Sex with the Queen (25 page)

Outraged at Königsmark’s public insults, Countess Platen tried to rouse the lethargic Ernst August to action but he impa-tiently waved her away. She then informed Melusina of her in-ternational humiliation.

Melusina was a gentle soul whose only major fault was rapac-ity. No plotting and planning for Melusina, no upstaging her lover’s wife; she quietly had sex with George Louis at night and pocketed the price the next day. But with the sound of laughter at the Dresden officers’ mess echoing in her ears, Melusina picked up her heavy skirts and flew to George Louis. Weeping from shame, she upbraided her lover about his wife’s affair with Königsmark and the humiliating stories the count was spreading across Europe.

Furious that his gentle mistress should be so insulted, George Louis burst into Sophia Dorothea’s rooms and bitterly criticized her for her love affair. The enraged princess replied that George Louis’s affair with Melusina was the real scandal and suggested that they divorce. George Louis heatedly agreed, and the quarrel escalated until the prince threw himself on his wife and began 1 1 2

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tearing out her hair. His hands circled her neck and squeezed.

Her attendants in the antechamber, hearing her screams, rushed in to save her. George Louis, seeing her rescuers, threw his wife on the floor and swore he would never look at her again. He never did.

Her mother was horrified to learn of the attack. Her father, however, suggested she had earned the purple finger marks on her neck by her outrageous behavior. Her in-laws, fearing scan-dal and a possible divorce that would rob them of Sophia Dorothea’s money, sent George Louis away to visit his sister in Berlin until tempers calmed down.

Sophia Dorothea, sick of her life in Hanover, knowing her father would never offer her a respectable haven at Celle, was ready to flee her gilded cage and live the life of a soldier’s woman with Königsmark. If she escaped Hanover, her husband would divorce her for desertion. She could then marry Königsmark and live with him in some sunny foreign land. She would will-ingly surrender the coronet and gowns, the jewels, state car-riages, and pompous ceremonies. She, of all people, knew how empty they were.

The only problem was money. Königsmark had spent his en-tire inheritance and was wallowing in debt. After more than a decade of marriage, Sophia Dorothea first looked into her own financial affairs. “Yesterday I read my marriage contract,” she wrote Königsmark sadly, “which could not be more disadvanta-geous to me than it is. The Prince is the absolute master of everything and nothing belongs to me. Even the allowance he ought to give me is so badly explained that they can easily quibble over it. I was very much surprised by all this because I did not ex-pect it at all. It hurt me so much that I had tears in my eyes.”32

Sophia Dorothea owned a few pieces of fine jewelry and some small change. Where would they flee with so little money? Cer-tainly they could not afford a long journey. And the longer the journey, the greater the risk they would be captured by Hanover-ian agents. A sensible destination was the nearby duchy of Anton Ulrich von Wolfenbüttel, the man whose son had been Sophia Dorothea’s fiancé a dozen years earlier, and the enemy of the t h e s e v e n t e e n t h c e n t u r y 1 1 3

elector of Hanover. He would protect her and be glad to embar-rass Ernst August.

At the end of June 1694 Königsmark deserted his post at Dresden and rode posthaste to dislodge his royal mistress from the iron grip of the House of Hanover. Forbidden to cross the border, he disguised himself and slipped into his house with the aid of a few faithful servants. But Countess Platen’s spies recog-nized him entering the city. Like a malevolent spider she sat silent and still, watching her prey become entangled in the un-forgiving fibers of her web.

On July 1 Sophia Dorothea sent Königsmark a note asking him to visit her in her apartments that evening between eleven o’clock and midnight. The door would be opened when he whis-tled “The Spanish Follies.” But Countess Platen had intercepted the note before passing it on and was well aware of the ren-dezvous. She was informed as soon as Königsmark arrived in the princess’s chamber, disguised in a pair of shabby summer trousers, a worn white jacket, and brown cloak and carrying a short sword.

Countess Platen, the epitome of scandalized female virtue, raced to the elector and told him breathlessly that at that very moment the count was making love to the electoral princess.

Ernst August, sick to death of Königsmark, wanted to go to his daughter-in-law’s apartments to confront the guilty pair, arrest the count and exile him once and for all.

