Part 4

I waited with some impatience, listening for the sound of a footstep, but for a while the house was singularly silent. Presently, however, I was startled by the soft notes of some instrument, for I knew that, in the strict Muscovite household, music among the women was discouraged. But here was a stringed instrument, and then a woman’s voice, singularly sweet and mellow, began to sing in Russ, and I listened attentively, not only because of the unusual words of the little ballad, but because the voice seemed to me to belong to the princess herself.

“‘_If the frost nipped the flowerets no more_,’”

sang the unseen musician:

“‘_If in winter the flowerets would bloom, If the woes of my spirit were o’er, My spirit would cast off its gloom,-- I would sit with my sorrow no longer O’erwatching the dew-covered field._’”

The singer’s voice rose and fell, plaintive and sweet, and then she played a few more chords before she continued:

“‘_I said to my father already, Already I said to my taper,-- “Nay! marry me not, O my father! O marry me not to the proud one! O seek not for high piles of riches; O seek not for palaces fair, ’Tis man, not his palace, we dwell in; ’Tis comfort, not riches, we need!”-- I hurried across the young grass; I threw off my sable fur cloak, Lest its buttons of metal might tinkle-- Afraid my stepfather would hear me And say “she is there,” to his son-- To his son who is doomed for my husband!_’”

Again her voice sank and her hands must have strayed over her instrument. I had forgotten my impatience and stood listening in rapt attention, when she began again with the little refrain:

“‘_If the frost nipped the flowerets no more, If in winter the----_’”

She got no farther; her song stopped sharply and then I heard a ripple of laughter and much whispering, followed by the rustling of skirts in the room beyond. Then the curtain between was lifted by an old Russian woman, who held it respectfully aside, and the Princess Daria entered. I had only seen her, cloaked and hooded, in Maître le Bastien’s workshop, and was almost unprepared for the vision that broke upon me, as she walked slowly across the room and, pausing in the broad light of the window, turned her face toward me and calmly waited for me to speak. She was tall, with a girlish slenderness of figure, and the dignity and poise of a young queen. The beauty of her features, which I had already seen, was greatly enhanced by her colouring, for her complexion was almost dazzlingly fair, and her hair as black and glossy as a raven’s wing. To my satisfaction, too, she wore no paint, which was unusual, as the Russian women painted not only their faces, but their hands and arms, and even coloured their eyelashes, but she was beautiful as nature made her. Her costume, too, singular as it was to my eyes, only added to her charms; it was a flowing, ungirdled robe of some clinging white material, embroidered in gold around the edge of the hem at her feet, and in a broad band around the half low neck; and on either bare, round, white arm, as well as about her throat, were plain bands of dull gold.

She stood looking at me with great composure, her penetrating glance apparently taking in every detail of my appearance, and to add to my embarrassment, I became aware of Lissa’s roguish face peeping out from behind the shoulder of the old duenna, who stood patiently in the doorway. However, I made my obeisance as gracefully as I could, and drawing forth the packet, which contained the pear. I presented it, along with the picture of the Czarevna Sophia, which Maître le Bastien had been careful to return. The princess received the package with dignified complacence, but at the sight of the miniature she turned crimson, looking for all the world like a naughty child caught in some mischief. Seeing her confusion, and determined to prolong the interview to the fullest extent, I bethought me of something more to say.

“Let me warn the princess,” I said courteously, “that there seems to be a peculiar interest attached to that locket, and that it was seen while in the hands of Maître le Bastien.”

She gave me a startled look, in which alarm and displeasure were mingled.

“And by whom, sir?” she asked haughtily.

“By the Boyar Kurakin,” I replied.

She blushed yet more deeply and bit her lip, while I heard a little smothered scream of laughter from the direction of the doorway.

“I trusted it to you,” said the Princess Daria coldly. “It was your fault that my confidence was betrayed.”

“It was purely accidental, mademoiselle,” I replied, and went on hastily to explain how Kurakin had forced himself into the house, pushing Michaud, who understood no Russ, out of his way and entering the shop unannounced. Then I told her briefly of his effort to get the locket from me.

“But he failed, princess,” I continued suavely, “because, at the moment when he thought to snatch it from me, he tripped and fell down the stairs on top of our fat old cook, Advotia, who beat him with a skillet of soup, so that the noble gentleman not only lost the locket, but was baptized in good broth.”

She had listened with an effort at dignified reserve, but at this conclusion to my narrative she began to laugh a little, and at the sound of the merriment behind the portière, she, too, gave way to hers, and laughed as gaily as Lissa; the duenna meanwhile--to whom my French was as so much Greek--looked from one to the other in puzzled silence, her black eyes keenly alert and her wrinkled face as grave as a judge’s.

