Buckle and Squash and the Monstrous Moat-Dragon Read online

  ‘WHAT.ARE. THESE?!’ Mordmont gasped, pointing at the bills with a quaking finger.

  ‘They’re bills, sire,’ said Bonnet, stooping to pick them up. As he did so, Mordmont snatched them out of his hands and started to open them.

  ‘One hundred pieces of silver for a stuffed owl? Four hundred pieces of silver for a pair of solid gold shoes? Six hundred pieces of silver for a pair of gold shoes for a stuffed owl? Bonnet! WHO has been spending all this money on this USELESS RUBBISH?’

  ‘Um . . .’ said Bonnet. He coughed. He never liked giving bad news. ‘I suppose that would be you, sire.’

  ‘That is absurd!’ Mordmont said, glancing down at his feet and noticing for the first time that his shoes were remarkably heavy. And looked, well, definitely . . . quite . . . goldy.

  He frowned. ‘No doubt these were all necessities. And they shall be paid for. Fetch me the chest of silver from the East Wing.’

  ‘I, er, I can’t,’ said Bonnet in a small voice.

  ‘Can’t?’ said Mordmont. ‘Can’t?’

  ‘Well, er, the thing is, sire, you lost it, sire. In a bet. Playing poker, sire.’

  ‘The entire chest of silver?’ Mordmont asked.

  ‘No, sire. The East Wing, sire,’ said Bonnet. ‘Your friend Lord Tartiflette had it removed this morning.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mordmont. ‘I see.’

  Mordmont paced around the room. He did dimly remember playing poker with his friend Lord Tartiflette.

  ‘So, there’s no money left at all?’ said Mordmont sadly, slumping to the floor.

  ‘Not exactly, sire,’ said Bonnet. ‘Cake, sire?’

  Bonnet held out a beautiful porcelain plate, with a large slice of lemon cake on it. Mordmont nodded, and mournfully stuffed it into his mouth.

  ‘I’m a broken man,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘I’m as broken as this plate.’ He threw the plate across the room and it smashed against the wall. ‘I don’t suppose I won anything at the poker game, did I?’

  ‘Er, only that priceless Chinese plate, sire,’ said Bonnet.

  Mordmont sighed again. He had spent all his money. He had gambled away half his castle. He wasn’t even eating his favourite kind of cake. Life had gone badly wrong, and it was time for some clear thinking.

  ‘I’m a man of simple pleasures,’ he said. ‘All I ever wanted was a castle, my own pride of lions, a jewelled crown, a choir of elves singing me awake each morning, sainthood, the power to make gold, the best moustache in Europe, a Jacuzzi, an elephant from the Indies, another one to be its friend, a singing giraffe, the power of invisibility, Magical Cheese Powers, a tiger with the feet of a lamb, the head of a lamb and the body of a lamb – basically, a lamb – power over the sea, power over the letter C . . .’

  DEAR READER,

  THIS IS JUST A NOTE TO SAY, I CUT THE NEXT 4,235 OF MORDMONT’S SIMPLE PLEASURES, BECAUSE REALLY THEY WEREN’T THAT NECESSARY. OR SIMPLE. AND BECAUSE I LIKE TO SAVE PAPER WHERE I CAN.

  LOVE,

  SIDNEY THE TREE

  ‘. . . and a meringue that speaks Japanese,’ Mordmont said finally. ‘Is that really too much to ask?’

  ‘Yes! No! Gorilla trousers! What?’ Bonnet spluttered as he awoke from a small nap.

  ‘It is clear that I must do a terrible thing,’ Mordmont went on. A look of pain crossed his face, turned left at his ear, left again, and then crossed back over his face. ‘I’m going to have to take you to the market and sell you as a slave.’

  ‘Yuwhh?’ said Bonnet.

  ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking,’ Mordmont sighed. ‘How will I cope? Who will make my breakfast cake? Who will sing “The Loveliest Sheep” to me when I can’t sleep? But don’t think of me. I’ll just have to get by without you.’

  And Mordmont strode off to brood on the difficulties of his life. Mordmont was fond of brooding. He knew how handsome it made him look.

  Unfortunately, as he brooded his way through the hallway, he tripped over a scroll, crashed into a lamp, fell over his own feet . . . and landed sprawled on the floor like a spider, with his nose pressed into that morning’s copy of The Squerb Times. Inside it was the solution to all his problems.2

  ‘YEAOOOOOW!’ Mordmont shrieked as he read the front page. ‘Bonnet – that’s IT! Look!’

