The Lost Prince (30 page)

‘If they’re barons and counts, and friends of your father’s, they are well-to-do enough to be responsible for you,’ said Mrs Beedle, rather fiercely, because she was somewhat over-awed and resented the fact. ‘It’s a matter of next week’s rent, gentlemen. I want to know where it’s coming from.’

The elder man looked at her with a swift cold glance. He did not speak to her, but to Lazarus. ‘What is she doing here?’ he demanded.

Marco answered him. ‘She is afraid we cannot pay our rent,’ he said. ‘It is of great importance to her that she should be sure.’

‘Take her away,’ said the gentleman to Lazarus. He did not even glance at her. He drew something from his coat-pocket and handed it to the old soldier. ‘Take her away,’ he repeated. And because it seemed as if she were not any longer a person at all, Mrs Beedle actually shuffled down the passage to the cellar-kitchen steps. Lazarus did not leave her until he, too, had descended into the cellar kitchen, where he stood and towered above her like an infuriated giant.

‘Tomorrow he will be on his way to Samavia, miserable woman!’ he said. ‘Before he goes, it would be well for you to implore his pardon.’

But Mrs Beedle’s point of view was not his. She had recovered some of her breath.

‘I don’t know where Samavia is,’ she raged, as she struggled to set her dusty, black cap straight. ‘I’ll warrant it’s one of these little foreign countries you can scarcely see on the map – and not a decent English town in it! He can go as soon as he likes, so long as he pays his rent before he does it. Samavia, indeed! You talk as if he was Buckingham Palace!’

chapter thirty-one

‘the son of stefan loristan’

When a party composed of two boys attended by a big soldierly manservant and accompanied by two distinguished-looking, elderly men, of a marked foreign type, appeared on the platform of Charing Cross Station they attracted a good deal of attention. In fact, the good looks and strong, well-carried body of the handsome lad with the thick black hair would have caused eyes to turn towards him even if he had not seemed to be regarded as so special a charge by those who were with him. But in a country where people are accustomed to seeing a certain manner and certain forms observed in the case of persons – however young – who are set apart by the fortune of rank and distinction, and where the populace also rather enjoys the sight of such demeanour, it was inevitable that more than one
quick-sighted
looker-on should comment on the fact that this was not an ordinary group of individuals.

‘See that fine, big lad over there!’ said a workman, whose head, with a pipe in its mouth, stuck out of a third-class smoking carriage window. ‘He’s some sort of a young swell, I’ll lay a shillin’! Take a look at him,’ to his mate inside.

The mate took a look. The pair were of the decent, polytechnic-educated type, and were shrewd at observation.

‘Yes, he’s some sort of young swell,’ he summed him up. ‘But he’s not English by a long chalk. He must be a young Turk, or Russian, sent over to be educated. His suite looks like it. All but the ferret-faced chap on crutches. Wonder what he is!’

A good-natured looking guard was passing, and the first man hailed him.

‘Have we got any swells travelling with us this morning?’ he asked, jerking his head towards the group. ‘That looks like it. Any one leaving Windsor or Sandringham to cross from Dover today?’

The man looked at the group curiously for a moment and then shook his head.

‘They do look like something or other,’ he answered, ‘but no one knows anything about them. Everybody’s safe in Buckingham Palace and Marlborough House this week. No one either going or coming.’

No observer, it is true, could have mistaken Lazarus for an ordinary attendant escorting an ordinary charge. If silence had not still been strictly the order, he could not have restrained himself. As it was, he bore himself like a grenadier, and stood by Marco as if across his dead body alone could any one approach the lad.

‘Until we reach Melzarr,’ he had said with passion to the two gentlemen – ‘until I can stand before my Master and behold him embrace his son –
behold
him – I implore that I may not lose sight of him night or day. On my knees, I implore that I may travel, armed, at his side. I am but his servant, and have no right to occupy a
place in the same carriage. But put me anywhere. I will be deaf, dumb, blind to all but himself. Only permit me to be near enough to give my life if it is needed. Let me say to my Master, “I never left him.”’

