A year passed… then two… then three, four, and five.

The tiny kingdom of Cornucopia, which had once been the envy of its neighbours for its magically rich soil, for the skill of its cheesemakers, winemakers and pastry chefs, and for the happiness of its people, had changed almost beyond recognition.

True, Chouxville was carrying on more or less as it always had. Spittleworth didn’t want the king to notice that anything had changed, so he spent plenty of gold in the capital to keep things running as they always had, especially in the City-Within-The-City. Up in the northern cities, though, people were struggling. More and more businesses – shops, taverns, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, farms, and vineyards – were closing down. The Ickabog tax was pushing people into poverty, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, everyone feared being the next to receive a visit from the Ickabog – or whatever it was that broke down doors and left monster-like tracks around houses and farms.

People who voiced doubts about whether the Ickabog was really behind these attacks were usually next to receive a visit from the Dark Footers. That was the name Spittleworth and Roach had given to the squads of men who murdered unbelievers in the night, leaving footprints around their victims’ houses.

Occasionally, though, the Ickabog doubters lived in the middle of a city, where it was difficult to fake an attack without the neighbours seeing. In this case, Spittleworth would hold a trial, and by threatening their families, as he had with Goodfellow and his friends, he made the accused agree that they’d committed treason.

Increasing numbers of trials meant Spittleworth had to oversee the building of more jails. He also needed more orphanages. Why did he need orphanages, you ask?

Well, in the first place, quite a number of parents were being killed or imprisoned. As everyone was now finding it difficult to feed their own families, they weren’t able to take in the abandoned children.

In the second place, poor people were dying of hunger. As parents usually fed their children rather than themselves, children were often the last of the family left alive.

And in the third place, some heartbroken, homeless families were giving up their children to orphanages, because it was the only way they could make sure their children would have food and shelter.

I wonder whether you remember the palace maid, Hetty, who so bravely warned Lady Eslanda that Captain Goodfellow and his friends were about to be executed?

Well, Hetty used Lady Eslanda’s gold to take a coach home to her father’s vineyard, just outside Jeroboam. A year later, she married a man called Hopkins, and gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.

However, the effort of paying the Ickabog tax was too much for the Hopkins family. They lost their little grocery store, and Hetty’s parents couldn’t help them, because shortly after losing their vineyard, they’d starved to death. Homeless now, their children crying with hunger, Hetty and her husband walked in desperation to Ma Grunter’s orphanage. The twins were torn, sobbing, from their mother’s arms. The door slammed, the bolts banged home, and poor Hetty Hopkins and her husband walked away, crying no less hard than their children, and praying that Ma Grunter would keep them alive.

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A few days later, Lady Eslanda was walking alone in the palace rose garden when the two soldiers hiding in a bush spotted their chance. They seized her, gagged her, bound her hands, and drove her away to Spittleworth’s estate in the country. Then they sent a message to Spittleworth, and waited for him to join them.

Spittleworth promptly summoned Lady Eslanda’s maid, Millicent. By threatening to murder Millicent’s little sister, he forced her to deliver messages to all Lady Eslanda’s friends, telling them that her mistress had decided to become a nun.

Lady Eslanda’s friends were all shocked by this news. She’d never mentioned wanting to become a nun to any of them. In fact, several of them were suspicious that Lord Spittleworth had had something to do with her sudden disappearance. However, I’m sad to tell you that Spittleworth was now so widely feared, that apart from whispering their suspicions to each other, Eslanda’s friends did nothing to either find her, or ask Spittleworth what he knew. Perhaps even worse was the fact that none of them tried to help Millicent, who was caught by soldiers trying to flee the City-Within-The-City, and imprisoned in the dungeons.

Next, Spittleworth had set out for his country estate, where he arrived late the following evening. After giving each of Eslanda’s kidnappers fifty ducats, and reminding them that if they talked, he’d have them executed, Spittleworth smoothed his thin moustaches in a mirror, then went to find Lady Eslanda, who was sitting in his rather dusty library, reading a book by candlelight.

‘Good evening, my lady,’ said Spittleworth, sweeping her a bow.

Lady Eslanda looked at him in silence.

‘I have good news for you,’ continued Spittleworth, smiling. ‘You are to become the wife of the Chief Advisor.’

