A Kiss for the King Read online

  Before she reached it, the door opened and Olivia came in.

  “Your – Majesty!” she started in a strangled voice and Anastasia turned round.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Pedro has just – told me that a revolution is to – break out tonight!” Olivia gasped.

  “What do you mean?” Anastasia enquired.

  “It is a plot! A plot – Your Majesty – and you must – save the King!”

  “But how – what has happened? Speak slowly, Olivia,”

  She realised Olivia must have been running through the long corridors of the Palace to reach her.

  “Pedro overheard – everything. The Ambassador was – instructing the men who are to – kidnap His Majesty.”

  “Kidnap him?” Anastasia exclaimed. “Where? How?”

  “It is all arranged, Your Majesty. The Comtesse le Granmont will be with him for a short while and then when he sees her off through the door into the garden he will be seized. A carriage will be waiting outside the Palace wall to carry His Majesty over the French border.”

  Olivia paused for breath and Anastasia cried,

  “Go on!”

  “Once he is on French soil, the revolution will break out and His Majesty will ask the French – or be forced to do so – to intervene. They will march into Sergei at his request and once here the country will be theirs!”

  Anastasia’s eyes were very large in her small face as she stared at Olivia and her brain assimilated all she had been told.

  It was a very clever plot!

  If the French put down the revolution at the King’s invitation, Queen Victoria, indeed the world, could not charge them with aggression!

  The only thing that could save Maurona was for the King not to be kidnapped.

  Olivia was staring at her white-faced.

  “Fetch Captain Aznar!” Anastasia commanded. “Fetch him quickly!”

  Olivia ran from the room as Anastasia stood trying to think what to do.

  It seemed to Anastasia that she waited for a very long time before the door opened again and Olivia reappeared with Captain Aznar. In reality it was only a few minutes, for the Captain had been in the aides-de-camp’s room of the on the ground floor.

  “Captain Aznar, Your Majesty!” Olivia called out, her voice still breathless.

  Anastasia waited until the door was closed then she cried,

  “Olivia has brought me terrible news! Tell the Captain, Olivia, what you have just told me.”

  A little less breathlessly, but still a trifle incoherently Olivia gasped out her story.

  “Pedro is to be relied upon,” Anastasia said as she finished. “He is First Valet to the French Ambassador.”

  Captain Aznar looked at Anastasia.

  “We must get His Majesty away.”

  “Where to?” Anastasia asked.

  “To the Army in Leziga,” Captain Aznar replied.

  “You will take me with you?”

  “Of course, ma’am! We would not leave you to the revolutionaries.”

  “We will need horses.”

  “I will arrange that,” Captain Aznar replied, “and there are three Officers in the Palace at the moment who can be trusted.”

  “Will you arrange everything, Captain?”

  “At once,” Captain Aznar replied, “but we must alert His Majesty. Is he in his rooms?”

  Anastasia hesitated.

  She could not bear to tell him where she suspected the King would be at this moment.

  “I will tell His Majesty,” she said firmly.

  “I need not remind you that there is no time to be lost, ma’am. If they fail to kidnap the King from the Palace, the revolutionaries in their pay might find another way to take him prisoner.”

  “We will be ready as soon as you have the horses.”

  Captain Aznar bowed.

  Then, as he turned quickly to leave the room, Anastasia called out,

  “One moment! Has the King an old nanny who is living, or someone he knew well as a child?”

  “His Majesty’s old nanny,” Captain Aznar replied, “is alive, but she was too old to come to the wedding. She lives a long way from Serge, in a village in the Pyrenees.”

  “Thank you, Captain. That is all I wanted to know,”

  She opened the communicating door as she spoke and, without looking back, started to run through the King’s apartments. She moved from one to the other until finally, beyond the reception room, she came to a door which she knew led into the King’s private room.

  Just for a moment she hesitated.

  Then, drawing a deep breath and putting up her chin in an instinctive effort to be brave, she opened the door and walked in.

  The room was dimly lit and smaller than Anastasia had expected.

  Seated on a huge divan heaped with satin cushions was the Comtesse le Granmont – and standing in front of her was the King.

  Anastasia had the impression that they were arguing with each other, but at her appearance their voices died away and their faces were turned towards her with an almost ludicrous expression of surprise on them.

  “Please forgive me for interrupting you,” Anastasia began, to the King, “but I have in my sitting room a dear old woman who was your nanny. She came to the wedding yesterday and has tried ineffectually to see you all today before she returns home.”

  She paused to say softly,

  “I feel she will not live very long and it would make her so very happy if she could see you – perhaps for the last time.”

  For a moment it seemed as if the King could not find his voice and then he answered,

  “Yes, of course, I will speak to her.”

  With a charming smile Anastasia turned towards the Comtesse who had not risen and was still seated on the divan,

  “I do apologise for interrupting you, madame,” she said, “but through a whole series of misunderstandings the King was not informed earlier today that his old nanny had called.”

