Chapter IV. The Rat

The Lost Prince

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Marco would have wondered very much if he had heard the words,
but, as he did not hear them, he turned toward home wondering at
something else. A man who was in intimate attendance on a king must
be a person of importance. He no doubt knew many things not only of
his own ruler's country, but of the countries of other kings. But so
few had really known anything of poor little Samavia until the
newspapers had begun to tell them of the horrors of its war--and who
but a Samavian could speak its language? It would be an interesting
thing to tell his father--that a man who knew the King had spoken to
him in Samavian, and had sent that curious message.

Later he found himself passing a side street and looked up it.
It was so narrow, and on either side of it were such old, tall, and
sloping-walled houses that it attracted his attention. It looked as
if a bit of old London had been left to stand while newer places grew
up and hid it from view. This was the kind of street he liked to
pass through for curiosity's sake. He knew many of them in the old
quarters of many cities. He had lived in some of them. He could
find his way home from the other end of it. Another thing than its
queerness attracted him. He heard a clamor of boys' voices, and he
wanted to see what they were doing. Sometimes, when he had reached a
new place and had had that lonely feeling, he had followed some
boyish clamor of play or wrangling, and had found a temporary friend
or so.

Half-way to the street's end there was an arched brick passage.
The sound of the voices came from there--one of them high, and
thinner and shriller than the rest. Marco tramped up to the arch and
looked down through the passage. It opened on to a gray flagged
space, shut in by the railings of a black, deserted, and ancient
graveyard behind a venerable church which turned its face toward some
other street. The boys were not playing, but listening to one of
their number who was reading to them from a newspaper.

Marco walked down the passage and listened also, standing in the
dark arched outlet at its end and watching the boy who read. He was
a strange little creature with a big forehead, and deep eyes which
were curiously sharp. But this was not all. He had a hunch back,
his legs seemed small and crooked. He sat with them crossed before
him on a rough wooden platform set on low wheels, on which he
evidently pushed himself about. Near him were a number of sticks
stacked together as if they were rifles. One of the first things
that Marco noticed was that he had a savage little face marked with
lines as if he had been angry all his life.

"Hold your tongues, you fools!" he shrilled out to some boys who
interrupted him. "Don't you want to know anything, you ignorant
swine?"

He was as ill-dressed as the rest of them, but he did not speak
in the Cockney dialect. If he was of the riffraff of the streets, as
his companions were, he was somehow different.

Then he, by chance, saw Marco, who was standing in the arched
end of the passage.

"What are you doing there listening?" he shouted, and at once
stooped to pick up a stone and threw it at him. The stone hit
Marco's shoulder, but it did not hurt him much. What he did not like
was that another lad should want to throw something at him before
they had even exchanged boy-signs. He also did not like the fact
that two other boys promptly took the matter up by bending down to
pick up stones also.

He walked forward straight into the group and stopped close to
the hunchback.

"What did you do that for?" he asked, in his rather deep young
voice.

He was big and strong-looking enough to suggest that he was not
a boy it would be easy to dispose of, but it was not that which made
the group stand still a moment to stare at him. It was something in
himself--half of it a kind of impartial lack of anything like
irritation at the stone-throwing. It was as if it had not mattered
to him in the least. It had not made him feel angry or insulted. He
was only rather curious about it. Because he was clean, and his hair
and his shabby clothes were brushed, the first impression given by
his appearance as he stood in the archway was that he was a young
"toff" poking his nose where it was not wanted; but, as he drew near,
they saw that the well-brushed clothes were worn, and there were
patches on his shoes.

"What did you do that for?" he asked, and he asked it merely as
if he wanted to find out the reason.

"I'm not going to have you swells dropping in to my club as if
it was your own," said the hunchback.

"I'm not a swell, and I didn't know it was a club," Marco
answered. "I heard boys, and I thought I'd come and look. When I
heard you reading about Samavia, I wanted to hear."

He looked at the reader with his silent-expressioned eyes.

"You needn't have thrown a stone," he added. "They don't do it
at men's clubs. I'll go away."

He turned about as if he were going, but, before he had taken
three steps, the hunchback hailed him unceremoniously.

"Hi!" he called out. "Hi, you!"

"What do you want?" said Marco.

"I bet you don't know where Samavia is, or what they're fighting
about." The hunchback threw the words at him.