‘I’d sooner die,’ said Lady Eslanda pleasantly, and, turning a page in her book, she continued to read.

‘Come, come,’ said Spittleworth. ‘As you can see, my house really needs a woman’s tender care. You’ll be far happier here, making yourself useful, than pining over the cheesemakers’ son, who in any case, is likely to starve to death any day now.’

Lady Eslanda, who’d expected Spittleworth to mention Captain Goodfellow, had been preparing for this moment ever since arriving in the cold and dirty house. So she said, with neither a blush nor a tear:

‘I stopped caring for Captain Goodfellow a long time ago, Lord Spittleworth. The sight of him confessing to treason disgusted me. I could never love a treacherous man – which is why I could never love you.’

She said it so convincingly that Spittleworth believed her. He tried a different threat, and told her he’d kill her parents if she didn’t marry him, but Lady Eslanda reminded him that she, like Captain Goodfellow, was an orphan. Then Spittleworth said he’d take away all the jewellery her mother had left her, but she shrugged and said she preferred books anyway. Finally, Spittleworth threatened to kill her, and Lady Eslanda suggested he get on with it, because that would be far better than listening to him talk.

Spittleworth was enraged. He’d become used to having his own way in everything, and here was something he couldn’t have, and it only made him want it all the more. Finally, he said that if she liked books so much, he’d lock her up inside the library forever. He’d have bars fitted on all the windows, and Scrumble the butler would bring her food three times a day, but she would only ever leave the room to go to the bathroom – unless she agreed to marry him.

‘Then I shall die in this room,’ said Lady Eslanda calmly, ‘or, perhaps – who knows? – in the bathroom.’

As he couldn’t get another word out of her, the furious Chief Advisor left.

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‘This had better be worth my while,’ snapped Spittleworth five minutes later, as he entered the Blue Parlour, where the spy was waiting.

‘Your – Lordship,’ said the breathless man, ‘they’re saying – the monster’s – hopping.’

‘They’re saying what?’

‘Hopping, my lord – hopping!’ he panted. ‘They’ve noticed – all the prints – are made by the same – left – foot!’

Spittleworth stood speechless. It had never occurred to him that the common folk might be clever enough to spot a thing like that. Indeed, he, who’d never had to look after a living creature in his life, not even his own horse, hadn’t stopped to consider the fact that a creature’s feet might not all make the same prints in the ground.

‘Must I think of everything?’ bellowed Spittleworth, and he stormed out of the parlour and off to the Guard’s Room, where he found Major Roach drinking wine and playing cards with some friends. The major leapt to his feet at the sight of Spittleworth, who beckoned him to come outside.

‘I want you to assemble the Ickabog Defence Brigade immediately, Roach,’ Spittleworth told the major, in a low voice. ‘You’re to ride north, and be sure to make plenty of noise as you go. I want everyone from Chouxville to Jeroboam to see you passing by. Then, once you’re up there, spread out, and mount a guard over the border of the marsh.’

‘But—’ began Major Roach, who’d got used to a life of ease and plenty at the palace, with occasional rides around Chouxville in full uniform.

‘I don’t want “buts”, I want action!’ shouted Spittleworth. ‘Rumours are flying that there’s nobody stationed in the north! Go, now, and make sure you wake up as many people as possible as you go – but leave me two men, Roach. Just two. I have another small job for them.’

So the grumpy Roach ran off to assemble his troops, and Spittleworth proceeded alone to the dungeon.

The first thing he heard when he got there was the sound of Mr Dovetail, who was still singing the national anthem.

‘Be quiet!’ bellowed Spittleworth, drawing his sword and gesturing to the warder to let him into Mr Dovetail’s cell.

The carpenter appeared quite different to the last time Lord Spittleworth had seen him. Since learning that he wasn’t to be let out of the dungeon to see Daisy, a wild look had appeared in Mr Dovetail’s eye. Of course, he hadn’t been able to shave for weeks either, and his hair had grown rather long.

‘I said, be quiet!’ barked Spittleworth, because the carpenter, who didn’t seem able to help himself, was still humming the national anthem. ‘I need another three feet, d’you hear me? One more left foot, and two right. Do you understand me, carpenter?’

Mr Dovetail stopped humming.

‘If I carve them, will you let me out to see my daughter, my lord?’ he asked in a hoarse voice.

