Love affairs of the Courts of Europe

by Thornton Hall

As for Prince Christian, he had no eyes for any but the "little dove" who outshone all her rivals as the sun pales the stars. It was the maid of the market whom he led out for the first dance, and throughout the long night he rarely left her side, whirling round the room with her, his arm close-clasped round her slender waist, not seeing or indifferent to the glances of envy and hate that followed them; or, during the intervals, drinking in her beauty as he poured sweet flatteries into her ears. As for Dyveke, she was radiantly happy at finding herself thus transported into the favour of a Prince and the Queendom of fair women, for whose envy she cared as little as for the danger in which she stood.

If anything had remained to complete Christian's infatuation, this intoxicating night of the ball supplied it. The "little dove" had found a secure nesting-place in his heart. She must be his at any cost. She and her mother alone, of all the guests, were invited to spend the rest of the night at the castle as the Prince's guests; and when he parted from her the following day, it was with vows on his part of undying love and fidelity, and a promise on hers to come to him at Upsala as soon as a suitable home could be found for her.

Thus easily was the dove caught in the toils of one of the most amorous Princes of Europe; but it must be said for her that her heart went with the surrender of her freedom, for the Prince, with his ardent passion, his strength and his magnetism, had swept her as quickly off her feet as she had made a quick conquest of him.

Thus, before many weeks had passed, we find Dyveke installed with her mother in a sumptuous home in the outskirts of Upsala, queening it in the Prince's Court, and every day forging new fetters to bind him to her. And while Dyveke thus ruled over Christian's heart, her strong-minded mother soon established a similar empire over his mind. With the clever, masterful brain of a man, the Amazon of the market-place developed such a capacity for intrigue, such a grasp of statesmanship and such arts of diplomacy that Christian, strong man as he thought himself, soon became little more than a puppet in her hands, taking her counsel and deferring to her judgment in preference to those of his ministers. The fruit-seller thus found herself virtual Prime Minister, while her daughter reigned, an uncrowned Queen.

When the Prince was summoned to Copenhagen by his father's failing health, Frau Sigbrit and her daughter accompanied him, one in her way as indispensable as the other; and when King James died and Christian reigned in his stead, the women of the Bergen market were installed in a splendid suite of apartments in his palace. So hopeless was his subjection to both that his subjects, with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders, accepted them as inevitable.

For a time, it is true, their supremacy was in danger. Now that Christian was King, it became important to provide him with a Queen, and a suitable consort was found for him in the Austrian Princess, Isabella, sister of the Emperor Charles V., a well-gilded bride, distinguished alike for her beauty and her piety. Isabella, however, was one of the last women to tolerate any rivalry in her husband's affection, and before the marriage-contract was sealed, she had received a solemn pledge from Christian's envoys that his relations with the pretty flower-girl should cease.

But even Christian's word of honour was seldom allowed to bar the way to his pleasure, and within a few weeks of Isabella's bridal entry into Copenhagen, Dyveke and her mother resumed their places at his Court, to his Queen's unconcealed disgust and displeasure. More than this, he established them in a fine house near his palace gates; and when he was not dallying there with Dyveke, he was to be found by her side at the Castle of Hvideur, of which he had made her chatelaine.

The remonstrances of Valkendorf and his other ministers were made to deaf ears; his wife's reproaches and tears were as futile as the strongly worded protestations of his Royal relatives. Pleadings, arguments, and threats were alike powerless to break the spell Dyveke and her mother had cast over him. But Dyveke's day of empire was now drawing to a tragic close. One day, after eating some cherries from the palace gardens, she was seized with a violent pain. All the skill of the Court doctors could do as little to assuage her agony as to save her life; and within a few hours she died, clasped to the breast of her distracted lover!

Such was Christian's distress that for a time his reason trembled in the balance. He vowed that he would not be separated from her even by death; he threatened to put an end to his own life since it had been reft of all that made it worth living. And when cooler moments came, he swore a terrible vengeance against those who had robbed him of his beloved. She had been poisoned beyond a doubt; but who had done the dastardly deed?

The finger of suspicion pointed to the steward of his household, Torbern Oxe, who, it was said, had been among the most ardent of Dyveke's admirers, and had had the audacity to aspire to her hand. It was even rumoured that he had had more intimate relations with her. Such were the stories and suspicions that passed from mouth to mouth in Christian's clouded Court before Dyveke's beautiful body was cold; and such were the tales which Hans Faaborg, the King's Treasurer, poured into his master's ears.