"Yes, I do. It's north of Beltrazo and east of Jiardasia, and
they are fighting because one party has assassinated King Maran, and
the other will not let them crown Nicola Iarovitch. And why should
they? He's a brigand, and hasn't a drop of royal blood in him."

"Oh!" reluctantly admitted the hunchback. "You do know that
much, do you? Come back here."

Marco turned back, while the boys still stared. It was as if
two leaders or generals were meeting for the first time, and the
rabble, looking on, wondered what would come of their encounter.

"The Samavians of the Iarovitch party are a bad lot and want
only bad things," said Marco, speaking first. "They care nothing for
Samavia. They only care for money and the power to make laws which
will serve them and crush everybody else. They know Nicola is a weak
man, and that, if they can crown him king, they can make him do what
they like."

The fact that he spoke first, and that, though he spoke in a
steady boyish voice without swagger, he somehow seemed to take it for
granted that they would listen, made his place for him at once. Boys
are impressionable creatures, and they know a leader when they see
him. The hunchback fixed glittering eyes on him. The rabble began
to murmur.

"Rat! Rat!" several voices cried at once in good strong Cockney.
"Arst 'im some more, Rat!"

"Is that what they call you?" Marco asked the hunchback.

"It's what I called myself," he answered resentfully. " `The
Rat.' Look at me! Crawling round on the ground like this! Look at
me!"

He made a gesture ordering his followers to move aside, and
began to push himself rapidly, with queer darts this side and that
round the inclosure. He bent his head and body, and twisted his
face, and made strange animal-like movements. He even uttered sharp
squeaks as he rushed here and there--as a rat might have done when it
was being hunted. He did it as if he were displaying an
accomplishment, and his followers' laughter was applause.

"Wasn't I like a rat?" he demanded, when he suddenly stopped.

"You made yourself like one on purpose," Marco answered. "You
do it for fun."

"Not so much fun," said The Rat. "I feel like one. Every one's
my enemy. I'm vermin. I can't fight or defend myself unless I bite.
I can bite, though." And he showed two rows of fierce, strong,
white teeth, sharper at the points than human teeth usually are. "I
bite my father when he gets drunk and beats me. I've bitten him till
he's learned to remember." He laughed a shrill, squeaking laugh.
"He hasn't tried it for three months--even when he was drunk-- and
he's always drunk." Then he laughed again still more shrilly. "He's
a gentleman," he said. "I'm a gentleman's son. He was a Master at a
big school until he was kicked out--that was when I was four and my
mother died. I'm thirteen now. How old are you?"

"I'm twelve," answered Marco.

The Rat twisted his face enviously.

"I wish I was your size! Are you a gentleman's son? You look
as if you were."

"I'm a very poor man's son," was Marco's answer. "My father is
a writer."

"Then, ten to one, he's a sort of gentleman," said The Rat.
Then quite suddenly he threw another question at him. "What's the
name of the other Samavian party?"

"The Maranovitch. The Maranovitch and the Iarovitch have been
fighting with each other for five hundred years. First one dynasty
rules, and then the other gets in when it has killed somebody as it
killed King Maran," Marco answered without hesitation.

"What was the name of the dynasty that ruled before they began
fighting? The first Maranovitch assassinated the last of them," The
Rat asked him.

"The Fedorovitch," said Marco. "The last one was a bad
king."

"His son was the one they never found again," said The Rat.
"The one they call the Lost Prince."

Marco would have started but for his long training in exterior
self-control. It was so strange to hear his dream-hero spoken of in
this back alley in a slum, and just after he had been thinking of
him.

"What do you know about him?" he asked, and, as he did so, he
saw the group of vagabond lads draw nearer.

"Not much. I only read something about him in a torn magazine I
found in the street," The Rat answered. "The man that wrote about
him said he was only part of a legend, and he laughed at people for
believing in him. He said it was about time that he should turn up
again if he intended to. I've invented things about him because
these chaps like to hear me tell them. They're only stories."

"We likes 'im," a voice called out, "becos 'e wos the right
sort; 'e'd fight, 'e would, if 'e was in Samavia now."

Marco rapidly asked himself how much he might say. He decided
and spoke to them all.

"He is not part of a legend. He's part of Samavian history," he
said. "I know something about him too."

"How did you find it out?" asked The Rat.