Spittleworth smiled. It was clear to him that the man was going slowly mad, because only a madman would imagine he’d be let out after making another three Ickabog feet.

‘Of course I will,’ said Spittleworth. ‘I shall have the wood delivered to you first thing tomorrow morning. Work hard, carpenter. When you’re finished, I’ll let you out to see your daughter.’

When Spittleworth emerged from the dungeons, he found two soldiers waiting for him, just as he’d requested. Spittleworth led these men up to his private apartments, made sure Cankerby the footman wasn’t skulking about, locked the door, and turned to give the men their instructions.

‘There will be fifty ducats for each of you, if you succeed in this job,’ he said, and the soldiers looked excited.

‘You are to follow the Lady Eslanda, morning, noon, and night, you understand me? She must not know you are following her. You will wait for a moment when she is quite alone, so that you can kidnap her without anyone hearing or seeing anything. If she escapes, or if you are seen, I shall deny that I gave you this order, and put you to death.’

‘What do we do with her once we’ve got her?’ asked one of the soldiers, who no longer looked excited, but very scared.

‘Hmm,’ said Spittleworth, turning to look out of the window while he considered what best to do with Eslanda. ‘Well, a lady of the court isn’t the same as a butcher. The Ickabog can’t enter the palace and eat her… No, I think it best,’ said Spittleworth, a slow smile spreading over his crafty face, ‘if you take Lady Eslanda to my estate in the country. Send word when you’ve got her there, and I’ll join you.’

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 33: King Fred is Worried

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Little knowing of the new threat to their schemes, Spittleworth and Flapoon had just sat down to one of their usual sumptuous late-night dinners with the king. Fred was most alarmed to hear of the Ickabog’s attack on Baronstown, because it meant that the monster had strayed closer to the palace than ever before.

‘Ghastly business,’ said Flapoon, lifting an entire black pudding onto his plate.

‘Shocking, really,’ said Spittleworth, carving himself a slice of pheasant.

‘What I don’t understand,’ fretted Fred, ‘is how it slipped through the blockade!’

For, of course, the king had been told that a division of the Ickabog Defence Brigade was permanently camped round the edge of the marsh, to stop the Ickabog escaping into the rest of the country. Spittleworth, who’d been expecting Fred to raise this point, had his explanation ready.

‘I regret to say that two soldiers fell asleep on watch, Your Majesty. Taken unawares by the Ickabog, they were eaten whole.’

‘Suffering Saints!’ said Fred, horrified.

‘Having broken through the line,’ continued Spittleworth, ‘the monster headed south. We believe it was attracted to Baronstown because of the smell of meat. While there, it gobbled up some chickens, as well as the butcher and his wife.’

‘Dreadful, dreadful,’ said Fred with a shudder, pushing his plate away from him. ‘And then it slunk off back home to the marsh, did it?’

‘So our trackers tell us, sire,’ said Spittleworth, ‘but now that it’s tasted a butcher full of Baronstown sausage, we must prepare for it trying to break through the soldiers’ lines regularly – which is why I think we should double the number of men stationed there, sire. Sadly, that will mean doubling the Ickabog tax.’

Luckily for them, Fred was watching Spittleworth, so he didn’t see Flapoon smirk.

‘Yes… I suppose that makes sense,’ said the king.

He got to his feet and began roaming restlessly around the dining room. The lamplight made his costume, which today was of sky-blue silk with aquamarine buttons, shine beautifully. As he paused to admire himself in the mirror, Fred’s expression clouded.

‘Spittleworth,’ he said, ‘the people do still like me, don’t they?’

‘How can Your Majesty ask such a thing?’ said Spittleworth, with a gasp. ‘You’re the most beloved king in the whole of Cornucopia’s history!’

‘It’s just that… riding back from hunting, yesterday, I couldn’t help thinking that people didn’t seem quite as happy as usual to see me,’ said King Fred. ‘There were hardly any cheers, and only one flag.’

‘Give me their names and addresses,’ said Flapoon through a mouthful of black pudding, and he groped in his pockets for a pencil.

‘I don’t know their names and addresses, Flapoon,’ said Fred, who was now playing with a tassel on the curtains. ‘They were just people, you know, passing by. But it upset me, rather, and then, when I got back to the palace, I heard that the Day of Petition has been cancelled.’

