The Princess Rules Read online

  It wasn’t the end as far as Florizella was concerned.

  She felt that she owed the wolves a debt of gratitude. They could have attacked her, but instead they had shared their cave with her. They could have eaten her up, but instead they had kept her warm.

  So, while the trader was in the castle apologising to the king and queen, Florizella went to the kitchen and fetched a strong basket, lined it with a soft tea towel (which she took without asking!), whistled for Jellybean and set off for the Purple Forest.

  Why did she need the strong basket and the soft tea towel?

  Wait and see.

  Florizella had no difficulty in finding the track, and as soon as she came to the tree that had been struck by lightning she tied Jellybean to one of the fallen branches and set off up the little hill.

  Outside the wolves’ cave she stopped and called softly. If they were still alive she didn’t really want to meet them again. She wasn’t altogether sure that they would be so hospitable on a second visit.

  But there was no noise from the cave except a very soft whimpering, which sounded like cubs.

  It sounded like four very hungry cubs.

  Florizella forgot all about being careful and plunged into the narrow entrance of the cave, blinking so that she could see in the gloom.

  Four little wolf cubs came squirming up and climbed all over her riding boots. Florizella bent down and stroked them. To her horror they were not fat little creatures any more. They were thin, so thin that she could feel their sharp little ribs and the bony knobbly bits on their spines. They had not been fed for several days.

  Florizella put down the basket and, one by one, lifted the skinny, squirming cubs into it. (That was what the basket was for!) When she picked it up, it was surprisingly heavy. She carried it carefully down the hill to where Jellybean was waiting.

  Jellybean didn’t really like carrying a basket of wolves, but he went as steady as a rock all the way back to the castle, because he knew that Florizella had only one hand on the reins. And Florizella was lucky when she got home for there was no one in the courtyard, and no one on the stairs. She got the basket with the cubs in it all the way up to her room, and no one spotted her.

  Then she went straight downstairs to the kitchen and told the cook that she was starving hungry.

  ‘You can have a slice of pie,’ he said, pointing to the larder. ‘There’s a nice steak-and-mushroom pie left over from lunch. Or I’m just about to take a chocolate cake out of the oven.’

  ‘I’ll have some pie, please,’ said Florizella, and the cook was surprised because Florizella adored chocolate cake, but was usually a bit so-so about steak and mushroom.

  Florizella slipped into the larder and took the whole pie – a massive great round one. She carried it carefully up to her room and cut it into four portions and put each slice on the floor. The little wolf cubs fell on it like mad things, and in an amazingly short time the pie had gone and there were four little cubs, with bellies as tight as drums, snoozing on the carpet.

  Florizella fetched a shawl from a drawer and tucked them up under her bed where they would not be noticed, and went down to her supper.

  When Florizella came back from supper, she discovered that keeping wolf cubs is no easy job.

  Keeping wolf cubs in secret is impossible.

  They had made horrid smelly poos all over the floor, which she had to clean up with paper and a bowl of water. They had hunted her bedcover and pulled it to the floor and killed it. One of them had bitten and swung on the curtains, dragging them right off the pole. And worse than all of that … they were hungry again!

  As soon as they saw Florizella, they scrambledall over her, making pitiful whines, begging for more food. Florizella looked down at them like a distracted mother and said, ‘But you’ve only just been fed!’

  The cubs didn’t care. There is a reason why people say, ‘I am as hungry as a wolf,’ and Florizella understood it now. These cubs were wolves and they specialised in being hungry.

  All the time.

  Florizella scowled at them. She knew she would have to go back down to the kitchen. And she was wondering if the cook might not find it a bit odd.

  He did.

  He found it very odd indeed that Princess Florizella should have taken a massive steak-and-mushroom pie up to her room before her supper. He found it very odd that she should have brought the pie dish back quite empty. Then she had eaten a good supper – and one of the footmen had seen her sneak the chop bones off her plate into her pocket.

  Now, less than an hour later, Florizella was in the kitchen again, asking for something to eat.

  The cook looked at her suspiciously.

  ‘I have chocolate ice cream,’ he said. ‘Or cheesecake.’

  Florizella adored cheesecake. She didn’t mind chocolate ice cream, either.

  ‘Do you have any meat?’ she asked. ‘Any of those chops left over from supper?’

  ‘I have twelve chops,’ he said, ‘but they’re not cooked.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right!’ said Florizella hastily, thinking of the hungry little wolf cubs upstairs who would love raw lamb chops. ‘Even better!’

  And to the cook’s utter amazement, Florizella went to the larder and came out with a bowl of uncooked lamb chops, and took them to her room as if she had been having midnight feasts of raw meat all her life.

  The cook had an idea.

  But he didn’t say anything yet.

  Next morning when the cook came down to make breakfast, he found that a great haunch of venison had gone. It had been hanging in the larder and it would have been venison pie for thirty people that evening. One of the maids had seen Princess Florizella taking it upstairs.

  The cook went to find the king and queen.

  ‘I am sorry to have to tell you, but I am afraid that Princess Florizella is under a lion enchantment,’ he said as soon as he was in the royal breakfast parlour.

  ‘In the past twenty-four hours, she has taken from my larder: a steak-and-mushroom pie, a dozen raw lamb chops and a haunch of venison that would have served thirty people.’

  The king and queen gasped.

  ‘What’s a lion enchantment?’ asked the king.

  ‘Someone has put her under a spell to turn her into a lion,’ the queen explained. ‘But surely it can’t be true! Who would do such a thing to Florizella? She’s always been so popular, except for that unfortunate incident with a python.’

  ‘Send for the royal enchanter!’ said the king. ‘This is his sort of thing.’

  (In the Seven Kingdoms you can send for an enchanter like you can send for a plumber or an electrician in our world. They have magic there, but no electricity. (Which would you rather have?) It’s great for spells, but a nuisance when it’s dark, and of course there’s no TV, no phones or drones, not even vacuum cleaners or electric toothbrushes. But there are magicians. The royal palace always has two enchanters on call, day and night, in case of visits from wicked fairy godmothers, accidents with spinning wheels, the disappearance of girls or the arrival of armies of gnomes – the sort of things that happen in fairy tales and are very inconvenient.)

  The royal enchanter came at once, looking grave.

  ‘Eating meat to excess,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘How does she smell?’

  The queen thought hard. Florizella had popped into her room that morning, and after a night with four wolf cubs she had smelled a bit … a bit …

  ‘Whiffy!’ she said honestly.

  The enchanter nodded. ‘Any sign of a mane growing round her neck and head?’ he asked.

  The queen looked horrified. What with hiding the venison bone and mopping up after the wolf cubs, Florizella had not bothered to brush her hair that morning. It didn’t look in the least like a lion’s mane – but frightened people often get things wrong.

  ‘Oh dear!’ the queen said. ‘And her nails!’

  She meant that they were so dirty – Florizella had torn up the venison into little pieces for the wol