The Good Fairy Sense-Of-Proportion was fairly nonplussed when she heard about the Christening from the Good Fairy Melodrama, who was in a terrible flap because one of the sequins had inadvertently fallen off the hem of her favourite Christening gown. Since she had not been invited, a fact which did not particularly bother her, she made the Good Fairy Melodrama a cup of weak, milky tea and mended the defective gown with a sequin from her own. It did occur to her that, were she not simply to presume that she had been omitted by accident (as, of course, was so) and attend in any case, the young Princess might suffer in later life from the lack of that particular gift which was hers to bestow, but then she reflected on the way Princesses in Fairy Stories invariably live happily ever after, so it did not really seem worth the fuss.
Consequently, when the grand occasion arrived, and all the good fairies who were present, as well as a careful selection of the more amusingly wicked ones, bestowed their gifts on the little infant, there was a certain degree of consternation in the Royal Household about the absence of the Good Fairy Sense-Of-Proportion.
`I'm sure it's no big deal.' said the King, trying to reassure the Queen. `She wouldn't want us to fuss.'
`On the contrary,' interrupted the Good Fairy Melodrama, `it's a truly Titanic calamity portending monstrous Tidal Waves Of Depression in which your poor innocent daughter is haplessly doomed to perish, you mark my words. And sooner rather than later.'
`Oh, my poor baby!' wailed the Queen.
`I hadn't thought of it like that.' said the King. `Whatever shall we do?'
`She must learn Mathematics, your Majesties.' pronounced the Court Necromancer. `If she is not gifted instinctively with a Sense Of Proportion, then it surely follows that she must develop a deep intellectual understanding of these matters, and besides, Long Division will do her more good than those awful magazines Cook reads.'
`I resent that.' said the Cook. `Magazines, your Majesties may be full of vacuous tittle-tattle and implausible stories about people who overreact to the fundamental paranoias which are the inevitable lot of mortals, but they are altogether more instructive with respect to the paradigmatic shortcomings of the Human Condition than any amount of Bringing Down The Next Digit.'
`Excuse me,' said the King, `but I think I can smell something burning.'
`Oh, my Zeitgeist! It'll be ruined!' cried Cook as she scurried off in the direction of the Kitchens.
`I'm going to invite Princess Alicia to be my partner at the Hunt Ball.' one of them would say, in a vain effort to impress the others.
`The only Balls she's interested in have Radius Delta.' would be the character of the response, and thence the conversation would develop along the predictable paths of idle innuendo and spiteful one-up-manship.
Meanwhile, the poor Princess, notwithstanding her admirable intellectual grasp of the situation, could not help feeling that her troubles were well-nigh intolerable, and that she must surely be the unhappiest maiden in all of the Seven Hegemonies, if not the Whole Wide World. This, in turn, inclined her to a melancholy affectation, a sulking and a brooding, the positive effects of which were clear to nobody, least of all Alicia herself.
Fortunately, the Princess was far from content to suffer in silence. She would explain her distress at great length to her Mother and Father, and the Queen would say something like `Don't you worry, dear, it'll all work out in the end. Somewhere in the World, there's just the man for you, sitting wondering where you've got to.'
`Your Mother's right, you know.' the King would add, and then exchange long, worried faces with his wife. The Princess was perfectly aware this `just the man for you' business was preposterous, but the attention made her feel better nonetheless.
`Never forget that you're a Very Special Girl, your Highness.' the Necromancer would say in similar circumstances. `If these oafish and innumerate Princes aren't interested in you, it's hardly any great loss. Your talent is, I think I can safely say, prodigious, so you have every reason not to be bothered about men until you happen upon one who appreciates your true qualities.'
Princess Alicia always thought twice before broaching the subject with the Cook, who was well known for serving her comfort cold, but at least her comfort was more nutritious than most.
`Nobody fancies me.' the Princess would complain.
`Nonsense, your Highness!' Cook would reply, with a wicked little smile. `It's quite obvious that the Necromancer fancies you.'
`I know,' Alicia would admit, recoiling, `but he's such a horrible old man!'
`He's younger than me, and he's not that horrible.' Cook would say, rubbing it in, but then relenting, `I take your point, your Highness, but all I'm trying to say is that you patently are an attractive young girl.'
Alicia tended to regard this as irrelevant---`All right, then, nobody that I fancy fancies me.' Cook would laugh. `There are two things to be said about that. Firstly, if you're so insecure as to need to be fancied, then the only men you'll ever interest will be cruel, condescending, possessive and protective; and secondly, just how many men do you fancy?'
Alicia inevitably blushed and hesitated, before replying `None.'
`There you are, then, your Highness.' Cook would cry in triumph, `All the men you fancy fancy you---I believe that's what your friend the Necromancer would call a Vacuously Satisfied Proposition!'
`You know perfectly well what I mean, Cook.' Alicia would say, with the affected haughtiness that Royal people always display when they are frustrated. `Nobody likes Mathematicians.'
`Well, why else do you think the Necromancer took up magic, your Highness?' Cook would quip in response. `Look,' she would continue, trying to sound as tender as was possible for her, `you're getting worked up over nothing.'
`Nothing?' the Princess would explode. `I think you'll find...'
Cook would quietly cut her off. `What really needs attention, my dear, is your Self-Respect. Get some interest into your life. Make some friends---it doesn't matter who---and stop worrying about Love---that causes enough trouble without you wishing it on yourself.'
The Princess generally left at this point and returned to her room, trying to work out why this advice was unhelpful, desperate as she was for reassurance that she could do nothing whatsoever to escape from her plight without the assistance of some handsome beau. Meanwhile, the Cook would swear profusely about the Princess's lack of Sense of Proportion and spit in the soup.
You see, nobody had ever told the Princess about the Good Fairy Sense-Of-Proportion's absence from her Christening. On the one hand, it would have been impolite, like mentioning a speech impediment or an unfortunately shaped strawberry birthmark, and on the other, there was a faint hope that she might one day acquire an ordinary sense of proportion, such as the common people have (for they do not have the good fortune or, let us be quite frank, the Breeding to receive Christening gifts from Fairies), but this hope would surely come to naught, were her deficiency always to the forefront of her mind. However, even though nobody ever mentioned the Princess's little difficulty, either in polite or in private conversation, her troubles showed no sign whatsoever of diminution, thus causing her incomplete Christening to feature frequently in the grave thoughts and countenances of the Royal Household.
Since the principal duties incumbent on a Princess tended to involve Entertaining Oneself In An Apposite And Decorous Manner, Alicia found that she had a considerable amount of time at her disposal, outside of pursuits Mathematical and Psychological. Consequently, when the weather was suitably pleasing, the Princess was wont to borrow a large ball of wool from the Royal Hosiers and wander aimlessly about the Maze, passing the hours in diverse contemplation, paying out the wool to guide her return after the fashion of Theseus.
