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The Tsar's Dwarf. Peter H. Fogtdal
Читать онлайн.Название The Tsar's Dwarf
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780983304920
Автор произведения Peter H. Fogtdal
Издательство Ingram
“What does he want to purchase?”
“No one knows.”
I put my grammar book away.
I’m looking forward to seeing Peter Alexeyevich again. The tsar builds ships with his own hands, he drinks the Russian soldiers under the table, downing anise-flavored vodka. He’s a man you can talk to. He’s not snobbish like King Frederik, who flounces around in his silk robes. Yet I love Frederik all the same. Everyone in Denmark loves the angelic-minded sovereign.
On the other hand, no one loves Frederik’s mistress.
No. No one loves Anna Sophie Reventlow, who is young, enchanting, and impossibly obtuse.
17.
SEVERAL MONTHS AGO I WAS SENT ON LOAN TO FREDERIK’S “queen of the left hand”—as the king calls her. Anna Sophie lives in Storm Manor next to the castle, where she spends her days and nights in constant boredom. I was driven over there in a magnificent coach. They set me on top of some silk cushions and put a bow around my neck. When Anna Sophie saw me, she gave a loud shriek. She picked me up and kissed me on the forehead with fierce little smacks.
“The two of us are going to be the best of friends,” she said, carrying me into the parlor, past Chinese vases, polished bureaus, and gilded console tables. Everything in her mansion was extraordinarily hideous. Everything was green, and the pictures on the walls were mawkish. On the sofas sat three ladies-in-waiting drinking tea from the East Indies.
“What’s your name, poppet?”
“Sørine Bentsdatter, my lady.”
“You may call me Anna Sophie.”
The king’s mistress was around twenty. She was tall and stately, with lovely fair hair that had been bleached according to the latest fashion. Her eyes were dark and gave the impression that she was in an eternal state of infatuation. Her neck was long, her lips red and shapely. Anna Sophie was perfect, as long as she didn’t open her mouth—she had abominable teeth. Why the king didn’t demand that they all be removed, I have no idea. The royal barber could have done it in no time.
After that I was required to visit the mistress every day. I was introduced to Anna Sophie’s empty world. I was placed under the wine-red canopy of her bed, and she lay next to me, telling me about all the sorrows of her heart.
Anna Sophie was wild about her king. But she was also wild about a corporal from the Guards. She was oh so delighted, as she told me in Swedish, by a Swedish envoy who visited her on Tuesdays. She was fascinated by a Frisian duke who visited her on Wednesdays. But, most important of all, she was unhappy that Frederik visited the queen’s ladies-in-waiting.
“I’m afraid he’s growing tired of me,” she wept, showing me a clumsy letter written by the king. I read it with fascination. Frederik called her Angel Heart. He alternated between bad German and bad Danish. The king held absolute power, but he had no future as a poet.
“Do you think he’ll leave me?” asked Anna Sophie, looking at me with her big eyes.
“I have no idea, my lady.”
“But I thought that you dwarves had special powers.”
“For what?”
“To see into the future.”
“As you wish, my lady.”
“So do you think that Frederik will leave me?”
“There’s no doubt about it,” I said.
After that she collapsed onto her silken sheets. Where else would she collapse?
IT WASN’T VERY kind of me to be so truthful, but that’s an ancient prerogative belonging to us dwarves. People expect a certain malice from us, and I’m proud to have saved up a bucketful. It’s said that the malice resides in the dwarves’ hunchbacks. But since I don’t have one, my malice is distributed through my whole body. It works its way up from my intestines, into my throat, onto my tongue, and then strikes whoever deserves the poison.
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