After a short while, it occurred to the Prince that he could not spend his whole life in the convent. He could not have his body slavered with medicine every day, and neither could he live on gruel alone. The hay beneath him smelled more and more of donkey with each passing moment, and the sound of young girls’ laughter was driving him wild, wilder than he thought possible in reference to females. The nuns were not his servants after all, and he felt his heart warm toward them, for they dug their own gardens to grow vegetables for the poor, and all spare alms from their weekly collection was handed to the widows.
And so the Prince recovered from his amnesia, and couriers were sent forth briskly, and news spread throughout the land. Messages were exchanged, gifts of gold arrived, and so eventually did an envoy from the Prince’s own kingdom, consisting of knights and lords and the King’s own brother. New clothes that now felt too heavy and too fussy were thrown over his body, his ears crammed with commiserations and inquiries. A story had been fabricated and sent to all corners of the empire, which involved kidnapping and intended assassination, given the unseemly ropes that were found near the Prince’s unconscious body. A story that everyone believed except for the Uncle, who had invented it himself.
As a parting ritual, the nuns requested that the Prince and his troupe attend a single mass. They willingly obliged, and as the Prince sang the hymns and knelt and stood and exchanged the sign of peace, he found his gaze drawn to the rows of schoolgirls in the hope of glimpsing one. Several of them turned their heads during the mass to stare at him, but none of them were the ordinary girl from the beach. Disappointed, he returned to his land, and it seemed that his whole kingdom smelled of oranges.
The court of advisors launched a full-blown investigation into the abduction of the Prince, but it lost its steam and eventually fizzled out. This was primarily due to the Prince’s lack of cooperation, for it seemed that these criminals had treated their monarch so violently that he did not retain any memory of the event. When it became clear to all that the happenings of that night were to remain a mystery, the advisors returned to their secret meetings and discussed earnestly whether the Prince was at all suitable for the throne, now that he was considered brain-damaged. Perhaps his memory would one day return, as do some trauma survivors, but he certainly was behaving differently.
They had seen more of him now than ever before. He no longer hid in the trees of the terrace gardens, and his Uncle was yet to prise him from the bed of his water-level chamber. In fact, he had rather astonished the governor-general just this morning, as the latter was taking his post-breakfast stroll amongst the corridors. “Good morning!” exclaimed the Prince, who had materialised out of nowhere, looking rested and amiable. The governor-general was exceedingly shocked, stammered a reply, and scurried away to tell everyone of this strange occurrence.
The Prince started to show up to half of the meetings he was required to attend, and in some instances, even appeared to be listening. Once or twice he voiced an opinion, and though it was not the most educated of opinions, neither was it nonsensical. It seemed to the court that the Prince had finally learned, or decided to remember, their names, for they found themselves addressed frequently when face-to-face. Why, he had even attended the banquet set in honour of his safe return! To think! There was the Prince himself, at the head of the table and to the right of his Uncle, standing and responding to every toast! And even though he declined to dance afterwards, for once he did not back away from the ladies when they approached him. Instead, he listened for a while, nodding his head, and sometimes attempted a wry smile, to the delight of all. Was this brain-damage? wondered the court. Some privately thought that if the Prince were indeed brain-damaged, then everyone could do with a bit more brain-damage in their lives.
The cooks of the palace were astonished when the Prince began to request oranges for his breakfast. No oranges had ever been seen in the kingdom, and only the very well travelled and the very well read understood what oranges were. Crates of the fruit were ordered from neighbouring countries, and the court became so fascinated with their juicy flesh and tangy aroma that the Prince was obliged to throw an Orange Luncheon, where the cooks made a special orange juice for the guests to sip, and mixed the oranges into the chicken salad. They diced them and arranged them on skewers, and grated the peel into cakes. The roast beef boasted an orange sauce, and garlands of orange blossom floated atop every individual dish. It was a great success, and the Prince seemed to be enjoying himself. He asked a lot of questions about the origins of the fruit, and where exactly they had been ordered from. But not one answer included the convent on the seaside.
The Uncle watched his nephew with a shrewd eye, and was greatly encouraged by the changes seen in him. He was wise enough not to ask the real version of events of that fateful night, but he was intelligent and had pieced it all together. He mourned that the Prince had been miserable enough to cast himself into the sea, but he had not seen so much as a trace of that sad character since the Prince had returned from the south of France.
Certainly, the Prince was often quiet and thoughtful, but it seemed he no longer wished to remain invisible – it seemed he had realised that he had value. The Prince did not smile a great deal, or converse lightly, but neither did he have that haunted, empty look in his eye. The Uncle privately rejoiced when the Prince and the little black dog finally left the sea-level chamber and resumed the King’s suite on the upper floors. He did not know what to think of the latest obsession with oranges, for the Uncle had had plenty of opportunities to sample the fruit, and thought it nothing special.
In fact, the Prince was relieved to have left the sea-level. When he had returned to his bedchamber after the long absence, he sensed a forbidding morbidity inside the room. He recognised flecks of his own blood on the Persian rugs, and was afraid. He rummaged through the opulent sheets of his bed until he found the dagger and held it in his hand. He observed the instrument of pain and peace that had been his ally all of these years, and also his greatest enemy. It was small and silver, and its handle was made in the image of a great serpent. And it seemed that he watched himself now, a sunken figure slung across the bed like a rag doll, with hollows for eyes and hollows for cheeks, tracing his naked body with the dagger as his mind was pillaged by evil thoughts. When a particularly terrible idea invaded him, in plunged the knife and it sliced more at his mind than his body. Filled with disgust, the Prince hurled the knife through the open window. He stepped out of the chamber, calling the dog after him. He never returned to it again.
He took to consulting his Uncle about all manner of things, but mostly things he should have already known but did not:
“Who exactly are our allies and how many more years will the treaties last?”
“Where do the trade routes lie and is there a more efficient way of exporting our goods that distance?”
“Was the Countess really the mistress of my grandfather and should we continue to pay her annuity?”
“Why is there no clean water supply in the remote parts of the kingdom and how many wells should we build?”
All of these questions delighted the Uncle, and the Prince soon became his earnest student, and began to frequent the dinner tables of the advisors in order to listen. Apart from that, the Prince did not socialise much and could be found all hours of the night in the library, absorbing books on a great many subjects he did not understand at first – economics, foreign trade, agriculture. When he was not in the library, he would supervise the planting of the orange grove in the far courtyard of the palace.