Tatterhood (9 page)

‘It would be a sorry shame,' said the woman, ‘if we didn't help you in return. My husband is a blacksmith, and I'll have him make a set of claws to help you climb the mountain.'

When the smith came home he set to work at once, and by morning the claws were ready – strong and sharp and curved – a set for each hand, and a set for each foot as well. The princess wasted no time, but strapped them on, hooked herself onto the rock-face and began to climb. She crept and crawled and clambered, hauling herself up the rugged cliff – clanking and rasping and scraping – until her muscles cramped and she could barely lift her arms for weariness.

But just as she thought she'd rather die than creep a millimetre further, her clawed hands grasped the top of the cliff, and she scrambled onto a plateau.

Ahead of her lay a jumble of plains and gorges – gorges filled with boulders, sharp as teeth, and crossed by crooked bridges – while nearby, gnarled and lumpy, there towered a troll-castle.

The castle swarmed with workers. They streamed in and out, up and down, back and forth, striving like ants in an antheap.

‘What's going on?' the princess asked.

‘There's going to be a wedding,' said one, ‘between the troll-hag and the whitebear prince.'

‘Because,' explained another, ‘the king's daughter couldn't free him from the curse.'

‘Can I speak with the troll-hag?' the king's daughter asked.

‘No!' they all agreed. ‘That would be impossible.'

But the princess wouldn't take impossible for an answer.

Instead, she sat herself beneath the shutters of the troll-hag's window and set to snipping and snapping at the air with her golden shears. It wasn't long before silk and velvet were whirling about her like a snowstorm and, when the troll-hag looked out, she wanted the scissors right away.

‘I won't sell them for gold,' said the princess, ‘but you can have them if you'll let me visit my sweetheart tonight.'

‘Ech! If you agree to let me put him to sleep first,' said the troll, ‘and wake him again in the morning.'

The princess agreed, and when the prince went to his room, the troll-hag went with him. But she gave him a sleeping potion so strong that he stayed asleep the whole night through, no matter how the princess shouted and shook him.

Next day, the king's daughter sat herself outside the troll-hag's window again, and set to pouring from the flask. It gushed like a stream with mead and wine, and never once ran empty.

Well, no sooner did she see it than the troll-hag wanted the flask as well.

Once again, the princess said she'd swap it for permission to visit her sweetheart, and the troll-hag agreed – except that she herself would see him to sleep and wake him again in the morning. So, when he went to his room, the prince was given another sleeping potion, and it went no better that night either; the prince was in no state to wake up, no matter how the king's daughter pummelled and yelled.

It happened, however, that one of the workers overheard the crying and commotion in the prince's room. He guessed what was happening and, the following morning, told the prince that the king's daughter might have turned up to rescue him.

That day, it went with the cloth exactly as it had with the shears and flask. The king's daughter went outside the castle, spread the cloth and told it to serve her with food. It dished up enough for a hundred hungry workers and, when the troll-hag looked out and saw it, she wanted the cloth as well.

Once more the princess bargained for a night beside her sweetheart, and once again the troll agreed – on condition, of course, that she herself would put the prince to sleep, and that she herself would wake him.

When the prince went to his room, along came the troll with her sleeping potion as usual. But this time the prince kept his wits about him. He asked the troll-hag to fetch honey to sweeten the drink, and when she had gone, he poured out the potion, then pretended he had drunk it down without the honey after all.

Well, the troll didn't trust anyone, not even herself. So, when the prince lay down to sleep, she fished out a darning needle and jabbed it clean through his arm – just to be sure. But the prince watched through his eyelashes, saw the needle coming and – no matter how it hurt – didn't so much as twitch.

Then the troll was satisfied and let the princess in.

Of course, the prince was nothing like asleep. In fact, with his princess encircled in one arm and a hole straight through the other, he was more awake than he had been for a long time.

‘If only we could be rid of the troll,' he said, ‘then we'd be free – both of her and her enchantment.'

It happened that the princess had a few ideas. She had been listening at windows and knew that, in troll tradition, the bride always rode foremost in the wedding procession.

‘You pretend to go ahead with the marriage,' she said to the prince, ‘and I'll ask the carpenters to build a swivel in the first bridge along the way. When the troll-hag rides onto it, the bridge will tip and dump her onto the boulders below.'

Which is exactly what happened.

Then the king's daughter and the prince gathered together as much troll-gold as they could carry, and hurried home to where they belonged.

But what of those three little girls, living in the woods with their aunts – each one a year older than the next, each as sweet as a sunny day, and all of them as like the princess as beads on a string?

