Once on a Time Part 30

The barber got to work again.

"Do you know what I should do to the King of Barodia if I had him here?"

Merriwig did not dare to speak, but he indicated with his right eye that he was interested in the conversation.

"I'd shave his whiskers off," said Carlo firmly.

The King gave a sudden jerk, and for the moment there were signs of a battle upon the snow; then the King leant back again, and in another minute or so the operation was over.

"It will soon be all right," said Carlo, mopping at his Majesty's chin. "Your Majesty shouldn't have moved."

"It was my own fault, Carlo; you gave me a sudden idea, that's all."

"You're welcome, your Majesty."

As soon as he was alone the King took out his tablets. On these he was accustomed to record any great thoughts which occurred to him during the day. He now wrote in them these n.o.ble words:

"_Jewels of wisdom may fall from the meanest of hinds._"

He struck a gong to summon the Chancellor into his presence.

"I have a great idea," he told the Chancellor.

The Chancellor hid his surprise and expressed his pleasure.

"To-night I propose to pay a secret visit to his Majesty the King of Barodia. Which of the many tents yonder have my spies located as the royal one?"

"The big on in the centre, above which the Royal Arms fly."

"I thought as much. Indeed I have often seen his Majesty entering it.

But one prefers to do these things according to custom. Acting on the information given me by my trusty spies, I propose to enter the King of Barodia's tent at the dead of night, and----"

The Chancellor shuddered in antic.i.p.ation.

"And shave his whiskers off."

The Chancellor trembled with delight.

"Your Majesty," he said in a quavering voice, "forty years, man and boy, have I served your Majesty, and your Majesty's late lamented father, and never have I heard such a beautiful plan."

Merriwig struggled with himself for a moment, but his natural honesty was too much for him.

"It was put into my head by a remark of my Court Barber's," he said casually. "But of course the actual working out of it has been mine."

"Jewels of wisdom," said the Chancellor sententiously, "may fall from the meanest of hinds."

"I suppose," said Merriwig, taking up his tablets and absently scratching out the words written thereon, "there is nothing in the rules against it?"

"By no means, your Majesty. In the annuals of Euralia there are many instances of humour similar to that which your Majesty suggests: humour, if I may say so, which, while evidencing to the ignorant only the lighter side of war, has its roots in the most fundamental strategical considerations."

Merriwig regarded him with admiration. This was indeed a Chancellor.

"The very words," he answered, "which I said to myself when the idea came to me. 'The fact,' I said, 'that this will help us to win the war, must not disguise from us the fact that the King of Barodia will look extremely funny without his whiskers.' To-night I shall sally forth and put my plan into practice."

At midnight, then, he started out. The Chancellor awaited his return with some anxiety. This might well turn out to be the decisive stroke (or strokes) of the war. For centuries past the ruling monarchs of Barodia had been famous for their ginger whiskers. "As lost as the King of Barodia without his whiskers" was indeed a proverb of those times. A King without a pair, and at such a crisis in his country's fortunes! It was inconceivable. At the least he would have to live in retirement until they grew again, and without the leadership of their King the Barodian army would become a rabble.

The Chancellor was not distressed at the thought; he was looking forward to his return to Euralia, where he kept a comfortable house.

It was not that his life in the field was uninteresting; he had as much work to do as any man. It was part of his business, for instance, to test the pretentions of any new wizard or spell-monger who was brought into the camp. Such and such a quack would seek an interview on the pretext that for five hundred crowns he could turn the King of Barodia into a small black pig. He would be brought before the Chancellor.

"You say that you can turn a man into a small black pig?" the Chancellor would ask.

"Yes, your lordship. It came to me from my grandmother."

"Then turn me," the Chancellor would say simply.

The so-called wizard would try. As soon as the incantation was over, the Chancellor surveyed himself in the mirror. Then he nodded to a couple of soldiers, and the impostor was tied backwards on to a mule and driven with jeers out of the camp. There were many such impostors (who at least made a mule out of it), and the Chancellor's life did not lack excitement.

But he yearned now for the simple comforts of his home. He liked pottering about his garden, when his work at the Palace was finished; he liked, over the last meal of the day, to tell his wife all the important things he had been doing since he had seen her, and to impress her with the fact that he was the holder of many state secrets which she must not attempt to drag from him. A woman of less tact would have considered the subject closed at this point, but she knew that he was only longing to be persuaded. However, as she always found the secrets too dull to tell any one else, no great harm was done.

"Just help me off with this cloak," said a voice in front of him.

The Chancellor felt about until his hands encountered a solid body.

He undid the cloak and the King stood revealed before him.

"Thanks. Well, I've done it. It went to my heart to do it at the last moment, so beautiful they were, but I nerved myself to it. Poor soul, he slept like a lamb through it all. I wonder what he'll say when he wakes up."

"Did you bring them back with you?" asked the Chancellor excitedly.

"My dear Chancellor, what a question!" He produced them from his pocket. "In the morning we'll run them up on the flagstaff for all Barodia to see."

"He won't like that," said the Chancellor, chuckling.

"I don't quite see what he can do about it," said Merriwig.

The King of Barodia didn't quite see either.

A fit of sneezing woke him up that morning, and at the same moment he felt a curious draught about his cheeks. He put his hand up and immediately knew the worst.

"Hullo, there!" he bellowed to the sentry outside the door.

"Your Majesty," said the sentry, coming in with alacrity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The tent seemed to swim before his eyes, and he knew no more_]

The King bobbed down again at once.

"Send the Chancellor to me," said an angry voice from under the bedclothes.