“If my old master could hear me, he would have my head for that! No, that does not suit him. It is his wish, his intent, to bring the market widow, the dove-seller, into the Palace and make her Queen, crowned with his mother’s crown. The result of this you can imagine. Every well-born lady in Jexal insulted; the-King whose daughter has been passed over, ready to make war; the market people insufferable from pride. Not to be contemplated. So he is given his portion, he announces publicly that he is no longer prince, or heir, or any connection with the ruling house and he goes. To Armenia, it is said.”
Caspar listened to this sorry little story with a sneaking feeling of admiration for Pella, a man of some spirit, he thought, not a Jexalian at all.
“Suppose,” he said, ‘just suppose, that he came back, with an army behind him, to claim what he claimed to be his right.”
“He renounced all rights. Between the dove-seller-and Jexal he chose
once and forever.““So you said. But if it came to choosing between him and me;
what then?”
“You,” the Vizier said, ‘valued Jexal enough to fight for it; he flung it away like a worn out shoe. Also, there is this to be said … You said I was always to speak the truth to you, and the truth now I dare to speak. We are subject to you and to your Five Hundred, but with you we feel safe. When the battle was over it was over, some lost their positions, some their mansions, but our lives are safe. With Pella nobody would be safe. He gave up Jexal once for a market woman; he would give it again to the foreign army that re-established him. He was a man of no judgement. May I ask … is it likely that we must make this choice? Has he, in the face of all that he vowed, some plan to return?”
“Not that I know of. I was talking idly. And still talking idly, I ask this. If Pella should ever come, the boy Malchus, the girl Ilya, where would they stand?”
“Against him, whatever that involved,” the Vizier said promptly.
“He and his mother and the two princes who were killed did everything in their power to make life miserable for the young wife and her children. Malchus, I assure you,“has no ambitions; except to be a soldier. With three elder brothers he never expected to inherit the crown and now that you have allowed him to be a soldier he is content—and your devoted subject.”
That Caspar doubted, but he let it pass, hoping that the Vizier would now speak Ilya’s name, since he couldn’t without betraying his interest, speak it again himself.
“For the girl I am sad,” the Vizier said, ‘as I am sad for any girl for whom no husband can be found. My old master so doted upon her, his only girl child, that no offer made for her pleased him. This one was too old, this too young, this had bad teeth and the other was of known bad temper. Thirteen years old and not promised, when he died; for a Princess, and so pretty, a thing unknown. And now too late. Unless—and this I do also dare to say because you said that from me you would take nothing but the truth—if you would marry her. What a wonderful thing that would be, and how pleasing to all the people.”
“When I marry,” Caspar said, ‘it will be to please myself, not the people.”
“But naturally,” the Vizier said.
Time passed; no emissary came from Rome offering a ruinous friendship; there was no news of Pella. The year passed its peak and began to decline; travellers from the West grew fewer; soon would come the season when snow would lie on the mountains. Caspar busied himself with his army and his defences, never naming Rome as the enemy even in his mind, but being ready because, as he had reason to know, all men are enemies to those who possess something covetable.
Then, on a crisp bright morning, the Customs Officer in the post on the north-easterly road out of Jexal reported the arrival there of an old man, almost half dead from hunger, riding a lame camel: his name, he said, was Melchior and he came from far away, from a place called Pyangyong. He seemed to be a scholar, he had spoken in two or three strange tongues before trying the one which, with difficulty, the Customs Officer had understood.
“And which tongue was that?” Caspar asked the Vizier who had brought this report to him. ” “Something between the market speech which I use to you and the speech of the Five Hundred which you use to me.”
Coming from that direction the old man could have no news of Rome or of Pella; he was not, like” Benjamin the Jew, a rich and valued customer; there was no real reason why Caspar should receive him. But lately he had welcomed any diversion which would prevent him, in the evening hours, from brooding upon his own foolishness with regard to’ a pale, frail girl with great dark eyes.
So he said, “Kinship of tongue should indicate kinship of blood. Ask this Melchior to eat supper with me.”
“If the report is to be believed,” the Vizier said, ‘he and his camel may be dead by supper time.”
“Where are they now?”
“A swift runner brought the message and I came straight todeliver it. They may by this time have reached the bridge.”
“Order a meal; bring the old man to me, and look after the camel.”
Had the King of Jexal given such an order in the old days it would have been relayed and subdivided and its execution delayed; but things were different now and in a short time Melchior and Caspar made their fateful meeting. Caspar, well used to assessing a man’s physical state, saw at a glance that the old man was in the last stages of exhaustion, and near starvation point as well. But he was courteous. He put his left hand in his right sleeve, his right in his left, and bowed so that for a second his queer round hat looked like a shield. Then he raised his wasted face to Caspar and said:
“It is charitable of you to invite me to eat with you; but you are only prolonging a useless life.”
The words, spoken in a weak voice, and, to Caspar’s ear, strangely accented, were only just recognisable. Their meaning seemed obscure.
“Sit down,” he said.
“Food is ready.”
A servant brought in a dish, hastily prepared and the old man eyed it so avidly that Caspar said :
“Take a mouthful or two of wine first, to make way. Then eat slowly. With fasting the belly shrinks.”
“You have known hunger?”
“Many a time.”
The wine ran down hearteningly and presently Melchior began to pick at the food.
“You have travelled far,” Caspar said.
“Where is Pyangyong?”
“To the East. By the shore of the Yellow Sea.” Caspar had never heard of the Yellow Sea but he was skilled now in concealing ignorance, so he nodded and asked: “And where are you going?”
“That I cannot tell you, because I am uncertain myself. This may sound strange to you, but it is fact. In Samarkand I consulted a map, said to be new and accurate, and I think I was bound for Jerusalem or some place a little to the south of it. Not that it matters. I know now that I shall never get there. I have failed.”
“In what way?”
Along the road, making an ineffectual attempt to bargain, or—since his money gave out—to beg, Melchior had tried to explain something of his errand and its urgency; he had always been laughed at. So now he was cautious.
“I had a message to deliver,” he said.
“A message of the utmost importance, something that only I knew about. I realise now that I am an impractical man.. ..” He brooded for a moment, ignoring his food, then said in a more vigorous voice, “On the other hand, had I foreseen the difficulties and the expense or realised how money becomes of less and less value as one moves westwards, there was nothing I could have done. I sold all I had. My own wants are meagre, but to keep a camel in condition is very expensive. And the ferries …”
He looked at Caspar with his old unworldly-wise eyes and said with a thin smile that looked as though it hurt:
“Have you ever been obliged to pay for a passage, with a camel, across a wide river, by ferry?”
“No.”
“You have then been spared the worst evidences of human rapacity. I have made five such crossings and they have ruined me. It is not, one admits, easy work, and there are certain risks, especially with a camel aboard; but I-can see no excuse for saying that the ferry fee is so much and then stopping in midstream and demanding as much again. Or, as once happened, allowing me to land on the farther bank and then pushing away, threatening to carry my camel back to the other side unless I paid more. I hesitate to say that such practices are unknown in my own country, I have led a retired life. And it is possible, of course, that strangers are exploited everywhere. Oh, not here,” he added hastily, ‘here I have been most kindly received, and I am grateful indeed. And I ask you to forgive, if you can, my showing a miserable face at your hospitable table. The thought of my failure distresses me.”