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Baffled, the wicked queen slumped forward; and the trolley moved. The housekeeper had forgotten to apply the brake.
Quickly, the wicked queen made a mental assessment of the odds. They weren’t good; she stood about as much chance as an egg in a game of squash. But they were still better than nothing. She took a deep breath, threw her weight against the trolley and pushed for all she was worth.
‘Hey!’ shouted the housekeeper, dropping her mop and making a grab for the rail. ‘You stop that, or I’ll—’
Supermarket trolley syndrome. Honestly, the wicked queen didn’t mean to do it, but the navigational matrix of any heavily laden independent wheel carriage when savagely nudged is at best erratic, usually uncontrollable — or, to put it another way, any sudden movement and they home in on people’s ankles like sharks in bloodied water. ‘Yow!’ the housekeeper shrieked, as the trolley ca
Occupational hazard, the wicked queen rationalised as she shoved against the dead weight of the trolley. A job like hers, on her feet all day, stands to reason the poor soul’s got bad ankles. She felt awful about it, up to a point; the point being the sharp one on the end of that very big knife she’d had digging in her throat not so very long ago. When she considered that, she didn’t feel quite so bad after all.
She still had the minor problem of being chained to a very heavy trolley, which she was having to push along at one hell of a lick just to keep the momentum going. She’d reached the stage by now where the thing was moving quite well, but she couldn’t help feeling that any attempt to steer it, for example round a corner, was going to be fraught with unpleasant difficulties. Stopping it in anything less than a hundred yards of clear, uncluttered straight was more or less out of the question, unless a messy and spectacular crash counted as a stop for the purposes of the exercise. All in all, it was an unhappy state of affairs, and she couldn’t help feeling that she was now so thoroughly settled into the shit that she could quite legitimately apply for citizenship and a work permit.
So preoccupied was she with this train of thought that she didn’t notice the door until it was too late.
The results were quite spectacular. The trolley hit the door, crumpled up like the sacrificial front end of a Volvo, and came to a juddering halt. The door, having auditioned unsuccessfully for the part of immovable object, got out of the way in a jumble of flying splinters, just in time to let the remains of the trolley come skidding through on its side. At some point in all this, the struts that supported the handle must have come under a sufficient degree of torque to pull the heads of the retaining rivets clean through seventy-five thousandths of an inch of steel tubing, leaving the handle (and, incidentally, the wicked queen) conveniently behind.
Fortuitous, you might say.
The queen stood up and checked herself for damage. There was something wrong with her left knee and her ribs ached; but the chain linking the handcuffs had broken and she no longer had the housekeeper’s humming to contend with, so on balance she was in better shape than she had been. After a quick glance back through what was left of the door (about enough to provide sticks for two dozen ice lollies), she set off at an express limp in the opposite direction.
Fairly soon she found herself standing in what could only be the great hall of the castle. There was a wide oak table, marginally shorter than the Ml but much more highly polished, and beyond that a raised dais with another long oak table ru
As soon as she’d made the co
Because this was, of course, the sword fighting area of the castle. Build a great hall to these dimensions and furnish it in this ma
The queen’s first instinct was to hide under a side-table, but she resisted it; fortunately for her, since it was one of the first casualties of the duel. Swordfighter A turned it over and ducked behind it, swordfighter B ran it through, almost but not quite kebabing his opponent, and while he was struggling to pull his sword out again, swordfighter A aimed a doozy of a backhand slash at his head, missing him by inches and slicing off one of the table’s legs. By the time they’d finished picking on it and had moved on to beating the bejabers out of a rather fine elm-backed settle, it’d have had trouble getting a job as a drinks mat. The duellists, needless to say, didn’t seem to give a damn what they smashed up, thereby illustrating the old adage that good fencers make bad neighbours.
The wicked queen cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.
The duellists froze in mid-stroke, turned and looked at her. They were more or less identical; same clothes, same hairstyle, same pencil moustache on the upper lip. Briefly the queen wondered which one was the hero and which was the villain; nothing to choose between them. For all she knew, they took turns.
‘Well?’ said A.
‘Sorry to butt in when you’re obviously busy,’ the wicked queen said sweetly, ‘but I was wondering, could you very sweetly point me in the direction of the way out of this castle? I’d appreciate that ever so much.’
By the looks of it, the duellists weren’t sure what to make of the interruption, though to judge by the somewhat hostile glint in their eyes, mincemeat was probably top of their list of preferences.
‘And about time too,’ said A, irritably. ‘We couldn’t wait any longer so we started without you.’
‘Ah,’ said the queen. ‘Gosh.’
The duellists glowered at her. B tapped his foot on the flagstones.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Get on with it, girl. Now you’re here you might as well.’
The queen converted her bewildered gawp into a charming smile. ‘I think I may not be quite up to speed here,’ she said. ‘What exactly is it you want me to do?’
A’s face creased into an Oh-for-pity’s-sake expression. ‘Scream, of course,’ he said. ‘Then, when he’s knocked the sword out of my hand and he’s getting ready to stab me, you bash him over the head with a candlestick.’
The famous imaginary light bulb so popular with cartoonists lit up in the queen’s brain with an almost audible snap. ‘How dreadfully slow of me,’ she said. ‘All right, then, here goes.’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘EEEEEEEEE!’ she said.
The duellists looked at each other.
‘I know,’ said B with a wry smile. ‘But she’s all I could get at short notice.’
‘Oh,’ A replied. ‘What happened to the usual girl?’
‘It’s her mother’s birthday. Ready?’
‘Ready.’
Immediately, the fight resumed. This time, the casualties included an alabaster figure of St Cecilia (no great loss), half a dozen specialist matchwood chairs (guaranteed to shatter at the slightest touch or your money back) and, needless to say, the bell-rope (with A halfway up it). The wicked queen, who had been following the moves carefully, recognised her cue, selected the likeliest-looking candlestick, sneaked up behind the duellists while they were locked in one of those mechanical-advantage arm-wrestles and did her stuff. There was a deep, clunking noise. The swordfighter she’d just clobbered turned round.