Andrew Lang_Fairy Book 08 (7 page)

'And what did she do that for?' asked the king again.

'Because I would not tell her my dream.'

'And why wouldn't you tell it to her?'

'Because I will never tell it to anyone till it comes true,' answered
the boy.

'And won't you tell it to me either?' asked the king in surprise.

'No, not even to you, your Majesty,' replied he.

'Oh, I am sure you will when we get home,' said the king smiling,
and he talked to him about other things till they came to the palace.

'I have brought you such a nice present,' he said to his daughters,
and as the boy was very pretty they were delighted to have him and
gave him all their best toys.

'You must not spoil him,' observed the king one day, when he had
been watching them playing together. He has a secret which he
won't tell to anyone.'

'He will tell me,' answered the eldest princess; but the boy only
shook his head.

'He will tell me,' said the second girl.

'Not I,' replied the boy.

'He will tell me,' cried the youngest, who was the prettiest too.

'I will tell nobody till it comes true,' said the boy, as he had said
before; 'and I will beat anybody who asks me.'

The king was very sorry when he heard this, for he loved the boy
dearly; but he thought it would never do to keep anyone near him
who would not do as he was bid. So he commanded his servants to
take him away and not to let him enter the palace again until he had
come to his right senses.

The sword clanked loudly as the boy was led away, but the child
said nothing, though he was very unhappy at being treated so badly
when he had done nothing. However, the servants were very kind
to him, and their children brought him fruit and all sorts of nice
things, and he soon grew merry again, and lived amongst them for
many years till his seventeenth birthday.

Meanwhile the two eldest princesses had become women, and had
married two powerful kings who ruled over great countries across
the sea. The youngest one was old enough to be married too, but
she was very particular, and turned up her nose at all the young
princes who had sought her hand.

One day she was sitting in the palace feeling rather dull and lonely,
and suddenly she began to wonder what the servants were doing,
and whether it was not more amusing down in their quarters. The
king was at his council and the queen was ill in bed, so there was no
one to stop the princess, and she hastily ran across the gardens to
the houses where the servants lived. Outside she noticed a youth
who was handsomer than any prince she had ever seen, and in a
moment she knew him to be the little boy she had once played with.

'Tell me your secret and I will marry you,' she said to him; but the
boy only gave her the beating he had promised her long ago, when
she asked him the same question. The girl was very angry, besides
being hurt, and ran home to complain to her father.

'If he had a thousand souls, I would kill them all,' swore the king.

That very day a gallows was built outside the town, and all the
people crowded round to see the execution of the young man who
had dared to beat the king's daughter. The prisoner, with his hands
tied behind his back, was brought out by the hangman, and amidst
dead silence his sentence was being read by the judge when
suddenly the sword clanked against his side. Instantly a great noise
was heard and a golden coach rumbled over the stones, with a
white flag waving out of the window. It stopped underneath the
gallows, and from it stepped the king of the Magyars, who begged
that the life of the boy might be spared.

'Sir, he has beaten my daughter, who only asked him to tell her his
secret. I cannot pardon that,' answered the princess's father.

'Give him to me, I'm sure he will tell me the secret; or, if not, I have
a daughter who is like the Morning Star, and he is sure to tell it to
her.'

The sword clanked for the third time, and the king said angrily:
'Well, if you want him so much you can have him; only never let me
see his face again.' And he made a sign to the hangman. The
bandage was removed from the young man's eyes, and the cords
from his wrists, and he took his seat in the golden coach beside the
king of the Magyars. Then the coachman whipped up his horses,
and they set out for Buda.

The king talked very pleasantly for a few miles, and when he
thought that his new companion was quite at ease with him, he
asked him what was the secret which had brought him into such
trouble. ' That I cannot tell you,' answered the youth, 'until it
comes true.'

'You will tell my daughter,' said the king, smiling.

'I will tell nobody,' replied the youth, and as he spoke the sword
clanked loudly. The king said no more, but trusted to his daughter's
beauty to get the secret from him.

The journey to Buda was long, and it was several days before they
arrived there. The beautiful princess happened to be picking roses
in the garden, when her father's coach drove up.

'Oh, what a handsome youth! Have you brought him from
fairyland?' cried she, when they all stood upon the marble steps in
front of the castle.

'I have brought him from the gallows,' answered the king; rather
vexed at his daughter's words, as never before had she consented to
speak to any man.

'I don't care where you brought him from,' said the spoilt girl. 'I
will marry him and nobody else, and we will live together till we
die.'

'You will tell another tale,' replied the king, 'when you ask him his
secret. After all he is no better than a servant.'

'That is nothing to me,' said the princess, 'for I love him. He will
tell his secret to me, and will find a place in the middle of my heart.'

But the king shook his head, and gave orders that the lad was to be
lodged in the summer-house.

One day, about a week later, the princess put on her finest dress,
and went to pay him a visit. She looked so beautiful that, at the
sight of her, the book dropped from his hand, and he stood up
speechless. 'Tell me,' she said, coaxingly, 'what is this wonderful
secret? Just whisper it in my ear, and I will give you a kiss.'

'My angel,' he answered, 'be wise, and ask no questions, if you wish
to get safely back to your father's palace; I have kept my secret all
these years, and do not mean to tell it now.'

However, the girl would not listen, and went on pressing him, till at
last he slapped her face so hard that her nose bled. She shrieked
with pain and rage, and ran screaming back to the palace, where her
father was waiting to hear if she had succeeded. 'I will starve you
to death, you son of a dragon,' cried he, when he saw her dress
streaming with blood; and he ordered all the masons and bricklayers
in the town to come before him.

