When he opened the basket and recognized the donkey’s head, and heard the Prince’s words as repeated to him by his High Chancellor, such mad fury seized hold of him that he fell like a log on the floor.
And when they lifted him up to carry him to his bed, they saw that he was dead.
On the day of his coronation, Prudentius II went to the river to hold a memorial service in honour of all those who had fallen during that famous nocturnal battle.
Under the shade of the plane trees, two white crosses stood side by side: the grave of Polydorus and the grave of the youth from the tavern.
Prudentius placed a laurel wreath on each cross.
“Place a second wreath on this one, my lord,” said the master builder, indicating Polydorus’s grave.
“A second wreath? What do you mean?”
“In honour of the Unrevealed Hero,” replied the master builder.
Prudentius cast him a hard look.
“I do not understand,” he said.
“The one-armed man never made it back from his last crossing,” my lord.
“What became of him, do you know? Have you had any news?” asked Prudentius.
The master builder slowly shook his head.
“For three years now I have waited for him,” he said, “and every nightfall, once the sun has set, I have come back to this same place, in the hope that perhaps he would return. But now I no longer expect him to come back…”
“He may have gone abroad, like so many others,” said Prudentius.
The master builder considered this carefully.
“I know that he did not,” he said at last. “As I knew him, he was a man who would have given up his life without many words, silent and unrevealed, for the sake of his country. Abandon his homeland during a time of danger? That he would never have done!”
For a good while neither of the two spoke.
Then the new King cut a laurel branch from the tree and laid it on Polydorus’s grave.
“To the Unrevealed Hero…” he said.
“And to all those who give up their lives in silence and with humility for the sake of their country, without their homeland ever coming to know who they were…” added the master builder.
And kneeling, they both paid their homage before the grave.
THE END
