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The chill of winter was felt in Ma Grunter’s orphanage, too. Children in rags who are fed only on cabbage soup cannot withstand coughs and colds as easily as children who are well fed. The little cemetery at the back of the orphanage saw a steady stream of Johns and Janes who’d died for lack of food, and warmth, and love, and they were buried without anybody knowing their real names, although the other children mourned them.

The sudden spate of deaths was the reason Ma Grunter had sent Basher John out onto the streets of Jeroboam, to round up as many homeless children as he could find, to keep up her numbers. Inspectors came to visit three times a year to make sure she wasn’t lying about how many children were in her care. She preferred to take in older children, if possible, because they were hardier than the little ones.

The gold she received for each child had now made Ma Grunter’s private rooms in the orphanage some of the most luxurious in Cornucopia, with a blazing fire and deep velvet armchairs, thick silk rugs and a bed with soft woollen blankets. Her table was always provided with the finest food and wine. The starving children caught whiffs of heaven as Baronstown pies and Kurdsburg cheeses passed into Ma Grunter’s apartment. She rarely left her rooms now except to greet the inspectors, leaving Basher John to manage the children.

Daisy Dovetail paid little attention to the two new boys when they first arrived. They were dirty and ragged, as were all newcomers, and Daisy and Martha were busy trying to keep as many of the smaller children alive as was possible. They went hungry themselves to make sure the little ones got enough to eat, and Daisy carried bruises from Basher John’s cane because she often inserted herself between him and a smaller child he was trying to hit. If she thought about the new boys at all, it was to despise them for agreeing to be called John without putting up any sort of fight. She wasn’t to know that it suited the two boys very well for nobody to know their real names.

A week after Bert and Roderick arrived at the orphanage, Daisy and her best friend Martha held a secret birthday party for Hetty Hopkins’ twins. Many of the youngest children didn’t know when their birthdays were, so Daisy picked a date for them, and always made sure it was celebrated, if only with a double portion of cabbage soup. She and Martha always encouraged the little ones to remember their real names, too, although they taught them to call each other John and Jane in front of Basher John.
Daisy had a special treat for the twins. She’d actually managed to steal two real Chouxville pastries from a delivery for Ma Grunter several days before, and saved them for the twins’ birthday, even though the smell of the pastries had tortured Daisy and it had been hard to resist eating them herself.

‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ sighed the little girl through tears of joy.

‘Lovely,’ echoed her brother.

‘Those came from Chouxville, which is the capital,’ Daisy told them. She tried to teach the smaller children the things she remembered from her own interrupted schooldays, and often described the cities they’d never seen. Martha liked hearing about Kurdsburg, Baronstown and Chouxville, too, because she’d never lived anywhere but the Marshlands and Ma Grunter’s orphanage.

The twins had just swallowed the last crumbs of their pastries, when Basher John came bursting into the room. Daisy tried to hide the plate, on which was a trace of cream, but Basher John had spotted it.

‘You,’ he bellowed, approaching Daisy with the cane held up over his head, ‘have been stealing again, Ugly Jane!’ He was about to bring it down on her when he suddenly found it caught in mid-air. Bert had heard the shouting and gone to find out what was going on. Seeing that Basher John had cornered a skinny girl in much-patched overalls, Bert grabbed and held the cane on the way down.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Bert told Basher John in a low growl. For the first time, Daisy heard the new boy’s Chouxville accent, but he looked so different to the Bert she’d once known, so much older, so much harder-faced, that she didn’t recognise him. As for Bert, who remembered Daisy as a little olive-skinned girl with brown pigtails, he had no idea he’d ever met the girl with the burning eyes before.

Basher John tried to pull his cane free of Bert’s grip, but Roderick came to Bert’s aid. There was a short fight, and for the first time in any of the children’s memories, Basher John lost. Finally, vowing revenge, he left the room with a cut lip, and word spread in whispers around the orphanage that the two new boys had rescued Daisy and the twins, and that Basher John had slunk off looking stupid.

Later that evening, when all the orphanage children were settling down for bed, Bert and Daisy passed each other on an upstairs landing, and they paused, a little awkwardly, to talk to each other.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Daisy, ‘for earlier.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Bert. ‘Does he often behave like that?’

‘Quite often,’ said Daisy, with a little shrug. ‘But the twins got their pastries. I’m very grateful.’

