The Proud Princess Page 13

  Ilona’s eyes were on his face as the Count continued,

  “As you can imagine, it was inevitable that some of the Sáros young men should consider it their duty to form a rival group to challenge the Radáks and fight them wherever they appeared.”

  The Count paused before he said reflectively,

  “At first, I am sure, it was just a game. The rival groups had to be intelligent enough to guess where their enemies would appear and try to be in positions of advantage before they arrived.”

  His voice was grave as he went on,

  “Then things began to get out of hand. I have no way of estimating what the casualties were amongst the Radáks, but a number of Sáros youths lost their lives or were badly injured.”

  “They used knives?” Ilona asked.

  “And pistols!” the Count replied. “In fact the encounters became shooting-matches in which innocent bystanders, who had only gone to the Inn for a glass of wine after a hard day’s work, were killed or wounded.”

  Ilona clasped her hands together.

  She could understand all too well how easily such an explosive situation would escalate into what must have amounted to open warfare.

  “Your brother was killed in a small Inn near the river where there had never been any trouble before. The landlord catered mostly for courting couples who sat in arbours in his garden, drinking the local wine, and making love.”

  He paused before he said sadly,

  “Three betrothed men, all decent, industrious workers, were killed the same night as your brother died and six of the Sáros group.”

  “And the Radáks?” Ilona enquired.

  “Besides your brother, four men were killed, one blinded and another lost his leg!”

  Ilona gave a little cry of horror.

  “Your brother’s identity was not known until the following morning after the bodies had been taken to the local Church for their relatives to claim them.”

  It had been a senseless way for Julius to throw away his life, Ilona thought.

  Yet she could understand that he found such nightly excursions exciting and entertaining simply because he must have been so bored at the Palace.

  She did not suppose that as he grew older he had found it any easier to put up with his father’s autocratic behaviour, and she suspected that the King might have become jealous of his son.

  There were many explanations, many excuses which could be made for Julius’s death.

  But the fact remained that he had thrown away his life in a manner which had helped no-one and had merely made the gulf between the Sáros and the Radáks even wider than it had been before.

  “Thank you for telling me,” Ilona said quietly to the Count and they had gone on to speak of other things.

  Riding away from the Castle through the darkness, Ilona thought now that perhaps because Julius had shown her the secret passage he would in fact be instrumental now in saving Dabrozka.

  “How did you ever learn of this?” she had asked.

  Her brother had taken her through the passage and shown her the concealed entrance which was indiscernible unless one was actually looking for it.

  “You remember old Giskra?” he had asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Ilona answered.

  Giskra had been Julius’s first valet once he had become too old to be looked after by a Nanny.

  He had served their grandfather and had always seemed to Ilona to be incredibly ancient.

  He looked in fact like a little gnome, and as a child she had thought there were numbers of Giskras working away in the mountains, chiselling out the amethysts and other precious stones which her mother treasured.

  Giskra had adored Julius and had followed him about like a faithful spaniel, asking nothing more of life than the opportunity to serve him.

  “Giskra learnt of the passage through grandfather,” Julius told Ilona. “He had apparently wished to examine it one day and Giskra had gone with him to hold the lantern.”

  “And Giskra told you?”

  “He took me down it when I wanted to go fishing and Papa had forbidden me to leave the Palace.”

  “For any good reason?” Ilona enquired.

  Julius shrugged his shoulders.

  “You know Papa. Any reason that is disagreeable and unjust is good in his eyes!’.’

  The Prince had crossed the river a long way from the Palace and now as they left Sáros land Ilona felt frightened.

  Supposing the King’s Armies had anticipated that the Prince would oppose the Russians in defiance of orders to the contrary?

  They might be hidden, ready to ambush the Sáros troops and, if the Dabrozkans fought each other, that would be exactly what the Russians wanted. .

  But the woods near the river were very quiet. The trees were not so thick nor were there the dense pine forests as on the other side. But at least they sheltered the troops from observation.

  The only noise was the jingle of the bridles and the breathing of the horses blowing through their nostrils.

  Before they left the Prince had said,

  “We move in silence. As you all know, voices carry, especially at night. No-one will speak unless it is absolutely necessary and then only to an officer.”

  The Prince’s band of thirty men were all mounted.

  They wore dark Cavalry cloaks over their uniforms and beneath them every man had a pistol at his belt and there was a rifle strapped to his horse’s saddle.

  So that they would move more quietly the Prince had ordered them all to remove their spurs.

  Dabrozkans were such magnificent riders that spurs were nothing more than a decorative part of their uniform.

  No Dabrozkans riding for pleasure or dressed as a civilian ever wore spurs.

  Despite the fact that they had crossed the river there was still a long way to go.

  They had to make a great detour over land that was first wooded, then rough and uneven, covered with huge boulders from some volcanic past.

  It would have been impossible to travel quickly, even in the day-time.