Thus it was on a bright Wednesday morning in the May of Princess Alicia's seventeenth year that a terrible misfortune befell her, for on this particular day, she chose to enter the Maze, marking her return path with some quite spectacular wool left over from the much admired pair of spangly golden socks which the Queen had given the King the previous Christmas. She walked among the box in a relatively unsystematic succession of directions, reflecting the while on her emotional predicament, and laying down her shining woollen trail until the Sun was high in the sky, whereupon she turned and began to reel herself back towards the entrance, in order to be present punctually at Principal Luncheon. However, the golden threads brought her only to a magpie stuck amidst an immense spangly tangle dangling from the hedgerow.
Poor Alicia's attempts to navigate her exit from memory were entirely hopeless, since she had been deep in contemplation, trusting her wool for guidance, and any sensible stratagem she might have adopted, based on the direction of what little shadows there were or more likely on some notion derived from her extensive knowledge of the Theory of Graphs, was stymied before its inception by the quite disproportionate degree of panic which this troublesome situation had engendered, for unlike the much less fortunate Adam Goodbody, the Princess would surely be missed by the close of Tertiary Luncheon at the very latest, and a thoroughgoing search ordered and executed without delay. As it was, she ran hither and thither, with her heart in palpitations as if she were being pursued, at times doubling back in doubt, at times feeling a glimmer of recognition, only to have her hopes dashed by endless twists of box.
Then, all of a sudden, she heard a voice---a young man's voice reciting poetry---accompanied by the rhythmic snip-snip of box hedge shears. Her first impulse was to cry out for help, but that mysterious authority which lurks in the voice of a poet held her in silent attention to the ancient story he was telling in his own peculiar and captivating metre.
You will find the poet's words in the next chapter.
This Queen had sent her Knave to him
Suggesting that they both
Should plight their solemn troth,
A grim and grievous prospect for a Handsome Prince.
`The odds on marriage are thus slim,'
The Prince said to the Knave,
`Pray begone unto that cave
So dim and dingy where your Mistress lurks longsince.'
The Fairy Queen was livid when
Her knave returned a `no',
So in person did she go
Again her hopes of handsome husband for to try.
Refused, she made reply `Why then,
If you're inclined to scorn,
Pray prove that you were born
Of men and scorn me while you look me in the eye.'
The lion-hearted Prince could not
Have guessed at her intent,
So the fool gave his assent
And got a shock which left his mandibles agog.
The fires of Fairy spite burn hot:
She fixed him with a stare
And transformed his body fair
To what we saw upon the lily pad---a frog.
It seems the Prince is doomed to rest
Batrachian in state
Unless his hapless fate
Is blessed by some unlikely turn to yield him bliss.
For, sad to say, to pass the test
And break the Fairy spell,
He must overcome his smell
And wrest from Royal Maidenhood a loving kiss.
But lo! We see a maiden near:
Of Royal stamp her face;
Her gait declares her grace,
Yet here she comes with perturbation on her brow.
Perchance she does not know the mere
And seeks to find its end.
It could be she will bend
An ear to Frog who, if he could, would tell her how.
Yet try to tell her though he may,
He makes no human sound,
And never has he found
A way to match the depth of sorrow in his eyes.
She looks at him as if to say
`Oh help me, Mister Frog,
To escape this horrid bog.
To stay would be the death of me, you realise?'
And in her heart she senses that
The frog does understand,
So she reaches out a hand
Held flat and onto it with happy heart he skips.
Yea, from this very Royal mat
Of dainty satin glove,
He offers her his love
And flatters her until she takes him to her lips.
Shazam! At last the spell is done.
The Prince is on his knees
Before the Princess he's
Just won, for she's delighted that they will be wed.
And verily they have a son,
Whose rule will carry on
From theirs when they are gone
And run until, in turn, his twilit sky turns red.
`Your Highness!' said the red face of Adam Goodbody, peering over the high hedge, `I never realised you were there!'
`I appear to have mislaid my direction.' said the Princess, trying not to sound pathetic, but not quite getting it right. `I should be very grateful, my Good Man, if you were to guide me back to the Castle.'
`I'd be glad to, your Highness,' replied Adam Goodbody, `but by the time I could reach your current position in the Maze, it would certainly be dark and quite probably the day after tomorrow.'
`I beg your pardon?' asked Alicia, far from pleased.
`What I'm trying to say, your Highness' explained Goodbody, `is that, although we are topographically very close together, we are topologically leagues apart.'
`I see.' said Alicia, grasping the situation. `But you do have a step-ladder.'
Now it was Goodbody's turn to be confused. `Yes, your Highness.'
`So you can climb over the hedge.'
`Ingenious, your Highness! The idea of modifying the Maze topology by a higher-dimensional embedding would never have occurred to me in a million years.'
`I'm not just a pretty face.'
`As you say, your Highness.'
So Adam Goodbody climbed up his step-ladder and scrambled haphazardly on top of the hedge, which began to give way under his weight until he spreadeagled himself in a distinctly undecorous fashion, with his legs dangling whence he had come, and his arms whither he was going. The Princess giggled.
`Pass me your shears.' And he did so.
`Step-ladder.' said Goodbody, as much to himself as to the Princess, and he struggled round on his belly to reach for it, so that all the Princess could see of him were his legs and his behind, but the stepladder was just a little beyond his reach, so he inched his way further and further off the edge, until, just at the moment he could put his hand to the platform, he began to slide, and would doubtless have suffered serious injury, were it not for the Royal Grip which became manifest about his ankles in the nick of time. Thus, with the Princess's help, Adam Goodbody managed to cross the box hedge with all of his equipment intact.
Having shouldered his trusty ladder, Adam bowed to the Princess, holding out his other hand to show the way back to the Castle. The Princess blushed coyly and proceeded, mincing coquettishly in the indicated direction.
`Please allow me' ventured Goodbody `to carry the shears, your Highness.'
`I don't mind carrying them.' replied Alicia.
`Ah, but your Highness,' he coaxed, `permit me to remind you of the duty allotted to your station, namely to Enjoy Yourself In An Apposite And Decorous Manner. I respectfully submit that by carrying my shears, you are in flagrant dereliction of your obligations.'
`Nonsense, my Good Man.' she retorted. `As it happens, I am Enjoying Myself a great deal, thank you very much.'
`That may be so, your Highness' he continued unabashed, `and although, having carried those very shears for days at a time without deriving any particular pleasure from them, I am curious as to the nature of this Enjoyment, laying that aside for the moment, I am sure you will agree that, for a Daughter Of The Royal House, carrying an old, slightly rusty and rather blunt pair of gardening shears, badly in need of oil, could hardly, by any stretch of even the most egalitarian imagination, be considered in the least Decorous or Apposite, except possibly on Maundy Thursday.'
`Flatter me not with your affected concern for my obligations,' said the Princess, `for it is perfectly clear that what really bothers you is the thought of the whipping you will receive from the Head Gardener if he catches you burdening a Daughter Of The Royal House with your miserable shears. And as for the Enjoyment they afford me,' she continued, smiling like a cat, `well, for one thing, I can do That---and frighten you.'
