Princess and Curdie — Chapters 33-35

CHAPTER 33

The Battle He commanded the page to blow his trumpet; and, in the strength of the moment, the youth uttered a right warlike defiance.

But the butchers and the guard, who had gone over armed to the enemy, thinking that the king had come to make his peace also, and that it might thereafter go hard with them, rushed at once to make short work with him, and both secure and commend themselves.

The butchers came on first--for the guards had slackened their saddle girths--brandishing their knives, and talking to their dogs.

Curdie and the page, with Lina and her pack, bounded to meet them.

Curdie struck down the foremost with his mattock.

The page, finding his sword too much for him, threw it away and seized the butcher's knife, which as he rose he plunged into the foremost dog.

Lina rushed raging and gnashing among them.

She would not look at a dog so long as there was a butcher on his legs, and she never stopped to kill a butcher, only with one grind of her jaws crushed a leg of him.

When they were all down, then indeed she flashed among the dogs.

Meantime the king and the colonel had spurred toward the advancing guard.

The king clove the major through skull and collar bone, and the colonel stabbed the captain in the throat.

Then a fierce combat commenced--two against many.

But the butchers and their dogs quickly disposed of, up came Curdie and his beasts.

The horses of the guard, struck with terror, turned in spite of the spur, and fled in confusion.

Thereupon the forces of Borsagrass, which could see little of the affair, but correctly imagined a small determined body in front of them, hastened to the attack.

No sooner did their first advancing wave appear through the foam of the retreating one, than the king and the colonel and the page, Curdie and the beasts, went charging upon them.

Their attack, especially the rush of the Uglies, threw the first line into great confusion, but the second came up quickly; the beasts could not be everywhere, there were thousands to one against them, and the king and his three companions were in the greatest possible danger.

A dense cloud came over the sun, and sank rapidly toward the earth.

The cloud moved all together, and yet the thousands of white flakes of which it was made up moved each for itself in ceaseless and rapid motion: those flakes were the wings of pigeons.

Down swooped the birds upon the invaders; right in the face of man and horse they flew with swift-beating wings, blinding eyes and confounding brain.

Horses reared and plunged and wheeled.

All was at once in confusion.

The men made frantic efforts to seize their tormentors, but not one could they touch; and they outdoubled them in numbers.

Between every wild clutch came a peck of beak and a buffet of pinion in the face.

Generally the bird would, with sharp-clapping wings, dart its whole body, with the swiftness of an arrow, against its singled mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and descend skimming; much as the thin stone, shot with horizontal cast of arm, having touched and torn the surface of the lake, ascends to skim, touch, and tear again.

So mingled the feathered multitude in the grim game of war.

It was a storm in which the wind was birds, and the sea men.

And ever as each bird arrived at the rear of the enemy, it turned, ascended, and sped to the front to charge again.

The moment the battle began, the princess's pony took fright, and turned and fled.

But the maid wheeled her horse across the road and stopped him; and they waited together the result of the battle.

And as they waited, it seemed to the princess right strange that the pigeons, every one as it came to the rear, and fetched a compass to gather force for the reattack, should make the head of her attendant on the red horse the goal around which it turned; so that about them was an unintermittent flapping and flashing of wings, and a curving, sweeping torrent of the side-poised wheeling bodies of birds.

Strange also it seemed that the maid should be constantly waving her arm toward the battle.

And the time of the motion of her arm so fitted with the rushes of birds, that it looked as if the birds obeyed her gesture, and she was casting living javelins by the thousand against the enemy.

The moment a pigeon had rounded her head, it went off straight as bolt from bow, and with trebled velocity.

But of these strange things, others besides the princess had taken note.

From a rising ground whence they watched the battle in growing dismay, the leaders of the enemy saw the maid and her motions, and, concluding her an enchantress, whose were the airy legions humiliating them, set spurs to their horses, made a circuit, outflanked the king, and came down upon her.

But suddenly by her side stood a stalwart old man in the garb of a miner, who, as the general rode at her, sword in hand, heaved his swift mattock, and brought it down with such force on the forehead of his charger, that he fell to the ground like a log.

His rider shot over his head and lay stunned.

Had not the great red horse reared and wheeled, he would have fallen beneath that of the general.

With lifted sabre, one of his attendant officers rode at the miner.

