PRINCE HENRI “DAYS OF ENNUI”

My ongoing love affair with the trials and tribulations of a fictional Royal family, the star of whom is Henri. Check back regularly for updates as the story unfolds!

PART ONE: NERVOUS RACK OF LAMB

Prince Henri spent his days murderously close to ennui. He lay on the daybed. What do you want to do Henri? Choose. “NO!!” There wasn’t a thing he would touch which didn’t have weight. Every pen, glass of milk and shiny slink of a pillow was picked up with a kind of heavied elegance. He wasn’t an angry Prince, nor a particularly objectionable one at that either, but his demeanour was most alarming, because not one of his subjects could ever say a bad thing about him. Each day they brought him the requested supply of fresh bread, churned milk and whipped chocolate; which really was the only food he appropriated enjoying the consumption of. He received each plate gracefully with his long fingers, all knuckled in rosey tinctures, and putting it down, would wave the subject off with only the most subtle sway of a hand.

In purely physical terms, Prince Henri had unusually long fingers, and a delicate jaw; a face framed with a dark shadow of hair which fell softly across his forehead. When he was about to speak, the Prince would dramatically draw this hair out of his eyes with a long slow sweep, the top of his fingertips moving gently across his skin. The skin itself was very white, rosey in the nose and speckled with freckles like a freshly laid sparrows egg. His hair was very dark, and he didn’t spend much time outside at all. In fact, it was quite rare to see the Prince up on his very languid feet, and when he did walk, it was with the ever so slight gait of a limp, which he seemed to withstand politely as he moved between rooms. No one really knew how his leg came to be that way, and no one dared ask. Apparently it was a very simple out maneuver of the ankle which did it.  “Perhaps he kicked an onion,” suggested one of the Butlers. Henri never spoke of it.

Occasionally the Prince got up and made sandwiches. But to the intrigue of the chefs, he had either an extremely limited palate, or else didn’t know anything different, and filled his sandwiches solely with meat products. Once his subjects observed five different kinds of meat between bread. Of course this thoroughly impressed the King.

“A fine Prince should have a fine degustation! What need of a vegetable, eh Henri?”

“Agreed Father. Agreed,” Henri would say calmly as he laid out his prosciutto, turkey, chicken, pheasant and steak shank on a slither of whipped butter. He spread this on a piece of bread laid atop the finest carved porcelain that resided so nonchalantly about his person. He bit into the meats. Henri didn’t much care for the porcelain itself. The plates and other china lay amongst crystal and gold: It was all very dandy, he thought. However, if anything less than this lavishness presented itself to Henri’s vicinity, he turned a blank cheek, the rose drained out of it, and he meditated solemnly on something – anything – else that wasn’t ordinary.

He particularly enjoyed his toy slinky. This was what entertained the Prince most during hours of daylight. The King and Queen tended to their contracts and Royal assignments, while Henri was tickled grandly by the undulating strings of slinking greatness. What perfection!! He thought.  What graceful invention parades before my eyes!! He once thought to himself: “Why, if only a woman was made like a slinky. All the woes of my spirit would subside!!” Adrift on his daybed, Prince Henri moved the circular metal spiral to and fro, from one papery peach palm to the other. His eyes glazed over merely from the sight of such perfect symmetry.

It seemed to the Castle staff that Henri controlled the entire Castle from his meditations upon an abacus which lay on his lap during all hours of daylight, as well as a button to his left. Everyone wanted to please the Prince, and would find new ways to do this right up until moonlight hit and Henri retired to his sleeping quarters. He lay horizontally as they swanned about him, his long fingers gentle on the smooth buttons and baubles, as if one look too long in his direction might send him into a tizzy, and cause shutes to open in the floor, and subjects to drop forevermore into them. Perhaps those sidelong glances he shot occasionally at certain members of the castle would fuzz his patience up the wrong way, and BAM a suit of his Uncle’s armour standing sentient in the empty hallway would snatch the offender up. They would be sent off into a hidden passage full of demonic slinkies, or at least receive a good shiner on the back of the shoulder, the place of all imminent death. And during it all, Henri would keep his nose high in the air from the other room, and go back to whatever business he was tending to soon after.

But he wasn’t completely nonchalant when it came to affairs of the heart. There was one particular girl, a friend of a friend, the Duke of Entchester, who Henri was particularly fond of caressing with his eyes. He saluted her sometimes. She didn’t present any kind of a challenge though, and even if she was, all challenges were all taken care of by the minions he controlled. Sometimes he thought he might make a joke and tell it to her. But since all he could really make were five meat sandwiches, he preferred to let her come to him, and practised furrowing his brow, sweeping his fringe with fingertips, and feigning disinterest in the woman. If only she was a slinky, he thought incessantly. It was the one thing that could occupy his mind for long stretches. All other matters disinterested him. Except for the slow chew of his food, the sweep of his hair, the push of the button, he kept all other movement within his mind.

What went on in this mind? Many men and women of the Court questioned this, as well as foreigners from other Courts who visited the Estate. The King and Queen plied him with books on tapestries, footage of bombs, variant sandwich ingredients, but still, he was not interested much in any other thing than his own inner world. What landscape was this? What filled the landscape? You might suppose it was like the floor of the sea: there is as much down there as there is up here. Henri sat at the table magnanimously one evening with his father and mother, their Majesties, his brother the Sir Octavius of Entchester and his sisters the Princesses of Witchipation. They were all engaged in their own conversations, about lineages and whatnot. It did not interest Henri. The Princesses sat all convoluted like contortionists around themselves, their legs crossed, their ankles crossed, their elbows on the table. Tshh, thought Prince Henri as his eyes slid from one corner of the table to another. Who knows where those elbows have been.  He leant over and whispered to Octavius of Entchester, Who dare they…

PART DEUX: “AT THE DINNER TABLE”

“What?” Octavius said, looking at Henri oddly.
“Who dare they…” said Henri again,
“Yes, I heard you” he replied, looking down at his knife.
“So, is Don Stone Gratten’s step-father?” asked the King, chewing the sinews off a leg of lamb. “Or is Gratten Edie’s son?”  He was asking his Mother the Queen of Montgomeriz with loud, urgent probes.
“But how come?” the King and his wife continued desperately.The elderly Queen looked vacantly at the drapes.Continually there were difficulties with their attempts to untangle the ancestry of the Montgomeriz family tree, and it was proving more and more fruitless.
“I’m not sure I should” said the Kings Mother at the table.
“Oh dear,” the reigning Queen said. “Nothing at our table is bad. It’s all good for you- ”
” – and you will always know about it” added Princessepy of Witchipation the First from the shadows down the table.
“Go ahead” nudged the Queen to her Mother-in-law, motioning to the Butler who was serving them waffles.
“Chocolate IS good for you” muttered Princessepy of Witchipation the Second from the other side of the table.
“Ah!” exclaimed the King suddenly, “so Don was Edie’s – oh….no, he can’t be…”
“Yes that’s right dear!”
“No, Richard…”

