CHAPTER II

Count Piper stood looking thoughtfully at the King; he was wondering if the young man was sober enough to make it worth while speaking to him; he doubted this, and yet time was short--a question of hours might decide the fate of Sweden.

Karl sat immovable; across his slightly upturned face fell a pale ray of sun that had faintly penetrated the clouds and entered the small room, and in this light that was so dim as to be almost colorless, the King’s countenance, framed in the loose flowing, light hair, had such a strange effect that it almost startled Count Piper, even though he had known the King from babyhood and daily watched his lineaments. Very obvious now was that inhuman look, a serenity, a reserve that was neither disdain nor secrecy but mere indifferency, a look of something large and noble and cold in the wide, handsome face that did not belong to ordinary mankind.

This was not attractive, this expression, it inspired a certain fear even in one as familiar with it as Count Piper--yet the King was only a haughty boy, soiled from his rough sport and drunk--a boy who had been insolent to his kinswoman and who had insulted his sister’s friend almost in her presence.

“Your Majesty,” said Count Piper, looking away from those calm, blank blue eyes, “will you forgo the chase to-morrow to attend the Council of State?”

The King sighed.

“Yes, I will come,” he said, with a gentleness that Count Piper was not expecting.

“And give your mind to the business in hand?” added the councilor, for he could recollect council meetings when Karl had sat in an aloof silence commonly attributed to a haughty stupidity, with his feet on the table and his hands in his pockets.

Karl slowly turned his fine head and looked at his friend.

“You are very kind to me,” he remarked gravely.

“Your Majesty is not just to yourself,” replied the Count.

An expression of bewilderment crossed the King’s face; he put his strong, blood-stained hand to his forehead.

“I am drunk,” he said.

Count Piper could not repress a movement of impatience.

“Yes, your Majesty is drunk,” he replied, “and at this moment three Kingdoms are in league against you--to deprive you of all you have.”

There was no response in the attitude or expression of the King.

Count Piper tried the name that had roused him to such passionate violence before.

“Is the son of Karl XI going to permit the Czar of Muscovy to add so easily to his laurels?”

Karl remained calm.

“Why are these three princes at war with me?” he asked slowly.

“Because they think that you are a foolish boy,” replied Count Piper instantly. “Because they believe that in such hands as yours Sweden can do nothing against them. Denmark is your hereditary enemy--Saxony is an adventurer, keeping on foot an army at all costs--and the Czar--is the most ambitious man in Europe.”

“What does he want?” asked Karl.

“All the land between the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic Sea, Poland, and Muscovy,” replied the councilor laconically.

Karl laughed; it had a meaningless sound.

“My land,” he said.

“Precisely, sire.”

The King, still holding his head and still confused, spoke again, slowly and insistently, like a child asking artless, but to himself important questions.

“What are the Czar’s objects--tell me, Count?” he asked.

The more stupidly calm his master showed the more the diplomat dared show his annoyance--after all, this boy was eighteen, of a race of heroes, carefully trained and had shown already some signs of greatness as in the matter of his coronation and his refusal to be ruled by a woman, and it was intolerable that he should sit here fuddled with wine, staring with eyes blank as those of any fool.

“The Czar needs an outlet--a fort--on the Baltic,” he replied, in a tone of fierce sarcasm; “the Czar is a man of vast schemes, of a wide ambition--of a fair measure of greatness, too--he has taught his people much--he would teach them the art of war. At your expense, sire.”

“And Saxony and Poland help him--yes, you told me so--we discussed this the other day.”

“We have spoken of it many times,” replied the councilor bitterly.

Karl did not heed him.

“And there is my poor brother Gottorp-Holstein ruined--and my sister weeping here for help,” he said slowly; “that is a pretty creature she has with her, Count----”

“Will your Majesty add that to your other amusements--so soon?” interrupted Count Piper.

His glance went wistfully over the splendid young man who stared at him so stupidly. “I must learn to make my court to a Marquise de Maintenon or an Aurora von Königsmarck!” he added.

“Who is she--Aurora von Königsmarck?” asked the King.

“A thing like this piece your Majesty admires--one of those creatures who get their feet on the necks of kings!”

“Not great kings!” said Karl, with a sudden short laugh, showing his teeth in a disagreeable manner.

