Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (9 page)

Babette spoke with the haughtiness of her thinner days, “You forget your place, Madeline. I am still the princess, gravy stained gown or no, and you are still the chambermaid. You have no authority to stop me. Besides, I very much doubt anyone will notice, or care all that much.” She added with a tear of self-pity rolling down her cheek and chins.

Rather to her surprise, Madeline patted her hand consolingly. “Here now, ducks, I mean, Your Highness, don't take on so. That's not true, though you may think so. Your people will come around once they gets used to you. Same thing happened to my sister Sophie after the twins was born. She was afraid her man was going to leave her but he got used to her, didn't he? Now he just says there's more of her to love and meanwhile Soph's had our Wat and our Alice born, hasn't she?”

“Kind of you to say so, Madeline,” Babette said, though actually it didn't give her, still a virgin, much comfort to think that she had the same weight problem as a mother of at least four.

“Here's your food now, ma'am. But cook says as how if you should come back after supper, she'll leave the makings of a cold meal for me to fetch for you in the kitchen.”

“You and cook are both very thoughtful, Madeline,” Babette said. She had never noticed that before but then, servants were expected to be thoughtful, weren't they? It was their job. “I'll just be off now.”

“Aren't you going to take off your crown and bind you your hair, ma'am?” Madeline asked. “I mean, if you want to disguise yourself as a common woman. Just a suggestion.”

“Oh, silly me,” Babette said. “Of course, and put the crown in her jewelry box and allowed Madeline to braid her hair into two long braids then loop each of them up and tie her own kerchief around it. “How do I look now?” Babette asked.

“We-ell,” Madeline giggled. “I reckon it's not that easy to make a sow's ear from a silken purse either, if you don't mind my saying so, but them little embroidered shoes don't seem like the right accessories to me.”

“Oh dear. I can't go barefoot! I'd be lame in no time!”

“Be back in a tic, ma'am,” Madeline said, and returned with some wooden clogs. “These will protect your feet and help you look your part as well.”

They were not, however, very comfortable, inflexible and clunky. Babette had to remember to pick her feet up off the floor and put them down again rather than gliding heel and toe as she was accustomed.

But Madeline was satisfied with the disguise at last and saw her to the castle gate, handing over her cloth wrapped parcel of food at the last minute before waving goodbye.

Now then, Babette thought, what tests are these that the wizard had for her before she could resume her rightful shape and place in life?

From his palace tower, the wizard looked into his scrying glass and saw the humbly dressed princess, her wealth of golden hair braided up like a goose girl's, and chuckled happily to himself before releasing another carrier crow.

The crow dive-bombed the unsuspecting princess, who ducked and swung her arms, frightening a horse pulling a wagonload of dung. The horse reared and the cart upset and Babette slipped on some of the contents and fell onto her backside in the ordur.

She said something very unprincesslike as the message tube dropped into her newly fragrant lap. “ You must walk seven times seven leagues in seven times in seven months. You must climb seven mountains, ford seven rivers, and cross seven seas.”

“Right,” she said, though she couldn't help wondering why wizards were always so preoccupied with sevens. He would have been very tedious to be married to, she thought. No wonder she had disliked him on sight. But she set off briskly, avoiding the curses of the dung-wagon driver. A swim in one of seven rivers sounded well worth walking seven leagues for at this point. In fact, she thought of turning back to the palace to have a wash before she started but she doubted the guards would recognize her, which was rather the point, even if they let her get close enough, stinking as she was, to see her properly. Oh well, the sooner she started the sooner she'd be there.

Walking in clogs had very little in common with walking in seven-league boots, she realized after half of the first league. The clogs did not offer much in the way of striding ability. Finally once she was walking on the road that wound through meadows, she removed the offending footwear and walked barefoot in the grass, which was quite nice except for the occasional sticker patch.