This argument continued, in a thoroughly good-natured fashion, for most of the walk back to the Castle, but eventually Alicia gave in with a sigh of `Noblesse oblige.'
Having reclaimed his shears, Adam summoned up the courage to ask Alicia what she really thought of his poetry.
`Magnificent!' exclaimed the Princess. `And what an arresting metre you chose! It is indeed a wonder that you got from one end to the other without tripping over your feet!'
`Oh, I don't know, your Highness.' said the poet. `Some of the rhyming was a trifle cringeworthy, and the phraseology was gratuitously excessive. ``mandibles agog''---really!'
The Princess was open-mouthed with astonishment at Goodbody's modesty. `I thought that was a superb line. No, honestly, it's true. Look, you must come and read to me, you really must. I'll have it arranged.'
Just then, they rounded the last box hedge corner to see the path stretching ahead of them up to the Hegemonial Castle.
`Look at the Sundial, your Highness!' said Adam. `If you hurry you'll catch Secondary Luncheon. I, on the other hand, have hedges to trim, otherwise the Head Gardener really will have me whipped.'
`Poor thing!' the Princess sympathised. `Farewell then, Adam Goodbody, and thank you.' and she held out her hand for him to kiss.
`I should only make it dirty, your Highness.' said the gardener.
`That doesn't matter.' replied Alicia, `I always wash my hands before I dine.'
Goodbody bowed before such unassailable logic, touching his lips to her hand as he did so. Rising again, he said `Farewell, your Highness.' and vanished backwards once more into the Maze.
Princess Alicia, on the other hand, barely dabbled her fingertips in the basin before Secondary Luncheon, and hardly ate a thing.
Nonetheless, her thoughts continued, the wool had taken her fancy, as it had done the magpie's, in a not entirely unpredictable fashion. But the wool would not have been there had it not been left over from the King's Christmas Socks, and that was only due, on the one hand, to an idle notion of the Queen's---and for such there can be no accounting---and on the other hand to the disparity in scale between the King's Feet and the Golden Fleece, which had been spun into twine especially for the purpose.
On and on the Princess reflected, trying to work out whether there was some way in which the morning's events might have been born out of any kind of deliberate intent whatsoever. Yet, ultimately, she was forced to conclude that she and Goodbody had been brought together by nothing other than the Hand Of Fate. And why, she asked herself, would Fate bother to engineer such an implausible string of coincidences? The answer to this question had been staring her in the face from the very beginning, and all her attempts to flee from it had availed her not a crumb of comfort. Her heart had been pierced by an arrow, fleet from the bow of Eros, and she was in love.
How cruel Fate had been to make her fall in love with a gardener! How she might as well have fallen in love with a frog! How he had even looked like a frog, with his legs dangling from the hedge and his behind in the air! And yet, if she were to kiss him, or more to the point, if she were to marry him, would he not become a Prince?
But how was this to come about? Were this man some foreign Prince, the matter could have been left in the hands of the diplomats, although countless common people had on various occasions slaughtered one another simply because some Prince, too proud to do the Decent Thing, had awoken the morning after some doubtless luxuriant Ball to a shock considerably uglier than the headache which accompanied it. The fact that the object of the Princess's desire was but a humble functionary in the Royal Household meant that any conceivable affair would perforce be clandestine, yet this was not, of itself, an insuperable difficulty. The trouble, as Alicia knew perfectly well, was that humble functionaries of the Royal Household are taught from birth to Know Their Places, so while Adam Goodbody doubtless found her beautiful and charming and loved her in the way one ought to love one's Royalty, the thought of entertaining amorous relations with a Princess could not possibly, of its own accord, grow even to such a size as to merit a walnut's worth of repression.
Princess Alicia therefore set about solving her problem, with the assistance of the Necromancer's notoriously efficacious library, which contained voluminous tomes concerning every variety of subject-matter and all manner of distress, and having found a book which contained some helpful suggestions, she despatched without explanation a subsequently rather bemused servant to collect for her the items she required, returning then to her room to contemplate the future.
By the time the Princess came down for Dinner, she had changed her dress twenty-seven times, eventually choosing a long red silk gown whose bodice shimmered slinkily and whose skirts rustled gently to her graceful step. Her shoulders gleamed like pearl, and her nut-brown hair was combed straight down her back, where it reached to her slender waist. The light in her eyes and the smile on her face were so radiant that everyone who saw her was filled with joy at the presence of such loveliness.
`I don't believe she's ever looked quite as beautiful as this before.' whispered the Queen, delightedly to her husband. `Surely Prince Herrold and Prince Dmitri cannot fail to be smitten. I do believe we'll have a Happy Ending after all.'
`Yes,' agreed the King, `our Alicia is quite some Fairy Tale Princess this evening.'
However, the Princess's eyes were not for Prince Herrold or Prince Dmitri, fine and handsome visitors though they made, but rather she stared into the middle distance at nothing in particular, while the mealtime conversation passed her by, and the Princes, although awestruck at her beauty, observed that she was as distant as ever and concentrated on their food, trying desperately not to look. The King and Queen despaired.
The Cook, on the other hand, was, perhaps surprisingly, not in the least offended when the Butler returned with a plateful of evidence that at no point in the entire proceedings had the Princess's dainty hand, gloved in red to the elbow, lifted a solitary succulent forkful of Contemporary Intuitionism to her seemingly abstracted lips. Instead, Cook smiled gently as she made her calculations, and then fed Alicia's dinner to the cats.
As soon as she could politely be excused, Alicia made her way to the Postern Gate, where she met her faithful, if still bemused, servant and exchanged for the sack which was wriggling in his hands a small bag of gold, which was plenty enough to cover the bribe he had made to the gamekeeper, the price he had paid the poacher, the sum due for his time and the fee required to guarantee his silence. Then she returned to her room and locked the door.
The first thing she took from the sack was a knife, which she drew from its sheath and sharpened on the window-ledge until it shimmered in the light of the Full Moon as prettily as the silk of her gown. Next, in accordance with the instructions she had found in the book, she withdrew a Toad, still alive, whose throat she slit, draining its blood into a golden cup. Then she added leaves of Deadly Nightshade, fine dicings of Fly Agaric, a drop of her own Saliva and a Pinch of Salt. These she mixed thoroughly, whispering incantations and prayers to Hecate as she did so.
When she was satisfied with the preparation, she took a live Albino Rabbit from the sack. Having cut off its whiskers and tail, she dipped her gloved fingers in the mixture and rubbed a little into each of the rabbit's eyes. She continued to do this until the rabbit was blind, which she tested by threatening it with the knife. Then she picked it up and walked over to the mirror, where she stood, looking at the full length of her beauty, while, with her own thumbs, she prised out each of the rabbit's eyes in turn, bit them off and swallowed them whole.