Bert now thought he saw something familiar in the shape of Daisy’s face, and heard the trace of Chouxville in her voice. Then he looked down at the ancient, much-washed overalls, onto which Daisy had had to sew extra lengths to the legs.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

Daisy glanced around to make sure they weren’t being overheard.

‘Daisy,’ she said. ‘But you must remember to call me Jane when Basher John’s around.’

‘Daisy,’ gasped Bert. ‘Daisy – it’s me! Bert Beamish!’

Daisy’s mouth fell open, and before they knew it, they were hugging and crying, as though they’d been transformed back into small children in those sunlit days in the palace courtyard, before Daisy’s mother had died, and Bert’s father had been killed, when Cornucopia had seemed the happiest place on earth.

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The kitchen workers in the palace were most surprised to hear from Lord Spittleworth that Mrs Beamish had requested her own, separate kitchen, because she was so much more important than they were. Indeed, some of them were suspicious, because Mrs Beamish had never been stuck up, in all the years they’d known her. However, as her cakes and pastries were still appearing regularly at the king’s table, they knew she was alive, wherever she was, and like many of their fellow countrymen, the servants decided it was safest not to ask questions.

Meanwhile, life in the palace dungeons had been utterly transformed. A stove had been fitted in Mrs Beamish’s cell, her pots and pans had been brought down from the kitchens, and the prisoners in neighbouring cells had been trained up to help her perform the different tasks that went into producing the feather-light pastries that made her the best baker in the kingdom. She demanded the doubling of the prisoners’ rations (to make sure they were strong enough to whisk and fold, to measure and weigh, to sift and pour) and a rat catcher to clean the place of vermin, and a servant to run between the cells, handing out different implements through the bars.

The heat from the stove dried out the damp walls. Delicious smells replaced the stench of mould and dank water. Mrs Beamish insisted that each of the prisoners had to taste a finished cake, so that they understood the results of their efforts. Slowly, the dungeon started to be a place of activity, even of cheerfulness, and prisoners who’d been weak and starving before Mrs Beamish arrived were gradually fattening up. In this way she kept busy, and tried to distract herself from her worries about Bert.

All the time the rest of the prisoners baked, Mr Dovetail sang the national anthem, and kept carving giant Ickabog feet in the cell next door. His singing and banging had enraged the other prisoners before Mrs Beamish arrived, but now she encouraged everyone to join in with him. The sound of all the prisoners singing the national anthem drowned out the perpetual noises of his hammer and chisel, and the best of it was that when Spittleworth ran down into the dungeons to tell them to stop making such a racket, Mrs Beamish said innocently that surely it was treason, to stop people singing the national anthem? Spittleworth looked foolish at that, and all the prisoners bellowed with laughter. With a leap of joy, Mrs Beamish thought she heard a weak, wheezy chuckle from the cell next door.

Mrs Beamish might not have known much about madness, but she knew how to rescue things that seemed spoiled, like curdled sauces and falling soufflés. She believed Mr Dovetail’s broken mind might yet be mended, if only he could be brought to understand that he wasn’t alone, and to remember who he was. And so every now and then Mrs Beamish would suggest songs other than the national anthem, trying to jolt Mr Dovetail’s poor mind onto a different course that might bring him back to himself.

And at last, to her amazement and joy, she heard him joining in with the Ickabog drinking song, which had been popular even in the days long before people thought the monster was real.

‘I drank a single bottle and the Ickabog’s a lie,

I drank another bottle, and I thought I heard it sigh,

And now I’ve drunk another, I can see it slinking by,

The Ickabog is coming, so let’s drink before we die!’

Setting down the tray of cakes she’d just taken out of the stove, Mrs Beamish jumped up onto her bed, and spoke softly through the crack high in the wall.

‘Daniel Dovetail, I heard you singing that silly song. It’s Bertha Beamish here, your old friend. Remember me? We used to sing that a long time ago, when the children were tiny. My Bert, and your Daisy. D’you remember that, Dan?’

She waited for a response and in a little while, she thought she heard a sob.

You may think this strange, but Mrs Beamish was glad to hear Mr Dovetail cry, because tears can heal a mind, as well as laughter.

And that night, and for many nights afterwards, Mrs Beamish talked softly to Mr Dovetail through the crack in the wall, and after a while he began to talk back. Mrs Beamish told Mr Dovetail how terribly she regretted telling the kitchen maid what he’d said about the Ickabog, and Mr Dovetail told her how wretched he’d felt, afterwards, for suggesting that Major Beamish had fallen off his horse. And each promised the other that their child was alive, because they had to believe it, or die.

