Strelsau

“ It was indeed most impossible that the King could be in Strelsau.
He lost no time now in turning his steps towards his refuge. It was past five o'clock, day came quickly, and the streets began to be peopled by men and women on their way to open stalls or to buy in the market. Rudolf crossed the square at a rapid walk, for he was afraid of the soldiers who were gathering for early duty opposite to the barracks. Fortunately he passed by them unobserved, and gained the comparative seclusion of the street in which my house stands without encountering any further difficulties. ”

“ There rises often before my mind the picture of young Rupert, standing where Rischenheim left him, awaiting the return of his messenger and watching for some sign that should declare to Strelsau the death of its king which his own hand had wrought. His image is one that memory holds clear and distinct, though time may blur the shape of greater and better men, and the position in which he was that morning gives play enough to the imagination. ”

“ Rudolf went on: "'The King will not leave the lodge to-day.' Thank God, then, we have to-day!"
"Yes, but Where's Rupert?"
"We shall know in an hour, if he's in Strelsau," and Mr. Rassendyll looked as though it would please him well to find Rupert in Strelsau. "Yes, I must seek him. I shall stand at nothing to find him. If I can only get to him as the King, then I'll be the King. We have to-day!"
My message put them in heart again, although it left so much still unexplained. Rudolf turned to the Queen:
"Courage, my Queen," said he. "A few hours now will see an end of all our dangers." ”

“ There are ladies still in Strelsau who wear his trinkets in an ashamed devotion that cannot forget. Well, even I, who had every good cause to hate and scorn him, set the hair smooth on his brow; while Rischenheim was sobbing like a child, and young Bernenstein rested his head on his arm as he leant on the mantelpiece and would not look at the dead. Rudolf alone seemed not to heed or think of him. His eyes had lost their unnatural look of joy, and were now calm and tranquil. He took his own revolver from the mantelpiece and put it in his pocket, laying Rupert's neatly where his had been. ”

“ Thus prepared, I slipped out and made my way on foot to the Königstrasse.
It was now long past midday. Many folk were still at their dinner and the streets were not full. Two or three people recognised me, but I passed by most unnoticed. There was no sign of stir or excitement, and the flags still floated high in the wind. Sapt had kept the secret: the men of Strelsau thought still that their King lived and was among them. I feared that Rudolf's coming would have been seen, and expected to find a crowd of people near the house. ”

“ I knew that it was in Bernenstein’s thoughts no less than in my own; for neither of us had been able to form any reasonable scheme by which the living king, whom half Strelsau now knew to be in the city, could be spirited away, and the dead king set in his place. The change could take place, as it seemed, only in one way and at one cost: the truth, or the better part of it, must be told, and every tongue set wagging with gossip and guesses concerning Rudolf Rassendyll and his relations with the queen. Who that knows what men and women are would not have shrunk from that alternative? ”

“ If all went well in the day that had now dawned, by the evening of it the letter would be destroyed, the Queen's peril past, and Rudolf once more far away from Strelsau. Then enough of the truth—no more—must be disclosed. Helsing would be told the story of Rudolf Rassendyll and persuaded to hold his tongue about the harum-scarum Englishman (we are ready to believe much of an Englishman) having been audacious enough again to play the King in Strelsau. The old Chancellor was a very good fellow, and I do not think that Rudolf did wrong in relying upon him. ”

“ Rudolf was with the queen, my wife was resting, Bernenstein had sat down to a meal for which I could find no appetite. By an effort I freed myself from my fancies and tried to concentrate my brain on the facts of our position. We were ringed round with difficulties. To solve them was beyond my power; but I knew where my wish and longing lay. I had no desire to find means by which Rudolf Rassendyll should escape unknown from Strelsau; the king, although dead, be again in death the king, and the queen be left desolate on her mournful and solitary throne. ”

“ Hearing that I was bound for Strelsau, he came to see me while I was breakfasting, and told me that a sister of his, who had married a well-to-do tradesman and lived in the capital, had invited him to occupy a room in her house. ”

