THE PROPHECY.
Curdie sat and watched every motion of the sleeping king. All the night,
to his ear, the palace lay as quiet as a nursery of healthful children.
At sunrise he called the princess.
"How has his Majesty slept?" were her first words as she entered the
room.
"Quite quietly," answered Curdie; "that is, since the doctor was got rid
of."
"How did you manage that?" inquired Irene; and Curdie had to tell all
about it.
"How terrible!" she said. "Did it not startle the king dreadfully?"
"It did rather. I found him getting out of bed, sword in hand."
"The brave old man!" cried the princess.
"Not so old!" said Curdie, "--as you will soon see. He went off again
in a minute or so; but for a little while he was restless, and once when
he lifted his hand it came down on the spikes of his crown, and he half
waked."
"But where _is_ the crown?" cried Irene, in sudden terror.
"I stroked his hands," answered Curdie, "and took the crown from them;
and ever since he has slept quietly, and again and again smiled in his
sleep."
"I have never seen him do that," said the princess. "But what have you
done with the crown, Curdie?"
"Look," said Curdie, moving away from the bedside.
Irene followed him--and there, in the middle of the floor, she saw a
strange sight. Lina lay at full length, fast asleep, her tail stretched
out straight behind her and her fore-legs before her: between the two
paws meeting in front of it, her nose just touching it behind, glowed
and flashed the crown, like a nest for the humming-birds of heaven.
Irene gazed, and looked up with a smile.
"But what if the thief were to come, and she not to wake?" she said.
"Shall I try her?" And as she spoke she stooped towards the crown.
"No, no, no!" cried Curdie, terrified. "She would frighten you out of
your wits. I would do it to show you, but she would wake your father.
You have no conception with what a roar she would spring at my throat.
But you shall see how lightly she wakes the moment I speak to
her.--Lina!"
She was on her feet the same instant, with her great tail sticking out
straight behind her, just as it had been lying.
"Good dog!" said the princess, and patted her head. Lina wagged her tail
solemnly, like the boom of an anchored sloop. Irene took the crown, and
laid it where the king would see it when he woke.
"Now, princess," said Curdie, "I must leave you for a few minutes. You
must bolt the door, please, and not open it to any one."
Away to the cellar he went with Lina, taking care, as they passed
through the servants' hall, to get her a good breakfast. In about one
minute she had eaten what he gave her, and looked up in his face: it was
not more she wanted, but work. So out of the cellar they went through
the passage, and Curdie into the dungeon, where he pulled up Lina,
opened the door, let her out, and shut it again behind her. As he
reached the door of the king's chamber, Lina was flying out of the gate
of Gwyntystorm as fast as her mighty legs could carry her.
* * * * *
"What's come to the wench?" growled the men-servants one to another,
when the chambermaid appeared among them the next morning. There was
something in her face which they could not understand, and did not
like.
"Are we all dirt?" they said. "What are you thinking about? Have you
seen yourself in the glass this morning, miss?"
She made no answer.
"Do you want to be treated as you deserve, or will you speak, you
hussy?" said the first woman-cook. "I would fain know what right _you_
have to put on a face like that!"
"You won't believe me," said the girl.
"Of course not. What is it?"
"I must tell you, whether you believe me or not," she said.
"Of course you must."
"It is this, then: if you do not repent of your bad ways, you are all
going to be punished--all turned out of the palace together."
"A mighty punishment!" said the butler. "A good riddance, say I, of the
trouble of keeping minxes like you in order! And why, pray, should we be
turned out? What have I to repent of now, your holiness?"
"That you know best yourself," said the girl.
"A pretty piece of insolence! How should _I_ know, forsooth, what a
menial like you has got against me! There _are_ people in this
house--oh! I'm not blind to their ways! but every one for himself, say
I!--Pray, Miss Judgment, who gave you such an impertinent message to his
majesty's household?"
"One who is come to set things right in the king's house."
"Right, indeed!" cried the butler; but that moment the thought came back
to him of the roar he had heard in the cellar, and he turned pale and
was silent.
The steward took it up next.
"And pray, pretty prophetess," he said, attempting to chuck her under
the chin, "what have _I_ got to repent of?"
"That you know best yourself," said the girl. "You have but to look into
your books or your heart."
"Can you tell _me_, then, what I have to repent of?" said the groom of
the chambers.