A freezing chill was now stealing into the dungeons through its one high, tiny, barred window. The prisoners could tell a hard winter was approaching, yet the dungeon had become a place of hope and healing. Mrs Beamish demanded more blankets for all her helpers and kept her stove burning all night, determined that they would survive.

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 46: The Tale of Roderick Roach

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You might think Bert would be terrified at the sound of these words, but believe it or not, the voice filled him with relief. He’d recognised it, you see. So instead of putting up his hands, or pleading for his life, he turned around, and found himself looking at Roderick Roach.

‘What are you smiling about?’ growled Roderick, staring into Bert’s filthy face.

‘I know you’re not going to stab me, Roddy,’ said Bert quietly.

Even though Roderick was the one holding the sword, Bert could tell the other boy was far more scared than he was. The shivering Roderick was wearing a coat over his pyjamas and his feet were wrapped in bloodstained rags.

‘Have you walked all the way from Chouxville like that?’ asked Bert.

‘That’s none of your business!’ spat Roderick, trying to look fierce, though his teeth were chattering. ‘I’m taking you in, Beamish, you traitor!’

‘No, you aren’t,’ said Bert and he pulled the sword out of Roderick’s hand. At that, Roderick burst into tears.

‘Come on,’ said Bert kindly, and he put his arm round Roderick’s shoulders and led him off down a side alley, away from the fluttering Wanted poster.

‘Get off,’ sobbed Roderick, shrugging away Bert’s arm. ‘Get off me! It’s all your fault!’

‘What’s my fault?’ asked Bert, as the two boys came to a halt beside some bins full of empty wine bottles.

‘You ran away from my father!’ said Roderick, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

‘Well, of course I did,’ said Bert reasonably. ‘He wanted to kill me.’

‘But n – now he’s been – been killed!’ sobbed Roderick.

‘Major Roach is dead?’ said Bert, taken aback. ‘How?’

‘Sp – Spittleworth,’ sobbed Roderick. ‘He c – came t – to our house with soldiers when n – nobody could find you. He was so angry Father hadn’t caught you – he grabbed a soldier’s gun – and he…’

Roderick sat down on a dustbin and wept. A cold wind blew down the alleyway. This, Bert thought, showed just how dangerous Spittleworth was. If he could shoot dead his faithful head of the Royal Guard, nobody was safe.

‘How did you know I’d come to Jeroboam?’ Bert asked.

‘C – Cankerby from the palace told me. I gave him five ducats. He remembered your mother talking about your cousin owning a tavern.’

‘How many people d’you think Cankerby’s told?’ asked Bert, now worried.

‘Plenty, probably,’ said Roderick, mopping his face with his pyjama sleeve. ‘He’ll sell anyone information for gold.’

‘That’s rich, coming from you,’ said Bert, getting angry. ‘You were about to sell me for a hundred ducats!’

‘I d – didn’t want the g – gold,’ said Roderick. ‘It was for my m – mother and brothers. I thought I might be able to g – get them back if I turned you in. Spittleworth t – took them away. I escaped out of my bedroom window. That’s why I’m in my pyjamas.’

‘I escaped from my bedroom window too,’ said Bert. ‘But at least I had the sense to bring shoes. Come on, we’d better get out of here,’ he added, pulling Roderick to his feet. ‘We’ll try and steal you some socks off a washing line on the way.’

But they’d taken barely a couple of steps when a man’s voice spoke from behind them.

‘Hands up! You two are coming with me!’

Both boys raised their hands and turned round. A man with a dirty, mean face had just emerged from the shadows, and was pointing a rifle at them. He wasn’t in uniform and neither Bert nor Roderick recognised him, but Daisy Dovetail could have told them exactly who this was: Basher John, Ma Grunter’s deputy, now a full-grown man.

Basher John took a few steps closer, squinting from one boy to the other. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You two’ll do. Gimme that sword.’

With a rifle pointed at his chest, Bert had no choice but to hand it over. However, he wasn’t quite as scared as he might have been, because Bert – whatever Flapoon might have told him – was actually a very clever boy. This dirty-looking man didn’t seem to realise he’d just caught a fugitive worth one hundred gold ducats. He seemed to have been looking for any two boys, though why, Bert couldn’t imagine. Roderick, on the other hand, had turned deathly pale. He knew Spittleworth had spies in every city, and was convinced they were both about to be handed over to the Chief Advisor, and that he, Roderick Roach, would be put to death for being in league with a traitor.

