“Will you take that child away, girl? Is this a scene for his young eyes? Take him to the nursery, and keep him there until I send for you.”
“You bid me go, lord, and take with me the little lord?” demanded Danaë, thrilling with outraged pride and affection on behalf of her little charge.
“Yes, go, in the name of the All-Holy Mother of God, and leave me alone with my dead!”
“I go, lord!” said Danaë impressively, but she doubted whether he even heard her. He was bending over his wife again.
“Most beloved, open those lips but for an instant, and tell me to whose cursed treachery I owe this blow. Let thy spirit visit me at night, my beautiful one, and keep vengeance ever in my mind. If there be one left alive of those who slew thee——”
The familiar voice, raised in a half chant, grew faint in Danaë’s ears. She was stalking majestically across the grass, hushing the protesting Janni in her arms, and listening greedily for some word of recall. No one should say she had stolen away secretly, but if she was driven out she would go. His son, his heir, was nothing to Prince Romanos in comparison with the dead body of the schismatic woman! He would leave him without protection in the house, till the conspirators returned and finished their deadly work! Very well, then; he should see no more of Janni until he had learnt to value him properly. Danaë would at once save the child and punish the father. Mingled with her lofty resolves was perhaps a vague idea of averting retribution. The death of the Lady was without doubt in some measure due to her; she would blot out her guilt by saving the Lady’s son.
Prince Romanos did not call her back, and when she looked round from the edge of the wood he was still kneeling over his wife’s body. Her heart hardened against him, and she picked up the bundle she had left under the trees and went on as far as the wall. She climbed up easily enough, and dropped the bundle over, then returned for Janni, and wound him closely in her shawl. The ground outside was happily soft, for on this side the garden adjoined a large piece of land belonging to the Prince which he had planted with trees, with the intention of making it into a park in future, and she was able to let herself down safely by her hands. She had often longed to explore this piece of woodland, and when it was once crossed she would be well away from the city. She started very happily, beguiling the way by conversation with Janni, though after a time it occurred to her that there was nothing very interesting in the rows of young trees and the growing shrubs. Janni was heavy to carry, too, when it was not a question of merely rambling about the garden, but she held on stoutly, sustained by her very mingled motives.
Sitting down at last to rest at the top of a hill up which she had laboured with considerable difficulty, she looked back over the way she had come. The sea in the distance gave her a moment’s wild longing for Strio, but there would be no safety there for Janni, she saw that now. Rather must she look nearer, to the new Therma, with its streets of tall white houses crossing and recrossing with mathematical regularity, and the Emathian flag flying over the Palace, the position of which she could easily distinguish now, dominating the broad road leading from the great square called the Place de l’Europe Unie. But between the Palace and herself was the villa among its woods, with her brother mourning over the tragedy she had helped to bring upon him, and she wondered hopelessly how the tangle was ever to be unravelled, how she could keep Janni in her own charge, and yet see him restored to his proper position. But her desultory musings were suddenly focussed into a keen and pressing anxiety. Among the young trees between her and the wall of the garden something was moving. At first it looked like a bright bird flying low, but as she watched it she realised that it was the gay fez and golden tassel of a man of the Prince’s guard. There was no need to ask herself who it could be. Petros had guessed that she had fled with the child, had tracked her path, and was following hard on her heels, that he might finish his evil work, and make sure of the victim who had been snatched from him in the morning.
Terror lent wings to Danaë’s tired feet, and catching up Janni, she hurried on down the hill. There was no time to look for villages, and what village would shelter her against the demand of a servant of the Prince? She stumbled along wildly, looking hopelessly round for some hiding-place that might enable her to evade the pursuer. But he had reached the top of the hill while she was still full in view, and his shouts of “Eurynomé! stop, girl!” his adjurations and threats of vengeance, came to her faintly on the wind, though she strove to shut her ears to them. Tired as she was, and burdened with the child, she had no hope of outdistancing him, but she struggled on, though it seemed to her that he was now so close that she could hear his heavy footsteps. Then, as she reached the foot of the hill, and an artfully contrived glade opened before her, she saw one single chance of safety, for there were the figures of men and horses under the trees. Two men wearing “European” clothes, and evidently not Emathians, were walking up and down impatiently, as though waiting for somebody, and behind them were four horses under the charge of two armed guards. There was no doubt in Danaë’s mind as to the identity of the strangers. They must be the Englishmen whom Prince Romanos had told Despina he was to meet and accompany on their journey—and therefore they were an additional danger. The single subject on which Danaë and the two old women were in agreement was that of the preposterous baselessness of the claims of the schismatic Englishman who dared to put himself forward as heir of the Eastern Empire by right of direct descent from the Emperor John Theophanis. When the Orthodox position was triumphantly vindicated by the election of Prince Romanos, who could trace his lineage only in the female line, to the throne of Emathia, he had relegated the rival claimant, so Danaë firmly believed, to a species of honourable imprisonment in a remote part of the principality. Here he could amuse himself by playing the ruler under strict supervision, and was even allowed to visit Therma on asking permission. Judging him by herself, however, Danaë had no faith in his gratitude for this considerate treatment, and saw in him merely another menace to Janni’s safety if he discovered who he was. But the danger of Petros hot on her heels was more pressing, since she had always understood that Englishmen were easily to be deceived. Yet how, in any case, was Petros to be kept from publishing the perilous truth? Her quick scheming brain worked at tremendous pressure during the last agitated minutes of her stumbling run.
“Come back, girl! Will you ruin everything?” she heard Petros cry, as he made a final attempt to head her off, and only found himself at the top of a slope too steep to descend. He was obliged to go round, and she reached the two Englishmen, who had paused, astonished, in their walk, and threw herself panting at the feet of one of them, a keen hard-faced man with noticeably blue eyes.