“Mostly great kings,” replied the Count drily. “From Thäis to our poor Aurora--you may search history and you will never find your conqueror, your hero without them--and it is human nature--you can no more avoid them than you can flowers at a feast, or flags at a victory--and is this to be your Majesty’s choice? I know nothing of the girl.”

The King had been listening with some intentness; he unaccountably flushed.

“I like neither flowers nor flags,” he said. “I will rule without women, Piper.” His eyes narrowed with a look of intelligence. “Is there any king in the world now, Piper, who is free of women?”

The councilor shook his head.

“There is the King of England, sire, who is a grave and great Monarch--but he largely owed his fortunes to his wife and has been a different man since her death----”

“I will have no wife,” said Karl instantly. “I will be greater than the King of England--Count, were there women in the sagas? Did the Vikings care for maids or wives?”

The older man smiled.

“I will forgive you your women, sire, and your chase, and your wine--if you will but keep Sweden great--and make her greater.”

But the glow of energy had passed from the King’s strange face, the broad lids dropped over the wide blue eyes.

“Talk to me later,” he muttered, and turned his head away on the dark cushions of the chair.

Count Piper hesitated a moment, then, seeing that the young man was falling into a heavy sleep, he, with a little bitter shrug, left the cabinet, gently closing the door behind him, frowning as he did so with an annoyance that he could, for all his training, scarcely control.

He went straight to the apartments of the Duchess of Gottorp, the King’s sister, whose husband had been the first victim of the league against Sweden.

She was in her hood and cloak, ready for some poor diversion of a ride or walk, a sad, anxious lady beneath her air of princely reserve.

The dreary air of the old palace, which was both dull and unhomelike, pervaded these apartments of the fugitive princess; she looked and felt like an exile as she drew off her gauntlet and gave her bare hand to Count Piper.

She knew that he was her ally and could be of more use to her husband than any man in Sweden, but she was surprised at seeing him now as she had just been with the Queen Dowager and had heard in what condition the King had left the table; therefore she had hoped for nothing to-day, which she had already put aside as another space of wasted time.

“Madame,” said Count Piper, “you have a lady in your service named Viktoria?”

The Duchess frowned, instantly cold.

“I do not like her, Count.”

“I do not think that I do,” replied the Count reflectively, “but I want to speak to her, Highness.”

The Duchess looked at him sharply.

“What do you know about her?” she asked quickly.

“Nothing at all,” smiled Count Piper. “It is you, Madame, who should know what there is to know about this lady.”

The Duchess seemed vexed.

“Her father is a great man in Gottorp--I found she had a right to come to court”

“And to come with you here, Highness, to Stockholm?” asked the Count, with a shade of regret in his voice.

“How could I help it?” demanded the Duchess on the defensive. “They were ruined--like ourselves--had lost everything. I could do nothing but offer this shelter to one who had been sacrificed in our cause.”

Count Piper fingered the brown curls of the wig that hung on to the heart of his somber coat and looked reflectively at the floor; the Duchess eyed him, and her fair face was hard in the shadow of her hood and her blue eyes had darkened with emotion.

“It is not pleasant to return to one’s country as I have returned--an exile and a fugitive,” she said, in a heavy voice, “to wait here day by day, like a poor petitioner, to gain my brother’s ear--but it is an added bitterness to think that I have brought with me one who will be a mischief in Sweden.”

“So your Highness thinks of this lady as a mischief?” asked the Count thoughtfully.

“You know, sir,” she replied, disdainful of pretense, “that is what you came to tell me.”

“No,” he said, looking at her straightly. “I think she might be useful.”

“To whom?” cried the Duchess.

“To Sweden.”

As the King’s sister understood the King’s minister, she colored swiftly and drew a step away from him.

“This is not Versailles,” she said. Then in a tone of real disgust, “Heavens! would you seek to rule the King through women?”

“If it was the only way.”

“A boy!”

Count Piper lifted his shoulders.

“She is the type--the temperament--they have noticed each other. He speaks of her.”

“Not when he is sober,” flashed the Duchess.

“Believe me, Madame,” he answered gravely, “he is ensnared. And his first love. It will be serious.”

The Duchess tapped her foot impatiently.

“And I came to Stockholm for this!” she exclaimed, full of contempt and revolt.

“So much depends on the lady--why should she not be our friend, Highness? The friend of Sweden? That wench might save the country if she chose to persuade the King that way--let us use her, instead of flouting her, Madame.”

