The Ludwig Conspiracy (25 page)

“Well, I’ll be damned. It’s Lu!” he crowed cheerfully. “For a moment I thought the king was back on his island.” The fisherman rose and approached Albert Zöller with arms outspread.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Alois,” Uncle Lu growled. “The king was never as fat as me, even on the dissecting table.” He heaved the basketful of books up on the landing stage, then shook hands with Alois. “But thanks for the compliment. Well, how about it? Would you do us a favor and row the three of us over to the Herreninsel?”

Alois put his head on one side and inspected Zöller’s companions disapprovingly. “Are they tourists, or are they friends of yours? Because I’m sick and tired of foreigners. There’re more of ’em here than whitefish in the Chiemsee.”

“They’re people on our side, Alois,” Zöller told him with a grave expression. “The king needs our help.”

The fisherman raised his eyebrows. “The king? Well, of course that’s different.”

In silence, the little man helped Sara and Steven into his ancient, dilapidated boat. They were followed by the heavy weight of the laundry basket, and the even heavier weight of Uncle Lu, tilting the boat on its side at a dangerous angle.

“Move over to the middle, Lu,” Alois said, pushing off from the landing stage with the oars. “Or you’ll end up drowned dead like our Ludwig, and that’d be a shame.”

Grinning, Zöller made his way to the middle of the seat and then turned to Sara and Steven.

“Many of the simple folk of the Chiemgau area still support the king,” he whispered softly. “Alois won’t give us away. Most Bavarians stick together when it comes to Ludwig the Second.”

“Sorry, but are we talking about the same king as the one who died one hundred twenty-five years ago?” Steven interrupted, smiling. “You talk as if he were still alive.”

Zöller put his head on one side and looked at Steven in surprise. “And isn’t he?” Then he roared with laughter. “To be honest,” he finally said, puffing to get his breath back, “Ludwig the Second is far more than a fat drowned body to many Bavarians. He’s their identity and a myth at the same time, and as a myth, of course he lives forever.” Uncle Lu pointed to the morose fisherman behind them dipping his oars steadily into the water. “Every myth has its keeper of the Grail, and Alois is one of them. I’ve always known him as a loyalist. We once met every year at Berg on Lake Starnberg. Alois backs the chloroform theory, but otherwise he’s a reasonable man.”

“The chloroform theory?” Steven asked, at a loss.

“Its adherents claim that Gudden anesthetized Ludwig with chloroform and then threw him into the water,” Sara said. “One of at least a dozen theories about the death of the king.”

“Yes, indeed.” Zöller smiled and let his right hand dangle in the cool water of the lake. “There’s even a theory that only a waxwork dummy was buried at St. Michael’s in Munich, and the real king lived on for decades as a wealthy private citizen. As you see, Herr Lukas, by comparison with King Ludwig, all the conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination are just cheap soap operas.”

By now they were approaching the wooded shore of the island, which was surrounded by a dense belt of reed beds. A small chapel stood on a little promontory, with a boathouse and a landing stage beside it, and the fisherman was rowing that way.

“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.

IDT

T
he 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.

Maria . . .

Since our first meeting under the linden tree, I had been unable to get the girl out of my mind. It was as if her clear chime of laughter and her clever, merry eyes would liberate not only the king, but me as well, from the gloomy atmosphere that loomed like a poisonous cloud over Linderhof these days. So I would lie in wait for her at the servants’ entrance. I helped her to carry baskets of fresh eggs to the kitchen, or I carved pipes of willow wood for little Leopold, all just to get her to notice me. Maria laughed a great deal, and her eyes twinkled at me, yet she was always surrounded by a strangely dark aura that I could not interpret. In the middle of playing with me and her son, something empty and at the same time infinitely sad would suddenly come into her eyes.

Over the next few weeks we met more and more often, and once or twice Maria, without Leopold, went walking beside the little river Linder with me, although she always withdrew her hand as soon as I wanted to hold it for any length of time.

“Who does the gentleman think he’s looking at?” she once said playfully, raising a finger in pretended admonition. “I’m the king’s maidservant, so I answer only to His Excellency.” Then she smiled. “What’s more, you’re not for the likes of me. A doctor who has studied medicine and a woodcarver’s daughter—that would never do.”

