“YOU understand, then,” said Prince Theophanis to Petros, “that I will take the girl into my service for the present, but that if she is required as a witness, the police have only to let me know, and the Princess will see that she is sent down under proper escort to Therma?”
“The Lady Eirene will hardly thank you for burdening her with such trash, lord,” said Petros, with the familiarity of old acquaintance; “but my poor comrade will kiss the icons for you night and morning, in gratitude for your protection granted to his son. When the matter has been forgotten, he will obtain pardon from the Lord Romanos, and come and claim the child.”
“Ah, by the bye, what has happened to Prince Romanos?” asked the man called Glafko quickly. “He was to join us here at three, and we have waited nearly two hours.”
“Truly, lord, I know not. I have not seen my master since the early morning, when I was thrown from my horse while in attendance upon him, and he graciously excused me from duty for the rest of the day.”
Danaë listened with delight. Petros was a worthy fellow-conspirator, after all. He was taking pains to round off her story neatly, and provide against any chance allusion to the fact of his having been seen out in this direction.
“You pursued the girl all the way from Therma after getting a bad fall?” said the blue-eyed man. “Truly, you are a stout-hearted fellow, friend Petros!”
Petros looked down, with admirably simulated confusion. “Perhaps I may have been glad to get the day to myself, lord,” he admitted. “There was the promise to my poor comrade—and I could not broach the matter to my master, lest he should feel compelled to hand over to the police one whom he would much prefer to protect.”
“Exactly. Prince Romanos knows nothing.” But Danaë detected a mocking undercurrent in the blue-eyed man’s speech. He was suspicious about something, she saw, and she wished she had not told that purposeless lie about the islands. However, since it was told, it must be maintained.
“If I might venture to offer counsel, it would be that the Lord Theophanis and the Lord Glafko should ride on to the end of to-day’s short stage, and wait for the Lord Romanos at the inn,” said Petros respectfully. “Since he is late, he will doubtless ride fast thither by the road, but if not, I shall meet him in my return to Therma, and can tell him where they are.”
“I suppose we can’t do better,” said Prince Theophanis, beckoning to the guards to bring up the horses.
“Many be your years, friend Petraki!” said Danaë triumphantly, prudence forgotten for the moment.
“Wait, my lady, only wait!” he responded, with heartfelt warmth. The blue-eyed man called Glafko was watching them closely, so that no more was possible.
“Logofet,” said the Prince, as the guards came up, “you had better walk, and let the girl ride your horse as far as the inn. To-morrow we can find her a place on one of the mules.”
The man called Logofet obeyed without demur, much to Danaë’s astonishment, for she had expected nothing better than to trudge alongside holding a stirrup. The guards were Thracian Emathians, she knew by their dress and equipment, and she was prepared to regard them, as Exarchists, as rather worse than ordinary schismatics, but they seemed to treat women better than the staunch Patriarchists to whom she was accustomed. She was just making up her prejudiced little mind that this was due to poorness of spirit, when she was forcibly undeceived. She had never mounted a horse before—there were none in Strio—and when Logofet swung her into the saddle, it was with such unnecessary force that she went over on the other side. Happily his comrade was there, and caught her.
“Fool!” he growled, as he restored her to her place. “If the Prince had seen thee——!”
“The devil fly away with the Prince and the girl too!” snarled Logofet. “If I had known we were to be ruled by women, I would never have joined thee, Gavril.”
“Peace! thou art a wild savage from the hills,” said Gavril contemptuously, “and both the Prince and I can do very well without thee, if the honour of serving him and Glafko is not enough for thee. There! Glafko looks round. Thou hast delayed us both with thy foolishness, and we shall not again be chosen to attend the Prince.”
“So much the better!” muttered Logofet, inciting the horse to a disquieting prance as he led it. “Hold tight, girl! Is it not enough for thee to be taken to Klaustra, where kitchen-wenches must be treated like queens, that thou shouldst try to dismount every step of the way?”
Horribly frightened, and much encumbered by the necessity of holding Janni firmly on her knee, Danaë did her best to obey, but the horse’s movements under Logofet’s leading made her perfectly sick with terror, until she cried out a despairing appeal to be allowed to walk. The Prince and his brother-in-law turned instantly, and Logofet received a sharp rebuke, while Gavril was ordered to lead both horses. Thus relieved, Danaë succeeded in maintaining her position for an hour or more, until, as dusk was falling, they reached a wayside inn, the inner courtyard of which was full of horses and mules and guards and servants. Those of the latter who wore the livery of Prince Romanos were separating themselves and their beasts from the rest, so that there was much confusion.