  He jumped up, bolted back into the kitchen, and thrust the paper into Bonnet’s face. ‘Look! Read! Look!’

  So Bonnet read out the headlines:

  ‘The Black Death: Not As Much Fun As We Thought . . . Women: They’re Just Wrong, Says Pope . . . Latest Tonsure Styles for Spring . . .’

  ‘No – not that. This!’ said Mordmont. He snatched the paper back, and read:

  ‘That’s it!’ Mordmont said as he danced a little jig. ‘Don’t you see, Bonnet, don’t you see? One princess equals one thousand silver pieces! I don’t need to sell you! Besides – how much would you have really fetched anyway? I mean, look at you. The Smallest Giant in the Kingdom. What are you worth, really? A bag of flour? Half a cabbage and a small glass of milk?’

  ‘Thank you for not selling me,’ said Bonnet quietly.

  ‘Oh, Bonnet, I wasn’t really going to sell you. You’re basically worthless! All we need to do now is find a princess and kidnap her. Snap her up. Then bingo – Bob’s your uncle!’

  ‘But Bob’s not my uncle,’ Bonnet whispered as Mordmont danced around him.

  ‘The ransom will be ours! That is – mine! And then all my troubles will vanish – just like that ridiculous owl!’

  And walking over to the windowsill, he picked up a large stuffed owl (which was wearing a pair of gold shoes) and kicked it out of the window.

  SPLASH!

  ‘Present for you, Violet!’ Mordmont shouted out of the window, although Violet did not reply.

  ‘But . . . how are you going to kidnap a princess?’ asked Bonnet.

  ‘Ha!’ Mordmont laughed. ‘I’m not – that would be incredibly hard work, and really far too dangerous. No – you are!’

  ‘I am?’ said Bonnet.

  ‘Yes. Not alone, of course. Alone, you couldn’t kidnap your own eyebrows. No. You’ll just have to find the princess. But you’ll need someone’s help to catch her. Someone big and strong . . .’

  Please don’t say Clive, please don’t say Clive, please don’t say Clive, thought Bonnet.

  Of all the things in life Bonnet was scared of (and there were 87,564 at his last count), the thing at the top of the list was . . .

  ‘Clive,’ said Mordmont.

  The next morning was bright and lovely. The birds sang. Dawn rose. Then she went back to bed. Luckily Dawn isn’t part of this story. She didn’t really get up to that much.

  Eliza, however, was up early. She fed the chickens, cut the grass and washed all her clothes . . . while Lavender lay in bed snoring.

  Eliza didn’t mind that her sister was fond of staying in bed for hours ‘practising being Sleeping Beauty’. She didn’t mind doing all the work on the farm by herself. And if it just so happened that she chopped a few more logs than necessary . . .

  . . . that was just a coincidence, and nothing to do with her sister spending the entire morning in bed. But at lunchtime, when Lavender still hadn’t appeared, Eliza decided she’d had enough.

  ‘Lavender. Lavender. Lavender. LAVENDER!’ she shouted, standing over her sister’s bed. ‘Are you planning to stay there for a hundred years? Lavender! Lavender?’

  And she pulled back the covers, to see the gentle, sleepy face of . . .

  ‘Gertrude???! Get out of there! Wait! Then . . . where’s Lavender?’

  While Gertrude skittered outside, Eliza stomped off to find her sister. She knew all Lavender’s favourite spots.

  But Lavender wasn’t down by the pond, collecting frogs, just in case one of them turned out to be the Frog Prince.

  And she wasn’t gazing into her mirror, covering her face in flour, so she’d be just as pale as Snow White.

  And she wasn’t in the kitchen, dressed up as Cinderella, pretending to sweep the floor while singing a song.

  Lavender had vanished. It was a mystery, even more mysterious than the mystery of Eliza’s missing socks.

  So Eliza went to ask Grandma Maud if she knew where Lavender had gone.

  ‘Ooh, I expect she’s been taken by the Black Death, dear,’ said Grandma Maud as she sat in her rocking chair, examining a pebble.

  ‘Er, I don’t think she has,’ said Eliza with a frown.

