‘What a race you are! What a race – you Samavian Loristans!’
He paused as if to think the thing over again.
‘I want to see your face,’ he said next. ‘Here is a tree with a shaft of moonlight striking through the branches. Let us step aside and stand under it.’
Marco did as he was told. The shaft of moonlight fell upon his uplifted face and showed its young strength and darkness, quite splendid for the moment in a triumphant glow of joy in obstacles overcome. Raindrops hung on his hair, but he did not look draggled, only very wet and picturesque. He had reached his man. He had given the Sign.
The Prince looked him over with interested curiosity.
‘Yes,’ he said in his cool, rather dragging voice. ‘You are the son of Stefan Loristan. Also you must be taken care of. You must come with me. I have trained my household to remain in its own quarters until I require its service. I have attached to my own apartments a good safe little room where I sometimes keep people. You can dry your clothes and sleep there. When the gardens are opened again, the rest will be easy.’
But though he stepped out from under the trees and began to move towards the palace in the shadow, Marco noticed that he moved hesitatingly, as if he had not quite decided what he should do. He stopped rather suddenly and turned again to Marco, who was following him.
‘There is someone in the room I just now left,’ he said, ‘an old man – whom it might interest to see you. It might also be a good thing for him to feel interest in you. I choose that he shall see you – as you are.’
‘I am at your command, Highness,’ Marco answered. He knew his companion was smiling again.
‘You have been in training for more centuries than you know,’ he said; ‘and your father has prepared you to encounter the unexpected without surprise.’
They passed under the balcony and paused at a low stone doorway hidden behind shrubs. The door was a beautiful one, Marco saw when it was opened, and the corridor disclosed was beautiful also, though it had an air of quiet and aloofness which was not so much secret as private. A perfect though narrow staircase mounted from it to the next floor. After ascending it, the Prince led the way through a short corridor and stopped at the door at the end of it. ‘We are going in here,’ he said.
It was a wonderful room – the one which opened on to the balcony. Each piece of furniture in it, the hangings, the tapestries, and pictures on the wall were all such as might well have found themselves adorning a museum. Marco remembered the common report of his escort’s favourite amusement of collecting wonders and furnishing his house with the things others exhibited only as marvels of art and handicraft. The place was rich and mellow with exquisitely chosen beauties.
In a massive chair upon the hearth sat a figure with bent head. It was a tall old man with white hair and moustache. His elbows rested upon the arm of his chair and he leaned his forehead on his hand as if he were weary.
Marco’s companion crossed the room and stood beside him, speaking in a lowered voice. Marco could not at first hear what he said. He himself stood quite still, waiting. The white-haired man lifted his head and listened. It seemed as though almost at once he was singularly interested. The lowered voice was slightly raised at last and Marco heard the last two sentences: ‘The only son of Stefan Loristan. Look at him.’
The old man in the chair turned slowly and looked, steadily, and with questioning curiosity touched with grave surprise. He had keen and clear blue eyes.
Then Marco, still erect and silent, waited again. The Prince had merely said to him, ‘an old man whom it might interest to see you’. He had plainly intended that, whatsoever happened, he must make no outward sign of seeing more than he had been told he would see – ‘an old man’. It was for him to show no astonishment or recognition. He had been brought here not to see but to be seen. The power of remaining still under scrutiny, which The Rat had often envied him, stood now in good stead because he had seen the white head and tall form not many days before, surmounted by brilliant emerald plumes, hung with jewelled decorations, in the royal carriage, escorted by banners, and helmets, and following troops whose tramping feet kept time to bursts of military music while the populace bared their heads and cheered.
‘He is like his father,’ this personage said to the Prince. ‘But if anyone but Loristan had sent him – His looks please me.’ Then suddenly to Marco, ‘You were waiting outside while the storm was going on?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Marco answered.
Then the two exchanged some words still in the lowered voice.
‘You read the news as you made your journey?’ he was asked. ‘You know how Samavia stands?’
‘She does not stand,’ said Marco. ‘The Iarovitch and the Maranovitch have fought as hyenas fight, until each has torn the other into fragments – and neither has blood or strength left.’
The two glanced at each other.
‘A good simile,’ said the older person. ‘You are right. If a strong party rose – and a greater power chose not to interfere – the country might see better days.’ He looked at him a few moments longer and then waved his hand kindly.
‘You are a fine Samavian,’ he said. ‘I am glad of that. You may go. Goodnight.’
Marco bowed respectfully and the man with the tired face led him out of the room.
It was just before he left him in the small quiet chamber in which he was to sleep that the Prince gave him a final curious glance. ‘I remember now,’ he said. ‘In the room, when you answered the question about Samavia, I was sure that I had seen you before. It was the day of the celebration. There was a break in the crowd and I saw a boy looking at me. It was you.’
‘Yes,’ said Marco, ‘I have followed you each time you have gone out since then, but I could never get near enough to speak. Tonight seemed only one chance in a thousand.’
‘You are doing your work more like a man than a boy,’ was the next speech, and it was made reflectively. ‘No man could have behaved more perfectly than you did just now, when discretion and composure were necessary.’ Then, after a moment’s pause, ‘He was deeply interested and deeply pleased. Goodnight.’
