Blood Royal Page 18

  It was approaching midday when I heard a sound in the antechamber which even the massive mahogany could not shut out – the sharp smack and jingle of heavy spurred heels.

  The sentries had sprung to attention.

  Now they had not saluted Kneller, and though several officers had called, they had paid them no compliments. This, no doubt, was in order, for the men’s manner was very punctilious and, so far as I had seen, they never moved a muscle, but only their eyes.

  For an instant my brain faltered. Then the truth leaped into my mind.

  It was the Duke Johann.

  There is a Latin saying that those whom God will destroy He first sends mad. Dully I acknowledged the truth of the saw. That we had not foreseen that Johann would present himself argued that George and I were out of our minds.

  Instead of watching the telltale, I looked round helplessly.

  George Hanbury’s door was open. He seemed to be receiving some message from someone without. Bell was watching him closely, ready, no doubt, to go for one of the Grimms. Of the two, George was the nearest, and he was twenty paces away. The lord-in-waiting was staring out of the window six paces from where I stood.

  I made a frantic effort to marshal my wits.

  For Johann to set eyes upon me was clearly dangerous. He would not know me from Adam, but he might very well know that Grimm had dismissed three footmen the night before. And if he knew young Grimm by sight… Again, the Duke Johann had need of no visiting card. I should have to announce his presence – and I dared not trust my voice.

  Suddenly I remembered the telltale.

  This was dull, but I had no means of knowing whether it had lighted or no.

  I dropped my salver.

  When I had picked it up, I saw that the telltale was glowing – to my disordered mind as never before.

  Kneller had turned and was staring. He was clearly a martinet. A footman’s salver to him was the trooper’s sword.

  There was nothing for it – I went up to Kneller and bowed.

  “My lord,” I mumbled, “will speak with the Duke Johann?”

  God knows what he thought of my accent, but my voice was husky with emotion, and maybe that covered it up.

  In any event he followed me back to the door, and I swung this open directly and shut it as soon as I dared.

  His manner was so hostile that I made sure that on returning he would take me to task, but I think that his speech with Johann put my failings out of his mind, for when he re-entered the hall he did not seem to see me, and, very soon after, Brooch came to his relief and he went away.

  One ordeal we were spared, and that was a visit from Duke Paul. As I have said, he had the right of entry into the hall itself: but though he had been in the habit of coming to inquire for his great-uncle, if not of visiting the Prince, Sully had stopped these visits when Johann took command of the Body Guard. Again by Sully’s advice, the Grand Duchess stayed away: and though she had a lady-in-waiting who could come in her stead, no male of the royal house, except the Prince, was accorded the honour of a regular equerry.

  For the next three hours our hands were not quite so full, but we had no sort of respite, and even the wretched meal we tried to make was so much interrupted that at last we cared not whether we ate or no.

  Here let me say that the Prince’s sickness was accounting for this grievous load of duty, which I think twelve footmen could have conveniently shared. When he was well, the Prince, who was vigorous, was out of the palace for the greater part of his day, so that four footmen, although occasionally pressed, had, in the ordinary way, leisure to spare.

  Kneller returned to duty at three o’clock – to my inquietude, for, compared with him, Brooch was benevolence itself. The latter’s eyes and ears were none too keen, and the one or two orders he gave me were pleasantly given and easy enough to fulfil. What was more, he spent his time reading, but, as I have said, Kneller was very restless and never sat down. Indeed, if Bell had known German, I should have done my best to keep out of Kneller’s sight; for I knew he had not forgiven me for letting fall my salver or for bungling my announcement of the presence of Duke Johann, and so was on the look-out for any misconduct of mine upon which he could pounce. The best we could contrive, however, was that I should man the door from the staircase and Hanbury that of the bedchamber, for if the lord-in-waiting had any commands, he was not likely to call the janitor. Bell was to watch the back door, and the Grimms, so far as they could, would stay at the end of the hall, for from there they could see us all three and so could instantly respond to any signal of distress.

  It was about four o’clock that I opened my door some six inches to see before me the man that I had hit in the stomach on the day that we came to Barabbas against our will.

  That there might be no doubt about it, he had a card in his hand, and, when I presented a salver, I saw that the card bore the name of Martin Egge.

  He gave me no sign of recognition: but be sure I lost no time in shutting the door.

  At once I looked for assistance, and the sergeant-footman stepped to my side.

  “I know this man,” I whispered. “He must not see me again.”

  “Very well,” said he, and took the card to Kneller, who was pacing the hall.

  When Kneller had read the name he showed signs of concern. I fancy he knew Martin Egge for a creature of Duke Johann’s, and did not wish to see him, yet could not bring himself to send him away.

  At length—

  “Desire him to wait,” he said.

  Grimm returned to the door and requested the fellow to wait in the south antechamber.

  “I cannot wait,” said the other. “I must either be admitted or go.”

  “I may not admit you, sir. It is against the rule.”

  The visitor shrugged his shoulders and stood where he was.

  As I shut the door—

  “What does he say?” growled Kneller, three paces away.

  “That he cannot wait, my lord,” said Grimm. “He must either be admitted or go.”