“ CHAPTER XI. WHAT THE CHANCELLOR’S WIFE SAW
THE night, so precious in its silence, solitude, and darkness, was waning fast; soon the first dim approaches of day would be visible; soon the streets would become alive and people be about. Before then Rudolf Rassendyll, the man who bore a face that he dared not show in open day, must be under cover; else men would say that the king was in Strelsau, and the news would flash in a few hours through the kingdom and (so Rudolf feared) reach even those ears which we knew to be shut to all earthly sounds. ”

“ The Queen had begun to listen before now; her eyes were fixed on Sapt, and she had stretched out one arm to him, as if imploring him to read her his riddle. But a few words had in truth declared his device plainly enough in all its simplicity. Rudolf Rassendyll was dead, his body burnt to a cinder, and the King was alive, whole, and on his throne in Strelsau. Thus had Sapt caught from James the servant the infection of his madness, and had fulfilled in action the strange imagination which the little man had unfolded to him in order to pass their idle hours at the lodge. ”

“ Rischenheim was loyal to the pledge he had given to the queen. The ashes of the hunting-lodge held their secret fast, and none suspected when the charred body which was called Rudolf Rassendyll’s was laid to quiet rest in the graveyard of the town of Zenda, hard by the tomb of Herbert the forester. For we had from the first rejected any idea of bringing the king’s body to Strelsau and setting it in the place of Mr. Rassendyll’s. The difficulties of such an undertaking were almost insuperable; in our hearts we did not desire to conquer them. ”

“ Can I go in?" And he jumped down from his horse, throwing the reins to his companion.
"What's the good of your going in?" asked Sapt. "Herbert's not here."
"Not here? Then where is he?"
"Why, he went with the King this morning."
"Oh, he went with the King, sir? Then he's in Strelsau, I suppose?"
"If you know that, Simon, you're wiser than I am."
"But the King is in Strelsau, sir."
"The deuce he is! He said nothing of going to Strelsau. He rose early and rode off with Herbert, merely saying they would be back to-night."
"He went to Strelsau, sir. ”

“ Too many kings might spoil the broth."
"We will be back tonight after the coronation. You understand, Josef—I shall hold you responsible for the King."
"There is the King—and he's as fit as I am!"
"It cannot be the King! I tell you I saw him drain the bottle myself!"
At high noon.
"No word from Hentzau yet?"
"The Duke of Strelsau! 'Tis he should be crowned King today!"
All is well - Salutations to Michael I King of Ruritania!
Hentzau
The famous Black Cuisassiers, the back-bone of Michael's power in Strelsau. ”

“ There, in the city, the drama must be played out. There was Rudolf, there Rischenheim, there in all likelihood Rupert of Hentzau, there now the queen. And of these Rupert alone, or perhaps Rischenheim also, knew that the king was dead, and how the issue of last night had shaped itself under the compelling hand of wayward fortune. The king lay in peace on his bed, his grave was dug; Sapt and James held the secret with solemn faith and ready lives. To Strelsau I must go to tell the queen that she was widowed, and to aim the stroke at young Rupert’s heart. ”

“ There, in the bright moonlight, on the far side of the broad terrace, close by the line of tall trees that fringed its edge, we saw Rudolf Rassendyll pacing slowly up and down, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the arbiter of his fate, on her who was to make him a king or send him a fugitive from Strelsau.
"There he is, madame," said Sapt. "Safe enough!"
The Queen did not answer. Sapt said no more, and of the rest of us none spoke. We stood watching him as he struggled with his great issue: a greater surely has seldom fallen to the lot of any man born in a private station. ”

“ Then she began to speak quickly: "Rudolf, last night I had a dream about you, a strange dream. I seemed to be in Strelsau, and all the people were talking about the King. It was you they meant; you were the King. At last you were the King, and I was your Queen. But I could see you only very dimly; you were somewhere, but I could not make out where; just sometimes your face came. Then I tried to tell you that you were King—yes, and Colonel Sapt and Fritz tried to tell you; the people, too, called out that you were King. ”

