by Fiona Monroe
She had begun by addressing herself to the much more kindly-looking aide, who had dark, intelligent eyes, but she forced herself to direct her final appeal to the count himself. His Excellency glowered at her throughout her speech, but she kept her gaze steady.
The aide had been conveying her meaning in short murmurs into his ear. Margaret could only hope that he was translating the nuance of her carefully-chosen words. When she had finished, the count turned toward his aide and seemed to be asking him questions. He did not look at Margaret again.
"If you would come this way, madam," said the aide, gesturing.
"But, sir, what does the count say?"
"Through this way, if you please, madam." He bowed and held out his hand.
Margaret looked again at the count and was shocked. His Excellency was leaning back in the chair, a triumphant expression on his weary face, staring at her. As they met eyes, he made a slow, unpleasant smile.
She jumped as the aide touched her, respectfully but firmly, on the elbow. He was carrying a candle. She thought she was going to be escorted out. Instead, the aide steered her toward the stairs.
"Where are we going, sir?" she asked.
"Please, madam," said the aide, with impeccable politeness, bowing and indicating the staircase.
Margaret gave one swift glance over her shoulder, at a loss at how to behave. She was suddenly consumed with nervousness, but she felt it would be undignified to show it in any way. The two rough-looking servants were standing together in front of the barred and bolted outer door, their arms folded across their chests.
She decided she had little choice but to go where she was being asked, so she mounted the stairs to a tiny upper landing with three doors leading from it. The aide opened one, and indicated that she should go in.
Uncertainly, Margaret stepped across the threshold. In the wavering light of the aide's candle, she had an indistinct glimpse of a very narrow room with a sloping ceiling and nothing within but an old-fashioned single box bed, a wash stand, and a chest. She turned back to the aide, who handed her the candle-stick with a courteous bow. And then, before Margaret could say or do anything else, he pulled shut the door from without.
"Sir!" Margaret cried. "Seniore!"
From outside, came the unmistakeable sound of a key turning in a lock.
Chapter 20
Margaret was too angry, both with her captors and with herself, to give in at first either to tears or to terror. She spent some time pounding on the door and screaming to be let out, but when her cries were ignored, she decided that this was a waste of her energy and undignified, too. The candle was half-burned down, and she knew she had to make the most of what light she had left, so she fell to a minute examination of the room in which she had been imprisoned.
She soon determined that escape would be impossible. There was a window large enough to crawl out, but nothing below it but a drop of many stories into a pit-like courtyard. She might scream for help, but since the window did not look over the street, it was unlikely that anyone would pay any attention. She imagined that rows and yells were commonplace in these stone warrens and that neighbours routinely ignored each other's fights. The door was solid and immoveable.
Eventually, weariness overcame her, and the candle guttered out. In the tomb-liked darkness that enveloped her, she could do nothing in the end but collapse onto the box bed and wait for morning. The quilt and mattress on the bed were surprisingly soft and smelled of lavender. She could not have believed it possible, but she fell asleep.
She awoke with a start at the noise of the door closing and sat bolt upright.
The aide was in the room with her, holding a tray. The shutters were open, and a grey gloomy light filled the little room. Rain was lashing against the windows.
"I have brought you breakfast, madam." The aide placed the tray on a small table by the bed.
"Is it morning?" Margaret asked stupidly, shrinking away.
"Yes, madam."
"When are you going to let me go?"
"Please let me know if we can make you comfortable in any way, madam."
"You can make me comfortable by letting me go!" Margaret cried, but the man merely bowed and left her, locking the door firmly behind him.
She took another look out of the window now that it was daylight. The casement opened, but she confirmed what she had thought the night before; there was nothing below but a dizzying well of other windows behind, cascading down to a tiny courtyard. She saw a woman, probably a maidservant, shaking a cloth or rag out of a window several stories down and she thought of shouting to her, but it was unlikely the girl would even hear her distinctly through the pouring rain. It gave her a pang to see such an ordinary, domestic thing as a servant shaking a cloth out a window, while she was imprisoned by Italian ruffians.
