The Princess Rules

by Philippa Gregory

  She jumped up and whistled for Jellybean, collecting the cut ropes and gathering the swords in a very busy, cross way.

  ‘But that’s how princes and princesses are supposed to be!’ said Prince Bennett, a bit cross himself. ‘We’re supposed to warn you, you’re supposed to wander into obvious danger, then I am supposed to rescue you.’

  Florizella put a hand on Jellybean’s halter and looked at the prince with blazing eyes.

  ‘Suit yourself!’ she said crossly. ‘If you want to be best friends, then you come to me when I need you and I’ll come to you when you need me. But if you want to be like other princes and princesses and get married as soon as something interesting happens, so that nothing interesting ever happens again, that’s up to you! But I told you once and I’ll tell you again – I won’t get married for a good long while. And I won’t marry you just because we fought a dragon together. You said we were best friends, and that’s what I want. But if you want me to be a regular princess – and worse than that – a princess who has to be rescued, then you can fight your own dragons … and I hope they eat you!’

  ‘But a proper princess—’ Bennett started.

  ‘This is a proper princess,’ Florizella yelled, waving her sword above her head in her agitation. ‘I am a proper princess! Like a prince only with more s’s!’

  ‘Why, what do the s’s stand for?’

  ‘Swordsmanship,’ said Florizella crushingly, and she jumped on Jellybean, dug her heels in and scorched off at a gallop. She did not even look back at poor Prince Bennett, standing all alone in the Purple Forest with his broken sword and the trees quietly smouldering all around him.

  She went home, put Jellybean back in his stall and gave him a rub-down and a feed. Then she climbed up the drainpipe (for her bedroom door was still locked) and pulled back the covers on her bed, tumbled in and fell fast asleep. She was very tired.

  So she did not know until the next morning that she and Bennett were the best of friends after all. For when the rescue party finally arrived in the Purple Forest, he did not go straight home, where his parents were anxiously waiting. He rode all the way back to Florizella’s kingdom and, for the second time that day, he sought and found the king, Florizella’s father, and addressed him as ‘Sire’ just like a proper fairy tale.

  Bennett told the king straight that he would never marry Florizella, unless one day she really wanted to marry him.

  ‘And I think, Sire,’ he said, ‘that a girl who is big enough to kill her own dragon is big enough to make up her own mind.’

  The king could not help but agree and give Prince Bennett a hug.

  ‘Undoubtedly! Undootedly!’ he said.

  And the queen, who had taught Florizella sword-fighting in the first place, nodded rather proudly and said, ‘Well, Florizella was never just an ordinary princess.’

  She hugged Prince Bennett too, and they sent him home in the second-best royal carriage, the silver one with the blue cushions. And from that day onwards no one ever suggested that Princess Florizella should obey the Princess Rules.

  Least of all Prince Bennett.

  It was a bright, sunny morning as Princess Florizella threw back her bedroom curtains and saw, to her relief, that no overnight spell had turned her kingdom into a watery waste, or the people into butterflies, or any of the other tedious and unpredictable things that can happen to a fairytale princess.

  Since everything seemed normal, she leaned out of the window to see her horse, Jellybean, grazing in the field beyond the palace gardens. She put two fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle. Jellybean’s head went up and his ears went forward and he thundered down the paddock towards the gate and cleared it with a metre to spare, narrowly missing the king, who was gardening on the other side.

  ‘I do wish she wouldn’t do that,’ said the king as he pulled himself out of the rose bush.

  The queen gave him a helpful tug, and watched Florizella slide down the drainpipe and jump from the windowsill on to Jellybean’s warm back, and trot round to the stables.

  ‘I wish she’d use the doors,’ she agreed. ‘But she’s always been a princess in her own way.’

  ‘Undoubtedly!’ said the king, with much feeling. ‘Undootedly!’

  Florizella had Jellybean tacked up in a few minutes. She put on her hard hat with its smart princess cover, and trotted out of the stableyard, over the castle drawbridge and down the lane towards the Purple Forest.

