A Tale Without a Name (15 page)

T
HE SCOUTS
were coming back just then, bringing the news that the enemy had been disbanded, dispersed and scattered, others here and others there, that the entire plain was bestrewn with the arms they had abandoned in their flight, and that the King the Royal Uncle, as a result of his spite and his rage, had fallen ill, and had summoned from his own country the most learned sage to cure him. He intended, he said, once he was well, to raise a new army and resume the warfare.

The Prince then had some of his people gather the discarded weapons of their enemies. He sent Polycarpus to the capital to buy wheat, barley and anything else that could be sown. He sent others to every corner of the kingdom to purchase oxen from the farmers and also their ploughs, which had stood rusting for countless years in the derelict stables.

And seeing the soldiers sitting with their arms crossed, chatting away the time, or lying basking in the sun, or
strolling along the riverbank, he summoned them all together and he said to them:

“Come on, countrymen, let us go and plough the fields, so that when they bring us the wheat, we shall be ready to sow.”

And picking up a hoe, he was about to start digging the earth to set the example.

But the soldiers did not let him.

“Not today, my lord,” they told him. “You can’t, not with your wounded arm and bandaged head! Let us do this work. Just tell us where to begin.”

And so, after setting them to work, he took again the road to the capital, and from there he headed for the schoolmaster’s house.

As before, he found two or three famished children there, who were watering and raking the garden of the School of the State—while, lounging lazily astride two chairs, his arm resting on a third, was the schoolmaster, reading Xenophon’s
Anabasis of Cyrus.

“Ah, no, this cannot go on any longer!” the Prince said severely. “The time has come for all of us to work, and that includes you, schoolmaster.”

The schoolmaster set down his book, and with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, asked:

“What work can I do? As if I could bring the place into order on my own!”

“You and I and all of us, together we shall bring the place into good order, setting first ourselves to rights!” said the Prince angrily.

“And what could I do, for example?”

“Work, instead of sitting here idle and with your arms crossed!”

Very ashamed, the schoolmaster rose from his seat.

“You have work to give me?” he asked.

“As much as you want,” replied the Prince. “First of all, take these children here who work in your garden and come with me.”

The schoolmaster took the children with him and followed the Prince to Miserlix’s smithy, where a great crowd of young boys and girls came and went, carrying iron from the mines to the blacksmith’s workshop.

“Good greetings to you, my lord,” said Miserlix gaily. “See what good that first street urchin’s example has done to the land! The entire capital is sending me now its children, so they might at least earn their bread. And I have no idea how to feed all these people! My stock of grain has almost run out!”

As he spoke, he was still tirelessly striking away with his hammer at the iron on his anvil.

“That’s quite all right, Miserlix,” said the Prince. “The forest is right at you doorstep, and there are many deer, hares, rabbits and wildfowl, while the plain is filled with wild rocket.”

And turning to the children, who were staring at his bandaged head and wounded arm with eyes full of questions:

“Who amongst you knows how to shoot with a sling?”

They all knew. The sling was the only toy they had ever had.

The Prince turned then to the schoolmaster.

“So, then, master scholar, take this down…”

And he dictated the daily schedule, which the schoolmaster wrote down as follows.

Two hours in the morning and two more in the afternoon were to be spent working in the mineshafts; each child was to carry iron back to Miserlix’s house. One further hour in the morning and one in the afternoon were to be spent doing lessons; the schoolmaster was to hold the lesson in the woods when the weather was fair, and in the School of the State when the weather was foul. And any remaining hours were to be devoted to hunting.

“Each morning every boy will practise shooting with the bow,” ordered the Prince. “In the beginning they will be killing harts and deer, and when they are older they will destroy, should there be need, the enemies of their country.”

“Long live our Prince!” exclaimed the children with great excitement.

And all together they ran to kiss his hands, his robes, anything they could get hold of.

“And who is to quarry in the mines?” asked Miserlix. “The piles of leftover stones have been used up, and the children cannot both dig and transport.”

“The prisoners will be sent down to the pits,” replied the Prince. “Instead of rotting away in prison, let them work for the welfare of the state. Only through work can they become decent human beings again.”

Master Miserlix had finished making the rope ladder with the help of one or two carpenters, and the children were now able to go up and down the pits freely.

“And you,” said the Prince, smiling to Miserlix’s daughter, who had brought him coffee in an iron coffee cup as before, “you and the other young women will be cooking soup for all these people, while the Princess will be cooking it at the camp for the entire army.”

And so it began, from the littlest things to the very greatest, the restructuring and the rebirth of the kingdom of the Fatalists.

From the camp of the defeated enemy, the Prince collected the tents and the equipment of war, and distributed these to his soldiers. From the dead enemies he took clothes, and stored them in the palace cellars, so that he could distribute them again to the men in the winter when it turned cold.

Afterwards, he divided his soldiers into four units, in accordance with the trade or craft that they each had known before they became soldiers. The farmers ploughed and sowed the fields; the builders built warehouses and mills and laid out roads; the woodsmen and the carpenters felled trees and worked on the ships of the master builder; and the blacksmiths and
the locksmiths worked in the smithy of Miserlix, who oversaw them all.

