The Ordinary Princess (2 page)

Every eye was turned to the palace.
“Boom!”
rang out the cannon.
“Boom!” “Boom!”
“Fifteen—sixteen—seventeen—eighteen—nine- teen,” counted the townsfolk. “Twenty! A princess!” they cried. And they threw their hats in the air and cheered while the bells of all the churches in the city rang a merry peal and a general holiday was declared in honor of the occasion.

In a rich and splendid room, high up in a turret of the palace, the cause of all the excitement and rejoicing lay in a golden cradle and blinked at the carved ceiling.

The seventh princess really was the loveliest baby imaginable. She was no bigger than one of her sisters’ dolls, but she was as pink and white and gold as the apple blossoms and the spring sunshine, and her eyes were as blue as the sky above the Forest of Faraway. Her nurses and ladies-in-waiting never tired of admiring and exclaiming over her many perfections, and from the first she was a very good-tempered baby. She never cried or screamed but would lie on her back and smile at the sunbeams dancing on the ceiling, or sleep for hours on end.

She had a very grand nursery for such a very small person, for the ceiling was all carved and painted with legends of the Forest of Faraway, and the walls were hung with amethyst-colored tapestry. The floor was spread with silken carpets, and the seventh princess had no less than twelve attendants all her own. First there was her nurse, Marta, then three under-nurses, two ladies-in-waiting, four nurserymaids, and two pages. Sometimes the pages would play on flutes and viols while the ladies-in-waiting sang lullabies to hush the seventh princess to sleep.

 

 

When she was six weeks old, preparations were begun for an especially grand and splendid christening. Hundreds of clerks sat at ivory desks all day, writing out invitations with gold ink on parchment. Hundreds of pages heated gold sealing wax to seal the envelopes, and hundreds of the King’s messengers put spurs to their horses and rode away east and west and north and south to deliver them to the invited guests.

The list of invitations was so long that it took the Lord High Chamberlain from before breakfast until after suppertime to read it, while the roll it made was so large that it took six men-at-arms to carry it. There had been a long debate in Council on “The Advisability of Inviting Fairies to the Christening.” The King had been against it from the first, but he had ended by being overruled by the Queen, who had been backed up by the Prime Minister and the Lord High Chamberlain and a large majority of the councillors.

“Oh, all right—have it your own way,” said the King at last. “But mind you, I think it’s rash. And I shall go on saying that it’s rash. We didn’t have any of these fairy nuisances at the christenings of my other daughters, and what happened?”

“Nothing,” said the Queen.

“Precisely,” said the King. “Perfect peace and quiet. Everything went off beautifully; no fuss or bother and everyone had an extremely good time.”

“But Your Majesty—” began the Prime Minister.

“I know, I know. Don’t interrupt me,” said the King testily. “You are going to tell me that it is the custom of our kingdom to invite all fairies to the christening of a seventh daughter. You have already said it at least seven times, and I still say that it’s rash!”

“There is no need to get heated about it, dear,” said the Queen. “You know perfectly well that it has always been done before and that it would look very odd if it were not done now.”

“I’m not getting heated,” said the King. “I only said that it was rash.”

“For goodness’ sake, Hulderbrand,” snapped the Queen, almost losing her royal temper, “do stop using that annoying word.” She took a deep breath and recovered her queenly calm: “Besides, dear, think how useful it will be. Fairies always give such delightful presents. Like Good Temper and—and Unfailing Charm and Unfading Beauty. You wouldn’t want to deprive your daughter of such a chance?”

“I can only repeat,” said the King stubbornly, “that to invite fairies to a christening is asking for trouble. And getting it,” he added gloomily. “Speaking for myself,” said the King, “I’d far rather ask several man-eating tigers. You may have forgotten what happened to my great-great-great-grandmother, but I have not. Had to sleep for a hundred years, poor girl, and the entire court with her, and all because of some silly fairy-business at the christening.”

“But Your Majesty forgets,” put in the Prime Minister, “that the unfortunate episode you refer to was due to gross neglect and carelessness. History tells us that an influential fairy was not invited. But on this occasion I, personally, will take the greatest possible care that no such calamity occurs again.” And the Prime Minister tried to look very uncareless indeed.