‘Ah,’ said Spittleworth, ‘yes, I was going to explain that to Your Majesty…’

‘There’s no need,’ said Fred. ‘Lady Eslanda has already spoken to me about it.’

‘What?’ said Spittleworth, glaring at Flapoon. He’d given his friend strict instructions never to let Lady Eslanda near the king, because he was worried what she might tell him. Flapoon scowled and shrugged. Really, Spittleworth couldn’t expect him to be at the king’s side every minute of the day. A man needed the bathroom occasionally, after all.

‘Lady Eslanda told me that people are complaining that the Ickabog tax is too high. She says rumours are flying that there aren’t even any troops stationed in the north!’

‘Piffle and poppycock,’ said Spittleworth, though in fact it was perfectly true that there were no troops stationed in the north, and also true that there’d been even more complaints about the Ickabog tax, which was why he’d cancelled the Day of Petition. The last thing he wanted was for Fred to hear that he was losing popularity. He might take it into his foolish head to lower the taxes or, even worse, send people to investigate the imaginary camp in the north.

‘There are times, obviously, when two regiments swap over,’ said Spittleworth, thinking that he’d have to station some soldiers near the marsh now, to stop busybodies asking questions. ‘Possibly some foolish Marshlander saw a regiment riding away, and imagined that there was nobody left up there… Why don’t we triple the Ickabog tax, sire?’ asked Spittleworth, thinking that this would serve the complainers right. ‘After all, the monster did break through the lines last night! Then there can never again be any danger of a scarcity of men on the edge of the Marshlands and everyone will be happy.’

‘Yes,’ said King Fred uneasily. ‘Yes, that does make sense. I mean, if the monster can kill four people and some chickens in a single night…’

At this moment, Cankerby the footman entered the dining room and, with a low bow, whispered to Spittleworth that the Baronstown spy had just arrived with urgent news from the sausage-making city.

‘Your Majesty,’ said Spittleworth smoothly, ‘I must leave you. Nothing to worry about! A minor issue with my, ah, horse.’

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When Mr and Mrs Tenderloin’s neighbours woke up the next day and found chickens all over the road, they hurried to tell Tubby his birds had escaped. Imagine the neighbours’ horror when they found the enormous footprints, the blood and the feathers, the broken-down back door and no sign of either husband or wife.

Before an hour had passed, a huge crowd had congregated around Tubby’s empty house, all examining the monstrous footprints, the smashed-in door, and the wrecked furniture. Panic set in, and within a few hours, news of the Ickabog’s raid on a Baronstown butcher’s house was spreading north, south, east and west. Town criers rang their bells in the city squares, and within a couple of days, only the Marshlanders would be ignorant of the fact that the Ickabog had slunk south overnight and carried off two people.

Spittleworth’s Baronstown spy, who’d been mingling with the crowds all day to observe their reactions, sent word to his master that his plan had worked magnificently. However, in the early evening, just as the spy was thinking of heading off to the tavern for a celebratory sausage roll and a pint of beer, he noticed a group of men whispering together as they examined one of the Ickabog’s giant footprints. The spy sidled over.

‘Terrifying, isn’t it?’ the spy asked them. ‘The size of its feet! The length of its claws!’

One of Tubby’s neighbours straightened up, frowning.

‘It’s hopping,’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’ said the spy.

‘It’s hopping,’ repeated the neighbour. ‘Look. It’s the same left foot, over and over again. Either the Ickabog’s hopping, or…’

The man didn’t finish his sentence, but the look on his face alarmed the spy. Instead of heading for the tavern, he mounted his horse again, and galloped off towards the palace.

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 31: Disappearance of a Butcher

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That night, under cover of darkness, a party of horsemen dressed all in black rode out from Chouxville, headed by Major Roach. Hidden beneath a large bit of sacking on a wagon in their midst was the gigantic wooden foot, with its carved scales and long sharp claws.

At last they reached the outskirts of Baronstown. Now the riders – members of the Ickabog Defence Brigade whom Spittleworth had chosen for the job – slipped from their horses and covered the animals’ hooves with sacking to muffle the noise and the shape of their prints. Then they lifted the giant foot off the wagon, remounted, and carried it between them to the house where Tubby Tenderloin the butcher lived with his wife, which was luckily a little distance from its neighbours.