"That you know best yourself," said the girl once more. "The person who
told me to tell you said the servants of this house had to repent of
thieving, and lying, and unkindness, and drinking; and they will be made
to repent of them one way, if they don't do it of themselves another."
Then arose a great hubbub; for by this time all the servants in the
house were gathered about her, and all talked together, in towering
indignation.
"Thieving, indeed!" cried one. "A pretty word in a house where
everything is left lying about in a shameless way, tempting poor
innocent girls!--a house where nobody cares for anything, or has the
least respect to the value of property!"
"I suppose you envy me this brooch of mine," said another. "There was
just a half-sheet of note-paper about it, not a scrap more, in a drawer
that's always open in the writing-table in the study! What sort of a
place is that for a jewel? Can you call it stealing to take a thing from
such a place as that? Nobody cared a straw about it. It might as well
have been in the dust-hole! If it had been locked up--then, to be sure!"
"Drinking!" said the chief porter, with a husky laugh. "And who wouldn't
drink when he had a chance? Or who would repent it, except that the
drink was gone? Tell me that, Miss Innocence."
"Lying!" said a great, coarse footman. "I suppose you mean when I told
you yesterday you were a pretty girl when you didn't pout? Lying,
indeed! Tell us something worth repenting of! Lying is the way of
Gwyntystorm. You should have heard Jabez lying to the cook last night!
He wanted a sweetbread for his pup, and pretended it was for the
princess! Ha! ha! ha!"
"Unkindness! I wonder who's unkind! Going and listening to any stranger
against her fellow-servants, and then bringing back his wicked words to
trouble them!" said the oldest and worst of the housemaids. "--One of
ourselves, too!--Come, you hypocrite! this is all an invention of yours
and your young man's, to take your revenge of us because we found you
out in a lie last night. Tell true now:--wasn't it the same that stole
the loaf and the pie that sent you with the impudent message?"
As she said this, she stepped up to the housemaid and gave her, instead
of time to answer, a box on the ear that almost threw her down; and
whoever could get at her began to push and hustle and pinch and punch
her.
"You invite your fate," she said quietly.
They fell furiously upon her, drove her from the hall with kicks and
blows, hustled her along the passage, and threw her down the stair to
the wine-cellar, then locked the door at the top of it, and went back to
their breakfast.
In the meantime the king and the princess had had their bread and wine,
and the princess, with Curdie's help, had made the room as tidy as she
could--they were terribly neglected by the servants. And now Curdie set
himself to interest and amuse the king, and prevent him from thinking
too much, in order that he might the sooner think the better. Presently,
at his majesty's request, he began from the beginning, and told
everything he could recall of his life, about his father and mother and
their cottage on the mountain, of the inside of the mountain and the
work there, about the goblins and his adventures with them. When he came
to finding the princess and her nurse overtaken by the twilight on the
mountain, Irene took up her share of the tale, and told all about
herself to that point, and then Curdie took it up again; and so they
went on, each fitting in the part that the other did not know, thus
keeping the hoop of the story running straight; and the king listened
with wondering and delighted ears, astonished to find what he could so
ill comprehend, yet fitting so well together from the lips of two
narrators. At last, with the mission given him by the wonderful princess
and his consequent adventures, Curdie brought up the whole tale to the
present moment. Then a silence fell, and Irene and Curdie thought the
king was asleep. But he was far from it; he was thinking about many
things. After a long pause he said:--
"Now at last, my children, I am compelled to believe many things I could
not and do not yet understand--things I used to hear, and sometimes see,
as often as I visited my mother's home. Once, for instance, I heard my
mother say to her father--speaking of me--'He is a good, honest boy, but
he will be an old man before he understands;' and my grandfather
answered, 'Keep up your heart, child: my mother will look after him.' I
thought often of their words, and the many strange things besides I both
heard and saw in that house; but by degrees, because I could not
understand them, I gave up thinking of them. And indeed I had almost
forgotten them, when you, my child, talking that day about the Queen
Irene and her pigeons, and what you had seen in her garret, brought them
all back to my mind in a vague mass. But now they keep coming back to
me, one by one, every one for itself; and I shall just hold my peace,
and lie here quite still, and think about them all till I get well
again."
What he meant they could not quite understand, but they saw plainly that
already he was better.
"Put away my crown," he said. "I am tired of seeing it, and have no more
any fear of its safety."
They put it away together, withdrew from the bedside, and left him in
peace.