The Ordinary Princess (4 page)

When March winds blow coldly over the city, inside the forest it is warm and still; and on hot summer days the forest glades are cool and green. Even on wintry or wet days it seemed beautiful to the Ordinary Princess, so while her six beautiful sisters played with their golden ball in the palace gardens, she played with the rabbits and the deer in the forest.

The six proper princesses never went out of doors without pages to carry silken canopies over their heads, for fear the sunshine might spoil their complexions. But the Ordinary Princess pushed her crown under the royal nightdress case and never wore a hat, and her nose got frecklier and frecklier in spite of all the Queen’s lily lotions and lemon juice.

The six lovely princesses had ladies-in-waiting and pages standing around when they played ball, to pick it up when they dropped it. But the Ordinary Princess learned to climb trees like a squirrel and to swim like an otter in the deep forest pools. She had a lovely time!

Nobody could ever understand why she grew so brown or why her brocaded gowns were always getting torn and her embroidered shoes so stained and scratched. But then no one ever worried much about her anyway, and whenever anyone remembered to ask where she was, the answer was nearly always “Somewhere about.” For to tell the truth, they were really all quite glad that she should keep out of the way, as such a very ordinary child was a disgrace to any royal family.

So it is not surprising that the courtiers sometimes forgot that there was a seventh princess at all.

 

 

One by one the six beautiful sisters grew up and married handsome and gallant princes. And six years running the Ordinary Princess followed one of her sisters down the long, dim aisle of the great cathedral of Phanff and helped to carry the bride’s train and threw rice and rose petals after the glass coach as the bride and her groom drove away from the palace.

The sixth year she had to carry the train all by herself, for all the other sisters were married, so there was only herself to follow the Princess Pearl up the aisle when Pearl married the Crown Prince of Crystalvia.

The bride’s train was of silver tissue embroidered with pearls, and as it was ten yards long, the Ordinary Princess found it exceedingly heavy and very difficult to manage.

It was a hot day and the cathedral was rather stuffy—what with the huge crowd of wedding guests, the clouds of incense from the swinging silver censers, the thousands of lighted candles and the heavy scent of lilies and white roses. The Princess Pearl looked lovelier than ever, and the Crown Prince of Crystalvia very handsome and gallant; though privately the Ordinary Princess thought him rather stiff. “He may be very good looking,” she thought, “but I’m quite sure that he has never giggled one good giggle in his life!”

Her own bridesmaid’s dress was of amethyst satin embroidered with silver and sewn with a great many pearls in honor of her sister. The silver embroidery scratched her neck and arms and her crown was rather tight as well as being too heavy, and altogether she was very glad when the ceremony was over, the last slice of wedding cake had been cut and the last handful of rose petals had been thrown after the bride and bridegroom’s crystal coach.

“Well, that’s
that!”
said the Ordinary Princess, tossing her crown onto her bed and wriggling out of her amethyst satin bridesmaid’s dress.

She fetched an apple from the top shelf of her book shelf where she kept a hidden store of them, and perched herself on the windowsill of her room in her petticoat. The evening sun was making the treetops of the forest all dusty gold, and there was a great twittering among the birds.

“I suppose next year it will be my turn to get married,” thought the Ordinary Princess. “Oh dear! I’m sure I shan’t like it a bit. No more fun. No more forest. Having to wear best dresses every day. Crowns and court curtseys and state banquets and things like that. No climbing trees, and a very handsome husband with no sense of humor!”

The Ordinary Princess sighed gloomily and threw her apple core at some rabbits.

“Your Highness!” cried Nurse Marta in a shocked voice, bustling into the room with a great rustling of her starched skirts. “Sitting at the window in your petticoat! Whatever will you be doing next? Suppose someone were to see you!” She hustled the Ordinary Princess away, drew the curtains, and lit all the lamps.

“But Marta, it’s still daylight,” said the Ordinary Princess wistfully, “and there’s such a lovely sunset.”

“What has that got to do with it? ” asked Nurse Marta. “It’s past seven o‘clock and that is quite time to draw the curtains.” And she scolded the Ordinary Princess for leaving her beautiful bridesmaid’s frock on the floor—“Your Highness! Your Highness!” said the old nurse, throwing up her hands in horror, “when will you learn to behave like a princess?”

Then she called the ladies-in-waiting and the maids, and they all chattered and laughed together like a flock of starlings as they brushed the Princess Amy’s hair and poured scented water into her marble bathtub.

“Now there is only one princess,” said her ladies-in-waiting. “Soon there will be suitors coming for Your Highness, and next year there will be another wedding.” But the Ordinary Princess only yawned. She wished they would not talk so much, for it had been a very long and tiring day, and she had a headache. Besides, she was not very interested in weddings: she had been a bridesmaid at six of them, and by now it all seemed a little dull.

But very soon it began to look as though there was not going to be a seventh wedding after all.

The King became flustered and peppery and the Queen became more and more anxious and distracted as time went on. The Prime Minister and the Lord High Chamberlain and all the Councillors of State went about with such long faces that the Ordinary Princess said it was a wonder they did not trip over their chins.

