Straw into Gold Page 5

  “Those four winged ponies attached to the golden coach at the door . . .”

  It was true, they waited there.

  “. . . will vanish!” said the fairy godmother sadly. “Will all be gone. Do you understand, child?”

  “I don’t,” remarked Buttons.

  “It’s magic, isn’t it?” whispered Cinderella. “Thank you, thank you, thank you . . .”

  She was touching the ponies’ velvet muzzles, her snowflake dress was floating with the movement of their wings, she was in the coach and it was flying. Over the wall and over the rooftops and over the river, a golden light in a whirl of stars. She looked down to Buttons, still on the doormat.

  “Run after her!” commanded the fairy godmother, prodding him to his feet. “Run after her and say, ‘Midnight!’ Make sure she understands.”

  Buttons found himself gripped by his jacket, heaved high in the air by a long bony arm, and dropped over the wall. He squeaked, stumbled, and ran.

  Ever since sunset, the palace had been shining with light. It sparkled with reflections from gilt cups and jeweled heels and crystal lamps. It hummed and throbbed and tinkled and murmured with voices and music and iced drinks and dance steps.

  It smelled of roses.

  At the top of the palace steps, under the brightest lamps of all, stood the Prince. To each guest that entered he handed a rose. He had a great tub of them, waiting.

  “Welcome!” he said, his smile gallant, his eyes watchful. “Be happy! Let me give you a rose!”

  Then every guest, eager or shy, gabbling or silent, in silk or velvet or muslin or brocade, laughing or shivering, said, “OUCH! It pricked me! I think it’s bleeding!”

  And each time the Prince was solemnly concerned and inspected the wound and recommended ice, but under his breath he murmured, “Purple, purple, blue, pink, blue, reddish, mauve, mauve, blue again (I SAID no princesses), pink, I suppose you might call that red . . .”

  “Far too much blue!” he snapped at the Butler, during a lull in guests.

  And the Butler, who was standing behind him with the ice, said, “Very hard to weed them out, Sire. Very determined.”

  The Prince groaned, turned to the next guest (who if she wasn’t wearing a tiara, was wearing something very much like one), and selected her a nice spiky rose.

  “OUCH!” she shrieked.

  And the Prince peered and muttered, “Just as I thought. Royal blue. Useless.”

  But at last the crowd on the steps grew smaller. The roses in the tubs were almost all gone. “Three, two, one, and that’s the lot,” the Prince counted under his breath. “Purple, mauve, wishy-washy pink . . . Look at that! I don’t believe it!”

  A little gold coach was flying up the drive.

  “That’s a princess if ever I saw one!” said the Prince angrily to the Butler. “Take over, will you? I can’t be bothered.”

  But before this could happen, Cinderella jumped from her coach and, despite himself, the Prince paused.

  “Oh how lovely, lovely, lovely!” cried Cinderella, running up the steps. “Oh, Buttons never told me it was as beautiful as this! Oh, thank you for asking me! Oh, is that for me?”

  It was the last rose in the tub, rather squashed and damp, a white one, not even red, but it was Cinderella’s first rose, and she loved it, smelled it, touched the petals to her cheek, laughed out loud in delight, and tucked it into the front of her dress.

  “It’s only a white one,” said the Prince, watching.

  “It has a golden heart,” said Cinderella. “It’s absolutely perfect. I like the white ones best.”

  “Did it prick you?” asked the Prince.

  “No.” Cinderella shook her head and bent to smile at her rose. “Anyway, if it had, it would have been worth it. Oh, I recognize your boots!”

  The Prince, despite very much mistrusting her snowflake dress and the golden carriage, looked at Cinderella with more interest than he had looked at anyone for hours, and raised his first eyebrow of the evening.

  “I polished them last Tuesday,” explained Cinderella helpfully. “I help Buttons. He’s a friend. Listen to that music! Can we go inside?”

  The Prince bowed to his boots and held out a hand, and the first thing Cinderella said when she saw the glistening ballroom was “However do you keep it clean?”

  “I believe there are . . . um . . . servants,” said the Prince, after thinking for a moment, “and . . . er . . . possibly brooms.”

