Joan of the Sword Hand

Von Dessauer, High Councillor of Plassenburg, stood leaning on the head of his staff and watching with a certain gravity of sympathy, mixed with apprehension, the simple ceremonial.

Presently the solemn "Let no man put asunder" was said, the blessing pronounced, and Leopold von Dessauer came forward with his usual courtly grace to salute the newly made Countess von Löen.

He would have kissed her hand, but with a swift gesture she offered her cheek.

"Not hands to-day, good friend," she said. "I am no more a princess, but my husband's wife. They cannot part us now, can they, High Councillor? I have gotten my wish!"

"Dear lady," the Chancellor of Plassenburg answered gently. "I am an old man, and I have observed that Hymen is the most tricksome of the divinities. His omens go mostly by contraries. Where much is expected, little is obtained. When all men speak well of a wedding, and all the prophets prophesy smooth things—my fear is great. Therefore be of good cheer. Though you have chosen the rough road, the perilous venture, the dark night, the deep and untried ford, you will yet come out upon a plain of gladness, into a day of sunshine, and at the eventide reach a home of content."

"So good a fortune from so wise a soothsayer deserves—this!"

And she kissed the Chancellor frankly on the mouth.

"Father Clement," she said, turning about to the priest with a provocative look on her face, "have you a prophecy for us worthy a like guerdon?"

"Avaunt, witch! Get thee behind me, pretty impling! Tempt not an old man to forget his office, or I will set thee such a penance as will take months to perform."

Nevertheless his face softened as he spoke. He saw too plainly the perils which encompassed Maurice von Lynar and his wife. Yet he held out his hand benignantly and they sank on their knees.

"God bring you well through, beloveds!" he said. "May He send His angels to succour the faithful and punish the guilty!"

"I bid you fair good-night!" said Leopold von Dessauer at the threshold. But he added in his heart, "But alas for the to-morrow that must come to you twain!"

"I care for nothing now—I have gotten my will!" said the Princess Margaret, nodding her head to the Father as he went out.

She was standing on the threshold with her husband's hand in hers, and her eyes were full of that which no words can express.

"May that which is so sweet in the mouth now, never prove bitter in the belly!"

That was the Father's last prayer for them.

But neither Margaret nor Maurice von Lynar so much as heard him, for they had turned to one another.

For the golden lamp was burning itself out, and without in the dark the Alla still said, "Hush!" like a mother who soothes her children to sleep.

CHAPTER XXXIV

"Maurice—I would it were so, indeed. Do you know I think being married makes one's soul frightened. The one you love grows so terrifyingly precious. It seems such a long time since I was a wild and reckless girl, flouting those who spoke of love, and boasting (oh, so vainly!) that love would never touch me. I used to, not so long ago—though you would not think it now, knowing how weak and foolish I am."

The Sparhawk laughed a little and glanced fondly at his wife. It was a strange look, full of the peculiar joy of man—and that, where the essence of love dwells in him, is his sense of unique possession.

"Do keep still," said the Princess suddenly, stamping her foot. "How can I finish the arraying of your locks, if you twist about thus in your seat? It is fortunate for you, sir, that the Duchess Joan wears her hair short, like a Northman or a bantling troubadour. Otherwise you could not have gone masquerading till yours had grown to be something of this length."

And, with the innocent vanity of a woman preferred, she shook her own head backward till the rich golden tresses, each hair distinct and crisp as a golden wire of infinite thinness, fell over her back and hung down as low as the hollows of her knees.

"Joan could not do that!" she cried triumphantly.

"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said the Sparhawk, with appreciative reverence, trying to rise from the low stool in front of the Venice mirror upon which he was submitting to having his toilet superintended—for the first time by a thoroughly competent person.

The Princess Margaret bit her lip vixenishly in a pretty way she had when making a pretext of being angry, at the same time sticking the little curved golden comb she was using upon his raven locks viciously into his head.

"Oh, you hurt!" he cried, making a grimace and pretending in his turn.

