Harry Potter Fans With No Life

Chapter 29

Mrs Beamish Worries

Back in Chouxville, Spittleworth made sure the story was circulated that the Dovetail family had packed up in the middle of the night and moved to the neighboring country of Pluritania. Daisy’s former teacher told her old classmates, and Cankerby the footman informed all the palace servants.

After he got home from school that day, Bert went and laid on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He was thinking back to the days when he’d been a small, plump boy whom the other children called “Butterball,” and how Daisy had always stuck up for him. He remembered their long-ago fight in the palace courtyard, and the expression on Daisy’s face when he’d accidentally knocked her Hopes-of-Heaven to the ground on her birthday.

Then Bert considered the way he spent his break times these days. At first, Bert had sort of liked being friends with Roderick Roach, because Roderick used to bully him and he was glad he’d stopped, but if he was truly honest with himself, Bert didn’t really enjoy the same things that Roderick did: for instance, trying to hit stray dogs with catapults, or finding live frogs to hide in the girls’ satchels. In fact, the more he remembered the fun he used to have with Daisy, the more he thought about how his face ached from fake smiling at the end of a day with Roderick, and the more Bert regretted that he’d never tried to repair his and Daisy’s friendship. But it was too late, now. Daisy was gone forever: gone to Pluritania.

While Bert was lying on his bed, Mrs. Beamish sat alone in the kitchen. She felt almost as bad as her son.

Ever since she’d done it, Mrs. Beamish had regretted telling the scullery maid what Mr. Dovetail had said about the Ickabog not being real. She’d been so angry at the suggestion that her husband might have fallen off his horse she hadn’t realized she was reporting treason, until the words were out of her mouth and it was too late to call them back. She really hadn’t wanted to get such an old friend into trouble, so she’d begged the scullery maid to forget what she’d said, and Mabel had agreed.

Relieved, Mrs. Beamish had turned around to take a large batch of Maidens’ Dreams out of the oven, then spotted Cankerby, the footman, skulking in the corner. Cankerby was known to everyone who worked at the palace as a sneak and a tattletale. He had a knack of arriving noiselessly in rooms, and peeping unnoticed through keyholes. Mrs. Beamish didn’t dare ask Cankerby how long he’d been standing there, but now, sitting alone at her own kitchen table, a terrible fear gripped her heart. Had news of Mr. Dovetail’s treason been carried by Cankerby to Lord Spittleworth? Was it possible that Mr. Dovetail had gone, not to Pluritania, but to prison?

The longer she thought about it, the more frightened she became, until finally, Mrs. Beamish called out to Bert that she was going for an evening stroll, and hurried from the house.

There were still children playing in the streets, and Mrs. Beamish wound her way in and out of them until she reached the small cottage that lay between the City-Within-The-City gates and the graveyard. The windows were dark and the workshop locked up, but when Mrs. Beamish gave the front door a gentle push, it opened.

All the furniture was gone, right down to the pictures on the walls. Mrs. Beamish let out a long, slow sigh of relief. If they’d slung Mr. Dovetail in jail, they’d hardly have put all his furniture in there with him. It really did look as though he’d packed up and taken Daisy off to Pluritania. Mrs. Beamish felt a little easier in her mind as she walked back through the City-Within-The-City.

Some little girls were jumping rope in the road up ahead, chanting a rhyme now repeated in playgrounds all over the kingdom.

“Ickabog, Ickabog, he’ll get you if you stop,

Ickabog, Ickabog, so skip until you flop,

Never look back if you feel squeamish

’Cause he’s caught a soldier called Major —”

One of the little girls turning the rope for her friend spotted Mrs. Beamish, let out a squeal, and dropped her end. The other little girls turned too, and, seeing the pastry chef, all of them turned red. One let out a terrified giggle and another burst into tears.

“It’s all right, girls,” said Mrs. Beamish, trying to smile. “It doesn’t matter.”

The children remained quite still as she passed them, until suddenly Mrs. Beamish turned to look again at the girl who’d dropped the end of the skipping rope.

“Where,” asked Mrs. Beamish, “did you get that dress?”

The scarlet-faced little girl looked down at it, then back up at Mrs. Beamish.

“My daddy gave it to me, missus,” said the girl. “When he come home from work yesterday. And he gave my brother a bandalore.”

After staring at the dress for a few more seconds, Mrs. Beamish turned slowly away and walked on home. She told herself she must be mistaken, but she was sure she could remember Daisy Dovetail wearing a beautiful little dress exactly like that — sunshine yellow, with daisies embroidered around the neck and cuffs — back when her mother was alive, and made all Daisy’s clothes.

Chapter 30

The Foot

A month passed. Deep in the dungeons, Mr. Dovetail worked in a kind of frenzy. He had to finish the monstrous wooden foot, so he could see Daisy again. He’d forced himself to believe that Spittleworth would keep his word, and let him leave the dungeon after he’d completed his task, even though a voice in his head kept saying, “They’ll never let you go after this. Never.”

To drive out fear, Mr. Dovetail started singing the national anthem, over and over again:

“Coooorn — ucopia, give praises to the king,

Coooorn — ucopia, lift up your voice and sing . . .”

His constant singing annoyed the other prisoners even more than the sound of his chisel and hammer. The now thin and ragged Captain Goodfellow begged him to stop, but Mr. Dovetail paid no attention. He’d become a little delirious. He had a confused idea that if he showed himself a faithful subject of the king, Spittleworth might think him less of a danger, and release him. So the carpenter’s cell rang with the banging and scraping of his tools and the national anthem, and slowly but surely, a monstrous clawed foot took shape, with a long handle out of the top, so that a man on horseback could press it deep into soft ground.

When at last the wooden foot was finished, Spittleworth, Flapoon, and Major Roach came down into the dungeons to inspect it.

“Yes,” said Spittleworth slowly, examining the foot from every angle. “Very good indeed. What do you think, Roach?”

“I think that’ll do very nicely, my lord,” replied the major.

“You’ve done well, Dovetail,” Spittleworth told the carpenter. “I’ll tell the warder to give you extra rations tonight.”

“But you said I’d go free when I finished,” said Mr. Dovetail, falling to his knees, pale and exhausted. “Please, my lord. Please. I have to see my daughter . . . please.”

Mr. Dovetail reached for Lord Spittleworth’s bony hand, but Spittleworth snatched it back.

“Don’t touch me, traitor. You should be grateful I didn’t have you put to death. I may yet, if this foot doesn’t do the trick — so if I were you, I’d pray my plan works.”

Chapter 31

Disappearance of a Butcher

That night, under cover of darkness, a party of horsemen dressed all in black rode out from Chouxville, headed by Major Roach. Hidden beneath a large bit of sacking on a wagon in their midst was the gigantic wooden foot, with its carved scales and long, sharp claws.

At last they reached the outskirts of Baronstown. Now the riders — members of the Ickabog Defense Brigade whom Spittleworth had chosen for the job — slipped from their horses and covered the animals’ hooves with sacking to muffle the noise and the shape of their prints. Then they lifted the giant foot off the wagon, remounted, and carried it between them to the house where Tubby Tenderloin the butcher lived with his wife, which was luckily a little distance from its neighbors.

Several of the soldiers now tied up their horses, stole up to Tubby’s back door, and forced entry, while the rest pressed the giant foot into the mud around his back gate.

Five minutes after the soldiers arrived, they carried Tubby and his wife, who had no children, out of their house, bound and gagged, then threw them onto the wagon. I may as well tell you now that Tubby and his wife were about to be killed, their bodies buried in the woods, in exactly the way Private Prodd had been supposed to dispose of Daisy. Spittleworth only kept alive those people for whom he had a use: Mr. Dovetail might need to repair the Ickabog foot if it got damaged, and Captain Goodfellow and his friends might need to be dragged out again some day, to repeat their lies about the Ickabog. Spittleworth couldn’t imagine ever needing a treasonous sausage maker, though, so he’d ordered his murder. As for poor Mrs. Tenderloin, Spittleworth barely considered her at all, but I’d like you to know that she was a very kind person, who babysat her friends’ children and sang in the local choir.

Once the Tenderloins had been taken away, the remaining soldiers entered the house and smashed up the furniture as though a giant creature had wrecked it, while the rest of the men broke down the back fence and pressed the giant foot into the soft soil around Tubby’s chicken coop, so that it appeared the prowling monster had also attacked the birds. One of the soldiers even stripped off his socks and boots, and made bare footprints on the soft earth, as though Tubby had rushed outside to protect his chickens. Finally, the same man cut off the head of one of the hens and made sure plenty of blood and feathers was spread around, before breaking down the side of the coop to allow the rest of the chickens to escape.

After pressing the giant foot many more times onto the mud outside Tubby’s house, so the monster appeared to have run away onto solid ground, the soldiers heaved Mr. Dovetail’s creation back onto the wagon beside the soon-to-be-murdered butcher and his wife, remounted their horses, and disappeared into the night.

Chapter 32

A Flaw in the Plan

When Mr. and Mrs. Tenderloin’s neighbors woke up the next day and found chickens all over the road, they hurried to tell Tubby his birds had escaped. Imagine the neighbors’ horror when they found the enormous footprints, the blood and the feathers, the broken-down back door, and no sign of either husband or wife.

Before an hour had passed, a huge crowd had congregated around Tubby’s empty house, all examining the monstrous footprints, the smashed-in door, and the wrecked furniture. Panic set in, and within a few hours, news of the Ickabog’s raid on a Baronstown butcher’s house was spreading north, south, east, and west, and soon town criers were ringing their bells in the city squares, and within a couple of days, only the Marshlanders would be ignorant of the fact that the Ickabog had slunk south overnight and carried off two people.

Spittleworth’s Baronstown spy, who’d been mingling with the crowds all day to observe their reactions, sent word to his master that his plan had worked magnificently. However, in the early evening, just as the spy was thinking of heading off to the tavern for a celebratory sausage roll and a pint of beer, he noticed a group of men whispering together as they examined one of the Ickabog’s giant footprints. The spy sidled over.

