The Ickabog

by J. K. Rowling

  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.

  Meanwhile, life in the palace dungeons had been utterly transformed.

  By Advika, Age 9

  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 i
n 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.

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

  By Ila, Age 9

  Children generally stayed at Ma Grunter’s orphanage until she threw them out onto the street. She received no gold for looking after grown men and women, and had allowed Basher John to stay only because he was useful to her. While they were still worth gold, Ma Grunter made sure no children escaped by keeping all doors securely locked and bolted. Only Basher John had keys, and the last boy who’d tried to steal them had spent months recovering from his injuries.

  Daisy and Martha both knew the time was coming when they’d be thrown out, but they were less worried for themselves than for what would become of the little ones once they were gone. Bert and Roderick knew they’d have to leave around the same time, if not sooner. They weren’t able to check and see whether WANTED posters with Bert’s face on them were still stuck to the walls of Jeroboam, but it seemed unlikely they’d been taken down. The four lived in daily dread that Ma Grunter and Basher John would realize they had a valuable fugitive worth one hundred gold ducats under their roof.

  In the meantime, Bert, Daisy, Martha, and Roderick met every night, while the other children were asleep, to share their stories and pool their knowledge about what was going on in Cornucopia. They held these meetings in the only place Basher John never went: the large cabbage cupboard in the kitchen.

  Roderick, who’d been raised to make jokes about the Marshlanders, laughed at Martha’s accent during the first of these meetings, but Daisy told him off so fiercely that he didn’t do it again.

  Huddled around a single candle as though it were a fire, amid mounds of tough, smelly cabbages, Daisy told the boys about her kidnap, Bert shared his fear that his father had died in some kind of accident, and Roderick explained about the way the Dark Footers faked attacks on towns to keep people believing in the Ickabog. He also told the others about how the mail was intercepted, how the two lords were stealing wagonloads of gold from the country, and that hundreds of people had been killed, or, if they were useful to Spittleworth in some way, imprisoned.

  However, each of the boys was hiding something, and I’ll tell you what it was.

  Roderick suspected that Mr. Beamish had been accidentally shot on the marsh, all those years ago, but he hadn’t told Bert that, because he was scared his friend would blame him for not telling him sooner.

  Meanwhile, Bert, who was certain Mr. Dovetail had carved the giant feet the Dark Footers were using, didn’t tell Daisy so. You see, he was certain Mr. Dovetail must have been killed after making them, and he didn’t want to give Daisy false hope that he was still alive. As Roderick didn’t know who’d carved the many sets of feet used by the Dark Footers, Daisy had no idea about her father’s part in the attacks.

  “But what about the soldiers?” Daisy asked Roderick, on the sixth night they met in the cabbage cupboard. “The Ickabog Defense Brigade and the Royal Guard? Are they in on it?”

  “I think they must be, a bit,” said Roderick. “But only the very top people know everything — the two lords and my — and whoever’s replaced my father.” He fell silent for a while.

  “The soldiers must know there is no Ickabog,” said Bert, “after all the time they’ve spent up in the Marshlands.”

  “There is an Ickabog, though,” said Martha. Roddy didn’t laugh, though he might have done if he’d just met her. Daisy ignored Martha, as she usually did, but Bert said kindly:

  “I believed in it myself, until I realized what was really going on.”

  The foursome went off to bed that night, agreeing to meet again the following evening. Each was burning with ambition to save the country, but they kept coming back to the fact that without weapons, they could hardly fight Spittleworth and his many soldiers.

  However, when the girls arrived in the cabbage cupboard on the seventh night, Bert knew from their expressions that something bad had happened.

  “Trouble,” whispered Daisy, as soon as Martha had closed the cupboard door. “We heard Ma Grunter and Basher John talking, just before we went to bed. There’s an orphanage inspector on the way. He’ll be here tomorrow afternoon.”

  The boys looked at each other, extremely worried. The last thing they wanted was for an outsider to recognize them as two fugitives.

  “We have to leave,” said Bert to Roderick. “Now. Tonight. Together, we can manage to get the keys from Basher John.”

  “I’m game,” said Roderick, clenching his fists.

  “Well, Martha and I are coming with you,” said Daisy. “We’ve thought of a plan.”

  “What plan?” asked Bert.

  “I say the four of us head north, to the soldiers’ camp in the Marshlands,” said Daisy. “Martha knows the way, she can guide us. When we get there, we tell the soldiers everything Roderick’s told us — about the Ickabog being fake —”

  “It’s real, though,” said Martha, but the other three ignored her.

