The Ogre of Oglefort (12 page)

I
vo and Mirella had soon worked out that the magic beans, like all the Norns' gifts, were a little faulty: they only worked on animals who had once been humans. But this was useful in a way, for once all the rescuers had eaten the beans they knew exactly which fish they should eat and which animals might help them in their work.

The spiders who had protected Dr. Brainsweller from his mother were two middle-aged sisters who had been turned out of their home by a greedy landlord. They had been very fond of knitting and thought being spiders might suit them. And there was a hedgehog who used to be a shop assistant in a department store and only wanted to be alone.

Most of the animals in the castle, though, were just what they seemed. The spittlebug in the ogre's nostril was simply a spittlebug. The wood lice behind his ears were simply wood lice and the bats in the rafters were bats.

But the children's new friends in the garden were wonderfully helpful. The gnu made seed furrows with his cloven hooves; the aye-aye tied in the young shoots on the vines; and Bessie began work on clearing the moat. Soon the grounds began to look really well tended and tidy, and everyone was proud of this because it seemed that visitors would soon come to the castle.

The ogre's bath ended better than it began, but it was not long before he became restless again and said he could feel himself becoming weaker by the hour and it was time to send off the invitations to the aunts for his funeral. He still hadn't quite decided which aunt to leave the castle to, and if they came a few days early it would help him to make up his mind.

“Once I see them in the flesh I shall know,” he said.

So he sent a messenger to the three aunts asking them to come, and he told them they could bring Clarence if they had nobody to leave him with.

The messenger he used was not a magical person but a cousin of Brod's, the man who brought the milk. This cousin rode around the countryside on an old gray horse, and though he was not speedy he was reliable.

The messenger went first to the Aunt-with-the-Nose.

This aunt lived in a huge, dark cave—a cavern really. She was very pale because of living in the dark, but her swollen nose glowed slightly, which helped her to sniff her way about. She wandered about in the cave, smelling everything that lived down there: roots, earth, stones—and of course feet when anybody came to visit. She could even smell crystals and stalactites.

This aunt was a vegetarian: she ate roots and leaves and her hobby was worm-collecting. She collected them because they did not smell in the way that furry animals do and were no bother. She had the best worm collection in Norland, and sometimes she swapped worms with other collectors or took them to worm shows.

When she got the message about coming for the funeral, she came out of her cave, nose first, and shuddered a little because the scent of the grass and the trees and the flowers always overwhelmed her, they were so strong. Then she set off down the hillside, up another hill and down again till she came to the house of her sister, the Aunt-with-the-Ears.

The Aunt-with-the-Ears was waiting for her, because she had heard her sister's footsteps as soon as she left her cave. She was a giantess, with ears the size of footballs which drooped down on either side of her face. Her home was an old abbey with a carp pond which had been lived in by monks, and she kept to the inner rooms so that as little noise came to her as possible, but she also had outsize earplugs made from old footballs which she'd cut up. Even so, sometimes the sound of the rain plopping into the pond gave her a headache.

“Have you had your invitation from Dennis?” asked the Aunt-with-the-Nose.

Her sister nodded. “He seems to think he's dying,” she said.

She wasn't particularly upset because ogres don't go in for family feeling. All the same, she thought they had better go.

“He says we can bring Clarence if we want to,” said the Aunt-with-the-Nose. “We could put him on a trolley.”

“Yes, we'd better do that. I don't want to leave him—he just might be ready.”

The Aunt-with-the-Ears did not collect worms; she collected eggs. She collected every sort of egg, and because Norland was an unusual place she collected some very unusual eggs. Some of these had hatched into ordinary birds or reptiles; some had hatched into phoenixes or small dragons and flown away.

But Clarence hadn't hatched. He was by far the largest egg that any of the aunts had seen—and though eggs can't really keep on growing, it seemed to them that Clarence inside his egg was somehow forcing the shell outward without breaking it.

He had been with them for six years and still hadn't made his way out into the world, yet they were certain that he wasn't dead. Sometimes noises came from him—not cheepings, not cluckings, but . . . sighs, slight groans as though Clarence would have liked to get around to hatching, but couldn't quite make the effort.

