The Proud Princess Page 2

  She was aware that Colonel Ceáky glanced at the Major as if in doubt of what they should tell her.

  There was also an expression almost of fear in his eyes, but that, she thought, could be accounted for by the fact that they were afraid of her father.

  Who was not?

  Even in the twenty-four hours she had been at home she had realised that everyone in the Palace almost grovelled before him and watched him apprehensively.

  “Why did I not stay in Paris?” she asked herself.

  Then she remembered she had no choice in the matter.

  “I would like to know the truth,” she said to the Colonel. “What are you suggesting by saying that I should not enter Sáros territory?”

  She paused and added with a faint smile on her lips,

  “Whatever you tell me I will not repeat it to the King.”

  She was almost certain that the Colonel relaxed a little as he answered,

  “Our country, although Your Royal Highness may not be aware of it is divided into two sections. Radák and Sáros.”

  “But surely Papa reigns over the whole of Dabrozka, as my grandfather did and his father before him?”

  “In theory,” the Colonel replied, “but in the last five or six years things have altered dramatically.”

  “In what way?” Ilona asked.

  She was very interested, and although they were not on the flat grassland of the steppes she made no effort to gallop her horse as ordinarily she would have done.

  The two grooms were some way behind them and she realised that if they kept their voices low she and the two officers could not be overheard.

  “Please go on!” she begged.

  “The Princes of Sáros have always been the largest and most powerful landowners in Dabrozka,” the Colonel said, “and in your grandfather’s time the head of the family, Prince Ladislas was, next to the King, the most important man in the country.”

  “One might say they shared their power,” Major Kassa interposed.

  “Yes, that is right! The two men together administered the country most ably,” the Colonel agreed.

  There was a pause, then he said,

  “It was very different when your father, Prince Jozef Radák, inherited the throne.”

  There was no need for Ilona to ask why.

  Her father’s irascible temper, his overbearing character and his cruelty had driven her mother from Dabrozka, and she herself had hated him ever since she was old enough to think.

  “What is happening now?” she asked.

  “Dabrozka really consists of two separate States,” the Colonel explained, “and the people live either in Radák land or in Sáros.’

  “There is almost a state of war between the two sections,” Major Kassa explained.

  “A state of war?” Ilona exclaimed.

  She had hoped when she left France she need never think of war again, and yet it was apparently to be found even in Dabrozka.

  “Dabrozkans are in a very difficult position,” the Colonel explained. “Because their Rulers are in enmity, some citizens find it an excuse to pay off old grudges, to renew feuds and revenge ancient insults.”

  “You mean,” Ilona said, “that the Sáros section are fighting us?”

  There was a pause. Then the Colonel said tentatively,

  “Prince Aladár Sáros disapproves and rejects many of the new laws that have been introduced by His Majesty. He refuses to obey them and defends his people when they are arrested.”

  “Does he defend them by force?” Ilona asked.

  “Two nights ago,” the Colonel replied, “the prison in Vitózi was broken into and all the prisoners released!”

  “Were the soldiers who were guarding them – killed?”

  “None of them,” the Colonel replied. “They were all bound and thrown into the lake! It was not deep enough for them to drown, but it was a humiliation they will not forget in a hurry.”

  The Colonel’s voice was grim.

  Ilona laughed. She could not help it.

  “It is not a matter for amusement, Your Royal Highness,” Major Kassa said reprovingly.

  “I am sorry,” Ilona apologised, “but I was thinking only yesterday when I watched the guard at the Palace how pompous the soldiers looked in the new uniform Papa has chosen for them! To see them bound and sitting in the lake must have been amusing for the citizens of Vitózi, while the victims resented the indignity of it!”

  “I am only trying to warn Your Royal Highness,” Colonel Ceáky said with a reproachful note in his voice, “that you should not go into Sáros territory. You might be insulted or worse still, I would not be surprised if you were kidnapped!”

  He paused before he said impressively,

  “It would certainly be a way to induce His Majesty to rescind some of his new laws.”

  “What are these new laws which have caused so much trouble?” Ilona asked.

  The Colonel looked uncomfortable.

  “I think perhaps you should ask the King that question, Your Royal Highness.”

  “You know perfectly well that I would not wish to do that,” Ilona replied. “I am just as frightened of Papa as you are, Colonel.”

  “Frightened? Frightened!” the Colonel ejaculated. “I have a vast respect for His Majesty, and I obey his commands.”

  “But you are frightened of him,” Ilona insisted. “Come on, be honest and own up! Papa is a very frightening person. That is why for me it has been such a relief, however difficult it has been, not to live in Dabrozka all these years.”

  She gave a little sigh and looked around her.

  “At the same time, I have missed its incredible beauty and of course our wonderful, wonderful horses!”

  She bent forward to pat her mount. Then when she would have ridden on she sat up again and said resolutely,

  “Tell me the truth, Colonel, and then we will gallop over this glorious ground.”