She was getting wet. She closed the window and turned her attention toward breakfast, which consisted of rolls still warm from the oven, a dish of porridge, and a pitcher of milk. It was mundanely Scottish fare, probably purchased from the street vendors who sold their wares around Mercat Cross in the mornings.
Her stomach was heavy with creeping misery and fear, and her throat felt too tight to eat more than a mouthful of warm roll. She was beginning to realise that she really was in trouble, and she knew that she only had herself to blame. Nobody knew she was here, and so nobody would know where to start looking for her. She was hidden in the stone ant-hill of Old Town, tucked away amongst a thousand other apartments in its teeming hive. Besides, only Emmeline was likely to notice that she was missing, and what could Emmeline do about it?
Why had she thought these foreigners would listen to her? It had really seemed like a righteous and heroic course of action the night before, after her long day of distress, to intercede directly with Count Contarini and willingly offer her fortune up to ensure Lord John's happiness with his true wife. She'd had some idea that she, herself, might then wilt into an early grave, like the wronged heroine of a tragic romance, thus negating the need for practical considerations such as money to live on thereafter.
In the grey light of a rainy dawn, imprisoned in an upper room in Old Town, her natural common sense was reasserting itself. She wanted very much to live, and now she was scared.
She tried banging on the door again. "Let me out! Let me out! My uncle is a Justice of the Peace! He will have you all arrested!"
Eventually, a rough voice called something through the door that did not sound friendly.
Margaret redoubled her pounding and yelling.
"Madam!" The voice of the aide had to shout a few times to be heard over the racket.
Margaret, her chest heaving, her ear pressed against the door, held still to listen.
"Madam. My apologies, but if you continue to make a noise, we will have to silence you."
"S-silence me? What do you mean?"
She stumbled backward as the door swung open against her, and one of the thug-like servants came in along with the aide. Pointlessly, she tried to run past them both. The thug seized her arms and pulled them roughly behind her back.
The aide, with an apologetic look, had removed a long silk scarf from his pocket and was advancing on her with it stretched between his hands. He was going to strangle her with it, garrotte her just like a villain in a circulating library romance. She pulled all the breath she could into her lungs, breathing in the servant's unwashed, rancid odour and the whiff of scented pomade coming from the aide, and screamed at the top of her voice.
The aide jammed the scarf not against her throat but into her wide-open mouth. She gagged and choked, and just at that moment, there was a clamour of commotion within the apartment.
From downstairs, his voice was yelling, "Margaret!"
It distracted the aide for the moment that it took Margaret to sink her teeth into his fingers and scream, "Lord John!" before her captor redoubled his attack and bound the scarf tight around her jaw.
The aide shook his bitten hand with a curse, glare
d at her, and spat an order at the thug. Margaret felt her wrists being bound behind her back, but she did not care.
He was here. He had come for her.
For several minutes, however, nothing happened. Margaret could hear voices downstairs—a deep rumble which she thought was the count and the distinctive tone of Lord John. The aide, too, seemed to be listening. He had hold of her arm and shoulder.
Then the other servant appeared at the door and said something, and the aide nodded.
"Your lover wants to see you," he said, matter of factly, and steered her out of the room.
Margaret wanted to protest that Lord John was not her lover, but in the strictest sense, it was the truth; and her heart leapt up of its own accord, to know that he had asked for her. Her tongue was flattened by the gag, in any case, so all she could do was go meekly along with her captor.
On the bend of the staircase, they stopped.
Lord John was there in the central room of the apartment, large as life, dripping rain onto the polished oak floor, his dark blond hair plastered to his face, and a sword—a real sword—in one hand. As he caught sight of her, his expression melted for an instant from tense anger to warmth. He half smiled and lowered the sword.
The thug at his elbow pressed a long dagger closer to his neck.
Then, as he saw her bound and gagged state, his face closed up again. "Let her go, Contarini," he said. "This is no way to treat a lady."