"And so I will, and much worse," she retorted, "if you do not be still and do as I bid you. How can a self-respecting tire-woman attend to her business under such circumstances? I warn you that you may engage a new maid."

"Wickedest one!" he murmured, gazing fondly up at Margaret, "there is no one like you!"

"Well," she drolled, "I am glad of your opinion, though sorry for your taste. For me, I prefer the Lady Joan."

"And why?"

"Because she is like you, of course!"

So, on the verge perilous, lightly and foolishly they jested as all those who love each other do (which folly is the only wisdom), while the green Alla sped swiftly on to the sea, and the city in which Death waited for Maurice von Lynar began to hum about them.

As yet, however, there fell no suspicion. For Margaret had warned her bowermaidens that the Princess Joan would need no assistance from them. Her own waiting-women were on their way from Castle Kernsberg. In any case she, Margaret of Courtland, would help her sister in person, as well for love as because such service was the guest's right.

And the Courtland maidens, accustomed to the whims and sudden likings of their impetuous mistress, glad also to escape extra duty, hastened their task of arraying Margaret. Never had she been so restless and exacting. Her toilet was not half finished when she rose from her ebony stool, told her favourite Thora of Bornholm that she was too ignorant to be trusted to array so much as the tow-head of a Swedish puppet, endued herself without assistance with a long loose gown of velvet lined with pale blue silk, and flashed out again to revisit her sister-in-law.

"And do you, Thora, and the others, wait my pleasure in the anteroom," she commanded her handmaidens as she swept through the doorway. "Go barter love-compliments with the men-at-arms. It is all such fumblers are good for!"

Behind her back the tiring maids shrugged shoulders and glanced at each other secretly with lifted eyebrow, as they put gowns and broidered slippers back in their places, to signify that if it began thus they were in for a day of it. Nevertheless they obeyed, and, finding certain young gentlemen of Prince Louis's guard waiting for just such an opportunity without, Thora and the others proceeded to carry out to the letter the second part of the instructions of their mistress.

"How now, sweet Thora of the Flaxen Locks?" cried Justus of Grätz, a slender young man who carried the Prince's bannerstaff on saints' days, and practised fencing and the art of love professionally at other times; "has the Princess boxed all your ears this morning, that you come trembling forth, pell-mell, like a flock of geese out of a barn when the farmer's dog is after them?"

There were three under-officers of the guard in the little courtyard. Slim Justus of Grätz, his friend and boon companion Seydelmann, a man of fine presence and empty head, who on wet days could curl the wings of his moustaches round his ears, and, sitting a little apart from these, little Johannes Rode, the only very brave man of the three, a swordsman and a poet, yet one who passed for a ninny and a greenhorn because he chose mostly to be silent. Nevertheless, Thora of Bornholm preferred him to all others in the palace. For the eyes of a woman are quick to discern manhood—so long, that is, as she is not in love. After that, God wot, there is no eyeless fish so blind in all the caverns of the Hartz.

With the Northwoman Thora in her tendance of the Princess there were joined Anna and Martha Pappenheim, two maids quicker of speech and more restless in demeanour—Franconians, like all their name, of their persons little and lithe and gay. The Princess had brought them back with her when at the last Diet she visited Ratisbon with her brother.

"Ah, Thora, fairest of maids! Hath an east wind made you sulky this morning, that you will not answer?" languished Justus. "Then I warrant so are not Anna and Martha. My service to you, noble dames!"

"Noble 'dames' indeed—and to us!" they answered in alternate jets of speech. "As if we were apple-women or the fat house-frows of Courtlandish burghers. Get away—you have no manners! You sop your wits in sour beer. You eat frogs-meat out of your Baltic marshes. A dozen dozen of you were not worth one lively lad out of sweet Franconia!"

"Swe-e-et Franconia!" mocked Justus; "why, then, did you not stop there? Of a verity no lover carried you off to Courtland across his saddle-bow, that I warrant! He had repented his pains and killed his horse long ere he smelt the Baltic brine."

