Stories From The Old Attic by Robert Harris (popular books of all time .TXT) 📖

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