  The Colonel looked at her and she thought his eyes softened, as if he found the appeal in hers irresistible.

  “Very well then,” he replied. “I will tell you, Princess, that the two laws which have most infuriated a great number of people are first - the King has decreed that half of every man’s harvest shall be appropriated by the State!”

  “In other words – by him!” Ilona said in a low voice.

  “Secondly,” the Colonel went on as if he had not been interrupted, “he has banished all gypsies under pain of death.”

  “But that is ridiculous!” Ilona exclaimed. “The gypsies have always lived peacefully with us. I remember Mama telling me how cruelly they were treated in Rumania and all the terrible tortures to which they were subjected.”

  She paused before she went on reflectively,

  “In Hungary too there is a long history of persecutions and tortures under Maria Thérèsa and then Joseph II.”

  “That is true, Princess,” Major Kassa murmured.

  “But here they have always been accepted as part of our way of life,” Ilona said.

  “The King has said that they are to leave the country,” Colonel Ceáky remarked.

  “But where will they go?” Ilona asked. “There is only Russia, and as the Russians dislike us so much it is unlikely that they will accept our gypsies.”

  “These arguments have all been put to the King, and very forcibly indeed, by Prince Aladár.”

  “You need not tell me that he would not listen,” Ilona murmured.

  “There are a number of other laws which have recently been proclaimed and which are causing much dissension,” the Colonel said. “The Army is being reinforced, but the situation, I can say quite frankly, is not a comfortable one.”

  “I am not surprised!”

  Ilona smiled at the Colonel, then at the Major.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, for what you have told me. You may rest assured that I will not betray your confidence?”

  She looked ahead as she said,

  “Now I want to gallop as swiftly as
I can and forget everything except that this is the most beautiful place in the world!”

  She touched her horse with her whip and he, sprang forward as if as eager as she was to gallop over the grassy steppe.

  As the horses thundered over the soft ground, Ilona thought it was the most marvellous sensation she had ever known.

  Riding homewards she could not help looking at the peasants they passed working in the fields, busy in the small villages, or in the woods which surrounded the Palace.

  Was it her imagination, she asked herself, or did they look sulky and resentful?

  Or had she been wrong in remembering a smiling, good tempered people who had been her countrymen in the past?

  The wooden houses with their balconies filled with flowers, the Cśardas, or wayside Inns, with their painted signs and wine-covered gardens where the customers congregated to drink the local wine were just as she remembered them.

  The acacia trees were in bloom and the whole scene looked not only beautiful but also prosperous.

  The large herds of cows, their white horns polished and often decorated with ribbons, the flocks of fleecy sheep and black and white foals were unchanged.

  Many of the women with the brightly coloured skirts and long plaits of hair reaching nearly to their knees, were very beautiful.

  The men all had a picturesque raffishness about them.

  It was due, Ilona thought, to their Hussar-type jackets, carelessly flung over one shoulder, their red waistcoats plenteously ornamented with buttons, and their round, felt hats with their cheeky feathers.

  Some wore top-boots with spurs but rode their horses bare-backed, and Ilona knew that no country in Europe could equal their horsemanship.

  Everything seemed as it had always been, and yet she told herself there was something lacking! Then she realised what it was.

  Always she had associated music, singing and laughter with the Dabrozkans.

  They used to sing as they worked, they sang as they drove their cattle out to pasture, they sang when they came home triumphantly from a hunting expedition carrying a chamois or a stag tied to a pole which rested on their shoulders.

  But now, she noticed there seemed to be a silence over the land, and she was sure too that the peasants’ clothes were more shabby and threadbare than they had been in the past.

  The gypsies had often been in tatters, but not the peasants, who had always taken a very personal pride in their appearance.

  They neared the Palace and started the long climb up to the magnificent building which had stood high above the valley for centuries.

  It had been built and re-built by every succeeding monarch.

  But Ilona’s grandfather had made it even more impressive and impregnable by adding more towers and turrets to the existing building.

  From a distance the Palace looked a most beautiful building.

  But nearto it was a grim reminder of the days when to defend a fortress it was always wisest to be above the enemy, and to be able to shoot him down as he approached.

  Ilona’s grandmother had planted trees all round the Castle to make it, she had said, look less awe-inspiring.

  When the almond blossom and peach trees were in bloom its towers and spires seemed to rise like an insubstantial dream from the exquisite pink and white blossoms.

  The gardens inside the Castle were also very lovely.

  As she entered through the great iron gate which had repelled enemy armies and marauding bands, Ilona thought that no-one living in such beautiful surroundings should be anything but happy.

  But as she knew only too well there was no happiness inside the Radák Palace.

  She had thought never to see her home again. In fact her mother had said to her often enough,

  “We will never go back, Ilona. We may not be important abroad, we may have little money, but at least we have peace of mind.”

  When she spoke of the past, Ilona’s mother always had an expression of horror in her eyes and a note of fear in her voice that was very disturbing.

