Andrew Lang_Fairy Book 03 (3 page)

Now it happened that King Charming, or rather the Blue Bird, had
been flying round the palace in the hope of seeing his beloved
Princess, but had not dared to go too near the windows for fear
of being seen and recognised by Turritella. When night fell he
had not succeeded in discovering where Fiordelisa was imprisoned,
and, weary and sad, he perched upon a branch of a tall fir tree
which grew close to the tower, and began to sing himself to
sleep. But soon the sound of a soft voice lamenting attracted his
attention, and listening intently he heard it say—

'Ah! cruel Queen! what have I ever done to be imprisoned like
this? And was I not unhappy enough before, that you must needs
come and taunt me with the happiness your daughter is enjoying
now she is King Charming's bride?'

The Blue Bird, greatly surprised, waited impatiently for the
dawn, and the moment it was light flew off to see who it could
have been who spoke thus. But he found the window shut, and could
see no one. The next night, however, he was on the watch, and by
the clear moonlight he saw that the sorrowful lady at the window
was Fiordelisa herself.

'My Princess! have I found you at last?' said he, alighting close
to her.

'Who is speaking to me?' cried the Princess in great surprise.

'Only a moment since you mentioned my name, and now you do not
know me, Fiordelisa,' said he sadly. 'But no wonder, since I am
nothing but a Blue Bird, and must remain one for seven years.'

'What! Little Blue Bird, are you really the powerful King
Charming?' said the Princess, caressing him.

'It is too true,' he answered. 'For being faithful to you I am
thus punished. But believe me, if it were for twice as long I
would bear it joyfully rather than give you up.'

'Oh! what are you telling me?' cried the Princess. 'Has not your
bride, Turritella, just visited me, wearing the royal mantle and
the diamond crown you gave her? I cannot be mistaken, for I saw
your ring upon her thumb.'

Then the Blue Bird was furiously angry, and told the Princess all
that had happened, how he had been deceived into carrying off
Turritella, and how, for refusing to marry her, the Fairy Mazilla
had condemned him to be a Blue Bird for seven years.

The Princess was very happy when she heard how faithful her lover
was, and would never have tired of hearing his loving speeches
and explanations, but too soon the sun rose, and they had to part
lest the Blue Bird should be discovered. After promising to come
again to the Princess's window as soon as it was dark, he flew
away, and hid himself in a little hole in the fir-tree, while
Fiordelisa remained devoured by anxiety lest he should be caught
in a trap, or eaten up by an eagle.

But the Blue Bird did not long stay in his hiding-place. He flew
away, and away, until he came to his own palace, and got into it
through a broken window, and there he found the cabinet where his
jewels were kept, and chose out a splendid diamond ring as a
present for the Princess. By the time he got back, Fiordelisa was
sitting waiting for him by the open window, and when he gave her
the ring, she scolded him gently for having run such a risk to
get it for her.

'Promise me that you will wear it always!' said the Blue Bird.
And the Princess promised on condition that he should come and
see her in the day as well as by night. They talked all night
long, and the next morning the Blue Bird flew off to his kingdom,
and crept into his palace through the broken window, and chose
from his treasures two bracelets, each cut out of a single
emerald. When he presented them to the Princess, she shook her
head at him reproachfully, saying—

'Do you think I love you so little that I need all these gifts to
remind me of you?'

And he answered—

'No, my Princess; but I love you so much that I feel I cannot
express it, try as I may. I only bring you these worthless
trifles to show that I have not ceased to think of you, though I
have been obliged to leave you for a time.' The following night
he gave Fiordelisa a watch set in a single pearl. The Princess
laughed a little when she saw it, and said—

'You may well give me a watch, for since I have known you I have
lost the power of measuring time. The hours you spend with me
pass like minutes, and the hours that I drag through without you
seem years to me.'

