The Lost Prince Read online

  The king, despite his terror, could not help but sneer.

  ‘Call him again,’ he said. ‘He is afraid to come out of his hole!’

  A savage fellow from the mountain fastnesses struck him on the mouth.

  ‘He afraid!’ he shouted. ‘If he does not come, it is because thou 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 rooms shouting the prince’s name. But there was no answer. They sought him in a frenzy, bursting open doors and flinging down every obstacle in their way. A page, found hidden in a closet, owned that he had seen His Royal Highness pass through a corridor early in the morning. He had been softly singing to himself one of the shepherd’s songs.

  And in this strange way out of the history of Samavia, five hundred years before Marco’s day, the young prince had walked – singing softly to himself the old song of Samavia’s beauty and happiness. 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 some secret place, or had privately had him killed. The fury of the people grew to frenzy. There were new risings, and every few days the palace was attacked and searched again. But no trace of the prince was found. He had vanished as a star vanishes when it drops from its place in the sky. During a riot in the palace, when a last fruitless search was made, the king himself was killed. A powerful noble who headed one of the uprisings made himself king in his place. From that time, the once splendid little kingdom was like a bone fought for by dogs. Its pastoral peace was forgotten. It was torn and worried and shaken by stronger countries. It tore and worried itself with internal fights. It assassinated kings and created new ones. No man was sure in his youth what ruler his maturity would live under, or whether his children would die in useless fights, or through stress of poverty and cruel, useless laws. There were no more shepherds and herdsmen who were poets, but on the mountain sides and in the valleys sometimes some of the old songs were sung. Those most beloved were songs about a Lost Prince whose name had been Ivor. If he had been king, he would have saved Samavia, the verses said, and all brave hearts believed that he would still return. In the modern cities, one of the jocular cynical sayings was, ‘Yes, that will happen when Prince Ivor comes again.’

  In his more childish days, Marco had been bitterly troubled by the unsolved mystery. Where had he gone – the Lost Prince? Had he been killed, or had he been hidden away in a dungeon? But he was 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 or guess anything about him ever – ever – ever?’ he would say restlessly again and again.

  One winter’s night, as they sat together before a small fire in a cold room in a cold city in Austria, he had been so eager and asked so many searching questions, that his father gave him an answer he had never given him before, and which was a sort of ending to the story, though not a satisfying one:

  ‘Everybody guessed as you are guessing. A few very old shepherds in the mountains who like to believe ancient histories relate a story which most people consider a kind of legend. It is that almost a hundred years after the prince was lost, an old shepherd told a story his long-dead father had confided to him in secret just before he died. The father had said that, going out in the early morning on the mountain side, he had found in the forest what he at first thought to be the dead body of a beautiful, boyish, young huntsman. Some enemy had plainly attacked him from behind and believed he had killed him. He was, however, not quite dead, and the shepherd dragged him into a cave where he himself often took refuge from storms with his flocks. Since there was such riot and disorder in the city, he was afraid to speak of what he had found; and, by the time he discovered that he was harbouring the prince, the king had already been killed, and an even worse man had taken possession of his throne, and ruled Samavia with a bloodstained, iron hand. To the terrified and simple peasant the safest thing seemed to get the wounded youth out of the country before there was any chance of his being discovered and murdered outright, as he would surely be. The cave in which he was hidden was not far from the frontier, and while he was still so weak that he was hardly conscious of what befell him, he was smuggled across it in a cart loaded with sheepskins, and left with some kind monks who did not know his rank or name. The shepherd went back to his flocks and his mountains, and lived and died among them, always in terror of the changing rulers and their savage battles with each other. The mountaineers said among themselves, as the generations succeeded each other, that the Lost Prince must have died young, because otherwise he would have come back to his country and tried 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 his people,’ Loristan answered, as if he were not reflecting on a story which was probably only a kind of legend. ‘But he was very young, and Samavia was in the hands of the new dynasty, and filled with his enemies. He could not have crossed the frontier without an army. Still, I think he died young.’

  It was of this story that Marco was thinking as he walked, and perhaps the thoughts that filled his mind expressed themselves in his face in some way which attracted attention. As he was nearing Buckingham Palace, a distinguished-looking well-dressed man with clever eyes caught sight of him, and, after looking at him keenly, slackened his pace as he approached him from the opposite direction. An observer might have thought he saw something which puzzled and surprised him. Marco didn’t see him at all, and still moved forward, thinking of the shepherds and the prince. The well-dressed man began to walk still more slowly. When he was quite close to Marco, he stopped and spoke to him – in the Samavian language.

  ‘What is your name?’ he asked.

