They knelt down before Thea.
“Bless us,” they begged, “give us the blessing of Héja.”
For a moment Thea could only stare at them wide-eyed. Then Nikōs said quietly to her in English,
“Put your hand on their heads and say a prayer to each woman.”
She was too frightened to do anything but obey him.
She touched the children’s heads and as she did so, she said a simple prayer, which was one that her mother had always used when she prayed at her knee.
“May God and the angels bless you and watch over you now and for your whole life.”
She soon had blessed all the children as there being not very many of them.
Then the women started beseeching her.
“I lost my last two babies,” one cried. “Bless me that the next will be born strong.”
Thea felt that what she was doing was almost sacrilegious.
She glanced at Nikōs.
“Pray that she will have a son. That is all she asks for,” he suggested quietly.
Thea then put both her hands over the head of the woman.
“May God bless you and give you the son you long for, may he be strong, brave and at the same time kind and merciful.”
The woman bent low and kissed Thea’s feet.
Then Thea blessed the other women until Nikōs drew her away to where the Chief bandit was waiting for them.
She saw as they moved that the young men who had looked at her with lecherous eyes had now disappeared.
Nikōs had won.
The cave they were shown into was dark and rather intimidating.
One of the bandits’ flares, however, was fixed outside, so that they could just about see.
There was a pile of dried leaves against one wall, the floor was sandy and Thea thought that there was a faint smell of chamois or perhaps it was a wolf.
But nothing mattered except that she would be with Nikōs and thanks to his presence of mind the bandits would not dare to touch her.
Then, as if they must show their gratitude, or perhaps their reverence, the bandit women came hurrying in.
They brought a woollen blanket to lay over the dried leaves.
It was none too clean, but at least, Thea thought, it would prevent their being pricked as she was certain that there would be brambles and thorns amongst the leaves.
There were two other blankets to cover themselves with. Also a rough pillow that looked more lumpy than soft.
The blankets were torn, but Thea was well aware that it was the best that they could do.
She thanked them a little hesitatingly in their own language and Nikōs thanked them too.
Then because it was now dark outside, the bandits withdrew and Thea knew that they were going to their caves to sleep.
The bandit Chief however said before he left,
“You try escape – we shoot you!”
It was as if he wanted to strongly assert himself, feeling that Nikōs’s ascendancy over his followers had somehow humiliated him.
“We will be here when it is light,” Nikōs replied.
With a sound that was like a grunt the bandit walked away.
It was then that Thea flung herself against Nikōs saying,
“You saved me – you were wonderful! How could – you be so – brave?”
He put his arms around her and replied quietly,
“We are safe for the moment, but I want you now to lie down and rest.”
She looked at the bed and became aware as she did so that it was suddenly growing very cold outside.
Now that the sun had gone the temperature had dropped dramatically and she knew, because they were so high up, that deep snow was only just above them.
With what she thought was a note of amusement in his voice Nikōs said,
“I think, my darling, we would be very unwise if we did not rest close together.”
“You – will not – leave me?” Thea stammered almost as if he had suggested it.
“That is something I shall not be allowed to do,” Nikōs replied. “Instead, if I hold you in my arms, you will be warm and you will feel very much safer.”
Because she knew that he was being sensible, Thea moved towards the bed.
It was more comfortable than she had expected.
As she lay against the side of the cave so that Nikōs would be on the outside, she found that she was actually quite warm.
The blankets were made of a thick wool from the mountain sheep.
She seemed to sink into the leaves beneath her and she was wearing her woollen shawl.
Only when Nikōs joined her did she remember for the first time that he was not wearing a coat.
He had expected to be back in the cosy warmth of his little house by this time and they would now be sitting in front of the log fire as they had done last night.
He lay down and put his arm around her and she said,
“I am afraid – you will be very – cold.”
“I am relying on you to keep me warm,” he replied.
He had spread the blankets over them up to their waists and now he pulled them even higher.
As he did so, Thea spread the end of her shawl across his chest, thinking even a little of its warmth was better than nothing.
Then Nikōs put his other arm around her and held her tight.
As she rested her head on his shoulder, she thought how she had wanted to be close to him like this.
It seemed extraordinary to her that it was the bandits who had made it possible.
“All that matters is that we are together,” she surmised.
“Yes, we are together,” Nikōs smiled as if he was reading her thoughts, “and you are not to be afraid, my darling one.”
“I thought when you were speaking so cleverly that the bandits believed you,” Thea said, “but if we had to die, at least I was with you.”
“We are not going to die,” he insisted in his deep voice. “We are both going to live, my precious, and we shall look back on this as an adventure that we will tell our children and our grandchildren.”