“No sign of him yet, Wylie,” said the Prince to his companion.
“No, but here is a messenger, I imagine,” as one of the Therma guardsmen swaggered up with a note.
“He says he can’t come—sudden severe personal bereavement,” said the Prince, after reading it.
“Ah, he’s playing us false, as I expected. Well, let us get rid of his fellows, and then I will commend Miss Kalliopé Vlasso to the special care of the landlord’s wife. I mean to keep an eye on that young lady.”
* * * * * * * *
“What maggot have you got in your head about this luckless girl?” asked the Prince, when he and his brother-in-law met at supper. They spoke English, as was usual when they were alone together.
“I presume that even you can see there’s something remarkably fishy about her. Why did she and friend Petros, after breathing such violent mutual hostility, fall like lambs into the same story, and back each other up?”
“Because it was true, I suppose. But I see. You think they were both in the plot, and that the hostility was only a blind?”
“And very badly carried out. What makes me certain is the girl’s denying that she comes from the islands. If ever I heard an island voice, it’s hers.”
“But her ancestors may have come from there.”
“But she has the type of face. Look here, we’ll ask Armitage when he comes. If he doesn’t say it is an island type——”
“Yes, but if he does, what does it prove?”
“That she and Petros are acquainted, and probably related, in spite of her strenuous denials.”
“I suppose you mean me to understand that she was an accomplice in the sister’s murder, and that we are helping her to fly from justice?”
“By Jove! I shouldn’t wonder,” cried Wylie. “No, I hadn’t thought of that, though it did cross my mind that the philanthropic Petros was in all probability the murderous husband of the story. We are certainly introducing a novel element into our home circle.”
“But that’s absurd. We won’t take her with us.”
“What are we to do—leave her here? That’s exactly what I don’t want to do. You don’t see my point. What will you take that there has been no murder at all?”
“I don’t see what you mean.”
“Well, listen. I will send a man back to Therma to-night to bring out the earliest issues of the papers in the morning. If the girl was concerned in the affair the fact will have come out by this time. By her account, the thing was public enough. But if there is no murder in the papers at all?”
“Because it has been hushed up?”
“No, because it never happened. Because the story was ingeniously contrived to furnish a reason for the girl’s foisting herself on us, and going with us to Klaustra.”
“But why burden herself with the child?”
“To make it look more natural, I suppose. How can I tell what’s at the back of their minds? But you can see that Romanos has contrived to make us introduce of our own accord the spy who is to keep an eye on us.”
“We send her back with compliments, I suppose?”
“Not a bit of it. We take her home—the little serpent!—and cherish her in our collective bosom, keeping a sharp look-out as to her possibilities of stinging. In other words, we’ll put her where she can see everything—in the nursery, if I can get Zoe to agree—and take good care that she tells nothing but the truth. The more she lives in our very midst, the easier it will be to supervise her correspondence and her comings and goings.”
“I don’t see making things easy for her, Wylie.”
“Why, what harm can she do, provided she tells the truth? We have nothing to be ashamed of. And surely it’s better to have our spy labelled, than not to know who could be trusted and who not?”
“Wylie, I don’t like it. The child—it occurs to me—what if there is some design against your boy?”
Colonel Wylie’s face showed signs of wavering for a moment, then regained its decisive lines. “Can’t help that, Maurice. If Zoe and I and Linton can’t look after the child, why, we deserve to lose him. At any rate, there’s no plan of substitution, for this baby would be a puny creature beside him. But I’ll warn Zoe, of course, and get her help in keeping a watch on the girl. We must sift this thing to the bottom, for it’s all part and parcel of the disloyalty which I am convinced Romanos is plotting, and which you won’t believe in.”
“And if the papers confirm the girl’s story in the morning?”
“Why shouldn’t he have had the whole thing made up and inserted? No, perhaps that’s a little too much. I will beg the young woman’s pardon if it is so.”
But the papers were entirely on Wylie’s side in the morning, containing not a word of any such tragedy as Danaë had described. On the other hand, the landlord’s wife beckoned him mysteriously aside, and expressed it as her opinion that there was something very queer about that girl who said she was going to Klaustra to wait on the Princesses. She had cried out in the night so loud as to wake the servant-girls who slept with her, and one of them who understood Greek said that her cries were all of knives and blood, and her own share in some dreadful deed. The others had teased her to tell them about it, but she refused to say a word, and they were now sending her to Coventry in consequence. The news was perplexing, for Wylie could scarcely believe the girl to be such a practised plotter as even to support her story by the simulation of nightly terrors. In the faint hope of clearing up the mystery, he tried to take her by surprise.
