The King Without a Heart Read online

  She walked into the stables to see the horses being saddled and was very impressed with the one that the King had chosen for her.

  It was a large stallion which the Head Groom told her had come from Hungary and Titania could see that it obviously had Arab blood in it.

  She was discussing the horse with him when the stable boy announced that the King was outside.

  The horses were hurriedly taken from their stalls and as Titania had expected, Darius and Kastri were with the King.

  After she had curtsied to the King, she smiled at the aides-de-camps and they bade her good morning.

  “I am going to take you for a different ride today,” the King told her as they set off. “I think it is important for you to see the different parts of my country.”

  “It is all exceedingly beautiful,” sighed Titania, “and I am so impressed with the high mountains.”

  “I will show you those on another day. Now I want to race you as I did yesterday and I think it is what our horses are hoping for.”

  They rode for quite a long distance at a very fast pace and when they drew in their mounts and were able to speak to each other, the King said,

  “I think you will find this part of the country is a little more inhabited than where we were yesterday. There is a small village over there which I have always thought is most picturesque.”

  “Oh, do let me see it, Sire,” begged Titania.

  The King smiled good-humouredly and they rode towards the village.

  As he had said, the village was picturesque and built of small houses and there were a few small shops, much to Titania’s surprise, but they were empty compared to the ones she had seen yesterday in the City.

  She drew her horse up outside one shop that sold furniture beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl with different woods that made every piece a real work of art.

  “I have never seen anything so pretty!” exclaimed Titania.

  Even as she spoke a man who was doubtless the creator of this lovely furniture came out from the back of the shop bowing respectfully.

  “Is your furniture for sale?” Titania asked him.

  “It is indeed, madam,” he replied. “But alas we have very few visitors to this small village.”

  Titania looked at the furniture again and then she had a sudden idea. She turned to the King and speaking in English so that the man could not understand, she suggested,

  “This is exactly the sort of shop you should have in the City. The shops there are empty with almost nothing on sale and I can quite understand why you do not have many tourists in Velidos, beautiful though it is.”

  The King looked at her in astonishment.

  “I suppose you are right,”

  he admitted.

  “Now I come think about it, there is very little to interest a tourist.”

  Titania turned to the man who was looking at her curiously.

  “Are there any more brilliant craftsmen like you in this village?” she asked.

  He gave a laugh.

  “We are refugees, madam. Our families escaped when the Turks were fighting the Serbs and we were very scared.”

  Titania remembered that twelve years ago in 1876 the Turks had invaded Serbia and they had been appallingly cruel in the way they fought and treated those they conquered.

  Everyone in England, including Mr. Disraeli, the Prime Minister, had been horrified at the way they had behaved.

  “We escaped and came here,” the man was saying.

  “My sister and her husband have a shop just a few yards up the road where she makes beautiful lace. I know, madam, she would be very proud to show her work to you.”

  Titania found that he had not exaggerated.

  The lace was exquisite and there was a great deal of it because, as the maker said pathetically, there were very few buyers.

  There was another shop owned by another relation of a man and his wife who made toys for children. Some of them were carved and some were sewn together from odd pieces of material.

  Every one of them was fascinating and Titania knew that they would delight any child.

  She praised them and then she turned to the King,

  “Alongside the shops in the main street of the City which had so little to sell, I saw several empty ones, which Darius told me had not been occupied for many years.”

  The King rode back to the first shop, dismounted and looked at the furniture carefully and by this time Darius and Kastri had caught up with them.

  Darius held the bridle of Titania’s horse as she slipped down to the ground to join the King.

  “I have never seen such beautiful work,” she exclaimed.

  “You know how clever the people in some of the Balkan countries are and how many sightseers visit their countries more for what they can buy than for what they can see.”

  “I know exactly what you are saying to me,” muttered the King.

  He called to his side the man who had carved the furniture and his relations who had followed them and then he said to them,

  “I have a proposition to make to you. I think your brilliant talents are wasted here where, as you say, too few people visit. I want you to move into the City, where there are several empty shops on the main street. I will guarantee that you pay no rent until you can afford to do so after the first year or two. I am convinced that if you continue to work as cleverly as you have done here, you will soon have more customers than you can cope with.”

  He smiled as he finished speaking and the man’s sister who made the lace came forward.

  Going down on her knee in front of the King, she kissed his hand.

  “You have saved us,” she said. “How can we ever thank you enough for making such a proposal to us?”

  “Are you quite sure, Sire,” the man with the toys said tentatively, “that you can afford to let us have the shops without paying you rent?”

  “I see you do not recognise me. I am actually the King of this country and I think you will find there will be no difficulties, except that you will have to decorate the shops to make them look attractive enough for what you have to sell.”

