The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “That is the King of Cabbodia’s Castle,” announced his squire, who seemed to know everything. “His daughter is the Princess Serena, and every Prince in the neighbourhood is at the moment competing for her hand. I have already sent ahead entering your name for the contest.”

  “Oh, have you,” said Erroll. “I’m not a Prince.”

  “They won’t know that.”

  “But I mightn’t like her.”

  “Wait till you see her. She’s as beautiful as the day is long,” replied the squire, putting his fingers to his lips and blowing a kiss into the air.

  At that very moment the King of Cabbodia was hurriedly finishing his breakfast, with one eye on the sundial just outside the window. He was already late for an important Grand Council. He gulped down the last bit of toast, wiped his mouth, and only pausing to pick up a crown from the crown-rack in the hall, strode into the Second Best Throne Room, where his Counsellors were assembled.

  “Morning, all!” said the King, seating himself on the Second Best Throne, not liking it much, and sending a young Counsellor for another cushion. “I’m not really late, you know. The Dining Room sundial is slow again. Now to business. Court Chamberlain!”

  The Court Chamberlain shuffled apprehensively forward. He was an aged man who, judging from an occasional champing of the jaws and several crumbs in his long white beard, had also only just finished breakfast.

  “About the competition! Everything arranged? By the way, there’s a new Prince entered. Ear-oil, or some such name.”

  “Erroll, Your Majesty. He arrives to-night.”

  “Good! That makes fourteen. Have you drawn the lots yet, for who has first go?”

  “Well, Your Majesty, there’s a difficulty . . .” The old man paused and swallowed twice, apparently from nervousness, though it may have been because he had just found some hitherto overlooked bit of breakfast. “I’m— er— afraid,” he went on in increasing confusion, “that the fierce Aurochs which the Princes had to fight in order to decide . . .” He paused again, this time agitatedly to comb crumbs out of his beard.

  “Come on,” said the King. “What’s happened to our Aurochs . . . There’s still a bit of toast, by the way, down in the left-hand corner. Or else it’s haddock. No, further over! There! Now leave your beard alone and get on with it.”

  “I’m afraid he’s died,” the old man blurted out.

  “Died?”

  “Yes, he ate some varlet that disagreed with him.”

  “Tut, tut!” said the King. “Poor old Towser! Now we are in a hole. What are they to do instead?”

  “If I might suggest, Your Majesty,” put in a shrewd-looking Counsellor, “why not change the competition and make it one to find water in that patch of desert just outside the town. We’ve always wanted a well there, so it would serve a double purpose . . .”

  “Good idea!” cried the King. “And we’ll give them each one night to do it in.”

  “Only one night, Your Majesty?” interposed the Court Chamberlain.

  “Why not? One of them might quite well strike it right away. Besides – do leave your beard alone, please; it looks all right from the outside, but heaven knows what’ll come to light if you keep stirring it up like that – besides, we must make it a little difficult for them, otherwise it reflects on Princess Serena.”

  “Still, we musn’t risk them all failing,” pointed out another Counsellor. “I mean, then we mightn’t get our well at all.”

  “In that case we’ll ask the Court Magician to provide one. It’ll be child’s play to him. Come to think of it, he might have done it before. That sort of thing is his job. However . . .” He rose from his throne. “That’s settled then. We’ll announce it to the Princes to-morrow. I’m sorry about Towser, but perhaps they won’t be. So long, all! I mean— the Grand Council is now terminated.”

  He bustled from the room. The Counsellors all bowed. The Court Chamberlain ran to earth the final crumb of toast that had been annoying him. The shrewd-looking Counsellor hurried off to buy a cheap option on the bit of desert land in question.

  The following day the terms of the Well-Finding Contest were formally announced, and for the next three nights three Princes tried and failed. Erroll, who had drawn fourth place, had spent the interval in getting to know the Princess Serena, who, as his squire had said, was as beautiful as the day was long – and the fellow obviously hadn’t meant any December day either. Erroll decided he liked her very much, and that he would win her if humanly possible. But when his turn came that night and he found himself outside the town moodily surveying the desert, he realized he was up against a real difficulty.

