Little Prue, as she did afterwards tell me, was "all of a twitter" betwixt pride and bashfulness, and it was only with much blushing and stammering that she at length found her voice.
"I' fecks, Your High and Great Mightiness, sir," she said at last, "I have been fatting him like a great pullet in the loft of our barn. I did take him for a soldier you would have hanged for thieving."
"How chanced it," said the Prince, "that you knew our need of him?"
Now this was for Prue a very distressful question, and, since she would not tell the truth, nor could readily think upon a fiction of any appearance, she felt herself in sorry plight, which she made no better by showing very plainly in her face the distress that she felt. Her rescue came quickly from a source whence it was little expected. For her piteous glance of appeal was cast in vain on M. de Rondiniacque, who himself was not a little taken aback by the Prince's question, and then in a very helpless fashion she passed it on to me. And I, all in the dark as I was, strove blindly for the means to come to her aid, when Mr. Bentinck, with a little laugh that was very dry and yet vastly humorous, interfered.
"It were best, Your Highness," he said, "to pass that point."
The Prince looked upon him for a moment, and seemed to lay the matter aside in his mind for future enlightening.
"Well, my pretty maid," said he to Prudence, who now regarded Mr. Bentinck as if she would willingly have kissed his feet, "we owe you some return. How shall we render it?"
"What I did, sir," says Prue, "was done for my dear mistress there. If you will but add my debt to her prayers, sir, I shall be overpaid."
"That is well said. Even the servants, William," said His Highness, turning to Mr. Bentinck, "in this terrible family are at one with their masters. 'T is a tribe we had best have on our side." And then he went over to the knot of men that stood against the hearth. "Mr. Royston," he said, "this matter shall rest as it stood yesternight, when you left your house. You are free." And then to Philip: "Mr. Drayton, you are an honest foe, from a camp whence I have least reason to expect such. Will you give me a promise to add to that which Mr. Royston holds of you?"
"Most willingly, Your Highness," replied Philip, "if I may with honor."
"Then I ask you," said His Highness, "to abide six months from this day with your good father. After, do what and go where you will. He is worth the time that will be so spent, sir. To ease your conscience on the Roman side, Sir Priest, I give you leave to effect his conversion"—and here His Highness laughed very drily—"if you prove able. Is it agreed?"
"The punishment is not a hard one," answered Philip. "I will observe your conditions. You have my word."
"I shall always regard a Drayton's word," said His Highness, with a very grave and sweet courtesy, "aspar excellencethe oath of honor. And you, Mistress Drayton," he continued, "must I go fight my enemies with a sword that cannot thrust? I do perceive I did you wrong, and now once more I thank you for that you did yesterday. But my sword does lack its point." And the Prince drew from a scabbard that was never made for it the shortened blade whose other part I guarded so close.
"Ay, it lacks yet its point," I answered, "even as Your Highness's clemency does still lack its crowning grace. The sword's latter half is not yet redeemed."
"What, what! fair enemy?" cried the Prince, in tones of raillery.
"More fair I do hope than enemy, Your Highness," I replied.
"Well, pretty friend," he continued, seeming not ill pleased, "wouldst have me thus armed? 'T is true—in your ear—I purpose using English swords against such good English fellows as come not over to our side. But what of these hordes of Irish kerns, with Tyrconnel and Sarsfield at their head? Surely on these we poor Dutchmen may flesh our blades; and when the time comes, is it with this you would have me fight?"
Now, while the Prince did tease me with the sight of his broken blade, and while I felt for words to clothe the thought in me, I marked that M. de Rondiniacque, as one taking time by the forelock upon a signal long expected, went hurriedly out from the hall, a circumstance that I had speedily forgot but for its sequel. Meantime I had inwardly breathed a little prayer to God for the gift of a prevailing tongue, and now drew from my bosom that seven inches of pointed steel that I purposed selling at so great a price.
"Your Highness," I said, "this kind of iron is sold mighty dear. Ah, will a great Prince have a poor maid that is his true servant wed with a man unhappy all his days? And yet a man so true, did Your Highness know him as I have known him for many, many years? As he and I rode hither in the smallest hours of this very day, it was a broken man at my side—a man whose one half would rejoice for his company, while the other part of him cried out for his Leader, his Prince, his King. And, woman-like, I upbraided you sore, finding in my passion of pity no word too bitter for you, sir. But from him there fell no word of blame, for no hard thought of you did cross his mind. Your Highness, he tried to serve two masters, indeed, but himself was never one of them. If he did ill, it was for me—me that he loved since his arms were my childhood's harbor of refuge, his shoulder my horse that tired not. For that part of your sword that you hold, you gave me his life. For this part that I have kept, where I hope all the days of my life to keep his honor, give me his old rank in your service—and ever, during his desert, his old favor in those eyes that, when they will, can read so deep."
The Prince gazed at me a while, and his face grew somehow to a softness that is seldom, I think, observed upon it. And, as we looked upon each other, there was a little bustle at the door, made, I doubt not, by M. de Rondiniacque's return.
"Give it me, child," said William, and I handed him, without further doubt of his purpose, the remnant of his pledge.
