The Greedy King

Stories for Another Day

In those days, the second kingdom was blessed with an excellent king, King Rupe. He took good care of his people and his lands, and he made sure that he kept on good terms with the neighbouring lands. He paid them visits from time to time, and occasionally sent them gifts. His people respected him and they were very happy with him.

But King Rupe had a secret. He had a deep, abiding, unappeasable hunger for diamonds. Rupe was not a greedy man, in most things. He didn’t overeat, except when it came to chocolate, but that was no different from anyone else. He wasn’t grasping or miserly. He taxed his people fairly. But where diamonds were concerned, he had a hunger that could not be satisfied.

It started when the king of the sixth kingdom sent him a gift, a pretty diamond on a chain. Rupe thought he would give it to his daughter, Shell, but the more he looked at it, and toyed with it, the more he thought he wouldn’t. It was probably quite valuable, he thought, and Princess Shell might feel uncomfortable wearing it, in case she lost it. So he kept it, and thought no more about it.

But as the days went by, he seemed to notice diamonds everywhere, and every time he did, he felt an overwhelming urge to have them for his own. When the queen, Alabaster, wore her diamond necklace to dinner, King Rupe said, “My dear! Those diamonds are very dusty. Give them to me, and I’ll have them cleaned for you.”

But he never did. He put them away in his private treasury. When he was by himself, he would secretly take them out and hold them up to the light and gaze at them for hours on end.

He sent his servants out to buy more diamonds, all the diamonds they could find, in rings, pendants, and tiaras. The more diamonds he had, the more he wanted.

After a while, he had spent nearly all the money in the Royal Bank. The king was dismayed. He looked at his piles of diamonds, letting them run through his fingers, but he could not bear to part with a single one. He decided to raise the taxes instead.

The people complained, but the king took no notice. What’s the point of being king if you can’t raise taxes now and then? he said to himself.

Then one day, the king fell ill. He lay in bed, white and shivering. The queen made him warm milk and his favourite pudding, and fed it to him herself with a spoon, but he turned his head away and wouldn’t eat. His daughter, Shell, came and offered to sing for him, but he couldn’t bear to have her in the room. The queen became very worried and sent for the palace doctors. They examined the king carefully, then they shook their heads. “There is nothing wrong with his body,” they murmured to the queen, out of the king’s hearing. “We suspect,” the Chief Medical Officer said, tapping the side of his head with his finger, “it may be a disturbance of the mind.”

Princess Shell had an idea.”I have heard of a violinist whose playing is so beautiful that it touches both the heart and the spirit. Perhaps if he played for my father, he would get better?”

The queen sent for the violinist and had him taken to the king’s bedroom. The violinist, whom we know as Cal, lifted his violin and played a few notes but the king cried out and pulled his pillow over his head. Cal lowered his violin, puzzled. It was very hot in the king’s bedroom, so he went to open the windows but the king shouted, “No! Don’t open them!”

Cal sat down on the end of the bed and said, “Your majesty, what is the matter?”

The king bent his head and wrapped his arms around himself. “I am afraid,” he said, “I am afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?” Cal asked quietly.

The king swallowed. He said in a low voice, “My daughter, oh, my daughter!”

Cal was intrigued. He said, “Tell me why you are afraid, your majesty.”

“There is a man,” King Rupe said, choking over the words. “He has a diamond, the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, exquisitely cut, perfectly clear, so beautiful, so beautiful,” he moaned. “I offered to buy it from him. I offered him all the gold in the palace, everything I have, but there is only one thing he will take for it: my daughter. And I am so afraid.”

Cal looked at the king, the truth beginning to dawn on him. He said gently, “Why are you afraid of this man?”

“I am afraid that I will do as he asks and give him my daughter for the diamond!” Rupe whispered.

“No!” exclaimed Cal.

“At first I refused, and laughed at him,” said the king, “but he came again and again, with the diamond in his hand, the lovely thing. Again I refused, but he smiled, and held it so that the light caught it in such a way… I sent him out of my sight, but I see him everywhere, with the diamond. And I dream of it.”

He looked up at Cal, and said, “Now do you see why I keep the doors and windows locked? Why I dare not leave this room?”

Cal got up and walked the length of the room, twice, three times. He came back and stood at the king’s side and said, “The music that I play has the power to touch the spirit. It has brought people back from the brink of despair, and turned the hearts of others away from evil. If you wish it, I can play for you.”

The light of hope sprang up in King Rupe’s eyes. “Yes, play for me!” he said.

Cal said, “If I play, and you change your heart, the change is permanent, and complete. There are no half measures, and no going back.”

The king stayed silent, thinking about his hoard. He wept with anguish at the thought of losing his love for his diamonds. Then he thought of his lovely daughter, Shell. For moments, his heart swayed between the two. Then he looked up at Cal and said a single word. “Play.”

The music of the violin was soft and gentle, like a hand caressing a child’s head. Then it grew deeper and stronger. It pleaded and insisted. It filled the room like a great storm, and then it gradually became quieter, until it came to rest.

The king opened his eyes, smiling. “I am cured, I am sure of it,” he said. “I can feel that my heart is my own again.”

He opened a great chest beside his bed, filled to overflowing with diamonds, large and small. Then he called his servants and said, “Take all these and sell them, and return the money to the Royal Bank. If there is any money left over, then give it to the poor.” The servants loaded up baskets and wheelbarrows full of diamonds and took them away, every last diamond. The king smiled, happier than he had been for a long, long time.

He shook Cal’s hand, saying, “How can I ever thank you?”

Frowning, Cal said, “One moment, your majesty.” In lowering his violin, he had brushed one of the strings, and heard a strange echo from somewhere in the room. He plucked the string again, firmly. The echo, like an eerie singing, came from the king’s robe.

“What is it?” Cal asked.

Rupe put his hand into his pocket and drew out a small, twinkling diamond on a chain. “This?” he said. “I… I had forgotten I had it. It was the first of my collection, a gift from my neighbour.”

They both stared at the diamond, glittering in the light, and they looked at each other. Rupe placed it carefully on the stone edge of the window. Cal lifted his violin and played a single note, over and over, with more and more intensity, until the king had to put both hands over his ears. Then the diamond shattered, into a hundred thousand sparks of light.