A Miracle of Love Read online

  As they began to go to bed the trouble started.

  They could now hear more noise and commotion and the Prince gathered that the youths who could not have a cabin were given rough mattresses to sleep on.

  There was, he realised, violent contention raging among them. This was because some of the mattresses were better than others and quite a number of them were fighting for what they claimed were their rights.

  “Undress,” the Prince suggested to Sacia, “and get into bed. Then I will come back and talk to you.”

  Without asking any questions Sacia obeyed him.

  He felt that no other woman would have been so amenable.

  Then when he went to his cabin, he could hear the turmoil outside and it would not only make it difficult to sleep, but would be dangerous for anyone who came into contact with this drunken mob.

  They were distinctly unsteady and their language was unpleasant and because the ship was now rolling a little they were unable to keep on their feet.

  The Prince waited until he was quite certain that Sacia would be in bed and then he took the mattress off his own bunk and carried it quickly to her cabin.

  “What are you doing? What is happening?” Sacia asked him.

  She sat up in her bunk looking very attractive and the Prince realised that as she had no nightgown, she was wearing her petticoat.

  She had loosened her hair and it was cascading onto her shoulders.

  He thought as he looked at her from the door that no one could be lovelier or more exquisite.

  There came a loud drunken shout behind him and he moved quickly into Sacia’s cabin pushing his mattress in front of him and closing the door behind him.

  “Why are you bringing your mattress in here?” she questioned.

  “Because I am going to sleep here on the floor,” he replied.

  “Have they taken away your cabin, Nico?”

  “No, not so far, though they might if they realise it is now empty. But I don’t want you to be alone. I am sure you don’t want a gang of youths coming in and trying to talk to you, even though they will undoubtedly admire you. Every woman on board this ship is at least thirty or forty years older than you.”

  “Of course they must not come in here. Can you lock the door?”

  “I am going to lock it now for what it is worth. I have already examined the locks. Mine is so very fragile it would break if it is given a hard push and yours seems not much better.”

  “You will be very uncomfortable on the floor.”

  “But I will not be as worried as I would be if I was next door and you were having men piling into your cabin merely to stare at you!”

  “Now you are really frightening me – ”

  “I have no wish to do so, Sacia, and I have with me something I will most certainly use if they intrude on us.”

  “What can it be?”

  He pulled his revolver from his belt and put it down on his mattress.

  “That will protect us both, particularly you, Sacia. Now go to sleep and try not to worry yourself about what is happening outside.”

  “I will worry about you being uncomfortable and I think it is wonderful of you to come here and protect me. Those men are so noisy and – they sound very rough.”

  She spoke a little nervously.

  “Forget them!” urged the Prince. “And now I too am going to sleep.”

  He took off his coat and put it on the floor and then he lay down just as he was on the mattress.

  “I think you are very very kind,” Sacia murmured from the bed. “I now feel I am really safe and no longer frightened. I was a little when I heard the noise they were making, but I did not want to worry you.”

  The Prince smiled.

  “I am always worried if you are in any danger,” he said. “And it is my solemn duty to protect you until you are completely and absolutely safe.”

  “Thank you, thank you, Nico. Now I am going to say a special prayer that we will both be safe from those we are running away from.”

  The Prince did not answer and after waiting for a moment she then slipped down in the bunk, put her hands together and closed her eyes.

  He could not hear her prayers and yet the Prince felt as if there was something indefinable and spiritual in the cabin that had not been there before.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It must have been an hour later that the shouts and screams came closer.

  It woke the Prince first and then he became aware that the young ruffians had come down the companionway leading to the cabins.

  In fact he could now hear them smashing the cabin doors.

  As Sacia woke abruptly they both heard the youths shouting,

  “We want women. Women to dance. Women to play with. Where are the women!”

  Their voices rang out down the corridor and next came the crash of another door being forced and a woman screamed.

  The Prince rose to his feet.

  “Get down in the bunk,” he ordered Sacia, “and cover yourself up completely.”

  She quickly obeyed him.

  She was now terrified, but she felt sure the Prince would protect her.

  He was standing by the door listening as the noise and shouts came nearer and nearer.

  As the youths reached them, he flung open the door and fired his revolver into the ceiling.

  It made a resounding noise in the narrow corridor and for a brief second there was silence from the rioters.

  “I will shoot the next man who breaks a door,” the Prince yelled, his voice ringing out so that they could all hear him. “Go back on deck where you belong and don’t come down here again.”

  As he finished speaking he fired a second shot into the air.

  The youths turned.

  In a blind panic they began running up the corridor falling over one another in their anxiety to escape.

  It was as the last youth disappeared that the woman who had already been dragged out of bed called from her cabin which was near the companionway,

  “Thank you, sir, thank you.”