  “— and about the killings and all the gold Spittleworth and Flapoon are stealing from the country. We can’t take on Spittleworth alone. There must be some good soldiers, who’d stop obeying him, and help us take the country back!”

  “It’s a good plan,” said Bert slowly, “but I don’t think you girls should come. It might be dangerous. Roderick and I will do it.”

  “No, Bert,” said Daisy, her eyes almost feverish. “With four of us, we double the number of soldiers we can talk to. Please don’t argue. Unless something changes, soon, most of the children in this orphanage will be in that cemetery before the winter’s over.”

  It took a little more argument for Bert to agree that the two girls should come, because he privately worried that Daisy and Martha were too frail to make the journey, but at last he agreed.

  “All right. You’d better grab your blankets off your beds, because it’s going to be a long, cold walk. Roddy and l will deal with Basher John.”

  So Bert and Roderick sneaked into Basher John’s room. The fight was short and brutal. It was lucky Ma Grunter had drunk two whole bottles of wine with her dinner, because otherwise all the banging and shouting would definitely have woken her. Leaving Basher John bloody and bruised, Roderick stole his boots. Then, they locked him in his own room, and the two boys sprinted to join the girls, who were waiting beside the front door. It took five long minutes to unfasten all the padlocks and loosen all the chains.

  A blast of icy air met them as they opened the door. With one last glance back at the orphanage, threadbare blankets around their shoulders, Daisy, Bert, Martha, and Roderick slipped out onto the street and set off for the Marshlands, through the first few flakes of snow.

  No harder journey had been made, in all of Cornucopia’s history, than the trek of those four young people to the Marshlands.

  It was the bitterest winter the kingdom had seen for a hundred years, and by the time the dark outline of Jeroboam had vanished behind them, the snow was falling so thickly it dazzled their eyes with whiteness. Their thin, patched clothes and their torn blankets were no match for the freezing air, which bit at every part of them like tiny, sharp-toothed wolves.

  If not for Martha, it would have been impossible to find their way, but she was familiar with the country north of Jeroboam and, in spite of the thick snow now covering every landmark, she recognized old trees she used to climb, odd-shaped rocks that had always been there, and ramshackle sheep sheds that had once belonged to neighbors. Even so, the farther north they traveled, the more all of them wondered in their hearts whether the journey would kill them, though they never spoke the thought aloud. Each felt their body plead with them to stop, to lie down in the icy straw of some abandoned barn, and give up.

  On the third night, Martha knew they were close, because she could smell the familiar ooze and brackish water of the marsh. All of them regained a little hope; they
strained their eyes for any sign of torches and fires in the soldiers’ encampment, and imagined they heard men talking and the jingling of horses’ harnesses through the whistling wind. Every now and then they saw a glint in the distance, or heard a noise, but it was always just the moonlight reflecting on a frozen puddle, or a tree creaking in the blizzard.

  At last they reached the edge of the wide expanse of rock, marsh, and rustling weed, and they realized there were no soldiers there at all.

  The winter storms had caused a retreat. The commander, who was privately certain there was no Ickabog, had decided that he wasn’t going to let his men freeze to death just to please Lord Spittleworth. So he’d given the order to head south, and if it hadn’t been for the thick snow, which was still falling so fast it covered all tracks, the friends might have been able to see the soldiers’ five-day-old footprints, going in the opposite direction.

  “Look,” said Roderick, pointing as he shivered. “They were here …”

  A wagon had been abandoned in the snow because it had gotten stuck, and the soldiers wanted to escape the storm quickly. The foursome approached the wagon and saw food, food such as Bert, Daisy, and Roderick remembered only from their dreams, and which Martha had never seen in her life. Heaps of creamy Kurdsburg cheeses, piles of Chouxville pastries, sausages and venison pies of Baronstown, all sent to keep the camp commander and his soldiers happy, because there was no food to be had in the Marshlands.

  Bert reached out numb fingers to try and take a pie, but a thick layer of ice now covered the food, and his fingers simply slid off.

  He turned a hopeless face to Daisy, Martha, and Roderick, all of whose lips were now blue. Nobody said anything. They knew they were going to die of cold on the edge of the Ickabog’s marsh and none of them really cared any longer. Daisy was so cold that to sleep forever seemed a wonderful idea. She barely felt the added chill as she sank slowly into the snow. Bert sank down and put his arms around her, but he too was feeling sleepy and strange. Martha leaned up against Roderick, who tried to draw her under his blanket. Huddled together beside the wagon, all four were soon unconscious, and the snow crept up their bodies as the moon began to rise.