Contarini was facing him. "I let her go, if you give me satisfaction," he said ponderously. "Swords, not pistols. A pistol is not the weapon of a Contarini."
"I don't want to fight you, Your Excellency. You are twenty years my senior."
"You will not fight me. You will fight my champion." The count used his cane to wave toward the stairs, indicating his aide.
Lord John's eyes flickered upward, and Margaret saw a moment of consternation in his expression. Cavelieri Nicolo Contarini was young, agile, and strong, and most definitely looked as if he would be capable of handling himself in a swordfight.
Then he squared his shoulders and made one more attempt at diplomacy. "Your Excellency, this is madness! I am not your enemy. I have no quarrel with you. If you kill me, there will be consequences, you know."
The count waved his hand in the air and let out a stream of Italian invective, which Cavaliere Contarini began to translate. "We have a ship docked in the Port of Leith. We will be gone within the hour. Nobody will notice a man killed with a blade in this place until we are far away. I will have satisfaction for my sister's honour."
"All right, I know! I know!" Lord John held up a hand. "Thank you, Cavaliere, I understand what he's saying. I did live in Venice for nine years. And I would venture to suggest that His Excellency's choice of weapons has less to do with your family's honour, than with not making a loud report in the midst of an Old Town tenement and bringing the constabulary to the door before you could all escape. All right! Let this lady go—go free—and I will fight your duel. But you have to give me your word of honour that you will not harm her, whatever happens."
The count looked up at his aide then waved one of his thick-fingered, be-ringed hands and said, "Si, si."
Margaret struggled as she was handed over by the Cavaliere to the servant and screamed as loudly as she could against the gag. She wanted desperately to tell Lord John not to do it and, certainly, not to put his life in danger on her account. But she could articulate nothing and could only watch helplessly as her erstwhile husband took off his overcoat and jacket and flexed his long arms.
He had no second, so all he could do was drop them in a heap on the floor. The Cavaliere was already in shirt sleeves and accepted a thin, flexible, deadly-looking sword from the count, himself, who had been handed it by one of the servants.
The two men adopted fighting stances, and squared up to each other across the rug.
The count intoned something in Italian, and both combatants lunged toward each other simultaneously.
It was over in seconds. Margaret shut her eyes in terror, heard a tremendous crash, clatter and grunt, and opened them again.
Lord John was sprawled on the floor underneath a toppled-over table, clutching his arm, and Cavaliere Contarini was standing with a foot pressed into his chest and the tip of his sword against his cheek. Lord John's sword was halfway across the room. After a horrified moment, she saw that blood was seeping through his fingers.
Her heart was hammering so hard in her chest that she thought it might burst. She strained against the ruffian's arms, trying to get to him.
The count lumbered across and said something.
His aide turned, frowned, and shook his head.
"Go on then, Cavaliere," said Lord John, with a gasp. "Do what he says. Finish me off. Just let my wife go. You gave your word of honour."
"No." Cavaliere Contarini lowered his sword. "That is not the act of a gentleman. But be advised, your lordship, il Conte will never let your wife go free. The Lady Lucia—"
"The Lady Lucia is my wife."
It was a completely different voice.
So intent had everyone in the room been on the fight, that nobody had been guarding the outer door to the apartment. It flew open, and what seemed to Margaret's bewildered senses to be fifteen or twenty uniformed soldiers poured into the room.
There were six, in fact. Six imposing armed men in gleaming military attire, all surrounding a seventh man who was dressed all in white and wore a sash across his chest. This man was not carrying a weapon but had about him an air of authority and importance so absolute that the Italians all shrank back from him.
The Cavaliere sheathed his sword and stood down.
Even the count looked disconcerted. He glowered at the newcomer. "Who are you, sir? Why are you and your men in my house?"
"I am Leopold, King of Swabia," said the man in white. He was young, tall, fair, and spoke English almost without an accent. "And I must beg your pardon, Your Excellency, for I am the man who married your sister."
