Then the thought of Mautya, the gypsy was like the stab of a dagger in her breast.
`Perhaps tonight he will stay with her again!’ Ilona thought miserably.
It was some time before Magda returned and even as she set the tray with its numerous silver dishes down beside the bed, Ilona knew there was something wrong.
She had been so close to Magda for so many years that she could sense without words everything she was feeling, could read every inflection of her voice and every expression in her eyes.
“What is wrong, Magda?” she asked.
“Drink your soup, M'mselle.”
Ilona took a sip, found it delicious and took another.
“Something has upset you,” she said.
“Is it surprising?” Magda asked evasively.
Ilona drank a little more soup.
“It must be something that has happened since you left the room. When I talked to you just now you were so glad that I was alive and safe!”
“I am still glad about that,” Magda answered. “Eat, my child. You need to renew your strength.”
Ilona finished the soup and ate a few mouthfuls of a pink fleshed salmon which she knew would have been caught in the river that morning.
Then she drank a little of the golden wine which Magda had poured into a glass before she said,
“Now tell me, Magda. What has happened?”
There was silence and she said firmly,
“I insist upon knowing!”
She had a terrifying feeling that it was something which concerned the Prince.
Had he left the Castle? Had Magda found out something unpleasant about him and the gypsy?
She waited apprehensively and after a moment Magda said reluctantly,
“It’s the Russians, M’mselle!”
“The Russians?” Ilona repeated in astonishment.
“The servants are saying that the Prince learnt that His Majesty has invited them into the country to occupy the Palace!”
“It cannot be – true!”
“His Highness has said nothing, M’mselle, but the officers have been talking amongst themselves and the Major Domo overheard them say that if the Russians can get their guns into the Palace they can bombard Vitózi and us!”
Ilona was very still.
She could remember the horrors of the bombardment of Paris, the noise, the devastation caused by the German shells, the people who had been killed and wounded, and the terror that every outburst of firing evoked.
“It is impossible!” she said aloud.
But she knew even as she spoke that what Magda had told her was only too possible.
If Russian guns were installed in the Palace standing so high above the valley, nowhere within their range of fire would be safe.
“What is – being done?” she asked.
“Members of the Council and the officers of His Highness’s Army are discussing the position at this moment,” Magda replied. “But you, my little M’mselle, must be -taken away to safety. I will tell His Highness that myself!”
Ilona jumped out of bed.
“I will speak to His Highness. Quick, Magda, give me my velvet negligee.”
Magda looked at her in astonishment.
“But, M’mselle, His Highness is in conference.”
“I have no time to dress,” Ilona said impatiently. “Just do as I say, Magda!”
She spoke in a peremptory way which was very unlike her, and Magda ran to the wardrobe and brought from it one of the exquisite negligees they had bought in Paris.
This one was intended for the colder weather and was of turquoise blue velvet, trimmed with row upon row of white lace inset with turquoise ribbons.
Ilona had not worn it before, and she put it on hastily.
She buttoned it down the front, slipped her feet into her slippers which were lying beside a chair and without even glancing in the mirror she ran towards the door.
“Where are you going, M’mselle? You cannot go downstairs dressed like that,” Magda cried.
But Ilona did not listen to her.
Running along the corridor she hurried down the staircase and found the Major Domo in the Hall.
He looked at her in astonishment and she said,
“Where is His Highness?”
“He is in the Hunting Room, Your Royal Highness. Shall I inform him that you wish to see him?”
Ilona did not answer. She did not even hear the end of the sentence. She was running straight to the Hunting Room.
It was a fine Reception Room on the ground floor, large enough for dances or entertainments, and also used for conferences and meetings.
Two footmen were standing outside the double doors and they were so surprised at Ilona’s appearance that it was only when she had actually reached them that they remembered to open the doors for her.
She walked into the room.
There were thirty or forty men present, seated in chairs, facing the Prince. He was sitting at a table with a Senior Army Officer on one side of him, and on the other an elderly man whom Ilona thought she had seen with the Prime Minister.
They were talking earnestly, but at Ilona’s entrance there was a sudden silence.
She did not even look at the men who stared at her in surprise as they rose to their feet. Her eyes were on the Prince’s face as he too rose.
For a moment his self-possession seemed to desert him as he saw the way Ilona was dressed - her red hair streaming loose over her shoulders, her green eyes seeking his.
She reached the table in front of him and stood looking up into his eyes to ask,
“Is it true that the Russians have entered the country and have occupied the Palace?”
“That is what I have been told,” the Prince said quietly. “But there is no need for you to be frightened.”
“I am not frightened,” Ilona said scornfully. “I have come to tell you how you can enter the Palace and take them by surprise before they can fire on us!”
She saw the astonishment in the Prince’s face. Then the Army officer beside him asked,
“Is there a way into the Palace, Your Royal Highness, without approaching it from the valley?”
