These words were repeated to the baker; he married her and she managed to keep her promise.
A little while afterwards the second daughter was looking out of window when she spied the king’s pastry-cook.
“How I should like to marry that fine-looking man,” said she. “I would make enough cakes in a day to last a year.”
As before, the words were repeated; the girl had her wish, and managed to keep her promise.
But the third daughter saw the king’s son, and said, “If the king’s son were to marry me I would bring him three children, two boys and a girl, each with the red cross of a knight on his chest.”
This saying was repeated to the prince who married the girl and almost immediately afterwards became king. But he had not been king long before a terrible war broke out, and he had to leave his bride and go far away to fight. He put her under the charge of his mother, with strict injunctions that he should receive information as to whether his wife had kept her promise or not. Now the queen-mother was a wicked woman, who hated her daughter-in-law because she was not a princess by birth, but only the daughter of a poor knight; and the two elder sisters also hated the queen, being jealous of her, because they had to bow before her and do her homage. So these three women consulted together, and sent for a wicked witch to help them injure the poor queen. The queen had three children as she had promised, two boys and a girl, each with the red cross of a knight on his chest; but as soon as they were born, the witch let three black puppies run about the room, and took away the children and put them on the river-bank in the forest hard by. Then she sent word to the king:—
“Your wife has brought you three black dogs.”
“Let her and them be well taken care of,” wrote he. But the witch and the queen-mother changed the letter into:—
“Let her be walled in at the foot of the stairs, and let everyone who goes by spit on her”; and this was done. Now we will go back to the children.
In the forest there lived a hermit; he heard small voices crying, went and looked, and found the little ones. He took them to his hut, and tended them, and they grew up like flowers, fine and strong, with the red cross always in front.