Fathers and sons -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction; Princes -- Fiction; Refugees -- Fiction
No more was said. Marco knew that the quiet mention of the stranger's
title had been made merely as a designation. If it was necessary to
mention him again in the future, he could be referred to as "the
Prince." In various Continental countries there were many princes who
were not royal or even serene highnesses--who were merely princes as
other nobles were dukes or barons. Nothing special was revealed when
a man was spoken of as a prince. But though nothing was said on the
subject of the incident, it was plain that much work was being done by
Loristan and Lazarus. The sitting-room door was locked, and the maps
and documents, usually kept in the iron box, were being used.
Marco went to the Tower of London and spent part of the day in living
again the stories which, centuries past, had been inclosed within its
massive and ancient stone walls. In this way, he had throughout boyhood
become intimate with people who to most boys seemed only the unreal
creatures who professed to be alive in school-books of history. He had
learned to know them as men and women because he had stood in the
palaces they had been born in and had played in as children, had died in
at the end. He had seen the dungeons they had been imprisoned in, the
blocks on which they had laid their heads, the battlements on which they
had fought to defend their fortressed towers, the thrones they had sat
upon, the crowns they had worn, and the jeweled scepters they had held.
He had stood before their portraits and had gazed curiously at their
"Robes of Investiture," sewn with tens of thousands of seed-pearls. To
look at a man's face and feel his pictured eyes follow you as you move
away from him, to see the strangely splendid garments he once warmed
with his living flesh, is to realize that history is not a mere lesson
in a school-book, but is a relation of the life stories of men and women
who saw strange and splendid days, and sometimes suffered strange and
terrible things.
There were only a few people who were being led about sight-seeing.
The man in the ancient Beef-eaters' costume, who was their guide, was
good-natured, and evidently fond of talking. He was a big and stout man,
with a large face and a small, merry eye. He was rather like pictures of
Henry the Eighth, himself, which Marco remembered having seen. He was
specially talkative when he stood by the tablet that marks the spot
where stood the block on which Lady Jane Grey had laid her young head.
One of the sightseers who knew little of English history had asked some
questions about the reasons for her execution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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