“But I would have learned a great deal.”
Which did not really satisfy Princess Floralinda.
Come that lunchtime, she felt so horrible that she was certain dying was better than having to put her hands in a fresh mixture of citron-peel and hot water. That whole dusty little tower room reeked of oranges until she wanted to weep from it. If the late Princess Mellarose had felt herself killed by oranges, Floralinda felt sure that she was doubly dead from them; but the little fairy seemed so absorbed in skinning the orange over and over again, and arranging some of the long strips to dry in the sun, and amusing itself by separating the pith and the peel, that Floralinda did not feel it in her power to call a halt. But this time she was careful to keep the chamber-pot next to her, and began to anticipate the pain, which for a princess was shocking; for your average princess can’t anticipate pain, even if she has pricked her finger on a spindle half a dozen times, or slept on hard peas for half a year.
In the early afternoon she slept a little, woken only when the diamond-tipped dragon decided to roar. At dinnertime Cobweb made her steep her hands again, until Floralinda was beginning to feel less like princess and more like a soup-bone.
This dreadful process went on for days. On the third day, Floralinda felt a great deal worse, and could barely leave the bed that morning, and couldn’t at all that night, although Cobweb chivvied her unmercifully to do. She ran such a fever that the bedclothes were wet through. But on the fourth day Floralinda began to feel better, and to want more of the milk, and more of the bread.
On the fifth morning she was quite cheerful. The holes in her hands were still scabby, and her bruises had gone bright yellow; but the swelling in her hands was not half so bad, and there was no greenish tinge. It must be said that the fairy Cobweb, who had amassed quite a large amount of pith by this point, was quite disappointed.
“We must count it a success,” it said bracingly.
Princess Floralinda, sitting up to eat her breakfast (wheaten bread in milk, for nourishment) enjoyed the breeze coming through the tower window, and the fresh sunlight, and the bed-linen set to dry in it, even if that had forced her to take off the valance and sit on the slats of the bed. Princesses are also not often just glad to be alive; they don’t notice it. She should have still been very unhappy about her situation. And of course she was; only she was so relieved that she was not going to succumb to the goblins after all, even if they had managed to give her a raging case of proto-septicaemia.
She was sitting in her petticoats and spooning mush to her mouth, and she thought about a thought that had been slowly rolling around in her head, which was also quite a feat for some princesses—
“Cobweb,” she said, “did you say that you were in trouble, back in Fairyland?”
“No,” said Cobweb instantly.
But Floralinda was not so stupid as all that, and thought about it as hard as she possibly could, over her bread and milk.
“But I heard you say it—quite distinctly.”
Cobweb hedged, “Are you certain? Everyone knows princesses hear all sorts of things. Talking horse’s heads and flights of swans, and so on.”
But Floralinda said Yes; so Cobweb wiped its hands clean of orange-juice, and smiled at her, contriving to appear quite sweet, with its greeny-golden curls looking like coloured spun sugar in the morning light, and its skin looking more like the creamy heart of a lily than ever. But Cobweb, for having all of the beauty a fairy might have, was not actually very good at smiling. A smile on Cobweb’s face always looked a bit like last season’s hat on this season’s gown; it spoiled the whole effect.
“It’s true,” it said heavily, dropping the attempt at once. “I am in trouble already. They say I am not good at being a bottom-of-the-garden fairy, and that if I don’t keep my nose clean I’ll have to give it up and do something menial, like paint black bibs on boy sparrows, or put the hairs on traveller’s joy. Paint sparrows! It’s not my fault I’m so progressive.”
“But Cobweb,” said Floralinda, “what did you do?”
The fairy sighed, and it was not a very penitent sigh, but a sigh that remembered something beautiful, and was sorry not to see it again.
“I learned how to make things burn,” said Cobweb, dreamily.
Being a naturally tidy girl, once she felt better Princess Floralinda set to making the tower spick-and-span; it would be dreadful if a prince managed to get up all thirty-nine flights—though he would now find flight thirty-nine rather easy—only to think her some kind of slattern. She cleaned everything with hot water, and washed her hair with orange-peels, and made sure there was no trace anywhere of her having been ill; and though Cobweb complained terribly, and wasn’t a bit of help, Floralinda’s heart felt lighter at flapping her silk gown out and getting it completely dry. The silk gown was a perfect fright now; it used to be that Floralinda felt the need to retire a dress if it had a snag or if the lace had touched on a nail, but this gown was now all of Floralinda’s wardrobe, and there was no thought of retiring it. Having hot water made things a great deal easier, but washing everything in plain hot water made everything dry a bit stiff, and washing everything in orange-water made everything dry a bit stiff and smelling like oranges and tinged yellow on top of that.
Wishing to be altogether tidy, Floralinda addressed the issue of the now extremely dead goblin at the bottom of the stairs. Having ascertained bravely that there were no more goblins left, she also addressed the issue of the trapdoor she had found earlier, which lifted with surprising ease. If she had known what flight thirty-eight contained, she might never have tried it at all.
It opened on to a ladder, and a great empty dark space that she did not want to investigate without a candle; and then, faced with the nasty corpse of the goblin, Floralinda did something very silly and not very far-thinking. She did not want to drag the goblin back upstairs and get any mess on the floor she had scrubbed, and so she heaved the thing down that black space instead. She regretted it the moment she did it, thinking, ‘Oh, but I shall step in it later, if I ever go down there!’; but then she stopped thinking about it very hard, given that she had also recently learned how to make toast, and wanted some.
What Floralinda did not know was that flight thirty-eight was a large empty space that contained a giant spider. She did not know that it was the type of spider who was not above eating dead prey, especially as it was giant and greedy; she now knew a little of goblins being filthy, but did not know that the blood of a goblin was tremendously foul too. Thankfully, neither did the spider. It gorged itself and became deathly ill, which is a moral lesson for spiders everywhere, as Floralinda unknowing went upstairs and heated slices of wheaten bread and slices of white over her ever-burning fire.
That was, inadvertently, the end of flight thirty-eight, which Floralinda had solved by dint of being at once too houseproud and too prone to cut corners when it came to rubbish removal.
Otherwise, it would have proved very difficult. The witch thought no spider was worth it unless it was exceedingly venomous.
“I think you ought to tell me your long-term plan,” said Cobweb.
“I was about to say the same thing,” said Princess Floralinda.
It was early in the morning in the tower, and summer was starting to take its leave, it having been quite late in the season when poor Floralinda was locked up anyway. They had enjoyed some truly beautiful golden days of good weather, but now it was becoming chilly o’nights, and this made the princess very pensive again. The fortieth flight had not become really homely and indeed was shabbier than ever now that Floralinda had taken up long residence, but it was familiar, and she tried to keep it tidy, and she only wore her gown when she really needed to feel like a princess. It was difficult to feel like a princess when she saw the puckered white parts on her hands, and even more difficult to feel like a princess when Cobweb bossed her about. Every so often when she felt particularly wretched she put on the gown and her rings and combed her long golden hair, which still shone beautifully in the sunlight, but had a tiny bald patch where the goblin had ripped out a piece. Floralinda could feel it with her finger.