She was also plagued by insects, drawn to her new perfume. She swatted them with her food bundle and used some very ignoble language in her attempts to discourage them. Unfortunately, the mountain she had to climb that day was not high enough to be cold enough for the insects to fall away from her. When at last she reached bottom of the mountain she found a stream and, though not the first river, and, carrying her food packet and her clogs above her head, began to wade.

At which point she became the object of aerial attack by seven crows, who tore the food packet from her hands and knocked away the clogs. They scattered what food they did not steal into the water, though she was left holding half of one of cook's best roast swan sandwiches.

When she bit down on it, she almost broke one of her teeth on another message tube. “You must travel through seven forests, sleeping on the ground among the beasts, finding bee pollen, chickweed...” and a long list of herbs, which she wouldn't know from ornamental ivy, followed. Contemplating the soggy half of her sandwich, she wondered how these herbs tasted, preferably fried.

“Share your food with a poor old woman, dearie?” a shakey voice asked.

“All I have left is half a roast swan sandwich,” the princess said. She was hungry—very hungry really, but the sandwich didn't look like much. “It's rather soggy.”

The old woman, who was very ugly indeed, looked anxiously from the sandwich to her face and back again, licking her chops.

“Oh, all right,” the Princess said. “I'll split it with you, how's that?” She tried not to sound as reluctant as she was. After all, she may have until recently been a beautiful blonde, but that didn't mean she was stupid. She knew the fairy tales. She knew the score. You didn't ever, ever, refuse food or help to little old ladies you met on the road because they would either A. turn you into a frog (though that was usually for arrogant princes rather than hungry princesses) B. make something nasty fall from your mouth eternally or C. refuse to share with you the knowledge of herbs and simples all old biddies supposedly had.

She was a little surprised when the old lady did none of the above, instead, snatching the entire half a sandwich from the princess's hand and flinging it in the stream where it was carried off.

“Wh—“ the princess began. But the old woman was flinging off her rags and lifting her ugly mask to reveal the face and robes of the wizard Vladimirror, who giggled evilly at her.

“No roast swan for you, little glutton. In fact, no sugar, salt, wheat, corn, fruit, bread of any kind for the duration if you ever want to look like a proper princess again.”

“But that's everything!” she wailed. “What will I eat?”

“Crow, Your Highness. You can eat crow. That is, if you can catch one. You are truly pathetic away from your parents, you know. By the time you slim down again, you're going to be wanting a spell to get your youth back along with your recovered waistline.”

“If I do it certainly won't be so the likes of you will want to marry me,” she snapped. “You are a horrid beastly man.”

“And
you
are a thoroughly lost and very fat princess and will remain that way if you don't start moving,” the wizard told her. Then he turned into a crow and flew away. She was mad enough that she thought if she could catch him she
would
have eaten one crow.

Still hungry, she kept wandering, and frankly had no idea how many leagues she had gone, though she did have to cross a river. By the time she got across it was night. And cold. The leaves were turning. Actually, she hadn't seem that too many times. Where she lived it was mostly farming country, good farming country, and beyond the castle as the village and beyond the village the fields. Not a great many trees any longer. The leaves were quite pretty and piled up nicely for her to lie down on, once she realized she was going to have to actually sleep IN the forest ON the ground with no blanket and nothing but what she was wearing. Very shortly she discovered that if she burrowed into the leaves and covered herself with them, they added a little warmth. Picking leaves beside a very large tree was helpful as a windbreak too. But when night fell and she heard footsteps, snuffles, and cries all around her and when she dared peek out, saw eyes glowing in the darkness...

Well, needless to say, she didn't sleep late that morning, lest she wake up just in time to find herself breakfast in bed for some bear or lion or dragon or boar or goodness only knew what else. She walked much faster the next day, but was did not leave the forest, and after another night in the leaves, crossed another river and climbed another mountain without leaving the trees. This went on for a week. Seven days, actually, when she had nothing much to eat and felt in grave danger of being eaten.

So she was understandably very hungry, footsore and weary when she saw smoke rising from a chimney and came upon what looked like a woodcutter's hut. Woodcutters were always very handy in fairytales too. Except this one wasn't home. There was, however, another ugly old lady there, along with a calico cat.

