The Princess Bride (8 page)

And very quickly now, her potential began to be realized. From twentieth, she jumped within two weeks to fifteenth, an unheard-of change in such a time. But three weeks after that she was already ninth and moving. The competition was tremendous now, but the day after she was ninth a three-page letter arrived from Westley in London and just reading it over put her up to eighth. That was really what was doing it for her more than anything— her love for Westley would not stop growing, and people were dazzled when she delivered milk in the morning. Some people were only able to gape at her, but many talked and those that did found her warmer and gentler than she had ever been before. Even the village girls would nod and smile now, and some of them would ask after Westley, which was a mistake unless you happened to have a lot of spare time, because when someone asked Buttercup how Westley was—well, she told them. He was supreme as usual; he was spectacular; he was singularly fabulous. Oh, she could go on for hours. Sometimes it got a little tough for the listeners to maintain strict attention, but they did their best, since Buttercup loved him so completely.

Which was why Westley’s death hit her the way it did.

He had written to her just before he sailed for America. The
Queen’s Pride
was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love you. Like that.)

Then there were no letters, but that was natural; he was at sea. Then she heard. She came home from delivering the milk and her parents were wooden. “Off the Carolina coast,” her father whispered.

Her mother whispered, “Without warning. At night.”

“What?” from Buttercup.

“Pirates,” said her father.

Buttercup thought she’d better sit down.

Quiet in the room.

“He’s been taken prisoner then?” Buttercup managed.

Her mother made a “no.”

“It was Roberts,” her father said. “The Dread Pirate Roberts.”

“Oh,” Buttercup said. “The one who never leaves survivors.”

“Yes,” her father said.

Quiet in the room.

Suddenly Buttercup was talking very fast: “Was he stabbed? . . . Did he drown? . . . Did they cut his throat asleep? . . . Did they wake him, do you suppose? . . . Perhaps they whipped him dead. . . .” She stood up then. “I’m getting silly, forgive me.” She shook her head. “As if the way they got him mattered. Excuse me, please.” With that she hurried to her room.

She stayed there many days. At first her parents tried to lure her, but she would not have it. They took to leaving food outside her room, and she took bits and shreds, enough to stay alive. There was never noise inside, no wailing, no bitter sounds.

And when she at last came out, her eyes were dry. Her parents stared up from their silent breakfast at her. They both started to rise but she put a hand out, stopped them. “I can care for myself, please,” and she set about getting some food. They watched her closely.

In point of fact, she had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering.

She was eighteen. She was the most beautiful woman in a hundred years. She didn’t seem to care.

“You’re all right?” her mother asked.

Buttercup sipped her cocoa. “Fine,” she said.

“You’re sure?” her father wondered.

“Yes,” Buttercup replied. There was a very long pause. “But I must never love again.”

She never did.

Two - THE GROOM

This is my first major excision. Chapter One, The Bride, is almost in its entirety about the bride. Chapter Two, The Groom, only picks up Prince Humperdinck in the last few pages.

This chapter is where my son Jason stopped reading, and there is simply no way of blaming him. For what Morgenstern has done is open this chapter with sixty-six pages of Florinese history. More accurately, it is the history of the Florinese crown.

Dreary? Not to be believed.

Why would a master of narrative stop his narrative dead before it has much chance to begin generating? No known answer. All I can guess is that for Morgenstern, the real narrative was not Buttercup and the remarkable things she endures, but, rather, the history of the monarchy and other such stuff. When this version comes out, I expect every Florinese scholar alive to slaughter me. (Columbia University has not only the leading Florinese experts in America, but also direct ties to the New York Times Book Review. I can’t help that, and I only hope they understand my intentions here are in no way meant to be destructive of Morgenstern’s vision.)

 Prince Humperdinck was shaped like a barrel. His chest was a great barrel chest, his thighs mighty barrel thighs. He was not tall but he weighed close to 250 pounds, brick hard. He walked like a crab, side to side, and probably if he had wanted to be a ballet dancer, he would have been doomed to a miserable life of endless frustration. But he didn’t want to be a ballet dancer. He wasn’t in that much of a hurry to be king either. Even war, at which he excelled, took second place in his affections. Everything took second place in his affections.

