The King's Indian: Stories and Tales

by John Gardner

“Then you are not,” said Muriel, “his accomplices.”

  “Certainly not!” said Dobremish.

  Luba, the daughter of the blacksmith, added quickly, “Though we don’t necessarily disagree with his opinions.”

  Djubkin told a joke which made everyone laugh till he could hardly see. Then Dobremish said, “It’s true, dear Muriel, that it’s not exactly clear to us why some people have to work all day and night while others do nothing but try dresses on, and it’s true that we feel, as you once felt, that Vrokror isn’t really as bad as the posters say he is. But we wish, heaven knows, no harm to you, or to anyone you love. We feel there’s been some horrible breakdown in communications, as Vrokror says. In fact we think—”

  Dobremish looked groundwards, unable to continue. Djubkin touched her arm. Bravely, timidly, Dobremish continued: “We wonder if, perhaps, in your favored position, you couldn’t, perhaps, discover that we’re all really royalty, like you.”

  Muriel’s eyes widened, but she said as gently as Queen Louisa could have said it, “My dear friends, you are in alliance with Vrokror! Since that is so, I must ask you to take me to him, and we’ll see what we shall see.”

  Though her friends feigned astonishment and injured innocence, it took her no time at all to wrest the admission from them. She had a firmness of conviction and a steadiness of eye that those of lower station simply could not match. It was Dobremish herself who led Muriel to the secret door. With Muriel holding the candle, Dobremish unlocked the door, but before opening it kissed her friend on the cheek, saying, “Tanya, or Muriel, whichever you please, do not judge us too hastily. Think it over carefully if you care at all for Truth. For perhaps we really are all princes and princesses.” With that, she pushed the door open and stepped back.

  6

  “Dearest Tanya!” cried Vrokror. He too held a candle. It threw its feeble light to the cobwebbed corners of the room, which contained a bed, a table, two flimsy chairs. “How weary you appear, my love,” he said. “You must come to bed at once!” He turned from her to fluff up the pillows on the bed.

  That would have been happiness indeed, for Muriel, but raising her pale hand she sadly declined. “Not this time, dearest Vrokror. It appears we have much to discuss, you and I.”

  He gazed at her admiringly. How she had matured! he seemed to be thinking, and he was right, she felt. She took his hand and led him deeper into the room, out of earshot of the others. She indicated the two flimsy chairs, and when Vrokror had drawn them up side by side, she and Vrokror sat down.

  “Vrokror, my dearest,” Muriel began, “you have poisoned the minds of my former friends. You have turned all those happy and contented peasants into smoldering revolutionaries who can never again know their former contentment. I cannot tell you how that grieves me.”

  Vrokror nodded solemnly, adjusting his glasses with two fingers. From his one good eye, a tear fell.

  “You warned me, of course,” Muriel continued, “of your demonic purpose, destruction of all government. Now I find myself your helpless captive, and no doubt you will force me against my will to aid and abet you in your fiendish scheme.”

  All her childhood friends, she noticed, were crowded around the open door, peeking in and eagerly awaiting the outcome of their battle of wits. How ironic, she mused, that a twist of fate should pit two such lovers against one another in inexorable conflict. She sighed.

  “I understand your reluctance to assist me, my dearest,” Vrokror said, wringing his long fingers. “I was a prince once myself, as you may have surmised.”

  “I did, actually,” Muriel said.

  “Then no doubt you will also have guessed my plot. Using you as my hostage—O hateful necessity!—I mean to bring about the death of Queen Louisa, undermining the morale of Gregor’s kingdom, after which I will throw the whole kingdom into war. When the knights are at their weakest the people will arise to my battle cry.” His gentle eye shone in the candlelight as he looked past her head at his vision of the future. “Everyone will be equal. We’ll all crowd into the palace, somehow—” He broke off abruptly. This was no time for idle conversation. “I will show you the letter I’ve written,” he said. He nodded to Djubkin, who came hurrying from the door, drawing the missive from his waistcoat pocket. “Dear Queen Louisa” the letter said, “Princess Muriel is hidden far away, but I, a kind priest with your best interests at heart, can tell you where she is if you come to me alone at midnight and meet me in the village church. Sincerely yours, Father Plodza.”

