“Sire?”
“The cloth-of-gold gauntlet gloves that I wore at my coronation! They are gold already, it may be that… Yes, it’s worth a try! Fetch them, Biffpot, they are in the Royal Robing Room. You have the keys … Be quick, there’s a good fellow!”
Biffpot was back in a few minutes with a magnificent pair of high-cuffed gloves, very thick and heavy, woven of pure gold thread and richly embroidered.
“Good. Put them there, on the chair.”
The man obeyed. The King snatched up one glove. Biffpot, watching closely, thought he saw the embroidery lose its colour as the King pulled the gauntlet on. The same thing happened with the other glove. Then the King did a curious thing – he touched the chair, the wall, the door-handle with his gloved fingers, cautiously, as if they might be red hot. He breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“These might make all the difference … But still, I cannot take the slightest risk. Biffpot, turn down the bedclothes. I shall sleep as I am – if I can sleep at all.”
“Sleep in your clothes, Sire!”
“It doesn’t matter, Biffpot.”
Biffpot uneasily turned back the bedclothes and the King climbed heavily into bed. He was shivering and sweating. Biffpot, very concerned, spread two more blankets. The King was ashy pale.
“Are you unwell, Sire?”
“I think I may have caught a chill. I got wet in the storm.”
“Storm, Sire? When was that?”
Midas raised his head from the pillow. “Just now.”
“It’s a fine evening, Sire. No rain for a week.”
The King stared at him. “A magic storm then,” he whispered. “I see it is all to be made as hard for me as possible … Quite right. Quite right!” His voice shook.
“Sire?”
“Never mind, Biffpot. Go to the Princess and tell her – tell her I have a cold and can’t come to her this evening. Give her …” he cleared his throat and passed a hand across his eyes. “Give her my love, will you, and say – I will see her tomorrow after school. By then, everything will be … I have the best hope that …” He kept the gauntlet pressed to his eyes and Biffpot saw that he couldn’t say any more.
“Goodnight, Sire,” he said quietly, and withdrew from the room, a deeply troubled man.
Princess Delia was sitting up in bed drinking cocoa, waiting for her father and reflecting on the day.
It had been a good one. She had got up earlier than usual because the weather was so perfect, and the birdsong so loud. Still in her nightdress, she had run to feed and talk to her birds in the aviary in her playroom. She had seven different kinds, but her favourite was a plain grey parrot with a red spot on his tail. He could say lots of things, but his favourite thing to say was, “I am a prince in disguise!” Delia had taught him that and it kept all her friends guessing.
Then she had run downstairs and out into the conservatory to have her bath. This really was rather special; the King had had it made for her as a special surprise last birthday, and the thrill of it had not yet worn off.
The conservatory was huge, and very warm, and filled with tropical plants. She had to push through them to get to her bath. It was sunk into the floor, and made like a woodland pool large enough to swim in. It was lined with natural stone, and real moss. The water – just hot enough, and smelling of exotic flowers – flowed down from a hidden source above. There were real birds flying about, and it was just like being in a jungle.
When she’d played and swum as much as she wanted to, she pressed a certain rock on the edge of the pool. Her personal maid appeared around a yucca plant with a big, warm, fluffy towel. She would wrap herself up in this and dash back upstairs to dress.
She had a lot of clothes to choose from, apart from her special ones for wearing on state occasions. But for school she wore what her friends wore, only maybe a little bit nicer. The school uniform was a plain brown tunic with a white blouse, buttoned with pearl buttons. Nobody knew that the buttons on Delia’s blouse were real pearl or that the tunic was as light as a cobweb and fashioned out of the underfur of a musk-ox. And she never told them.
In summer she had her breakfast on a terrace overlooking the roses. It was daintily prepared and brought to her on a silver tray – always more or less the same: passionfruit or mango juice, a cereal made of mixed grains and dried fruit, and one peacock egg perfectly boiled, with her slice of buttered wheat-toast cut into fingers for dipping. The egg was so big she only ate the yolk.
She was driven to school in a pony-trap because it was too far to walk. She was allowed to drive it herself, though a groom always went with her to look after her. He had been a seafaring man, and had a fund of stories that never seemed to run out.
School was a mixed pleasure, usually, but today had been a good day there, too. Her homework was all done and all right, for once. Her best friend, with whom she had had a silly quarrel, came to make it up. She auditioned for the end-of-year play and got – not the best part, but the second best, which was more than she’d hoped for. She was very excited about this, and was longing to tell her father.
After school the pony-trap and the groom had been waiting to take her to a friend’s house for tea. This had been arranged in advance (princesses can’t do very much on the spur of the moment, unfortunately.) There was a certain amount of bowing and curtseying and far too rich a tea for Delia’s taste, but that always happened – she had had to get used to it, all her friends’ parents did it. But this time at least she and her friend were able to get away to the playroom afterwards and have fun on their own without any fuss. She got home rather late, and had hurried straight to her own quarters to do her homework before bedtime. (She went to bed very early in term-time. The lives of princesses are apt to be highly regulated.)
All this explains why she had not seen her father all day.