So now they put him on his special trolley and covered him with his egg cozy to stop him from getting chilled and wheeled him around to the third aunt, the Aunt-with-the-Eyes.

This aunt lived at the top of a tall tower which had once been a lighthouse. It was right at the edge of the sea, and when the aunt stood and looked out with her great eyes she could see every ship within hundreds of miles. She too collected things, but not worms or eggs—she collected the bones of sailors who had drowned. She gathered them up and bleached them and kept them in a special room in the tower: toe bones and ankle bones and thigh bones and ribs. This aunt was very thin because of running up and down the stairs of her tower. The Aunt-with-the-Ears was very tall and the Aunt-with-the-Nose was portly.

And when everything had been settled, the aunts set off, pulling Clarence behind them on his trolley.

“After all, Dennis is our nephew,” they told each other. “And we'll have to see what's to become of the castle.”

“Yes, that's true. Who is he going to leave the castle to?”

They wondered about this all the way to Oglefort. The castle was the biggest and most important in the area—it must go to someone who mattered. And of course it should be someone from within the family.

If Clarence had only hatched and become someone remarkable, perhaps he would have had a chance to inherit—but the aunts were sensible women and they realized that the ogre couldn't leave his castle to an egg.

O
h when will the aunts come?” said the ogre in a weak and trembling voice. “I feel terrible. I'm sure I can't last much longer.”

“You said it would take them at least a week to make the journey,” said Ulf. But he was getting worried. If the ogre died before it was decided which aunt was going to inherit the castle it would make a nasty muddle.

He felt the ogre's pulse, which was indeed extremely feeble.

“Try a spoonful of this—just a small one,” said the troll, reaching for a plate of gruel which the Hag had made, but the ogre only turned his head away and sighed.

It was at this moment that the gnu, out in the garden, lifted his great head. His ears twitched; he rose to his feet.

“What is it?” asked Ivo.

The gnu was looking anxious. “I hear something,” he said. “Keep very still.”

The children did as they were told. At first they could hear nothing—antelopes have much more sensitive hearing than humans. But as they waited and listened they too heard it.

Hoofbeats. A large number of them. Horses were approaching the castle.

The gnu pawed the ground, ready to take off.

But at that moment the aye-aye came bounding through the branches and dropped to the ground beside them. Her eyes were wide with terror.

“There are men with uniforms riding toward us. I could see them coming over the hill. Many men—a whole army.” She began to whimper. “Men like that are bad—very bad. They have flags with many colors—green and yellow and blue, and foolish hats. When men have such silly clothes they are dangerous.”

“Oh heavens!” Mirella had put her hands over her mouth. “Those are my parents' colors—they have them on the royal standard. They'll have sent an army to fetch me away but I won't go—I won't go.”

“The drawbridge,” said Ivo. “We must pull up the drawbridge.”

The children ran as fast as their legs would carry them into the castle.

The Hag and the wizard were in the kitchen. They had heard nothing, but when they saw the children's faces they wasted no time.

“Only Ulf has the strength to shift the bridge,” said the Hag. “He's upstairs with the ogre.”

They ran upstairs and burst into the ogre's bedroom. The ogre was dozing and Ulf was just covering him with a blanket.

“Ulf, come quickly—we're being attacked. We must pull up the drawbridge.”

Ulf wasted no time. He pulled the blanket farther up on the bed, hoping that the ogre had not heard, and ran downstairs.

But the ogre had heard. The children were about to follow the troll downstairs when a great roar came from the bed. Then the blanket was thrown off, and after a few convulsions the ogre was on his feet.

“Oh be careful!” said Mirella—for the ogre had not been out of bed for days.

The ogre swayed and clutched the bedpost. He straightened himself. He flexed his biceps—and the bulge of muscle rolled down his arm and grew bigger and bulgier by the minute. He lifted one leg, and put it down. Then he lifted the other—and kicked a chair, which flew across the room.

“Attacking us, are they,” he roared. “Attacking Oglefort! Get me my club and my entrenching tool. And my trousers,” he added as an afterthought.

