Shadow of a Hero

LEGEND

The Pomegranate Trees

RESTAUR VAX SENT letters to Bishop Pango in Rome, saying, ‘Return, for the Pashas have fled, and our country is ours.’

Bishop Pango answered, ‘In a little while.’

Restaur Vax wrote again, saying, ‘Return, for we need both your counsel and your blessing.’

Bishop Pango answered, ‘My blessing is always with you, and my counsel is that the Pashas are not fled for ever.’

A third time Restaur Vax wrote, saying, ‘Return. Your counsel is wise, but we are strong in our mountains. The Pashas cannot drive us out. All that is needed is your presence among us.’

Then Bishop Pango sent for the messenger and told him, ‘Say this to Restaur Vax. “There was once a king who married a woman from the far south, and he loved her greatly and gave her many gifts, but still she repined. And when he asked her why, she told him that she yearned for the things of her own land, and above all for the sight and scent of a pomegranate tree in the spring. So the king sent south for pomegranate trees, enough to fill an orchard, but it was a far journey and a hard one, and when they came at last all but four of the trees were dead. These he gave to his gardener, saying, ‘Make me a garden, and let there be a pomegranate tree at its centre, for my queen to see and smell when it flowers in the spring.’

‘“The gardener had never grown such a tree, and knew nothing of its culture, but he knew his king for an angry man when his wish was not fulfilled. Therefore he built for his king four gardens, each with a pomegranate tree at its centre. One tree he both pruned and dunged. One he pruned and did not dung. One he dunged and did not prune. And the fourth he neither dunged nor pruned. So the trees prospered or stayed or failed according to their nature.

‘“Then in the spring the gardener led his king and his queen to a garden filled with roses and with lilies and with amaranth, and at its centre a young pomegranate tree heavy with blossom, so that it scented all the garden. The queen clapped her hands with pleasure and the king rewarded the gardener with praise and with gold. So the gardener left them to delight in their tree, and sent for his workmen and said, ‘Let the other three gardens be ploughed, and wheat sown in their place, that my master may not know of them, the two gardens where the tree at the centre is a poor thing with only few leaves, and the fourth where it is dead.’”

‘My son, that gardener was a wise man. Moreover he had four trees of which to make trial, and we have but two. Let us not grow them in the same garden.’

By this Restaur Vax knew that the Bishop would not come.