Joan of the Sword Hand

So smiling and kissing her hand the Princess Margaret waved her brother and Prince Ivan off. The Prince of Courtland neither looked at her nor answered. But the Muscovite turned often in his saddle as if to carry with him the picture she made of saucy countenance and dainty figure as she stood looking up into the face of the Cardinal Prince Conrad.

"What in Heaven's name is the meaning of all this – I do not understand in the least?" he was saying.

"Haste you and unrobe, Brother Con," she said; "this grandeur of yours daunts me. Then, in the summer parlour, I will tell you all!"

CHAPTER XVI

PRINCE WASP'S COMPACT

"I cannot go back to Courtland dishonoured," said Prince Louis to Ivan of Muscovy, as they stood on the green bank looking down on the rushing river, broad and brown, which had so lately been the Fords of Alla. The river had risen almost as it seemed upon the very heels of the four hundred horsemen of Kernsberg, and the ironclad knights and men-at-arms who followed the Prince of Courtland could not face the yeasty swirl of the flood.

Prince Ivan, left to himself, would have dared it.

"What is a little brown water?" he cried. "Let the men leave their armour on this side and swim their horses through. We do it fifty times a month in Muscovy in the springtime. And what are your hill-fed brooks to the full-bosomed rivers of the Great Plain?"

"It is just because they are hill-fed that we know them and will not risk our lives. The Alla has come down out of the mountains of Hohenstein. For four-and-twenty hours nothing without wing may pass and repass. Yet an hour earlier and our Duchess had been trapped on the hither side even as we. But now she will sit and laugh up there in Kernsberg. And – I cannot go back to Courtland without a bride!"

Prince Ivan stood a moment silent. Then his eyes glanced over his companion with a certain severe and amused curiosity. From foot to head they scanned him, beginning at the shoes of red Cordovan leather, following upwards to the great tassel he wore at his poignard; then came the golden girdle about his waist, the flowered needlework at his wrists and neck, and the scrutiny ended with the flat red cap on his head, from which a white feather nodded over his left eye.

Then the gaze of Prince Ivan returned again slowly to the pointed red shoes of Cordovan leather.

If there was anything so contemptuous as that eye-blink in the open scorn of all the burghers of Courtland, Prince Louis was to be excused for any hesitation he might show in facing his subjects.

The matter of Prince Wasp's meditation ran somewhat thuswise: "Thou man, fashioned from a scullion's nail-paring, and cocked upon a horse, what can I make of thee? Thou, to have a country, a crown, a wife! Gudgeon eats stickleback, jack-pike eats gudgeon and grows fat, till at last the sturgeon in his armour eats him. I will fatten this jack. I will feed him like the gudgeons of Kernsberg and Hohenstein, then take him with a dainty lure indeed, black-tipped, with sleeves gay as cranes' wings, and answering to the name of 'my lady Joan.' But wait – I must be wary, and have a care lest I shadow his water."

So saying within his heart, Prince Wasp became exceedingly thoughtful and of a demure countenance.

"My lord," he said, "this day's work will not go well down in Courtland, I fear me!"

Prince Louis moved uneasily, keeping his regard steadily upon the brown turmoil of the Alla swirling beneath, whereas the eyes of Ivan were never removed from his friend's meagre face.

"Your true Courtlander is more than half a Muscovite," mused Prince Wasp, as if thinking aloud; "he wishes not to be argued with. He wants a master, and he will not love one who permits himself to be choused of a wife upon his wedding-day!"

Prince Louis started quickly as the Wasp's sting pricked him.

"And pray, Prince Ivan," he said, "what could I have done that I left undone? Speak plainly, since you are so prodigal of smiles suppressed, so witty with covert words and shoulder-tappings!"

"My Louis," said Prince Wasp, laying his hand upon the arm of his companion with an affectation of tenderness. "I flout you not – I mock you not. And if I speak harshly, it is only that I love not to see you in your turn flouted, mocked, scorned, made light of before your own people!"

"I believe it, Ivan; pardon the heat of my hasty temper!" said the Prince of Courtland. The watchful Muscovite pursued his advantage, narrowing his eyes that he might the better note every change on the face of the man whom he held in his toils. He went on, with a certain resigned sadness in his voice —

"Ever since I came first to Courtland with the not dishonourable hope of carrying back to my father a princess of your house, none have been so amiable together as you and I. We have been even as David and Jonathan."

The Prince Louis put out a hand, which apparently Ivan did not see, for he continued without taking it.

"Yet what have I gained either of solid good or even of the lighter but not less agreeable matter of my lady's favour? So far as your sister is concerned, I have wasted my time. If I consider the union of our peoples, already one in heart, your brother works against us both; the Princess Margaret despises me, Prince Conrad thwarts us. He would bind us in chains and carry us tinkling to the feet of his pagan master in Rome!"

"I think not so," answered Prince Louis – "I cannot think so of my brother, with all his faults. Conrad is a brave soldier, a good knight – though, as is the custom of our house, it is his lot to be no more than a prince-bishop!"