  Princess Muriel trembled as she read.

  “She’ll come, of course,” said Vrokror with a cruel smile, “and that will be the end of her.”

  “Vrokror, have mercy!” cried Princess Muriel. But for all his tender affection for her, he answered only with an ugly twist of his handsome mouth.

  “Soon we’ll all be princes and princesses,” said Djubkin, rubbing his hands together.

  “And I’ll be the queen,” said Dobremish sweetly, “unless Muriel wants to be.”

  Muriel looked left and right in horror. How had he so tainted the minds of her friends? “Do not be persuaded by this madman!” she cried. “Think of Queen Louisa’s great beauty and gentleness. Think of the valuable charities she runs!”

  Luba the daughter of the blacksmith came to Muriel and kneeled before her, clasping her knees. “You haven’t understood at all, dearest Tanya. Only you can stop Vrokror from this horrible treason. Simply recognize us as your long-lost brothers and sisters, princes and princesses.”

  Muriel’s eyes widened. She threw her hands up in dismay. “No one would believe me! The idea’s absurd!”

  Her friends all stared at her solemnly. She was the princess; it was up to her. She closed her eyes, one hand pressed to her bosom, the back of the other to her feverish forehead. She thought of the wardrobe torn to shreds, thought of the inevitable decline of poetry. And with that thought she suddenly formed a plan.

  As if in anguish she said, “I cannot recognize you as what you are not, for princesses do not lie. If Vrokror is adamant, I am powerless to prevent him.” She turned her wan face to Vrokror, miserably weeping. “But I will say one thing. You’ve addressed the queen improperly in your letter. She’ll tear it up in fury and throw away the pieces, which will wreck your whole plan.”

  Vrokror looked puzzled.

  “One doesn’t say ‘Dear Queen Louisa,’ ” she said scornfully. “That’s crude and barbaric. You address her as O mystic pantarb Sun.’ ”

  Vrokror looked at the letter. “I clearly remember from when I was a prince …” he began uncertainly.

  “Well, I’ve given you fair warning,” said Muriel, and blew her nose.

  After much discussion with Djubkin, Luba, and Dobremish, Vrokror made the change, and the letter was sent.

  7

  I set down the sequel with a trembling hand.

  Queen Louisa, believing the letter was some kind of poem from Sir Clervel, took it to the minstrel to see if he could make heads or tails of it. The minstrel carried it straight to the king, seeing that the letter was a fiendish trick.

  At midnight, King Gregor and his knights rode out stealthily and surrounded the old stone village church. King Gregor wore, on top of his armor and long black beard, a long white dress and false red hair and, over his visor of steel, a lady’s veil. Thus disguised, he entered the church alone, his hands hidden in his long white shawl. Meekly, timidly, he approached the robed and hooded priest. When he was five feet away, the priest turned to him, threw back his hood, and cried fiendishly, “Surprise!”

  “Surprise yourself, Vrokror!” cried the king, throwing off his veil and wig and shawl and swinging his sword up to strike.

  At this signal the knights all came crashing in through the church door and windows.

  “Betrayed!” howled Vrokror, turning to flee. “Rise and defend yourselves, downtrodden peasants!”

  Out of every shadowy corner came Muriel’s childhood friends, armed with pitchforks, candlestick
s, carving knives, fenceposts, whatever lay at hand. They leaped at the knights with the fury of wild beasts, though they must all have guessed the futility of it.

  “Surrender!” cried Gregor, but they refused, of course. King Gregor gave the signal and his knights began swinging their enormous two-hand swords, coming down with great whonks on the revolutionaries’ heads. Muriel, peeking from behind the altar, wept and sobbed. Down went Djubkin with a defiant cry. Down went Luba the blacksmith’s daughter, valiantly hurling a pitchfork as she fell. Down went elegant and frail Pretty Polly, and soon after, casting a last sad look at her dear friend the princess, down went the tinker’s daughter, Dobremish. Only Vrokror escaped. He snatched up the veil and red wig, threw the shawl around his shoulders, and fled into the night. At the end of the fracas, the church was so filled with fallen peasants, some of them bleeding horribly, that the knights could hardly walk without slipping and falling with a crash.

  “Vrokror, see what you’ve done!” cried Muriel, insane with anguish.