“Terrifying, isn’t it?” the spy asked them. “The size of its feet! The length of its claws!”

One of Tubby’s neighbors straightened up, frowning.

“It’s hopping,” he said.

“Excuse me?” said the spy.

“It’s hopping,” repeated the neighbor. “Look. It’s the same left foot, over and over again. Either the Ickabog’s hopping, or . . .”

The man didn’t finish his sentence, but the look on his face alarmed the spy. Instead of heading for the tavern, he mounted his horse again, and galloped off toward the palace.

Chapter 33

King Fred is Worried

Little knowing of the new threat to their schemes, Spittleworth and Flapoon had just sat down to one of their usual sumptuous late-night dinners with the king. Fred was most alarmed to hear of the Ickabog’s attack on Baronstown, because it meant that the monster had strayed closer to the palace than ever before.

“Ghastly business,” said Flapoon, lifting an entire black pudding onto his plate.

“Shocking, really,” said Spittleworth, carving himself a slice of pheasant.

“What I don’t understand,” fretted Fred, “is how it slipped through the blockade!”

For, of course, the king had been told that a division of the Ickabog Defense Brigade was permanently camped round the edge of the marsh, to stop the Ickabog escaping into the rest of the country. Spittleworth, who’d been expecting Fred to raise this point, had his explanation ready.

“I regret to say that two soldiers fell asleep on watch, Your Majesty. Taken unawares by the Ickabog, they were eaten whole.”

“Suffering Saints!” said Fred, horrified.

“Having broken through the line,” continued Spittleworth, “the monster headed south. We believe it was attracted to Baronstown because of the smell of meat. While there, it gobbled up some chickens, as well as the butcher and his wife.”

“Dreadful, dreadful,” said Fred with a shudder, pushing his plate away from him. “And then it slunk off back home to the marsh, did it?”

“So our trackers tell us, sire,” said Spittleworth, “but now that it’s tasted a butcher full of Baronstown sausage, we must prepare for it trying to break through the soldiers’ lines regularly — which is why I think we should double the number of men stationed there, sire. Sadly, that will mean doubling the Ickabog tax.”

Luckily for them, Fred was watching Spittleworth, so he didn’t see Flapoon smirk.

“Yes . . . I suppose that makes sense,” said the king.

He got to his feet and began roaming restlessly around the dining room. The lamplight made his costume, which today was of sky-blue silk with aquamarine buttons, shine beautifully. As he paused to admire himself in the mirror, Fred’s expression clouded.

“Spittleworth,” he said, “the people do still like me, don’t they?”

“How can Your Majesty ask such a thing?” said Spittleworth, with a gasp. “You’re the most beloved king in the whole of Cornucopia’s history!”

“It’s just that . . . riding back from hunting, yesterday, I couldn’t help thinking that people didn’t seem quite as happy as usual to see me,” said King Fred. “There were hardly any cheers, and only one flag.”

“Give me their names and addresses,” said Flapoon through a mouthful of black pudding, and he groped in his pockets for a pencil.

“I don’t know their names and addresses, Flapoon,” said Fred, who was now playing with a tassel on the curtains. “They were just people, you know, passing by. But it upset me, rather, and then, when I got back to the palace, I heard that the Day of Petition has been canceled.”

“Ah,” said Spittleworth, “yes, I was going to explain that to Your Majesty . . .”

“There’s no need,” said Fred. “Lady Eslanda has already spoken to me about it.”

“What?” said Spittleworth, glaring at Flapoon. He’d given his friend strict instructions never to let Lady Eslanda near the king, because he was worried what she might tell him. Flapoon scowled and shrugged. Really, Spittleworth couldn’t expect him to be at the king’s side every minute of the day. A man needed the bathroom occasionally, after all.

“Lady Eslanda told me that people are complaining that the Ickabog tax is too high. She says rumors are flying that there aren’t even any troops stationed in the north!”

“Piffle and poppycock,” said Spittleworth, though in fact it was perfectly true that there were no troops stationed in the north, and also true that there’d been even more complaints about the Ickabog tax, which was why he’d canceled the Day of Petition. The last thing he wanted was for Fred to hear that he was losing popularity. He might take it into his foolish head to lower the taxes or, even worse, send people to investigate the imaginary camp in the north.

“There are times, obviously, when two regiments swap over,” said Spittleworth, thinking that he’d have to station some soldiers near the marsh now, to stop busybodies asking questions. “Possibly some foolish Marshlander saw a regiment riding away, and imagined that there was nobody left up there . . . why don’t we triple the Ickabog tax, sire?” asked Spittleworth, thinking that this would serve the complainers right. “After all, the monster did break through the lines last night! Then there can never again be any danger of a scarcity of men on the edge of the Marshlands and everyone will be happy.”

“Yes,” said King Fred uneasily. “Yes, that does make sense. I mean, if the monster can kill four people and some chickens in a single night . . .”

At this moment, Cankerby the footman entered the dining room and, with a low bow, whispered to Spittleworth that the Baronstown spy had just arrived with urgent news from the sausage-making city.

“Your Majesty,” said Spittleworth smoothly, “I must leave you. Nothing to worry about! A minor issue with my, ah, horse.”

Chapter 34

Three More Feet

“This had better be worth my while,” snapped Spittleworth five minutes later, as he entered the Blue Parlor, where the spy was waiting.

“Your — Lordship,” said the breathless man, “they’re saying — the monster’s — hopping.”

“They’re saying what?”

“Hopping — my lord — hopping!” he panted. “They’ve noticed — all the prints — are made by the same — left — foot!”

Spittleworth stood speechless. It had never occurred to him that the common folk might be clever enough to spot a thing like that. Indeed, he, who’d never had to look after a living creature in his life, not even his own horse, hadn’t stopped to consider the fact that a creature’s feet might not all make the same prints in the ground.

“Must I think of everything?” bellowed Spittleworth, and he stormed out of the parlor and off to the Guard’s Room, where he found Major Roach drinking wine and playing cards with some friends. The major leapt to his feet at the sight of Spittleworth, who beckoned him to come outside.

“I want you to assemble the Ickabog Defense Brigade immediately, Roach,” Spittleworth told the major, in a low voice. “You’re to ride north, and be sure to make plenty of noise as you go. I want everyone from Chouxville to Jeroboam to see you passing by. Then, once you’re up there, spread out, and mount a guard over the border of the marsh.”

“But —” began Major Roach, who’d gotten used to a life of ease and plenty at the palace, with occasional rides around Chouxville in full uniform.

“I don’t want ‘buts,’ I want action!” shouted Spittleworth. “Rumors are flying that there’s nobody stationed in the north! Go, now, and make sure you wake up as many people as possible as you go — but leave me two men, Roach. Just two. I have another small job for them.”

So the grumpy Roach ran off to assemble his troops, and Spittleworth proceeded alone to the dungeon.

The first thing he heard when he got there was the sound of Mr. Dovetail, who was still singing the national anthem.

“Be quiet!” bellowed Spittleworth, drawing his sword and gesturing to the warder to let him into Mr. Dovetail’s cell.

The carpenter appeared quite different to the last time Lord Spittleworth had seen him. Since learning that he wasn’t to be let out of the dungeon to see Daisy, a wild look had appeared in Mr. Dovetail’s eye. Of course, he hadn’t been able to shave for weeks either, and his hair had grown rather long.

“I said, be quiet!” barked Spittleworth, because the carpenter, who didn’t seem able to help himself, was still humming the national anthem. “I need another three feet, d’you hear me? One more left foot, and two right. Do you understand me, carpenter?”

Mr. Dovetail stopped humming.

“If I carve them, will you let me out to see my daughter, my lord?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

Spittleworth smiled. It was clear to him that the man was going slowly mad, because only a madman would imagine he’d be let out after making another three Ickabog feet.

“Of course I will,” said Spittleworth. “I shall have the wood delivered to you first thing tomorrow morning. Work hard, carpenter. When you’re finished, I’ll let you out to see your daughter.”

When Spittleworth emerged from the dungeons, he found two soldiers waiting for him, just as he’d requested. Spittleworth led these men up to his private apartments, made sure Cankerby the footman wasn’t skulking about, locked the door, and turned to give the men their instructions.

“There will be fifty Ducats for each of you, if you succeed in this job,” he said, and the soldiers looked excited.

“You are to follow the Lady Eslanda, morning, noon, and night, you understand me? She must not know you are following her. You will wait for a moment when she is quite alone, so that you can kidnap her without anyone hearing or seeing anything. If she escapes, or if you are seen, I shall deny that I gave you this order, and put you to death.”

“What do we do with her once we’ve got her?” asked one of the soldiers, who no longer looked excited, but very scared.

“Hmm,” said Spittleworth, turning to look out of the window while he considered what best to do with Eslanda. “Well, a lady of the court isn’t the same as a butcher. The Ickabog can’t enter the palace and eat her . . . no, I think it best,” said Spittleworth, a slow smile spreading over his crafty face, “if you take Lady Eslanda to my estate in the country. Send word when you’ve got her there, and I’ll join you.”

Chapter 35

Lord Spittleworth’s Proposal

A few days later, Lady Eslanda was walking alone in the palace rose garden when the two soldiers hiding in a bush spotted their chance. They seized her, gagged her, bound her hands, and drove her away to Spittleworth’s estate in the country. Then they sent a message to Spittleworth, and waited for him to join them.

Spittleworth promptly summoned Lady Eslanda’s maid, Millicent. By threatening to murder Millicent’s little sister, he forced her to deliver messages to all Lady Eslanda’s friends, telling them that her mistress had decided to become a nun.

Lady Eslanda’s friends were all shocked by this news. She’d never mentioned wanting to become a nun to any of them. In fact, several of them were suspicious that Lord Spittleworth had had something to do with her sudden disappearance. However, I’m sad to tell you that Spittleworth was now so widely feared, that apart from whispering their suspicions to one another, Eslanda’s friends did nothing to either find her, or ask Spittleworth what he knew. Perhaps even worse was the fact that none of them tried to help Millicent, who was caught by soldiers trying to flee the City-Within-The-City, and imprisoned in the dungeons.