Chapter 21
"He was never meant to be king."
Margaret was sitting at Lord John's side, back in the light and comfort of their drawing room in Princes Street, hearing the whole incredible story.
The surgeon had bound up his injured arm, which had received a long but superficial gash from the edge of Contarini's sword, and Lord John had insisted on no further physic beyond a bottle of fine brandy.
She had been amazed to find Lord John's sister-in-law, Lady Crieff, the Dowager Marchioness, waiting there when, at last, they had extricated themselves from the Contarinis and returned across the bridge. His Majesty, King Leopold, and his honour guard had gone elsewhere for now but promised to visit them before the end of the day.
Margaret could scarcely grasp the suddenness of her escape, the dizzying reversal of her fortunes. It was only her concern for Lord John's safety that had kept her calm and stopped her collapsing into hysterics when she managed to understand that the husband of Lucia Contarini was not Lord John, but the man who had so recently succeeded to the throne of a tiny German kingdom called Swabia.
She, Margaret, was still married to Lord John. She had been married to Lord John all along.
She had never even heard of Swabia.
"Oh, yes, Konigreich Schwaben, I believe it is called in German," said Lady Crieff, who was alarmingly huge, as if she were about to burst at any moment. "It is to the southwest of Wurttemberg, which is much larger, of course."
"Something like that, indeed," said Lord John, waving his uninjured hand. "I met Leopold at Oxford, when he was merely Prince Leopold, except we called him von Uexkull. I knew he was one of those innumerable German princes from one of those innumerable principalities and tiny countries they have over there, but I thought little of it. He had an elder brother, Frederick, who was the heir, of course, and one of those fine dashing types, according to Leopold. Hunts, rides, dances, handsome as the devil—a perfect future king, Leopold used to say, and good luck to him. L
eopold wanted to be a scholar. We became very good friends, and we went travelling across Europe together. When we got to Venice, we stayed there. I wanted to write poetry; he wanted to dig up disgusting old manuscripts and write essays about architecture and history. Except, he met Lucia Contarini and, instead, began to pursue the romance of the ages."
"But why did you say it was you who married her?" asked Margaret. It was the question that had been tumbling around in her head since the extraordinary revelations of the morning.
"I'm getting to that part! Let me tell the story. Well, nobody had ever loved a woman like old Leo loved Signorina Contarini."
"John, you are too cynical," said Arabella with a wan smile.
"I am not! I am a romantic, dear sister. You will not believe it, but… " He looked at Margaret warmly. "I am. But you did not have to share a palazzo with His Royal Highness, Prince Leopold, at the height of his mania. If they had been able to run off to the nearest church and get married in the usual course of things, they would have settled down and been content like anyone else, I've no doubt, but because there were so many obstacles, it was elevated into a grand passion. For a start, she was Roman Catholic, and the Kingdom of Swabia is Lutheran to its core, so she was reluctant to agree to his proposal unless he promised to go to Rome. He could hardly give his assent to that because, as aforementioned, he was prince of a realm sworn to the opposite persuasion. Then it turned out her hideous brother wanted to marry her off to some old man with a flotilla of merchant ships, and he would have been unimpressed by the younger son of a minor foreign monarch. The Venetians are, as I've said before, extraordinarily insular. Leopold certainly never got so far as revealing his intentions to Contarini. In the end, he married her in secret in a ceremony in a private chapel, with only myself and the officiating priest present."
"Did he become a Papist, then?" Margaret asked.
"Yes, as far as I know. The other big problem was that his father, the old king, was—at least according to Leopold—a worse tyrant than Contarini. He was convinced that his father would never forgive him a Venetian commoner as a bride, quite apart from the issue of religion. In fact, I think there was talk of his being lined up as a match for some fairly senior foreign princess, and that was one reason he was hiding in Venice. His plan, insofar as the fool had any plan, was to wait until his father died and throw himself on his older brother's mercy, and in the meantime, not to consummate his marriage. Well, that is not so easy."