Book II Chapter 1 The Twilight of Magic by Hugh Lofting
The King’s Finder
And so the next day Giles started out for the capital; and with his starting out there began for him a new life, the life of palaces and princes.
He never thought that it would be nine whole years, from that morning, before he would return to his father’s town. Yet so it was to be. It was not that he had no wish to come back. Indeed, he often planned to do so. But something always came along to prevent it. For his own life was a very busy and a very happy one; and in those nine years many strange happenings took up his thoughts and filled his days.
It must be said in Giles’s favour that he did not allow all the new splendour and glory to turn his head; which was very remarkable in one so young. For it became quite clear to everyone as soon as the King got back to his Court that the boy he had brought with him stood very high in the royal favour. Not only was the young knight, with his one esquire, given rooms in the King’s own apartments, but it was noticed that the King took him with him wherever he went. More than that, His Majesty, it seemed, often talked over important business of State with him—even before taking advice from his regular councillors and ministers; and he was always giving the boy important tasks to carry out.
And before long Giles was surprised to find that all manner of grand and high persons about the Court were most anxious to gain his favour and show great friendliness to him. Hoping to get him to put in a good word for them and their affairs with the King, they even tried to give him presents. That was how he came to be spoken of sometimes in the history of this particular king’s reign as the ‘Boy Chancellor’. For even princes of foreign lands who wanted to make treaties and trade agreements with this country sent secret messengers to Giles, with gorgeous gifts, before they made their business known to the King himself.
Among the grand folk who sought to gain the favour of the King’s Finder there was His Majesty’s own aunt, the Princess Sophronia. Giles found this lady to be most peculiar. Not only was she a fuss-budget and dreadfully ugly, but she was also very vain, thinking herself a great beauty. She was no longer young, either. Yet she expected to marry an emperor, or some important sovereign at least. And at first Giles wondered why. But he soon saw the reason for it. Because she was the King’s aunt, many of the people about the Court flattered her no end and were always telling her how beautiful and noble she was and that she ought surely some day to be the queen of a great country. This was the first time that Giles came to see how some persons about the courts of kings were not to be trusted, that many who pretended to be loyal friends were nothing but double-faced, selfish schemers.
The poor King could not abide his Aunt Sophronia; yet because she was of the blood royal he had to be polite to her. And she was for ever pestering him for all manner of favours and complaining of this and that. Here, too, Giles came in very handy to his master. Whenever His Majesty saw the Princess coming, he would whisper:
‘Here comes my aunt. For pity’s sake, keep her talking for me while I slip away into the garden.’
And so Sir Giles Waggonwright, the King’s Finder, had to have many conversations with the Princess Sophronia and got to know Her Highness very well. But he soon saw that he had to keep her and many others in their places. He politely refused to annoy the King with most of their worrisome requests and plans; and he would not take the presents and bribes of money with which they tempted him to carry their prayers to the sovereign.
Among the people at the Court, however, there were two who never bothered the King’s Finder to do things for them—though both of them were indeed good friends of his. One was the Queen Dowager, His Majesty’s mother. Until the King should get himself a wife, his mother still held the position of Queen, as she had done when his father was alive. She was a very kind little old lady with merry twinkling eyes, and was beloved by everyone throughout the realm. The other was the beautiful Countess Barbara, daughter of the Commander of the Scottish Archers.
This girl, although she was still very young, seemed to grow more lovely with every passing year; and princes and rulers from many lands had already asked for her hand. Marriages were arranged very early in life in those days, and after the betrothal an engagement was sometimes announced long before the wedding. The Countess was now a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Dowager. But she did not as yet appear to be interested in the idea of marrying. She seemed to have no time or liking for the noble youths who fluttered around the King’s mother, living in the hope that the beautiful Barbara might some day cast favourable eyes on them. Indeed, Giles often thought she cared very little at all for any part of the grand and gossipy and ceremonious life of the Court. She loved the countryside and the common people of the land, dogs and horses, gardens and fields.
