Much confused, she followed him in silence, and they penetrated through several winding lanes until they came out on the banks of the river. The first sight that greeted their eyes was the comfortable form of Fräulein von Staubach, sitting at her ease on a heap of planks, with the little King asleep in her arms; the next, the bridge, a short distance to their right, with a strong body of soldiers guarding its approaches. Several peasant families, coming from the market-place and wishing to cross, were turned back, and at last Cyril approached the man who seemed to be the head of one of them, and asked what the difficulty was.
“They will let no one cross without a passport,” replied the man, “and as, of course, mine is at home, I have to go and look for the headman of our village, who travelled to town with us this morning, to come and identify us as belonging to the commune before we can cross.”
He passed on, and Cyril meditated upon this unwelcome intelligence. The passport which he had drawn up at Tatarjé, and which had been countersigned by the sub-prefect, would naturally, under present circumstances, be worse than useless, and he had buried it in the wood with the other things abandoned in the morning; but now it appeared that without a passport, and with no one to testify to their identity, or rather to disown it, he and his charges would be in a position every whit as bad as if the compromising document were still in their possession. It was clearly out of the question to attempt to cross the river by means of the bridge, and he began to wander down the bank, followed at a short distance by the Queen and Fräulein von Staubach, examining the boats that were moored there. Most of them were empty and untenanted, and for a moment the thought crossed his mind of stealing one and escaping in it; but he reflected quickly that it was unlikely such an easy means of evasion should have been left unguarded, and that so larcenous an attempt would only precipitate the catastrophe he dreaded. It was necessary, then, to turn to the boats with people on board, in the hope that it might be possible to arrange the terms of a passage. After passing several craft in review, Cyril stopped before a boat loaded with bales of flax, on the deck of which a shock-headed elderly man was walking up and down and talking angrily to himself.
“Do you want a hand with your boat, father?” Cyril asked him politely; but the politeness appeared to be wasted.
“No, young man, I don’t,” was the snappish answer. “Do you think after I have brought this load of flax down the river for the merchant Alexandrovics, only to be told by that dog of a Jew his clerk that I have mistaken the day, and that it was next market-day he meant, that I am likely to be able to waste money in hiring help?”
“But surely it will be a hard pull against the stream if you have to take it back?”
“Of course it will; but that is nothing compared with losing a whole day and having nothing to show for it. At any rate, it is a comfort that I would not allow my son to leave his work on the farm when he offered to come and help me, though it will be hard enough with the loaded boat.”
“But why not land the flax and leave it at the merchant’s house?”
“And find next week that half the bales were under weight, and that the flax in the rest had been filled with stones and mud by that Jew thief? A plague on these Jews! It is they who have kidnapped the King, and his mother knows it. Birds of a feather flock together. You know that she is secretly a Jewess?”
“The Queen? No?” replied Cyril, with as stupid an expression of wonder as he could command. But his surprise seemed to offend the old man.