Joan of the Sword Hand Part 51

"Give him rope!" muttered Prince Hugo. "He will tangle himself rarely or all be done!"

"I mean by the blessing of Heaven there was no bloodshed," Boris corrected himself. "There was, as I say, no fighting. There was none to fight with. Prince Louis had not a friend in his own capital city, saving the Muscovite. And at that moment Prince Ivan the Wasp was glad enough to win clear off to the frontier with his Cossacks at his tail.

It was a G.o.d's pity we could not ride them down. But though Jorian and I did all that men could----"

"Ahem!" said Jorian, as if a fly had flown into his mouth and tickled his throat.

"I mean, your Highnesses, we did whatever men could to keep the populace within bounds. But they broke through and leaped upon us, throwing their arms about our horses' necks, crying out, 'Our saviours!' 'Our deliverers!' G.o.d wot, we might as well have tried to charge through the billows of the Baltic when it blows a norther right from the Gulf of Bothnia! But it almost broke my heart to see them ride off with never so much as a spear thrust through one single Muscovite belly-band!"

Here Jorian had a fit of coughing which caused the Princess to look severely upon him. Boris, recalled to himself, proceeded more carefully.

"It was all we could do to open up a way to where the young man Maurice lay stretched on the Cross of Death. They had loosed the wild horses before we arrived, and these had galloped off after their companions. A pity! Oh, a great pity!

"Then came the young man's mother near, she who was our hostess at Isle Rugen----"

"Why did you not abide at Kernsberg as you were instructed?" put in Hugo at this point.

"Never mind--go on--tell the tale!" cried Helene, who was listening breathlessly.

"We thought it our duty to accompany the d.u.c.h.ess Joan," said Boris, deftly enough; "where the king is, there is the court!"

And at this point the two captains saluted very dutifully and respectfully, like machines moved by one spring.

"Well said for once, thou overly long one," growled Jorian under his breath.

"Go on!" commanded Helene.

"The young man's mother came near and threw a cloak across his naked body. Then Jorian and I unbound him and chafed his limbs, first removing the gag from his mouth; but so tightly had the cords been bound about him that for long he could not stand upright. Then, from the royal pavilion, where she had been brought for cruel sport to see the death, the Princess Margaret came running----"

"Oh, wickedness!" cried Helene, "to make her look on at her lover's death!"

"She came furiously, though a dainty princess, thrusting strong men aside. 'Way there!' she cried, 'on your lives make way! I will go to him. I am the Princess Margaret. Give me a dagger and I will p.r.i.c.k me a way.'"

"And, by Saint Stephen the holy martyr--if she did not s.n.a.t.c.h a bodkin from the belt of a tailor in the High Street and with it open up her way as featly as though she were handling a Cossack lance."

"And what happened when she got to him--when she found her husband?"

cried Helene, her eyes sparkling. And she put out a hand to touch her own, just to be sure that he was there.

"Truth, a very wondrous thing happened!" said Jorian, whose fingers also had been twitching, "a mightily wondrous thing. Thus it was----"

"Hold your tongue, sausage-bag!" growled Boris, very low; "who tells this tale, you or I?"

"Get on, then," answered in like fas.h.i.+on Captain Jorian, "you are as long-winded and wheezy as a smith's bellows!"

"Yes, a strange thing it was. I was standing by Maurice von Lynar, undoing the cord from his neck. His mother was chafing an arm. The Lady Joan was bending to speak softly to him, for she had dismounted from her horse, when, all in the snapping of a twig, the Princess Margaret came bursting through the ring which Jorian and the Kernsbergers were keeping with their lance-b.u.t.ts. She thrust us all aside. By my faith, me she sent spinning like the young Prince's top there!"

"G.o.d save his Excellency!" quoth Jorian, not to be left out entirely.

"Silence!" cried Helene, with an imperious stamp of her little foot; "and do you, Boris, tell the tale without comparisons. What happened then?"

"Only the boy's mother kept her ground! She went on chafing his arm without so much as raising her eyes."

"Did the Princess serve Joan of the Sword Hand as she served you?"

interposed Hugo.

"Marry, worse!" cried Boris, growing excited for the first time. "She thrust her aside like a kitchen wench, and our lady took it as meekly as--as----"

"Go on! Did I not tell you to spare us your comparatives?" cried Helene the Princess, letting her broidery slip to the ground in her consuming interest.

"Well," said Boris, quickly sobered, "it was in truth a mighty quaint thing to see. The Princess Margaret took the young man in her arms and caught him to her. The Lady Theresa kept hold of his wrist. They looked at each other a moment without speech, eye countering eye like knights at a----"

"Go on!" the Princess thundered, if indeed a silvern voice can be said to thunder.

"'Give him up to me! He is mine!' cried the Princess.

"'He is mine!' answered very haughtily the lady of the Isle Rugen--'Who are you?' 'And you?' cried both at once, flinging their heads back, but never for a moment letting go with their hands. The youth, being dazed, said nothing, nor so much as moved.

"'I am his mother!' said the Lady Theresa, speaking first.

"'I am his wife!' said the Princess.

"Then the woman who had borne the young man gave him into his wife's arms without a word, and the Princess gathered him to her bosom and crooned over him, that being her right. But his mother stepped back among the crowd and drew the hood of her cloak over her head that no man might look upon her face."

"Bravo!" cried Helene, clapping her hands, "it was her right!"

"Little one," said her husband, pointing to the boy on the terrace beneath, who was las.h.i.+ng a toy horse of wood with all his baby might, "I wonder if you will think so when another woman takes _him_ from you!"

The Princess Helene caught her breath sharply.

"That would be different!" she said, "yes, very different!"

"Ah!" said Hugo the Prince, her husband.

CHAPTER XLVI

THE FEAR THAT IS IN LOVE

Thus the climax came about in the twinkling of an eye, but the universal turmoil and wild jubilation in which Prince Louis's power and government were swept away had really been preparing for years, though the end fell sharp as the thunderclap that breaks the weather after a season of parching heat.

For all that the trouble was only deferred, not removed. The cruel death of Maurice von Lynar had been rendered impossible by the opportune arrival of Prince Conrad and the sudden revolution which the sight of his n.o.ble and beloved form, clad in armour, produced among the disgusted and impulsive Courtlanders.

Yet the arch-foe had only recoiled in order that he might the further leap. The great army of the White Czar was encamped just across the frontier, nominally on the march to Poland, but capable of being in a moment diverted upon the Princedom of Courtland. Here was a pretext of invasion ripe to Prince Ivan's hand. So he kept Louis, the dethroned and extruded prince, close beside him. He urged his father, by every tie of friends.h.i.+p and interest, to replace that prince upon his throne. And the Czar Paul, well knowing that the restoration of Louis meant nothing less than the incorporation of Courtland with his empire, hastened to carry out his son's advice.

In Courtland itself there was no confusion. A certain grim determination took possession of the people. They had made their choice, and they would abide by it. They had chosen Conrad to be their ruler, as he had long been their only hope; and they knew that now Louis was for ever impossible, save as a cloak for a Muscovite dominion.