The Ordinary Princess (12 page)

And, as the King said, the disgrace of having an unmarried princess in one’s family was preferable to having a son-in-law for whose visits one had to lock away the gold plate and chain the spoons and forks to the table.

“It is quite obvious to me,” said the Queen in a resigned voice, “that Amy will be an old maid. There has never been such a thing in our family before, but it seems we are to have one now.”

But the Queen was wrong, for a week after the runaway Princess had returned to her home, the Queen came rushing into her turret room in a state of great excitement. In fact she was so excited that it was some time before she could speak.

“My child!” exclaimed the Queen wildly, embracing her youngest daughter. “My Amy!”

She sat down heavily on the Ordinary Princess’s golden bed, on top of the Ordinary Princess’s second-best dress that had been laid out on the coverlet, and fanned herself with her lace handkerchief while the Ordinary Princess’s ladies-in-waiting and maids-of-honor stood around simply bursting with curiosity.

“My child!” exclaimed the Queen again, getting her breath. “Put on your nicest dress at once, and do, my dearest Amy, try to look your best. An Envoy Extraordinary has arrived from His Majesty the King of Ambergeldar to request your hand in marriage! Was there ever such an enchanting piece of news!” cried the Queen, quite overwhelmed by this unexpected stroke of good fortune.

The King and the whole Council had been equally overcome.

“Do you suppose, dear,” said the King nervously, “that they’ll change their minds when they see Amy?”

“Leave it to me, dear,” said the Queen, and she gave orders that all the lights in the state rooms should be lowered and that only the very plainest ladies-in-waiting should be allowed to attend on the Ordinary Princess.

“That ought to help,” said the Queen hopefully.

So the Ordinary Princess was dressed in the most magnificent robes imaginable, and hung with diamonds and amethysts, and made to wear her for-very-best-occasions crown, and sent down to meet the Envoy Extraordinary and his attendants in the throne room, accompanied by the plainest ladies in the palace.

Which probably accounts for the fact that the very gorgeous person whom she had last seen standing at the foot of a back staircase in Amber Castle, and who was one of the Envoy Extraordinary’s attendants, never recognized her at all, even though he had stared so hard and so disapprovingly at the little kitchen maid who had been caught talking to the King.

The whole reception passed off beautifully, and when it was arranged that the wedding should take place in the last week of April, the Queen almost wept with joy.

As for the King, he said, “Bless my soul,” one hundred and seventeen separate times and raised the salaries of the entire palace staff.

So the Envoy Extraordinary went back to Ambergeldar leaving the court of Phantasmorania quite dazed with excitement, to prepare for the wedding of the seventh princess of the royal house of Phanffaria. But in spite of all the preparations, and the ordering of a most magnificent trousseau, the Ordinary Princess thought that the winter passed slower than any winter had ever done before.

It seemed that spring would never come.

Day after day she would sit at her window, looking out at the dark forest where the bare branches of the trees were covered with snow, and wonder if it would
ever
be green again or full of birds and butterflies and wild flowers.

When she was not looking out of the window, she was being fitted for new dresses, or sitting at a desk writing hundreds of “thank you” letters for all the wedding presents that kept arriving at the palace. Then she had to sit for her portrait, as her Mama the Queen had ordered one from Mynheer Van Turpentine, the court painter, to be sent to the King of Ambergeldar, and as nobody dreamed that he had ever seen her, Mynheer Van Turpentine was instructed to flatter her as much as possible. Which he did.

“But it isn’t in the
least
bit like me!” protested the Ordinary Princess.

“Nonsense, dear,” said the Queen firmly. “It is you at your best. And though I will admit that it is not what one would call a
speaking
likeness, we cannot afford to take any risks. After all,” said the Queen comfortably, “by the time His Majesty sees you himself, it will be too late for him to change his mind!” And with that she sailed off to see to the arrangements for displaying the wedding presents.

The Ordinary Princess laughed and tried to imagine what Perry would say when he received Mynheer Van Turpentine’s portrait.

“Don’t get worried,” she wrote to him, “I haven’t really grown like that. My nose is still turned up and I have as many freckles as ever.”

