He had one flower in his hand, a rose, and he was holding it out to her eagerly.
Giona stopped and an Officer, who had been in front of the soldiers, came hurrying towards the child intent on moving him away.
Giona reached him first.
She bent down, crouching a little so that her face was almost on a level with his as she took the rose from him and said softly in Slavonian,
“Thank you, that is a lovely flower you have brought me.”
“For pretty Princess,” the child lisped.
She smiled at him and asked,
“What is your name?”
“Your Royal Highness,” the Officer said before he could speak, “this child has no right to be here. I must take him away.”
Giona looked up at him smiling.
“Nonsense!” she said. “He has every right to give me a flower and that at least cannot be considered dangerous.”
She saw that the Officer was not smiling, but looking rather fierce, and rising, she picked the little boy up in her arms and stated firmly,
“I will take him back to his mother.”
The Officer gasped, but did not know how to interfere.
Giona carried the child back to where she could see a woman holding out her arms while two soldiers forcibly restrained her from joining her son.
The small boy was quite happy to be carried by Giona and, when she reached his mother, there was a sudden silence as if everybody were too astonished by what was happening to make a sound.
“Your son is a very handsome little boy,” Giona said in Slavonian. “How old is he?”
“Just – t-three years – old, gracious lady,” the woman replied, stammering a little, as if overcome by being spoken to.
Giona handed the small boy to her and said,
“I am very pleased with the rose he has brought me. Thank you very much!”
The mother took the child from her and then, as she turned to re-join the King, the cheers broke out.
The King, as if he found it impossible to believe what was happening, was standing at the foot of the steps with what she thought was an extremely angry expression on his face.
“I am sorry to keep Your Majesty waiting,” Giona said a little breathlessly.
“That child had no right to be allowed to intrude,” the King replied. “You should have ignored him. The Officer in charge will be reprimanded for negligence.”
“A child as small as that can creep through anywhere,” Giona smiled. “He brought me a rose.”
She held it up to show it to him.
“I thought it a very touching gesture.”
“It is disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful!” the King exclaimed.
He started to stamp up the steps, each footfall seeming as if it repeated the word disgraceful until they reached the top.
The Prime Minister greeted them with a long and, Giona thought, again very boring speech of welcome.
Then she found herself on a platform at one end of the huge hall with all the Members of Parliament and their wives seated in front of them.
They rose when she and the King appeared, clapping politely but not, she thought, with the same enthusiasm as had been shown by the crowd.
After she and the King were seated, the speeches began, and she thought that each one was more pompous than the last.
They were, of course, all delivered in German and it was not difficult for her to see that the Cabinet were all either Austrians or Germans, while she was sure without being told that the majority of the Members of Parliament were Slavonians.
The first part of the proceedings took nearly an hour before the Wedding present, which was a large and resplendent gold table ornament, was at last presented to them.
The King thanked the assembled company for their generosity and said that he hoped that his marriage, which represented an alliance between Slavonia and Great Britain, would bring the country the peace that it so ardently desired.
Only some of the Members of Parliament, Giona noticed, applauded when he referred to her and she guessed that those who abstained were Slavonians, who thought that the British were bolstering up a régime that they did not approve of.
There was no question of her being able to say anything and, when the ceremony was over, she found it impossible to speak to anyone except the Cabinet, while the Members of Parliament and their wives moved out through another door.
Then once again the King and she were walking back the way they had come and, when they passed the point where the little boy had run out, she thought that the cheers were louder and more genuine than those she had heard before.
The women were waving their handkerchiefs and the men their hats and there seemed to be more children sitting on their fathers’ shoulders than there had been previously.
They drove back to The Palace at the same pace as they had come from it and, only when they had left the carriages and were moving up the steps of The Palace itself, did the King say,
“Another time ignore anyone who approaches you, whether it is a child, a man or a woman. I shall contrive to make certain that there is no question of anyone again passing the bodyguards. Unfortunately our troops are not as efficient as I would wish them to be, seeing we have to use the natives of this country.”
“You mean they are Slavonian?”
“Of course they are Slavonian,” the King replied. “Stupid fools without a brain in their head! We have the right men to train them, but they will not always learn.”
He spoke angrily and then added,.
“If they are ever again so lax as to permit the kind of incident that happened this morning, you will take no notice. Do you understand?”
They had reached the hall by this time and Giona thought it best not to argue with the King in front of the servants.
At the same time she felt that it was a great deal of fuss about one small boy aged three and she still carried the rose that he had given her.
*
Luncheon was once again a long drawn out meal and when it was over Giona retired to what she thought of as her private sitting room, only to find that both her Ladies-in-Waiting came with her.
