Chapter 4: The King Keeps His Appointment

Whether I had slept a minute or a year I knew not. I awoke with a start and a shiver; my face, hair and clothes dripped water, and opposite me stood old Sapt, a sneering smile on his face and an empty bucket in his hand. On the table by him sat Fritz von Tarlenheim, pale as a ghost and black as a crow under the eyes.

I leapt to my feet in anger.

“Your joke goes too far, sir!” I cried.

“Tut, man, we’ve no time for quarrelling. Nothing else would rouse you. It’s five o’clock.”

“I’ll thank you, Colonel Sapt--” I began again, hot in spirit, though I was uncommonly cold in body.

“Rassendyll,” interrupted Fritz, getting down from the table and taking my arm, “look here.”

The King lay full length on the floor. His face was red as his hair, and he breathed heavily. Sapt, the disrespectful old dog, kicked him sharply. He did not stir, nor was there any break in his breathing. I saw that his face and head were wet with water, as were mine.

“We’ve spent half an hour on him,” said Fritz.

“He drank three times what either of you did,” growled Sapt.

I knelt down and felt his pulse. It was alarmingly languid and slow. We three looked at one another.

“Was it drugged--that last bottle?” I asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” said Sapt.

“We must get a doctor.”

“There’s none within ten miles, and a thousand doctors wouldn’t take him to Strelsau today. I know the look of it. He’ll not move for six or seven hours yet.”

“But the coronation!” I cried in horror.

Fritz shrugged his shoulders, as I began to see was his habit on most occasions.

“We must send word that he’s ill,” he said.

“I suppose so,” said I.

Old Sapt, who seemed as fresh as a daisy, had lit his pipe and was puffing hard at it.

“If he’s not crowned today,” said he, “I’ll lay a crown he’s never crowned.”

“But heavens, why?”

“The whole nation’s there to meet him; half the army--ay, and Black Michael at the head. Shall we send word that the King’s drunk?”

“That he’s ill,” said I, in correction.

“Ill!” echoed Sapt, with a scornful laugh. “They know his illnesses too well. He’s been ‘ill’ before!”

“Well, we must chance what they think,” said Fritz helplessly. “I’ll carry the news and make the best of it.”

Sapt raised his hand.

“Tell me,” said he. “Do you think the King was drugged?”

“I do,” said I.

“And who drugged him?”

“That damned hound, Black Michael,” said Fritz between his teeth.

“Ay,” said Sapt, “that he might not come to be crowned. Rassendyll here doesn’t know our pretty Michael. What think you, Fritz, has Michael no king ready? Has half Strelsau no other candidate? As God’s alive, man the throne’s lost if the King show himself not in Strelsau today. I know Black Michael.”

“We could carry him there,” said I.

“And a very pretty picture he makes,” sneered Sapt.

Fritz von Tarlenheim buried his face in his hands. The King breathed loudly and heavily. Sapt stirred him again with his foot.

“The drunken dog!” he said; “but he’s an Elphberg and the son of his father, and may I rot in hell before Black Michael sits in his place!”

For a moment or two we were all silent; then Sapt, knitting his bushy grey brows, took his pipe from his mouth and said to me:

“As a man grows old he believes in Fate. Fate sent you here. Fate sends you now to Strelsau.”

I staggered back, murmuring “Good God!”

Fritz looked up with an eager, bewildered gaze.

“Impossible!” I muttered. “I should be known.”

“It’s a risk--against a certainty,” said Sapt. “If you shave, I’ll wager you’ll not be known. Are you afraid?”

“Sir!”

“Come, lad, there, there; but it’s your life, you know, if you’re known--and mine--and Fritz’s here. But, if you don’t go, I swear to you Black Michael will sit tonight on the throne, and the King lie in prison or his grave.”

“The King would never forgive it,” I stammered.

“Are we women? Who cares for his forgiveness?”

The clock ticked fifty times, and sixty and seventy times, as I stood in thought. Then I suppose a look came over my face, for old Sapt caught me by the hand, crying:

“You’ll go?”

“Yes, I’ll go,” said I, and I turned my eyes on the prostrate figure of the King on the floor.

“Tonight,” Sapt went on in a hasty whisper, “we are to lodge in the Palace. The moment they leave us you and I will mount our horses--Fritz must stay there and guard the King’s room--and ride here at a gallop. The King will be ready--Josef will tell him--and he must ride back with me to Strelsau, and you ride as if the devil were behind you to the frontier.”

I took it all in in a second, and nodded my head.

“There’s a chance,” said Fritz, with his first sign of hopefulness.

“If I escape detection,” said I.

“If we’re detected,” said Sapt. “I’ll send Black Michael down below before I go myself, so help me heaven! Sit in that chair, man.”

I obeyed him.

He darted from the room, calling “Josef! Josef!” In three minutes he was back, and Josef with him. The latter carried a jug of hot water, soap and razors. He was trembling as Sapt told him how the land lay, and bade him shave me.

Suddenly Fritz smote on his thigh:

“But the guard! They’ll know! they’ll know!”

“Pooh! We shan’t wait for the guard. We’ll ride to Hofbau and catch a train there. When they come, the bird’ll be flown.”

“But the King?”

“The King will be in the wine-cellar. I’m going to carry him there now.”

“If they find him?”

“They won’t. How should they? Josef will put them off.”

“But--”

Sapt stamped his foot.

“We’re not playing,” he roared. “My God! don’t I know the risk? If they do find him, he’s no worse off than if he isn’t crowned today in Strelsau.”