  The door opposite the Prince also opened and the man in the cabin had obviously been petrified as to what might happen next.

  He called out to the Prince,

  “You are a hero, that’s what you are. I was really scared until you sent them away.”

  “They will not return,” the Prince asserted, “but if they do, I am in here and I will keep my promise and shoot anyone who assaults us.”

  The Prince closed the cabin door and turned round to see Sacia peeping out from under the bedclothes.

  He could just make her out faintly in the moonlight streaming in through the porthole.

  But he saw that she was looking very beautiful and the expression in her eyes was one of admiration.

  “You were so wonderful,” she sighed. “I was really terrified as those other women must have been.”

  “I don’t think they will come back now, but if they do, I will definitely shoot one of them to teach the others how to behave.”

  “If you kill one, there will be a scandal – ”

  “I am not as stupid as that, Sacia. I will shoot him in the leg or the arm and incidentally, in case you question me, I am a very good shot!”

  “I’m quite certain you are, Nico. You are good at everything and most of all at protecting me!”

  The Prince locked the cabin door and walked a few feet to Sacia’s bunk.

  He sat down on it, thinking the moonlight behind her hair was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

  As he looked at her he remembered that she was sleeping in her petticoat, because she had no nightgown, and there were just two soft satin ribbons over her bare shoulders.

  Her petticoat was more décolletée than an evening dress should have been on such a young girl.

  She put out both her hands towards him.

  It was only with a Herculean effort that the Prince restrained himself from putting his arms around her.

  “You are saf
e now,” he reassured her soothingly, “and we must both go to sleep again. I cannot allow you to arrive in Rome tired and travel-worn.”

  Sacia laughed.

  “It has been another adventure,” she smiled, “and we have had so many I have almost lost count.”

  The Prince reflected that he would remember them for the rest of his life, but he did not say so.

  Instead he declared,

  “You have been very brave, Sacia, and I can only say again you are a perfect companion. Now I am going to go to sleep.”

  He walked back to his mattress, thinking that never in his life had he been in such a series of situations.

  Yet perhaps it was Sacia herself who made him do exactly the right thing every time – without pushing herself forward as other women would have done.

  As he lay down Sacia sighed,

  “You see my prayers were answered. I asked God and Aphrodite for help. It was they who told you to come to Venice to save me. I am now certain that they made you think how useful your revolver might be before you ran away.”

  “I am delighted you give them credit,” the Prince replied, “but I would like to take a little of it for myself!”

  “Of course you know you are wonderful,” she said, “but you must be tired of hearing me say so.”

  “Go to sleep, Sacia. I suggest we leave this ship as soon as possible, but I am not letting you out of this cabin until those rampaging youths have gone ashore.”

  “I thought, as in all good adventure stories, I would perhaps end up being taken prisoner. I assure you I am content to be your prisoner even though I would prefer a more comfortable prison!”

  “Is the bed very hard?” the Prince asked.

  “It is rather like lying down on a cobbled yard, not that I have ever lain on one, but if we are together much longer, I am sure I will!”

  “You never know your luck,” the Prince replied.

  They both laughed and then Sacia added,

  “We really must sleep. Goodnight and thank you and God bless you, Nico. I never knew a man could be as magnificent as you are.”

  The Prince could not think of an answer.

  A little later he was aware that Sacia was asleep and as he listened the noise from above appeared to have diminished considerably.

  He supposed that the youths were either too drunk even to scream or had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.

  He closed his eyes and although he expected to lie awake on the floor, he slept peacefully.

  *

  When morning came, it was Sacia who awoke first.

  For a moment she could not think where she was and then the traumas of the previous night came rushing back into her mind.

  The cabin was bright with the early morning sun and she could see the Prince lying on the floor and he was still fast asleep.

  He must have turned towards her during the night, as when she last saw him she had been aware that although the door was locked, he was lying facing it still with his revolver was in his hand.

  Now she could see quite clearly that this hand was empty and the revolver was beside him on the mattress.

  She had not seen him asleep before and she thought he looked very much younger but a little vulnerable.

  ‘He is protecting me,’ she said to herself, ‘but he should be protected too from those he is running away from.’

  She thought that if they caught up with him, he may be in trouble and there would be no one to help him.

  She wondered if she should suggest staying with him instead of going to her teacher and then she felt that if Nico wanted her to continue travelling with her he would say so.

  ‘I must not push myself forward,’ she decided, ‘but when he has gone I will miss him very much.’

  How different life would be if she just worked, as she had already suggested, with her previous teacher and it was a task she was sure she could do well.

  She was also certain that there would be plenty of pupils to learn the many studies she was proficient in, most of all Greek – but it would not be the same as being with Nico and wondering what adventure might happen next.

  ‘It has been so enthralling and maybe one day I will write it all down in a book,’ she mused. ‘But people will find it hard to believe.’

