The Ludwig Conspiracy (48 page)

“Or his son’s son, or even his son’s great-grandson.” Maria sighed. “I don’t think the murder of Ludwig will ever be properly explained. Too many powerful men have spun that web of lies.”

“We’ll see.” I put my arm around her shoulders, the clouds parted for a moment, and the sun shed a thin ray of light on us. “Until then, in any case, we must conceal that letter,” I said firmly. “And if we die before the secret of Ludwig’s death can be aired, we must make sure that only those who do not want to harm his reputation know of the hiding place.”

“But how will you do that?” she asked. “How can you make sure that the statutory declaration doesn’t fall into the wrong hands?”

I hesitated, but then a plan suddenly began to form in my mind. It was such a fantastic plan, like something out of a fairy tale, that I’m sure Ludwig would have liked it. I held Maria’s hands firmly, and at that moment I felt a bond between the three of us—Maria, me, and the king.

“Didn’t you say yourself that there were very few people who really knew Ludwig?” I began. “Who knew about his most secret wishes, the many themes and symbols of the world he dreamed of? About his fairy-tale castles and plans for the future?” My voice was firmer now, and I raised my hand as if to take an oath. “I promise you, Maria, I will think of a puzzle that can be solved only by those who really understand the king. None of the ministers, none of the bureaucrats who thought Ludwig was insane. And this puzzle will lead to the place where I shall hide the statutory declaration.”

Maria looked at me, baffled. “What kind of puzzle?”

I smiled and drew her gently down into the tall grass under the linden tree.

“It will be our story, Maria. Ours and Ludwig’s.” Tentatively, I dropped a light kiss on her cheek, and I felt her trembling. “And now tell me all you know about the king. His deepest secrets and wishes. The whole truth. I will devise a puzzle worthy of a fairy-tale king. Even if it is more than a hundred years before it is solved.”

We sank into the grass and saw clouds moving in the sky overhead in the shape of fabulous creatures.

“I
S THAT THE END
of the diary?” Sara asked, nestling close to Steven for warmth. She fished the last cigarette out of her pack and lit it. A small cloud of smoke rose to the cupola in the roof.

Steven leafed through it and shook his head. “No, there’s one page left. It was written almost a full year later.”

“Then read it aloud,” Sara said, drawing deeply on her cigarette. “I want to know how the story ends.”

In a faltering voice, Steven read.

A
FTERWORD, WRITTEN ON
the morning of 28 July 1887

This is our story.

The puzzle has been written, and I have hidden the statutory declaration. Maria does not know where. I am going to keep it a secret from her, for fear of endangering yet another human being. May those who understand and love the king as Maria and I did find the place someday.

It all happened just as we feared. A year after the murder, the new ruler’s men are out and about everywhere, intent upon silencing every possible witness to their plot. One of Ludwig’s servants is alleged to have committed suicide; others have died in unexplained ways, or were incarcerated in asylums, or are said to have disappeared. Those gentlemen have also muzzled my mentor, Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld, threatening him. Hornig and Kaulbach are keeping quiet, whether out of fear or because they have been bribed, I cannot say.

They will not find me.

I am sitting outside our little house in a remote valley of the Werdenfelser Alps, watching Maria and Leopold playing. I resigned from my position as assistant to the royal physician directly after Ludwig’s death, even before the prince regent could send me packing. The simple country folk here can do with a qualified doctor; until now they have always had to make do with rustic barber-surgeons. I splint broken bones and treat coughs with camomile, echinacea, and coltsfoot; I put my stethoscope to old women’s chests and listen to their tirades about unfaithful, good-for-nothing husbands; I mix medicines in scratched stoneware pots and mortars, yet I can imagine no better profession.

For Maria is with me, Maria and Leopold. We are a family, and even if I am not the boy’s father, I feel that all the same there is an invisible bond between the three of us that no one can break now.