"Because my father's a writer, he's obliged to have books and
papers, and he knows things. I like to read, and I go into the free
libraries. You can always get books and papers there. Then I ask my
father questions. All the newspapers are full of things about
Samavia just now." Marco felt that this was an explanation which
betrayed nothing. It was true that no one could open a newspaper at
this period without seeing news and stories of Samavia.

The Rat saw possible vistas of information opening up before
him.

"Sit down here," he said, "and tell us what you know about him.
Sit down, you fellows."

There was nothing to sit on but the broken flagged pavement, but
that was a small matter. Marco himself had sat on flags or bare
ground often enough before, and so had the rest of the lads. He took
his place near The Rat, and the others made a semicircle in front of
them. The two leaders had joined forces, so to speak, and the
followers fell into line at "attention."

Then the new-comer began to talk. It was a good story, that of
the Lost Prince, and Marco told it in a way which gave it reality.
How could he help it? He knew, as they could not, that it was real.
He who had pored over maps of little Samavia since his seventh year,
who had studied them with his father, knew it as a country he could
have found his way to any part of if he had been dropped in any
forest or any mountain of it. He knew every highway and byway, and
in the capital city of Melzarr could almost have made his way
blindfolded. He knew the palaces and the forts, the churches, the
poor streets and the rich ones. His father had once shown him a plan
of the royal palace which they had studied together until the boy
knew each apartment and corridor in it by heart. But this he did not
speak of. He knew it was one of the things to be silent about. But
of the mountains and the emerald velvet meadows climbing their sides
and only ending where huge bare crags and peaks began, he could
speak. He could make pictures of the wide fertile plains where herds
of wild horses fed, or raced and sniffed the air; he could describe
the fertile valleys where clear rivers ran and flocks of sheep
pastured on deep sweet grass. He could speak of them because he
could offer a good enough reason for his knowledge of them. It was
not the only reason he had for his knowledge, but it was one which
would serve well enough.

"That torn magazine you found had more than one article about
Samavia in it," he said to The Rat. "The same man wrote four. I
read them all in a free library. He had been to Samavia, and knew a
great deal about it. He said it was one of the most beautiful
countries he had ever traveled in--and the most fertile. That's what
they all say of it."

The group before him knew nothing of fertility or open country.
They only knew London back streets and courts. Most of them had
never traveled as far as the public parks, and in fact scarcely
believed in their existence. They were a rough lot, and as they had
stared at Marco at first sight of him, so they continued to stare at
him as he talked. When he told of the tall Samavians who had been
like giants centuries ago, and who had hunted the wild horses and
captured and trained them to obedience by a sort of strong and gentle
magic, their mouths fell open. This was the sort of thing to allure
any boy's imagination.

"Blimme, if I wouldn't 'ave liked ketchin' one o' them 'orses,"
broke in one of the audience, and his exclamation was followed by a
dozen of like nature from the others. Who wouldn't have liked
"ketchin' one"?

When he told of the deep endless-seeming forests, and of the
herdsmen and shepherds who played on their pipes and made songs about
high deeds and bravery, they grinned with pleasure without knowing
they were grinning. They did not really know that in this neglected,
broken-flagged inclosure, shut in on one side by smoke- blackened,
poverty-stricken houses, and on the other by a deserted and forgotten
sunken graveyard, they heard the rustle of green forest boughs where
birds nested close, the swish of the summer wind in the river reeds,
and the tinkle and laughter and rush of brooks running.

They heard more or less of it all through the Lost Prince story,
because Prince Ivor had loved lowland woods and mountain forests and
all out-of-door life. When Marco pictured him tall and strong-
limbed and young, winning all the people when he rode smiling among
them, the boys grinned again with unconscious pleasure.

"Wisht 'e 'adn't got lost!" some one cried out.

When they heard of the unrest and dissatisfaction of the
Samavians, they began to get restless themselves. When Marco reached
the part of the story in which the mob rushed into the palace and
demanded their prince from the king, they ejaculated scraps of bad
language. "The old geezer had got him hidden somewhere in some
dungeon, or he'd killed him out an' out--that's what he'd been up
to!" they clamored. "Wisht the lot of us had been there then--wisht
we 'ad. We'd 'ave give' 'im wot for, anyway!"

"An' 'im walkin' out o' the place so early in the mornin' just
singin' like that! 'E 'ad 'im follered an' done for!" they decided
with various exclamations of boyish wrath. Somehow, the fact that
the handsome royal lad had strolled into the morning sunshine singing
made them more savage. Their language was extremely bad at this
point.