The two Queens and the King continued to debate the intrinsic tangles. The elderly Queen mostly smiled, letting her mouth fall agape as the questions fell upon her, and yet generally nodded with each development. Occasionally she interjected: “This is lovely dear” which simply caused further confusion and frustration from the King, as well as further probing from the reigning Queen who was leaning further on her elbows across the table. Meanwhile, further down the table, Octavius, Henri and the Princesses brooded.
“Chocolate has loads of antioxidants” said one of the Princesses.
“What’s an antioxidant?” Octavius said over the din of questioning.
“It takes care of your free radicals” the other one said.
“What’s a free radical? ” asked Octavius.
“It’s the terrorist in your blood.” began Princessepy the First, to which Octavius looked alarmed and down at his plate. The Princess’ moon eyes stared straight at, and into him. Octavius didn’t look up.
“It’s like a suicide bomber going EEEEEEE down the corridors.” said Princessepy the Second, waving her lacy arms around, elbows everywhere. The others smiled, shook their heads. Across the table Henri sat with both hands on either side of his place setting, the long fingers straight forward, wrists slightly elevated, his long dark fringe skewed elegantly upon his forehead. He moved his skull slowly from side to side in disdain. It wasn’t clear whether he was disparaging the sudden display of informality at the Royal dinner table, or the sudden display of elbows. He picked up a glass of water, still reclined in his position and took a sip. Everything was quiet.
“Well, that was lovely dear” said the King’s Mother-in-Law again, smiling sweetly as the Queen lifted a fork to her mouth.
“”Botulism” said Henri with sudden recognition. “Botulinum” he chuckled. Princessepy Two giggled through the hair draping over each side of her plate and her big eyes. They both remembered the moment the King and Queen had a discussion in the courtyard marquee one candelit Christmas about a botulised colon. The ensuing depth of concern the King and Queen had had over the topic had bonded the young Prince and Princessepy of Witchipation, who found their parent’s interest in the growing scientific and medical atmosphere of the country more than amusing. Earlier in the day they had been playing a game of backgammon and attempting to resurrect that particular topic of conversation in a fever of remembrance. Now Henri had chanced upon the magical word, upon which the Princess smiled.

At this stage the King was also reclined with a bowl of stripped lamb shanks discarded before him, which a waiter promptly removed. “A free radical” he began somewhat belatedly, “is a molecule that gives off an electron the stasis of which, Octavius” continued the King, folding his hands. “is the polymer of deuteronomy.”
“Ohh, I see, so is there a carbon – ?”
The conversation continued. The Queen still pondering “But surely Edie wasn’t the heir to the Montgomery throne? No that can’t be right….” while the Elderly Queen smiled at her grandchildren from afar. The Princesses sat twisted up in their own limbs nonchalantly, having finished their plates, watching waiters swan about them. One Princess leaned over the table, and drank from her cup as she picked up a fallen salt shaker, tossing the whole thing over her left shoulder. It smashed on the skirting board. The King flinched. Octavius was still deep in conversation with him – something about calibrating particles of Zeus. The other Princess was muttering some incantation under her breath. Amongst all of this, Henri moved positions. He reclined back in his chair, adjusted his waist strap. As the noises of their chattering went on as he gently cleared his throat, and lifted one long arm and two finger tips to his brow which was ever so slightly beginning to dew in a gentle sweat. He drew the fingertips across his brow pushing the hair out of his eyes, and then laid his hand back on the table lightly.

It was only the Butler who noticed Henri’s forehead budding with perspiration. The elderly Queen was now telling the waiter “That was lovely dear” as he took her plate and another waiter helped her out from the table holding her hand in his white glove. Henri cleared his throat again. The Butler sauntered over to Henri’s side.
“Sir, is everything alright?”
“Yes Alfred. Certainly. Fetch me a – ”

PART THREE: BOMBAY

- “gin and tonic, please. And stop that racket!” said Prince Henri to the small orchestra of violinists who had commenced a spirited recital of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini across the dining room.
“Bombay Sapphire,” added Prince Henri, “and make it swift.”
“But sir, Bombay is – ”
“Across the Gulf, yes Alfred I am quite aware of that” said the Prince to the Butler. “Off you go now, toodeloo!” The violinists began again with gusto. “Not you fools!” They fell silent again. The Butler looked thoroughly aghast at the prospect of making a trip to Bombay in order to acquire Indian liquor for the Prince’s drink. He asked, “Do we not have any other kind of beverage that would suffice to caress your taste buds, Your Highness?”
The table fell silent and utterly still. So still, that even the wrinkles on Her Majesty Queen Grandmother’s face stopped forming in their tracks. Not a curtain moved, not a breath was breathed. Henri’s sweat now formed sufficient momentum such that it was not such a dew anymore, but rivulets of exasperation. Because of this he was required to calmly take his napkin from its draped position across his thin legs, wrap it around his fingers, and run it elegantly across his brow. He remained quite composed.
“No, Alfred.”
It was so quiet that snow could be heard melting as it fell on the manicured lawns through the acre high windows. Accidentally, one of the violinists bows caught the bad end of a violin string and disrupted the pain of quietude with a rude twang.
“That will be quite enough,” said the King at the far end of the table, now bustling together and collecting himself from his position. “Henri, ease the poor man and make do with Brandy now son, eh?”
“This will most certainly be the end of me,” said the Queen.
“That was lovely dear” said the Queen Grandmother.
Henri slapped old Alfred on the back in a manner that sent him suddenly almost nose down into the leftovers of salmon terrine. “Not to worry, old chap! Just a thought, just a thought. Bring me Brandy, and we’ll have a riotous old time” said the Prince laughing to the Butler, and Alfred breathed a sigh of relief.