'Ah, Princess, they cannot seem so long to you as they do to me!'
he answered. Day by day he brought more beautiful things for the
Princess—diamonds, and rubies, and opals; and at night she
decked herself with them to please him, but by day she hid them
in her straw mattress. When the sun shone the Blue Bird, hidden
in the tall fir-tree, sang to her so sweetly that all the
passersby wondered, and said that the wood was inhabited by a
spirit. And so two years slipped away, and still the Princess was
a prisoner, and Turritella was not married. The Queen had offered
her hand to all the neighbouring Princes, but they always
answered that they would marry Fiordelisa with pleasure, but not
Turritella on any account. This displeased the Queen terribly.
'Fiordelisa must be in league with them, to annoy me!' she said.
'Let us go and accuse her of it.'

So she and Turritella went up into the tower. Now it happened
that it was nearly midnight, and Fiordelisa, all decked with
jewels, was sitting at the window with the Blue Bird, and as the
Queen paused outside the door to listen she heard the Princess
and her lover singing together a little song he had just taught
her. These were the words:—

'Oh! what a luckless pair are we,
One in a prison, and one in a tree.
All our trouble and anguish came
From our faithfulness spoiling our enemies' game.
But vainly they practice their cruel arts,
For nought can sever our two fond hearts.'

They sound melancholy perhaps, but the two voices sang them gaily
enough, and the Queen burst open the door, crying, 'Ah! my
Turritella, there is some treachery going on here!'

As soon as she saw her, Fiordelisa, with great presence of mind,
hastily shut her little window, that the Blue Bird might have
time to escape, and then turned to meet the Queen, who
overwhelmed her with a torrent of reproaches.

'Your intrigues are discovered, Madam,' she said furiously; 'and
you need not hope that your high rank will save you from the
punishment you deserve.'

'And with whom do you accuse me of intriguing, Madam?' said the
Princess. 'Have I not been your prisoner these two years, and who
have I seen except the gaolers sent by you?'

While she spoke the Queen and Turritella were looking at her in
the greatest surprise, perfectly dazzled by her beauty and the
splendour of her jewels, and the Queen said:

'If one may ask, Madam, where did you get all these diamonds?
Perhaps you mean to tell me that you have discovered a mine of
them in the tower!'

'I certainly did find them here,' answered the Princess.

'And pray,' said the Queen, her wrath increasing every moment,
'for whose admiration are you decked out like this, since I have
often seen you not half as fine on the most important occasions
at Court?'

'For my own,' answered Fiordelisa. 'You must admit that I have
had plenty of time on my hands, so you cannot be surprised at my
spending some of it in making myself smart.'

'That's all very fine,' said the Queen suspiciously. 'I think I
will look about, and see for myself.'

So she and Turritella began to search every corner of the little
room, and when they came to the straw mattress out fell such a
quantity of pearls, diamonds, rubies, opals, emeralds, and
sapphires, that they were amazed, and could not tell what to
think. But the Queen resolved to hide somewhere a packet of false
letters to prove that the Princess had been conspiring with the
King's enemies, and she chose the chimney as a good place.
Fortunately for Fiordelisa this was exactly where the Blue Bird
had perched himself, to keep an eye upon her proceedings, and try
to avert danger from his beloved Princess, and now he cried:

'Beware, Fiordelisa! Your false enemy is plotting against you.'

This strange voice so frightened the Queen that she took the
letter and went away hastily with Turritella, and they held a
council to try and devise some means of finding out what Fairy or
Enchanter was favouring the Princess. At last they sent one of
the Queen's maids to wait upon Fiordelisa, and told her to
pretend to be quite stupid, and to see and hear nothing, while
she was really to watch the Princess day and night, and keep the
Queen informed of all her doings.

Poor Fiordelisa, who guessed she was sent as a spy, was in
despair, and cried bitterly that she dared not see her dear Blue
Bird for fear that some evil might happen to him if he were
discovered.

The days were so long, and the nights so dull, but for a whole
month she never went near her little window lest he should fly to
her as he used to do.

However, at last the spy, who had never taken her eyes off the
Princess day or night, was so overcome with weariness that she
fell into a deep sleep, and as son as the Princess saw that, she
flew to open her window and cried softly:

'Blue Bird, blue as the sky,
Fly to me now, there's nobody by.'

