He pointed to the bird, which had most intelligently taken off from the rock and was now making a graceful curve upward before winging its way toward the sea.
Umberto squinted at the sky. He couldn’t see much because he was very shortsighted but he had got the message.
“White bird,” he repeated dopily. And then, “Can’t marry a bird. Wouldn’t do.”
“No. You can’t marry her. But you can go and tell her parents how happy Mirella is. How she has got exactly what she wanted. Maybe they’ll give you a reward for bringing them such lovely news.”
Umberto smiled. One word had got through to him.
“Reward,” he said. “Pay the tailor . . . pay the bookies . . . pay everyone . . .”
“That’s right,” said Ivo. “Now let’s see if we can catch your horse.”
The horse had been at liberty for long enough. He wanted his stable, and he let himself be caught and mounted by the prince.
“Here, you can have my sandwich,” said Ivo, feeling in his pocket. “Now you know where to go—over the hill and through that copse and then straight out the way you came. And remember how pleased they’ll be when you tell them about Mirella.”
“Reward,” said Umberto, smiling his foolish smile, and Ivo watched as the prince rode away and out of sight.
CHAPTER
24
THE AUNTS ARRIVE
I suppose it might have been worse,” said Ivo. “I mean they might have eaten people, like Germania used to. After all they are ogresses.”
But not much worse, because the aunts were thoroughly nasty. They had arrived the day before, stomping into the castle on their great feet—and immediately started giving orders.
“You there,” said the Aunt-with-the-Ears, pointing to the Hag. “I suppose you’re the cook. I eat five times a day and my meals must be on the table the moment I appear.”
“I shall dig up my own meals,” said the Aunt-with-the-Nose, “but I want my shoes cleaned with special polish—and the polish must NOT SMELL, do you understand,” she said, addressing the troll.
“You can carry my bag up to my room,” said the Aunt-with-the-Eyes, glaring at the wizard. “But I will not be waited on by servants who have specks of dust on their clothes. Clean yourself up before I see you again.”
Then they handed the trolley over to Ivo and said, “You and that girl there will look after Clarence. He must not get chilled.” She scowled at Charlie. “And if that dog doesn’t stop barking it’ll be the worse for him.”
And as they stomped off to find the ogre, their loud voices carried back to the rescuers.
“The first thing I’m going to do when I inherit the castle is get rid of those useless servants,” said the Aunt-with-the-Nose. “I’ve never seen such a sorry-looking bunch.”
“What makes you think you’re going to inherit the castle?” said the Aunt-with-the-Ears. She put her hands over the sides of her face. “Those spiders are making a quite unnecessary racket,” she muttered angrily. “It’s perfectly possible to spin a web without making a noise. The whole place is an inferno—I must find my earplugs. When I inherit I’m getting the place cleared.”
The Aunt-with-the-Eyes was peering disgustedly at the cracks in the flagstones. “Full of dirt, full of dust. I can’t live in a place like this. It must be scoured and scrubbed from top to toe before I move in.”
The ogre was waiting for them in his room and when they saw him all three aunts stopped dead.
“What are you doing out of bed?” asked the Aunt-with-the-Nose angrily. “You said you were ill.”
“I hope we haven’t come all this way for nothing,” said the Aunt-with-the-Ears.
“You do not seem to me to be dying,” said the Aunt-with-the-Eyes. “I hope you haven’t been playing a trick on us.”
The ogre was wearing a rather elegant dressing gown, and underneath, though the aunts could not see this, was a pair of shorts which he had been trying on because he thought they would look good to wear on the deck of the cruise ship. He was a little bit hurt that the aunts were not pleased that he had recovered, but he quickly reassured them.
“No, no. Not at all. I’ve decided to go away for a very long time. On a cruise. Germania thinks it would do me good. But altogether I don’t want to own things anymore. I want to lead a free and roaming life until it’s time to get into the mound, so I’m definitely going to leave the castle to one of you. I thought you might like to have a week to look around the place and then come and tell me what you would do with it—and the person who comes up with the best idea shall have it.”
What was strange was that though the ogre’s aunts were so unpleasant, Clarence was different.
“There’s something really nice about him,” said Mirella, stroking his mottled shell.
“You feel that when he does hatch he’ll have been worth waiting for,” said Ivo.
The animals, too, had the same feeling about Clar-ence. He was a good egg and much easier to look after than a baby with all those diapers and screaming and fuss—and Charlie seemed to agree, for when the children moved away from Clarence, he sat and guarded him.
But time was a running out for the rescuers. If they had hoped that there might be one aunt who was less awful than the others, their hopes were unfulfilled. Whichever aunt inherited the castle, it would be equally bad for them, and they were determined to get away on the day the ogre left his home. They would have left earlier, but the ogre had promised to send word to the boatman who had brought them that they needed to be fetched.
He himself had decided to leave in the hearse.
“Pity to waste it,” he said, “and it’ll make quite a stir when I get to the harbor.”
The hearse had turned out very well. Ulf had painted it black and, though the gnu had offered to pull it, Brod’s cousin, the one who took messages, had a spare horse which he said they could borrow.