  It was then that Mad Queen Louisa arrived, Madame Logre just behind her. As the queen hopped through the church door, the church fell silent. She stared, wide-eyed, in such shock and indignation that she couldn’t tell whether to be the queen or a toad, and kept shifting helplessly from one to the other. At last, hands clenching her temples, she brought out, “My children! My long-lost princes and princesses! Gregor—monster!—you’ve slaughtered all our children!” She sank to her knees, shuddering and distraught.

  King Gregor said, horrified, pulling with both hands at his long black beard, “Our children, Louisa?”

  “Poor princes, poor princesses,” wailed the queen. Madame Logre smiled, showing her pointed teeth, and hugged herself. The knights hung their heads and the king shifted nervously from one foot to the other.

  “It was all my fault,” cried Muriel, coming from her hiding place.

  “Not at all,” said Queen Louisa, trembling. “It was the fault of tiresome and ultimately dangerous ideas.”

  Everyone was puzzled to hear her say something that appeared to make sense.

  “Mystic pantarb suns indeed!” said Queen Louisa.

  This was so confusing that everyone felt more or less secure again; so much so, in fact, that the beaten peasants began regaining consciousness, rubbing their sore heads and groaning. Though many would have to go to the castle infirmary, none of them was seriously wounded or dead.

  When Queen Louisa saw them getting up she was beside herself with joy, but she was also stern, as was necessary. “People with tiresome and dangerous ideas should be switched,” she said, and sent out for a willow switch. She did the switching herself. Everyone but Muriel and King Gregor was switched, even Madame Logre, though she loudly protested.

  “I never did a thing!” cried Madame Logre, and wholeheartedly believed it.

  “That,” said Queen Louisa, “is the most tiresome and ultimately dangerous idea of all!” and put the switch to her in earnest. Madame Logre did everything she could to escape. She turned into a mouse, a huge green serpent, a poor sickly old lady. All in vain.

  Then, chastened, they all limped back to the castle behind Queen Louisa, who carried her willow switch in front of her like a flag, and Dobremish (who was always her favorite) in her lap. King Gregor and Muriel, who hadn’t been switched, kept glancing at each other furtively, wondering what it was they did right. It was sunrise.

  Meanwhile, on a nearby snowcapped mountain, Vrokror was watching the procession through a spyglass and muttering oaths and imprecations. “Maniacs, maniacs, maniacs!” he kept hissing, stamping his foot in childish rage.

  “All error begins,” Queen Louisa said, “with soreheads.”

  Book Three

  THE

  KING’S INDIAN

  A Tale

  I

  “Hoaxes! Don’t speak to me of hoaxes, sir! I was part of the worst that was ever dreamt up in all history, and not free of it yet. Two old gnomes from Nantucket, some years ago … Gnomes. Hah! Cracked checker-players, that’s nearer the mark! Beelzebub and Jaweh! Never mind … interminable damned … Hoaxes. Hah.”

  He hunches up, cunning, a crafty old loon with his left eye cocked to the northwest corner of the universe. He is teased toward some barest possibility. He purses his lips. He looks both sly and apprehensive. His long, lean nose is the cutting edge of outlandishness.

  “I could tell you a tale, if ye’d understand from the outset it has no purpose to it, no shape or form or discipline but the tucket and boom of its highflown language and whatever dim flickers that noise stirs up in yer cerebrium, sir—the boom and the bottle we chase it with— fierce rum of everlasting sleep, ha ha!—for I won’t be called a liar, no sir! not when I speak of such matters as devils and angels and the making of man, which is my subject, sir.”

  With dignity, an angel enters, golden-winged, and places spirits on the table between the mariner and his guest (apparently a city fellow). The guest uncomfortably picks his lip. Except for the angel, the mariner’s voice, and the guest’s self-conscious ear, the room is empty; yellow. The guest is as yet only half-aware of the angel’s wings. Blushing slightly, uncertain who is supposed to pay, the guest glances over his shoulder, adjusts his tie.

  “ ‘Tell on, old loon!’ yer supposed to say.”

  “Tell on,” says the guest.

  “God bless yer generous soul, sir, that I will!”

