Floods 8 (7 page)

While the country was enjoying the pageant, the Countess Slab was stuck in the doorway down in the kitchens for three days. Finally King Quatorze reluctantly decided he ought to go and see if he could prise her free. However, with her trapped as she was, he'd realised that he was now much happier than he had been since the day they had first met, when he'd been visiting a small sausage farm in Bavaria and the Countess had fallen off a pig and landed on him.

Actually, I might have that the wrong way round,
he thought.
The pig might have fallen off the Countess.

This sudden thought made him realise that he might have got everything the wrong way round and actually fallen in love with the pig, but taken the Countess home by mistake.

It's the sort of mistake anyone could make,
he thought.

It was Thursday, which made the King even more bad-tempered. Thursday was his favourite day of the week, because Thursday was Kitten Knitting Day.
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All week he looked forward to their pathetic mewing – he even had a CD of it to play the other six days of the week – and now he'd have to give it a miss.

‘I suppose I could knit kittens tomorrow,' he said to himself, ‘but Friday's when I go round the town spitting at babies and if I missed that my subjects might think I'm getting soft. Oh God it's hard being a tyrant.'

But lots of fun,
he thought.

Though the fun didn't seem quite as great as it
used to. Sure, the kitties and the babies cried out as much as ever, but it didn't satisfy him like in the old days. He'd experimented with taking a mouthful of lemon juice before spitting in the babies' eyes and that had helped for a while, but even that had lost its edge.

Although Castle Twilight was very large, the Countess's shouting and swearing could be heard everywhere, even outside in the town, and it was giving the King a terrible headache.

‘Though now I come to think of it,' he said, ‘I've had a terrible headache since the day we met.'

Then he went into a very small soundproof room, locked the door behind him and said, very quietly and pathetically so no one could hear him, ‘I wish I was dead.' He was the King, for goodness sake! He was supposed to be happier than everyone else, but he realised that everyone else was probably happier than he was, even the Countess.

‘He's just wished he was dead,' said Winchflat to his family. He was listening in on his Even-Hear-A-Pin-Drop-Machine.

‘Dead? Not likely,' said Queen Scratchrot. ‘He's not getting off that lightly.'

The Countess Slab's terrible roaring created a rumour in the town that the ancient legend of the Giant Kraken Worm had finally come true and it had burst up from the bowels of the earth and was now eating its way through everyone inside the castle walls before smashing down the walls and squashing everyone in their beds. A lot of people refused to go to bed, just in case the rumour was true.

‘So it was foretold, by the ancient ones,' old crones were heard to say, though when they were asked to explain what that meant they all went rather quiet and did a lot of that dribbly muttering no one can understand that old ladies are so good at. The dribbly muttering would always end up with a knowing wink and a nod and a ‘See if it don't'.

But the kitchen boy, who had decided that he probably wouldn't end it all for now, just in case Betty changed her mind, told seven people down
in the town what was actually making the roaring noise, and those seven each told seven others and in no time at all the whole population knew that the King's fat wife had been trapped in a doorway by Betty.

‘So it was foretold, by the ancient ones,' old crones said again, though this time when they were asked to explain, they said that it meant the vague
rumour about Merlin's descendant – i.e. Nerlin – coming back to reclaim the throne, maybe, perhaps, possibly was actually true. Then they did some more of the dribbly muttering that no one could understand and went home and hid under their beds in case they were wrong, but then they lay there all night too scared to move in case the Giant Kraken Worm came and sat on them.

The Countess's bellowing had made most of the leaves fall off the trees. Large cracks were beginning to appear in the castle walls and all the paintings in the Castle lost their colour.

Something had to be done.

The King, who was terrified of Countess Slab and could never find an answer when he asked himself why he had married her in the first place, told his manservant to go down to the kitchens and see what could be done. The manservant was also terrified of the Countess so he told his manservant to go and sort it out and that manservant told his manservant and so on until there was no one else to tell. The last manservant, who was more terrified
than all the others and had no one to pass the order on to, chose to go waterskiing in Lake Tarnish rather than face the Countess, so nothing happened.

‘I suppose I'll have to go myself,' said the King on the fourth day, pausing for someone to offer to go in his place.

But no one did.

‘Hello, my beloved,' he said timidly as he walked through the kitchen towards the back end of his wife.

‘GR!!***&8¢¢KK*!' screamed the Countess, followed by, ‘F@@#XXX!!!!£, Mackerel, Mackerel, Mackerel, Organiser!!!'

‘Now, now, dear, don't worry,' said the King. ‘We'll soon have you out of there.'