  At once he thought of his jewel and turned it three times.

  Next moment a lovely young girl stood smiling before him.

  “I wondered when I was going to get a call,” she said.

  “Are you really Joy?” he asked incredulously.

  “Yes. Don’t you recognize my voice? And look! Here’s the green travelling rug. It’s just brought me.”

  She stepped off it as she spoke and came nearer to him. “Well how do you like me?”

  “I— I think you’re lovely,” stammered Erroll. He wanted to say a lot more on the subject, but all he could get out was: “So you got home all right?”

  “Naturally,” smiled Joy. “But Father had moved again. Still, it’s a much nicer neighbourhood, near a delightful spring, and he’s decided to have parties and try and get to know people.”

  “Talking of springs,” said Erroll thoughtfully, “my difficulty is . . .” He stopped. He had suddenly realized he didn’t now want to find that well as much as he had a short while before. “That is . . . let’s talk, shall we?”

  “First, what’s your difficulty?”

  “Nothing at all. Matter of fact, I was just looking at the jewel and turned it by mistake.”

  “Liar! You’ve got to tell me – if you want me to stay and talk to you.”

  So Erroll naturally had to tell her.

  “Oh, that!” cried Joy. “That’s easy.” She clapped her hands and suddenly a stream of water was gushing out at their feet.

  “Here, I say!” cried Erroll in dismay. “You’ve done it now. I shall have to marry the Princess Serena.”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “I should be marrying her under false pretences.”

  “Meaning you’re not really a Prince – and haven’t found the water yourself?”

  “No. Meaning I want to marry someone else, now I’ve seen her.”

  Joy looked a little embarrassed. “I— I don’t quite follow.”

  “Yes, you do.” He moved towards her.

  She retreated to the travelling rug. “But suppose I . . .”

  She stopped speaking, largely because Erroll, who could not be accused of being backward, was kissing her rather thoroughly.

  “What will Father say?” Joy managed to get out at last.

  Next minute they knew, for by then they were both standing on the travelling rug, and once again Erroll had inadvertently trodden on the self-starter.

  What the warlock said, however, cannot really be repeated here, for it was very impolite. On the other hand, the rug had taken them on to his best corn as he sat in front of the fire having a nightcap. Moreover, he had upset his wine.

  “You do flip about, Joy!” he grumbled, wiping himself down. “Why, Erroll’s here, too! What’s he doing?”

  “Can’t you see? Kissing me. He’s going to be your son-in-law.”

  “Bless my whiskers! Congratulations! We must celebrate this.” He clapped his hands and a fairy major-domo appeared.

  “Tell you what! This is a chance for that idea of yours.” He turned to the fairy. “Let there be a big party to-morrow,” he commanded, “and invite everyone in the neighbourhood. Particularly the— er— as it were, ground landlord of the castle at the moment . . .”

  The celebratory party next day was, as one may imagine with a warlock as host, done in slap-up sty
le, starting off with a big banquet with vintage nectar, honey-dew cup, and a new dish specially created for the occasion by the wizard Head Chef and named in Joy’s honour, Filets de Joie d’ Ambrosia. Many of the elderly people present, while considering that the name sounded a little vulgar, took two helpings and said it was better than anything they’d ever tasted before. As a matter of fact, the Head Chef hadn’t really taken very much trouble over creating the dish. Being a wizard, he had simply waved his wand over the range and said, “Let there be a dish better than anything anyone has ever tasted before,” and there the darn thing was – almost before he could add that he was catering for three hundred.

  About halfway through the subsequent dance the warlock, who had been doing himself well, called for silence.

  “I want all you nice people,” he announced, “to drink a lil toast. The health, gemmen, of the yappy cung hupple.”