All of a sudden, her reflection changed, and a cold and silky shiver ran all the way down her spine, bringing her a smile to her blood-red lips. Her skin tingled, aware of every tiny movement of the gown caressing her body, its gentle whispering filling her ears. Her tongue was twitching in her mouth and her breathing grew quicker and quicker as her fiery eyes beheld in the mirror a figure, which had long surpassed that beauty which inclines a mortal soul to Joy, for now she had that beauty which inclines women to Envy and men to Murder, and she became aware, as she inspected her image, that she could have anything or anyone she wanted.
You see, Princess Alicia intended to draw Adam Goodbody irrevokably from the modesty of his humble spirit, to make him mad with desire, and to replace the best part of his wits with bravery---to this end, she was preparing a Succubus. Now, if you don't know what a Succubus is, I shall tell you. Put simply, it is a feather with which one tickles a man's nose while he is sleeping---if one manages to do it correctly, he will sneeze out his better judgment and not even notice a thing when he wakes in the morning. Hence, the last items the Princess took from her servant's sack were a box of Millet Seed and a live Woodpigeon.
Of the three creatures Alicia had had collected, the pigeon was the luckiest, since all it lost was a feather from its tail, and even then, only for a little while. As the chimes of midnight struck, Alicia took the feather and, still gazing in ecstasy at her own overpowering reflection, still burning in the fire of her senses, she put into it the perfume of her body and the rapture of her spirit. Then, to complete her succubus, all she had to do was replace the pigeon's tail feather, feed it a little of the seed and give it a kiss for luck before sending it on its way to the man she had chosen to love.
Her spell cast, she washed the animals' blood from the utensils, the table and the floor with plenty of water and dissolved the mirror's memories in Moonlight, which latter she drank, so as to preserve that astonishing beauty in herself, and then she took off her shoes and cuddled up in bed, still wearing that fabulous silk gown, to her favourite kitten. Purring softly, and smiling a heavenly smile, she drifted off to sleep.
Now consider for a moment these deeds of our fairy tale Princess. The Vegetarians among you may protest at the treatment of the rabbit, but let us not judge Alicia by the still somewhat dubious standards of our culture. Instead, place yourself in her situation, in her culture, for she is a Princess in an orderly hierarchy of Power, a Power which depends on and declares itself by Cruelty---nobody in her right mind would think twice about eviscerating a toad or blinding a rabbit. And in any case, to deny that such actions take place in our own society is to blind oneself.
Far more important is the question of the transition in Alicia's beauty. I sincerely hope that the people who might think it a shame that such joyful and radiant innocence should be lost were among those successfully warded off by my opening paragraph to this chapter, for the beauty which is Purity only touches men in the heart. It is this beauty which brings forth man the Protector, man the Possessor, man the Father Of Your Children, man the Bruiser Of Your Face and man the Slipper Off For The Weekend with somebody else. There is no pleasure in this beauty---even the men find it boring after not particularly long.
The beauty which Princess Alicia acquired when she worked her Magic Spell was the beauty of Power, and such beauty is made from Cruelty of one form or another, so be grateful that it was to animals and not to humans. This beauty trembles in fear at its own potency, for it is the beauty which makes foolish men slaves, bored men adulterous, rich men poor and wise men rare. Let no-one deny that this is the true beauty, and neither let anyone deny Alicia her touches of silk, her tickling feather, her cuddling kitten and her heavenly smile.
She was not particularly put out when Goodbody did not arrive at all that day, since she figured (correctly, as it happened) that the messenger had failed to find him in the Maze. Patience was a particular virtue of hers.
At dinner that evening, she cast her eyes about, smiling her new smile, and Prince Herrold and Prince Dmitri, still visiting, were pleasantly surprised. The King and Queen wondered what had happened, but nodded approvingly to one another.
When they had dined, the Princes approached her and bowed low.
`I... I...' began Prince Dmitri.
`I grateful would be if me you would honour with your part-an-airship at the Dance of tonight.' said Prince Herrold, quickly.
`I'm sorry,' replied Princess Alicia, `but I'm in the middle of a Constructive Proof of Dirichlet's Notorious Box Principle, and I really would so hate to lose my train of thought. Perhaps another evening.' She permitted them both to kiss her on the glove, and then retired upstairs, giggling and wondering how to construct a proof which would leave her in the same box as Adam Goodbody.
The next day, her messenger returned, looking rather flustered, with the news that the gardener was waiting on her pleasure.
`In that case,' she said, `send him up to the Parlour at three o'clock.'
At three o'clock, the Friday Butler knocked on the parlour door.
`A Working Gentleman Of The Garden to see you, your Highness.' he began. `I believe his name is Goodbody. Shall I send him away?'
`Certainly not, Cranthorpe.' replied the Princess, curtly. `Show him in at once.'
In came Adam Goodbody, cleanly shaven and wearing his best breeches.
`Good afternoon, your Highness. To what, if I may ask, do I owe this unexpected pleasure?'
`Don't be silly Mr Goodbody. (Leave us, Cranthorpe.)' said Alicia, offering the gardener her fingers, `I should like to hear some more of your excellent poetry.'
`In this, as in anything, your Highness, I shall be glad to oblige.'
`And I should think so too.' replied the Princess. `But how different you are without your shears! And such an improvement! Last we met, why, you looked as if you'd just climbed over a hedge!'
`What need have we of my shears,' said Adam in turn, `when your Highness's wit is sharper tenthousandfold? Why, were you to make a habit of Conversation with the Maze, I should become redundant.'
`Nonsense, dear fellow,' smiled Alicia, `for I would still keep you to read me poetry. Come sit by me and talk with me in verse.'
`I fear that would be most inadvisable, your Highness,' said Goodbody, `for were I to place myself upon a seat of such comfort as that upholstery appears to contain, I would surely pass out from Astonishment.'
`Come now, Mr Goodbody, don't be shy.' she insisted, with an artful fluttering of her eyelids. `If you pass out, I shall prod you until you come to, or else send for Cranthorpe with the Smelling Salts.'
`It seems that your Highness is determined to get me whipped.' ventured the lowly gardener.
`Why, if that's all you're afraid of, Adam dear, lock the door, and then who will there be to whip you?'
`As your Highness pleases.' said Goodbody, giving in and sitting down. `Now, about what shall I recite?'
`About Love, silly.' said the Princess. `Recite to me a poem about Love.'
`Very well, your Highness. This poem is called ``The Servant's Dream''.'
`Do go on.'
`Ahem, ``The Servant's Dream'',' he began, and continued in the next chapter.
`This cannot be!' the Servant thought,
`I must not contemplate
This notion here assailing me,
For it is not availing me
Of aught which will not surely lead me to an ill and early fate.
For from the cradle was I taught
To stay within my station,
And many tales were told of twits
Who sold for ha'penny beans their wits
And bought a merry hundredweight of trouble, woe and consternation.'