“I am sorry you lost your soup, monsieur,” said the princess, still laughing softly, “and for me, too!”

“I would lose much more--and peril much--for the sake of the Princess Daria,” I replied gallantly, forgetting my rôle of apprentice.

She flashed a quick look at me and blushed and smiled, for, with all her hauteur, she seemed to have the simplicity of a child. But the chaperon was not so well pleased, and she made a cautious movement of warning, touching the princess’ robe, and the young girl, blushing still more deeply, recollected her dignity, and taking a purse from the old woman’s hand, she turned to pay for the locket. This part of the transaction had never entered my thoughts, and as it flashed upon me my face burned, and I motioned the money away; retreating toward the door. It was now her turn to be embarrassed; she drew back the purse and looked at me, a picture of pretty confusion.

“But, monsieur,” she said, “cannot take the work as a gift. I must pay for the locket.”

“There is nothing to pay,” I retorted brusquely, as red as fire; “the labour was nothing.”

“But there was the soup, monsieur,” she said, a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

“That went to M. Kurakin,” I replied with a bow, and I took another step toward the door.

She stood irresolute, looking at me and fingering the bracelet on her arm, and I know not how long might have lingered, for she was good to look upon, when suddenly she snapped the circlet and it fell apart in her fingers. She looked at it with a little cry of surprise, and then held it out to me, with the prettiest gesture of friendliness.

“Will you not mend it for me, sir?” she said, with her head on one side, a smile lurking in her eyes.

“With pleasure, my princess,” I replied, bowing profoundly, and as I took the bracelet I managed to kiss the fair hand that gave it.

And then the duenna hustled me suddenly out of the _terem_, for if she knew no French, she understood looks and gestures only too well--the old ferret--and she shook her staff at me from the head of the stairs as I descended. She stood there looking, for all the world, like an angry hen, clucking away at me in Russ, at the top of her lungs, until old Piotr took me in charge and, in his turn, hurried me out of the house. Evidently, the pair of them regarded me as a dangerous intruder in their dove-cote.

_VI: THE DWARF_

ONCE more in the court-yard, I stopped to laugh, for the anger and trepidation of the two guardians of the household furnished me with no little entertainment. I was in a good humour, too, for I had seen my divinity and had even kissed her soft white hand; a proceeding which caused her no little amazement, for I had seen her surprise in her eyes, and the blood had stolen up to her hair, but I flattered myself that she was not altogether angry, for I felt sure she was amused at the old woman’s excitement over the little episode. I glanced back now over the house, hoping to catch another glimpse of its fair mistress, but was disappointed. Piotr’s discipline had served to keep the serfs from gaping at me again, and the upper windows were vacant, save for a solitary raven that perched upon one sill and craned his neck as if to look down at me. The sun shone intensely on the white walls of the palace, and the shadows were clean cut and black where they fell in the niches of the building, and above the sky was blue. The bells of the Kremlin churches began to ring sweetly, the clear-toned notes floating away in the distance, and the air was soft as spring in the south.

I walked slowly to the gates and stood a moment looking out into the street, and it was while I lingered thus that a drosky arrived at the main entrance drawn by three fleet horses, and a tall man alighted from it, attended by a servant. At the first glance I recognised the handsome face and fine figure of Prince Basil Galitsyn; he had been often to Maître le Bastien’s workshop, and I could not mistake his face or his bearing. Of all the Russian nobles he was the most Western in his manners and tastes, and he was an unusually handsome and dignified man. The air of familiarity with which he approached the house and the cordiality with which he was greeted--Piotr standing bare-headed on the step to receive him--were not at all to my taste. I stood staring after him as he vanished into the palace and, for the first time, I regretted having assumed a disguise. I reflected that the princess had in her possession, at that very moment, a locket that belonged to Prince Galitsyn, and all at once he loomed up before me as a probable lover of the beautiful Daria. “Why not,” I reflected; “what was more likely? And here was I, like a blockhead, in the shabby garb of an apprentice, cooling my heels in the court-yard, while his excellency, the prince, was doubtless taking _zakuska_ in the salon.” Yet I had no remedy, and must even grin and bear it, for to rush back and declare myself the Marquis de Cernay would have done little for my cause beyond raising the ridicule of the kitchen. Neither could I hang about the court-yard, like a menial, to catch a glimpse of the proceedings that might be visible through the lower windows; there was nothing for it but to curse my ill fortune and, buttoning my old taffety coat over the princess’ bracelet, to proceed on my way back to my quarters with no very pleasant reflections. But there was one thread of comfort: I knew that by common report the Czarevna Sophia loved Prince Galitsyn, and she was reputed to be a woman of no ordinary qualities and was likely enough to be a formidable rival even for the beautiful Princess Voronin. I tried to remember all that I had ever heard of the czarevna, and to piece together a respectable romance between her and Prince Galitsyn, but I confess I got very little satisfaction out of the process, for before my mind’s eye stood always the graceful figure, the glowing, youthful face, the sparkling eyes of Daria Kirilovna, and I could not believe that the prince was blind.

