The prison governor at this time came up but rarely; Peder Jensen waited on me.[129] His Majesty was ill for a short time, and died suddenly on February 9, 1670. And as on the same day at twelve o’clock the palace bell tolled, I was well aware what this indicated, though the woman was not. We conversed on the subject, who it might be. She could perceive that I was sad, and she said: ‘That might be for the King, for the last time I saw him on the stairs, getting out of the carriage, he could only move with difficulty, and I said to myself that it would soon be over with him. If he is dead, you will have your liberty, that is certain.’ I was silent, and thought otherwise, which was the case. About half-past four o’clock the fire was generally lighted in the outside stove, and this was done by a lad whom Chresten at that time employed. I called him to the door and asked him why the bell had tolled for a whole hour at noon. He answered, ‘I may not say; I am forbidden.’ I said that I would not betray him. He then told me that the King had died in the morning. I gave free vent to my tears, which I had restrained, at which the woman was astonished, and talked for a long time.
I received all that she said in silence, for I never trusted her. I begged her to ask Chresten, when he unlocked the door, what the tolling intimated. She did so, but Chresten answered that he did not know. The prison governor came up the same evening, but he did not speak with me. He came up also the next day at noon. I requested to speak with him, and enquired why the bell had sounded. He answered ironically, ‘What is that to you? Does it not ring every day?’ I replied somewhat angrily: ‘What it is to me God knows! This I know, that the castle bell is not tolled for your equals!’ He took off his hat and made me a bow, and said, ‘Your ladyship desires nothing else?’ I answered, ‘St. Martin comes for you too.’[E49] ‘St. Martin?’ he said, and laughed, and went away and went out to Walter, standing for a long time whispering with him in front of the hole; I could see him, as he well knew.[130] He was undoubtedly telling him of the King’s death, and giving him hope that he would be liberated from prison. God designed it otherwise. Walter was ill, and lay for a long time in great misery. He behaved very badly to Chresten; took the dirt from the floor and threw it into the food; spat into the beer, and allowed Chresten to see him do so when he carried the can away. Every day Chresten received the titles of thief and rogue, so that it may easily be imagined how Chresten tormented him. When I sent him some meat, either stewed or roasted, Chresten came back with it and said he would not have it. I begged Chresten to leave it with him, and he would probably eat it later. This he did once, and then Chresten showed me how full it was of dirt and filth.[131]
When Chresten had to turn Walter in bed, the latter screamed so pitifully that I felt sympathy with him, and begged Chresten not to be so unmerciful to him. He laughed and said, ‘He is a rogue.’ I said, ‘Then he is in his master’s hands.’ This pleased Chresten well. Walter suffered much pain; at length God released him. His body was left in the prison until his brother came, who ordered it to be buried in the German Church. When I heard that Karen could come to me again, and the time was over which I had promised the other to keep her, Cathrina went down and Karen returned to me. This was easily effected, for the prison governor was not well pleased with Cathrina; she gave him none of her money, as she had promised, but only empty words in its place, such as that he was not in earnest, and that he surely did not wish to have anything from her, &c.[132] The prison governor began immediately to pay me less respect, when he perceived that my liberation was not expected.