  At night it meant that every step might mean a twisted fetlock or a fall, even for the sure-footed Dabrozkan horses which were used to such terrain.

  They must have been travelling for an hour-and-a-half before the Prince rode to Ilona’s side.

  She was vividly aware of him as he drew his horse alongside hers.

  Now the moon was rising in the sky, and although its light was still pale and not of the strength it would be later she could see his face and the outline of his handsome features.

  His eyes were pools of darkness and she could not guess at the expression in them.

  He put out his hand to lay it on her arm and she felt herself quiver as if her whole body came alive at his touch.

  “You are all right?”

  He spoke almost, beneath his breath, and rather than break the silence, she nodded, then smiled at him because she was so happy.

  He had remembered her and he was concerned with her well-being.

  Then she told herself that perhaps it was only because she had her uses and if she should collapse now they would be unable to find the passage into the Palace.

  He removed his hand, but Ilona had an irrational impulse to hold on to him, to ask him to carry her on the front of his saddle as he had done earlier in the day.

  Even to think of the sense of protection and safety he had given her was to feel a thrill of fire run through her.

  His arm had been very strong and she had been able to put her head on his shoulder and feel the roughness of his tunic against her cheek.

  “I love him!” she told herself. “I love him so –overwhelmingly that even if we are both – killed tonight it will not matter as long as I am – with him!”

  She thought that even the guns would no longer make her afraid as the German shells had done when they bombarded Paris.

  Then, because her mother did not expect her to show any emotion, she had sat in the sitting-room of the
small house sewing.

  She had forced herself not to start or wince when they heard the loud report and the crash of the exploding shell.

  She had gone with Magda sometimes to see the devastation that the bombardment had caused - the shattered skeletons of great buildings with their mangled and torn fragments of iron looked desolate and at the same time menacing.

  Yet she had known that the German shells, filled only with black powder which could be heard all too plainly in the centre of Paris, had a demoralising effect which was a more potent weapon of war than the damage they caused.

  The Parisians had screamed hysterically and run for cover, the women herding their children frantically below ground into cellars and basements.

  Only her mother remained completely rigid and expressionless when a shell fell within a hundred yards of their house, and Ilona after one frightened gasp, had gone on with her embroidery.

  She thought of the nights when she had listened tense and apprehensive and the days when to count the time between one shell and another had seemed interminable.

  There was the same hollow feeling of fear within her now and yet it was a comfort she could not express to know that the Prince was near her.

  ‘He is so magnificent, so fine and noble,’ she thought. ‘No wonder his men adore him!’

  He rode to the front of his troops leading the way and finding every possible cover for them whether consisting of trees or boulders.

  Then at length when they had been riding for well over three hours Ilona saw the Palace to the left of them.

  They had moved in a half-circle since they had left the Castle and having crossed the road to the Pass, which had been a dangerous moment, they were moving in less difficult country and gradually approaching the Palace from the back.

  The trees were very thick around its base and it was an awe-inspiring and frightening sight as the moonlight revealed it, looking almost like a fortified town above the tops of the trees.

  Ilona knew how strongly the walls had been built and that the Palace was capable of withstanding a long siege, if necessary.

  She began to wonder frantically how many Russians were already inside.

  She could only pray that the Prince had received his information before too many of their enemies had installed themselves and their guns.

  No-one had said so, but Ilona was certain that it would have been the gypsies who had carried the vital information to the Castle.

  Her father’s harshness and the manner in which he had exiled them would have turned them bitterly against him.

  They would have been only too glad to inform the Prince of anything which might discredit the King.

  Gypsies could move surreptitiously and with a secrecy which ensured their going undetected by even the most watchful soldiers.

  They had been persecuted for so many years and in so many countries and they had learned how to escape into the woods and mountains where no-one was able to follow them.

  ‘The gypsies would have told Aladár about the Russians,’ Ilona thought and wondered if their spokesman had been the alluring, exotic Mautya.

  He would have been overwhelmingly grateful to her and to her people. How would he have shown his gratitude? The answer to the question was so painful that Ilona wanted to cry out in her distress.

  Then she told herself severely that this was no moment for jealousy, no moment to be consumed, as she had been the night before, by a murderous hatred for the woman she suspected of being her husband’s mistress.

  “All that matters is that we should succeed and that Aladár should remain unhurt,” she told herself.

  They were now less than four hundred yards from the Palace and the Prince brought his horse to a halt.

  Quietly the whole troop dismounted and gathered around the Prince, leaving six men to stay with the animals who were furnished with nose-bags to keep them quiet.

  An officer helped Ilona to the ground and she walked to the Prince’s side.

  She waited for his instructions.

  “You will show me the entrance to the passage,” he said in a low voice. “Then when we have entered you will return with Captain Gayozy to the Castle.”

  “I have no wish to do that,” Ilona replied.

