CHAPTER II.
It could not be said that the Prince missed his mother; children of his age cannot do that; but somehow, after she died everything seemed to go wrong with him. From a beautiful baby he became pale and sickly, seeming to have almost ceased growing, especially in his legs, which had been so fat and strong. But after the day of his christening they withered, and when he was nearly a year old, and his nurse tried to make him stand, he only tumbled down.
This happened so many times that at last people began to talk about it.
A prince, and not able to stand on his legs! What a misfortune to the country!
After a time he became stronger and his body grew, but his limbs remained shrunken. No one talked of this to the King, for he was very sad.
The King desired that the Prince should keep the name given him by the little old woman in grey and so he was known as Dolor.
Once a week, according to established state custom, the Prince, dressed in his very best, was brought to the King, his father, for half an hour, but his Majesty was too melancholy to pay much attention to the child.
Only once, when the King and his brother were sitting together, with Prince Dolor playing in a corner of the room, dragging himself about with his arms, rather than his legs, it seemed to strike the father that all was not right with his son.
"How old is his Royal Highness?" said he, suddenly, to the nurse.
"Two years, three months, and five days, please your Majesty."
"It does not please me," said the King with a sigh. "He ought to be far more forward than he is. Is there not something wrong about him?"
"Oh, no," said the King's brother, exchanging meaning looks with the nurse. "Nothing to make your Majesty at all uneasy. No doubt his Royal Highness will outgrow it in time."
"Out-grow what?"
"A slight delicacy ahem! in the spine something inherited, perhaps, from his dear mother."
"Ah, she was always delicate; but she was the sweetest woman that ever lived. Come here, my little son."
The Prince turned to his father a small, sweet, grave face like his mother's, and the King smiled and held out his arms. But when the boy came to him, not running like a boy, but wriggling awkwardly along the floor, the royal countenance clouded.
"I ought to have been told of this. Send for all the doctors in my kingdom immediately."
They came, and agreed in what had been pretty well known before; that the prince must have been hurt when he was an infant. Did anybody remember?
No, nobody. Indignantly, all the nurses denied that any such accident had happened.
But of all this the King knew nothing, for, indeed, after the first shock of finding out that his son could not walk, and seemed never likely to walk, he interfered very little concerning him. He could not walk; his limbs were mere useless additions to his body, but the body itself was strong and sound, and his face was the same as ever just like his mother's face, one of the sweetest in the world!
Even the King, indifferent as he was, sometimes looked at the little fellow with sad tenderness, noticing how cleverly he learned to crawl, and swing himself about by his arms, so that in his own awkward way he was as active as most children of his age.
"Poor little man! he does his best, and he is not unhappy," said the King to his brother. "I have appointed you as Regent. In case of my death, you will take care of my poor little boy?"
Soon after he said this, the King died, as suddenly and quietly as the Queen had done, and Prince Dolor was left without either father or mother as sad a thing as could happen, even to a Prince.
He was more than that now, though. He was a king. In Nomansland as in other countries, the people were struck with grief one day and revived the next. "The king is dead long live the king!" was the cry that rang through the nation, and almost before his late Majesty had been laid beside the queen, crowds came thronging from all parts to the royal palace, eager to see the new monarch.
They did see him sitting on the floor of the council-chamber, sucking his thumb! And when one of the gentlemen-in-waiting lifted him up and carried him to the chair of state, and put the crown on his head, he shook it off again, it was so heavy and uncomfortable. Sliding down to the foot of the throne, he began playing with the gold lions that supported it; laughing as if he had at last found something to amuse him.
"It is very unfortunate," said one of the lords. "It is always bad for a nation when its king is a child; but such a child a permanent cripple, if not worse."
"Let us hope not worse," said another lord in a very hopeless tone, and looking towards the Regent, who stood erect and pretended to hear nothing. "I have heard that these kind of children with very large heads and great broad foreheads and staring eyes, are well, well, let us hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. In the meantime "
"Come forth and kiss the hilt of his sword," said the Regent "I swear to perform my duties as Regent, to take care of his Majesty, and I shall do my humble best to govern the country."
Whenever the Regent and his sons appeared, they were received with shouts "Long live the Regent!" "Long live the Royal family!"
As for the other child, his Royal Highness Prince Dolor somehow people soon ceased to call him his Majesty, which seemed such a ridiculous title for a poor little fellow, a helpless cripple, with only head and trunk, and no legs to speak of he was seen very seldom by anybody.
Sometimes people daring to peer over the high wall of the palace garden noticed there a pretty little crippled boy with large dreamy, thoughtful eyes, beneath the grave glance of which wrongdoers felt uneasy, and, although they did not know it then, the sight of him bearing his affliction made them better.
If anybody had said that Prince Dolor's uncle was cruel, he would have said that what he did was for the good of the country.
Therefore he went one day to the council-chamber, informed the ministers and the country that the young King was in failing health, and that it would be best to send him for a time to the Beautiful Mountains where his mother was born.
Soon after he obtained an order to send the King away which was done in great state. The nation learned, without much surprise, that the poor little Prince had fallen ill on the road and died within a few hours; so declared the physician in attendance, and the nurse who had been sent to take care of him. They brought the coffin back in great state, and buried him with his parents.
The country went into deep mourning for him, and then forgot him, and his uncle reigned in his stead.
CHAPTER III.
And what of the little lame prince, whom everybody seemed so easily to have forgotten?