  Very reluctantly and with stormy eyes, the Comtesse rose to her feet.

  Looking at her, Anastasia thought it impossible for any lady of good breeding to wear a dress that was so improper and so revealing.

  Yet she had to admit that the Comtesse looked extremely alluring and the rubies round her neck and in her ears must have cost someone a small fortune.

  Anastasia wondered if they had been a present from the King, but hastily reminded herself there was no time to be lost in speculations of that sort.

  “I will not keep you more than five or ten minutes,” she turned to the King, “and you will make someone who loves you very happy.”

  For the first time since Anastasia had entered the room, the King glanced towards the Comtesse.

  It was as if, without words, he asked her to leave.

  “I will wait for you, Sire,” she stated firmly.

  As if he felt it was hopeless to argue, the King merely followed Anastasia through the door.

  She waited until he had closed it behind them, then she slipped her hand into his.

  “Come quickly!” she whispered.

  She started to pull him across the reception room.

  “What is this and why the urgency, Anastasia?” he enquired.

  “I will tell you when we reach your bedroom.”

  She could not help feeling afraid that the Comtesse might hear them or there might perhaps be other ears lurking in the shadows or behind the curtains covering the windows.

  When things such as the plot that threatened the King happened, who could one trust?

  While she was pulling him forward, the King walked quickly and then as they reached his bedroom he said in an irritated tone,

  “What is this all about? Is my old nanny really here?”

  “No! That was merely an excuse so that I could tell you what has been planned,” Anastasia cried. “The French mean to kidnap you when you take the Comtesse downstairs. They will take you through the door in the Palace wall to where a carriage is
waiting to carry you across the border.”

  She saw by the King’s expression that he did not believe her.

  “Everything is planned,” she went on hurriedly. “As soon as you have been abducted, a revolution will break out in the City, and because you have no alternative you will have to ask the French to help you to restore order.”

  “Who told you all this nonsense?” the King asked sharply.

  “It is the truth,” Anastasia insisted. “I swear to you it is the truth!”

  “Do you really believe I would invite the French to march into Sergei?” the King asked.

  “Once you are with your so-called ‘friends’,” Anastasia retorted, “do you imagine you would get a truthful report of what is happening? What would you do if you were told that the whole City was being devastated, women and children being killed, the Palace looted? Under such circumstances what other alternative would there be but to ask for their help?”

  “I cannot believe there is such a plot!” the King exclaimed angrily. “But if there is, what do you suggest I do?”

  “Several of your Officers here in the Palace, who are to be trusted, will help you to reach the Army. If a revolution breaks out, it can be dealt with by you – not by a foreign power!”

  He stared at her as if she had taken leave of her senses.

  Then, as they looked at each other in silence, the door opened and Captain Aznar came in.

  The King turned to him.

  “Are you a part of these ridiculous theatricals, Aznar?” he enquired hastily. “Can I possibly credit that what the Queen has told me is the truth?”

  “You can believe it, Sire,” Captain Aznar replied quietly. “It is indeed what some of us have been expecting for a long time.”

  The King looked at him in astonishment.

  “You really thought this might happen?”

  “This, or something like it, Sire,” Captain Aznar answered. “It is only Her Majesty who has been clever enough to discover the details of the plot, before it is put into operation.”

  The King looked back at Anastasia and seemed to hesitate.

  Then Captain Aznar added,

  “I am certain, Sire, that the coast road will be blocked and so will both passes. To reach Leziga we shall have to ride over the mountains.”

  “I cannot believe it! This is quite incredible!” the King exclaimed.

  “It would be folly, Sire, for you to risk the chance that I am wrong! I therefore suggest that we leave as quickly as possible. Will you change your clothes?”

  “And I must change mine!” Anastasia said.

  “Please be as swift as possible, ma’am,” Captain Aznar begged.

  Without saying anything more, Anastasia ran into her own room.

  Olivia was waiting for her and already had laid out one of the new riding habits, which she had brought with her from England.

  It took her only a few minutes to take off her evening gown and put on the riding habit of sapphire blue velvet, frogged with white braid.

  There was a very elegant tall hat to go with it, but Anastasia covered her head with a white chiffon scarf, wrapping the long ends round her neck.

  “The King is going to Leziga, Olivia,” she said when she was ready. “I shall be with him. Join me as soon as you can.”

  “I will do that, Your Majesty.”

  “And I should not allow your Pedro to go back to the French Embassy,” Anastasia went on. “It might be dangerous for him.”

  “He has already thought of that, Your Majesty.”

  Anastasia looked at her.

  “Thank you, with all my heart,” she murmured softly.

  Then she bent forward to kiss Olivia on the cheek.

  She glanced at the clock. It was now twenty minutes past eleven.

  She had a feeling that the plotters would start the revolution in the early hours of the morning. By that time they would expect their plans to have materialised and the King would be over the French border.

  It would have taken some time before the Palace guards were alerted to the riots taking place in the centre of the City.

