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But at a sign from him Stephanu stepped back and took my bridle, and within a couple of minutes I felt that my pony's feet were treading good turf and, at a cry from my guide, ducked my head to avoid the boughs as we threaded our way down through an orchard of stalwart olives.
"Nay, mistress," said Marc'antonio, with another glance at Stephanu; "but first cross them, that there be no telling the right from the left: for we are two jealous men." She crossed them obediently, and the two took each a hand and kissed it. Now all this while I could see that she was struggling for speech, and as they released her hands she found it.
I read his meaning that he wished to plan his campaign privately with Stephanu and, reining in my pony, I fell back out of earshot.
Marc'antonio lifted and waved a hand. "That will be Stephanu," he announced; and sure enough, before we had pushed a couple of furlongs up the slope, we caught sight of Stephanu descending a steep scree to meet us. He and Marc'antonio nodded salutation brusquely, as though they had parted but a few hours ago. Marc'antonio, though relieved to see him, wore a judicial frown.
"So you tell me," I answered, with a scornful laugh, brazening it out. "You are her man, and Stephanu is her man, and the Prince too, and the Father Domenico, no doubt. Yes, you are all her men, you four: but why can she collect no others?" I paused a moment and, holding up a hand, checked them off contemptuously upon my fingers. "Four of you! and among you at least one traitor!
Stephanu repeated the words as a child repeats a lesson, but whether ironically or not his face did not tell. "Also I have seen her. And that is the devil of it." "Will you explain?" "She will have nothing to do with me; nor with you. I told her that you would be upon the road and following close after me. Naturally I said nothing of the cavalier here, for I knew nothing " "Did she ask?"
It can be no other than the Prince, returning this way!" While we stood with our faces upturned to the granite crags, I caught the Princess regarding me doubtfully. Her gaze passed on as if to interrogate Marc'antonio and Stephanu, who, however, paid no heed, being preoccupied. Again the horn sounded; not clear as before, although close at hand, for the thick woods muffled it.
Therefore I knew you would not have quitted it, if alive; and if you were dead " Stephanu shrugged his shoulders. "I was in a hurry, you understand; and in a hurry a man must take a few risks." "I am not saying you did ill," growled Marc'antonio, slightly mollified. "The Princess said so, however.
"Is it meet, think you, O brother, for a King of Corsica to kill his hostage?" "Is it meet, O sister," he snarled, "for you, of all women, to champion a man and a foreigner before my soldiers? Shoot him, Stephanu!" Her head went up proudly. "Stephanu will not shoot.
When they were gone I laughed again, with a glance at Nat who lay with closed eyes and white still face where Marc'antonio and Stephanu had made a couch of fern and some heather for him under the chestnut boughs. The sight of the heather gave me an idea, and I walked back to where, at the end of the chestnut wood, a noble clump of it grew, under a scarp of rock where the pines broke off.
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