“Boiling oil,” said the Hag, looking around hopefully. “They used to pour boiling oil on invaders—but we don't have any. Only salad oil and not much of that. And you two must go down into the dungeons and hide,” she ordered the children. “Mirella must keep out of sight.”

“Well I won't. I'm going to fight with everything I can find,” said Mirella. “We can throw things off the battlements.”

It was ridiculous how little they had to defend themselves with—but it was hundreds of years since the castle had been attacked. Ivo had found some fire irons; Mirella grabbed a footstool. The wizard had seized a marble bust of Germania's grandmother.

Ulf with all his might pulled up the chain which held the drawbridge in place. To get into Oglefort now, the invaders would have to swim the moat.

The army had been advancing steadily, and now it took up its position in front of the castle. It wasn't quite the troop which had set out from Waterfield. It was, in fact, considerably smaller. Three members of the Royal Fusiliers had turned back when they saw the narrow bridge over the gorge which they had to cross. Two soldiers from the Household Guards had fled when a giant had come roaring out of a forest that they had to pass through, and the Soldiers of the Bedchamber were down to four very bedraggled-looking riders.

But the two princes who were married to Mirella's sisters were still mounted—and leading the charge. Prince Phillipe on a black charger rode on the left flank. He had left his stamp collection at home and was waving his sword and shouting abuse. Prince Tomas, still sucking a peppermint, led the right flank. But Prince Umberto, who was meant to be at the head of the whole troop, had somehow managed to get to the back. He rode a gray stallion that was tossing his head and fidgeting because Umberto had no idea how to control him, and Umberto looked sick with fear.

“We come to kill the Ogre of Ogelfort,” shouted Prince Phillipe.

“And to free the Princess Mirella,” shouted Prince Tomas. “Open the gates!”

Prince Umberto didn't shout anything because he was trembling too much, but Mirella, up on the roof, had caught sight of him.

“I'm going to be sick,” she said as the horror of his courtship came back to her, and she vanished behind a chimney stack on the other side of the ramparts.

The soldiers looked up at the castle. It was frighteningly large but there did not seem to be any cannons pointing in their direction. Prince Tomas gave a command and the archers laid their arrows to their bows. But before they could shoot, there came a mighty roar from the battlements. Then an enormous figure, hid-eous and hairy, his huge arms raised threateningly, appeared and glared down at them.

The riders shifted in their saddles. Prince Phillipe's horse took a pace backward.

Silhouetted against the sky, the Ogre of Oglefort was a terrifying sight.

“How dare you try to invade my castle, you vile scum,” shouted the ogre. “I spit on you! I'm going to tear you limb from limb. I'm going to devour you toe by toe and ear by ear and nose by nose.”

He picked up a floor mop and hurled it into the mass of troops, and it dislodged a fusilier, who fell to the ground.

“I'm going to grind your guts like corn. I'm going to dig your tonsils into the ground.”

But if the soldiers were frightened, the children and the rescuers on the battlements were utterly amazed. An hour ago the ogre had been lying limply in his bed waiting for death—and now he was roaring and threatening. Surely he would have a heart attack and drop dead?

Prince Umberto, who was already right at the back, edged his horse farther away. It was as though the ogre's power could somehow reach them even from the roof.

But Prince Phillipe and Prince Tomas were made of sterner stuff. They repeated the signal to the archers and a volley of arrows sped toward the towering figure on the roof.

The arrows missed—and the ogre picked one up and scratched his armpits with it. Then he looked around for a weapon and Ivo handed him a coal bucket, which he hurled with all his might into the army—and a member of the Household Guards cried out and fell to the ground. The troll had made a sling from a sheet. He put in a metal cooking pot and sent it flying toward the Soldiers of the Bedchamber. It glanced off a sergeant's arm, and he cried out but managed to stay on his horse.

A second hail of arrows flew up to the roof—and missed again.

“Come on you, lily-livered, cow-handed imbeciles. How dare you attack Oglefort Castle, which has stood for five hundred years. Just you wait till I get down there and crunch you up between my molars.”

But one of the fusiliers had broken ranks and was setting his horse at the moat. He could not jump it, but he meant to swim it—and he shouted to his sergeant to bring reinforcements. If he could get into the castle by the back he had a good chance of rescuing the princess.

