The Ogre of Oglefort (11 page)

“What do you want? Leave me alone. Don't hurt me.”

“We're not going to hurt you. We wouldn't dream of it,” said Ivo. “We just want to make friends.”

It took a long time to coax the aye-aye down from the tree and to hear her story, but when they did, they understood why she was so shy and seemed so unhappy.

“My name is Nandi,” the little creature said, staring at them out of her huge, black-ringed eyes. “And I was born in India and they said I was pretty, so from when I was a little girl my mother put me in for beauty competitions till in the end I was Miss India with a big crown on my head and a lot of fruit round my neck and everyone shouting. And then I was Miss Eurasia with pomegranates and a purple bikini and cameras clicking. Then when we came to England I had to be Miss Hackney South with a Union Jack on my bosom and a wand—and then they put me in for the Miss Universe competition, but the heel came off my shoe in the procession and I fell over and everyone laughed—and my boyfriend was angry and left me because he had bet a lot of money on me winning. And he was the apple of my eye, so my heart was broken and I came here and asked to be an aye-aye and live where nobody can hurt me.”

When Nandi had finished speaking in her breathless little voice, the children were very shaken. They could see all the other contestants laughing and sneering as she ran off the platform, and they would have liked to put a bullet through the cruel man who had left her. They were so upset that they hardly dared ask Nandi if she would help them to make the castle gardens flourish, but she already knew what they wanted.

“I will help pull down the fruit on the high branches,” she said. “And I can put back some of the tiles on the roof. I have seen you working and I will help—but there must be no cruel men—and no competitions.”

“What nice people they all seem to have been,” said Mirella as they made their way back. “And all of them willing to help. After the Grumblers I was expecting the worst.”

But as they got closer to the castle, they both fell silent, because they were absolutely dreading what they had to do next: talk to Charlie, and find out what kind of a human being he had been.

“Even if we tried not to,” said Ivo, “I suppose it wouldn't work. Now that we've swallowed the beans we can't
not
talk to him.”

“It'll probably be all right,” said Mirella. “He can't have been anybody really horrid—he just can't.”

They tried to think what sort of a person they wouldn't mind him having been.

“I suppose if he'd been one of those people who go bird-watching and hiking on the weekends. Maybe takes school parties and shows them things?”

“In an anorak, with binoculars, who tells you it's not a Lesser Spotted Flycatcher, it's a greater one?”

“Or a geologist with a little hammer banging at rocks?”

But though those sort of people do a lot of good in the world, they didn't want Charlie to be like that, and they didn't want him to be an out-of-work actor, or an office clerk whose boss had been unkind to him. In fact they couldn't think of a single sort of person they really wanted Charlie to be, and their steps got slower and slower as they got nearer home.

But when they walked into kitchen, the Hag told them that Ulf had taken the little dog to the forest and probably wouldn't be back for a while. The evenings were long and light still, and there was no sign of Charlie or Ulf at the time they usually went to bed. Ivo had gone to his room, and Mirella was just saying good night when there was a scratching at the door, and when they opened it, Charlie rushed into the room—tired, happy, muddy, and ready to share his busy day in the forest.

The children looked at each other. Time to begin. So far Charlie's barks had sounded as they always did, but it had been the same with the others at first—the gnu's grunts, the aye-aye's screeches had taken a moment to become understandable as human speech.

“Charlie,” said Mirella very seriously, taking the plunge and looking into the dog's eyes. “We're able to understand the language of animals now, so would you tell us who you are? Or rather who you used to be.”

And they waited, holding their breath.

But whoever Charlie had been, it was obviously not someone very quick on the uptake. He wriggled free of Mirella's grasp and began to play his favorite game, leaping over the footstool and waiting for them to catch him.

“Please, Charlie,” said Mirella, “speak to us. Tell us about your past. We have to know.”

Charlie rolled on his back and let his paws go limp, ready to have his tummy tickled.

But the children felt they had to go through with it now—and how could they scratch the stomach of someone who might presently tell them that he was a High Court judge?

“Charlie, please try,” Mirella begged again.

But it was no use, and now Charlie had jumped onto the bed and begun his evening rearrangement of Ivo's pillows.

“Of course,” said Ivo suddenly. “I know what's gone wrong! All those magic things usually stop working after the sun has gone down. And it has gone down—look—there's not a ray to be seen.”