‘Move,’ said the blunt-faced man, gesturing them out of the alley with his rifle. With the gun at their backs, Bert and Roderick were forced away through the dark streets of Jeroboam until, finally, they reached the door of Ma Grunter’s orphanage.

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 45: Bert in Jeroboam

Next writing: The Ickabog – Chapter 47: Down in the Dungeons »

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 44: Mrs Beamish Fights Back

Next writing: The Ickabog – Chapter 46: The Tale of Roderick Roach »

While Bert was slipping out of the city gates, Mrs Beamish was being shunted into a cell in the dungeons by Lord Spittleworth. A cracked, reedy voice nearby sang the national anthem in time to hammer blows.

‘Be quiet!’ bellowed Spittleworth towards the wall. The singing stopped.

‘When I finish this foot, my lord,’ said the broken voice, ‘will you let me out to see my daughter?’

‘Yes, yes, you’ll see your daughter,’ Spittleworth called back, rolling his eyes. ‘Now, be quiet, because I want to talk to your neighbour!’

‘Well, before you get started, my lord,’ said Mrs Beamish, ‘I’ve got a few things I want to say to you.’

Spittleworth and Flapoon stared at the plump little woman. Never had they placed anyone in the dungeons who looked so proud and unconcerned at being slung in this dank, cold place. Spittleworth was reminded of Lady Eslanda, who was still shut up in his library, and still refusing to marry him. He’d never imagined a cook could look as haughty as a lady.

‘Firstly,’ said Mrs Beamish, ‘if you kill me, the king will know. He’ll notice I’m not making his pastries. He can taste the difference.’

‘That’s true,’ said Spittleworth, with a cruel smile. ‘However, as the king will believe that you’ve been killed by the Ickabog, he’ll simply have to get used to his pastries tasting different, won’t he?’

‘My house lies in the shadow of the palace walls,’ countered Mrs Beamish. ‘It will be impossible to fake an Ickabog attack there without waking up a hundred witnesses.’

‘That’s easily solved,’ said Spittleworth. ‘We’ll say you were foolish enough to take a night-time stroll down by the banks of the River Fluma, where the Ickabog was having a drink.’

‘Which might have worked,’ said Mrs Beamish, making up a story off the top of her head, ‘if I hadn’t left certain instructions, to be carried out if word gets out that I’ve been killed by the Ickabog.’

‘What instructions, and whom have you given them to?’ said Flapoon.

‘Her son, I daresay,’ said Spittleworth, ‘but he’ll soon be in our power. Make a note, Flapoon – we only kill the cook once we’ve killed her son.’

‘In the meantime,’ said Mrs Beamish, pretending she hadn’t felt an icy stab of terror at the thought of Bert falling into Spittleworth’s hands, ‘you might as well equip this cell properly with a stove and all my regular implements, so I can keep making cakes for the king.’

‘Yes… Why not?’ said Spittleworth slowly. ‘We all enjoy your pastries, Mrs Beamish. You may continue to cook for the king until your son is caught.’

‘Good,’ said Mrs Beamish, ‘but I’m going to need assistance. I suggest I train up some of my fellow prisoners who can at least whisk the egg whites and line my baking trays.

‘That will require you to feed the poor fellows a little more. I noticed as you marched me through here that some of them look like skeletons. I can’t have them eating all my raw ingredients because they’re starving.

‘And lastly,’ said Mrs Beamish, giving her cell a sweeping glance, ‘I shall need a comfortable bed and some clean blankets if I’m to get enough sleep to produce cakes of the quality the king demands. It’s his birthday coming up too. He’ll be expecting something very special.’

Spittleworth eyed this most surprising captive for a moment or two, then said:

‘Doesn’t it alarm you, madam, to think that you and your child will soon be dead?’

‘Oh, if there’s one thing you learn at cookery school,’ said Mrs Beamish, with a shrug, ‘burned crusts and soggy bases happen to the best of us. Roll up your sleeves and start something else, I say. No point moaning over what you can’t fix!’

As Spittleworth couldn’t think of a good retort to this, he beckoned to Flapoon and the two lords left the cell, the door clanging shut behind them.

As soon as they’d gone, Mrs Beamish stopped pretending to be brave and dropped down onto the hard bed, which was the only piece of furniture in the cell. She was shaking all over and for a moment, she was afraid that she was going to have hysterics.