Several of the soldiers now tied up their horses, stole up to Tubby’s back door and forced entry, while the rest pressed the giant foot into the mud around his back gate.

Five minutes after the soldiers arrived, they carried Tubby and his wife, who had no children, out of their house, bound and gagged, then threw them onto the wagon. I may as well tell you now that Tubby and his wife were about to be killed, their bodies buried in the woods, in exactly the way Private Prodd had been supposed to dispose of Daisy. Spittleworth only kept alive those people for whom he had a use: Mr Dovetail might need to repair the Ickabog foot if it got damaged, and Captain Goodfellow and his friends might need to be dragged out again some day, to repeat their lies about the Ickabog. Spittleworth couldn’t imagine ever needing a treasonous sausage maker, though, so he’d ordered his murder. As for poor Mrs Tenderloin, Spittleworth barely considered her at all, but I’d like you to know that she was a very kind person, who babysat her friends’ children and sang in the local choir.

Once the Tenderloins had been taken away, the remaining soldiers entered the house and smashed up the furniture as though a giant creature had wrecked it, while the rest of the men broke down the back fence and pressed the giant foot into the soft soil around Tubby’s chicken coop, so that it appeared the prowling monster had also attacked the birds. One of the soldiers even stripped off his socks and boots, and made bare footprints in the soft earth, as though Tubby had rushed outside to protect his chickens. Finally, the same man cut off the head of one of the hens and made sure plenty of blood and feathers was spread around, before breaking down the side of the coop to allow the rest of the chickens to escape.

After pressing the giant foot many more times onto the mud outside Tubby’s house, so the monster appeared to have run away onto solid ground, the soldiers heaved Mr Dovetail’s creation back onto the wagon beside the soon-to-be-murdered butcher and his wife, remounted their horses, and disappeared into the night.

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 30: The Foot

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A month passed. Deep in the dungeons, Mr Dovetail worked in a kind of frenzy. He had to finish the monstrous wooden foot, so he could see Daisy again. He’d forced himself to believe that Spittleworth would keep his word, and let him leave the dungeon after he’d completed his task, even though a voice in his head kept saying, They’ll never let you go after this. Never.

To drive out fear, Mr Dovetail started singing the national anthem, over and over again:

‘Coooorn – ucopia, give praises to the king,

Coooorn – ucopia, lift up your voice and sing…’

His constant singing annoyed the other prisoners even more than the sound of his chisel and hammer. The now thin and ragged Captain Goodfellow begged him to stop, but Mr Dovetail paid no attention. He’d become a little delirious. He had a confused idea that if he showed himself a faithful subject of the king, Spittleworth might think him less of a danger, and release him. So the carpenter’s cell rang with the banging and scraping of his tools and the national anthem, and slowly but surely, a monstrous clawed foot took shape, with a long handle out of the top, so that a man on horseback could press it deep into soft ground.

When at last the wooden foot was finished, Spittleworth, Flapoon, and Major Roach came down into the dungeons to inspect it.

‘Yes,’ said Spittleworth slowly, examining the foot from every angle. ‘Very good indeed. What do you think, Roach?’

‘I think that’ll do very nicely, my lord,’ replied the major.

‘You’ve done well, Dovetail,’ Spittleworth told the carpenter. ‘I’ll tell the warder to give you extra rations tonight.’

‘But you said I’d go free when I finished,’ said Mr Dovetail, falling to his knees, pale and exhausted. ‘Please, my lord. Please. I have to see my daughter… please.’

Mr Dovetail reached for Lord Spittleworth’s bony hand, but Spittleworth snatched it back.

‘Don’t touch me, traitor. You should be grateful I didn’t have you put to death. I may yet, if this foot doesn’t do the trick – so if I were you, I’d pray my plan works.’

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 29: Mrs Beamish Worries

Next writing: The Ickabog – Chapter 31: Disappearance of a Butcher »

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Previous writing: « The Ickabog – Chapter 28: Ma Grunter

Next writing: The Ickabog – Chapter 30: The Foot »

Having made sure her front door was secure, Ma Grunter pulled the sack off her new charge.

Blinking in the sudden light, Daisy found herself in a narrow, rather dirty hallway, face-to-face with a very ugly old woman who was dressed all in black, a large brown wart with hairs growing out of it on the tip of her nose.

