"And why?" he asked in a tone full of contempt. "Why cannot the Princess Margaret be married?"

"Because," said the woman in the long cloak, fingering a string at her neck, "she is married already. _I am her husband!_"

The long blue cloak fell to the ground, and the Sparhawk, clad in close-fitting squire's dress, stood before their astonished eyes.

A long low murmur, gathering and sinking, surged about the square.

Prince Louis gasped. Margaret clung to her lover's arm, and for the s.p.a.ce of a score of seconds the whole world stopped breathing.

Prince Ivan twisted his moustache as if he would pull it out by the roots.

"So," he said, "the Princess is married, is she? And you are her husband? 'Whom G.o.d hath joined'--and the rest of it. Well, we shall see, we shall see!"

He spoke gently, meditatively, almost caressingly.

"Yes," cried the Sparhawk defiantly, "we were married yesterday by Father Clement, the Prince's chaplain, in the presence of the most n.o.ble Leopold von Dessauer, High Councillor of Pla.s.senburg!"

"And my wife--the Princess Joan, where is she?" gasped Prince Louis, so greatly bewildered that he had not yet begun to be angry.

Ivan of Muscovy put out his hand.

"Gently, friend," he said; "I will unmask this play-acting springald.

This is not your wife, not the woman you wedded and fought for, not the Lady Joan of Hohenstein, but some baseborn brother, who, having her face, hath played her part, in order to mock and cheat and deceive us both!"

He turned again to Maurice von Lynar.

"I think we have met before, Sir Masquer," he said with his usual suave courtesy; "I have, therefore, a double debt to pay. Hither!" He beckoned to the guards who lined the approaches. "I presume, sir, so true a courtier will not brawl before ladies. You recognise that you are in our power. Your sword, sir!"

The Sparhawk looked all about the crowded square. Then he snapped his sword over his knee and threw the pieces down on the stone steps.

"You are right; I will not fight vainly here," he said. "I know well it is useless. But"--he raised his voice--"be it known to all men that my name is Maurice, Count von Loen, and that the Princess Margaret is my lawfully wedded wife. She cannot then marry Ivan of Muscovy!"

The Prince laughed easily and spread his hand with gentle deprecation, as the guards seized the Sparhawk and forced him a little s.p.a.ce away from the clinging hands of the Princess.

"I am an easy man," he said gently, as he clicked his dagger to and fro in its sheath. "When I like a woman, I would as lief marry her widow as maid!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

THE RETURN OF THE BRIDE

"Prince Louis," continued Ivan, turning to the Prince, "we are keeping these holy men needlessly, as well as disappointing the good folk of Courtland of their spectacle. There is no need that we should stand here any longer. We have matters to discuss with this gentleman and--his wife. Have I your leave to bring them together in the Palace? We may have something to say to them more at leisure."

But the Prince of Courtland made no answer. His late fears of the Black Death, the astonishing turn affairs had taken, the discovery that his wife was not his wife, the slowly percolating thought that his invasion of Kernsberg, his victories there, and his triumphal re-entry into his capital, had all been in vain, united with his absorbing fear of ridicule to deprive him of speech. He moved his hand angrily and began to descend the stairs towards the waiting horses.

Prince Ivan turned towards Maurice von Lynar.

"You will come with me to the Palace under escort of these gentlemen of my staff," he said, with smiling equality of courtesy; "there is no need to discuss intimate family affairs before half the rabble of Courtland."

He bowed to Maurice as if he had been inviting him to a feast. Maurice looked about the crowded square, and over the pennons of the Cossacks.

He knew there was no hope either in flight or in resistance. All the approaches to the square had been filled up with armed men.

"I will follow!" he answered briefly.

The Prince swept his plumed hat to the ground.

"Nay," he said; "lead, not follow. You must go with your wife. The Prince of Muscovy does not precede a lady, a princess,--and a bride!"

So it came about that Margaret, after all, descended the cathedral steps on her husband's arm.

And as the cavalcade rode back to the Palace the Princess was in the midst between the Sparhawk and Prince Wasp, Louis of Courtland pacing moodily ahead, his bridle reins loose upon his horse's neck, his chin sunk on his breast, while the rabble cried ever, "Largesse! largesse!"

and ran before them casting brightly coloured silken scarves in the way.