Hunting was his love.

He made it a practice never to let a day go by without killing something. It didn’t much matter what. When he first grew dedicated, he killed only big things: elephants or pythons. But then, as his skills increased, he began to enjoy the suffering of little beasts too. He could happily spend an afternoon tracking a flying squirrel across forests or a rainbow trout down rivers. Once he was determined, once he had focused on an object, the Prince was relentless. He never tired, never wavered, neither ate nor slept. It was death chess and he was international grand master.

In the beginning, he traversed the world for opposition. But travel consumed time, ships and horses being what they were, and the time away from Florin was worrying. There always had to be a male heir to the throne, and as long as his father was alive, there was no problem. But someday his father would die and then the Prince would be the king and he would have to select a queen to supply an heir for the day of his own death.

So to avoid the problem of absence, Prince Humperdinck built the Zoo of Death. He designed it himself with Count Rugen’s help, and he sent his hirelings across the world to stock it for him. It was kept brimming with things that he could hunt, and it really wasn’t like any other animal sanctuary anywhere. In the first place, there were never any visitors. Only the albino keeper, to make sure the beasts were properly fed, and that there was never any sickness or weakness inside.

The other thing about the Zoo was that it was underground. The Prince picked the spot himself, in the quietest, remotest corner of the castle grounds. And he decreed there were to be five levels, all with the proper needs for his individual enemies. On the first level, he put enemies of speed: wild dogs, cheetahs, hummingbirds. On the second level belonged the enemies of strength: anacondas and rhinos and crocodiles of over twenty feet. The third level was for poisoners: spitting cobras, jumping spiders, death bats galore. The fourth level was the kingdom of the most dangerous, the enemies of fear: the shrieking tarantula (the only spider capable of sound), the blood eagle (the only bird that thrived on human flesh), plus, in its own black pool, the sucking squid. Even the albino shivered during feeding time on the fourth level.

The fifth level was empty.

The Prince constructed it in the hopes of someday finding something worthy, something as dangerous and fierce and powerful as he was.

Unlikely. Still, he was an eternal optimist, so he kept the great cage of the fifth level always in readiness.

And there was really more than enough that was lethal on the other four levels to keep a man happy. The Prince would sometimes choose his prey by luck—he had a great wheel with a spinner and on the outside of the wheel was a picture of every animal in the Zoo and he would twirl the spinner at breakfast, and wherever it stopped, the albino would ready that breed. Sometimes he would choose by mood: “I feel quick today; fetch me a cheetah” or “I feel strong today, release a rhino.” And whatever he requested, of course, was done.

He was ringing down the curtain on an orangutan when the business of the King’s health made its ultimate intrusion. It was midafternoon, and the Prince had been grappling with the giant beast since morning, and finally, after all these hours, the hairy thing was weakening. Again and again, the monkey tried to bite, a sure sign of failure of strength in the arms. The Prince warded off the attempted bites with ease, and the ape was heaving at the chest now, desperate for air. The Prince made a crablike step sidewise, then another, then darted forward, spun the great beast into his arms, began applying pressure to the spine. (This was all taking place in the ape pit, where the Prince had his pleasure with any simians.) From up above now, Count Rugen’s voice interrupted. “There is news,” the Count said.

From battle, the Prince replied. “Cannot it wait?”

“For how long?” asked the Count.

C
   R
      A
         C
            K

The orangutan fell like a rag doll. “Now, what is all this,” the Prince replied, stepping past the dead beast, mounting the ladder out of the pit.

“Your father has had his annual physical,” the Count said. “I have the report.”

“And?”

“Your father is dying.”

“Drat!” said the Prince. “That means I shall have to get married.”

Three - THE COURTSHIP

Four of them met in the great council room of the castle. Prince Humperdinck, his confidant, Count Rugen, his father, aging King Lotharon, and Queen Bella, his evil stepmother.