When the gardens had been thrown open the next morning and people were passing in and out again, Marco passed out also. He was obliged to tell himself two or three times that he had not wakened from an amazing dream. He quickened his pace after he had crossed the street, because he wanted to get home to the attic and talk to The Rat. There was a narrow side-street it was necessary for him to pass through if he wished to make a shortcut. As he turned into it, he saw a curious figure leaning on crutches against a wall. It looked damp and forlorn, and he wondered if it could be a beggar. It was not. It was The Rat, who suddenly saw who was approaching and swung forward. His face was pale and haggard and he looked worn and frightened. He dragged off his cap and spoke in a voice which was hoarse as a crow’s.
‘God be thanked!’ he said. ‘God be thanked!’ as people always said it when they received the Sign, alone. But there was a kind of anguish in his voice as well as relief.
‘Aide-de-camp!’ Marco cried out – The Rat had begged him to call him so. ‘What have you been doing? How long have you been here?’
‘Ever since I left you last night,’ said The Rat clutching tremblingly at his arm as if to make sure he was real. ‘If there was not room for two in the hollow, there was room for one in the street. Was it my place to go off duty and leave you alone – was it?’
‘You were out in the storm?’
‘Weren’t you?’ said The Rat fiercely. ‘I huddled against the wall as well as I could. What did I care? Crutches don’t prevent a fellow waiting. I wouldn’t have left you if you’d given me orders. And that would have been mutiny. When you did not come out as soon as the gates opened, I felt as if my head got on fire. How could I know what had happened? I’ve not the nerve and backbone you have. I go half mad.’ For a second or so Marco did not answer. But when he put his hand on the damp sleeve, The Rat actually star
ted, because it seemed as though he were looking into the eyes of Stefan Loristan. ‘You look just like your father!’ he exclaimed, in spite of himself. ‘How tall you are!’
‘When you are near me,’ Marco said, in Loristan’s own voice, ‘when you are near me, I feel – I feel as if I were a royal prince attended by an army. You are my army.’ And he pulled off his cap with quick boyishness and added, ‘God be thanked!’
The sun was warm in the attic window when they reached their lodging, and the two leaned on the rough sill as Marco told his story. It took some time to relate; and when he ended, he took an envelope from his pocket and showed it to The Rat. It contained a flat package of money.
‘He gave it to me just before he opened the private door,’ Marco explained. ‘And he said to me, ‘It will not be long now. After Samavia, go back to London as quickly as you can – as quickly as you can!’
‘I wonder – what he meant?’ The Rat said, slowly. A tremendous thought had shot through his mind. But it was not a thought he could speak of to Marco.
‘I cannot tell. I thought that it was for some reason he did not expect me to know,’ Marco said. ‘We will do as he told us. As quickly as we can.’ They looked over the newspapers, as they did every day. All that could be gathered from any of them was that the opposing armies of Samavia seemed each to have reached the culmination of disaster and exhaustion. Which party had the power left to take any final step which could call itself a victory, it was impossible to say. Never had a country been in a more desperate case.
‘It is the time!’ said The Rat, glowering over his map. ‘If the Secret Party rises suddenly now, it can take Melzarr almost without a blow. It can sweep through the country and disarm both armies. They’re weakened – they’re half starved – they’re bleeding to death; they want to be disarmed. Only the Iarovitch and the Maranovitch keep on with the struggle because each is fighting for the power to tax the people and make slaves of them. If the Secret Party does not rise, the people will, and they’ll rush on the palaces and kill every Maranovitch and Iarovitch they find. And serve them right!’
‘Let us spend the rest of the day in studying the road map again,’ said Marco. ‘Tonight we must be on the way to Samavia!’
chapter twenty-six
across the frontier
That one day, a week later, two tired and travel-worn boy-mendicants should drag themselves with slow and weary feet across the frontier line between Jiardasia and Samavia, was not an incident to awaken suspicion or even to attract attention. War and hunger and anguish had left the country stunned and broken. Since the worst had happened, no one was curious as to what would befall them next. If Jiardasia herself had become a foe, instead of a friendly neighbour, and had sent across the border galloping hordes of soldiery, there would only have been more shrieks, and home-burnings, and slaughter which no one dare resist. But, so far, Jiardasia had remained peaceful. The two boys – one of them on crutches – had evidently travelled far on foot. Their poor clothes were dusty and travel-stained, and they stopped and asked for water at the first hut across the line. The one who walked without crutches had some coarse bread in a bag slung over his shoulder, and they sat on the roadside and ate it as if they were hungry. The old grandmother who lived alone in the hut sat and stared at them without any curiosity. She may have vaguely wondered why anyone crossed into Samavia in these days. But she did not care to know their reason. Her big son had lived in a village which belonged to the Maranovitch and he had been called out to fight for his lords. He had not wanted to fight and had not known what the quarrel was about, but he was forced to obey. He had kissed his handsome wife and four sturdy children, blubbering aloud when he left them. His village and his good crops and his house must be left behind. Then the Iarovitch swept through the pretty little cluster of homesteads which belonged to their enemy. They were mad with rage because they had met with great losses in a battle not far away, and, as they swooped through, they burned and killed, and trampled down fields and vineyards. The old woman’s son never saw either the burned walls of his house or the bodies of his wife and children, because he had been killed himself in the battle for which the Iarovitch were revenging themselves. Only the old grandmother who lived in the hut near the frontier line and stared vacantly at the passers-by remained alive. She wearily gazed at people and wondered why she did not hear news from her son and her grandchildren. But that was all.