  ‘That’s the thing with the Black Death, dear,’ said Grandma Maud. ‘You never expect it. First you see the spots. And then the lumps. And then your skin withers. And then you faint. And then your fingers fall off. And then your legs fall off! And before you know it – POOF! You’re gone!’

  ‘I really don’t think she’s been taken by the Black Death,’ said Eliza. ‘She wasn’t even ill.’

  ‘Could be the Fatal Hiccups then,’ said Grandma Maud. ‘When they come, they come lightning quick.’

  Eliza sighed. She clearly wasn’t going to get any more sense out of Grandma Maud, so she went and sat down on her bed and frowned.

  Everything’s fine, she thought to herself. Lavender will turn up. It’s not as if she’s taken the map and run away or anything . . .

  ‘ARGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!’ yelled Eliza, who had sat on one of her sister’s hairpins.

  ‘ARGGHHHHHH!’ she yelled again, when she looked up and noticed that the Map of These ’Ere Parts had vanished.

  ‘Lavender, where HAVE YOU GONE?!’

  Meanwhile, Bonnet was on his way to kidnap a princess, with Clive.

  Clive, who had the shoulders of a bear and the neck of an ox (he kept them in his bag and liked showing them to people sometimes).

  Clive, whose favourite hobbies were:

  1) Poking
Bonnet.

  2) Poking Bonnet.

  3) Poking Bonnet.

  4) Illuminating manuscripts Poking Bonnet.

  With his craggy face, his deep gravelly voice, his spade-shaped head and his head-shaped spade, Clive looked like a violent criminal – which he was. Bonnet, on the other hand, was dressed in a bonnet, and a long green dress, and looked like a high-born lady – which he wasn’t.

  Together they set out on the path to kidnap the princess. Or rather, Bonnet set out, and Clive lay back in the cart, chewing bits of straw and going over the plan.

  ‘So,’ said Clive. ‘How do you identify a princess?’

  ‘One,’ Bonnet wheezed, ‘she will walk in a dainty way. Two, she will either be picking flowers or dancing. Three, she will be wearing a pointy princess hat. Four, she will almost certainly be singing.’

  ‘And when we locate her?’

  ‘I will engage her in ladylike conversation,’ gasped Bonnet, a little bit out of breath from dragging the cart, and Clive, along. ‘I will impersonate a princess.’

  ‘And on what topics will you converse with the said princess?’

  ‘Princessy topics,’ wheezed Bonnet.

  ‘And what would they be?’

  ‘Measles and France,’ said Bonnet.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Clive. He knew a lot about ladies, having had a lot of girlfriends,3 and he was pretty sure that that’s what they liked talking about.

  ‘Now. Just tell me again, one more time. Just to be sure?’

  So, between wheezes, Bonnet told him all over again.

  ‘Sorry, Bonnet, I was just listening to a chaffinch,’ said Clive. ‘Just tell me again?’

  And so Bonnet told him the plan again. He knew that Clive knew what the plan was. He knew Clive just enjoyed seeing him drag the cart, and not trip over his dress, and talk, all at the same time. But he did it anyway, gritting his teeth.

  And, in the back of the cart, Clive gritted his teeth too.

  (How else do you think he got that deep, gravelly voice?)

  All day they roamed across the countryside. They searched high and low, and at medium height, and they only stopped once, for a quick nap at lunchtime. And nothing much happened while they were asleep.

  But they didn’t find a single princess. Finally, as the sun was setting, Clive looked around and noticed that the cart was no longer on a road.

  ‘Bonnet,’ he said. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Er . . . Quite near The Middle of Nowhere, I think,’ said Bonnet.

  ‘The Middle of NOWHERE!’

  ‘Er, I think so. Not far off.’

  ‘Well this is perfect,’ Clive roared. ‘You know what? You really are a giant. A GIANT EEJIT! If we have to go back to Mordmont without a princess, he is going to kill me. And after he’s killed me, I am going to kill you!’

  Bonnet nodded. ‘Let’s stick to that order,’ he said.

  ‘If I see a princess out here, in the middle of nowhere, I’ll eat my hat, and then I’ll eat your hat. And then I’ll eat Mordmont’s hat. That’s right, that enormous big furry one, and who knows what that’ll do to my digestion—’

  ‘Shhh!’ said Bonnet suddenly.

  And they both heard it.

