Chapter III. The Legend of the Lost Prince

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

　　As he walked through the streets, he was thinking of one of thesestories. It was one he had heard first when he was very young,and it had so seized upon his imagination that he had asked oftenfor it. It was, indeed, a part of the long-past history ofSamavia, and he had loved it for that reason. Lazarus had oftentold it to him, sometimes adding much detail, but he had alwaysliked best his father's version, which seemed a thrilling andliving thing. On their journey from Russia, during an hour whenthey had been forced to wait in a cold wayside station and hadfound the time long, Loristan had discussed it with him. Healways found some such way of making hard and comfortless hourseasier to live through."Fine, big lad--for a foreigner," Marco heard a man say to hiscompanion as he passed them this morning. "Looks like a Pole ora Russian."It was this which had led his thoughts back to the story of theLost Prince. He knew that most of the people who looked at himand called him a "foreigner" had not even heard of Samavia.Those who chanced to recall its existence knew of it only as asmall fierce country, so placed upon the map that the largercountries which were its neighbors felt they must control andkeep it in order, and therefore made incursions into it, andfought its people and each other for possession. But it had notbeen always so. It was an old, old country, and hundreds ofyears ago it had been as celebrated for its peaceful happinessand wealth as for its beauty. It was often said that it was oneof the most beautiful places in the world. A favorite Samavianlegend was that it had been the site of the Garden of Eden. Inthose past centuries, its people had been of such great stature,physical beauty, and strength, that they had been like a race ofnoble giants. They were in those days a pastoral people, whoserich crops and splendid flocks and herds were the envy of lessfertile countries. Among the shepherds and herdsmen there werepoets who sang their own songs when they piped among their sheepupon the mountain sides and in the flower-thick valleys. Theirsongs had been about patriotism and bravery, and faithfulness totheir chieftains and their country. The simple courtesy of thepoorest peasant was as stately as the manner of a noble. Butthat, as Loristan had said with a tired smile, had been beforethey had had time to outlive and forget the Garden of Eden. Fivehundred years ago, there had succeeded to the throne a king whowas bad and weak. His father had lived to be ninety years old,and his son had grown tired of waiting in Samavia for his crown.He had gone out into the world, and visited other countries andtheir courts. When he returned and became king, he lived as noSamavian king had lived before. He was an extravagant, viciousman of furious temper and bitter jealousies. He was jealous ofthe larger courts and countries he had seen, and triedto introduce their customs and their ambitions. He ended byintroducing their worst faults and vices. There arose politicalquarrels and savage new factions. Money was squandered untilpoverty began for the first time to stare the country in theface. The big Samavians, after their first stupefaction, brokeforth into furious rage. There were mobs and riots, then bloodybattles. Since it was the king who had worked this wrong, theywould have none of him. They would depose him and make his sonking in his place. It was at this part of the story that Marcowas always most deeply interested. The young prince was totallyunlike his father. He was a true royal Samavian. He was biggerand stronger for his age than any man in the country, and he wasas handsome as a young Viking god. More than this, he had alion's heart, and before he was sixteen, the shepherds andherdsmen had already begun to make songs about his young valor,and his kingly courtesy, and generous kindness. Not only theshepherds and herdsmen sang them, but the people in the streets.The king, his father, had always been jealous of him, even whenhe was only a beautiful, stately child whom the people roaredwith joy to see as he rode through the streets. When he returnedfrom his journeyings and found him a splendid youth, he detestedhim. When the people began to clamor and demand that he himselfshould abdicate, he became insane with rage, and committed suchcruelties that the people ran mad themselves. One day theystormed the palace, killed and overpowered the guards, and,rushing into the royal apartments, burst in upon the king as heshuddered green with terror and fury in his private room. He wasking no more, and must leave the country, they vowed, as theyclosed round him with bared weapons and shook them in his face.Where was the prince? They must see him and tell him theirultimatum. It was he whom they wanted for a king. They trustedhim and would obey him. They began to shout aloud his name,calling him in a sort of chant in unison, "Prince Ivor--PrinceIvor--Prince Ivor!" But no answer came. The people of thepalace had hidden themselves, and the place was utterly silent.The king, despite his terror, could not help but sneer."Call him again," he said. "He is afraid to come out of hishole!"A savage fellow from the mountain fastnesses struck him on themouth."He afraid!" he shouted. "If he does not come, it is becausethou hast killed him--and thou art a dead man!"This set them aflame with hotter burning. They broke away,leaving three on guard, and ran about the empty palace roomsshouting the prince's name. But there was no answer. Theysought him in a frenzy, bursting open doors and flinging downevery obstacle in their way. A page, found hidden in a closet,owned that he had seen His Royal Highness pass through a