And the Blue Bird, who had never ceased to flutter round within
sight and hearing of her prison, came in an instant. They had so
much to say, and were so overjoyed to meet once more, that it
scarcely seemed to them five minutes before the sun rose, and the
Blue Bird had to fly away.

But the next night the spy slept as soundly as before, so that
the Blue Bird came, and he and the Princess began to think they
were perfectly safe, and to make all sorts of plans for being
happy as they were before the Queen's visit. But, alas! the third
night the spy was not quite so sleepy, and when the Princess
opened her window and cried as usual:

'Blue Bird, blue as the sky,
Fly to me now, there's nobody nigh,'

she was wide awake in a moment, though she was sly enough to keep
her eyes shut at first. But presently she heard voices, and
peeping cautiously, she saw by the moonlight the most lovely blue
bird in the world, who was talking to the Princess, while she
stroked and caressed it fondly.

The spy did not lose a single word of the conversation, and as
soon as the day dawned, and the Blue Bird had reluctantly said
good-bye to the Princess, she rushed off to the Queen, and told
her all she had seen and heard.

Then the Queen sent for Turritella, and they talked it over, and
very soon came to the conclusion than this Blue Bird was no other
than King Charming himself.

'Ah! that insolent Princess!' cried the Queen. 'To think that
when we supposed her to be so miserable, she was all the while as
happy as possible with that false King. But I know how we can
avenge ourselves!'

So the spy was ordered to go back and pretend to sleep as soundly
as ever, and indeed she went to bed earlier than usual, and
snored as naturally as possible, and the poor Princess ran to the
window and cried:

'Blue Bird, blue as the sky,
Fly to me now, there's nobody by!'

But no bird came. All night long she called, and waited, and
listened, but still there was no answer, for the cruel Queen had
caused the fir tree to be hung all over with knives, swords,
razors, shears, bill-hooks, and sickles, so that when the Blue
Bird heard the Princess call, and flew towards her, his wings
were cut, and his little black feet clipped off, and all pierced
and stabbed in twenty places, he fell back bleeding into his
hiding place in the tree, and lay there groaning and despairing,
for he thought the Princess must have been persuaded to betray
him, to regain her liberty.

'Ah! Fiordelisa, can you indeed be so lovely and so faithless?'
he sighed, 'then I may as well die at once!' And he turned over
on his side and began to die. But it happened that his friend the
Enchanter had been very much alarmed at seeing the Frog chariot
come back to him without King Charming, and had been round the
world eight times seeking him, but without success. At the very
moment when the King gave himself up to despair, he was passing
through the wood for the eighth time, and called, as he had done
all over the world:

'Charming! King Charming! Are you here?'

The King at once recognised his friend's voice, and answered very
faintly:

'I am here.'

The Enchanter looked all round him, but could see nothing, and
then the King said again:

'I am a Blue Bird.'

Then the Enchanter found him in an instant, and seeing his
pitiable condition, ran hither and thither without a word, until
he had collected a handful of magic herbs, with which, and a few
incantations, he speedily made the King whole and sound again.

'Now,' said he, 'let me hear all about it. There must be a
Princess at the bottom of this.'

'There are two!' answered King Charming, with a wry smile.

And then he told the whole story, accusing Fiordelisa of having
betrayed the secret of his visits to make her peace with the
Queen, and indeed saying a great many hard things about her
fickleness and her deceitful beauty, and so on. The Enchanter
quite agreed with him, and even went further, declaring that all
Princesses were alike, except perhaps in the matter of beauty,
and advised him to have done with Fiordelisa, and forget all
about her. But, somehow or other, this advice did not quite
please the King.

'What is to be done next?' said the Enchanter, 'since you still
have five years to remain a Blue Bird.'

'Take me to your palace,' answered the King; 'there you can at
least keep me in a cage safe from cats and swords.'

'Well, that will be the best thing to do for the present,' said
his friend. 'But I am not an Enchanter for nothing. I'm sure to
have a brilliant idea for you before long.'