The prisoner of Zenda
myself--ay, and the real King in Zenda, were pieces in his game; and
pawns have no business with passions. Not even at the walls of the
Palace did he stop; for when at last I handed Flavia down the broad
marble steps and into her carriage, there was a great crowd awaiting
us, and we were welcomed with deafening cheers. What could I do? Had I
spoken then, they would have refused to believe that I was not the King;
they might have believed that the King had run mad. By Sapt’s devices
and my own ungoverned passion I had been forced on, and the way back had
closed behind me; and the passion still drove me in the same direction
as the devices seduced me. I faced all Strelsau that night as the King
and the accepted suitor of the Princess Flavia.
At last, at three in the morning, when the cold light of dawning day
began to steal in, I was in my dressing-room, and Sapt alone was with
me. I sat like a man dazed, staring into the fire; he puffed at his
pipe; Fritz was gone to bed, having almost refused to speak to me. On
the table by me lay a rose; it had been in Flavia’s dress, and, as we
parted, she had kissed it and given it to me.
Sapt advanced his hand towards the rose, but, with a quick movement, I
shut mine down upon it.
“That’s mine,” I said, “not yours--nor the King’s either.”
“We struck a good blow for the King tonight,” said he.
I turned on him fiercely.
“What’s to prevent me striking a blow for myself?” I said.
He nodded his head.
“I know what’s in your mind,” he said. “Yes, lad; but you’re bound in
honour.”
“Have you left me any honour?”
“Oh, come, to play a little trick on a girl--”
“You can spare me that. Colonel Sapt, if you would not have me utterly a
villain--if you would not have your King rot in Zenda, while Michael and
I play for the great stake outside--You follow me?”
“Ay, I follow you.”
“We must act, and quickly! You saw tonight--you heard--tonight--”
“I did,” said he.
“Your cursed acuteness told you what I should do. Well, leave me here a
week--and there’s another problem for you. Do you find the answer?”
“Yes, I find it,” he answered, frowning heavily. “But if you did that,
you’d have to fight me first--and kill me.”
“Well, and if I had--or a score of men? I tell you, I could raise all
Strelsau on you in an hour, and choke you with your lies--yes, your mad
lies--in your mouth.”
“It’s gospel truth,” he said--“thanks to my advice you could.”
“I could marry the princess, and send Michael and his brother together
to--”
“I’m not denying it, lad,” said he.
“Then, in God’s name,” I cried, stretching out my hands to him, “let us
go to Zenda and crush this Michael and bring the King back to his own
again.” The old fellow stood and looked at me for full a minute.
“And the princess?” he said.
I bowed my head to meet my hands, and crushed the rose between my
fingers and my lips.
I felt his hand on my shoulder, and his voice sounded husky as he
whispered low in my ear:
“Before God, you’re the finest Elphberg of them all. But I have eaten
of the King’s bread, and I am the King’s servant. Come, we will go to
Zenda!”
And I looked up and caught him by the hand. And the eyes of both of us
were wet.
CHAPTER 11
Hunting a Very Big Boar
The terrible temptation which was assailing me will now be understood.
I would so force Michael’s hand that he must kill the King. I was in a
position to bid him defiance and tighten my grasp on the crown--not for
its own sake, but because the King of Ruritania was to wed the Princess
Flavia. What of Sapt and Fritz? Ah! but a man cannot be held to write
down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm his brain when
an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them. Yet, unless
he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better
employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to
resist was vouchsafed to him, than in fretting over wicked impulses
which come unsought and extort an unwilling hospitality from the
weakness of our nature.
It was a fine bright morning when I walked, unattended, to the
princess’s house, carrying a nosegay in my hand. Policy made excuses
for love, and every attention that I paid her, while it riveted my own
chains, bound closer to me the people of the great city, who worshipped
her. I found Fritz’s _inamorata_, the Countess Helga, gathering blooms in
the garden for her mistress’s wear, and prevailed on her to take mine in
their place. The girl was rosy with happiness, for Fritz, in his turn,
had not wasted his evening, and no dark shadow hung over his wooing,
save the hatred which the Duke of Strelsau was known to bear him.
“And that,” she said, with a mischievous smile, “your Majesty has made
of no moment. Yes, I will take the flowers; shall I tell you, sire, what
is the first thing the princess does with them?”
We were talking on a broad terrace that ran along the back of the house,
and a window above our heads stood open.
“Madame!” cried the countess merrily, and Flavia herself looked out. I
bared my head and bowed. She wore a white gown, and her hair was loosely
gathered in a knot. She kissed her hand to me, crying:
“Bring the King up, Helga; I’ll give him some coffee.”
The countess, with a gay glance, led the way, and took me into Flavia’s
morning-room. And, left alone, we greeted one another as lovers are
wont. Then the princess laid two letters before me. One was from Black
Michael--a most courteous request that she would honour him by spending
a day at his Castle of Zenda, as had been her custom once a year in the
summer, when the place and its gardens were in the height of their great
beauty. I threw the letter down in disgust, and Flavia laughed at me.
Then, growing grave again, she pointed to the other sheet.
“I don’t know who that comes from,” she said. “Read it.”
