A Tale Without a Name (8 page)

Once inside, Miserlix’s daughter brewed coffee, served it in iron cups, and placed these before them on an iron tray.

The Prince noticed that all the furnishings were also made of iron, and asked why.

“And how would it be otherwise? Mine is the blacksmith’s craft, my lad,” replied Miserlix. “Once upon a time, I was the one who forged all the swords, arrow tips and suits of armour in the kingdom, it was I who would clad the mighty ships with iron, ships which filled the river and spread terror to every neighbour. But the good years are now gone, the ships are lost, as are the weapons, and the palace does not order new ones; my hands hang worthless, useless. What iron was left in my storehouse I used to make furniture, just so I would have something to busy myself with, and not sit around doing nothing. I have no iron left, however. And so, here I sit, idling away the time, smoking my pipe, while my daughter sells her needlework to bring some bread into the house. Everything has been turned upside down, my lad!”

The Prince’s eyes flashed with the new hopes that were being born in his heart.

“And long ago, at the time when the palace still commissioned swords, where did you buy the iron?”

“I did not buy it. The palace provided me with it.”

“And where did the palace get it from?”

“Ah, my boy, those were the days when everyone prospered here. Many were the young men and the families who owed their livelihood to the State mines and quarries. You could see them going down the pits every day, like armies of ants, extracting the stones, and
as many more would be busy in the workshops, where they would separate the ore from the rock. I was then managing one hundred hard-working craftsmen, we earned our bread lavishly, and there wasn’t a soul left without his beef stew or his roast chicken on a Sunday. Those days are gone and vanished, never to return!” said Miserlix with a sigh.

“And why couldn’t the good days come back, I wonder?” said the Prince eagerly. “Why might not the work begin anew, with miners extracting iron, so you could make again arrow tips and spearheads?”

Miserlix smiled.

“And who would be paying for all the hard-toiling labourers? The King is up to his ears in debt. He does not even have food to eat.”

The Prince bowed his head at this, heavy as lead with dark sadness. He needed florins! Where
could
he find florins?

He remembered the lost treasure, and his heart felt quashed, strangled by an iron grip. He rose to take his leave of Miserlix and his daughter.

“Come,” he said to Little Irene. “Let us go to the schoolmaster straight away.” But they had no time to go to his house, for they met him on their way.

“Good greetings to you, my children,” said the schoolmaster, recognizing the two siblings. “Where are you going?”

“I was coming to find you,” said the Prince. “I have a favour to ask, and I was heading towards your house.”

“What a pity!” said the schoolmaster. “I was just now going to town, to see my brother who lives there. Could you perhaps explain while we walk?”

“Why not? I too must go back to the capital with my sister, so we can talk on the way there. I have a proposition for you. I want to learn how to read and write. Will you teach me?”

“Well done! But how much will you pay me? You know I am a poor man. I cannot teach for nothing—”

“I have no money to give you, nor anything else of value,” interrupted the Prince, “but I propose the following arrangement. You only have some wild greens to live on, which the children cultivate on your behalf—”

“Not wild greens, just tubers,” interrupted the schoolmaster. “I grow nothing but carrots, onions and the like now, plants whose yield cannot be seen. Otherwise, all is stolen from me.”

“Well then. What I propose is to bring you a fowl or a hare or a rabbit or any other game I might kill for every lesson you give me. Do you accept?”

“Do I? And how!” said the schoolmaster, overjoyed. “So many years has it been since I last ate meat that I have near forgotten what it tastes like.”

They were walking through the woods.

The schoolmaster took a thick dry branch, cut it and trimmed it into small squares, and scratched on each a letter of the alphabet. Then he sat down at the root of a tree, and spread them before him.

“Come,” he said, “and I shall first teach you the letters and the sounds.”

The schoolmaster had good patience, and the students were eager and keen to learn. And so, when the sun set, the three of them were still sitting beneath the tree, shuffling the wooden squares and sorting them out again, to form syllables and words.

“This is good,” said the schoolmaster. “If we always work as well as we did today, you shall learn even more things than I know myself. Soon I shall give you books too, so you may read on you own.”

They took again the way to the capital. As they walked, they talked of many things.

“Had you passed this way during the days of Prudentius I, it would have seemed to you that the entire land was one great, busy factory,” said the schoolmaster.

“What did everyone do then?” asked the Prince.

“They built ships,” answered the schoolmaster. “And the master builder was my brother. They felled the trees, and carried them down to the river, building there the royal ships, which were then taken to the naval base.”

“And where is your brother now?” asked the Prince fervently.

“He lives in the capital: that is where I am going tonight. But the poor man barely makes ends meet, always living from hand to mouth. If he has one unlucky turn, one day of sickness, he will lose his bread.”

“What is his name?”

“Illstar the master builder, to distinguish him from myself, whom they call Illstar the schoolmaster.”

“I would very much like to meet him,” said the Prince.

“And why not? Instead of going all the way to the School of the State, come tomorrow to his house to have your lesson. If you come early, you will find me there.”

“Very well, then, I will come.”

In front of the door of the master builder’s house, the schoolmaster bid them goodbye, and the Prince went up the mountain slope with Little Irene.

It was late by the time they reached the palace. Everyone was asleep.

Polycarpus alone had anxiously stayed up for them, venturing outside to see if they were approaching, then again going inside, back to the bench where Polydorus lay asleep, to tell him about his worries, which the sleeping man never heard at all.

“I have saved up some food for you, my lady, and also for His Highness, your brother,” he said happily to Little Irene when he saw her. “Go into the dining hall, your young Highness, I have the table all laid out properly.”

