THE BLACK DEATH
The Princes of Courtland and Muscovy, inseparable as the Princesses,
were on the pleasant creeper-shaded terrace which looks over the rose
garden of the palace of Courtland down upon the sea plain of the Baltic,
now stretching blue black from verge to verge under the imminent sun of
noon.
Prince Louis moved restlessly to and fro, now biting his lip, now
frowning and fumbling with his sword-hilt, and anon half drawing his
jewelled dagger from its sheath and allowing it to slip back again with
the faintly musical click of perfectly fitting steel. Ivan of Muscovy,
on the other hand, lounged listlessly in the angle of an embrasure,
alternately contemplating his red-pointed toes shod in Cordovan leather,
and glancing keenly from under his eyelids at his nervous companion as
often as his back was turned in the course of his ceaseless
perambulations.
"You would desert me, Ivan," Prince Louis was saying in a tone at once
appealing and childishly aggressive: "you would leave me in the hour of
my need. You would take away from me my sister Margaret, who alone has
influence with the Princess, my wife!"
"But you do not try to court the lady with any proper fervour," objected
Ivan, half humouring and half irritating his companion; "you observe
none of the rules. Speak her soft, praise her eyelashes--surely they are
worthy of all praise; give her a pet lamb for a playmate. Feed her with
conserves of honey and spice. Surely such comfits would mollify even
Joan of the Sword Hand!"
"Tush!--you flout me, Ivan--even you. Every one despises me since--since
she flouted me. The woman is a tigress, I tell you. Every time she looks
at me her eyes flick across me like a whip-lash!"
"That is but her maiden modesty. How often is it assumed to cover love!"
murmured Ivan, demurely smiling at his shoe point, which nodded
automatically before him. "So doth the glance of my sweet bride of
to-day, your own sister Margaret. To all seeming she loves me as little
as the Lady Joan does you. Yet I am not afraid. I know women. Before I
have her a month in Moscow she will run that she may be allowed to pull
my shoes off and on. She will be out of breath with hasting to fetch my
slippers--together with other little domestic offices of that sort, all
very profitable for women's souls to perform. Take pattern by me, Louis,
and teach the tigress to bring your shoes and tie your hose points. In a
little while she will like it and hold up her cheek to be kissed for a
sufficient reward."
At this point an officer came swiftly across the parterre and stood with
uncovered head by the steps of the terrace, waiting permission to
ascend. The Prince summoned him with a movement of his hand.
"What news?" he said; "have the ladies yet left the Summer Palace?"
"No, my lord," answered the officer earnestly; "but Johannes Rode of the
Princess Margaret's household has come with a message that the plague
has broken out there, and that the Lady Princess is the first stricken!"
"Which Princess?" demanded Ivan, with an instant incision of tone.
"The Lady Joan, Princess of Courtland, your Highness," replied the man,
without, however, looking at the Prince of Muscovy.
"The Lady Joan?" cried the Prince Louis. "She is ill? She has brought
the Black Death with her from Kernsberg! She is stricken with the
plague? How fortunate that, so far, I----"
He clapped his hand upon his brow and shut his eyes as if giving thanks.
"I see it all now!" he cried. "This is the reason the Kernsberg traitors
were so willing to give her up. It is all a plot against my life. I will
not go near. Let the court physicians be sent! Cause the doors of the
Summer Palace to be sealed! Set double guards! Permit none to pass
either way, save the doctors only! And let them change their clothes and
perfume themselves with the smoke of sulphur before they come out!"
His voice mounted higher and higher as he spoke, and Ivan of Muscovy
watched him without speaking, as with hands thrust out and distended
nostrils he screamed and gesticulated.
Prince Ivan had never seen a thorough coward before, and the breed
interested him. But when he had let the Prince run on far enough to
shame him before his own officer, he rose quietly and stood in front of
him.
"Louis," he said, in a low voice, "listen to me--this is but a report.
It is like enough to be false; it is certain to be exaggerated. Let us
go at once and find out."
Prince Louis threw out his hands with a gesture of despair.
"Not I--not I!" he cried. "You may go if you like, if you do not value
your life. But I--I do not feel well even now. Yesterday I kissed her
hand. Ah, would to God that I had not! That is it. I wondered what ailed
me this morning. Go--stop the court physicians! Do not let them go to
the Summer Palace; bring them here to me first. Your arm, officer; I
think I will go to my room--I am not well."
Prince Ivan's countenance grew mottled and greyish, and his teeth showed
in the sun like a thin line of dazzling white. He grasped the poltroon
by the wrist with a hand of steel.
