Jean Plaidy - The Princess of Celle

In his heart Ernest Augustus did not believe for a moment that his son would be concerned in a plot to poison him; nor did he think the lighthearted Count Mölcke capable of such an action. But it was true that there was disaffection in the family and that was something he had tolerated long enough. Knowing Clara, an idea of how the snuff came to be poisoned entered his mind. Maximilian had insulted her and Clara was never one to forgive insults. However, he would not explore that possibility and it had to be made known that such conduct could not be tolerated.

There had to be a scapegoat and Mölcke being the obvious one, he was sentenced to death. Maximilian was banished from Hanover; and as soon as he had gone Ernest Augustus realized the folly of this action, for he immediately went to Wolfenbüttel where he was received with the utmost hospitality.

Clara was delighted with Maximilian’s banishment but to punish him was not as important as to destroy Sophia Dorothea.

When Mölcke had been questioned he had been urged to implicate the Princess but this he refused to do.

It simply was not true, he said, that the Princess had been present when they had talked of the injustice to the younger sons of Hanover. He would be lying if he said she were.

Clara was not satisfied with this. She sent one of the guards to the imprisoned man to tell him that there was one way of saving his life. He only had to implicate Sophia Dorothea.

This Mölcke steadfastly refused to do; and Clara was further enraged.

Königsmarck visited his friend Count Mölcke in his prison.

‘How could you have been so foolish as to become involved?’ he asked.

‘It was to amuse Maximilian. We were not serious any of us … at least not serious in our talk of overthrowing George Lewis. It was all so much talk. I had no idea how the poisoned snuff came to be in the box. I was as surprised as anyone.’

‘It was put there to incriminate you, of course.’

‘You will have to see that the Princess is protected.’

‘The Princess! What has the Princess to do with this?’

‘She is innocent of any plot against the Duke … but I am innocent of attempting to poison him, yet here I am … condemned as guilty. Someone wants to ruin her. I was told that if I would swear she was guilty of treason and in the plot to murder Ernest Augustus I could save my life.’

‘Good God!’ cried Königsmarck. ‘She is in danger then.’

‘No,’ said Mölcke, ‘I refused.’

‘My good friend,’ cried Königsmarck. ‘The Princess has a formidable enemy in Hanover.’

Eléonore von Knesebeck had brought him in. He embraced Sophia Dorothea with fervour.

She was in danger, he told her. Mölcke had been offered his life to betray her.

‘Betray me?’ cried Sophia Dorothea. ‘For what?’

‘My precious Princess, my darling! You are in danger. We cannot go on like this.’

‘I have few friends in Hanover,’ said Sophia Dorothea. ‘But I have many enemies.’

They embraced. Each knew who was the vindictive enemy. Königsmarck cursed his weak folly, his infidelity, his indulgence which had led him to become, though briefly, the lover of the evil Clara. And Sophia Dorothea wept for it.

Sophia Dorothea went to her husband’s apartments – an intrusion which was as distasteful to her as it was irritating to him.

‘I must speak to you,’ she said.

He grunted and not rising from his chair sat back and yawned.

How she hated him. He seemed more crude than ever since she was learning to know Königsmarck so well.

‘Someone is trying to implicate me in this affair of the snuff box.’

He did not speak.

‘Don’t you see how important it is?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘You will stand by and see your wife so treated? You know who is behind this, don’t you? It is the Platen woman. She offered Mölcke his life if he would admit that I was one of the conspirators, that I helped to plan your father’s death. Can’t you say anything?’

‘What is there to say? You have said it.’

‘Mölcke refused to lie. He is innocent of this charge, and he would not lie even to save his life. Well? What are you going to do?’

‘What is there to do?’

‘Is it nothing to you that your wife is plotted against?’

‘You said he refused to implicate you.’

‘But someone tried to tempt him to do so.’

‘He didn’t. And that’s an end of it.’

‘I … I don’t understand you.’

‘Why should you?’

She looked at him in exasperation. ‘And is it nothing to you that I have enemies who would dishonour me … who would plot my ruin?’

‘It’s no concern of mine,’ mumbled George Lewis.

She left him in an agony of rage; and she wept for Count Mölcke when his head was cut off in the Royal Mews.