Down the hall Alfred muttered to himself. “What a quack of lunatics! Mad, carniverous cadavers! They’ll all send us insane, absolutely, absolutely” he repeated, scratching at his cufflinks. Thankfully, the door to the cellar was open when he came to the kitchen, and so Alfred had no trouble finding the bottle. The chefs were killing a piglet as he passed; he shuddered and scratched some more. “Mad, they’re all mad, brrrrr!!”
It wasn’t cold, but Alfred said that a lot. “Brrrrr! Shushh piggy! Huff!” The piglet screeched and was silent. Its blood spilled through the sinks. So, Bombay was not on the itinerary. Alfred went back down the hall. The Princesses swanned past, one of them explaining and expressing, hands all afly with mania spilling off her lips in joyous excitement. The other nodded and leapt and grabbed a sword from one of the Suits of Armor, swinging it and leaping through the air with her own grace of exuberance. Further along the hallway, the waiter in white gloves was ushering the Queen Grandmother past the portraits, and as Alfred approached he heard the old woman’s wooden leg on the floor as the waiter coached her on.
“I was a great scrabble player once” said the Queen Grandmother. “There’s a certain fire to the game…!” she said, pausing for an odd length of time. Alfred was sure the waiter had no clue what she was talking about, but the baffled man nodded gravely to the Queen as the Butler went past.
“All mad, raving, hypnotized, YES! That’s the ticket, hiddle-de-dum, they must be insane” said Alfred working up a nervous twitch.
“ALFREDO!” boomed the King from the dining room. On he hurried, dark and swift and upright with the bottle at waist height. When he got to the room, Henri said, “Father, please, his name is Alfred. Alfredo is the gardener! Pshhh. Tut, tut. Thank you sir.” Alfred laid the bottle before the King, the Queen, Henri and The Duke of Octavius who was still scribbling things in the tablecloth.
“At your service Henri,” said Alfredo. “You are the only one who knows my name, understands the beauty of the slinky, and does not mind when I do not go to Bombay for you”
Henri looked solemnly into Alfred’s eyes, for he had been a brilliant Butler and friend, and furthermore, had never forgotten the fact that Henri preferred his bread buttered whilst no-one else had a care for it.
“It is my pleasure to be served by you Alfred. One day you will go free as a piglet from it’s mothers breast and you will know the acid swill of Gin for yourself!! But for now, rest here my friend, and forget Bombay, it was a bad idea anyway. The trade winds are down and my concubines have not erected the mezzanine tents on the Ganges, as it stands.”
The Butler was a little disconcerted, but took from the tone of the Prince’s words a kind of comfort, gave a slight nod of the head, and patted Henri on the shoulder as he went back to his quarters.
“Now sons, what say ye to a White Russian?”
The Butler ambled down the red carpets, rubbed up with the madness of they who dwelt here, and baffled to the core by the fact that nobody seemed to realise their own eccentricity, nay, they were all in joy because of it. The Butler shook his head.
“It just doesn’t make the slightest rasher of sense,” and off he went into the darkness, past the chefs tearing up flesh and leg and feather, past the sitting room where the waiter was engaged in a steadfast game of scrabble amongst tea and cigar smoke, past the walls with their echoing screams of delight shining down from the Princesses doors full of light. He went to his bed not knowing whether to be confused or comforted that the world could still function without his control and in the midst of chaos. He picked up a slinky, and lay long into the night balancing its strings from one hand to the next until he could not slink any longer.

Alfred lived to be 80 years old and served Prince Henri every day, in every way. Prince Henri never tired of slinkies, except when he once saw a lifesize, human slinky perform at his court and turned away in horror. He never touched slinkies in the same way again. In case you were wondering, the piglet was eaten for breakfast at sunrise, and also, the waiter won scrabble, 95- 72 on a triple word score.

PART QUARTRE: OCTAVIUS  & THE SILVER SPOON

Octavius muttered under his breath as he sat pondering in the drawing room over the Encyclopedia marked C-Ch. “Chocolate, Cholera, Children, Chivas, Chastity, hmmmm?” he wondered as he flipped through the book. The drawing room had been filled with smoke the night before from the cigar of his Grandmother, Her Highness the King’s Mother, who was the very woman who had knighted Octavius in the first place.

It wasn’t exactly a proper Knighthood, more a passing acknowledgment that had stuck; but it served him fine. One morning he had been out in the snow to fetch the eggs and hatchet a block of ice from the ice-cabinet. He was a strapping young chap at the time, wore big-toed boots and shoulders half the width of the doorway before he was even 7 years old. He strode through the snow like it was butter, but stumbled a bit as one does through fresh fallen cover. He had an axe over his shoulder to chip the ice for their larder inside. What they needed ice for when it was the end of winter out there, no one knew – it didn’t really make sense, but to Octavius, well, when one is 7, one doesn’t question anything, anything at all, does one.

“We need ice because your Mother is from the Tropic of Capricorn – Madagascar to be concise – and she must have fires in every room plus every thermostat at Equatorial heat” said the King from the long end of the dining room table, where he sat smoking a cigar with his mother. Octavius’ Great-Grandmother nodded quietly as ash fell from her cigar-end to the red patterned carpet.

Octavius reached the chicken coop in the snow with the red door and swung it open with his muscular baby hands. A chicken flew out unsuspectingly. Normally, they were all inside in separate compartments with double doors just like a regular horse stable. But they hadn’t kept horses for a while. Not since one of the Princesses had crept into the stable at sunrise and opened the latches ever so carefully, whispering to the horses, run free into the day and never come back! “Run free like birds!” she’d said, then added “I should be so lucky” as she stood at the cusp of the hill they trotted down. Bundled in her white and blue velvet dressing gown, her lips were pink like roses in the mist.

The chicken had escaped the old horse stables on this morning just like the old horses. But, Octavius wasn’t about to be blamed for copying his sisters’ escapade. No. No way. These chickens weren’t convicts, weren’t escaped criminals, no, they had to be put back in their Wards! Octavius swung the axe at the chicken as it fluttered clucking around his head while he neared it by the trees. He swung and swiped and hurled that axe at the convicted hospital chicken. Feathers flew all around him in the snow.

“Octavius! What are you doing?” called Princess Caroline from one of the closer turret windows. Her blonde hair was in a crown of plaits on her head. Through the window on the other turret, on the other side of the castle, of which Octavius was now clean in the middle of, shouted his other sister Princess Olive. With the axe and feathers flying around like snow drifting, he heard her ask with a call, ‘OCTAVIUS! ARE YOU OKAY?’
Now, remember Octavius was 7 at this time in his life. He didn’t want his bigger sisters to think there was anything wrong. “I’m fine! Just fine!” he said, standing with one knee bent in the higher snow, the other hand on the top of the axe like a walking stick.
“ARE YOU SURE? YOU LOOK A LITTLE WEIRD?” called Olive slowly again. She had a red cap with a long red cape down the back of her dark hair and wore a puzzled look in the center of that gray stone opening of cold window.
“PERFECTLY FINE, SIS!” he called back loudly. He heard the chicken clucking about in the forest behind him. “Blasted damnation!” he swore he would Damn The Chicken to Hell, if he got hold of it, and he was a serious axe-man 7 year old.
The two heads retreated back into their dens and Octavius was left alone to deal with his dilemma.
“Heeere chicky chicky chicky!” he said. “Heeeeeeere chicky CHICKY CHICKY!”
“GOBELELELBEL” the chicken swarmed into his face from behind a tree, it’s eyes beady and red and evil like Satan scorned. “I’ll be damned!” He swung the axe and chipped a bit accidentally from one of the pines.
“Damn the chicken to hell!” he said to himself, knowing that Alfred the Butler would see that chip and know he’d been messing around in the forest.

Meanwhile, in the dining room, His Highness, the King, had left to supervise the day’s feast, as well as boss people about in the shiny kitchen. But from the position the King had left her, Octavius’ Great-Grandmother had what was a clear view through the lattice of steel-cut windows, across the snow – clean into the forest of dark pines.

“What in the heavens is he doing?” muttered the Queen-Grandmother under her aghast breath. Octavius was in a bad state now, fitting and twisting about in a little mini child murderers anger, falling on the floor under a hail of slow-motion feathers which seemed to annoy him even more. He was chipping wood chips off every corner of tree he launched into. The chicken was attacking him, it appeared, not the other other way around. The chicken had an upper wing for sure.

