Joan of the Sword Hand

by S. R. Crockett

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  THE BLACK DEATH

  The Princes of Courtland and Muscovy, inseparable as the Princesses,were on the pleasant creeper-shaded terrace which looks over the rosegarden of the palace of Courtland down upon the sea plain of the Baltic,now stretching blue black from verge to verge under the imminent sun ofnoon.

  Prince Louis moved restlessly to and fro, now biting his lip, nowfrowning and fumbling with his sword-hilt, and anon half drawing hisjewelled dagger from its sheath and allowing it to slip back again withthe faintly musical click of perfectly fitting steel. Ivan of Muscovy,on the other hand, lounged listlessly in the angle of an embrasure,alternately contemplating his red-pointed toes shod in Cordovan leather,and glancing keenly from under his eyelids at his nervous companion asoften as his back was turned in the course of his ceaselessperambulations.

  "You would desert me, Ivan," Prince Louis was saying in a tone at onceappealing and childishly aggressive: "you would leave me in the hour ofmy need. You would take away from me my sister Margaret, who alone hasinfluence with the Princess, my wife!"

  "But you do not try to court the lady with any proper fervour," objectedIvan, half humouring and half irritating his companion; "you observenone of the rules. Speak her soft, praise her eyelashes--surely they areworthy of all praise; give her a pet lamb for a playmate. Feed her withconserves of honey and spice. Surely such comfits would mollify evenJoan of the Sword Hand!"

  "Tush!--you flout me, Ivan--even you. Every one despises me since--sinceshe flouted me. The woman is a tigress, I tell you. Every time she looksat me her eyes flick across me like a whip-lash!"

  "That is but her maiden modesty. How often is it assumed to cover love!"murmured Ivan, demurely smiling at his shoe point, which noddedautomatically before him. "So doth the glance of my sweet bride ofto-day, your own sister Margaret. To all seeming she loves me as littleas the Lady Joan does you. Yet I am not afraid. I know women. Before Ihave her a month in Moscow she will run that she may be allowed to pullmy shoes off and on. She will be out of breath with hasting to fetch myslippers--together with other little domestic offices of that sort, allvery profitable for women's souls to perform. Take pattern by me, Louis,and teach the tigress to bring your shoes and tie your hose points. In alittle while she will like it and hold up her cheek to be kissed for asufficient reward."

  At this point an officer came swiftly across the parterre and stood withuncovered head by the steps of the terrace, waiting permission toascend. The Prince summoned him with a movement of his hand.

  "What news?" he said; "have the ladies yet left the Summer Palace?"

  "No, my lord," answered the officer earnestly; "but Johannes Rode of thePrincess Margaret's household has come with a message that the plaguehas broken out there, and that the Lady Princess is the first stricken!"

  "Which Princess?" demanded Ivan, with an instant incision of tone.

  "The Lady Joan, Princess of Courtland, your Highness," replied the man,without, however, looking at the Prince of Muscovy.

  "The Lady Joan?" cried the Prince Louis. "She is ill? She has broughtthe Black Death with her from Kernsberg! She is stricken with theplague? How fortunate that, so far, I----"

  He clapped his hand upon his brow and shut his eyes as if giving thanks.

  "I see it all now!" he cried. "This is the reason the Kernsberg traitorswere so willing to give her up. It is all a plot against my life. I willnot go near. Let the court physicians be sent! Cause the doors of theSummer Palace to be sealed! Set double guards! Permit none to passeither way, save the doctors only! And let them change their clothes andperfume themselves with the smoke of sulphur before they come out!"

  His voice mounted higher and higher as he spoke, and Ivan of Muscovywatched him without speaking, as with hands thrust out and distendednostrils he screamed and gesticulated.

  Prince Ivan had never seen a thorough coward before, and the breedinterested him. But when he had let the Prince run on far enough toshame him before his own officer, he rose quietly and stood in front ofhim.

  "Louis," he said, in a low voice, "listen to me--this is but a report.It is like enough to be false; it is certain to be exaggerated. Let usgo at once and find out."

  Prince Louis threw out his hands with a gesture of despair.

  "Not I--not I!" he cried. "You may go if you like, if you do not valueyour life. But I--I do not feel well even now. Yesterday I kissed herhand. Ah, would to God that I had not! That is it. I wondered what ailedme this morning. Go--stop the court physicians! Do not let them go tothe Summer Palace; bring them here to me first. Your arm, officer; Ithink I will go to my room--I am not well."

  Prince Ivan's countenance grew mottled and greyish, and his teeth showedin the sun like a thin line of dazzling white. He grasped the poltroonby the wrist with a hand of steel.