The Wasp laughed a little hard laugh, clear and inhuman as the snap and rattle of Spanish castanets.

"Louis, my good friend, your simplicity, your lack of guile, do you wrong most grievous! You judge others as you yourself are. Do you not see that Conrad your brother must pay for his red hat? He must earn his cardinalate. Papa Sixtus gives nothing for nothing. Courtland must pay Peter's pence, must become monkish land. On every flake of stockfish, every grain of sturgeon roe, every ounce of marled amber, your Holy Father must levy his sacred dues. And the clear ambition of your brother is to make you chief cat's-paw pontifical upon the Baltic shore. Consider it, good Louis."

And the Prince of Muscovy twirled his moustache and smiled condescendingly between his fingers. Then, as if he thought suddenly of something else and made a new calculation, he laughed a laugh, quick and short as the barking of a dog.

"Ha!" he cried, "truly we order things better in my country. I have brothers, one, two, three. They are grand dukes, highnesses very serene. One of them has this province, another this sinecure, yet another waits on my father. My father dies – and I – well, I am in my father's place. What will my brothers do with their serene highnesses then? They will take each one the clearest road and the shortest for the frontier, or by the Holy Icon of Moscow, there would very speedily be certain new tablets in the funeral vault of my fathers."

The Prince of Courtland started.

"This thing I could never imagine of Conrad my brother. He loves me. At heart he ever cared but for his books, and now that he is a priest he hath forsworn knighthood, and tournaments, and wars."

"Poor Louis," said Ivan sadly, "not to see that once a soldier always a soldier. But 'tis a good fault, this generous blindness of the eyes. He hath already the love of your people. He has won already the voice that speaks from every altar and presbytery. The power to loose and bind men's consciences is in his hand. In a little, when he has bartered away your power for his cardinal's hat, he may be made a greater than yourself, an elector of the empire, the right-hand man of Papa Sixtus, as his uncle Adrian was before him. Then indeed your Courtland will underlie the tinkle of Peter's keys!"

"I am sure that Conrad would do nothing against his fatherland or to the hurt of his prince and brother!" said Prince Louis, but he spoke in a wavering voice, like one more than half convinced.

"Again," continued Ivan, without heeding him, "there is your wife. I am sure that if he had been the prince and you the priest – well, she had not slept this night in the Castle of Kernsberg!"

"Ivan, if you love me, be silent," cried the tortured Prince of Courtland, setting his hand to his brow. "This is the mere idle dreaming of a fool. How learned you these things? I mean how did the thoughts enter into your mind?"

"I learned the matter from the Princess Margaret, who in the brief space of a day became your wife's confidante!"

"Did Margaret tell it you?"

The Prince Ivan laughed a short, self-depreciatory laugh.

"Nay, truly," he said, smiling sadly, "you and I are in one despite, Louis. Your wife scorns you – me, my sweetheart. Did Margaret tell me? Nay, verily! Yet I learned it, nevertheless, even more certainly because she denied it so vehemently. But, after all, I daresay all will end for the best."

"How so?" demanded Prince Louis haughtily.

"Why, I have heard that your Papa at Rome will do aught for money. Doubtless he will dissolve this marriage, which indeed is no more than one in name. He has done more than that already for his own nephews. He will absolve your brother from his vows. Then you can be the monk and he the king. There will be a new marriage, at which doubtless you shall hold the service book and he the lady's hand. Then we shall have no ridings back to Kernsberg, with four hundred lances, at a word from a girl's scornful mouth. And the Alla down there may rise or fall at its pleasure, and neither hurt nor hinder any!"

The Prince of Courtland turned an angry countenance upon his friend, but the keen-witted Muscovite looked so kindly and yet so sadly upon him that after awhile the severity of his face relaxed as it had been against his will, and with a quick gesture he added, "I believe you love me, Ivan, though indeed your words are no better than red-hot pincers in my heart."

"Love you, Louis?" cried Prince Ivan. "I love you better than any brother I have, though they will never live to thwart me as yours thwarts you – better even than my father, for you do not keep me out of my inheritance!"

Then in a gayer tone he went on.

"I love you so much that I will pledge my father's whole army to help you, first to win your wife, next to take Hohenstein, Kernsberg, and Marienfeld. And after that, if you are still ambitious, why – to Plassenburg and the Wolfmark, which now the Executioner's Son holds. That would make a noble kingdom to offer a fair and wilful queen."

"And for this you ask?"

"Only your love, Louis – only your love! And, if it please you, the alliance with that Princess of your honourable house, of whom we spoke just now!"

"My sister Margaret, you mean? I will do what I can, Ivan, but she also is wilful. You know she is wilful! I cannot compel her love!"

The Prince Ivan laughed.

"I am not so complaisant as you, Louis, nor yet so modest. Give me my bride on the day Joan of the Sword Hand sleeps in the palace of Courtland as its princess, and I will take my chance of winning our Margaret's love!"