Then at last a wheel broke off the rear axle and the horses slipped the traces and took to the hills. The carriage slewed across the path, crashed into a ditch, turned over twice and smashed against a great oak tree. Belinda lay unconscious beneath a pile of carriage cushions and one split suitcase.
With whoops of delight the robbers descended and stripped the broken carriage of everything worth taking. They took the royal jewellery and the royal suitcases. They took the frightened driver’s velvet breeches and satin waistcoat. They took all the presents from the Krust royal family. They even took Belinda’s beautiful dress and expensive shoes. They rounded up the horses and had quite vanished from sight with them long before Belinda woke up with an aching head.
She crawled out of the broken carriage and stood in her petticoat by the side of it. She looked at the driver and at the mess scattered far and wide by the searching robbers.
‘Oh, dear,’ she murmured. She helped the poor driver to his feet.
‘They were robbers, Your Royalty,’ explained the driver, quite unnecessarily. ‘I tried to fight them off. I went biff! and baff! but there were more than I could manage and they took my breeches and my second best waistcoat what your mum gave me last Christmas.’
Belinda soothed his feelings. ‘I’m sure you did your best. Now you’d better go back to the palace and tell them what happened. Tell them not to worry. I’m going on to see King Krust. It can’t be very far now.’ Her keen eyes caught sight of a dusty glitter on the road. She bent down and picked up a gold coin.
‘There! Look what those robbers left behind.’ Belinda pressed it into the driver’s hand. ‘You take that. It will get you home safely.’
‘Thank you, thank you, Your Royalty. I’ll set off right away, I will.’ And the driver did just that. Belinda watched his departure and then began walking herself, hoping that she would reach King Krust’s palace before she got too hungry.
It was further than she thought. She did not arrive until two days later, by which time she was tired and very hungry. Her petticoat was covered in dust and her skin was smudged with dirt. She did not look at all like a princess.
Certainly the palace guards did not think she was a princess, and they laughed in her face when she told them. It was at this point that Belinda discovered something. Her father was not the only king that King Krust had written to. It seemed he had written hundreds of letters, for the whole town was seething with princesses of every nationality, and all of them had come to win the hand of the fabled Prince Bruno de Bruno Bunkum Krust, for not only was he most wonderfully handsome, but he could do thirty-nine press-ups without stopping. Either he had been practising or somebody was exaggerating.
Now, the Princess Belinda was just a little bit like her father because she had a stubborn streak in her and a hasty temper. When she realized that there were at least three hundred princesses in competition with her, and when the guards just laughed at her, she decided there and then to show them not only that was she a princess but that she’d marry Bruno no matter what.
She looked calmly into the guard’s piggy little eyes and said slowly, ‘If you do not take me to the king at once, I shall bang your helmet.’
Foolishly the guard just laughed again, so Belinda banged his helmet. Half an hour later when he woke up he discovered that: he had a splitting headache; he couldn’t get his helmet off because Belinda had put a very large dent in it; and Belinda had taken herself off to see the king.
It took Belinda a long time to find the king because guards kept trying to stop her. They all refused to believe she was a princess. By the time she reached the king there were forty-six guards with dented helmets lying unconscious all over the palace.
King Krust did not believe her either. He was a very short man, almost as wide as he was tall. He had to stand on a small stool to look at Belinda. He examined her through his monocle.
‘You don’t look at all like a princess,’ he declared. ‘You’re not even beautiful.’
Belinda thought the king was not exactly pretty either, but she didn’t say so because Hiro Ono had taught her there was little point in making people angry.
Queen Krust was a little kinder than her husband and said that they might at least hear what Belinda had to say. Belinda explained carefully all that had happened to her and why she had turned up in her petticoat looking so filthy. The queen was sympathetic.
‘You must have a nice hot bath, my dear, and we’ll find you some clean clothes.’
‘Just a minute,’ butted in the king. ‘Suppose she’s an impostor?’