"The most that such louts as you Courtlanders could carry off would be a screeching pullet from a farmyard, when the goodman is from home. There is no spirit in the North—save, I grant, among the women. There is our Princess and her new sister the Lady Joan of the Sword Hand. Where will you see their match? Small wonder they will have nothing to say to such men as they can find hereabouts! But how they love each other! 'Tis as good as a love tale to see them——"

"Aye, and a very miracle to boot!" interjected Thora of Bornholm.

The Pappenheims, as before, went on antiphonally, each answering and anticipating the other.

"The Princesses need not any man to make them happy! Their affection for each other is past telling," said Martha.

"How their eyes shine when they look at each other!" sighed Anna, while Thora said nothing for a little, but watched Johannes Rode keenly. She saw he had something on his mind. The Northwoman was not of the opinion which Anna Pappenheim attributed to the Princesses. For the fair-skinned daughters of the Goth, being wise, hold that there is but one kind of love, as there is but one kind of gold. Also they believe that they carry with them the philosopher's stone wherewith to procure that fine ore. After a while Thora spoke.

"This morning it was 'The Princess needs not your help—I myself will be her tire-woman!' I wot Margaret is as jealous of any other serving the Lady Joan——"

"As you would be if we made love to Johannes Rode there!" laughed Martha Pappenheim, getting behind a pillar and peeping roguishly round in order that the poet might have an opportunity of seeing the pretty turn of her ankle.

But little Johannes, who with a nail was scratching a line or two of a catch on a smooth stone, hardly even smiled. He minded maids of honour, their gabble and their ankles, no more than jackdaws crying in the crevices of the gable—that is, all except Thora, who was so large and fair and white that he could not get her quite out of his mind. But even with Thora of Bornholm he did his best.

"That is all very well now," put in vain Fritz Seydelmann, stroking his handsome beard and smiling vacantly; "but wait till these same Princesses have had husbands of their own for a year. Then they will spit at each other and scratch—like cats. All women are cats, and maids of honour the worst of all!"

"How so, Sir Wiseman—because they do not like puppies? You have found out that?" Anna Pappenheim struck back demurely.

"You ask me why maids of honour are like cats," returned Seydelmann complacently (he had been making up this speech all night). "Do they not arch their backs when they are stroked? Do they not purr? Have you not seen them lie about the house all day, doing nothing and looking as saintly as so many abbots at High Mass? But at night and on the tiles—phew! 'tis another matter then."

And having thus said vain moustached Seydelmann, who plumed himself upon his wit, dragged at his moustache horns and simpered bovinely down upon the girls.

Anna Pappenheim turned to Thora, who was looking steadily through the self-satisfied Fritz, much as if she could see a spider crawling on the wall behind him.

"Do they let things like that run about loose here in Courtland?" she asked, with some anxiety on her face. "We have sties built for them at home in Franconia!"

But Thora was in no mood for the rough jesting of officers-in-waiting and princesses' tirewomen. She continued to watch the spider.

Then little Johannes Rode spoke for the first time.

"I wager," he said slowly, "that the Princesses will be less inseparable by this time to-morrow."

"What do you mean, Johannes Rode?" said Thora, with instant challenge in her voice, turning the wide-eyed directness of her gaze full upon him.

The young man did not look at her. He merely continued the carving of his couplet upon the lower stone of the sundial, whistling the air as he did so.

"Well," he answered slowly, "the Muscovite guard of Prince Ivan have packed their own baggage (together with a good deal that is not their own), and the minster priests are warned to hold themselves at the Prince's bidding all day. That means a wedding, and I warrant you our noble Louis does not mean to marry his Princess all over again in the Dom-Kirch of Courtland. They are going to marry the Russ to our Princess Margaret!"

Blonde Fritz laughed loud and long and tugged at his moustache.

"Out, you fool!" he cried; "this is a saint's day! I saw it in the chaplain's Breviary. The Prince goes to shrive himself, and right wisely he judges. I would not only confess, but receive extreme unction as well, before I attempted to come nigh Joan of the Sword Hand in the way of love! What say you, Justus?"

But before his companion could reply, Thora of Bornholm had risen and stolen quietly within.

