I started behind my bush. At last I realized why von Strelitz had been on the island in the Chiemsee. He had been collecting evidence of Ludwig’s insanity, and I had gotten in his way. But what had Maria meant when she murmured, He’ll kill me, just before von Strelitz appeared in the wood? Was there something else that I didn’t know?
“You . . . you really have no cause for complaint.” By now Gudden had recovered his old academic arrogance. Nonetheless, he stalked back and forth on the bank, looking nervously around him, as von Strelitz dragged the king’s body over to the lake. “How much did Holnstein pay you for this mission?” snapped the doctor. “How much were you paid to change sides and work for the Bavarian government? Thirty thousand reichsmarks? Fifty thousand?” He stamped his foot angrily. “If you had done your work properly, if you had collected evidence, or forged it for all I care, we wouldn’t have had to resort to such means as these. You were probably paid a good bonus for committing the murder, isn’t that so?”
“He was a king, after all; don’t forget that,” grunted von Strelitz, pushing Ludwig’s corpse into the waist-high water. “Killing a king has always been well paid. It’s been the same ever since the time of Judas. Now, for heaven’s sake, help me.” He beckoned impatiently to Gudden. “Don’t be so squeamish; you’re welcome to get wet. After all, you’re to tell everyone, later, that you tried to save Ludwig when he decided to drown himself in the lake.”
Dr. von Gudden sighed and gingerly made his way into the water, which was far too cold for June. After taking a few steps, he had reached the agent. The body of Ludwig, face-down, bobbed in the water beside them like a buoy.
Paralyzed by shock, I crouched behind the bush. I ought to have gone running along the lakeside path, calling for help. By this time, however, I was no longer sure exactly who was involved in the plot. I decided to leave my hiding place and steal back to the promontory beyond which the boat was still waiting. But I had hardly stepped out on the path, which was bordered by tall reeds at this point, before I heard the doctor’s voice again. Looking past the reeds, I could easily see the two figures now standing in the lake, some sixteen feet from the bank.
“And I’m not sure that we’ll be believed when we say it was suicide,” whined Dr. Gudden. “There will always be doubts. The king has been too reasonable for a potential suicide these last two days. He even said we were trying to kill him.”
“You’re right,” replied Carl von Strelitz calmly. “There will indeed always be doubts. Unless the king had done something shortly before his death to make him look deranged in the eyes of one and all.”
The psychiatrist looked at von Strelitz, baffled. In his wet coat, which was swirling around him in the knee-deep water like mourning ribbons, he resembled an overgrown, agitated coot. “I . . . I’m afraid I don’t entirely understand you.”
Carl von Strelitz carelessly pushed the floating corpse aside and waded toward Gudden. “You really don’t? I thought you were cleverer than that, Doctor. Au revoir.”
With these words, the agent put his strong fingers around Gudden’s throat and tightened them. The small, frail doctor had not the slightest chance. He grunted and panted for breath, tugging at his attacker’s arms, but von Strelitz simply kicked his legs out from under him and held him down below the surface of the water like a puppy. At first Gudden struck out wildly; then he began thrashing his limbs about so that the water foamed up around him in white jets. Those movements changed to twitching, and finally his body went limp.
Von Strelitz held Gudden under the surface for a little longer and then gave the corpse a slight push. Like a piece of driftwood, it floated toward the middle of the lake.
At that very moment my friends’ boat appeared on the choppy water. They had obviously suspected that something was happening. I could see Hornig and Kaulbach, both rowing against the wind as hard as they could. Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld sat in the bow, his hair blowing around his head. When he saw the Prussian agent, and the two corpses in the water, he cried out in horror.
“My God, the king!” he cried. “Hornig, look!”
Without hesitation, Loewenfeld leaped into the waist-high water and waded toward Ludwig. Meanwhile, Richard Hornig had thrown down his oar to dive straight into the water, and now he plowed his way through the lake like an ocean-going steamer. He soon reached Carl von Strelitz, who was waiting for him with his fists raised.