However, a woman didn’t rise to be in charge of the king’s kitchens, in a city of the finest pastry-makers on earth, without being able to manage her own nerves. Mrs Beamish took a deep, steadying breath and then, hearing the reedy voice next door break into the national anthem again, she pressed her ear to the wall, and began to listen for the place where the noise was coming into her cell. At last she found a crack near the ceiling. Standing on her bed, she called softly:

‘Dan? Daniel Dovetail? I know that’s you. This is Bertha, Bertha Beamish!’

But the broken voice only continued to sing. Mrs Beamish sank back down on her bed, wrapped her arms around herself, closed her eyes and prayed with every part of her aching heart that wherever Bert was, he was safe.

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 43: Bert and the Guard

Next writing: The Ickabog – Chapter 45: Bert in Jeroboam »

The candle on the table beside Bert burned slowly downwards while he watched the minute hand creep around the clock face. He told himself his mother would definitely come home soon. She’d walk in any minute, pick up his half-darned sweater as though she’d never dropped it, and tell him what had happened when she saw the king.

Then the minute hand seemed to speed up, when Bert would have done anything to make it slow down. Four minutes. Three minutes. Two minutes left.

Bert got to his feet and moved to the window. He looked up and down the dark street. There was no sign of his mother returning.

But wait! His heart leapt: he’d seen movement on the corner! For a few shining seconds, Bert was sure he was about to see Mrs Beamish step into the patch of moonlight, smiling as she caught sight of his anxious face at the window.

And then his heart seemed to drop like a brick into his stomach. It wasn’t Mrs Beamish who was approaching, but Major Roach, accompanied by four large members of the Ickabog Defence Brigade, all carrying torches.

Bert leapt back from the window, snatched up the sweater from the table, and sprinted through to his bedroom. He grabbed his shoes and his father’s medal, forced up the bedroom window, clambered out of it, then gently slid the window closed from outside. As he dropped down into the vegetable patch, he heard Major Roach banging on the front door, then a rough voice said: ‘I’ll check the back.’

Bert threw himself flat in the earth behind a row of beetroots, smeared his fair hair with soil and lay very still in the darkness.

Through his closed eyelids he saw flickering light. A soldier held his torch high in hopes of seeing Bert running away across other people’s gardens. The soldier didn’t notice the earthy shape of Bert concealed behind the beetroot leaves, which threw long, swaying shadows.

‘Well, he hasn’t got out this way,’ shouted the soldier.

There was a crash, and Bert knew Roach had broken down the front door. He listened to the soldiers opening cupboards and wardrobes. Bert remained utterly still in the earth, because torchlight was still shining through his closed eyelids.

‘Maybe he cleared out before his mother went to the palace?’

‘Well, we’ve got to find him,’ growled the familiar voice of Major Roach. ‘He’s the son of the Ickabog’s first victim. If Bert Beamish starts telling the world the monster’s a lie, people will listen. Spread out and search, he can’t have got far. And if you catch him,’ said Roach, as his men’s heavy footsteps sounded across the Beamishes’ wooden floorboards, ‘kill him. We’ll work out our stories later.’

Bert lay completely flat and still, listening to the men running away up and down the street, and then a cool part of Bert’s brain said:

Move.

He put his father’s medal around his neck, pulled on the half-darned sweater and snatched up his shoes, then began to crawl through the earth until he reached a neighbouring fence, where he tunnelled out enough dirt to let him wriggle beneath it. He kept crawling until he reached a cobbled street, but he could still hear the soldiers’ voices echoing through the night as they banged on doors, demanding to search houses, asking people whether they’d seen Bert Beamish, the pastry chef’s son. He heard himself described as a dangerous traitor.

Bert took another handful of earth and smeared it over his face. Then he got to his feet and, crouching low, darted into a dark doorway across the street. A soldier ran past, but Bert was now so filthy that he was well camouflaged against the dark door, and the man noticed nothing. When the soldier had disappeared, Bert ran barefooted from doorway to doorway, carrying his shoes, hiding in shadowy alcoves and edging ever closer to the City-Within-The-City gates. However, when he drew near, he saw a guard keeping watch, and before Bert could think up a plan, he had to slide behind a statue of King Richard the Righteous, because Roach and another soldier were approaching.

‘Have you seen Bert Beamish?’ they shouted at the guard.

‘What, the pastry chef’s son?’ asked the man.

Roach seized the front of the man’s uniform and shook him as a terrier shakes a rabbit. ‘Of course, the pastry chef’s son! Have you let him through these gates? Tell me!’

‘No, I haven’t,’ said the guard, ‘and what’s the boy done, to have you lot chasing him?’

