Thekla gave a little cry of delight.
“You mean I can – come with – you?”
“I think now it would be safer than your staying here.”
“Then please – please do what you suggest. Nothing matters – nothing except – you should not leave me.”
*
It was after Maniu had cooked a small luncheon that Drogo and he set off for the Palace.
First Drogo had taken Thekla upstairs and made her promise to stay in the bedroom.
She was not to come out even if there was knocking on the door or if people burst into the lower part of the house.
“Promise – you will be very careful,” she pleaded. “Supposing they – kill you and – you do not come – back to me.”
“I don’t think that the Red Marchers will kill me,” Drogo answered. “I speak Russian and I shall go to the Palace as a Russian, in fact I shall be a Red Marcher.”
He had learned from Maniu that the Red Marchers wore red ties around their necks.
Many of them had belts in which they stuffed a pistol and a knife.
Drogo was already dressed in the clothes he had escaped.
Although in Russia he had pretended to be an Afghan, the ragged clothes he wore were very similar.
With an astrakhan cap on his head, he might easily pass for a Russian.
His disguises were always so convincing because he thought himself into the part.
It was not just a question of being dressed up, but of speaking like the people of the country he was purporting to belong to.
He used not only their idioms but also their gestures and facial characteristics, which were a far more effective disguise than anything else.
From the moment that he and Maniu left the little house where Thekla was praying for their safe return, he thought like a Russian, spoke like a Russian and walked like one.
Maniu had only to be a disreputable version of himself, carrying a half-empty bottle of wine.
They walked up the road that led to the Palace.
Drogo recognised the wall that Thekla had climbed over the previous evening. It was a high wall encircling the whole Palace, having elaborate entrance gates at various intervals.
Inside he found that the Palace was exactly as he had expected it to be.
It had lofty rooms, decorated in Rococo style, with further additions made in the last thirty years.
The moment they were inside, it was obvious that the local inhabitants were stealing everything they could lay their hands on.
Women were carrying away velvet curtains in roughly made carts. Men had armchairs on their heads. Children were laden with pieces of china and kitchen utensils.
There was a general spirit of excitement and greed.
Drogo was not surprised to see two men fighting viciously over some silver in the Marble Hall.
The body of another man, who had obviously been knifed, was lying unconscious in the Throne Room.
He had before leaving made Thekla draw him a plan of the Palace.
He thought that it would be a mistake to go immediately to the King’s apartments and he and Maniu first joined the crowd looting the State Rooms.
Then when he thought those around him were too busily engaged to notice what he and Maniu were doing, they made their way up not the main staircase but a side one.
Thekla had said that it was normally used by the servants.
The King’s private apartments were at the far end of the building and so far the majority of the looters were engaged below.
One or two men were removing pictures in the corridor, while others were trying to carry away inlaid cabinets, which they were too drunk to manage.
Drogo passed them without attracting attention and found his way without much difficulty to the bedroom that the King had occupied.
The pictures, the ornaments and the bedclothes had already vanished.
The wardrobe was open, revealing that someone had already taken away the King’s various uniforms.
It was however, the dressing room that Drogo was interested in.
Leaving Maniu in the bedroom to keep watch, he slipped inside, locked the door behind him and went to the North wall.
Thekla had explained that the second panel beside the window hid the safe and Drogo realised that it would be impossible for anyone to notice it unless they were aware of its existence.
He found the catch that opened the panel and was confronted with the safe.
Thekla, however, knew the combination of the lock as she had opened it for her father.
She had explained to Drogo exactly how it worked.
When it quickly swung open, he gave a sigh of relief, knowing how important this moment was for Thekla as well as for himself.
As she had anticipated, there was a pile of golden coins and bank notes of high denomination.
What was even more important, the King kept in the safe foreign currency that he had not expended the year before when he had visited Vienna and Paris.
Drogo did not waste time counting what he was taking.
He simply put all the foreign currency in his pocket and all the gold coins.
He added most of the paper money of Kozan, though, thinking as he did so, that it would prove to be worthless.
Then on Thekla’s instructions he searched the lower part of the safe.
There he found the jewellery that had belonged to her mother.
The State Jewels, she said, were all kept in a different part of the Palace and the Red Marchers would certainly seize these before they allowed the public into the building.
Drogo was aware that the jewels, which had belonged to Thekla’s mother, were valuable and they would at least give her some resources of her own when she was a refugee.
There were too many to put into his pocket.
But he had been wise enough to bring with him a cushion cover that looked like something he might have stolen from another part of the Palace.
He emptied the jewels into it and shut the safe.
He closed the panelling over it and unlocked the door of the dressing room.
The whole operation had not taken him more than four or five minutes, but he knew that Maniu would be anxious.
