The Laughing Prince Part 23

"Let him who found the Nightingale come to the mosque and then the Nightingale will sing."

Thereafter every day when the beggar youth came to the mosque to pray the Nightingale sang, and always when the Sultan approached the beggar walked away and the bird stopped singing. At last people began whispering:

"Strange that the Nightingale should sing only when that beggar youth is near! And yet the Dervish says it will not sing unless he who found it comes to the mosque! What can he mean?"

Report of the beggar youth reached the ears of the Sultan and he went to the Dervish and questioned him.

"Why do you say that the Nightingale Gisar will not sing unless he who found him comes to the mosque? Lo, here are my two sons who found him and the bird remains silent, yet people tell me that when a certain beggar comes to the mosque he sings. Why does he not sing when I and my two sons come to pray?"

And always the Dervish made the same answer in the same sing-song voice:

"Let him who found the Nightingale come to the mosque and then the Nightingale will sing."

Soon a terrifying rumor spread through the land that a great Warrior Princess called Flower o' the World was coming with a mighty army to make war on the Sultan and to destroy his city. Her army far outnumbered the Sultan's and when she encamped in a broad valley over against the city the Sultan's people, seeing her mighty hosts, were filled with dread and besought their ruler to make peace with the Princess at any cost. So the Sultan called his heralds and sent them to her and through them he said:

"Demand of me what you will even to my life but spare my city."

The Warrior Princess returned this answer:

"I will spare you and your city provided you deliver me your son who stole from me the Nightingale Gisar. Him I shall have executed or let live as it pleases me."

Now the Sultan's two sons knew that the Flower o' the World was fated to marry the man who had stolen from her the Nightingale Gisar, so when they heard the Princess's demand they were overjoyed thinking that she would have to fall in love with one of them. So they disputed at great length as to which of them had done the actual deed of taking the bird, each insisting that it was he and not his brother. The Sultan himself had finally to decide between them.

"You have told me," he said, "that you captured the bird together. As that is the case and as I can't send you both to the Warrior Princess it is only right that the older should go."

So under a splendid escort the oldest son rode to the tent of the Warrior Princess. She bade him enter alone and when he appeared before her she looked at him long and steadily. Then she said:

"Nay, but you are never the man who stole from me the Nightingale Gisar!

You would lack the courage to face the perils of the way!"

The oldest prince answered the Flower o' the World craftily:

"But how, Princess, if I did not steal from you the Nightingale Gisar was I then able to bring back that glorious bird and hang his cage beside the fountain in the mosque?"

But Flower o' the World was not to be deceived by such specious words.

"Tell me then," she said, "if it was you who stole my glorious Nightingale, where did you find him hanging in his golden cage?"

The oldest prince could not answer this, so he said at random:

"I found his golden cage hanging in the cypress tree that grows in the garden of your palace."

"Enough!" cried the Princess.

She clapped her hands and when her guards appeared she said to them:

"Have this man executed at once and let his head be sent to the Sultan with the message: _This is the head of a liar and a coward! Send me at once your son who stole my glorious Nightingale Gisar or I will march against your city!_"

The Sultan was greatly shocked to receive this message together with the head of his oldest son.

"Alas!" he cried, calling his second son, "would that I had listened to you when you insisted that it was you and not your brother who actually did the deed! Unhappily I listened to your brother! See now the awful result of this mistake! Go you now to this heartless Princess whom men call Flower o' the World or else our poor defenseless city will have to pay the penalty."

So the second prince was taken to the tent of the Warrior Maiden and she put to him the same questions and he fared even worse than his brother had fared. So his head, too, was sent to the Sultan with this message:

"_Send me no more liars and cowards but the son who actually did steal from me my glorious Nightingale Gisar._"

In despair the Sultan went to the mosque to pray. As he bowed his head he heard the Nightingale burst forth in song. Then when he looked up he saw a beggar youth standing near the fountain.

When his prayers were finished the Sultan went outside to the Dervish and said to him:

"The Warrior Princess, Flower o' the World, demands that I send her another son. I know not where my Third Son is. What shall I do?"

Without looking at the Sultan the Dervish answered in his sing-song voice:

"Send her the son for whom the Nightingale sings."

The Sultan turned away in disappointment, not understanding what the Dervish meant, but one of his attendants plucked his sleeve and whispered:

"The Nightingale sings for yonder beggar youth. Perhaps it is he the Dervish means. Why not ask him if he will go to Flower o' the World in place of your Youngest Son?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Flower o' the World Asleep_]

The Sultan nodded, so the attendant called the beggar youth and the Sultan asked him would he go to the Warrior Princess as the Youngest Prince.

"Allah alone knows where my Youngest Son is," the Sultan said, "but he is just about your age and if you were washed and anointed and dressed in fitting garments you would not be unlike him."

The beggar youth said he would go but he insisted on going just as he was. The Sultan begged him to go dressed as a prince or the Flower o'

the World might not receive him.

"No," said the youth, "I shall go as a beggar or not at all. It is for the Flower o' the World to know me whether or not I am the Sultan's Youngest Son and the man who stole from her the Nightingale Gisar."

So he went as he was to the tent of the Flower o' the World and her warriors when they saw him coming said to the Princess:

"This Sultan mocks you and sends you a beggar when you demand his Third Son."

But the Flower o' the World ordered them all out and bade the beggar enter alone. She looked at him long and steadily and she saw through his rags that he was indeed a n.o.ble youth with a body made strong and beautiful through exercise and toil and she thought to herself:

"It were not a hard fate to marry this youth!"

Then she questioned him:

"Are you the Sultan's Third Son?"

"I am."

"Then why are you dressed as a beggar?"

"Because I was set upon at the crossroads and beaten insensible and my clothes torn to rags. I was coming home with the Nightingale Gisar in my hands and I lay down at the roadside to rest while I awaited the coming of my brothers. When I awoke to consciousness the Nightingale and its golden cage were gone. I came home to my father's city as a beggar and there they told me that my brothers had come just before me bringing with them the Nightingale and boasting of the perils they had been through and the dangers they had faced. But the Nightingale, they told me, hanging in its golden cage beside the fountain, was silent. Yet when I went to the mosque it always sang."