corridorearly in the morning. He had been softly singing to himself oneof the shepherd's songs.And in this strange way out of the history of Samavia, fivehundred years before Marco's day, the young prince had walked--singing softly to himself the old song of Samavia's beauty andhappiness. For he was never seen again.In every nook and cranny, high and low, they sought for him,believing that the king himself had made him prisoner in somesecret place, or had privately had him killed. The fury of thepeople grew to frenzy. There were new risings, and every fewdays the palace was attacked and searched again. But no trace ofthe prince was found. He had vanished as a star vanishes when itdrops from its place in the sky. During a riot in the palace,when a last fruitless search was made, the king himself waskilled. A powerful noble who headed one of the uprisings madehimself king in his place. From that time, the once splendidlittle kingdom was like a bone fought for by dogs. Its pastoralpeace was forgotten. It was torn and worried and shaken bystronger countries. It tore and worried itself with internalfights. It assassinated kings and created new ones. No man wassure in his youth what ruler his maturity would live under, orwhether his children would die in useless fights, or throughstress of poverty and cruel, useless laws. There were no moreshepherds and herdsmen who were poets, but on the mountain sidesand in the valleys sometimes some of the old songs were sung.Those most beloved were songs about a Lost Prince whose name hadbeen Ivor. If he had been king, he would have saved Samavia, theverses said, and all brave hearts believed that he would stillreturn. In the modern cities, one of the jocular cynical sayingswas, "Yes, that will happen when Prince Ivor comes again."In his more childish days, Marco had been bitterly troubled bythe unsolved mystery. Where had he gone--the Lost Prince? Hadhe been killed, or had he been hidden away in a dungeon? But hewas so big and brave, he would have broken out of any dungeon.The boy had invented for himself a dozen endings to the story."Did no one ever find his sword or his cap--or hear anything orguess anything about him ever--ever--ever?" he would sayrestlessly again and again.One winter's night, as they sat together before a small fire in acold room in a cold city in Austria, he had been so eager andasked so many searching questions, that his father gave him ananswer he had never given him before, and which was a sort ofending to the story, though not a satisfying one:"Everybody guessed as you are guessing. A few very oldshepherds in the mountains who like to believe ancient historiesrelate a story which most people consider a kind of legend. Itis that almost a hundred years after the prince was lost, an oldshepherd told a story his long-dead father had confided to him insecret just before he died. The father had said that, going outin the early morning on the mountain side, he had found in theforest what he at first thought to be the dead body of abeautiful, boyish, young huntsman. Some enemy had plainlyattacked him from behind and believed he had killed him. He was,however, not quite dead, and the shepherd dragged him into a cavewhere he himself often took refuge from storms with his flocks.Since there was such riot and disorder in the city, he was afraidto speak of what he had found; and, by the time he discoveredthat he was harboring the prince, the king had already beenkilled, and an even worse man had taken possession of his throne,and ruled Samavia with a blood-stained, iron hand. To theterrified and simple peasant the safest thing seemed to get thewounded youth out of the country before there was any chance ofhis being discovered and murdered outright, as he would surelybe. The cave in which he was hidden was not far from thefrontier, and while he was still so weak that he was hardlyconscious of what befell him, he was smuggled across it in a cartloaded with sheepskins, and left with some kind monks who did notknow his rank or name. The shepherd went back to his flocks andhis mountains, and lived and died among them, always in terror ofthe changing rulers and their savage battles with each other.The mountaineers said among themselves, as the generationssucceeded each other, that the Lost Prince must have died young,because otherwise he would have come back to his country andtried to restore its good, bygone days.""Yes, he would have come," Marco said."He would have come if he had seen that he could help hispeople," Loristan answered, as if he were not reflecting on astory which was probably only a kind of legend. "But he wasvery young, and Samavia was in the hands of the new dynasty, andfilled with his enemies. He could not have crossed the frontierwithout an army. Still, I think he died young."It was of this story that Marco was thinking as he walked, andperhaps the thoughts that filled his mind expressed themselves inhis face in some way which attracted attention. As he wasnearing Buckingham Palace, a distinguished-looking well-dressedman with clever eyes caught sight of him, and, after looking athim keenly, slackened his pace as he approached him from theopposite direction. An observer might have thought he sawsomething which puzzled and surprised him. Marco didn't see himat all, and still moved forward, thinking of the shepherds andthe prince. The well- dressed man began to walk still moreslowly. When he was quite close to Marco, he stopped and spoketo him--in the Samavian language."What is your name?" he asked.Marco's training from his earliest childhood had been an extra-ordinary thing. His love for his father had made it simple andnatural to him, and he had never questioned the reason for it.As he had been taught to keep silence, he