Bluebeard

by Angela Carter

  The cat overheard him but decided to pretend he had not done so; he addressed his master gravely.

  ‘Master, don’t fret; give me a bag and a pair of boots to protect my little feet from the thorny undergrowth and you’ll see that your father hasn’t provided for you so badly, after all.’

  Although the cat’s master could not really believe his cat would support him, he had seen him play so many cunning tricks when he went to catch rats and mice – he would hang upside down by his feet; or hide himself in the meal and play at being dead – that he felt a faint hope his cat might think up some helpful scheme.

  When the cat had got what he asked for, he put on his handsome boots and slung the bag round his neck, keeping hold of the draw-strings with his two front paws. He went to a warren where he knew there were a great many rabbits. He put some bran and a selection of juicy weeds at the bottom of the bag and then stretched out quite still, like a corpse, and waited for some ingenuous young rabbit to come and investigate the bag and its appetizing contents.

  No sooner had he lain down than a silly bunny jumped into the bag. Instantly, the cat pulled the draw-strings tight and killed the rabbit without mercy.

  Proudly bearing his prey, he went to the king and asked to speak to him. He was taken to his majesty’s private apartment. As soon as he got inside the door, he made the king a tremendous bow and said:

  ‘Sire, may I present you with a delicious young rabbit that my master, the Marquis of Carabas, ordered me to offer to you, with his humblest compliments.’

  Without his master’s knowledge or consent, the cat had decided the miller’s son should adopt the name of the Marquis of Carabas.

  ‘Tell your master that I thank him with all my heart,’ said the king.

  The next day, the cat hid himself in a cornfield, with his open bag, and two partridges flew into it. He pulled the strings and caught them both. Then he went to present them to the king, just as he had done with the rabbit. The king accepted the partridges with great glee and rewarded the cat with a handsome tip.

  The cat kept on taking his master’s game to the king for two or three months. One day, he learned that the king planned to take a drive along the riverside with his beautiful daughter. He said to his master:

  ‘If you take my advice, your fortune is made. You just go for a swim in the river at a spot I’ll show to you and leave the rest to me.’

  The Marquis of Carabas obediently went off to swim, although he could not think why the cat should want him to. While he was bathing, the king drove by and the cat cried out with all its might:

  ‘Help! Help! The Marquis of Carabas is drowning!’

  The king put his head out of his carriage window when he heard this commotion and recognized the cat who had brought him so much game. He ordered his servants to hurry and save the Marquis of Carabas.

  While they were pulling the marquis out of the river, the cat went to the king’s carriage and told him how robbers had stolen his master’s clothes while he swam in the river even though he’d shouted ‘Stop thief!’ at the top of his voice. In fact, the cunning cat had hidden the miller’s son’s wretched clothes under a stone.

  The king ordered the master of his wardrobe to hurry back to the palace and bring a selection of his own finest garments for the Marquis of Carabas to wear. When the young man put them on, he looked very handsome and the king’s daughter thought: ‘What an attractive young man!’ The Marquis of Carabas treated her with respect mingled with tenderness and she fell madly in love.

  The king invited the Marquis of Carabas to join him in his carriage and continue the drive in style. The cat was delighted to see his scheme begin to succeed and busily ran ahead of the procession. He came to a band of peasants who were mowing a meadow and said:

  ‘Good people, if you don’t tell the king that this meadow belongs to the Marquis of Carabas, I’ll make mincemeat of every one of you.’

  As soon as he saw the mowers, the king asked them who owned the hayfield. They had been so intimidated by the cat that they dutifully chorused:

  ‘It belongs to the Marquis of Carabas.’

  ‘You have a fine estate,’ remarked the king to the marquis.

  ‘The field crops abundantly every year,’ improvised the marquis.

  The cat was still racing ahead of the party and came to a band of harvesters. He said to them:

  ‘Good harvesters, if you don’t say that all these cornfields belong to the Marquis of Carabas, I’ll make mincemeat of every one of you.’