‘We will give her a little test, to make sure she’s a princess,’ suggested the queen.
‘What sort of test?’
‘The usual one. We’ll put lots and lots of mattresses on top of each other and put a pea under the bottom one and then see if she can feel it.’ The queen turned to Belinda. ‘Will that test suit you?’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Belinda.
And so it was arranged.
Belinda felt much better after a hot bath and in clean clothes. When she went to bed she had to climb up a long ladder to reach the top mattress. The king came along to supervise the test and he stood at the bottom of the ladder and stared up at Belinda through a big telescope that his Chief Minister held for him, propped up on his back.
Belinda settled down. The bed was beautifully soft and warm but she squirmed about a bit and wriggled and after five minutes she called down to the king.
‘I can’t sleep.’
‘Why not?’ he demanded.
‘The mattress is too lumpy.
King Krust snapped his telescope shut and shrugged. ‘Oh well,’ he sighed. ‘She must be a princess. Never mind.’ He strutted out of the room and Belinda turned over, closed her eyes and instantly fell fast asleep, pea or no pea.
3
The royal quest
Belinda nearly had a terrible accident first thing next morning. She woke up feeling wonderful. She felt fresh and lively and cheerful and jumped straight out of bed, quite forgetting that she was perched on top of twenty-seven mattresses and therefore some distance above ground level.
In the nick of time she grabbed at the ladder that had been left at the bedside overnight. The ladder swayed dangerously for a moment as the princess clung to the top rung, with her legs waving wildly beneath her like storm-tossed banners. Then the ladder settled against the mattresses and Belinda clambered down safely.
After breakfast, which she ate with the queen, Belinda set about finding the fabled Prince Bruno de Bruno Bunkum Krust. She was interested to see just what he looked like.
The palace was crawling with princesses, all calling out to their servants in loud, demanding voices. They were all trying terribly hard to impress each other with their beauty and their dresses and their riches.
‘Oh, I say,’ cried one, ‘my daddy owns a whole diamond mine.’
‘Really?’ screeched another. ‘My daddy has two.’
‘Never mind, dears,’ said a third. ‘My daddy has three diamond mines and a golden throne as large as a settee.’
At this point Belinda quietly walked past and said with a lovely smile and bright eyes, ‘My daddy has four hundred and thirty-one diamond mines and a golden throne that is so heavy that one side of the palace is quite lop-sided. When we sit down to dinner all the plates and knives and forks all slide to one end of the table and fall off.’
The three princesses were quite flabbergasted, and one of them could not resist asking, ‘But, my dear, how do you manage to eat?’
Princess Belinda looked a little sorrowful. ‘We have to eat off the floor,’ she whispered, as if it were a terrible secret, and she hurried off to look for the prince, leaving the princesses looking quite disgusted.
After Belinda thought she had searched every room in the palace without any success, she at last came to a huge room with giant double doors that had carvings of cherubs all over them. Belinda thought she heard voices on the other side, so she kn
ocked, pushed the doors open and went in. There was the prince.
He was tall and slender and radiantly handsome. His blond hair shone in the sunlight that poured down through the high windows. His face was tanned. His eyes were hazel-brown and they rested on Belinda with a look that made her heart melt. He was sitting with his back straight as a board, shoulders back, in full military uniform – a stunningly handsome sight. Clutched in his slender hands were the reins of his mount – a dusty, stitched-up rocking horse with creaking springs and no tail.
Prince Bruno de Bruno galloped and galloped on his squeaky horse without getting anywhere at all, while just to one side stood a large easel, half covered with clean canvas. Working away with quick, deft charcoal marks was a young painter. He kept stopping and eyeing the galloping prince and then making more marks on his big canvas.
The prince cried out, ‘Whoa!’ and hastily stopped the rocking horse. The painter put down his charcoal and turned to see what had interrupted them.
‘Hallo,’ said Belinda cheerfully. Prince Bruno de Bruno tilted his nose towards the ceiling and eyed her distantly.
