The Ludwig Conspiracy(49)

I humbly bowed my head. “Majesty, it is only because . . .”

“Be silent, before I regret bringing you up here at all!”

Without another word the king rose to his feet. His chair fell over with a crash, and Ludwig climbed down the ladder to the ground. He did not deign to favor me with another glance and disappeared into the castle.

I struck my forehead and cursed myself for my thoughtlessness. Ludwig was well-known for cultivating an almost fraternal relationship with his social inferiors, but it could change into icy coldness from one moment to the next. I ought to have known! Instead, I had been incautious and endangered my mission. I dared not think what Count Dürckheim would say when I told him about my faux pas. Now how was I going to convince the king that he must go to Munich?

Gritting my teeth, I made my way down the ladder hand over hand, wondering how I could mollify Ludwig. My game of hide-and-seek, my flight—perhaps it had all been for nothing.

“Don’t be downcast,” said a clear voice behind me suddenly. “Sometimes the king is like an angry child. His tantrums are like storms. They come suddenly, but they disappear again just as fast.”

Startled, I turned around and found myself looking straight into the face of the black-haired girl whose looks had taken my breath away. Now, at close quarters, the young woman seemed if anything even more beautiful than she had appeared from the platform in the tree.

“Oh . . . I didn’t know . . .” I stammered. She shook her head, laughing.

“I couldn’t help hearing your quarrel. Think nothing of it. You got off lightly; the king has been known to push other men into the fountain from up here.”

I smiled, while I went on surreptitiously looking at her.

“You seem to know His Majesty well. Does he allow you an audience, ma’am?”

Her clear, bell-like laughter rang out again, and my heart beat faster. “Never mind the formality, sir,” she said, chuckling. “I am only the daughter of a simple peasant woodcarver from Oberammergau.” Suddenly her voice was grave, and a small frown of annoyance appeared on her brow. “But you are right, I do know the king well. Better, anyway, than many a minister, state secretary, or councilor. To you, coming from Munich, Ludwig is only a dreamer, am I right? A wayward oddity who won’t do what you all tell him.” She pointed to the forests stretching up into the mountains behind the castle. “But ask the common people here in the Graswangtal, and they will tell you a different story. The king talks to us, asks how we are. And when one of his grooms has a birthday, he serves him a festive meal with his own hands.”

I said nothing but looked in admiration at the young woman who had spoken with so much feeling. Her face was fine-featured, with high cheekbones and clever eyes that hardly suited a maidservant. But for the simple linen skirt and apron that she wore, I would have taken her for a court lady, or a merchant’s daughter. Her whole appearance had something playfully ladylike about it; she had a natural elegance lacking in most of the ladies of high social standing whom I knew.

“The king was right to be angry with me just now,” I said at last, hesitantly. “I was a fool. Perhaps it would be a good thing if someone were to take me to task more often.”

“Well, don’t expect me to do it. Two scamps are quite enough for me.” Her eyes twinkled at me, and I felt a slight shiver down my back all of a sudden. This girl could reduce me to the state of a naïve, stammering peasant with her glances alone.

“Two . . . er, scamps?”

“Well, the king and the naughty little boy shooting sparrows out of the trees there.”

She pointed to a group of bushes from which a flock of birds, twittering angrily, was just flying up. A little boy of about six, with unruly black curls and wearing short lederhosen, was running after them with a slingshot, shouting. It was the boy I had seen from the platform.

“Is that your child?” I asked, and looked at her in surprise. She seemed so young that I would never have thought the boy might be her own. When she nodded, I felt a sharp pang deep inside me.

“Leopold,” she said quietly, and a shadow came over her face. “He will be six next summer. He’s the apple of my eye, even if I sometimes curse him to the devil.”

We were walking together toward the basin of the fountain, which was still sending a powerful jet of water up into the air. Tiny drops moistened my face and formed a misty veil with a rainbow in it above our heads. The girl had now bent down to pick a bunch of flowers. A little way off, the boy was aiming his slingshot at a couple of crows who had come down to settle on the head of a Greek statue of Diana.