“I thought, Your Royal Highness,” the Baroness said, “that this would be a good opportunity for us to instruct you in some of the etiquette that His Majesty expects here in The Palace.”
Giona shook her head.
“I am sorry,” she said, “but what I wish to do now is to be alone to write to my mother. I want to tell her what has happened since I arrived and also to describe the journey.”
The Baroness looked worried.
“I hope that you will not tell the Princess of the regrettable and outrageous attack made on your train by those terrible revolutionaries. I feel sure it would upset her.”
“As far as I can ascertain,” Giona replied, “there were only two of them wounded and we were all unharmed, so it might have been much worse.”
“Your Royal Highness is very brave,” the Baroness said, “but I hear that His Majesty has given the order that any revolutionary who is caught in the next month will be summarily hanged as a reprisal for their behaviour on your arrival.”
“Oh, no!” Giona cried. “That is cruel and unnecessary and the man they catch may be entirely innocent.”
“All revolutionaries should be exterminated!” the Baroness asserted. “Do you not agree. Countess?”
“I do indeed!” the Countess replied. “If His Majesty does not keep them under control, we shall none of us be able to sleep in our beds without being afraid.”
Giona decided that it would be a mistake to say too much. At the same time she was appalled by the violence of the King’s reaction.
She could not imagine that a severer punishment could have been devised if, according to the plan ‘The Invisible One’ had told her, the whole train had been burned with her in it.
She had, however, made it quite clear that she wished to be alone and looking as if they expected they would be
reprimanded for not doing their duty, the two Ladies-in-Waiting withdrew.
Giona sat down at the desk in the corner of the room and started to write to her mother and Chloris.
She told them how much she missed them and began her account with her arrival at the Station at Dūric, thinking perhaps the Baroness was right and it would be a mistake to upset her mother by describing the incident on the train.
She had already written them long letters when she was on board the Battleship and made a very amusing story of how seasick everybody was.
Also she related how, after all the Ambassador’s fuss about her being chaperoned, both he and Lady Bowden had succumbed to the stormy waves in the Bay of Biscay and had not been seen again until they reached the smoother waters of the Mediterranean.
She now described to her mother how boring the long speeches in German had been both at her arrival and today in the House of Parliament.
She finished,
“If only you were here, Mama and Chloris, I would have somebody to laugh with, but there are very few smiles in the Palace and I am sure it is because the King has no time for them.”
She had already described how the King hurried over everything and the speed at which they rushed through the streets.
She was just finishing her letter, when Mithra came into the room from the bedroom.
“Excuse me, Your Royal Highness,” she said, “but a servant has come upstairs to tell you that a deputation of mothers and children has just arrived at the door. The children have all brought you flowers and the mothers, although they know it is an imposition, ask if it would be possible to speak to you.”
Giona put down her pen.
“Of course,” she said. “Have the deputation shown into one of the rooms. I will come down immediately.”
Mithra hesitated.
“The servant who brought the message, Your Royal Highness, says that he cannot find the Chief Steward at this time, as he is having a rest, and he is therefore not quite certain what is the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do is to show the women into one of the rooms, as I told you,” Giona replied, “I cannot believe that there are many of them.”
“About a dozen, I think, Your Royal Highness, and their children.”
“Tell the servants to do as I say,” Giona insisted.
Mithra hurried away and Giona finished her letter, put it into an envelope and addressed it.
Then she went into the bedroom where Mithra was waiting and said,
“Have my letter posted, Mithra, and where is the deputation?”
“They are in the first room on the right as you come in at the front door, Your Royal Highness,” Mithra replied, “although I am not quite certain that you are doing the right thing.”
“This is the first deputation I have ever received,” Giona answered, “and I am going to enjoy it!”
She laughed as she spoke, then ran impetuously along the corridor and down the stairs, fearing that if she did not hurry, somebody might send the deputation away before she could see them.
A servant, and she suspected that he was the one who had come upstairs, opened the door for her leading out of the marble hall and she went into what was apparently a small anteroom.
She found, as Mithra had said, a dozen women waiting, each one accompanied by a small child or children, holding posies of flowers.
They were obviously overcome with their surroundings and were standing in a little group looking nervous.
At the same time Giona appreciated that many of them were extremely good-looking, some of the younger ones really lovely with enormous eyes and long hair that fell over their shoulders.
They were all in native costume with its pretty velvet bodice, flared skirt and embroidered apron that was almost universal in the Balkans.
As Giona appeared, they made a murmur of delight that was more eloquent than if they had spoken.
“How kind of you to come to see me,” Giona began in Slavonian.
