This time there was a definite pause while she was certain that both men were thinking how they could evade the question.
Finally the Ambassador said,
“All these things will be explained to Your Royal Highness when you arrive in Dūric, and I am sure that the reception you receive once you are on Slavonian soil will be a very pleasant one.”
“I certainly hope so,” Giona said. “But there is one thing I must insist upon before I arrive.”
The Slavonian Ambassador looked at her as if he resented the word ‘insist’ and wondered what she was about to ask.
Before he could speak, however, Giona carried on,
“You will understand, I am sure, that this is a very reasonable request – it is that somebody should teach me Slavonian. I am quick to learn and wish to start at once with, of course, a teacher who is of Slavonian nationality.”
“I hardly think that is necessary, Your Royal Highness,” the Slavonian Ambassador replied. “His Majesty and all his Court speak German.”
“So I have heard,” Giona responded coldly, “but I would wish to understand the language of the country I am living in and the majority of the King’s subjects must naturally be Slavonian.”
There was no answer to this and the Ambassador puffed and huffed and repeated several times that it would be very difficult to find a suitable person before she actually arrived in Slavonia.
Then at last the British Ambassador suggested,
“The new aide-de-camp to His Majesty, who accompanied us to England, is in fact Slavonian.”
“If you are referring to Captain Otho Darius, he is far too young. And since he has only just joined us, I am not certain that he would be suitable to instruct Her Royal Highness.”
“Everybody else is German,” Sir Edward Bowden said quietly, “so unless I am mistaken, I doubt if any of them are at all fluent in Slavonian.”
With a bad grace the Slavonian Ambassador gave in.
“Very well,” he said, “you can see Captain Darius and, of course, he can be dispensed with as soon as we arrive in Dūric.”
The way he spoke made Giona feel that she had won a major victory and, only when the Ambassador had left, again expressing himself effusively on how satisfactory it was for everyone that she was to be the Queen of Slavonia, did Princess Louise ask,
“Why do you make such a fuss, dearest, about learning Slavonian?”
Giona looked at her mother in surprise.
“But surely, Mama,” she said, “you realise it is something Papa that would have done. He always felt it mortifying and infuriating to visit any country where he could not speak the language fluently and he would definitely have been shocked if I had accepted to be the Queen of Slavonia without being able to communicate with any of my husband’s subjects.”
The Princess had no answer to this, but before Captain Darius arrived the next morning to give Giona her first lesson, she said to her daughter,
“Now, listen, Giona, I think it would be a mistake for you to discuss politics when you are with Captain Darius.”
“Why, Mama?” Giona asked in surprise.
The Princess hesitated and Giona said,
“What is so secret about the politics of Slavonia? I realised yesterday that the Ambassador was keeping something from me.”
“I don’t think it is a question of being secret, dearest,” the Princess replied. “The British Ambassador explained to me that there was unrest and trouble in the country because a number of people resent being ruled over by what they think of as a foreign King.”
“I can understand that.”
The Princess looked at her daughter sharply.
“You may understand,” she said, “but it would be a great mistake for you to sympathise with them or in any way fail to support your husband loyally.”
“Of course, Mama,” Giona agreed. “At the same time I cannot understand why so many of the Balkan countries chose Kings from outside their own boundaries. I remember Papa saying years ago that it was a great mistake.”
“I think your father was talking about Greece,” the Princess replied. “There is no reason to think that King Ferdinand is not an excellent Monarch in every way and naturally no encouragement must be given to any sort of revolutionaries.”
Giona did not reply and after a moment the Princess went on,
“What is more, dearest, you must be very careful what you say and, if Captain Darius tries to enlist your sympathy because he is a Slavonian, I hope you will make it very clear that you are heart and soul on the side of the King.”
“I can hardly be sure of that until I arrive in Slavonia and see what the King is like, Mama!”
Princess Louise gave a little cry of protest.
“Please, Giona,” she said, “you must not be too independent. You must remember that from now on anything you say and almost anything you think will be of significance and could be used either for or against you, and, of course, against your husband, the King.”
Giona laughed.
“I am sure, Mama, that you are exaggerating my importance. After all, the only thing that matters is that I am English and am being sent there by the Queen to hold an umbrella over the King’s head in case he is pushed into becoming part of the Austrian Empire!”
“Giona, you must not say such things!” the Princess protested.
But Giona knew that she was really very worried in case she should start off her marriage of convenience on the wrong foot.
What she had not expected was that, when Captain Darius arrived, she would find that he was young and an extremely good-looking man of about twenty-five.
Having met the Slavonian Ambassador, who was over fifty, she had expected his whole entourage to be old and doubtless as pompous and long-winded as he was.
Instead, when she was told that Captain Darius had arrived and she went downstairs to where he had been shown into the small sitting room, she found herself thinking that he was the first pleasant factor concerned with her Wedding she had experienced.
