The Ordinary Princess (10 page)

You have to pay attention when washing dishes, what with the slipperiness of wet plates, and the Ordinary Princess did not have her mind on plates! She was wondering whatever she was going to say to Nurse Marta.

“Oh dear,” thought the Ordinary Princess, “why did she have to come and spoil it all?”

She sighed heavily and dropped a soup plate.

It broke into eighteen quite small pieces, and one of these flew up and caught the fourth assistant senior cook on the nose.

As we already know, his temper was not of the best, and what with so much extra work, on account of Queen Hedwig of Plumblossomburg and her daughter and all her attendants staying on and on, and a bad attack of toothache that had been keeping him awake for the past three nights ... Well, the end of it was that the Ordinary Princess found herself dismissed.

The fourth assistant senior cook did not put it as elegantly as that.

“You’re fired!” shouted the fourth assistant senior cook. “Take a week’s wages!” And with that he had ordered her out of the kitchen.

“I don’t care!” said the Ordinary Princess, climbing wearily up the fourth flight of stairs on her way to the attic. “I don’t care a
bit!”
and a large tear rolled down her cheek and dripped off the point of her chin.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” sobbed the Ordinary Princess, sitting down suddenly on a step. “Whatever
am
I going to do now?”

Someone was whistling somewhere...

“Hi!” called Peregrine in a loud whisper, appearing unexpectedly at the bottom of the staircase. “I’ve been waiting to catch you. There was something I wanted to say.”

But the Ordinary Princess went on sitting on the stairs, while her tears splashed onto her shabby dress.

Peregrine came up the stairs four steps at a time.

“I say,” he said, “what’s happened?”

“I’ve been f-f-fired!” sobbed the Ordinary Princess.

“You’ve been
what?”

“D-d-dismissed,” wept the Ordinary Princess. “I b-broke f-f-four plates, and Cook f-f-fired me!”

“Good!” said Peregrine approvingly.

“How
can
you say that?” flared the Ordinary Princess. She stamped her foot and suddenly stopped crying. “How can you be so horrid when you know quite well that I haven’t saved
nearly
a hundred pfennigs and I don’t know where I am to get another job.”

“Darling Amy,” said Peregrine, “don’t cry. I only said ‘Good’ because I think it’s awful, your having to work so hard. You shall have all the pfennigs you want and all the dresses in the world!”

He lent her his pocket handkerchief, and the Ordinary Princess mopped her eyes, blew her freckled nose, and sniffed.

“I’d have given you a hundred pfennigs weeks ago,” said Peregrine, “only I was afraid that if I did, you’d just buy a new dress and run off to live in the forest, and I should never see you again.”

He smiled his nice smile at her, and the Ordinary Princess could not help smiling back. Suddenly she felt much better.

“You see,” began Peregrine—but just at that moment a door on the landing below opened, and through it came a very gorgeous person indeed.

He wore a suit of crimson and violet taffeta, all laced with gold and embroidered with twinkling jewels, and wherever there was room for one he seemed to have added a bunch of ribbons. The toes of his purple velvet shoes were quite half a yard long, and he carried a tall golden stick.

“Now we shall catch it!” thought the Ordinary Princess, for she was quite sure that tearful kitchen maids and sympathetic men-of-all-work were not supposed to sit about on staircases and gossip—even on back staircases.

The very gorgeous person stood quite still and stared at them. His face got redder and redder until it was almost purple, and his eyes seemed as though they would pop out of his head in horror and amazement.

“Oh my goodness,” thought the Ordinary Princess frantically, “now Perry will get into hot water too, and I shall be fired all over again.”

But it seemed that the very gorgeous person was not going to fire anyone, for quite suddenly he stopped staring and getting purple, and bowed very low instead.

“Your Majesty must excuse me,” said the very gorgeous person, bowing again, this time even lower than before, “but I was to request Your Majesty’s presence in the Council chamber. One of Your Majesty’s guards informed me that you had been seen coming this way, and though I could not believe ...”

Here the very gorgeous person broke off and gave an apologetic sort of cough, bowed again, and said humbly, “I trust I do not intrude, but the Prime Minister begs to remind you that the matter is urgent.”

And with a shocked look at the Ordinary Princess (who really was looking very like an ordinary kitchen maid!) he bowed himself backward through the door.

“Well!!!” said the Ordinary Princess.

“Of course this would happen!” said Peregrine.

“Well I must say!” said the Ordinary Princess, and without saying it, she rose and started up the stairs in a very stately manner.

Peregrine put out a hand and caught the hem of her skirt.

Since it is almost impossible to continue walking up a staircase in a stately manner while someone is holding onto your dress, the Ordinary Princess stopped and said very haughtily indeed, “Will Your Majesty be so good as to release me.”

“Don’t show off!” said Peregrine. “I can talk just like that too, if I want to. And I was going to tell you. I really was. That’s what I waited for. Only of course that flatfooted fathead of a Court Chamberlain had to go and spoil it all.”

“So you were a real prince—I mean king—all the time,” said the Ordinary Princess.

“Yes,” said the King. “I’m afraid I was.”

“For two pins,” said the Ordinary Princess severely, “I’d give you a good hard slap!”

The King grinned at her cheerfully.