  The sound of singing. Really terrible singing.

  In the next field, a small girl was dancing, picking flowers, wearing a pointy princess hat, and singing:

  ‘Oooh, Prince Rudolph, with your lovely chin (or chins)

  They’re so very handsome, what do you keep them in (when you’re not wearing them)?

  I would like to be saved by you and/or him

  (by which I mean one of the other Princes) –

  Oooh, Prince Rudolph,

  You are . . . a Prince.’

  ‘That,’ Lavender said to herself, ‘will sound wonderful in French.4’

  And as she wandered through the field, Bonnet followed behind her on tiptoe. And inside the cart, Clive stood up and tiptoed too, just to be extra quiet.

  Which didn’t really work that well, as the cart itself creaked loudly as it rolled along.

  They tiptoed closer and closer and closer.

  In front of them, the princess picked flowers, and twirled, and sang, and soon arrived at the edge of a tall, dark, forbidding-looking forest . . .

  Meanwhile Eliza was racing through the countryside to rescue her sister on the back of a gleaming white steed. She was riding like the wind, riding so fast her eyes streamed and – oh, wait. No she wasn’t. She wasn’t even riding like a light breeze. Because Eliza didn’t have a gleaming white steed. What she did have was a grumpy brown goat.

  ‘Come on, Gertrude!’ she said. ‘Let’s GO!!!’

  She was sitting on the back of Gertrude, in Gertrude’s pen.

  ‘Mnnnnhrr,’ shrugged Gertrude.

  ‘Come on! Don’t you care about Lavender AT ALL? Don’t you want to hear her singing ever again?’

  At this, Gertrude sat down, rested her head on the ground and shut her eyes.

  ‘What if she’s lost and she never comes back? Just think about that!’ Eliza said, and in reply Gertrude started to snore, with the ghost of a smile on her face. It was fair to say that Gertrude didn’t always enjoy spending time with Lavender. Only last week, Lavender had decided to put on a play of Cinderella, and had made Gertrude and Eliza dress up as the Ugly Sisters.

  The week before that, she had dressed Gertrude up as her fairy godmother.

  The week before that, she had dressed her up as her ‘delightful French handmaiden Lucille’.

  It seemed as if Gertrude was going to need a little bit of persuading. But then Eliza had a brilliant idea. She dashed into the house, and in two minutes she was back with one of Grandpa Joe’s old fishing rods and the smelliest sock she could find. As if by magic, Gertrude opened her eyes and leaped to her feet. They were on their way.

  So Eliza and Gertrude trotted along through fields, and valleys, and fields, and then more fields, and then some more fields, and then a couple of fields, and after that some more fields. It was a farming area. And everywhere they went, Eliza asked: ‘Have you seen my sister, Lavender? Sort of annoying? Sings a lot? Wears a pointy hat?’

  But everyone said: ‘No,’ ‘No,’ ‘No,’ ‘No,’ ‘No’ and, ‘We’re a leper colony, run away while you’ve still got legs!’

  At the edge of the forest, Lavender was smiling. At last! she thought to herself. The Forest of Toothy, Vicious and Flatulent Dragons!

  She stopped to read the sign:

  THIS IS THE FOREST OF TOOTHY,

  VICIOUS AND FLATULENT DRAGONS.

  DO NOT ENTER.

  And, ten steps behind her, Bonnet and Clive stopped too.

  ‘What if she turns round?’ hissed Bonnet, suddenly frightened. ‘I’m not ready yet! She’ll see us!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Clive hissed back. ‘If she turns round, we’ll just pretend to be sparrows.’

  ‘Oh, OK then.’

  But Lavender didn’t turn round. She started to walk into the forest, and beamed as she read the next sign.

  SERIOUSLY. RUN AWAY

  BEFORE YOU GET EATEN.

  And the next one:

  WHO DO YOU THINK IS WRITING THESE SIGNS?

  THE ONLY VEGETARIAN DRAGON

  IN THE WHOLE FOREST!

  And the next one:

  FINE. IGNORE ME. GET EATEN IF YOU LIKE.

  I’LL JUST GET BACK TO MAKING MY QUILT.

  Lavender kept smiling as she walked deep into the dark, gloomy forest. Before long, she had found exactly what she was looking for: a cave. She checked it against the picture in her book of fairy tales. It was perfect.