bushes from which a flock of birds, twittering angrily, was just flying up. A little boy of about six, with unruly black curls and wearing short lederhosen, was running after them with a slingshot, shouting. It was the boy I had seen from the platform.

  “Is that your child?” I asked, and looked at her in surprise. She seemed so young that I would never have thought the boy might be her own. When she nodded, I felt a sharp pang deep inside me.

  “Leopold,” she said quietly, and a shadow came over her face. “He will be six next summer. He’s the apple of my eye, even if I sometimes curse him to the devil.”

  We were walking together toward the basin of the fountain, which was still sending a powerful jet of water up into the air. Tiny drops moistened my face and formed a misty veil with a rainbow in it above our heads. The girl had now bent down to pick a bunch of flowers. A little way off, the boy was aiming his slingshot at a couple of crows who had come down to settle on the head of a Greek statue of Diana.

  “Your boy does indeed seem to be a real scamp,” I said only half seriously. “I expect his father has to read him a lecture pretty often. Where is his papa, by the way?”

  The girl went on picking marguerite daisies, bellflowers, and red poppies in silence. Only after a few moments did she turn to me, shaking her head sadly.

  “Leopold has never had a father. The king was kind enough to take us in.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry about that,” I replied, at the same time ashamed of myself for feeling something like relief. “An accident?”

  “No, it’s only that . . . Leo, get down from there at once!”

  She had called the last words to the boy, who was now trying to balance on the rim of the fountain. She looked at me, and at least she was smiling again now.

  “I’ll have to go and save my little scamp’s life again. I’m pleased to have made your acquaintance, sir. May I ask the gentleman’s name?”

  “Marot,” I stammered. “Theodor Marot. I am assistant to the royal physician.”

  “Marot.” She put her head on one side and blinked into the sun. “A handsome name and a handsome man to bear it.” She took her leave of me with a little curtsey and a slight glint of mockery in her eyes. “My name is Maria. Always at your service, sir.”

  Then she turned and ran toward the rim of the fountain opposite.

  “Maria is . . . is a beautiful name, too,” I murmured, and waved to her, but she already had hold of her little boy, and they had disappeared into the bushes.

  Still dazed, and weary after two days of riding, I let myself slide down the trunk of the linden tree to the ground, from where I stared up at the white Temple of Venus.

  “Maria,” I whispered.

  All my anger, my bad luck, the quarrel with Ludwig, were forgotten. I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to pleasant daydreams, in which Maria ran through the meadow with me as she had just been running with her child. A veil came down over my consciousness, and I had to admit to myself that, against all the dictates of reason, I had fallen head over heels in love.

  I really cannot have been of sound mind, because the next thing I did was distinctly childish—and it would cost me my king’s favor if he were ever to hear of it. I took my knife out of my pocket and began to carve that day’s date and the name of the clever black-haired girl into the bark of the king’s linden tree.

  MARIA 10.9.1885

  When I had finished, I ran my forefinger over the letters and softly whispered her name. How was I to guess, at the time, that this girl would determine the fate of so many of us long after our deaths?

  RLLKH, XEXMNPE, NACTAPE

  14

  A KNOCK ON THE DOOR WOKE Steven. Alarmed, he sat up in bed abruptly and for a moment didn’t know where he was.

  The Cowled Men! The thought shot through his mind. They’re coming to get the book!

  “Who . . . who’s there?” he croaked.

  “Housekeeping,” a gentle voice fluted. “I’ll come back later.”

  Drowsily, Steven groped for his watch beside the bed. It said nine thirty. At the same moment he remembered where he was, and why he was there. The memory did not improve his temper very much.

  Good morning, Herr Lukas. We have the police downstairs. They want you for torture and murder. There are also a couple of gentlemen in black hooded robes who want a word with you. Would you like orange juice for breakfast?

  He had gone on working on the diary until late into the night, finally going to bed around two in the morning. By then Sara was fast asleep, with the headphones still over her ears, while on the TV screen busty women silently promised carnal pleasures.

  Sara . . .

  Steven looked to his right, but the other side of the bed was empty. He stretched and rubbed his eyes. The art detective was probably down in the breakfast room by now. Finally he went into the bathroom and spread shaving cream on his face, humming while contemplating Marot’s experiences at Linderhof. The transliteration of Shelton’s shorthand had not brought anything conclusive to light. There had been eight new words in cipher in those passages, but no clue to the means of decoding them. All the same, Marot had mentioned the Grotto of Venus.

  Venus . . .

  Could a clue perhaps be hidden in the grotto? But how was Steven to check, when the grotto was closed to visitors?

  After he had shaved carefully, Steven put on the torn pants again, with the printed T-shirt, and leather jacket. He put the notebook containing the decoded diary pages away in his inside pocket, then set off down to the almost-empty breakfast room. Two of the hotel staff were hanging garlands and lanterns for some kind of party. Yesterday’s elderly waiter was shuffling around the room, looking morose and pouring coffee from a large pot. To his surprise, Steven saw that Sara wasn’t there yet. He asked in the lobby, where he was told that the lady had driven away at eight that morning. No, she hadn’t left any message.

  Thoroughly bewildered, Steven sat down at a table and sipped the black coffee, which was far too bitter. Where could Sara be? Why hadn’t she told him where she was going? Once again, he had a feeling that the art detective was hiding something from him. He remembered how calmly Sara had searched the body of that hit man in his bookshop. What had she said at the time?

  Why don’t you just assume I have a certain amount of experience . . .

  Steven quickly skimmed through the local paper, until on one of the back pages he found a headline that ruined his appetite.

  BOOKSELLER MURDER SUSPECT: THE SEARCH GOES ON

  The story under it didn’t contain much news; it simply reiterated that a ce
rtain Steven Lukas had disappeared, and the police were still in the dark. Steven sighed and put the paper down in revulsion. At least they’d refrained from printing a photo of him this time. He got to his feet, deciding to follow up his suspicions of the Grotto of Venus, even without Sara.

  Outside the hotel, the October sky was gray and cloudy, and with only a thin T-shirt under the leather jacket, Steven immediately began shivering. A notice on the nearby entrance to the park announced, as he expected, that the castle and the upper part of the grounds were closed; otherwise, however, there seemed to be free access. The bookseller passed the wrought-iron gate and walked through the little wood, which was surrounded by bushes. He met only a few tourists at this early hour, and soon he was on his own among the tall trees. A curious squirrel scurried past his feet, and somewhere he heard the cawing of a crow. Morning mist lay over the hedges and arbors, from which brightly colored leaves fell to the ground.

  Steven left the little pond and walked east until a red and white plastic tape barred his way. Beyond it he saw several limousines outside the castle, and the shrill laughter of women reached his ears. Half a dozen domestic staff were setting up little cocktail tables.

  Nice place for a party, Steven thought. And in this outfit, I could pass for an invited guest, maybe a rock star.

  “Hey, you! What are you doing here?”

  A powerfully built steward in a gray suit was coming toward him. A walkie-talkie at his side was chirping.

  “I’m . . . er . . . going for a walk,” Steven replied. “Is that forbidden?”

  “So long as you stay this side of the barrier, it’s okay,” growled the man. “There’s a private event here today.”