Back in the forest the chicken leapt onto Octavius like it had nothing to lose. Soon, finally, Octavius grabbed it by the feet, wrenched his axe from the snow and hurled it at the chicken. From the turrets both Princess Caroline and Olive heard the last sounds of what could only be described as the last moments of a lunatic chicken’s death row.

They were in different rooms just down the hall from each other, but on the same side of the castle Caroline and Olive heard the execution. From these corners they looked up in their different occupations with innocent alarm.

By now Octavius was flustered, angry, and hungry, which is unfortunate because when informing a French chef of these emotions, do sound like the same word.
“You killed zat chick-en Octavius. Non?”
“Yes, now help, Pierre, there’s blood going all down my trouser pants.” He held the headless body up as it oozed like a hospital drip.
“Did you get ze eggs and ice, Octavius?”
“No, but I’m hungry,” he said.
“You are angry?”
“Hungry”
“Angry?”
“No, HUNGRY”
“HANGRY?”
“Hungry!!! I’m Hungry”
“Oh, you are very Angry!”
“Well, I’m Angry as well!” shouted little seven year old Octavius as loud as he could.
“You are Angry or Hungry?” said the French chef quizzically.
Octavius lifted his bloody chickenless hand and put it up like he was taking an oath before the wooden door. The other hand he slowly coiled finger by finger at his side into a knuckle sandwich. He stood there not saying anything, took a deep breath, considered Pierre looking at him in innocence, and then walked off back to the chicken coop.
He was careful not to let any more chickens out and gathered the eggs roughly, angrily, hungrily. On the way back he noticed the Butler Alfred was carting the ice back in a canvas bag on a toboggan through the snow.

“Is everything okay Octavius?” he asked in typical concerned fashion.
“Octavius, what’s wrong?” asked Caroline now standing behind the French Chef, who Olive was also ushering aside. “Octavius?”
He came leaping with his little feet in boots through the snow, falling unevenly as he hurled the armful of eggs one by one at the direction of the French chef in the door. The girls ducked. Some eggs had already broken as he ran, and flew prematurely in splatters of yolk through the snow in front of the group.

“OCTAVIUS!? WHAT IS IT?” asked his eldest sister.
As yellow and crackles of egg-shell ran down the stone and entirely missed the trio of unknowing offenders, Octavius fell to his knees in the layers of snowflakes and said through tears, “I’m just, Hungryy….!” and with that the boy collapsed in a pre-breakfast low blood sugar stupor in the snow like an egg-flecked angel in boots and bloodied axe hands.

Her Majestic Great-Grandmother had seen it all as she sat calmly from the dining room. The girls and the chef unwrapped themselves from their arm protections that had shielded their heads, as the old woman wobbled out into the snowy rise. With a sword in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, she knelt in front of the little boy and lay the sword’s handle from one shoulder to the other, effectively knighting him.
“Hummm de hummmmm, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Octavius I Knight thee and thee shall be Knighted, a Sir. Fine and Dandy. Now – come and help me make an omelette.”
One boyish eye opened amid snow. “Fig and brie? or truffles – what shall it be Sir Octavius the First?”
He whispered “The first one…” and that was the end of it. The Princesses threw their hands up in the air and tut-tutted their heads; the Chef was just utterly bewildered.
“I zout he said Angry, and then I zout Hangry, I knew he was Angry, but not Hungry, ah! I try, I try my best! Alors, de rien. C’est la vie. Pooh pooh” he lilted in puzzled French tones with the chicken in his arms like a baby. And with that, he turned down the corner, and Octavius was a Sir.

“Chocolate.” Octavius decided in the drawing room as he slammed shut the encyclopedia marked, C-Ch. “That’s my choice for today. Chocolate. Best decision I’ve made by far. Yep.” Up he got from behind the heavy desk with its studded gold nails, and out he strode, through the smokey sunlit morning room over the carpet, littered with scrabble pieces.

Little did he know, a storm was brewing upstairs between his brother the Prince, and other members of the shall we say, inherited family. But all Octavius heard as he walked down the carpeted hall completely content with his decision-making practices that were so important to a young Knight, (he nodded approvingly at this thought), was the noisy clatter of a silver spoon; made obvious through the type of clang silver made, as well as the room out of whence it came…

Is someone hungry or angry? thought Octavius to himself with a chuckle. Nevertheless he deemed it wise to go upstairs, in his Knightish duty, and check on the family proceedings as a good brother should. “Are you hungry, or are you angr- ” and he stopped dead in his tracks when he opened the door.

PART FIVE: PRINCESS OLIVE’S ASTRONOMY CLUB

Princess Olive was in her room when she heard Octavius slam the door. She went into the corridor and found both Octavius, Prince Henri and Princess Caroline in the corridor. Henri was holding a silver spoon.
“I tell you, it’s an Hermes spoon, and I ate with it first!” said Henri.
“I tell you, it’s from my very own tea-set!!” said Caroline
“I tell you, I have never seen it in my life!” said Octavius pointing earnestly at the spoon to Olive.
“Well why are you telling me, fools! You are disturbing my Astronomy Club! Asses!” she said as she turned on her heel back into her room, slamming the door also.

Octavius looked at Caroline. “What do you mean it’s from your tea-set. Your tea-set is Hermes anyway. Couldn’t it be possible that it is both from your tea-set, and Hermes, Henri?”
Henri was looking at the cornices between the ceiling and the richly painted wall, arms crossed, inspecting it.
“No,” said Henri.
“No what?” said Octavius.
“No. It is not possible”
“Well I’ve had enough anyway!” said Caroline. “I was quite happy drinking tea with Jimmy Levino and Sissy Spacek when he just barged in and snatched the teaspoon!” (Octavius knew that Jimmy Levino and Sissy Spacek were a stuffed unicorn, and a wooden stegosaurus who Caroline liked to entertain as part of her extended family.)
“Henri?” said Octavius, now questioning the prosecution, prodding further. Henri extended his foot from the heel, kept the foot poised there, toes skyward for a few moments, and then simply strode off down the hall still cross-armed, high-nosed. He didn’t say a thing, nor look back. His brother and sister watched, before he turned the corner, and was gone.
“Well anyway, I still have the spoon” said Caroline. “I say we crash Astronomy Club.”