  “I have a broom,” Cinderella told him. “A very good broom. I dance with it . . .” (The Prince’s eyebrows were getting no rest now, shooting up and down at almost every new thing Cinderella said.) “I dance and sweep the kitchen at the same time. They say it wears out the bristles, but I think it’s worth it.”

  By now she and the Prince were dancing, the shiny boots and the sparkling glass slippers waltzing in perfect time. “It’s much, much better with a real person,” Cinderella gasped, laughing. “My darling broom doesn’t spin like this at all. We do quite slow twirls, compared . . . Oh, there’s Buttons!”

  Buttons saw Cinderella at the same time, shot across the dance floor, grabbed her skirts, and squeaked, “Midnight! Don’t forget!”

  “What happens at midnight?” asked the Prince.

  “Oh,” said Cinderella, suddenly mournful. “Let’s not think about that. It’s ages, isn’t it, till midnight?”

  “Perhaps,” said the Prince. “Shall we dance again? And you can tell me how you came to meet Buttons.”

  The stories that followed, of washtubs and bubbles and muddy stockings arriving by pulleys to be scrubbed in the kitchen, of sparrows on doorsteps and cobwebs and shadows and coal and log buckets and the Prince’s own boots, gave the Prince’s eyebrows more exercise than they had ever had before . . . and meanwhile the dancers whirled, and the lamps shone, and voices laughed, and the roses round the palace walls poured their perfume through the open windows.

  “Would you mind,” Cinderella asked at last, “if we stopped dancing for a little while to give my rose a drink?”

  The Prince nodded, and his eyebrows became very thoughtful as he watched Cinderella untuck her little white rose and lower it gently into a glass of cool champagne. “I should like it to last forever,” Cinderella explained, smiling up at him. “The golden middle . . .”

  “Stamens . . . ,” the Prince told her.

  “. . . the stamens glow so brightly, like a little sun! And the petals are as white as moonlight.”

  “The petals are heart-shaped,” said the Prince, so suddenly that Cinderella jumped.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Although I prefer the ruby red,” said the Prince, very briskly. “Here comes your little friend again!”

  “Midnight!” panted Buttons, clutching Cinderella to steady himself as he skidded across the floor.

  “Not yet, not yet,” said Cinderella. “Buttons, look at my rose!”

  “They make me sneeze,” said Buttons. “There are too many blooming roses around here!”

  “There can never be too many blooming roses, Buttons,” said Cinderella, laughing.

  “You’re as bad as him,” said Buttons, frowning at the Prince. “You’ve been dancing together an awful lot. Everyone’s saying it’s time he danced with someone else.”

  The Prince glared at Buttons, and then his eyes shot round the ballroom. The sudden waiting silence that fell confirmed that Buttons was speaking the truth.

  “What about the one in the red dress?” asked Buttons.

  “Half of them at least are wearing red dresses,” said the Prince irritably.

  “That’s because you’re always hanging over them red roses,” said Buttons. “They think you’ll notice them more. What about her that’s waving that big fan? She asked me special to make you look at her.”

  “Oh ALL right!” snapped the Prince. “Stop pointing! I’m going. Stay where you are, I’ll be back.”

  But Cinderella didn’t wait for the Prince to come back beca
use she couldn’t bear to waste the time. “Come on!” she said to Buttons.

  “I’m not dancing with girls,” said Buttons in disgust. “I can’t anyway, I don’t know how, I don’t like it, everyone will laugh.”

  “Pretend you’re a broom, and I’ll dance you,” said Cinderella. “That’s right! That’s perfect! Round the kitchen, sweep, sweep! Mind the table, spin! Try not to clump in case they hear upstairs! Brilliant, Buttons!”

  Buttons smirked, and when the Prince came back and tapped him on his head, he dashed off to find another girl with whom to sweep the floor.

  “I do love Buttons,” said Cinderella to the Prince.

  “He’s much too young for you,” said the Prince briskly. “Are glass slippers comfortable?”

  “Not at all,” said Cinderella, “but so pretty they are worth it.”