When the time came at which I was accustomed to receive the holy communion, I begged the prison governor that he should manage that I should have the court preacher, D. Hans Læt, as the former court preacher, D. Mathias Foss, had come to me on the first occasion in my prison. The prison governor stated my desire, and his Majesty assented. D. Hans Læt was already in the tower, down below, but he was called back because the Queen Dowager (who was still in the palace) would not allow it; and the prison governor sent me word, through Peder Jensen, that the King had said I was to be content with the clergyman to whom I was accustomed, so that the necessary preparation for the Lord’s Supper was postponed till the following day, when Mag. Buck came to me and greeted me in an unusual manner, congratulating me in a long oration on my intention, saluting me ‘your Grace.’ When he was seated, he said, ‘I should have been glad if D. Hans Læt had come in my place.’ I replied, ‘I had wished it also.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know well why you wished it so. You wish to know things, and that is forbidden me. You have already caused one man to lose his employ.’ I asked him whether I had ever desired to know anything from him? ‘No,’ he replied, ‘you know well that you would learn nothing from me; for that reason you have asked me nothing.’ ‘Does the Herr Mag, then,’ I said, ‘mean that I desired D. Hans Læt in order to hear news of him?’ He hesitated a little, and then said, ‘You wanted to have D. Hans Læt in order that he might speak for you with the King.’ I said, ‘There may perhaps be something in that.’ Upon this he began to swear all kinds of oaths (such as I have never heard before),[133] that he had spoken for me. (I thought: ‘I have no doubt you have spoken of me, but not in my favour.’) He had given me a book which I still have; it is ‘St. Augustini Manuali;’ the Statholder Gabel had bought it, as he said more than once, protesting by God that it had cost the Herr Statholder a rix-dollar. (I thought of the 5,000 rix-dollars which Gabel received, that we might be liberated from our confinement at Borringholm, but I said nothing; perhaps for this reason he repeated the statement so often.) I asked him whom I had caused to lose his employ. He answered, ‘Hans Balcke.[134] He told you that Treasurer Gabel was Statholder, and he ought not to have done so.’ I said, ‘I do not believe that Balcke knew that he ought not to say it, for he did not tell it to me as a secret. One might say just as well that H. Magister had caused Balcke to lose his place.’ He was very angry at this, and various disputes arose on the subject. He began again just as before, that I wanted to have D. Læt, he knew why. I said, ‘I did not insist specially on having D. Læt; but if not him, the chaplain of the castle, or another.’ He asked, ‘Why another?’ I replied, ‘Because it is not always convenient to the Herr Magister. I have been obliged to wait for him ten, twelve, and even fourteen days, and the last time he administered his office in great haste, so that it is not convenient for him to come when I require him.’ He sat turning over my words, not knowing what to answer, and at last he said; ‘You think it will go better with you now because King Frederick is dead. No, you deceive yourself! It will go worse with you, it will go worse with you!’ And as he was growing angry, I became more composed and I asked gently why so, and from what could he infer it? He answered, ‘I infer it from the fact that you have not been able to get your will in desiring another clergyman and confessor; so I assure you things will not be better with you. If King Frederick is dead, King Christian is alive.’ I said: ‘That is a bad foundation; your words of threatening have no basis. If I have not this time been able to obtain another confessor, it does not follow that I shall not have another at another time. And what have I done, that things should go worse with me?’ He was more and more angry, and exclaimed aloud several times, ‘Worse, yes, it will be worse!’ Then I also answered angrily, ‘Well, then let it come.’
Upon this he was quite silent, and I said: ‘You have given me a good preparation; now, in God’s name!’ Then I made my confession, and he administered his office and went away without any other farewell than giving me his hand. I learned afterwards that before M. Buck came to me he went to the prison governor, who was in bed, and begged him to tell Knud, who was at that time page of the chamber,[E50] what a sacramental woman I was; how I had dug a hole in the floor in order to speak with the doctor (which was an impossibility), and how I had practised climbing up and looking out on the square. He begged him several times to tell this to the page of the chamber: ‘That is a sacramental woman!’[135]
In the end of April in the same year my door was opened one afternoon, and the prison governor came in with some ladies, who kept somewhat aside until he had said, ‘Here are some of the maids of honour, who are permitted to speak to you.’ There came in first a young lady whom I did not know. Next appeared the Lady Augusta of Glücksburg, whom I recognised at once, as she was but little altered. Next followed the Electoral Princess of Saxony, whom I at once recognised from her likeness to her royal father, and last of all our gracious Queen, whom I chiefly looked at, and found the lineaments of her countenance just as Peder Jensen had described them. I saw also a large diamond on her bracelet, and one on her finger, where her glove was cut. Her Majesty supported herself against the folding table as soon as she had greeted me. Lady Augusta ran up and down into every corner, and the Electoral Princess remained at the door. Lady Augusta said: ‘Fye, what a disgusting room this is! I could not live a day in it. I wonder that you have been able to endure it so long.’ I answered, ‘The room is such as pleases God and his Majesty, and so long as God will I shall be able to endure it.’ She began a conversation with the prison governor, who was half tipsy, and spoke with him about Balcke’s marriage, whose wedding with his third wife was taking place on that very day; she spoke against marrying so often, and the prison governor replied with various silly speeches. She asked me if I was plagued with fleas. I replied that I could furnish her with a regiment of fleas, if she would have them. She replied hastily with an oath, and swore that she did not want them.
