More Vengeance
As soon as they were gone, Curdie brought the creatures back to the
servants' hall, and told them to eat up everything on the table. It was
a sight to see them all standing round it--except such as had to get
upon it--eating and drinking, each after its fashion, without a smile,
or a word, or a glance of fellowship in the act. A very few moments
served to make everything eatable vanish, and then Curdie requested
them to clean house, and the page who stood by to assist them.
Every one set about it except Ballbody: he could do nothing at
cleaning, for the more he rolled, the more he spread the dirt. Curdie
was curious to know what he had been, and how he had come to be such as
he was: but he could only conjecture that he was a gluttonous alderman
whom nature had treated homeopathically. And now there was such a
cleaning and clearing out of neglected places, such a burying and
burning of refuse, such a rinsing of jugs, such a swilling of sinks,
and such a flushing of drains as would have delighted the eyes of all
true housekeepers and lovers of cleanliness generally.
Curdie meantime was with the king, telling him all he had done. They
had heard a little noise, but not much, for he had told the avengers to
repress outcry as much as possible; and they had seen to it that the
more anyone cried out the more he had to cry out upon, while the
patient ones they scarcely hurt at all.
Having promised His Majesty and Her Royal Highness a good breakfast,
Curdie now went to finish the business. The courtiers must be dealt
with. A few who were the worst, and the leaders of the rest, must be
made examples of; the others should be driven to the street.
He found the chiefs of the conspiracy holding a final consultation in
the smaller room off the hall. These were the lord chamberlain, the
attorney-general, the master of the horse, and the king's private
secretary: the lord chancellor and the rest, as foolish as faithless,
were but the tools of these.
The housemaid had shown him a little closet, opening from a passage
behind, where he could overhear all that passed in that room; and now
Curdie heard enough to understand that they had determined, in the dead
of that night, rather in the deepest dark before the morning, to bring
a certain company of soldiers into the palace, make away with the king,
secure the princess, announce the sudden death of His Majesty, read as
his the will they had drawn up, and proceed to govern the country at
their ease, and with results: they would at once levy severer taxes,
and pick a quarrel with the most powerful of their neighbours.
Everything settled, they agreed to retire, and have a few hours' quiet
sleep first--all but the secretary, who was to sit up and call them at
the proper moment. Curdie allowed them half an hour to get to bed, and
then set about completing his purgation of the palace.
First he called Lina, and opened the door of the room where the
secretary sat. She crept in, and laid herself down against it. When
the secretary, rising to stretch his legs, caught sight of her eyes, he
stood frozen with terror. She made neither motion nor sound.
Gathering courage, and taking the thing for a spectral illusion, he
made a step forward. She showed her other teeth, with a growl neither
more than audible nor less than horrible. The secretary sank fainting
into a chair. He was not a brave man, and besides, his conscience had
gone over to the enemy, and was sitting against the door by Lina.
To the lord chamberlain's door next, Curdie conducted the legserpent,
and let him in.
Now His Lordship had had a bedstead made for himself, sweetly fashioned
of rods of silver gilt: upon it the legserpent found him asleep, and
under it he crept. But out he came on the other side, and crept over
it next, and again under it, and so over it, under it, over it, five or
six times, every time leaving a coil of himself behind him, until he
had softly folded all his length about the lord chamberlain and his
bed. This done, he set up his head, looking down with curved neck
right over His Lordship's, and began to hiss in his face.
He woke in terror unspeakable, and would have started up but the moment
he moved, the legserpent drew his coils closer, and closer still, and
drew and drew until the quaking traitor heard the joints of his
bedstead grinding and gnarring. Presently he persuaded himself that it
was only a horrid nightmare, and began to struggle with all his
strength to throw it off. Thereupon the legserpent gave his hooked
nose such a bite that his teeth met through it--but it was hardly
thicker than the bowl of a spoon; and then the vulture knew that he was
in the grasp of his enemy the snake, and yielded.
As soon as he was quiet the legserpent began to untwist and retwist, to
uncoil and recoil himself, swinging and swaying, knotting and relaxing
himself with strangest curves and convolutions, always, however,
leaving at least one coil around his victim. At last he undid himself
entirely, and crept from the bed. Then first the lord chamberlain
discovered that his tormentor had bent and twisted the bedstead, legs
and canopy and all, so about him that he was shut in a silver cage out
of which it was impossible for him to find a way. Once more, thinking
his enemy was gone, he began to shout for help. But the instant he
opened his mouth his keeper darted at him and bit him, and after three
or four such essays, he lay still.
The master of the horse Curdie gave in charge to the tapir. When the
soldier saw him enter--for he was not yet asleep--he sprang from his
bed, and flew at him with his sword. But the creature's hide was
invulnerable to his blows, and he pecked at his legs with his proboscis
until he jumped into bed again, groaning, and covered himself up; after
which the tapir contented himself with now and then paying a visit to
his toes.
As for the attorney-general, Curdie led to his door a huge spider,
about two feet long in the body, which, having made an excellent
supper, was full of webbing. The attorney-general had not gone to bed,
but sat in a chair asleep before a great mirror. He had been trying
the effect of a diamond star which he had that morning taken from the
jewel room. When he woke he fancied himself paralysed; every limb,
every finger even, was motionless: coils and coils of broad spider
ribbon bandaged his members to his body, and all to the chair. In the
glass he saw himself wound about with slavery infinite. On a footstool
a yard off sat the spider glaring at him.
Clubhead had mounted guard over the butler, where he lay tied hand and
foot under the third cask. From that cask he had seen the wine run
into a great bath, and therein he expected to be drowned. The doctor,
with his crushed leg, needed no one to guard him.
And now Curdie proceeded to the expulsion of the rest. Great men or
underlings, he treated them all alike. From room to room over the
house he went, and sleeping or waking took the man by the hand. Such
was the state to which a year of wicked rule had reduced the moral
condition of the court, that in it all he found but three with human
hands. The possessors of these he allowed to dress themselves and
depart in peace. When they perceived his mission, and how he was
backed, they yielded.
Then commenced a general hunt, to clear the house of the vermin. Out of
their beds in their night clothing, out of their rooms, gorgeous
chambers or garret nooks, the creatures hunted them. Not one was
allowed to escape. Tumult and noise there was little, for fear was too
deadly for outcry. Ferreting them out everywhere, following them
upstairs and downstairs, yielding no instant of repose except upon the
way out, the avengers persecuted the miscreants, until the last of them
was shivering outside the palace gates, with hardly sense enough left
to know where to turn.
When they set out to look for shelter, they found every inn full of the
servants expelled before them, and not one would yield his place to a
superior suddenly levelled with himself. Most houses refused to admit
them on the ground of the wickedness that must have drawn on them such
a punishment; and not a few would have been left in the streets all
night, had not Derba, roused by the vain entreaties at the doors on
each side of her cottage, opened hers, and given up everything to them.
The lord chancellor was only too glad to share a mattress with a
stableboy, and steal his bare feet under his jacket.
In the morning Curdie appeared, and the outcasts were in terror,
thinking he had come after them again. But he took no notice of them:
his object was to request Derba to go to the palace: the king required
her services. She need take no trouble about her cottage, he said; the
palace was henceforward her home: she was the king's chatelaine over
men and maidens of his household. And this very morning she must cook
His Majesty a nice breakfast.