Every morning, before they applied themselves to any other task, everyone went out hunting, and with their arrows they killed deer, harts, rabbits or wild goats, and with the sling they killed wildfowl, while the elderly, who could no longer rush out to the woods and to the mountains, cast their nets or their lines into the river and caught fish.

Little Irene had come from the palace the moment her brother had spoken to her. Yet when she saw the immense quantities of game and then took one look at her little pots and pans, which would only hold a few small birds at most, she sat down on the grass and burst into tears.

All of a sudden, someone’s hand took her own, and a sad voice murmured:

“Do not weep, my Princess, tell me what I may do for you!”

“Oh, Polycarpus!” replied Little Irene. “Where will I stew all the deer and the wild goats that they have brought? I could not even fit one of their heads in my copper pot!”

Polycarpus leapt up instantly, ready to dash to the very end of the kingdom to find the cauldron that would be required for the army soup—if this was what it would take to dry his princess’s tears.

A sparkling laughter was heard at that moment, however, which made them both start and be still.

Together they turned to look behind them, and saw a girly head smiling at them from between the foliage and the branches.

“The cauldron is right here, Little Irene, bring your game. And you, Polycarpus, come and light the fire for us!” said Knowledge.

They ran to her side, and saw two enormous cauldrons being dragged along by some soldiers. Mistress Wise was leading them, while farther behind came Jealousia and Spitefulnia, smiling and content, as Little Irene had never seen them before. They were carrying between them a large basket filled with wild greens and fruit.

Little Irene was staring at them, stunned with amazement, and it did not even cross her mind to ask how her sisters had come to be there.

Knowledge saw her and started laughing again.

“You did not expect to see your sisters with us, now, did you, Little Irene?” she said. “They got lost in the woods, and grew hungry and tired, so then they remembered the palace, and they wanted to get back. Only they did not know the way. During the night, we heard their crying, and we came out of our tree-hollow, my mother and I. We
gave them food, made a bed for them to sleep on, and at earliest dawn all of us together started to work. Because, as you know well, everyone must work in our house.”

“But where did you find the cauldrons?” asked Little Irene.

“My mother went and unearthed them from the ruins which used to be the public baths a very long time ago,” replied Knowledge. “She thought that those cauldrons, which had been big enough to heat up all that water for the baths, would also be big enough to cook a great quantity of food. Time and rust had eaten away at them, filling them with quite a good number of holes, but Miserlix is an able craftsman, and he patched them easily.”

Mistress Wise had set up her cauldrons, Polycarpus had lit the fire, and all the maidens together got busy preparing the army’s soup.

Each of them had so much work to do that Jealousia and Spitefulnia quite forgot to quarrel.

“What happened to the maids-in-waiting?” asked Little Irene, when she found herself for a brief instant next to Jealousia, working over the same cauldron.

“Oh! Please! I beg you not to remind me of them!” replied Jealousia with a shiver. “They are the ones who got us all wound up about going away. And when they saw that we had changed our minds, they took all we had and disappeared, abandoning us to our fate.”

“And what did you do then?” asked Little Irene with sympathy.

“At first, we began to squabble with each other. One of us would say it was the other’s fault. Only, after we had beaten one another viciously, and pulled at each other’s hair, and had shed all the tears that we had in our eyes, we decided that it would be better to stop all quarrelling, and seek our way back. So together we came near to where Knowledge was, and it was she who heard our crying and came out to console us and to offer us good shelter.”

“Oh, Jealousia!” said Little Irene. “Couldn’t you possibly give up quarrelling altogether?”

“All by ourselves, impossible!” said Jealousia. “But Knowledge says she has a special medicine, and that she will give it to us.”

“What sort of special medicine?”

“I do not know. Every time I have tried to ask her, she has immediately given me some urgent task to do. And as soon as I finish it, and I go back to ask again, she gives me straight away another task, equally urgent. So that she still has not had a chance to tell me about it. The same with Spitefulnia.”

And in the evening, when all the work was done and everyone went to sleep, their weariness was such that the two sisters again forgot to quarrel.

Some days went by in this manner.

The Prince sent out scouts regularly, to find out what the enemies were up to. But the King the Royal Uncle was still so enraged that he could not get better. And his few soldiers who had escaped with their lives from the
battle, instead of rallying around him, were going ever farther away, crossing the borders back to their country and returning to their homes.

And so it was that every day the Prince distributed to his soldiers the weapons that Miserlix was making without ever stopping, and he trained them at the bow and the lance. And each day the work of the master builder advanced further, and the ships, from the three that they had been at first, became five, ready to be launched onto the river.

Some weeks went by.

The crops had grown, and the farmers wanted to plant olive trees, pear trees, apple trees, and then they wanted to plant some vegetables. Only there were not enough hands to cultivate all those fields, and those who had sons or daughters abroad began to regret how the country had been emptied of strong hands.