Ilona knew he was thinking of how the Palace had repelled many enemy assaults in the past, thanks to its strong fortifications and lofty position from which the defenders could fire down with a devastating loss of life on anyone approaching the gates.
“There is a way into the Palace,” Ilona, replied, “which only I know. I doubt if even my father is aware that it exists.”
Ever since Magda had told her that the Russians were being admitted into the Palace she had been thinking about the secret which Julius had imparted to her so many years ago.
He had been sixteen at the time, and the King had discovered that he had been out at night enjoying himself in the Inns in Vitózi where there was dancing and drinking and many pretty girls to entertain the customers.
There had been a row which reverberated through the Palace when her father had, as usual, indulged himself in one of his tyrannical rages.
The King had threatened to beat Julius who had immediately picked up a sword and offered to fight his father.
That he should be defied by his own son had infuriated the King to the point where he might even have killed Julius had it not been for the Queen’s intervention.
Finally Julius had been punished by being locked in his room by his Tutor and told that if he went out again at night without his father’s permission he would be placed in one of the dungeons and chained to the wall.
Ilona, then aged nine, had found her mother in tears and had gathered from what the Courtiers said and the chatter of the servants exactly what had happened.
What had upset her was that Julius had not only been locked in his room, but her father had also given instructions that he was to be given nothing to eat for the next twenty four hours!
When she had been put to bed at her usual hour she found she could not sleep.
She waited
until her Nurse had left the Nursery, doubtless to gossip with the other staff. Then putting her pillows under the bedclothes to make it look as if she was still there, she put on her dressing-gown and tip-toed along the passage to Julius’s room.
It was very quiet and there appeared to be no-one about as she knocked tentatively at the door.
“Who is it?” Julius asked. “It is me - Ilona!”
Ire had come to the door so that he could talk to her through the key-hole.
“I am locked in, Ilona.”
“I know. Are you very hungry, Julius?”
“Very hungry, and very cross,” he answered. “Where is the key of the door?”
Ilona looked around her and saw it hanging on a nail above her head.
She told Julius where it was.
“Can you reach it?”
“If I put a chair underneath it I can.”
“Then let me out,” Julius pleaded. “I will not let you get into trouble - I promise!”
“I am not afraid,” she answered.
She pulled a chair into position, climbed onto it, lifted down the key, and opened the door.
Julius came out, picked her up in his arms and kissed her.
He was tall for his age and looked very much older than his sixteen years.
The men of Dabrozka developed young and Julius was already a man.
“Thank you, Ilona,” he said.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Out!” he replied. “You do not suppose I am going to let Papa keep me shut up like a rat in a trap?”
“He will be very angry if he catches you!”
“I know,” Julius replied, “and that is why I am going to ask you to help me, Ilona.”
“You know I will help you – you know I will!” Ilona replied eagerly.
Julius hung the key back on the nail and replaced the chair which Ilona had moved.
“If I come and wake you up,” he asked, “will you lock me in again?”
“You know I will,” Ilona answered. “But how are you going to get out of the Palace? The sentries will see you.”
“Not the way I intend to go,” he replied.
Ilona had realised it was a secret, and because she pleaded with him, Julius had good-humouredly taken her with him down a twisting staircase which was seldom used and led to the cellars.
This very old part of the Palace with its thick walls and uneven floors was not in use.
But Julius had found an old passage-way which must have been built hundreds of year ago and which burrowed under the ground to emerge hidden by some rocks at the back of the Palace where people seldom went.
He had not shown Ilona the whole passage the first night, but after she had let him out subsequently half-a-dozen other times, she had managed to persuade him to take her down the passage in the day-time.
He had shown her how well the entrance was concealed between some boulders and beneath the thick branches of the acacia trees.
“It is a secret between us,” Julius had said. “You will never speak of it to anyone or I am certain Papa will cut off my head!”
“You know I would never betray you,” Ilona had said adoringly.
And she had never mentioned the secret passage, not even to her mother.
She explained now to the Prince where it was and how it was possible to enter the passage from the outside without anyone in the Palace being aware of it.
“It is not overlooked and there are no rooms in use in that part of the building,” she said.
Her eyes were fixed on the Prince and she spoke as if addressing him alone.
There was a silence in the room and everyone else was listening.
When she had finished the Prince took her hand in his and raised it to his lips.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
“This changes everything, Your Highness,” the Army Officer said excitedly.
“I must – come with you,” Ilona said to the Prince.
He shook his head.
“That is impossible!”
“Then you will never find the entrance.”
He hesitated and she went on,
“You know as well as I do you cannot afford to waste time, nor can you risk being seen by daylight.”
“It is true that we shall have to enter the Palace as soon as it is dark,” the Prince agreed.
