Camelot (12 page)

Although Lady Petaluna was an honest child, Morgan le Fey found it hard to believe that Romeo Crick really was fireproof. So she decided to go and see for herself. Lady Petaluna had told her that the Cook was extremely protective of the boy, barely letting him out of her sight, so she would have to go in disguise so as not to arouse any suspicion.

‘You are quite sure that this is what a common serving wench wears?' said Morgan le Fey as Lady Petaluna tied the last strips of torn rag round her ankle. She had been surrounded by servants her whole life. She knew they spoke funny and had peculiar skin conditions, but she had never paid much attention to their dress code.

‘Yes, my lady,' said Lady Petaluna, ‘though there is still a problem with your smell.'

‘I don't have a smell,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘Princesses do not smell.'

‘That's the problem. Serving wenches do.'

‘Oh, and I suppose I'd be right in thinking it's not a particularly nice smell.'

‘That depends who you are and what you compare it to, my lady.'

‘Meaning?'

‘If you were a flea and you lived on a pig's bottom, you would probably think it was a delicate and rather sweet smell,' said Lady Petaluna.

‘And if you were a princess?'

‘You might want to throw up a lot.'

Lady Petaluna went off to find a bottle of cabbage water with a dead rat in it. She was right about the throwing-up bit. Morgan le Fey did it a lot.

‘Has it got rose petals in it?' she said.

‘Yes, my lady. I put them in to make the smell less vomit-making.'

‘I hate the smell of roses.'

But even when Lady Petaluna went outside and took the rose petals out of the bottle it didn't really help.

‘I'm not sure I can go through with this,' said Morgan le Fey as she barfed for the seventh time. ‘If I'm like this now, I can't imagine how I'll feel when you actually open the bottle.'

But Morgan le Fey was not one to give up so she stuff ed daisies up each nostril
⁴⁶
while Lady Petaluna poured the contents of the bottle onto the rags Morgan was wearing.

‘OK, let's go,' she said, holding her breath as much as she could.

The dungeons were very close to the kitchens so Morgan le Fey decided they should go there first. If the Cook discovered they had taken Romeo Crick and came after them, the dungeons would be the perfect place to lie low. The Cook would never think to look there.

Morgan le Fey was fascinated by what she saw below stairs. Living in her privileged world she had never seen anything like it.

‘Though it is a lot like upstairs, but without daylight or windows or fresh air or cleanliness,' she
said, ‘or flowers or birds or smiling or washing.'

Because no one ever went to this part of the castle, she decided it was safe to reveal who she was to Clynk the jailer.

‘I guarantee,' Morgan le Fey told Clynk, ‘that before the year's end I shall get you and the prisoners set free.'

‘Even Lord Resydue the Baby-Eater of Londinium?' said Clynk. ‘Surely not him?'

‘But if he is left here, then you will have to remain too,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘That is true,' said Clynk. ‘Unless I use Plan B.'

‘Plan B?'

‘It is better you do not know what Plan B is, my lady.'

‘Fair enough,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘Though at a guess I would say it probably involves a certain person changing from a breathing situation to a no-longer-breathing situation.'

‘You are as wise as you are beautiful, my lady,' said Clynk.

They left the dungeons and went up the back stairs to the kitchens.

‘Everyone is all right except the Cook,' said Lady Petaluna. ‘If she asks who you are, tell her you're the new servant girl from the Attic of a Thousand Nanas. She hates the nanas so she never speaks to any of them and would never go up there to check.'

‘And if she asks me why I'm here, what should I say?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Tell her you have been sent down to fetch the weekly gristle allowance.'

Of course, the first person they bumped into was the Cook.

‘Who are you?' she demanded of Morgan le Fey. ‘And what are you doing in my kitchen?'

‘If it please you, ma'am,' said Morgan le Fey, curtsying, ‘I be Blossom Scroggins, one of the new maids in the Attic of a Thousand Nanas.'

‘I hate them nanas,' said the Cook, ‘sitting up
there in their attic being so high and mighty, while us honest working folk are stuck down here in the steam and the darkness. They should put them down here and give us the bright sunny attics. I mean, all they're doin' is waitin' around to die. They could do that anywhere.'

‘Them's exactly the words my mother uses,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘She says them nanas is a no-good bunch of scroungers and they should be made to go out and dig for coal, is what she says.'

‘Your mother sounds like a smart woman,' said the Cook, putting her arm round Morgan le Fey's shoulder. ‘What's a nice girl like you doing working for them useless old biddies?'

‘'Tis where I was sent, ma'am,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘I warn't gived no choice.'

‘Maybe I knows your mother,' said the Cook. ‘What's her name and what's her occupation?'

‘She be called Gladys Scroggins, if it please you, ma'am, and she be a washerwoman,' said Morgan le Fey.

It may seem surprising that, coming from her sheltered background, Morgan le Fey could act so
convincingly but, by an amazing piece of good luck, she owned a children's book called
Gladys Scroggins in Wonderland
, which told the story of a washerwoman and her magic bucket. She knew that the Cook would not have read the book, because the lower classes couldn't read on account of it being illegal for them to do so in those days.

‘I think I might have met her, you know,' said the Cook. ‘Now you be sure to give her my regards when you see her next and here's a nice pig's knuckle for you, my dear.'