  It was a wonderful day in early summer; the scarlet swallows and the golden swifts were swooping low over the river, and in the central square, the fairies were holding a farmers’ market, buying and selling farmers. Florizella was singing to herself, and Jellybean put his ears forward and went into an easy canter down the track that runs through the Purple Forest and up to the high moorland.

  But somehow they took a wrong turn.

  Florizella rode for a little while, then she pulled Jellybean to a standstill and looked around. She had never been this deep into the Purple Forest before and she was surprised at how dark it was. She knew there were wolves and lions in the forest, as well as witches and enchanters. Florizella felt rather uncomfortable – as if there were cold fingers walking up and down her spine.

  It grew darker, and Florizella started to wish she was at home. The black bushes and shadowy trees seemed to whisper in the wind, and the little rustlings sounded like someone coming closer.

  Jellybean put back his ears, a sure sign that he was unhappy, and moved restlessly. Florizella patted his neck and said, ‘Silly Jellybean! Fancy being frightened!’ as if she were not nervous herself, and she turned him round to ride back the way she had come.

  Then suddenly the rain started – great thick drops of rain that cascaded through the leaves of the trees and soaked Florizella and Jellybean in seconds so they both stopped being scared and became cold and miserable. Jellybean’s head drooped and his lovely bright chestnut coat went all streaky and dark with the wet. Florizella was wet through, rain dripping off her hat and down her neck.

  Then there was a great Crash! of thunder and a great Crack-crack! of lightning. Jellybean flung up his head and reared in fright and Florizella tumbled off his back and down into the mud. Before she could catch the reins, Jellybean was gone! Back to his warm stable – because he had known the way home all along, but hadn’t been able to explain it.

  That was bad. But there was worse to come!

  The lightning had struck a great tree nearby – it was groaning and creaking and swaying. Florizella could see it looming over her, but she was so stunned by her fall that she couldn’t move. She could only lie there in the mud while the great tree leaned and cracked and finally came down with a great roar and a crackle of breaking branches.

  She was always the luckiest of princesses! The two main branches of the tree fell either side of her. The tree trunk, which could have crushed her, fell short; the boughs that could have broken her bones were spread out all around her.

  ‘Crikey!’ said Florizella when she dared to open her eyes.

  The storm was still raging, and as she struggled to sit up and look through the great bushy branches of leaves, she heard the thunder roll again, and the lightning was as bright as fireworks. Florizella heard another tree crashing down, and she knew that she had to find shelter. She scrambled over the branches and looked around in the stormy darkness.

  There was a little hill to her left, away from the path, and some solid-looking boulders. Florizella thought that if she could creep under one of the rocks she would be out of the rain and safe from any more falling trees. She scrambled up the hill, her path sometimes very bright from lightning and sometimes very black from the storm; her eyes sometimes able to see everything as clear as day for the few seconds of light, and then quite blind afterwards. The rain poured down on her, and she was wet through and gasping – it was like being under a super-strong power shower turned to COLD – but eventually she scrambled up the slope and reached the top of the hill and found, to
her relief, a proper cave.

  The entrance to the cave was a little patch of grass and one rock leaning against another to make a doorway. Florizella dropped to her hands and knees and squeezed through. The roof of the cave was higher inside and Florizella was able to stand up and feel her way along the wall towards the back. She sat down in the darkness and thought that she was lucky to be safe and out of the rain.

  Then she stopped feeling lucky, and felt instead … a Horrid Feeling.

  It is the feeling you get when you think you are in a room on your own, and you suddenly know that someone else is there.

  That sort of Horrid Feeling.

  It is the feeling you get when you play games like What’s the Time, Mister Wolf? or Cat and Mouse, or Grandmother’s Footsteps, when you turn your back, and the other people creep quietly, quietly up on you.

  You don’t need to turn round to see your friends coming closer and closer in those games. You can feel them sneaking up.

  It was that kind of feeling for Florizella.

