‘Well,’ sighed Giles, ‘maybe she’ll turn up again some day. She does, you know, in the most unexpected places.’
‘And always where she’s needed,’ Luke added with a nod.
‘It’s late,’ said Giles. ‘Let us get to bed now. We need rest. For tomorrow, Luke, we set out for the capital and fortune—tomorrow we ride with the King!’
Book 2
1 The King’s Finder
And so the next day Giles started out for the capital; and with his starting out there began for him a new life, the life of palaces and princes.
He never thought that it would be nine whole years, from that morning, before he would return to his father’s town. Yet so it was to be. It was not that he had no wish to come back. Indeed, he often planned to do so. But something always came along to prevent it. For his own life was a very busy and a very happy one; and in those nine years many strange happenings took up his thoughts and filled his days.
It must be said in Giles’s favour that he did not allow all the new splendour and glory to turn his head; which was very remarkable in one so young. For it became quite clear to everyone as soon as the King got back to his Court that the boy he had brought with him stood very high in the royal favour. Not only was the young knight, with his one esquire, given rooms in the King’s own apartments, but it was noticed that the King took him with him wherever he went. More than that, His Majesty, it seemed, often talked over important business of State with him—even before taking advice from his regular councillors and ministers; and he was always giving the boy important tasks to carry out.
And before long Giles was surprised to find that all manner of grand and high persons about the Court were most anxious to gain his favour and show great friendliness to him. Hoping to get him to put in a good word for them and their affairs with the King, they even tried to give him presents. That was how he came to be spoken of sometimes in the history of this particular king’s reign as the ‘Boy Chancellor’. For even princes of foreign lands who wanted to make treaties and trade agreements with this country sent secret messengers to Giles, with gorgeous gifts, before they made their business known to the King himself.
Among the grand folk who sought to gain the favour of the King’s Finder there was His Majesty’s own aunt, the Princess Sophronia. Giles found this lady to be most peculiar. Not only was she a fuss-budget and dreadfully ugly, but she was also very vain, thinking herself a great beauty. She was no longer young, either. Yet she expected to marry an emperor, or some important sovereign at least. And at first Giles wondered why. But he soon saw the reason for it. Because she was the King’s aunt, many of the people about the Court flattered her no end and were always telling her how beautiful and noble she was and that she ought surely some day to be the queen of a great country. This was the first time that Giles came to see how some persons about the courts of kings were not to be trusted, that many who pretended to be loyal friends were nothing but double-faced, selfish schemers.
The poor King could not abide his Aunt Sophronia; yet because she was of the blood royal he had to be polite to her. And she was for ever pestering him for all manner of favours and complaining of this and that. Here, too, Giles came in very handy to his master. Whenever His Majesty saw the Princess coming, he would whisper:
‘Here comes my aunt. For pity’s sake, keep her talking for me while I slip away into the garden.’
And so Sir Giles Waggonwright, the King’s Finder, had to have many conversations with the Princess Sophronia and got to know Her Highness very well. But he soon saw that he had to keep her and many others in their places. He politely refused to annoy the King with most of their worrisome requests and plans; and he would not take the presents and bribes of money with which they tempted him to carry their prayers to the sovereign.
Among the people at the Court, however, there were two who never bothered the King’s Finder to do things for them—though both of them were indeed good friends of his. One was the Queen Dowager, His Majesty’s mother. Until the King should get himself a wife, his mother still held the position of Queen, as she had done when his father was alive. She was a very kind little old lady with merry twinkling eyes, and was beloved by everyone throughout the realm. The other was the beautiful Countess Barbara, daughter of the Commander of the Scottish Archers.
This girl, although she was still very young, seemed to grow more lovely with every passing year; and princes and rulers from many lands had already asked for her hand. Marriages were arranged very early in life in those days, and after the betrothal an engagement was sometimes announced long before the wedding. The Countess was now a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Dowager. But she did not as yet appear to be interested in the idea of marrying. She seemed to have no time or liking for the noble youths who fluttered around the King’s mother, living in the hope that the beautiful Barbara might some day cast favourable eyes on them. Indeed, Giles often thought she cared very little at all for any part of the grand and gossipy and ceremonious life of the Court. She loved the countryside and the common people of the land, dogs and horses, gardens and fields.
The King himself was this way inclined also—as were Giles and Luke. The business of reigning was indeed a business for the poor King. He had to attend to it and he did. But he was always glad to throw aside the pomp and grandeur and go off with no other attendants but the Countess, Giles and Luke, picnicking in the country. Here the four of them had a grand time, climbing trees; racing their dogs; jumping their horses over hedge and stream; gathering blackberries and lunching off sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs. These doings sometimes caused a good deal of talk among the ministers and important persons at the Court who did not feel that His Majesty always behaved with proper kingly dignity.
The thought often came to Giles that although the beautiful Barbara was not in the least interested in love, perhaps the King was very much interested in Barbara—if he were not actually in love with her.
When Giles had first come to the palace and was dressed by the Court tailors, measured by the royal saddlers, given a whole suite of rooms of his own and treated with all the honour and respect due to a knight, he had been a little anxious and afraid. His fear was that he might not, after all this trouble had been taken over him, prove to be such a wonderful finder as he had boasted of being.
But he very soon made good his claim. He certainly had a gift for finding things—and the King had an even greater gift for losing them. Most of the other officers of the Royal Household were held strictly to certain regulations; and they had fixed hours when they must wait upon the King, with exact and solemn ceremony. But with Giles it was very different. He had no set hours for his work and attendance. And if this kept him busier than the others, he at all events had the consolation of being free. Special orders were given by His Majesty that the King’s Finder should be supplied with keys to every door and gate in the castle, and that he was to be admitted to any room at any hour whatever. This came in very handy for Giles when he had a fancy to get a piece of pie from the castle pantry in the middle of the night. But it also caused some inconvenience to others, as, for instance, when he woke the Princess Sophronia out of a sound sleep at two o’clock in the morning to see if she had borrowed a book which the King had missed.
Yes, the King’s habit of losing things certainly kept the Finder busy. Often there were two or more things lost in one day and Giles wouldn’t know which to hunt for first. But after a while he saw that his hardest tasks always came whenever the King left his private rooms. So long as the thing lost lay in the royal apartments, Giles knew he did not have to go far to seek it. But when His Majesty wandered off into the country and left his best jacket hanging on a tree because the day was warm, the matter was not so easy.