‘Oh, thank you, ma'am.'

‘And you be welcome here whenever you feels like it, my dear,' added the Cook. ‘And any time you feel you need to get away from them old biddies upstairs, you just come and see old Cookie.'

‘Thank you, ma'am,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘Maybe I could get a job down here, helpin's you?'

‘That be a great idea,' said the Cook. ‘I been thinking I should be getting an apprentice to teach all my recipes to and I think you might be just the girl for the job.'

‘I'm sure I should, ma'am. For I do so love
the cookin' and potatoes and things like that,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘I has a good feelin' about this,' said the Cook.

‘So does I,' said Morgan le Fey.
More than you could imagine,
she thought. For not only would she be in the same place as Romeo Crick and so be able to get to know the boy without raising any suspicions, she might even learn how to make beetroot soup and how to get the skin of roast boar as crispy as a winter frost.

‘Oh, my lady,' said Lady Petaluna, as soon as they left the kitchens, ‘you were brilliant. Why, I almost believed you were Blossom Scroggins myself.'

Every day for the next week Morgan le Fey, disguised as Blossom Scroggins, worked as the Cook's apprentice. On the fifth day the Cook introduced her to Romeo Crick.

‘You know,' she said to Morgan le Fey, ‘I looks upon young Romeo here as the son I never had and
I'm beginning to look upon you as a daughter.'

‘But I already has a mum, ma'am.'

‘And brothers and sisters too, no doubt?' said the Cook.

‘Yes, ma'am, sixteen of them if it please you,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Sixteen? My goodness me,' said the Cook. ‘And here's me with not a one. Now I'm sure your mother wouldn't mind if I took you as my own daughter. I mean, with seventeen of you she probably wouldn't even notice.'

‘That be true, ma'am. She can only count up to one.'

‘Then it's settled,' said the Cook. ‘You shall be my daughter and a big sister to my poor orphaned son Romeo.'

‘A sister?' said Romeo. ‘I never had one of them, nor a brother, as I can remember.'

‘You must have been awful lonely,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Oh no, I had Geoffrey,' said Romeo. ‘As good a friend as a boy ever had.'

‘And what happened to him then?'

‘He got struck by lightning,' said Romeo. ‘And eated.'

‘Eated?' said Morgan le Fey, moving away from the boy. ‘Eated? Oh my God. Was you attacked by cannibals?'

‘No, no, we all eated him,' said Romeo.

Morgan le Fey moved further away and turned white.

‘The crackling was delicious,' said Romeo.

Seeing the expression on Morgan le Fey's face, the Cook explained that Geoffrey was not a small boy, but a large pig.

‘So now I has the family I always dreamt of,' the Cook said, putting one arm round Romeo and the other round Morgan le Fey. ‘We will celebrate with gristle pie and mulled cabbage water.'

If I had sat down and written a plan, it wouldn't have been any better than this,
thought Morgan le Fey.

She soon discovered that what Lady Petaluna had told her about Romeo's amazing abilities was true. She stood open-mouthed as he climbed into the red-hot ovens and scraped them clean. Not only did Romeo Crick glow gold, he was also worth his
weight in it. She had to get him away from the Cook and up into her quarters before her stupid brother found out about him.

It didn't take long for the opportunity to arise. The Cook adored the boy and rarely let him out of her sight, but now she adored Blossom Scroggins too.

Of course, the easiest thing would be to knock the Cook out with a sleeping draught, but the woman was crafty and forever on her guard. She would neither eat nor drink anything that she hadn't prepared herself, yet it seemed she made an exception to that rule whenever Romeo made chocolate truffles for her. It was simple enough to slip something into them as the boy was making them. He was a total innocent and never suspected anyone would do stuff like that. So when Morgan le Fey offered to help him, he was only too happy to let her.

Each night the kitchen staff went back to their hovels, leaving only the Cook, Morgan le Fey and Romeo behind, for their beds were in the kitchen itself. So every night the three of them would eat their dinner at the huge pine table that during the day was the centre of all the cooking activity.

And after they had dined on the finest pig's knuckles and fish bladders filled with shredded weasel, they would sit back and relax, and it was then that the Cook would finish her meal off with a few of Romeo's chocolate truffles.

‘I do believe, my little angel, that these are the best truffles you have made. They have an almost magical richness to them that almost puts me into a trance,' she said that night.

Then she fell off her chair and lay amongst the straw, snoring like a very large pig with a terrible nasal problem.

‘Would you'm like to see outside?' said Morgan le Fey as Blossom.

‘What, upstairs?' said Romeo Crick.

‘Indeed.'

‘It's not allowed. Cook said I was never to go above stairs or something terrible would happen to me and I'd be turned into a carrot.'

‘'Tain't true,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘People can't be turned into carrots. Though I did see someone turned into a potato once, but they got turned back again when the new moon comed.'

‘But…'

‘Come on. Old Cookie be fast asleep. We'll be back before she wakes up.'

She took Romeo's hand and led him up the stairs. They passed through the storerooms and up more stairs until they reached ground level, where Lady Petaluna was waiting.

‘What're you doing here?' said Romeo Crick.

‘You haven't told him yet, then, my lady?' said Lady Petaluna.

‘No, I thought I'd wait until we got back to my quarters,' said Morgan le Fey in her proper voice.