The Duchess was silent a second, struggling with a pride that bade her speak scornful words; she knew that Count Piper but followed the usual procedure of courts, but his worldly wisdom disgusted her, and, desperate as she was, and cause as she had to be angry with her brother, she did not care to think of him as sunk in foolish weakness; the men of her house had never been feeble.

Yet she knew, by a deep instinct and a jealous observation, that Viktoria had greatly attracted the King, and she thought that, bold, fair, and worldly as this woman was, she would not forgo any advantage for any scruple.

“I leave it in your hands,” she said at last. “I cannot speak to her myself. I will send her to you while I go for my walk.”

She went from the room as if not too well pleased with Count Piper, and he, left alone in the dreary atmosphere of the narrow apartment, began to slightly doubt the wisdom of the course he had set himself.

But he was aroused; he was afraid as only a brave man can be afraid, mistrustful as only a wise man can be mistrustful, roused in his pride as a statesman and as a Swede; he believed the Czar Peter to be terrible--more terrible than anyone yet guessed; ambitious, fierce, one eager to rule who yet did not disdain to learn--a dangerous combination; he believed the King of Denmark malicious and active; and the third of the King’s enemies, Augustus of Saxony, King of Poland, he believed to be equally formidable--a fribble, a rake, but an important pawn, a sharp tool in the hands of others--a valuable asset to such a man as the Czar.

Sweden had possessions all of these envied--they did not hesitate to stretch out their hands and take them from one whom they knew to be a boy and believed to be defenseless.

The two former Kings had made Sweden great--this King might lose all that greatness so easily.

Count Piper’s shrewd face hardened as he thought of the tipsy youth slumbering in his cabinet; his delicate mission seemed easier as he reflected on that foolish degradation.

And it was not likely that the woman was of finer clay than the man whom she sought to enslave; Count Piper was hardened towards her with whom he had to deal before he had spoken to her; her quiet entry found him cold and prepared.

Her curtsey was slow; she had her eyes fixed on him the while.

It was the first time that he had seen her close and face to face; his practised glance noted, first that she was not a girl, secondly that she was as clever as she was fair; it was an intelligence equal to his own that looked at him out of those clear brown eyes.

And she was certainly very fair; there was no fault in her exact features, in her pure complexion, none in her exquisite form, unless it might be that she was too tall and too slender.

Her dress was over-rich and over-gay for her surroundings; a court ruled by an old woman had not seen before a creature so splendid.

Her pale blond hair was worn in cunningly disposed ringlets through which was passed a little braid of pearls, and fastened by a fair tortoiseshell comb adorned with squares of dark amber.

Her dress was of rose-colored velvet, cut low in front, with a fall of silver lace on the bosom, and showing a silver petticoat in front.

She had a great scarf of black silk wrapped like a shawl over all her attire, and no jewels at all but one square sapphire on the first finger of her right hand.

“You are very gracious, Madame, to grant me this interview,” said Count Piper; he looked a dull, a wizened figure beside her radiant grace.

“Was it not a command?” asked Madame von Falkenberg.

She stood facing him, with one hand on her hip, almost in the attitude of a man who feels for his sword hilt.

“I am not powerful enough to issue commands to you, Baroness,” he replied suavely.

She flashed into a sudden animation that accorded ill with her frail pallor and look of languid grace.

“I think you are not powerful enough to do anything, Count,” she said, “not powerful enough, certainly, to save Sweden.”

He did not understand her mood or her attitude, but he answered boldly.

“Therefore I am going to ask your help, Madame.”

Viktoria von Falkenberg moved impatiently towards the window, like a creature confined against her will.

“Are you not ashamed,” she asked, “that you cannot manage one wilful boy?”

This was so unexpected that Count Piper could think of no reply whatever.

“This King of yours,” continued the lady, “was drunk to-day, and unwashed from the chase, sat down to his food with spotted linen and muddy boots, was rude to women--I should not be proud to be his tutor.”

She had completely turned the tables on him; he had meant to tactfully reproach her with the effect of her influence on the King--to point out how Karl was drifting to disaster--and she had snatched his weapons from his hands and left him defenseless.

She threw up her head impetuously and struck her open palm on the window-pane.

“Oh, for something beautiful!” she cried, “were it but the waving of a spray of leaves against a gray sky! Your palace stifles, Count, and while we wait your King’s graciousness we lose our life!”

“It is of that I would speak to you,” said the Count, endeavoring to keep to his first point of view, “of your desires--and the King.”