Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 721
It was a sin against the sacred manes of all the kings who had ever lived and ruled; every imperial and monarchical sentiment in the world had been outraged by his public escort through the city of the funeral of Illyris. Even Kantakuzene dared not defend such an action.
When asked why he had not endeavoured to obtain the royal assent to his escort of the funeral, Othyris answered that there had been no time to seek it; also that he did not think his accompaniment of the bier was one which required any permission from the Crown. It had been an inoffensive testimony of a perfectly natural union of sentiment on his part with the people of Helios.
‘You must be aware, sir,’ said the President, ‘that such an act on your part was on the contrary most offensive to the Crown.’ ‘I do not see the offence,’ said Othyris. ‘Neither on my own part, nor on that of the populace, was there any disrespect shown to my father or to the State.’
‘What, sir! Not the burial of a revolutionist in the same temple with Theodoric the Great!’
‘They fought side by side once. Of the two it is not Platon Illyris who has the lesser title to a place in that classic sepulchre.’
A murmur of horror from the officers assembled in council followed this speech. The words would have been shocking from any one, — but from a prince of the blood!
‘Let me caution you, sir, such speeches as yours cannot assist your defence, they must increase your punishment.’
‘That will be as it may.’
‘You are wofully mistaken, sir, as a prince, as a son, as an officer.’
‘It is inevitable that a military tribunal should think so.’
Those who sat in judgment were perplexed. Any other person making use of such speech as his could have been shot. With Othyris they could not take so severely swift and simple a solution.
If they could only have bent him to any measure of retractation, of admission of offence, of regret, of apology, their course of action would have been clearer to them.
The examination lasted long and was full of wearisome repetition. Othyris did not alter or increase his replies either in matter or in manner. He had done that which he had done out of respect for the dead man, and out of consciousness that his own House had never shown either respect or gratitude to the great patriarch by whom Helianthus had been freed from the foreigner.
‘Platon Illyris,’ he replied, ‘was the liberator of Helianthus.’
‘Sir, you forget your great and revered ancestor.’
‘I forget nothing.’
‘Do you consider, sir, that a prince of your House should have publicly proclaimed his sympathy with a republican?’
‘I consider that my family, beyond all others, owes gratitude and honour to the victor of Argileion and of Samaris.’
‘He was a rebel against your illustrious ancestor.’
‘He had full right to be so, if he were.’
‘That is strange language on your part, sir, being who you are.’
‘Being who I am, I am bound to speak the truth.’ To most of those present it seemed that a military execution in the courtyard of the fortress would have been the most wise and the most just end to an unpardonable scandal. But what would the people of Helianthus, the citizens of Helios, think of such a sentence passed by a father on a son, by the head of a nation on the favourite of that nation?
They felt that if a hair of the head of this rebel were touched, the city certainly, and probably after it the country, would rise in arms. True, Elim being dead would be powerless to profit by their rising; but before now dead men have had more sway than their living foes.
Three days went by without any news reaching those at Aquilegia from the city. Janos was forbidden by his lady to go down to the gates, for she was afraid that his ignorance and his excitement might get him into trouble there, in his pride at the triumph of his late master. No one came; the few necessities of life were at hand on the soil and in the cupboard; there was less need than ever for any expenditure to meet their simple wants. Therefore nothing was known by any one there of the arrest of Othyris until the fourth day, when, as it was market-day, Janos could not be kept on the land, as he had produce to sell and calves to fetch home. He returned late, greatly distressed and agitated, consigning the calves to Philemon.
‘The great lord is being sent away,’ said Janos, when he came up to the house.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Maïa, who was spinning by the well.
‘Our prince who saved Philemon,’ replied Janos. ‘They sent him away, to keep him away for years and years, that the people may not see him. They were all talking of it in the streets. The King, his father, wills it so. The King is jealous of him. The people are very angry.’
‘Are you sure of what you say?’
‘Sure? Ay, I am sure. A score of mouths yelled it at me. The city is angry.’
‘But why does the King do this? What is his offence?’
‘They say it is because he put our Master in the House of the Immortals. That made the King hot against him.’
‘That is like enough,’ said Maïa gravely, and she resumed her spinning.
Ilia came towards them, from the stone bench by the porch where she had been seated; she had heard the words they spoke.
‘Is he to go into exile?’ she asked. Her face was very pale.
‘What is exile?’ said Janos. ‘To go out of the country?’
‘Yes.’
‘That I do not know. I think not.’
‘Why did you not ask more?’
‘The streets were like hives of swarming bees; they dumfoundered me. Besides, I had to go to the end of the world to fetch the bull calves. But this I heard from a dozen mouths in the morning, and then again as I brought the calves through the city: he is to be shut up far away.’
‘For what he did the other day?’
‘Ay, for that. So they say.’
Ilia was silent.
‘Some said the people should rise.’ added the peasant; ‘but others said no, they were not ready, and the King is strong.’
‘The King is very strong,’ muttered Maïa.
Ilia said nothing; she went away under the shade of the olive branches. The sun was setting, a dusky gold shining through the grey shadows of the great trees. She walked on alone through their solitudes; what she had heard smote her conscience with a sense of unworthiness and coldness; he suffered for her and hers, and he had received scarcely a dry crust of gratitude.