The door opened on a grand circular room with a giant indigo dome of a ceiling. It was unusually dark, and warm.  There were tiny greenish glowing lights on the ceiling and the rest of the room was shaded, filled with the voice of an orator; Olive leading as President of the Astronomy Club, which was, really, the convention of all the less-sane staff of the Castle, who met once a week on Tuesday. They were all under Olive’s domed, glow-in-the-dark-star studded ceiling.
“And if you look to the left towards due South-East, North a fifth of a degree, and above Cassiopeia, you will see the constellation Andersinsomnia.” Olive had a bone coloured baton that was thin like a drum stick. She was pointing balletically. The smattering of cross-legged people gathered in ‘ahhhhs.’
“Now, tomorrow is the 75th rotation of the moon Velasquazer around Saturn that we have observed. Next week we will meet again at the same time and place to discuss the astrological implications this has on baking, gardening and liquor-serving, yes? Sound good?” She was talking to them like it was yoga class. Nevertheless, the group nodded sagely, and gave her some perfunctory applause in respect of the evening. One member of the 5 people gathered, which didn’t include Caroline and Octavius, was a servant they called Idiom because he was constantly saying strange things that became popular expressions in the household. He was also quite, shall we say, disturbed, in the brain. He raised his hand. Olive pointed at him with her baton. He spoke melodiously, like someone you have never heard say “whither” or “thence” before.
“O, Olive, whence shall the snow fall again upon the poplar trees of June?” His hand went slowly down after he said it, but his eyes remained wide with his question.
“Well Idiom, that is a very good question and I’m glad you asked. 76th rotation of Sassaquatch around Venus,” she nodded. Idiom looked relieved and relaxed back into his cross-leg, looked around smiling at the others, as if it were a question about whether he would live or die.
“This is weird,” muttered Octavius in Caroline’s ear.
“This is amazing” she gushed. “I’m joining. I heard you get a free Mars Bar when you sign up…” Her eyes were excited like fire.
“More like free acid,” said the Knight.

Olive smiled at her disciples as she waited for any more questions. None arrived. They just gazed up at her and some at the ceiling, while they lay on giant stuffed animals whose necks were all twisted and floppy underneath members’ elbows. Amongst them was the tray-boy who worked in the Castle bakery. Caroline rather fancied him, but was always stringing him along. She wouldn’t step foot in the bakery because the dust made her sneeze, and she said it flustered her heart to sneeze, and ruined her chances of making a good impression. Sounded like a load of sourdough to her sister. They confided in each other often, forever in youthful torrents. But to Princess Caroline, her decision was a perfectly logical deduction of sorts.
Seated there on the circular carpet printed with a map of the globe – its continents like algae-coloured islands – were an interesting assortment of club members. Olive flicked off an overhead projector that showed a diagram of Geigenshein. It been positioned toward a section of wall that wasn’t filled with dried upside-down roses and jazz hats. She shuffled papers together and put them in a red cigar box, slid it under the bottom bunk of the bunk-beds. Olive always slept up top, floating on her sea of space. On the carpet sat the tray-boy, tying his shoelaces. There was also Etienne, the chef Jacques’ son who plucked all the chickens that came in. He smelt like goose-down and something metallic, musky.
The other three members of Olive’s Astronomy Club included a meek woman who lived in one of the gardeners cabins to the side of the Castle with her husband. Her husband was a logger with hands that if cast in plaster, would produce the perfect replica of an axe handle. His inner palms were callused at the place where the fingers joined, and these lay relaxed, face up, as he reclined on an elbow chatting to the one other member of the Astronomy Club. They were talking fondly about meteorite showers like the rocks were wedding silver, raining on all the brides of the world. The logger was surprisingly tender at Astronomy Club. His spirit came through his body thick like trees.
The last member, who listened to the huge man talk was the ghost of Alfred. Yes, the Butler Alfred’s ghost had returned, and it was not unusual for him to make himself quite known to everyone in the entire castle now. His figure was just like ash suspended in air, and Olive was never disquieted by his presence in her room; in fact, she quite enjoyed his company. He was even more spirited now, they’d found, than when he had been locked in his flesh and bone body. The blood had run away, and his soul was free to roam. Astronomy club was the perfect place for it.

Caroline tucked her blue dress under her milk and honey coloured knees as she knelt to sit gently with the group. Octavius went to congratulate his sister Olive on another successful evening, even if he didn’t really believe it was. How could it be? How could you measure success by the number of facts about moon rotations you gave?
“Marvellous evening once again Sis.” Olive her offered her cheek to him, smiling. He gave it a kiss. It smelled like marzipan and cloves.
“What is this now. Meeting number…?”
“Seven. Lucky seven” smiled Olive.
“Lucky everything. Alfredo’s lucky. He seems happy.”
“Oh yes, isn’t he marvellous! Poor thing, he doesn’t have much else to do these days but listen, and watch.” They pondered him. “I do like to give him something to be entertained by. It’s the least I can do.” Her smile seemed to linger unnaturally long. You wondered what she was so happy about all the time. Must be the acid, thought Octavius.
“Where’s Henri?” Olive asked, her smile dropping a few notches.
“Oh, had a tiff with Caro about an Hermes spoon or something” he said.
“Ah, yes. I had a vision” she replied.
“Oh really?” Octavius shifted his feet. He and Olive were now leaning against the bunks with their dark blue bedspreads and gold painted wood. They watched Caroline talk eagerly to the ghost of Alfredo – they affectionately added the errant ‘o’ to his name now; the Bakery boy, whose name was Iggy; the logger; his little wife; and Etienne, picking feathers off his black velvet dinner jacket.
“Oh yes, didn’t you have one too? I could see it a mile off. Henri has been looking for that spoon all his life, don’t you remember? Caroline has her own tea-set version from the dolls-house Great-Grandma gave us. Her spoon is smaller than the one Henri wants.” Octavius stared blankly at her for a few seconds.
“Why in blazing hell does Henri want a damned flea-bitten tea-spoon for?!?” Octavius said summoning as many whisper-designed expletives he could manage in one sentence. Olive smiled, her smooth red lips curling up at one corner, looking at her brother side-long with an elbow on a rung of the ladder.
“Why, didn’t you know? It protects him from Evil. It’s the first spoon Mother fed him with before he was handed over to the wet-nurse and never ever fed by her, ever again.”
“Are you on acid?” he looked at her squarely now. “Are you taking any stimulants?”
“No, in fact, I am not. Take my blood if you like. Etienne will do it. Just ask that lady.” Olive nodded to the loggers wife who was listening wide eyed to her husband, now telling a story with huge animations.
“She knows.” The logger impersonated a gazelle running, and then a rifle, and then did more galloping gazelles with his giant arms, faster now.
“Talismans.” said Olive. “We watched it on cable.”
“Where? Father banned cable.” said Octavius, “Hold on. Why wasn’t I invited!!!!”
“Cable at their house.”
“The garden shed?”
“Ya.”
“Well I’ll be nuggeted and rolled into ham!” said Octavius. He punched the wide planks of the bunk-bed rails. It splintered in a bow, but didn’t break entirely. Olive gave a little shout and brandished him with her eyes. The others looked over and the loggers arms slowly dropped from the sky as he lowered back from kneeling to his heels. Caroline looked over still smiling from the story, and Alfredo adjusted his ashy bow-tie.
“You guys have been watching cable without me!!?” pressed Octavius. They kept looking at him, then looked at each other.
“It’s – ”
“you know –”
“hardly –”
“only, like, twice” they all interjected.
“I’m just a ghost,” said Alfredo, “Don’t blame me. What else am I supposed to be doing?”
“Um, maybe scaring some people? Playing poltergeist!?” said Octavius. Alfredo looked crestfallen.
“But, I’m not that kind of ghost,” he said quietly into the carpet.
“It’s okay” said Caroline trying to put her arm around him but it fell straight through. She blushed pink and pretended to pick glitter out of the carpet instead. Alfredo looked at her fondly.
“Octavius, look, we had no choice.” said the logger woman. “Henri came to us at a loose end. He knew Mythmakers was on cable. When he came to us he said he’d tried the drawing room but it was locked. He wanted to ask you a question. Thought maybe you could help with your Encyclopedias.”
Octavius’ mouth was falling open. Henri had needed his help? What for?
“What do you mean. What question?”
“Well, why don’t you get him to explain it to you. Then you’ll understand why we’ve been helping him.”
“And watching cable” added Alfredo.
“Shut up Alfredo,” said Etienne. Alfredo’s lit-up gaze fell again to the carpet, resting somewhere near the Icelandic peninsular.
“There isn’t actually a peninsular on Icela– ” began Alfredo, but he was silenced again by 8 pairs of eyes.

