When we came in sight of the Fir Cone again, Jones was there, pacing up and down in front of it. “What did you find out?” I asked, as we filed into the tap room.
He jerked back a chair and plumped himself into it. “Ravan’s at court, apparently so busy that he never has time to come to town.”
“Not good,” Golias said. “I’d much rather have our interview with him out of earshot of the king, not to mention the royal guards.” He pulled thoughtfully at his nose. “It might be well to wait until he’s less engaged with his arch majesty; but you want to go out there right away, I suppose.”
“I am going out there,” Lucius declared. “Why, if I wait until Don Rodrigos at leisure — ”
“I can see that point,” Golias conceded. “Well, let’s get our beards off. Then we’ll have a snack — I’d hate to be killed on an empty stomach — and by that time our new duds should be here. How far is it to Xanadu, would you say, Lucius?”
“About seven miles.”
“That jibes with my own recollection.” Golias clinked his full purse. “Now that we’re in funds, we’ll hire a coach to take us as far as the gardens.”
“Why not to the palace itself?” I asked.
“We’re not exactly invited, and by driving up in style we’d attract more attention than I care to.”
“I wish we had some plan of campaign,” I said, when we were on our way a couple of hours later.
Golias stopped whistling to smile. “We’re not being as foolish as you might think,” he observed. “It’s only good sense to go looking for trouble, because then at least you have your eyes open; while if you stay still, trouble will sneak up on you and pot you like a sitting bird. As for a plan to use against it, there’s no such thing. When your tail’s in a crack, you improvise if you’re good enough. Otherwise you give your pelt to the trapper.”
I wasn’t much comforted by his philosophy, and I didn’t feel better when I saw Xanadu. It was a town boxed in by walls like those of a state prison. There were gates with soldiers at them, and if those gates closed, you stayed inside.
The sight of the palace itself on the other hand cheered me somewhat. It was built for fun and comfort, so obviously so that the thought of violence seemed incongruous. Even pleasanter to the eye was the park around it, a mass of fountains, greenery, and blossoms, seamed with winding walks. Dismounting, we began making our way along one of them.
Most of the other people we saw were sauntering rather than going anywhere. Allowing for the fact that all the men were armed, it was rather like Lincoln Park on a Sunday afternoon, minus the pigeons and children. We drew some notice by our brisk advance along walks dedicated to idleness and flirtation, a fact that gave me concern. Golias evidently felt the same way.
“We’d do better not to be conspicuous, Lucius.”
“Don’t accompany me, if it worries you,” Jones told him. Instantly he was sorry. “No, I didn’t mean that! But I can’t go slow.”
“Take your pace then,” I growled, “and watch where you’re walking. You don’t have to run over other people just because you’re in a hurry.”
I made this remark, because Jones, while apologizing to Golias, wasn’t giving clearance to a pair of men rounding a twist in the path just ahead of us. Lucius looked up, but instead of yielding space he stepped directly in their way.
“Rodrigo!” he exclaimed; and the name was a threat and a curse as well as a recognition.
I would have stood on my guard if a man had spoken to me like that, but the fellow Jones was glaring at halted as if he was slightly puzzled about something. “Watch it, Lucius!” I cried, but in place of the pistol I had expected, he pulled a lorgnette out of his pocket. Through this instrument of superciliousness he peered at the fuming man who confronted him.
“If it’s not my pseudo-kinsman, Mr. Jones,” he said to his companion, “it’s somebody just as silly-looking.”
I think Lucius was already too deep in fury to be bothered by insults; but the fact that Ravan was amused rather than on the defensive did get under his skin. He reached out and bunched the other’s blouse in his big left fist.
“Damn you! Where is she?”
“Careful, you fool, that’s the king’s favorite!” Ravan’s companion made the mistake of tugging at the offending arm, as he gave that warning.
I wouldn’t have believed that so much anger could have lived in the same carcass with so much good nature. Jones was wild with it beyond all the drags of discretion.
