CHAPTER XXXV
A PERILOUS HONEYMOON
Never was day so largely and gloriously blue since Courtland was a city as the first morning of the married life of Maurice and Margaret von Lynar, Count and Countess von Löen. The summer floods had subsided, and the tawny dye had gone clean out of the Alla, which was now as clear as aquamarine, and laved rather than fretted the dark green piles of the Summer Palace.
The Princesses (so they said without) were more than ever inseparable. They were constantly talking confidentially together, for all the world like schoolgirls with a secret. Doubtless Prince Louis's fair sister was persuading the unruly wife to return to her duty. Doubtless it was so—ah, yes, doubtless!
"Better that Prince Louis should do his own embassage in such a matter in his proper person," said the good-wives of Thorn. "For me, I would not listen to any sister if my man came not to my feet himself. The Lady Joan is in the right of it—a feckless lover, no true man!"
"Aye," said the men, agreeing for once, "a paper-backed princeling! God wot, were it our Conrad we should soon hear other of it! There would be none of this shilly-shallying back-and-forth work then! We would give half a year's income in golden gulden for a good lusty heir to the Principalities—with that foul Muscovite Ivan yearning to lay the knout across our backs!"
"There is something toward to-day," said a decent widow woman who lived in the Königstrasse to her neighbour. "My son, who as you know is a chorister, is gone to practise the Wedding Hymn in the cathedral. I am going thither to get a good place. I will not miss it, whatever it is. Perhaps they are going to make the Princess Joan do penance for her fault, in a white sheet with a candle in her hand a yard long! That would be rare sport. I would not miss it for so much as four farthings!"
And with that the chorister's mother hobbled off, telling everybody she met the same story. And so in half an hour the news had spread all over the city, and there began to be the makings of quite a respectable crowd in the Dom Platz of Courtland.
It was half-past eleven when the archers of the guard appeared at the entrance of the square which leads from the palace. Behind them, rank upon rank, could be seen the lances of the wild Cossacks of Prince Ivan's escort who had remained behind when the Muscovite army went back to the Russian plains. Their dusky goat-hair tents, which had long covered the banks of the Alla, had now been struck and were laded upon baggage-horses and sumpter mules.
"The Prince of Muscovy delays only for the ceremony, whatever it may be!" the people said, admiring at their own prevision.