He had heard many rumours of a war on his borders, and with no army nor enough peasantry to conjure a militia he was duly concerned that his small country would be marched over and absorbed by one of the greater powers on his borders. He contrived ways to make sure that in the future his kingdom would be respected. He sent out emissaries to the adjoining realms, taking with them such wealth as the king could muster to present to those men as a gift of good will and a pact to save the neutrality of that small kingdom of Wistham. This course left the kingdom with little money and less to trade because trade caravans needed protection that would cost money that was going to secure the safety of the whole kingdom. The spiral continued, and all the while the dark clothes stood locked in a chest in the castle.

Time passed, and Alexander watched the world around him spin and change in a tumult of battle and invasion. He heard tell of a great army being summoned in the south, and a most disturbing saga of a man who slew his brother for nothing more than the wherewithal to direct a camel train. Most of these tales he paid no heed, since his treatise with his neighbours kept his small kingdom safe from the majority of the suffering of which he received nought but vague messages. The people of Wistham were not upset, more than they were wont to be, with the state of affairs. They had been told, time and again that soon enough their time would come, and they lived life on the premise that, given enough time, they would have what they had always wanted. They were content with being discontented.

It was into this kingdom, across the supposedly closed border, that a man came. He walked strangely, and looked men in the eye rather than grace the ground with his stern gaze. Those who saw him, in his grim habit, took him for a member of a distant clergy and treated him accordingly. To men he spoke of doom, and to women he preached of a time when all men would be dead and gone and then they would have to make the best of the world left to them. In swift passage he gained himself a reputation better suited to one graced with gifts of foresight. Men ran in fear of him as he approached, though never had this man struck another. Doors were shut to him as he approached for no more reason than a word of fabrication that would never likely be proved right or wrong. So it came that this man found himself on the only doorstep left to his pilgrimage, tat of the castle. He knocked on the door, and was admitted by a guard wearing an overly large helmet who seemed all too incapable of guarding his own step. He was shown into a large hall, but stayed near the door through desire not to be exposed to the elements which were free to pour whatever they would through the great rift in the roof of the castle. The guard left him only minutes before he that was called Alexander walked into the hall from the far end.

‘Welcome, holy father,’ said the king.

‘I am not thy father, good king, nor do I profess any knowledge of the mind of the gods. Despite this I bid thee my greetings. It has been a road long and dire to reach this place and I hope that your welcome should stay when I give you what I have in exchange for your hospitality.’

‘Pray, what is this of which you speak that may tarnish a welcome earnestly offered?’

‘Nothing more than words, nothing less neither,’ said the man, pulling back his habitual hood to reveal a river of white hair and skin only graced with life in a good light. ‘I have a tale to tell you sire, which I have travelled through your kingdom to say.’

Alexander looked eagerly at this strange man and beckoned his come to a place more comfortable than the airy hall. When the two were ensconced in a room with a fire and a lock on the door Alexander bid the monk to say on. In response the man stood by the fire, and there framed began to speak his tale.

Alexander heard tell of a man to whom life was little but a reason to wait for sunrise, because he had been told that after that sunrise he would be granted eternal life. As the world spun and the sun rose each day and his expectation grew and withered with the very light of the sun the man grew older. One day, long after he accepted the prophesy, he was as sure as he had ever been that the next morning would be his day to be judged. He went to sleep that night, his heart full of the hope of waking and being grated life eternal in a place more kind to his body than that harsh world. Alexander took all this in time until the monk stood almost on his face speaking rapidly and with great volume of the night which the man had slept in. No thunderstorm were heard, no meteors fell and the world did not end. In time the sun rose once more, and the man lay dead in his bed. No life stirred his heart, nor did any life remember that which he had done during his long existence. Alexander looked long into the fire after the moink had ceased his fevered speech. The man himself walked away, begging freedom to roam the castle while the king thought on his tale. This he was granted, and he swiftly walked to the room in which the chest lay, unopened for a year and a day. When he returned to the company of the king the jester was once more dressed in his customary guise, and the king did not but for his face recognise him.

‘Indeed this is a strange and unwelcome tale, thy who express both the face of belief and the clothes of disbelief. I am sure you did make a pigs ear from the fine leather of the tale up until the it was on the block ready to be put to rest. The promise you showed in your previous clothing was coloured and spoilt by an adverse and incomprehensible finale. I am most displeased with it, and wish that should you stay any longer in this house that you will devise an alternative end for the good man, whom as I can see had no reason to be denied that which he had waited long for. It is similar to my own position, and I am sure that in time I will be granted a kingdom worthy of a ruler. This doomladen judgement which you pass has little to say of my own existence and so the most prophetic nature with which you impart it misplaced indeed.’

‘My tale held import for any man able to see it, and any man who cannot may enjoy to a degree that which I spoke. Of the man in the tale, should envy be far from your mind, then a degree of true joy may be had in knowing that the fate which he did enjoy will be far from you. Who is to say the main thust of the tale? To every man tis more than to another man. Think what you will, fo if the bells do not ring true the metal shall be cast anew.’

Alexander stood and paced the room, limping as his mode of transport. He looked slyly on the jester, who stood before him seeking no more than acceptance.

‘What you say reeks of failure, and I am disappointed with it. I am not man to whom kindness is stranger, and so you may stay for as long as you wish, having collected your clothes so mysteriously transported here a year ago. I shall not banish you, so stay. But now I have business so you must depart this place and find yourself a room in which to sleep. Any such room, but those under the castle. Those rooms are home to no man.’

Hearing this with a frown and a wink the jester left in silence, seeking not to give the king any further reason to send him hence.