Next, Spittleworth had set out for his country estate, where he arrived late the following evening. After giving each of Eslanda’s kidnappers fifty Ducats, and reminding them that if they talked, he’d have them executed, Spittleworth smoothed his thin moustache in a mirror, then went to find Lady Eslanda, who was sitting in his rather dusty library, reading a book by candlelight.

“Good evening, my lady,” said Spittleworth, sweeping her a bow.

Lady Eslanda looked at him in silence.

“I have good news for you,” continued Spittleworth, smiling. “You are to become the wife of the Chief Advisor.”

“I’d sooner die,” said Lady Eslanda pleasantly, and turning a page in her book, she continued to read.

“Come, come,” said Spittleworth. “As you can see, my house really needs a woman’s tender care. You’ll be far happier here, making yourself useful, than pining over the cheesemakers’ son, who in any case, is likely to starve to death any day now.”

Lady Eslanda, who’d expected Spittleworth to mention Captain Goodfellow, had been preparing for this moment ever since arriving in the cold and dirty house. So she said, with neither a blush nor a tear:

“I stopped caring for Captain Goodfellow a long time ago, Lord Spittleworth. The sight of him confessing to treason disgusted me. I could never love a treacherous man — which is why I could never love you.”

She said it so convincingly that Spittleworth believed her. He tried a different threat, and told her he’d kill her parents if she didn’t marry him, but Lady Eslanda reminded him that she, like Captain Goodfellow, was an orphan. Then Spittleworth said he’d take away all the jewelry her mother had left her, but she shrugged and said she preferred books anyway. Finally, Spittleworth threatened to kill her, and Lady Eslanda suggested he get on with it, because that would be far better than listening to him talk.

Spittleworth was enraged. He’d become used to having his own way in everything, and here was something he couldn’t have, and it only made him want it all the more. Finally, he said that if she liked books so much, he’d lock her up inside the library forever. He’d have bars fitted on all the windows, and Scrumble the butler would bring her food three times a day, but she would only ever leave the room to go to the bathroom — unless she agreed to marry him.

“Then I shall die in this room,” said Lady Eslanda calmly, “or, perhaps — who knows? — in the bathroom.”

As he couldn’t get another word out of her, the furious Chief Advisor left.

Chapter 36

Cornucopia Hungry

A year passed . . . then two . . . then three, four, and five.

The tiny kingdom of Cornucopia, which had once been the envy of its neighbors for its magically rich soil, for the skill of its cheesemakers, winemakers, and pastry chefs, and for the happiness of its people, had changed almost beyond recognition.

True, Chouxville was carrying on more or less as it always had. Spittleworth didn’t want the king to notice that anything had changed, so he spent plenty of gold in the capital to keep things running as they always had, especially in the City-Within-The-City. Up in the northern cities, though, people were struggling. More and more businesses — shops, taverns, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, farms, and vineyards — were closing down. The Ickabog tax was pushing people into poverty, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, everyone feared being the next to receive a visit from the Ickabog — or whatever it was that broke down doors and left monsterlike tracks around houses and farms.

People who voiced doubts about whether the Ickabog was really behind these attacks were usually next to receive a visit from the Dark Footers. That was the name Spittleworth and Roach had given to the squads of men who murdered unbelievers in the night, leaving footprints around their victims’ houses.

Occasionally, though, the Ickabog doubters lived in the middle of a city, where it was difficult to fake an attack without the neighbors seeing. In this case, Spittleworth would hold a trial, and by threatening their families, as he had with Goodfellow and his friends, he made the accused agree that they’d committed treason.

Increasing numbers of trials meant Spittleworth had to oversee the building of more jails. He also needed more orphanages. Why did he need orphanages, you ask?

Well, in the first place, quite a number of parents were being killed or imprisoned. As everyone was now finding it difficult to feed their own families, they weren’t able to take in the abandoned children.

In the second place, poor people were dying of hunger. As parents usually fed their children rather than themselves, children were often the last of the family left alive.

And in the third place, some heartbroken, homeless families were giving up their children to orphanages, because it was the only way they could make sure their children would have food and shelter.

I wonder whether you remember the palace maid, Hetty, who so bravely warned Lady Eslanda that Captain Goodfellow and his friends were about to be executed?

Well, Hetty used Lady Eslanda’s gold to take a coach home to her father’s vineyard, just outside Jeroboam. A year later, she married a man called Hopkins, and gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.

However, the effort of paying the Ickabog tax was too much for the Hopkins family. They lost their little grocery store, and Hetty’s parents couldn’t help them, because shortly after losing their vineyard, they’d starved to death. Homeless now, their children crying with hunger, Hetty and her husband walked in desperation to Ma Grunter’s orphanage. The twins were torn, sobbing, from their mother’s arms. The door slammed, the bolts banged home, and poor Hetty Hopkins and her husband walked away, crying no less hard than their children, and praying that Ma Grunter would keep them alive.

Chapter 37

Daisy and the Moon

Ma Grunter’s orphanage had changed a great deal since Daisy Dovetail had been taken there in a sack. The broken-down hovel was now an enormous stone building, with bars on the windows, locks on every door, and space for a hundred children.

Daisy was still there, grown much taller and thinner, but still wearing the coveralls in which she’d been kidnapped. She’d sewn lengths on to the arms and legs so they still fit, and patched them carefully when they tore. They were the last thing she had of her home and her father, and so she kept wearing them, instead of making herself dresses out of the sacks the cabbages came in, as Martha and the other big girls did.

Daisy had held on to the idea that her father was still alive for several long years after her kidnap. She was a clever girl, and had always known her father didn’t believe in the Ickabog, so she forced herself to believe that he was in a cell somewhere, looking up through the barred window at the same moon she watched every night, before she fell asleep.

Then one night, in her sixth year at Ma Grunter’s, after tucking the Hopkins twins in for the night, and promising them they’d see their mummy and daddy again soon, Daisy lay down beside Martha and looked up at the pale gold disc in the sky as usual, and realized she no longer believed her father was alive. That hope had left her heart like a bird fleeing a ransacked nest, and though tears leaked out of her eyes, she told herself that her father was in a better place now, up there in the glorious heavens with her mother. She tried to find comfort in the idea that, being no longer earthbound, her parents could live anywhere, including in her own heart, and that she must keep their memories alive inside her, like a flame. Still, it was hard to have parents who lived inside you, when all you really wanted was for them to come back, and hug you.

Unlike many of the orphanage children, Daisy retained a clear memory of her parents. The memory of their love sustained her, and every day she helped look after the little ones in the orphanage, and made sure they had the hugs and kindness she was missing herself.

Yet it wasn’t only the thought of her mother and father that enabled Daisy to carry on. She had a strange feeling that she was meant to do something important — something that would change not only her own life, but the fortunes of Cornucopia. She’d never told anyone about this strange feeling, not even her best friend, Martha, yet it was a source of strength. Her chance, Daisy felt sure, would come.

Chapter 38

Lord Spittleworth Comes to Call

Ma Grunter was one of the few Cornucopians who’d grown richer and richer in the last few years. She’d crammed her hovel with children and babies until the place was at bursting point, then demanded gold from the two lords who now ruled the kingdom, to enlarge her tumbledown house. These days the orphanage was a thriving business, which meant that Ma Grunter was able to dine on delicacies that only the richest could afford. Most of her gold paid for bottles of finest Jeroboam wine, and I’m sorry to say that when drunk, Ma Grunter was very cruel indeed. The children inside the orphanage sported many cuts and bruises, because of Ma Grunter’s drunken temper.

Some of her charges didn’t last long on a diet of cabbage soup and cruelty. While endless hungry children poured in at the front door, a little cemetery at the back of the building became fuller and fuller. Ma Grunter didn’t care. All the Johns and Janes of the orphanage were alike to her, their faces pale and pinched, their only worth the gold she got for taking them in.

But in the seventh year of Lord Spittleworth’s rule over Cornucopia, when he received yet another request for gold from Ma Grunter’s orphanage, the Chief Advisor decided to go and inspect the place, before he gave the old woman more funds. Ma Grunter dressed up in her best black silk dress to greet his lordship, and was careful not to let him smell wine on her breath.

“Poor little mites, ain’t they, Your Lordship?” she asked him, as he looked around at all the thin, pale children, with his scented handkerchief held to his nostrils. Ma Grunter stooped down to pick up one tiny Marshlander, whose belly was swollen from hunger. “You see ’ow much they needs Your Lordship’s ’elp.”

“Yes, yes, clearly,” said Spittleworth, his handkerchief clamped to his face. He didn’t like children, especially children as dirty as these, but he knew many Cornucopians were stupidly fond of brats, so it was a bad idea to let too many of them die. “Very well, further funds are approved, Ma Grunter.”

As he turned to leave, the lord noticed a pale girl standing beside the door, holding a baby in each arm. She wore patched coveralls which had been let out and lengthened. There was something about the girl that set her apart from the other children. Spittleworth even had the strange notion that he’d seen somebody like her before. Unlike the other brats, she didn’t seem at all impressed by his sweeping Chief Advisor’s robes, nor of the jangling medals he’d awarded himself for being Regimental Colonel of the Ickabog Defense Brigade.

“What’s your name, girl?” Spittleworth asked, halting beside Daisy, and lowering his scented handkerchief.

“Jane, my lord. We’re all called Jane here, you know,” said Daisy, examining Spittleworth with cool, serious eyes. She remembered him from the palace courtyard where she’d once played, how he and Flapoon would scare the children into silence as they walked past, scowling.

“Why don’t you curtsy? I am the king’s Chief Advisor.”

“A Chief Advisor isn’t a king,” said the girl.

