The King awoke and looking out of his palace window he saw a river where there was not one before and ships were sailing on it and Emelian was levelling a little mound with his spade. And the King was alarmed. He took no pleasure in the river or the ships, he was only annoyed that he could not cut off Emelian’s head. “There is no task he cannot do,” he thought. “What shall we do now?”
And the King summoned his servants and conferred with them.
“Think of a task,” he said, “that will be beyond Emelian’s strength, for so far he has done everything we have thought of and I cannot take away his wife.”
And the courtiers thought for a long time, then came to the King and said, “You must summon Emelian and say to him, ‘Go to—I don’t know where, and bring me—I don’t know what.’ He won’t be able to escape you then, for wherever he goes you can say it was not the right place and whatever he brings was not the right thing. Then you can cut off his head and take away his wife.”
The King was pleased with the idea. He sent for Emelian and said to him, “Go to—I don’t know where, and bring me—I don’t know what. And if you don’t, I’ll cut off your head.”
Emelian went back to his wife and told her what the King had said. The wife reflected.
“Well,” she said. “Be it on the King’s own head what his courtiers have taught him. We must act with cunning now.”
She sat and thought it over for a while; then said to her husband, “You must go a long way to our old grandmother, a peasant soldier’s mother, and ask her to help you. She will give you something which you must take straight to the palace and I will be there already. I cannot escape them now; they will take me by force, but only for a short while. If you do what grandmother tells you, you will soon set me free.”
And the wife prepared Emelian for the journey and gave him a bundle and a spindle.
“Give grandmother this spindle,” she said; “by this she will know that you are my husband.”