The Shadow of the Czar Part 36

She paused in her utterance.

"Yes, if you should lose it now--?"

"Have I not you?" she answered with a soft pressure of her arms. Paul would have deserved instant knouting if he had not kissed the princess for that saying. Then, becoming grave again he said,--

"You say the cardinal threatens you with deposition? Why this hostility on his part?"

"Because I will not dance to his piping."

"And by adhering to me you will increase his hostility, since with him I shall not be a _persona gratissima_."

"He cannot ruin me without ruining himself, and ambition will cause him to pause ere doing that."

"But," said the puzzled Paul, "since you are the daughter of Prince Thaddeus, how is it possible for him to dethrone you, and why is it necessary that you should personate the Princess Natalie?"

All this time Barbara had been standing clasped within Paul's arms; but now, taking him by the hand, she led him to a seat, and sat down beside him.

"The story of my life, as far as it was known to me, I told you at Isola Sacra. Let me now supplement it with details which I have since learned."

The following is a brief outline of Barbara's narration.

The late Prince Thaddeus had in youth contracted a marriage with a young English lady named Hilda Tressilian, who lived in the neighborhood of Warsaw. Thaddeus, aware that his father would be averse to this match, kept it a secret, visiting his wife at intervals. During his absence in Czernova Hilda died suddenly, and was buried ere the prince had time to gaze upon her lifeless form.

On reaching the scene of her death, Thaddeus learned that there had been a daughter still-born, the truth being that the infant was in reality alive, Hilda's servants having been bribed to relate this falsehood by Pasqual Ravenna, at that time a youthful priest of ambitious views. His object was to train the child in the Catholic faith,--Thaddeus was a Greek,--and ultimately to restore her to her rightful dignity as Princess of Czernova; the interests of the Latin Church would be thereby advanced. And for eighteen years Ravenna, while rising from one ecclesiastical dignity to another, never lost sight of this scheme; and, when he deemed the time ripe, secretly apprised Thaddeus of the existence of Barbara.

That prince, pressed by political necessity, had made a second marriage, the issue of which was an only child, Natalie, born eighteen months after Barbara.

This Natalie, to whom Thaddeus had become pa.s.sionately attached, was now threatened with exclusion from the throne by the existence of her elder half-sister. Thaddeus, suspecting a plot on the part of the cardinal, refused to acknowledge his resuscitated daughter; and for a time the matter remained in abeyance.

Some months later the Princess Natalie, being in a somewhat delicate state of health, was advised by the court physician to take a tour in the countries around the Adriatic; and Thaddeus, prompted either by fear or by some other motive, permitted Cardinal Ravenna to take charge of the princess. Among other places Dalmatia was visited, and here, while at Castel Nuovo, Natalie died.

"In what way?" asked Paul.

"She committed suicide," replied Barbara, in a whisper of awe.

"You have proof of this?"

"I have my father's word. He had come to Dalmatia purposely to see Natalie, and was in the neighborhood of Castel Nuovo at the time of the tragedy. He was at once sent for. Oh! no, there was nothing suspicious in her death," continued Barbara, observant of the misgiving expressed on Paul's face. "Do you think that my father, who loved Natalie so dearly, would have connived at a crime?"

Paul considered it not at all unlikely that Thaddeus had been deceived by the cardinal. He refrained, however, from expressing his doubts.

"In what way did she commit suicide?"

"She stabbed herself before any one could prevent her. My father had the story from Lambro and Jacintha, who, as well as the cardinal, were eye-witnesses of the deed."

Paul was of opinion that the cardinal who had bribed servants to utter the falsehood of Barbara's death would certainly employ the like expedient where his own guilt was concerned.

The more Paul recalled Jacintha's air of terror and her admission as to the mysterious oath taken on the Holy Sacrament, the more he became convinced that Natalie Lilieska had met her death by foul play. But dead princesses tell no tales; and the disappearance of the two witnesses of the deed, Lambro and Jacintha, in the submergence of Castel Nuovo, made it extremely improbable that the charge would ever be brought home to the cardinal.

It was agreed, Barbara continued, that the scandal of Princess Natalie's suicide must be kept secret. Her body, sealed in a leaden coffin, was concealed beneath the flooring of the cardinal's study at Castel Nuovo, to be removed at a convenient opportunity to the princely vault at Slavowitz. That opportunity never came, and the waves of the Adriatic now flowed over the body of the Princess Natalie.

It was clear that unless Thaddeus consented to recognize the convent-maiden as his daughter, the crown of Czernova would devolve upon one whom he personally disliked, namely, upon Bora, though Natalie herself had accepted the duke's addresses with pleasure.