"Why so ready, mistress?" asked His Highness. "I have granted naught."
"Nay," I replied, "but love can read deep, even as the eyes of a prince."
"In this world, my child," he said, speaking still with that gentleness I had marked in his face, "there is no going back. But, if Mr. Bentinck will fill us out a major's brevet for Mr. Edward Royston, will that serve to balance the uneven division of last night, sir, or madam?"
Upon which the joy in my heart was so near to seeking its relief in tears that I had much ado to answer him.
"I do thank Your Highness," I murmured, "beyond all telling." And then, finding a better voice, I continued: "And, if it please Your Highness, I will be always madam."
"Then must you begin soon," he answered; "to which end I shall impose a condition on this settlement." But here the Prince checked himself, turning suddenly upon M. de Rondiniacque, by which action he was able to detect that pleasant gentleman in the act of restoring to Ned the sword taken from him the night before.
To my ear he has since declared that he had some inward premonition on his arising that morning that the matter of poor Royston's disgrace was by no means concluded; and this feeling, whether foresight or presentiment, had waxed in him so strong, that he had brought with him that weapon, as well as his own, in spite of his previous intent to leave it privily in its owner's house.
As His Highness turned from me to observe him, De Rondiniacque uttered these words: "Your sword, Major Royston," with so much of kindly triumph in voice and countenance that even the visage turned on him with enquiry so stern broke into a smile very responsive.
"How now, Lieutenant," said His Highness, "what is this?"
"When Mistress Drayton did begin to adjure Your Highness so movingly," said the Frenchman, "holding in her hand that fragment of Your Highness's sword, I made sure she would ask and obtain her price; and so, Your Highness, I went straightway to fetch it. And, knowing Your Highness has need not only of swords, but also of men that wield them as few but Major Royston can, I do trust I have done no wrong."
"'T is well, sir," replied the Prince. "As it seems your nature to take much upon yourself, let it always, as now, be the discharge of my wishes."
At which M. de Rondiniacque appeared not a little disconcerted; but, since he has done His Highness many a notable service in these latter days, it cannot be said that the mildness of the reproof was ill-advised.
"But what was that, sweet child," the Prince now continued, addressing me anew, "of which I was to speak?"
"I think, Your Highness," I replied, "that it was of some condition to be set upon us in regard to—to——"
"Faith, I do remember," said he. "It is that Major Royston do wed you within the week, and thereafter join us at Salisbury. And quarters shall be found for the pair of you," he continued, "for if the steel be near the magnet it will not wander again." And so saying he laid his hand very kindly upon Ned's shoulder. And Ned Royston looked him in the face with that look that an hour agone I had given my life to bring into his face.
"My life is yours, sir," said he, with a blunt heartiness; and, taking my hand very firmly and tenderly in his, he added: "and Your Highness will now have from me two services in one."
And here Simon Emmet, who, upon a word of his master, had been for some minutes mighty full of a kind of bustling greatness, did give into Sir Michael's hands that great silver drinking bowl that no lip for over forty years had touched. And Sir Michael held the bowl high, and gave it then into the hands of the Prince of Orange.
"From this cup," said my father, "the last to drink was Your Highness's grandfather, King Charles the Martyr."
"Then in his name, and in the name of England, I drink first of a loving-cup," cried the Prince; which when he had done he passed the vessel to me, and from me it went the round of every living soul there present, leaving, I suppose, in the bottom of the bowl but a few drops of wine to wet the lips of Prudence, who, as luck would have it, came last of all in the drinking; for, after she had tipped it high to catch the last, she gazed beseechingly around, daintily licking her lips the while, as if she would know whether she might truly say she had drunk that toast. His Highness, marking with the rest her pretty gesture, could not forbear smiling.
"Ah, my pretty maid," he said, "it was you that did bring us that fat rooster in the nick of time. Do you then ask no reward?"
And Prue, as a woman can, asked of me in two movements of her eyes a question. Once most indicatively they went to His Highness's belt and sword, and once, with interrogation as plain, to my face, catching thence the answer before one man in the room, I truly think, had fully gathered the sense of the Prince's question.
"There is a thing, if it please Your Mightiness," she said, "that I would have."
"What is it, then?" said His Highness. "For it seems I must spend this day in giving."
"The fragments, Your Honor," says Prue, "of that same blessed sword."
And he gave her the broken pieces of the sword, which in triumph she straightway brought to me; and I hung them then and there above the hearth, standing upon the table most comfortably thrust into place by many willing hands.
And when it was done, I cried, facing them all in my joy before I descended: "And there it shall stay: and hereafter they shall say whose it was."
"'They,' Mistress Drayton?" cried the Prince. "Who are 'they'? Thy children?"
And I wished heartily then for a more lowly station. But princes will be answered, and, for all the shame I felt, I answered the Prince of Orange.
"Yes, Your Highness," I said. "The children of Royston and Drayton shall say—shall say that it is—
"The sword of the Prince of Orange?" says His Highness, willing to help me in my confusion.
"Not so, I hope and pray to God," I answered. "May He grant that it then be the sword of their King."
And this is the story of the sword that was his that is the King. For my own, it did not end there, nor is it ended yet.
THE END