The king was always there on good days.
It was not a long walk from the Kungshuset on Riddarholmen islet – where the king and queen lived for now, and where the count had his private offices – up to the new royal palace on Stadsholmen, overlooking the main Stockholm harbour. But there would be enough time for him to compose his thoughts before approaching His Majesty King Frederick I with this latest matter arising.
Count Arvid Bernhard Horn of Ekebyholm was the king’s president of the privy council chancellery – in other words, his prime minister. He was an older man, of seventy years, fierce of countenance and short of temper when dealing with lesser mortals, which encompassed most of humanity. When dealing with those who had the power to thwart him, however – such as the king – he was a man possessed of an almost other-worldly subtlety and patience.
To look at, he was tall, gaunt and all nose. And today that nose led him unerringly to the king’s presence, facing the southern aspect of the new palace, where Frederick I of Sweden was watching the raising of a cast-bronze relief depicting the booty of war.
Frederick was a roly-poly, pudgy-faced man in a coat, all blue velvet and brocade, with a huge feather in his huge hat, and he was leaning back to look up at the industry taking place above him, quite enraptured.
The irony of the scene was not lost on Count Horn; the huge palace under construction before him was of a grandeur in inverse proportion to the failed glory of the country now building it, and the intricate frieze Frederick was so taken by depicted booty he could never hope to amass in his reign.
There was no love lost between Count Horn and the younger king, nor even a master–servant relationship. Both men knew Frederick was a weak king, in terms of the power he could wield abroad and the respect he commanded at home. Also, at the age of 58 he was childless, and when he died, his dynasty would die with him.
It had not always been so for Sweden or its royal household. Under the last king, Charles XII, Sweden had been the major power in the Baltic, with an empire along its southern shores stretching intermittently from Karelia and the Baltic states to Pomerania and the Duchy of Bremen. Until impetuous Charles went to war with Peter the Great at the beginning of the century, and lost it all.
Which was why Count Horn was under no illusion as to his role these days; it was managing Frederick’s – and Sweden’s – decline. And a grim, dogged, unrewarding struggle it often proved.
That war had lasted twenty years, and Sweden’s final defeat had been almost a decade and a half ago. Both Charles XII and Tsar Peter were long dead now, but the Russia Peter had left behind now dominated the Baltic. Yet the Swedes and their new king had remained ever reluctant to let go of the trappings of their country’s former glory. The palace was probably the grandest example of that denial; a huge brick and sandstone rococo confection begun three years before the outbreak of that fatal conflict, when Sweden’s power was at its height. Yet it was still being built, even though the victorious Russians and every other scavenging neighbour had taken advantage of Sweden’s fall to snap up her previous conquests, and all the revenues that had flowed from them.
Given half a chance, they’d try to snap up more. Which was why poor, weak Sweden these days needed Count Horn and his cautious diplomacy – of that, the count was convinced.
‘Your majesty,’ said the count in the king’s ear. The king did not flinch, or indeed show any sign he’d heard. He was used to Horn sneaking up on him, pestering him with stuff, which was why he seldom listened.
‘Your majesty,’ Horn continued, undeterred. ‘We have received intelligence from the collector of customs at Karlskrona that a close relative of the Duke of Courland has landed on our shores in most unusual circumstances.’
Now, news that a von Kettler had come to visit – that was interesting. Enough to make Frederick turn and look at the count. ‘Unusual? How do you mean unusual?’ said the king.
‘She appears to have arrived in some state of disarray, having come on a fishing boat. From Danzig.’
Neither of them needed any further explanation of what coming ‘from Danzig’ meant. News of the city’s capitulation to the Russians had already reached them. But that was a fight that Count Horn had steered Sweden well away from. Ask him what was happening in Danzig and he’d say, ‘none of my business.’ Privately, however, Count Horn dissected every move the Russians ever made, much as a Roman augur would pick through a fallen eagle’s innards.
‘You said, “she”,’ said the king. ‘And “in disarray”. You’ve lost me Horn, as you usually do. Why on earth would any “she” from the house of von Kettler be arriving here, “in disarray?’
‘Quite, your majesty. Which is why I draw it to your attention.’
Both men regarded the men at work and the play of their intricate system of pulleys as they swayed up the next cast frieze.
‘The woman is the duke’s niece, the Gräfin Dorothea,’ said Horn. ‘And why she is here concerns me, your majesty.’
‘Hmm,’ said the king.
‘My informants assure me the Duke of Courland continues to reside contentedly in his Danzig town house, and is unmoved and undisturbed by the Russian occupation of the city,’ the count added. ‘Indeed, there is no reason why he shouldn’t. The Russians have no quarrel with Courland. In fact his presence, under their protection, could be of political advantage to them now that King Stanislas has been forced to flee. Which begs the question, why has the Gräfin Dorothea not remained there with