CHAPTER XXXV

"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.

CHAPTER XXXVI

"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!"

CHAPTER XXXVII

So they came at last to the Dom and the groups of wondering folks, thinly scattered here and there—women mostly. For there had been such long delay at the Summer Palace that the men had gone back to their shavings and cooperage tubs or were quaffing tankards in the city ale-cellars.

The great doors of the cathedral had been thrown wide open and the leathern curtains withdrawn. The sun was checkering the vast tesselated pavement with blurs of purple and red and glorious blue shot through the western window of the nave. In gloomy chapel and recessed nook marble princes and battered Crusaders of the line of Courtland seemed to blink and turn their faces to the wall away from the unaccustomed glare. The altar candles and the lamps a-swing in the choir winked no brighter than yellow willow leaves seen through an autumnal fog. But as the cortège dismounted the organ began to roll, and the people within rose with a hush like that which follows the opening of a window at night above the Alla.

The sonorous diapason of the great instrument disgorged itself through the doorway in wave upon wave of sound. The Princess Margaret found herself again on her feet, upheld on either side by brother and lover. She was at first somewhat dazed with the rush of accumulate disasters. Slowly her mind came back. The Dom Platz whirled more slowly about her. With a fresh-dawning surprise she heard the choir sing within. She began to understand the speech of men. The great black square of the open doorway slowed and finally stopped before her. She was on the steps of the cathedral. What had come to her? Was it the Duchess Joan's wedding day? Surely no! Then what was the matter? Had she fainted?

Maurice—where was Maurice? She turned about. The small glittering eyes of Prince Ivan, black as sloes, were looking into hers. She remembered now. It was her own wedding. These two, her brother and her enemy, were carrying out their threat. They had brought her to the cathedral to wed her, against her will, to the man she hated. But they could not. She would tell them. Already she was a—but then, if she told them that, they would ride back and kill him. Better that she should perjure herself, condemn herself to hell, than that. Better anything than that. But what was she to do? Was ever a poor girl so driven?

And there, in the hour of her extremity, her eye fell upon a young man in the crowd beneath, a youth in a 'prentice's blue jerkin. He was passing his arm softly about a girl's waist—slily also, lest her mother should see. And the maid, first starting with a pretence of not knowing whence came the pressure, presently looked up and smiled at him, nestling a moment closer to his shoulder before removing his hand, only to hold it covertly under her apron till her mother showed signs of turning round.

"Ah! why was I born a princess?" moaned the poor driven girl.

"Margaret, you must come with us into the cathedral." It was the voice of her brother. "It is necessary that the Prince should wed you now. It has too long been promised, and now he can delay no longer. Besides, the Black Death is in the city, and this is the only hope of escape. Come!"

It was on the tip of Margaret's tongue to cry out with wild words even as she had done at the door at the river parlour. But the thought of Maurice, of the torture and the death, silenced her. She lifted her eyes, and there, at the top of the steps, were the dignitaries of the cathedral waiting to lead the solemn procession.

"I will go!" she said.

And at her words the Prince Ivan smiled under his thin moustache.

She laid her hand on her brother's arm and began the ascent of the long flight of stairs. But even as she did so, behind her there broke a wave of sound—the crying of many people, confused and multitudinous like the warning which runs along a crowded thoroughfare when a wild charger escaped from bonds threshes along with frantic flying harness. Then came the clatter of horses' hoofs, the clang of doors shut in haste as decent burghers got them in out of harm's way! And lo! at the foot of the steps, clad from head to foot in a cloak, the sick Princess Joan, she whom the Black Death had stricken, leaped from her foaming steed, and drawing sword followed fiercely up the stairway after the marriage procession. The Cossacks of the Muscovite guard looked at each other, not knowing whether to stand in her way or no.

"The Princess Joan!" they said from one to the other.

"Joan of the Sword Hand!" whispered the burghers of Courtland. "The disease has gone to her brain. Look at the madness in her eye!"

And their lips parted a little as is the wont of those who, having come to view a comedy, find themselves unexpectedly in the midst of high tragedy.