‘We will find a place for you,’ the elder man said, ‘and if you are so anxious, you may sleep across his threshold when we spend the night at a hotel.’

‘I will not sleep!’ said Lazarus. ‘I will watch. Suppose there should be demons of Maranovitch loose and infuriated in Europe? Who knows!’

‘The Maranovitch and Iarovitch who have not already sworn allegiance to King Ivor are dead on battlefields. The remainder are now Fedorovitch and praising God for their King,’ was the answer Baron Rastka made him.

But Lazarus kept his guard unbroken. When he occupied the next compartment to the one in which Marco travelled, he stood in the corridor throughout the journey. When they descended at any point to change trains, he followed close at the boy’s heels, his fierce eyes on every side at once and his hand on the weapon hidden in his broad leather belt. When they stopped to rest in some city, he planted himself in a chair by the bedroom door of his charge, and if he slept he was not aware that nature had betrayed him into doing so.

If the journey made by the young Bearers of the Sign had been a strange one, this was strange by its very contrast. Throughout that pilgrimage, two uncared-for waifs in worn clothes had travelled from one place to another, sometimes in third- or fourth-class continental railroad carriages, sometimes in jolting diligences, sometimes in peasants’ carts, sometimes on foot by
side roads and mountain paths, and forest ways. Now, two well-dressed boys in the charge of two men of the class whose orders are obeyed, journeyed in compartments reserved for them, their travelling appurtenances supplying every comfort that luxury could provide.

The Rat had not known that there were people who travelled in such a manner; that wants could be so perfectly foreseen; that railroad officials, porters at stations, the staff of restaurants, could be by magic transformed into active and eager servants. To lean against the upholstered back of a railway carriage and in luxurious ease look through the window at passing beauties, and then to find books at your elbow and excellent meals appearing at regular hours, these unknown perfections made it necessary for him at times to pull himself together and give all his energies to believing that he was quite awake. Awake he was, and with much on his mind ‘to work out’ – so much, indeed, that on the first day of the journey he had decided to give up the struggle, and wait until fate made clear to him such things as he was to be allowed to understand of the mystery of Stefan Loristan.

What he realised most clearly was that the fact that the son of Stefan Loristan was being escorted in private state to the country his father had given his life’s work to, was never for a moment forgotten. The Baron Rastka and Count Vorversk were of the dignity and courteous reserve which marks men of distinction. Marco was not a mere boy to them, he was the son of Stefan Loristan; and they were Samavians. They watched over him, not as Lazarus did, but with a gravity and
forethought which somehow seemed to encircle him with a rampart. Without any air of subservience, they constituted themselves his attendants. His comfort, his pleasure, even his entertainment, were their private care. The Rat felt sure they intended that, if possible, he should enjoy his journey, and that he should not be fatigued by it. They conversed with him as The Rat had not known that men ever conversed with boys – until he had met Loristan. It was plain that they knew what he would be most interested in, and that they were aware he was as familiar with the history of Samavia as they were themselves. When he showed a disposition to hear of events which had occurred, they were as prompt to follow his lead as they would have been to follow the lead of a man. That, The Rat argued with himself, was because Marco had lived so intimately with his father that his life had been more like a man’s than a boy’s and had trained him in mature thinking. He was very quiet during the journey, and The Rat knew he was thinking all the time.

The night before they reached Melzarr, they slept at a town some hours distant from the capital. They arrived at midnight and went to a quiet hotel.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Marco, when The Rat had left him for the night, ‘tomorrow, we shall see him! God be thanked!’

‘God be thanked!’ said The Rat, also. And each saluted the other before they parted.

In the morning, Lazarus came into the bedroom with an air so solemn that it seemed as if the garments he carried in his hands were part of some religious ceremony.

‘I am at your command, sir,’ he said. ‘And I bring you your uniform.’

He carried, in fact, a richly decorated Samavian uniform, and the first thing Marco had seen when he entered was that Lazarus himself was in uniform also. His was the uniform of an officer of the King’s Body Guard.