“What the hell do I care if the king doesn’t know any better?” he shouted. While so doing he gave the man a push which tripped him over his own sword and sat him on his can in a rain pool just big enough to accommodate it. Then Lucius tugged at Don Rodrigo’s blouse. “Where is she, I asked you.”
In my experience two handsomer men never confronted each other. But leaving out of account the fact that they were about the same height, their looks had little in common. Lucius was sandy-haired, rugged, and healthy. Ravan was twenty years old, dark, and of a wirier build. He appeared athletic enough, but his complexion had ripened indoors, and the mice, small ones as yet, had crept under his eyes to stay. The eyes themselves had the gift of concealing emotion.
Now they looked mild, as he gazed back at Jones. “Whom do you refer to? And, by the way, you’re crinkling my newest tunic.”
Seeing that he had got him to talk, Lucius let go. “I mean the Lady Hermione ap Hawthorn, kidnapped by some bastards of your hiring. Where is she?”
“Oh, you mean my fiancée?”
“Mine, blast you! Or she would still be if it wasn’t for you.”
“The king says otherwise,” Don Rodrigo said. “I expressly asked him for his blessing on my marriage to the Lady Hermione.”
“Blast the king!” Jones roared. “What’s he got to do with it? She’s not his ward.”
Ravan’s companion had arisen from his puddle. “You can’t talk about his majesty that way!” he cried.
I myself was uneasy about the way Lucius was throwing the king’s name around. “What about it?” I whispered to Golias. “Do you think we’d better call him off?”
“He wouldn’t listen,” Golias murmured. “We’ll be lucky if he blows off steam with words only.”
While we were muttering, Don Rodrigo was deciding where to slip his knife in next. “I understand that the lady herself has raised an objection to the match, but if she didn’t want the king to bestow her, she shouldn’t have run away from her natural guardian. In other words, she had made her bed, and I shall lie in it.”
Lucius let him have it then, a smash to the jaw that sent his enemy crashing into the shrubbery which lined the path. It was only one point of action among several. Golias jumped for Ravan’s companion, but didn’t get there in time. Before his hands closed on the fellow’s throat the latter had bleated.
“Help! The guards! My Lord Ravan!”
Meanwhile, and though I could hear shouts and running feet, Jones had drawn his sword. “You were hit, weren’t you,” he yelled. “Draw, so I can kill you.”
Ravan did know he had been hit. It took him a minute to pull himself together, but he was ready enough then. That blow had taken the enamel off him, and he wasn’t posing when his sword came out. His face was that of a killer who thought he had found fresh meat.
As for me, I ended by drawing my cane sword, although not knowing how to use it or whom I was going to use it on, simply because I couldn’t stand there and do nothing. Thus we were all three obvious enemies to the peace when the royal guards charged on the scene.
There were too many of them to resist, even if we had wanted to make our position worse by defying these direct representatives of the arch king’s authority. Having seen to it that each of us was collared by no less than four of his men apiece, the officer in command saluted Ravan.
“The Chateau d’lf, my lord?”
It was his lord’s companion, his throat not yet recovered from the grip of Golias’ fingers, who re
plied. “Yes, the Chateau d’lf,” he whispered, wheezing and coughing. “Put ’em deep down, and in irons.”
The officer flipped open a note book. “And the charges, sir?”
“Attempted murder in his blessed majesty’s own royal enclosure, and — ”
“Wait a minute, Varney,” Ravan intervened. “As the person murderously assaulted, I have something to say here.”
“You have everything to say, my lord,” Varney agreed. “I was only — ”
“Talking out of turn,” Ravan cut him off. “Now, captain, can I ask you to be patient a few minutes while I quiz one of your prisoners?”
“We can wait an hour — or three — if your lordship wishes.”
Stepping past him, Don Rodrigo stepped in front of the glowering Jones. “Another man might be angry with you,” he remarked, “but I can’t find it in my heart to hold a grudge so near my nuptials.”