“What’s that she’s saying?” croaked Ma Grunter, hobbling over to see that Daisy wasn’t making trouble. Of all the children in her orphanage, Daisy Dovetail was the one Ma Grunter liked least. The girl’s spirit had never quite been broken, although Ma Grunter had tried her hardest to do it. “What are you saying, Ugly Jane?” she asked. Daisy wasn’t ugly in the slightest, but this name was one of the ways Ma Grunter tried to break her spirit.

“She’s explaining why she doesn’t curtsy to me,” said Spittleworth, still staring into Daisy’s dark eyes, and wondering where he’d seen them before.

In fact, he’d seen them in the face of the carpenter he visited regularly in the dungeon, but as Mr. Dovetail was now quite insane, with long white hair and beard, and this girl looked intelligent and calm, Spittleworth didn’t make the connection between them.

“Ugly Jane’s always been impertinent,” said Ma Grunter, inwardly vowing to punish Daisy as soon as Lord Spittleworth had gone. “One of these days I’ll turn her out, my lord, and she can see how she likes begging on the streets, instead of sheltering under my roof and eating my food.”

“How I’d miss cabbage soup,” said Daisy, in a cold, hard voice. “Did you know that’s what we eat here, my lord? Cabbage soup, three times a day?”

“Very nourishing, I’m sure,” said Lord Spittleworth.

“Though, sometimes, as a special treat,” said Daisy, “we get Orphanage Cakes. Do you know what those are, my lord?”

“No,” said Spittleworth, against his will. There was something about this girl . . . What was it?

“They’re made of spoiled ingredients,” said Daisy, her dark eyes boring into his. “Bad eggs, moldy flour, scraps of things that have been in the cupboard too long . . . People haven’t got any other food to spare for us, so they mix up the things they don’t want and leave them on the front steps. Sometimes the Orphanage Cakes make the children sick, but they eat them anyway, because they’re so hungry.”

Spittleworth wasn’t really listening to Daisy’s words, but to her accent. Though she’d now spent so long in Jeroboam, her voice still carried traces of Chouxville.

“Where do you come from, girl?” he asked.

The other children had fallen silent now, all of them watching the lord talking to Daisy. Though Ma Grunter hated her, Daisy was a great favorite among the younger children, because she protected them from Ma Grunter and Basher John, and never stole their dry crusts, unlike some of the other big children. She’d also been known to sneak them bread and cheese from Ma Grunter’s private stores, although that was a risky business, and sometimes led to Daisy being beaten by Basher John.

“I come from Cornucopia, my lord,” said Daisy. “You might have heard of it. It’s a country that used to exist, where nobody was ever poor or hungry.”

“That’s enough,” snarled Lord Spittleworth, and, turning to Ma Grunter he said, “I agree with you, madam. This child seems ungrateful for your kindness. Perhaps she ought to be left to fend for herself, out in the world.”

With that, Lord Spittleworth swept out of the orphanage, slamming the door behind him. As soon as he had gone, Ma Grunter swung her cane at Daisy, but long practice enabled Daisy to duck out of harm’s way. The old woman shuffled away, swishing her cane before her, making all the little ones scatter, then slammed the door of her comfortable parlor behind her. The children heard the popping of a cork.

Later, after they’d climbed into their neighboring beds that night, Martha suddenly said to Daisy:

“You know, Daisy, it isn’t true, what you said to the Chief Advisor.”

“Which bit, Martha?” whispered Daisy.

“It isn’t true that everyone was well fed and happy in the old days. My family never had enough in the Marshlands.”

“I’m sorry,” said Daisy quietly. “I forgot.”

“Of course,” sighed the sleepy Martha, “the Ickabog kept stealing our sheep.”

Daisy wriggled deeper under her thin blanket, trying to keep warm. In all their time together, she’d never managed to convince Martha that the Ickabog wasn’t real. Tonight, though, Daisy wished that she too believed in a monster in the marsh, rather than in the human wickedness she’d seen staring out of Lord Spittleworth’s eyes.

Chapter 39

Bert and the Ickabog Defence Brigade

We now return to Chouxville, where some important things are about to happen.

I’m sure you remember the day of Major Beamish’s funeral, when little Bert returned home, smashed apart his Ickabog toy with the poker, and vowed that when he grew up, he’d hunt down the Ickabog and take revenge upon the monster that killed his father.

Well, Bert was about to turn fifteen. This might not seem very old to you, but in those days it was big enough to become a soldier, and Bert had heard that the Brigade was expanding. So one Monday morning, without telling his mother what he was planning, Bert set off from their little cottage at the usual time, but instead of going to school, he stuffed his schoolbooks into the garden hedge where he could retrieve them later, then headed for the palace, where he intended to apply to join the Brigade. Under his shirt, for luck, he wore the silver medal his father had won for outstanding bravery against the Ickabog.

Bert hadn’t gone far when he saw a commotion ahead of him in the road. A small crowd was clustered around a mail coach. As he was far too busy trying to think of good answers to the questions Major Roach was sure to ask him, Bert walked past the mail coach without paying much attention.

What Bert didn’t realize was that the arrival of that mail coach was going to have some very important consequences, which would send him on a dangerous adventure. Let’s allow Bert to walk on without us for a moment or two, so I can tell you about the coach.

Ever since Lady Eslanda had informed King Fred that Cornucopia was unhappy about the Ickabog tax, Spittleworth and Flapoon had taken steps to make sure he never heard news from outside the capital again. As Chouxville remained quite rich and bustling, the king, who never left the capital anymore, assumed the rest of the country must be the same. In fact, the other Cornucopian cities were all full of beggars and boarded-up shops, because the two lords and Roach had stolen so much gold from the people. To ensure the king never got wind of all this, Lord Spittleworth, who read all the king’s letters in any case, had hired gangs of highwaymen lately to stop any letters entering Chouxville. The only people who knew this were Major Roach, because he’d hired the highwaymen, and Cankerby the footman, who’d been lurking outside the Guard’s Room door when the plan was hatched.

Spittleworth’s plan had worked well so far, but today, just before dawn, some of the highwaymen had bungled the job. They’d ambushed the coach as usual, dragging the poor driver from his seat, but before they could steal the mail sacks, the frightened horses had bolted. When the highwaymen fired their guns after the horses they merely galloped all the faster, so that the mail coach soon entered Chouxville, where it careered through the streets, finally coming to rest in the City-Within-The-City. There a blacksmith succeeded in seizing the reins and bringing the horses to a halt. Soon, the servants of the king were tearing open long-awaited letters from their families in the north. We’ll find out more about those letters later, because it’s now time to rejoin Bert, who’d just reached the palace gates.

“Please,” Bert said to the guard, “I want to join the Ickabog Defense Brigade.”

The guard took Bert’s name and told him to wait, then carried the message to Major Roach. However, when he reached the door of the Guard’s Room, the soldier paused, because he could hear shouting. He knocked, and the voices fell silent at once.

“Enter!” barked Roach.

The guard obeyed, and found himself face-to-face with three men: Major Roach, who looked extremely angry, Lord Flapoon, whose face was scarlet above his striped silk dressing gown, and Cankerby the footman, who, with his usual good timing, had been walking to work when the mail coach came galloping into town, and had hastened to tell Flapoon that letters had managed to make their way past the highwaymen. On hearing this news, Flapoon had stormed downstairs from his bedroom into the Guard’s Room to blame Roach for the highwaymen’s failure, and a shouting match erupted. Neither man wanted to be blamed by Spittleworth when he returned from his inspection of Ma Grunter’s, and heard what had happened.

“Major,” said the soldier, saluting both men, “there’s a boy at the gate, sir, name of Bert Beamish. Wants to know if he can join the Ickabog Defense Brigade.”

“Tell him to go away,” barked Flapoon. “We’re busy!”

“Do not tell the Beamish boy to go away!” snapped Roach. “Bring him to me immediately. Cankerby, leave us!”

“I was hoping,” began Cankerby, in his weaselly way, “that you gentlemen might want to reward me for —”

“Any idiot can see a mail coach speed past them!” said Flapoon. “If you’d wanted a reward, you should’ve hopped on board and driven it straight back out of the city again!”

So the disappointed footman slunk out, and the guard went to fetch Bert.

“What are you bothering with this boy for?” Flapoon demanded of Roach, once they were alone. “We have to solve this problem of the mail!”

“He isn’t just any boy,” said Roach. “He’s the son of a national hero. You remember Major Beamish, my lord. You shot him.”

“All right, all right, there’s no need to go on about it,” said Flapoon irritably. “We’ve all made a tidy bit of gold out of it, haven’t we? What do you suppose his son wants — compensation?”

But before Major Roach could answer, in walked Bert, looking nervous and eager.

“Good morning, Beamish,” said Major Roach, who’d known Bert a long time, because of his friendship with Roderick. “What can I do for you?”

“Please, major,” said Bert, “please, I want to join the Ickabog Defense Brigade. I heard you’re needing more men.”

“Ah,” said Major Roach. “I see. And what makes you want to do that?”

“I want to kill the monster that killed my father,” said Bert.

There was a short silence, in which Major Roach wished he was as good as Lord Spittleworth at thinking up lies and excuses. He glanced toward Lord Flapoon for help, but none came, although Roach could tell that Flapoon too had spotted the danger. The last thing the Ickabog Defense Brigade needed was somebody who actually wanted to find an Ickabog.

“There are tests,” said Roach, playing for time. “We don’t let just anybody join. Can you ride?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said Bert truthfully. “I taught myself.”

“Can you use a sword?”

“I’m sure I could pick it up fast enough,” said Bert.

“Can you shoot?”

“Yes, sir, I can hit a bottle from the end of the paddock!”

“Hmm,” said Roach. “Yes. But the problem is, Beamish — you see, the problem is, you might be too —”

“Foolish,” said Flapoon cruelly. He really wanted this boy gone, so that he and Roach could think up a solution to this problem of the mail coach.

Bert’s face flooded with color. “Wh-what?”

“Your schoolmistress told me,” lied Flapoon. He’d never spoken to the schoolmistress in his life. “She says you’re a bit of a dunce. Nothing that should hold you back in any line of work other than soldiering, but dangerous to have a dunce on the battlefield.”