I knew in a moment. There was no signature at all this time, but the
handwriting was the same as that which had told me of the snare in the
summer-house: it was Antoinette de Mauban’s.
“I have no cause to love you,” it ran, “but God forbid that you should
fall into the power of the duke. Accept no invitations of his. Go
nowhere without a large guard--a regiment is not too much to make you
safe. Show this, if you can, to him who reigns in Strelsau.”
“Why doesn’t it say ‘the King’?” asked Flavia, leaning over my shoulder,
so that the ripple of her hair played on my cheek. “Is it a hoax?”
“As you value life, and more than life, my queen,” I said, “obey it to
the very letter. A regiment shall camp round your house today. See that
you do not go out unless well guarded.”
“An order, sire?” she asked, a little rebellious.
“Yes, an order, madame--if you love me.”
“Ah!” she cried; and I could not but kiss her.
“You know who sent it?” she asked.
“I guess,” said I. “It is from a good friend--and I fear, an unhappy
woman. You must be ill, Flavia, and unable to go to Zenda. Make your
excuses as cold and formal as you like.”
“So you feel strong enough to anger Michael?” she said, with a proud
smile.
“I’m strong enough for anything, while you are safe,” said I.
Soon I tore myself away from her, and then, without consulting Sapt, I
took my way to the house of Marshal Strakencz. I had seen something
of the old general, and I liked and trusted him. Sapt was less
enthusiastic, but I had learnt by now that Sapt was best pleased when
he could do everything, and jealousy played some part in his views. As
things were now, I had more work than Sapt and Fritz could manage, for
they must come with me to Zenda, and I wanted a man to guard what I
loved most in all the world, and suffer me to set about my task of
releasing the King with a quiet mind.
The Marshal received me with most loyal kindness. To some extent, I took
him into my confidence. I charged him with the care of the princess,
looking him full and significantly in the face as I bade him let no one
from her cousin the duke approach her, unless he himself were there and
a dozen of his men with him.
“You may be right, sire,” said he, shaking his grey head sadly. “I have
known better men than the duke do worse things than that for love.”
I could quite appreciate the remark, but I said:
“There’s something beside love, Marshal. Love’s for the heart; is there
nothing my brother might like for his head?”
“I pray that you wrong him, sire.”
“Marshal, I’m leaving Strelsau for a few days. Every evening I will
send a courier to you. If for three days none comes, you will publish an
order which I will give you, depriving Duke Michael of the governorship
of Strelsau and appointing you in his place. You will declare a state of
siege. Then you will send word to Michael that you demand an audience of
the King--You follow me?”
“Ay, sire.”
“--In twenty-four hours. If he does not produce the King” (I laid my
hand on his knee), “then the King is dead, and you will proclaim the
next heir. You know who that is?”
“The Princess Flavia.”
“And swear to me, on your faith and honour and by the fear of the living
God, that you will stand by her to the death, and kill that reptile, and
seat her where I sit now.”
“On my faith and honour, and by the fear of God, I swear it! And may
Almighty God preserve your Majesty, for I think that you go on an errand
of danger.”
“I hope that no life more precious than mine may be demanded,” said I,
rising. Then I held out my hand to him.
“Marshal,” I said, “in days to come, it may be--I know not--that you
will hear strange things of the man who speaks to you now. Let him be
what he may, and who he may, what say you of the manner in which he has
borne himself as King in Strelsau?”
The old man, holding my hand, spoke to me, man to man.
“I have known many of the Elphbergs,” said he, “and I have seen you.
And, happen what may, you have borne yourself as a wise King and a brave
man; ay, and you have proved as courteous a gentleman and as gallant a
lover as any that have been of the House.”
“Be that my epitaph,” said I, “when the time comes that another sits on
the throne of Ruritania.”
“God send a far day, and may I not see it!” said he.
I was much moved, and the Marshal’s worn face twitched. I sat down and
wrote my order.
“I can hardly yet write,” said I; “my finger is stiff still.”
It was, in fact, the first time that I had ventured to write more than
a signature; and in spite of the pains I had taken to learn the King’s
hand, I was not yet perfect in it.
“Indeed, sire,” he said, “it differs a little from your ordinary
handwriting. It is unfortunate, for it may lead to a suspicion of
forgery.”
“Marshal,” said I, with a laugh, “what use are the guns of Strelsau, if
they can’t assuage a little suspicion?”
He smiled grimly, and took the paper.
“Colonel Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim go with me,” I continued.
“You go to seek the duke?” he asked in a low tone.
“Yes, the duke, and someone else of whom I have need, and who is at
Zenda,” I replied.
“I wish I could go with you,” he cried, tugging at his white moustache.
“I’d like to strike a blow for you and your crown.”
“I leave you what is more than my life and more than my crown,” said I,
“because you are the man I trust more than all other in Ruritania.”
“I will deliver her to you safe and sound,” said he, “and, failing that,
I will make her queen.”
We parted, and I returned to the Palace and told Sapt and Fritz what
I had done. Sapt had a few faults to find and a few grumbles to
utter. This was merely what I expected, for Sapt liked to be consulted
beforehand, not informed afterwards; but on the whole he approved of my
plans, and his spirits rose high as the hour of action drew nearer and
nearer. Fritz, too, was ready; though he, poor fellow, risked more than