As she spoke, they gave a cry of delight and one of them exclaimed and she knew at once that it was the mother of the little boy she had carried,
“I told you Her Royal Highness speaks our language!”
“I have been learning it all the way here,” Giona said. “But if I make mistakes, you must forgive me and tell me what I really ought to have said.”
“It is wonderful that we can understand Your Royal Highness and you can understand us! But we never expected an English Princess to be as beautiful as you or so clever!”
Giona laughed.
Then she took the flowers from the children, asking their names and their ages and finding them all very attractive.
In fact the little girls were, as she had written to her mother, as lovely as angels.
“I had no idea that you were all so beautiful in Slavonia!” she said. “But it is only right that such a beautiful country should contain beautiful people!”
“You too are very beautiful, Your Royal Highness,” one of the more voluble of the women replied, “and perhaps things will be different now that you have arrived.”
“Different? In what way?” Giona asked.
There was a little pause then she replied,
“No one cares about us. The schools are bad and there are not enough teachers. Our children, however bright they are, cannot get on and improve themselves.”
“That is wrong!” Giona exclaimed.
“I know, Your Royal Highness, but although some of our Members of Parliament complain over and over again, nothing is done for the real people of the country.”
Giona repressed what she wanted to say, knowing that it would be a mistake.
Instead she asked the women about their lives and found, as she expected, that their husbands were all in lowly occupations and there was only one whose husband was a clerk in one of the Government Offices.
She realised as well from what they said that they were very poor and it was not hard to guess that it was those who lived in the City who suffered the most because the people in the country could at least grow their own food.
There were a hundred things she wanted to say, but she knew that it would be indiscreet and finally, because she was afraid that they might be interrupted, she thought it wise to draw their visit to an end.
“I wish I had something to give the children,” she said.
Then on an impulse she rang the bell.
The door was opened instantly, which made her think that the servants on duty had been listening outside.
“Will you see if you can find some biscuits, cakes or chocolate for the children?” she asked. “I feel sure that the chef can provide something. There are not many of them.”
She spoke in German and the servant bowed and disappeared.
“Please, Your Royal Highness, you must not bother about us,” one of the women said. “We thought that it was very daring of us to come here at all. We have never been inside The Palace before, but after you have been so kind, we wanted to tell you how much we admire you.”
“I have enjoyed meeting you,” Giona replied, “and I hope to have the opportunity of talking to many of the people in Slavonia as I have been able to do with you.”
She knew by the expressions on their faces that they thought this very unlikely.
Then fortunately, far quicker than she expected, the servant returned with a tray full of fancy pastries which the children were delighted with and so were their mothers.
They ate quickly, then as if they sensed as Giona did that it would be a mistake for them to linger any longer, they took their leave.
Giona tried to shake hands with the mothers, but to her embarrassment they curtseyed, then went down on their knees to kiss her hand and the children followed their example.
They were so effusive in their gratitude that it was pathetic and, when she waved them goodbye from the top of the steps, she thought, if nothing else, she had made a few friends in Dūric.
Then, as she tur
ned back to go through the high ornamental door, an aide-de-camp came to her side.
“His Majesty wishes to speak to you, Your Royal Highness.”
“Where is he?” Giona asked.
She was aware that her heart had given a rather frightened jump, as if she knew that she had been doing something wrong and had been caught out like a naughty schoolgirl.
“His Majesty is in his private study,” the aide-de-camp replied. “May I show you the way?”
Giona followed him for what seemed miles along corridors to a part of The Palace where she guessed that the King had his private apartments.
The room she was shown into was large, dark and somehow so obviously Germanic it might have come straight from the North of Europe without any alterations being made to it.
The walls were covered with heavy dark panelling, the chairs and sofa did not look very comfortable and were upholstered in brown leather. There was a huge impressive desk piled with papers and the pictures, in black carved frames, were quite obviously of the King’s ancestors.
The King had discarded most of the decorations that he had worn in the morning, but he was still looking very impressive, and he rose from the desk as Giona entered and stood watching her approach.
As she reached his side and curtseyed, he said,
“I have been informed that without my permission you have received a number of women and their children who had no right to approach you and those who admitted them to The Palace must have been insane to do so!”
He sounded so fierce and so angry that instead of feeling frightened Giona merely wanted to laugh.
“You are taking it far too seriously,” she said. “They were just a few young mothers who wanted to see me and who brought their children with them. I was very touched at their doing so and I hope that it will form a bond between myself and the Slavonian people which might not have happened if the little boy had not brought me a rose on the way to the House of Parliament this morning.”
The King stared at her as if he could hardly believe what he was hearing.
Because he did not speak, she walked away from him to stand in front of the rather austere mantelpiece and looked around the room.
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