‘Who,’ he demanded, ‘are you?’
‘Princess Belinda.’ The prince gave a short snort.
‘You! A princess! Hmph, I don’t believe you.’
Belinda smiled and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Neither did the guards, nor your father, nor your mother for that matter.’ The prince ignored all this.
‘You’re not beautiful enough to be a princess,’ he declared.
Meanwhile the royal artist had stepped forward and was quietly watching Belinda. He turned to the prince and pointed out that although Belinda may not look beautiful at first sight, she had extraordinarily blue eyes, and if you looked at the blue eyes for long enough, then you would begin to see that she was truly beautiful.
Again the prince snorted. ‘Hubert,’ he said, ‘you’re a fool. Get on with the painting. I want it finished by lunch-time.’
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ said Hubert the artist, with a short bow, and he returned to his easel and canvas.
Belinda watched the prince for a little longer. She decided he was rather rude, but
no doubt that was because he was a prince. There was certainly no doubt that he was handsome, although she hadn’t yet seen him do any press-ups. Besides, if he didn’t think very much of her, then she would have to make sure that he changed his mind.
She left the prince, creaking away on his galloping rocking horse, and went off to find a quiet little room for herself, where she could do some thinking and planning. On the way she passed a big hall mirror, and she couldn’t resist stopping quickly to take a look at her eyes. Nobody had ever said they were beautiful before. In the mirror they sparkled back at her, but Belinda could not see why they were beautiful at all. She thought they were just like… well, like eyes.
In the meantime, King Krust was having a bit of a problem. He was sitting up in bed, surrounded by his most important ministers. The king always held his most important meetings when he was in bed because his ministers made such long speeches he kept dropping off to sleep. If you’re going to drop off to sleep, he pointed out, you may as well be in bed and do it properly.
‘We’ve got a problem,’ he announced.
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘To put it another way, we’ve got four hundred and three problems, because that’s how many princesses there are. They’re cluttering up the palace and eating me out of house and home.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ nodded the old and important ministers.
‘Well, what are we going to do about it?’ the king snapped.
A chorus of ums and ahs filled the royal bedchamber. One minister pressed his fingertips together one by one and coughed.
‘I suppose we could poison them,’ he said.
‘That’s a good idea. That would get rid of them,’ said the others.
King Krust sighed. ‘It is not a good idea at all. What do you think would happen when their fathers found out? They’d all be coming round here, waving their swords and things. No, no. We can’t have that.’
There was a long silence, during which the king began to snore. He jerked awake. ‘The whole point is,’ he grunted, ‘we are trying to find a wife for my son. How on earth do we choose the right wife out of all that lot?’
‘Perhaps we could give them numbers and draw one out of a hat?’
‘Don’t be so stupid!’ he snapped, seizing his crown and holding it out for all to see. ‘How can you put numbers in that? They’d go straight through!’
The other important ministers glared at the unlucky one who had made the suggestion. ‘How stupid!’ they grumbled. Then another one had a good idea.
‘Your Majesty, suppose we gave all the princesses a task to complete. Then whoever did it first could marry your son.’
At first there was no reply because King Krust was fast asleep again. The poor minister had to repeat his suggestion all over again.
‘Hmmm,’ mumbled the king. ‘That might work. What sort of task?’
‘Well, I need some buttons sewn on my shirt,’ one suggested.
‘My lawn needs mowing,’ said another.
‘I say, I left my poor wife with her big toe stuck in the bath tap. I don’t know how she’s going to get it out.’
‘Saw her leg off!’ cried the king, standing up in his bed and waving his little arms about. ‘This is ridiculous. They should be fighting dragons or something, not sewing on buttons and pulling toes out of bath taps.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty, but we don’t have any dragons.’
One of the more silent ministers mumbled something about his wife being rather fierce, but nobody heard him.