  The king passed by a little later and wanted to know who owned the rolling cornfield.

  ‘The Marquis of Carabas possesses them all,’ said the harvesters.

  The king expressed his increasing admiration of the marquis’s estates. The cat ran before the carriage and made the same threats to everyone he met on the way; the king was perfectly astonished at the young man’s great possessions.

  At last the cat arrived at a castle. In this castle, lived an ogre. This ogre was extraordinarily rich; he was the true owner of all the land through which the king had travelled. The cat had taken good care to find out all he could about this ogre and now he asked the servant who answered the door if he could speak to him; he said he couldn’t pass so close by the castle without paying his respects to such an important man as its owner.

  The ogre made him as welcome as an ogre can.

  ‘I’m told you can transform yourself into all sorts of animals,’ said the cat. ‘That you can change yourself into a lion, for example; or even an elephant.’

  ‘Quite right,’ replied the ogre. ‘Just to show you, I’ll turn myself into a lion.’

  When he found himself face to face with a lion, even our cat was so scared that he jumped up on to the roof and balanced there precariously because his boots weren’t made for walking on tiles.

  As soon as the ogre had become himself again, the cat clambered down and confessed how terrified he had been.

  ‘But gossip also has it – though I can scarcely believe it – that you also have the power to take the shapes of the very smallest animals. They say you can even shrink down as small as a rat, or a mouse. But I must admit, even if it seems rude, that I think that’s quite impossible.’

  ‘Impossible?’ said the ogre. ‘Just you see!’ He changed into a mouse and began to scamper around on the floor. The cat no sooner saw him than he jumped on him and gobbled him up.

  Meanwhile, the king saw the ogre’s fine castle as he drove by and decided to pay it a visit. The cat heard the sound of carriage wheels on the drawbridge, ran outside and greeted the king.

  ‘Welcome, your majesty, to the castle of the Marquis of Carabas.’

  ‘What, sir? Does this fine castle also belong to you? I’ve never seen anything more splendid than this courtyard and the battlements that surround it; may we be permitted to view the interior?’

  The marquis gave his hand to the young princess and followed the king. They entered a grand room where they found a banquet ready prepared; the ogre had invited all his friends to a dinner party, but none of the guests dared enter the castle when they saw the king had arrived. The king was delighted with the good qualities of the Marquis of Carabas and his daughter was beside herself about them. There was also the young man’s immense wealth to be taken into account. After his fifth or sixth glass of wine, the king said:

  ‘Say the word, my fine fellow, and you shall become my son-in-law.’

  The marquis bowed very low, immediately accepted the honour the king bestowed on him and married the princess that very day. The cat was made a great lord and gave up hunting mice, except for pleasure.

  Moral

  A great inheritance may be a fine thing; but hard work and ingenuity will take a young man further than his father’s money.

  Another Moral

  If a miller’s son can so quickly win the heart of a princess, that is because clothes, bearing and youth speedily inspire affection; and the means to achieve them are not always en
tirely commendable.

  The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood

  Once upon a time, there lived a king and a queen who were bitterly unhappy because they did not have any children. They visited all the clinics, all the specialists, made holy vows, went on pilgrimages and said their prayers regularly but with so little success that when, at long last, the queen finally did conceive and, in due course, gave birth to a daughter, they were both wild with joy. Obviously, this baby’s christening must be the grandest of all possible christenings; for her godmothers, she would have as many fairies as they could find in the entire kingdom. According to the custom of those times, each fairy would make the child a magic present, so that the princess could acquire every possible perfection. After a long search, they managed to trace seven suitable fairies.