Busied with these meditations, I traversed the streets between the palace and our quarters quickly enough, and entering the house, with a face as long as my arm, bethought myself of the dwarf, and intending to call for him, I opened the door of the refectory and looked in. There was the dwarf himself, seated on a table in the middle of the room, busily engaged in devouring a meal that had been spread before him, while Michaud, the apprentice, was sitting on a window-sill near at hand, looking on with a grin.

The little creature, with his white, three-cornered face, was hunched over his food, eating with his fingers, and devouring the stuff with the fierce greediness of an animal, and as he ate his great ears wagged with every motion of his jaws, and Michaud,--who was an idle rogue,--seeing this, put his hands at each side of his own head and wagged them to and fro, in mockery of Maluta’s ears, making his jaws go to the same tune. The meal, too, was one to startle any but a Russian stomach; it was a bit of sterlet,--the precious fish they love so well,--some Muscovite rice bread, a pickled mushroom, and a tankard of beer, with some drops of oil of cinnamon in it, a flavour that the Czar Alexis considered a truly royal delicacy, and the dwarf ate and drank with an avidity that could be heard in the entry, while Michaud mocked him--eating imaginary food with the same relish.

I stood looking at the scene in silence, vastly amused thereat, and so fierce was the dwarf’s appetite that he did not observe me until he had gulped down the last of the beer, and then his rat-like eyes suddenly alighted upon me. He put down the empty tankard, sighed, thrust the whole pickled mushroom into his mouth as a parting dainty, and wriggling off the table, he came across the room, knelt on one knee and made an obeisance before me, as if he kissed the floor at my feet, while Michaud hooted derisively in the background.

“Up, you little varlet,” I said impatiently, advancing toward the only chair at the table, “come hither and tell me your history”; as I spoke, I was about to sit down, when I discovered that that lout of an apprentice had thrown himself into the armchair and was gazing at me with a cool impudence that I had never seen equalled.

So amazed was I that, for the moment, I only stared and then I stirred him with my foot.

“Be off!” I exclaimed sharply, tried beyond prudence.

“Be off, yourself!” retorted Michaud insolently.

I fairly choked with rage. “You impudent puppy,” I said, “how dare you?”

“How dare I?” said he; “and what are you? You are Raoul, the apprentice, and I am Michaud, the apprentice, and a better goldsmith than you, I’ll warrant!”

This was too much; my disguise had cost me too dearly already, and the varlet’s insolence made me blaze forth into fury.

“Get up!” I said fiercely. “I am neither Raoul nor the apprentice, sirrah, and you know it! Try not my patience too far, or I’ll break your head for your pains.”

Something in my face cowed him, though the fellow usually was bold enough. He rose sullenly.

“I care not!” he said gruffly; “you are one moment an apprentice and the next moment ‘monsieur.’ How can an honest man know what you are?” and he shot a look of suspicion at me.

I disdained to tell him who I was, although I did not fear betrayal, or care for it, but I ordered him out of the room, and then, taking the disputed chair, I fell to questioning my new protégé. Maluta had watched me while I talked with Michaud, and though he understood no French, I think the little beast read our gestures and expressions so well that he understood the gist of the matter, and I saw him studying my face, while we talked together, much as a mariner studies a new-made chart of a dangerous coast. A few well-directed questions drew forth the creature’s history, in substance, at least. He was one of the court dwarfs, or had been, and the Czar Feodor had given him to the Boyar Kurakin, who had virtually discarded him, and he had, for the last few months, got his food where he could, mainly through the charity of cooks and scullions, for these little creatures were veritable waifs of fortune. That he might be useful to me I could not doubt, for he had, of course, every court intrigue at his fingers’ ends; but that he would also be a nuisance and a charge upon me was equally plain, yet I never felt less inclined to turn a poor waif into the street. Moreover, he was infinitely amusing, for that night while Maître le Bastien and I supped together, he danced for us and performed a dozen monkeyish tricks with tireless energy. And, whether I would or no, he attached himself to me; he watched my moods, he carried my cloak and my sword, he was even ready to change my shoes, or to run my errands, and after a day or two I began to tolerate him and even to find him useful. I little dreamed then, however, how useful he was to be.

