Back in the days of knights and chivalry and courtly love, a
beautiful young woman fell in love with a man of noble birth, who,
however, was already married. Their love continued to grow until
the woman granted and the man took more than virtue could properly
countenance and one morning the woman awakened with the right to use
the pronoun "we" whenever she spoke.
She realized that she could not inform her lover because of his
position, for he was not only married but also a very prominent
member of the court. So she concealed the matter remarkably over
many months, until, in the fullness of time, it could be concealed
no longer. At that point she resolved to throw herself on the mercy
of her mistress, the king's daughter, to whom she was a lady in
waiting. She took her newborn son to the princess and begged quite
pathetically for her help.
The king's daughter, knowing that he was a hard man who had never
hesitated to crush, kill, or otherwise persecute anyone who offended
him in the slightest, realized that she could not tell the truth or
say simply that the child had been found during one of the princess'
walks, because the king would then send it to a harsh life in an
orphanage--and that would be if she found him in a good mood. She
decided instead to declare to the king that the child was her own
and take the guilt, together with any other consequences, upon
herself, for she loved her lady in waiting very much.
When the king learned that his daughter had given birth (or so he
believed), he was unutterably furious, and spent the better part of
an hour ranting and shouting execrations and breaking things. But
when he demanded which of his knights had helped her into this
situation, the princess, not willing to sacrifice any of the noble
and completely innocent knights of the castle, invented the story of
a secret lover from outside the castle walls.
The king suspected that his daughter was lying, or trying to
lie--for the girl was so honest that she could not dissemble with
conviction--so that he was now even more uncontrollably enraged than
before; he now began screaming directly at his daughter and breaking
larger and more expensive things. And because he could think of
nothing but her duplicity and disobedience and his injured honor and
her betrayal of his affection, he coldly (or rather hotly)
determined to banish her from the kingdom. "For," he argued, "I
will love not those who love not me." He therefore cruelly turned
the girl and the child over to the traders of a passing caravan from
a distant land who would take them past the borders of the kingdom.
Even as she saw her father's look of hatred as she was packed into
the wagon at the rear of the caravan, the princess did not alter her
resolve to keep her secret, for now she knew that if the king knew
the truth, her lady in waiting would most certainly be executed. As
for the lady in waiting, she was so stricken with grief over the
king's actions that she very nearly took her own life. But the
princess had commanded her never to reveal the secret, regardless of
the consequences, and the lady in waiting feared that the princess
would be exposed by such an action. So the woman, helpless to
remedy the situation, instead fled the palace in tears.
As the traders proceeded out of the kingdom, the princess resolved
that, whatever should happen to herself, she would not see the child
grow up a slave. She therefore watched carefully for an opportunity
and one night sneaked off from the traders as far as she could get
in the cold and dark, and put the child near a hut, hoping and
praying that it would find safety and a free life, however humble.
She then sneaked back to the traders, and pretended to be cuddling
the baby in her arms.
The caravan traveled two full days before her deception was
detected. When it was, the princess once again played audience to
violent anger. The traders yelled and cursed the girl; then they
beat her with fists and even with sticks, accompanied by more curses
and threats; but nothing they could do could force her to tell what
she had done with the baby. The traders, remembering the promises
made to them by the king to encourage the secrecy of their charges,
and fearing the consequences of a breach of that secrecy, sent
riders back over the route they had traveled, to search everywhere.
Meanwhile an old woodcutter, who lived in the hut with his wife,
found the baby and brought it inside. As they looked upon the
beautiful, healthy child, their eyes shone with a sparkle that they
thought had long ago disappeared forever. But even in their
delight, they recognized immediately that the child was no ordinary
foundling, for it had noble features and was wrapped in silks and
wore a gold brooch with a white lily on it.
They soon recognized that the child would need better fare than the
rough crusts and ordinary water the couple subsisted on--for they
were extremely poor--so they began to wonder how they could take
care of it.
"We could pick some of our neighbor's fruit at night," suggested the
woman, "or perhaps sell the gold brooch."
