A PERILOUS HONEYMOON
Never was day so largely and gloriously blue since Courtland was a city
as the first morning of the married life of Maurice and Margaret von
Lynar, Count and Countess von Löen. The summer floods had subsided, and
the tawny dye had gone clean out of the Alla, which was now as clear as
aquamarine, and laved rather than fretted the dark green piles of the
Summer Palace.
The Princesses (so they said without) were more than ever inseparable.
They were constantly talking confidentially together, for all the world
like schoolgirls with a secret. Doubtless Prince Louis's fair sister was
persuading the unruly wife to return to her duty. Doubtless it was
so--ah, yes, doubtless!
"Better that Prince Louis should do his own embassage in such a matter
in his proper person," said the good-wives of Thorn. "For me, I would
not listen to any sister if my man came not to my feet himself. The Lady
Joan is in the right of it--a feckless lover, no true man!"
"Aye," said the men, agreeing for once, "a paper-backed princeling! God
wot, were it our Conrad we should soon hear other of it! There would be
none of this shilly-shallying back-and-forth work then! We would give
half a year's income in golden gulden for a good lusty heir to the
Principalities--with that foul Muscovite Ivan yearning to lay the knout
across our backs!"
"There is something toward to-day," said a decent widow woman who lived
in the Königstrasse to her neighbour. "My son, who as you know is a
chorister, is gone to practise the Wedding Hymn in the cathedral. I am
going thither to get a good place. I will not miss it, whatever it is.
Perhaps they are going to make the Princess Joan do penance for her
fault, in a white sheet with a candle in her hand a yard long! That
would be rare sport. I would not miss it for so much as four farthings!"
And with that the chorister's mother hobbled off, telling everybody she
met the same story. And so in half an hour the news had spread all over
the city, and there began to be the makings of quite a respectable crowd
in the Dom Platz of Courtland.
It was half-past eleven when the archers of the guard appeared at the
entrance of the square which leads from the palace. Behind them, rank
upon rank, could be seen the lances of the wild Cossacks of Prince
Ivan's escort who had remained behind when the Muscovite army went back
to the Russian plains. Their dusky goat-hair tents, which had long
covered the banks of the Alla, had now been struck and were laded upon
baggage-horses and sumpter mules.
"The Prince of Muscovy delays only for the ceremony, whatever it may
be!" the people said, admiring at their own prevision.
And the better sort added privately, "We shall be well rid of him!" But
the baser grieved for the loss of the largesse which he scattered abroad
in good Muscovite silver, unclipped and unalloyed, with the
mint-master's hammer-stroke clean and clear to the margin. For with such
Prince Ivan knew how to make himself beloved, holding man's honour and
woman's love at the price of so few and so many gold pieces, and
thinking well or ill of them according to their own valuation. The
rabble of Courtland, whose price was only silver, he counted as no
better than the trodden dirt of the highway.
Meanwhile, in the river parlour of the Summer Palace, the two Princesses
were talking together even as the people had said. The Princess
Margaret sat on a low stool, leaning her elbow on her companion's knee
and gazing up at him. And though she sometimes looked away, it was not
for long, and Maurice, meeting her ever-recurrent regard, found that a
new thing had come into her eyes.
Presently a low tapping was heard at the inner door, from which a
passage communicated with the rooms of the Princess Margaret. The
Sparhawk would have risen, for the moment forgetful of his disguise, but
with a slight pressure of her arm upon his knee the Princess restrained
him.
"Enter!" she called aloud in her clear imperious voice.
Thora entered hurriedly, and, closing the door behind her, she stood
with the latch in her hand. "My Princess," she said in a voice that was
little more than a whisper, "I have heard ill news. They are making the
cathedral ready for a wedding. The Cossacks have struck their tents. I
think a plot is on foot to marry you this day to Prince Ivan, and to
carry you off with him to Moscow."
The Sparhawk sprang to his feet and laid his hand on the place where his
sword-hilt should have been.
"Never," he cried; "it is impossible! The Princess is----"
He was about to add, "She is married already," but with a quick gesture
of warning Margaret stopped him.
"Who told you this?" she queried, turning again to Thora of Bornholm.
"Johannes Rode of the Prince's guard told me a moment ago," she
answered. "He has just returned from the Muscovite camp."
"I thank you, Thora--I shall not forget this faithfulness," said
Margaret. "Now you have my leave to go!" The Princess spoke calmly, and
to the ear even a little coldly.
The door closed upon the Swedish maiden. Margaret and Maurice turned to
each other with one pregnant instinct and took hands.
"Already!" said Margaret faintly, going back into the woman; "they might
have left us alone a little longer. How shall we meet this? What shall
we do? I had counted on this one day."
"Margaret," answered the Sparhawk impulsively, "this shall not daunt us.
We would have told your brother Louis one day. We will tell him now.
