e
decided instead to declare to the king that the child was her own
and take the guilt, together with any other consequences, upon
herself, for she loved her lady in waiting very much.

When the king learned that his daughter had given birth (or so he
believed), he was unutterably furious, and spent the better part of
an hour ranting and shouting execrations and breaking things. But
when he demanded which of his knights had helped her into this
situation, the princess, not willing to sacrifice any of the noble
and completely innocent knights of the castle, invented the story of
a secret lover from outside the castle walls.

The king suspected that his daughter was lying, or trying to
lie--for the girl was so honest that she could not dissemble with
conviction--so that he was now even more uncontrollably enraged than
before; he now began screaming directly at his daughter and breaking
larger and more expensive things. And because he could think of
nothing but her duplicity and disobedience and his injured honor and
her betrayal of his affection, he coldly (or rather hotly)
determined to banish her from the kingdom. "For," he argued, "I
will love not those who love not me." He therefore cruelly turned
the girl and the child over to the traders of a passing caravan from
a distant land who would take them past the borders of the kingdom.

Even as she saw her father's look of hatred as she was packed into
the wagon at the rear of the caravan, the princess did not alter her
resolve to keep her secret, for now she knew that if the king knew
the truth, her lady in waiting would most certainly be executed. As
for the lady in waiting, she was so stricken with grief over the
king's actions that she very nearly took her own life. But the
princess had commanded her never to reveal the secret, regardless of
the consequences, and the lady in waiting feared that the princess
would be exposed by such an action. So the woman, helpless to
remedy the situation, instead fled the palace in tears.

As the traders proceeded out of the kingdom, the princess resolved
that, whatever should happen to herself, she would not see the child
grow up a slave. She therefore watched carefully for an opportunity
and one night sneaked off from the traders as far as she could get
in the cold and dark, and put the child near a hut, hoping and
praying that it would find safety and a free life, however humble.
She then sneaked back to the traders,