had been taught tocontrol the expression of his face and the sound of his voice,and, above all, never to allow himself to look startled. But forthis he might have started at the extraordinary sound of theSamavian words suddenly uttered in a London street by an Englishgentleman. He might even have answered the question in Samavianhimself. But he did not. He courteously lifted his cap andreplied in English:"Excuse me?"The gentleman's clever eyes scrutinized him keenly. Then he alsospoke in English."Perhaps you do not understand? I asked your name because youare very like a Samavian I know," he said."I am Marco Loristan," the boy answered him.The man looked straight into his eyes and smiled."That is not the name," he said. "I beg your pardon, myboy."He was about to go on, and had indeed taken a couple of stepsaway, when he paused and turned to him again."You may tell your father that you are a very well-trained lad.I wanted to find out for myself." And he went on.Marco felt that his heart beat a little quickly. This was one ofseveral incidents which had happened during the last three years,and made him feel that he was living among things so mysteriousthat their very mystery hinted at danger. But he himself hadnever before seemed involved in them. Why should it matter thathe was well-behaved? Then he remembered something. The man hadnot said "well-behaved," he had said "well-trained."Well-trained in what way? He felt his forehead prickle slightlyas he thought of the smiling, keen look which set itself sostraight upon him. Had he spoken to him in Samavian for anexperiment, to see if he would be startled into forgetting thathe had been trained to seem to know only the language of thecountry he was temporarily living in? But he had not forgotten.He had remembered well, and was thankful that he had betrayednothing. "Even exiles may be Samavian soldiers. I am one. Youmust be one," his father had said on that day long ago when hehad made him take his oath. Perhaps remembering his training wasbeing a soldier. Never had Samavia needed help as she needed itto-day. Two years before, a rival claimant to the throne hadassassinated the then reigning king and his sons, and since then,bloody war and tumult had raged. The new king was a powerfulman, and had a great following of the worst and most self-seekingof the people. Neighboring countries had interfered for theirown welfare's sake, and the newspapers had been full of storiesof savage fighting and atrocities, and of starving peasants.Marco had late one evening entered their lodgings to findLoristan walking to and fro like a lion in a cage, a papercrushed and torn in his hands, and his eyes blazing. He had beenreading of cruelties wrought upon innocent peasants and women andchildren. Lazarus was standing staring at him with huge tearsrunning down his cheeks. When Marco opened the door, the oldsoldier strode over to him, turned him about, and led him out ofthe room."Pardon, sir, pardon!" he sobbed. "No one must see him, noteven you. He suffers so horribly."He stood by a chair in Marco's own small bedroom, where he halfpushed, half led him. He bent his grizzled head, and wept like abeaten child."Dear God of those who are in pain, assuredly it is now the timeto give back to us our Lost Prince!" he said, and Marco knew thewords were a prayer, and wondered at the frenzied intensity ofit, because it seemed so wild a thing to pray for the return of ayouth who had died five hundred years before.When he reached the palace, he was still thinking of the man whohad spoken to him. He was thinking of him even as he looked atthe majestic gray stone building and counted the number of itsstories and windows. He walked round it that he might make anote in his memory of its size and form and its entrances, andguess at the size of its gardens. This he did because it waspart of his game, and part of his strange training.When he came back to the front, he saw that in the great entrancecourt within the high iron railings an elegant but quiet- lookingclosed carriage was drawing up before the doorway. Marco stoodand watched with interest to see who would come out and enter it.He knew that kings and emperors who were not on parade lookedmerely like well-dressed private gentlemen, and often chose to goout as simply and quietly as other men. So he thought that,perhaps, if he waited, he might see one of those well-known faceswhich represent the highest rank and power in a monarchicalcountry, and which in times gone by had also represented thepower over human life and death and liberty."I should like to be able to tell my father that I have seen theKing and know his face, as I know the faces of the czar and thetwo emperors."There was a little movement among the tall men-servants in theroyal scarlet liveries, and an elderly man descended the stepsattended by another who walked behind him. He entered thecarriage, the other man followed him, the door was closed, andthe carriage drove through the entrance gates, where the sentriessaluted.Marco was near enough to see distinctly. The two men weretalking as if interested. The face of the one farthest from himwas the face he had often seen in shop-windows and newspapers.The boy made his quick, formal salute. It was the King; and, ashe smiled and acknowledged his greeting, he spoke to hiscompanion."That fine lad salutes as if he belonged to the army," was whathe said, though Marco could not hear him.His companion leaned forward to look through the window. When hecaught sight of Marco, a singular expression crossed his face."He does belong to an army, sir," he answered, "though he doesnot know it. His name is Marco Loristan."Then Marco saw him plainly for the first time. He was the manwith the keen eyes who had spoken to him in Samavian.