'Build me a tower as fast as you can,' he said, 'and see that there is
room for a stool and a small table, and for nothing else. The men
set to work, and in two hours the tower was built, and they
proceeded to the palace to inform the king that his commands were
fulfilled. On the way they met the princess, who began to talk to
one of the masons, and when the rest were out of hearing she asked
if he could manage to make a hole in the tower, which nobody
could see, large enough for a bottle of wine and some food to pass
through.

'To be sure I can,' said the mason, turning back, and in a few
minutes the hole was bored.

At sunset a large crowd assembled to watch the youth being led to
the tower, and after his misdeeds had been proclaimed he was
solemnly walled up. But every morning the princess passed him in
food through the hole, and every third day the king sent his
secretary to climb up a ladder and look down through a little
window to see if he was dead. But the secretary always brought
back the report that he was fat and rosy.

'There is some magic about this,' said the king.

This state of affairs lasted some time, till one day a messenger
arrived from the Sultan bearing a letter for the king, and also three
canes. 'My master bids me say,' said the messenger, bowing low,
'that if you cannot tell him which of these three canes grows nearest
the root, which in the middle, and which at the top, he will declare
war against you.

The king was very much frightened when he heard this, and though
he took the canes and examined them closely, he could see no
difference between them. He looked so sad that his daughter
noticed it, and inquired the reason.

'Alas! my daughter,' he answered, 'how can I help being sad? The
Sultan has sent me three canes, and says that if I cannot tell him
which of them grows near the root, which in the middle, and which
at the top, he will make war upon me. And you know that his army
is far greater than mine.'

'Oh, do not despair, my father,' said she. 'We shall be sure to find
out the answer'; and she ran away to the tower, and told the young
man what had occurred.

'Go to bed as usual,' replied he, 'and when you wake, tell your
father that you have dreamed that the canes must be placed in warm
water. After a little while one will sink to the bottom; that is the
one that grows nearest the root. The one which neither sinks nor
comes to the surface is the cane that is cut from the middle; and the
one that floats is from the top.'

So, the next morning, the princess told her father of her dream, and
by her advice he cut notches in each of the canes when he took
them out of the water, so that he might make no mistake when he
handed them back to the messenger. The Sultan could not imagine
how he had found out, but he did not declare war.

The following year the Sultan again wanted to pick a quarrel with
the king of the Magyars, so he sent another messenger to him with
three foals, begging him to say which of the animals was born in the
morning, which at noon, and which in the evening. If an answer
was not ready in three days, war would be declared at once. The
king's heart sank when he read the letter. He could not expect his
daughter to be lucky enough to dream rightly a second time, and as
a plague had been raging through the country, and had carried off
many of his soldiers, his army was even weaker than before. At this
thought his face became so gloomy that his daughter noticed it, and
inquired what was the matter.

'I have had another letter from the Sultan,' replied the king, 'and he
says that if I cannot tell him which of three foals was born in the
morning, which at noon, and which in the evening, he will declare
war at once.'

'Oh, don't be cast down,' said she, 'something is sure to happen'; and
she ran down to the tower to consult the youth.

'Go home, idol of my heart, and when night comes, pretend to
scream out in your sleep, so that your father hears you. Then tell
him that you have dreamt that he was just being carried off by the
Turks because he could not answer the question about the foals,
when the lad whom he had shut up in the tower ran up and told
them which was foaled in the morning, which at noon, and which in
the evening.'

So the princess did exactly as the youth had bidden her; and no
sooner had she spoken than the king ordered the tower to be pulled
down, and the prisoner brought before him.

'I did not think that you could have lived so long without food,' said
he, 'and as you have had plenty of time to repent your wicked
conduct, I will grant you pardon, on condition that you help me in a
sore strait. Read this letter from the Sultan; you will see that if I
fail to answer his question about the foals, a dreadful war will be
the result.'

The youth took the letter and read it through. 'Yes, I can help you,'
replied he; 'but first you must bring me three troughs, all exactly
alike. Into one you must put oats, into another wheat, and into the
third barley. The foal which eats the oats is that which was foaled
in the morning; the foal which eats the wheat is that which was
foaled at noon; and the foal which eats the barley is that which was
foaled at night.' The king followed the youth's directions, and,
marking the foals, sent them back to Turkey, and there was no war
that year.

Now the Sultan was very angry that both his plots to get possession
of Hungary had been such total failures, and he sent for his aunt,
who was a witch, to consult her as to what he should do next.

'It is not the king who has answered your questions,' observed the
aunt, when he had told his story. 'He is far too stupid ever to have
done that! The person who has found out the puzzle is the son of a
poor woman, who, if he lives, will become King of Hungary.
Therefore, if you want the crown yourself, you must get him here
and kill him.'

After this conversation another letter was written to the Court of
Hungary, saying that if the youth, now in the palace, was not sent
to Turkey within three days, a large army would cross the border.
The king's heart was sorrowful as he read, for he was grateful to
the lad for what he had done to help him; but the boy only laughed,
and bade the king fear nothing, but to search the town instantly for
two youths just like each other, and he would paint himself a mask
that was just like them. And the sword at his side clanked loudly.

After a long search twin brothers were found, so exactly resembling
each other that even their own mother could not tell the difference.
The youth painted a mask that was the precise copy of them, and
when he had put it on, no one would have known one boy from the
other. They set out at once for the Sultan's palace, and when they
reached it, they were taken straight into his presence. He made a
sign for them to come near; they all bowed low in greeting. He
asked them about their journey; they answered his questions all
together, and in the same words. If one sat down to supper, the
others sat down at the same instant. When one got up, the others
got up too, as if there had been only one body between them. The
Sultan could not detect any difference between them, and he told
his aunt that he would not be so cruel as to kill all three.