But if it was bad here, it became worse when the old shepherd
found the young huntsman's half-dead body in the forest. He had "bin
`done for' in the back! 'E'd bin give' no charnst. G-r-r-r!" they
groaned in chorus. "Wisht" they'd "bin there when 'e'd bin 'it!"
They'd " 'ave done fur somebody" themselves. It was a story which
had a queer effect on them. It made them think they saw things; it
fired their blood; it set them wanting to fight for ideals they knew
nothing about--adventurous things, for instance, and high and noble
young princes who were full of the possibility of great and good
deeds. Sitting upon the broken flagstones of the bit of ground
behind the deserted graveyard, they were suddenly dragged into the
world of romance, and noble young princes and great and good deeds
became as real as the sunken gravestones, and far more
interesting.

And then the smuggling across the frontier of the unconscious
prince in the bullock cart loaded with sheepskins! They held their
breaths. Would the old shepherd get him past the line! Marco, who
was lost in the recital himself, told it as if he had been present.
He felt as if he had, and as this was the first time he had ever told
it to thrilled listeners, his imagination got him in its grip, and
his heart jumped in his breast as he was sure the old man's must have
done when the guard stopped his cart and asked him what he was
carrying out of the country. He knew he must have had to call up all
his strength to force his voice into steadiness.

And then the good monks! He had to stop to explain what a monk
was, and when he described the solitude of the ancient monastery, and
its walled gardens full of flowers and old simples to be used for
healing, and the wise monks walking in the silence and the sun, the
boys stared a little helplessly, but still as if they were vaguely
pleased by the picture.

And then there was no more to tell--no more. There it broke
off, and something like a low howl of dismay broke from the
semicircle.

"Aw!" they protested, "it 'adn't ought to stop there! Ain't
there no more? Is that all there is?"

"It's all that was ever known really. And that last part might
only be a sort of story made up by somebody. But I believe it
myself."

The Rat had listened with burning eyes. He had sat biting his
finger-nails, as was a trick of his when he was excited or angry.

"Tell you what!" he exclaimed suddenly. "This was what
happened. It was some of the Maranovitch fellows that tried to kill
him. They meant to kill his father and make their own man king, and
they knew the people wouldn't stand it if young Ivor was alive. They
just stabbed him in the back, the fiends! I dare say they heard the
old shepherd coming, and left him for dead and ran."

"Right, oh! That was it!" the lads agreed. "Yer right there,
Rat!"

"When he got well," The Rat went on feverishly, still biting his
nails, "he couldn't go back. He was only a boy. The other fellow
had been crowned, and his followers felt strong because they'd just
conquered the country. He could have done nothing without an army,
and he was too young to raise one. Perhaps he thought he'd wait till
he was old enough to know what to do. I dare say he went away and
had to work for his living as if he'd never been a prince at all.
Then perhaps sometime he married somebody and had a son, and told him
as a secret who he was and all about Samavia." The Rat began to look
vengeful. "If I'd bin him I'd have told him not to forget what the
Maranovitch had done to me. I'd have told him that if I couldn't get
back the throne, he must see what he could do when he grew to be a
man. And I'd have made him swear, if he got it back, to take it out
of them or their children or their children's children in torture and
killing. I'd have made him swear not to leave a Maranovitch alive.
And I'd have told him that, if he couldn't do it in his life, he must
pass the oath on to his son and his son's son, as long as there was a
Fedorovitch on earth. Wouldn't you?" he demanded hotly of Marco.

Marco's blood was also hot, but it was a different kind of
blood, and he had talked too much to a very sane man.

"No," he said slowly. "What would have been the use? It
wouldn't have done Samavia any good, and it wouldn't have done him
any good to torture and kill people. Better keep them alive and make
them do things for the country. If you're a patriot, you think of
the country." He wanted to add "That's what my father says," but he
did not.

"Torture 'em first and then attend to the country," snapped The
Rat. "What would you have told your son if you'd been Ivor?"

"I'd have told him to learn everything about Samavia--and all
the things kings have to know--and study things about laws and other
countries--and about keeping silent--and about governing himself as
if he were a general commanding soldiers in battle--so that he would
never do anything he did not mean to do or could be ashamed of doing
after it was over. And I'd have asked him to tell his son's sons to
tell their sons to learn the same things. So, you see, however long
the time was, there would always be a king getting ready for
Samavia--when Samavia really wanted him. And he would be a real
king."