“ Thus I arrived at my own house in Strelsau on the same Friday morning that witnessed the Count of Luzau-Rischenheim's twofold interview with the King at the Castle of Zenda. The moment I had arrived, I sent James, whose assistance had been, and continued to be, in all respects most valuable, to despatch a message to the Constable, acquainting him with my whereabouts and putting myself entirely at his disposal. Sapt received this message while a council of war was being held, and the information it gave aided not a little in the arrangements that the Constable and Rudolf Rassendyll made. ”

“ There are some wings in Strelsau singed at that candle."
"Indeed, the light is very bright," assented the marquis, courteously. "That risk I must run, though, if I am to win my [pg 199] wager. It is to be three, then, and by what means I will, save force?"
"Even so," said Rudolf, and he laughed again. For he thought the wager harmless, since by no means could Monsieur de Mérosailles win so much as one kiss from the Princess Osra, and the wager stood at three. But he did not think how he wronged his sister by using her name lightly, being in all such matters a man of careless mind. ”

“ They were good, quiet people, and seemed very little interested in the great doings at Strelsau. The old lady’s hero was the duke, for he was now, under the late King’s will, master of the Zenda estates and of the Castle, which rose grandly on its steep hill at the end of the valley a mile or so from the inn. The old lady, indeed, did not hesitate to express regret that the duke was not on the throne, instead of his brother.
“We know Duke Michael,” said she. “He has always lived among us; every Ruritanian knows Duke Michael. But the King is almost a stranger ”

“ Ay, you may show yourself, you may say they didn’t know you. Will they believe she didn’t? Was the king’s ring on your finger? Where is it? And how comes Mr. Rassendyll to be at Fritz von Tarlenheim’s for hours with the queen, when the king is at his hunting lodge? A king has died already, and two men besides, to save a word against her. And you—you’ll be the man to set every tongue in Strelsau talking, and every finger pointing in suspicion at her?”
Rudolf made no answer. When Sapt had first uttered the queen’s name, he had drawn near and let his hand fall over the back of her chair. ”

“ That would serve to satisfy the inquiries as to my whereabouts, which were probably still vexing the Prefect of the Police of Strelsau. I let my moustache and imperial grow again; and as hair comes quickly on my face, they were respectable, though not luxuriant, by the time that I landed myself in Paris and called on my friend George Featherly. My interview with him was chiefly remarkable for the number of unwilling but necessary falsehoods that I told; and I rallied him unmercifully when he told me that he had made up his mind that I had gone in the track of Madame de Mauban to Strelsau. ”

“ For my good brother the King has eyes in his head, and his son sees no less well. I met them on my travels, and I can speak to it. Most certainly an embassy will come from Glottenberg before we are a month older!"
Yet, strange to say, the same thing followed on the despatch of the portrait (which Giraldo sent by a certain trusty messenger, whom he was accustomed to employ) as had happened before; no embassy came, and the King of Glottenberg excused himself from paying a visit to Strelsau, which he and his son had promised on the invitation of King Rudolf. ”

“ Sapt reminded me. "He'll be there if Rischenheim arrives in time to tell him the truth. But we have also to be ready for him here, and at the hunting-lodge. Well, we're ready for him wherever he is: Rudolf will be in Strelsau, you and I will ride to the lodge, and Bernenstein will be here with the Queen."
"Only one here?" I asked.
"Aye, but a good one," said the Constable, clapping Bernenstein on the shoulder. "We shan't be gone above four hours, and those while the King is safe in his bed. Bernenstein has only to refuse access to him, and stand to that with his life till we come back. ”

“ On week-days the inspectors always took their leave, returning to their duties, but to-day Herr Storting lingered and asked for leave of absence for the next morning. Herr von Osternau seemed surprised. "Is your business in Breslau so very pressing?" he asked. "You know every hour is precious during the harvesting."
"Yes, papa, Herr Storting has very urgent business in Breslau," Lieschen replied in the young man's stead. "He and Herr Pigglewitch must both pay a visit there to-morrow morning. ”