Well, the prince ducked in at each of the cottages as they passed, scooped up the girls, all three, and handed them back to their mother.

Which wasn't such a bad old trick, now, was it?

Long before now – but not too long – there was a poor farmer girl who used to work in the fields of a squire. The squire was both fat and fine. His coffers were lined with silver, his meadows reached into the hills and his house had stairs that led up to a sleeping loft under the roof. But for all his wealth, there was something missing: the squire had no wife.

Even so, there was no one else so grand, nor anyone quite so round, or so red in the face, or so chock full of himself, either – at least not that the poorer farmers could think of.

One day in autumn, about harvest time, the girl was raking in the squire's hayfield when he happened to look across and notice her, as if for the first time. He noticed her strong broad shoulders and brawny arms. He noticed her solid back, firm waist and sturdy rump. In particular, he noticed how she planted her feet staunch and square on the dirt as she slung the hay from furrow to rick.

The squire was so impressed that he began to think. ‘Poor folks' offspring,' he said to himself. ‘She should fall into line at the mere mention of marriage, no trouble at all.'

Then he set out across the field for a closer look.

‘I've been having thoughts,' he said to the girl.

‘It happens to some,' the farmer's daughter replied with a chuckle.

‘That is, I've arrived at thoughts of marrying,' said the squire.

‘One can arrive at that much,' said the girl and chuckled again.

‘I was meaning,' said the squire, ‘that you should be the wife.'

‘Pff!' laughed the girl. ‘No, thanks all the same.'

‘It was my understanding,' the squire said, ‘that, being of humble folk, you'd fall for the offer first up.'

‘I've never been one for falling,' said the girl, and to show what she meant she planted her feet more squarely on the ground. The squire thought he had never seen a woman so delightfully sturdy – nor so downright useful-looking – and wanted to marry her more than ever.

But the more he pressed, the less she wanted him, and the less she liked him, the more determined he was to have her.

‘You'll end up marrying a bog-trotter,' he told her, ‘if you refuse me.' Then he reminded her that she was neither fair nor dainty, and that she was in no position to turn up her nose at generous offers.

But the girl told him no and stuck to no.

In the end, when he couldn't gain any ground no matter which way he came at it, he stumped off.

‘Pfff,' chuckled the girl to herself, and went on with her work.

Now the squire was used to having his way. Determined to marry the girl one way or the other, he sent for her father instead.

‘If you can manage things so I can have her,' he told the man, ‘it will be worth your while, and you'll get the patch of dirt that lies alongside my meadow.'

‘In that case,' said the father, ‘you can wed her straight away. She's only young, after all, and doesn't know what's good for her.'

But when he went home, no matter what he said to his daughter – gentle or harsh, pleading or plain – it made no difference. She didn't want the squire and she wasn't going to have him, either.

‘Not even if he was up to his ears in gold,' she said. ‘Which he isn't.'

Well, the farmer blustered all night and his daughter argued till dawn. Up on the hill, the squire waited and waited. When there was no reply by mid-morning, the squire got restless. When there was still none by afternoon he grew impatient, and by evening he was downright indignant. Then he gave up waiting and, in a seething rage, sent for the girl's father again.

‘If you're going to stand by your promise,' he shouted, ‘and earn that patch of dirt, you'd better do something about it right away because I'm not waiting any longer!'

The father said that he'd tried every angle, hadn't got anywhere and was, in fact, plumb out of ideas.

‘You don't know what she's like,' he said. ‘Headstrong as a mule.'

‘And just as handy in front of a plough, too, I'll bet,' replied the squire.

As it happened, the patch of dirt was playing hard on the farmer's mind, helping him to think in ways he had never thought before.

‘There might be a way around it, all the same,' he said at last. ‘That is, if you're not particular, and you're willing to marry her, by hook or by crook.'

Well, the only thing the squire cared about was getting the girl. As far as he was concerned, any idea was a fine idea, no matter how crafty, if it meant he got his way. So they put their heads together and the farmer told him his plan.

It was such a good plan, the squire wished he'd thought of it himself, but he went away and did as he'd been told. First he set up a wedding, with priest, guests and food, and when all was assembled, he called for the stable boy.

‘Get down to the neighbour,' he said to the lad, ‘and tell him to send up what he promised. And you'd better be back with her, lickety-spank, or I'll …'

The boy streaked off – down the hill, past the girl picking peas in her father's patch and into the farmer's cottage.

Pff
, thought the girl as she watched him pass,
another invitation from the squire, is it?

Meanwhile, the boy told the farmer he'd come from the squire to fetch what was promised.