Oliver VII (5 page)

“But they were married after that, weren’t they?”

“Not at all. The princess had lived with the serpent on the island for many years … and in the Alturian language the word for snake is masculine. So the princess lost her good name. They shut her away in a nunnery.”

Ortrud was plunged deep in thought. The story weighed heavily on her simple soul.

“Perhaps none of it is true,” she ventured at last.

“Perhaps. All the same, it’s what every child in Alturia learns.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What then?”

“Perhaps the princess didn’t have a … relationship … with the serpent. And she never experienced the big change, the one that is so important in the life of a woman.”

“To be sure,” the King said gently. “And if something did happen at this moment—another sea serpent, for example, then you wouldn’t experience that great change … and I would never know just what a dear little woman you are.” He heaved a deep sigh. “I would regret it for the rest of my life.”

He stroked her head tenderly.

Ortrud gazed at him with eyes of love. The story of the sea serpent had thoroughly alarmed her. What would it mean if they really were forced to separate? Tears gathered in her eyes. Suddenly a great idea came to her.

“Tell me, Oliver, do we absolutely have to wait until
tomorrow
?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well … I think … the great change … ”

“What? You want to be my wife now?”

She nodded her head, shyly.

“In case the sea serpent … ”

“But my sweet … I, er … my aide-de-camp could be here at any moment. And you know what a stickler he is.”

“So we must wait for tomorrow?” she began, deeply saddened. “Oliver, listen to me, let’s not wait. Now, Oliver, now … ”

Oliver was profoundly troubled. Ortrud had urged him with such an adorable, naive charm, temptation stirred within him. Like other men, he wasn’t used to saying no to a woman.

“But Ortrud, what are you thinking?” he stammered. “Such things aren’t possible for a king and a princess. Of course, if I were only the president of a republic, and you were … I don’t know … a shepherdess … ”

“But my dear Oliver, it isn’t only presidents and
shepherdesses
who … ”

“Ortrud, just imagine, if the sea serpent carried me off and you were left here without a husband. We must be sensible.”

“Yes, precisely, Oliver.”

Agitated, the King moved quickly away to the window and stood staring out. Ortrud followed and snuggled up against him.

“Can’t you see how much more interesting it would be today than tomorrow? We’d cheat the world. But how intriguing! I never realised how difficult it is to seduce a man. It’s exactly the other way round in books. There it’s the men who seduce the women.”

The King felt wounded in his manly pride. To avoid having to answer, he drew the Princess to himself and began to kiss
her. But all the time he kept a nervous eye on the clock over the fireplace.

At exactly nine a huge roar was heard down below. The King extracted himself from the embrace.

“Do you hear that?” he asked. “Do you hear it?”

“What?” the Princess replied, in a trance of love.

“They’re here!”

“I can’t hear anything. Who are here?”

The roar grew steadily louder.

“But can you hear it now?”

“Yes. Someone shouting.”

“Someone, you call it? Shouting? Madness! Come here, look out of the window! It isn’t ‘someone’, it’s a mob, and they’re not shouting, they’re screaming. A whole sea of people.”

“Holy God!”

“The entire population of my country is screaming
outside
the palace, and you say ‘someone’s shouting’. Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Oliver … what do they want?”

“What do they want? How should I know? How would I know that, tell me?”

A mighty bellow made the glass in the windows tremble.

“Come away from the window, Ortrud! It’s the revolution. The sea serpent!”

“Now you see, Oliver.” the Princess said through her tears. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

When Pritanez reached the palace, after that memorable confrontation in the street, he darted into the porter’s lodge, washed himself as well as his agitated state allowed, and
dressed again as best he could, with the porter’s help. The porter was a very large man, and his shirt and collar sat rather incongruously on the short, stout Pritanez.

“My, how you’ve changed, Your Excellency,” the porter’s wife solemnly remarked when she saw him.