The two men were soon engaged in a life-or-death struggle, each vying in turn to push the other under the water. Hornig punched von Strelitz with a right hook to his chin, so that he staggered back and fell on top of Gudden’s corpse. Von Strelitz struggled up again and flung himself on the royal equerry with a piercing cry. Richard Hornig was a fit, muscular man, but he was no match for the sheer malice of the Prussian agent. Von Strelitz spread the fingers of his right hand like a tiger’s claws, digging them into his adversary’s face, and at the same time thrusting his knee forward to strike Hornig between the loins. The equerry doubled up with pain, and Carl von Strelitz struck the back of his head with all his might. Hornig sank into the waters of the lake with a gurgling cry.
“Kaulbach, do something!”
It was Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld who had called out to the painter. With almost superhuman strength, Loewenfeld was tugging at the king’s body, trying to drag it to land. Meanwhile, Hermann von Kaulbach was still sitting in the boat, his hands clutching the rail, rigid with horror and incapable of any movement. No one yet seemed to have noticed me behind the tall reeds.
While von Strelitz held the royal equerry down underwater, I looked desperately around. For a moment I was tempted to call for help at the top of my voice, but then my eye fell on the air rifle lying only a few paces away from me. I ran to it, snatched it up, and took aim.
In my time as a student in Strasbourg, I had been considered a good marksman, and I had also twice acted as a man’s second in a duel. But this weapon was new to me, and I had no idea whether I could fire it with precision. The steel was cold against my cheek. I loaded another ball from the magazine and aligned the sights on my target. Von Strelitz was only fifteen paces away and did not appear to have seen me. He was still holding Richard Hornig down under the surface of the lake, where white foaming bubbles were rising. Now Dr. Loewenfeld caught sight of me.
“Marot, heaven sends you!” he cried. “For God’s sake, pull the trigger!”
Startled by Loewenfeld’s voice, Carl von Strelitz briefly let go of his victim and turned his head to me. His face was a mask of hatred and alarm. A mocking smile played around his lips. He slowly raised his hands, and a coughing, retching Hornig emerged from the lake before him again.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” von Strelitz called to me. “I have influential friends—very influential. You can still decide to back the winning side.” He pointed behind him, to where Dr. Loewenfeld stood up to his waist in the water beside Ludwig’s corpse. “The king is dead, and believe me, that’s the best thing that could happen to your country. A deranged dreamer, that’s what he was. Is a man like that fit to lead Bavaria into the twentieth century?” He laughed and stroked his wet black hair down over his head. “Trust me when I say we’ll meet with challenges to which no dreamer is equal. Bavaria needs a strong king, not a starry-eyed idealist. In a few years, no one will care a whit about Ludwig. So be reasonable, and . . .”
“Go to hell, von Strelitz.”
I pulled the trigger and once again heard the muted, pleasingly quiet report of the air rifle. Carl von Strelitz staggered two steps back, but he stayed on his feet. He stared at me, his eyes full of hatred, one last time; then his gaze moved down in surprise to where blood was staining his white shirt red.
“You damn . . . fool,” he groaned. Then, at last, the agent fell backward and hit the water with a splash, his arms flung wide. Streaks of blood spread out around him like long, red threads.
I stood on the bank as if in a trance. The gun slipped from my hands and fell on the gravel path that r
an along the bank. Only Richard Hornig’s coughing brought me back to the present. He had scrambled out of the water by now, but he was still fighting for breath. “God in heaven, Marot! You . . . you saved my life,” he groaned. He was pale as a drowned corpse, but otherwise he seemed to be in good shape. Now he took hold of the body of von Strelitz, scrutinized it disparagingly, and then threw it back into the lake like a piece of rotten wood. “That bastard nearly drowned me. Who in the name of three devils was he?”
“The man who murdered the king,” I said quietly. “We came too late.”
There was a moment of absolute silence, in which only the cawing of a single crow could be heard. A cloud of red had formed around Ludwig’s corpse and was slowly dispersing in the murky water. His thick black hair floated like seaweed in the gentle swell of the lake.
