"Will you repeat that," he said at length, "and slowly?"
O"Toole repeated his remark, and the courier nodded at him. "That"s very strange," said he, solemnly, wagging his head. "I do not dispute its truth, but it is most strange. I will tell my wife of it." He turned in his chair, and a twinge from his bruises made him cry out. "I shall be as stiff as a mummy in the morning," he exclaimed, and swore loudly at "the bandits" who had caused him this deplorable journey. Misset and O"Toole exchanged a quick glance, and Misset pushed the gla.s.s across the table. The courier took it, and his eyes lighted up.
"You have come from Trent," said he. "Did you pa.s.s a travelling carriage on the road?"
"Yes," said Misset; "the Prince of Baden with a large following drove into Trent as we came out."
"Yes, yes," said the courier. "But no second party behind the Prince?"
Misset shook his head; he made a pretence of consulting O"Toole in French, and O"Toole shook his head.
"Then I shall have the robbers," cried the courier. "They are to be flayed alive, and they deserve it," he shouted fiercely to Misset. "Gallows-birds!"
He dropped his head upon his arms and muttered "gallows-birds" again. It seemed that he was falling asleep, but he suddenly sat up and beat on the table with his fist.
"I have eaten nothing since the morning. Ah-gallows- birds-flayed alive, and hanged-no, hanged and flayed alive-no, that"s impossible." He drank off the wine which Misset had poured out for him, and rose from his chair. "Where"s the landlord? I want supper. I want besides to speak to him;" and he staggered towards the door.
"As for supper," said Misset, "we shall be glad if you will share ours. Travellers should be friendly."
O"Toole caught the courier by the arm and with a polite speech in French drew him again down into his chair. The courier stared at O"Toole and forgot all about the landlord. He had eaten nothing all day, and the wine and the water-jug had gone to his head. He put a long forefinger on O"Toole"s knee.
"Say that again," said he, and O"Toole obeyed. A slow, fat smile spread all over the courier"s face.
"I"ll tell my wife about it," said he. He tried to clap O"Toole on the back, and missing him fell forward with his face on the table. The next minute he was snoring. Misset walked round the table and deftly picked his pockets. There was a package in one of them superscribed to "Prince Taxis, the Governor of Trent." Misset deliberately broke the seal and read the contents. He handed the package to O"Toole, who read it, and then flinging it upon the ground danced upon it. Misset went out of the room and found Wogan and Gaydon keeping watch by Clementina"s door. To them he spoke in a whisper.
"The fellow brings letters from General Heister to the Governor of Trent to stop us at all costs. But his letters are destroyed, and he"s lying dead-drunk on the table."
The three men quickly concerted a plan. The Princess must be roused; a start must be made at once; and O"Toole must be left behind to keep a watch upon the courier, Wogan rapped at the door and waked Clementina; he sent Gaydon to the stables to bribe the ostlers, and with Misset went down to inform O"Toole.
O"Toole, however, was sitting with his eyes closed and his head nodding, surrounded by sc.r.a.ps of the letter which he had danced to pieces. Wogan shook him by the shoulder, and he opened his eyes and smiled fatuously.
"He means to tell his wife," he said with a foolish gurgle of laughter. "He must be an a.s.s. I don"t think if I had a wife I should tell her. Would you, Wogan, tell your wife if you had one? Misset wouldn"t tell his wife."
Misset interrupted him.
"What have you drank since I went out of the room?" he asked roughly. He took up the water-jug and turned it topsy-turvy. It was quite empty.
"Only water," said O"Toole, dreamily, and he laughed again. "Now I wouldn"t mind telling my wife that," said he.
Misset let him go and turned with a gesture of despair to Wogan.
"I poured my flask out into the water-bottle. It was full of burnt Strasbourg brandy, of double strength. It is as potent as opium. Neither of them will have his wits before to-morrow. It will not help us to leave O"Toole to guard the courier."
"And we cannot take him," said Wogan. "There is the Princess to be thought of. We must leave him, and we cannot leave him alone, for his neck"s in danger,-more than in danger if the courier wakes before him."