But like a woman set on fire,
She set on him unbid,
And forced upon his naked frame
A silken clinch which burned with shame---
Desire should not disjoin the chain whereby the ego checks the id.
`Lord Jesus, help me from this mire,'
He prayed, `Or else I sink.
You know how pious is my soul,
So raise my dreaming from this hole
To higher things on which it's fitting for a serving man to think.'
And lo! His prayers were answer'ed:
A bargain it was struck.
And down, amidst a Holy Light,
Came Gabriel in all his might
And dread obscured the dream which fought to rend his very soul unstuck.
And this is what the Angel said,
Yea, almost with a laugh,
`When morning comes, get thee confessed,
And see this vision who came dressed
In red is but a Cauldron-Boiler from your Lady's kitchen staff!'
But Adam Goodbody was a strong man, and he managed to force her off, rolling her onto her back. Sitting on top of her and pinning her arms down, he said `Look, your Highness, this may be a jolly jape for you, luring me here under the pretense that it was my poetry you sought, but for me it's a matter of life and death. If your Father hears of this, you'll have to eat porridge for a week, but I'll never eat porridge again.'
`But Adam, I love you.' said the Princess.
`Love is cheap, your Highness,' observed Goodbody, `but life is precious.'
`Just kiss me, Adam. No-one will know. I won't let Daddy kill you.'
`With all due respect, your Highness, I don't see how you'll stop him.'
`I'll tell him how much I love you.' Alicia pleaded. `I'll tell him I want to marry you. You may not be a Prince, but let me kiss you and I'll make you a Prince.'
`I'm just an ordinary frog, your Highness,' Adam replied, `and nomatter how many times you kiss me, I'll still be an ordinary frog, but all the more likely to be served up in one of Cook's Hallowe'en Epiphenomena.'
`Adam Goodbody,' began the Princess, glaring up at him angrily, `I am a Princess, and you are but a Gardener. If you do not kiss me at once, I shall tell my Father that you did.'
Now this was what Goodbody had been dreading all along. One way or the other, if he was not extremely careful, his head would end up on the block.
`If you truly love me,' he gambled, `you will not have me killed.'
`Cranthorpe!' screamed Alicia, before Goodbody covered her mouth.
`Now that was extremely stupid.' he hissed, pulling her up from the floor. `You had better think quickly, before someone gets hurt.' and he lay down, pretending to be unconscious.
Cranthorpe arrived, still carrying himself with that special dignity by which butlers distinguish themselves from the people they serve. `Dear, dear, your Highness. What seems to be the trouble?' he asked, digging Goodbody with his foot.
`I asked Mr Goodbody to sit down on the chaise longue, but it was to comfortable for him, so he collapsed! Quick Cranthorpe, the Smelling Salts!'
Cranthorpe did as he was bid and held his little jar of smelling salts to Goodbody's nose, saying `Come on, man, wake up!' and Adam Goodbody duly sat up with a start.
`My, what a comf...' he began, `Oh, did I pass out?'
`Thank you, Cranthorpe,' said the Princess quickly, `That will be all.'
`As you wish, your Highness.' replied the Butler, and he backed his way stiffly out through the doorway.
Alicia beamed radiantly at the man whose neck she had saved.
`That was a truly abominable lie.' said Adam, and then he did kiss her.
`I just don't know what's bad enough to do to you, you pathetic little rat.' he screamed at poor Adam, who had been hauled before him in chains (although it had taken the Guards the best part of a week to find him in the Maze, and longer still to find their way out with him).
`Father, please don't hurt him.' begged Alicia. `I ...'
`You speak when you're spoken to, you shameless hussy.' shouted His Majesty.
`Hand him over to me,' advised the Necromancer, `and I'll turn him into a frog.'
`Don't you think you're being just a trifle precipitate?' asked Cook. `Surely it wouldn't hurt to consult the Auguries.'
`Don't be ridiculous!' the King exploded, his livid eyeballs practically bursting from their sockets.
`It's not that ridiculous, dear.' said the Queen.
`Hmm, I suppose it's not.' agreed the King, and he called for the Chief Augurial Virgin.
The Chief Augurial Virgin came in, with a retinue of three acolytes, all covered from head to foot in veils and robes of blue linen.
`Your Majesty, what is your query?' she asked in her notoriously resonant and surprisingly deep voice.
`O Chief Augurial Virgin,' recited the King, `you who have given your Joy for our Knowledge, should I let this loutish reprobate here marry my daughter, or should I let the Necromancer turn him into a frog?'
`The answer, O King, is written on his chest.' came her reply. `The answer is written on his chest.'
`Bare his chest!' demanded the King, and the guards ripped Goodbody's shirt off, to reveal an enormous strawberry birthmark, shaped like a blot.
`Your Majesty,' began the Chief Augurial Virgin, `can you not see?'
`He's got a big strawberry birthmark!' said the King.
`Your Majesty,' continued the Chief Augurial Virgin, quietly wishing somebody would one day explain to the King the concept of the Rhetorical Question, `it is quite clear to me that this young man, whatever his beginnings, is set for the most glorious of endings, for to him will come Hegemonial Crowns not one, but two, and his children will rule in this land for a hundred years.'
`Well I never!' said the King. `Fetch this young gentleman a clean shirt!', but the Royal Couturier could get nowhere near Adam Goodbody, for there was a Princess in the way.'
The Cook heaved a sigh of relief, for, of course, the whole thing was a scam---the Cook had visited Adam in prison and smeared beetroot on his chest, while the Chief Augurial Virgin had been quietly reminded of her previous indiscretions. Indeed, one of her attendants was the very Virgin who had inadvertently been the cause of Adam's dismissal from the Butlery, and she was carrying a long, poisoned needle under her robes, just in case her superior tried anything foolishly honest. Thus nobody was more surprised than Cook when, all of a sudden, a Messenger arrived from the Hegemony of Cynthia.
`Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,' he began, `I have the unfortunate duty to inform you that the King Of Cynthia is dead.'
`Long Live The King!' cried the assembled gathering in unison.
`Further,' continued the Messenger, `I am sorry to say that there is no Legitimate Heir to the Throne of Cynthia.'
`Shame!' they all cried.
`However,' said the Messenger in an irritated tone of voice, `the King, before he passed away...'
`Long Live The King!'
`...left a Last Will And Testament, in which he clearly states that he sired an Illegitimate Heir to the Throne of Cynthia on some serving wench he took a fancy to, when he was attending a Hunt Ball at this esteemed Hegemonial Castle during the Wilder Days of His Majestic Youth. This Document also clearly states that the Young Gentleman concerned will be easily recognised by the enormous strawberry birthmark on his chest.'
`Goodness me!' said the King, `And to think I almost had the new King Of Cynthia turned into a frog! He must marry my daughter right away. Summon a Priest!'
