The Ludwig Conspiracy(25)

Ludwig was celebrating his birthday, as he did almost every year, in his hunting lodge on the heights of Schachen in the massive Wetterstein mountain range. The local peasants had lit bonfires on the peaks, so that we were surrounded by a wreath of fire with the wooden hunting lodge at its center. The king had invited only a few of his faithful friends there with him, including his adjutant, Alfred Count Eckbrecht von Dürckheim-Montmartin; the postilion, Karl Hesselschwerdt; and my humble self.

Since I had risen to the post of Loewenfeld’s assistant more than ten years before, the king had frequently invited me to keep him company. We often stayed up until the small hours of the morning, discussing the French court theater, or the poems of Schiller, as well as that remarkable writer Edgar Allan Poe, whom Ludwig loved more than any other contemporary author. I may say that I had become a genuine friend of the king’s in those years. And although his whims and posturing often seemed to me like the games of a boy of twelve, he was my king. There was no one else like this poetic, melancholy, pugnacious man on the earthly globe. An artist as head of state—what other country can claim as much for itself?

On the night of 24 August, we were sitting up late on the upper floor of the Schachen lodge, in what was known as the Turkish Room. A few years earlier, Ludwig had had this room designed in the style of Moorish palaces. A fountain played, splashing gently; soft, richly ornamented carpets covered the floor, and the walls were decorated with gilded carvings and bright stained-glass windows. Wearing kaftans, we leaned back on cushions and divans, smoking hookah pipes and sipping mocha from tiny cups as thin as parchment. Servants fanned us with peacock feathers, and the music of a shawm came from somewhere.

I was by now used to such spectacles staged by our king, so I was not surprised when he sat up on his cushion, placid as a portly Buddha, and offered me his pipe.

“Dearest Mahmoud, my grand vizier and most loyal of my Mussulmen,” he said, turning to me with a grave expression, “you are too high-strung. Here, inhale some of this delicious tobacco. It will help you to dream a dream out of the Thousand and One Nights.”

Smiling, I took the pipe and inhaled deeply. It was not a rare occurrence for the king to address us by historical names, or names of his own invention. In the last few years I had already been Gawain, Gunther, Faithful Eckhart, and Colbert, the French minister. Why not a grand vizier for a change? Through the smoke, I looked at Ludwig’s expansive figure and tried to recall him in his prime.

It was some time since the king had been the well-built warrior who had had all the women at his feet in the first years of his reign. It was true, at almost six feet tall he was still a giant, but by now he weighed well over two hundred pounds. His face was pale and bloated, his eyes cloudy, his mouth fallen in and near toothless. I could smell his fetid breath from where I sat. The brightly colored Turkish costume that he wore in the Schachen hunting lodge did not conceal the fact that Ludwig was more and more letting himself go to seed. Only his hair was unchanged, still as thick and black as it had been when he ascended to the throne more than twenty years ago.

But what alarmed all of us most were the sometimes deluded, sometimes dreamy moods that came over him with increasing frequency. He was a king of the moonlight who made night his day and lived in his own fairy-tale world. Even we, his faithful friends, could get through to him less and less often.

Beside me, Count Dürckheim shifted restlessly on his cushion. Like the rest of us, the usually dashing adjutant with his neatly twirled mustache was wearing a loose silk caftan. Dürckheim hated these masquerades, but he knew that at such moments he could get much farther with his king than in any official meetings.

“Your Majesty, we have to talk,” he began in a serious tone. “I went through the items on your civil list again yesterday. Your debts now amount to almost fourteen million marks, and I think that the building of your castles . . .”

“Dürckheim, how many more times do I have to tell you that I don’t want to hear this tiresome financial drivel on my birthday?” the king snapped at him, and he closed the book of Turkish poetry that he had been about to go on reading. “It’s bad enough to have you pestering me with it in Munich. We’ll continue building the castles—that’s settled. They are the expression of my very being—without them I would not be king.” Suddenly his lips were narrow as two straight lines. “My father, my grandfather, they were all allowed to build such castles,” he hissed. “It’s only my own ministers who act in such a way. On my honor, Dürckheim, if those gentlemen don’t grant me more money, I’ll blow Hohenschwangau sky-high. I won’t endure the shame of it any longer. Money must be forthcoming, never mind how, understand? Have you understood?”