  After the ceremony at the church, the guests went back to the royal palace for a party in honour of the fairy godmothers. Each of these important guests found her place was specially laid with a great dish of gold and a golden knife, fork and spoon studded with diamonds and rubies. But as the fairies took their seats, an uninvited guest came storming into the palace, deeply affronted because she had been forgotten – though it was no wonder she’d been overlooked; this old fairy had hidden herself away in her tower for fifteen years and, since nobody had set eyes on her all that time, they thought she was dead, or had been bewitched. The king ordered a place to be laid for her at once but he could not give her a great gold dish and gold cutlery like the other fairies had because only seven sets had been made. The old fairy was very annoyed at that and muttered threats between her teeth. The fairy who sat beside her overheard her and suspected she planned to revenge herself by giving the little princess a very unpleasant present when the time for present giving came. She slipped away behind the tapestry so that she could have the last word, if necessary, and put right any harm the old witch might do the baby.

  Now the fairies presented their gifts. The first fairy said the princess would grow up to be the loveliest woman in the world. The next said she would have the disposition of an angel, the third that she would be graceful as a gazelle, the fourth gave her the gift of dancing, the fifth of singing like a nightingale, and the sixth said she would be able to play any kind of musical instrument that she wanted to.

  But when it came to the old fairy’s turn, she shook with spite and announced that, in spite of her beauty and accomplishments, the princess was going to prick her finger with a spindle and die of it.

  All the guests trembled and wept. But the youngest fairy stepped out from behind the tapestry and cried out:

  ‘Don’t despair, King and Queen; your daughter will not die – though, alas, I cannot undo entirely the magic of a senior-ranking fairy. The princess will prick her finger with a spindle but, instead of dying, she will fall into a deep sleep that will last for a hundred years. And at the end of a hundred years, the son of a king will come to wake her.’

  In spite of this comfort, the king did all he could to escape the curse; he forbade the use of a spindle, or even the possession of one, on pain of death, in all the lands he governed.

  Fifteen or sixteen years went by. The king and queen were spending the summer at a castle in the country and one day the princess decided to explore, prowling through room after room until at last she climbed up a spiral staircase in a tower and came to an attic in which an old lady was sitting, along with her distaff, spinning, for this old lady had not heard how the king had banned the use of a spindle.

  ‘Whatever are you doing, my good woman?’ asked the princess.

  ‘I’m spinning, my pretty dear,’ answered the old lady.

  ‘Oh, how clever!’ said the princess. ‘How do you do it? Give it to me so that I can see if I can do it, too!’

  She was very lively and just a little careless; but besides, and most importantly, the fairies had ordained it. No sooner had she picked up the spindle than she pierced her hand with it and fell down in a faint.

  The old lady cried for help and the servants came running from all directions. They threw water over her, unlaced her corsets, slapped her hands, rubbed her temples with eau-de-cologne – but nothing would wake her.

  The king climbed to the attic to see the cause of the clamour and, sad at heart, knew the fairy’s curse had come true. He knew the princess’s time had come, just as the fairies said it would, and ordered her to be carried to the finest room in the palace and laid there on a bed covered with gold and silver embroidery. She was as beautiful as an angel. Her trance had not yet taken the colour from her face; her cheeks were rosy and her lips like coral. Her eyes were closed but you could hear her breathing very, very softly and, if you saw the slow movement of her breast, you knew she was not dead.

  The king ordered she should be left in peace until the time came when she would wake up. At the moment the princess had pricked her finger, the good fairy who saved her life was in the realm of Mataquin, twelve thousand leagues away, but she heard the news immediately from a dwarf who sped to her in a pair of seven-league boots. The fairy left Mataquin at once in a fiery chariot drawn by dragons and arrived at the grieving court an hour later. The king went out to help her down; she approved of all his arrangements but she was very sensitive, and she thought how sad the princess would be when she woke up all alone in that great castle.

  So she touched everything in the house, except for the king and queen, with her magic ring – the housekeepers, the maids of honour, the chambermaids, the gentlemen-in-waiting, the court officials, the cooks, the scullions, the errand-boys, the night-watchmen, the Swiss guards, the page-boys, the footmen; she touched all the horses in the stable, and the stable-boys, too, and even Puff, the princess’s little lap-dog, who was curled up on her bed beside her. As soon as she touched them with her magic ring, they all fell fast asleep and would not wake up until their mistress woke, ready to look after her when she needed them. Even the spits on the fire, loaded with partridges and pheasants, drowsed off to sleep, and the flames died down and slept, too. All this took only a moment; fairies are fast workers.

