Queen in Waiting - Plaidy Jean - Страница 7

Yes, she could understand why her mother was disturbed.

Eleanor was saying in a sad tired voice: "I feel so ... alone, and I know they are determined to be rid of me by one means or another."

"Your Highness should not distress yourself."

"How can I help it? They are getting restive. They have endured me long enough."

"Your Highness, this could never be. There would be an outcry. It is against religion as well as the laws of the state."

"They're desperate," said Eleanor. "This could be a safer way ... than some."

She was aware of Caroline standing there with the pamphlet in her hand.

"Oh ... Caroline. Put that paper down. I want to rest. Go now."

Caroline laid the pamphlet on the table and went out.

They thought she understood nothing; they thought she was a child still.

Magdalen told all her friends that very soon she would be the Electress. The Elector was going to marry her. He had a wife already? Oh, but the Elector believed that in certain circumstances a man should have two wives.

Madam von Roohlitz had discreetly let it be known that anyone seeking honours should come to her. Magdalen would be able to arrange anything with the Elector she considered desirable, but as she would be very busily occupied her mother would shoulder some of her daughter's responsibilities.

Madam von Roohlitz was almost delirious with the new sense of power.

Her suggestion of another marriage had worked very well. Magdalen had learned her part adequately; she had told her lover how much she desired to be his wife and he yearned to grant her wish.

She assured herself that the plot was succeeding far better than at first she had thought possible. The fact was that the Electress was such a spineless creature that no one cared to defend her. Her only friends, the Brandenburgs, were far away; but she must impress on Magdalen the need to get this matter settled as quickly as possible.

However she was soon disappointed for although the Elector would willingly have married Magdalen, his ministers had refused to consider the question.

"It strikes at the very tenets of our Faith," they declared. "It is quite impossible."

"Nothing is impossible if I decide it shall be done," shouted John George.

*'Your Highness," he was told, **a man who has one wife in the eyes of God cannot have another until her death. That is the law of the Church and the State."

"I will be my ow^n law! " he cried.

But he knew they would not allow Magdalen to be his wife and he would remain married to that woman whom he had come to loathe ... until death parted them.

He was angry but not so deeply as Madam von Roohlitz. He still had his mistress even though he could not make her his wife. As for Madam von Roohlitz, what had become of the lucrative business she was going to build up by selling honours to those who could pay well enough for them?

She shut herself in her apartments and would see no one ... not even Magdalen.

Till death parts them! she murmured and seemed to derive a little comfort from the thought.

Someone was standing by Caroline's bed.

"Wake up your mother has sent for you."

Caroline scrambled up. It was dark and the candle threw the long shadow of her nurse on the wall.

"What is it?" she asked, her teeth beginning to chatter because she was conscious of a sense of doom.

"Your mother has been taken ill and is asking for. you."

"How... ill?"

"Don't talk so much. She's waiting."

As she was hurried into her robe she was thinking: She is going to die. She will tell me what I have to do when I am alone.

Then a feeling of desolation struck her and she knew that she had rarely been so frightened. She was so lonely. She had no friends in this alien court. Because she was her mother's daughter nobody wanted her.

"Hurry?"

"I'm ready," she said.

She was taken to her mother's bedchamber where Eleanor lay in her bed looking exhausted, her skin yellow, her eyes glassy.

The Shadow of Murder J5

"My child..." she began and Caroline ran to the bed and kneeling took her hand.

"Mamma, what has happened. You are ill."

"I have been very ill, daughter. I think I am going to die."

"No ... no ... you must not."

"I have no place in this world, child. Life has not been very kind to me. I trust it will be kinder to you."

Caroline gripped the bedclothes and thought: I will never let people treat me as ihcy have treated you! But how prevent it. There must be a way. She was sure of it and she was going to find it.

"Mamma, you are not going to die."

"If this attempt has failed, there will be others."

"Attempt ... failed ..."

"I ramble, child."

It was a lie, of course. She was not rambling. Why would they treat her as a child? It was true she was only nine years old but the last year at the Court of Saxony had taught her more than most children learn in ten. She knew how frightening marriage could be; but she thought: Had I been Manmia, I would not have allowed it to happen. What would she have done? She was not sure. But she believed she would have found some way of avoiding a position which was degrading, wretched and had now become very sinsister indeed.

"If anything should happen to me, Caroline ... are you listening?"

"Yes,'Mamma."

"You should go back to Ansbach."

"Yes, Mamma."

"You could write to the Electress of Brandenburg. She was my good friend until she persuaded me to this marriage."

Caroline spoke hotly in defence of her beloved Sophia Charlotte. "But, Mamma, you need not have married had you not wished to."

"You are a child. What do you understand? I would to God I had remained a widow ... for he will do nothing for you ... nothing for me and nothing for you. No, you had best go back to Ansbach. Your brother will help you."

"I am two years older than he is, Mamma. Perhaps I can help him."

Eleanor smiled wanly. "Go and call someone," she said. "I'm beginning to feel ill again. And don't come back till I send for you."

"Yes, Mamma."

She called the attendants and then went to sit in the ante room.

She heard her mother groaning and retching.

She thought: What will become of me when she is dead?

It was not now a question of trying to listen. Caroline could not escape the whispers.

"It was an attempt to poison the Electress Eleanor."

"By whom?"

"Come, are you serious? Surely you can guess."

"Well if there is to be a new law that a man can have two wives why bother to rid themselves of the first?"

"It'll never be a law. That's why. They know it. They will keep to the old ways. It's been used often enough and is the most successful."

"Poor lady. I wouldn't be in her shoes."

"Nor I. He'll have the Roohlitz ... never fear. He's set on it and so is her mother."

"Poor Electress Eleanor, she should watch who hands her her plate."

They were planning to poison her mother. They had tried once and failed. But they would try again.

She was frantic with anxiety, but to whom could she turn? She, a nine-year-old girl without a single friend in the palace— what could she do?

If only the Electress Sophia Charlotte were here, she could go to her, explain her fears, be listened to with attention; she would be told what to do and it would be the right thing she was sure. But Sophia Charlotte was miles away and there was no one to help her.