Now she was all ready for sleep; this was his time to come – he never failed to come to tuck her in and exchange news about their days. So when the gentle knock came on the door, she called happily:
“Come in, Daddy!”
When Biffpot appeared, her face fell. “Oh, hallo, Biffpot. Where’s the King?” she asked.
“He is unwell, Your Highness,” Biffpot said with the customary bow. “He sends Your Highness his love and apologies.”
Delia sat straight up in bed, her face full of anxiety.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Biffpot coughed and lowered his eyes. He was not a good liar.
“A slight cold, Your Highness, nothing worse.”
“Oh. Well. Thank you. Goodnight.”
Biffpot, who was of the old school of royal retainers, backed out of the room, closing the door softly. The Princess thought for a moment, put down her mug, and pressed the bell for her maid.
Nobody came.
This was very strange. Her father had always come. The maid had always come … She had been with her earlier to help her get ready for bed. She’d seemed oddly nervous …
Delia now noticed an oddness about the palace. She couldn’t put her finger on it. It just seemed quieter than usual, as if it contained fewer people.
It was not usually her job to put the light out, but tonight she had to, and lay down to sleep. But she couldn’t. She kept thinking of her father with his cold. These were the times he must specially miss having a queen. She would have seen that he had enough bedclothes and made sure someone brought him a honey-and-lemon drink.
She wondered if he had a hot-water bottle. He had once told her men didn’t need them, but she thought this was ridiculous. Nobody can fall asleep with cold feet! She snuggled her feet against her own hot-water bottle, and suddenly she had an idea.
She would take him hers. She would tiptoe into his room and slip it into his bed.
So she got up, put on her dressing-gown and slippers, and crept quietly through the darkened palace to the King’s bedroom.
“How quiet it is,” she thought as she slipped along the wide, carpetted corridors. �
��Where is everybody tonight?”
The King lay in his bed, on his back, snoring slightly, only his head and hands outside the covers. She stood with the hot-water bottle in her hand, looking down at him. He was very pale and had a lost, sad look. She felt her love for him very strongly suddenly, like a pain, and bent down to give him a feather-light kiss that wouldn’t wake him.
That’s when she noticed the gauntlets.
“Why ever is he wearing those huge gloves?” she thought. “He’ll be so uncomfortable!”
And she gently eased the first one off, and then began to tuck his hand under the covers so it wouldn’t get cold.
Chapter Four
The Quest Begins
When the King woke up next morning, his nose was blocked up solid. He reached his hand under his pillow to feel for a handkerchief. At once he felt as if his head was resting on a huge, icy stone.
His eyes flew open with a sudden awful feeling of foreboding.
The first thing he saw was his right hand – his treacherous, enchanted hand, ungloved and deadly, in front of his face. And then, as if it would say, There! See my masterpiece! it moved aside by itself, and the blood rushed from the King’s face to sustain a heart that had all but stopped beating.
Delia stood bent over him in her long nightgown. Her curls, which had been gold to begin with, fell over her shoulders. In her hand was a golden hot-water bottle.
Everything about her – from her eyelashes to the fur on her bedroom slippers – was modelled in gold more perfectly than any master sculptor could have made it. On her face was a look of tender concern, frozen now into deathly stillness.
The King could only stare and stare, numb with the shock of it. Then he started up. He stripped the other gauntlet from his hand, and began frantically stroking her hair and rubbing her little hands as if he could bring life back into them.
But she was stiff and cold.
He didn’t rail or weep or accuse himself, as he had over his dog. It was too bad for that. His greed had murdered his child. Here she was before him – final proof of his folly.
Now he did something from habit too strong to be broken. He reached for the locket that held his dead queen’s hair. He had done this for years, whenever he needed comfort and courage. He started as his fingers touched it.
“Not that too!” he cried brokenly.
He lifted it from his neck, opened it – gold as it had always been – and found that by some wonder, the lock of hair behind the glass was still real.
He stared at it for a long time. What power had protected it against his curse? Could it be love – or his queen, reaching out to him somehow from beyond the grave? The sight of the lock he had touched so many times gave him a morsel of hope. A hope against hope that somehow Delia still lived.
He clicked the locket shut and hung it round his neck, the one real, true thing that was left to him. A little courage came to him.
He thought of the magic storm, his retreat last night. He knew that he faced a great ordeal and that however bad it was, he must do his best, and better than his best. If he couldn’t find a remedy his life was as good as over.
He got up, turning all the bedclothes into gold without even noticing. In his dressing-room was a beautiful screen. He dragged it – monstrously heavy as it suddenly was – to the bedside and set its folds around his golden daughter. Then he rang the bell – brass before he touched it, pure gold afterwards.
After a long time there was a timid knock.
“Is that you, Biffpot?”
“Y-y-yes, Sire,” said a shaky voice.
“Come in.”
Biffpot’s face, white with fear, came round the door.
“What’s the matter with you, man?” asked the King.
Biffpot hardly knew how to answer. The palace below and all around them was empty. Not another servant had dared to stay after it was discovered that the Princess had disappeared – nobody could face the King with such news.