The loggers wife, who introduced herself as Jane, spoke directly to Octavius. She told him how they’d managed to receive cable off the signal from the neighbours property, a Swedish family who owned another place heralded as the smallest castle ever. She pleaded with Octavius not to tell his father the King, who would definitely snip the wires with his steak knife if he found out.
“And why should I help you?” said Octavius. Olive slipped out the yellow crack in the door and went to go find Henri. It was quiet.
“Because you want to watch cable?” suggested Caroline.
Octavius pondered his elbow on the ladder for a moment, the bent gold wood railing, the group of people on the rug, the silvery figure of Alfredo, and his sister in her blue dress and blonde hair glowing in the lamplight under the artificial stars. Henri must need a lot of protection if he had all these people, and a ghost, by his side.
“For Henri” said Octavius. “I’ll do it for Henri.”
The logger huzzahed, and the boys clapped each other on the back. They stood up to throw their arms around Octavius. Princess Caroline and the loggers wife grinned and chatted in high spirits again, Alfredo did a kind of waltz around the room by himself. The boys began pointing out constellations to Octavius on the ceiling as they wandered around the room, arms still draped and guiding.

Downstairs Olive strode down the long soft corridors past the Ice-Cream Room, outfitted like Coney Island in pastel stripes. An old man in a peaked cap dozed on a stool in the pink and blue corner. Bowling pins tumbled to the floor from another room. The rumble of old cannon balls shot from miniature re-fashioned cannons sent thin wafts of gunpowder out the doorway. Olive moved it by fanning her hand through the smoke as she walked on. Tramp-Room (hand painted by the Princes when they were kids) was on the right. The trampolines were discarded and still, set in the floor surrounded by padded walls, thick as marshmallows. No sign of Henri. Olive descended down another staircase by the window. She could hear the chefs going out on their four-wheeler motorbikes into the forest to shoot geese with rifles. The window showed no sign of Henri whatsoever. The snow lay perfect as a sheet of unwritten paper.

~

Henri sat before a fireplace in the great empty sitting-room, cross legged eating cheese with dates, and white toast with lashings of truffle butter. He chewed determinedly as the flames reflected on his face, lighting his eyes up like the Devil was there. Crackles and blows, spits and slicks shot up from the fire into the dark mouth of chimney, four-feet wide. Henri was square in the center of it.
“You’ll never make it,” said the King from the darkness.
Henri said nothing. Meditated on the red and black of the places the fire had touched, where it hadn’t.
“Who do you think you are, Hamlet’s Shakespeare?” came the voice.
“It’s Shakespeare’s Hamlet” said Henri gritting his teeth. He took another bite.
“Doesn’t mean peacocks to me boy!” said the King, and he started walking slowly towards the firelight.  “You need glory!” A step. “You need duty!” Another step. “You need courage!” He paused at a portrait of his father on the far-wall. The King’s meaty hands were clasped behind him as he surveyed his descendant over a curled mustache.
“Build your own Castle” said Henri bitterly.

PART SIX: PRINCESS CAROLINE’S FENCING RING & VELVETEEN THINGS

It was a crisp Spring day when Caroline rose to take her weekly fencing lessons with her father. The Princess was rested and fresh as the flower buds on the tree branches as she sprang down the stairs past the Ice-cream parlour with its closed pastel doors, the bowling alley, and Tramp-room.

“La di dah dah” she sang as she skipped along with her skirt in her hands. She wore sky-blue velvet with green trimmings which illuminated the pale emerald of her eyes. These eyes had seen eruptions of temper amongst her family; the bitter torment of the slaves and servants who worked within their walls, but Caroline was forever the calm centrifuge of the family, a peace maker and philanthropist at heart, though paradoxically, a steady hand with a fencing sword.
Princess Caroline had taken up the sport when her Father suggested she arm herself against any invaders of the Castle and gentry-men who would ask for her hand willy-nilly without his consent.
“You must be prepared,” he had said between elegant strokes of the sword, “to fend off any unwanted suitors.” He’d swung the sword balletically.
“But Father, is it not I who get to choose who to slay and who will stay? Am I not the decider of my destiny?” It had been their first lesson when the King attempted a smart sleight of hand to outwit his more intelligent daughter. She contested it. He looked her square in the eyes as she held her place before the sword.
“Very well,” he said like a fox, backing down. “As you wish.”
Caroline knew very well that the King was desperate to train his children in the ways of his lineage and plaster them with Royalty in spades. After that first lesson, he had insisted it be known that they must be prepared to inherit his Estate, and planted all kinds of temptations for his children to proceed down the path he desired. It was Caroline in particular, alongside the master of the house and he with the most pressure to succeed the King – Prince Henri –  who fought this duel of conscience most masterfully.

Thus it was on this particular day, brimming with memories of their last exchange, that Caroline entered the fencing room. The King was seated close to the high latticed windows which let in a bright stream of clear sunlight, illuminating the blonde-wood floors. He was lacing his shoes, the fencing mask beside his feet.
“Good morning Father!” sung Caroline cheerfully.
“Oh Caroline, my dearest!” he said. “How do you do today, let me take a look at you,” and he got up mechanically from his seat, rusty at the hinges.
“Ach, dear, now,” and he set his hands on her shoulders, visibly puffed already.
Caroline smiled while he caught his breath, then said, “Father, are you sure you should be doing this? How is your heart?”
“Ack – perrywinkles Caroline, I am as spritely as anything! Fred Astaire’s got nothing on me.” He turned to pick up his mask, bent down to reach it. “Just had a late night last night. Young Master Henri has been giving me trouble, tis all.”
Caroline looked around for her sword and uniform, frowning as she looked – a frown which hid her worry that the King was being far too hard on Henri. She knew Henri’s motives. She knew her father did not.
“Father, where’s my uniform?”
“Oh, over there on the trestle table – mother ironed it last night. Heavens, I don’t know why.”
“It’s mainly chain mail, yes! Why does it need ironing!?”
“I’m telling you, not you nor I nor the Gods above know why. Perhaps a squirrel would have more of a clue, but we won’t ever find that out either.”