  Marco’s training from his earliest childhood had been an extraordinary thing. His love for his father had made it simple and natural to him, and he had never questioned the reason for it. As he had been taught to keep silence, he had been taught to control the expression of his face and the sound of his voice, and, above all, never to allow himself to look startled. But for this he might have started at the extraordinary sound of the Samavian words suddenly uttered in a London street by an English gentleman. He might even have answered the question in Samavian himself. But he did not. He courteously lifted his cap and replied in English:

  ‘Excuse me?’

  The gentleman’s clever eyes scrutinized him keenly. Then he also spoke in English.

  ‘Perhaps you do not understand? I asked your name because you are 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, my boy.’

  He was about to go on, and had indeed taken a couple of steps away, 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 of several incidents which had happened during the last three years, and made him feel that he was living among things so mysterious that their very mystery hinted at danger. But he himself had never before seemed involved in them. Why should it matter that he was well-behaved? Then he remembered something. The man had not said ‘well-behaved,’ he had said ‘well-trained’. Well-trained in what way? He felt his forehead prickle slightly as he thought of the smiling, keen look which set itself so straight upon him. Had he spoken to him in Samavian for an experiment, to see if he would be startled into forgetting that he had been trained to seem to know only the language of the country he was temporarily living in? But he had not forgotten. He had remembered well, and was thankful that he had betrayed
nothing. ‘Even exiles may be Samavian soldiers. I am one. You must be one,’ his father had said on that day long ago when he had made him take his oath. Perhaps remembering his training was being a soldier. Never had Samavia needed help as she needed it today. Two years before, a rival claimant to the throne had assassinated the then-reigning king and his sons, and since then, bloody war and tumult had raged. The new king was a powerful man, and had a great following of the worst and most self-seeking of the people. Neighbouring countries had interfered for their own welfare’s sake, and the newspapers had been full of stories of savage fighting and atrocities, and of starving peasants.

  Marco had late one evening entered their lodgings to find Loristan walking to and fro like a lion in a cage, a paper crushed and torn in his hands, and his eyes blazing. He had been reading of cruelties wrought upon innocent peasants and women and children. Lazarus was standing staring at him with huge tears running down his cheeks. When Marco opened the door, the old soldier strode over to him, turned him about, and led him out of the room.

  ‘Pardon, sir, pardon!’ he sobbed. ‘No one must see him, not even you. He suffers so horribly.’

  He stood by a chair in Marco’s own small bedroom, where he half pushed, half led him. He bent his grizzled head, and wept like a beaten child.

  ‘Dear God of those who are in pain, assuredly it is now the time to give back to us our Lost Prince!’ he said, and Marco knew the words were a prayer, and wondered at the frenzied intensity of it, because it seemed so wild a thing to pray for the return of a youth who had died five hundred years before.

  When he reached the palace, he was still thinking of the man who had spoken to him. He was thinking of him even as he looked at the majestic grey stone building and counted the number of its stories and windows. He walked round it that he might make a note in his memory of its size and form and its entrances, and guess at the size of its gardens. This he did because it was part of his game, and part of his strange training.

  When he came back to the front, he saw that in the great entrance court within the high iron railings an elegant but quiet-looking closed carriage was drawing up before the doorway. Marco stood and watched with interest to see who would come out and enter it. He knew that kings and emperors who were not on parade looked merely like well-dressed private gentlemen, and often chose to go out as simply and quietly as other men. So he thought that, perhaps, if he waited, he might see one of those well-known faces which represent the highest rank and power in a monarchical country, and which in times gone by had also represented the power over human life and death and liberty.

  ‘I should like to be able to tell my father that I have seen the King and know his face, as I know the faces of the tsar and the two emperors.’

  There was a little movement among the tall menservants in the royal scarlet liveries, and an elderly man descended the steps attended by another who walked behind him. He entered the carriage, the other man followed him, the door was closed, and the carriage drove through the entrance gates, where the sentries saluted.

  Marco was near enough to see distinctly. The two men were talking as if interested. The face of the one farthest from him was the face he had often seen in shop-windows and newspapers. The boy made his quick, formal salute. It was the King; and, as he smiled and acknowledged his greeting, he spoke to his companion.

  ‘That fine lad salutes as if he belonged to the army,’ was what he said, though Marco could not hear him.

  His companion leaned forward to look through the window. When he caught sight of Marco, a singular expression crossed his face.

  ‘He does belong to an army, sir,’ he answered, ‘though he does not know it. His name is Marco Loristan.’

