Her Serene Highness: A Novel

by David Graham Phillips

When she returned to The Castle the preparations for the wedding were going forward apace. The central part, where were the principal rooms of state, was open at every window and door; tradespeople were coming and going; there were sounds of hammering, clouds of dust from the windows, a press of wagons about the doors. The Grand Duke had decided to make the wedding a big, public affair, so that Erica would feel that it was impossible to retreat. And he had left it open whether the ceremony itself was to be public or private.

At eleven that night Ernestine crept softly down the corridor and reconnoitred both stairways leading from the apartments of Her Serene Highness to the lower floors. At the foot of each was a soldier with a huge white rosette on his left arm, in honor of the coming gayeties. Erica had expected this; she simply wished to discover where the enemy lay. She dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant of the Household Guards. When she and Ernestine had made it, two years before, she had been full of the idea of running away for several days to “see the world” from a man’s point of view. But her audacity failed her—that is, she permitted the obstacles to seem insurmountable, and she never got beyond parading her rooms in it, with Ernestine as a critic of her counterfeit of a man’s figure and walk. The feat she now proposed would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, in woman’s dress.

She was putting the finishing touches to her masculine toilet when Ernestine hurried into her dressing-room in a panic. Baron Zeppstein was waiting to see her. Erica drew off her top-boots and thrust her feet into a pair of slippers; she drew on a loose wrapper, tied a white shawl about her shoulders, and, letting down her hair, appeared before the Baron.

Zeppstein’s old head was almost knocking his swollen knee-joints. “By His Royal Highness’s command, Your Serene Highness,” he said, humbly, “I come to inquire of you in person whether you are entirely comfortable.”

Erica was gracious, bade him sit, asked about the preparations for the wedding in detail, made several adroit remarks which seemed to indicate that she was secretly preparing to yield but did not wish to gratify the Grand Duke and humiliate herself by relieving his suspense. Zeppstein went away convinced, and was able to make a convincing report which stood the test of Casimir’s exhaustive and searching cross-examination.

It was now midnight and Ernestine put out all lights. She was to go to bed, and if any one came and insisted upon seeing her mistress, she was to detain him as long as possible, and profess ignorance and alarm should the flight be discovered.

Erica advanced down the lofty stone passage-way. It was an alternation of bands of darkness and bands of moonlight. She took the second corridor to the left and stole along it until, in the darkness, her foot touched the first step of the ascending stairway. She went up, opened the door at the top, and entered. When she had bolted this door she breathed more freely.

She went up a second and narrower flight of stairs and slipped through a window to a small balcony. It was in the full moonlight, but it looked only upon the roofs and the deserted battlements of The Castle. Holding to the ridge of stone above her head she stepped to the next balcony. From this she was able to go out upon the ledge extending along the huge tower fifteen or twenty feet above the battlements. The ledge was narrow and there was no hold for her hands. She clung to the wall and sidled slowly along, feeling her way with her feet and her body. She did not dare open her eyes except when she paused.

At last she came to the place where the ledge passed immediately above and very close to the pointed roof of the throne-room. She stepped down softly and cautiously; the roof was steep, and, should she slip, she would slide to the edge, where, if she did not fall to the battlements, she would cling until rescued and returned to captivity. She worked herself along the ridge of the roof to the great circular skylight which divided it into two parts. She glanced down through one of the open sections. Scores of people were at work decorating the throne-room for the wedding.

“If I fail,” she thought, “I shall be forced there, perhaps, and it is set for to-morrow!”