Accordingly, Thaddeus, accompanied by the cardinal, set off for the convent of the Holy Sacrament, to see the daughter whom he had never yet seen. On his arrival, however, he learned with dismay that Barbara had fled the day previously.

Many weeks were spent by the prince and the cardinal in searching for her in the neighboring province and Bosnia. They had been led into this region by a story to the effect that she had been seen journeying in a caravan of gypsies.

Disappointed in their quest, Thaddeus and Ravenna returned to Castel Nuovo, arriving there by a singular chance on the very day that Paul and Barbara had chosen for their excursion to Isola Sacra. They instantly resolved to send over a band of men for the purpose of carrying off Barbara, and of leaving behind on the island the dangerous young Englishman who was unknowingly wooing a princess.

Their plan succeeded.

Fortunately, Barbara and her abductors did not pa.s.s that night at Castel Nuovo. In the mist the boat was carried by the current some miles lower down the coast; and captors and captive lodged at an inn which remained unaffected by the earthquake that had devastated the rest of Dalmatia.

Barbara's pa.s.sion of grief and indignation at being torn from Paul was so violent, that the prince and the cardinal had no other course than to promise that she should have her own way as regarded the young Englishman. But next morning, to the despair of Barbara, the relief of Thaddeus, and the secret joy of Ravenna, it was seen that Isola Sacra had disappeared beneath the waves. It was naturally concluded that Paul had gone down with it.

Grief-stricken at this ending of her love-dream, Barbara was more disposed to return to the convent and a.s.sume the veil of a nun than to accept the prospective crown of Czernova; but finally she was persuaded to this latter course by Thaddeus, who, convinced now that Barbara was indeed his daughter, displayed all a father's tenderness.

There would be a difficulty, however, in persuading the Czernovese people to accept as the daughter of their prince a maiden of whom they had never before heard.

Now it so happened that the church in which Thaddeus's marriage with Hilda Tressilian had taken place had been subsequently destroyed by fire, and with it the doc.u.mentary evidence tending to prove Barbara's ident.i.ty and legitimacy.

Thaddeus was thus unable to establish her relations.h.i.+p to himself. The Diet might be pardoned for refusing to take his bare word as proof.

Bora, too, would loudly declare that Barbara was a supposit.i.tious child brought forward to deprive him of the throne.

In view, therefore, of her marvellous resemblance to Natalie, it was decided by the prince and the cardinal that Barbara should lose her own ident.i.ty and should personate the late princess.

This Barbara had done, and with such art and tact that not even Bora suspected the pardonable, if not altogether innocent manoeuvre by which she had contrived to secure her rights.

"With the exception of yourself," said Barbara in conclusion, "the cardinal is the sole depositary of my secret, for not even to Zabern, my confidant in most things, have I revealed it. Now you understand the power which the cardinal professes to wield over me, and why he insolently presumes to menace me with deposition. But he shall not succeed. Zabern is my hope. Zabern, crafty and subtle, will find a way of defeating the cardinal's machinations; and then," she murmured, "and then--he shall regret his threat to dethrone the Princess of Czernova."

Barbara, menaced on the one side by the cardinal and on the other by the Czar, had not a very firm hold on her throne, at least in Paul's judgment; and now by her attachment to himself she was still further imperilling her position. But he ceased to argue the matter. Any man with those lovely arms around him might be pardoned for shutting his eyes to the future.

"And so your mother was an Englishwoman?" he remarked, seeing in that fact a possible explanation of Barbara's pro-Anglian tastes.

"Yes, I am half English," she replied, "and I am glad for your sake that I am such. You have not told any one of our prior meeting in Dalmatia?"

"I have kept it a secret."

"Let it remain such. And our love, too, must be kept secret,--at least, for a time," she added with a sigh, for she loved open dealing, and the hiding of her real faith, together with the a.s.sumption of her sister's name, had never ceased to be a source of pain.

"How happily we sit here," murmured Barbara, "giving no thought to him who is lying dead! You were with Trevisa at the time of his murder; tell me how it happened."

Paul gave an account of Trevisa's death, in itself a sad event, and one rendered still more painful to Barbara by the thought that it had occurred so shortly after his dismissal from his secretarys.h.i.+p. The sorrowful look with which he had received her decision would never fade from her mind. She felt his loss keenly, inasmuch as he had been her friend as well as her amanuensis, and for a long time she sat talking of Trevisa, of his loyalty and his good services.

"I shall require a new secretary," she said. "You, Paul, must fill Trevisa's place. Nay, forgive me for being thus imperious. I speak as if I had the right to your obedience. My commands are for my ministers, not for you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'See how well it becomes you,' she said, drawing him gently towards a mirror."]

She slid playfully upon her knees before him, and put her hands together with a demure air.