Caroline went towards the small locker room that served the entire sporting area of the Castle. Another door on the other side of the locker room led to basketball and badminton courts, a dart-room and diving pool. A short path through another door led via the back paddock to the stables where horses were kept for polo-cross. These were the horses Caroline had let run free when she was younger. She remembered it fondly, could still feel the star dripping dawn on her skin.

In the locker room the Princess bolted the doors, slipped out of her velvet dress into the white chain-mail fencing jumpsuit. It had a hood, white gloves and white boots that accompanied it. A mirror told Caroline that all was in place, and that she looked ever so dashing.
“Like an angel- ninja” said the Mirror.
“Thank you,” said Caroline curtly with a smile. The Mirror had no face, no lips to speak of, just the luminous nether-regions of space and matter that carried all reflection back to its source. The Princess unlocked the door and went gliding out of it as if carried by the air itself. The Mirror was silent once more, except to add “Shut the door!” to which Caroline skipped back and with flushed cheeks, apologised, and acquiesced.
After a quick warm up and sparring session, the choreographed fencing of the King and his daughter began. The grass was greener on this side of the castle, and sparrows chirped outside amongst tiny pink flowers on the lawn. Honeysuckle grew up the edges of the windowed-wall, which spanned 40 feet wide and 20 feet tall.
“Father” Caroline began, slightly agitated from the battle.
“Yes dear,” the King’s face was bustled with tension.
“Why are you so hard on our brother?” More sparring.
“Well, that’s easy – because neither he nor I have anything better to do”
“That’s not true. Henri is up to great things! And you have plenty to do! Ah!” She defended a deft move.
“What? Besides fencing you, eating duck, holding court, I don’t do much – I’m getting old, and besides Henri needs to get off his little buttocks and learn to be King!”
“Well why don’t you teach him to fence, or wrestle? Shouldn’t I be embroidering with the Queen? Ironing chainmail with Grandmother?”
After a few quick moves, the King motioned with his free-hand to lower the sword and to come sit beside the window. He pushed a button in the wall that was a radio-device and asked for water with ice to be sent immediately to the fencing room.
“Let me explain something,” he said huffing, breathing heavily over his knees to catch his breath. Soon he straightened back to standing, where Caroline had pulled off the white hood and mask and begun combing her hands through long tangled hair. She listened patiently.
“I have offered many things to my children. I have offered it all. You have everything.” he waved a hand nonchalantly. “When I offer things, most of the time different people agree to different things. You chose fencing, and if you do not recall, I suggest you ask Idiom –” Caroline kept listening, interested. “– about the time he gave you bread with the crusts still on. You were 6 and told me you needed to defend yourself against such rigorous tests of character. Ahah! What a chap he was to think he could sidestep the demands of a child.”

An alarmingly tall man also dressed all in white entered the room at this moment with a tray of blue bottles filled with water which beaded with cold sweat.
“Thank you Jeeves,” said the King, and he nodded gravely after he’d set it down, before loping off again in rather delicate strides for a tall person.
“Who was that?” whispered Caroline as he left.
“Oh yes, he’s new. Jeeves is the new Butler, seeing as Alfred decided to depart our floors and ascend to heaven. Or would it be Hell, I was never quite sure his true colors.”
Caroline bristled at this comment, and started to see that her Father never really did care for his employees, and why did they need employees anyway? Besides, Alfredo was free now, he would never have to work for their father again. She would take care of him, for sure.
“Father – Alf–” she hesitated, wondering whether she should tell of Alfredo’s existence and how he really was a great … entity. But she thought better of it.
“Henri! Now he is one who won’t go to Heaven if he doesn’t start pulling his weight for this Castle. I’m telling you – between you and I – that boy is trouble.” He picked up a piece of white toast that Jeeves had also arranged on the tray. “All this talk about Theatres and outer-space. The only space that matters is in here! The Castle! These days of Ennui are all he needs!”
Caroline was incensed. Keeping his children under his thumb like this. Servants and butlers and bakers and chefs. Who did he think he was! Well, the King, certainly. But who do we think we are!
“Father, I think I have to go now. I think I hear… Mother calling me – you know, telepathy.” He looked befuddled. “I know it’s completely silent in here, but I can hear it. Great practice! Thanks Dad!” And off she ran, just like that.
Down the hall Caroline sprinted towards the only place she knew Henri might be, along with all the others too. She realized she still held a dark blue water glass in her hand, which she threw to the ground immediately. It smashed at the feet of a Knight’s Suit of Armor. She jogged along effortlessly, a white apparition dodging different characters idling along the halls. There was a court jester in red and green stripes with an ice bag pressed to his tongue (he sometimes performed fire-swallowing tricks); a Fred Astaire-type in tuxedo tails; an ice sculpture on wheels, men that looked like ushers from the in-house movie-theater. Caroline was almost cajoled into a smokey screening of a Lauren Bacall movie and a piano recital of “Hong Kong Blues” which the visiting Prince of Nigeria wanted her to join him in.
But she wriggled free with smiles from all of them. She had to get to Henri to tell him what was up and what was down. The route was becoming ever so clear.