‘He’s a traitor!’ snarled Roach. ‘And I’ll personally shoot anyone who helps him, understood?’

‘Understood,’ said the guard. Roach released the man and he and his companion ran off again, their torches casting swinging pools of light on all the walls, until they were swallowed once more by the darkness.

Bert watched the guard straighten his uniform and shake his head. Bert hesitated, then, knowing this might cost him his life, crept out of his hiding place. So thoroughly had Bert camouflaged himself with all the earth, that the guard didn’t realise anyone was beside him until he saw the whites of Bert’s eyes in the moonlight, and he let out a yelp of terror.

‘Please,’ whispered Bert. ‘Please… don’t give me away. I need to get out of here.’

From beneath his sweater, he pulled his father’s heavy silver medal, brushed earth from the surface, and showed the guard.

‘I’ll give you this – it’s real silver! – if you just let me out through the gates, and don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me. I’m not a traitor,’ said Bert. ‘I haven’t betrayed anyone, I swear.’

The guard was an older man, with a stiff grey beard. He considered the earth-covered Bert for a moment or two before saying:

‘Keep your medal, son.’

He opened the gate just wide enough for Bert to slide through.

‘Thank you!’ gasped Bert.

‘Stick to the back roads,’ advised the guard. ‘And trust no one. Good luck.’

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 42: Behind the Curtain

Next writing: The Ickabog – Chapter 44: Mrs Beamish Fights Back »

The kitchens were dark and empty when Mrs Beamish let herself in from the courtyard. Moving on tiptoe, she peeked around corners as she went, because she knew how Cankerby the footman liked to lurk in the shadows. Slowly and carefully, Mrs Beamish made her way towards the king’s private apartments, holding the little wooden foot so tightly in her hand that its sharp claws dug into her palm.

At last she reached the scarlet-carpeted corridor leading to Fred’s rooms. Now she could hear laughter coming from behind the doors. Mrs Beamish rightly guessed that Fred hadn’t been told about the Ickabog attack on the outskirts of Chouxville, because she was sure he wouldn’t be laughing if he had. However, somebody was clearly with the king, and she wanted to see Fred alone. As she stood there, wondering what was best to do, the door ahead opened.

With a gasp, Mrs Beamish dived behind a long velvet curtain and tried to stop it swaying. Spittleworth and Flapoon were laughing and joking with the king as they bade him goodnight.

‘Excellent joke, Your Majesty, why, I think I’ve split my pantaloons!’ guffawed Flapoon.

‘We shall have to rechristen you King Fred the Funny, sire!’ chuckled Spittleworth.

Mrs Beamish held her breath and tried to suck in her tummy. She heard the sound of Fred’s door closing. The two lords stopped laughing at once.

‘Blithering idiot,’ said Flapoon in a low voice.

‘I’ve met cleverer blobs of Kurdsburg cheese,’ muttered Spittleworth.

‘Can’t you take a turn entertaining him tomorrow?’ grumbled Flapoon.

‘I’ll be busy with the tax collectors until three,’ said Spittleworth. ‘But if—’

Both lords stopped talking. Their footsteps also ceased. Mrs Beamish was still holding her breath, her eyes closed, praying they hadn’t noticed the bulge in the curtain.

‘Well, goodnight, Spittleworth,’ said Flapoon’s voice.

‘Yes, sleep well, Flapoon,’ said Spittleworth.

Very softly, her heart beating very fast, Mrs Beamish let out her breath. It was all right. The two lords were going to bed… and yet she couldn’t hear footsteps…

Then, so suddenly she had no time to draw breath into her lungs, the curtain was ripped back. Before she could cry out, Flapoon’s large hand had closed over her mouth and Spittleworth had seized her wrists. The two lords dragged Mrs Beamish out of her hiding place and down the nearest set of stairs, and while she struggled and tried to shout, she couldn’t make a sound through Flapoon’s thick fingers, nor could she wriggle free. At last, they pulled her into that same Blue Parlour where she’d once kissed her dead husband’s hand.

‘Do not scream,’ Spittleworth warned her, pulling out a short dagger he’d taken to wearing, even inside the palace, ‘or the king will need a new pastry chef.’

He gestured to Flapoon to take his hand away from Mrs Beamish’s mouth. The first thing she did was take a gasp of breath, because she felt like fainting.

‘You made an outsized lump in that curtain, cook,’ sneered Spittleworth. ‘Exactly what were you doing, lurking there, so close to the king, after the kitchens have closed?’