When the boys were over the frontier and well on their way along the roads, it was not difficult to keep out of sight if it seemed necessary. The country was mountainous and there were deep and thick forests by the way – forests so far-reaching and with such thick undergrowth that full-grown men could easily have hidden themselves. It was because of this, perhaps, that this part of the country had seen little fighting. There was too great opportunity for secure ambush for a foe. As the two travellers went on, they heard of burned villages and towns destroyed, but they were towns and villages nearer Melzarr and other fortress-defended cities, or they were in the country surrounding the castles and estates of powerful nobles and leaders. It was true, as Marco had said to the white-haired personage, that the Maranovitch and Iarovitch had fought with the savageness of hyenas until at last the forces of each side lay torn and bleeding, their strength, their resources, their supplies exhausted.
Each day left them weaker and more desperate. Europe looked on with small interest in either party but with growing desire that the disorder should end and cease to interfere with commerce. All this and much more Marco and The Rat knew, but, as they made their cautious way through byways of the maimed and tortured little country, they learned other things. They learned that the stories of its beauty and fertility were not romances. Its heaven-reaching mountains, its immense plains of rich verdure on which flocks and herds might have fed by thousands, its splendour of deep forest and broad clear rushing rivers had a primeval majesty such as the first human creatures might have found on earth in the days of the Garden of Eden. The two boys travelled through forest and woodland when it was possible to leave the road. It was safe to thread a way among huge trees and tall ferns and young saplings. It was not always easy but it was safe. Sometimes they saw a charcoal-burner’s hut or a shelter where a shepherd was hiding with the few sheep left to him. Each man they met wore the same look of stony suffering in his face; but, when the boys begged for bread and water, as was their habit, no one refused to share the little he had. It soon became plain to them that they were thought to be two young fugitives whose homes had probably been destroyed and who were wandering about with no thought but that of finding safety until the worst was over. That one of them travelled on crutches added to their apparent helplessness, and that he could not speak the language of the country made him more an object of pity. The peasants did not know what language he spoke. Sometimes a foreigner came to find work in this small town or that. The poor lad might have come to the country with his father and mother and then have been caught in the whirlpool of war and tossed out on the world parentless. But no one asked questions. Even in their desolation they were silent and noble people who were too courteous for curiosity.
‘In the old days they were simple and stately and kind. All doors were open to travellers. The master of the poorest hut uttered a blessing and a welcome when a stranger crossed his threshold. It was the custom of the country,’ Marco said. ‘I read about it in a book of my father’s. About most of the doors the welcome was carved in stone. It was this – “The Blessing of the Son of God, and Rest within these Walls.”’
‘They are big and strong,’ said The Rat. ‘And they have good faces. They carry themselves as if they had been drilled – both men and women.’
It was not through the blood-drenched part of the unhappy land their way led them, but they saw hunger and dread in the villages they passed. Crops which should have fed the people had been taken from them for the use of the army; flocks and herds had been driven away, and faces were gaunt and gray. Those who had a
s yet only lost crops and herds knew that homes and lives might be torn from them at any moment. Only old men and women and children were left to wait for any fate which the chances of war might deal out to them.
When they were given food from some poor store, Marco would offer a little money in return. He dare not excite suspicion by offering much. He was obliged to let it be imagined that in his flight from his ruined home he had been able to snatch at and secrete some poor hoard which might save him from starvation. Often the women would not take what he offered. Their journey was a hard and hungry one. They must make it all on foot and there was little food to be found. But each of them knew how to live on scant fare. They travelled mostly by night and slept among the ferns and undergrowth through the day. They drank from running brooks and bathed in them. Moss and ferns made soft and sweet-smelling beds, and trees roofed them. Sometimes they lay long and talked while they rested. And at length a day came when they knew they were nearing their journey’s end.
‘It is nearly over now,’ Marco said, after they had thrown themselves down in the forest in the early hours of one dewy morning. ‘He said “After Samavia, go back to London as quickly as you can – as quickly as you can.” He said it twice. As if – something were going to happen.’
‘Perhaps it will happen more suddenly than we think – the thing he meant,’ answered The Rat.
Suddenly he sat up on his elbow and leaned towards Marco.
‘We are in Samavia!’ he said ‘We two are in Samavia! And we are near the end!’
Marco rose on his elbow also. He was very thin as a result of hard travel and scant feeding. His thinness made his eyes look immense and black as pits. But they burned and were beautiful with their own fire.
‘Yes,’ he said, breathing quickly. ‘And though we do not know what the end will be, we have obeyed orders. The Prince was next to the last one. There is only one more. The old priest.’