But a mass of pigeons darted in the faces of him and his horse, and the next moment he lay beside his commander.

The rest of them turned and fled, pursued by the birds.

'Ah, friend Peter!'

said the maid; 'thou hast come as I told thee!

Welcome and thanks!'

By this time the battle was over.

The rout was general.

The enemy stormed back upon their own camp, with the beasts roaring in the midst of them, and the king and his army, now reinforced by one, pursuing.

But presently the king drew rein.

'Call off your hounds, Curdie, and let the pigeons do the rest,' he shouted, and turned to see what had become of the princess.

In full panic fled the invaders, sweeping down their tents, stumbling over their baggage, trampling on their dead and wounded, ceaselessly pursued and buffeted by the white-winged army of heaven.

Homeward they rushed the road they had come, straight for the borders, many dropping from pure fatigue, and lying where they fell.

And still the pigeons were in their necks as they ran.

At length to the eyes of the king and his army nothing was visible save a dust cloud below, and a bird cloud above.

Before night the bird cloud came back, flying high over Gwyntystorm.

Sinking swiftly, it disappeared among the ancient roofs of the palace.

CHAPTER 34

Judgement The king and his army returned, bringing with them one prisoner only, the lord chancellor.

Curdie had dragged him from under a fallen tent, not by the hand of a man, but by the foot of a mule.

When they entered the city, it was still as the grave.

The citizens had fled home.

'We must submit,' they cried, 'or the king and his demons will destroy us.'

The king rode through the streets in silence, ill-pleased with his people.

But he stopped his horse in the midst of the market place, and called, in a voice loud and clear as the cry of a silver trumpet, 'Go and find your own.

Bury your dead, and bring home your wounded.'

Then he turned him gloomily to the palace.

Just as they reached the gates, Peter, who, as they went, had been telling his tale to Curdie, ended it with the words: 'And so there I was, in the nick of time to save the two princesses!'

'The two princesses, Father!

The one on the great red horse was the housemaid,' said Curdie, and ran to open the gates for the king.

They found Derba returned before them, and already busy preparing them food.

The king put up his charger with his own hands, rubbed him down, and fed him.

When they had washed, and eaten and drunk, he called the colonel, and told Curdie and the page to bring out the traitors and the beasts, and attend him to the market place.

By this time the people were crowding back into the city, bearing their dead and wounded.

And there was lamentation in Gwyntystorm, for no one could comfort himself, and no one had any to comfort him.

The nation was victorious, but the people were conquered.

The king stood in the centre of the market place, upon the steps of the ancient cross.

He had laid aside his helmet and put on his crown, but he stood all armed beside, with his sword in his hand.

He called the people to him, and, for all the terror of the beasts, they dared not disobey him.

Those, even, who were carrying their wounded laid them down, and drew near trembling.

Then the king said to Curdie and the page: 'Set the evil men before me.'

He looked upon them for a moment in mingled anger and pity, then turned to the people and said: 'Behold your trust!

Ye slaves, behold your leaders!

I would have freed you, but ye would not be free.

Now shall ye be ruled with a rod of iron, that ye may learn what freedom is, and love it and seek it.

These wretches I will send where they shall mislead you no longer.'

He made a sign to Curdie, who immediately brought up the legserpent.

To the body of the animal they bound the lord chamberlain, speechless with horror.

The butler began to shriek and pray, but they bound him on the back of Clubhead.

One after another, upon the largest of the creatures they bound the whole seven, each through the unveiling terror looking the villain he was.

Then said the king: 'I thank you, my good beasts; and I hope to visit you ere long.

Take these evil men with you, and go to your place.'

Like a whirlwind they were in the crowd, scattering it like dust.

Like hounds they rushed from the city, their burdens howling and raving.

What became of them I have never heard.

Then the king turned once more to the people and said, 'Go to your houses'; nor vouchsafed them another word.

They crept home like chidden hounds.

The king returned to the palace.

He made the colonel a duke, and the page a knight, and Peter he appointed general of all his mines.

But to Curdie he said: 'You are my own boy, Curdie.

My child cannot choose but love you, and when you are grown up--if you both will--you shall marry each other, and be king and queen when I am gone.

Till then be the king's Curdie.'

Irene held out her arms to Curdie.

He raised her in his, and she kissed him.

