The Ludwig Conspiracy(72)
“My respects to you,” I hastily greeted him. “I hope you received my . . .”
Dürckheim put a finger to his lips and told me to be quiet. “Not here,” he said, low-voiced. “We’ll go over to the cavaliers’ building, where you will meet a carefully selected company of gentlemen. Follow me, but do not attract any attention.”
Passing the colored glass globes that servants had put up on stakes all over the garden, we reached the small, secluded building, designed for the king’s visitors, by way of an arbored path. In the corridor inside we were received by my mentor Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld, who used to spend a great deal of time here. In silence, and leaning on a walking stick, he led us to a modest conference room, and then carefully closed the door.
When I looked around the room, I saw, as well as the royal physician and Count Dürckheim, two other men standing smoking by the fireplace. One was Richard Hornig, Ludwig’s equerry and loyal friend for many long years; he served the king as a riding companion and coachman. The other, a pale, thin man in his late thirties, wearing a light summer suit, holding a straw hat, and smoking a cigarette, I recognized only at second glance. He was the Munich painter Hermann von Kaulbach, who had already done several model drawings for the king, and who was also unconditionally loyal to him. When Loewenfeld saw my surprise at this strange meeting, he raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture.
“Never fear, my dear young colleague,” he reassured me, leaning on his stick. “We are among friends here.” He smiled wearily. “Perhaps the last friends the king still has.”
Dr. Loewenfeld, then almost eighty years old, seemed to have aged by years over the last few months. He still sported old-fashioned side-whiskers, like the late American president Lincoln, murdered twenty years ago. But now his hair was white as snow, and deep lines had formed around his eyes. Loewenfeld had been personal physician to Ludwig’s father, Maximilian II, and was a true friend to the Wittelsbach family. Now he had to stand by and watch as the kingdom of Bavaria went to the dogs.
“Well?” Count Dürckheim spoke to me in an urgent voice. “Have you succeeded in convincing the king that he must act?”
I shook my head in silence, whereupon the count nodded understandingly. “As I had expected. But at least we now know what’s at stake. An intrigue, supported by the Prussian Secret Service, with the intention of having the king certified insane. That is nothing but high treason.” He put his hand to his officer’s cap. “I owe you my thanks, Marot. You have done the country an inestimable service.”
“A service that, I am afraid, does us no good,” replied Dr. Loewenfeld, sighing as he let himself drop into one of the chairs beside the fireplace. “As long as Ludwig lives solely in his dreams, he will be playing into his enemies’ hands. Lutz, president of the ministerial council, has already been in touch with Prince Luitpold. Ludwig’s uncle has agreed to take over as regent.”
“It’s in the king’s own hands,” interrupted Kaulbach the painter, drawing on the thin mouthpiece of his cigarette holder. “If he goes to Munich and shows himself to the people, no one will dare to certify him insane. But as matters stand . . .” He paused, and it was a pause pregnant with meaning. “If he goes on driving through the mountains in his coach by night, and building his fairy-tale castles, he is indeed playing into the ministers’ hands. Lutz is having rumors circulated in the newspapers, they are already singing satirical songs in the taverns, and no one does anything to avert it.”
Hornig, the royal equerry, nodded bitterly. “The lackeys at court are full of malicious gossip. I’ve heard that they steal torn documents from the king’s wastebaskets, hoping to find incriminating material. Then they pass it on to that bastard Lutz.”
“Who can still be trusted?” I asked hesitantly, looking around at the company.
“Apart from the five of us?” Count Dürckheim laughed despairingly. “I wouldn’t vouch for anyone else. Count von Holnstein is inciting the last of the loyalists against the king.”
“Another bastard!” Richard Hornig spat in the empty fireplace. “And when, thanks to Ludwig, he had a handsome sum from Bismarck.”
I could understand Hornig’s anger with his immediate superior. The Master of the Royal Stables, Max Count Holnstein, had once been the young king’s playmate. But Holnstein was hungry for both power and money, a bull-necked, choleric man who liked to browbeat his subordinates. He had been paid ten percent commission on the millions of the Guelph Fund, money with which Bismarck had bribed the king of Bavaria, after the war in the seventies, to get a Hohenzollern on the throne of the German emperor. Holnstein had been scheming against the king for years.