When Caroline had dashed up the entire spiral staircase she realized she’d left the key to her room in her ice-blue robes, back in the fencing room.
“Drats!” she said. She stood there biting her thumb. Her foot tapped psychotically on the red carpet beneath her.
“ALFREDO!” she whispered loudly into the locked door. “Are you in there?”
On the other side of the door, Alfredo was indeed seated at the low afternoon-tea table, even though it was morning. Beside him was Sissy Spacek the stuffed unicorn, and a few figurines from the metre tall dollhouse that was positioned flat at the back of the room beside the royal blue day beds strewn with mustard and olive coloured pillows. Jimmy Levino, the stegosaurus, was residing over the windowsill.
“Yes, I wonder that too,” Alfredo was saying to a figurine of a Scottish Dalmation under his breath, “It’s staggering isn’t it. Each pillow represents a different type of food – Jillyweed!” The door was being continuously tapped. “What is it!? Excuse me, ladies and gentleman…”
“Alfredo! Come out here please, and don’t bring the Dalmation because it won’t go through the wall – Remember?” Alfredo dropped the figurine, remembering how things were always sieved from his hands when he went through solid walls. He appeared in the hallway.
“Thank you Alfredo, very well done!” Caroline beamed. The butler looked pleased and wrung his hands behind his back.
“What did I miss? We were having a lovely tea party. Say, is there a reason each pillow – ”
“Alfredo, I don’t have time to explain. Can you do something for me? I need the key to my room.”
“Where is it? Can I get you something from your room dear?” Caroline looked at him, a look that seared him to a crisp. “Oh that’s right.” (a nervous laugh) “Apologies I’ll begin again. Where is your key.”
“It’s in my locker in the Anteroom of the Sports club. If I don’t tell Henry that the King is trying to manipulate him against his wildest dreams, then we’ll all be eating toast for breakfast!”
“But we do eat toast for breakfast….”
“That’s not the point!” Caroline shook her head and Alfredo shifted,
“I’m sorry –” He noticed she was exasperated.
“If I can’t get in my room before tonight, the lockers will close automatically, and this weeks Astronomy Club will be over – they start early on the 10th day of every second month, see – and I won’t have time to tell them all about what I learnt and I just did about five hours of fencing and I’m SO tired and I ran eleven flights of stairs and PLEASE Alfredo, you can do it so easily, just tell the Mirror what you’re doing so it won’t snap your fingers off – oh wait you don’t have fingers, I keep forgetting! Ha!”
Alfredo stood stationary with eyes narrowed. Miraculously, Caroline did not appear to take a breath.
“Nevertheless, even if I can’t get into my room, we’ll all have our guts for garters and Sissy and Jimmy and the Scottish Dalmation and all the hor d’oevre inspired pillows will be lost forever.”
“So THAT’S what it is!” Alfredo spoke but was cascaded upon by her continuous tirade. “Hor D’oevre inspired. I knew there was logic behind it – ”
” – I need my lists and my book on Herbology, and I need to get that box from the top right corner because it has a live Salamander in it, oh and the Chameleon from 6th Grade, I need her too, did you know her name is Pythagoras? She’ll die if I can’t get in! We’re all going to help Henri, Alfredo! Our wellbeing depends on it! Our BEING WELL!”
Alfredo stood like a stone before her, and with a raised finger that silenced, said “Caroline, you might like to cessate your words here. Draw air through your nostrils here, to fill your lungs here.”
Caroline’s brow was furrowed with a neat crease, her mouth a determined pout.
“It’s called breathing, yes, like so!” He held his hands on each side of his stomach and lower back, indicating the phenomenon of breathing to his disciple.
“Happy!” said Caroline. “I’m breathing,” and she twirled her hands with raised eyebrows to demonstrate to her remonstrator. He said “Good, Carry on.” She was silent.
“The door, Alfredo. Or I’ll smash it in like every other goddamn breakable thing in this Castle” said the Princess with teeth of steel.
Alfredo rushed down the lower level halls for Caroline, towards the Anteroom. He could see her in his minds eye tapping the floor waiting for him, pacing to and fro holding a vase made by Henri when he was six, that usually sat on the table by the corridor wall. Oh Heavens! It was a special vase too, that was perhaps special only for its crudeness. It was a duck – or something like it – but without a bill.
“Short-billed ducks” Henri had said many years ago after a heated dinner discussion, pointing to an entry in the encyclopedia before snapping it shut. “Do not discriminate,” he had added sitting down.
If Caroline smashed that vase on the floor, thought Alfredo, all hell would break loose! The King would evacuate the Castle. Maybe that’s what Caroline wanted. No – he had to save the vase from Caroline’s usually innocuous hands. Henri’s parents idolized all of Henri’s early work, just as Henri idolized the darned silver spoon they all fawned over at Christmastimes. The early years were indeed obsessed about. Golly, thought Alfredo. What’s the party – I much prefer being dead anyway. My early years were boring as toast untruffled! I’d take the twilight of the soul over attachment to form any day, thought the ghost as he glid down the lowest hallway towards the fencing room.

One thing was interesting about Caroline, Alfredo realized as his apparition moved through the doors and walls seamlessly. She had an enlightening disregard of form – take the case of the duck, porcelain soupcons, anything smashable she could get her hands on when angry or bored – would simply be discarded to splinter at the skirting boards. No one really bat an eyelid, the maids would sweep the shards up sooner or later. They were so bored it was usually the most exciting part of the day – Was it expensive, this one? Was the Queen particularly incensed? It was the gossip that fueled the chefs while they peeled their potatoes.
But on the other hand, what did Caroline really need from her bedroom? She had an amazing collection of things, the Chameleon was particularly awesome, rationed the ghost – but on the other side of Caroline’s freedom from Form, just like all her siblings really – was their attachment to Matter. They’d been surrounded by so much matter, and everything mattered, and sometimes nothing mattered. To them, even no matter was still a matter.
The fencing room was darker by now. The midday sun was above the house, and the large window wall was met with drifting dandelion spores on the exterior and dust motes floating on the interior. Alfredo had only to move through one door so far, and was lucky all the others had been unlocked, or were simply archways he could move normally through. He entered the changeroom, seeing its door still ajar… The air was metallic, even though he couldn’t smell it – when you’re a ghost sensations become smells – you can feel the scent of ginger marmalade toast, Sunday morning. You can feel the smell of pine needles and oily snow leaked upon by tractors.
Alfredo crept in, and glanced at the rows of lockers. He went inside the last one, and slowly combed the recesses from within, feeling with his whole being for Caroline’s velvet. Oh god – this locker must be Octavius’, thought Alfredo. “Oh god – ” he repeated, as he moved through the pungency of a mouldy croissant. The next lockers were empty, a few twists of dust and hair. A small square of chocolate in the corner. Henri’s. Soon he arrived at the dense dump of velvet and sat through the material so as he could feel the key. Yes, there it was. There was a little more light in this locker seeing as the locker door had been left unlocked by Caroline who thought she’d be back after practice. Alfredo moved easily out with the bundle of ice-blue velvet in his ghostly, cufflink cradled hands.
“And who, do you think you are, fool” said the snithy Mirror. It creaked under it’s lean towards the vision of the Ghost, foggy in the Mirror’s reflection. Obviously the ghost was hard for the mirror to make out. But to the Mirror this was no Princess, that’s for sure. Alfredo wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t the sleekest siren in the sea, either. Alfredo didn’t make a sound, but drifted backwards from where he was, hoping the Mirror would think he was a trick of the eye. Merely smoke, perhaps. He listened to the Mirror’s ramblings.
“Foolish smoke, think you can trick me with your optical illusions. I’m no half-cast iron-plate mirror, I see all!! …..” he paused, still suspicious, now whispering evilly.
“I will find you, I will see you – poltergeist thief! I will tell the King.” Now in sing-song: “I WILL TELL THE KING! I WILL TELL THE KING!” Alfredo became alarmed and slipped out the door now at foot’s reach beside him. The door creaked a little as the bundle of clothes squeezed through, the key knocking on the wood ever so quietly, but perceptibly, instant. The mirror could still be heard louder upon leaving each room. Alfredo glid as fast as a ghost could glide with his chin high and the forbidden bundle held outstretched in his hands like a newborn calf, dripping with blood.
“I’LL SEE YOU IN THE HALLWAYS! I KNOW YOU. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!”

“Alfredo! What in the heavens!?” The King bumbled out of the way with hands like a hostage as the furrowed figure of Alfredo burrowed down the halls. From a distance it was like seeing a blue velvet nappy, at shoulder height, streak past, trailing with smoke and gripped by ghostly hands, a head buried in the icy feathers of fabric. Many eyebrows raised as the thing vapidly passed. Many passages were interrupted – frowns multiplied all through the rooms. Meanwhile upstairs, Caroline lay on the floor outside her room playing with the short-billed duck just as Henri strolled past. Immediately he lit up and launched into rapturous short-billed memories,  while Caroline waited for her moment to kill the illusion that told them everything was exactly as it seemed…

TO BE CONTINUED.