Brigid Lucy and the Princess Tower (6 page)

My sword is ripping through the air so fast that the monsters are too scared to come out of the walls.

And Biddy never stops for a minute, so they can’t grab her. Even when she gets a stitch in her side from running too much, she doesn’t stop. She just breathes in deep, down into her stomach. Then she skips to change the rhythm of her running and keeps going.

She is still singing that silly song, ‘
I am bra-ave. I am strong …
’

Finally, we get to the top of the stairwell, to safety.

I raise my sword at the monsters. ‘Stunned you!’ I say. And, ‘How’s that!’ And, ‘
Victory!
’

Chapter nine

the secret room

Biddy runs into the room at the top of the stairs. ‘
Princess Rapunzel?
’ she calls. ‘We have come to save you.’

But there is no one there. There’s no princess tied up in the corner, with tape around her mouth to stop her from screaming. There is just a small, empty room, with a huge copper bell in the middle of it. The ringer inside the bell is tied against the bell’s edge so it can’t make a sound.

I skip up right on top of Biddy’s head so I can see and hear everything.

‘They must have hidden Princess Rapunzel in an invisible room,’ Biddy says, patting the walls.

Then Biddy makes up magic words to open the secret doorways.

‘
Spell-in-cous-cous!
’ she says.

And, ‘
Try-la-men-ia!
’

And, ‘
Wocca-woo!
’

And, ‘
Stru-ta-lu-ta!
’

And, ‘
Till-gäng-lig!
’

She stops and listens after each magic word for the
creak! crack! rumble!
sounds the stone wall would make as it pulled back to reveal the secret doorway. But the only noise either of us can hear is the sound of Biddy’s footsteps echoing on the wooden floorboards, and a strange hum.

What is causing the hum?

Ah! It is the great bell. The footstep-echoes are bouncing up against the wall and back onto the bell. And the sound has set the whole room vibrating with the most amazingly wonderful humming. I love it way past the furthest edge of impossibility.

‘Maybe Princess Rapunzel’s already escaped,’ Biddy says, suddenly standing still.

‘But how could Princess Rapunzel get out?’ I ask, closing my eyes to help me think. How could she have possibly escaped from this tower? What happened in the story?

Oh yes! I remember.

‘Biddy!
The window!
’ I yell. ‘She climbed out through the window.’

‘Rapunzel climbed out through the window, and down her long hair!’ Biddy says. Then she runs to the window so fast that I fall backwards.

And, before I can get my balance again, Biddy’s head jerks forwards out through the tall slit-of-a-window.

Ahhh!
I’m sliding.

Grab! Scrabble!

I catch a strand of Biddy’s fringe with my hands.

But Mum has brushed it smooth. There are no knots to hang onto. The hair is slipping through my fingers. I’m falling! I’ll be dead.
Splat!
Like a bug on the concrete below.

Suddenly, a rope is flying towards me. No … it’s one of Biddy’s plaits!

I grab onto it, wrapping my legs and arms around it. Then I tuck my hands and feet into its tight folds. I’m dangling high in the air, swinging through empty space. I feel a bit sick. But I’m safe.

‘
Holy-mog-olie!
’ Biddy is yelling. ‘Look at that.’

I look down. The whole city is spread out below us. Everything on the ground looks tiny. Cars and people are rushing past, stopping at the traffic lights, and going on again like ants.

Right across from the tower, a lady is running backwards and forwards across the pavement. Her red coat is flapping behind her, and she is holding her high-heeled shoes in her hands.

‘Mum!’ Biddy yells.

And she is right. The running lady is Mum!

But Mum never runs. She always tells Biddy off for running on busy streets.

What is wrong? Something
terrible
must have happened.

There are other people running with Mum, back and forth. Police cars are pulling up at the side of the busy road with their sirens blaring. And policemen and policewomen are stopping people on the street, and asking them questions.

What do they want?

I bet Matilda wandered off on her own! She is always letting go of Mum’s hand and getting lost. Matilda is such a silly, little, not-very-careful kid.

No … Matilda isn’t lost. She’s down there, too, holding a policeman’s hand. Well, who are they looking for?