‘The Master,’ he said, ‘asks that you wear this on your entrance to Melzarr. I have a uniform, also, for your aide-de-camp.’

When Rastka and Vorversk appeared, they were in uniforms also. It was a uniform which had a touch of the Orient in its picturesque splendour. A short fur-bordered mantle hung by a jewelled chain from the shoulders, and there was much magnificent embroidery of colour and gold.

‘Sir, we must drive quickly to the station,’ Baron Rastka said to Marco. ‘These people are excitable and patriotic, and His Majesty wishes us to remain incognito, and avoid all chance of public demonstration until we reach the capital.’ They passed rather hurriedly through the hotel to the carriage which awaited them. The Rat saw that something unusual was happening in the place. Servants were scurrying round corners, and guests were coming out of their rooms and even hanging over the balustrades.

As Marco got into his carriage, he caught sight of a boy about his own age who was peeping from behind a bush. Suddenly he darted away, and they all saw him tearing down the street towards the station as fast as his legs would carry him.

But the horses were faster than he was. The party reached the station, and was escorted quickly to its place in a special saloon-carriage which awaited it. As the train made its way out of the station, Marco saw the boy who had run before them rush on to the platform, waving his arms and shouting something with wild delight. The people who were standing about turned to look at him, and the next instant they had all torn off their caps and thrown them up in the air and were shouting also. But it was not possible to hear what they said.

‘We were only just in time,’ said Vorversk, and Baron Rastka nodded.

The train went swiftly, and stopped only once before they reached Melzarr. This was at a small station, on the platform of which stood peasants with big baskets of garlanded flowers and evergreens. They put them on the train, and soon both Marco and The Rat saw that something unusual was taking place. At one time, a man standing on the narrow outside platform of the carriage was plainly seen to be securing garlands and handing up flags to men who worked on the roof.

‘They are doing something with Samavian flags and a lot of flowers and green things!’ cried The Rat, in excitement.

‘Sir, they are decorating the outside of the carriage,’ Vorversk said. ‘The villagers on the line obtained permission from His Majesty. The son of Stefan Loristan could not be allowed to pass their homes without their doing homage.’

‘I understand,’ said Marco, his heart thumping hard against his uniform. ‘It is for my father’s sake.’

At last, embowered, garlanded, and hung with waving banners, the train drew in at the chief station at Melzarr.

‘Sir,’ said Rastka, as they were entering, ‘will you stand up that the people may see you? Those on the outskirts of the crowd will have the merest glimpse, but they will never forget.’

Marco stood up. The others grouped themselves behind him. There arose a roar of voices, which ended almost in a shriek of joy which was like the shriek of a tempest. Then there burst forth the blare of brazen instruments playing the National Hymn of Samavia, and mad voices joined in it.

If Marco had not been a strong boy, and long trained in self-control, what he saw and heard might have been almost too much to be borne. When the train had come to a full stop, and the door was thrown open, even Rastka’s dignified voice was unsteady as he said, ‘Sir, lead the way. It is for us to follow.’

And Marco, erect in the doorway, stood for a moment, looking out upon the roaring, acclaiming, weeping, singing and swaying multitude – and saluted just as he had saluted The Squad, looking just as much a boy, just as much a man, just as much a thrilling young human being.

Then, at the sight of him standing so, it seemed as if the crowd went mad – as the Forgers of the Sword had seemed to go mad on the night in the cavern. The tumult rose and rose, the crowd rocked, and leapt, and, in its frenzy of emotion, threatened to crush itself to death. But for the lines of soldiers, there would have seemed no chance for anyone to pass through it alive.

‘I am the son of Stefan Loristan,’ Marco said to himself, in order to hold himself steady. ‘I am on my way to my father.’

Afterwards, he was moving through the line of guarding soldiers to the entrance, where two great state-carriages stood; and there, outside, waited even a huger and more frenzied crowd than that left behind. He saluted there again, and again, and again, on all sides. It was what they had seen the Emperor do in Vienna. He was not an Emperor, but he was the son of Stefan Loristan who had brought back the King.