CHAPTER XLV
THE TRUTH-SPEAKING OF BORIS AND JORIAN
This is the report verbal of Captains Boris and Jorian, which they gavein face of their sovereigns in the garden pleasaunce of the palace ofPlassenburg. Hugo and Helene sat at opposite ends of a seat of twistedbranches. Hugo crossed his legs and whistled low with his thumbs in theslashing of his doublet, a habit of which Helene had long striven invain to cure him. The Princess was busy broidering the coronated doubleeagle of a new banner, but occasionally she raised her eyes to where onthe green slope beneath, under the wing of a sage woman of experience,the youthful hope of Plassenburg led his mimic armies to battle againstthe lilies by the orchard wall, or laid lance in rest to storm the tooeasy fortress of his nurse's lap.
"Boris," whispered Jorian, "remember! Do not lie, Boris. 'Tis toodangerous. You remember the last time?"
"Aye," growled Boris. "I have good cause to remember! What a liar ourHugo must have been in his time, so readily to suspect two honestsoldiers!"
"Speak out your minds, good lads!" said Hugo, leaning a little furtherback.
"Aye, tell us all," assented Helene, pausing to shake her head at theantics of the young Prince Karl; "tell us how you delivered theSparhawk, as you call him, the officer of the Duchess Joan!"
So Boris saluted and began.
"The tale is a long one, Prince and Princess," he said. "Of our manyand difficult endeavours to keep the peace and prevent quarrelling Iwill say nothing----"
"Better so!" interjected Hugo, with a gleam in his eye. Jorian coughedand growled to himself, "That long fool will make a mess of it!"
"I will pass on to our entry into Courtland. It was like the home-comingof a long-lost true prince. There was no fighting--alack, not so much asa stroke after all that pother of shouting!"
"Boris!" said the Princess warningly.
"Give him rope!" muttered Prince Hugo. "He will tangle himself rarely orall be done!"
"I mean by the blessing of Heaven there was no bloodshed," Boriscorrected himself. "There was, as I say, no fighting. There was none tofight with. Prince Louis had not a friend in his own capital city,saving the Muscovite. And at that moment Prince Ivan the Wasp was gladenough to win clear off to the frontier with his Cossacks at his tail.It was a God's pity we could not ride them down. But though Jorian and Idid all that men could----"
"Ahem!" said Jorian, as if a fly had flown into his mouth and tickledhis throat.
"I mean, your Highnesses, we did whatever men could to keep the populacewithin bounds. But they broke through and leaped upon us, throwing theirarms about our horses' necks, crying out, 'Our saviours!' 'Ourdeliverers!' God wot, we might as well have tried to charge through thebillows of the Baltic when it blows a norther right from the Gulf ofBothnia! But it almost broke my heart to see them ride off with never somuch as a spear thrust through one single Muscovite belly-band!"
Here Jorian had a fit of coughing which caused the Princess to lookseverely upon him. Boris, recalled to himself, proceeded more carefully.
"It was all we could do to open up a way to where the young man Mauricelay stretched on the Cross of Death. They had loosed the wild horsesbefore we arrived, and these had galloped off after their companions. Apity! Oh, a great pity!
"Then came the young man's mother near, she who was our hostess at IsleRugen----"
"Why did you not abide at Kernsberg as you were instructed?" put in Hugoat this point.
"Never mind--go on--tell the tale!" cried Helene, who was listeningbreathlessly.
"We thought it our duty to accompany the Duchess Joan," said Boris,deftly enough; "where the king is, there is the court!"
And at this point the two captains saluted very dutifully andrespectfully, like machines moved by one spring.
"Well said for once, thou overly long one," growled Jorian under hisbreath.
"Go on!" commanded Helene.
"The young man's mother came near and threw a cloak across his nakedbody. Then Jorian and I unbound him and chafed his limbs, first removingthe gag from his mouth; but so tightly had the cords been bound abouthim that for long he could not stand upright. Then, from the royalpavilion, where she had been brought for cruel sport to see the death,the Princess Margaret came running----"
"Oh, wickedness!" cried Helene, "to make her look on at her lover'sdeath!"
"She came furiously, though a dainty princess, thrusting strong menaside. 'Way there!' she cried, 'on your lives make way! I will go tohim. I am the Princess Margaret. Give me a dagger and I will prick me away.'"
"And, by Saint Stephen the holy martyr--if she did not snatch a bodkinfrom the belt of a tailor in the High Street and with it open up her wayas featly as though she were handling a Cossack lance."
"And what happened when she got to him--when she found her husband?"cried Helene, her eyes sparkling. And she put out a hand to touch herown, just to be sure that he was there.
"Truth, a very wondrous thing happened!" said Jorian, whose fingers alsohad been twitching, "a mightily wondrous thing. Thus it was----"
"Hold your tongue, sausage-bag!" growled Boris, very low; "who tellsthis tale, you or I?"
"Get on, then," answered in like fashion Captain Jorian, "you are aslong-winded and wheezy as a smith's bellows!"
"Yes, a strange thing it was. I was standing by Maurice von Lynar,undoing the cord from his neck. His mother was chafing an arm. The LadyJoan was bending to speak softly to him, for she had dismounted from herhorse, when, all in the snapping of a twig, the Princess Margaret camebursting through the ring which Jorian and the Kernsbergers were keepingwith their lance-butts. She thrust us all aside. By my faith, me shesent spinning like the young Prince's top there!"
"God save his Excellency!" quoth Jorian, not to be left out entirely.
"Silence!" cried Helene, with an imperious stamp of her little foot;"and do you, Boris, tell the tale without comparisons. What happenedthen?"
"Only the boy's mother kept her ground! She went on chafing his armwithout so much as raising her eyes."
"Did the Princess serve Joan of the Sword Hand as she served you?"interposed Hugo.
"Marry, worse!" cried Boris, growing excited for the first time. "Shethrust her aside like a kitchen wench, and our lady took it as meeklyas--as----"
"Go on! Did I not tell you to spare us your comparatives?" cried Helenethe Princess, letting her broidery slip to the ground in her consuminginterest.
"Well," said Boris, quickly sobered, "it was in truth a mighty quaintthing to see. The Princess Margaret took the young man in her arms andcaught him to her. The Lady Theresa kept hold of his wrist. They lookedat each other a moment without speech, eye countering eye like knightsat a----"
"Go on!" the Princess thundered, if indeed a silvern voice can be saidto thunder.
"'Give him up to me! He is mine!' cried the Princess.
"'He is mine!' answered very haughtily the lady of the Isle Rugen--'Whoare you?' 'And you?' cried both at once, flinging their heads back, butnever for a moment letting go with their hands. The youth, being dazed,said nothing, nor so much as moved.
"'I am his mother!' said the Lady Theresa, speaking first.
"'I am his wife!' said the Princess.
"Then the woman who had borne the young man gave him into his wife'sarms without a word, and the Princess gathered him to her bosom andcrooned over him, that being her right. But his mother stepped backamong the crowd and drew the hood of her cloak over her head that no manmight look upon her face."
"Bravo!" cried Helene, clapping her hands, "it was her right!"
"Little one," said her husband, pointing to the boy on the terracebeneath, who was lashing a toy horse of wood with all his baby might, "Iwonder if you will think so when another woman takes _him_ from you!"
The Princess Helene caught her breath sharply.
"That would be different!" she said, "yes, very different!"
"Ah!" said Hugo the Prince, her husband.