‘John!’ the old woman croaked, without taking her eyes off Daisy, and a boy much bigger and older than Daisy with a blunt, scowling face came shuffling into the hall, cracking his knuckles. ‘Go and tell the Janes upstairs to put another mattress in their room.’

‘Make one of the little brats do it,’ grunted John. ‘I ’aven’t ’ad breakfast.’

Ma Grunter suddenly swung her heavy, silver-handled cane at the boy’s head. Daisy expected to hear a horrible thud of silver on bone, but the boy ducked the cane neatly, as though he’d had a lot of practice, cracked his knuckles again and said sullenly: ‘Orl right, orl right.’ He disappeared up some rickety stairs.

‘What’s your name?’ said Ma Grunter, turning back to Daisy.

‘Daisy,’ said Daisy.

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Ma Grunter. ‘Your name is Jane.’

Daisy would soon find out that Ma Grunter did the same thing to every single child who arrived in her house. Every girl was rechristened Jane, and every boy was renamed John. The way the child reacted to being given a new name told Ma Grunter exactly what she needed to know about how hard it was going to be to break that child’s spirit.

Of course, the very tiny children who came to Ma Grunter simply agreed that their name was John or Jane, and quickly forgot that they’d been called anything else. Homeless children and lost children, who could tell that being John or Jane was the price of having a roof over their heads, were also quick to agree to the change.

But every so often Ma Grunter met a child who wouldn’t accept their new name without a fight, and she knew, before Daisy even opened her mouth, that the girl was going to be one of them. There was a nasty, proud look about the newcomer, and, while skinny, she looked strong, standing there in her overalls with her fists clenched.

‘My name,’ said Daisy, ‘is Daisy Dovetail. I was named after my mother’s favourite flower.’

‘Your mother is dead,’ said Ma Grunter, because she always told the children in her care that their parents were dead. It was best if the little wretches didn’t think there was anybody to run away to.

‘That’s true,’ said Daisy, her heart hammering very fast. ‘My mother is dead.’

‘And so is your father,’ said Ma Grunter.

The horrible old woman seemed to swim before Daisy’s eyes. She’d had nothing to eat since the previous lunchtime and had spent a night of terror on Prodd’s wagon. Nevertheless, she said in a cold, clear voice: ‘My father’s alive. I’m Daisy Dovetail, and my father lives in Chouxville.’

She had to believe her father was still there. She couldn’t let herself doubt it, because if her father was dead, then all light would disappear from the world, forever.

‘No, he isn’t,’ said Ma Grunter, raising her cane. ‘Your father’s as dead as a doornail and your name is Jane.’

‘My name—’ began Daisy, but with a sudden whoosh, Ma Grunter’s cane came swinging at her head. Daisy ducked as she’d seen the big boy do, but the cane swung back again, and this time it hit Daisy painfully on the ear, and knocked her sideways.

‘Let’s try that again,’ said Ma Grunter. ‘Repeat after me. “My father is dead and my name is Jane.”’

‘I won’t,’ shouted Daisy, and before the cane could swing back at her, she’d darted under Ma Grunter’s arm and run off into the house, hoping that the back door might not have bolts on it. In the kitchen she found two pale, frightened-looking children, a boy and a girl, ladling a dirty green liquid into bowls, and a door with just as many chains and padlocks on it as the other. Daisy turned and ran back to the hall, dodged Ma Grunter and her cane, then sped upstairs, where more thin, pale children were cleaning and making beds with threadbare sheets. Ma Grunter was already climbing the stairs behind her.

‘Say it,’ croaked Ma Grunter. ‘Say, “My father is dead and my name is Jane.”’

‘My father’s alive and my name is Daisy!’ shouted Daisy, now spotting a hatch in the ceiling that she suspected led to an attic. Snatching a feather duster out of the hand of a scared girl, she poked the hatch open. A rope ladder fell, which Daisy climbed, pulling it up after her and slamming the attic door, so that Ma Grunter and her cane couldn’t reach her. She could hear the old woman cackling below, and ordering a boy to stand guard over the hatch, to make sure Daisy didn’t come out.

Later, Daisy would discover that the children gave each other extra names, so they knew which John or Jane they were talking about. The big boy now standing guard over the attic hatch was the same one Daisy had seen downstairs. His nickname among the other children was Basher John, for the way he bullied the smaller children. Basher John was by way of being a deputy for Ma Grunter, and now he called up to Daisy, telling her children had died of starvation in that attic and that she’d find their skeletons if she looked hard enough.

