“Praise and thanks be, Lady, that you have come. My weary head and my long years of service I lay at your feet. See if I have served you faithfully.”
The vision of womanhood gently inclined her head to the old man. He fell to his face and was silent.
Once more the regal apparition turned to me and I seemed to hear a voice, like a bell ringing from a distant tower:
“Greetings: – Longed for – Chosen – Not yet tested!” and as the echo died away I seemed to hear Jane’s earthly voice return, repeating her anxious warning: “– help yourself. – Be strong.”
Suddenly the vision paled as a noise of uproar came from the courtyard beyond the wall.
I looked up to see Lipotin staring incomprehendingly at myself and the prostrate gardener in turns. A few brief words told me he had seen nothing of the vision. He was merely puzzled by the old man’s strange behaviour.
But before he had time to bend down to him, men rushed towards us from the castle courtyard, shouting. I hurried to meet them. Words battered at my ear like breakers in a storm and a second later my eyes saw: in a shallow spot in the middle of the river – below where the road follows a sharp bend high above a rocky precipice – picked out by the white lines of foam from the current, was the wreck of the Princess’ car.
Slowly the pandemonium around me resolved into words: “All three dead! It seemed to take off into the air, right into the air. The chauffeur must have been out of his mind, or blinded by the devil!” – – “Jane! Jane!” It was my own cry that woke me! I turned to call Lipotin, but he was kneeling next to the gardener who was still lying motionless on the grass. He raised the old man’s head and looked at me with empty, soulless eyes. The old man’s body slipped from his hands onto its side. The old man was dead.
Lipotin continued to stare at me as if in a trance. I was incapable of speech. I just pointed over the parapet down to the river. He stared down into the valley for a long time, then passed his hand lightly over his forehead: “So: sunk into the green depths once more. Steep banks! I am weary ... Did you hear? They are calling me.”
A flotilla of little boats brought the bodies from the shallow rapids. Only the two women; the chauffeur had been carried away downstream. “Corpses that those waters bear away are never found,” someone said, “they are swept away without coming to the surface until they reach the far-off sea.” I shivered at the thought of seeing the face of my cousin, John Roger, staring up at me from the waters, deathly pale and bloated.
And then the dreadful question: was it an accident? ... And this? What could this mean? Jane’s dagger was lodged deep in the Princess’ breast, piercing her heart.
She must have impaled herself on the spearhead by accident when the car crashed – at least that was what I told myself. I felt almost like a corpse myself as I stood for a long time before the dead women: Jane seemed to be sleeping with an expression of peace and contentment on her face. Her quiet, budding beauty seemed to blossom on the withered stem and dried my tears and turned my lamentation into prayer: “Holy guardian angel of my life, intercede for me that I may bear it all ...”
The Princess’ brow was furrowed. Her lips, closed tight in pain, seemed to repress a cry. It was almost as if she were still alive and about to wake up at any moment. Tiny shadows from the leaves dancing in the breeze flitted across her eyelids. – Or did she suddenly open them and close them again quickly when she saw I might notice. No, no: she is dead! The dagger has pierced her heart!! Then, as the hours passed, the tension in her features relaxed and her face was distorted by a repulsive, cat-like trait.
Since the funeral of the two women I have not seen Lipotin. But I await a visit from him hourly; as we parted at the cemetery gate he said:
“Now it begins in earnest! Now we will see who will be Lord of the Dagger. Put your trust in yourself alone, if you can. – But I will, of course, remain your obedient servant, and when the time is ripe I will come to ask if you have need of me. By the way, the red Dugpa monks have sent me the black spot ... That means ...”
“Oh, yes?” I asked, preoccupied; my whole being was filled with mourning for Jane. “Well?”
“That means ...” Lipotin did not complete the sentence but just drew his hand across his throat.
By the time I had taken in his gesture and asked him what the meaning of it all was, he had disappeared in the crush of people getting on and off a tram.
I often go over in my mind all that he said and did; and still I ask myself: was it real? Or did I just imagine it? These events have a different place in my memory from those that I went through at the same time ...
How long is it now since I buried Jane side by side with Assja Shotokalungin? How can I know? I have not counted the days, nor the weeks, nor the months; – or is it years that have passed