  II

  Says he:

  “There never was a nobler sight in the world, nor like to be, I incline to think, than a brig in full sail out of some far-off foreign or American port, riding in a wind that knows its business, neither blustering like a fool nor slacking off. (Take a drop of the whiskey, sir.) And there never was a nobler sensation, God knows, than riding in the rigging of such a ship, the decks all gleaming with varnish below you, and the smell of unlimited futurity stinging your nosedrills. I’d aspired for years to such a ride, but always one thing had deterred me from it. I’m not a good man for taking orders or letting my soul be boxed in, so to speak. I never was good at it from the day I was born—an event I remember, believe it or not, with some clarity. I felt pain in my head, and then immediately a sensation of drowning, and I clawed and screamed, not from pain so much, though the pain was titanic, as from outrage and moral indignation. In time I came to forgive my parents for the inconvenience they’d afforded me, but be damned if I’d ever let another man take a similar advantage. Say all you like on ‘Ain’t all men slaves, either physical or metaphysical?’—myself, I like to preserve split-hair distinctions.

  “I may as well mention another experience that came when I was young and impressionable and which served to support my predilection for keeping out of other people’s clutches. Boston was a great place for mumbo-jumbo—magicians, clairvoyants, mediums who could fill up vast theaters with the shivers and shrieks of religion. There was many a murderer smoked out on stage, many a family miraculously reunited. There was schools in Boston that would teach you telepathy and the reading of minds for your greater success in business, and there was solemn narrations in the Boston papers of trips among vampire bats and prehistoric monsters, in search of Eldorado. It was a town fit to set beside any that ever was heard of to prove man’s capacity for bunkum. The end of the world was close at hand, it was generally acknowledged. Man was entering his final age—the age of his psychic awakening. Those who scoffed at all this spirit-crepitation were such patent cynics, such mean-eyed, low-browed habitual doubters, they looked to any unprejudiced man like mightier fools than the mediums.

  “Well, sir, as I was saying, when my father was home one time from whaling—he was a Nantuck whaler who’d been riding the swells from before he could remember, he used to boast—my parents took me to a mesmeric demonstration by the infamous Dr. Flint. Flint, as you know if you ever seen him, was a great gray craggy Adirondack of a man, with eyes like steel beneath that grandiose top hat, and a manner so forceful his magnetic passes made the tails of his coat
fly out in pure dismay. His most striking demonstrations (not counting his more illicit ones, like the time he stole the King of Sweden’s crown, and not counting one I saw years later, the strangest I ever saw on earth) were those involving his wispy little golden-headed daughter Miranda. One snap of his fingers and she’s deep in a trance, standing stiff as a pine tree and heavy on her feet as a Post Office. Four burly men from the audience can’t lift her—so Flint makes it seem. Laid between two upright chairs, this innocent, lovely-eyed child of just seven who surely can’t weigh, in her normal state, more than forty-some pounds—this child, I say, can support the weight of six great Yugoslav acrobats, part of Flint’s troupe. She can suffer being sawed clear in half inside a box. She can lean way off balance, supported by nothing but magnetic rays. She can float in the empty air like a duck on a river.

  “I marveled at these things, ye may well believe—marveled far more than I ever did at displays of clock-work automatons or those crafty Paris memory experts. I marveled and shrunk back in horror, yes sir! and not all my father’s ingenious explanations of how the trick was accomplished made a particle of difference. (My father was no mean sleight-of-hand man himself. He kept in practice to drive away the boredom on a whaler, so he claimed. I suspected from the first there was more to it than that. He couldn’t eat a meal without causing his spoon to disappear two, three times, and he carried a false beard in his inside coat pocket—I never found out why, though now that I’m old and have seen a few things, whenever I drive into the village I do the same. He was a storyteller respected far and wide, and the wilder the story was, the better he could prove it. He’d sported with a mermaid off Gibraltar one time, he told us once—the neighbors all gathered in the parlor as usual—and he made it so convincing my poor mother went into a secret rage and a decline that nearly ended her. With a pack of cards he was a dangerous man, and the way he snatched nickels out of empty air you’d have thought we’d be living in a mansion. ‘Chicanery, my boy, pure chicanery,’ says he. ‘That’s the whole secret of a long, rich life!’ His grin was exactly like a monkey’s; but I digress.)