  The king and queen kissed their darling child but she did not stir. Then they left the palace for ever and issued proclamations forbidding anyone to approach it. Within a quarter of an hour, a great number of trees, some large, some small, interlaced with brambles and thorns, sprang up around the park and formed a hedge so thick that neither man nor beast could penetrate it. This hedge grew so tall that you could see only the topmost turrets of the castle, for the fairy had made a safe, magic place where the princess could sleep her sleep out free from prying eyes.

  At the end of a hundred years, the son of the king who now ruled over the country went out hunting in that region. He asked the local police what those turrets he could see above the great wood might mean. They replied, each one, as he had heard tell – how it was an old ruin, full of ghosts; or, that all the witches of the country went there to hold their sabbaths. But the most popular story was that it was the home of an ogre who carried all the children he caught there, to eat them at his leisure, knowing nobody else could follow him through the wood.

  The prince did not know what to believe. Then an old man said to him:

  ‘My lord, fifty years ago I heard my father say that the most beautiful princess in all the world was sleeping in that castle, and her sleep was going to last for a hundred years, until the prince who is meant to have her comes to wake her up.’

  When he heard that, the young prince was tremendously excited; he had never heard of such a marvellous adventure and, fired with thoughts of love and glory, he made up his mind there and then to go through the wood. No sooner had he stepped among the trees than the great trunks and branches, the thorns and brambles parted, to let him pass. He saw the castle at the end of a great avenue and walked towards it, though he was surprised to see that none of his attendants could follow him because the trees sprang together again as soon as he had gone between them. But he did not abandon his quest. A young prince in love is always
brave. Then he arrived at a courtyard that seemed like a place where only fear lived.

  An awful silence filled it and the look of death was on everything. Man and beast stretched on the ground, like corpses; but the pimples on the red noses of the Swiss guards soon showed him they were not dead at all, but sleeping, and the glasses beside them, with the dregs of wine still at the bottoms, showed how they had dozed off after a spree.

  He went through a marble courtyard; he climbed a staircase; he went into a guardroom, where the guards were lined up in two ranks, each with a gun on his shoulder, and snoring with all their might. He found several rooms full of gentlemen-in-waiting and fine ladies; some stood, some sat, all slept. At last he arrived in a room that was entirely covered in gilding and, there on a bed with the curtains drawn back so that he could see her clearly, lay a princess about fifteen or sixteen years old and she was so lovely that she seemed, almost, to shine. The prince approached her trembling, and fell on his knees before her.

  The enchantment was over; the princess woke. She gazed at him so tenderly you would not have thought it was the first time she had ever seen him.

  ‘Is it you, my prince?’ she said. ‘You have kept me waiting for a long time.’

  The prince was beside himself with joy when he heard that and the tenderness in her voice overwhelmed him so that he hardly knew how to reply. He told her he loved her better than he loved himself and though he stumbled over the words, that made her very happy, because he showed so much feeling. He was more tongue-tied than she, because she had had plenty of time to dream of what she would say to him; her good fairy had made sure she had sweet dreams during her long sleep. They talked for hours and still had not said half the things they wanted to say to one another.

  But the entire palace had woken up with the princess and everyone was going about his business again. Since none of them were in love, they were all dying of hunger. The chief lady-in-waiting, just as ravenous as the rest, lost patience after a while and told the princess loud and clear that dinner was ready. The prince helped the princess up from the bed and she dressed herself with the greatest magnificence; but when she put on her ruff, the prince remembered how his grandmother had worn one just like it. All the princess’s clothes were a hundred years out of fashion, but she was no less beautiful because of that.