Early the next morning, with the little cook’s letter to Miss Thomson in his pocket, and a full day’s wages in his purse, Prince Peerio set out for Mountainy Castle. When he came to the town at the foot of the hill, he went into a shop, just as it was being opened, the pavement swabbed, and the shutters lifted down with a clatter, and bought himself a new lace-collar and a new cocked hat. He would have liked to wear his suit of bright chain-mail, but there were two reasons why he had not brought that with him. One was that it was rather too heavy to walk round the world in, and the other because he wanted to approach the Castle, not as a Prince, but in disguise. For he wished to find out all about the people in the Castle before he told them why he had come. He thought himself very lucky, therefore, when, on arriving at the Castle gate, he saw a stable-boy leaning idly against it.

This stable-boy was a good-natured hobbledehoy young lout, all legs and wings, who yanked about the Castle in a suit of corduroy reach-me-downs, with a straw hanging out of one side of his mouth and a melancholy whistle tootling out of the other.

“Mornin',” he said to the Prince.

“Good morning to you!” answered Peerio pleasantly. Very soon they fell talking, and Prince Peerio began to ask the stable-boy what was going on inside the Castle. The little cook at the inn had already told him what had gone on while hewas still at the Castle, but he didn’t seem to know much about what had happened since. He had not been at the Castle since Princess Lily was born, so he said, and that was nearly twenty years ago.

“Yes,” said the stable-boy gloomily, “things is going from bad to worse inside. Old Gamboy, she’s got ‘em all into the coop, like a lot o’ chicks, an' she’s sitting on the lid—and there she’ll stay, I reckon, as long as she’s on top of dirt.”

He shook his head sadly from side to side, and the straw hanging from his mouth wagged to and fro as solemnly as the pendulum of a grandfather’s clock. Then, out of the other side of his mouth, he went on talking:

“Them Amalgamated Princesses!” he said indignantly. And, after a pause, “Anyone ‘ud think the Castle belonged to ‘em. ‘Is por old Majesty stuck in his study from morning to night, not knowin’ what’s goin’ on and not darin’ to come out and see for hisself. They do say as if he

so much as shows ‘is face at the door, old Gamboy is up and fussin’ all over ‘um, before you can say ‘Sneeze.’ ‘Well, dear, wot is it, me dear? Troublin’ that por old ‘ead of yours, are you? Better leave it all to me, darling, much better leave it all to me. Yes, Lily’s quite well, me dear, I’m

looking after ‘er.’ O Lord, ‘aven’t I ‘eard all about it from the parlermaids? Aven’t I ‘eard it more than one times?”

Prince Peerio’s heart leaped when he heard the stable-boy say “Lily,” but he said nothing, for he wanted the lad to go on.

“They do say,” he continued at last in a hoarse whisper, leaning forward to the Prince’s ear, “as he just sits an’ stares! sits in ‘is study all day, just starin’ an’ starin’ at nothing. ‘E don’t seem to know quite where ‘e is, por gentleman. P’raps it’s a good thing ‘e don’t. I tell you, when I ‘eard ten years ago that ‘e was married to ‘er—yer could have knocked me down with a feather—just like that, yer could!—knocked me down with a feather! Nobody knows how it ‘appened. I don’t believe ‘Is Majesty knows ‘imself. They say ‘e just kinder woke up one

morning an’ found it ‘ad ‘appened—started callin’ ‘er ‘is Queen. I don’t wonder neither, seein’ as she’d been bossing ‘im about enough for fifty Queens ever since ‘er sister died. But the queer thing is, Mister, they say as ‘e don’t always seem to know be rights who she is. ‘E mixes up the old an’ the new in ‘is por old ‘ead—calls ‘er Violet, yer know.”

By this time the Prince and the stable-boy, without knowing what they were doing, had entered the Castle grounds. The stable-boy went on:

“I tell you I don’t like it at all. You should have ‘eard ‘er talkin’ down in the market- place, when the famine was on. I wasn’t but a little nipper then; but, my, she said some nasty things. My Father believed ‘em all, too—marched up to the castle, ‘e did, the night the Queen died.”

But Prince Peerio had heard all this from the little cook at the inn. So he interrupted: “What are the Amalgamated**Princesses?” he asked.

“Ah!” said the stable-boy. “Well, what are they?”

“Sheknows!” said the stable-boy, darkly squinting. “Doesn’t anybody else know?”

“Not properly they don’t. But I’ll tell you, Mister: I know one thing, and that’s not two!” He leaned forward and whispered again. “They pays ‘er subscripshuns. An’ she spends ‘em— spends ‘em all on ‘erself and ‘er own fenarious schemes!”

“Embezzles them,” suggested the Prince.