  It was obvious that the people listening to him were stunned by what the King had said.

  Without him and Titania being aware of it, a small crowd of people from the village had seen their horses and out of curiosity they had come to find out what was happening.

  Then they understood what was going on and the King learned that there was a man who made the most delicious sweetmeats for children.

  Another married couple produced basket-work and they ran home to fetch some to show the King and it was exceptional.

  “I think there will be enough unoccupied shops for all of them,” said Titania excitedly.

  “I will tell you what I will do,” suggested the King. “As soon as I return to the Palace I will send someone who will inform me exactly what is available, and arrange for those of you who wish to be transported to the city to be taken there as soon as possible.”

  He paused before he added,

  “In the meantime I wish to buy six pieces of this beautiful furniture, enough lace to cover a gown for this lady and twenty-five toys which will be left at the Palace.”

  There was a gasp first of astonishment and next they were almost incoherent in their thanks and gratitude. As they rode away, Titania turned to the King.

  “You have made those people very happy, Sire. They will serve Your Majesty faithfully and, of course, love you for the rest of your life.”

  To her surprise the King did not speak for a moment and then he replied,

  “You must not fit me into a role for which I am not suited.”

  “I don’t know what you are saying, Sire.”

  “Ever since I came to the throne, I have been a King without a heart and now it is too late for me to change.”

  “You are nothing of the sort,” responded Titania without thinking. “Why should you think that is what you are?”

  “It i
s what I want to be and what I intend to remain.”

  They rode on for a little way until when they were some distance from the Equerries and Titania asked him,

  “You must explain to me. I am feeling somewhat bewildered by what you have just said.”

  She thought for a moment that the King was going to refuse to talk to her anymore and then he answered, “When I found you crying yesterday, I told you I understood only too well what you were feeling.”

  “Because you had lost your dog?” murmured Titania.

  “Not only my dog, but everything I have ever cared for. When my mother died I had a nanny who must have been rather like yours. When I was six my stepmother sent her away and replaced her with a young woman who was German like herself. She was told to make a man of me and I was more or less drilled from morning to night. Then, when I grew a little older, she was replaced by tutors who did exactly the same thing.”

  “I cannot bear to think about it,” said Titania in a low voice.

  She thought, however, that the King had not heard her as he continued,

  “When Frederick was born, my stepmother hated me because I was the heir to my father’s throne and not her own son.”

  “It must have been terrible for you,” sighed Titania sympathetically.

  “Everything I did was wrong, but I had my dog and he was something to love and he loved me.”

  “Then you lost him?”

  “When I came back from school and found him gone, it was then that I began to think I would never give my heart or my love to anyone again.”

  “How could anyone be so cruel and so unkind to a young boy?”

  “My stepmother was determined that I should have no friends. If I brought home a school friend, he was laughed at and scorned and my stepmother made certain he was never asked again.”

  He gave a little laugh which had no humour in it before he resumed,

  “You can imagine that if I was interested in a girl, what happened. But I soon learnt to avoid anything feminine, because it would be humiliating if they showed an interest in me.”

  “But eventually you escaped. Your father died and you became King.”

  “I became King and the first action I took was to send my stepmother back to her relations in Germany. But you can understand that by this time I had learnt the lesson she taught me and I had no intention of ever being as miserable as I had been since my mother died.”

  “So you pretended, that you – had no heart.”

  “It was not a question of pretence,” the King said sharply. “I have no heart and I have no intention of trying to find one and suffer as I have suffered before in my life.”

  As he finished speaking he spurred his horse and as he began to gallop Titania had to urge her own mount on to keep up with him.

  They rode back to the Palace too quickly for there to be any chance of further conversation.

  Only as they rode into the stable yard did Titania say a little nervously,

  “You will not forget those people from the village you promised to help?”

  “I may not have a heart,” replied the King in a cold voice, “but I keep my word and do not go back on it.”

  “I am sorry, Sire,” muttered Titania apologetically, but he was not listening.

  He dismounted from his horse which was being held by one of the grooms and without speaking to Titania again, he walked towards the Palace and disappeared.

  Titania felt as if the sun had gone in and the world had become dark.

  She had been very proud and delighted when he had been kind to the people in the village. He had solved not only their problems, but had given the City the beginning of the renaissance it so desperately needed.

  But now he seemed to be angry with her and she wanted to run after him and apologise again

  But as she dismounted Darius was beside her.

  “That was very clever of you,” he said. “The people are very grateful and the whole City will be astonished and delighted that the King is at last taking some interest in them.”

  “But surely the Prime Minister and his colleagues realise that if they want tourists to spend money here, they must have something to attract them.”