The horse, however, had different ideas. It stopped dead and the soldier shot over his head into the deep and slimy water.

Mirella, emerging from the shelter of the chimney stacks, looked down and remembered what Bessie had said about the weeds in the moat. Well if the soldier drowned that was one less for the attack. But as the fusilier's anguished face appeared above the surface and vanished again she saw, to her horror, that it was somebody she knew. One of the servants who had been kind to her in the palace: the son of the carpenter who had helped her to make her ant nest.

Without thinking, Mirella rushed down the curving stone staircase and out by the sally port. There was an old life belt fixed by a rope on a stand, and she threw it with all her might into the water.

“Go back,” she shouted. “The ogre will kill you if you come any farther.”

The soldier caught it and held on but as he did so he saw Mirella. Here was his chance for fame and glory—he and he alone would rescue the princess. Instead of swimming back to the army, he thrust out toward the castle side of the moat and grabbed Mirella's legs.

Taken by surprise, Mirella let go of the rope and stumbled—and he pulled her into the water.

“Hold on, Your Highness,” he spluttered. “We'll soon have you safe.”

Ivo, who had gone around to the back to fetch some loose bricks for ammunition, saw what had happened.

“They've got her—they've got Mirella,” he shouted. “I'm going down to help her.”

“No you're not,” said Ulf, grabbing him. “They'll only get you, too.”

But someone else was in the moat, swimming strongly toward the soldier and his burden. And when the fusilier saw who it was he screamed in terror.

A great mouth had opened in front of him, a crimson cavern with fearsome yellowing teeth. A mouth belonging to the most dangerous mammal in Africa, who could snap people in half with one movement of the jaw.

“Watch out!” Mirella shouted to the soldier, who held her in his grip. “It's the Oglefort Hippo—she's a killer!”

Mirella was right: it was indeed a hippopotamus. This gentle animal who wanted nothing except to live in peace had come lumbering up before the battle and taken it on herself to patrol the moat.

There was no way the soldier could have known that Bessie would have died rather than taste his horrid flesh. He saw only the gaping mouth, the terrible teeth, and he loosened his hold on Mirella and—still in the life belt—he struck out for the bank.

Mirella managed to swim back to the castle side of the moat, but the bank was steep and slimy. As she struggled to get out, Prince Phillipe rode over.

“Don't worry, my dear,” he called to her in a patronizing voice. “We'll soon have you out of here and safe back home.”

“I don't want to be safe,” she spluttered. “And I'm not going home.”

“She's been brainwashed,” said the prince to his aide—and since no one could swim the waters of the moat while the wild hippopotamus patrolled it, he gave orders that a big tree nearby should be cut down to make a bridge.

“Like that, we'll be able to get her out of the water and storm the castle,” he said.

But Bessie was not the only animal who had come to help.

“We need more ammunition,” shouted the ogre—and vanished, to return with a grandfather clock, an iron bedstead, and an armchair, which he sent crashing down from the battlements.

“Come any closer and I'll blister the skin off your backsides!” he roared.

“I've run out of boulders,” said the troll—and then he heard above him Nandi's quiet voice and saw that the aye-aye, in spite of her terror of men, was on the roof above him prying off the razor-sharp slates, which she handed to him so that he could send them flying like knives through the ranks.

But the army stood its ground, and the arrows came steadily.

Ivo was standing between the Hag and the wizard. He had thrown a footstool, a bedpan, and a set of fire irons. His aim had been good, but what use was that? Mirella's white face and her look of terror when she heard that her father's army was coming wouldn't leave him.

“Isn't there any magic you can do?” he begged the Hag. “Anything at all?”

The Hag turned, still holding the soup tureen she had been about to throw.

She saw Ivo's pleading face and remembered the time she had told him about Gladys's treachery.

“I could be your familiar,” he had said. And later: “Familiars serve for life.”

And what sort of an employer had she been, what sort of a witch?

The Hag, in the midst of the battle, examined her soul. Just because no one seemed to want magic anymore, just because she was content to sit in the Dribble soaking her feet, she had let it go.

Ivo said no more. He only looked.