Queen Bella was shaped like a gumdrop. And colored like a raspberry. She was easily the most beloved person in the kingdom, and had been married to the King long before he began mumbling. Prince Humperdinck was but a child then, and since the only stepmothers he knew were the evil ones from stories, he always called Bella that or “E. S.” for short.

“All right,” the Prince began when they were all assembled. “Who do I marry? Let’s pick a bride and get it done.”

Aging King Lotharon said, “I’ve been thinking it’s really getting to be about time for Humperdinck to pick a bride.” He didn’t actually so much say that as mumble it: “I’ve beee mumbbble mumbbble Humpmummmble engamumble.”

Queen Bella was the only one who bothered ferreting out his meanings any more. “You couldn’t be righter, dear,” she said, and she patted his royal robes.

“What did he say?”

“He said whoever we decided on would be getting a thunderously handsome prince for a lifetime companion.”

“Tell him he’s looking quite well himself,” the Prince returned.

“We’ve only just changed miracle men,” the Queen said. “That accounts for the improvement.”

“You mean you fired Miracle Max?” Prince Humperdinck said. “I thought he was the only one left.”

“No, we found another one up in the mountains and he’s quite extraordinary. Old, of course, but then, who wants a young miracle man?”

“Tell him I’ve changed miracle men,” King Lotharon said. It came out: “Tell mumble mirumble mumble.”

“What did he say?” the Prince wondered.

“He said a man of your importance couldn’t marry just
any
princess.”

“True, true,” Prince Humperdinck said. He sighed. Deeply. “I suppose that means Noreena.”

“That would certainly be a perfect match politically,” Count Rugen allowed. Princess Noreena was from Guilder, the country that lay just across Florin Channel. (In Guilder, they put it differently; for them, Florin was the country on the other side of the Channel of Guilder.) In any case, the two countries had stayed alive over the centuries mainly by warring on each other. There had been the Olive War, the Tuna Fish Discrepancy, which almost bankrupted both nations, the Roman Rift, which did send them both into insolvency, only to be followed by the Discord of the Emeralds, in which they both got rich again, chiefly by banding together for a brief period and robbing everybody within sailing distance.

“I wonder if she hunts, though,” said Humperdinck. “I don’t care so much about personality, just so they’re good with a knife.”

“I saw her several years ago,” Queen Bella said. “She seemed lovely, though hardly muscular. I would describe her more as a knitter than a doer. But again, lovely.”

“Skin?” asked the Prince.

“Marbleish,” answered the Queen.

“Lips?”

“Number or color?” asked the Queen.

“Color, E. S.”

“Roseish. Cheeks the same. Eyes largeish, one blue, one green.”

“Hmmm,” said Humperdinck. “And form?”

“Hourglassish. Always clothed divineishly. And, of course, famous throughout Guilder for the largest hat collection in the world.”

“Well, let’s bring her over here for some state occasion and have a look at her,” said the Prince.

“Isn’t there a princess in Guilder that would be about the right age?” said the King. It came out: “Mum-cess Guilble, abumble mumble?”

“Are you never wrong?” said Queen Bella, and she smiled into the weakening eyes of her ruler.

“What did he say?” wondered the Prince.

“That I should leave this very day with an invitation,” replied the Queen.

So began the great visit of the Princess Noreena.

Me again. Of all the cuts in this version, I feel most justified in making this one. Just as the chapters on whaling in Moby-Dick can be omitted by all but the most punishment-loving readers, so the packing scenes that Morgenstern details here are really best left alone. That’s what happens for the next fifty-six and a half pages of The Princess Bride: packing. (I include unpacking scenes in the same category.)

What happens is just this: Queen Bella packs most of her wardrobe (11 pages) and travels to Guilder (2 pages). In Guilder she unpacks (5 pages), then tenders the invitation to Princess Noreena (1 page). Princess Noreena accepts (1 page). Then Princess Noreena packsallher clothes and hats (23 pages) and, together, the Princess and the Queen travel back to Florin for the annual celebration of the founding of Florin City (1 page). They reach King Lotharon’s castle, where Princess Noreena is shown her quarters (1/2 page) and unpacks all the same clothes and hats we’ve just seen her pack one and a half pages before (12 pages).