The Ordinary Princess Page 4

  The next day the uproar in the palace was beyond description.

  The flight of the Princess Amy had been discovered by her two ladies-in-waiting, whose duty it was to wake her each morning. But on that particular morning they found that there was no one to wake. The big golden four-poster bed with its amethyst satin draperies was not only empty but had obviously not been slept in, while on the carved marble mantel stood a square white envelope on which was written in large block capitals:TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

  The ladies-in-waiting evidently thought that it concerned them, or perhaps it was just that their curiosity became too much for them. Anyway, they opened it at once, and when they read the letter inside they both screamed at the top of their voices, and one of them fainted away. The one who didn’t faint called for help and then ran as fast as she could to the Queen.

  The King and Queen were having breakfast together in the sun parlor when the lady-in-waiting burst in on them. She was breathless with excitement and also because she was rather plump and had been running very fast down a great many corridors. “Oh, Your Majesty!” gasped the lady-in-waiting, panting like a goldfish out of water, “Oh, Your Majesty!”

  “Good gracious!” exclaimed the King, dropping his spectacles into the butter. “Is the place on fire?”

  But the lady-in-waiting merely burst into tears and handed the princess’s letter to the Queen.

  It was a very short letter, and this is what it said:

  Dear Everyone,

  I think this dragon idea is simply silly and I won’t be shut up in a tower, and what’s more I won’t marry any stupid dragon-slaying prince. In fact I’ve decided that I don’t think I’ll marry anyone ever, so I’ve run away and it’s no use trying to find me, and please don’t worry because I shall be quite all right.

  Love and kisses

  Amy.

  There were several spelling mistakes.

  The Queen read it, and when she came to the end, she screamed even louder than the two ladies-in-waiting put together and went off into a fit of hysterics. The King knocked over the coffeepot and spilled a new jar of marmalade in his agitation, and search parties were rushed off in every direction with orders to find the princess and bring her back immediately.

  But nobody saw so much as the flicker of her skirt.

  The Ordinary Princess had vanished as completely as though she had been made of snow and had melted away in the sunshine.

  The King fined all his councillors half a month’s salary to relieve his feelings, and the Minister in Charge of Hiring a Suitable Dragon had to write and cancel his order for: Dragons, I. Laying-waste-the-land; for the use of.

  PART III

  When You Are King

  The Forest

  “I really shall have to do something about my clothes,” said the Ordinary Princess, speaking rather severely to Mr. Pemberthy and Peter Aurelious.

  Mr. Pemberthy and Peter Aurelious had not the least idea what she was saying, but they tried to look intelligent and sympathetic.

  Mr. Pemberthy was a little red squirrel and Peter Aurelious was a crow.

  The Ordinary Princess hardly ever had anyone to talk to, so she had made friends with the forest creatures and talked to them. It tended to make conversation rather one-sided, but that was sometimes an advantage. At least they could not answer back!

  The little red squirrel and the bright-eyed crow had become so tame that the Ordinary Princess gave them proper names (she had called the squirrel after a jolly, red-haired pastry cook at the palace, and the crow after her Uncle Aurelious), and now they followed her everywhere and came when she called them.

  It was a fine sunny morning on the far side of the forest from the kingdom of Phantasmorania, and the Ordinary Princess was gathering wild strawberries for lunch. Nearly two months had gone by since the night she had scrambled down the wisteria outside her window and run away into the forest, and every day had taken her farther and farther away from her home, until after weeks of wandering she had reached the other side of the great Forest of Faraway and the borders of the kingdom of Ambergeldar.

  The open-air life seemed to agree with her, for though she was thinner, she was as brown as a berry and her cheeks were as rosy as the little wild crabapples. But for all that, on this particular morning she was wearing a rather worried frown. The cause of the frown was the question of clothes.

  Up to now she had found life in the forest a very simple affair. There were plenty of roots and nuts and berries to eat and water from many little bubbling springs to drink. The forest pools made the most beautiful baths, and the deep emerald moss the most comfortable of beds, and there had not been so much as one rainy day since she left the palace.