  She knew that she was not alone in the cave.

  She knew that there was something else in the cave too. She knew it was sneaking up on her.

  As she stayed very still and listened, she could hear it breathing.

  She was scared then, all right.

  Prince with two s’s or not, brave or not, Florizella was very scared then. She could clearly hear soft little breaths. And, what was worse, they were coming from between her and the entrance. Whatever was sharing the cave with her and gently panting, had her trapped. And she did not have a clue what it might be.

  Florizella froze as still as a statue and listened as hard as she could. Nothing happened for long, scary moments. The princess put her back to the cave wall and looked around in the darkness, straining her eyes to see.

  Then she felt something extremely soft touch her foot.

  She very nearly screamed and jumped, but she did not. You might hope this was because she was a brave princess who feared nothing! You might hope that she remembered the Princess Rule, which says that a princess never raises her voice except in the case of fire. But that is not true either. She did not scream and jump, she did not run away, because she was frightened rigid. She let out a tiny little mouse-squeak and stayed as still as a stone princess.

  Then she heard a funny little growl and ascuffle, and something warm and heavy tumbled over her other foot.

  So there were two of IT.

  And they were small.

  And they were light, Florizella thought, as light as … puppies. They were puppy-shaped, they made little puppyish noises, they smelled that delicious smell of warm, dry fur and clean paws, and they were playing in the dark with each other.

  Florizella laughed out loud and put her hand down to her feet to feel for them. As her eyes got used to the darkness she could just see them. One, two, three, four darling little puppies with smooth grey coats and fat little bellies and big black eyes, tumbling over each other and biting each other’s tails and paws. Florizella sat down among them and picked them up and put them on her lap.

  They were adorable. They tumbled on to the floor and they bit the belt on her trousers. They gnawed at the heels of her riding boots, made fierce little attacks on her twiddling fingers, and climbed all over her.

  Florizella thought that they must belong to a couple of dogs lost by their owners in the forest, or perhaps a dog that had run away from home to have puppies on her own. But she didn’t think much about the mother dog at all.

  And that was a mistake. A very big mistake.

  Florizella sat on the floor of the cave and played with the puppies as if she were a young silly puppy herself. She didn’t think about the mother dog or the father dog once.

  Until …

  The entrance to the cave suddenly grew dark as the light was blocked by a great animal coming in. A great animal coming back into its own cave, to feed its young. A huge animal, so big that it had to squeeze in through the cave mouth. It smelled Florizella the moment it was inside, and it looked for her with its fierce orange eyes, and then it growled.

  And Florizella, silly Florizella, looked up from playing with the puppies and saw the light blocked by the great animal and saw … not a lost pet dog … but a wolf.

  Worse than that (twice as bad, to be very precise) she saw two wolves. The mother and the father wolf came into the cave and glared at Florizella sitting on the floor of their cave with their puppies on her knees.

  Florizella stayed very still. She had no weapon and, anyway, she couldn’t fight two wolves at once. No one was going to rescue her as no one knew where she was. If she were going to get out of this adventure alive, she would have to do it all on her own, with skill, and a lot of luck.

  ‘Nice wolves,’ said Florizella nervously into the darkness. ‘Here are your puppies. See? I was just petting them.’ Carefully she put them on the floor and they stumbled on their fat feet over to their parents. The mother wolf dropped to the ground with a dead rabbit in her mouth and tore off little bits of meat and skin for the puppies. The father wolf sat on his haunches to guard them and looked at Florizella with his marmalade-coloured eyes. He didn’t take his gaze off her once. He didn’t even blink.

  Florizella sat very still and waited for them to finish their meal. Overall, she thought it was better if they were not hungry. Being stuck in a cave with six wolves is dangerous – six hungry wolves is worse. She didn’t say a word, but she couldn’t help shivering. She shivered so hard that her teeth chattered like clattering castanets. The mother wolf glanced up at the noise. Florizella gritted her teeth and tried to shiver in silence.