It was not that there was any lack of suitors. The fame of the princesses of Phantasmorania had gone abroad, and each year princes and peers had come from all over the wide world to make offers of marriage. There were quite as many as, if not more than, the numbers who had paid visits of ceremony at the palace of Phanff in the year before the wedding of the Princess Pearl. For was there not still one princess left? And didn’t everyone know that youngest princesses are always the most beautiful and charming of all?

The court of Phanff, you see, had always been discreetly silent on the subject of its seventh princess, and outside the kingdom it was naturally supposed that the Princess Amethyst was as beautiful, if not more beautiful, than any of her six lovely sisters. So of course the list of visiting suitors was as impressive as ever.

One after another, as the months rolled by, princes and Grand Dukes and Royal Highnesses and Serene Transparencies of every description, shape and size arrived at the palace of Phanff to pay a friendly visit, but in reality to meet Her Serene and Royal Highness the Princess Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne of Phantasmorania. But none of them ever stayed more than one day.

One after another, after their first shocked look at the Ordinary Princess, they hurriedly remembered previous engagements. They apologized for having to make such a brief stay and said that if they should ever happen to be passing that way again they would of course drop in. After which they would pack their luggage and hurry away the very next morning.

None of them ever stayed a second day, except His Serene Transparency the Archduke of Pantechniconia, who was in such a hurry to leave that he tripped on his ermine-trimmed cloak on the top step of the grand staircase and fell down the whole flight. After which, of course, he was so bruised that he had to be put to bed for a week before it was safe for him to travel.

 

 

 

So the year went round and the winter passed, and it was spring once more. And once again it seemed to the Ordinary Princess as though the sky had fallen into the Forest of Faraway, as she lay on her back in a sea of bluebells and watched a pair of orioles building their nest in the branches over her head.

As she lay there, she sang to herself a nursery rhyme that her ladies-in-waiting used to sing to her when she was a little girl. It is a very old song now, but then it was almost new ...

No one listening to her would have realized, from her lighthearted singing, what a very great deal of trouble she was causing. For while the Ordinary Princess lay on her back and sang songs among the bluebells, her father the King was attending an Extra Specially Important Meeting of the Council of State, summoned to discuss the question of the marriage of his last and youngest unmarried daughter.

“Something must be done!” shouted the King. And he banged on the table so hard that he twisted his thumb and spilled the inkpot onto the Lord High Chamberlain’s velvet robe, which did not improve matters.

“It was all your fault in the first place,” said the King, getting crosser than ever and finding some difficulty in keeping his crown from sliding over one ear—a thing that always seemed to happen whenever he got in the least excited. “Years ago I sat in this very same room,” said the King, sucking his injured thumb, “and warned the lot of you. I warned you that you were being rash—and don’t interrupt me, Rodehesia,” he added fiercely, turning on the Queen, who had moaned at the sound of that by now all too familiar word.

But the Queen was far too upset to interrupt anyone. She asked for a glass of water and some smelling salts and fanned herself with her lace handkerchief.

“Well?” said the King. “Well? Well? Well? Hasn’t anyone got anything to say? Has no one any ideas?”

The Council maintained a gloomy silence, and the Queen took a sip of water and said in a faint voice, “We must do
something.
The disgrace of it! There has never been a spinster in all the Annals of the Phanffarias.”

The Prime Minister coughed apologetically.

“Well, Your Majesty,” said the Prime Minister, “there has never been a princess in the family quite ... er ... quite like ... er ...” He caught the King’s eye and subsided.

“I asked for
ideas,”
said the King tartly, “not criticism. What I want from all of you is less criticism and more ideas. Her Majesty is quite right. No princess of our house has ever before failed to make a brilliant marriage.
And,”
added the King, looking fiercer than ever, “we are not going to start now!” He raised his fist to thump on the table, thought better of it, and glowered at his councillors instead.

There was a lot more silence.

“Well?” demanded the King again. “Well? Well?”

“If I might make a suggestion, Your Majesty,” said the Lord High Chamberlain nervously, “could we not try the effect of a ... er ... dragon?”

“On whom?” inquired the King, puzzled.

“Er ... on the suitors, Your Majesty. It has sometimes proved very useful in the case of—er—er—not very attractive young damsels,” he finished hurriedly.

“Explain yourself,” ordered the King sternly.

“Well, Your Majesty knows what romantic minds these young princes have, so suppose we hired a dragon to—to lay waste the countryside—?” (Here the Minister of Public Safety looked alarmed and the Minister for Agriculture and Fishery was heard to protest.) “We might then imprison Her Royal Highness in a tower and send out a proclamation to say that any prince who slew the dragon should be rewarded by the princess’s hand in marriage. I venture to think, Your Majesty,” said the Lord High Chamberlain more nervously than ever, “that this might have the—er—desired effect. Provided, of course, that Her Highness was kept—er—out of sight as it were,” finished the Lord High Chamberlain rapidly.

“How
can
you say such a thing? Oh, my poor child!” wailed the Queen, taking a long sniff at her smelling salts. But the King suddenly sat up straight with a wild look in his eye.