“That’s it, Mister, the first thing she did with ‘er bloomin’ subscripshuns, as didn’t properly belong to ‘er, was to purchase that great black book of hern. An’ she spent the rest of ‘em hexperimenting with the magics in the book. I tell yer, it fair gives yer the creeps to walk underneath her window at night an’ hear the old lady up there a mumblin’ and a mutterin’ to

‘erself or the Devil, it’s pretty much the same thing, I reckon. An’ them Amalgamated**Princesses, they still goes on payin’ their subscripshuns, oh yus, they still go on payin’ up through the nose. They seem ter like it. There’s nought so queer as folk, I reckon—very!”

They were talking so hard that they never noticed they had come right up to the Castle wall and were standing underneath Gamboy’s window.

But Aunt Gamboy, up in her room, bending her head low over the squiggled pages of Excerpta, had heard their footsteps. She perked up her head, and her dark eyes gleamed suddenly with a baleful light. She crept to the window. She could see them. She could hear every word they said.

She heard Prince Peerio ask the stable-boy where Princess Lily was and what she was

doing.

The boy pointed to a building a little way outside the Castle grounds; it was a high, stalk-

like tower, with a little door at the bottom of it and at the very top a few narrow slits of windows. The rest was blank, staring stone.

“She’s in there,” he said.

And then Gamboy heard him tell the Prince what follows:

When the Princess Lily had at last recovered from her long illness, she was so wasted by fever and so weakened by pain that her own Father could scarcely recognize her. Nor was she indeed the same girl. Ever since the day Aunt Gamboy had had tea with her she had been peak- faced, irritable, and headachy. A silence had fallen on her. She would never open her mouth of her own accord, and, if she was asked a question, would answer “Yes” or “No,” and say no more. If anybody asked her to do anything, to play at ball or go a walk, she would only look peevish and avoid complying. She no longer read the wise and beautiful books on her Father’s shelves, nor did she dance any more, as she had danced to him in the old days for joy, but sat about in drooping attitudes with her white hands hanging listlessly in her lap, thinking.

She was a burden to all who came near her, and all were astonished at the change. Her own servants, who had delighted to serve the gay young thing she once was, now avoided her whenever possible, and pouted back sour and sullen looks at her querulous upbraidings. But there was one thing which nobody noticed (nobody, that is, except old Lord Tullywich, and he saw most things that went on under his nose), and that was that Princess Lily had grown timid. She, who had never trembled until she saw the toad, was now ready to be scared by her own shadow, terrified by the darkness, and startled out of her skin by the banging of a door two rooms away.

Often, just before she went to bed, she would run to Gamboy and cling on to her hand: “Auntie,” she would say, “will you promise me that no toads will get into my room

tonight? They won’t, will they?” And Aunt Gamboy would turn her head and look down at Lily through her great round spectacles, and say, oh so kindly:

“I can’t promise, my darling—it’s very unlikely—it’s never happened before—and I sincerely hope it never will; but—they mayof course. Anything mayhappen, you know. You mustn’t be frightened, there’s a good girl.”

Then Princess Lily would answer obediently (for she was still obedient to her Aunt): “No, Auntie. I only thought I’d just like to ask you.”

And then she would go off to bed, trembling with fear, and lie awake half the night with her eyes wide open, staring into the darkness. All the time, as the days went by, she came more and more to lean on her Aunt, to go to her for comfort, and to believe every word she said. So that if Gamboy had once told her firmly (what was no more than the truth) that no toad could

possibly get into her room as long as she kept the windows shut, she would have slept quite happily every night; and very soon she would have been peak-faced and white no more, but as healthy as it is possible for anyone to be who sleeps with the windows shut.

But Aunt Gamboy never told her this.

As for her Father, she scarcely ever saw him now. For he, too, had come to lean all his strength on his new Queen. He believed himself to be happy, because he no longer thought much about anything—not even about Violet. But he was not really happy.

So Queen Gamboy gradually gathered all the affairs of State into her own hands, and at last even began to attend the meetings of the Privy Council in her husband’s place, while he sat mooning in his study. As a matter of fact, she used to put slumber-syrups in his coffee. Ever since their marriage she had insisted on making it for him with her own hands, and ever since their marriage the King had grown sleepier and sleepier. So that poor, pale little Lily scarcely ever saw her Father nowadays, or, if she did see him, he seemed only half to know her, and would make some foolish remark or other about the weather or the political situation. He could never tell her that she was safe from toads. He didn’t even know she was frightened of them.

So at last, at the Queen’s suggestion, she had had the high, stalk-like tower built for her.

But even there she did not feel safe from toads.

