Penelope Delta: A Tale Without a Name

The proud aspect of his son began to irritate the King.

“Well, you went on foot. Cunningson surely took a horse,” he snapped.

“There is no road, and a horse cannot pass by the rugged ridgeways. And even if there had been a road, still he would not have made it there and back again in such a short time.”

“Dash it all! You are beginning seriously to annoy me!” yelled the King. “Let us then just say that he flew there! Stop bothering me, or I shall have you thrown in prison, future king or not.”

And without further ado he sat down to supper, together with the women, Cunningson and the fool, who turned a cartwheel to show his joy, causing the little jingle bells of his motley-coloured garb to chime as he did so.

The Prince seized Little Irene’s hand.

“Come with me,” he said, “or I will suffocate in here!”

They went out together; in silence, with difficulty, tripping and stumbling in the darkness, they descended the mountain.

When they reached the valley, Little Irene stopped him.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Anywhere, as long as it is far away from this kingdom where such things can happen!”

“You mean to forsake your country?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes… I mean to leave this accursed land, and forget all about it!”

Little Irene made no reply. Her heart bled at the thought of leaving her fatherland, where she had been born and had grown up. Its squalor, its desolation, even its bad fortune, all these she loved, because this was her homeland.

Unspeaking, she followed her brother. And so they went on, for hours, and for more hours still, amidst the sharp stones and the crooked twigs of the undergrowth. Yet she was unaccustomed to such rough paths. Her feet, barely protected by her tattered silken slippers, were bruised all over. Her old sequined skirt, embroidered with golden thread, trailed on the ground, torn to shreds by the spiny thorns where it had been caught along the way.

She turned around and looked at her brother.

Lips pressed resolutely together, head held high, the Prince walked on, in full defiance of all pain and all tiredness. And the night breeze stroked his forehead, frolicking between the strands of his brown hair, which fell in rich, long locks all the way down to his gold-embroidered neckerchief.

He seemed to her so noble and beautiful that she embraced him.

“Yes! I shall come with you, wherever you may go!” she said to him. And with courage anew she set off again by his side. In a little while, however, her exhaustion vanquished her. She sat down at the edge of the road, and rested her head on her huddled knees.

“I cannot walk any farther!” she said faintly.

“Rest awhile,” replied the Prince, “and then we will go on again.”

At that, he climbed on a high rock to look around him. In the distance, through a thicket of trees, it seemed to him that he could see a light.

He scrambled down hurriedly from the rock, and ran to his sister.

“Get up, Little Irene, I have seen a light!” he cried out to her. “Come! It must be a house, and perhaps they will open their door to us, and give us shelter.”

So they went on their way once more, towards the place where the light could be seen, till they arrived in front of a small, freshly whitewashed dwelling.

The Prince knocked at the door.

“Who is that?” asked a woman’s voice inside.

“Please open your door to us,” pleaded the Prince. “My sister and I ask for your hospitality, to warm ourselves up, and rest awhile.”

The door opened, and an old woman with pure white hair and a face that had the sweetness of honey beckoned to them to enter.

“Welcome to the poor home of Mistress Wise,” she said. “Come and sit down, my children, have a rest.”

A young girl was lying asleep on a couch nearby. The old woman nudged her gently.

“Wake up, my good girl; guests have come to us. Get up and warm some milk, and bring along some rusks of bread.”

The girl got up and lit the fire, warmed the milk. Then she poured it into two small mugs and smilingly placed these on the table in front of the famished siblings, together with a plate of rusks.

Little Irene, however, did not have time to eat, for she had fallen asleep on her chair. The two women lifted her in their arms and laid her on the couch.

“Get some sleep yourself, now, my young lord,” said the old woman, “and tomorrow you can resume your journey. You have far to go?”

“Yes,” replied the Prince, “I am going very far.”

“A pity!” said the old woman pensively.

And with a sigh, she patted the young boy’s curly head.

“A pity? Why so?” asked the Prince, taken aback.

The old woman, however, merely smiled.

“Good night to you, my child; sleep peacefully, it is late,” she said.

And with her daughter they went into a small adjacent room and closed the door.

The Prince lay himself down to sleep on the hearthrug in front of the fireplace, and he did try his best to fall asleep. Yet for all his weariness, sleep would not come to him. The words of the old woman kept ringing in his head, now loudly and very distressingly, then again half-faded, as though coming to him from very far away.

“A pity!.. A pity!.. A pity…”

Why a pity? What did the old woman mean?

And with this thought he finally fell asleep.

The room was flooded with sunlight when he woke up in the morning. He got up and ran to the couch, where Little Irene was still lying, lost in reverie, although thoroughly awake.

“I was waiting for you,” she said. “Come, let us go outside. It is so very beautiful outside!”

In her little kitchen garden, Mistress Wise was hanging the washed clothes out to dry, while her daughter, sitting on a little stool, was milking the cow.

They both smiled when they saw the two siblings.

“Knowledge, my good girl, give the children to drink some of the milk you have just milked, before it gets cold,” said the old woman. “Do sit you down, my young lord and lady. You will have fine weather for your journey.”

The Prince remembered the words she had said to him the previous night.

“Old mother,” he said, “why do you think it a pity that I should go away?”

But the old woman had work to do in the house.

“I have no time just now, my young lord,” she said. “Knowledge will answer your question. For she knows all such matters even better than I do myself.”

And she went into her back kitchen to prepare the meal.

“Well then, you tell me, Knowledge,” said again the Prince, “why does your mother say that it is a pity that I should be going away?”

The young girl hesitated awhile. Then she said cautiously:

“Because the King’s son ought not to leave his land.”

The Prince was startled.

“How can you tell who I am?” he asked.

“My mother can tell, she knows you. Once upon a while we too lived in the palace. But many years have gone by since then.”

“And why did you go away?”

“Because other maids-in-waiting took my mother’s place, and we could no longer stay. We left the palace, and stayed in a little house in the capital, at the foot of the mountain. But the new maids-in-waiting drove us away from there too, and so we left and went farther away, and farther still, and in the end we came here, to the edge of the kingdom, where no man sees us, no man concerns himself with us. And we live all by ourselves, in the solitude of the countryside, which used to be dense with green things and teeming with houses, and yet is now only barren stones and desolation.”

“We too, we should come here!” said Little Irene. “It is so very peaceful and beautiful!”

“This is not a choice that is given to you,” said Knowledge.