The tower and the telescope

ONCE UPON A TIME the king and queen had a daughter. The king was a jealous old fool and he kept his daughter in highest tower of the castle, far away above the world.


Only one person, an old nurse was allowed to visit the princess in her lonely tower. She visited her twice a day. She visited before the sun shone through the towers window in the morning and she visited after the last light of day had gone out. Twice a day, the old nurse climbed up the tower, past all the empty rooms and corridors, where the dust was ankle deep, undisturbed. She climbed round and round the spiral staircase all the way to the top of the tower where she put on a blindfold so that she could only see what was in her hands or at her feet. For even the old nurse was not allowed to gaze upon the princess.


Days passed, as they do, into years, till one day a prince from a far away land came to the city. He had heard that there was a princess so beautiful that no one was allowed to look at her. But the people in the city told him there was no princess, for the queen hand borne no child. In the darker places, where the city never sleeps, they told him of a child so ugly, the king had wrung her neck with his own hands.


But the prince would not be deterred and each day he went out into the city and asked everyone he met if they had heard of the princess. One night, tired and footsore, the prince stumbled home. He had walked further that day and questioned more people than before. His hope was almost gone.


When he came to his inn, he noticed a narrow door that he had not seen before. It was ajar and creaked back and fore in the wind as if beckoning him.


He knocked and a voice inside answered.


"Who is there?"


"I have come from far away," said the prince, "in search of a princess of such beauty, that no one may look on her." He heard footsteps on the stairs. The building he noticed was very thin and tall as though the buildings on either side were squashing it. It was scarcely wider than the door and the door was very narrow. At each floor there was a single small window as dark as the night. The building stretched up higher than any other house in the city. Then a voice came from that dark stairwell.


"I know the princess of whom you speak." The prince was overjoyed.


"You must tell me everything," he said.


"Come in," said the old man, "But be careful." and the prince saw that the old man was blind and that was why the house was dark.


The old man lead the prince up the ricketty staircase to the very top of the house. The roof was domed, but open to the evening sky. The prince could see all of the sleeping city below him. He could see over the houses all the way to the castle.


"How is it you know of the princess?" asked the prince.


"When I was young," said the old man, "and my eyes were good. I worked as a glass blower and lens maker. I could make the finest glass, the most delicate ornaments and the most perfect lenses in the whole of the land. I once ground a set of spectacles for a short-sighted mouse and made a glass bird so delicate that it floated on the breeze as though alive and trilled and sang like a real bird.


"But such fine work takes its toll and soon my eyesight started to fade. One day a message came from the castle, a comission to build a great telescope, one so perfect that you could read a newspaper from a mile away. He said that if it could be done, the kind would shower me with gold. When I was done, the telescope was twice as good as I had promised, but my eyesight was almost gone and all the kings gold could not bring it back. The messenger said that I was to give the telescope to him and tell him how it worked, but he was a pompous fool and I did not trust him. I carried the telescope to the castle myself. The king greeted me and said that I might explain its operations myself, but that I was to tell no one of what I saw.


"Though I was all but blind, I was made to wear a blindfold. An old woman took my hand and together we climbed a staircase that I thought would never end. Round and round it went till I was dizzy and short of breath and still it went up. At the top, for we had climbed so high I could imagine nothing higher, I took the telescope from its packing. I was assembling it when I heard a wondrous thing. The lady who lives at the top of that tower has a voice so sweet it makes the common words that foul our mouths as sweet as music.


"She never asked me to repeat an instruction, nor faltered once, though the telescope was a complex thing that few could master in a lifetime. And all the while, she made it seem as if it were my instructions that made the learning of it so simple. She made my slow tongue seem fast and though old men should not think of love, I fell in love and longed to take the blind fold from my eyes. But a promise is a promise and now I live twice in darkness with the memory of that loss."


"So, it is true," the prince declared and there and then he decided that he must meet the princess.


In the dark before dawn, he scaled the castle walls and came at last to the foot of the tallest tower and there he hid. He saw the old woman enter and leave and then again after last light. When she left, he followed her to her room.