She had lost a friend – a gallant chivalrous gentleman; she turned to Königsmarck for comfort.

ERNEST AUGUSTUS HAD at last attained his heart’s desire. Hanover was created an Electorate and he its Elector. All the scheming of years had borne fruit. He could not have done it, he knew, without the help of his brother George William’s wealth and without the aid they had been able to give to the Emperor. But the glory was his; he was richer, more powerful than he had dared hope. And for a time he forgot his worries. He did not wonder what Maximilian was doing in Wolfenbüttel; how far his brother Christian was with him; he suppressed his disappointment in Sophia Dorothea for whom he had always had a tender spot. He gave himself up to the joy of celebrating his great achievement. Clara was only too happy to help him.

Königsmarck was uneasy. He was no coward, but the Mölcke affair had shaken him. He knew that he was living dangerously as Sophia Dorothea’s lover. He continually cursed himself for having made an enemy of Clara von Platen. There were times when he was sure that he would willingly die for Sophia Dorothea and others when he was unsure. If he could have married her, willingly would he have done so, and he was sure that he could have been a faithful husband. When he was with her he was the chivalrous and single-minded lover she believed him to be. There were times when he was not with her, when he was unsure.

He was an adventurer, an opportunist; he could not change his character because he was in love. How he fluctuated! There were times when he planned to run away with her; others when he planned to run away without her.

Because she was romantic and he was calculating, because she in her simplicity loved him for that ideal manhood with which she alone had endowed him, she could not truly know him. But he knew himself; and because she meant more to him than any other living person ever had, desperately he tried to live up to her ideal.

Creeping into her apartments by night, romantically scrambling from her window in the early morning … all this was romance. But he was always aware of the dangers he ran and wondered whether this or that night’s adventure would be the last. Sometimes he told himself he was a fool.

Thus it was with Königsmarck – torn between the wisdom of flight from danger and the ecstasy of living with it.

Hildebrand, Königsmarck’s secretary and confidant, was waiting for him when the Count entered the house. There was a messenger, he told his master, from Saxony.

Königsmarck said he would see the man at once and when he came to him and handed him letters he took them to his private apartments to read at once.

One of the letters was from his friend Frederick Augustus, heir to the Electorate of Saxony; but as Königsmarck read the letter he realized that his friend had come into his inheritance.

His brother George Frederick had died of smallpox and Frederick Augustus had succeeded him. He needed his friends about him and there would be a welcome for Königsmarck in Dresden.

This was unexpected. The Elector George Frederick had been in his prime – a lusty man who had at this time been ruled by his beautiful mistress the Countess von Röohlitz, an imperious young woman of twenty-one who had haughtily declared that she would not live at the same court as her lover’s wife; as a result the Electress had been asked to leave. She had seemed invincible until an enemy had confronted her whom she could not vanquish. The smallpox had killed her, and in his devotion to her, for he would not leave her side, her lover had caught the disease, and died less than a fortnight after her.

‘I should be with my friend Frederick Augustus at such a time,’ said Königsmarck.

An absence from Hanover, he believed, would give him time to decide how he should shape his life, for he could not go on for ever in this unsatisfactory state. Sophia Dorothea would be ready to elope with him, he believed, and he wanted to go away for a while to explore this exciting but highly dangerous possibility.

Within a few weeks of receiving those letters, Königsmarck was on his way to Dresden.

Sophia Dorothea missed him sadly. Life was empty without him, she told Eléonore von Knesebeck.

‘Sometimes I think he will never return,’ she said. ‘He will see the wisdom of staying away now that he has put some distance between us.’

‘He’ll come back.’

‘If you loved me you would pray he never would.’

‘When you yourself will pray that he will?’

‘Have done! I want to get away from the palace. Let us go for a walk in the gardens.’

It was pleasant walking in the gardens which, although not so tastefully arranged as they were at Celle, were more colourful.

People curtsied as she passed, and among them was one woman who had been in great poverty and to whom she had ordered that food and clothes should be sent. She recognized the woman, looking affluent now, and paused to express her pleasure. The woman dropped a deep curtsey and murmured that she would never forget the service done to her by the Princess. She was a midwife who had recently improved her fortunes when she delivered a very important child.