The wildness had passed from Lucius’ eyes to leave a look of despairing loathing. He said nothing.
“Now if you enter the Chateau d’lf,” the other went on reflectively, “you will leave it alive only in the event that the king, which Heaven forbid, dies before you.”
He took off his hat when he asked Heaven to look after the king. Varney did likewise, and the captain snapped to attention, both saying: “Amen.”
“The new monarch would probably honor custom by granting a general amnesty on his assumption of the throne,” Ravan explained. “But I should point out that the present all-wise and gracious ruler is healthy, which is more than can be said for the Chateau d’lf. Your chances of being out by my wedding day are slight.”
If Jones had glanced my way, he must have seen a face as pale and sick as his own. I took it that his sentence would also be that of Golias and myself. And if I wasn’t losing my sweetheart into the bargain, I was agonizingly conscious of the fact that this wasn’t basically my affair at all.
“Now,” Don Rodrigo went on when Lucius remained silent, “I should hate for anyone who was once considered my kinsman not to be present to wish joy to my lovely bride and myself when the marital bond makes us one in the spirit — and, of course, in the flesh.” He had the screw way down now, and he was ready to crush the bone. “Out of my magnanimity, augmented by my strong family feeling, I will see to it that instead of rotting in prison you will be released — free to eat, drink, be merry, and to wed whoever will have a man of dubious ancestry and no patrimony — if only I have your sworn word that you will come to my wedding.”
So great was my relief that I hardly appreciated the mind which could devise such careful cruelty. I could feel that the soldiers’ grip on my arms had slackened, and I stopped sweating. I felt sorry for Jones meanwhile — but not half so sorry as I felt for myself a moment later.
“No!” Lucius was snarling again. “Fight me!”
“Why, to tell the truth,” Ravan said, “you’re a better swordsman than I would have thought, and I never fight anybody I’m not sure of beating. Fight the walls of Chateau d’lf. I’ll leave you your sword and will send every day to find out who’s winning. You can also try your blade on the bad air, the dampness, the dark, the dog food, the groans of your dying neighbors, the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, and the years.”
Everything in his catalogue scorched my imagination, as he let the items fall on it one by one. It must have had a similar effect on Jones, for he had to brace himself before he opened his mouth.
“Stop talking and do what you’re going to do,” he said.
I wanted to yell at him that he had us to think of, too; but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. It took guts for Lucius to do what he was doing, and it wasn’t for me to bring added pressure to make him knuckle down. Ravan, however, was not the man to pass over this weapon.
“If you persist in being disobliging in so trivial a matter, you are also dooming your associates,” he pointed out.
It wasn’t in my power to tell Lucius to go ahead and never mind me, though I tried to keep my eyes blank as he looked my way. He hadn’t had time to think of us, naturally, and I could see that he was stunned by this new attack. He gave a little moan, and Don Rodrigo smiled.
So engrossed had I been with my own feelings and those of Jones that I hadn’t given Golias a thought. Now he spoke up.
“He’s only asked you to go to his wedding, Lucius. The request included no mention of whom he was going to marry. Am I right, my lord?”
Ravan looked more amused than ever. “I believe you are, and although I might amend my phrasing now that you’ve called the oversight to my attention, I’ll allow the quibble.”
It was the only thing that could help. In prison, for whatsoever noble reasons, Lucius couldn’t rescue his girl. He might not be able to anyhow, but he would be free to try without breaking his word. It was not until then that I reflected that I had never once wondered why Lucius hadn’t promised, just so he could get out from under. And I saw the answer, too, though it never would have occurred to me before I came to the Commonwealth. In a way it would have been a more crushing victory over him for Ravan — and certainly Don Rodrigo would have known and relished it — than the latter could win either by imprisoning him or stealing his fiancée.