  Kneller grew red in the face.

  Then—

  “I will go out,” he said thickly.

  I opened the door to the staircase, and Kneller passed out.

  I looked at the sergeant-footman, who was frowning upon the door.

  “Listen,” said I. “He should not have left the suite.”

  “No,” said Grimm. “He should not.”

  “You take the door,” said I. “That was one of Duke Johann’s men.”

  Before he could reply I was gone, and had signed to George to follow me out of sight.

  I cannot think how I smelled danger, but the sight of Egge had shocked me, and his inconvenient persistence had seemed to me something deliberate, and not the instance of a man who has truly no time to spare. I felt that he had wished to lure Kneller out of the suite.

  Be that as it may, as the sergeant-footman stood to the door, every moment expecting his son to take Hanbury’s place, he saw Johann enter the hall from the south antechamber.

  Exactly what passed between them I never knew, but though Grimm showed the man out, he was clearly badly shaken by the line which Johann had taken and his menacing air.

  This much I learned.

  Johann had justified his entry by declaring that he had been ‘ringing’ for several minutes, in vain and then had said that, now that Grimm was short-handed, he had better have three or four sentries to keep the doors.

  Grimm had replied that he would take the Prince’s pleasure upon that point.

  Johann had then asked where was the lord-in-waiting, and Grimm had been forced to admit that he was not in the suite.

  Upon this Johann had said that if the lords-in-waiting and servants were not at their posts, he would have to consider his position and whether it was not his duty to man the apartments himself.

  With that he took himself off, having had, to my mind, very much the best of the round, for, though he was clean out of order, he had caught Kneller napp
ing and Grimm alone in the hall: he had proved ‘the nakedness of the land’, and, if now he determined to relieve it, I did not see that his proposal could be reasonably condemned.

  As the door closed upon him, young Grimm, who had been detained, arrived at the door to the stairs, and an instant later Kneller re-entered the hall. By the grace of God, therefore, Johann and the lord-in-waiting did not meet, and the former was spared the knowledge that there were in fact four footmen as heretofore. But the keeping of this secret seemed like to cost us as dear as its revelation, and it was desperately clear that any moment now the ice upon which we were treading was going to crack.

  Before, however, we could even discuss this very serious turn, the Prince was calling for Grimm, and while the latter was with him, the Court clockmaker came to wind the clocks. While he was about his business, two prelates arrived, and, the Prince’s pleasure being learned, were ushered into his chamber to comfort their sovereign lord. By the time the two were gone it was half past four, and from then until half past five, representatives of foreign Courts came to the antechamber to pay their respects.

  After six o’clock the calls upon our activity diminished to some extent, but though we tried more than once to hold a hasty council and have at the matter with Grimm, each time we were interrupted almost before we had begun and at last we saw that it was hopeless and abandoned the attempt.

  Indeed, I shall never know how Grimm and his son were able to cope with the duty at this time the day before: but young Grimm declared that the calls had been much less frequent and that the Prince had been dozing and so had not sent for his father for nearly two hours.

  At five minutes to nine that evening I ushered the doctors out of the royal apartments, and two or three minutes later Brooch took his leave for the night.

  I shut the door behind him, sank down on the bench beside me and buried my face in my hands.

  To make use of a slang expression, I was all in.

  At half past two the next morning somebody touched my arm.

  Dead asleep as I had been, I was wide awake in an instant, after the way of the soldier that is holding some hopeless lodgment and has his being in constant dread of attack.

  George Hanbury and Grimm were beside me.

  “There’s a change in the Prince’s condition,” said George quickly. “It’s slight, but eloquent. The nuns are perfectly persuaded that this is the end.”

  “Have they rung for the doctors?”

  “Not yet. They don’t propose to until there is more to be seen. The doctors, they say, would probably laugh them to scorn.”

  “How long do they give him?” said I.

  “They won’t be tied down,” said George. “But, so far as I can gather, from three to six hours.”

  I got to my feet.

  “We must press for the minimum,” said I. I turned to Grimm. “Will you go and ask them if they would be astonished if the Prince were dead in an hour? Put it like that.”

  He nodded and disappeared, and I went to drink some water and bathe my face.

  As I returned, he emerged from the Prince’s room.

  “The Prince will live for an hour, sir – most likely for two or three. He may live for six or seven hours: but that he should die under the hour they will not have.”

  “Very well,” said I: “then Rowley must leave at once.”

  As I had half expected, the sergeant-footman demurred.

  It would, he maintained, be most awkward for her Highness and Duke Paul and Sully to be waiting in the private apartments for five or six hours: there was no fit accommodation: once there, they would be his charge, and take so much upon him he could not at such a time.

  “Listen,” said I. “There’s a risk of their coming too early, and a risk of their coming too late. We cannot take the second, and so we must take the first.”

  George supported me stoutly, and at length the old servant gave way.

  We opened the door to the passage and sent Rowley off.

  “And now,” said I, “to business. Bringing them in is nothing. We’ve got to tie up Johann.”

  For the next thirty minutes we hammered and beat upon this problem, as a smith upon the red-hot iron.