‘We must have something dangerous somewhere in the kingdom,’ said the king, sitting down again.
‘Your Majesty, I believe we do have a Bogle somewhere. Hiding in the Marsh at the End of the World, I think.’
‘My goodness, that’s a long way off. That’s probably why I’ve never heard of it before. What on earth is a Bogle?’ King Krust snuggled down under the bedcovers as if he expected a bedtime story.
‘Bogles are a bit like men,’ explained the important minister. ‘But they are very hairy and have long arms, long fingers and even longer fingernails.’
‘Ugh,’ said the king.
‘Quite so, Your Majesty. Their eyes glow in the dark, and they have hair sprouting out of their nostrils and ears. They are not very pretty,’ added the minister, quite unnecessarily.
‘No, well, I wasn’t thinking of inviting him to my birthday party, you know. Tell me what they eat.’
‘Slugs and beetles, Your Majesty, but if they could, they would eat humans. Every so often they come out of the marsh and seize a few people. They’re never ever heard of again.’
King Krust clapped his hands. ‘Just the job,’ he said. ‘He’ll do nicely. Has he got a name, this Bogle?’
‘I believe he’s known as Knackerleevee.’
‘Good, good, good,’ said the king, jumping out of bed. ‘Get the princesses together and I shall be down shortly.’
It took the king three hours to get himself dressed, partly because he couldn’t be bothered to undo his cuff buttons and consequently his arms got stuck in his shirt sleeves. When at last he arrived in the main hall he found it jam-packed with the princesses. The noise was awful.
A big gong sounded, and King Krust raised his arms.
‘Silence, silence!’ he yelled. ‘I have an announcement. Now, you have all come here to marry my wonderful son, Prince Bruno de Bruno Bunkum Krust.’ Here there were great cheers and a curtain was pulled back to reveal the portrait that Belinda had seen earlier that morning. The paint was still wet, but there for all to see was Bruno de Bruno, dashing across the countryside on a magnificent white horse. Belinda, who was crushed right at the back of the hall, couldn’t help thinking it was a shame that nobody else had seen the stitched-up rocking horse.
Several princesses swooned a
t the sight of the handsome prince and had to be carried from the room, to be dumped in a passage outside. The king continued.
‘Now, there are far too many princesses to marry my son – that honour can fall to only one of you. I have therefore arranged for a competition. Whoever completes this task will marry my son and receive half my kingdom… but not the bit with the diamond mine. I’m having that half. At the far corner of my kingdom, in the Marsh at the End of the World, there lives a Bogle. His name is Knackerleevee. He is very hairy, smells of fish and eats people. I want him brought back, dead or alive.’
At this announcement a whole lot more of the princesses swooned away at the thought of smelly fish. Another couple of hundred took to their heels and ran out of the palace,
never to be seen again. In short, only two princesses were left, standing all alone in the big hall.
The king could hardly believe his eyes. It was wonderful. All the princesses had gone at last. He stared down at the two left behind.
‘I know you,’ he said to Belinda, ‘but who are you?’
The second princess, who was, naturally, astonishingly beautiful, stepped forward and gave the king a dazzling smile.
‘Your Majesty,’ she crooned. ‘I am the Princess Saramanda Sneak, and I shall bring you the Bogle dead or alive, just as you wish.’
The princess bent over his hand and gave it a sloppy kiss. King Krust turned to his important ministers with a beaming face.
‘There,’ he said. ‘I think that was an excellent idea of mine!’ And he added in a loud whisper that Belinda heard quite clearly, ‘I do hope Saramanda wins. Isn’t she a stunner? I don’t fancy that other one as a daughter-in-law at all.’
4
Princess Saramanda Sneak
Belinda was eager to start off straight away for the Marsh at the End of the World, but King Krust was in no particular hurry.
‘You may as well stay for tea,’ he said. ‘And then it will be too late to start before nightfall, so you may as well spend the night here and set off in the morning.’
The Karate Princess Page 2