But that was at the back of my mind. In its front was the desire to shout at him to take the opening Golias had found. Yet I couldn’t mention the argument which would hold most weight with him, for fear Ravan might take back his offer. I added several strands of white hair to my lock while Lucius was working the problem over; and when he started to speak I felt like a man up for homicide waiting for the foreman of the jury to open his mouth.
“All right,” he said. “When does your damned lordship propose to marry, and where will the ceremony take place?”
Don Rodrigo laughed. “Hard to get out, wasn’t it? Let’s see; the place will naturally be wherever the king is holding court, and the time will be as soon as I return from the confidential mission on which his benign majesty is sending me tonight. That will make it necessary to defer my wedding and honeymoon plans for some weeks, possibly even a couple of months.” He then addressed the waiting officer again. “As this is more or less a family quarrel, complicated by a little boyish jealousy on the part of my backdoor cousin here, I’m going to ask you to forget that this incident took place. Possibly your promotion is overdue?”
The captain thought it was, but we didn’t listen to the details. We were free and got out of there.
16
A New Problem
“WE DIDN’T gain much by a frontal attack,” I said, when we were back at the Fir Cone, “but at least we found out that we have some time to spare.”
“Not too much,” Lucius said. He unbuckled his sword and picked up my sword cane. “I’m going to the Hell Fire Club again. There’ll be a lot more around than were present this morning, so it’s possible that I’ll learn something useful.”
“Will you wait here for him?” Golias asked when Jones had left us.
“There’s nothing else to do,” I said, and thankfully, for I was beginning to know that I hadn’t had much rest the night before. “Why, what are you planning on?”
For answer he showed me a pair of dice, then closed his fist on them and made them cackle. “I’m going to finance this rescue expedition. I know from experience that such a business costs money. Guessing that leg wasn’t mine in fee simple, Barabas screwed me way down on what he gave for it; and we’ll need horses and maybe a gang of armed bravos before we’re through.”
If I hadn’t recalled his success on Brodir’s ship, I might have warned him about gambling with strangers. As it was, I only said: “Do they let you play with your own dice hereabouts?”
“Mine or theirs, it won’t matter tonight,” he said. “I feel lucky.”
In view of his plans, we ate early. Golias left as soon as we had finished, and I settled myself to hold the fort. I would rather have gone to our room to cork off for a few hours, or m
aybe ten, but Lucius would be in need of company when he returned. So I dozed where I was, coming out of it every now and then to fiddle dopily with the pipe I had ordered. After about an hour of this, when I was beginning to come out of it a little, Lucius showed up. He was looking so excited that I was sure he had found out something.
“What did you hear?” I demanded.
His gloom returned for a moment. “Nothing at all.”
“That’s too bad,” I sympathized, turning to look for a waiter. “Where’s that soup caddy? You must be starved.”
“No — er — I hope you didn’t wait for me.”
“Not a chance. Golias had a project, and we didn’t know how late you’d be.”
“That’s fine, for I’ve already eaten. I wouldn’t have, knowing there was a possibility you might be waiting; but I met somebody.”
“Where is she now?”
He flushed, half shamefaced and half indignant. “It was a man, Shandon. You see, I was pretty despondent when I didn’t learn anything on my second visit to the club, and as I didn’t feel up to joining any of those roaring boys, I stopped at a tavern instead for a drink of brandy to keep me company on the way here. No doubt I looked as downhearted as I felt, for this officer — an awfully jolly, considerate fellow — asked me if he could buy me another drink in hopes of making me feel better. Then he was kind enough to enquire as to what was troubling me.”
“I hope to the devil you didn’t tell him.”
“Oh, I didn’t give him any particulars,” Jones said, “but I told him in a general way.”
“What for? You don’t look potted, let alone true-confession drunk.”
“I wasn’t just looking for tavern sympathy,” he repudiated the suggestion, “but he said he’d be able to help — or rather he knew somebody who would.”
“Huh?” The waiter had come, and while Lucius was speaking I had been ordering a bottle. “Why should he want to help and how could he? Especially as he doesn’t know, according to you, who’s doing what to whom.”