Mrs Beamish might have made up some silly lie, of course. She could have pretended she wanted to ask King Fred what kinds of cakes he’d like her to make tomorrow, but she knew the two lords wouldn’t believe her. So instead she held out the hand clutching the Ickabog foot, and opened her fingers.

‘I know,’ she said quietly, ‘what you’re up to.’

The two lords moved closer and peered down at her palm, and the perfect, tiny replica of the huge feet the Dark Footers were using. Spittleworth and Flapoon looked at each other, and then at Mrs Beamish, and all the pastry chef could think, when she saw their expressions, was, Run, Bert – run!

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Next writing: The Ickabog – Chapter 43: Bert and the Guard »

‘Mother,’ said Bert.

Mrs Beamish had been sitting at the kitchen table, mending a hole in one of Bert’s sweaters and pausing occasionally to wipe her eyes. The Ickabog’s attack on their Chouxville neighbour had brought back awful memories of the death of Major Beamish, and she’d just been thinking about that night when she’d kissed his poor, cold hand in the Blue Parlour at the palace, while the rest of him was hidden by the Cornucopian flag.

‘Mother, look,’ said Bert, in a strange voice, and he set down in front of her the tiny, clawed wooden foot he’d found beneath his bed.

Mrs Beamish picked it up and examined it through the spectacles she wore when sewing by candlelight.

‘Why, it’s part of that little toy you used to have,’ said Bert’s mother. ‘Your toy Icka…’

But Mrs Beamish didn’t finish the word. Still staring at the carved foot, she remembered the monstrous footprints she and Bert had seen earlier that day, in the soft ground around the house of the vanished old lady. Although much, much bigger, the shape of that foot was identical to this, as were the angle of the toes, the scales and the long claws.

For several minutes, the only sound was the sputtering of the candle, as Mrs Beamish turned the little wooden foot in her trembling fingers.

It was as though a door had flown open inside her mind, a door she’d been keeping blocked and barricaded for a very long time. Ever since her husband had died, Mrs Beamish had refused to admit a single doubt or suspicion about the Ickabog. Loyal to the king, trusting in Spittleworth, she’d believed the people who claimed the Ickabog wasn’t real were traitors.

But now the uncomfortable memories she’d tried to shut out came flooding in upon her. She remembered telling the scullery maid all about Mr Dovetail’s treasonous speech about the Ickabog, and turning to see Cankerby the footman listening in the shadows. She remembered how soon afterwards the Dovetails had disappeared. She remembered the little girl who’d been skipping, wearing one of Daisy Dovetail’s old dresses, and the bandalore she’d claimed her brother had been given on the same day. She thought of her cousin Harold starving, and the strange absence of mail from the north that she and all her neighbours had noticed over the past few months. She thought, too, of the sudden disappearance of Lady Eslanda, which many had puzzled over. These, and a hundred other odd happenings, added themselves together in Mrs Beamish’s mind as she gazed at the little wooden foot, and together they formed a monstrous outline that frightened her far more than the Ickabog. What, she asked herself, had really happened to her husband up on that marsh? Why hadn’t she been allowed to look beneath the Cornucopian flag covering his body? Horrible thoughts now tumbled on top of each other as Mrs Beamish turned to look at her son, and saw her suspicions reflected in his face.

‘The king can’t know,’ she whispered. ‘He can’t. He’s a good man.’

Even if everything else she’d believed might be wrong, Mrs Beamish couldn’t bear to give up her belief in the goodness of King Fred the Fearless. He’d always been so kind to her and Bert.

Mrs Beamish stood up, the little wooden foot clutched tightly in her hand, and laid down Bert’s half-darned sweater.

I’m going to see the king,’ she said, with a more determined look on her face than Bert had ever seen there.

‘Now?’ he asked, looking out into the darkness.

‘Tonight,’ said Mrs Beamish, ‘while there’s a chance neither of those lords are with him. He’ll see me. He’s always liked me.’

‘I want to come too,’ said Bert, because a strange feeling of foreboding had come over him.

‘No,’ said Mrs Beamish. She approached her son, put her hand on his shoulder, and looked up into his face. ‘Listen to me, Bert. If I’m not back from the palace in one hour, you’re to leave Chouxville. Head north to Jeroboam, find Cousin Harold and tell him everything.’

‘But—’ said Bert, suddenly afraid.

‘Promise me you’ll go if I’m not back in an hour,’ said Mrs Beamish fiercely.