  At first Ilona had not understood why her mother was prepared to give up her position as Queen in Dabrozka, to leave her friends and the life she had known for eighteen years.

  When Queen Gisela had left her husband, she had done it very quietly in an undramatic manner that in itself was more impressive than if she had made a scene or invited sympathy.

  She had suffered at the hands of a tyrannical, brutal husband whose cruelty had grown with the years until it became quite intolerable.

  The Queen might in fact have continued to endure her unhappiness if it had not been for Ilona.

  The King in his fanatical rages knocked his wife about and often to relieve his feelings had beaten her almost insensible. But when he attacked his daughter the Queen, quiet, gentle and, as he imagined, utterly subservient to his will, rebelled.

  She had said nothing. She had merely asked permission to visit her parents in Budapest.

  As her father was growing old and reported to be ill it was impossible for the King to refuse such a request.

  Once in Hungary the Queen had written saying that she had no intention of returning to the purgatory which her life had become.

  She had been forced to leave her son behind her, but that was inevitable because at seventeen Prince Julius had started his Army career and it would have been impossible for him to desert his Regiment.

  But the Queen had carried Ilona to safety.

  Because she feared that her husband’s reaction might be to injure her parents, she left Budapest.

  The Queen’s father and mother were of Royal blood but they were impoverished. Their lands had been taken from them by the Austrians.

  They had nothing left but their pride and their self-respect and she could not allow them to suffer on her account. The Queen took Ilona, as far as her husband was concerned, to an unknown destination.

  They had in fact moved across Europe until they reached Paris where the Queen had a few friends. They were all older then she was, but they were quiet, intelligent people who welcomed her amongst them.

  She had thought to find in Paris the kind of education which she believed was essential for her daughter.

  Ilona had attended one of the famous Convents, where she was accepted as an ordinary pupil and no-one had the slightest idea of her rank.

  As Madame Radák, the Queen, with the little money she owned herself and which had been settled on her by her parents, rented a small house in a quiet street off the Champs Élysée and settled down to lead a normal life.

  It had been a relief to know that she was free of the mental and physical torture that had been an inescapable terror during the years of her marriage.

  She taught Ilona that self-control was a sign of good breeding and character.

  The manner in which the King had treated his wife left an indelible mark on her.

  But the Queen was determined that Ilona should be made to forget all she had seen and heard in the Palace at Dabrozka.

  She wanted her to acquire a serenity which came from a life where she met decent, civilised people who behaved as might be expected of their noble blood.

  The ancient Comtes and Comtesses, the Marquises and Abbes who made up the small number of acquaintances that the Queen had in Paris were all aristocrats of the old school.

  Their manners were impeccable, if they were unhappy they hid it behind a smiling mask. If they suffered either physically or mentally, it was buried beneath their pride.

  Because she had suffered so greatly from her husband’s outbursts of temper, because she had found it impossible to assuage his violence, the Queen had instilled into Ilona her own creed.

  It was that never under any circumstances must one’s emotions, whatever they might be, show themselves in front of others.

  It hurt her occasionally when she would see beneath the veneer she was trying to impart to her daughter the passionate emotions of a Dabrozkan bursting through.

  When the Dabrozkans loved t
hey loved, when they hated they hated. There were no half-measures, no ‘grey’ in-between state of indifference when they did not care!

  A Dabrozkan was positive, a Dabrozkan was ardent, jealous, vengeful and wildly ecstatic in love.

  It was this part of her daughter’s blood that the Queen was determined to eradicate or at least hold completely under control.

  Ilona was therefore taught not to express herself too enthusiastically, not to kiss too effusively, nor to show too much affection for her toys or her playmates.

  “Remember you are Royal! Remember how the French aristocrats went to the guillotine with a smile on their lips, joking with each other, even as they laid their heads under the sharp knife.”

  “But I am not likely to be guillotined, Mama!” Ilona had remonstrated.

  “There are other things in life that are worse,” the Queen said enigmatically, “and whatever they may be, Ilona, you will face them with courage, without complaining, and without letting anyone know what you may be suffering inside you.”

  That was the way her mother had died, Ilona thought.

  At times the Queen must have been in an agony of pain, and yet while she looked paler every day she had never revealed her suffering not even to the doctor!

  When Ilona had found her dead she was lying on her back with her hands clasped over her breasts, a faint smile on her lips as if by her very attitude she defied death itself.

  On her mother’s death, it had seemed to Ilona that the bottom had fallen out of her world, and she faced a desolation and a loneliness so frightening that she wanted to scream at the horror of it.

  But because she knew what her mother expected of her, she told all the old friends who called to offer their condolences that she was ‘all right’.

  ‘Somehow,’ she thought, ‘I will make arrangements for the future and there is no reason to burden others with my troubles.’

  Only to old Magda, her mother’s maid who had been with them ever since they had left Dabrozka, did she ask despairingly ,

  “What shall we do, Magda? What shall we do? We cannot stay here for ever.”