“Will you be all right in Whipple Road?” Ivo had asked Mirella. “After all, you used to be a princess and it’s not very exciting.”
“Of course I’ll be all right,” said Mirella.
But nobody felt all right during those last days. You can think you’re prepared for something, but when it comes it can take you by the throat. The thought of leaving the castle, the gardens they had tended, and the beautiful countryside was almost more than they could bear. Worst of all was the knowledge that they would never see their animal friends again—and the animals were taking it just as hard.
“I like being a gnu,” said the antelope. “I’m glad to be a gnu—but I didn’t expect that a gnu could feel such sorrow. It’ll be a desert without you.”
The aye-aye was becoming very shivery and nervous again.
“It’s as bad as when I was supposed to be Miss Universe with bananas on my head,” she said.
And she kept bringing presents down for them from the high trees: interesting feathers, bright berries, and unusual twigs.
Bessie didn’t say much, but every so often she gave great spluttery sighs and shook her head.
And at night Ivo hugged Charlie and thought that if he had to go back to the Home he would die.
The adults felt it just as keenly. The Hag sat on her stone in the Dribble when she could get away and cried a little, because it was hard to believe that she should find her Paradise so late in life, only to have it snatched away. The troll leaned his back against the five-hundred-year-old oak in his forest and tried to get used to the idea that soon he would again be trundling trolleys down the stuffy corridors of the hospital—and the wizard cooked in a frenzy, knowing that when he got back he would be trapped in his workshop trying to make useless things like gold which nobody could eat.
Meanwhile inside the castle things were getting stead-ily worse. The three aunts sniffed and snooped along the corridors; they peered and poked into the rooms; they shuddered and shivered and complained. They found sordid tasks which they expected the rescuers to do.
“My earplugs are too hard,” com
plained the Aunt-with-the-Ears, and she told the wizard to knead them with the soles of his feet to soften them.
The Aunt-with-the-Eyes had brought a bottle of ointment and a dropper which she expected the Hag to drop into her eyes, and then yelled at her because it stung. The Aunt-with-the-Nose dug up patches in the lawn to get at the roots she liked for a snack, and they had to follow her and put the turf back again.
One of the things they quarreled about was where they would put their collections.
“There isn’t a decent place for my worm collection anywhere,” complained the Aunt-with-the-Nose. “I want somewhere warm and quiet and moist; that shouldn’t be too difficult.”
The Aunt-with-the-Eyes wanted somewhere dry for her bone collection, and the Aunt-with-the-Ears said she needed a quiet straw-lined place for her egg collection, and why didn’t Dennis have anything like that. “The place is big enough, surely,” she complained.
The children found it hard to keep their tempers, especially when the aunts bullied the Hag—but they were becoming very sorry for the ogre, who looked more puzzled and worried every day.
“I’m sure they’ll come up with something good soon, don’t you think?” he asked them. “They’re just getting themselves sorted out.”
But as far as they could see the aunts were going to pieces. At the beginning they had been quite friendly to one another though rude to everyone else, but that had gone. They called one another names, they threw things and slammed doors, and at night they could be heard screaming in their sleep. Obviously each of them was so anxious to have the castle that their jealousy had become uncontrollable.
“I suppose I could leave the castle to all three of them,” said the ogre doubtfully, “but with the way they’re quarreling now, that doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
Then there came a morning when the Aunt-with-the-Nose pushed the Hag out of the way so hard that she fell and hurt her forehead.
“Right,” said the troll. “That does it. We’re leaving straightaway.”
The Hag said no, she was perfectly all right, but her friends had had enough. So they went to find the ogre and told him they were going—and they said they were taking Charlie, which had already been agreed on.
The ogre was very upset. “Couldn’t you wait just a few days? I could give you a lift in the hearse.”
It was difficult to say no to him, but when they looked at the bruise on the Hag’s forehead they knew it was time to go.
They went to bed early, meaning to start at dawn, but they had very little sleep because the aunts screamed and shouted all night, and the Aunt-with-the-Nose was found sleepwalking in the corridor and had to be pushed back into bed. So they were later than they meant to be as they went to the ogre’s room to say good-bye.
But when they got there they found a most extraordinary hullabaloo. All the aunts were standing around the ogre’s bed and they were crying and screaming and hiccuping.
“I won’t,” shouted the Aunt-with-the-Ears. “I won’t and you can’t make me!”
“Well, you needn’t think I will either,” yelled the Aunt-with-the-Eyes. “I couldn’t. I absolutely couldn’t endure it.”
“And I suppose you think you can fob it off on me,” screeched the Aunt-with-the-Nose. “But you can’t. You can’t. You can’t,” she yelled, getting hysterical and stamping her feet.
“What’s happened?” asked Ulf. “What’s going on?”
The ogre was sitting up in bed, looking thoroughly bewildered.
“They don’t want it,” he said, shaking his head. “They don’t want the castle. None of them do.”
The aunts turned on him.
“No we don’t. We never will. We want to go home.”
“Home!” shouted the Aunt-with-the-Eyes. “Home to my lovely lighthouse.”
