Stories from the Old Attic

by Robert A. Harris

As the days passed, the old couple grew thoroughly attached to the baby. They both found themselves unexpectedly humming little tunes or smiling for no apparent reason, and they both found their chores suddenly lighter and easier. They worked faster, eager to finish and once again spend some time playing with the child.

However, it wasn't many weeks before the old woodcutter and his wife were forced to admit that they were simply too old and too poor to raise the child as it should be, and that they ought in all fairness to the babe to find a better home for it. "For," as the old woman explained, "I love the child too much to keep him."

So the woodcutter took the child to a house where several holy women lived and, after explaining the brief history of the child as he knew it, asked for their help. "The wife and I don't have the learning behind us, the money with us, or the years ahead of us to raise this child as it ought to be raised," said the woodcutter to the matron of the house, "so we'd appreciate it if you could find it a proper home."

"Our small endowment provides us with only a modest living," the matron said, "but we will care for the child until we can find out whom it belongs to, or until we can find it a good home." So the man left the child with them and went on with his wood cutting. The matron of the house assigned care of the child to one of the newest of the holy women, who could nurse it.

About this season in the kingdom, the queen gave birth to a son also. The child, however, was weak and sickly, and failed to flourish. In just a few weeks it developed a fever and died suddenly in the night. The queen, in addition to her grief, was frantic with anxiety, knowing that the king was such a hard man that if he knew his only son had died, he would hate the queen and perhaps divorce her. So she sent, with the utmost secrecy, a trusted servant to find another child to replace the one she had lost. "Bring me a child with no past," she told her servant, "and I will give it a future."

Finding such a child was a tiring and frustrating task for the servant, and he met with humiliation and rejection and insult and false leads and failure at every turn. But since this story is not about him, nor about the rewards of perseverance, let us say simply that eventually he found himself at the door of the holy order of women we have mentioned above.

"Yes, we do have such a child as you seek," the matron told him. "We were keeping him until we could find his parents, or until we could find him a good home. Perhaps your mistress, whoever she is, will care for him well." The servant assured the matron that this would be so and gave her a large gift to maintain the house and its charitable work. As she handed him the child, she said, "The woman who has been nursing the child says that this parting is like a death to her, for she has become very attached to him. But she loves him too much to think of her feelings. I hope that what is a sadness for her will be a happiness for the child."

"Truly, good woman," replied the servant, "it is rightly said that the death of every fruit is the seed of new life. Every ending is also a beginning."

As the years passed, the baby grew up into a fine, strong young man. The king, who remained crusty and harsh toward everyone else, changed completely when his son (as he supposed) entered the room. The king became actually friendly and laughed some and often engaged in animated conversation with the young prince. The king was often heard to say that he would never let the prince part from him even for a day but that the prince should be his always. They often rode on horseback through the forest all day or sat together by the fire until the servants fell asleep, discussing the kingdom and enjoying each other's company.

When the prince reached his early manhood, the king not only took him into confidence on affairs of state, but began to share power with him, knowing that not many more years would pass before there would necessarily be a new king. Many of the king's decisions were now submitted to the prince before they were made, and the prince, to his credit, frequently moderated the king's stern and often cruel decrees.