~By the Lion's Mane: See You Again~

Chapter Twenty-Five

~Eustace~

Before either Puddlelgum or I could stop her, Jill blurted out our mission to the Knight. 

"Please, we are trying to find Prince Rilian of Narnia!"

I cut her a sharp look, but the Knight didn't seem to care. "Rilian? Narnia?" he said flippantly. "What land is that? I've never heard the name. Nor have I met this--what did you call him?--Billian? Trillian? in my Lady's realm. To my knowledge, there is no such man here."

He laughed very loudly, startling me slightly, and I wondered if that was what was wrong with him. Perhaps he was a bit... silly?

And then his words sunk in, and I felt suddenly desperate. Surely this was where we were meant to be? "We had been told to look for a message on the stones of the City Ruinous, and we saw the words 'UNDER ME'," I explained.

The Knight laughed even more loudly at that. "You were deceived, those words mean nothing to your purpose! If you had only asked my Lady, she could have given you better direction. Those words are all that is left of a longer script from ancient times, as she well remembers. The verse was: 

        Though under Earth and throneless now I be,

        Yet, while I lived, all Earth was under me.

"You see, it was some great king of giants that had this message cut into the stone over his sepulcher, and only those two words yet remain. Is it not the merriest jest in the world that you should have thought they were written to you?"

The Knight chuckled and clapped his hands together, oblivous to the effect that his words had had upon Jill and me. I felt overwhelmingly foolish; how could we have believed that such an ancient message could be meant for us? 

But Puddlelgum looked to us and said, "Don't you mind him. There are no accidents. Our guide is Aslan; and he was there when the giant King caused the letters to be cut, and he knew already all things that would come of them, including this."

"This guide of yours must be a long liver, friend!" said the Knight, laughing again. I stared at him, wondering how he could be so irritatingly simple and different from the stoic, intimidating figure in the armor when we had first met.

"And it seems to me, sir," Puddleglum retorted, "that this Lady of yours must also be a long liver, if she remembers the verse as it was when they first cut it."

The Knight clapped the Marsh-wiggle on his bony shoulder and laughed again. "Very shrewd, Frog-Face, and you have hit on the truth. She is of divine race, and knows neither age nor death. I am the more thankful to her for all her infinite bounty to such a poor mortal wretch as I. For you must know, Sirs, I am a man under most strange afflictions, and none but the Queen's grace would have had patience with me. But it goes beyond that-- she has promised me a great kingdom in Overland, and, when I am king, her own most gracious hand in marriage!"

He paused as if just realizing something, laughed, and said, "But here you are fasting and standing!" He turned to the guards. "Bring wine and Updweller's food for my guests!"

And then he turned back to us, gesturing to the many fine chairs, and said, "Please you, be seated gentlemen, little maiden. You shall hear of my tale."

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And so, over a supper of pigeon pie and honey cakes, the Knight told us his tale. He said that he remembered nothing of his life in the Dark World (as he called it) before coming to Underland, but that he was afflicted with some kind of terrible curse. Every night, he would have to bound to a chair, because he would go into a mad fit of rage and transform into a giant serpent, attempting to kill anyone within reach. But the next morning, in his sane state, he remembers nothing of the episode.