Fathers and sons -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction; Princes -- Fiction; Refugees -- Fiction
Marco felt that his heart beat a little quickly. This was one of
several incidents which had happened during the last three years, and
made him feel that he was living among things so mysterious that their
very mystery hinted at danger. But he himself had never before seemed
involved in them. Why should it matter that he was well-behaved? Then he
remembered something. The man had not said "well-behaved," he had said
"well-_trained_." Well-trained in what way? He felt his forehead prickle
slightly as he thought of the smiling, keen look which set itself so
straight upon him. Had he spoken to him in Samavian for an experiment,
to see if he would be startled into forgetting that he had been trained
to seem to know only the language of the country he was temporarily
living in? But he had not forgotten. He had remembered well, and was
thankful that he had betrayed nothing. "Even exiles may be Samavian
soldiers. I am one. You must be one," his father had said on that day
long ago when he had made him take his oath. Perhaps remembering his
training was being a soldier. Never had Samavia needed help as she
needed it to-day. Two years before, a rival claimant to the throne had
assassinated the then reigning king and his sons, and since then, bloody
war and tumult had raged. The new king was a powerful man, and had a
great following of the worst and most self-seeking of the people.
Neighboring countries had interfered for their own welfare's sake,
and the newspapers had been full of stories of savage fighting and
atrocities, and of starving peasants.
Marco had late one evening entered their lodgings to find Loristan
walking to and fro like a lion in a cage, a paper crushed and torn
in his hands, and his eyes blazing. He had been reading of cruelties
wrought upon innocent peasants and women and children. Lazarus was
standing staring at him with huge tears running down his cheeks. When
Marco opened the door, the old soldier strode over to him, turned him
about, and led him out of the room.
"Pardon, sir, pardon!" he sobbed. "No one must see him, not even you.
He suffers so horribly."
He stood by a chair in Marco's own small bedroom, where he half pushed,
half led him. He bent his grizzled head, and wept like a beaten child.
"Dear God of those who are in pain, assuredly it is now the time to give
back to us our Lost Prince!" he said, and Marco knew the words were a
prayer, and wondered at the frenzied intensity of it, because it seemed
so wild a thing to pray for the return of a youth who had died five
hundred years before.
When he reached the palace, he was still thinking of the man who had
spoken to him. He was thinking of him even as he looked at the majestic
gray stone building and counted the number of its stories and windows.
He walked round it that he might make a note in his memory of its size
and form and its entrances, and guess at the size of its gardens. This
he did because it was part of his game, and part of his strange
training.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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