Not everybody. There were a few kind souls, mothers of families, who had heard his sad story, and some servants about the palace, who had been familiar with his sweet ways these many a time sighed and said, "Poor Prince Dolor!" Or, looking at the Beautiful Mountains, which were visible all over Nomansland, though few people ever visited them, "Well, perhaps his Royal Highness is better where he is."
They did not know that beyond the mountains, between them and the sea, lay a tract of country, level, barren, except for a short stunted grass, and here and there a patch of tiny flowers. Not a bush not a tree not a resting place for bird or beast in that dreary plain. It was not a pleasant place to live.
The only sign that human creatures had ever been near the spot was a large round tower which rose up in the centre of the plain. In form it resembled the Irish round towers, which have puzzled people for so long, nobody being able to find out when, or by whom they were made. It was circular, of very firm brickwork, with neither doors nor windows, until near the top, when you could perceive some slits in the wall, through which one could not possibly creep in or look out. Its height was nearly a hundred feet.
The plain was desolate, like a desert, only without sand, and led to nowhere except the still more desolate sea-coast; nobody ever crossed it. Whatever mystery there was about the tower, it and the sky and the plain kept to themselves.
It was a very great secret indeed, a state secret, which none but so clever a man as the present king of Nomansland would ever have thought of. How he carried it out, undiscovered, I cannot tell. People said, long afterwards, that it was by means of a gang of condemned criminals, who were set to work, and executed immediately after they had done, so that nobody knew anything, or in the least suspected the real fact.
Within twenty feet of the top, some ingenious architect had planned a perfect little house, divided into four rooms. By making skylights, and a few slits in the walls for windows, and raising a peaked roof which was hidden by the parapet, here was a dwelling complete; eighty feet from the ground and hard to reach.
Inside it was furnished with all the comfort and elegance imaginable; with lots of books and toys, and everything that the heart of a child could desire.
One winter night, when all the plain was white with moonlight, there was seen crossing it, a great tall, black horse, ridden by a man also big and equally black, carrying before him on the saddle a woman and a child. The sad fierce-looking woman was a criminal under sentence of death, but her sentence had been changed. She was to inhabit the lonely tower with the child; she was to live as long as the child lived no longer. This, in order that she might take the utmost care of him; for those who put him there were equally afraid of his dying and of his living. And yet he was only a little gentle boy, with a sweet smile. He was very tired with his long journey and was clinging to the man's neck, for he was rather frightened.
The tired little boy was Prince Dolor. He was not dead at all. His grand funeral had been a pretence; a wax figure having been put in his place, while he was spirited away by the condemned woman and the black man. The latter was deaf and dumb, so could tell nothing.
When they reached the foot of the tower, there was light enough to see a huge chain dangling half way from the parapet. The deaf mute took from his saddle-wallet a sort of ladder, arranged in pieces like a puzzle, fitted it together, and lifted it up to meet the chain. Then he mounted to the top of the tower, and slung from it a chair, in which the woman and child placed themselves and were drawn up, never to come down again.
The man descended the ladder, took it to pieces and disappeared across the plain. Every month he came and fastened his horse to the foot of the tower and climbed it as before, laden with provisions and many other things. He always saw the Prince, so as to make sure that the child was alive and well, and then went away until the following month.
Prince Dolor had every luxury that even a Prince could need, and the one thing wanting love, never having known, he did not miss. His nurse was very kind to him, though she was a wicked woman. Perhaps it made her better to be shut up with an innocent child.
By-and-by he began to learn lessons not that his nurse had been ordered to teach him, but she did it partly to amuse herself. She was not a stupid woman, and Prince Dolor was by no means a stupid child; so they got on very well.
When he grew older he began reading the books which the mute brought to him. As they told him of the things in the outside world he longed to see them.
From this time a change came over the boy. He began to look sad and thin, and to shut himself up for hours without speaking. His nurse had been forbidden, on pain of death, to tell him anything about himself. He knew he was Prince Dolor, because she always addressed him as "My prince" and "your Royal Highness," but what a prince was, he had not the least idea.
He had been reading one day, but feeling all the while that to read about things which you never can see is like hearing about a beautiful dinner while you are starving. He grew melancholy, gazing out of the window-slit.
Not a very cheerful view just the plain and the sky but he liked it.
He used to think, if he could only fly out of that window, up to the sky or down to the plain, how nice it would be! Perhaps when he died his nurse had told him once in anger that he would never leave the tower till he died he might be able to do this.
"And I wish I had somebody to tell me all about it; about that and many other things; somebody that would be fond of me, like my poor white kitten."
Here the tears came into his eyes, for the boy's one friend had been a little white kitten, which the deaf mute, kindly smiling, once took out of his pocket and gave him. For four weeks it was his constant companion and plaything, till one moonlight night it took a fancy for wandering, climbed on to the parapet of the tower, dropped over and disappeared. It was not killed, he hoped; indeed, he almost fancied he saw it pick itself up and scamper away, but he never caught sight of it again.
"Yes, I wish I had a person, a real live person, who would be fond of me and kind to me. Oh, I want somebody dreadfully, dreadfully!"
As he spoke, there sounded behind him a slight tap-tap-tap, as of a cane, and twisting himself around, what do you think he saw? A curious little woman, no bigger than he might himself have been, had his legs grown, but she was not a child she was an old woman with a sweet smile and a soft voice, and was carrying a cane.
"My own little boy," she said, "I could not come to you until you had said you wanted me, but now you do want me, here I am."
"And you are very welcome, madam," replied the Prince. "May I ask you who you are? Perhaps my mother?"