Then Prince Ivan, summoning his almoner to his side, took from him a bag of coin. He dipped his fingers deeply in and scattered the coins with a free hand, crying loudly, "To the health and long life of the Princess Margaret and her husband! Health and riches and offspring!"

And the mob taking the word from him shouted all along the narrow streets, "To the Princess and her husband!"

But from the hooded dormers of the city, from the lofty gable spy-holes, from the narrow windows of Baltic staircase-towers the good wives of Courtland looked down to see the great folk pa.s.s. And their comment was not that of the rabble. "Married, is she?" they said among themselves.

"Well, G.o.d bless her comely face! It minds me of my own wedding. But, by my faith, I looked more at my Fritz than she doth at the Muscovite. I declare all her eyes are for that handsome lad who rides at her left elbow----"

"Nay, he is not handsome--look at his face. It is as white as a new-washen clout hung on a drying line. Who can he be?"

"Minds me o' the Prince's wife, the proud lady that flouted him, mightily he doth--I should not wonder if he were her brother."

"Yes, by my faith, dame--hast hit it! So he doth. And here was I racking my brains to think where I had seen him before, and then, after all, I never _had_ seen him before!"

"A miracle it is, gossip, and right pale he looks! Yet I should not wonder if our Margaret loves him the most. Her eyes seek to him. Women among the great are not like us. They say they never like their own husbands the best. What wouldst thou do, good neighbour Bette, if I loved your Hans better than mine own stupid old Fritz! Pull the strings off my cap, dame, sayst thou? That shows thee no great lady. For if thou wast of the great, thou wouldst no more than wave thy hand and say, 'A good riddance and a heartsome change!'--and with that begin to make love to the next young lad that came by with his thumbs in his armholes and a feather in his cap!"

"And what o' the childer--the house-bairns--what o' them? With all this mixing about, what comes o' them--answer me that, good dame!"

"What, Gossip Bette--have you never heard? The childer of the great, they suck not their own mothers' milk--they are not dandled in their own mothers' arms. They learn not their Duty from their mothers' lips. When they are fractious, a stranger beats them till they be good----"

"Ah," cried the court of matrons all in unison, "I would like to catch one of the fremit lay a hand on my Karl--my Kirsten--that I would! I would comb their hair for them, tear the pinner off their backs--that I would!" "And I!" "And I!"

"Nay, good gossips all," out of the chorus the voice of the dame learned in the ways of the great a.s.serted itself; "that, again, proves you all no better than burgherish town-folk--not truly of the n.o.ble of the land.

For a right great lady, when she meets a foster-nurse with a baby at the breast, will go near and say--I have heard 'em--'La! the pretty thing--a poppet! Well-a-well, 'tis pretty, for sure! And whose baby may this be?'

"'Thine own, lady, thine own!'"

At this long and loud echoed the derision of the good wives of Courtland. Their gossip laughed and rea.s.serted. But no, they would not hear a word more. She had overstepped the limit of their belief.

"What, not to know her child--her own flesh and blood? Out on her!"

cried every mother who had felt about her neck the clasp of tiny hands, or upon her breast the easing pressure of little blind lips. "Good dame, no; you shall not hoodwink us. Were she deaf and dumb and doting, a mother would yet know her child. 'Tis not in nature else! Well, thanks be to Mary Mother--she who knew both wife-pain and mother-joy, we, at least, are not of the great. We may hush our own bairns to sleep, dance with them when they frolic, and correct them when they be naughty-minded. Nevertheless, a good luck go with our n.o.ble lady this day! May she have many fair children and a husband to love her even as if she were a common woman and no princess!"

So in little jerks of blessing and with much head-shaking the good wives of Courtland continued their congress, long after the last Cossack lance with its fluttering pennon had been lost to view down the winding street.

For, indeed, well might the gossips thank the Virgin and their patron saints that they were not as the poor Princess Margaret, and that their worst troubles concerned only whether Hans or Fritz tarried a little over-long in the town wine-cellars, or wagered the fraction of a penny too much on a neighbour's c.o.c.k-fight, and so returned home somewhat crusty because the wrong bird had won the main.