The Lost Prince Read Free

using our brains, learning the things which are best to be done for our people and our country. Even exiles may be Samavian soldiers – I am one, you must be one.’
    ‘Are we exiles?’ asked Marco.
    ‘Yes,’ was the answer. ‘But even if we never set foot on Samavian soil, we must give our lives to it. I have given mine since I was sixteen. I shall give it until I die.’
    ‘Have you never lived there?’ said Marco.
    A strange look shot across his father’s face.
    ‘No,’ he answered, and said no more. Marco watching him, knew he must not ask the question again.
    The next words his father said were about the promises. Marco was quite a little fellow at the time, but he understood the solemnity of them, and felt that he was being honoured as if he were a man.
    ‘When you are a man, you shall know all you wish to know,’ Loristan said. ‘Now you are a child, and your mind must not be burdened. But you must do your part. A child sometimes forgets that words may be dangerous. You must promise never to forget this. Wheresoever you are; if you have playmates, you must remember to be silent about many things. You must not speak of what I do, or of the people who come to see me. You must not mention the things in your life which make it different from the lives of other boys. You must keep in your mind that a secret exists which a chance foolish word might betray. You are a Samavian, and there have been Samavians who have died a thousand deaths rather than betray a secret.You must learn to obey without question, as if you were a soldier. Now you must take your oath of allegiance.’
    He rose from his seat and went to a corner of the room. He knelt down, turned back the carpet, lifted a plank, and took something from beneath it. It was a sword, and, as he came back to Marco, he drew it out from its sheath. The child’s strong, little body stiffened and drew itself up, his large, deep eyes flashed. He was to take his oath of allegiance upon a sword as if he were a man. He did not know that his small hand opened and shut with a fierce understanding grip because those of his blood had for long centuries past carried swords and fought with them.
    Loristan gave him the big bared weapon, and stood erect before him.
    ‘Repeat these words after me sentence by sentence!’ he commanded.
    And as he spoke them Marco echoed each one loudly and clearly.
    ‘The sword in my hand – for Samavia!
    ‘The heart in my breast – for Samavia!
    ‘The swiftness of my sight, the thought of my brain, the life of my life – for Samavia.
    ‘Here grows a man for Samavia.
    ‘God be thanked!’
    Then Loristan put his hand on the child’s shoulder, and his dark face looked almost fiercely proud.
    ‘From this hour,’ he said, ‘you and I are comrades at arms.’
    And from that day to the one on which he stood beside the broken iron railings of No. 7 Philibert Place, Marco had not forgotten for one hour.

chapter two

    a young citizen of the world
    He had been in London more than once before, but not to the lodgings in Philibert Place. When he was brought a second or third time to a town or city, he always knew that the house he was taken to would be in a quarter new to him, and he should not see again the people he had seen before. Such slight links of acquaintance as sometimes formed themselves between him and other children as shabby and poor as himself were easily broken. His father, however, had never forbidden him to make chance acquaintances. He had, in fact, told him that he had reasons for not wishing him to hold himself aloof from other boys. The only barrier which must exist between them must be the barrier of silence concerning his wanderings from country to country. Other boys as poor as he was did not make constant journeys, therefore they would miss nothing from his boyish talk when he omitted all mention of his. When he was in Russia, he must speak only of Russian places and Russian people and customs. When he was in France,