‘
Uh-oh!
’ Biddy says. ‘They are looking for me!’

She leans further out the window and screams, ‘Here! I’m up here. Mum! Police-people! It’s okay. I’m here.
Don’t worry
.’

Mum and the policemen and all the other looking-for-Biddy people are just over the road from the Princess Tower. But they can’t hear Biddy yelling because she is so high up, and the traffic on the ground is so noisy.

‘I’m up here!’ Biddy yells again. She pulls off her shoes and waves them out of the window.

But still no one notices.

Then Biddy remembers the bell.

She pulls her head back through the window, and runs across the room to the bell. Then she undoes the rope, and swings the bell-ringer as hard as she can.

BOING! BOING! BOING!
goes the bell.

It makes the loudest noise in the whole universe. My ears are ringing, nearly to bursting.

Then Biddy runs back to the window and throws her shoes out. They flutter down and bounce onto the ground, right next to a policewoman.

The policewoman looks up, sees us, waves, and calls to Mum.

Then Mum sees us, yells to the police-people, and runs straight across the road. She doesn’t even look-to-the-left-to-the-right-to-the-left-again! Cars
blare
their horns and people scream. The policemen and policewomen put their hands up to stop the traffic.

And over the top of it all, Mum is
screaming
, ‘Brigid Lucy!’

And, ‘Stay-where-you-are!’

And, ‘Get-back-from-that-window!’

And, ‘Don’t-you-dare-move.’

Well, we can’t actually hear what she’s saying, but I bet she is saying something just like that. She always does.

Chapter ten

in trouble again

Me and Biddy can hear Mum’s voice yelling all the way up the stairs.

When she bursts into the bell-room, she grabs Biddy in the biggest
bear hug
ever. Then she cries and laughs and yells. She is nearly squash-suffocating me and Biddy to bits.

Then some of the police-people come in, too. The policewoman who spotted Biddy in the tower is here.

She walks over to look out of the slit-ofa-window. ‘What a
view
,’ she says. ‘You can see the sea!’

When Mum stops crying and laughing, she wipes her face and starts telling Biddy off.

‘Brigid-Lucy-what-were-you-thinking?’ she says. And, ‘You-worry-me-to-death.’

Then, when Mum gets tired of telling Biddy off, a big policeman comes over.

He kneels down, wearing a very
serious
face, and tells Biddy all about ‘danger’ and ‘strangers’. And then he tells her how little girls should never, ever run away from their mums because terrible things can happen to them.

‘Tell me about it!’ I say. ‘We just nearly got turned into a piece of infinity by a king’s magic ring. And then we were almost gobbled up by a huge pile of monsters in the stairwell.’

But Biddy patiently waits till the policeman stops talking.

Then she asks him in her most polite voice, ‘
Mr Policeman
, are they allowed to keep little girls prisoners in towers, even if they are princesses?’

‘Of course not!’ the policeman says.

‘Well, the king is keeping a little girl prisoner here right now,’ Biddy says.

‘What king?’ asks the policeman.

‘That one right
there
,’ Biddy says, pointing at the king and the other man from the Great Hall. They have just come puffing up the stairwell.

The policeman stands up and steps towards the king.

I dive behind Biddy’s ear. There is going to be a battle. The policeman will try to capture the king. The king will pull out his magic ring and cast us all into the dungeon, or feed us to a dragon.

Or perhaps he’ll lock us all up here in this tower. We’ll have only the terrible monsters with the gnashing teeth and sharp pointy claws for company, until the end of infinity.

But the policeman just says, ‘That gentleman is not a king. He is a bishop.’

‘Well, even if he is not a king,’ Biddy says, ‘I heard him say he was going to keep Princess Rapunzel gagged and locked up as a
prisoner
in this tower until the time was right.’

The policeman looks at the king-bishop person and asks him if what Biddy says is true.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know what the young lady is talking about,’ the king-bishop person says. Then he looks at the huge bell. ‘Ah,’ he says and smiles at Biddy. ‘Princess Rapunzel, you say?’

He walks over to the bell, and adds, ‘You may have heard me talking about our new bell, Pristus Repastelle.’