Seeing the old woman sweeping at the door, Babette very nearly turned and ran but the old woman called out to her. “Who's there? Whoever you are, could you help me a moment please?”

“Oh, no, you don't,” Babette muttered. But since she was still only a fat young princess and not a toad, she figured she still had something to lose so she cautiously turned back to the hut.

“Excuse me, beldame,” she said with all the courtesy she could muster, “ but I haven't had very good luck with pathetic old ladies lately. Would you mind taking off that shawl and tugging at your face so I can see whether or not you're this evil wizard who tricked me before?”

The old lady gave a reassuringly elderly cackle not a bit like the wizard's giggle. “Certainly, my pretty,” she said and accomodatingly made faces with her face and whirled her shawl in the air like a flag.

“My pretty” eh? Babette decided she liked this old girl, who was evidently not the wizard. “So what can I do for you? If it's food, I'm sorry, but that wizard I mentioned tricked me out of my last morsel.”

“Oh, no, my pretty, nothing like that. In fact, I was about to invite you in for some nice crow stew I've made up fresh today. But first I wanted you to see if you can reach behind the stove. My cat brought a mouse in and the wicked thing hid behind the stove and died. Can you fetch it out? It's stinking up the house.”

“Ewwww,” Babette said.

“I wouldn't ask it of you except I'm blind, which as you probably know from the stories makes all of my other senses extra keen, so the smell is driving me mad.”

Blind, huh? Hence the “my pretty.” Oh well. She seemed nice enough. And though the house smelled ripe with dead mouse, it still didn't smell as bad as Babette herself had smelled until recently.

Whipping off her kerchief, Babette put it over her hand and groped until her kerchief shielded fingers squished into dead mouse, which she pulled out, without looking, and flung into the woods, along with the kerchief.

The crow stew was a little bitter. “It's better with extra salt,” the old woman said. “I don't normally have it but there was a whole flock of crows in front of the house today and my cat here is very very fast.”

The cat licked her front paws, one red and one white.

Babette looked longingly at the little dish of salt but shook her head. After all she'd been through, she supposed she could do without. “I'm not allowed salt.”

“What? Whyever not?” the old woman asked.

“I'm having a curse cured, you see, and its one of the magical formulas for curing it.” She dug into Cook's pocket and read her the wizard's message. “Have you any idea where these herbs and simples can be found, beldame?”

“I wish you'd stop calling me that,” the old woman said. “My name is Fifi. Fifi La Fey.”

“Sorry, Mistress Fifi. I'm Pr—uh, precisely who you think I am, a young woman from town who got lost in these woods trying to fulfill these idiotic instructions from a wizard. My name is Barbara,” she said. The old woman was an unlikely Fifi and the princess suspected she was an even more implausible Babette at this point. “Barbara—er—Cook.”

“Well, Barbara, as I've mentioned, I'm blind, but my adopted son Pr—presently will be home. I call him Burl. Because he works with wood. Get it?”

Babette laughed. Now that she was comfortable, she found relief made her easily amused. “And does he know more about herbs and simples than you do?”

“No, of course not. I know all about them. I just can't see them any longer. But when he gets back, I can tell him where they are and he can help you find them. He's gone off to fetch Hamlet to us.”

“Who is Hamlet?” Babette asked.

“The minstrel who comes by now and then. Specializes in long gloomy battles and dirges and laments. But being a travelling man, he is also very up on current events. Can you write that down? Laments? Events? He might want to use those lines in one of his songs.”

“I'll try to remember,” Babette promised.

“Would you be kind enough to fetch some water from the stream?”

Babette did. It was very heavy and she was very tired. Worst of all, there was a quiet little pool off to one side of the stream and when she looked into it, a fat girl with dishevelled blond braids, a dirty face, and dimples looked back at her. All that hunger and walking and crow-eating and she was just as heavy as ever! She hauled the water back and was going to ask if there was a place where she could sleep.