“Her Royal Highness, Your Majesty, she’s –”
“Silence on that subject, Biffpot,” said the King quietly.
Biffpot bowed obediently, but his eyes were taking in the room, the golden objects the King had touched, the mysterious screen by the bed, the gauntlets on the floor … The gauntlets! Biffpot’s eyes flew to the King’s hands. They were uncovered and slightly raised, the fingers twitching as if they had life of their own. He gasped and took a step backward instinctively.
“Yes, Biffpot. You do well to keep away from these hands,” said the King, holding them up in front of his face and staring at them with loathing. “I fear I may not be in control of them for much longer. You see before you a desperate man … I must go. I must go.”
“Where are you going, Sire?”
“Into the garden. After that … Heaven knows … I don’t. Meanwhile, my dear old fellow … allow me to call you that, you are far more like a friend to me than a valet, and I suspect that you alone have not deserted me as I deserve … I want you to do for me what may be a last service. Do you see that screen?”
“I see it, Sire.”
“Behind that screen is the greatest treasure in my kingdom. You are the only person I can trust to guard it with your life until I come back. Will you do that for me?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Thank you,” said the King simply. “I hope I won’t be away too long.”
“Don’t you need your – gloves, Sire?”
The King paused at the door. “They are useless to me now,” he said strangely. “Everything is useless except courage. Of which I have never had much. Goodbye, my friend.”
The King left the palace by the main doors. As soon as he stepped outside, the magic storm began again, just as it had before. But now the King had no time to be afraid. He rushed out like a madman, dodging the flashes of lightning that stabbed down at him, and ran to the rose garden.
The elements seemed to burst themselves in an effort to stop him. When he tried to call out “Red rose, bloom again!” his voice was drowned by the thunder. The louder he shouted the words, the more the noise of the storm seemed to mock him – the lightning formed a ring of fire around him, the rain dashed into his mouth, the thunder half deafened him, the wind carried his words away.
At last he stopped trying to make himself heard, and stood still. “I will wait,” he said inside his head. “I will stand here all day if I must! Even a magic storm can’t last for ever.”
The thunder rolled as if to say, “Oh yes, it can!” But the King was thinking of Delia and didn’t hear.
“I’ll do anything to undo what I’ve done,” he vowed to himself. “I’ll live in a hermit’s cave in rags, and eat nuts and berries. I hope with all my heart I never see gold again for the rest of my life. She is all that matters.”
And he meant every word.
Thoughts are magic, too, though the King didn’t know it. Abruptly, he saw the sun dazzling through the golden leaves and making diamonds on the wet grass. Across the black clouds, grumbling away into the distance, stretched a rainbow full of every colour but gold.
The King sighed heavily, cleared his throat and said loudly:
“Red rose, bloom again!”
At first, nothing seemed to happen. The King’s battered heart sank. But then suddenly, there was the Midas rose, just as it had been the day before, glowing with all its reds, all by itself in the air – floating quietly in front of the King, at the height of his waist.
He felt his right hand move towards the rose without his order, and he couldn’t stop it. It was the most awful feeling. The rose moved out of reach.
The old man’s voice out of nowhere said, “None of that! You have lots of roses of your own to turn into gold. I prefer mine as it is.”
“So do I!” said the King.
The old magician appeared all at once, in a flash of green light. The rose was still pinned to his leather waistcoat.
“Say it,” he said sharply.
The King understoo
d what he had to do.
“I hate gold,” he said, slowly and clearly. “I have been worse than a fool. I’ve destroyed all that I love best. I’m in despair. Help me, I beg of you. Take away this curse.”
The magician seemed to be thinking of something else. He stroked his long white beard and drew out of it a long black cigar.
“Oh, please, listen to me!” begged the King.
“Hm?”
The little man put the cigar into his mouth. It was already alight, but instead of having a red glow at the end, it had a green one. And when it was puffed, the smoke that came out of Nandan’s mouth was green too.
“Hate gold, eh?” he said, puffing. “Too bad. Have to live with it for the rest of your life.”
“Don’t! Oh, don’t say that!” cried the King in anguish. “Don’t tell me you won’t take the spell off!”
“No ‘won’t’ about it,” replied Nandan, blowing a green smoke-ring. “Can’t. I don’t know how.”
The King felt as if he’d been hit in the stomach. “But if you can’t, who can?” he gasped out.
“Hard to say,” said the magician. He flicked away a piece of ash. As it landed on the ground, it turned into a little green bird, which took off suddenly from the grass and flew away singing.
The King didn’t notice. “You must help me!” he pleaded desperately. “I’ll give you anything you ask!”
The magician looked at him for the first time, and his eyes, which looked surprisingly young in such a wrinkled old face, twinkled more than ever. Midas suddenly knew what they reminded him of – a mask with eyes looking through it.
“Anything?” Nandan asked sharply.
“Anything in my power,” replied Midas.
“Hm,” said the little man.
He stuck the cigar between his teeth and walked up and down with his hands behind his back. His beard was so long that he often had to kick it out of his way. Each time a piece of ash fell from the cigar, it turned into a little green bird.
The Adventures of King Midas (Red Storybook) Page 3