The Princess's Dilemma

Summary

In the echoing stone arteries of an ancestral fortress, a soirée glimmers with candlelit protocol while Princess Elena—veiled in crimson velvet and the weight of unspoken misgivings—presides over a reception meant to celebrate her father’s blood-soaked victories. The prime minister’s announcement of fresh conquests lands like a dull blade; the only scar she can picture belongs to a young captain whose laughter once skimmed across pre-war gardens. Destiny, never subtle, delivers him to her doorstep as a broken prisoner of war, bones splinted, pride in tatters. Elena sheds protocol like a silk glove, installs herself as his clandestine nurse, and soon flings the castle gates ajar so that the enemy may wander her rose-raked terraces. Their clandestine promenades germinate a perilous intimacy—each footstep a silent act of treason—while the prime minister’s pupils darken with possessive bile. When the crown forbids the captain’s presence, Elena slips him a ladder stitched from hemp and rebellion, plus a revolver tucked between pages of Rousseau. Moonlight witnesses his climb downward, a musket crack, hoofbeats, a river crossing, and the inexorable dragnet of cavalry that drags him back to face a hasty court-martial and a waiting noose. Elena bargains with the very minister who covets her hand: her body for his signature on a reprieve. Refusing the transaction, she steals into the dungeon disguised as a turnkey, offers her lover a paper-knife exit into death, and, when he chooses country over shared oblivion, slips him a uniform instead. He vanishes into the night; she falls upon her own stiletto, bleeding out under torchlight that paints the flagstones like poppies.

Synopsis

The princess is presiding at a reception being given in the old castle during the absence of her venerable father. The prime minister announces that the old soldier has again overcome his warring neighbors. The princess does not appear to be over elated, because she recalls that a young captain, whom she had once met in times of peace, might be among the dead or the wounded. Sure enough he is brought to a hospital, a wounded prisoner, and Elena volunteers to act as his nurse despite the protests of the prime minister. As he regains some of his normal strength he chafes under the restraint imposed upon him, and in her efforts to ease his lot, the princess issues orders that he may have use of the castle grounds. In his walks he frequently comes in contact with the princess, and while their intimacy ripens, the prime minister arrows more jealous. At length he clearly indicates his aversion to her companionship with an avowed enemy of her country, and in the name of the king seeks to restrict the captain from exercising in the grounds of the castle. The princess dismisses him and continues to secure an occasional tete-a-tete with the captain. He persistently pleads to her to help him escape from the confinement that is so galling to him and at length she accedes. She forwards to his apartments a rope ladder and a revolver hidden beneath a consignment of books. In the silence of the night he lowers his rope and makes his perilous descent to the foot of the walls. A sentry spies him, fires a warning shot, and engages the captain in a stern struggle. The captain manages, however, to break away; but soon he has a troop of cavalry on his track. He swims a river and rushes pell-mell through woodland country, but his mounted pursuers gradually gain upon him and, still weak from his wounds, he falls panting to the ground as they reach him. A court-martial quickly follows his recapture, and the dread verdict is summarily issued. Princess Elena sends for the prime minister, who has already signed the death warrant, and pleads to him to revoke it. He says he is ready to do so, but imposes, as a condition, that she should become his (the prime minister's) wife. She returns abruptly to her apartments and determines on a course which seems to her to offer the only possible way out for her and the man she loves. Under the cover of the night and closely veiled she steals to the prison and then gains admission to the cell in which the condemned man is crouched in an attitude of hopelessness. At first he thinks she is but a vision of his disordered mind, but when he folds her in his arms he understands the depth of love which has prompted her to come to him. She tells him that the chances of escape are too forlorn to attempt, and knowing that she cannot save him, she has decreed there is only one thing to do, to die together. She takes a paper knife, from her dress and hands it to him, but he recoils, and in an outburst declares that he will not die, but must go back to his country. His country comes first, and recognizing the inevitable, and the futility of their love, the princess rushes from the cell and secures a uniform of a prison warder. The captain kisses her and makes his escape. Later she is found on the floor of the cell, a victim of her own stiletto.