The King and his wife sat in the royal tent together. Her arm was stiff and painful and the King was uneasy, for he longed to place her under more skilful care than any which could be got in their present position. They sat at the tent door under the stars; just before morning, when all was beginning to be astir with preparations for the march, a star dropped from its place and fell across the Northern heavens. It travelled slowly along, leaving in its wake a little train of blue sparks.
“That is a good omen,” the Queen said.
Soon the rebels got news that the King had landed, and they came with their troops to meet him. There was a great battle that lasted from noon until the evening, and all day the King rode unharmed through the fray with a white pigeon on his shoulder—a white pigeon with a broken wing. The enemy looked upon this strange sight with superstitious awe, and many an arrow tried to find its way to the mysterious bird’s heart. But none succeeded, and when, at the end of that hard day, the King stood victorious on the field, the only signs of blood to be seen upon him were the drops that dripped upon his shoulder from the wing of the white pigeon.
At last he was able to go to his tent and lay aside sword and armour, and he placed the bird tenderly upon the ground. The Queen at once returned to her own shape, half dead with pain and fatigue and scarcely able to stand.
A great fear took hold upon the King. How if he were even now, in the hour of his success, to lose her?
It took him but one moment to make up his mind. He would take her to Maddy Norey, for, if there were help to be found under heaven, he knew that the witch would give it to him.
Commanding a fresh horse should be brought, he mounted as the moon rose and rode out into the night, holding the bird in the folds of his cloak. The people, when they heard of the advance of the troops and the great defeat from some fugitives who had escaped from the battle, had abandoned their houses and fled in all directions, so it was through a desolate country that the King spurred his good horse. He rode grimly on with his sword drawn in his hand, ready to cut down the first obstacle that might present itself, his eyes fixed steadily in front of him, looking neither to the right nor the left. In the early dawn he stood, as he had stood not so long since, at the foot of the Dovecote. There was the little door in front of him, with its rusty latch and hanging cobwebs. He threw himself from the saddle and rushed into the building and up the crazy stair. Maddy Norey’s voice came from inside the attic.
“Be quick, be quick,” she said, holding out her hands for the bird, “you have not come a moment too soon. Give her to me.”
They laid the fluttering creature on the ground, and, when her natural shape had returned, the Queen was carried to the carved bed where the witch dressed her wound, and, with charms and spells, charmed back her sinking life; and, having been assured by the old woman that all danger was past, the King left her with hope in his heart, and returned to meet his troops.
From that day everything went well; the march to the capital was but a triumphal progress, and the victors were soon joined by bands of those who had remained loyal during the rebellion, but who had not been able to gain the day for their sovereign by reason of the tremendous odds against which they fought.