But Countess Platen had other plans. She convinced her lover that it would be beneath his dignity as elector to involve himself personally in the scandal; he should sign an order for the guards to arrest Königsmark. Armed with the order, she took four guards into the great hall through which the count would have to retrace his steps and plied them with liquor until they be-came violently drunk. Perhaps, as she stewed in her bitter mis-ery, Countess Platen pictured her lover, the only man she had ever truly wanted, so desperately wanted, making love to the woman she despised more than anyone else in the world.

The princess, having smoothed down her skirts, and the count, having pulled up his breeches, set to work packing trunks 1 1 4

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for her escape the following evening. They laughed to think of the reaction of George Louis, his parents, and Countess Platen when word got out that the two had run off together. In the depths of the night Königsmark bid his royal mistress farewell and went down the corridor humming a tune. He found that the door through which he had come had been bolted, the door which he had purposely left unbolted. Someone had locked it.

But who? He stopped humming. Now he would have to go through the great hall to exit. Wary of a trap, he drew his sword.

As he passed the huge fireplace, the soldiers leapt out, one of them hitting him on the head with the flat of his sword. After wounding two soldiers, the count’s sword snapped. Defenseless now, he was run through the body by saber thrusts and gashed in the head by a battle-axe. As he bled on the floor, his last words were, “Spare the Princess; save the innocent Princess!”33 Upon hearing this, Countess Platen, with the pointed brocade toe of her diamond-buckled shoe, kicked the dying man hard in the mouth.

In her jealous fury, she had plotted his death. But now, seeing him lying there, his scarlet blood staining the floorboards, she was sorry. Certainly she was afraid. First she called for a cordial, which she tried to force down his throat. Then for bandages to stanch the grievous wounds. Vanquished, she realized her lover was dead, and that she had killed him as surely as if she had run him through herself.

She raced to the elector’s rooms. Panting, she told him that Königsmark had resisted arrest so violently that the guards, de-fending themselves, had accidentally killed him. The elector was horrified. The count had been a nobleman of Sweden, well known to its king, and Königsmark’s best friend was the elector of Saxony. The bon vivant of Europe, he had highly placed con-nections in France, England, and Denmark. Important people would come looking for him. How to explain this arrest gone wrong, this murder in the dead of night of one man by so many armed soldiers? It was best, the elector and countess decided, to do away with the body and feign innocence of his whereabouts.

After all, he had been a rakehell adventurer rolling about Europe t h e s e v e n t e e n t h c e n t u r y 1 1 5

in search of booty, battles, and women. Anything could have happened to him. No one knew that he had been murdered by the elector’s guards except the guards themselves, and the elector made them swear to silence on pain of death.

But what to do with the mangled body? If they carried it outside, surely someone would see them struggling with their burden, and a fresh grave could easily be discovered. And so with the help of the guilty guards, the elector and his mistress pried loose some floorboards of the great hall and tossed the body into the darkness below. Quicklime was thrown on it to eat away the flesh and neutralize the smell. The floorboards were hurriedly nailed back on. This is how Countess Platen buried her greatest passion, her deadliest mistake, her only love. The bloodstains were scoured from the floor. But it is hard to wash away blood. Many spots do not agree to be bleached clean; they cling as mute witnesses to the life that was, to the violence done.

Sophia Dorothea had written Königsmark years earlier, “I belong so truly to you that death alone can part us.”34 And now, as she cheerfully burned papers and packed bags, she was un-aware of the parting. At one point Knesebeck alerted her mis-tress to noises in the great hall but the princess didn’t think twice about it. She thought only of the morrow, a day of free-dom and joy. In the morning she would wait for Königsmark’s note indicating where she and Knesebeck should find the wait-ing coach.

By noon she had not heard from him. Then Knesebeck told her that Königsmark had not returned home the night before and his servants were looking for him. They were worried be-cause they had heard reports from palace servants of a commo-tion in the great hall during the night and had found traces of blood on the floor.

Sophia Dorothea waited patiently in her rooms. Surely some word must come. But that evening her children did not come by to wish her good night as usual. When she tried to leave her rooms to visit the elector, she was stopped. Electress Sophia 1 1 6

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