Duchess Joan is safe out of his reach, Kernsberg is revictualled, the
Muscovite army returned. There is no need to keep up the masquerade any
longer. Whatever may come of it, let us go to your brother. That will
end it swiftly, at all events."
The Princess put away his restraining clasp and came closer to him.
"No--no," she cried: "you must not. You do not know my brother. He is
wholly under the influence of Ivan of Muscovy. Louis would slay you for
having cheated him of his bride--Ivan for having forestalled him with
me."
"But you cannot marry Ivan. That were an outrage against the laws of God
and man!"
"Marry Ivan!" she cried, to the full as impulsively as her lover; "not
though they set ravens to pick the live flesh off my bones! But it is
the thought of torture and death for you--that I cannot abide. We must
continue to deceive them. Let me think!--let me think!"
Hastily she barred the door which led out upon the corridor. Then taking
Maurice's hand once more she led him over to the window, from which she
could see the green Alla cutting its way through the city bounds and
presently escaping into the yet greener corn lands on its way to the
sea.
"It is for this one day's delay that we must plan. To-night we will
certainly escape. I can trust certain of those of my household. I have
tried them before.... I have it. Maurice, you must be taken ill--lie
down on this couch away from the light. There is a rumour of the Black
Death in the city--we must build on that. They say an Astrakhan trader
is dead of it already. For one day we may stave it off with this. It is
the poor best we can do. Lie down, I will call Thora. She is staunch and
fully to be trusted."
The Princess Margaret went to the inner door and clapped her hands
sharply.
The fair-haired Swedish maiden came running to her. She had been waiting
for such a signal.
"Thora," said her mistress in a quick whisper, "we must put off this
marriage. I would sooner die than marry Ivan. You have that drug you
spoke of--that which gives the appearance of sickness unto death without
the reality. The Lady Joan must be ill, very ill. You understand, we
must deceive even the Prince's physicians."
The girl nodded with quick understanding, and, turning, she sped away up
the inner stair to her own sleeping-chamber, the key of which (as was
the custom in Courtland) she carried in her pocket.
"This will keep you from being suspected--as in public places you would
have been," whispered Margaret to her young husband. "What Thora thinks
or knows does not matter. I can trust Thora with my life--nay, what is
far more, with yours."
A light tap and the girl re-entered, a tall phial in her hand. With a
swift look at her mistress to obtain permission, she went up to the
couch upon which the Sparhawk had lain down. Then with a deft hand she
opened the bottle, and pouring a little of a colourless liquid into a
cup she gave it him to drink. In a few minutes a sickly pallor slowly
overspread Maurice von Lynar's brow. His eyes appeared injected, the
lips paled to a grey white, beads of perspiration stood on the forehead,
and his whole countenance took on the hue and expression of mortal
sickness.
"Now," said Thora, when she had finished, "will the noble lady deign to
swallow one of these pellicles, and in ten minutes not a leech in the
country will be able to pronounce that she is not suffering from a
dangerous disease."
"You are sure, Thora," said the Princess Margaret almost fiercely,
laying her hand on her tirewoman's wrist, "that there is no harm in all
this? Remember, on your life be it!"
The placid, flaxen-haired woman turned with the little silver box in her
hand.
"Danger there is, dear mistress," she said softly, "but not, I think, so
great danger as we are already in. But I will prove my honesty----"
She took first a little of the liquid, and immediately after swallowed
one of the white pellicles she had given Maurice.
"It will be as well," she said, "when the Prince's wiseacre physicians
come, that they should find another sickening of the same disease."
Thora of Bornholm passed about the couch and took up a waiting-maid's
station some way behind.
"All is ready," she said softly.
"We will forestall them," answered the Princess. "Thora, send and bid
Prince Louis come hither quickly."
"And shall I also ask him to send hither his most skilled doctors of
healing?" added the girl. "I will despatch Johannes Rode. He will go
quickly and answer as I bid him with discretion--and without asking
questions."
And with the noiseless tread peculiar to most blonde women of large
physique, Thora disappeared through the private door by which she had
entered.
The Princess Margaret kneeled down by the couch and looked into the face
of the Sparhawk. Even she who had seen the wonder was amazed and almost
frightened by the ghastly effect the drug had wrought in such short
space.
"You are sure that you do not feel any ill effects--you are perfectly
well?" she said, with tremulous anxiety in her voice.
The Sparhawk smiled and nodded reassuringly up at her.
"Never better," he said. "My nerves are iron, my muscles steel. I feel
as if, for my Margaret's sake, I could vanquish an army of Prince
Ivan's single-handed!"
The Princess rose from her place and unlocked the main door.
"We will be ready for them," she said. "All must appear as though we had
no motive for concealment."
And, having drawn the curtains somewhat closer, she kneeled down again
by the couch. There was no sound in the room as the youthful husband and
wife thus waited their fate hand in hand, save only the soft continuous
sibilance of their whispered converse, and from without the deeper note
of the Alla sapping the Palace walls.