Because she was shy, Thea gave a little murmur and turned her face against his chest.
She felt him kiss her hair and then he said very quietly,
“Will you marry me, my darling? I know now that I cannot live without you.”
For a moment Thea was still.
That Nikōs should really want to marry her was the most incredible and yet the most marvellous thing that could ever happen to her.
She knew too that it was impossible and it was something that she would never be allowed to do.
Then she asked herself – why not?
If she was married to Nikōs, it would then be impossible for her to become King Otho’s wife.
She was also aware that she could no longer be Royal and she knew how furious her father would be, but if she was legally married, there would be nothing in the whole world he could do about it.
She remembered what had happened to a distant cousin of hers.
She had been Royal, the youngest daughter of the King of Tek.
Her sisters, and there were three of them, were all married to reigning Monarchs, but she had fallen in love with one of her father’s aides-de-camp.
They had run away together.
Her father, the King, had stripped her of her Royal rank and her name had been erased from the Royal Hierarchy.
Thea had been told that she was never spoken of again and she had often wondered if giving up everything as well as losing her Royal rank and status had been worth it.
Now she knew that if it was a choice between being a Princess and a Queen as the wife of King Otho or renouncing it all for Nikōs, there was no question as to what she would answer.
She loved Nikōs as he loved her.
They were closely attuned like the notes of two violins. They were incomplete without each other.
The thought flashed through her mind that if she was married to Nikōs
, she need never go back to The Palace.
If the soldiers did not find her, then in time she would be presumed dead and then soon forgotten
If they did find her and she was married to Nikōs, there would be nothing that they could do about it anyway.
Except that she would no longer be Princess Sydel.
Nikōs was waiting for her to speak, but he did not move.
His lips did not touch hers, but she could hear his heart beating.
She raised her head to look up at him and she could see him in the light that came from the flare outside, which was now burning lower.
“I love – you!” she sighed.
“Then you will marry me?”
“I can – imagine nothing more – wonderful than to be – your wife!”
It was then she knew that he had been tense as he waited patiently for her answer.
Now their bodies seemed to melt into each other’s and he held her so close that she could hardly breathe.
Then he said,
“That is what I wanted you to say and I swear to you, my lovely little Goddess, I will make you extremely happy.”
“I love you!” Thea said again. “All I can think of is you – and your – love.”
“That is all I would ever want you to think about and we will be married immediately we are free.”
Thea gave a little shudder.
“You do – not think they will – hurt us?”
“Not if they receive the money they have asked for.”
“There will be – no difficulty about – that?”
She was terribly afraid he might say that he had not have so much money, but he replied,
“Don’t think about it, think only that in a very short while I shall be able to make love to you as I so want to do.”
Thea thought of last night and blushed and she was glad that he could not see her face.
She wanted him to kiss her and she wanted him to give her the ecstasy and the rapture that she had felt before.
Foolishly, she mused, she had been frightened and had sent him away.
“When we are married,” Nikōs now said, as if he was following his own train of thought, “I will teach you, my precious little Ice Maiden, all about love, but now you must be kind to me.”
“Kind?” Thea asked.
“You know that I dare not kiss you.”
“But – why not?”
She lifted her lips and knew that they were very close to his.
She wanted his kisses, she wanted them desperately and Nikōs’s arms tightened.
“Last night,” my darling one, “I frightened you and I knew afterwards that it was very stupid of me.”
He drew in his breath before he added,
“You have no idea how beautiful you looked when I came to your bedroom with your amazing hair falling over your shoulders and your eyes green as emeralds in the light from the candles.”
The way he spoke made Thea quiver.
As Nikōs was aware of it, he went on,
“Because we both have Hungarian blood in us, we come from the sun. We are easily aroused and our passions burn fiercely and demandingly like the heat of the sun itself!”
The way he was speaking was very exciting and Thea moved a little closer to him.
“I want you, my lovely one, I want you unbearably and uncontrollably. I want to kiss you from the top of your head to the toes of your tiny feet.”
There was a note of wild passion in his voice.
It instantly reminded Thea of the music of the gypsies and she felt a flame awake within herself and move from her breast towards her lips.
“But because I will also revere and worship you as my wife,” Nikōs continued, “I will not make you mine until we receive the Blessing of the Church and are joined by God in a bond that no man can sever.”
The way he spoke was very powerful yet moving.
She felt her love seeping through her and her heart was beating frantically against his.
“Would it – matter very much if you just – kissed me?” she asked.
“You must not tempt me!”
“Tempt – you?”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I adore your innocence and your ignorance about love, but I am also a man, Thea!”
