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.

Hans Faaborg little dreamt that when he was thus trying to bring about the downfall of his rival he was sealing his own fate.  Christian lent an eager ear to the stories of his steward’s iniquities; but, when he found there was no shred of proof to support them, his anger and disappointment vented themselves on the informer.  He had long suspected Faaborg of irregularities in his purse-holding, and in these suspicions found a weapon to use against him.  Faaborg was arrested; an examination of his ledgers showed that for years he had been waxing rich at his master’s expense, and he had to pay with his life the penalty of his fraud and his unproved testimony.