"Or we could cheat the king the next time he buys wood," said the
woodcutter sarcastically. "But we won't do any of those things.
You know that it isn't right to do wrong, even to bring good. God
has brought us this child; I pray that he will help us feed it."
Now, the old woodcutter had been saving a few coins from his meager
earnings over the past three years in order to buy himself a new axe
head in the spring. "But," he thought to himself, "I suppose I
could sharpen this old head one more season, and with a little
longer handle, it ought to be good enough to get my by." So he took
the money he had saved and gave it to his wife, instructing her to
buy the child proper food and raiment.
The old woman was so moved by this sacrifice that she took off her
locket--other than her wedding ring the only piece of jewelry she
owned, and an heirloom from her great grandmother, at that--and
contributed it to the welfare of the child. "For," she said, "I was
never so foolish as to believe that love had no price."
Just a few days later a rider from the traveling caravan arrived,
and visited the woodcutter's neighbor. Because the woodcutter was
not far away at the time, he overheard the conversation. "Have you
seen anyone with a baby in the past week?" demanded the rider roughly.
"Who's asking?" asked the neighbor, without excessive politeness.
As the woodcutter heard the angry, cursing, threatening reply of the
rider, he ambled back to his hut to inform his wife of what was
going on. The couple was quite shrewd enough not to reveal anything
to a rude, angry, and ill-dressed man on horseback, because, they
concluded that, however deficient their own hospitality to the
child, it was likely to be better than whatever would be offered by
such a ruffian. "And besides," the woodcutter's wife said, "I
already love the child too much to give him up."
As the days passed, the old couple grew thoroughly attached to the
baby. They both found themselves unexpectedly humming little tunes
or smiling for no apparent reason, and they both found their chores
suddenly lighter and easier. They worked faster, eager to finish
and once again spend some time playing with the child.
However, it wasn't many weeks before the old woodcutter and his wife
were forced to admit that they were simply too old and too poor to
raise the child as it should be, and that they ought in all fairness
to the babe to find a better home for it. "For," as the old woman
explained, "I love the child too much to keep him."
So the woodcutter took the child to a house where several holy women
lived and, after explaining the brief history of the child as he
knew it, asked for their help. "The wife and I don't have the
learning behind us, the money with us, or the years ahead of us to
raise this child as it ought to be raised," said the woodcutter to
the matron of the house, "so we'd appreciate it if you could find it
a proper home."
"Our small endowment provides us with only a modest living," the
matron said, "but we will care for the child until we can find out
whom it belongs to, or until we can find it a good home." So the
man left the child with them and went on with his wood cutting. The
matron of the house assigned care of the child to one of the newest
of the holy women, who could nurse it.
About this season in the kingdom, the queen gave birth to a son
also. The child, however, was weak and sickly, and failed to
flourish. In just a few weeks it developed a fever and died
suddenly in the night. The queen, in addition to her grief, was
frantic with anxiety, knowing that the king was such a hard man that
if he knew his only son had died, he would hate the queen and
perhaps divorce her. So she sent, with the utmost secrecy, a
trusted servant to find another child to replace the one she had
lost. "Bring me a child with no past," she told her servant, "and I
will give it a future."
Finding such a child was a tiring and frustrating task for the
servant, and he met with humiliation and rejection and insult and
false leads and failure at every turn. But since this story is not
about him, nor about the rewards of perseverance, let us say simply
that eventually he found himself at the door of the holy order of
women we have mentioned above.
"Yes, we do have such a child as you seek," the matron told him.
"We were keeping him until we could find his parents, or until we
could find him a good home. Perhaps your mistress, whoever she is,
will care for him well." The servant assured the matron that this
would be so and gave her a large gift to maintain the house and its
charitable work. As she handed him the child, she said, "The woman
who has been nursing the child says that this parting is like a
death to her, for she has become very attached to him. But she
loves him too much to think of her feelings. I hope that what is a
sadness for her will be a happiness for the child."
"Truly, good woman," replied the servant, "it is rightly said that
the death of every fruit is the seed of new life. Every ending is
also a beginning."