  The doctors must presently be summoned, and so must Kneller and Brooch. Johann might have to be summoned, or he might not. Grimm had not summoned him before – the fellow had simply appeared. Whether a doctor had warned him, or one of the lords-in-waiting, neither Grimm nor his son could tell. It might have been one of the footmen that Grimm had dismissed. This, of course, was the devil. The last thing we wanted was Johann before his time.

  One thing was clear as daylight – once it was known that the heir apparent’s adherents were in the private apartments, no one, but one of us five, must leave the suite.

  Without a doubt, Johann had issued his orders a week ago – orders to be carried out the moment he gave the word. They might or might not be sealed – most likely they were. But that his Adjutant had them I was perfectly sure. And at a word from Johann he would instantly set to work to carry them out.

  That word must never be given – must never be sent.

  There were within call eight sentries – eight men-at-arms. Once he was in the suite, their Colonel-in-Chief had only to raise his voice for them to enter the apartments and come to his side.

  That voice must never be raised.

  What harassed us to distraction was how to deal with Johann.

  We dreaded his presence: yet we dared not leave him at large. If he did not come, he must be summoned, and then – what then?

  Sandbag the man we dared not. For one thing only, the Body Guard was under his orders and would surely wait upon these. For another, neither Sully nor Kneller would countenance such an act. Johann was of royal blood.

  Let me put it like this.

  A pretender to the throne, Johann had to be crushed: as a duke of the royal house, he had to be spared: but, as commanding the Body Guard, he had to be used.

  The Body Guard held the palace. All the goings and comings, consequent upon the death of the sovereign, would be under their hand: they would provide, or withhold, the orderlies, escorts and guards which a due observance of the passing of the throne would require: except by their leave, the people of Riechtenburg could not be so much as informed of the death of the Prince.

  Even if Kneller stayed faithful, I found it hard to believe that the Second-in-command of the Body Guard would take the General’s orders, unless they came through Johann.

  “Deadlock,” said George, in the end. “I can’t see any way out. If we all look ugly enough, he may find it rather awkward to call the guard: but we can’t order them off and, if we do, I don’t imagine they’ll go. His game is to smile – and wait. Sully produces Duke Paul and says ‘Here’s the king.’ ‘Right-o,’ says Johann. ‘You play him.’ And, if he says that, Sully’s stuck. He damned well can’t play his king. For one thing, he’s out of touch. Post-office, press and public are out of his reach. Even the telephone’s gone. But Johann’s not out of touch…

  Here the door of the wardrobe was opened and Sully stepped out.

  I shall never forget his coming.

  Instead of the agitation which I had made sure he would show, he was as calm and unruffled as I had ever seen him, and his cool, dignified bearing and the steady look in his eyes put me to shame.

  Before we could speak, he set his hands upon our shoulders and lowered his head.

  “If I were married,” he said, “I should pray that my sons might have your courage, your wit, and your address – and I should pray in vain. If I had not seen it myself, I would not have believed that the spirit could so dominate the flesh.”

  ‘Courage and address.’ Had he seen me when I dropped my salver, I fancy that he would have chosen less shining words.

  “Don’t believe it now,” said George. “We’re a couple of broken reeds.”

  Sully smiled.

  “I have learned of you,” he said. “You have given me
confidence: and nothing that you can say can take it away.”

  “I’m thankful for that,” said I, and began to examine the problem which George and I could not solve.

  To my surprise he stopped me.

  “If we had six months,” he said, “we could preconceive no plan. We must deal with what happens when it happens, as best we may.”

  “I think,” said I, “that you may need our support.”

  “I depend upon it,” said Sully. “I know that you will do nothing rash, and of that knowledge I shall question nothing that you do.”

  With his words, Grimm came out of the bedchamber. In his eyes was the look of distress you may see in the eyes of a dog.

  “The Prince is worse, sirs,” he said. “I think that the doctors should be summoned. He – he does not know me.”

  George and I looked at one another.

  “If we summon the doctors,” said I, “we must summon the lords-in-waiting. And that may mean that we are summoning Johann.”

  “Let it be done,” said Sully. “We must ourselves be in order at any cost.”

  A bell in the Prince’s study would summon the lords-in-waiting. Grimm told his son to ring this and then to man the door from the staircase instead of Bell. Bell would man that of the bedchamber.

  I entered the wardrobe and, kneeling by the door from the passage, strained my ears.

  I could hear nothing.

  It was now nearly forty minutes since Rowley had gone.

  I returned to Sully.

  “Do you know,” I asked him, “whether they have a car?”

  “Yes,” said he. “In case that of Madame Dresden was not ready, I sent mine to the Duke’s lodging and came here on foot.”

  There was nothing to be said.

  Within five minutes I heard the doctors arrive.

  A moment later Grimm came out of the room.

  “The Prince is sinking, sirs. He will not live for two hours. When they said that, I asked the doctors to tell me when I should summon the chaplain and Duke Johann. They promised to give me the word.”

  “Well done,” said I.

  “But I think the Duke Johann may come, sir, without we send. My lord Brooch may give him the word.”