"Hold, there!" the pursuer shouted, as she set foot on the lowest step.

"Lord! Surely that is no woman's voice!" whispered the people who stood nearest, and their lower jaws dropped a little further in sheer wonderment.

The Princes turned on the threshold of the cathedral, with Margaret still between them, the belly of the church black behind them, and the processional priests first halting and then peering over each other's shoulders in their eagerness to see.

Up the wide steps of the Dom flew the tall woman in the flowing cloak. Her face was pallid as death, but her eyes were brilliant and her lips red. At the sight of the naked sword Prince Ivan plucked the blade from his side and Louis shrank a little behind his sister.

"Treason!" he faltered. "What is this? Is it sudden madness or the frenzy of the Black Death?"

"The Princess Margaret cannot be married!" cried the seeming Princess. "To me, Margaret! I will slay the man who lays a hand on you!"

Obedient to that word, Margaret of Courtland broke from between her brother and Prince Ivan and ran to the tall woman, laying her brow on her breast. The Prince of Muscovy continued calm and immovable.

"And why?" he asked in a tone full of contempt. "Why cannot the Princess Margaret be married?"

"Because," said the woman in the long cloak, fingering a string at her neck, "she is married already. I am her husband!"

The long blue cloak fell to the ground, and the Sparhawk, clad in close-fitting squire's dress, stood before their astonished eyes.

A long low murmur, gathering and sinking, surged about the square. Prince Louis gasped. Margaret clung to her lover's arm, and for the space of a score of seconds the whole world stopped breathing.

Prince Ivan twisted his moustache as if he would pull it out by the roots.

"So," he said, "the Princess is married, is she? And you are her husband? 'Whom God hath joined'—and the rest of it. Well, we shall see, we shall see!"

He spoke gently, meditatively, almost caressingly.

"Yes," cried the Sparhawk defiantly, "we were married yesterday by Father Clement, the Prince's chaplain, in the presence of the most noble Leopold von Dessauer, High Councillor of Plassenburg!"

"And my wife—the Princess Joan, where is she?" gasped Prince Louis, so greatly bewildered that he had not yet begun to be angry.

Ivan of Muscovy put out his hand.

"Gently, friend," he said; "I will unmask this play-acting springald. This is not your wife, not the woman you wedded and fought for, not the Lady Joan of Hohenstein, but some baseborn brother, who, having her face, hath played her part, in order to mock and cheat and deceive us both!"

He turned again to Maurice von Lynar.

"I think we have met before, Sir Masquer," he said with his usual suave courtesy; "I have, therefore, a double debt to pay. Hither!" He beckoned to the guards who lined the approaches. "I presume, sir, so true a courtier will not brawl before ladies. You recognise that you are in our power. Your sword, sir!"

The Sparhawk looked all about the crowded square. Then he snapped his sword over his knee and threw the pieces down on the stone steps.

"You are right; I will not fight vainly here," he said. "I know well it is useless. But"—he raised his voice—"be it known to all men that my name is Maurice, Count von Löen, and that the Princess Margaret is my lawfully wedded wife. She cannot then marry Ivan of Muscovy!"

The Prince laughed easily and spread his hand with gentle deprecation, as the guards seized the Sparhawk and forced him a little space away from the clinging hands of the Princess.

"I am an easy man," he said gently, as he clicked his dagger to and fro in its sheath. "When I like a woman, I would as lief marry her widow as maid!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

He bowed to Maurice as if he had been inviting him to a feast. Maurice looked about the crowded square, and over the pennons of the Cossacks. He knew there was no hope either in flight or in resistance. All the approaches to the square had been filled up with armed men.

"I will follow!" he answered briefly.

The Prince swept his plumed hat to the ground.

"Nay," he said; "lead, not follow. You must go with your wife. The Prince of Muscovy does not precede a lady, a princess,—and a bride!"

So it came about that Margaret, after all, descended the cathedral steps on her husband's arm.