Peregrine wrote a very correct letter about the portrait to the Queen, but to the Ordinary Princess he wrote, “I have hung the painting in one of the state drawing rooms that I hardly ever have to go into, and when I have to I only think how glad I am that you are not a bit like it and that your nose still turns up and has as many freckles as ever! Darling Amy, don’t ever change.”

 

At last, at last, the snow melted and the air became warmer.

Birds began to sing in the Forest of Faraway, and on the boughs of the trees tiny buds appeared and presently the world grew green again. Early primroses spread gay golden carpets between the gray tree trunks, and it was spring once more.

In the last week of April, King Algernon of Ambergeldar, who was also Peregrine the man-of-all-work, came riding to the kingdom of Phantasmorania at the head of a glittering cavalcade of knights, barons and fair ladies. And in the great throne room of the palace of Phanff, His Majesty King Hulderbrand took his youngest daughter by the hand and led her forward to meet the King of Ambergeldar.

“My daughter, Amethyst,” said King Hulderbrand, a little flustered by the grandeur of the occasion. “Amy, this is Algernon.”

The Ordinary Princess tried hard not to giggle as she swept the most beautiful curtsey.

She was wearing a magnificent gown with a ten-foot train and really looked quite
smothered
in jewels. But the King of Ambergeldar only saw that among the glittering diamonds and ropes of gleaming pearls, Her Serene and Royal Highness, Princess Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne of Phantasmorania was wearing a little necklace made of acorn cups.

His Majesty of Ambergeldar replied to the princess’s curtsey with the most courtly of bows. He was dressed every bit as magnificently as she was and looked very kingly indeed.

“Oh dear,” thought the Ordinary Princess in a panic, “he doesn’t seem a bit like my Perry!”

Then the heralds blew a fanfare on their silver trumpets, and King Algernon winked at the princess.

“Oh Perry,” whispered the Ordinary Princess, under cover of the fanfare, “it
is
you after all!”

“Of course it’s me,” whispered Peregrine, “but do try and look as though we’ve only just been introduced this minute.”

“I’ll try,” giggled the Ordinary Princess, “but I really believe it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

And so the next day they were married in the great cathedral of Phanff by twenty archbishops and with the most magnificent of ceremonies.

The Ordinary Princess wore a wedding dress with a train that was seventeen yards long and took twenty pages to carry it. Her six lovely sisters, with their husbands and children, all came to the wedding, and so did the old Fairy Crustacea, who arrived in a chariot entirely made out of oyster shells and drawn by a hundred golden frogs. Her clothes were wetter and more seaweedy than ever, but she was in a remarkably good temper and stayed until quite late.

“I haven’t sent you a wedding present,” she said as she kissed the bride, “because my presents are not the kind that can be tied up with paper and string. But bend your head my dear,” said the old Fairy Crustacea.

Then she tapped the Ordinary Princess, who was now the Queen of Ambergeldar, on the forehead with her twisty coral stick. “You shall always keep the love of your husband and the respect and devotion of your subjects,” said the old Fairy Crustacea. “You shall have four gallant sons and two darling daughters, and you shall live happily all your days!”

“Now
that,”
said Peregrine, “is something like a wedding present!”

So Peregrine and his Queen drove away from the palace in a crystal coach, and everyone threw rice and rose petals and satin slippers and waved their hands and their handkerchiefs and cried good wishes.

But nobody noticed that the new Queen of Ambergeldar took with her a rather untidy brown paper parcel, or that perched among the carvings on the coachman’s box sat a little red squirrel and a glossy black crow. And of course everyone thought that the royal bride and bridegroom would spend their honeymoon in one of the bridegroom’s many castles.

No one guessed that they spent it instead in a little log hut called “The Birches,” on the far side of the Forest of Faraway.

For the little hut was still standing in spite of the winter storms and snow. The moss was greener than ever, and primroses, windflowers and wild cherry brightened all the forest.

The Ordinary Princess, who had once been an ordinary kitchen maid and was now Queen Amethyst of Ambergeldar, wore Clorinda’s ragged dress, which she had most carefully mended, and cooked the brown trout that Peregrine—who was always Peregrine—caught in the forest streams for their dinner.

Mr. Pemberthy skipped among the branches, and Peter Aurelious cawed happily to himself from the roof of “The Birches.”

sang Peregrine, chopping firewood,

“And so I am!” said the Ordinary Princess.

THE END