But Pritanez was not at the moment concerned with the minutiae of personal elegance. He was looking for someone to whom he could pour out the bitterness of his feelings, and demand an inquiry. The first suitable person he came upon was Mawiras-Tendal.

“Major, Major … something unheard-of has happened to me.”

“So I see,” the Major replied, with a smile. “You had to leave the arms of your beloved so hastily that you put the husband’s clothes on by mistake, or something like that … I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

“If you please! Do you think, with my social standing and figure, I make a habit of calling on mistresses? This is an entirely different matter. Major, I have been insulted. You must hold an inquiry, sir. It amounts to an insurrection!”

“What does?”

“Major,” the minister choked, “they threw things at me.”

“You don’t say. This is serious.”

“I think so too.”

“I was referring to the state of your nerves. You must be very distressed.”

“I certainly am!”

“Dreadful! To suffer a nervous breakdown in your hour of triumph! Because, you know, everything’s perfectly quiet and orderly in town.”

“If this is your order and your quiet … ”

“You need a rest. Stay here until you can compose yourself. I’ll catch up with you later.”
 

“But Major! … ”

The Major had already left the room, shut the door and locked him in. For some time he stared at the door in
astonishment
, then he began to yell and bang on it. But somehow no one seemed to be around in that part of the palace, and he yelled in vain.

Pritanez had not been the only one to take refuge in the palace from the menacing behaviour of the crowd. The Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior had done so too. From there they tried to make plans, and to contact the local authorities and the Chief of Police—but the telephone returned the engaged signal every time. They dispatched a messenger, who was immediately intercepted by soldiers of the Twelfth Regiment and detained in the building.

The government were sitting in the King’s study, in a state of feverish anxiety and completely powerless. No one could say where the King was. Even the Major had disappeared. It was assumed that they had left the palace, taken refuge with the local authorities and were making arrangements there. But no one dared leave the building. From the windows they could see how the crowd outside had grown as night had fallen.

What was making them even more nervous was that, from somewhere inside the building, they could hear an
indefinable
sound—rattling, yelling, and then dying away—that gnawed away at their imagination: the sort of noise cattle make as they approach the abattoir.

“We should get to the bottom of this at least,” the Prime Minister said. “Secretary of State Salvid, you must deal with it. Go and see who is doing all this shouting, and why.”

“On my own?” the Secretary of State began, with horror in his voice.

He dared not go. Finally they all got up and set off towards the room where Pritanez was imprisoned.

By this stage Pritanez was quite beside himself.

“Major!” he was bawling, “Let me out. This is worse than being with a woman. I’m innocent. I’m innocent!”

The ministers looked at one another in amazement. Pritanez with a woman? Pritanez innocent? The man was clearly raving. Finally, with extreme caution, the Prime Minister unlocked the door, pulled at it, and immediately leapt to one side. The sudden opening had brought Pritanez tumbling out in a faint.

Four of them lifted him up and laid him down on a divan. They too were struck by the unusual size of the shirt and the collar that they unbuttoned at his neck. These totally
incomprehensible
details induced a sense of horror perhaps even greater than all the larger signs of a revolution at hand.

But their preoccupation with Pritanez was short-lived. He had barely begun to come to, when they heard the same roar from the square outside that King Oliver and Princess Ortrud heard from their apartments. Pritanez immediately fainted again.

“What was that?”

Everyone rushed to the window and gazed at the sea of people outside the palace. The noise out there was growing steadily louder.

Just then the Secretary of State, who had been sent to look for the King, came back into the room.

“He’s in Princess Ortrud’s apartments. Come quickly.”

They rushed out, abandoning the unconscious Finance Minister, and burst in on the couple in such great haste that all sense of etiquette was forgotten.

“Come away from the window, Your Highness!” the Prime Minister shouted from the far side of the room. “They can still see you!

Then the minister with responsibility for the press burst in:

“Your Highness: terrible news! They are demanding that you abdicate and hand over your ministers.”

The ministers cried out in horror.

