The King almost choked with furious indignation. The blood flooded to his head, he turned a deep, dark purple.
“What are you saying?… What are you saying?” he faltered, before his voice broke, and he could not utter another word.
“My lord,” Cartwheeler repeated, unperturbed, “our last General-in-Chief was Master Rogue. It has been two years now since he sold his house and went abroad, where he is known to everyone as the most prosperous banker.”
“And where might he have got the florins to do that?” bellowed the King.
“A great mystery, that, my lord.”
“Summon the Admiral-in-Chief, then,” ordered the King nervously. And again he began to pace up and down the room.
But as he made to turn, with hands crossed, his forehead bowed and clouded, he instantly collided with the barrel-shaped belly of Cartwheeler, who had had no time to remove himself from his path.
“So what are you standing there for? Summon, I said, the Admiral-in-Chief!” he said angrily.
His equanimity intact, the Lord Chamberlain attempted once again to bow.
“We have no Admiral-in-Chief, my lord,” he said calmly.
The King collapsed upon the sofa. His knees had buckled under him, his voice too was broken, and he remained there utterly devastated.
“What became of the Admiral-in-Chief?” asked the Prince.
“He is a mighty merchant abroad, my lord,” answered the Lord Chamberlain. “He trades in iron.”
“And how did he come upon so many florins as well?” asked the King, fuming with rage.
“He came upon them only recently.”
“But by what means? Tell me that!”
“With the iron from the naval fleet.”
The King received the news with a great staggering shock. He sprang up with a leap, and ran to the door.
“Mad! Mad, they are all mad! All of them!” he yelled. And seeing Polydorus the equerry at the door:
“Sound the call to arms immediately,” he commanded. “Muster the troops at once, from every corner of the kingdom!”
And he rushed out running, his mantle flying behind him like the swelling sails of a ship.
The Prince followed him; far behind, panting and round as a ball, scampered the Lord Chamberlain. From the highest turret Polydorus sounded the call to arms with the great trumpet.
The King and his son ran without stopping to the barracks.
By the doorway, they found the old garrison commander, only half-awake and half-dressed, stupefied and bewildered. He struggled to make sense of the purpose of the trumpet call, which he had not heard for so very many years.
“Where are the soldiers? Summon them all here at once!” ordered the King. The knees of the old garrison commander buckled under him, and he landed sitting squarely upon the ground.
A second time the equerry sounded the call to arms from high up on the turret. And then, all of a sudden, from the corner of the square, out of a tavern, there came a single, solitary, one-legged man, who hurried to the barracks, drew from under a mattress a rusty lance with no head, and hobbled his way to where the King and the Prince stood; pulling himself up to attention before them, he presented arms.
“Who is he?” asked the King.
“The army, my lord,” answered the one-legged man.
“I am in no mood for pleasantries,” said the King. “Do you know whom you are addressing?”
“My liege and king,” replied the one-legged man, without changing his position.
“Well, then, be lost with you, before I have time to get cross. The troops will be coming out any time now, and ragamuffins such as yourself have no place in their midst.”
“But I am the troops, I am the army, my lord,” said the one-legged man again.
“Is he insane, or insolent?” asked the King, turning to the garrison commander, who still sat exactly where he had landed, his feet sockless inside his worn slippers. Immobile, the old man replied as though in a daze:
“He is neither insane nor insolent. He is the troops; he is the army.”
“Where is the royal guard? Where are the cavalry and the lancers?” enquired the Prince quietly, thinking that perhaps the garrison commander had been struck dumb with fright.
But the old man stretched out his hand and pointed to the one-legged man.
“There is the guard, there is the army too,” he replied. “I have no other troops, my lords. You may go up to the dormitories, if you wish, and see for yourselves whether I am lying or not.”
And because the King and the Prince remained still, unwilling to believe, the old man continued:
“You remember the old times, my good lords. Gone are those times, nor will they ever return again.”
Just then, Cartwheeler finally arrived, flushed red and sweating, hot from running.
The King pointed to the old garrison commander, who was still sitting on the ground, and with one hand made a sign to indicate that the man was not entirely right in the head.
“He is not all there,” he said in a hushed tone.
“He is all there, my lord,” replied the Lord Chamberlain, “and he is telling you the truth. There are no troops—”
“What is all this nonsense, for heaven’s sake!” interrupted the King, who was beginning to become angry once again. “Let him summon the officers and I shall show you then where my army is.”
And turning to the old man:
“Fetch at once General… General… what’s his name? Never mind the name,” he screamed, enraged.
“There is no general here, my lord,” replied the garrison commander, trembling and shaking.
“Well, then, call the Commander of the Corps!”
“There is no Commander of the Corps!”
“Then call whomever you like, but call someone!” yelled the King, quite beside himself.
“We are all of us here, my lord!” said the old man, with a most pitiful expression on his face.
“But then the army…”
“There is no army any longer, long gone is the army, finished — you seek it in vain, my lord! There are just the two of us, my cook and myself!”
The King seized his head with both hands.
“Is it I who am going mad? Perhaps I do not understand?… You talk utter nonsense!” he burst out angrily again. “I know well that I have an army, for I pay for it every year…”
And, changing his tone:
“In fact, what do I pay for it exactly?” he asked the Lord Chamberlain.
“I do not know, my lord. You managed such accounts with the High Chancellor. I never laid eyes on them…”
“I pay… um… Well, I pay a great deal!” the King continued nervously. “And I also pay for my navy… well, an equal amount. Where is the navy? The soldiers must be on the ships! Where are the ships?”
No one knew.
With the corner of his mantle he wiped the perspiration that had formed strings of beads on his forehead.
“Let us go to the naval base,” he ordered.
And with his son he hastened to the river, while farther behind, far away, tumbling at every step, followed the miserable Lord Chamberlain.
They reached the river, which ran its course, tranquil and transparent, between the green wooded riverbanks where no house could be seen, no matter how far one strained one’s eye.
There were only two shabby old feluccas there, moored to the shore by a long rope, rocking away lazily on the silvery waters; a wide plank, nailed to the sides at each end, joined them together at the middle and held one next to the other.
Sprawled across the prow of one of the boats there slept a one-armed man, his mouth agape.
The King gazed up and down the river, yet he saw nothing but lush green grass, many trees, and some stones, fallen from some old derelict wall, black and begrimed by time and humidity.