Only occasionally does one of the local farmers ask about Leopold, and why he does not look at all like me. Then I tell the truth, saying that his father is dead. The men say no more and nod. There is not much talking in these remote, deep Alpine valleys, and that is just as well.

Here come Maria and Leopold running over the mown fields of stubble toward me, the boy with his arms outspread as if to take off in flight. The sun is climbing above the mountains, and its light wanders from tree to tree, from house to house. Maria’s laughter rings out in the air like the clear sound of bells.

At this moment I feel like a king.

Signed,

Dr. Theodor Marot, in the year of our Lord 1887.

PS: I will keep this diary for posterity, together with a lock of Leopold’s hair and a few carefully chosen photographs. After Maria and I die, it will pass into the possession of Leopold, the only son of Ludwig II, then to the hands of his children, and so on, until at last the time is ripe for the truth.

A
FTER THAT LAST SENTENCE
, there was silence for some time in the throne room, broken only by Albert Zöller’s rattling breaths.

“Ludwig had a
son?
” Sara asked at last, incredulously, grinding out her cigarette. “Is that the secret that was kept for so long?”

Steven nodded. “As far as I know, there have always been rumors about an heir. Zöller mentioned something like that once. To all appearances Ludwig was gay, yes, but certain women fascinated him. He’s even thought to have had a relationship with the sculptor Elisabeth Ney.” He tapped the sentence giving the solution to the puzzle in Sara’s laptop. “Remember.
In the king’s fourth castle a
scion
shows the dearest of his treasures.
That scion was obviously Ludwig’s son, Leopold, and the statutory declaration bears it out.”

“Just a moment,” Sara objected. “So you think the treasure in that fourth castle is nothing but the statutory declaration made by Ludwig at the time?” She shook her head. “All that suffering, all those deaths, for a single scrap of paper? But why . . .”

Their conversation was interrupted by a yapping cough. When they turned around, they saw that Zöller had hauled himself, with difficulty, into a sitting position, and was leaning against the wall.

“My God, Uncle Lu!” Sara cried. “You mustn’t try to stand up. We hope there’ll be a doctor here soon . . .”

“Forget the doctor, children,” Zöller moaned. “You don’t seriously think that Manstein woman will get treatment for me, do you? It’s probably far too late for that anyway.”

“But Herr Zöller,” Steven reassured him, “you’re not in such serious condition that . . .”

“Nonsense.” Zöller gestured impatiently. “I can tell for myself what kind of condition I’m in. So don’t pretend to me. It’s much more important for you to understand at long last, Steven.”

“Understand?” Steven blinked incredulously at the old man. “I’m afraid I don’t see what you mean.”

“Don’t you realize why the Manstein woman shot me just now?” Zöller winced in pain. “Because I was on the point of telling you the
truth.
”

“What truth?”

“The truth about that damn diary! The reason why Frau Manstein is after it like a Fury, why she’s climbing over corpses to get her hands on it. Why Paul made sure he left the diary with
you.
” The old man took another deep breath, while Steven and Sara stared at him in suspense.

“Go on,” Steven whispered. “I want to know.”

“Two months ago my old friend Paul Liebermann came to see me,” Zöller began, breathing heavily. “He said he had bought the estate of an old junk dealer at auction over the Internet. A pile of worthless books, but among them a curious little box containing the diary of a certain Theodor Marot, along with several old photographs and a strand of dark hair. Paul knew that this man, Marot, had been the assistant to the royal physician Max Schleiss von Loewenfeld. There has always been speculation that the diary would contain the truth about Ludwig’s death.”

“Herr Zöller, we know all this already,” Sara said gently. “You really must spare yourself now.”

“Kindly let me finish what I was saying.” For a moment the old annoyance flashed into Zöller’s eyes, but then he had to cough again. It was a while before he could go on.

“Luise Manstein got wind of that auction when the book had already been sold to Paul,” he said. “She wanted it for herself and showed my friend a family tree demonstrating that . . .” He took a deep breath and coughed up blood. “Demonstrating that her family is descended from a certain Leopold from Oberammergau, whose mother Maria had been a maidservant of Ludwig the Second’s.”