Captain Darius spoke in English with a pronounced accent, but he had an engaging smile and she thought that there was an undoubted look of admiration in his eyes when he saw her.
“I have the honour, Your Royal Highness,” he said, “to be appointed by His Excellency to teach you a little Slavonian before you arrive in my country.”
He paused before he added,
“And may I say with all respect that we in Slavonia shall be very fortunate to have such a beautiful Queen.”
Giona smiled.
“Thank you,” she said, “but I don’t want to know only a little Slavonian by the time I arrive in your country, but to speak it fluently.”
“I am afraid that might be impossible, as it is a somewhat complicated language,” Captain Darius replied, “but I will certainly do my best, Your Royal Highness, although I have always before been a pupil not a teacher.”
“I cannot think that Slavonian can be any more difficult than Greek,” Giona said, “and I can speak Serbian, a little Albanian and a certain amount of Macedonian.”
Captain Darius seemed to think this incredible and, when they sat down at the table, Giona found to her delight that Slavonian was, as she had said to Chloris, comparatively easy because it was a mixture of all the other languages she knew.
“You are incredible, absolutely incredible, Your Royal Highness!” Captain Darius said at the end of an hour. “I would like to thank you with all my heart for wishing to know Slavonian, even though I feel that you will very seldom use it.”
“Why do you say that?” Giona asked quickly.
For a moment he looked embarrassed, as if he had spoken without thinking.
Then he replied,
“I am sure that you are already aware that His Majesty speaks German at Court.”
“Yes, I had heard about it,” Giona said.
“As the majority of the Courtiers and practically everybody of any importance in the Government is either Germa
n or Austrian, the Slavonians seldom hear their own language, except in the streets.”
“Is that really true?” Giona asked him.
“Perhaps I should not tell you what you will soon find out for yourself,” Captain Darius commented.
Giona lowered her voice.
“I want you to tell me the truth. If we are to work together, it will be impossible if each of us is saying one thing and thinking another. Please, Captain, be frank with me.”
The Captain gave a sigh.
“It is what I would like to do, Your Royal Highness, but if I am, it will, if it becomes known, get me into a great deal of trouble.”
“Let me assure you that anything you say to me in confidence will not be repeated,” Giona said. “But I do want to know, and I think that only you can tell me exactly what is the situation in Slavonia, and why this marriage has been arranged with such unseemly haste.”
To her surprise Captain Darius rose to his feet and started to gather his books and papers together.
“I regret, Your Royal Highness, that the hour allotted to us for your lesson has come to an end,” he pronounced in a cold voice. “I can only congratulate you on your quick intelligence and the manner in which you have assimilated so many different elements of our somewhat complex language in so short a time.”
The way he spoke was so different from his former easy manner that Giona could only stare at him in astonishment.
Then before she could ask why he had suddenly changed his tone, the door of the sitting room opened and unannounced the Slavonian Ambassador entered.
“Good morning, Your Royal Highness,” he said to Giona. “Forgive me for my impertinence in walking in without being announced, but, although I rang the bell several times, there was no reply.”
The way he spoke made Giona sure that he was lying and she was quite certain that he had deliberately not knocked, but had opened the door without doing so and entered the house silently so that he could listen to what was going on.
She had already learnt that Captain Darius’s ears were sharper than hers and she knew from the expression on his face that he had been aware that somebody was listening to them.
To the Slavonian Ambassador she said,
“You have come at exactly the right time, Your Excellency, because Captain Darius and I have finished and I found my lesson very interesting, except, of course, there is always a difficulty with verbs and vowels when one starts a new language.”
The Ambassador laughed.
“That is indeed true, Your Royal Highness, but I am glad that Captain Darius has proved a good instructor. Do you really wish to carry on?”
“Of course I do!” Giona replied. “I shall look forward to having my lesson tomorrow morning. I am only sorry that this afternoon I have to go shopping with Mama.”
“For your trousseau,” the Ambassador said genially. “And that is very important if you are to look beautiful for your new husband.”
“Yes, of course,” Giona said. “That is why Mama is taking so much trouble in choosing my gowns.”
She made it sound like girlish enthusiasm, but when she looked from the Ambassador to Captain Darius’s face, she knew, because his expression was dark and foreboding, that he was appalled, if that was the right word that she should be the bride of the King.
*
It was not until the evening that Giona learnt that her mother was not coming with her to Slavonia.
“Not coming to my Wedding, Mama?” she exclaimed. “But why? How could I possibly go without you?”
“I talked the matter over with the British Ambassador,” Princess Louise answered, “and, while actually Her Majesty had told me that she thought it was unnecessary for me to make such a long journey, I had every intention of insisting on accompanying you until Sir Edward persuaded me that it would be a mistake.”
“Why should he do that?” Giona asked angrily. “As you know, Slavonia lies South of Albania and of Serbia, surrounded on other sides by Macedonia. There is, His Excellency said, quite a lot of trouble on the frontiers of the country and, while they intend to send a large escort to take you safely to the Capital, it would be a nuisance and would create difficulties if the same escort had to take me back after the Ceremony was over.”
