In the Suicide Mountains

Chapter Six

He’d come up into the mountains, the prince said morosely, because the king had ordered him to. (The three of them were traveling up the road again now, the prince and Chudu the Goat’s Son walking — Chudu scrambling to keep up, sometimes falling — Armida riding on the big white horse. He had a black nose with pink spots on it. “What’s your horse’s name?” Armida had asked the prince, fluttering her lashes. “I don’t know,” the prince said. “They told me, but I forgot. I call him Boy.”) Christopher the Sullen had no liking for quests, and no liking for tournaments or fights or politics, all of which, as crown prince, he was forced to make his business. He was the unhappiest man in the world. Also, he said — giving a little tug at the horse’s bridle, because every time the road went under low-hanging branches the horse would reach his head up for a mouthful of leaves — he, Prince Christopher, wasn’t what you could call good at quests or fighting or politics, and he made no bones about it.

“I was sickly, as a child,” he said gloomily, looking off into the woods — they were dark now, toward the middle—“and I never really did get my strength back. But that’s the least of it.” He pursed his lips, looking now at the ground a few feet ahead of him, for the confession, Chudu the Goat’s Son saw, was embarrassing for him to make. It was a mark of his despair that he made it anyway, as if nothing at all mattered one jot. “That’s the least of it,” he said again, and nodded. “The sickness apparently affected my mind. A prince is supposed to be clever. Quick-witted. Ha.” He glanced over at Chudu, then back at the ground again. “I’m doltish, that’s the truth. Sometimes I forget to tie my shoes.”

“But you’re good at heart,” Armida said encouragingly.

“Not really,” said the prince. “Take horses, for instance. I’m not so stupid I haven’t noticed how ‘real men,’ as they say, feel about horses — the way they pat them lovingly, you know, when they dismount, and always think of their horses’ needs first on long journeys. Read stories of knightly adventure, it’s all there.” He glanced at his horse as if to see if he was listening and decided, fool that he was, that horses don’t understand. “I hate horses,” he said fiercely. “My favorite way to travel is on a train.”

Chudu the Goat’s Son thought of his nights by the railroad trestle and shuddered.

“Oh, there are some things I like about horses,” Prince Christopher corrected himself — for one of his faults, as his father was always telling him (since it was a serious disadvantage in government work), was that Christopher the Sullen was abnormally fussy about truth. “I like the smell, for instance. Somebody should bottle it. But as for the rest…” He glanced at the horse’s nose. The horse’s black lips parted, trying to give Christopher the Sullen a nip. The prince jerked his hand away. Armida, unbeknownst to the prince — her face still empty of intelligence as a plate — patted the horse to calm him and distract his mind.

They walked on for a time in silence. Prince Christopher, who had his steel helmet off now, had long, raven-black, shiny hair, as soft and beautiful and well-cared-for as a woman’s. It flowed halfway down his back and had a wonderful smell; it took all Armida’s concentration to resist reaching forward and touching it, sniffing it, pressing it to her lips. His dark, handsome eyes were also womanish, and so were his gestures. When he waved his free left hand, gesticulating, he reminded her of an Indian princess. And she noticed this too: When lost in thought he had a funny way of pursing his lips as if preparing for a kiss. She blushed.

“I should never have been a prince,” he said. “It’s all some absurd mistake. All I really care about is playing the violin. I’m really good at that. And also, occasionally, I like to read books. I like books quite a lot, actually, though people say it’s sissy.” He added in haste, “Not science books or history books.” He glanced at them. A blush rose up his neck but he wouldn’t stop confessing. “I like poems and stories. I do. I wish the whole world was run by poems and stories. ‘Why not?’ I say. People laugh. Poems are for girls, they say. I say ‘Pish!’”

“Personally, I hate poetry,” Armida said, and then looked nonplussed, for she’d been trying not to let any thoughts slip out.

“I don’t believe it,” the prince said simply and impolitely. He looked up at her, eyes brightening. “You want to hear a poem?”

Armida pursed her lips, glanced at Chudu the Goat’s Son, and said nothing. The Coat’s Son chuckled grimly. He did like poetry, but only poetry about caves.

Prince Christopher’s face became more animated, and his walk, in some curious way, took on conviction, though he wasn’t walking faster. “It’s about a juggler,” he said. “A juggler who’s a magician. It’s a poem I wrote myself.”

Prince Christopher the Sullen was striding now, striking his legs out like an Irish dancer, his right hand still holding the bridle of the horse, his left hand pressed against his chest so that he could feel the fremitus as he spoke. The sun was slanting into the woods almost sideways — it would soon be dark — but the prince, declaiming his poem, was like cock-robin early in the morning. “The Juggler and the Baron’s Daughter,” he began, “by Prince Christopher the Sullen.”

It went:

Draw in near!

Draw in near!

Draw in near to

The jolly old juggler!

There once did live

A rich baron’s daughter,

And she’d have no man

That for her love had sought her,

So nice she was.

And she’d have no man

That’s made of bone and meat

But if he had a mouth of gold

To kiss her on the seat,

So grand she was.

And so the jolly juggler learnt,

Lying on the heath,

And at this pretty lady’s words,

Forsooth he grit his teeth,

So cross he was.

He juggled him a mighty steed

Out of a horse’s bone,

A saddle and a bridle too,

And sat himself thereon,

So sly he was.

He pricked and pranced that mighty steed

Before the lady’s gate:

She swore he was an angel

Come there for her sake.

(A dunce she was.)

