第38章

The King's Chamber He found himself in a large room, dimly lighted by a silver lamp that hung from the ceiling.Far at the other end was a great bed, surrounded with dark heavy curtains.He went softly toward it, his heart beating fast.It was a dreadful thing to be alone in the king's chamber at the dead of night.To gain courage he had to remind himself of the beautiful princess who had sent him.

But when he was about halfway to the bed, a figure appeared from the farther side of it, and came towards him, with a hand raised warningly.He stood still.The light was dim, and he could distinguish little more than the outline of a young girl.But though the form he saw was much taller than the princess he remembered, he never doubted it was she.For one thing, he knew that most girls would have been frightened to see him there in the dead of the night, but like a true princess, and the princess he used to know, she walked straight on to meet him.As she came she lowered the hand she had lifted, and laid the forefinger of it upon her lips.Nearer and nearer, quite near, close up to him she came, then stopped, and stood a moment looking at him.

'You are Curdie,' she said.

'And you are the Princess Irene,' he returned.

'Then we know each other still,' she said, with a sad smile of pleasure.'You will help me.'

'That I will,' answered Curdie.He did not say, 'If I can';for he knew that what he was sent to do, that he could do.'May Ikiss your hand, little Princess?'

She was only between nine and ten, though indeed she looked several years older, and her eyes almost those of a grown woman, for she had had terrible trouble of late.

She held out her hand.

'I am not the little princess any more.I have grown up since Isaw you last, Mr Miner.'

The smile which accompanied the words had in it a strange mixture of playfulness and sadness.

'So I see, Miss Princess,' returned Curdie; 'and therefore, being more of a princess, you are the more my princess.Here I am, sent by your great-great-grandmother, to be your servant.May I ask why you are up so late, Princess?'

'Because my father wakes so frightened, and I don't know what he would do if he didn't find me by his bedside.There! he's waking now.'

She darted off to the side of the bed she had come from.

Curdie stood where he was.

A voice altogether unlike what he remembered of the mighty, noble king on his white horse came from the bed, thin, feeble, hollow, and husky, and in tone like that of a petulant child:

'I will not, I will not.I am a king, and I will be a king.Ihate you and despise you, and you shall not torture me!'

'Never mind them, Father dear,' said the princess.'I am here, and they shan't touch you.They dare not, you know, so long as you defy them.'

'They want my crown, darling; and I can't give them my crown, can I? For what is a king without his crown?'

'They shall never have your crown, my king,' said Irene.'Here it is - all safe.I am watching it for you.'

Curdie drew near the bed on the other side.There lay the grand old king - he looked grand still, and twenty years older.His body was pillowed high; his beard descended long and white over the crimson coverlid; and his crown, its diamonds and emeralds gleaming in the twilight of the curtains, lay in front of him, his long thin old hands folded round it, and the ends of his beard straying among the lovely stones.His face was like that of a man who had died fighting nobly; but one thing made it dreadful: his eyes, while they moved about as if searching in this direction and in that, looked more dead than his face.He saw neither his daughter nor his crown: it was the voice of the one and the touch of the other that comforted him.He kept murmuring what seemed words, but was unintelligible to Curdie, although, to judge from the look of Irene's face, she learned and concluded from it.

By degrees his voice sank away and the murmuring ceased, although still his lips moved.Thus lay the old king on his bed, slumbering with his crown between his hands; on one side of him stood a lovely little maiden, with blue eyes, and brown hair going a little back from her temples, as if blown by a wind that no one felt but herself; and on the other a stalwart young miner, with his mattock over his shoulder.Stranger sight still was Lina lying along the threshold - only nobody saw her just then.

A moment more and the king's lips ceased to move.His breathing had grown regular and quiet.The princess gave a sigh of relief, and came round to Curdie.

'We can talk a little now,' she said, leading him toward the middle of the room.'My father will sleep now till the doctor wakes him to give him his medicine.It is not really medicine, though, but wine.Nothing but that, the doctor says, could have kept him so long alive.He always comes in the middle of the night to give it him with his own hands.But it makes me cry to see him wake up when so nicely asleep.'

'What sort of man is your doctor?' asked Curdie.

'Oh, such a dear, good, kind gentleman!' replied the princess.'He speaks so softly, and is so sorry for his dear king! He will be here presently, and you shall see for yourself.You will like him very much.'

'Has your king-father been long ill?' asked Curdie.

'A whole year now,' she replied.'Did you not know? That's how your mother never got the red petticoat my father promised her.

The lord chancellor told me that not only Gwyntystorm but the whole land was mourning over the illness of the good man.'