She saw that her daughter was unconvinced and went on,
“Besides, the Ambassador also said that, while Her Majesty is sending you in a Battleship, which is a great concession on her part, out to Slavonia, she has no wish for the ship to have to wait to bring me back to England.”
“Well, I think it’s disgraceful, Mama!” Giona exclaimed. “I don’t want to go without you.”
“I know, dearest, but you will be well looked after. Sir Edward’s wife, Lady Bowden, will chaperone you and the Slavonian Ambassador will, of course, travel with you.”
“It is wrong – I know it’s wrong for me to go off alone!” Giona said unhappily. “I had assumed that you would be with me, Mama.”
“There is nothing I want more, dearest,” the Princess said. “I tried, but there was nothing more I could do to persuade them that you are too young to travel without me.”
She sounded so distressed that Giona said little more to her mother.
But to Chloris she raged,
“The whole thing is disgraceful! The Queen has no right to push me out of England in a Battleship to all intents and purposes alone and leave me to fend for myself without anyone to support me in a completely strange country.”
“I am so sorry, dearest,” Chloris said. “I know I should be miserable if I was in your shoes. But Sir Edward and Lady Bowden are English and I am sure that they will look after you.”
“I am sure they will!” Giona said crossly. “Because it suits them to toady to the King!”
She did not say any more, but, when she was alone in bed, she found herself wondering whom she would turn to in Slavonia if she were desperately unhappy.
It was frightening to think that everybody she knew and loved would be hundreds of miles away.
She would be of no personal consequence to anyone, except for the fact that she was British and, as she had said to Chloris, ‘tied up in the Union Jack’.
*
As the days went by far too quickly for comfort, Giona found herself almost resenting the pretty gowns her mother was buying at the Queen’s expense and the exquisite lace-trimmed underclothes that were different from anything that she had ever worn before.
What did it matter what she looked like when she was being married to a man whose only interest in her was that she would prop up what she was convinced now was a rather rocky Throne and with whom she was quite certain that she would have nothing in common?
The more she talked with Captain Darius, the more she was convinced that the true picture of the political situation in Slavonia was being kept from her.
What was more, after the day when the Slavonian Ambassador had crept up on them so unexpectedly, Giona knew that Captain Darius was too frightened to tell her the truth about anything.
Sometimes he would seem as if he was going to be frank and explain the situation that she was certain existed, but was impossible for her to assess.
Then, as if his duty or perhaps his fear made him change his mind at the last moment, he would remain silent.
She was certain that he was afraid of being overheard and often, when she asked some pertinent question about his country, he would glance at the door almost as if he thought that there was somebody outside.
One day at the end of the first week, while she was having her lesson, she found that what Captain Darius suspected was only too true.
A slight sound in the small hall outside the sitting room made her rise quickly and without warning open the door.
Standing in the hall was another of the Embassy entourage, who explained quickly and in an obviously embarrassed manner that he had only just arrived with a message for her mother and seeing that the door was open had walked in without ringing the bell.
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It was true that sometimes when the weather was fine the door was left open to let in the sunshine, but Giona was quite certain that, when she had gone into the sitting room for her lesson, the door was closed.
It was therefore obvious that the intruder had let himself in.
She had taken the message, which was a note to her mother asking her and both Giona and Chloris to dinner at the Slavonian Embassy and then waited for the bearer of it to leave.
He, however, looked past her at Captain Darius, who was standing in the doorway of the sitting room and there was an expression on his face that told Giona without words that he was extremely hostile to the young Slavonian.
In German he said,
“If you have finished your lessons, Darius, I thought you might come back with me to the Embassy.”
“Of course,” Captain Darius replied. “Her Royal Highness and I have nearly completed our studies for this morning. Perhaps you would wait while I give her a passage to translate before tomorrow.”
The other man nodded his agreement, bowed to Giona and walked out through the front door to where she could see the carriage that had brought him waiting some distance away.
It was quite obvious that, if he had driven up to the door in the ordinary way, they would have heard the horses’ hoofs and the sound of the wheels.
But then he would not have been able to enter the house so surreptitiously.
Giona shut the front door behind him and went back into the sitting room and, as she and Captain Darius tidied the books on the table, she asked,
“Why is he spying on you?”
“Because he does not trust me.”
“Why should he not trust you?”
“Because I am Slavonian.”
Giona was not surprised at the answer, for it was only what she had expected and after a moment she asked,
“If they do not trust you, why were you included in the party that came to England to see the Queen? I realise that all the others are Austrian or German.”
“It was on the insistence of several of the Members of Parliament. They said that at least one member of the deputation should be a true Slavonian. After a great deal of argument and opposition, I was chosen because I was considered too young and inexperienced to be of any danger.”
Crowned with Love Page 3