So before long, everyone was toasting King Adam and Queen Alicia of Cynthia, even Cranthorpe and the Necromancer, while Cook became suddenly, inexplicably and astonishingly wealthy. As for the true Illegitimate Heir to the Throne of Cynthia, well, he never really existed. You see, the old King of Cynthia had had rather too much to drink that night, and Cook had never been particularly stupid.
So I suppose Princess Alicia did well enough in the end, despite her lack of Sense Of Proportion, and I can certainly assure you that, in the traditional manner, They All Lived Happily Ever After.
Cranthorpe, you see, was not the miserable toady that whoever it was would have had you believe, and even if he had been, he would have made a better job of it, for one does not become a Butler, especially not a Friday Butler, by losing one's wits, but rather by looking after the mislaid wits of one's masters. In particular, Cranthorpe was well aware of the need to prevent, as subtly as possible, his Royal Mistress, the Princess Alicia, from making a fool of herself, and it was entirely with this in mind that he listened at the Parlour door, trying hard not to laugh too loudly at the hedge-trimmer's verse.
Further, Princess Alicia is not the half-crazed nymphomaniac heroine of some tawdry bodice-ripper---rather, she is a fairy tale Princess, and that implies a considerable degree of decorum---so I am afraid the truth of the matter involves much less passionate tomfoolery than does the poor fiction above. Her primary motive in summoning Goodbody to the Parlour was not to set about him in a rash and precipitate fashion, but merely to assess the effect of the enterprise which she had undertaken two nights previously. Hence, she was clearly pleased at the general content of Goodbody's poem, while disconcerted by the ambiguity of its ending, and thus she embarked upon a line of questioning intended to resolve the doubt.
`Bravo once more, my good Sir!' began her response to the gardener's efforts. `May your selection of phrase and rhythm never cease to fascinate! Yet I find the contrast between the Servant's piety and the Angel's licentiousness most disturbing, for surely the substantial liaison with the kitchen-maid was a sin much more grievous in the reckoning than any amount of hypothesizing one may do about one's Mistress. After all, what harm can there be in dreams?'
`The Good Lord, your Highness,' replied Adam, `forbade to Adam and to Eve the fruits of but one tree in the Garden of Eden.'
`Yet was it a sin' countered Alicia `for Eve to hear the words of the serpent?'
`A fair point, your Highness,' accepted Adam, `but surely you will agree that, wherever the burden of sin lay in that case, no good came of it?'
`But were it a sin merely to behold the fruit,' struggled the Princess, `would not the Good Lord have planted that tree elsewhere?'
And in response came the old quip `To look upon a lady pheasant, your Highness, need not lead to plucking her.'
`Come now! Here our pious Servant quailed but to look upon the pheasant, yet had no qualm to pluck a barnyard hen.' said Alicia, picking at a flaw.
`To be thus occupied, however, is to duck the greater ill.' the gardener retaliated.
`But 'tis no sin to dream.' asserted the Princess, as if there were no dispute.
`No sin then, your Highness, but most discommodious to the discharge of one's duties.'
`And surely similarly in the symmetric scenario?' suggested Alicia.
`To flirt with the farthing florist, your Highness,' began Adam, with a smile which showed he was far from beaten, `is fair and fitting for the fine and famous.'
`So sauce from the gander is cause for the noose?' the Princess asked, which, if you have guessed the rules by now, you will agree was a touch below the belt.
`Sauce with no goose makes poor supper.' gambled the gardener, the entire rulebook now out the window.
`If you're not going to play properly,' complained Alicia, `then I'm not going to win.'
`Hanging one's opponent, your Highness,' said Goodbody reprovingly, `is not generally considered to constitute victory.'
`Nonetheless, Adam Goodbody,' said she, `if you persist in your impudence, you will be the Hanged Gardener who Babbled On.'
`Ah, your Highness,' Adam tactfully conceded, `you had only to look at me once and I was lost.'
`I seem to recall it was I who was lost.' said the Princess, not content with mere victory.
`Is there no Gracious Spirit who will save me from this awesome Goddess, whose wrath descendeth upon me, though I beg at her feet for mercy?' cried Goodbody out loud, prostrating himself before the Princess and clasping her knees in rhetorical supplication, eliciting nothing short of hysterics.
Curiously enough, a knock on the door interrupted at this crucial moment, and the Butler was admitted.
`What is it, Cranthorpe?' asked the Princess, fighting back the giggles.
Cranthorpe was wearing one of his straighter faces. `I'm dreadfully sorry to interrupt your merry-making, your Highness, but it would seem that the pheasant which was to be the Queen's dinner has escaped half-plucked.'
`Don't you usually kill them first?' asked Alicia, innocently.
`Usually, your Highness, yes,' confirmed Cranthorpe, `but not when one is Cook, and one is preparing the Sub-Oedipal Repression A` L'Abricot. Anyhow, this pheasant has apparently proven most evasive, despite being unable any more to fly and has, in point of fact, become embroiled in the Royal Maze.'
`How amusing!' said Alicia, not quite realising the gravity of the situation. Cranthorpe was quick to rectify her misapprehension.
`I am afraid, your Highness, that Cook does not find the situation remotely amusing, and neither, I fear, will the King if he even so much as guesses at what has endangered the preparation of this, undeniably his favourite entr'ee, and therefore, your Highness, we of the domestic staff would be most grateful if you would lend us the services of your esteemed companion, since he is the only person skilled enough in the myriad twists of the Maze to find the pheasant and, if you will excuse the pun, prevent our goose from being cooked.'
`Why, certainly, Cranthorpe. We had finished anyway.' consented the Princess magnanimously.
`I am most grateful, your Highness.' said Cranthorpe.
`It would seem,' said Alicia, turning to Adam, who had by this stage scrambled to his feet, `that the Servant must chase the pheasant after all.'
`Your Highness.' said the gardener, bowing and then departing with a sly wink.
`They're only human, your Highness.' Cook reminded her, whilst cutting her pastry into a Tessellation of Phantasmagorical Creatures.
`Yes, but we shouldn't let them believe that.' asserted the Princess.
`Indeed not, your Highness,' agreed Cook, `but, nonetheless, you mustn't be surprised when your attempts to inspire them to superhuman degrees of foolishness meet only with mixed success.'
`I suppose so, Cook.' said Alicia in a resigned tone of voice. `I just wish life wasn't so complicated.'
`So you've been discovering the perils of the Ineligible Gentleman?' Cook ventured.
`Who have you been talking to?' asked the Princess, failing to sound upset.
`Oh, nobody but you, your Highness.' laughed Cook. `Since there is not an eligible gentleman in all Seven Hegmonies who would not gladly fall at your feet, if you but gave him a second glance, the fact that you say life is complicated implies that the gentleman you have in mind (and don't you try to deny that there is one, your Highness, because it's written just under your nose) is ineligible. So tell me, is he married, or is it just that he's below your station?'
`He's not married.' admitted Alicia, sheepishly.
`So it's the Two Body Problem, then?' Facetiousness was one of Cook's more irritating traits. `I heard they'd solved that.'