  "Listen," he said--"no more of this; I will not have it! I will notwaste my own time and the blood of my father's soldiers for naught. Thisis but some woman's trick to delay the marriage--I know it. Hearken! Ifear neither Black Death nor black devil; I will have the Lady Margaretto-day if I have to wed her on her death-bed! Now, I cannot enter yourwife's chamber alone. Yet go I must, if only to see what all this means,and you shall accompany me. Do you hear, Prince Louis? I swear you shallgo with me to the Summer Palace if I have to drag you there step bystep!"

  His grasp lay like a tightening circle of iron about the wrist of PrinceLouis; his steady glance dominated the weaker man. Louis drew in hisbreath with a choking noise.

  "I will," he gasped; "if it must--I will go. But the Death--the BlackDeath! I am sick--truly, Ivan, I am very sick!"

  "So am I!" said Prince Ivan, smiling grimly. "But bring his Highness acup of wine, and send hither Alexis the Deacon, my own physician."

  The officer went out cursing the Muscovite ears that had listened tosuch things, and also high Heaven for giving such a Prince to his trueGerman fatherland.

  * * * * *

  Prince Ivan and Prince Louis stood at the door of the river parlour. Thepeculiar moving hush and tepidly stagnant air of a sick-room penetratedeven through the panels. Ivan still kept hold of his friend, but now bythe hand, not compulsively, but rather like one who in time of troublecomforts another's sorrow.

  At either end of the corridor could be seen a guard of Cossacks keepingit against all intrusion from without or exodus from within. So PrinceIvan had ordered it. His fellows were used to the plague, he said.

  At the Princess's door Prince Ivan tapped gently and inclined his ear tolisten. Louis fumbled with his golden crucifix, and as the Muscoviteturned away his head he pressed it furtively to his lips. Ever since heset foot in the Summer Palace he had been muttering the prayers of theChurch in a rapid undertone.

  "The Prince Louis to see the Princess Joan!" Ivan answered thelow-voiced challenge from within. The door opened slightly and then morewidely. Ivan pushed his friend forward and they entered, Louis draggingone foot after the other towards the shaded couch by which knelt thePrincess Margaret. Thora of Bornholm, pallid and blue-lipped, stoodbeside her, swaying a little, but still holding, half unconsciously, asit seemed, a silver basin, into which Margaret dipped a fine linencloth, before touching with it the foam-flecked lips of the sufferer.Prince Ivan remained a little back, near to where the court physicianswere conferring together in stage whispers. As he passed, a tallgrey-skirted long-bearded man, girt about the middle with a silverchain, detached himself from the official group and approached PrinceIvan. After an instinctive cringing movement of homage and salutation,he bent to the young man's ear and whispered half a dozen words. PrinceIvan nodded very slightly and the man stole away as he had come. No onein the room had noticed the incident.

  Meanwhile Louis of Courtland, almost as pale as Thora herself, his lipsblue, his teeth chattering, his fingers clammy with perspiration, stoodby the bedside clutching the crucifix. Presently a hand was laid uponhis arm. He started violently at the touch.

  "It is true--a
bad case," said Ivan in his ear. "Let us get away; I mustspeak with you at once. The physicians have given their verdict. Theycan do nothing!"

  With a gasp of relief Prince Louis faced about, and as he turned hetottered.

  "Steady, friend Louis!" said Prince Ivan in his ear, and passed his armabout his waist.

  He began to fear lest he should have frightened his dupe too thoroughly.

  "See how he loves her!" murmured the doctors of healing, stillconferring with their heads together. "Who would have believed itpossible?"

  "Nay, he is only much afraid," said Alexis the Deacon, the Muscovitedoctor; "and small blame to him, now that the Black Death has come toCourtland. In half an hour we shall hear the death-rattle!"

  "Then there is no need of us staying," said more than one learneddoctor, and they moved softly towards the door. But Ivan had possessedhimself of the key, and even as the hand of the first was on the latchetbar the bolt was shot in his face. And the eyes of Alexis the Deaconglowed between his narrow red lids like sparks in tinder as he glancedat the whitening faces of the learned men of Courtland.

  Without the door Ivan fixed Prince Louis with his will.

  "Now," he said, speaking in low trenchant tones, "if this be indeed theBlack Death (and it is like it), there is no safety for us here. We mustget without the walls. In an hour there will be such a panic in the cityas has not been for centuries. I offer you a way of escape. My Cossacksstand horsed and ready without. Let us go with them. But the PrincessMargaret must come also!"