“Why did you call out in the night that your sister’s death was your fault, Kalliopé?” he asked her.
The questioning of the girls had prepared Danaë for further curiosity, and she answered demurely, “Alas, lord! it is true. I stirred up my sister to scold her husband when he came home drunk, or she would have received him meekly, and he would not have killed her.”
He was not prepared with further questions, and she retired in mild triumph, to take her place with Janni on one of the mules. Wylie’s obvious suspicions put her on her mettle. She was far too clever to make palpable efforts to disarm them, but set herself to learn all she could of her new surroundings, that she might provide against further attempts to take her by surprise. From some of the guards who could speak Greek she discovered, much to her astonishment, that the position of the Theophanis family was by no means that of dependants upon Prince Romanos. They were the recognised rulers of the northern or Slav portion of the principality, raising troops and administering justice, though in subjection to the Therma Government. Danaë’s assertion of their inferior lot was laughed to scorn, and she was informed, to her great indignation, that the brunt of the struggle for freedom in the Hagiamavra peninsula, the glory of which she had always believed to be her brother’s peculiar possession, had been borne by them. Why they had allowed themselves to be defeated in the plébiscite that followed, when their followers would gladly have manipulated the voting in their favour, no one quite knew, but it was understood that they had weighty and cunning reasons for accepting temporarily a subordinate place, from which they would emerge as undisputed masters of the whole of Emathia. Danaë’s heart leaped when she heard this. To the glory of saving Janni should be added that of unmasking the plot which threatened her brother’s rule, and she would return to Therma doubly a deliverer.
Information regarding the family life of her hereditary foes was equally easy to obtain. Prince Theophanis and the Lord Glafko were inseparable friends, neither taking any action without consulting the other. It was shrewdly suspected that this complete unity was not altogether to the taste of the Lady Eirene, the Prince’s wife. Her title to represent the Imperial line was equal, if not superior, to his, and she was believed to advocate a much more energetic policy than that pursued by her husband and his friend. But much less had been heard of her views and wishes since the death of her little son at the time of the apparent collapse of the family fortunes, and the guards considered that she had learnt to accept the inferior place proper to a childless woman. Her sister-in-law, the Lady Zoe, ranked far higher in the estimation of the Emathians, since in the veins of her son ran the blood not only of the Theophanis Emperors but of their adored Glafko, whom they handsomely credited with having led them to victory in Hagiamavra. To Danaë’s ears this feeling supplied only the crowning proof of the impiety and heresy of the Slavs among the Emathians. They could welcome a mere ordinary Englishman, schismatic to the backbone, without one drop of royal blood, as the ancestor of their future Emperors! Little did they know that the child she held in her arms could trace his descent through a succession of Despots of Strio and Venetian Patricians of unbroken Orthodoxy, until—— A chill seized her as she remembered Janni’s schismatic mother, but after all, that mother was dead, and the obvious course was to declare that she had been Orthodox from her youth up.
A new idea for Janni’s future suggested itself to Danaë’s active mind on the journey. The child had taken a great fancy to Prince Theophanis, and held out his arms whenever he came near—an invitation which the bereaved father could never neglect. The jealous pang which seized Danaë at first soon gave place to approval. If Prince Theophanis should wish to adopt Janni! The ironical prospect of his bringing up his rival’s son to supplant himself, and unconsciously destroying the prospects of his own nephew, gave her the keenest delight. She spared no pains to deepen the fondness of the man and the child for each other, but it was impossible to find out whether the Prince had any such thought as she desired in his mind.
“Ah, lord, take care of him!” she said impulsively one day, as he bent to lift Janni before him on his horse. “He is greater than he seems.”
A whimsical smile crossed the Prince’s face. “And are you also greater than you seem, Kalliopé?” he asked her.
“I am only a poor servant-girl, lord. Do not mock me!” she entreated, covering her very real confusion by a hasty retreat.
“There’s something mighty queer about her, whatever she is,” said Wylie, looking after her. “If she has been coached in all she says, the plot is too deep for my poor brain.”
“It was awfully good of the plotters to send us this little chap, at any rate,” said the Prince. “I wonder whether Eirene could bring herself to take to him?”
“I don’t know whether she could, but she certainly won’t. No, I beg your pardon, Maurice; I had no right to say that. When she sees how fond you are of him——”
“That would make no difference,” said Maurice sharply.
