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The Ludwig Conspiracy(115)

By:Oliver Potzsch


At a loss, Steven stood in the middle of the enormous hall and looked up, as if he might find the keyword there. Beneath the vault of the cupola, there were pictures of pre-Christian rulers, and in the apse the bookseller saw Jesus Christ, the twelve apostles, and six more kings. The murals in the room celebrated the heroic deeds of saints, and Steven was struck, in particular, by the figure of St. George stabbing the dragon in the eye. While the battle between knight and monster went on in the foreground, the background of the painting showed a castle on a mountain looking very much like Neuschwanstein itself.

“Where’s the throne?” Steven asked, and his voice echoed in the high spaces of the room. “After all, this is the throne room.” He pointed to the empty apse, and a broad flight of steps leading up to it.

“Ludwig died before the throne was finished,” Zöller said. “But there are drawings. It would have been huge, made of gold and ivory, intended to outdo the thrones of both Charlemagne and Louis the Fourteenth. Everything here was to be just like the music of Wagner: grandiose and a little too loud.” He chuckled and pointed up. “Most of this stuff is only smoke and mirrors, anyway. The cupola is an iron structure, the columns are stucco, and glass drops hang from the chandelier. The entire castle is a theatrical setting.”

Groaning, Uncle Lu levered himself down to the floor and began leafing through a thick volume.

“Let’s just sum up,” he announced. “Supposing the keyword really does have something to do with Richard Wagner, then we’re looking at five thematic areas here. Each of the state rooms in the palace is based on an old legend. In the salon, the murals tell the story of the legend of Lohengrin; in the study, it’s Tannhäuser; in the bedroom, Tristan and Isolde; and finally, in the Lower Hall, Sigurd and Gudrun.”

“I’ve already fed all those names separately into the laptop,” Sara complained. “Nada. But that would have been too easy.”

Steven turned to Zöller. “Which do you think is the most likely room?”

“Lohengrin was Ludwig’s favorite Wagner opera,” Uncle Lu said thoughtfully. “It impressed him in his youth. And it’s perfectly possible that Marot concealed a clue in the Lohengrin pictures in the salon.”

“Who exactly was Lohengrin, anyway?” Sara asked. “All I really know about him is that he crosses the lake singing, in a boat drawn by a swan.”

Uncle Lu cleared his throat. “The character goes back to the Parsifal legend. Parsifal is the Grail king, that’s to say the keeper of the Holy Grail, and Lohengrin is his son. As the Knight of the Swan, Lohengrin travels to the Duchess of Brabant to protect her. But she must never ask him his name . . .”

“Which, of course, she does anyway,” Sara interrupted. “Naturally. Now I remember the story. And Tannhäuser?”

“Deals, among other things, with the medieval singers’ contest at the Wartburg castle. The Singers’ Hall on the fourth floor is modeled on the hall in the Wartburg.” Zöller opened a thick, well-thumbed book. “The story of Sigurd and Gudrun, in turn, goes back to the legendary Germanic world of the Edda.” He looked at Steven and Sara, his eyes twinkling. “You two probably know the romance better as the Nibelung legend featuring handsome Siegfried and his prim and proper Kriemhilde. The legend is easily the best-known story in Wagner’s operas. All most people really know about Tristan and Isolde is that they were a couple of lovers.”

“Hey, wait a moment.” Steven suddenly pricked up his ears and leafed fast through the diary, his voice growing more and more urgent. “Theodor Marot described the paintings and figures of the two lovers in Ludwig’s bedroom at some length. And Marot and Maria, after all, were another couple of lovers. The other two keywords were MARIA and LILIES. They’re both kind of connected with love. Couldn’t ‘Tristan and Isolde’ be the legend we’re after?”

“And suppose it is?” Sara was sitting beside Zöller on the mosaic floor, tapping the keyboard of her laptop listlessly. “I’ve fed the names Tristan and Isolde in about a dozen times. All I get out of that is garbage.”

“Then let’s go back to the bedroom,” Steven said, already making for the exit. “Maybe we’ll find a clue that we’ve overlooked so far. There simply must be something, I’m sure of it. We’ve been too blind to spot it so far, that’s all.”





IN THE FLICKERING emergency lighting, they hurried along the dark corridors and chambers of the castle. As a teenager, Steven had once gone on a guided tour of Neuschwanstein, but at night the building looked little like the fairy-tale tourist attraction of his childhood. In the darkness, the castle was gloomy, cold, and almost unreal, like a theatrical backdrop in which painted characters suddenly came to life. Knights with faces distorted by pain, pale aristocratic maidens, kings, and warriors stared out of the murals at Steven and seemed to follow every step he took. The heavy wooden doors creaked and squealed, and several times he thought he heard footsteps directly overhead, as if the king were still wandering restlessly through the Singers’ Hall. Sara, too, kept looking up at the ceiling, intrigued.