As he rejoined the servant, he did not speak but nodded to show that he had found what he had been seeking.
“We leave,” Maniu said in a low voice, “but first go Princess’s room.”
If Drogo had been left to his own inclinations, he would have left at once.
Yet, because Thekla had been so helpful, he knew he could not disappoint her.
Quickly they moved down a long corridor and reached the rooms occupied by Thekla.
The sitting room had already been looted and a great deal had been carried away from her bedroom.
The marks on the walls showed where the pictures had hung and the mirror on the dressing table had gone.
So had the corolla over the bed on which had hung silk curtains and the wardrobe doors were open as they had been in the King’s room.
However Thekla had described a dressing room where there were cupboards fitted into the walls that were not so obvious.
As Drogo opened the first one, it was a relief to find that she had been right in thinking that they might have been overlooked.
Quickly he and Maniu took what clothes they could bundle over their arms.
Drogo found a fur-lined cape and, thinking it would certainly be snatched from him if he was seen carrying it, he covered it with dresses that were hanging beside it.
He was intelligent enough to avoid taking elaborate evening gowns. Instead he chose sensible dresses that would not appear too fantastic if Thekla were seen in them.
Maniu stuffed his pockets from a drawer in the next cupboard, which held nightgowns and underclothes.
Then when they heard voices in the corridor they quickly closed the doors.
But not before Maniu had snatched up two pairs of shoes, which he stuffed inside his coat
.
Then, as a crowd of noisy young people burst into the bedroom next door, Drogo and Maniu slipped away.
They moved down secondary passages until eventually they found their way to the back quarters of the Palace.
It was then they could hear the voices of those who had rifled the cellars.
Drunken songs seemed to echo and re-echo in their ears until they stepped out through a side door into the garden.
The difficulty now was to get back without having what they had taken from the Palace stolen from them.
There were fights taking place at the comer of almost every street.
They passed bodies lying in the gutter that were either unconscious or dead.
It seemed to Drogo a miracle that eventually they arrived back at the house where they had left Thekla and found that nothing had happened in their absence.
There was still glass in the windows and the door was closed.
He could only be thankful that his cousin had chosen a quiet street to live in.
Maniu unlocked the back door and, when they went in, Drogo dropped his bundle at the bottom of the stairs.
“Thekla!” he called out. “Thekla!”
Before he reached the top, she had opened the door and was waiting for him.
As he reached her, a little breathless from the quickness of his climb, she flung her arms around him.
“You are back – thank God! I have been – praying and – praying you – would be safe.”
Then her arms were around him and her lips were raised to his.
He was kissing her wildly as if he had come back to her from the grave.
Chapter Four
Thekla was thrilled with what they had brought back with them.
“You have been very clever!” she exclaimed when she saw her clothes.
When Maniu had gone to the kitchen and they were alone, Drogo showed her the jewellery that he had collected from the safe.
The expression on her face was very touching.
He knew that she was delighted, not because the jewels were valuable but because they had belonged to her mother.
“I could not have borne the revolutionaries – having these,” she whispered.
Drogo bit back the words that she might have to sell them and instead he busied himself counting the money from the safe.
There was quite a considerable amount not in the Kozanian currency and he knew he would have to conceal it very carefully to prevent it being stolen from him.
Then, looking at Thekla as she touched her mother’s jewels tenderly with one finger, he asked himself almost frantically how he could save her.
Having seen the rioting in the streets and the devastation in the Palace, he was well aware that her life was in great danger.
‘I have to take her away,’ he determined.
Then he wondered if that might not prove more dangerous than leaving her behind.
Once again he thought of the Convent and, telling Thekla that he wanted to speak to Maniu, he went down the stairs.
He found him in the kitchen preparing their evening meal.
Sitting down on one of the deal chairs he said,
“I want your advice Maniu. Her Royal Highness said that she would not be safe in the Convent. But I cannot help thinking that it might be better for her to go there than to try to escape from Kozan.”
He paused a moment and then went on,
“We might be caught by the revolutionaries and at the very least thrown into prison.”
Maniu looked upwards, as if he was afraid that Thekla was listening, before saying in a low voice,
“I hear Red Marchers who drank too much at Palace broke into Convent last night and rape some of the nuns.”
Drogo’s lips tightened and he rose from the chair to walk to the window that looked out onto the yard.
He knew at that moment that he must somehow spirit Thekla away even if he lost his own life in doing so.
The mere thought of her being assaulted by men inflamed with drink made him feel that he wanted to fight them all single-handed.
He stood at the window for a long time and Maniu did not speak, but continued with his cooking.
Eventually Drogo made up his mind.