He stopped himself suddenly and looked at the staring
semicircle.

"I didn't make that up myself," he said. "I have heard a man
who reads and knows things say it. I believe the Lost Prince would
have had the same thoughts. If he had, and told them to his son,
there has been a line of kings in training for Samavia for five
hundred years, and perhaps one is walking about the streets of
Vienna, or Budapest, or Paris, or London now, and he'd be ready if
the people found out about him and called him."

"Wisht they would!" some one yelled.

"It would be a queer secret to know all the time when no one
else knew it," The Rat communed with himself as it were, "that you
were a king and you ought to be on a throne wearing a crown. I
wonder if it would make a chap look different?"

He laughed his squeaky laugh, and then turned in his sudden way
to Marco:

"But he'd be a fool to give up the vengeance. What is your
name?"

"Marco Loristan. What's yours? It isn't The Rat really."

"It's Jem Ratcliffe. That's pretty near. Where do you
live?"

"No. 7 Philibert Place."

"This club is a soldiers' club," said The Rat. "It's called the
Squad. I'm the captain. 'Tention, you fellows! Let's show him."

The semicircle sprang to its feet. There were about twelve lads
altogether, and, when they stood upright, Marco saw at once that for
some reason they were accustomed to obeying the word of command with
military precision.

"Form in line!" ordered The Rat.

They did it at once, and held their backs and legs straight and
their heads up amazingly well. Each had seized one of the sticks
which had been stacked together like guns.

The Rat himself sat up straight on his platform. There was
actually something military in the bearing of his lean body. His
voice lost its squeak and its sharpness became commanding.

He put the dozen lads through the drill as if he had been a
smart young officer. And the drill itself was prompt and smart
enough to have done credit to practiced soldiers in barracks. It
made Marco involuntarily stand very straight himself, and watch with
surprised interest.

"That's good!" he exclaimed when it was at an end. "How did you
learn that?"

The Rat made a savage gesture.

"If I'd had legs to stand on, I'd have been a soldier!" he said.
"I'd have enlisted in any regiment that would take me. I don't care
for anything else."

Suddenly his face changed, and he shouted a command to his
followers.

"Turn your backs!" he ordered.

And they did turn their backs and looked through the railings of
the old churchyard. Marco saw that they were obeying an order which
was not new to them. The Rat had thrown his arm up over his eyes and
covered them. He held it there for several moments, as if he did not
want to be seen. Marco turned his back as the rest had done. All at
once he understood that, though The Rat was not crying, yet he was
feeling something which another boy would possibly have broken down
under.

"All right!" he shouted presently, and dropped his
ragged-sleeved arm and sat up straight again.

"I want to go to war!" he said hoarsely. "I want to fight! I
want to lead a lot of men into battle! And I haven't got any legs.
Sometimes it takes the pluck out of me."

"You've not grown up yet!" said Marco. "You might get
strong.

No one knows what is going to happen. How did you learn to
drill the club?"

"I hang about barracks. I watch and listen. I follow soldiers.
If I could get books, I'd read about wars. I can't go to libraries
as you can. I can do nothing but scuffle about like a rat."

"I can take you to some libraries," said Marco. "There are
places where boys can get in. And I can get some papers from my
father."

"Can you?" said The Rat. "Do you want to join the club?"

"Yes!" Marco answered. "I'll speak to my father about it."

He said it because the hungry longing for companionship in his
own mind had found a sort of response in the queer hungry look in The
Rat's eyes. He wanted to see him again. Strange creature as he was,
there was attraction in him. Scuffling about on his low wheeled
platform, he had drawn this group of rough lads to him and made
himself their commander. They obeyed him; they listened to his
stories and harangues about war and soldiering; they let him drill
them and give them orders. Marco knew that, when he told his father
about him, he would be interested. The boy wanted to hear what
Loristan would say.

"I'm going home now," he said. "If you're going to be here to-
morrow, I will try to come."

"We shall be here," The Rat answered. "It's our barracks."

Marco drew himself up smartly and made his salute as if to a
superior officer. Then he wheeled about and marched through the
brick archway, and the sound of his boyish tread was as regular and
decided as if he had been a man keeping time with his regiment.

"He's been drilled himself," said The Rat. "He knows as much as
I do."

And he sat up and stared down the passage with new interest.