The ceiling of Ma Grunter’s attic was so low that Daisy had to crouch. It was also very dirty, but there was a small hole in the roof through which a shaft of sunlight fell. Daisy wriggled over to this and put her eye to it. Now she could see the skyline of Jeroboam. Unlike Chouxville, where the buildings were mostly sugar-white, this was a city of dark-grey stone. Two men were reeling along the street below, bellowing a popular drinking song.

‘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!’

Daisy sat with her eye pressed against the spyhole for an hour, until Ma Grunter came and banged on the hatch with her cane.

‘What is your name?’

‘Daisy Dovetail!’ bellowed Daisy.

And every hour afterwards, the question came, and the answer remained the same.

However, as the hours wore by, Daisy began to feel light-headed with hunger. Every time she shouted ‘Daisy Dovetail’ back at Ma Grunter, her voice was weaker. At last, she saw through her spyhole in the attic that it was becoming dark. She was very thirsty now, and she had to face the fact that, if she kept refusing to say her name was Jane, there really might be a skeleton in the attic for Basher John to frighten other children with.

So the next time Ma Grunter banged on the attic hatch with her cane and asked what Daisy’s name was, she answered, ‘Jane.’

‘And is your father alive?’ asked Ma Grunter.

Daisy crossed her fingers and said:

‘No.’

‘Very good,’ said Ma Grunter, pulling open the hatch, so that the rope ladder fell down. ‘Come down here, Jane.’

When Daisy was standing beside her again, the old lady cuffed her around the ear. ‘That’s for being a nasty, lying, filthy little brat. Now go and drink your soup, wash up the bowl, then get to bed.’

Daisy gulped down a small bowl of cabbage soup, which was the nastiest thing she’d ever eaten, washed the bowl in the greasy barrel that Ma Grunter kept for doing dishes, then went back upstairs. There was a spare mattress on the floor of the girls’ bedroom, so she crept inside while all the other girls watched her, and got under the threadbare blanket, fully dressed, because the room was very cold.

Daisy found herself looking into the kind blue eyes of a girl her own age, with a gaunt face.

‘You lasted much longer than most,’ whispered the girl. She had an accent Daisy had never heard before. Later, Daisy would learn that the girl was a Marshlander.

‘What’s your name?’ Daisy whispered. ‘Your real name?’

The girl considered Daisy with those huge, forget-me-not eyes.

‘We’re not allowed to say.’

‘I promise I won’t tell,’ whispered Daisy.

The girl stared at her. Just when Daisy thought she wasn’t going to answer, the girl whispered:

‘Martha.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Martha,’ whispered Daisy. ‘I’m Daisy Dovetail and my father’s still alive.’

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When Daisy arrived home from school that afternoon, playing with her bandalore as she went, she headed as usual to her father’s workshop to tell him about her day. However, to her surprise, she found the workshop locked up. Assuming that Mr Dovetail had finished work early and was back in the cottage, she walked in through the front door with her schoolbooks under her arm.

Daisy stopped dead in the doorway, staring around. All the furniture was gone, as were the pictures on the walls, the rug on the floor, the lamps, and even the stove.

She opened her mouth to call her father, but in that instant, a sack was thrown over her head and a hand clamped over her mouth. Her schoolbooks and her bandalore fell with a series of thuds to the floor. Daisy was lifted off her feet, struggling wildly, then carried out of the house, and slung into the back of a wagon.

‘If you make a noise,’ said a rough voice in her ear, ‘we’ll kill your father.’

Daisy, who’d drawn breath into her lungs to scream, let it out quietly instead. She felt the wagon lurch, and heard the jingling of a harness and trotting hooves as they began to move. By the turn that the wagon took, Daisy knew that they were heading out of the City-Within-The-City, and by the sounds of market traders and other horses, she realised they were moving into wider Chouxville. Though more frightened than she’d ever been in her life, Daisy nevertheless forced herself to concentrate on every turn, every sound, and every smell, so she could get some idea of where she was being taken.

After a while, the horse’s hooves were no longer falling on cobblestones, but on an earthy track, and the sugar-sweet air of Chouxville was gone, replaced by the green, loamy smell of the countryside.