The Lord High Chamberlain hastened to add that no single member of King Oberon’s court would be omitted from the list of guests: “And we must not forget,” he pointed out, “that as Her Majesty has said, these—er—persons have it in their power to bestow the most valuable of gifts. For your daughter’s sake—” urged the Lord High Chamberlain.

“Oh, all right, all right,” said the King peevishly. “Don’t let’s go over all that again. But you mark my words,” he said, “I’d much rather have a nice silver-plated christening mug from a nice solid baron than some chancy thing like Unfading Beauty from a tricky creature with wings and a wand! Besides,” said the King, “who’s to tell that some tiresome fairy won’t get out on the wrong side of her bed that day and give my daughter Perpetual Bad Temper instead? Answer me that!”

“Really,
Hulderbrand,” sighed the Queen in an exasperated sort of voice, “I find you quite impossible at times. It seems to me that you are determined to be unreasonable about the whole affair.”

“But Your Majesty—” began the Prime Minister.

“But Your Majesty—” began the Lord High Chamberlain.

“But Your Majesty—” chorused the councillors.

“Oh, all right,” said the King. “Have it your own way. Ask the lot. Don’t mind me!” He gathered up his train and glared at his councillors, the Prime Minister, the Lord High Chamberlain, and the Queen. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said. “No fairies have ever attended a christening without some funny business happening somewhere. You just mark my words,” said the King. “It’s rash.”

And with that he bounced out of the Council chamber and slammed the door behind him.

So the fairies were invited after all, and the most tremendous care was taken that no fairy should be overlooked: in fact a special committee was appointed to see to it that no one was forgotten. As the day of the christening approached, the whole palace buzzed with bustle and excitement like a hive of bees.

In the royal kitchens two hundred and twenty cooks, four hundred scullions, as many servingmen, and five hundred kitchen maids worked like mad, baking cakes and pies and pastries. They stuffed swans and peacocks and boars’ heads and made wonderful sweets—marzipan trees hung with crystalized cherries, and castles and dragons and great ships of sugar candy. Five cooks from Italy worked on the christening cake, which was decorated with hundreds of sugar bells and crystalized roses, and was so tall that they had to stand on silver steplad ders to ice it.

Ladies-in-waiting filled golden flower vases and crystal bowls with hundreds of blooms, so that the whole palace looked like a flower garden and smelled most deliciously of roses and lilies and lilac. Housemaids polished the chandeliers, and footmen and pages ran to and fro with trays full of china and glass. In the city the rich merchants and important citizens who had been invited to the ceremony were having new suits and dresses made for the occasion, and the townsfolk were preparing bonfires and decorating their streets and houses with banners and wreaths.

 

 

The day of the christening dawned bright and sunny, with not a single cloud in the blue sky. Guns boomed and church bells rang in every steeple as the townsfolk crowded round the palace to cheer the arrival of the guests. But the seventh princess was quite unbothered by all this noise and fuss. She lay in her magnificent cradle in the great throne room and stared at the dangling fringe of little golden bells on the canopy above her head and paid no attention to the guests at all.

She had seven godfathers and seventeen godmoth ers, and when the christening ceremony was over, heralds in scarlet and gold blew a fanfare on silver trumpets and announced her seven names to the populace:

“Her Serene and Royal Highness the Princess Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne!” cried the heralds.

Then all the people cheered and flung their hats into the air, and a thousand white doves were released from the windows of the palace. The doves flew out into the sunshine and circled and cooed above the tall turrets and battlements before winging their way into the Forest of Faraway. While inside the throne room the guests passed in procession by the cradle, each in turn presenting a christening gift to the seventh princess.

The presents mounted up in a huge pile until they almost reached the ceiling, but the gifts that the fairies gave took up no room at all, for the sort of presents they give do not need to be packed in boxes.

They gave the seventh princess Charm and Wit and Grace and Courage, and a great many other things like that, and the Queen could not help looking extremely pleased with herself and saying in a rather loud whisper to the King, “You see it has all turned out a great success in spite of all your fussing. I told you so.”

But the King only sniffed. “I wouldn’t speak too soon,” he said pessimistically. “There’s still a lot of time for something nasty to happen.”

And just then, something did.

The last and most important of the fairy god-mothers had arrived late because of a traffic jam on the road to the palace. Her name was Crustacea, and she was the fairy-in-charge-of-water, which means that she was the head fairy of all the seas, pools, ponds, lakes and rivers.