  Morning after morning the sun had risen in a cloudless sky, and night after night the stars had been friendly candles to light her to bed. But now at last an extremely bothersome thing had cropped up.

  Her dress and her apron, once the property of Clorinda, were beginning to fall to pieces, and though nuts and berries may grow on trees, new clothes do not.

  Her stockings had been torn to ribbons long ago, and she had lost one shoe in a boggy bit of ground and the other in a stream. But that did not worry her at all, because she liked running barefoot.

  But her dress and apron and petticoat were quite another matter.

  Wandering in forests, and climbing trees or paddling in streams, are not good for dresses, however sensible their material. “It won’t be so long before they fall off in bits,” said the Ordinary Princess wor riedly.

  She had tried pinning the holes together with pine needles and bramble thorns, but it had not been a success: the pine needles broke and the thorns scratched her. Once she had tried to weave herself a skirt of grass and leaves, like people did in books, but that had been a failure from the start. It seemed a good idea all right, but it simply did not work.

  “Whatever am I going to do?” said the Ordinary Princess to Mr. Pemberthy and Peter Aurelious.

  But Mr. Pemberthy was busy eating an acorn, and Peter Aurelious only cocked his glossy black head to one side and said: “Qwa!” which might mean anything ... or nothing.

  “Neither of you are being very helpful,” said the Ordinary Princess severely, and she sat down on a tree stump and ate her strawberries.

  When she had finished them, she licked her fingers and went off to a deep pool nearby to wash the juice off her face and hands, and it was while she was drying her face on the least ragged corner of her apron that a cracked voice quite close to her said, “Good afternoon, child.”

  The Ordinary Princess jumped.

  She had not noticed anyone when she came down to the pool, and when she dried the wet out of her eyes, she jumped again, for she saw the oddest sight.

  Standing half in and half out of the water, at the other end of the pool, was the queerest old lady she had ever seen. She had long, greenish-gray hair, a long hooky nose, and a pair of very twinkling eyes. She leaned on a stick made out of a knobbly branch of coral and wore a cloak of something that looked like seaweed.

  “Speak up, child,” said the old lady. “Where are your manners?”

  “G-g-good afternoon, ma‘am,” said the Ordinary Princess. And because she had been nicely brought up, she made the old lady a curtsey.

  The old lady gave her a long look from her queer twinkling eyes, and then she said, “You are Amethyst, I suppose?”

  The Ordinary Princess jumped for the third time and looked a little alarmed. “Yes,” she said, “but how did you know?”

  “Good gracious, child,” said the old lady, seating herself on a lump of rock with the water up to her knees, “I ought to know. I’m one of your godmoth ers. I’m Crustacea.”

  She gave the Ordinary Princess another sharp look. “You’ve heard of me, I suppose?”

  “Oh yes,” said the Ordinary Princess. “I’ve heard of you. And if it hadn’t been for you, Godmama, I wouldn’t be here at this minute.”

  “Does that make you glad or
sorry?” asked the old lady.

  “Glad!” said the Ordinary Princess promptly. “Though I ought to say,” she added truthfully, “that there have been times when I’ve wished I was a really proper kind of princess ... but not very often.”

  The old lady laughed a high cackling sort of laugh. “You’re a sensible child,” she said. “Come and sit beside me and tell me all about it.”

  So the Ordinary Princess told her the whole story and the Fairy Crustacea laughed and chuckled and wiped her twinkling eyes with the edge of her seaweedy cloak.

  “And now,” said the Ordinary Princess, “I would like some advice, Godmama. What do ordinary people do when their clothes wear out and they haven’t any more?”

  “Buy some new ones, child.”

  “But I haven’t any money.”

  “Then earn some. Go to work,” said the old lady.

  “Oh, work,” said the Ordinary Princess thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I should like that.”

  “Neither do most ordinary people—but they have to,” said the old fairy.

  “What sort of work? And where?”