‘A magnificent and a heroic man,’ she thought.
Who else would have shown such courage as he had shown when the bandits surrounded them?
Who else could have held them spellbound? Who else could have saved her from the degradation and horror of what they intended for her?
“You are – wonderful,” she sighed. “So wonderful that I am afraid you will – find me dull as – your wife.”
She thought then of the monotonous uneventful days and years that she had spent at The Palace.
The conversation of the Courtiers at Court was so dreary that she had ceased to listen to them.
With Nikōs everything had been a delight, exciting, stimulating and enthralling.
Now, closely held in his arms, even the bandits outside with their threats did not seem so intimidating.
Nikōs was holding her safe against him and in some strange way he seemed to have a dominance over them.
“What I want you to do,” he was saying to her now and his voice was no longer vibrant with passion, “is to go to sleep. Tomorrow when the ransom has been paid, we will return home to our little house and arrange our marriage.”
She knew that he was watching over her and because she loved him she must do as he asked.
“I will just say – my prayers,” she whispered, “and – thank God that I am with – you.”
She thought of how terrifying it would have been if she had been riding alone and then had encountered the bandits by herself.
They would certainly have taken her their prisoner if only because they wished to steal Mercury.
The younger bandits would have been waiting for her and, if Nikōs had not been there to save her, what might have happened?
She shivered.
“Forget it!” Nikōs urged her. “Forget everything except that the stars are watching over us.”
“And Héja?” Thea enquired.
“He is the sublime King of all the Gods who dwell in the mountains,” Nikōs replied, “and who knows that better than you, my perfect Goddess?”
He was teasing her and she gave a little laugh.
“After the way you spoke about him. I believe in him implicitly as the bandits do. How can they live up here and not be aware of the God above them?”
“They are in point of fact a very superstitious people,” Nikōs explained.
“I know that – now and we – were very – lucky!”
“Very lucky indeed!” Nikōs said quietly. “And now, my darling, go to sleep.”
“I am trying to do as you tell me, but it is incredibly exciting being so close to you.”
“So how do you think I feel?” Nikōs enquired.
The passion was now back in his voice and, as if with a superhuman effort, he controlled himself and urged her,
“Go to sleep.”
Thea said her prayers.
Then because she was very tired with all the emotions of last night and the happenings of the day, she gradually relaxed.
Nikōs could hear her breathing evenly.
The torch outside had finally burnt away and now there was only the light from the moon and the stars.
He looked through the opening in the cave at the rocks outside that the moon had turned to silver.
From the way he was lying he could just see some stars like diamonds shining in the sky.
He told himself that, whatever the difficulties ahead, he would protect and take care of Thea.
She was so beautiful.
And it was incredible that he had found the one woman in the whole world who was the completion of himself.
He was wise enough to know that it was almost an impossibility.
Yet he knew what Thea wa
s thinking and she too seemed to know his thoughts.
There was an affinity between them that was nothing short of miraculous.
All through his life he had believed in a Power that had helped him when he needed it most.
He had called on it tonight when he had known better than Thea did what the bandits intended for her.
Women to them were of complete unimportance except for amusement and the breeding of sons.
Thea had heard of the bandits stealing away peasant girls from their homes and that was only part of the story.
Nikōs knew that many of the girls they carried away with them into the mountains were brutally ill-treated and they became half-mad with the dreadful terror of what they had been forced to endure.
Then they would either throw themselves down the mountainside or else were thrown into a chasm by the bandits themselves.
Only a few of their own women survived to cook for them and to tend them if they were wounded.
But they were of less importance than the mountain ponies that carried their ill-gotten gains.
That he had managed to save Thea was, he believed, a miracle.
It came from the God he believed in and who had never failed him.
What mattered in the future was that he had found Thea.
He loved her with an intensity that he had never thought possible and she had come into his life as swiftly as the starlight appeared in the sky at night.
He vowed silently that he would never lose her or let her leave him.
‘She is mine!’ he told himself over and over again.
He spoke fiercely as if he was fighting a battle for her.
*
Thea was asleep when she heard the sound of voices.
As she stirred and came back to consciousness, there was the sudden sound of gunfire.
She opened her eyes instantly and in horror.
As she did so, Nikōs took his arms from her and rose to his feet.
“What – is – happening?” Thea asked and she was now really afraid.
Nikōs straightened himself and the cave was just high enough for him to be able to stand upright.
The noise outside then increased.
Now through the opening of the cave Thea could see that dawn had broken and the sky was light.
Nikōs walked without hurrying to the entrance of the cave and looked out.
More shots were being fired and now the sound was almost deafening.
The Passionate Princess Page 9