  She entered the King’s bedroom and found he had changed into uniform.

  Captain Aznar was still with him.

  “I have a Cavalry cloak here for you, ma’am, ,” he said to Anastasia. “You will find it a warm and effective disguise. His Majesty will also be wearing one.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  He put it over her shoulders. Of heavy black wool, the cloak had a hood designed to cover an Officer’s cap.

  Pulled over Anastasia’s head it hid her face almost completely and, because she was so small, it reached almost to the ground.

  The King swung a similar cloak over his shoulders.

  Then without speaking they followed Captain Aznar across the corridor and down the secondary staircase, which brought them to the ground floor.

  Here they hurried along dark passages in a part of the Palace Anastasia guessed was used as offices, or occupied by the servants.

  After they had walked for a long way, they came to a door that Captain Aznar opened.

  Outside three men similarly cloaked were waiting, already on horseback, each holding a second horse by the bridle. It was difficult for the King to identify them in the darkness.

  “Captain Seiza, Captain Mauresa and Lieutenant Tuleda, Sire,” Captain Aznar said in a low voice.

  The Officers saluted and the King swung himself into the saddle of a large black stallion, while Captain Aznar assisted Anastasia onto a horse, which she was thankful to see, was carrying a side-saddle.

  Two of the Officers went ahead, the King and Anastasia followed them and Captain Aznar and Lieutenant Tuleda brought up the rear.

  They were riding, Anastasia realised, at the back of the Palace. First she saw sheds and outbuildings, and then they were on a narrow drive leading to what was obviously a side gate, perhaps one used by tradesmen.

  There were two sentries guarding it who came to attention when they saw the Officers.

  The gates were opened and they passed through them without hurry.

  Only when they were outside and a little way from the Palace did the leading Officers quicken their pace.

  As soon as they were free of the barracks and various other buildings outside the Palace wall they moved even quicker. Soon they were riding among the forest trees as Anastasia and the King had done earlier in the day.

  It was a brilliant starlit night and a half moon was creeping up the sky, giving them just enough light to be able to see where they were going.

  After travelling a short distance they left the narrow road and took to the mountainside. Here there were only tracks and they proceeded in single file.

  No one spoke and there was only the sound of jingling bridles, the horses’ hoofs and the occasional dry cough from one of the animals.

  On and on they climbed, rising higher and always higher.

  They had ridden for very nearly an hour when the King pulled his horse to a standstill on a small flat plateau.

  He turned to look back.

  Moving up beside him Anastasia did the same.

  Below them lay Sergei. Most of the houses were in darkness, but in the very centre of the town there was the brilliant light of a fire.

  The flames were vividly red against the darkness and then, as they watched, another fire burst into flame a little to the right of it and then there was another to the left.

  “The revolution has already started, Sire!” Captain Aznar muttered.

  Without replying, the King turned his horse and once again they were climbing.

  Up, up, up!

  The cold from the snows was now sharp against Anastasia’s face and her small nose began to feel as if it did not belong to her.

  Still they went on and now the horses were wheezing and sweating a little with the effort, until finally when Anastasia was sure that they must be nearly at the top of the mountain, the Officers in front of them came to a
standstill.

  Captain Aznar passed Anastasia to reach the King’s side.

  “These are the old caves, Sire. You may remember that at one time certain mining operations took place here. I think this is where we should rest.”

  The King turned his head, but he did not speak.

  “It would be dangerous to descend on the other side of the mountain, which is very steep, until we can clearly see the way,” Captain Aznar said. “What I suggest, Sire, is that we wait here until dawn and then proceed to Leziga.”

  “Very well,” the King agreed.

  He dismounted as he spoke and went to Anastasia’s side to lift her down from the saddle.

  As she felt his arms around her, she longed to hold on to him.

  It had been frightening to see the fires down below them in Sergei. It was even more frightening to think this was a deliberate attempt to deprive the King of his country or to make him merely a puppet under the jurisdiction of the French.

  The Officers were taking things from their saddlebags.

  Now one man had gone ahead of them into the caves and a moment later they saw a faint light.

  “Will you go in, Sire?” Captain Aznar asked. “We don’t wish to draw attention to ourselves. A light on the mountain might be suspicious.”

  “Of course.”

  The King put his arm round Anastasia and drew her forward over the rough ground.

  She expected the entrance to the cave to be low, but the King did not have to bend his head and she found herself walking down what appeared to be a rough stone passage to where a light was gleaming at the end of it.

  This led to a large cave, but the Officer holding the candle lantern went further still until they entered another cave not as big as the first one, but nevertheless quite an appreciable size.

  He held up the lantern and Anastasia could see there was a pile of straw on the ground in one corner, a wooden packing case in the centre and several large logs of wood to sit on.

  “This appears to have been in use,” the King remarked.

  “In the winter it is a shelter, Sire, for mountaineers or shepherds who become snowbound,” the Officer answered. “I used to come here as a boy!”

  “I believe I have been here once before,” the King reflected.