  “Captain Gayozy has my orders,” the Prince answered, “and you will please obey them. I will not risk your being in any danger.”

  Ilona said nothing.

  She wanted to go on arguing with the Prince, but she realised that although they were speaking in very low voices it was possible for the officers near them to overhear what they were saying.

  “Shall we go now?” she asked.

  “We will go together,” the Prince answered.

  He took her hand as he spoke, as if she was a child being taken for a walk, and they moved ahead of the troops.

  Ilona felt herself tremble as he touched her.

  She had taken off one of her riding-gloves to push back her hood from her face and she had not replaced it.

  Her fingers were cold while the Prince’s were warm and she thought that if only he loved her this would be an exciting adventure to tell their children.

  Then she thought despairingly that they would have no children, and when the drama of the night was over, provided they were both alive, the Prince had his mistress waiting for him while she had nothing and no-one.

  Owing to the trees, the back of the Palace was in deep shadow, and for one frantic moment, as they drew near to it, Ilona thought she had forgotten where the entrance was.

  She had only been nine when she was last here and it was nine years since Julius had told her the secret of it.

  Then it had been an exciting game, but naturally she had not thought about it again since she left Dabrozka.

  As if with a perception she had not suspected the Prince knew what she was feeling, his fingers tightened on hers.

  “There is no hurry,” he whispered almost beneath his breath. “Take your time. It may have become overgrown.”

  His voice dispersed the feeling of fear and swept away Ilona’s uncertainty.

  Now she was sure that the entrance was a little to the left, obscured by rocks and hidden beneath the flowering creeper which crawled over the base of the Palace like a green veil.

  The Prince let her lead him and then when she pointed he pulled the creeper aside, revealing what appeared to be an iron grill.

  It was easily moved and behind it was the entrance to the passage, just as Ilona remembered it.

  There was no door, merely a narrow opening through which only one man could squeeze at a time, but which immediately opened into an enormous cave. The passage began at the back of it.

  Ilona remembered that it went straight, rising slightly for some distance, then there were stone steps rising to another level and yet another, until a door opened into the part of the Palace building which was never used.

  It was where the dungeons were and huge cellars, that had once housed wine, but which had been abandoned for more accessible storage-places near the Dining-Hall.

  The Prince and Ilona had entered the cave and they were joined, one by one, by the soldiers.

  Then the guns were passed through the opening and candle-lanterns gave a fitful glow carefully shaded so that they could not be seen from the outside.

  At last everyone was in the cave and the Prince turned to Ilona.

  “Ride home as quickly as you can,” he said quietly.

  She did not reply and she thought that he looked down at her in the semi-darkness as if he waited for her to speak.

  Then drawing his pistol from his belt he moved through the waiting men to lead them up the passage that loomed dark ahead of them.

  Ilona watched them go, the last to leave being the men with the guns which the mules had carried on their backs.

  The officers following the Prince had taken the lanterns with them, and now there was only the light from the narrow opening which seemed, after the darkness of the cave, to be very brig
ht.

  “We should leave, Ma’am,” Captain Gayozy said in a low voice.

  “I think I have dropped something,” Ilona answered. “Is it possible for you to find a light?”

  “There is another lantern here,” Captain Gayozy replied. “We brought a dozen with us, but the Prince thought we would only have need of half that number.”

  “Please light one.”

  Ilona waited while Captain Gayozy carried out her request. Then as he brought the flickering candle-lantern back to her side she said,

  “Perhaps you would carry it as we go along the passage.”

  “We cannot do that, Ma’am,” Captain Gayozy said. “You heard His Highness’s instructions.”

  “I have no intention of returning to the Castle,” Ilona replied.

  “But you cannot stay here, Ma’am. There will be fighting and you might be injured.”

  “I am not a fool, Captain Gayozy: I will not leave the passage at the other end until it is safe to do so. At the same time I have no intention of leaving the Palace without the Prince.”

  She looked at the Captain and realised he was extremely disconcerted by her declaration.

  He was a young officer, one of the Aides-de-camp who had looked at her with admiration when he travelled opposite her in the carriage.

  Now despite his consternation he could not stop his eyes lingering for a moment on the red of her hair as it glittered in the candle-light.

  “Do not be faint-hearted, Captain Gayozy,” Ilona said with a touch of amusement in her voice. “You can hardly force me to return at the point of a pistol, and having brought the Prince safely here and found the secret passage, I have no intention of being sent home like an unwanted parcel!”

  “I shall be court-martial led for dereliction of duty, Ma’am!” the Captain protested.

  “Nonsense!” Ilona retorted. “You will be decorated for courage in the face of an extremely formidable enemy!”

  The Captain could not help laughing.

  “You are incorrigible, Ma’am. But I cannot allow you to take any risks.”

  “I will allow you to be very careful of my safety,” Ilona promised him. “Now let us go up above and see what is happening!”