  "She cannot--she cannot. I will not permit it. She may already beinfected!" gasped Prince Louis.

  "There is no infection till the crisis of the disease is passed," saidPrince Ivan firmly. "We have had many plagues in Holy Russia, and knowthe symptoms."

  ("Indeed," he added to himself, "my physician, Alexis the Deacon, canproduce them!")

  "But--but--but----" Louis still objected, "the Princess Joan--she maydie. It will reflect upon my honour if we all desert her. My sister mustcontinue to attend her. They are friends. I will go with you....Margaret can remain and nurse her!"

  A light like a spear point glittered momentarily under the dark brows ofthe Muscovite.

  "Listen, Prince Louis," he said. "Your honour is your honour. Joan ofthe Sword Hand and her Black Plagues are your own affair. She is yourwife, not mine. I have helped you to get her back--no more. But thePrincess Margaret is my business. I have bought her with a price. Andlook you, sir, I will not ride back to Russia empty-handed, that everypetty boyar and starveling serf may scoff at me, saying, 'He helped thePrince of Courtland to win his wife, but he could not bring back onehimself.' The whole city, the whole country from here to Moscow know forwhat cause I have so long sojourned in your capital. No, Prince Louis,will you have me go as your friend or as your enemy?"

  "Ivan--Ivan, you are my friend. Do not speak to me so! Who else is myfriend if you desert me?"

  "Then give me your sister!"

  The Prince cast up his hand with a little gesture of despair.

  "Ah," he sighed, "you do not know Margaret! She is not in my gift, oryou should have had her long ago! Oh, these troubles, these troubles!When will they be at an end?"

  "They are at an end now," said Prince Ivan consolingly. "Call yoursister out of the chamber on a pretext. In ten minutes we shall be atthe cathedral gates. In another ten she and I can be wedded according toyour Roman custom. In half an hour we shall all be outside the walls. Ifyou fear the infection you need not once come near her. I will do allthat is necessary. And what more natural? We will be gone before thepanic breaks--you to one of your hill castles--if you do not wish tocome with us to Moscow."

  "And the Princess Joan----?" faltered the coward.

  "She is in good hands," said the Prince, truthfully for once. "I pledgeyou my word of honour she is in no danger. Call your sister!"

  Even as he spoke he tapped lightly, turned the key in the lock andwhispered, "Now!" to the Prince of Courtland.

  "Tell the Princess Margaret I would speak with her!" said Prince Louis."For a moment only!" he added, fearing that otherwise she might notcome.

  There was a stir in the sick chamber and then quick steps were heardcoming lightly across the floor. The face of the Princess appeared atthe door.

  "Well?" she said haughtily to her brother. Prince Ivan she did not see,for he had stepped back into the dusk of the corridor. Louis beckonedhis sister without.

  "I must speak a word with you," he said. "I would not have these fellowshear us!" She stepped out unsuspectingly. Instantly the door was closedbehind her. A dark figure slid between. Prince Ivan turned the key andlaid his hand upon her arm.

  "Help!" she cried, struggling; "help me! For God's grace, let me go!"

  But from behind came four Cossacks of the Prince's retinue whohalf-carried, half-forced her along towards the gates at which theMuscovite horses stood ready saddled. And as Margaret was carried downthe passage the alarmed servitors stood aloof from her cries, seeingthat Prince Louis himself was with her. Yet she cried out unceasingly inher anger and fear, "To me, men of Courtland! The Cossacks carry meoff--I will not go! O God, that Conrad were here! I will not be silent!Maurice, save me!"

  But the people only shrugged their shoulders even when they heard--asdid also the guards and the gentlemen-in-waiting, the underlings and thevery porters at the Palace gates. For they said, "They are strange folk,these Courtland princes and princesses of ours, with their marriages andgivings in marriage. They can neither wed nor bed like other people, butmust make all this fuss about it. Well--happily it is no business ofours!"

  Then at the stair foot she sank suddenly down by the sundial, almostfainting with the sudden alarm and fear, crying for the last time andyet more piercingly, "Maurice! Maurice! Come to me, Maurice!" Then abovethem in the Palace there began a mighty clamour, the noise of blowsstricken and the roar of many voices. But Ivan of Muscovy was neither tobe hurried nor flurried. Impassive and determined, he swung himselfinto the saddle. His black charger changed his feet to take his weightand looked about to welcome him--for he, too, knew his master.

  "Give the Princess to me," he commanded. "Now assist Prince Louis intohis saddle. To the cathedral, all of you!"