"Listen," he said--"no more of this; I will not have it! I will not
waste my own time and the blood of my father's soldiers for naught. This
is but some woman's trick to delay the marriage--I know it. Hearken! I
fear neither Black Death nor black devil; I will have the Lady Margaret
to-day if I have to wed her on her death-bed! Now, I cannot enter your
wife's chamber alone. Yet go I must, if only to see what all this means,
and you shall accompany me. Do you hear, Prince Louis? I swear you shall
go with me to the Summer Palace if I have to drag you there step by
step!"
His grasp lay like a tightening circle of iron about the wrist of Prince
Louis; his steady glance dominated the weaker man. Louis drew in his
breath with a choking noise.
"I will," he gasped; "if it must--I will go. But the Death--the Black
Death! I am sick--truly, Ivan, I am very sick!"
"So am I!" said Prince Ivan, smiling grimly. "But bring his Highness a
cup of wine, and send hither Alexis the Deacon, my own physician."
The officer went out cursing the Muscovite ears that had listened to
such things, and also high Heaven for giving such a Prince to his true
German fatherland.
* * * * *
Prince Ivan and Prince Louis stood at the door of the river parlour. The
peculiar moving hush and tepidly stagnant air of a sick-room penetrated
even through the panels. Ivan still kept hold of his friend, but now by
the hand, not compulsively, but rather like one who in time of trouble
comforts another's sorrow.
At either end of the corridor could be seen a guard of Cossacks keeping
it against all intrusion from without or exodus from within. So Prince
Ivan had ordered it. His fellows were used to the plague, he said.
At the Princess's door Prince Ivan tapped gently and inclined his ear to
listen. Louis fumbled with his golden crucifix, and as the Muscovite
turned away his head he pressed it furtively to his lips. Ever since he
set foot in the Summer Palace he had been muttering the prayers of the
Church in a rapid undertone.
"The Prince Louis to see the Princess Joan!" Ivan answered the
low-voiced challenge from within. The door opened slightly and then more
widely. Ivan pushed his friend forward and they entered, Louis dragging
one foot after the other towards the shaded couch by which knelt the
Princess Margaret. Thora of Bornholm, pallid and blue-lipped, stood
beside her, swaying a little, but still holding, half unconsciously, as
it seemed, a silver basin, into which Margaret dipped a fine linen
cloth, before touching with it the foam-flecked lips of the sufferer.
Prince Ivan remained a little back, near to where the court physicians
were conferring together in stage whispers. As he passed, a tall
grey-skirted long-bearded man, girt about the middle with a silver
chain, detached himself from the official group and approached Prince
Ivan. After an instinctive cringing movement of homage and salutation,
he bent to the young man's ear and whispered half a dozen words. Prince
Ivan nodded very slightly and the man stole away as he had come. No one
in the room had noticed the incident.
Meanwhile Louis of Courtland, almost as pale as Thora herself, his lips
blue, his teeth chattering, his fingers clammy with perspiration, stood
by the bedside clutching the crucifix. Presently a hand was laid upon
his arm. He started violently at the touch.
"It is true--a bad case," said Ivan in his ear. "Let us get away; I must
speak with you at once. The physicians have given their verdict. They
can do nothing!"
With a gasp of relief Prince Louis faced about, and as he turned he
tottered.
"Steady, friend Louis!" said Prince Ivan in his ear, and passed his arm
about his waist.
He began to fear lest he should have frightened his dupe too thoroughly.
"See how he loves her!" murmured the doctors of healing, still
conferring with their heads together. "Who would have believed it
possible?"
"Nay, he is only much afraid," said Alexis the Deacon, the Muscovite
doctor; "and small blame to him, now that the Black Death has come to
Courtland. In half an hour we shall hear the death-rattle!"
"Then there is no need of us staying," said more than one learned
doctor, and they moved softly towards the door. But Ivan had possessed
himself of the key, and even as the hand of the first was on the latchet
bar the bolt was shot in his face. And the eyes of Alexis the Deacon
glowed between his narrow red lids like sparks in tinder as he glanced
at the whitening faces of the learned men of Courtland.
Without the door Ivan fixed Prince Louis with his will.
"Now," he said, speaking in low trenchant tones, "if this be indeed the
Black Death (and it is like it), there is no safety for us here. We must
get without the walls. In an hour there will be such a panic in the city
as has not been for centuries. I offer you a way of escape. My Cossacks
stand horsed and ready without. Let us go with them. But the Princess
Margaret must come also!"