`Yes, Cook.' the Princess replied touchily. `We orbit one another, without getting any closer.'
`He's afraid because he doesn't want his head chopped off,' guessed Cook `and you're afraid because you think he'll run a mile.'
`That's about the height of it.' Alicia confirmed.
`I don't suppose you are interested in sensible advice?' Cook's offer was resignedly rhetorical.
`You think I should give up on my charming, although sadly not charmed frog and find myself some beastly Handsome Prince?' asked the Princess. `I thought you were on my side.'
`The only person who is against you, your Highness,' sighed the Cook, `is yourself. When you look at the sky, do you see thunder? Are the Chief Virgin's Pigeons hacking one another to death? Is the Household smitten by Plague? Have the English won at Cricket? For surely if 'twas Heaven's Design and Fate's Decree being thwarted, the Arrow of Eros bent awry, then would we see Earth, Air, Fire and Water in Great Foment and the Fixed Stars fleeing in their rage from the Crystal Spheres until some great Deus Ex Machina should declare ``Amor Vicit Omnia'' and set things to rights. But this is not the case, is it, your Highness? Instead, a beautiful but foolish young lady bemoans her unattainable choice of husband, and the Firmament stands rightfully unmoved.' Thus Cook expounded on the matter, hoping that the enormity of her metaphor might make some dent in the ardour of a Princess, sadly not given to that fortunate weakness which we call the Sense Of Proportion, but to no avail.
`But don't you see?' cried the Princess, confirming all of the Cook's worst fears. `This Love means more to me than the Whole Wide World. Why should I marry some oaf just because of his better breeding? I tell you, Cook, I won't do it. I would rather turn into a frog myself.'
`And a curious fairy tale that would make, your Highness.' said Cook. `But you are a real live Princess, and you must face up to the fact that no man will ever be what you want him to be. To say ``oaf'' is as much as to say ``husband'', and to make a man into a husband is to make of him an oaf, so I say to you waste not a good man by making him your husband, but rather take an oaf to the altar and remember why the Good Lord invented adultery, for Love, unlike Marriage, was not meant to last a lifetime.' and she caught herself before she said `Just look at your Mother.' Yet, for all her wisdom, the Cook could see her advice was falling on deaf ears. `Pour soul,' she said, seeing a tear trickling down the Princess's cheek, `don't cry. Your tears are too precious to waste on me. If you want foolish advice, then I'll give it you, so cheer up!'
`I just want him, that's all.' said Alicia and wiped her nose.
`You will never get him while he has recourse to the safety of Servanthood. Those whom the Gods destroy, they first dress up.' Cook hinted.
The light returned to the Princess's eyes. `The Masquerade Ball!' she giggled. `And it's only on Friday!'
`Ten out of ten, your Highness!' smiled Cook. `You get your man a costume and send him along to me. I'll get him smuggled in for you, don't you worry---Cranthorpe owes me a favour or two.'
`Why did you never marry, Cook?' asked the Princess, coyly.
`What would have been the point?' Cook replied. `I have no need of a husband to keep up appearances. After all, your Highness, I'm but a kitchen wench---not even the Good Lord worries who tickles my fancy.'
Once he had eaten, he sat for a while, scribbling at poetry by the light of the fire, but nothing seemed to flow. Finding neither rhythm nor rhyme, he decided to retire to bed in the hope that sleep would ease his troubled mind, leaving things clear in the light of morning, but when he walked into his bedroom, he simply could not believe his nose: the cool night air was sweet with the scent of Princess Alicia. On the floor, by the bed, there was a box, the attached note reading `Dearest Frog-Adam, Here is your costume for the Ball! Enter the Castle by the Scullery Door and, if you trust yourself to Cook, you shall be my Prince! All my Love, Cat-Alicia.' and inside was the clothing of the relevant pea-green amphibian.
Once he had eaten, he sat for a while, scribbling at poetry by the light of the fire, but nothing seemed to flow. Finding neither rhythm Adam decided to smile for the moment and worry about this development with the coming of the dawn. He blew out the candle and climbed into bed, only to find it warm already, for snuggled under the covers was a black cat, which, on finding human company, scratched at it and mewed, shortly before being defenestrated at high speed, much to the amusment of the Cook, who just happened to be passing that way. The gardener pulled his blankets around himself and closed his eyes, wondering what could possibly happen next to make his life any more ludicrous than it had already become.
Meanwhile, the Princess stood in her room, dancing before her mirror, far too excited to sleep a wink.
Alicia's costume was, literally, a cat-suit---a figure-hugging one-piece precisely executed in black velvet, gloving her hands in mock-clawed fingers, a full mask (with whiskers and little ears) pullings backward over her head, leaving holes for mouth, nostrils and eyes in front and allowing her long hair to escape at the back, and a mock tail dangling limply between her smoothly covered legs. Having donned this outfit, lacing it up along her spine, she stood in front of her mirror. Then, nervously, she took one of the mice from the wicker box and, placing it alive in her mouth, chewed it and swallowed it. Her whole body tingled with life, as if every velvet hair stood at a nerve's end. She purred with delight to find that she could no longer pinch her clothing away from her skin, that rather it was live to the touch, and so it was with naked pleasure that she ate the second mouse. The moment this latter was down her throat, her tail grew stiff, her ears and whiskers twitched and her claws sprang to readiness.
Alicia's costume was, literally, a cat-suit---a figure-hugging one-piece precisely executed in black velvet, gloving her hands in mock-clawed fingers, a full mask (with whiskers and little ears) pullings backward over her head, leaving holes for mouth, nostrils and eyes in front and allowing her long hair to escape at the back, and a mock tail dangling limply between her smoothly covered legs. Having donned this outfit, lacing it up along her spine, she stood in front of her mirror. Then, nervously, she took one of the mice from the wicker box and, placing it alive in her mouth, chewed it and swallowed it. Her whole body tingled with life, as if every velvet hair stood at a nerve's end. She purred with delight to find that she could no longer pinch her clothing away from her skin, that rather it was live to the touch, and so it was with naked pleasure that she ate the second mouse. The moment this latter was down her throat, her tail
She licked her lips and drew the third mouse from the box, pinching its tail sharply between finger-claw and thumb-claw, staring at its terror-struck little face with her flickering green eyes. Smiling, and then laughing, she dropped it to the floor. Cat-Alicia then leapt up onto the rail which ran along the top of one side of her four-poster bed and counted to twenty, watching as the mouse scurried around the floor trying in vain to find some safe hiding-place. The Princess pounced, landing nimbly on her toes and the heels of her hands, with the mouse caught in her fingers. Satisfied with her magic, she gobbled it, purring with glee, then curled up on her bed, waiting for the Ball to begin and thinking of Adam Goodbody holding her close.