And as the cavalcade rode back to the Palace the Princess was in the midst between the Sparhawk and Prince Wasp, Louis of Courtland pacing moodily ahead, his bridle reins loose upon his horse's neck, his chin sunk on his breast, while the rabble cried ever, "Largesse! largesse!" and ran before them casting brightly coloured silken scarves in the way.

Then Prince Ivan, summoning his almoner to his side, took from him a bag of coin. He dipped his fingers deeply in and scattered the coins with a free hand, crying loudly, "To the health and long life of the Princess Margaret and her husband! Health and riches and offspring!"

And the mob taking the word from him shouted all along the narrow streets, "To the Princess and her husband!"

But from the hooded dormers of the city, from the lofty gable spy-holes, from the narrow windows of Baltic staircase-towers the good wives of Courtland looked down to see the great folk pass. And their comment was not that of the rabble. "Married, is she?" they said among themselves. "Well, God bless her comely face! It minds me of my own wedding. But, by my faith, I looked more at my Fritz than she doth at the Muscovite. I declare all her eyes are for that handsome lad who rides at her left elbow——"

"Nay, he is not handsome—look at his face. It is as white as a new-washen clout hung on a drying line. Who can he be?"

"Minds me o' the Prince's wife, the proud lady that flouted him, mightily he doth—I should not wonder if he were her brother."

"Yes, by my faith, dame—hast hit it! So he doth. And here was I racking my brains to think where I had seen him before, and then, after all, I never had seen him before!"

"A miracle it is, gossip, and right pale he looks! Yet I should not wonder if our Margaret loves him the most. Her eyes seek to him. Women among the great are not like us. They say they never like their own husbands the best. What wouldst thou do, good neighbour Bette, if I loved your Hans better than mine own stupid old Fritz! Pull the strings off my cap, dame, sayst thou? That shows thee no great lady. For if thou wast of the great, thou wouldst no more than wave thy hand and say, 'A good riddance and a heartsome change!'—and with that begin to make love to the next young lad that came by with his thumbs in his armholes and a feather in his cap!"

"And what o' the childer—the house-bairns—what o' them? With all this mixing about, what comes o' them—answer me that, good dame!"

"What, Gossip Bette—have you never heard? The childer of the great, they suck not their own mothers' milk—they are not dandled in their own mothers' arms. They learn not their Duty from their mothers' lips. When they are fractious, a stranger beats them till they be good——"

"Ah," cried the court of matrons all in unison, "I would like to catch one of the fremit lay a hand on my Karl—my Kirsten—that I would! I would comb their hair for them, tear the pinner off their backs—that I would!" "And I!" "And I!"

"Nay, good gossips all," out of the chorus the voice of the dame learned in the ways of the great asserted itself; "that, again, proves you all no better than burgherish town-folk—not truly of the noble of the land. For a right great lady, when she meets a foster-nurse with a baby at the breast, will go near and say—I have heard 'em—'La! the pretty thing—a poppet! Well-a-well, 'tis pretty, for sure! And whose baby may this be?'

"'Thine own, lady, thine own!'"

At this long and loud echoed the derision of the good wives of Courtland. Their gossip laughed and reasserted. But no, they would not hear a word more. She had overstepped the limit of their belief.

"What, not to know her child—her own flesh and blood? Out on her!" cried every mother who had felt about her neck the clasp of tiny hands, or upon her breast the easing pressure of little blind lips. "Good dame, no; you shall not hoodwink us. Were she deaf and dumb and doting, a mother would yet know her child. 'Tis not in nature else! Well, thanks be to Mary Mother—she who knew both wife-pain and mother-joy, we, at least, are not of the great. We may hush our own bairns to sleep, dance with them when they frolic, and correct them when they be naughty-minded. Nevertheless, a good luck go with our noble lady this day! May she have many fair children and a husband to love her even as if she were a common woman and no princess!"

So in little jerks of blessing and with much head-shaking the good wives of Courtland continued their congress, long after the last Cossack lance with its fluttering pennon had been lost to view down the winding street.