"She cannot--she cannot. I will not permit it. She may already be
infected!" gasped Prince Louis.
"There is no infection till the crisis of the disease is passed," said
Prince Ivan firmly. "We have had many plagues in Holy Russia, and know
the symptoms."
("Indeed," he added to himself, "my physician, Alexis the Deacon, can
produce them!")
"But--but--but----" Louis still objected, "the Princess Joan--she may
die. It will reflect upon my honour if we all desert her. My sister must
continue to attend her. They are friends. I will go with you....
Margaret can remain and nurse her!"
A light like a spear point glittered momentarily under the dark brows of
the Muscovite.
"Listen, Prince Louis," he said. "Your honour is your honour. Joan of
the Sword Hand and her Black Plagues are your own affair. She is your
wife, not mine. I have helped you to get her back--no more. But the
Princess Margaret is my business. I have bought her with a price. And
look you, sir, I will not ride back to Russia empty-handed, that every
petty boyar and starveling serf may scoff at me, saying, 'He helped the
Prince of Courtland to win his wife, but he could not bring back one
himself.' The whole city, the whole country from here to Moscow know for
what cause I have so long sojourned in your capital. No, Prince Louis,
will you have me go as your friend or as your enemy?"
"Ivan--Ivan, you are my friend. Do not speak to me so! Who else is my
friend if you desert me?"
"Then give me your sister!"
The Prince cast up his hand with a little gesture of despair.
"Ah," he sighed, "you do not know Margaret! She is not in my gift, or
you should have had her long ago! Oh, these troubles, these troubles!
When will they be at an end?"
"They are at an end now," said Prince Ivan consolingly. "Call your
sister out of the chamber on a pretext. In ten minutes we shall be at
the cathedral gates. In another ten she and I can be wedded according to
your Roman custom. In half an hour we shall all be outside the walls. If
you fear the infection you need not once come near her. I will do all
that is necessary. And what more natural? We will be gone before the
panic breaks--you to one of your hill castles--if you do not wish to
come with us to Moscow."
"And the Princess Joan----?" faltered the coward.
"She is in good hands," said the Prince, truthfully for once. "I pledge
you my word of honour she is in no danger. Call your sister!"
Even as he spoke he tapped lightly, turned the key in the lock and
whispered, "Now!" to the Prince of Courtland.
"Tell the Princess Margaret I would speak with her!" said Prince Louis.
"For a moment only!" he added, fearing that otherwise she might not
come.
There was a stir in the sick chamber and then quick steps were heard
coming lightly across the floor. The face of the Princess appeared at
the door.
"Well?" she said haughtily to her brother. Prince Ivan she did not see,
for he had stepped back into the dusk of the corridor. Louis beckoned
his sister without.
"I must speak a word with you," he said. "I would not have these fellows
hear us!" She stepped out unsuspectingly. Instantly the door was closed
behind her. A dark figure slid between. Prince Ivan turned the key and
laid his hand upon her arm.
"Help!" she cried, struggling; "help me! For God's grace, let me go!"
But from behind came four Cossacks of the Prince's retinue who
half-carried, half-forced her along towards the gates at which the
Muscovite horses stood ready saddled. And as Margaret was carried down
the passage the alarmed servitors stood aloof from her cries, seeing
that Prince Louis himself was with her. Yet she cried out unceasingly in
her anger and fear, "To me, men of Courtland! The Cossacks carry me
off--I will not go! O God, that Conrad were here! I will not be silent!
Maurice, save me!"
But the people only shrugged their shoulders even when they heard--as
did also the guards and the gentlemen-in-waiting, the underlings and the
very porters at the Palace gates. For they said, "They are strange folk,
these Courtland princes and princesses of ours, with their marriages and
givings in marriage. They can neither wed nor bed like other people, but
must make all this fuss about it. Well--happily it is no business of
ours!"
Then at the stair foot she sank suddenly down by the sundial, almost
fainting with the sudden alarm and fear, crying for the last time and
yet more piercingly, "Maurice! Maurice! Come to me, Maurice!" Then above
them in the Palace there began a mighty clamour, the noise of blows
stricken and the roar of many voices. But Ivan of Muscovy was neither to
be hurried nor flurried. Impassive and determined, he swung himself
into the saddle. His black charger changed his feet to take his weight
and looked about to welcome him--for he, too, knew his master.
"Give the Princess to me," he commanded. "Now assist Prince Louis into
his saddle. To the cathedral, all of you!"