'And my Curdie too!'

she said.

Thereafter the people called him Prince Conrad; but the king always called him either just Curdie, or my miner boy.

They sat down to supper, and Derba and the knight and the housemaid waited, and Barbara sat at the king's left hand.

The housemaid poured out the wine; and as she poured for Curdie red wine that foamed in the cup, as if glad to see the light whence it had been banished so long, she looked him in the eyes.

And Curdie started, and sprang from his seat, and dropped on his knees, and burst into tears.

And the maid said with a smile, such as none but one could smile: 'Did I not tell you, Curdie, that it might be you would not know me when next you saw me?'

Then she went from the room, and in a moment returned in royal purple, with a crown of diamonds and rubies, from under which her hair went flowing to the floor, all about her ruby-slippered feet.

Her face was radiant with joy, the joy overshadowed by a faint mist as of unfulfilment.

The king rose and kneeled on one knee before her.

All kneeled in like homage.

Then the king would have yielded her his royal chair.

But she made them all sit down, and with her own hands placed at the table seats for Derba and the page.

Then in ruby crown and royal purple she served them all.

CHAPTER 35

The End The king sent Curdie out into his dominions to search for men and women that had human hands.

And many such he found, honest and true, and brought them to his master.

So a new and upright court was formed, and strength returned to the nation.

But the exchequer was almost empty, for the evil men had squandered everything, and the king hated taxes unwillingly paid.

Then came Curdie and said to the king that the city stood upon gold.

And the king sent for men wise in the ways of the earth, and they built smelting furnaces, and Peter brought miners, and they mined the gold, and smelted it, and the king coined it into money, and therewith established things well in the land.

The same day on which he found his boy, Peter set out to go home.

When he told the good news to Joan, his wife, she rose from her chair and said, 'Let us go.'

And they left the cottage, and repaired to Gwyntystorm.

And on a mountain above the city they built themselves a warm house for their old age, high in the clear air.

As Peter mined one day, at the back of the king's wine Cellar, he broke into a cavern crusted with gems, and much wealth flowed therefrom, and the king used it wisely.

Queen Irene--that was the right name of the old princess--was thereafter seldom long absent from the palace.

Once or twice when she was missing, Barbara, who seemed to know of her sometimes when nobody else had a notion whither she had gone, said she was with the dear old Uglies in the wood.

Curdie thought that perhaps her business might be with others there as well.

All the uppermost rooms in the palace were left to her use, and when any one was in need of her help, up thither he must go.

But even when she was there, he did not always succeed in finding her.

She, however, always knew that such a one had been looking for her.

Curdie went to find her one day.

As he ascended the last stair, to meet him came the well-known scent of her roses; and when he opened the door, lo!

there was the same gorgeous room in which his touch had been glorified by her fire!

And there burned the fire--a huge heap of red and white roses.

Before the hearth stood the princess, an old grey-haired woman, with Lina a little behind her, slowly wagging her tail, and looking like a beast of prey that can hardly so long restrain itself from springing as to be sure of its victim.

The queen was casting roses, more and more roses, upon the fire.

At last she turned and said, 'Now Lina!'

--and Lina dashed burrowing into the fire.

There went up a black smoke and a dust, and Lina was never more seen in the palace.

Irene and Curdie were married.

The old king died, and they were king and queen.

As long as they lived Gwyntystorm was a better city, and good people grew in it.

But they had no children, and when they died the people chose a king.

And the new king went mining and mining in the rock under the city, and grew more and more eager after the gold, and paid less and less heed to his people.

Rapidly they sank toward their old wickedness.

But still the king went on mining, and coining gold by the pailful, until the people were worse even than in the old time.

And so greedy was the king after gold, that when at last the ore began to fail, he caused the miners to reduce the pillars which Peter and they that followed him had left standing to bear the city.

And from the girth of an oak of a thousand years, they chipped them down to that of a fir tree of fifty.

One day at noon, when life was at its highest, the whole city fell with a roaring crash.

The cries of men and the shrieks of women went up with its dust, and then there was a great silence.

Where the mighty rock once towered, crowded with homes and crowned with a palace, now rushes and raves a stone-obstructed rapid of the river.

All around spreads a wilderness of wild deer, and the very name of Gwyntystorm had ceased from the lips of men.

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