‘KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL,' roared Countess Slab.

‘Who, dear?'

‘The little blonde girl. All little blonde girls. All medium-size blonde girls. Anyone with blonde hair. Anyone whose hair is not blonde just in case they've dyed it. Kill everyone.'

‘Little blonde girl?' said the King.

‘She said she was a princess, said her father was Nerlin, the true King of Transylvania Waters, and her mother was your own daughter.'

The King turned white and began to shake like a big round white jelly that had been made in a mould shaped like a little podgy king.

The Floods had returned.

This was the day he had feared ever since his daughter and wife had fled Transylvania Waters with that young man from the drains. The old crones had told him this day would come. Even when he had boiled them in cabbage water they foretold it. So it was true, the man from the drains really was a descendant of Merlin.

This was the day the Hearse Whisperer and the King's other spies had been supposed to stop happening. Now his evil cronies and agents had all
She had two things to decide too: (1) how she could get out of the wall, and (2) once out, how she could spend the rest of her life without the King in it.

She knew she had made a really bad decision hooking up with the King, but she had to admit there hadn't been anyone else to choose from. Sure, there had been a well-worn path of young men at her door, but they had all been running away. Even when her father had offered huge bribes, threats
enemies as he had been and all he could think of was running away.

This meant there were two things he had to decide: (1) where he could run to, and (2) whether he could manage to do it without taking the Countess with him.

‘I, err, umm,' he spluttered as a million confused thoughts crashed round inside his brain.

‘What are you whinging about, you feeble cretin?' the Countess snapped. ‘Get me out of here.'

She had two things to decide too: (1) how she could get out of the wall, and (2) once out, how she could spend the rest of her life without the King in it.

She knew she had made a really bad decision hooking up with the King, but she had to admit there hadn't been anyone else to choose from. Sure, there had been a well-worn path of young men at her door, but they had all been running away. Even when her father had offered huge bribes, threats
and magic spells, no one who had actually been breathing had wanted her. That is, until the short, stupid King of Transylvania Waters had come along. He was the Countess's father's dream – someone so stupid and greedy that he would have married a chicken for three cents and some shiny bits of plastic.

The King sent for the castle stonemason, but as Betty had said, the wall was as hard as a diamond so no matter what tools the stonemason used to attack the wall, nothing happened. The stonemason sent for the quarry man, who exploded a large stick of dynamite, but all that did was burn the Countess's eyebrows.
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‘You morons!' the Countess bellowed. ‘If you don't get me out of here at once I will have you thrown into Lake Tarnish!'

But no matter what they did, the Countess remained stuck fast.

When the cook suggested from a safe
distance – she went to Belgium and sent a carrier pigeon with a message suggesting that maybe if the Countess was to go on a diet, she might lose enough weight to wriggle out of the doorway, the Countess fainted, but after she woke up, without admitting it was probably the only thing to do, she did start eating less. She cut breakfast down to only three cabbages, lunch down to four and dinner to eleven. And to everyone's surprise, she cut out the two morning break and three afternoon break cabbages altogether.

But it made no difference. Betty's spell made sure that as the Countess shrank, so did the doorway.

‘There's only one thing we can do,' said the King. ‘We have to make the so-called princess reverse the spell.'

‘Well, send your spies out to find her,' the Countess Slab demanded.

‘Umm, yes, of course, dear, right away,' said the King, unable to admit that he didn't actually have any spies left.

He went back into his very small soundproof room, locked the door behind him again and said, very quietly and pathetically so no one could hear him, ‘No one loves me any more.'

Even the two cockroaches hiding in the shadows nodded in agreement.

‘Though to be honest,' one cockroach said to the other, ‘I don't think anyone ever did.'

‘True,' said the other. ‘They may have obeyed him out of fear and maybe even because they loved Queen Scratchrot, but you're right, no one ever loved Quatorze.'
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‘It is said, by the old crones, that even his own armpits despise him,' said the first cockroach.

‘My armpits do too, and to be despised by a cockroach's armpit is about as loathed as it's possible to be,' said the other. ‘Though to be strictly accurate, us cockroaches don't have arms, so we can't have armpits.'

‘I was about to point that out,' said the first cockroach.

Cockroaches are extremely particular about things like that.

‘No, we have legs so that means we have legpits. So to recap for a moment, my legpits despise the King.'

‘Exactly,' said another cockroach – hard to tell which one as they all look the same, even to each other.
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‘And as we each have six legpits, we can hate the king three times as much as humans who only have two armpits.'