The King himself was this way inclined also—as were Giles and Luke. The business of reigning was indeed a business for the poor King. He had to attend to it and he did. But he was always glad to throw aside the pomp and grandeur and go off with no other attendants but the Countess, Giles and Luke, picnicking in the country. Here the four of them had a grand time, climbing trees; racing their dogs; jumping their horses over hedge and stream; gathering blackberries and lunching off sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs. These doings sometimes caused a good deal of talk among the ministers and important persons at the Court who did not feel that His Majesty always behaved with proper kingly dignity.
The thought often came to Giles that although the beautiful Barbara was not in the least interested in love, perhaps the King was very much interested in Barbara—if he were not actually in love with her.
When Giles had first come to the palace and was dressed by the Court tailors, measured by the royal saddlers, given a whole suite of rooms of his own and treated with all the honour and respect due to a knight, he had been a little anxious and afraid. His fear was that he might not, after all this trouble had been taken over him, prove to be such a wonderful finder as he had boasted of being.
But he very soon made good his claim. He certainly had a gift for finding things—and the King had an even greater gift for losing them. Most of the other officers of the Royal Household were held strictly to certain regulations; and they had fixed hours when they must wait upon the King, with exact and solemn ceremony. But with Giles it was very different. He had no set hours for his work and attendance. And if this kept him busier than the others, he at all events had the consolation of being free. Special orders were given by His Majesty that the King’s Finder should be supplied with keys to every door and gate in the castle, and that he was to be admitted to any room at any hour whatever. This came in very handy for Giles when he had a fancy to get a piece of pie from the castle pantry in the middle of the night. But it also caused some inconvenience to others, as, for instance, when he woke the Princess Sophronia out of a sound sleep at two o’clock in the morning to see if she had borrowed a book which the King had missed.
Yes, the King’s habit of losing things certainly kept the Finder busy. Often there were two or more things lost in one day and Giles wouldn’t know which to hunt for first. But after a while he saw that his hardest tasks always came whenever the King left his private rooms. So long as the thing lost lay in the royal apartments, Giles knew he did not have to go far to seek it. But when His Majesty wandered off into the country and left his best jacket hanging on a tree because the day was warm, the matter was not so easy.
So Giles formed the habit of always watching the King to see if he laid things down in the wrong places and, when possible, of slipping them in his own pockets, so as to have them ready when his master needed them again. He had a tremendous memory for this sort of work; and with practice it grew better and better. Sometimes, when he appeared to be giving his whole attention to someone else, the Finder was watching the King out of the corner of his eye; and if His Majesty threw a letter aside carelessly, or, unthinking, slipped his favourite pen into a drawer, Giles could tell him weeks or months afterwards just where he had left it.
Other tricks he used to help him in his findings, but they were nearly all some form of what is called observation, keeping the eyes open, noticing little things. Often he would question the King as to where he saw the missing article last. And when he had found that out he would ask him to remember what he had done, minute by minute; and where he had been, foot by foot, since. This often took hours and wearied the King not a little; but in the end Giles nearly always knew to a yard or so just where to go and look for what had been lost.
Two very famous cases showing the cleverness of the King’s Finder are mentioned in the history of this country. One was when a shoe of the King’s disappeared mysteriously from the royal bedchamber. The King did not care anything about the shoe; but he was much upset at losing the buckle on it, which was one of a very precious gold pair that had belonged to his father. Everyone suspected the grooms of the bedchamber of having stolen it. But Giles thought otherwise. It seemed likely to him that if a servant had done it, he would have taken both the shoes and not one only.
So he went to see the Keeper of the Royal Kennels and asked if there were any puppies there. The Keeper said yes, one of the greyhounds had a litter about five weeks old; but the mother was in a great state because one of the pups was missing since last night. Giles then put the mother on a leash and led her to the King’s bedchamber. Here she got more excited and restless than ever; and picking up the scent of her young one, she dragged Giles after her out of the castle and down to the far end of an orchard. She stopped at the mouth of a deep pit which was used for throwing leaves and rubbish in. The puppy, worn out with his long journey, was found asleep at the bottom of it. And beside him was the King’s shoe, nearly chewed in halves, but with the precious buckle still safely sewed to it.
