The Coming of the Unicorn Read Online Free PDF Page B

reasoning with her.
    And he went down on his knees, “Your Majesty,” he said to the queen, “what have I done that makes you so upset?
    “You!” she said. “I was happy and happy married to the king… You have come and destroyed my life!”
    “Oh,” Jack said, “Your Majesty, I never destroyed your life. I never did any harm. All I did is come here and give the king back his keys.”
    “That’s what you’ve done, destroyed my life by giving the king back his keys!”
    “Well, I didn’t know about this.” But there was no reasoning with the queen. The more she talked the angrier she got. So, Jack begged upon her to tell him what was the reason behind the keys.
    Within her anger she says, “One night, when the king was drunk he told me the story.”
    Jack began to cock up his lugs; he wanted to find out.
    She said, “His good friend the wizard, before he left, built a secret garden in the mountains, in the middle of the mountains and guarded it by three gates, so that nothing in the world could ever enter – unless they were to be opened by the three silver keys. And in that garden is a fountain. That fountain is the Fountain of Youth. Whoever spends a day there in that fountain loses a year o’ their life. And for every day that he spends he gets younger by a year. So now,” she said, “I was happy with the king, growing old with the king. What’s going to happen to me now when the king comes back a young man and me an old woman? What will he do? He’ll cast me aside like a bit o’ stick and take some young woman for his queen. You are the cause o’ that!” And she got angrier and angrier. She called for the guards: “Arrest that man! He insulted me!”
    Immediately the guards came and Jack was arrested, thrown in the dungeons. He was taken before the court the next morning and the penalty for insulting the queen was death. Jack was to be hanged, hung by the neck until he was dead for insulting the queen! There was no escape for him. And he lay in a wee puckle straw, the rats running over the top o’ him days out and days in,fed on as little as possible and barely a drink o’ water. Till Jack says to himself, “I wish to God I had never seen the silver keys.”
    But anyway, the days passed by and Jack lost count of time. He barely knew day from night from a wee bit light shining through a slit in the wall in the dungeon. His beard grew long and his coat got tattered and worse he got. Till one day the door was flung open and in marched three guards. They pulled Jack to his feet.
    “Come on, get on your feet, you insulter of the Royalty! Today you’re going to be hung.”
    So, Jack was marched out by the courtroom to the square. The scaffold was built in the square and the people were all around, hundreds of them to see him hung. They were shouting and flinging stones at him as he was pulled by the guards. The guards were trying at the same time to hold the people back… that anybody, a stranger, would come into their district and insult Her Majesty the Queen! It was a great disgrace. It could never be lived down. But Jack was stood up, marched up the thirteen steps to the scaffold and the rope put round his neck. He was to be hung!
    The hangman says, “Your last request before you get hung!”
    Jack said, “I’ve no request to make. But if this is the way that ye treat a poor innocent man,” he said, “who came into your country with a present and greetings for the king… and I never insulted the queen!” But he pleaded and probed with the man, but it was no use with the hangman.
    He was just ready to pull the trap to let Jack hang – when down through the crowd o’ folk came this horseman! And a voice rang up, “The king, the king! Make way for the king!”
    And this man rode up. He came right beside the scaffold, jumped off his horse, ran up the thirteen steps and took his sword, cut the rope around Jack’s neck and led him down the steps.
    And Jack looked. He looked again.