  “Would you like to stop dancing and rest for a while?”

  “I’d like to dance forever,” said Cinderella.

  But time was passing, and Buttons was much too occupied now to remember to look at the clock. There was supper and fireworks and a trip up to the highest turret to look down on the roses from above, and then everyone was back in the ballroom again and it was half past eleven and then a quarter to twelve and then later and later and later and at one minute to twelve o’clock Buttons suddenly remembered, dropped his latest partner, and shrieked, “Midnight!”

  And then Cinderella remembered too.

  Cinderella left the Prince, rescued her rose, and fled across the ballroom and out into the cool night air of the palace steps. The little gold coach waited at the foot, the wings of the four white ponies beating with impatience.

  “Wait! Wait!” cried Cinderella, but the steps were slippery with faded petals and melted ice cubes, and the glass slippers were losing their magic. Halfway down, Cinderella fell.

  It hurt very much. One slipper broke and cut her foot. The other was lost in the darkness. The pearls in her hair rolled away down the steps, her snowflake dress melted into her shabby gray frock, and the little gilt coach with the four winged ponies rose into the sky without her. Cinderella gazed as it faded . . .

  a golden blur . . .

  the farthest star . . .

  gone.

  Then Cinderella picked herself up and limped down the palace steps, across the bridge and the deserted marketplace, over the wall, and back to the kitchen, where the fire was out and the shadows were deep, and she curled up in her little cold bed.

  But the last thing she thought, before she went to sleep, was It was worth it.

  Back at the palace, the ball went on. The music, and the lamplight, and the dancing. Buttons was soon back on the ballroom floor again, having discovered that dancing with girls was the thing he liked best. He forgot Cinderella as soon as she vanished.

  But the Prince did not. He went looking. All through the palace, around by the roses, at the top of the highest turret, and then, one by one, he searched the white marble steps. Just as the sun rose, he saw the glass slipper.

  He saw something else too, and it made his heart beat hard and fast.

  Then the Prince went leaping back up to the palace.

  The last and best thing about a really good ball is the magnificent breakfast served early in the morning before the dancers go home. This was what was happening when the Prince ran back into the palace ballroom.

  “Buttons will know where she is! Buttons! Where is that dismal child, Buttons?” shouted the Prince, rushing between the boiled eggs and fresh peaches and buttered toast and muffins and pancakes and waffles and ham and honey and raspberries and porridge and kippers being consumed by his guests.

  They bowed and curtsied, shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, gulped and swallowed and said, “He was here a minute ago.”

  But Buttons, who had eaten a French loaf, a side of smoked salmon, six eggs, and one hundred and twenty-two strawberries, had fallen asleep on a window seat, tucked up in a heap of borrowed velvet cloaks. He was quite invisible and quite deaf to the world, and he stayed that way for several hours while the Prince, in his frantic searching, ran past him many times. Meanwhile the guests went home, and the (by now exhausted) Butler was sent out to the marketplace with a Royal Proclamation (which is a loud, forceful message written on a long scroll in very black ink).

  The Royal Proclamation said that whoever fitted the glass slipper, carried by the Palace Butler on a purple velvet cushion, was sought by the Prince most urgently.

  “She must be the one he’s chosen to marry!” exclaimed many voices in the crowd.

  The girl in the red dress who had flapped the very large fan said, “What if she doesn’t want to?” But she was the only one. The entire guest list, including Cinderella’s stepsisters, queued up in the marketplace to try on the slipper, and it didn’t fit any of them.

  “That’s because it’s Cinderella’s,” said Buttons, staggering among them, awake at last.

  Then urgent messages were sent to the palace for the Prince to come at once, while Buttons said importantly, “Follow me!” and led the Butler round to the back of Cinderella’s house and over the wall, and across the yard and into the shadowy kitchen.

  And, astonishing! There was Cinderella, with her arms round the neck of a stranger, who, with his cheek resting gently on her brown silk hair, was murmuring, “My dear. My dearest.”

