The Princess and the Captain
Page 36
Malva smiled mysteriously. She knew exactly what she was going to do with them.
Around midday she left Berthilde and went back to the Citadel. The throne needed her presence: she had people to receive, ambassadors to send into the provinces, many important decisions to take.
One of those decisions concerned Finopico.
Malva summoned the new directors of the Maritime Institute and told them to send a scientific expedition to prove that the Ghoom of the Deeps really existed.
The scientists protested: the creature was only a mythical being, they said.
‘I like mythical beings,’ retorted the Princess. ‘Without them we’d have no dreams to pursue.’
She spread the sea chart out on the large table in the Hall of Delicacies, picked up a pen and drew a line round the place where the Estafador had sunk. Then she showed the scar on her leg. Much impressed, the scientists stopped objecting. It was decided that the expedition would set out a month later.
Another of Malva’s decisions involved the map-makers. She summoned them too, and showed them the piece of paper on which Orpheus had drawn his map of the Archipelago.
‘You must throw away the old maps and sea charts,’ she said. ‘I want you to make new ones mentioning those islands to the south of the Known World.’
The map-makers turned pale. Pushing back the limits of the Known World was impossible! But Malva would not take no for an answer. Above the drawing, she wrote in large letters The Archipelago of Orpheus.
‘That will be the official name of the region from this day on. Now get to work!’
The map-makers nodded and went away with the drawing. Malva sighed. She had wondered for a moment whether to ask for Elgolia to be added to the new maps. In the end, she decided against it. Elgolia should remain secret, hidden. A dream, in fact.
Some time later the Coronador died.
The next to go was Berthilde.
Malva founded an orphanage for street children in the McBott house: The Peppe Institute. There would be no dark cells or harsh treatment in the orphanage; she would see to that in person.
Later still, the scientific expedition came back from the Sea of Ypree. After months of research work, the holds of the ships were full of specimens of entirely unknown and extremely strange fish. Not one of them looked anything like the Ghoom of the Deeps.
To the despair of the Institute scientists, Malva sent out a second expedition. She had decided to go on sending them until the Finopicuum de profundis took its place in the official books.
Winter came again. Philomena and Uzmir had their horses saddled and set off for the steppes. It was time for them to rejoin their people and go hunting oryak. Philomena shed some tears, and Hainur, standing on his horse’s back, did a farewell dance for Malva.
They promised to come back next summer to see her.
At last Malva received a letter from the kingdom of Balmun. It was signed by Lei and Hob.
They told her about their many adventures, the welcome they had found in Lei’s family, and the days of festivities that followed. Both were very well, they said. At the bottom of the letter, Lei had drawn the plans of the house that they were building together beside a lake.
The twin stars shine every night here too, Hob wrote, and I believe the fortune-teller was right … for here I am as happy as a prince!
They ended their letter by asking Malva to give Babilas and Orpheus a hug from them. Malva decided to write and tell them how Orpheus, in trying to save her life, had lost his own.
That day she went to the graveyard again. Standing in front of the silent slab on the grave of Orpheus, she talked and wept for a long time. Then she knelt down, placed the palms of her hands flat on the ground before her and kissed it.
After that she went back to the Citadel. Babilas was receiving dignitaries from Polvakia and Sperta in the Hall of Delicacies. He was getting on very well by himself, so Malva discreetly disappeared.
She went to shut herself in the alcove, drew the curtains, lit a candle, opened a notebook and sat down at her dressing table. For a moment she dreamed in front of her own reflection, once again remembering the day when she had decided to run away. The words of the letter she had hidden there behind the mirror came back to her. But her rebellion, her anger and disgust no longer tormented her. She had shaken off that painful past. So the time had come …
She dipped her pen in the ink.
On the first page she wrote the title of the story she was going to tell. It was called The Princess and the Captain.
Then, writing feverishly, she began: To the north, the walls of the Citadel dropped straight to a sheer precipice. Perched there on its rock, it looked like a watchful bird of prey, unfolding its towers and wings above the valley and casting its imposing shadow on the calm waters of the River Gdavir.
She wrote all night, her words reviving the distant days when she still knew nothing of the joys and sorrows of the world, and bringing back to life all who had accompanied her on her fabulous journey.
THE END
ANNE-LAURE BONDOUX
Anne-Laure Bondoux was born in 1971 and lives near Paris. She began writing stories when she was about ten, and her passion for storytelling has remained with her ever since. After studying literature at university, she joined the Bayard Presse publishing group in 1996. Here she discovered literature for young people and published her first stories.
Anne-Laure Bondoux has been awarded several prizes: the Prix RTL – Mon Quotidien prize in 2003 for La Seconde Vie de Linus Hoppe, and the Prix Sésame de Saint Paul-Trois-Châteaux in 2004 for Les Larmes de l’Assassin, which also won the Prix Sorcières at the Paris Salon du Livre in the same year.
ANTHEA BELL
Anthea Bell was educated at Somerville College, Oxford, and is a freelance translator from French and German. Her translations include works of non-fiction, literary and popular fiction and many books for young people, including (with Derek Hockridge) the entire Asterix the Gaul saga by Goscinny and Uderzo. She has received several translation awards, including the Schlegel-Tieck award three times, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize (USA) in 2002 for the translation of W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, and the 2003 Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation.
This book is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as
part of the Burgess programme run by the Cultural Department of the
French Embassy in London (www.frenchbooknews.com).
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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This paperback edition published in 2007
Originally published in France in 2004 as La Princetta et le Capitaine
by Hachette Livre, Paris
Copyright © Anne-Laure Bondoux 2004
English translation copyright © Anthea Bell 2006
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
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