“Well, we can’t tell. Don’t force the idea on her. She may think of it for herself. I’ll take the little chap and Kalliopé straight to Zoe when we get in, so that your wife can just come in and see them casually.”
“Thanks, Wylie. You and Zoe are really frightfully good——”
“Oh, shut up, old man! I thought we agreed long ago that there was to be no more of that sort of thing. It’s little enough we can do to make things easier for you—and your wife, and we’re heartily glad to do it.”
Danaë, unaware of these arrangements, was rather taken aback on her arrival at the Konak at Klaustra. The place had been the abode of the Roumi Governor in the days before liberation, and had been adapted to European use by the erection of a second storey on three sides of the hollow square of buildings surrounding the paved court. The central portion, facing the gateway, was evidently the residence of the Prince, and a lady in black stood at the top of the steps, with a background of gaily dressed servants. She came forward to welcome her husband, and bestowed also a greeting—not a specially cordial one—on Wylie, who saluted in return, and reined his horse round as soon as Prince and Princess Theophanis had gone indoors. Danaë was preparing to dismount and follow them, but he told her hastily to stay where she was, and turned the mule. The buildings on the left-hand side of the square formed another dwelling, of less pretensions, and here also a lady was waiting on the steps. Before Wylie could dismount she ran down to him, and Danaë watched their greeting with curiosity and interest. The Lady Zoe was not beautiful, nor particularly young, but she was unaccountably reminded of another couple she would fain have forgotten—Janni’s mother and Prince Romanos, now sundered for ever through her instrumentality.
“And where is the autocrat?” inquired Wylie gaily of his wife.
“Just inside. I would not let Linton bring him out here, lest Maurice should see—and be reminded——”
“Of course. Let’s go in and pay our respects. Oh, by the bye, Zoe, what do you say to starting an understudy for him? We have picked up rather a jolly little waif of about his age, and brought him along with his nurse.”
“Graham! what an extraordinary thing to do! A child that you know nothing of? Show him to me at once. He looks clean, at any rate,” she admitted reluctantly, “and he has rather a dear little face. Are you sure he hasn’t been anywhere where there’s infection?”
“I can only say that he hasn’t come out with anything between Therma and here. The girl is tremendously careful of him, too, but I don’t know anything about his surroundings before we got him. It is a queer business altogether.”
“Lady, my little lord is tired and hungry,” said Danaë piteously, as Janni’s eyes began to wrinkle up, and his mouth to open, while the lady addressed as Zoe stood undecided.
“Poor little man! so he is.” She took him into her arms, and the impending yell collapsed as if by magic. “He shall share Harold’s supper, at any rate. Come in, nurse. What is your name? Kalliopé? Have you had charge of him long?”
“Since he was born, my lady,” lied Danaë with her usual hardihood, resisting the impulse to snatch her darling from the stranger’s arms, and following meekly up the steps. At the top stood an elderly English maid holding a child of about Janni’s age, and dark-haired like him, but more strongly built, and with his father’s deep blue eyes.
“Hasn’t he grown?” demanded the mother ecstatically, as Wylie took the child, with a kind word to the maid. “He gets more like you every day. You must see it.”
“Never was such a likeness, sir,” corroborated the nurse dutifully. “And so knowing, bless his little heart!”
“Here’s a companion for him. Let’s see what they think of one another,” said Wylie, waiving judiciously the question of likeness. “Put yours down here, Zoe. Nonsense! why shouldn’t they like it?”
His wife had demurred, and as it proved, with reason, for when the two children were set face to face upon the divan, their first acknowledgment of each other’s presence, after one horrified stare, was a simultaneous yell. Danaë flew to the rescue of her charge, and the English nurse of hers, and Wylie stood astonished, while his wife laughed.
“They will make friends over their bread and milk,” she said. “Come, Kalliopé.”
Mounting the steps to the roof of the original buildings, they reached the modern rooms, fitted up in English style, which formed the home of the Wylies. Danaë glanced round with something like awe at the appointments of the nursery. She had thought Janni’s nursery at the villa “European” in the extreme, but it had been nothing like this. Wylie brought in a second high chair from another room, and the two nurses were speedily engaged in feeding their respective charges with bread and milk. Very quickly Danaë observed, to her confusion, that Janni’s table manners were not producing a favourable impression. He grabbed at the spoon, filled his mouth too full, and choked, to the great scandal of his neighbour opposite, who commented on his behaviour obviously, though unintelligibly, in the nurse’s ear.
“There, there, Master Harold! he don’t know no better,” she said reprovingly, turning to the parents to add admiringly, “Did you ever see anybody so quick to notice things, ma’am?”