The other exploit, which made the Finder even more famous in the story and legend of the kingdom, threw almost a mysterious glory and respect around his name. Some of the courtiers who had grown jealous of the power and importance of the boy knight sought to destroy his favour with the King and hatched a plot against him. Up to this time, Giles’s success had been simply marvellous. Not a thing of value which he had set out to seek had he failed to find. Their idea was to make him fail, in order that the King would lose faith in him. So one night they managed to get hold of some of the Crown jewels and hid them in different places in the castle garden. And after they had carefully covered up all their traces they waited to see what would happen.
As soon as the loss of the jewels became known the whole palace was thrown into a great state of excitement. Again, several persons were accused of theft or carelessness, and again the King’s Finder was called in to solve the mystery. After questioning those whose business it was to guard such things, Giles did a little thinking. He knew almost at once that this could not be the work of any ordinary robber from outside. And if it had been done by anybody inside the castle, he guessed it was a trap laid for the purpose of injuring himself and his reputation—also that more than one person was likely engaged in the business. So the first thing he did was to warn the King that he must be patient, because this piece of work might take a little time.
Part of Sir Giles’s duties as an officer of the Royal Household was that of guardian and keeper of the Whispering Shell. Hardly anyone around the Court knew of the existence of this shell. The King had been anxious to keep its powers a secret. Giles nearly always carried it upon his person, to be ready to hand it to the King any time he asked for it. And whenever the Finder left it behind him, he locked it in a special strong cupboard in his rooms, to which only himself and the King had a key.
Once he had made up his mind that several people were in the plot, he kept the shell near him day and night. Even when sleeping, he put it next his cheek upon the pillow so that its heat should wake him up if anyone spoke of him. About one o’clock in the morning on the third day after the jewels vanished, he woke up with a great start. The shell was burning away like mad, which meant, he knew, that several people were speaking of him at once. He rolled over and clapped it to his ear.
‘Drat the country brat!’ said a voice. ‘This will queer him with the King—or I’m a Turk. “King’s Finder” indeed! He’ll have to be the Devil’s own finder to root out the piece I buried. Two feet down under the flagstones of the East Pavilion I laid it—and everything put back so a mole couldn’t tell I’d been there. Pass round that bottle of wine again and we’ll drink to his disgrace and destruction.’
‘Sir Giles Waggonwright!’ sneered another voice. ‘What a name! And whoever heard of making a knight of a boy that age? How old is he now?—Sixteen. Huh! And when he was raised to the nobility he was barely ten. The King must have been mad—bringing a workman’s boy to the palace to lord it over his betters. Well, we’ll see the end of him soon now. A whole lifetime couldn’t be long enough to discover my hiding-place. The Coronation Ring—with the Persian Emerald—it’s under a fathom of mud in the Turtle Pool. Let us see if his cheeky little peasant nose can dig that out. May the plague rot him!’
Then a third voice joined in—a fourth. And a fifth. The rattle of wine cups. Curses and laughter.
For a full half-hour the talk went on and Giles listened. Although no names were mentioned he recognized every voice. And before the shell grew cold he had learned where each one of the boasting courtiers had hidden his part of the treasure.
The dawn was just breaking as Giles, with Luke behind him, slipped out into the castle garden. They stopped a moment at the gardener’s tool-house, which was quickly opened with the Finder’s pass keys.
And when the King, a few hours later, sat down to breakfast in his rooms, there lay all the missing jewels upon the table before him.
His Majesty tried hard to make Giles tell how and where he had discovered them. But the Finder begged to be allowed to keep his secret.
‘Very good, Giles,’ he said at last, smiling. ‘So long as you stay in my service I am content. For truly I believe that so long as I have you I need not worry if I lose my crown and kingdom. Sit down and have some eggs with me.’
And so out of this plot against him came nothing but greater fame for Giles; and the Lord Treasurer was ordered to add another hundred crowns to the yearly wage of the King’s Finder.
But the five courtiers, whenever they passed him in the corridors and passages of the palace, quickly looked the other way and would not meet his eye. And before long they asked the royal permission to travel for their health, and they left the King’s Court, never to return again.