As the years passed, the baby grew up into a fine, strong young man.
The king, who remained crusty and harsh toward everyone else,
changed completely when his son (as he supposed) entered the room.
The king became actually friendly and laughed some and often engaged
in animated conversation with the young prince. The king was often
heard to say that he would never let the prince part from him even
for a day but that the prince should be his always. They often rode
on horseback through the forest all day or sat together by the fire
until the servants fell asleep, discussing the kingdom and enjoying
each other's company.
When the prince reached his early manhood, the king not only took
him into confidence on affairs of state, but began to share power
with him, knowing that not many more years would pass before there
would necessarily be a new king. Many of the king's decisions were
now submitted to the prince before they were made, and the prince,
to his credit, frequently moderated the king's stern and often
cruel decrees.
By this time, the queen was in poor health, troubled by constant
pain and a lingering cough. Everyone at the court eventually
recognized that she was about to die. For several days the queen
debated with herself whether or not to let the secret of the prince
die with her, but at last, showing the heritage of her daughter's
honesty, she decided that she must reveal it to the king.
By the time she reached this decision, the queen was truly on her
deathbed, so she called the king to her and sat up weakly. "My
king," she began, "I have a matter to disclose to you that has
burdened my heart for many years. It concerns the prince." And
here she hesitated for a few moments. The king waited in silence.
"You," she continued, "are not his father."
The king, immediately concluding that the sanctity of his marriage
bed had been violated, exploded into a rage that would likely have
ended the queen's suffering prematurely had she not added as loudly
as she could, "And I am not his mother." The king then, though
still in shock, calmed himself enough to hear her explanation of the
death of their natural son and her subterfuge in adopting the child
who was now the prince. The king at first gave little credit to
this tale, thinking that the queen was either delirious or scheming
against him and his beloved son in some way. But he sent attendants
to the holy order to discover the truth. They soon returned with the
matron of the house and the woman who had nursed the prince as a baby.
"If what the queen tells me is true," said the king, "I have no
happiness, no reason to live. For the only thing I love has been
taken away."
The matron from the holy order solemnly attested to the truth of the
queen's story. "The prince was indeed the baby given us by the
woodcutter so many years ago," she said. As the king felt a wave of
despair washing over him, the nurse from the holy order came forward
and spoke.
"With all deference to my Lady and to her majesty," she said, "the
queen is only half correct. For the child was indeed not hers, but
he is the king's son." She then pulled back the cowl of her robes,
took down her hair and showed the king her face. Even through the
ravages of two decades, the king could still clearly see the face of
his daughter's lady in waiting, his lover who had borne his child
without his knowledge so many years ago. The lady briefly explained
what had happened then and how she had immediately recognized the
child when the woodcutter brought it to the holy house.
"You willingly gave me your son, even though I was evil?" the king
asked in disbelief.
"I loved you," the lady in waiting said simply. "And I loved my
son--our son--more."
When he realized how unjust and hypocritical he had been toward the
lady, the princess, and the queen, the king was so overwhelmed with
shame and humiliation that he fell to his knees and began pulling on
his hair and sobbing loudly. His crying was the only sound in the
room until the queen spoke.
"I forgive you, my husband and my king," she said. "And I love you."
"You love me?" the king asked, rising and turning to her with
astonishment. "You love me after I have banished your daughter and
proven unfaithful to you?" But there was no answer, for the queen
had already closed her eyes for the last time.
The king stood as one who had been stunned. He could not speak or
think. As he sat down in a stupor at the foot of the queen's bed,
the prince suddenly spoke. "I have found a mother today," he said.
"I must now find a sister, too. I shall leave immediately in
search of her."
"No!" the king yelled, standing up. But then, recollecting himself,
he said, "No, you're right. You must go from me and find your sister."
In the days to come, as the king sat alone in his richly tapestried
rooms, he had many hours to think over the events that had formed
his life and to ask himself whether there was not in love some
quality that can be shown only in sacrifice, not in advantage; only
in surrender, and not in triumph.