“Home to my cave! My very own cave,” screeched the Aunt-with-the-Nose.
“Home to my abbey. Mine! My own place, my own home forever and ever,” yelled the Aunt-with-the-Ears.
They had stopped screaming now and begun to sob—great gloopy tears of homesickness and relief.
It seemed that they had liked the idea of owning a castle, but when it came to the point they couldn’t bear to leave their homes, and each of them had been pushing the castle off on the others, which was why they had been getting more and more bad-tempered.
“Home to my roots and my stalactites and my worms,” cried the Aunt-with-the-Nose.
“Home to my cloister and my eggs and my quietness.”
“Home to the sea and my bones.”
They went on sobbing and slurping with relief for several more minutes. Then quite suddenly they said, “Good-bye,” and rushed out of the castle. Rushed over the drawbridge and away . . . away over the hills, while the earth shuddered under their great boots.
But Ivo had remembered something. He ran out after them, ran like the wind—but there was no hope of catching them, and after a while he came panting back into the ogre’s room.
“They’ve left Clarence,” he said.
“They’ll come back for him, surely,” said Mirella.
But they never did.
CHAPTER
25
THE WHITE BIRD
It was because of his horse that Prince Umberto returned safely to the palace in Waterfield.
The stallion simply plodded on, through dark woods, across dangerous bridges, on and on, not spooked by anything, making for his stable. All that Umberto had to do was hold on, which he managed just about, but when he reached Waterfield and the groom came forward to take the bridle, he slithered to the ground, almost fainting with exhaustion.
When he had pulled himself together and made his way into the palace, he found the whole family assembled in the big salon. The king and queen were there; the Princess Sidony with her husband, Prince Phillipe, was there; and so was the Princess Angeline and her husband, Prince Tomas.
And they were all looking at a small blob in the center of their circle.
The blob was not an ordinary blob; it was a very young baby. At one end the baby was having her diapers changed by Mirella’s old nurse; at the other end the Princess Sidony was fussing with the baby’s christening robe. Sweetie Pie had been born while her father was away fighting the ogre; she was a girl and about to be christened in Waterfield Cathedral with a great deal of pomp and ceremony.
“Good heavens, it’s Umberto,” said the queen, jumping to her feet. “We thought you had been killed in the battle.” And then: “Have you any news of our poor darling daughter? Have you any news of Mirella?”
“Yes I have,” said Umberto. “I know exactly what has happened to Mirella. But you must prepare yourself.”
“Oh no!” The poor queen looked stricken. “The ogre has eaten her!”
“No. He hasn’t done that. But he has . . . changed her. Mirella has become a bird. A white bird. I saw her, high in the sky.”
“Oh no! No!” cried the queen. She burst into tears and so did Princess Sidony and Princess Angeline, while the king and the princes looked utterly stricken.
But in the midst of the hullabaloo, the old nurse, who had finished with the baby’s diaper, stood up and said: “Now, now, there’s no call for all that fuss. Mirella wanted to be a bird from when she was very small. She was always up on the roof staring up at them. She’ll be as happy as can be, so let’s have no more weeping, because she’s got exactly what she wants, and let’s get this baby off to the church.”
It took time for the queen to stop weeping, but Angeline now said: “It’s true, Mother. What Nurse says is true. Mirella never fitted in, you know that. Look at the fuss she made when she had to be a bridesmaid at my wedding.”
Prince Phillipe and Prince Tomas nodded. To tell the truth they were terribly relieved that there was no question of another expedition to rescue Mirella from the ogre.
But Umberto had had a good idea. Obviously he couldn’t marry Mirella now, but he still desperately needed the money that Mirella’s fat
her had promised him if he married into the family.
He looked down at the crib where Sweetie Pie was lying, blowing bubbles and looking really rather nice.
“I suppose I couldn’t get engaged to her,” he said, pointing to the baby. “I don’t mind waiting.”
But Umberto was unlucky. Sidony let out a shriek of anger, Prince Phillipe snorted, and the king said, “Most certainly not.”
Sweetie Pie wasn’t going to be a difficult and strange girl like Mirella—they would find a far more suitable husband for her when the time came.
So Umberto went back to his homeland, where his tailor and his barber and his bookie and all the people he owed money to were waiting for him, and his father said, “Enough is enough,” and banished him to two dark rooms at the back of the palace where Umberto had to do all his own housework; he even had to wash his bed socks by himself.
But the people of Waterfield, and the schoolchildren in particular, could never hear enough about Mirella. They became keen birdwatchers and bird protectors: bird tables and bird feeders appeared everywhere in the town, and the king and queen had a special flag made showing a white bird with outstretched wings which flew over the palace.
And again and again the children would nag for stories of her.
“Tell us about the Princess Mirella,” they would beg their parents. “Please tell us about the Princess Who Flew Away.”
CHAPTER
26
RETURN OF THE GHOSTS
The ghosts were back in their train, going around and around in an everlasting circle. They had been promised that if they frightened the ogre to death, their train would be rerouted: they would go on branch lines, through junctions, into different tunnels—but they had failed and now they were doomed once again to travel on the same wearying line.