We stood on the bank as if numb, staring at our dead king, at Dr. Gudden, and the Prussian agent, all three of them drifting, face-down, in the water of the lake. Tears glistened in Hornig’s eyes, mingling with the raindrops, and none of us said a word. It was as if the world as we had always known it had stopped turning.
Not until we heard cries in the distance and saw the flickering of torches through the trees did we run into the night, without another word.
ONLY AN HOUR later the five of us sat, brooding, in the smoking room of Baron Beck-Peccoz, who had waited for the king in vain at the gate of his castle park with his carriage. When he heard of Ludwig’s death, he seemed paralyzed by shock at first. Finally, he drove us in the carriage to his estate of Eurasburg, which was very close to Berg Castle. We were now staring, our eyes glazed, at the glowing logs on the hearth, while the stormy rain lashed the windows.
“If there were any traces left to show how the king really died, then they’ll have been removed by now,” said Richard Hornig. “They’ll take the body of the Prussian agent away and make the whole thing look like the suicide of a deranged king. No one will ever know the truth.”
The rest of us nodded in silence. It was as if, after so much hectic activity, apathy had overwhelmed us, leaving us unable to speak of what had happened. The king was dead, and nothing could bring him back.
Suddenly Kaulbach the painter rose to his feet. With shaking fingers, he ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and looked at us one by one. “It was a mistake for us to run like hares,” he said angrily. “We must go to the Starnberg police. At once! This crime can’t go unpunished.”
“Go to the police? Don’t be childish, Kaulbach.” Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld shook his head wearily before going on. “Don’t you understand? This thing has been engineered from the very top. Are you really planning to oppose the future prince regent, all the ministers, and the majority of the Bavarian nobility? Only with the king alive and at our side did we stand any chance of reversing the coup d’état. It’s too late now.”
For some time no one said anything. In the midst of the silence, Hermann Kaulbach suddenly took his wet hat from the fireside and turned to the door.
“What are you going to do, for God’s sake?” asked Dr. Loewenfeld in surprise.
“I am at least going to pay the king my last respects,” he said firmly. “And if you gentlemen have a spark of good feeling in you, you’ll do the same.”
Kaulbach disappeared into the rain outside, and after a little while the rest of us followed him. Only the baron still sat by the fire in a melancholy mood, watching the fire slowly burn down. His face was hard and gray as rock.
IT WAS JUST after midnight when we finally returned to Berg. Bright lights blazed everywhere in the castle and the park; people were running around in agitation, many of them weeping or embracing; gendarmes hurried through the wood like restless spirits. The bodies of Ludwig and Dr. Gudden had been found only about an hour before. They had drifted north from the original scene of the crime. We suspected that the dead Carl von Strelitz had already been taken away by police officers who knew his intentions.
In the general turmoil, it was easy for us to gain access to the castle. After all, Dr. Loewenfeld had been the king’s personal physician, although he had seen less and less of him in recent years. It was Dr. Loewenfeld, too, who made it possible for us to pay our condolences to the body of the dead king.
Contrary to our expectations, His Excellency had not yet been taken to Berg Castle but was lying in the boathouse with Dr. Gudden. They had been covered up to the throat with cloths, but in the general atmosphere of haste, no one had thought of washing Ludwig’s face. His mouth was open as if in a silent scream, and a thin line of dried blood stuck to his cheek.
“Do you see all that blood on the floor?” Dr. Loewenfeld whispered to me. “I’d assume that came from your Prussian agent before he was spirited away from here in secret. Either from him or from Ludwig himself. In any event, they’ll have to clean this boathouse thoroughly to get rid of all the traces.”
The four of us took off our hats and stood in silence before our king, whom we had wanted to save, and who was now taken from us forever. I felt the sense of something ending. The fairy tales disappeared with Ludwig, as did the last spirit of an epoch that had once teemed with fabulous creatures, strong warriors, elves and dwarves. They would be succeeded by pragmatists, by bureaucrats.
