“No; but if it is not harmful I am going to give some to the Queen. I’m sure there is spirit in it, and she must have something.”
“For pity’s sake don’t! It wouldn’t improve matters to poison her. Wait!” for Fräulein von Staubach was actually pouring out the liquid into a thimble, the only drinking-vessel available.
“What are you giving the poor thing?” cried a voice in Thracian, and an elderly woman burst in upon them like a beneficent tornado. In one hand was a steaming jug, in the other a great loaf of black bread, both sheltered from the snow by her shawl. “Don’t give her that nasty-smelling stuff,” she added briskly, depositing her load on the settle, “and you oughtn’t to have her here by this fire. Bring her in here,” and she produced a key and opened the door into an inner room. “The porter’s wife is my sister, and I have kept the place looked after for her myself. Carry your wife in, young man, and put her on the bed, and then bring in the child and the soup. Send the Jew boy to the well for some water—he knows where it is—and put on the pot to boil. And get some of those rugs of yours dried and warmed.”
She closed the inner door peremptorily on herself and Fräulein von Staubach, and Cyril was left to obey her last commands. Nathan proved to be much more expert in fixing up the great pot over the fire than he was, and he was holding up the rugs to the blaze to dry when the door opened again, and Fräulein von Staubach came out, wearing an expression of the most unflinching resolution, and took him by the arm.
“You must come in and speak to the Queen,” she said. “She is still unconscious.”
“But what good will it do if I speak to her?” asked Cyril in astonishment. “Surely it would be better for her to sleep off her fatigue?”
“It is not sleep—it is a kind of fainting-fit,” she returned, “and unless she is restored to consciousness she will slip away, merely through fatigue and want of food. You forget that she has had nothing to eat since noon, and it is now past nine o’clock. She must be made to take something.”
“But if you have tried in vain to persuade her Majesty, surely it is clear that nothing I could say would move her?”
“I do not wish to answer questions, Count. I want you to come with me at once.”
Yielding to her importunity, Cyril followed her into the inner room, feeling more foolish than he had ever done before in his life, and also more bashful. The thought of Baroness von Hilfenstein persisted in presenting itself to him, and he felt that in such a case as this, the mistress of the robes would unhesitatingly have condemned the Queen to death, rather than countenance so grievous a breach of etiquette. But when he was inside the room, he forgot all at once his misgivings and his self-consciousness. The old Thracian woman, who was undressing the little King, alleviating the hardships of the process by administering morsels of bread dipped in soup, nodded with evident satisfaction when she saw him.