‘And I scarcely thanked him. I closed the house to him,’ thought she; and the tears stood in her eyes and blinded her to the sunlight, and to the blaze of the distant dome of gold under which Platon Illyris and Theodoric lay side by side, their enmities forgot, their valour alone remembered in Helios.
At sunrise she sent Maïa down into the city to hear if the tidings brought by Janos were confirmed. The woman returned before noon and said that they were true. All the people of Helios were agitated by them; some wished for a demonstration before the Soleia, but the hours slipped away and nothing was done; only the number of the city guards and carabineers was doubled. It was not known whether the Duke of Othyris had already gone, but it was generally believed that he had taken his departure by a night train; rumours as to the length of his term of banishment were various, and always greatly exaggerated. The populace were incensed, but helpless for want of a controlling hand.
As Maïa spoke, the noon sun struck the golden dome of the Pantheon where it stood amidst its cypress groves on the other side of the bay. Through a break in the woods it was visible across the water, the dome shining in the meridian light. Othyris had opened the gates of the Temple to Platon Illyris, and had been chastised for the act as for a crime.
That morning a letter was given by the common postman to the boy Philemon, as he worked in the lower woods.
‘Take that to your mistress,’ said the letter-carrier. He took it to her.
It was a note of only a few lines in the handwriting of Othyris. It said briefly that he had been condemned to twelve months’ detention in a fortress, and added:
‘I beg you not to be distressed. I am proud to have merited such punishment in so just a cause. Accept the homage of your humble servant.’
It was signed merely ‘Elim.’
The note dropped from Ilia’s hand on the cushion of the lace at which she worked. The shock was great to her. She was conscious that she had not deserved from him so much devotion or such total forbearance from reproach. A year of his life was lost through her! She could never give that year back to him. Its slow, long, cruel hours would drag their dull length away, and be for ever dead and buried like a sunless day.
‘I am sorry — oh, I am sorry!’ she murmured; the tears swam in her eyes, an intense sense of her debt to him and of his sacrifice to her filled her with regret which was well-nigh remorse. She could never give him back this year of his youth which he was about to spend in captivity for her and hers. She felt humbled and ashamed.
That night she could not sleep. In the morning she sent Janos to the market in the city.
‘Bring me news of what has happened,’ she said to him. He brought her news, with sobs of rage in his chest, and brown hairy hands clenched.
‘He is gone,’ he said. ‘They have sent him away into prison. It was done at night all secretly. He is there in the fortress of Constantine. The people are curs, sheep, cravens. They let this thing be done!’
In the fortress of Constantine! Where Theodoric had confined Illyris! Truly he had paid with his person for the offences of his forbears, for the falsehood of his race.
‘What shall we do, O daughter of Illyris?’ cried Janos. ‘Command, I will give my life.’
‘We can do nothing, my friend,’ she answered. ‘We are weak as water, you and I.’
‘But the people? They would be with us, and for him.’
‘Platon Illyris lay five years in the casemates of that prison, and the people let him lie. What can they do against the metal mouths of cannon? Pray, Janos; you believe in prayer. That is all that you can do.’
Janos swore a great oath on the names of saints and pagan gods, who were all one to him.
‘My arm is strong. It should be broken from shoulder to wrist for him. He gave me back Philemon.’
‘If ever the time come, yes, do not spare yourself. But now you can do nothing. The King is strong and cruel.’
‘Those lads missed the King. I should not miss him. My knife is sure. In a sure hand a knife is better than a bullet.’
‘Hush! The Master, were he here, would bid you do no evil that good may come, nor would Prince Elim wish for vengeance.’
Janos, his bronzed face wet with sweat and black with passion, slunk away like a dog forbidden to avenge a friend. Ilia went within.
The dove which had been often fondled by Platon Illyris flew to her and stroked her cheek with its caressing beak.
‘O bird of peace, you are no bird of ours!’ she cried, in passion. ‘The Illyris were men of war. Alas that I, a woman, and alone, cannot lift their sword, cannot lead their people!’
CHAPTER XXVI
DETENTION for life in a fortress would not have seemed too much severity in the esteem of the King. But with the shrewd caution which was his most useful quality, he knew that the nation would not consent to any such sentence. The majority of the people admired the conduct of his second son; and too great severity of the popular favourite would provoke dangerous resentment, perhaps even dangerous action. He would have liked nothing better than to consign Elim for life to one of the great, grim, fortified buildings standing in desolate places of the hills or of the sea shores, which served as military prisons, as barracks, or as powder-magazines, and where many a young officer, condemned by court-martial, had fretted his soul away in the dreary casemates, amongst those rugged solitudes where no sound ever came except the tramp of sentinels, the grounding of arms, the lumbering of caissons, the cries of the sea birds on the waters, and the plovers on the moors. To one of these strongholds the King would willingly have consigned Othyris, and have left him there, to eat his heart out like the caged eagle he had pitied in his childhood. But he did not dare.