He pricked and pranced that mighty steed

Before the lady’s bower:

She swore he was an angel

Come from Heaven’s Tower.

A prancer he was.

Then four and twenty knights

Led him through the hall;

Mean-while, as many squires

Led his horse to stall

And bade him eat.

The squires did give him oats,

The squires did give him hay,

But he was a mean one

And turned his head away.

He wouldn’t eat.

Then day began to pass

And night begun to come;

Up to her bed was brought

This gentle wo-mun.

The juggler too.

Then night began to pass

And day begun to spring,

And all the birds around the bower

Begun at once to sing.

(The cuckoo too!)

“Where are you, my perty maids,

That you come not me to?

The jolly windows of my bower

I pray that you undo,

That I may see.

“For I have here inside my arms

A duke or elst an earl.”

But when she looked upon the man,

He was a blear-eyed churl!

“Alas!” cried she.

She bore the juggler up a hill

And meant to hang him high:

He juggled him into a meal poke,

And dust fell in her eye.

Beguiled she was!

Christ and Our Lady

And sweet Saint John

Send to every haughty maid

Such another one!

Amen.

When he’d finished, the prince looked up at Armida and boyishly grinned. “What do you think?”

“Strange rhymes,” she said, and smiled shyly. She glanced down at the horse, which was blinking merry tears out of his eyes and chuckling.

Prince Christopher looked at the horse in surprise and found he was beginning to feel friendly toward him. “You like that?” he said. The horse nodded and chuckled harder. Prince Christopher mused. As had often happened, in his experience, poetry had mysteriously reclaimed the day. “You want to hear another one?” he asked.

Armida leaned forward in the saddle and batted her eyelashes. “Maybe later,” she said.

Though he’d intended to at the start — if only from curiosity about what kind of poetry a prince might write — Chudu the Goat’s Son had not paid particular attention to the poem, or anyway the last few stanzas of it, for he was thinking, with gradually increasing excitement, that perhaps Prince Christopher the Sullen might be the answer to his prayers. When poetry put the prince in a better disposition than was, apparently, normal for him, his antics had a tendency to distract Armida; and like a bolt out of the blue it had occurred to the Goat’s Son that such a tendency, pushed to an extreme, might in the end lead Armida to forsake her intention of committing suicide. With an eye to finding out how long the prince might be expected to remain with them, the Goat’s Son said now — with what seemed to Armida, the prince, and the horse an uncivil abruptness—“So your father, you say, ordered you here on a quest.”

It was a stupid thing, he saw at once, to have said. The prince suddenly became more dejected than ever.

“It’s filiacide,” he groaned, and in the failing light the Goat’s Son was just able to make out that large tears were falling from the prince’s beautiful dark eyes. In his misery — as if the whole burden of the world had dropped on him — the prince seemed not so much to walk as to stagger. He threw his left hand up in a dramatic gesture, the right one still holding the bridle. “I have to slay an outlaw,” he said and heaved a sigh. “The notorious six-fingered man.”

“I’ve heard of him!” Armida said, then stopped herself and in haste made her face shy and foolish.

“Everyone,” said the prince irritably, “has heard of the six-fingered man. Master of disguises, heart of a dragon, the man no jail in the world can hold—” He walked on a few steps, shaking his head, the tears still falling. “I haven’t got a prayer. He’ll kill me like a rabbit! What match is a mere poet and violinist for an experienced murderer?”

“Perhaps when the time comes,” Chudu began, but he let it trail off. Prince Christopher was right; he had no chance. In his mind he saw Prince Christopher lying on a heath with an arrow through his heart, Armida kneeling beside him in a long black dress, inconsolably weeping. He, Chudu, would wear his top-hat.

“Well,” Armida said, cheeks flushed with distress, “you’ll simply have to do your best.”

Christopher the Sullen laughed. It was a terrible thing to hear and made the night — or so it seemed — grow abruptly darker. “That’s what everybody says. ‘You’ll have to do your best.’ I don’t agree. Not one bit. It’s stupid! And undignified! There I’ll be, rattling my mighty lance and yelling ‘En garde, vile villain!’ and there he’ll be, smiling, sitting with his legs crossed, fiddling with his pen-knife—” The shame of it made Prince Christopher cover his eyes with his arm. “I won’t do it,” he moaned. “I can’t! I’d rather be hanged on a gybbit high!”

“What,” asked Armida, lowering her lashes, “is a gybbit high?”

The prince took his arm from in front of his eyes and thought about it. “I’m not sure,” he said at last.

Chudu the Goat’s Son pushed his hands into his pockets and pursed his lips. After they’d walked a little further, Chudu the dwarf taking three steps for every one of theirs, Chudu asked, gloomily fearing he could guess the answer, “Well then, Prince Christopher, what do you intend to do?”

“I’m going to kill myself,” said the prince. “I’ve made up my mind.”

Chudu the Goat’s Son nodded. “I thought so,” he said.

Armida gasped and peered through the darkness at the prince as if she might not have heard correctly. “You mustn’t!” she said. “Oh, you can’t!” She pressed her hand to her bosom.

“I can do anything I please,” snapped the prince, “and I intend to.”

Armida fell silent, abashed at having had to be yelled at. “I love him,” she thought, heart full of anguish, and was astonished at herself. Tears began coursing down her cheeks, but no one saw, for it was now dark as pitch. Ahead of them, at the top of the mountain, flimmering at the very edge of Suicide Leap, there were lights. It was the Ancient Monastery.