The Ludwig Conspiracy(69)

“Want me to collect you later?” Alois asked as he made the boat fast to a post. “They’re renovating the Castle Hotel—you won’t be able to stay the night there.”

“I’ll call you when we’re ready,” Uncle Lu replied. “I’ll leave the books in the chapel until then, if that’s all right.”

Waving to them, the fisherman put out on the lake, while Zöller dragged the heavy laundry basket into the chapel. Then they set off along the path to the middle of the island. Woods and meadows spread out ahead of them, and to their right they saw a fenced paddock.

“Is that the castle?” Steven asked, pointing to a group of white buildings standing on a rise farther up the path.

Uncle Lu shook his head. “No, only the former monastery, probably the oldest in all Bavaria. After secularization, the church was turned into a brewery, and other parts of the building were simply torn down. A real shame.” He kicked a stone by the side of the paddock, and some of the horses in it galloped away, neighing. “Then King Ludwig bought the island for 350,000 gulden in 1873, and moved into some rooms in the old monastery of the Augustinian Canons, a vantage point from which he could watch the building work. It was his dream to create a new Versailles here.”

“Just like Linderhof,” Steven said. “Ludwig must have been obsessed with the Sun King.”

“Yes, indeed, and this castle was originally to have been built at Linderhof, but the space there turned out to be too small.” Zöller’s eyes passed over the green landscape, the crystalline blue of the Chiemsee, and the Alps. “Here, Ludwig began by leveling out the whole site. Woods were cut down, hills flattened. The place had its own housing for the workmen. There were smiths, steam-driven saws, a railroad, too. And all that just for him and his dreams.”

“Well, Herrenchiemsee now belongs to the whole world, particularly tourists,” Sara said. “Ludwig would turn in his grave if he could see it.”

They reached the abbey and looked down on the little harbor, where a ferry had just put in with a new cargo of tourists. A brightly clad, noisy crowd made its way along the narrow path leading past the old monastery and into the woods.

“The castle stands almost exactly in the middle of the island,” Uncle Lu said. “Now, around midday, I can see all hell break loose. I’ll make you a suggestion: Sara and I will spend the day looking over the rest of the buildings, and this evening we’ll take a look at the castle.”

Steven frowned. “Won’t it be closed by then?”

“Prepare for a surprise.” Zöller pointed to Steven’s bulging rucksack. “Meanwhile you can get on with transcribing the book. Maybe you’ll come upon something that will help us to decipher the next words.”

Steven sighed. “I should have known. Very well, we’ll meet back at the chapel at six. Have fun searching the place.”

He wearily shouldered his backpack and walked aimlessly around the island, in search of a quiet, shady place where he could continue decoding Marot’s diary. A path along the shore of the island led him south, until he had finally reached the farthest point of the island. Here, away from the stream of tourists, it was pleasantly quiet, with the tapping of a spotted woodpecker and the wind in the trees the only sounds. Red and yellow leaves lay on the woodland floor like a soft carpet.

Someone had nailed a wooden bench with a sheltering roof around a mighty beech tree, and from there there was a wonderful view over the Chiemsee to the Alps beyond the lake. Steven sat down on it, and he tried to imagine Ludwig sitting there and dreaming his romantic dreams. A figure from the age of chivalry without a retinue, surrounded by scheming ministers and counselors who thought he was deranged. A king who seemed to have come from a past era, born into a modern world that he didn’t understand, and didn’t want to understand.

His curiosity reawakened, the bookseller took out the diary and set about going on with its transcription. He was used by now to the strange sensation of dizziness that came over him whenever he began reading it. He had become so good at the shorthand that he read the words almost like normal handwriting, except for the strange sequences of letters that were indeed becoming shorter and shorter.

It took him only a few lines before he was immersed once again in the world of a pleasantly faraway century slowly drawing to its close.





18





IDT





The next few days at Linderhof passed as if they were part of a dream.

Immediately after my fateful meeting with the king, I drafted a dispatch to Count Dürckheim, telling him the story of my experiences. As I had good reason to fear that most of Ludwig’s servants were no longer to be trusted, I paid out of my own pocket for a courier from Ettal, who promised me to deliver the sealed letter to Berg within a day. I knew that the count and also Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld were in the king’s castle there, waiting for his return. I myself planned to travel to Berg in the next few weeks, with Ludwig’s retinue. By then I hoped to have had a chance to speak to him again about the ministers’ plans. But my greatest wish was to see Maria as often as possible.