  Then she wondered what her life would be like in the future.

  It was one thing going to her previous teacher for help and safety, but it was quite another to contemplate spending the rest of her life teaching children and perhaps rather stupid young girls.

  ‘I want to feel free. I want to roam the country. I want to be on a horse with Nico.’

  It all swept over her.

  She felt a pressing desire to jump out of bed, lie down beside him and beg him to take her with him.

  Then she knew that would be an almost wicked thing for her to do. If he wanted her with him, he would ask her.

  But if she forced herself upon him he would be in an uncomfortable position as he would either have to tell her he did not want her or, because he was so kind, he would pretend he did.

  That would be unendurable and she would know instinctively as soon as he agreed.

  Yet she could not help feeling that she was crying out to him to allow her to stay and be together with him.

  Almost as if she called him aloud, she heard him stir and she lay back quickly in the bunk and shut her eyes.

  She was acutely aware that Nico was near her.

  Then, so silently she hardly heard him, he opened the door and went out locking it on the outside.

  She heard him go to his own cabin next door and she thought he was washing himself and changing his shirt.

  She had noticed that he had changed his shirt every day since they left Venice and she had wanted to ask if he would like her to wash one for him, but she had been too shy to suggest it.

  Perhaps when they were staying with the Duca the servant who had valeted him would have had one washed and pressed for the following morning.

  ‘I want to do things for him,’ Sacia thought, ‘but it would seem too intimate to suggest it. And I will have no chance of doing so anyway in the future.’

  In his cabin the Prince washed and put on a clean shirt as Sacia was expecting him to do. He realised it was the last clean one in his possession.

  He thought that when he left Sacia with her teacher, he might stay the night in a good hotel and they would wash his shirts and press his clothes before he moved on.

  Then he asked himself where he should go once he had handed Sacia over to her teacher and safety.

  He had of course a large number of acquaintances in Rome, but he had no wish to contact them at present.

  He would have to explain why he was travelling without an equerry or a valet, or, as was usual when he visited Rome, with a bodyguard.

  ‘Even when I lose Sacia,’ he told himself, ‘I can still pretend to be an ordinary man. And I must ask myself, before I take a wrong step, what an ordinary man would do in my position at this moment.’

  Then he laughed.

  How could he possibly be an ordinary man when his country was awaiting his return and when he had badly offended one of his most distinguished neighbours by not marrying his tiresome daughter?

  And when he had so enjoyed the most astonishing adventures that any man, however ordinary, could have possibly encountered.

  ‘If I was wise,’ he told himself, ‘I would take Sacia to Greece and not to her teacher. It is a country I would love to visit again and I can imagine nothing more exciting than to be with her.’

  Then he reflected that it would only make matters more complicated than they were already.

  If he was really in love with Sacia and felt he could not live without her, the difficulties ahead were obviously insurmountable.

  The Prime Minister and the Cabinet, as well as his relations, had begged him almost on their knees to marry, but their ideas of a suitable marriage for him were very different from his.

  They cra
ved security for Vienz and they could only see it all happening if he married the daughter of another Ruler – otherwise the future he and his country had to face might be a precarious one.

  He had been told a thousand times already, often in a whisper and sometimes more officially, that there were rumours that Italy would be as much of a danger in the future as Austria had been in the past.

  His was an ancient and most respected Principality, but countries striving to increase their power would not have any scruples.

  ‘I suppose the answer is,’ he told himself with a sigh, ‘that I will have to return home and find someone like Princess Marziale and pray to Heaven she is not in love with another man when she marries me!’

  The mere thought of it made him feel that having run away he wanted to go on running.

  These thoughts were all in his mind until he was ready to go up on deck and see what was happening.

  By now they should be not too far away from their destination.

  He went up the companionway and saw that the youths, exhausted by drink and rampaging, were asleep on deck – some of them had blankets, others were sleeping where they had fallen.

  He turned towards the bridge and found the Captain of the ship.

  “Are you all right?” the Captain asked, seeing the Prince looking distinguished amongst the riff-raff lying on the deck.

  The Prince climbed up to the bridge.

  “I know,” the Captain began, “I must be grateful to you for stopping them doing more damage last night. I heard your shots ring out and was told that you prevented them from breaking into any more cabins.”

  “They did a little damage,” the Prince replied, “but not as much as they might have done.”

  “Well, thank you, sir, and thank God we get rid of that lot in an hour’s time.”

  “In Ostia?” the Prince asked in surprise.

  “No, in Civitavecchia. It is where they have come from. They are a rough lot, but I have never known them quite as bad as they were last night.”

  “Too much alcohol,” the Prince remarked.

  “I realised that when it was too late and of course you will not be surprised to hear they drank more than they paid for. Another time the wine-store will be locked when they come aboard.”