Meanwhile another kettle of fish was boiling fast in the Zemlianui-gorod, where the Streltsi were gathered. For days the storm of discontent had been gathering, and petitions were carried back and forth between the barracks and the palace. The very day that I visited the Princess Daria the soldiers had seized and scourged one of their own colonels, and no man dared gainsay them, though the Chancellor Matveief, the uncle of the Czarina Natalia, and the old commander of the Streltsi, had been recalled from exile in Archangel and was in the Kremlin, trying to pour oil on the troubled waters, but deeper and yet deeper worked the intrigues of the Miloslavskys. Their emissaries were busy among the ranks of the soldiers, pledges were making, dissension was sowing, and loud and deep came the growl of the mob. Men dared not walk abroad unarmed; women kept closer than ever; even the _Gostinnoi Dvor_, the great bazaar, was almost deserted. I walked through it at noon of a Friday, and saw scarcely fifty people chaffering at the stands, and they were buying images and pictures of saints, and the merchants, bearded and solemn, looked pale and whispered apart. And the Red Place was empty, an ominous sign; it was not crowded with courtiers and petitioners, and the Czarina Natalia held her court with empty galleries--so Le Bastien told me--while the Czarevna Sophia was besieged by the soldiers, who hung about her, when she appeared in public, and thronged her ante-room at all hours. On the outskirts of the town the mob gathered at morning and evening, and talked and threatened; an officer riding through with an order from the czarina had been stoned at daybreak on Thursday, and there was a cry now for pay for the regiments and redress of all old grievances, the affirmation of the Streltsi’s old privilege of keeping shop, and a dozen other benefits that they had--or fancied they had--by right.

Maître le Bastien, who was an over-cautious man, began to hide much of the gold and silver that had been given him for his work, and he bought another pistol in the German quarter, at which I laughed; but he shook his head.

“There’s mischief brewing, monsieur,” he said; “mischief of a black sort. These soldiers are little better than a rabble of cut-throats and robbers, and the Miloslavskys are stirring them up to a devil’s business”; he shook his head again. “A child and a woman to rule,” he added, “and a band of wolves at the door; prime your pistols, M. de Cernay, and keep your sword loose in its scabbard. I remember hearing my grandmother tell of the Eve of Saint Bartholomew; though she was as good a Catholic as I am, she never forgot it, monsieur; their house was in the district of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, and to the day of her death she would fall to shivering when a pistol cracked in the dark or the bell of Saint Germain tolled. Last night, when I came out of the gate of Saint Nikolas, I passed perhaps twenty of these fellows, and if ever I saw the devil in men’s faces, I saw it in theirs.”

“Tut, Maître le Bastien,” I said, with a laugh; “you’ve got an old woman’s whims in your brains. They have but to pay these rogues and give them a beating, and they will slink back to their kennels.”

But he was not to be persuaded. “When the wolf scents blood----” he replied, with an expressive gesture, and went to the cellar to hide more of his gold. While I laughed and set Maluta to dancing on the table, which he did in a marvellous fashion, spinning around and around, in constantly increasing circles, until he leaped clear over my head and perched on the back of a chair, swinging there like an ape, to my great diversion.

Yet the future, so swiftly approaching, was bigger with fate for me than for Maître le Bastien, while for the Princess Daria--chut, I must not run ahead of my own tale.

_VII: THE SUMMONS_

IT was on a Friday, scarcely three days after Kurakin saw the golden pear in Maître le Bastien’s hands that a summons came from the palace. The goldsmith had been modelling in wax a very beautiful little image of the Virgin of Kazan, intending to cast it in gold with precious stones for the little Czar Peter. He was at work on it in the forenoon while I sat watching him, for lack of something better to do, for he had not yet mended the bracelet for the princess, though I had importuned him to do so; I think he delayed only to vex me, for he would shake his head, with a sly twinkle in his eye, when I asked him for the trinket.

The windows were open, and opposite the sun shone on Kurakin’s roof. All the morning there had been the dull boom of distant drums, for there was some new excitement in the quarters of the Streltsi; and there were strange rumours afloat that the blind Czarevitch Ivan was ill of a poison, but outwardly the city was calm, the calm that comes before the tempest, for it was already past the middle of May, and no one, perhaps, but Sophia Alexeievna herself knew the devil’s broth that was boiling under our feet.

A breath of chill air blew in from the north and lifted the grey curls on Maître le Bastien’s broad forehead. He set the little image on the table an viewed it complacently.

“It is well,” he said, and looked at me smiling, expecting approval.