  It didn’t seem the moment for proclamations and shoe fittings, and the Butler realized this and frog-marched Buttons outside again. They stood guard at the door together. The worn-out Butler soon fell asleep (standing up, like horses do), but Buttons passed the time reading the Royal Proclamation. That is what he was doing when the Prince climbed over the wall with his arms full of roses.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Buttons. “You can’t go in. She’s busy.”

  “But is she safe? Is she happy? Is she all right?” demanded the Prince.

  “She is now,” said Buttons. “But where’s her other shoe?”

  “Smashed,” said the Prince, and once again felt the lurch of his heart at the memory of the broken crystal and the small red marks on the white marble steps.

  “One shoe’s no good,” said Buttons, and went back to his reading, and this time the Prince noticed.

  And stared.

  “You can read!” he said.

  “Three silver pennies!” said Buttons triumphantly, holding out his hand. “I can read. I read that label. I told you I did! I read it on both sides! ‘Rosa alba. White roses. Can be grown as Rosa rubens vampira in certain conditions.’ Bloodthirsty roses! And royal blood turns them a very nasty blue!”

  “Yes, it does,” admitted the Prince. “But un-royal blood, commoners’ blood, like yours . . .”

  “Oi!” growled Buttons, insulted.

  “Proper, priceless, perfectly-normal-people’s blood,” said the Prince, appeasingly polite, “turns them beautiful ruby red, and it only takes a drop. And that’s why I didn’t want any blue-blooded princesses at my ball.”

  “In case you married one by mistake and she went and ruined your roses?” said Buttons.

  “Exactly,” said the Prince.

  But although he had given the palace ball for the sake of his ruby-red roses as much as the need for a wife, he had fallen in love with Cinderella hours before he had seen her footprint on the marble steps. And by then he didn’t care if she was royal or not, if only she loved him back. And the roses he had brought her were all white with golden stamens, because that was the color she said she loved most.

  And their petals were heart-shaped.

  And he had taken off every thorn.

  So the Prince went into the house and found Cinderella.

  And Cinderella said, “Darling Daddy, this is the Prince. Darling Prince, this is Daddy.”

  And such happiness filled the kitchen that all the shadows vanished.

  Then, not long afterward, Cinderella married the Prince and went to live at the palace, and she and the Prince took care of the roses to
gether, and they took care of Cinderella’s father and of Buttons too. Later they had two round baby boys to take care of as well, and then two round baby girls. And with Cinderella at the palace, there was much bubble-blowing and dancing and many sparrows on the marble steps and everybody, always, polished their own boots.

  And the roses around the palace walls were white with golden hearts, except sometimes, when Cinderella pricked her fingers on purpose and turned them ruby red.

  “I don’t think you ought to do that,” said Buttons, prim and shuddering, but Cinderella laughed at him from among the perfume-pouring flowers.

  “Dear, dear Buttons!” she said. “It truly doesn’t hurt. And anyway . . .

  “I think it’s worth it!”

  The Fountain in the Market Square

  or

  The Pied Piper of Hamelin

  Patter, patter, patter

  Silver rain

  That

  is

  The fountain in the market square

  and I am the Mayor of Hamelin.

  The fountain was given to the city by my great-grandfather more than one hundred years ago. The date is carved on the steps beneath:

  1185

  A Gift to the Good People of Hamelin

  Hamelin, my little city. A pleasant city, with its church bells and market bustle, its red roofs and white walls, and its garland of green hills beyond the river.

  I admit, one year the rats were a problem.

  Why were there so many rats that year? Some people blame the river. Others remember the good harvest of the autumn before, the grain stores full to bursting, the cheeses and the butter tubs. The dried fruits and the wines and the stores of meadow honeycomb. But I am not so sure. The river always ran beside the city. We have been fortunate: there have often been good harvests. No one went hungry in Hamelin. Not the hardworking merchants, nor the busy housewives, nor the old folk in their rocking chairs, not the merry young people in the streets.

  When I was young, things were different. Perhaps not better, but different. This city of ours did not fall from the sky like a toy ready-made, its streets swept, its merchants stocked, its bread baked, the window boxes full of herbs, and the chimneys ready smoking!