He picked up carefully the sc.r.a.ps of the letter and placed them in the middle of the fire. They were hardly burnt before Gaydon came into the room with word that horses were already being harnessed to the berlin. Wogan explained their predicament.
"We must choose which of us three shall stay behind," said he.
"Which of us two," Misset corrected, pointing to Gaydon and himself. "When the Princess drives into Bologna, Charles Wogan, who first had the high heart to dare this exploit, the brain to plot, the hand to execute it,-Charles Wogan must ride at her side, not Misset, not Gaydon. I take no man"s honours." He shook Wogan by the hand as he spoke, and he had spoken with an extraordinary warmth of admiration. Gaydon could do no less than follow his companion"s example, though there was a shade of embarra.s.sment in his manner of a.s.senting. It was not that he had any envy of Wogan, or any desire to rob him of a single t.i.ttle of his due credit. There was nothing mean in Gaydon"s nature, but here was a halving of Clementina"s protectors, and he could not stifle a suspicion that the best man of the four to leave behind was really Charles Wogan himself. Not a word, however, of this could he say, and so he nodded his a.s.sent to Misset"s proposal.
"It is I, then, who stay behind with O"Toole and the courier," he said. "Misset has a wife; the lot evidently falls to me. We will make a shift somehow or another to keep the fellow quiet till sundown to-morrow, which time should see you out of danger." He unbuckled the sword from his waist and laid it on the table, and that simple action somehow touched Wogan to the heart. He slipped his arm into Gaydon"s and said remorsefully,-
"d.i.c.k, I do hate to leave you, you and Lucius. I swept you into the peril, you two, my friends, and now I leave you in the thick of it to find a way out for yourselves. But there is no remedy, is there? I shall not rest until I see you both again. Goodbye, Lucius." He looked at O"Toole sprawling with outstretched legs upon his groaning chair. "My six feet four," said he, turning to Gaydon; "you must give me the pa.s.sport. Have a good care of him, d.i.c.k;" and he gripped O"Toole affectionately by the arms for a second, and then taking the pa.s.sport hurried from the room. Gaydon had seldom seen Wogan so moved.
The berlin was brought round to the door; the Princess, rosy with sleep, stepped into it; Wogan had brought with him a m.u.f.f, and he slipped it over Clementina"s feet to keep her warm during the night; Misset took Gaydon"s place, and the postillion cracked his whip and set off towards Trent. Gaydon, sitting before the fire in the parlour, heard the wheels grate upon the road; he had a vision of the berlin thundering through the night with a trail of sparks from the wheels; and he wondered whether Misset was asleep or merely leaning back with his eyes shut, and thus visiting incognito Woman"s fairy-land of dreams. However, Gaydon consoled himself with the reflection that it was none of his business.
CHAPTER XVII
But Gaydon was out of his reckoning. There were no fairy tales told for Misset to overhear, and the Princess Clementina slept in her corner of the carriage. If a jolt upon a stone wakened her, a movement opposite told her that her sentinel was watchful and alert. Three times the berlin stopped for a change of horses; and on each occasion Wogan was out of the door and hurrying the ostlers before the wheels had ceased to revolve.
"You should sleep, my friend," said she.
"Not till we reach Italy," he replied; and with the confidence of a child she nestled warmly in her cloak again and closed her eyes. This feeling of security was a new luxury to her after the months of anxiety and prison. The grey light of the morning stole into the berlin and revealed to her the erect and tireless figure of her saviour. The sun leaped down the mountain-peaks, and the grey of the light was now a sparkling gold. Wogan bade her Highness look from the carriage window, and she could not restrain a cry of delight. On her left, mountain-ridge rose behind mountain-ridge, away to the towering limestone cliffs of Monte Scanupia; on her right, the white peaks of the Orto d"Abram flashed to the sun; and between the hills the broad valley of the Adige rolled southwards,-a summer country of villages and vines, of mulberry-trees and fields of maize, in the midst of which rose the belfries of an Italian town.
"This is Italy," she cried.