Mirella ran to the window, and it was true. The evening star had just risen on a darkening sky.

“We'll have to wait till the morning,” said Ivo.

The relief was tremendous. Neither of the children had admitted how frightened they were of hearing Charlie's story.

So Mirella said good night and went along to her room, but as she passed the open door of Dr. Brainsweller's bedroom, Mirella heard voices.

“Ridiculous person,” said a woman's voice, “appearing like that and calling him Bri-Bri—and those absurd spectacles. No wonder the poor man gets upset—you did quite right, spinning a web over her face. We'll have to keep an eye on him—wizards are highly strung, everyone knows that.”

Mirella looked in at the open door. At first she thought the room was empty. Then she looked up at the ceiling where two large spiders were sitting close together and conversing.

Mirella hurried on. She had understood the spiders quite clearly. So what on earth was the matter with the little dog?

She decided to wait till the morning, but as soon as it was light she crept back to Ivo's room and told him what had happened.

“So it wasn't that the beans had stopped working, because I understood the spiders as clear as anything.”

They couldn't make it out. They tried again, asking Charlie simple questions, talking clearly and slowly—but all he did was scratch at the door and indicate that it was time he went out for his morning run.

“We'll have to go and see the ogre,” said Mirella. “And I don't care if he's in a state about his funeral pajamas or the trombone—we'll make him tell us who Charlie was. Now we've started we can't just stop.”

So they went to see the ogre, who was just finishing his breakfast. They explained about the beans and the animals and demanded to know the truth about Charlie.

The ogre wrinkled his vast forehead.

“Charlie?” he said. “Who's he?”

“The little white dog. The one who follows us everywhere. You must know who he is. White with a brown patch behind his ear.”

“Oh, him,” said the ogre. “He's a mongrel. Been around for a while.”

“Yes, but who was he?” said Mirella urgently. “Who was he before you changed him?”

The ogre shrugged. “He wasn't anybody. He's just a dog, always has been. Now about the hearse—I think it should have my name on the side and a little poem. The kind you get on gravestones.”

But the children weren't listening. They were hugging each other, then dancing around the room—and Mirella's eyes had filled with tears of relief and happiness.

Charlie was a dog. Charlie was himself and nothing else. Charlie was Charlie!

T
he Grumblers, who had fled from the dungeon, were on their way back home. They had managed to get a fishing boat to take them to the port of Osterhaven and were waiting for the overnight ferry bound for Great Britain, when Mr. Hummock pointed to a notice on the harbor wall.

“My goodness, look!” he said. “It's that wretched girl who tried to get ahead of us with the ogre and told us about the blood and the syringes and all that. Princess Mirella.”

His wife came to look and sure enough, there was Mirella with her thin face and her wild dark hair. But it was what was written underneath the notice that really excited them.

REWARD
it said in huge letters, and then:
A HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS IS OFFERED TO ANYONE WHO CAN GIVE INFORMATION ABOUT THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE PRINCESS. PLEASE APPLY TO THE MAJOR-DOMO, MONTEFINO PALACE, WATERFIELD.

The couple turned to each other excitedly.

“That's a lot of money,” said Mr. Hummock. “Why don't I go to Waterfield and claim it, and then I can send you your share.”

But his wife thought that this was a bad idea. They had decided to get a divorce and live in different places. “I don't trust you,” she said.

So they decided to go together, and instead of boarding the ferry, which was going back to Britain, they waited for the local boat, which puttered around the island and ended its journey at Waterfield Docks.

“There are two people who say they have news of the Princess Mirella, Your Majesty,” said the majordomo.

Mirella's mother leaped to her feet and called for her husband.

“Show them in quickly, quickly,” she said.

The Hummocks appeared. Each of them wanted to be the one to break the news, so they talked together and interrupted each other—but in the end Mirella's parents understood that their daughter was in the castle of the dreaded Ogre of Oglefort and in great danger.

“Oh heavens!” said the queen, clutching her heart. “Oh how dreadful—oh my poor dear girl!”

“We must send an army to rescue her at once,” said the king. “There is no time to be lost.”

So the Grumblers were sent off to get their reward, and the king and queen set to, to organize an army to slay the ogre and rescue their daughter from the evil monster's clutches.

