“Ah, it’s a constable. What’s up, Constable? Found another stray cow?” please Your Princeliness, there are Mongols on the Meadow Road, where the stop-station be. They say they have leave to pass, and us mayn’t stop they. So the guards they’m asked we to leave you know, and to instruct them in this matter.”
The card-players looked up from their greasy decks. “Mongols in the meadow?” asked Von Shtrumpf.
“What can he mean?” enquired Shtruwelpeyter.
Popoff moved to rise, sank back with a groan. “No use,” said he. “/can’t go. So you three had better go.”
They went.
The young man there at the border-station did look somewhat like Little Handsome Hans'li the puppet, and he was shouting. “What do you mean, you can’t let me cross without orders? How dare you stop me? I have Diplomatic Immunity!” His voice was slightly hoarse, as though he had been shouting for a while; but he might as well have told them that he had Pott’s Fracture, for all the good it was doing him. “ ‘Orders,’ what orders?” he cried, literally stamping his foot. “For that matter, whose orders?”
Eszterhazy stepped forward; and, as all eyes turned on him, he said, “These orders, sir,” and he handed over the document which had been handed him by his host, Prince Yohan — who had copied it, with a sufficiency of moans and groans, as he lay upon his couch of pain — copied it from some older form and model. The young man took it, not without a look of injury and outrage, and glanced at it.
The document began:
WE, JOHANNES, to our well-beloved Cousins and fellow-Christians of high degree, videlicet the Kings of the Greeks, Franks, Burgundians, and Castillians, as well as to all Hetmans, Woywodes, Chieftains, Dukes, Counts, and Constables . . .
— and went on to describe by title, clothing, and bodily appearance (as revealed by Psalmanazzar and Agag) His Young Highness, heir to The Heir, etc., etc., and adjured ACC THE AFOREMENTIONED to
pay him all worshipful respect — but allow him not to pass without further word and release, and herein fail not, by the Holy Sepulchre and the Anointing Oil, lest they die unshriven and impaled and become meat for pigs and crows . . .
There was a signature, and a very large seal.
His Young Highness, August Salvador, the heir to the Heir, did not bother to carry further the unpersuasive role of Mr. Bill-Silas Sneed, Drummer in American Cloth and Cheese. He read the document, and his laugh, as he tossed it down, seemed genuine. His face, which had been petulant and fatigued, once again justified its likeness, appearing (suitably framed) upon the tables of about half-a-million servant-girls and shop-keepers’ assistants. The document fell, and one of the wild-looking men picked it up. There were a number of wild-looking men at the scene, many with leather arm-bands and leather badges. They may not ever have done much writing themselves, but they had evidently a respect for that which was written . . . had they lived where more was written, and more often, perhaps they might have had less.
The Crown Princeling said, “You must have ransacked my old Bobbo’s trunk to locate this antique mummery, or flummery. Even if those kings were present, do you think that any of them would pay attention?”
“No,” said Eszterhazy, “but there are constables present, and they will.”
So there were. So they did. This ancient office, for long a sort of quiet smile, these ancient officers of the counts’ stables, duties now largely confined to the impoundment of cattle, lost, strayed, or stolen; of this ancient office, still they were officers. Hulking, hairy, uncouth, wild-looking, unkempt, a simple badge of office strapped to a sleeve, they passed this odd, odd document from hand to hand; and those who could read, read it to those who could not. And always they pointed to the seal. And always they pointed to the signature.
And steadily they continued coming in from the woods. And gradually they blocked the road. And gradually the Crown Princeling wilted. His bravado, his self-assurance, melted away. Mere youth and courage and passion had carried him thus far. If he had simply gone out on this mad-cap scheme in disguise, he might have succeeded. Even if he had added to this mad-cap scheme the hare-brained addition of a false diplomatic immunity, he might have succeeded.
Then again, he might not.
At other border-points, crossings, stop-stations, no one might have ever heard of the Grand Mogul; seeing a diplomatic seal, they might have simply let the baggage and its owner pass on into foreign territory. But here —
Right here — only here — and here alone, they had heard of him quite well. That is, not precisely of him — the last him, dying (long after the Sepoy Mutiny) in squalor and exile — but of his ancestors. Babar? Akbar? Well, anyway — Tamurlane. And Genghis Khan.
And Genghis Khan.
Something about that last name caught in Eszterhazy’s mind. It, but not quite exactly it. Had it not other forms? Certainly. Zinghis Khan, he had surely seen that one somewhere. But that was not it. In a flash and a surge it came to him. Chinghis Khan. Well. And what of it?
Old Gingers. That of it. He had been wrong about its having been a nickname for Barbarossa. This is where he would have come, Old Ginger, I mean ... it helps to know the mountain passes if you want to move an army through .. . Well... It may haye passed out of all common knowledge that, here in Eastern Europe, they had once waited for the Golden Horde to come riding. But it had not passed out of common knowledge here. And here was where August Salvador had come with his preposterous “diplomatic immunity” (probably his valet had bought it from the valet of the tottery Jam Jam Sahib).
The rough, archaic-looking, archaic-thinking rural constables looked grimly at the poor, befuddled, school-and-lessons-shunning Princeling.
“The Mongols shall not pass,” they said.
Long after Eszterhazy had uttered the tired, worn-past-satire words — indicating Von Shtrumpf and Shtruvvelpeyter — had said, “Will you go with these gentlemen, please?” for what else could he have said? — still, he looked at the document, smeared as it was by the honest dirt on the rough and calloused hands of the rural constables, the last of whom to read it had passed it on to him. He looked at the seal. It had meant something to these wild men. But it meant nothing to him. And the signature? Again — it had meant much to the men of these half-lost, secluded mountains, where the past lived on and the present was not yet born; did it mean anything to him, Engelbert Eszterhazy, Doctor of this and Doctor of that?
His own finger traced the large, archaic letters. Yohan Popoff. Well, and so —
Not quite. He had read — what he had expected to read, not actually what
was written. Which was:
Yohan Popa
Yohan Popa, was what the signature actually read. In other words, words which both mystified and made clear, John the Priest, in other words. Now he knew who had conducted the clandestine communion service in the chapel; the exotic, divine liturgy, or mass.
“We are waiting for you, Engelbert,” someone called from the carriage.
“Been there a long time,” that family? Yes, they had. They had indeed been there a long time. A very long time indeed. A “descendant of His Reverence”? To be sure. Celebrated the divine liturgy clandestinely, offered guests the liberty of his kingdom, did he? Of course. To be sure. He was entitled. And stillhe and his men stood guard against the Mongols. John the Priest. Yes.