Obstinate, insolent, disdainful of the people as he was, John of Gunderöde knew that such a course might lead to a revolt of the masses and to that exile of himself which Kantakuzene had pictured to himself with so much amusement. If he had been sure of his army he would not have hesitated; but he was not sure.
His secret reports left him no doubt as to the increase of socialism and republicanism amongst his troops: the murrain in the patient flocks, of which his eldest son had spoken. So, with his usual power of restraint upon his own desires, he limited himself to the mild punishment of the banishment of Othyris to one of his own estates, Hydaspe, for twelve months’ time, in an honourable captivity with which public opinion could not presume to quarrel. Hydaspe was far away from the capital, on the south-east coast, in a sparsely-peopled province; Othyris would be removed from the sight of the populace of Helios, and the King considered that what a mob does not see it forgets.
Kantakuzene greatly regretted the sentence; but it was impossible for him to oppose a decision of the head of the State and the head of the army. He too knew the temper of the Hélianthines. Removed from their sight, it was probable that Othyris would retain little place in their memories. They would not march across half the width of the country to his place of captivity in their tens of thousands and bring back in triumph to the capital the man they loved. They had not the grit in them to do that. His presence could move them to anything; in absence he would be rarely remembered, or so their rulers thought. Personally Kantakuzene was much attached to him; he felt the charm of an unselfish character and of generous and exalted ideals; but being now First Minister of the Crown, he could not but feel relieved from the extreme embarrassment which the presence of Othyris caused to him in Helios — an embarrassment which might increase perilously at any moment of public excitement.
Kantakuzene was sincerely distressed, but he was in the midst of all the agitation, anxiety, and difficulty of forming his Cabinet, of apportioning the loaves and fishes between the numerous claimants, of endeavouring to disarm enmity, to confirm hesitation, to pass over friendship which might be safely slighted, to irritate none, to alienate none, and, above all, to remain sole master of the situation. At such a vital moment Kantakuzene had little thought to give even to one who so much interested him as the second son of the King. If he could have interfered successfully, he would have done so even to his own hindrance; but it was impossible for him to touch a question so delicate and personal, to interfere in a matter which was exclusively at once a military and a family question for the judgment and the action of the sovereign alone. Kantakuzene consoled himself with the reflection that Othyris would doubtless be pardoned as soon as some months of his punishment had been endured, and in the agreeable sense of dominance and of success which came to him as he presided at his first Cabinet Council, he had not much time or inclination to give to the prisoner of Hydaspe. ‘He is quixotic! He is quixotic! ‘said Kantakuzene to others, with a sigh. ‘It is a fine defect, but it is a defect!’
Men have to take the world as it is, and live in it as best they may. It is not quite the bear-garden that satirists say, but neither is it quite the rose-garden which poets picture. Kantakuzene, who in his early time had gathered his roses, now preferred to tame the bears. Perchance Othyris would do so also in the future.
It was characteristic of the King that he did not select Ænothrea, which was beloved by Elim and beautiful in every way, as the estate on which his son was to pass a year of solitude. He chose Hydaspe, which was hot as a furnace in summer and cold as the North Pole in winter — a great mediaeval pile which had stood many sieges, standing on bare rocks which rose out of marshes and rice-fields, and which looked on a river which was a boiling torrent in winter and a bed of stones in the dry season. There was, indeed, the sea near at hand; but it was separated by three miles of sand and quicksands from the fortress, and was a portion of the eastern waters on which a sail was rarely seen — a melancholy and landlocked bay, on which a red and rayless sun rose drearily in the canicular heats. It was not a portion of the inheritance from Basil, but had been bequeathed to Othyris by a cousin-german. It was a possession of little value, although of great extent and antiquity; its revenues were always returned by him to the poor dwellers on the soil, chiefly workers in the rice-fields or in the dreary plains of maize, — people whose lot he could make less hard but could never render otherwise than melancholy; burnt up by the heat in one season, chilled by the blasts and frosts at another, getting up at every dawn to toil in the same furrows and ditches, giving their sons to the cannon and the barracks, seeing their daughters naked to the thighs in the rice channels, living pell-mell in their conical huts, their wives dropping the fruit of their womb as ewes drop lambs by the roadside, seeing always the sun go down upon their hopeless labour which could never change.
If Othyris had given his parole not to leave Hydaspe he would not have been subjected to any form of surveillance. But he would not give it. Therefore his movements were watched continually, and there were sentries at all the doors and gates of the castle. The place was his indeed, but the will of another, not of himself, ruled there. He was not allowed either to have any boat, large or small, in the bay for any movement on the sea. It was imprisonment in all but name, and when he heard the tramp of the sentinels on the ramparts or the grounding of arms by the soldiers on the gateways, he realised that his freedom was as completely lost for the time as any condemned convict’s. True, he was still owner of Hydaspe and still a prince of Helianthus, and the guards set over him all saluted as he passed and stood at attention so long as he was in sight; but he was virtually and to all intents and purposes a captive, though an undiminished deference and an elaborate ceremonial of etiquette still preserved to him the dignity of a rank which he hated, and which now, more than ever before, seemed to him an irony and a burden.