“Then I will show you the way,” Ilona insisted.
She saw his lips tighten as if once again he was going to refuse to take her into danger. Then she said, addressing the officer at his side,
“I am sure, Colonel, you will agree that we should move as soon as it is dark enough to conceal our movements. That will be in about an hour’s time. I will go and get ready!”
She turned to walk from the room.
As she did so the men who had been listening, spontaneously cheered her.
As the door closed behind her a babble of excited voices burst out.
CHAPTER SIX
Ilona ran back to the bed-room to find Magda waiting for her with a shocked expression on her face.
“Really, M’mselle!” she said in the tone of a scolding Nanny, “how could you go downstairs wearing little more than a néglige! What will His Highness think of you with your hair all over your shoulders?”
Ilona nearly retorted that His Highness was not interested in her or her hair one way or the other, and that his preference was for long dark locks which fell below the waist.
Instead she said,
“Magda, I have to be dressed and ready as quickly as possible. I require a riding-habit!”
“You are going riding at this hour?” Magda exclaimed.
“It is too much on top of what you have already gone through today!”
“I am all right! I am perfectly all right!” Ilona replied.
Refusing to listen to Magda’s protests and grumbles she began to dress herself as swiftly as she could.
She would have put on the fiést thing that came to hand, but Magda sensibly chose a riding-habit of deep sapphire velvet and as Ilona covered her crisp white petticoats with the skirt she realised it was a wise choice.
It was important that she should not be conspicuous, as she would be if she wore a lighter colour.
What was more it would be cold once the sun had set and the winds carried the chill of the snows from the mountains.
As Magda arranged her hair, drawing it back neatly and tightly into the chignon she always wore when riding, Ilona looked at her high-crowned, fashionable hat and said,
“I have an idea, Magda! Did you pack that cloak I used to wear when we lived in Paris?”
“That old thing?” Magda replied scornfully. “I meant to throw it away or give it to some poor beggar, but the beggars here are better dressed than we were in the past!”
“I will wear it!” Ilona said.
Magda tried to dissuade her but Ilona knew that the black woollen cloak with its hood would be just what she required as an effective disguise, and there would also be no need to wear a riding-hat.
All the time she was dressing her brain was busy planning how to approach the Palace without being seen which meant, she knew, a long detour.
She was quite certain that if the Russians were already in the Palace, they would have sentries watching for the approach of troops from Vitózi.
As soon as the moonlight illuminated the valley, anyone moving on the twisting road which wound from the river to the Palace gates would be easily discernible.
She was certain that the Prince and the Army Officers themselves would have thought of this. At the same time she felt responsible for the whole campaign.
“How could Papa do anything so unpatriotic, so wicked, as to intrigue with the Russians against his own people?” Ilona asked herself.
But she was well aware that the King when he was in one of his fanatical and tyrannical rages would do anything, however reprehensible, to get his own way.
It was all part of his vendetta
against the Sáros and particularly Prince Aladár.
He could not forget or forgive the fact that he had been forced to allow his daughter to be married to his most despised enemy.
Nothing else would seem to him to be of any consequence.
Therefore if the Russians had approached him, as Ilona was sure they had after learning that their plans for creating a civil war in Dabrozka had been thwarted, then the King would have acquiesced in anything they suggested.
Even though Ilona understood her father’s anger, his behaviour was still incredible. Nevertheless she did not doubt for a moment that the reports of what was happening were true.
What was really of importance now was time.
The pass over the mountains from Russia into Dabrozka was treacherous and narrow.
It would be impossible for a large number of men to enter the country quickly and without being detected.
What had happened, Ilona was sure,- was that small groups of soldiers doubtless on horseback had infiltrated under cover of night.
They would have made their way over the narrow, rough road to the Palace to be welcomed by her father.
Once the Palace was in their hands and they had established their guns it would be easy for the Russians to command all the known approaches and ensure a safe passage for the rest of their troops.
‘We can prevent this from happening, if Aladár’s men can take the Palace,’ Ilona thought.
When finally she was dressed she left behind a tearful and protesting Magda and hurried downstairs to find everything in a buzz of activity.
Senior officers were consulting maps and giving orders to their juniors, horses were saddled and waiting in the courtyard, and Ilona could see through the open door that there were too a number of mules with small, portable guns strapped to their backs.
She stood looking around her, the red of her hair heightened by the blue of her riding-habit.
She carried her black cloak over her arm. Count Duźsa crossed the Hall to her side.
“I have been told of the secret passage, Ma’am,” he said. “Can you remember, when you last saw it, whether it was well-built enough to have remained passable after all these years?”
Ilona smiled.
“It had not collapsed, Count, during the hundreds of years since it was built, and I therefore cannot believe that the last nine would have made much difference!”
Princes and Princesses: Favourite Royal Romances Page 28