  Then Marco saw him plainly for the first time. He was the man with the keen eyes who had spoken to him in Samavian.

  chapter four

  the rat

  Marco would have wondered very much if he had heard the words, but, as he did not hear them, he turned toward home wondering at something else. A man who was in intimate attendance on a king must be a person of importance. He no doubt knew many things not only of his own ruler’s country, but of the countries of other kings. But so few had really known anything of poor little Samavia until the newspapers had begun to tell them of the horrors of its war – and who but a Samavian could speak its language? It would be an interesting thing to tell his father – that a man who knew the King had spoken to him in Samavian, and had sent that curious message.

  Later he found himself passing a side street and looked up it. It was so narrow, and on either side of it were such old, tall, and sloping-walled houses that it attracted his attention. It looked as if a bit of old London had been left to stand while newer places grew up and hid it from view. This was the kind of street he liked to pass through for curiosity’s sake. He knew many of them in the old quarters of many cities. He had lived in some of them. He could find his way home from the other end of it. Another thing than its queerness attracted him. He heard a clamour of boys’ voices, and he wanted to see what they were doing. Sometimes, when he had reached a new place and had had that lonely feeling, he had followed some boyish clamour of play or wrangling, and had found a temporary friend or so.

  Halfway to the street’s end there was an arched brick passage. The sound of the voices came from there – one of them high, and thinner and shriller than the rest. Marco tramped up to the arch and looked down through the passage. It opened on to a grey flagged space, shut in by the railings of a black, deserted, and ancient graveyard behind a venerable church which turned its face toward some other street. The boys were not playing, but listening to one of their number who was reading to them from a newspaper.

  Marco walked down the passage and listened also, standing in the dark arched outlet at its end and watching the boy who read. He was a strange little creature with a big forehead, and deep eyes which were curiously sharp. But this was not all. He had a hunchback, his legs seemed small and crooked. He sat with them crossed before him on a rough wooden platform set on low wheels, on which he evidently pushed himself about. Near him were a number of sticks stacked together as if they were rifles. One of the first things that Marco noticed was that he had a savage little face marked with lines as if he had been angry all his life.

  ‘Hold your tongues, you fools!’ he shrilled out to some boys who interrupted him. ‘Don’t you want to know anything, you ignorant swine?’

  He was as ill-dressed as the rest of them, but he did not speak in the Cockney dialect. If he was of the riff-raff of the streets, as his companions were, he was somehow different.

  Then he, by chance, saw Marco, who was standing in the arched end of the passage.

  ‘What are you doing there listening?’ he shouted, and at once stooped to pick up a stone and threw it at him. The stone hit Marco’s shoulder, but it did not hurt him much. What he did not like was that another lad should want to throw something at him before they had even exchanged boy-signs. He also did not like the fact that two other boys promptly took the matter up by bending down to pick up stones also.

  He walked forward straight into the group and stopped close to the hunchback.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ he asked, in his rather deep young voice.

  He was big and strong-looking enough to suggest that he was not a boy it would be easy to dispose of, but it was not that which made the group stand still a moment to stare at him. It was something in himself – half of it a kind of impartial lack of anything like irritation at the stone-throwing. It was as if it had not mattered to him in the least. It had not made him feel angry or insulted. He was only rather curious about it. Because he was clean, and his hair and his shabby clothes were brushed, the first impression given by his appearance as he stood in the archway was that he was a young ‘toff’ poking his nose where it was not wanted; but, as he drew near, they saw that the well-brushed clothes were worn, and there were patches on his shoes.

  ‘What did you do that fo
r?’ he asked, and he asked it merely as if he wanted to find out the reason.

  ‘I’m not going to have you swells dropping in to my club as if it was your own,’ said the hunchback.

  ‘I’m not a swell, and I didn’t know it was a club,’ Marco answered. ‘I heard boys, and I thought I’d come and look. When I heard you reading about Samavia, I wanted to hear.’

  He looked at the reader with his silent-expressioned eyes.

  ‘You needn’t have thrown a stone,’ he added. ‘They don’t do it at men’s clubs. I’ll go away.’

  He turned about as if he were going, but, before he had taken three steps, the hunchback hailed him unceremoniously.

  ‘Hi!’ he called out. ‘Hi, you!’

  ‘What do you want?’ said Marco.

  ‘I bet you don’t know where Samavia is, or what they’re fighting about.’ The hunchback threw the words at him.

  ‘Yes, I do. It’s north of Beltrazo and east of Jiardasia, and they are fighting because one party has assassinated King Maran, and the other will not let them crown Nicola Iarovitch. And why should they? He’s a brigand, and hasn’t a drop of royal blood in him.’

  ‘Oh!’ reluctantly admitted the hunchback. ‘You do know that much, do you? Come back here.’

  Marco turned back, while the boys still stared. It was as if two leaders or generals were meeting for the first time, and the rabble, looking on, wondered what would come of their encounter.