A Masquerade Ball, when properly furnished and facilitated, is an astounding spectacle, and this one was, of course, no exception, except perhaps that it was, if anything more magnificent than any pageant or celebration which anyone present could remember. The Hegemonial Ballroom was bedecked with hangings in Royal colours, with fabulous golden embroidery depicting Lions, or the Sun, or all manner of other Heraldic Devices. Cranthorpe's staff had spent most of the day dangling precariously from the ceiling, polishing the chandeliers and replacing the candles, so that now, above the dancers was a veritable firmament of myriad twinklings, such as no one could look upon and not feel enchanted.
And the dancers! It seemed as if every Creature under the Sun was there, every Myth which had ever waltzed forth from a Storybook, Princes dressed as Pirates or Liars or Devils or Judges, Princesses dressed as Nymphs or Angels or Butterflies or Villains, Lawyers dressed as Honest Men, Bookmakers dressed as Magicians and Fairies dressed as Themselves. The Musicians were four long-haired gentlemen from the Low Countries, one percussive, another playing contrabasse, a third displaying considerable facility with all manner of lutes and the fourth astonishing everyone with his mastery of the organ and the flute, and with the power and range of his voice, which could leap from a thunderous bass rumbling to a piercing soprano yodelling and back in but the twinkling of an eye.
In among the couples there danced a Black She-Cat, stealthily purloining other ladies' partners from under their daintily powdered noses, then leaving the gentlemen standing bemused and bereft just as suddenly, passing on towards fresh prey with a twitch of her long black tail. Thus cruelly did she raise a jealousy among the ladyfolk and a desire among the men which availed them not one whit, save to make her eyes flash ever more brightly, her tail whisk ever more quickly, her body dance ever more lithely and the feline features of her face flicker ever more seductively with the sweetest smile that ever licked a saucer clean, and yet the one she sought appeared not.
Now Adam Goodbody was standing in the Kitchens all this time, with the body of a Frog, and the face of a man who feared an imminent culinary execution. Verily were the Harpies picking at his mind---Terror and Confusion and Guilt, yes, and possibly even Love. The Cook was unsympathetic.
`Just you get out there with your mask on.' she said. `Only don't you lose your head under it.'
`Wish me luck.' requested the gardener, weakly.
`It's not a question of luck.' said Cook angrily. `You mess this one up and All Hell will break loose, starting with Me, so get on you and get out.' and she well nigh beat him out into the hallway with her broomstick, his Frog-face half on and half off.
The Frog had been hoping to slip up to the Gallery for a couple of glasses of Aplomb before joining the Dance, but the Cat noticed him and darted after him, leaping from the floor to the balustrade half-way up the stairs. He therefore apologised his way hurriedly through the throng and down to the Quickstep below, where he caught a passing Butterfly and whirled his way into the thick of it, but before his breath had had a chance to return, he felt the twist of a tail around his leg and glanced over his shoulder to see the Cat dancing with a masked man in a blue tailcoat and a white powdered wig, to whom he winked, sadly invisibly because of his mask, before giving his own partner the slip.
Now everyone was amused to see this Black She-Cat chasing this poor clumsy Frog around the floor, her long hair flying behind her, and under their breath they egged him on and wondered who on Earth he was, but she caught him in the end and held him close, digging her claws into his back lest he escape. The tune changed to a slower one, and the Frog relented, taking his partner tightly and allowing his eyes to melt in her gaze. The rest of the Ballroom spun in a blur. Her breath smelt as if it were an intoxicating ether; his hands felt as if they touched directly on her naked self. She was transfixed with Love, his wits were dissolving rapdily, and on they danced, each one sensing the hyperventilation of the other.
The music swelled with an overpowering crescendo and swept the Ballroom clean out through the doors, which Cranthorpe (who had come dressed as a Butler) had conveniently opened onto the back Veranda, whence they could look out over the Moat to the Royal Maze, suddenly lit up in the flare of a Firework which cracked the night sky, but the Frog and the Black She-Cat danced slowly out into the quiet at the front of the Castle and, standing on the Drawbridge, with nothing for company but the moonlight shimmering on the water below, they joined together their lips and Time stood still.
You see, Goodbody was a very, very bad liar. He was such a bad liar that he could not even tell the truth convincingly, and this, somewhat inadvertently to be sure, had saved his neck on countless occasions. Indeed, this is why he had, up to this point, been perfect for his part in this business, but now a beautiful Black Velvet Disaster was striking ineluctably down his throat, and he knew that, if he did not manage to pull off one huge and utterly preposterous falsity, he would be lucky to finish in cubes. The Princess paused for breath.
`I do not love you.' said Adam Goodbody.
His words bounced around her head, but connected with nothing. Her lips reconnected with his, but this time he pushed her away. She stared at him like a wounded animal, incredulous with Fear.
`I do not love you.' said Adam again.
`You mean it, don't you?' asked Alicia, too stunned to cry just yet. Adam heaved a huge internal sigh of relief, and nodded slowly but determinedly to the Princess. A solitary tear crept from the corner of one green eye and down a velvet cheek, but then her back arched, her tail stiffened and with sharp claws poised she pounced, screeching `Love me! Love me or I'll have your head cut off!' and scratching at him through his mask, drawing blood, until he threw her down.
She landed on all fours and looked up at him, his torn mask maintaing its implacably gormless expression despite the streams of blood, and his motionless frame set firm against the night sky. He was silent. She shrank away to the edge of the bridge.
`Love me or I'll jump!' she wailed. `I'll drown myself in the Moat.'
Adam did not even stir.
`Say something, damn you!' she screamed.
Nothing.
`Oh, Adam...' she whimpered, and flopped over the edge. The drop would not even have killed a normal human being had it been onto solid stone, so the She-Cat had no chance. There was a brief mewing followed by a rather pathetic splash, as she landed with her feet and hands in the mud and stood up to find the water barely above her knees. The Cat-Magic had worn off at the touch of water and what had been her velvet skin was now once more clothing, hanging sopping wet from her arms and torso, so that she shivered in the cool night breeze.
As she staggered for the side, she tripped, her foot stuck in the silt, and collapsed into an old duck's nest by the bank, and when she pulled herself upright, she caught a glint of gold. Intrigued, she tugged at it to find that it was edging on an old piece of cardboard, frayed and crumpled and covered in guano, but in the moonlight, she could just make out the writing: `... cordially invite the Good Fairy Sense-Of-Proportion to the Christening of their New-Born Royal Daughter, soon to be Princess Alicia of ...'
Princess Alicia laughed. There was she, a Daughter Of The Royal House, standing in the Castle Moat, stuck in the mud, water up to her knees, soaked to the skin, dressed as a pussycat. And what had she done? She had thrown herself off the Drawbridge because a hedge-trimmer from the Royal Maze had refused to fall in Love with her. Oh, she laughed all right---a long, hard and bitter laugh.
Meanwhile, from a high window in the Castle, a certain member of the Kitchen Staff smiled wryly at the sight of Adam Goodbody pulling off his Frog-mask and wandering slowly towards his cottage, kicking frustratedly at pebbles and hanging his head down low.