“You can’t slap a king,” he said.

“Oh can’t I!”
said the Ordinary Princess, quite as if she could.

Then they both laughed so much that they had to sit down on the stairs again.

“Why did you tell me that your name was Peregrine?” asked the Ordinary Princess.

“Well, you must admit that ‘Algernon’ is pretty awful,” said the King. “Besides, my name is Peregrine. At least, it’s one of them. I’ve got eight altogether. And between you and me,” said the King, “the other six are pretty awful, too!”

“I’ve got seven,” said the Ordinary Princess, “and some of them are simply terrible.”

And at that they laughed so much that they had to hold onto each other to keep from slipping off their step.

“This is dreadful of us,” said the Ordinary Princess, drying her smudged face with the edge of her shabby skirt. “We can’t go on just sitting here and laughing. Someone will catch us. And besides, prime ministers and councils don’t like being kept waiting.”

“Let ‘em wait,” said the King cheerfully.

But the Ordinary Princess got up from her step and dusted her frock.

“You may be a king,” she said, “but kings are men-of-all-work too!”

“I was trying to forget it,” said the King.

“Good night, man-of-all-work,” said the Ordinary Princess.

“Good night, kitchen maid,” said the King.

So the Ordinary Princess ran up to her bed in the attic, and the King went off to the royal Council chamber.

The councillors were yawning and fidgeting, because they had been waiting for quite a long time for the King, and anyway they hated night sessions. It made bedtime so late. But as the Lord Chamberlain had said, the matter under discussion was an urgent one, so when the King arrived, they all stopped yawning and looked rather severe, though their bows were as low and as correct as ever.

“Gentlemen,” said the King, sitting down on the gilded throne at one end of the Council chamber, “you may be seated.”

There was a rustle of robes as the councillors sat down again. “And now,” said the King cheerfully, “what’s the trouble?”

The trouble, it seemed, was the question of the King’s marriage. The Prime Minister had called a Council of State to urge His Majesty to ask for the hand of Her Royal Highness the Princess Persephone of Plumblossomburg, and now, in speeches that lasted fully an hour and a half, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs pointed out the advantages of the match ...

What a good thing it would be for the kingdom to have a queen. What an excellent thing it would be for the country to have such a rich and powerful ally as Plumblossomburg. How greatly it would encourage trade, and how beautiful and gracious and charming and cultivated was the Princess Persephone.

Some of the older councillors frankly dozed, and the King played tic-tac-toe with himself on a bit of blotting paper.

He had tried to interrupt once or twice, but the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs all had good loud voices, and as they were absolutely
determined
to finish their speeches, he gave it up and went on playing tic-tac-toe and trying not to yawn.

The fact of the matter was that the entire Council had got so used to managing affairs while he was a little boy that they sometimes forgot that he was a little boy no longer and quite capable of thinking for himself. But by now they had all told him what to do and how to do it for so long that everybody had become used to it. So the King continued to play tic-tac-toe, until there was no more room on the blotting paper and the Prime Minister and the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had run out of things to say.

When they had quite finished, the King tore up his piece of blotting paper and stood up.

“Gentlemen,” said the King, “I have listened with the deepest interest to all that you have had to say.” (Which was really
far from
true, but royalty has to tell this kind of fib sometimes.) “And may I say,” continued the King, “that I am deeply touched by your concern for my welfare.” (Royalty has to talk like this too.) “But,” said the King, suddenly ceasing to be quite so royal, “I’m dashed if I’ll propose to Cousin Persephone.”

“Your
Majesty!”
gasped the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and all the councillors at once.

“Don’t interrupt me,” said the King. “I have listened to all your speeches, and now you can jolly well listen to one of mine. I am going,” said the King, “to marry Her Serene and Royal Highness the Princess Amethyst of Phantasmorania, with or without your permission. So there!”

“But Your Majesty—”

“I haven’t finished yet,” said the King severely. “I desire an embassy to set out for Phantasmorania immediately, to ask King Hulderbrand for his daughter’s hand in marriage. And the sooner,” said the King, “the better. That’s all I wanted to say.”

With which he bowed politely to the assembled councillors and marched off to bed.

“Phantasmorania!” said the Prime Minister.

“It is an idea,” mused the Chancellor.

“Well,
really!”
said the learned councillors.

“Whatever will Queen Hedwig say?” groaned the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

“I say,” said the King, reappearing rather suddenly round the door, “I forgot to mention that I think one of you should drop a hint to Her Majesty my aunt that even the most friendly of visits ought to end some time. She and my cousin and all the ragtag and bobtail they brought with them have been here for weeks and
weeks,”
said the King severely, “and it makes a lot of extra work for the kitchen maids!”

And with that he disappeared round the door again, leaving the Council gasping with dismay.

The Prime Minister was the first to recover.

“You know,” said the Prime Minister, “that idea of the King’s about an alliance with Phantasmorania is not a bad one. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before. It is every bit as powerful as Plumblossomburg —with whom we are already connected, Queen Hedwig being the King’s aunt. And come to think of it,” said the Prime Minister thoughtfully, “she is undoubtedly a very bossy sort of woman, and if our King married her daughter, she would probably be an almost
permanent
visitor in the Castle...