Her question made me somewhat ironical, and I was annoyed at the delight she exhibited at my miserable condition; so when she asked me whether I had body or wall lice, I answered her with a question, and enquired whether my brother-in-law Hanibal Sehested was still alive? This question made her somewhat draw in, for she perceived that I knew her. She made no answer. The Electoral Princess, who probably had heard of my brother-in-law’s intrigues with Lady Augusta,[E51] went quickly up to the table (the book lay on it, in which Karen used to read, and which she had brought in with her), took the book, opened it and asked whether it was mine. I replied that it belonged to the woman whom I had taught to read, and as I gave the Electoral Princess her fitting title of Serene Highness, Lady Augusta said: ‘You err! You are mistaken; she is not the person whom you think.’ I answered, ‘I am not mistaken.’ After this she said no more, but gave me her hand without a word. The gracious Queen looked sadly on, but said nothing. When her Majesty gave me her hand, I kissed it and held it fast, and begged her Majesty to intercede for me, at any rate for some alleviation of my captivity. Her Majesty replied not with words, but with a flood of tears. The virtuous Electoral Princess cried also; she wept very sorrowfully. And when they had reached the anteroom and my door was closed, both the Queen and the Electoral Princess said, ‘It is a sin to treat her thus!’ They shuddered; and each said, ‘Would to God that it rested with me! she should not stay there.’ Lady Augusta urged them to go away, and mentioned it afterwards to the Queen Dowager, who said that I had myself to thank for it; I had deserved to be worse treated than this.
When the King’s funeral was over, and the Queen Dowager had left the castle, I requested the prison governor that he should execute my message and solicit another clergyman for me, either the chaplain of the castle or the arsenal chaplain, or the one who usually attended to the prisoners; for if I could get no other than M. Buck, they must take the sin on their own heads, for that I would not again confess to him. A short time elapsed, but at length the chaplain of the castle, at that time M. Rodolff Moth, was assigned me. God, who has ever stood by me in all my adversity, and who in my sorrow and distress has sent me unexpected consolation, gave me peculiar comfort in this man. He consoled me with the Word of God; he was a learned and conversable man, and he interceded for me with his Majesty. The first favour which he obtained for me was, that I was granted another apartment on July 16, 1671, and Bishop D. Jesper’s postil.
He afterwards by degrees obtained still greater favours for me. I received 200 rix-dollars as a gift, to purchase such clothes for myself as I desired, and anything I might wish for to beguile the time.[136]
In this year her Majesty the Queen became pregnant, and her Majesty’s mother, the Landgravine of Hesse, came to be with her in her confinement. On September 6 her Serene Highness visited me in my prison, at first wishing to remain incognito. She had with her a Princess of Curland, who was betrothed to the son of the Landgravine; her lady in waiting, a Wallenstein by birth; and the wife of her master of the household. The Landgravine greeted me with a kiss, and the others followed her example. I did not at that time recognise the wife of the master of the household, but she had known me formerly in my prosperity at the Hague, when she had been in the service of the Countess Leuenstein, and the tears stood in her eyes.