“I want you to go down to the harbour, Maniu,” he said, “and find out if there is a ship that would carry us to safety.”
He hesitated for a moment and then resumed,
“It would be wise for you to be carrying something that you ostensibly have to sell. Then, if anybody is watching, they will not think that you personally have any desire to leave your country.”
“I understand,” Maniu said. “I take box of fruit I found in street.”
Drogo thought he would more likely have taken it from some man who had stolen it, but he made no comment.
“Go at once!” he said. “I cannot take Her Royal Highness out of the house until it is dark. But, if you find a ship, I will talk to the Captain myself.”
Maniu picked up his coat, which he had laid on a chair and put it on.
Carrying the box of fruit that he had set down just inside the back door, he went out into the yard.
He unbolted the door into the street and, when Maniu had passed through it, Drogo bolted it behind him.
Then he went back to Thekla to find that she had changed her gown for one of those he had brought her from the Palace.
She had also arranged her hair as it had been yesterday, but not quite so skilfully, he thought, as it would have been done by an experienced lady’s maid.
However, she looked very lovely and he knew, as she watched him coming towards her, that she was waiting for him to say so.
He stood gazing at her.
Then, as if she could not help herself, she moved against him holding onto the lapels of his coat with both her hands.
“What have – you been – arranging with Maniu?” she asked in a frightened voice. “You are – not going to – leave me behind?”
“No, I am taking you with me,” Drogo replied. “But we have to be sensible and realise that, if the revolutionaries have the slightest idea that you are leaving the country, they will watch every ship and every road out of the City.”
“Perhaps they will – think I am with – Papa,” Thekla whispered.
Drogo was certain that by this time the leaders of the revolution would have found out that she had left the Palace only last night.
He had, however, no wish to frighten her and very gently he set her down on a chair, saying as he did so,
“I want to tell you my plans.”
She clasped her hands together like a child and he knew that she was listening to him intently.
“I have sent Maniu to the harbour,” he said, “to see if there is a ship that would be willing to carry us.”
He paused and then went on,
“If we do find one, it may be very uncomfortable, but at least it would give you a chance of reaching Bulgaria or some other Balkan country. Later you will be able to join your father wherever he may be.”
He thought as he spoke that the King would, in all likelihood, have a chance of reaching Romania or perhaps Russia.
The Russians would undoubtedly pretend to offer him sanctuary although they had been instrumental in fomenting the revolution against him.
The revolutionaries would set up their own Government and the King would live in exile for the rest of his life.
It was an all too familiar pattern and Drogo could only hope that for Thekla’s sake by some miracle it would not be repeated.
She did not speak for some moments and then she said,
“We have never been very friendly with the Bulgarians and, if I have to go to any – country other than – my own, I would rather it was Greece or, better still, England.”
Drogo stared at her.
“Are you suggesting that you would go to your mother’s relations?”
“If you would take me,” she said. “It would be wonderful to be with you an
d then I would not be afraid.”
“It’s quite impossible!” Drogo exclaimed.
But, when he had spoken, he wondered if that was not really the best possible solution.
According to Thekla, even when she was in Kozan, she was unhappy because of her stepmother.
He was sure that her English relatives would have every sympathy for her predicament and perhaps Queen Victoria might even offer to help the King regain his throne.
All this flashed through his mind.
Then, as he saw the expression in Thekla’s very eloquent eyes, he knew that she was reading his thoughts.
She clearly wanted above everything else to make him take her to England.
At least now, he thought, they had enough money.
At the same time he was sensible enough to be aware that it might be very difficult to find a ship in which they could embark without being apprehended.
The revolutionaries would undoubtedly be watching all ships leaving the Capital, determined to find the Princess. Then she would certainly be taken from him.
He would suffer what was known diplomatically as ‘an unfortunate accident’.
It would in reality be cold-blooded murder!
He knew, even as he thought about it, that the secrets he carried must reach London before he died, but he had no idea of how he could get them there.
He was thinking of himself when Thekla gave a little sob.
“I am – making things – difficult for you,” she said. “Perhaps it would be – best if after all you took – me to the Convent. I think, if I pleaded with the Mother Superior, she would hide me.”
Drogo stiffened.
He remembered what Maniu had told him and he knew that even if the nuns had not been violated he could not let Thekla out of his sight.
“Let’s wait until Maniu returns,” he said, “and see what he has to tell us.”
He stopped speaking a moment and then continued,
“In the meantime send up a special prayer to St. Vitus, or whoever is the special Saint for today, that the angels will watch over us and show us the way to escape.”
“I was praying all the time you were at the Palace,” Thekla said simply.
“Your prayers were answered.”
As Drogo spoke, he looked at the jewellery that was lying on the bed.
A Revolution Of Love Page 6