‘I… I will,’ said Bert, but the boy who’d earlier imagined dying a heroic death, and not caring how much it upset his mother, was suddenly terrified. ‘Mother—’

She hugged him briefly. ‘You’re a clever boy. Never forget, you’re a soldier’s son, as well as a pastry chef’s.’

Mrs Beamish walked quickly to the door and slipped on her shoes. After one last smile at Bert, she slipped out into the night.

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When he heard that a mail coach had reached the heart of Chouxville, Spittleworth seized a heavy wooden chair and threw it at Major Roach’s head. Roach, who was far stronger than Spittleworth, batted the chair aside easily enough, but his hand flew to the hilt of his sword and for a few seconds, the two men stood with teeth bared in the gloom of the Guard’s Room, while Flapoon and the spies watched, open-mouthed.

‘You will send a party of Dark Footers to the outskirts of Chouxville tonight,’ Spittleworth ordered Roach. ‘You will fake a raid – we must terrify these people. They must understand that the tax is necessary, that any hardship their relatives are suffering is the fault of the Ickabog, not mine or the king’s. Go, and undo the harm you’ve done!’

The furious major left the room, privately thinking of all the ways he’d like to hurt Spittleworth, if given ten minutes alone with him.

‘And you,’ said Spittleworth to his spies, ‘will report to me tomorrow whether Major Roach has done his work well enough. If the city’s still whispering about starvation and penniless relations, well then, we’ll have to see how Major Roach likes the dungeons.’

So a group of Major Roach’s Dark Footers waited until the capital slept, then set out for the first time to make Chouxville believe that the Ickabog had come calling. They selected a cottage on the very edge of town that stood a little apart from its neighbours. The men who were most skilful at breaking into houses entered the cottage, where, it pains me to say, they killed the little old lady who lived there, who, you might like to know, had written several beautifully illustrated books about the fish that lived in the River Fluma. Once her body had been carried away to be buried somewhere remote, a group of men pressed four of Mr Dovetail’s finest carved feet into the ground around the fish expert’s house, smashed up her furniture and her fish tanks and let her specimens die, gasping, on the floor.

Next morning, Spittleworth’s spies reported that the plan seemed to have worked. Chouxville, so long avoided by the fearsome Ickabog, had at last been attacked. As the Dark Footers had now perfected the art of making the tracks look natural, and breaking down doors as though a gigantic monster had smashed them in, and using pointed metal tools to mimic tooth marks on wood, the Chouxville residents who flocked to see the poor old woman’s house were entirely taken in.

Young Bert Beamish stayed at the scene even after his mother had left to start cooking their supper. He was treasuring up every detail of the beast’s footprints and its fang marks, the better to imagine what it would look like when at last he came face-to-face with the evil creature that had killed his father, because he’d by no means abandoned his ambition to avenge him.

When Bert was sure he had every detail of the monster’s prints memorised, he walked home, burning with fury, and shut himself up in his bedroom, where he took down his father’s Medal for Outstanding Bravery Against the Deadly Ickabog, and the tiny medal the king had given him after he’d fought Daisy Dovetail. The smaller medal made Bert feel sad these days. He’d never had a friend as good as Daisy since she’d left for Pluritania, but at least, he thought, she and her father were beyond the reach of the evil Ickabog.

Angry tears started in Bert’s eyes. He’d so wanted to join the Ickabog Defence Brigade! He knew he’d be a good soldier. He wouldn’t even care if he died in the fight! Of course, it would be extremely upsetting for his mother if the Ickabog killed her son as well as her husband, but on the other hand, Bert would be a hero, like his father!

Lost in thoughts of revenge and glory, Bert made to replace the two medals on the mantelpiece when the smaller of them slipped through his fingers and rolled away under the bed. Bert lay down and groped for it, but couldn’t reach. He wriggled further under his bed and found it at last in the furthermost, dustiest corner, along with something sharp that seemed to have been there a very long time, because it was cobwebby.

Bert pulled both the medal and the sharp thing out from the corner and sat up, now rather dusty himself, to examine the unknown object.

By the light of his candle, he saw a tiny, perfectly carved Ickabog foot, the last remaining piece of the toy carved so long ago by Mr Dovetail. Bert had thought he’d burned up every last bit of the toy, but this foot must have flown under the bed when he’d smashed up the rest of the Ickabog with his poker.

He was on the point of tossing the foot onto his bedroom fire when Bert suddenly changed his mind, and began to examine it more closely.

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