Once upon a time there was an orphaned princess who lived on
an island. She was homely rather than beautiful, but her parents
had left her an enormous fortune, so knights came from all around
to try to take it away from her. Before he died, her father had
built a huge castle to protect his treasure, with many concentric
rings of high stone walls. Between the walls there were bare courtyards
with wells for the soldiers to drink at, and fireplaces for them
to cook their meals.
The knights outside the walls constructed towering wooden machines
to topple the stone and they built tunnels underneath the foundations
to undermine them. But all their efforts were in vain because
the walls were built with magic - the late king had also once
been a sorcerer.
Eventually, the knights gave up the siege and went home empty
handed. So notorious was their failure that stories eventually
reached the court of King Richard, where there was much debate
about what the knights had done. Sir Steven De Vere, complained
that they had behaved most unchivalrously, sending a whole army
against a single woman, and he boasted that he could win the treasure
all by himself. King Richard was reluctant to let him go, since
Sir Steven was an experienced soldier and the crusades were about
to begin again, so he allowed Sir Steven a single month to see
what he could accomplish.
When Sir Steven arrived on the island of the princess, he put
on his best suit of armour and rode up to the gate.
"Princess," he cried, "I have been sent by King
Richard to take your treasure to him so that we may fight a crusade
in the Holy Land. I intend you no harm and, as you can see, I
have no weapons with me."
The princess was somewhat surprised.
"What makes you feel that you can succeed where whole armies
have failed?" she asked.
"I shall not succeed, your highness, but I have given my
word that I shall try."
"And why do you still wear your armour if you come in peace?"
the girl inquired.
"So that an angry arrow from you will not kill me."
"I will do you no harm as long as you do not try to scale
the walls."
"I understand," said the knight, and there was a long
pause.
"Princess?"
"What do you want?"
"Well princess, since I am to be here for a month, can we
pass the time by talking to each other?"
"What would we possibly talk about for a whole month?"
she asked. "We are strangers to one another."
"If you will indulge me", answered the knight, "Tell
me which is the more beautiful, the blue of the sea or the blue
of the sky?"
"The sky of course. Its subtle colours and variation exceed
the palettes of our finest painters. The blue of the sea is but
a distant echo of the beauty of the heavens."
"But princess," replied the knight "The sky is
just a lantern to the beauty of the waves as they glitter in the
dusk of evening. Surely it is the canvas and not the candle which
holds the true secret of the painter's heart."
The princess had never looked at it that way before, and her voice
was going hoarse from all the shouting.
"What is you name?" she asked.
"Steven De Vere of King Richard's court."
"Well, Sir Steven, if we are to talk like this much longer,
I shall lose my voice, so I am going to let you into the first
courtyard. If you try to harm me, you will never escape the castle
alive."
"I understand."
"But if you are a gentleman, we may talk some more about
the colour blue."
"I accept your terms."
The gate was opened and the knight entered into the first courtyard.
When the she met him face to face, the princess thought that perhaps
the most exquisite blue was the blue of the knight's eyes, but
she quickly dismissed the thought as being far too dangerous.
They talked some more about different colours - whether the red
of cherries was more cheerful than the petals of roses, whether
the green of emeralds was more intense than fields of grass on
a bright summer's day. The princess almost wept as they spoke
because she was reminded of all the lovely things she had known
outside the ramparts, before her parents died and she became the
general of the castle. As the sun began to set, the princess went
away for a few moments, and returned with pitchers of wine and
pewter plates of food.
"She does not trust me enough to bring me plates of gold"
thought the knight, but the food was excellent. Soon afterwards
the knight began to feel drowsy and fell asleep. The next day
when he awoke, the princess was high up on the second set of ramparts.
"Good morning," she said "I enjoyed our conversation
yesterday, but today I am the general of the castle again. We
may talk, if you wish, but do not think that I can be charmed
into giving up my treasure."
"I would not think of it," replied the knight who secretly
was glad with progress. He had been on many quests before and,
to be honest, he was slightly worn out by them. This one he was
determined to enjoy, even if it ended in disappointment.
"Princess, which is more beautiful" he asked "the
melody of bird song, or the strumming of a lute?"
"Bird song, of course" replied the princess. "The
birds are free. Their whole body becomes their instrument as they
celebrate their health and love. A lute, on the other hand, is
an unnatural prison for the fingers - a hollow box taught with
cat gut. How can there be any comparison?"