“My — my marks are all right,” said poor Bert, trying to stop his voice from shaking. “Miss Monk never told me she thinks I’m —”

“Of course she hasn’t told you,” said Flapoon. “Only a fool would think a nice woman like that would tell a fool he’s a fool. Learn to make pastries like your mother, boy, and forget about the Ickabog, that’s my advice.”

Bert was horribly afraid his eyes had filled with tears. Scowling in his effort to keep from crying, he said:

“I — I’d welcome the chance to prove I’m not — not a fool, major.”

Roach wouldn’t have put matters as rudely as Flapoon, but after all, the important thing was to stop the boy joining the Brigade, so Roach said:

“Sorry, Beamish, but I don’t think you’re cut out for soldiering. However, as Lord Flapoon suggests —”

“Thank you for your time, major,” said Bert in a rush. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

And with a low bow, he left the Guard’s Room.

Once outside, Bert broke into a run. He felt very small and humiliated. The last thing he wanted to do was return to school, not after hearing what his teacher really thought of him. So, assuming that his mother would have left for work in the palace kitchens, he ran all the way home, barely noticing the knots of people now standing on street corners, talking about the letters in their hands.

When Bert entered the house, he found Mrs. Beamish was still standing in the kitchen, staring at a letter of her own.

“Bert!” she said, startled by the sudden appearance of her son. “What are you doing home?”

“Toothache,” Bert invented on the spot.

“Oh, you poor thing . . . Bert, we’ve had a letter from Cousin Harold,” said Mrs. Beamish, holding it up. “He says he’s worried he’s going to lose his tavern — that marvelous inn he built up from nothing! He’s written to ask me whether I might be able to get him a job working for the king . . . I don’t understand what can have happened. Harold says he and the family are actually going hungry!”

“It’ll be the Ickabog, won’t it,” said Bert. “Jeroboam’s the city nearest the Marshlands. People have probably stopped visiting taverns at night, in case they meet the monster on the way!”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Beamish, looking troubled, “yes, maybe that’s why . . . Gracious me, I’m late for work!” Setting Cousin Harold’s letter down on the table, she said, “Put some oil of cloves on that tooth, love,” and, giving her son a quick kiss, she hurried out of the door.

Once his mother had gone, Bert went and flung himself facedown on his bed, and sobbed with rage and disappointment.

Meanwhile, anxiety and anger were spreading through the streets of the capital. Chouxville had at last found out that their relatives in the north were so poor they were starving and homeless. When Lord Spittleworth returned to the city that night, he found serious trouble brewing.

Chapter 40

Bert Finds a Clue

When he heard that a mail coach had reached the heart of Chouxville, Spittleworth seized a heavy wooden chair and threw it at Major Roach’s head. Roach, who was far stronger than Spittleworth, batted the chair aside easily enough, but his hand flew to the hilt of his sword and for a few seconds, the two men stood with teeth bared in the gloom of the Guard’s Room, while Flapoon and the spies watched, openmouthed.

“You will send a party of Dark Footers to the outskirts of Chouxville tonight,” Spittleworth ordered Roach. “You will fake a raid — we must terrify these people. They must understand that the tax is necessary, that any hardship their relatives are suffering is the fault of the Ickabog, not mine or the king’s. Go, and undo the harm you’ve done!”

The furious major left the room, privately thinking of all the ways he’d like to hurt Spittleworth, if given ten minutes alone with him.

“And you,” said Spittleworth to his spies, “will report to me tomorrow whether Major Roach has done his work well enough. If the city’s still whispering about starvation and penniless relations, well then, we’ll have to see how Major Roach likes the dungeons.”

So a group of Major Roach’s Dark Footers waited until the capital slept, then set out for the first time to make Chouxville believe that the Ickabog had come calling. They selected a cottage on the very edge of town that stood a little apart from its neighbors. The men who were most skilful at breaking into houses entered the cottage, where, it pains me to say, they killed the little old lady who lived there, who, you might like to know, had written several beautifully illustrated books about the fish that lived in the River Fluma. Once her body had been carried away to be buried somewhere remote, a group of men pressed four of Mr. Dovetail’s finest carved feet into the ground around the fish expert’s house, smashed up her furniture and her fish tanks, and let her specimens die, gasping, on the floor.

Next morning, Spittleworth’s spies reported that the plan seemed to have worked. Chouxville, so long avoided by the fearsome Ickabog, had at last been attacked. As the Dark Footers had now perfected the art of making the tracks look natural, and breaking down doors as though a gigantic monster had smashed them in, and using pointed metal tools to mimic tooth marks on wood, the Chouxville residents who flocked to see the poor old woman’s house were entirely taken in.

Young Bert Beamish stayed at the scene even after his mother had left to start cooking their supper. He was treasuring up every detail of the beast’s footprints and its fang marks, the better to imagine what it would look like when at last he came face-to-face with the evil creature that had killed his father, because he’d by no means abandoned his ambition to avenge him.

When Bert was sure he had every detail of the monster’s prints memorized, he walked home, burning with fury, and shut himself up in his bedroom, where he took down his father’s Medal for Outstanding Bravery Against the Deadly Ickabog, and the tiny medal the king had given him after he’d fought Daisy Dovetail. The smaller medal made Bert feel sad these days. He’d never had a friend as good as Daisy since she’d left for Pluritania, but at least, he thought, she and her father were beyond the reach of the evil Ickabog.

Angry tears started in Bert’s eyes. He’d so wanted to join the Ickabog Defense Brigade! He knew he’d be a good solider. He wouldn’t even care if he died in the fight! Of course, it would be extremely upsetting for his mother if the Ickabog killed her son as well as her husband, but on the other hand, Bert would be a hero, like his father!

Lost in thoughts of revenge and glory, Bert made to replace the two medals on the mantelpiece when the smaller of them slipped through his fingers and rolled away under the bed. Bert lay down and groped for it, but couldn’t reach. He wriggled farther under his bed and found it at last in the farthermost, dustiest corner, along with something sharp that seemed to have been there a very long time, because it was cobwebby.

Bert pulled both the medal and the sharp thing out from the corner and sat up, now rather dusty himself, to examine the unknown object.

By the light of his candle, he saw a tiny, perfectly carved Ickabog foot, the last remaining piece of the toy carved so long ago by Mr. Dovetail. Bert had thought he’d burned up every last bit of the toy, but this foot must have flown under the bed when he’d smashed up the rest of the Ickabog with his poker.

He was on the point of tossing the foot onto his bedroom fire when Bert suddenly changed his mind, and began to examine it more closely.

Chapter 41

Mrs Beamish’s Plan


“Mother,” said Bert.

Mrs. Beamish had been sitting at the kitchen table, mending a hole in one of Bert’s sweaters and pausing occasionally to wipe her eyes. The Ickabog’s attack on their Chouxville neighbor had brought back awful memories of the death of Major Beamish, and she’d just been thinking about that night when she’d kissed his poor, cold hand in the Blue Parlor at the palace, while the rest of him was hidden by the Cornucopian flag.

“Mother, look,” said Bert, in a strange voice, and he set down in front of her the tiny, clawed wooden foot he’d found beneath his bed.

Mrs. Beamish picked it up and examined it through the spectacles she wore when sewing by candlelight.

“Why, it’s part of that little toy you used to have,” said Bert’s mother. “Your toy Icka —”

But Mrs. Beamish didn’t finish the word. Still staring at the carved foot, she remembered the monstrous footprints she and Bert had seen earlier that day, in the soft ground around the house of the vanished old lady. Although much, much bigger, the shape of that foot was identical to this, as were the angle of the toes, the scales, and the long claws.

For several minutes, the only sound was the sputtering of the candle, as Mrs. Beamish turned the little wooden foot in her trembling fingers.

It was as though a door had flown open inside her mind, a door she’d been keeping blocked and barricaded for a very long time. Ever since her husband had died, Mrs. Beamish had refused to admit a single doubt or suspicion about the Ickabog. Loyal to the king, trusting in Spittleworth, she’d believed the people who claimed the Ickabog wasn’t real were traitors.

But now the uncomfortable memories she’d tried to shut out came flooding in upon her. She remembered telling the scullery maid all about Mr. Dovetail’s treasonous speech about the Ickabog, and turning to see Cankerby the footman listening in the shadows. She remembered how soon afterward the Dovetails had disappeared. She remembered the little girl who’d been jumping rope wearing one of Daisy Dovetail’s old dresses, and the bandalore she’d claimed her brother had been given on the same day. She thought of her cousin Harold starving, and the strange absence of mail from the north that she and all her neighbors had noticed over the past few months. She thought too of the sudden disappearance of Lady Eslanda, which many had puzzled over. These, and a hundred other odd happenings added themselves together in Mrs. Beamish’s mind as she gazed at the little wooden foot, and together they formed a monstrous outline that frightened her far more than the Ickabog. What, she asked herself, had really happened to her husband up on that marsh? Why hadn’t she been allowed to look beneath the Cornucopian flag covering his body? Horrible thoughts now tumbled on top of one another as Mrs. Beamish turned to look at her son, and saw her suspicions reflected in his face.

“The king can’t know,” she whispered. “He can’t. He’s a good man.”

Even if everything else she’d believed might be wrong, Mrs. Beamish couldn’t bear to give up her belief in the goodness of King Fred the Fearless. He’d always been so kind to her and Bert.

Mrs. Beamish stood up, the little wooden foot clutched tightly in her hand, and laid down Bert’s half-darned sweater.

“I’m going to see the king,” she said, with a more determined look on her face than Bert had ever seen there.

“Now?” he asked, looking out into the darkness.

“Tonight,” said Mrs. Beamish, “while there’s a chance neither of those lords are with him. He’ll see me. He’s always liked me.”

“I want to come, too,” said Bert, because a strange feeling of foreboding had come over him.

“No,” said Mrs. Beamish. She approached her son, put her hand on his shoulder, and looked up into his face. “Listen to me, Bert. If I’m not back from the palace in one hour, you’re to leave Chouxville. Head north to Jeroboam, find Cousin Harold, and tell him everything.”