Silence reigned for quite a while, and finally Sara whistled softly through her teeth.

“So loopy Luise is really a descendant of Ludwig the Second?” She looked disbelievingly at Zöller. “Is that true? That’s why she wants the diary?”

“I’d already suspected it was something like that,” Steven said wearily. “And it was probably for the same reason that Frau Manstein made off with Ludwig’s furniture from Neuschwanstein. She thinks she’s his legitimate descendant. All she needs as proof is that statutory declaration.”

Zöller nodded and held his stomach. He seemed to be in great pain. “Luise Manstein showed Paul a letter authenticated by a notary, in which . . . in which Theodor left the diary to Maria after his death. Marot fell at the front in France in 1916, as an army doctor of distinction. From then on, the book officially belonged to the former Oberammergau maidservant and her descendants.”

“But Professor Liebermann didn’t give Luise Manstein the book?” Steven asked.

“My God, no!” Zöller laughed, a rattling laugh. When he wiped his mouth a moment later, bright blood showed on the back of his hand again. “Paul was quick to realize that the woman isn’t exactly all there. She became more and more insistent. She set her thugs on him. All the same, the diary really did belong to her family. Then Paul remembered the family tree that Luise Manstein had shown him. He asked to see it again and secretly made a copy.” Zöller paused for a moment to get his breath back again.

“With its help he . . . he succeeded in tracing a second branch of the family,” he finally went on. “You see, my friend Paul was hoping that there was another descendant, someone to whom he could entrust that valuable book with a clear conscience. And guess what, he did find such a descendant. He, too, like all members of the family, initially bore his great-great-grandmother Maria’s surname, which was also the surname of her son, Leopold.” Groaning, Uncle Lu took a deep breath and looked Steven intently in the eyes. “Herr Lukas—the maidservant’s name was Maria . . . 
Berlinger.
”

Steven felt dizzy and had to lean against the wall of the throne room for support. He saw his parents in front of him, the dusty little street lined with Fords, Buicks, and Chevys with the paint chipping off; the decrepit elevator that took them up to their tiny apartment in Boston; the nameplate on the door with the handsomely curved letters that, at the time, he couldn’t yet decipher.

GEORGE W. AND KAREN BERLINGER

“Berlinger?” he whispered. “But that’s . . .”

Zöller elaborately searched his jacket and finally brought out a folded document with spots of blood on it. “I have the complete family tree here with me, Herr Lukas. Kindly take a quick look at it.”

Zöller pushed the document over to him. Steven put the diary to one side and reached for it as if it were radioactive. Slowly, he unfolded the sheet of paper. It showed a family tree of the kind he had often seen in old books, except that he knew the names listed on this one. Taken together, they added up to a kind of formula, with the answer, as in an arithmetical calculation, at the bottom right.

It was his own name.

The brightly colored Chinese lanterns shining in my grandparents’ garden, the crackling flames in the library, the book with its pages fluttering on the floorboards in the wind . . . the girl with the blond braids who wants to scratch my eyes out, her burning dress . . .

“Do you understand, Steven?” Zöller asked. “Ludwig’s son, Leopold, had two sons, one of whom emigrated to the United States. That son, Anton Berlinger, is
your
grandfather. You are a direct descendant of Ludwig the Second, just as Luise is. She is your cousin.” He coughed again, and blood spilled from the corners of his mouth as he went on. “Paul wanted to get in touch to find out more about you, Steven. When events began moving thick and fast, he hid the diary in your bookshop.”

Zöller sighed and let out a loud, halting breath. “I have done some research in the States and even engaged a private detective, because I couldn’t believe what Paul said. And then, suddenly, there you were standing at my door asking
me
for help . . .” Uncle Lu laughed quietly. “At first I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t being taken in by a fraud and a murderer. But it’s all true.”