And there she sat all day and every day, with her hands in her lap, staring. Books all round her, and she never read one of them; pictures, and she never looked at them. She did not know the history of her own country, and she might have learnt the history of the world. Indeed, so far from knowing its history, she did not even know how it was made or what it was made of. Every spring the wild flowers burst into a sea of blossom that foamed up against the very foot of her tower, Honeysuckle, Loosestrife, Ladysmock, Daffodils, Goldilocks, Orchises, Palm, and the Drooping Star of Bethlehem—and she never troubled to learn their names. The birds perched on her high little window-sill, and said “Jug-jug” and “Deedle-deedle”, but she could not tell one from the other; and at night the constellations, Orion and the Great Bear, looked in, but she did not know them apart. She did not even know the difference between a star and a planet. What is the good of knowledge? she said, and began to forget all that her father had taught her. Nothing seemed to her to be worth doing, for nothing she did brought her any pleasure. Nor could she think of anything for long at a time except toads. At night she dreamed of them.

In his own words the stable-boy explained all this to Prince Peerio. He did not know all I have told you. What he did know he had only heard from the Castle servants. But he knew enough to make the Prince understand. For months, nay, for years now, the Castle, he said, had been like a painted castle. There was a spell on it. The King silent in his study all day and the Princess shut up in her tower. Even the servants went about their work with hushed voices and glum faces. A silence like death seemed to have come upon them all. One person only seemed alive. One person moved to and fro with a purpose—Queen Gamboy. She, too, was silent, but not with the silence of death. She was silent rather as ants and spiders are silent, and it was with their swift hurryings that she glided to and fro.

Now when the stable-boy had finished his story, he nodded to the Prince and loitered away to the stables. But the Prince stood still, pondering deeply how he might win Princess Lily to be his Queen. For nothing that the stable-boy had said had changed his love for her. He only longed more than ever to marry her and to give back to her her joy in life.

Somebody else stood still, too. Up in her window, a little way above his head, Queen Gamboy was standing still, thinking. And as she thought, she frowned. She had overheard every

word of the talk between the Prince and the stable-boy. What is more, she had heard the trembly sound in Peerio’s voice, when he asked after the Princess Lily.

She was no fool, wasn’t Queen Gamboy.

“Aha!” said she to herself. “A poor chance for your schemes, Gamboy, my dear, if this young fellow is to come and set us all by the ears, because he happens to have seen a picture of my niece. And just when we’re all getting on so comfortably, too! I couldn’t stir up those fool citizens down there in the town to rebel, even when they were starving. So it’s plain they must have some king or other over them; but if there’s to be another king in Mountainy after King Courtesy, it shall be my son—mine—Queen Gamboy’s.” And she scowled fiercely at the looking-glass—partly because she hadn’t even got a son yet.

“That young man wants taking down a peg or two, I fancy!” she muttered, and she peeped out of the window to see if he was still there. Yes, there he was, standing underneath the window, dreaming like loon. Gamboy tiptoed across her room to the table and picked up Excerpta. Softly, with the great black volume under her arm, softly she crept back across the carpet to the window.

He was still there.

Now she opened the book at a page she knew well enough and began (softly) to murmur her spell. She whispered it, whispered it lest he should hear and start away, before it had time to work. And as she whispered it, she moved her corky arms to and fro, engraving wicked rhombs and pentacles on the empty air.

Now I cannot tell you the exact words she uttered. If I did, the same thing might happen to you that happened to Prince Peerio. Not exactly the same thing, of course, unless the story is being read aloud to you and the person who is reading it happened by chance to make the exact patterns in the air which Gamboy made. But even if all this should not be so, even if you are reading the book to yourself, quite enough might happen to make you very, very uncomfortable. Aunt Gamboy had been studying that book for years now, you see, and her magic had grown very much stronger since the last time she used it, which was when she made her own and Princess Lily’s teeth chatter up in the Royal Nursery, ten years ago. These, then, were something like the words she whispered (but not the exact words):

“No dimber, dambler, angler, dancer, Prig of cackler, prig of prancer,

No swigman, swaddler, clapper-dudgeon, Cadge-gloak, curtal, or curmudgeon,

No whip-jack, palliard, patrico; No jarman, be he high or low, No dummerar or romany, Hobson, jobson, jigamaree, Nepot, niminidoxy, duffer,

Nor any other will I suffer

To prevent me from transmogrifying that young man.”

No sooner had she finished than the dreaming Prince came to himself with a jerk. He felt sick, wondered where he was, and in the twinkling of an eye saw his stomach shooting out in front of him, and felt his eyes bulging from his head. And now Gamboy craned her scraggy neck over the window-sill and gave a long sorcery chuckle to see on the ground beneath her, just on

the spot where Prince Peerio had been standing a moment before, a great grey-green lolloping toad!