Сказки / Fairy Tales

But the soldiers who stood on guard dropped their halberts[14 - halberds  –  алебарды] across the entrance, and said roughly to him,

‘What do you want in the city?’

‘I look for my mother,’ he answered, ‘please let me enter in, she may be in this city.’

But the soldiers mocked at him. One of them wagged a black beard, and set down his shield and cried,

‘Truly, your mother will not be merry when she sees you, because you are uglier than the toad of the marsh, or the adder that crawls in the fen.

And another soldier, who held a yellow banner in his hand, said to him,

‘Who is your mother? Why are you not together with her?’

The Star-Child answered,

‘My mother is a beggar as I am. I treated her evilly. Please let me pass that she may give me her forgiveness, if she lives in this city.’

But the soldiers pricked him with their spears.

As he turned away, one whose armour was with gilt flowers, and on whose helmet couched a lion with wings, came up and asked the soldiers who it was.

‘It is a beggar and the child of a beggar. Let him go away.’

‘No,’ he cried and laughed, ‘but we will sell the foul child for a slave and buy a bottle of sweet wine.’

An old and evil-visaged man[15 - old and evil-visaged man  –  старик с дьявольским выражением лица] who passed by, said,

‘I will buy him for that price.’

He paid the price and took the Star-Child by the hand and led him into the city.

After that they went through many streets and came to a little door in a wall that was covered with a pomegranate tree. The old man touched the door with a ring of graved jasper and it opened. They went down five steps of brass into a garden with black poppies and green clay jars. Then the old man took from his turban a scarf of figured silk, and bound with it the eyes of the Star-Child. Then he pushed him forward.

When the old man took the scarf off the Child’s eyes, the Star-Child found himself in a dungeon. The old man set before him some mouldy bread on a trencher and said,

‘Eat,’ and some brackish water in a cup and said, ‘Drink.’

Then the old man went out, locked the door behind him and fastened it with an iron chain.

The old man was indeed the magician of Libya and learned his art from one who dwelt in the tombs of the Nile.