  “Great barnacles!” exclaimed Crustacea, “how should I know? Use your head, child. Think for yourself. And as for where—well, look over there.”

  She pointed with her knobbly coral stick and the Ordinary Princess turned and looked.

  Beyond the pool the forest ended in a narrow strip of moorland, and between the tree trunks she saw a far distant view of roofs and walls and battlements glinting in the sun.

  “Why—there’s a town there,” she said.

  “Certainly there is a town there,” said her god-mother. “That is the city of Amber, the capital of Ambergeldar, and if I were you, I’d go there and get myself a job. Because one thing is certain,” said old Crustacea, “if you go about in those clothes much longer, they will simply fall to bits.”

  “I was thinking that myself just before I met you,” said the Ordinary Princess.

  “Then take my advice and go on thinking of it,” said Crustacea. “Because the more you think of it, the sooner you will see that there is nothing for it but to buy new ones. And to do that, one needs money. Shops make a point of it, I am told. And money,” said Crustacea, “does not grow on trees. So, as you will realize, it all seems to boil down to one word. Work!”

  “Work,” repeated the Ordinary Princess dutifully. “I expect you’re right, Godmama.”

  “I’m always right,” snappd the old fairy. “And now be off with you, child. And luck go with you.”

  She smiled a very kindly smile, and then, before the Ordinary Princess could even say, “Good-bye,” she slipped off the rock and disappeared under the water as smoothly as an otter, and there was nothing to show that she had been there at all, except a damp smear on the top of the rock and a widening circle of ripples on the surface of the pool.

  “Well!” said the Ordinary Princess. And she rubbed her eyes and pinched herself to make sure she had not been dreaming. But there were the ripples and the damp smear on the rock, and the pinch had certainly felt very real.

  “Anyway,” said the Ordinary Princess, “if I’ve got to start work sometime, I’d better start now.”

  So she stood up and shook out her ragged skirts and tidied her hair as best she could. Then she went to the tree stump where she had left Mr. Pemberthy and Peter Aurelious and her cloak.

  The cloak had not had nearly such hard wear as her dress and apron, for she had used it as a blanket every night and carried it rolled up in a bundle under her arm during the day, and when she put it on, it made her look quite neat and respectable.

  “It is a pity having no shoes and stockings,” thought the Ordinary Princess. “But then one can’t have everything. Good-bye, forest,” she said, “I’ve had a lovely time, and as soon as ever I’ve made enough money to buy some new clothes, I’ll come back to you!”

  She kissed her hand to the trees and the ferns and the emerald moss and set off toward the town of Amber. But she did not go alone, for Mr. Pemberthy and Peter Aurelious had no intention of being left behind.

  Mr. Pemberthy had stopped eating acorns and had taken one flying leap onto her shoulder, where he fluffed up his tail and sat looking very pleased with himself. Peter Aurelious flew alongside them, cawing loudly.

  It was almost four o‘clock by the time they reached the city, and the Ordinary Princess was very tired and footsore. It had been much farther than she had thought when she looked at its walls and roofs from the edge of the forest, which may have been partly because she found that roads are not nearly as comfortable to bare feet as moss, so that one has to go more slowly.

  She stopped by a little stone bridge over the river that ran through the town, to bathe her tired and dusty feet and decide what she had better do. “I think I shall try and get work at the castle,” thought the Ordinary Princess, wiggling her toes in the nice cool water. She smiled to herself and tweaked Mr. Pemberthy’s bushy tail. “It will be a change to work in a castle instead of living in one,” she said.

  Then she dried her toes on the long grass by the bridge and marched off down the road to the castle. Perhaps the old Fairy Crustacea’s wish that luck would go with her had something to do with it. But strange as it may seem, when she knocked at the back door of the castle and asked for work, she was taken in at once, in spite of that dreadfully ragged gown. For as luck would have it, the fourteenth assistant kitchen maid had tripped over the kitchen cat that very morning and twisted her ankle. So the Ordinary Princess got the job at two pfennigs a week, plus her keep and the loan of a spare apron.