The man who’d kidnapped Daisy was a large, rough member of the Ickabog Defence Brigade called Private Prodd. Spittleworth had told Prodd to ‘get rid of the little Dovetail girl’, and Prodd had understood Spittleworth to mean that he was to kill her. (Prodd was quite right to think this. Spittleworth had selected Prodd for the job of murdering Daisy because Prodd was fond of using his fists and seemed not to care whom he hurt.)

However, as he drove through the countryside, passing woods and forests where he might easily strangle Daisy and bury her body, it slowly dawned on Private Prodd that he wasn’t going to be able to do it. He happened to have a little niece around Daisy’s age, of whom he was very fond. In fact, every time he imagined himself strangling Daisy, he seemed to see his niece Rosie in his mind’s eye, pleading for her life. So instead of turning off the dirt track into the woods, Prodd drove the wagon onwards, racking his brains as to what to do with Daisy.

Inside the flour sack, Daisy smelled the sausages of Baronstown mingling with the cheese fumes of Kurdsburg, and wondered which of the two she was being taken to. Her father had occasionally taken her to buy cheese and meat in these famous cities. She believed that if she could somehow give the driver the slip when he lifted her down from the wagon, she’d be able to make her way back to Chouxville in a couple of days. Her frantic mind kept returning to her father, and where he was, and why all the furniture in their house had been removed, but she forced herself to concentrate on the journey the wagon was making instead, to be sure of finding her way home again.

However, hard as she listened out for the sound of the horse’s hooves on the stone bridge over the Fluma that connected Baronstown and Kurdsburg, it never came, because instead of entering either city, Private Prodd passed them by. He’d just had a brainwave about what to do with Daisy. So, skirting the city of sausagemakers, he drove on north. Slowly, the meat and cheese smells disappeared from the air and night began to fall.

Private Prodd had remembered an old woman who lived on the outskirts of Jeroboam, which happened to be his hometown. Everyone called this old woman Ma Grunter. She took in orphans, and was paid one ducat a month for each child she had living with her. No boy or girl had ever succeeded in running away from Ma Grunter’s house, and it was this that made Prodd decide to take Daisy there. The last thing he wanted was Daisy finding her way back home to Chouxville, because Spittleworth was likely to be furious that Prodd hadn’t done what he was told.

Though so scared, cold and uncomfortable in the back of the wagon, the rocking had lulled Daisy to sleep, but suddenly she jerked awake again. She could smell something different on the air now, something she didn’t much like, and after a while she identified it as wine fumes, which she recognised from the rare occasions when Mr Dovetail had a drink. They must be approaching Jeroboam, a city she’d never visited. Through the small holes in the sack she could see daybreak. The wagon was soon jolting over cobblestones again, and after a while it came to a halt.

At once, Daisy tried to wriggle out of the back of the wagon onto the ground, but before she’d hit the street, Private Prodd seized her. Then he carried her, struggling, to the door of Ma Grunter’s, which he pounded with a heavy fist.

‘All right, all right, I’m coming,’ came a high, cracked voice from inside the house.

There came the noise of many bolts and chains being removed and Ma Grunter was revealed in the doorway, leaning heavily on a silver-topped cane – though, of course, Daisy, being still in the sack, couldn’t see her.

‘New child for you, Ma,’ said Prodd, carrying the wriggling sack into Ma Grunter’s hallway, which smelled of boiled cabbage and cheap wine.

Now, you might think Ma Grunter would be alarmed to see a child in a sack carried into her house, but in fact, the kidnapped children of so-called traitors had found their way to her before. She didn’t care what a child’s story was; all she cared about was the one ducat a month the authorities paid her for keeping them. The more children she packed into her tumbledown hovel, the more wine she could afford, which was really all she cared about. So she held out her hand and croaked, ‘Five ducat placement fee,’ – which was what she always asked for, if she could tell somebody really wanted to get rid of a child.

Prodd scowled, handed over five ducats, and left without another word. Ma Grunter slammed the door behind him.

As he climbed back onto his wagon, Prodd heard the rattle of Ma Grunter’s chains and the scraping of her locks. Even if it had cost him half his month’s pay, Prodd was glad to have got rid of the problem of Daisy Dovetail, and he drove off as fast as he could, back to the capital.

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