“I’d happily learn the craft of woodcarving if it would bring me closer to you.”

Maria chuckled. “Dear heavens, Theodor! Don’t talk such nonsense. Anyway, you have two left hands—you’d only cut your own fingers off.”

She eluded my grasp and ran ahead, laughing. And lovesick fool that I was, I ran after her, in a starched shirt and a coat that was much too warm, until my brow was beaded with sweat and once again, out of breath, I had to own myself defeated.

It was at this time that jealousy began gnawing at me like an insatiable little animal. Some half a dozen times Maria disappeared, carrying wine, bread, and smoked meats, into the Grotto of Venus, where the king was waiting for her to bring him his dinner. I knew that Ludwig liked to have members of the ordinary folk around him, and it was his wont to ask how they were and give them small gifts. Maria was not the only one; grooms and coachmen also visited him at times—yet I was tormented by the thought that Maria was alone with Ludwig, and I once waited for her at the entrance to the grotto to call her to account.

“Well, and so how is His Illustrious Excellency?” I asked in as casual a tone as possible. “Do the two of you enjoy the wine? Is the marinated haunch of venison to Ludwig’s liking?”

Maria looked at me, surprised and injured, but soon she had control of herself again. “The king has toothache, as he often does,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I cut up the meat small for him so that he can eat it more easily. That’s all.”

“You could chew it for him first, to make it even more tender.”

Suddenly the angry frown that I had been privileged to admire at our first meeting appeared on her forehead again. “What in the world are you thinking, Theodor?” she snapped. “Who gave you the right to speak to me like that? You know neither me nor the king, yet you pour scorn upon him. Like all the others!”

“Suppose there’s a grain of truth in the scorn?” I asked coolly. My anger carried me unthinkingly away. “It’s not for nothing that people gossip about him. Believe me, I know from a reliable source that your beloved king is likely to find himself in the madhouse soon. And with all his escapades, with this grotto, with his ancient Germanic play-acting in Hunding’s hut, his nocturnal rides, he’s digging his own grave little by little.” My voice had risen enough to make me fear it could be heard inside the Grotto of Venus. “Don’t you see how he is playing into his enemies’ hands?” I cried. “And you even feed him as if he were an old dog!”

Maria’s face was white as a sheet. “Quiet!” she whispered tonelessly. “What do you know about the king? What do any of you know? Only yesterday they were saying, down in the tavern, that the king sups with his horse in the evening. What nonsense!” She shook her head indignantly. “You all pick up a few stories and make a great bugbear out of them. Just because you don’t understand Ludwig doesn’t make him a lunatic.”

She marched angrily away and left me standing there open-mouthed. Gradually I felt my hatred seep away, leaving me a pitiful picture of misery.

“Maria, I’m sorry!” I called after her, “I didn’t mean it that way. Come back!” But she had already disappeared among the trees.

It was a while before she would speak to me again. During that time my jealousy went on seething inside me, and it soon had new food for thought.

I had already seen Maria go over to Oberammergau twice with little Leopold, but now their expeditions became more frequent. And every time she came back with a particularly unhappy expression, so I decided that next time I had the chance, I would follow the two of them in secret. Their way took them along narrow mountain passes below Pürschling and through the valley known as the Graswangtal, ending only after some hours at a tiny house on the outskirts of the village, where a man of about forty with a grim face and a wild black beard opened the door to them. Children were playing around the house, and the man shooed them away with an imperious gesture before finally showing Maria into the room inside. I did not see any other woman from where I was hiding, but there was a clothesline with laundry fluttering on it, and some knitting lay on a garden bench. With an almost touching awkwardness, Leopold gave the man a hug, and the door closed behind the three of them.

I felt mingled grief, relief, and shame. How could I have thought that there was a secret liaison between Maria and the king? It was much simpler and at the same time more tragic than that. Little Leopold was obviously a bastard child, tolerated by his father only when the man’s lawful wife was at church or had gone to market. I ventured to doubt whether Maria still loved that grim-looking peasant. The child had probably been an accident, and presumably his father secretly gave her money for the boy. My hopes rose again.