  Darius smiled.

  “I suppose being men it is something they never thought of. But of course you are right and I think you are wonderful.”

  Titania could see the admiration in his eyes.

  “But the King is angry with me.”

  Darius shook his head. “I don’t think so. I believe that he has wanted to do the right thing by his people for a long time, but has prevented himself from doing so because he wishes to remain aloof, so he tries to be entirely immersed in his books rather than in life itself.”

  “You now think he might change?” Titania questioned him.

  “I believe you have made him take the first step and that is the most important. It is the first drop of water that can become a flood, which is what we need.”

  “I am still worried in case I have upset him,” murmured Titania.

  They were walking towards the Palace by now and she was still feeling as if the sun had gone in and the King was really angry with her.

  As they reached the door, Darius offered,

  “If you want to change your books I will come and tell you when the coast is clear.”

  “Thank you,” said Titania and ran up the stairs to her room.

  Sophie might be sending for her soon and, whatever happened, her cousin must not find out that she had been riding with the King.

  ‘Perhaps it is something I will never do again,’ she thought forlornly.

  It had been so exciting to be with him, just as she had been thrilled yesterday when he had listened to her telling him about the Sufis, the Zen Buddhists and those who sought enlightenment in the forest.

  ‘Perhaps he will never listen to me again,’ Titania told herself and felt like crying.

  But there was nothing she could do and so she ate her breakfast alone and then she waited for the summons to come from Sophie.

  She was half afraid that when she did go to her cousin, she would have learnt what she had been doing, but instead Sophie only wanted to tell her what Frederick had planned for her that afternoon.

  “We are going to inspect a Battleship,” she told Titania, “and Frederick is very anxious that it should be named after him.”

  “Will the King allow it?”

  Sophie gave a derogatory laugh.

  “Who cares what he says. Anyway nobody worries about him. All he does is write a stupid book which no one will want to read and it is really Frederick who runs the country.”

  Again Titania thought this sounded rather dangerous talk, but her cousin rambled on,

  “Of course Frederick should be King and I expect he will be sooner rather than later. The people are fed up with a King they never see and who is obviously not interested in them.”

  Sophie turned away from Titania to look at herself in the mirror.

  “I believe the Queen’s Crown is very becoming,” she continued smugly. “When I am Queen I shall have the Royal Jewels, which have been collected over the centuries and which Frederick tells me are fantastic.”

  “I think, Sophie, you must be very careful,” Titania counselled tentatively.

  “If people heard you talking like that, they would be – very shocked. After all, the King was crowned and he does rule over this country whatever people may say about him.”

  “He does nothing, absolutely nothing,”

  Sophie came back positively.

  “It is Frederick who inspects the troops, what there are of them, encourages the people who are building the Battleship to give it his name and who is cheered whenever he appears in public.”

  Titania thought the cheers at the wedding had not seemed as spontaneous as might have been expected.

  But there was nothing further she could say to Sophie.

  She therefore started to talk about what clothes she would
want to wear. As the conversation was now about herself, Sophie quickly forgot everything but her own appearance.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Titania was miserable.

  The following day the King did not come riding with her and she rode alone with Darius and she did not like to ask him why the King was not there at seven o’clock as he usually was.

  She enjoyed being mounted on a very spirited horse she had not yet ridden, but it was not the same as when she was with the King.

  In the afternoon when Sophie had gone out, Darius took her to the library and it was unoccupied.

  Titania selected several books to read, thinking they would be exciting, but somehow her mind kept going back to the King.

  She kept wondering how she had offended him.

  It was just the same the next day and that night she was forced to admit to herself that she missed the King unbearably.

  It was with the greatest difficulty she did not burst into tears.

  ‘I want to be with him, I want to talk to him,’ she kept thinking. ‘There is so much I can remember, which I am sure will help him with his book.’

  But it was no use telling the darkness.

  The King seemed to have disappeared!

  Sophie and Prince Frederick were extremely busy visiting organisations and people in the City and they also travelled to other towns which were near enough to be reached in no more than one or two hours driving.

  Sophie was happy as she believed that all this activity was because her husband wanted to show her to the people and considered it as a great compliment.

  However, Titania could not help wondering if Prince Frederick had other reasons for being so much in the public eye.

  On the third morning she went to the stables at the usual time expecting to find only Darius.

  The King was there.

  When she saw him her heart seemed to turn a somersault and the sky was brighter than it had ever seemed. She was aware, however, although she might have been mistaken, that the King did not look at her.

  He merely said politely,

  “Good morning, Titania, I have chosen a special mount for you today and I hope you will enjoy riding him.”

  “I know I will, Sire.”