"Bring me a lute," said the knight "and I will
show you."
The princess did just that and the knight played her a song in
which the birds of the forest sang out from his finger tips. The
princess thought it was a marvel of cleverness, but she also let
shed a single tear, since it was so long since she had been to
the forest, and no birds ever flew to the castle.
When he saw this, the knight wept too. He had not realised that
the princess was so lonely, although, of course, it fitted in
perfectly with his plan. They had supper, as on the previous evening,
but before he went to sleep, the knight tied a ribbon round the
post of the well so that he would be able to find his way out
again one day. The next morning, the princess was once more up
on the ramparts.
"Today I am the general again. You are very clever Steven,
with your stories and your music of the world outside. But you
are still a knight and I do not trust you."
"Have you ever been in love princess?"
The princess was startled by the directness of the question.
"Twice only, what about you?"
"Oh many times. Sometimes happily, sometimes hopelessly,
sometimes just before a battle, always just before I had to go
away. But love is too private a thing to shout to the roof tops."
"Well come into the next courtyard, there are comfortable
benches there where we can talk."
The gate opened and the knight went through. He and the princess
sat talking for hours. She had loved two men. One had died in
battle and the other, a serving boy, had been banished by the
king and was now happily married and living as a farmer.
The knight had had many experiences, some of them he remembered
fondly, others he seemed to wince at inside as if he had been
mauled by a lion. The princess felt slightly jealous that the
knight had known and done so much, but she found his honesty a
refreshing change. She was all too familiar with beautiful young
men who declared their undying love for her as if she was the
only woman in the world. They had supper, as before and on the
days which followed, the knight would wake up to find the princess
on the next set of ramparts and he would charm her with a question.
Sometimes they would be about practical things such as the best
way to build a tent, or the most delicious food to make with plums.
At other times the questions would be more romantic, like whether
it was men or women who fell more deeply in love. Sometimes they
would swap roles at lunch time and argue the opposite point of
view to the one they had expressed in the morning.
As the days went by, the plates remained pewter and the knight
realised that he never saw any servants to the princess. On the
thirtieth day the knight knew that the time had come for him to
leave. He went to the well to fill has water bottle and found
tied to the pillar a small piece of red ribbon. As he suspected,
the princess had been leading him from rampart to rampart like
the spokes of a wheel. He was back to where he had begun.
"Tell me princess, which is more beautiful, the tears of
laughter or the tears of farewell?"
"The tears of farewell, since they carry distilled in them
all the laughter and tenderness of our friendship." The knight
could not bring himself to disagree, so he just smiled weakly
and rode away.
The crusade was hard that year. The knight fought many battles
and was struck by an arrow in the shoulder, which meant that he
would never wield a sword again. It was a full two years before
he returned to the castle. When she saw the knight coming, the
princess threw open the gates and rushed out to embrace him.
She led him back into the courtyard through a door-way which he
had never seen before, right into the centre of the castle. There
before him was a tall watch-tower which legend said contained
the treasure. It was an ugly fortified structure with hideous
gargoyles and stone guttering for pouring boiling oil down onto
the crowds below.
"Come into my bedroom," she told him, "I have a
confession to make."
The bedroom was very spartan with a plain wooden bed, a dresser
with a tarnished copper mirror, and a simple china bowl for the
princess to wash her hair.
"This is all the treasure I possess," she explained.
"My father spent all our money on building the castle. The
larger it grew, the more men came to try to steal what they thought
must be inside, until there was nothing left."
"Don't you think I know that," said the knight. The
princess was astonished. "You are the treasure in the castle,
poor orphaned and lonely as you are, you are why I came back,
not for gold."
"Do you really mean that?" asked the princess, and she
looked into the knight's eyes and knew that he did. She took off
the knight's armour and tenderly caressed his shoulder where he
had been wounded. They kissed for the first time and made love
on that plain wooden bed, finally falling contentedly asleep.
The next day they awoke and looked out of the window. To their
delight, the ramparts had disappeared. They had been replaced
by an orchard of cherry trees and a meadow of green grass which
stretched down to a deep blue ocean. Tears welled up the princess'
eyes.
"Listen," she said, "there are birds in the trees,
and they are singing to me."
© 1990 Gavin Miller. All Rights Reserved.