"Old woman," he said, "I must meet the princess in yonder tower. I have travelled far beguiled by her tale and I must see with my own eyes the woman whom I love already."


The old nurse could see the foolish impetuousness of youth in his eyes and knew that he would find a way regardless of her pleas. She said, "Tomorrow morn, before the dawn you will ascend the tower, but you must promise that you will wear the blindfold at all time."


"I promise," he said and the prince took the blindfold.


At dawn, he climbed the tower. At the top, he slipped the blind fold down over his eyes and knocked on the door.


"Come in." With those two words the prince was won. He opened the door and stepped into the tower.


The princess was surprised to see a stranger in her tower.


"Who are you?" she said.


"I have come from far away," said the prince, "I have travelled long and hard chasing after a dream and now I have caught it. With two soft words you won my heart and now it is yours forever."


The princess sighed "I have watched you from my tower for many days and from the first moment I saw you, I knew that I loved you and now I know what it is you searched for so desperately. But you must not stay, for the guards will become suspicious." And so they talked for as long as they could and when the prince left he said, "I want to see you with my eyes," but the princess said, "It cannot be."


"Surely," he said, "true love may look on beauty?" and the princess laughed a sad laugh.


"It is true that for my looks I have been locked away, but great beauty is not mine." Her voice was sad. "You must go and go now. I hear the changing of the guard. I will see you this evening. Haste now."


But when the prince reached the bottom of that long staircase, the king and his guards were waiting.


"Put out his eyes," said the King, "and leave him at the edge of the city with the beggars and the thieves." The prince pleaded, but it was to no avail. The guards dragged him away and put out his eyes with hot irons. Then the King ordered that the tower be sealed up so that no one could enter it.


The princess in the tower saw all of this with her telescope. She watched as the prince was taken to the edge of town and dropped beside the road. She saw him stagger off down the road, his hands out in front of him to feel the way. She watched him till he was out of sight. All day she planned and by the time the sun went down she had an idea.


At dawn, when all birds sing to the sun, the princess rose and in her beautiful voice, she sang to the birds. One by one the birds in the city flew up to her window to listen to the beautiful song. To each one she gave a single strand of her hair. When the birds took off in a glorious cloud, they carried the princess up with them. They carried her far up, out over the city and for the first time, she saw things that she had never seen before. She saw the dour expression of the statue in the town square. She saw children in the school yards playing. She saw a thousand little things that she could not see from the tower. Still the birds carried her on till they set her down in a forest near the city and there she thanked each one in turn.


She walked through the forest, marvelling at the feel of grass beneath her feet, of the rough bark of trees, the shaggy lichens. Presently, she came to a road. She saw the footprints and wheel ruts in the soft ground and she covered her face with a shawl so that no one would see her face. It was not long till she met an old lady coming the other way. A huge bundle of sticks was balanced on her back. It bent her almost double, but the sound of the princesses voice made her smile. The princess asked her if she had seen her blind prince.


"Yesterday, I saw him," the old lady said, "heading east." The princess hurried on, stopping every traveller she met, always the same question, always with the same answer: east, east.


She travelled for many days and night till the road turned stony and cold and there were fewer travellers on it. She could smell the sea in the air and she knew then that the prince planned to throw himself from the cliffs into the heartless forgetting sea. She came to him at sunset and when she called out to him, he shook his head as though to clear it of a dream. Again she called out and again and again and each time he paused and shook his head. Finally she was close enough to hear him mutter, "It cannot be."


Before he could go on, she said "My love it is true. I have come to find you." The prince turned towards her and she saw the ruins of his eyes, then she ran to him and held him. They kissed there in the road and as the tears fell from her eyes on to his face, tears for what they had done to her prince, they washed the terrible wounds away. At last the prince stood before her, but still his eyes were tightly closed.


"May I gaze at last upon my love?" The princess scarcely dared to answer. She lifted the shawl from her head.


"Yes," she said and the prince opened his eyes.


"Oh but you are beautiful," he said, for love looks always on beauty.


And they lived happily ever after.