"Hang that same guard!" growled Sapt.
"Oh! it's very civil of my brother to ask the honour for his regiment," said the King. "Come, cousin, you need not start early. Another bottle, man!"
I had another bottle--or, rather, a part of one, for the larger half travelled quickly down his Majesty's throat. Fritz gave up his attempts at persuasion: from persuading, he fell to being persuaded, and soon we were all of us as full of wine as we had any right to be. The King began talking of what he would do in the future, old Sapt of what he had done in the past, Fritz of some beautiful girl or other, and I of the wonderful merits of the Elphberg dynasty. We all talked at once, and followed to the letter Sapt's exhortation
12
to let the morrow take care of itself.
At last the King set down his glass and leant back in his chair. "I have drunk enough," said he.
"Far be it from me to contradict the King," said I.
Indeed, his remark was most absolutely true--so far as it went.
While I yet spoke, Josef came and set before the King a marvellous old wicker-covered flagon. It had lain so long in some darkened
cellar that it seemed to blink in the candlelight.
"His Highness the Duke of Strelsau bade me set this wine before the King, when the King was weary of all other wines, and pray the King to drink, for the love that he bears his brother."
"Well done, Black Michael!" said the King. "Out with the cork, Josef. Hang him! Did he think I'd flinch from his bottle?"
The bottle was opened, and Josef filled the King's glass. The King tasted it. Then, with a solemnity born of the hour and his own
condition, he looked round on us:
"Gentlemen, my friends--Rudolf, my cousin ('tis a scandalous story, Rudolf, on my honour!), everything is yours to the half of Ruritania. But ask me not for a single drop of this divine bottle, which I will drink to the health of that--that sly knave, my brother, Black Michael."
And the King seized the bottle and turned it over his mouth, and drained it and flung it from him, and laid his head on his arms on
the table.
And we drank pleasant dreams to his Majesty--and that is all I remember of the evening. Perhaps it is enough.
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.
13
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!"
14
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