“But —” said Bert, suddenly afraid.

“Promise me you’ll go if I’m not back in an hour,” said Mrs. Beamish fiercely.

“I . . . I will,” said Bert, but the boy who’d earlier imagined dying a heroic death, and not caring how much it upset his mother, was suddenly terrified. “Mother —”

She hugged him briefly. “You’re a clever boy. Never forget, you’re a soldier’s son, as well as a pastry chef’s.”

Mrs. Beamish walked quickly to the door and slipped on her shoes. After one last smile at Bert, she slipped out into the night.

Chapter 42

Behind the Curtain

The kitchens were dark and empty when Mrs. Beamish let herself in from the courtyard. Moving on tiptoe, she peeked around corners as she went, because she knew how Cankerby the footman liked to lurk in the shadows. Slowly and carefully, Mrs. Beamish made her way toward the king’s private apartments, holding the little wooden foot so tightly in her hand that its sharp claws dug into her palm.

At last she reached the scarlet-carpeted corridor leading to Fred’s rooms. Now she could hear laughter coming from behind the doors. Mrs. Beamish rightly guessed that Fred hadn’t been told about the Ickabog attack on the outskirts of Chouxville, because she was sure he wouldn’t be laughing if he had. However, somebody was clearly with the king, and she wanted to see Fred alone. As she stood there, wondering what was best to do, the door ahead opened.

With a gasp, Mrs. Beamish dived behind a long velvet curtain and tried to stop it swaying. Spittleworth and Flapoon were laughing and joking with the king as they bade him good night.

“Excellent joke, Your Majesty, why, I think I’ve split my pantaloons!” guffawed Flapoon.

“We shall have to rechristen you King Fred the Funny, sire!” chuckled Spittleworth.

Mrs. Beamish held her breath and tried to suck in her tummy. She heard the sound of Fred’s door closing. The two lords stopped laughing at once.

“Blithering idiot,” said Flapoon in a low voice.

“I’ve met cleverer blobs of Kurdsburg cheese,” muttered Spittleworth.

“Can’t you take a turn entertaining him tomorrow?” grumbled Flapoon.

“I’ll be busy with the tax collectors until three,” said Spittleworth. “But if —”

Both lords stopped talking. Their footsteps also ceased. Mrs. Beamish was still holding her breath, her eyes closed, praying they hadn’t noticed the bulge in the curtain.

“Well, good night, Spittleworth,” said Flapoon’s voice.

“Yes, sleep well, Flapoon,” said Spittleworth.

Very softly, her heart beating very fast, Mrs. Beamish let out her breath. It was all right. The two lords were going to bed . . . and yet she couldn’t hear footsteps . . .

Then, so suddenly she had no time to draw breath into her lungs, the curtain was ripped back. Before she could cry out, Flapoon’s large hand had closed over her mouth and Spittleworth had seized her wrists. The two lords dragged Mrs. Beamish out of her hiding place and down the nearest set of stairs, and while she struggled and tried to shout, she couldn’t make a sound through Flapoon’s thick fingers, nor could she wriggle free. At last, they pulled her into that same Blue Parlor where she’d once kissed her dead husband’s hand.

“Do not scream,” Spittleworth warned her, pulling out a short dagger he’d taken to wearing, even inside the palace, “or the king will need a new pastry chef.”

He gestured to Flapoon to take his hand away from Mrs. Beamish’s mouth. The first thing she did was take a gasp of breath, because she felt like fainting.

“You made an outsized lump in that curtain, cook,” sneered Spittleworth. “Exactly what were you doing, lurking there, so close to the king, after the kitchens have closed?”

Mrs. Beamish might have made up some silly lie, of course. She could have pretended she wanted to ask King Fred what kinds of cakes he’d like her to make tomorrow, but she knew the two lords wouldn’t believe her. So instead she held out the hand clutching the Ickabog foot, and opened her fingers.

“I know,” she said quietly, “what you’re up to.”

The two lords moved closer and peered down at her palm, and the perfect, tiny replica of the huge feet the Dark Footers were using. Spittleworth and Flapoon looked at each other, and then at Mrs. Beamish, and all the pastry chef could think, when she saw their expressions, was, Run, Bert — run!

Chapter 43

Bert and the Guard

The candle on the table beside Bert burned slowly downward while he watched the minute hand creep around the clock face. He told himself his mother would definitely come home soon. She’d walk in any minute, pick up his half-darned sweater as though she’d never dropped it, and tell him what had happened when she saw the king.

Then the minute hand seemed to speed up, when Bert would have done anything to make it slow down. Four minutes. Three minutes. Two minutes left.

Bert got to his feet and moved to the window. He looked up and down the dark street. There was no sign of his mother returning.
But wait! His heart leapt: he’d seen movement on the corner! For a few shining seconds, Bert was sure he was about to see Mrs. Beamish step into the patch of moonlight, smiling as she caught sight of his anxious face at the window.

And then his heart seemed to drop like a brick into his stomach. It wasn’t Mrs. Beamish who was approaching, but Major Roach, accompanied by four large members of the Ickabog Defense Brigade, all carrying torches.

Bert leapt back from the window, snatched up the sweater on the table, and sprinted through to his bedroom. He grabbed his shoes and his father’s medal, forced up the bedroom window, clambered out of it, then gently slid the window closed from outside. As he dropped down into the vegetable patch, he heard Major Roach banging on the front door, then a rough voice said:

“I’ll check the back.”

Bert threw himself flat in the earth behind a row of beetroots, smeared his fair hair with soil, and lay very still in the darkness.

Through his closed eyelids he saw flickering light. A soldier held his torch high in hopes of seeing Bert running away across other people’s gardens. The soldier didn’t notice the earthy shape of Bert concealed behind the beetroot leaves, which threw long, swaying shadows.

“Well, he hasn’t got out this way,” shouted the soldier.

There was a crash, and Bert knew Roach had broken down the front door. He listened to the soldiers opening cupboards and wardrobes. Bert remained utterly still in the earth, because torchlight was still shining through his closed eyelids.

“Maybe he cleared out before his mother went to the palace?”

“Well, we’ve got to find him,” growled the familiar voice of Major Roach. “He’s the son of the Ickabog’s first victim. If Bert Beamish starts telling the world the monster’s a lie, people will listen. Spread out and search, he can’t have gotten far. And if you catch him,” said Roach, as his men’s heavy footsteps sounded across the Beamishes’ wooden floorboards, “kill him. We’ll work out our stories later.”

Bert lay completely flat and still, listening to the men running away up and down the street, and then a cool part of Bert’s brain said:

“Move.”

He put his father’s medal around his neck, pulled on the half-darned sweater, and snatched up his shoes, then began to crawl through the earth until he reached a neighboring fence, where he tunneled out enough dirt to let him wriggle beneath it. He kept crawling until he reached a cobbled street, but he could still hear the soldiers’ voices echoing through the night as they banged on doors, demanding to search houses, asking people whether they’d seen Bert Beamish, the pastry chef’s son. He heard himself described as a dangerous traitor.

Bert took another handful of earth and smeared it over his face. Then he got to his feet and, crouching low, darted into a dark doorway across the street. A soldier ran past, but Bert was now so filthy that he was well camouflaged against the dark door, and the man noticed nothing. When the soldier had disappeared, Bert ran barefooted from doorway to doorway, carrying his shoes, hiding in shadowy alcoves and edging ever closer to the City-Within-The-City gates. However, when he drew near, he saw a guard keeping watch, and before Bert could think up a plan, he had to slide behind a statue of King Richard the Righteous, because Roach and another soldier were approaching.

“Have you seen Bert Beamish?” they shouted at the guard.

“What, the pastry chef’s son?” asked the man.

Roach seized the front of the man’s uniform and shook him as a terrier shakes a rabbit. “Of course, the pastry chef’s son! Have you let him through these gates? Tell me!”

“No, I haven’t,” said the guard, “and what’s the boy done, to have you lot chasing him?”

“He’s a traitor!” snarled Roach. “And I’ll personally shoot anyone who helps him, understood?”

“Understood,” said the guard. Roach released the man and he and his companion ran off again, their torches casting swinging pools of light on all the walls, until they were swallowed once more by the darkness.

Bert watched the guard straighten his uniform and shake his head. Bert hesitated, then, knowing this might cost him his life, crept out of his hiding place. So thoroughly had Bert camouflaged himself with all the earth, that the guard didn’t realize anyone was beside him until he saw the whites of Bert’s eyes in the moonlight, and let out a yelp of terror.

“Please,” whispered Bert. “Please . . . don’t give me away. I need to get out of here.”

From beneath his sweater, he pulled his father’s heavy silver medal, brushed earth from the surface, and showed the guard.

“I’ll give you this — it’s real silver! — if you just let me out through the gates, and don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me. I’m not a traitor,” said Bert. “I haven’t betrayed anyone, I swear.”

The guard was an older man, with a stiff gray beard. He considered the earth-covered Bert for a moment or two before saying:

“Keep your medal, son.”

He opened the gate just wide enough for Bert to slide through.

“Thank you!” gasped Bert.

“Stick to the back roads,” advised the guard. “And trust no one. Good luck.”

Chapter 44

Mrs Beamish Fights Back

While Bert was slipping out of the city gates, Mrs. Beamish was being shunted into a cell in the dungeons by Lord Spittleworth. A cracked, reedy voice nearby sang the national anthem in time to hammer blows.

“Be quiet!” bellowed Spittleworth toward the wall. The singing stopped.

“When I finish this foot, my lord,” said the broken voice, “will you let me out to see my daughter?”

“Yes, yes, you’ll see your daughter,” Spittleworth called back, rolling his eyes. “Now, be quiet, because I want to talk to your neighbor!”

“Well, before you get started, my lord,” said Mrs. Beamish, “I’ve got a few things I want to say to you.”