Polydorus, however, had been awakened by the voices and was already lighting a torch so they could see their way to the dining hall. He could not light a lantern, for there were no wax tapers or even a tallow candle in the palace any more. So they stuck the torch into a clay pitcher, and by its light brother and sister sat down to eat.

The next day, first thing in the morning, they went once more to the woods, where the Prince killed wildfowl and rabbits, while Little Irene collected eggs from birds’ nests, and picked fruit, and gathered wild greens.

When they returned, still no one was awake. Only Polycarpus was up, getting the back kitchen ready once more for Little Irene.

The Prince took from the pile the schoolmaster’s share, and bid Little Irene farewell.

“I shan’t be long,” he said. “The master builder’s house is very near the foot of the mountain, and I will be back as soon as I have finished my lesson.”

He found the schoolmaster and his brother sitting inside the glassed-in porch of the house, eating bread and olives.

“Welcome, my good lad,” said the schoolmaster, and introduced his brother to the Prince.

The Prince immediately entered into a deep discussion with the master builder, asking him a myriad questions about the way he used to build ships in the past, and the master builder remembered with sadness and with longing the earlier years of his life, relating with tears in his eyes how deeply stirred he had been every time that he would see on the river some new ship, built by his own hands.

“Do you still have the urge to build ships?” asked the Prince. The master builder smiled cynically.

“You must not jest about such things,” he said. “Such pleasantries leave a bitter aftertaste.”

“Yet… and yet, if there might be someone… the King, let us say… and he were to commission new ships, would you build them?”

“The King will not commission them, rest assured,” said the master builder scornfully. “His entire life the King never thought of anything but his own comfort and peace of mind. Now it is too late for him to wake up. Thanks to his High Chancellors, his Supreme Commanders of the Army, his Commanders of the Fleet and their fine company, he does not even have food to eat any more.”

“What did the Supreme Commander of the Army do, exactly, do you know?” asked the Prince.

“You ask about Master Rogue? As though there were a man alive who did not know! He did the same as every other palace courtier. He had absolute control over the army warehouses, and he emptied them all. Once he had sold the armaments, the tents and the uniforms, he had amassed a considerable fortune and he went with it abroad, whilst his royal master never even suspected his absence. Even the stones know what I am telling you. It is a secret well known to everyone in the land! The King is the only one who never seems to hear of any of these things,” added the master builder.

“Is it really fair to put the blame on the King,” said the Prince, turning his face away, pretending to be looking at the street, but in truth trying to conceal the bright scarlet flush on his face. “How could it be the King’s fault, if he has only thieves and scoundrels in his entourage?”

“He ought to have taken care to know the members of his staff before entrusting them with the best interests of the State,” said the master builder, angry and indignant. “And when they turned out to be scoundrels, he ought to have punished them. But when did he ever care about anything? We are always plagued by so-called feelings of good charity! How could you punish a thief, or a traitor, or any other irresponsible and unscrupulous man? ‘The poor wretch,’ they tell you. ‘Why should his life be ruined? Many others do far, far worse!’ And so on and so forth. And it is only the honest men who cannot earn their bread in this land!”

The Prince interrupted him—so as not to hear more against his father.

“Why are there people running in the street?” he asked, pointing to two or three peasants, who were running hurriedly with their wives towards the mountain.

The two Illstars peered out of the window.

“It must be some brawl again,” said the master builder quietly. “We here are used to such goings-on; they no longer make an impression on us.”

“Do you frequently have brawls?” asked the Prince.

“Of course we do; ever since state justice became lax and then was done away with altogether, everyone seeks to defend his right on his own, and seeks to take vengeance on the man who wronged him, or whom he only believes to have wronged him. And so every day there is violent brawling in the capital and in the villages. Quite often
there are murders too. Yet the Law will take no notice! There is not a single policeman to be found anywhere any more!”

The Prince listened, and his soul became more and more distraught on account of the miseries plaguing his land. Whatever he might have to say, the conversation always evolved into a long, grievous complaint.

“And the lesson, then?” asked the schoolmaster, interrupting their talk. “What, you bring me such a scrumptious little rabbit, and you would not learn anything further?”

The Prince took his chips of wood out of his pocket and the lesson began.

“If you can learn as fast every day,” the schoolmaster said, pleased, “I shall soon give you the books I promised, for you to read them on your own.”

Without warning, the door was suddenly thrown open, and the equerry Polydorus entered, panting and covered in dust.

“My lord,” he said, and his voice was trembling, “the King asks you to come at once. Bad tidings have come. His Majesty is at a loss, he weeps and calls for you—the Princess has sent me to ask you to come immediately.”

“My
lord
?!” cried the schoolmaster in a daze.

The master builder started.

“My
lord
?!” he repeated in turn.

The Prince had risen from his seat. His face was deathly pale.

“The King our Royal Uncle…” he muttered.

“Who
are
you?!
Who
are you?!” shouted the master builder, who remembered petrified the words he had uttered earlier.

“I am the King’s son,” said the Prince, stretching out his hand to him. “And now it is I who command you to stop whatever you are doing, and build a new fleet. And if I have no florins to give you, even if many years must pass before I can pay you, again do not stop, only work hard, until the river is swarming again with ships. The time has come for us all to make sacrifices. Forget your own little self and your personal interest, work only for the common good of the land. Our homeland asks this, and I shall myself set the example for all of you.”

The master builder fell upon his knees, seized the boy’s hand and kissed it.

“I
shall
rebuild the fleet,” he said fervently, “and I shall work until all my strength is gone.”

The Prince then went out, his soul in turmoil. Polydorus followed him. Those last words had electrified him and his heart was swelling with love and admiration for his new lord, for the young man who had uttered them.