For, indeed, well might the gossips thank the Virgin and their patron saints that they were not as the poor Princess Margaret, and that their worst troubles concerned only whether Hans or Fritz tarried a little over-long in the town wine-cellars, or wagered the fraction of a penny too much on a neighbour's cock-fight, and so returned home somewhat crusty because the wrong bird had won the main.

But in the Prince's palace other things were going forward. Hitherto we have had to do with the Summer Palace by the river, a building of no strength, and built more as a pleasure house for the princely family than as a place of permanent habitation. But the Castle of Courtland was a structure of another sort.

Set on a low rock in the centre of the town, its walls rose continuous with its foundations, equally massive and impregnable, to the height of over seventy feet. For the first twenty-five neither window nor grating broke the grim uniformity of those mighty walls of mortared rock. Above that line only a few small openings half-closed with iron bars evidenced the fact that a great prince had his dwelling within. The main entrance to the Castle was through a gateway closed by a grim iron-toothed portcullis. Then a short tunnel led to another and yet stronger defence—a deep natural fosse which surrounded the rock on all sides, and over which a drawbridge conducted into the courtyard of the fortress.

The Sparhawk knew very well that he was going to his death as he rode through the streets of the city of Courtland, but none would have discovered from his bearing that there was aught upon his mind of graver concern than the fit of a doublet or, perhaps, the favour of a pretty maid-of-honour. But with the Princess Margaret it was different. In these last crowded hours she had quite lost her old gay defiance. Her whole heart was fixed on Maurice, and the tears would not be bitten back when she thought of the fate to which he was going with so manly a courage and so fine an air.

They dismounted in the gloomy courtyard, and Maurice, slipping quickly from his saddle, caught Margaret in his arms before the Muscovite could interfere. She clung to him closely, knowing that it might be for the last time.

"Maurice, Maurice," she murmured, "can you forgive me? I have brought you to this!"

"Hush, sweetheart," he answered in her ear; "be my own dear princess. Do not let them see. Be my brave girl. They cannot divide our love!"

"Come, I beg of you," came the dulcet voice of Prince Ivan behind them; "I would not for all Courtland break in upon the billing and cooing of such turtle-doves, were it not that their affection blinds them to the fact that the men-at-arms and scullions are witnesses to these pretty demonstrations. Tarry a little, sweet valentines—time and place wait for all things."

The Princess commanded herself quickly. In another moment she was once more Margaret of Courtland.

"Even the Prince of Muscovy might spare a lady his insults at such a time!" she said.

The Prince bared his head and bowed low.

"Nay," he said very courteously; "you mistake, Princess Margaret. I insult you not. I may regret your taste—but that is a different matter. Yet even that may in time amend. My quarrel is with this gentleman, and it is one of some standing, I believe."

"My sword is at your service, sir!" said Maurice von Lynar firmly.

"Again you mistake," returned the Prince more suavely than ever; "you have no sword. A prisoner, and (if I may say so without offence) a spy taken red-hand, cannot fight duels. The Prince of Courtland must settle this matter. When his Justiciar is satisfied, I shall most willingly take up my quarrel with—whatever is left of the most noble Count Maurice von Lynar."

To this Maurice did not reply, but with Margaret still beside him he followed Prince Louis up the narrow ancient stairway called from its shape the couch, into the gloomy audience chamber of the Castle of Courtland.

They reached the hall, and then at last, as though restored to power by his surroundings, Prince Louis found his tongue.

"A guard!" he cried; "hither Berghoff, Kampenfeldt! Conduct the Princess to her privy chamber and do not permit her to leave it without my permission. I would speak with this fellow alone."

Ivan hastily crossed over to Prince Louis and whispered in his ear.

In the meantime, ere the soldiers of the guard could approach, Margaret cried out in a loud clear voice, "I take you all to witness that I, Margaret of Courtland, am the wife of this man, Maurice von Lynar, Count von Löen. He is my wedded husband, and I love him with all my heart! According to God's holy ordinance he is mine!"

"You have forgotten the rest, fair Princess," suggested Prince Ivan subtly—"till death you do part!"