Spittleworth and Flapoon stared at the plump little woman. Never had they placed anyone in the dungeons who looked so proud and unconcerned at being slung in this dank, cold place. Spittleworth was reminded of Lady Eslanda, who was still shut up in his library, and still refusing to marry him. He’d never imagined a cook could look as haughty as a lady.

“Firstly,” said Mrs. Beamish, “if you kill me, the king will know. He’ll notice I’m not making his pastries. He can taste the difference.”

“That’s true,” said Spittleworth, with a cruel smile. “However, as the king will believe that you’ve been killed by the Ickabog, he’ll simply have to get used to his pastries tasting different, won’t he?”

“My house lies in the shadow of the palace walls,” countered Mrs. Beamish. “It will be impossible to fake an Ickabog attack there without waking up a hundred witnesses.”

“That’s easily solved,” said Spittleworth. “We’ll say you were foolish enough to take a nighttime stroll down by the banks of the River Fluma, where the Ickabog was having a drink.”

“Which might have worked,” said Mrs. Beamish, making up a story off the top of her head, “if I hadn’t left certain instructions, to be carried out if word gets out that I’ve been killed by the Ickabog.”

“What instructions, and whom have you given them to?” said Flapoon.

“Her son, I daresay,” said Spittleworth, “but he’ll soon be in our power. Make a note, Flapoon — we only kill the cook once we’ve killed her son.”

“In the meantime,” said Mrs. Beamish, pretending she hadn’t felt an icy stab of terror at the thought of Bert falling into Spittleworth’s hands, “you might as well equip this cell properly with a stove and all my regular implements, so I can keep making cakes for the king.”

“Yes . . . Why not?” said Spittleworth slowly. “We all enjoy your pastries, Mrs. Beamish. You may continue to cook for the king until your son is caught.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Beamish, “but I’m going to need assistance. I suggest I train up some of my fellow prisoners who can at least whisk the egg whites and line my baking trays.

“That will require you to feed the poor fellows a little more. I noticed as you marched me through here that some of them look like skeletons. I can’t have them eating all my raw ingredients because they’re starving.

“And lastly,” said Mrs. Beamish, giving her cell a sweeping glance, “I shall need a comfortable bed and some clean blankets if I’m to get enough sleep to produce cakes of the quality the king demands. It’s his birthday coming up, too. He’ll be expecting something very special.”

Spittleworth eyed this most surprising captive for a moment or two, then said:

“Doesn’t it alarm you, madam, to think that you and your child will soon be dead?”

“Oh, if there’s one thing you learn at cookery school,” said Mrs. Beamish, with a shrug, “burned crusts and soggy bases happen to the best of us. Roll up your sleeves and start something else, I say. No point moaning over what you can’t fix!”

As Spittleworth couldn’t think of a good retort to this, he beckoned to Flapoon and the two lords left the cell, the door clanging shut behind them.

As soon as they’d gone, Mrs. Beamish stopped pretending to be brave and dropped down onto the hard bed, which was the only piece of furniture in the cell. She was shaking all over and for a moment, she was afraid that she was going to have hysterics.

However, a woman didn’t rise to be in charge of the king’s kitchens, in a city of the finest pastry-makers on earth, without being able to manage her own nerves. Mrs. Beamish took a deep, steadying breath and then, hearing the reedy voice next door break into the national anthem again, pressed her ear to the wall, and began to listen for the place where the noise was coming into her cell. At last she found a crack near the ceiling. Standing on her bed, she called softly:

“Dan? Daniel Dovetail? I know that’s you. This is Bertha, Bertha Beamish!”

But the broken voice only continued to sing. Mrs. Beamish sank back down on her bed, wrapped her arms around herself, closed her eyes, and prayed with every part of her aching heart that wherever Bert was, he was safe.

Chapter 45

Bert in Jeroboam

At first, Bert didn’t realize that the whole of Cornucopia had been warned by Lord Spittleworth to watch out for him. Following the guard’s advice at the city gates, he kept to country lanes and back roads. He’d never been as far north as Jeroboam, but by roughly following the course of the River Fluma, he knew he must be traveling in the right direction.

Hair matted and shoes clogged with mud, he walked across plowed fields and slept in ditches. Not until he sneaked into Kurdsburg on the third night, to try and find something to eat, did he come face-to-face for the first time with a picture of himself on a Wanted poster, taped up in a cheesemonger’s window. Luckily, the drawing of a neat, smiling young man looked nothing like the reflection of the grubby tramp he saw staring out of the dark glass beside it. Nevertheless, it was a shock to see that there was a reward of one hundred Ducats on his head, dead or alive.

Bert hurried on through the dark streets, passing skinny dogs and boarded-up windows. Once or twice he came across other grubby, ragged people who were also foraging in bins. At last he managed to retrieve a lump of hard and slightly moldy cheese before anyone else could grab it. After taking a drink of rainwater from a barrel behind a disused dairy, he hurried back out of Kurdsburg and returned to the country roads.

All the time he walked, Bert’s thoughts kept scurrying back to his mother. They won’t kill her, he told himself, over and over again. They’ll never kill her. She’s the king’s favorite servant. They wouldn’t dare. He had to block the possibility of his mother’s death from his mind, because if he thought she’d gone, he knew he might not have the strength to get out of the next ditch he slept in.

Bert’s feet soon blistered, because he was walking miles out of his way to avoid meeting other people. The next night, he stole the last few rotting apples from an orchard, and the night after that, he took the carcass of a chicken from somebody’s dustbin, and gnawed off the last few scraps of meat. By the time he saw the dark gray outline of Jeroboam on the horizon, he’d had to steal a length of twine from a blacksmith’s yard, to use as a belt, because he’d lost so much weight that his trousers were falling down.
All through his journey, Bert told himself that if he could only find Cousin Harold, everything would be all right: he’d lay down his troubles at the feet of a grown-up, and Harold would sort everything out. Bert lurked outside the city walls until it was growing dark, then limped into the wine-making city, his blisters now hurting terribly, and headed for Harold’s tavern.

There were no lights in the window and when Bert drew near, he saw why. The doors and windows had all been boarded up. The tavern had gone out of business and Harold and his family seemed to have left.

“Please,” the desperate Bert asked a passing woman, “can you tell me where Harold’s gone? Harold, who used to own this tavern?”

“Harold?” said the woman. “Oh, he went south a week ago. He’s got relatives down in Chouxville. He’s hoping to get a job with the king.”

Stunned, Bert watched the woman walk away into the night. A chilly wind blew around him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw one of his own Wanted posters fluttering on a nearby lantern post. Exhausted, and with no idea what to do next, he imagined sitting down on this cold doorstep and simply waiting for the soldiers to find him.

It was then he felt the point of a sword at his back, and a voice in his ear said:

“Got you.”

Chapter 46

The Tale of Roderick Roach

You might think Bert would be terrified at the sound of these words, but believe it or not, the voice filled him with relief. He’d recognized it, you see. So instead of putting up his hands, or pleading for his life, he turned around, and found himself looking at Roderick Roach.

“What are you smiling about?” growled Roderick, staring into Bert’s filthy face.

“I know you’re not going to stab me, Roddy,” said Bert quietly.

Even though Roderick was the one holding the sword, Bert could tell the other boy was far more scared than he was. The shivering Roderick was wearing a coat over his pajamas and his feet were wrapped in bloodstained rags.

“Have you walked all the way from Chouxville like that?” asked Bert.

“That’s none of your business!” spat Roderick, trying to look fierce, though his teeth were chattering. “I’m taking you in, Beamish, you traitor!”

“No, you aren’t,” said Bert, and he pulled the sword out of Roderick’s hand. At that, Roderick burst into tears.

“Come on,” said Bert kindly, and he put his arm round Roderick’s shoulders and led him off down a side alley, away from the fluttering Wanted poster.

“Get off,” sobbed Roderick, shrugging away Bert’s arm. “Get off me! It’s all your fault!”

“What’s my fault?” asked Bert, as the two boys came to a halt beside some bins full of empty wine bottles.

“You ran away from my father!” said Roderick, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

“Well, of course I did,” said Bert reasonably. “He wanted to kill me.”

“But n-now he’s been — been killed!” sobbed Roderick.

“Major Roach is dead?” said Bert, taken aback. “How?”

“Sp-Spittleworth,” sobbed Roderick. “He c-came t-to our house with soldiers when n-nobody could find you. He was so angry Father hadn’t caught you — he grabbed a soldier’s gun . . . and he . . .”

Roderick sat down on a dustbin and wept. A cold wind blew down the alleyway. This, Bert thought, showed just how dangerous Spittleworth was. If he could shoot dead his faithful head of the Royal Guard, nobody was safe.

“How did you know I’d come to Jeroboam?” Bert asked.

“C-Cankerby from the palace told me. I gave him five Ducats. He remembered your mother talking about your cousin owning a tavern.”

“How many people d’you think Cankerby’s told?” asked Bert, now worried.

“Plenty, probably,” said Roderick, mopping his face with his pajama sleeve. “He’ll sell anyone information for gold.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” said Bert, getting angry. “You were about to sell me for a hundred Ducats!”

“I d-didn’t want the g-gold,” said Roderick. “It was for my m-mother and brothers. I thought I might be able to g-get them back if I turned you in. Spittleworth t-took them away. I escaped out of my bedroom window. That’s why I’m in my pajamas.”

“I escaped from my bedroom window, too,” said Bert. “But at least I had the sense to bring shoes. Come on, we’d better get out of here,” he added, pulling Roderick to his feet. “We’ll try and steal you some socks off a washing line on the way.”

But they’d taken barely a couple of steps when a man’s voice spoke from behind them.

“Hands up! You two are coming with me!”

Both boys raised their hands and turned round. A man with a dirty, mean face had just emerged from the shadows, and was pointing a rifle at them. He wasn’t in uniform and neither Bert nor Roderick recognized him, but Daisy Dovetail could have told them exactly who this was: Basher John, Ma Grunter’s deputy, now a full-grown man.

Basher John took a few steps closer, squinting from one boy to the other. “Yeah,” he said. “You two’ll do. Gimme that sword.”