"But the Emperor"s Italy," answered Wogan; and at half-past nine that morning the carriage stopped in the public square of Trent. As Wogan stepped onto the ground, he saw a cloud of dust at the opposite side of the square, and wrapped in that cloud men on horseback like soldiers in the smoke of battle; he heard, too, the sound of wheels. The Prince of Baden had that instant driven away, and he had taken every procurable horse in the town. Wogan"s own horses could go no further. He came back to the door of the carriage.
"I must search through Trent," said he, "on the mere chance of finding what will serve us. Your Highness must wait in the inn;" and Clementina, m.u.f.fling her face, said to him,-
"I dare not. My face is known in Trent, though this is the first time ever I saw it. But many gentlemen from Trent came to the Innspruck carnival, and of these a good number were kind enough to offer me their hearts. They were allowed to besiege me to their content. I must needs remain in the shelter of the carriage."
Wogan left Misset to stand sentinel, and hurried off upon his business. He ran from stable to stable, from inn to inn. The Prince of Baden had hired thirty-six horses; six more were nowhere to be found. Wogan would be content with four; he ended in a prayer for two. At each house the door was shut in his face. Wogan was in despair; nowhere could delay be so dangerous as at Trent, where there were soldiers, and a Governor who would not hesitate to act without orders if he suspected the Princess Clementina was escaping through his town. Two hours had pa.s.sed in Wogan"s vain search,-two hours of daylight, during which Clementina had sat in an unharnessed carriage in the market square. Wogan ran back to the square, half expecting to find that she had been recognised and arrested. As he reached the square, he saw that curious people were loitering about the carriage; as he pushed through them, he heard them questioning why travellers should on so hot a morning of spring sit m.u.f.fled up in a close, dark carriage when they could take their ease beneath trees in the inn-garden. One man laughed out at the Princess and the comical figure she made with her scarlet cloak drawn tight about her face. Wogan himself had bought that cloak in Strasbourg to guard his Princess from the cold of the Brenner, and guessed what discomfort its ermine lining must now be costing her. And this lout dared to laugh and make her, this incomparable woman, a b.u.t.t for his ridicule! Wogan took a step towards the fellow with his fists clenched, but thought the better of his impulse, and turning away ran to the palace of Prince Taxis.
This desperate course alone remained to him; he must have speech with the Prince-bishop himself. At the palace, however, he was informed that the Prince was in bed with the gout. Mr. Wogan, however, insisted.
"You will present my duties to the Prince; you will show him my pa.s.sport; you will say that the Count of Cernes has business of the last importance in Italy, and begs permission, since the Prince of Baden has hired every post-horse in the town, to requisition half a dozen farm-horses from the fields."
Mr. Wogan kicked his heels in the courtyard while the message was taken. At any moment some rumour of the curious spectacle in the square might be brought to the palace and excite inquiry. There might be another courier in pursuit besides the man whom Gaydon kept a prisoner. Wogan was devoured with a fever of impatience. It seemed to him hours before the Prince"s secretary returned to him. The secretary handed him back his pa.s.sport, and on the part of the Prince made a speech full of civilities.
"Here"s a great deal of jam, sir," said Wogan. "I mis...o...b.. me but what there"s a most unpalatable pill hidden away in it."
"Indeed," said the secretary, "the Prince begs you to be content and to wait for the post-horses to return."
"Ah, ah!" cried Wogan, "but that"s the one thing I cannot do. I must speak plainly, it appears." He drew the secretary out of ear-shot, and resumed: "My particular business is to catch up the Prince of Baden. He is summoned back to Innspruck. Do you understand?" he asked significantly.
"Sir, we are well informed in Trent as to the Emperor"s wishes," said the secretary, with a great deal of dignity.
"No, no, my friend," said Wogan. "It is not by the Emperor the Prince of Baden is summoned, though I have no doubt the summons is much to his taste."
The secretary stepped back in surprise.
"By her Highness the Princess?" he exclaimed.
"She changes her mind; she is willing where before she was obdurate. To tell you the truth, the Prince plied her too hard, and she would have none of him. Now that he turns his back and puts the miles as fast as he can between himself and her, she cannot sleep for want of him."