  “How many pfennigs would it take to buy a new frock?” she asked the thirteenth assistant kitchen maid.

  “About a hundred,” said the thirteenth assistant kitchen maid. “But it depends on the frock.”

  So that is how Her Serene and Royal Highness, Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne, Princess of Phantasmorania, became an ordinary kitchen maid in the royal castle of Amber.

  She was soon to find out that a great deal of work was expected in return for two pfennigs a week and her keep.

  From early dawn until late at night she was busy scampering up and down the huge castle kitchens, washing dishes, peeling potatoes, fetching and carrying for the royal cooks, filling pails of water, and a hundred other things.

  At night she slept in a narrow rickety bed in a very small attic room at the tip-top of the castle. The bed was very hard and the mattress full of lumps, but she was always so tired that she did not care.

  Whenever she could snatch a moment from her work, she would run up the twelve long flights of stairs that led to her attic, to take a handful of crumbs and scraps to Mr. Pemberthy and Peter Aurelious.

  Mr. Pemberthy and Peter Aurelious spent most of their time sunning themselves on the castle roofs or making trips down to the gardens. But wherever they were, the minute they heard the Ordinary Princess’s soft whistle they would hurry back to the attic windowsill.

  Every second week the Ordinary Princess was allowed Thursday afternoon off, and then all three of them would spend a glorious time together in the forest. And every Saturday night the Ordinary Princess would put two pfennigs into a cardboard box with a hole in the lid that she kept under her bed.

  “When the box is full,” she told Mr. Pemberthy and Peter Aurelious, “I shall take it down to the town and buy myself a new frock, and then we can all go back to the forest and live there for always. Or at least,” she added, “until I need a new one.”

  Peter Aurelious put his head on one side and said, “Qwa!” and Mr. Pemberthy fluffed up his tail and made a little chattering noise, quite as though they both understood what it was all about. Which perhaps they did.

  On the whole, the Ordinary Princess—who was now an ordinary kitchen maid—enjoyed life as much as ever. For when you have spent most of your life surrounded by ladies-in-waiting and polite courtiers who all expect you to do nothing but play the harp nicely and do a little elegant em
broidery, even peeling potatoes has its charms. And there is nothing that gives you a feeling of such proud satisfaction as drawing a weekly wage that you have earned all by yourself. Even if it is only two pfennigs!

  Every now and again the Ordinary Princess would send a letter to her parents, to tell them that she was quite safe and well and happy, so that they would not worry about her too much. But she was very careful to give no address, and as no one used postmarks in those days, she was never discovered.

  The Ordinary Princess had been an ordinary kitchen maid for several weeks before she caught so much as a glimpse of the castle’s owner, King Algernon of Ambergeldar. But though she had not seen him, she had heard a great deal about him from the other seventeen assistant kitchen maids.

  It seemed that he was young and gallant and handsome and that his mother had died when he was only a baby, and his father had been killed out hunting when he was ten years old, so he had been a king since that early age.

  The kitchen maids, the scullery maids, and the housemaids, the scullions, pages, cooks, and serving maids were never tired of talking about him, and to hear them one would suppose him to be the most marvelous person in the world.

  “But they can’t fool me,” said the Ordinary Princess to Mr. Pemberthy and Peter Aurelious. “I know all about kings and princes. They may seem very wonderful to kitchen maids, but believe me, when you get to know them, you’d be surprised how stiff and stodgy and tiresome they are.”

  She spoke so snappishly that Mr. Pemberthy looked quite startled and dropped an acorn.

  “Algernon, indeed!” said the Ordinary Princess in tones of immense scorn.

  “Qwa!” agreed Peter Aurelious.

  The cardboard box with the hole in the lid contained the sum of twelve pfennigs when the whole castle was thrown into a bustle of excitement. It seemed that Queen Hedwig of Plumblossomburg was to pay a friendly visit to her nephew, Algernon of Ambergeldar, and great plans were made to receive and entertain her.