All at once I heard a faint rustling, and I saw Hermann Kaulbach bring out a sketchpad, damp from the rain, from under his coat. With quick movements, he captured the image of the dead king on paper. He also did little portrait sketches of Richard Hornig and Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld.
“Even if they fake everything else, there will be a record of this moment,” said Kaulbach quietly. He looked at the door of the boathouse, which was only half closed. The gendarme on duty had just gone out for a cigarette.
“Let us promise not to forget all this. We owe His Majesty that.”
We nodded gravely and murmured our promise.
Only a moment later, a thought flashed through my mind. Kaulbach’s words had reminded me of something. I, too, owed a duty to Ludwig.
The king’s letter!
Hadn’t Ludwig himself called it the most important missive he had ever written? I had promised to deliver it to some person unknown at Linderhof. And in all the turmoil, I had forgotten about it.
I felt for my left-hand vest pocket, finding the letter, and the note bearing the name of its recipient. Who might that recipient be? Who could be important enough to receive the last letter of Ludwig’s life?
I had been told not to discover the recipient until I reached Linderhof. But time was short. And maybe it was too late anyway, now that the king was dead. So I took out the little note, unfolded it, and read the name.
At that moment, I understood.
35
“HEY, WE WERE RIGHT! We really were right!”
Sara’s voice brought Steven out of his thoughts. He was so absorbed in reading the book that her words came through to him muted.
“What . . . what do you mean?”
Sara pointed to the monitor of her laptop. “The lines of poetry and the roman numerals. They really do spell out a sentence. See for yourself.”
Ballad Line Word Solution
Erl-King XVI I In
Belshazzar V IV the
Women of Winsperg XVI IV king’s
Count of Thal CXIII II fourth
Enchantress in the Forest LXXXXIII V castle
Ring of Polycrates XV I a
Song of Siegerich LXXXXVIII IV scion
The Singer’s Curse LIX V shows
Lorelei VII I the
The Angler XXVII IV dearest
The Diver LXI IV of
Legend XXX IV his
Ballad XII II treasures
Steven looked at her and at the screen, on which a greenish table was shimmering.
In the king’s fourth castle a scion shows the dearest of his treasures.
The bookseller frowned. “What in the world . . .” he began.
“Fluch really did stand for Ludwig Uhland’s poem ‘Des S?
?ngers Fluch,’ ‘The Singer’s Curse,’ just as you suspected,” Sara said. “‘Legende’ and ‘Ballade’ are two not very well-known poems by Goethe. The most difficult ones to track down were Thal and Winsperg. But thank goodness, there are also a few ballads now rightly forgotten in that little old book.” Sara triumphantly held up Zöller’s volume of poetry. “Thal is Der Graf von Thal, The Count von Thal, by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, and Winsperg refers to a rather boring poem by Adalbert von Chamisso called ‘Die Weiber von Winsperg,’ ‘The Women of Winsperg.’ Taken together with the roman numerals for lines and words, we get this sentence . . .” She emphasized every single word. “In the king’s fourth castle a scion shows the dearest of his treasures. We’ve finally solved the puzzle. That’s the place that crazy Luise was blathering on about.”
Sara gave a V for victory sign, grinning broadly. “Now we just have to go to the king’s fourth castle and . . .”
Steven raised his eyebrows. “Fourth castle? As far as I know, Ludwig built only three castles. Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee, and this one, Neuschwanstein.”
Sara bit her lip. “Damn it, you’re right,” she said quietly. “There’s something wrong.” She frowned. “How about Ludwig’s hunting lodge on the Schachen, in the Wetterstein mountains? Or Berg, maybe? It’s a castle, after all, even if Ludwig didn’t build it himself. Could that be it?”
“I don’t know. It strikes me as illogical. All that trouble, just to lead us to Berg. We might as well start at the Residence Palace in Munich itself.” Steven sighed. “Whatever we do, we have to do it fast.” He glanced at Albert Zöller, who was still lying on the cold mosaic floor. His large paunch rose and fell like a pair of bellows, sweat poured over his face, which was white as a sheet, and he was breathing heavily. “Uncle Lu isn’t going to last much longer.”