Little Irene had come from the palace the moment her brother had spoken to her. Yet when she saw the immense quantities of game and then took one look at her little pots and pans, which would only hold a few small birds at most, she sat down on the grass and burst into tears.
All of a sudden, someone’s hand took her own, and a sad voice murmured:
“Do not weep, my Princess, tell me what I may do for you!”
“Oh, Polycarpus!” replied Little Irene. “Where will I stew all the deer and the wild goats that they have brought? I could not even fit one of their heads in my copper pot!”
Polycarpus leapt up instantly, ready to dash to the very end of the kingdom to find the cauldron that would be required for the army soup — if this was what it would take to dry his princess’s tears.
A sparkling laughter was heard at that moment, however, which made them both start and be still.
Together they turned to look behind them, and saw a girly head smiling at them from between the foliage and the branches.
“The cauldron is right here, Little Irene, bring your game. And you, Polycarpus, come and light the fire for us!” said Knowledge.
They ran to her side, and saw two enormous cauldrons being dragged along by some soldiers. Mistress Wise was leading them, while farther behind came Jealousia and Spitefulnia, smiling and content, as Little Irene had never seen them before. They were carrying between them a large basket filled with wild greens and fruit.
Little Irene was staring at them, stunned with amazement, and it did not even cross her mind to ask how her sisters had come to be there.
Knowledge saw her and started laughing again.
“You did not expect to see your sisters with us, now, did you, Little Irene?” she said. “They got lost in the woods, and grew hungry and tired, so then they remembered the palace, and they wanted to get back. Only they did not know the way. During the night, we heard their crying, and we came out of our tree-hollow, my mother and I. We gave them food, made a bed for them to sleep on, and at earliest dawn all of us together started to work. Because, as you know well, everyone must work in our house.”
“But where did you find the cauldrons?” asked Little Irene.
“My mother went and unearthed them from the ruins which used to be the public baths a very long time ago,” replied Knowledge. “She thought that those cauldrons, which had been big enough to heat up all that water for the baths, would also be big enough to cook a great quantity of food. Time and rust had eaten away at them, filling them with quite a good number of holes, but Miserlix is an able craftsman, and he patched them easily.”
Mistress Wise had set up her cauldrons, Polycarpus had lit the fire, and all the maidens together got busy preparing the army’s soup.
Each of them had so much work to do that Jealousia and Spitefulnia quite forgot to quarrel.
“What happened to the maids-in-waiting?” asked Little Irene, when she found herself for a brief instant next to Jealousia, working over the same cauldron.
“Oh! Please! I beg you not to remind me of them!” replied Jealousia with a shiver. “They are the ones who got us all wound up about going away. And when they saw that we had changed our minds, they took all we had and disappeared, abandoning us to our fate.”
“And what did you do then?” asked Little Irene with sympathy.
“At first, we began to squabble with each other. One of us would say it was the other’s fault. Only, after we had beaten one another viciously, and pulled at each other’s hair, and had shed all the tears that we had in our eyes, we decided that it would be better to stop all quarrelling, and seek our way back. So together we came near to where Knowledge was, and it was she who heard our crying and came out to console us and to offer us good shelter.”
“Oh, Jealousia!” said Little Irene. “Couldn’t you possibly give up quarrelling altogether?”
“All by ourselves, impossible!” said Jealousia. “But Knowledge says she has a special medicine, and that she will give it to us.”
“What sort of special medicine?”
“I do not know. Every time I have tried to ask her, she has immediately given me some urgent task to do. And as soon as I finish it, and I go back to ask again, she gives me straight away another task, equally urgent. So that she still has not had a chance to tell me about it. The same with Spitefulnia.”
And in the evening, when all the work was done and everyone went to sleep, their weariness was such that the two sisters again forgot to quarrel.
Some days went by in this manner.
The Prince sent out scouts regularly, to find out what the enemies were up to. But the King the Royal Uncle was still so enraged that he could not get better. And his few soldiers who had escaped with their lives from the battle, instead of rallying around him, were going ever farther away, crossing the borders back to their country and returning to their homes.
And so it was that every day the Prince distributed to his soldiers the weapons that Miserlix was making without ever stopping, and he trained them at the bow and the lance. And each day the work of the master builder advanced further, and the ships, from the three that they had been at first, became five, ready to be launched onto the river.
Some weeks went by.
The crops had grown, and the farmers wanted to plant olive trees, pear trees, apple trees, and then they wanted to plant some vegetables. Only there were not enough hands to cultivate all those fields, and those who had sons or daughters abroad began to regret how the country had been emptied of strong hands.
“So why don’t you write to your children to come back?” said the Prince to them, for he was never far from their midst.
And those who knew their letters sat down and wrote. And those who did not know how to read or write asked the schoolmaster, who made out for them a letter addressed to their child, or their brother, or their father, and little by little some of those who had left came back, and more weapons and more clothes were needed, and more food.
The Prince went then to the capital and to the villages, and he talked to the women and told them:
“Why are you sitting idle, cooped up in your homes? Your men are at the camp, and working the fields and laying down new roads, building ships, mills and storehouses. Why don’t you come too, and help with the preparation of the soup, sew clothes so that your men will have things to wear come winter?”
“And where are we to find the fabric?” the women asked.
“And where are we to find the yarn?”
“You ought to spin the yarn yourselves!”
“Oh, but Prince!” replied the women. “We are but poor folk, we have no sheep. Where shall we find the wool?”
At that, the Prince opened up the precious leather purse of his money belt, and took out a few florins; he then sent Polycarpus together with one or two soldiers to the kingdom of the King the Royal Cousin to buy lambs and sheep.
And when they had brought back the flock, the Prince ordered that they be sheared and that the wool be distributed among the women so they might spin it and weave it and then cut the fabric to make clothes.
He also summoned all the girls and instructed them how to milk the ewes, and under the guidance of Mistress Wise they learnt how to churn butter and make cheese, salt them and store them for the winter when the snows would arrive.
One day, as he was walking through the woods, the Prince saw hanging from a branch an entire beehive, like a big heavy bunch of grapes. He then had the idea of making honey, by assembling together in skeps the bees scattered here and there.