“Aha—duty is not a bed of roses,” the King observed. “But what else can we do? I believe any resistance would be futile and dangerous. What can we possibly do against the raging tide of the people?”

“But all is not yet lost,” the Prime Minister remarked. “The Palace Guard … ”

As if on cue, Count Wermold, the Colonel of the Guard, appeared.

“I am ashamed to have to tell you,” he announced, “that the Twelfth Regiment, who were on duty, laid down their arms and went over to the insurgents as soon as the mob began to march.”

“So there you are, then,” said the King.

“But the house guards are still here,” the Prime Minister insisted. “They’ve got automatic weapons. They could machine gun the rebels from the palace windows.”

“What are you thinking?” the King shouted furiously. “Shed the blood of innocent people? Who do you think I am, Philip II or the One-Eared?”

“With our life and our blood!” the Colonel proclaimed. “We’ll form a ring around Your Highness and break out of the palace. Tomorrow morning I shall plan our campaign of resistance.”

“My dear Count, a gentleman’s first thought is not for
himself
but for defenceless women. The life of Princess Ortrud is by no means certain here. Your men must make that ring around her car and conduct her to the coast. There are Norlandian patrol ships at anchor off Bangar. You, Count, will answer with your life if a hair of the Princess’ head is harmed. Take her to safety.”

Numb with shock, the ministers understood that he was sending away his personal guard, their last line of defence. Ortrud looked at the King with tears in her eyes. She went up to him, and asked, in a low voice:

“Oliver, what will become of the two of us, you and me?”

“I did tell you, didn’t I?” he whispered. “The sea serpent. These things happen every day.”

“And now we shan’t be married?”

“Well, you know, just now isn’t really the time. We have to part now. Some other day.”

Ortrud burst into tears.

“When shall I see you again?”

“Perhaps in the summer. Then, somehow … ”

Looking straight ahead, and clearly troubled, he drew her aside.

“Believe me,” he went on. “I shall always love you. Such things don’t change. But now … now I have to find out what life is like, down there. Now go in good heart, Ortrud.”

“God be with you, Oliver.”

No sooner had she and the Colonel left the room than the Prime Minister dashed up to the King.

“Your Highness,” he spluttered. “Don’t give yourself up like this. It might still be possible to do something. Not just possible, but necessary. In the end, it’s not just a question of Your Highness’ skin but ours too.”

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but we must make every sacrifice. You did say that you would accept your share of the odium attached to what we did. Well, now you must make that good!”

Mawiras-Tendal entered.

“Your Highness,” he announced. “The insurgents have occupied every place of strategic importance. I’ve just been informed that they have taken over the telephone exchange,
the main post office and the railway station. Soldiers of the Twelfth Regiment have smashed the windows of the Norlandian Ambassador’s residence. Baron Birker was hit on the nose by a stone. The question now is whether they’ll take the Citadel.”

At that moment the roaring, which so far had been heard at a distance, seemed to come from within, from the palace itself. The throng was much closer now, was inside, running from room to room. Everyone’s face went pale, and their eyes instinctively looked around for somewhere to hide. They all knew, from their history books and from films, what it meant when the mob broke in to a royal palace.

“Stay where you are, all of you!” the King bellowed. “I’ll shoot anyone who tries to run. Major, you go on ahead. I shall meet the representatives of the people.”

Mawiras-Tendal left the room.

“And I must ask you gentlemen to do your best to put on a friendly face.”

A minute later the Major returned with Delorme, Sandoval, Zizigan and the rest.

The revolutionaries lined up respectfully against a wall.

The King greeted them amiably and asked them to explain their demands.

Delorme stepped forward and began an eloquent, carefully prepared speech.

“We are well aware,” he said, amongst other things, “that Your Highness was not to blame for signing this wretched document, but was led astray by your advisers, those
wicked
, incompetent ministers, whom the people will hold to account … ”

Then he appealed to the King to prevent otherwise
unavoidable
bloodshed, and stand down in favour of his uncle, Duke Geront of Algarthe.