  When the puppies had played and pulled at the meat, and eaten a little, the mother wolf sprawled out and they swarmed up to her belly and sucked milk from her. The smell of wet wolf filled the cave, and the noise was rather soothing. The cave was small and, when the mother wolf stretched out, her head rested on Florizella’s foot. Florizella froze, not daring to move, but the mother wolf took no notice of anything but her four wolf cubs sucking like little pumps and wagging their tails. The father wolf picked his way over them and sat down opposite Florizella, watching her with his unwinking amber eyes.

  Florizella stayed as still as she could, waiting for him to pounce.

  But he did not pounce. Instead, he turned round and round two or three times like the palace pet dog in his basket, and then he lay down beside her. Soon he was breathing steadily and Florizella could tell he was asleep.

  Now the cave was very quiet. The father wolf, stretched out to his full length alongside Florizella’s leg, made her feel warmer. All four cubs were well fed and dreaming – Florizella could hear them snoring softly through milky whiskers. The mother wolf’s head rested, warm and heavy, on Florizella’s foot.

  With one warm, heavy wolf on one foot, and another warm wolf stretched along her leg, Florizella wasn’t cold any more. She felt quite cosy – a bit nervous maybe – but no longer chilled. She thought she would wait a moment till they were deeply asleep and then creep out of the cave. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes for a few moments.

  And then it was Florizella who fell deeply asleep.

  The four wolf cubs, the mother and father wolf and Princess Florizella slept sweetly until morning.

  There was uproar in the palace when Jellybean galloped in with his reinsloose, and the stirrups flapping, and no Florizella. There were search parties in all directions and diviners with wands. They were all very relieved when Florizella walked in the next morning, damp and rather smelly, and told them all about her night in the wolves’ cave. Then she begged the king and queen to outlaw wolf-hunting for the season, so that the four little wolf cubs could grow up safely in the Purple Forest. And Florizella’s mother and father – who believed in magic and in paying debts – agreed that their daughter had been spared by the wolves, so the least they could do was to make sure that all wolves were safe for a season.

  Throughout the land of the Seven
Kingdoms everyone was warned that wolf-hunting was illegal for the rest of the year. All the wolves – including the quite beastly ones – enjoyed a pleasant holiday eating other people’s goats, popping into hen houses and howling at the full moon.

  One day Princess Florizella was in the courtyard feeding the golden carp inthe fountain pond when a trader rode into the castle yard. He was very red-faced and hot because he wore or carried all his stock. He was wearing three shirts, two jackets and four capes. His poor horse was quite bow-legged under the weight of the saddle packs. He had toys in the right-side pack, and books in the left. He had bolts of cloth strapped on the back of the saddle, a carpet rolled up in front – and spread out over the horse’s hindquarters … he had a pair of beautiful fresh wolfskins.

  As soon as Florizella saw them, she let out a shriek and raced up to him and grabbed his stirrup leather.

  ‘Where did you hunt those wolves?’ she demanded, so fiercely that the man was quite afraid.

  ‘In the Purple Forest,’ he said, looking over her head to the grooms. One of them made a warning face at him, but he had travelled so far, and for so long, that he did not know this girl was Princess Florizella, and he did not know about the ban on wolf-hunting.

  ‘How could you!’ said Florizella, nearly crying. ‘Was it a male and a female?’

  ‘Yes, a pair,’ he said. ‘I trapped them by a tree that had been struck by lightning, just beside the track.’

  Florizella looked at him as if he were worse than a slug.

  ‘That’s forbidden!’ she said furiously. ‘There was to be no hunting of wolves this season to protect a special family of wolves. They lived in a cave near that tree. I think you’ve killed them!’

  The trader stammered that he had not known about the ban on wolf-hunting, but Florizella looked at him as if he were worse than a slug: a squashed slug, an old, dried-out squashed slug, until he stopped and shrugged his shoulders, and said there was nothing he could do about it. For the wolves were dead and that was the end of it.