Part 42 (2/2)

Maurice stood alone, his tall slender figure supple and erect. One hand rested easily upon his swordless thigh, while the other still held the plumed hat he s.n.a.t.c.hed up as in frantic haste he had followed Margaret from the Summer Palace.

There ensued a long silence in which the Sparhawk eyed his captors haughtily, while Prince Louis watched him from under the grey penthouse of his eyebrows.

Then three several times the Prince essayed to speak, and as often utterance was choked within him. His feelings could only find vent in muttered imprecations, half smothered by a consuming rage. Then Prince Ivan crossed over and laid his hand restrainingly on his arm. The touch seemed to calm his friend, and, after swallowing several times as there had been a knot in his throat, at last he spoke.

For the second time in his life Maurice von Lynar stood alone among his enemies; but this time in peril far deadlier than among the roisterous pleasantries of Castle Kernsberg. Yet he was as little daunted now as then. Once on a time a d.u.c.h.ess had saved him. Now a princess loved him.

And even if she could not save him, still that was better.

”So,” cried Prince Louis, in the curiously uneven voice of a coward las.h.i.+ng himself into a fury, ”you have played out your treachery upon a reigning Prince of Courtland. You cheated me at Castle Kernsberg. Now you have made me a laughing-stock throughout the Empire. You have shamed a maiden of my house, my sister, the daughter of my father. What have you to say ere I order you to be flung out from the battlements of the western tower?”

”Ere it comes to that I shall have something to say, Prince Louis,”

interrupted Prince Wasp, smiling. ”We must not waste such dainty powers of masquerade on anything so vulgar as the hangman's rope.”

”Gentlemen and princes,” Maurice von Lynar answered, ”that which I have done I have done for the sake of my mistress, the Lady Joan, and I am not afraid. Prince Louis, it was her will and intent never to come to Courtland as your wife. She would not have been taken alive. It was therefore the duty of her servants to preserve her life, and I offered myself in her stead. My life was hers already, for she had preserved it.

She had given. It was hers to take. With the chief captains of Kernsberg I plotted that she should be seized and carried to a place of refuge wherein no foe could even find her. There she abides with chosen men to guard her. I took her place and was delivered up that Kernsberg might be cleared of its enemies. Gladly I came that I might pay a little of my debt to my sovran lady and liege mistress, Joan d.u.c.h.ess of Kernsberg and Hohenstein.”

”n.o.bly perorated!” cried Prince Ivan, clapping his hands. ”Right sonorously ended. Faith, a paladin, a deliverer of oppressed damsels, a very carnival masquerader! He will play you the dragon, this fellow, or he will act Saint George with a sword of lath! He will amble you the hobby-horse, or be the Holy Virgin in a miracle play. Well, he shall play in one more good scene ere I have done with him. But, listen, Sir Mummer, in all this there is no word of the Princess Margaret. How comes it that you so loudly proclaim having given yourself a n.o.ble sacrifice for one fair lady, when at the same time you are secretly married to another? Are you a deliverer of ladies by wholesale? Speak to this point. Let us have another n.o.ble period--its subject my affianced bride.

Already we have heard of your high devotion to Prince Louis's wife.

Well--next!”

But it was the Princess who spoke from where she stood behind the crossed swords of her guards.

”That _I_ will answer. I am a woman, and weak in your hands, princes both. You have set the grasp of rude men-at-arms upon the wrist of a Princess of Courtland. But you can never compel her soul. Brother Louis, my father committed me to you as a little child--have I not been a loving and a faithful sister to you? And till this Muscovite came between, were you not good to me? Wherefore have you changed? Why has he made you cruel to your little Margaret?”

Prince Louis turned towards his sister, moving his hands uncertainly and even deprecatingly.

Ivan moved quickly to his side and whispered something which instantly rekindled the light of anger in the weakling's eyes.

”You are no sister of mine,” he said; ”you have disgraced your family and yourself. Whether it be true or no that you are married to this man matters little!”

”It is true; I do not lie!” said Margaret recovering herself.

”So much the worse, then, and he shall suffer for it. At least I can hide, if I cannot prevent, your shame!”

”I will never give him up; nothing on earth shall part our love!”

Prince Ivan smiled delicately, turning to where she stood at the end of the hall.

”Sweet Princess,” he said, ”divorce is, I understand, contrary to your holy Roman faith. But in my land we have discovered a readier way than any papal bull. Be good enough to observe this”--he held a dagger in his hand. ”It is a little blade of steel, but a span long, and narrow as one of your dainty fingers, yet it will divorce the best married pair in the world.”

”But neither dagger nor the hate of enemies can sever love,” Margaret answered proudly. ”You may slay my husband, but he is mine still. You cannot twain our souls.”

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