  “And yours, too, zur,” cried all the peasants and farmers, after they had done so, at which the warlock beamed very happily. It seemed he had achieved popularity at last. He took a large drink himself and invited them all to another party the following week, took another, and made it a weekly fixture. Then he drank the happy pair’s health again and, having cried loudly, “On with the dance. Let Joy be unconfined,” sat down in considerable embarrassment, muttering to himself that it was just a figure of speech, and that nothing was further from his thoughts.

  And as for Princess Serena? Well, Erroll was considered to have let her down very badly by disappearing after he had legally won her hand; and she rather cleverly sent all the other Princes off on a quest to find him and avenge her honour. Then while they were safely out of the way she married a handsome young knight at her father’s court, whom she’d had her eye on all the time.

  But Erroll and Joy lived happy ever after.

  THE GLASS SLIP-UP

  Louise Cooper

  Louise Cooper (1952-2009), who died tragically young, didn’t write many short stories. She is probably best known for her long-running Indigo sequence of fantasy novels which began with Nemesis (1988), although she had her first novel, The Book of Paradox (1973), published when she was twenty. Here she turns her hand to exploring what happened after Cinderella married the Prince.

  When his wife started telling Baron Grog the one about the three nuns and the deaf centaur. Charming shut his eyes and prayed that the ground would open up and swallow him. The prayer was not answered – they never were – so after a few seconds he opened his eyes again and with a sickly smile started a one-sided, trivial and utterly desperate conversation with the Dowager Duchess to his right at the banqueting table.

  “. . . unseasonably warm for the time of year, I think, Duchess. The crops are all ripening early, and—”

  “—So the centaur says, ‘Eh? What?’ and the second nun – she’s red as a beetroot by now, right? – shouts at the top of her voice—”

  “. . . all the palace gardeners are predicting an absolute glut, more than any year in their experience, and most of them have been in our service for—”

  “—Then the nun shrieks, ‘BALLS – I SAID, BALLS!’ And the centaur turns to the third nun and says—”

  “. . . And the roses! Father says he hasn’t seen such a display since—”

  “AHAHAHAHAHAHA!” The noise, which had the volume, if not the melody or anything dimly resembling it, of a full symphonic crescendo, ripped through the hall. The joke was finished, and Charming’s wife was laughing. Those closest to her at the table, including Baron Grog, made great efforts to pull their faces into expressions of hilarity (protocol was protocol, after all), but it was clearly costing them. From the head of the table the king, Charming’s father, drew his brows together and gave his son a Look, and Charming could only offer silent thanks that his mother had pleaded a diplomatic headache and excused herself before the feast began.

  Rell was reaching for the port, which she vastly preferred to wine and insisted on having to hand during every meal, to the horror of the palace’s senior steward. She filled her glass, drained it, smacked her lips and filled it again before taking another hearty swig.

  “Cor, that’s better. Makes you thirsty, laughing, eh?” Her head came up and she waved coquettishly towards her husband. “All right, Charm?”

  Across the table Araminta, the younger and uglier of Rell’s stepsisters, gave a snigger that she quickly disguised as a genteel cough. Two seats up, her elder sister, Arabella, raised her plucked and pencilled eyebrows, then met Charming’s gaze with an unequivocal message, tempered by a meaningful warning glance in the direction of her own husband. But for once Charming felt no stir of excitement. Even the prospect of Arabella’s particular brand of consolation couldn’t move him tonight. He felt too downhearted. It was all becoming just too much.

  The banquet ended at last, and guests began to mingle less formally in the great hall and adjoining anterooms. No one saw Charming slip away into the gardens, but a little while later his stepmother-in-law, who needed a breath of fresh air, found him glooming among the rhododendrons on the palace’s west side.

  The second Lady Hardup was, to use Charming’s own words, quite a good egg. She had tried at the start to warn Charming obliquely about Rell, though Charming had then been too besotted to pay any heed. An error he regretted now, of course. As Lady H had once gently pointed out, she and her natural daughters weren’t monsters out of some childish fairy tale. There had been a reason why they kept Rell at home in the kitchen. She was, quite simply, an embarrassment. It was Charming’s sheer bad luck that she had happened to behave herself at that first ball and, later, during the glass slipper business when the royal party had come knocking unsuspectingly at their door. Beyond that, though, Lady H had never once said “told you so”. She had tried, indeed, to help him. And, under the weight of parental and social disapproval that now dogged his every step, Charming sometimes suspected that she was the only real friend he had.

