The Narnians escape Tashbaan when a diplomatic visit turns into a danger of imprisonment: once Queen Susan refuses Prince Rabadash, King Edmund expects the party to lose the freedom they enjoyed as honored guests. Mr. Tumnus answers that danger with a deception built around an imaginary banquet aboard the Splendor Hyaline. The plan carries the Narnians from the city to their ship, then north toward home, while leaving Rabadash to discover their absence too late to pursue them effectively.

Causes and Stakes

King Edmund identifies the change in the Narnians’ position plainly. While Rabadash believed that Queen Susan might accept him, the visitors were treated as guests; after her flat refusal, Edmund fears they will be treated no better than prisoners. The escape is therefore not a casual departure but a response to a political threat: the party must leave Tashbaan without giving Rabadash the opportunity to prevent them.

The immediate problem is practical as well as political. The Narnians need to reach their ship and carry stores aboard without being seen and stopped. The ship’s presence offers a route out, but getting to it openly would risk alerting those who might detain them. The escape depends on making preparations for departure look like preparations for a social occasion.

The Banquet as a Cover

Mr. Tumnus proposes that the royal visitors invite Rabadash to a great banquet on board the Splendor Hyaline for the following night. The invitation is to be phrased graciously, but without committing Queen Susan’s honor, and to leave the Prince hoping that she is weakening. The scheme uses his desire to keep him from suspecting that the Narnians are preparing to flee.

The promised feast supplies a credible reason for the party to go down to the ship throughout the day. They can bring stores aboard while Tashbaan expects them to be preparing for guests. To make the pretense convincing, some of them are to spend every minim they have at fruit sellers, sweetmeat sellers, and wine merchants; magicians, jugglers, dancing girls, and flute players are also to be ordered for the supposed entertainment. These costly, conspicuous preparations are not the feast itself, but the evidence that makes the false feast plausible.

The plan turns on a precise separation between what Rabadash is told and what the Narnians intend. The invitation promises a banquet tomorrow night; the real purpose is to have everyone aboard that night. When darkness falls, the ship will raise sail, put out its oars, and head to sea. The Prince’s imagined prospect of winning Queen Susan thus becomes the cover for the Queen’s actual escape.

Departure and Escape

The council receives Tumnus’s proposal with growing enthusiasm. King Edmund recognizes its force, and the Raven praises it as better than anything a council could devise in seven days. The exchange turns a difficult escape into an executable sequence: announce the banquet, make visible preparations, gather aboard, and leave under cover of night.

The destination is north. As the party celebrates the plan, one Dwarf calls for the ship’s nose to point northward, and another cheers for Narnia and the North. The departure is not merely a withdrawal from Rabadash’s reach: it is a return voyage toward home. Once the meeting breaks up, the lords and creatures make way for the King and Queen to leave first, while Shasta is told to remain where he is until the others are ready to embark.

King Edmund also assesses the danger of pursuit. He has seen the shipping on the river and found no tall ship of war or swift galley there. On that basis, he is confident that the Splendor Hyaline could sink anything Rabadash might send after it, if the Prince managed to overtake them at all. The escape therefore rests on both concealment and the ship’s advantage over the vessels available in the river.

Rabadash Discovers the Flight

The next morning, Rabadash complains to the Tisroc that the delay has cost him his chance to catch the ship. When he first saw that the barbarians’ vessel had left its place, he wanted to send the swiftest galleys at sunrise. The Tisroc persuaded him to wait and find out whether the ship had merely moved around the point to a better anchorage; by the time that uncertainty was resolved, the day had been wasted and the Narnians were gone beyond his reach.

Rabadash’s anger makes the personal stakes of the escape explicit. He declares that he must have Queen Susan and describes himself as unable to sleep or enjoy food because of her, even as his language toward her becomes abusive. The staged banquet has bought the Narnians the time they needed, while his desire and indecision have left him reacting to their departure rather than directing it.

Narrative Function

The escape combines adventure and deception: rather than force a way out of Tashbaan, the Narnians make their threatened captor’s expectation work against him. The false banquet is effective because it operates on two levels at once. To the city, it explains why the party is moving stores to the ship; to Rabadash, it keeps alive the hope that Queen Susan may yet accept his suit.

The result is a sharp reversal of apparent power. Rabadash believes that his courtship gives him leverage over the Queen, but that belief helps conceal her departure. The next day’s empty ship’s place reveals what the banquet preparations were for: the Narnians have already converted a dangerous position into a passage north, and the Prince is left with the belated knowledge that the guests he hoped to command have escaped him.