With a rifle pointed at his chest, Bert had no choice but to hand it over. However, he wasn’t quite as scared as he might have been, because Bert — whatever Flapoon might have told him — was actually a very clever boy. This dirty-looking man didn’t seem to realize he’d just caught a fugitive worth one hundred gold Ducats. He seemed to have been looking for any two boys, though why, Bert couldn’t imagine. Roderick, on the other hand, had turned deathly pale. He knew Spittleworth had spies in every city, and was convinced they were both about to be handed over to the Chief Advisor, and that he, Roderick Roach, would be put to death for being in league with a traitor.

“Move,” said the blunt-faced man, gesturing them out of the alley with his rifle. With the gun at their backs, Bert and Roderick were forced away through the dark streets of Jeroboam until, finally, they reached the door of Ma Grunter’s orphanage.

Chapter 47

Down in the Dungeons

The kitchen workers in the palace were most surprised to hear from Lord Spittleworth that Mrs. Beamish had requested her own, separate kitchen, because she was so much more important than they were. Indeed, some of them were suspicious, because Mrs. Beamish had never been stuck up, in all the years they’d known her. However, as her cakes and pastries were still appearing regularly at the king’s table, they knew she was alive, wherever she was, and like many of their fellow countrymen, the servants decided it was safest not to ask questions.

Meanwhile, life in the palace dungeons had been utterly transformed. A stove had been fitted in Mrs. Beamish’s cell, her pots and pans had been brought down from the kitchens, and the prisoners in neighboring cells had been trained up to help her perform the different tasks that went into producing the featherlight pastries that made her the best baker in the kingdom. She demanded the doubling of the prisoners’ rations (to make sure they were strong enough to whisk and fold, to measure and weigh, to sift and pour) and a rat catcher to clean the place of vermin, and a servant to run between the cells, handing out different implements through the bars.

The heat from the stove dried out the damp walls. Delicious smells replaced the stench of mold and dank water. Mrs. Beamish insisted that each of the prisoners had to taste a finished cake, so that they understood the results of their efforts. Slowly, the dungeon started to be a place of activity, even of cheerfulness, and prisoners who’d been weak and starving before Mrs. Beamish arrived were gradually fattening up. In this way she kept busy, and tried to distract herself from her worries about Bert.

All the time the rest of the prisoners baked, Mr. Dovetail sang the national anthem, and kept carving giant Ickabog feet in the cell next door. His singing and banging had enraged the other prisoners before Mrs. Beamish arrived, but now she encouraged everyone to join in with him. The sound of all the prisoners singing the national anthem drowned out the perpetual noises of his hammer and chisel, and the best of it was that when Spittleworth ran down into the dungeons to tell them to stop making such a racket, Mrs. Beamish said innocently that surely it was treason, to stop people singing the national anthem? Spittleworth looked foolish at that, and all the prisoners bellowed with laughter. With a leap of joy, Mrs. Beamish thought she heard a weak, wheezy chuckle from the cell next door.

Mrs. Beamish might not have known much about madness, but she knew how to rescue things that seemed spoiled, like curdled sauces and falling soufflés. She believed Mr. Dovetail’s broken mind might yet be mended, if only he could be brought to understand that he wasn’t alone, and to remember who he was. And so every now and then Mrs. Beamish would suggest songs other than the national anthem, trying to jolt Mr. Dovetail’s poor mind into a different course, which might bring him back to himself.

And at last, to her amazement and joy, she heard him joining in with the Ickabog drinking song, which had been popular even in the days long before people thought the monster was real.

“I drank a single bottle and the Ickabog’s a lie,

I drank another bottle, and I thought I heard it sigh,

And now I’ve drunk another, I can see it slinking by,

The Ickabog is coming, so let’s drink before we die!”

Setting down the tray of cakes she’d just taken out of the stove, Mrs. Beamish jumped up onto her bed, and spoke softly through the crack high in the wall.

“Daniel Dovetail, I heard you singing that silly song. It’s Bertha Beamish here, your old friend. Remember me? We used to sing that a long time ago, when the children were tiny. My Bert, and your Daisy. D’you remember that, Dan?”

She waited for a response and in a little while, she thought she heard a sob.

You may think this strange, but Mrs. Beamish was glad to hear Mr. Dovetail cry, because tears can heal a mind, as well as laughter. And that night, and for many nights afterward, Mrs. Beamish talked softly to Mr. Dovetail through the crack in the wall, and after a while he began to talk back. Mrs. Beamish told Mr. Dovetail how terribly she regretted telling the kitchen maid what he’d said about the Ickabog, and Mr. Dovetail told her how wretched he’d felt, afterward, for suggesting that Major Beamish had fallen off his horse. And each promised the other that their child was alive, because they had to believe it, or die.

A freezing chill was now stealing into the dungeons through its one high, tiny, barred window. The prisoners could tell a hard winter was approaching, yet the dungeon had become a place of hope and healing. Mrs. Beamish demanded more blankets for all her helpers and kept her stove burning all night, determined that they would survive.

Chapter 48

Bert and Daisy Find Each Other

The chill of winter was felt in Ma Grunter’s orphanage too. Children in rags who are fed only on cabbage soup cannot withstand coughs and colds as easily as children who are well fed. The little cemetery at the back of the orphanage saw a steady stream of Johns and Janes who’d died for lack of food, and warmth, and love, and they were buried without anybody knowing their real names, although the other children mourned them.

The sudden spate of deaths was the reason Ma Grunter had sent Basher John out onto the streets of Jeroboam, to round up as many homeless children as he could find, to keep up her numbers. Inspectors came to visit three times a year to make sure she wasn’t lying about how many children were in her care. She preferred to take in older children, if possible, because they were hardier than the little ones.

The gold she received for each child had now made Ma Grunter’s private rooms in the orphanage some of the most luxurious in Cornucopia, with a blazing fire and deep velvet armchairs, thick silk rugs, and a bed with soft woolen blankets. Her table was always provided with the finest food and wine. The starving children caught whiffs of heaven as Baronstown pies and Kurdsburg cheeses passed into Ma Grunter’s apartment. She rarely left her rooms now except to greet the inspectors, leaving Basher John to manage the children.

Daisy Dovetail paid little attention to the two new boys when they first arrived. They were dirty and ragged, as were all newcomers, and Daisy and Martha were busy trying to keep as many of the smaller children alive as was possible. They went hungry themselves to make sure the little ones got enough to eat, and Daisy carried bruises from Basher John’s cane because she often inserted herself between him and a smaller child he was trying to hit. If she thought about the new boys at all, it was to despise them for agreeing to be called John without putting up any sort of fight. She wasn’t to know that it suited the two boys very well for nobody to know their real names.

A week after Bert and Roderick arrived at the orphanage, Daisy and her best friend Martha held a secret birthday party for Hetty Hopkins’s twins. Many of the youngest children didn’t know when their birthdays were, so Daisy picked a date for them, and always made sure it was celebrated, if only with a double portion of cabbage soup. She and Martha always encouraged the little ones to remember their real names too, although they taught them to call one another John and Jane in front of Basher John.
Daisy had a special treat for the twins. She’d actually managed to steal two real Chouxville pastries from a delivery for Ma Grunter several days before, and saved them for the twins’ birthday, even though the smell of the pastries had tortured Daisy and it had been hard to resist eating them herself.

“Oh, it’s lovely,” sighed the little girl through tears of joy.

“Lovely,” echoed her brother.

“Those came from Chouxville, which is the capital,” Daisy told them. She tried to teach the smaller children the things she remembered from her own interrupted schooldays, and often described the cities they’d never seen. Martha liked hearing about Kurdsburg, Baronstown, and Chouxville too, because she’d never lived anywhere but the Marshlands and Ma Grunter’s orphanage.

The twins had just swallowed the last crumbs of their pastries, when Basher John came bursting into the room. Daisy tried to hide the plate, on which was a trace of cream, but Basher John had spotted it.

“You,” he bellowed, approaching Daisy with the cane held up over his head, “have been stealing again, Ugly Jane!” He was about to bring it down on her when he suddenly found it caught in midair. Bert had heard the shouting and gone to find out what was going on. Seeing that Basher John had cornered a skinny girl in much-patched coveralls, Bert grabbed and held the cane on the way down.

“Don’t you dare,” Bert told Basher John in a low growl. For the first time, Daisy heard the new boy’s Chouxville accent, but he looked so different to the Bert she’d once known, so much older, so much harder faced, that she didn’t recognize him. As for Bert, who remembered Daisy as a little olive-skinned girl with brown pigtails, he had no idea he’d ever met the girl with the burning eyes before.

Basher John tried to pull his cane free of Bert’s grip, but Roderick came to Bert’s aid. There was a short fight, and for the first time in any of the children’s memories, Basher John lost. Finally, vowing revenge, he left the room with a cut lip, and word spread in whispers around the orphanage that the two new boys had rescued Daisy and the twins, and that Basher John had slunk off looking stupid.

Later that evening, when all the orphanage children were settling down for bed, Bert and Daisy passed each other on an upstairs landing, and they paused, a little awkwardly, to talk to each other.

“Thank you very much,” said Daisy, “for earlier.”

“You’re welcome,” said Bert. “Does he often behave like that?”

“Quite often,” said Daisy, with a little shrug. “But the twins got their pastries. I’m very grateful.”

Bert now thought he saw something familiar in the shape of Daisy’s face, and heard the trace of Chouxville in her voice. Then he looked down at the ancient, much-washed coveralls, on to which Daisy had had to sew extra lengths to the legs.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Daisy glanced around to make sure they weren’t being overheard.

“Daisy,” she said. “But you must remember to call me Jane when Basher John’s around.”

“Daisy,” gasped Bert. “Daisy — it’s me! Bert Beamish!”

Daisy’s mouth fell open, and before they knew it, they were hugging and crying, as though they’d been transformed back into small children in those sunlit days in the palace courtyard, before Daisy’s mother had died, and Bert’s father had been killed, when Cornucopia had seemed the happiest place on earth.