  She fell into step beside him and, after a few paces of sympathetic silence, said, “She told me that joke once; about four years ago. We were in the garden at the time. Countess Aniseed was paying a courtesy call . . .”

  Charming nodded. Countess Aniseed, he recalled, was very religious. For a few moments there was a silence of mutual understanding. Then Lady Hardup spoke again.

  “I blame that wretched pumpkin woman, of course. She was new to the district, and in my opinion she was simply looking for a way to ingratiate herself with a wealthy patron.” She paused. “You haven’t found her yet, I presume?”

  Charming shook his head. “She seems to have vanished without trace. We haven’t found a single clue.”

  “Hmm. That’s always the problem with witches. They have methods that aren’t available to the rest of us.” Lady H scowled. “White mice, indeed . . . at least the cat put paid to them.”

  “A little late, unfortunately,” said Charming.

  “Quite.” She sighed. “Well, we can but hope that she’ll turn up eventually. Thanks be that there are no children on the way to complicate matters.” Then her expression changed and she looked worriedly at him. “Um . . . I presume that situation hasn’t changed?”

  Charming thought back to his wedding night, and what Rell had suggested when they were alone in the royal bedchamber. All that cream . . . the kidskin gloves and feather boa had been brand new; and wanting to use the antique damask curtains really had been the last straw. It was off-putting in the extreme, and had stayed that way.

  “No,” he said aloud. “It hasn’t changed.”

  “Well, that’s a small mercy.” Lady H had noted his embarrassment and drew her own, reasonably accurate, conclusions. She patted his arm gently. “Have patience. We’ll find an answer. And in the meantime, you have the sympathy of us all.” She paused, then smiled meaningfully. “Especially Arabella.”

  Charming’s entire face turned scarlet, but before he could start to stammer out a denial she added, “Don’t worry, my dear; Arabella’s husband
hasn’t the smallest suspicion. But she and I have always been close.”

  Charming gulped. “Yes, I . . . I see. Ah . . . thank you for . . . um . . .”

  “My discretion? Not at all; not at all. I only wish that the glass slipper had fitted Bella in the first place. If it had, we should all have avoided a great deal of trouble.”

  Charming was saved from replying as light footsteps clicked along the terrace behind them. They both looked, and saw a sumptuously dressed slim figure with piled-up golden hair approaching.

  “Ah.” Lady Hardup’s eyebrows lifted, just an iota. “Someone is searching for you, I think. With your permission, I shall take my leave.”

  She didn’t wait for permission to be given, but turned and glided away towards the steps at the terrace’s opposite end. As her shape faded into the gloom, the newcomer reached the balustrade and leaned over.

  “Oho, so there you are!” Gold satin and purple velvet gleamed in the light spilling from the great hall, and the figure skimmed down the nearer steps to join Charming. “What’s the matter, petal; feeling a bit under the weather? Never mind; here’s Uncle Dandini to kiss it all better!”

  Charming evaded the attempt at an embrace, and Dandini shrugged, stepping back and patting a strand of his coiffe into place. Then his brown, cow-like eyes flicked to the vanishing form of Lady Hardup. “The Gorgon been bothering you, has she? What was it this time; complaining about that joke?”

  “She’s heard it before. And she’s not a gorgon. Far from it, in fact. She’s very sympathetic.”

  ‘Well, I suppose she can afford to be, since it’s only through your connections that she found a husband for that appalling daughter of hers. But I’m not here to have a nice bitch about her, more’s the pity.” Dandini’s painted mouth widened into a conspiratorial smile and, leaning forward, he whispered in Charming’s ear, “I’ve got some news.”

  Despite the overpowering scent assailing his nostrils, Charming’s interest quickened. “News?” he repeated eagerly. “About—”