“Phillipe must bring his soldiers,” said the king.

Phillipe was the prince with the stamp collection, the one who had married their eldest daughter, Sidony.

“And Tomas must bring some of his troops,” said his wife.

Tomas was the prince who sucked peppermints because he worried about his breath and was married to their second daughter, Angeline.

“But of course it is Umberto who must be at the head of the whole army,” agreed the king and queen. “And there is no time to be lost.”

So messengers were sent to Prince Phillipe and to Prince Tomas and to Prince Umberto, who was after all Mirella's proposed bridegroom.

The princes were not pleased at all. None of them wanted to confront an ogre, and their wives cried dreadfully.

Sidony cried because she was expecting a baby, and she begged her husband to stay at home.

“What if poor little Sweetie Pie was to grow up without a father?” she asked.

Angeline cried even harder, because she wasn't just expecting one baby, she was expecting twins.

“I couldn't bring up the Little Puddings all by myself,” she sobbed. “I simply couldn't.”

But of course they knew really that their husbands had to do their duty.

The most difficult to persuade was Prince Umberto, who had never in his life led an army or done anything braver than throw a wooden ball at a coconut, but he had no choice. He now owed so much money that without Mirella's father to bail him out he would have had to flee from his country or risk imprisonment, so he hurried to Waterfield in a very grand uniform and chose the most valuable horse in the royal stables for his mount. To the sound of a splendid brass band, the three princes rode off to rescue Mirella from the vile and dreadful ogre who had her in his power.

The army which set forth looked impressive, though in truth it was composed mainly of friends of the princes and their servants. There were the Household Guards in gold and purple with white plumes in their helmets, and the Royal Fusiliers in green and yellow with velvet caps, and the Soldiers of the Bedchamber in crimson and velvet. True, none of them had ever been in a battle, and there was a serious shortage of weapons and ammunition, but the people who cheered and waved and shouted as the army marched away were not upset by this. The schoolchildren were given a holiday, and that night there was feasting and rejoicing in the town because everyone was certain that the ogre would be slain and the Princess Mirella returned to them.

W
hen Ivo was not returned to the children's home on the day he was due back, the principal sent around the orphanage secretary to investigate.

The secretary banged on the door but nobody came. Mr. Prendergast was at work and Gladys was under her stone in the backyard. In any case even in her heyday when she was properly magical, Gladys had never been able to open doors.

So the secretary went away and came back the next day and the next, but still she couldn't get in. By now the principal of the orphanage was worried. It was true that Ivo was only one of eighty-seven boys in the Home and she'd never noticed him particularly, but that wasn't the point. A child in her care was missing and something had to be done about it.

So she came back with the secretary after working hours, and this time she found Mr. Prendergast at home. The enchantress and the henkies had moved in with friends, but kind Mr. Prendergast had stayed to look after the house.

“I'm afraid they have gone on a mission,” he explained, “and the boy is with them. I've been expecting them back every day but there has been no sign of them.”

The principal was absolutely outraged. “They had absolutely no right to take Ivo,” she said. “It amounts to kidnapping.”

At this point Mrs. Brainsweller, who had seen the orphanage van, came running in from two doors down with her hair flying and said her son, too, had disappeared.

“I managed to keep contact with him till a few days ago, but now he's been blotted out,” she said. “Absolutely blotted! There's a horrid gray mist over his face.”

So the head of the orphanage, who obviously thought that Mrs. Brainsweller's son was a little boy, too, went to the police, and they put up posters with very strange descriptions of the Hag and the troll (but no photographs because neither of them would ever have their pictures taken). The notice was headed
CHILD SNATCHERS
and underneath it said:
HAVE YOU SEEN THESE PEOPLE? IF SO, DO NOT APPROACH THEM
—
THEY ARE HIGHLY DANGEROUS, BUT CONTACT YOUR NEAREST POLICE STATION IMMEDIATELY.

There was also a very smudged photograph of Ivo taken on a school picnic with thirty other children and an arrow which said:
THE MISSING BOY
. (Actually the arrow was pointing to a boy called Bernard Sloope, but this is the kind of thing that happens in school photographs.)

But nobody came forward, so Ivo was put on the Missing Persons Register. Nor was there a reward for anyone coming to the police with information, because he was only an orphan and not a prince.