‘And where is that, exactly?’ asked the king nervously, for the last thing he wanted was to see those black drapes even nearer the palace gates.
‘Right on the edge of the City-Within-The-City,’ said the Chief Advisor. ‘Very close to the graveyard, in f—’
‘That sounds suitable,’ interrupted King Fred, leaping to his feet. ‘I have no need of details. Just make it happen, Herringbone, there’s a good chap.’
And so, Daisy and her father were instructed to swap houses with the family of Captain Roach, who, like Bert’s father, was a member of the king’s Royal Guard. The next time King Fred rode out, the black drapes had vanished from the door and the Roach children – four strapping brothers, the ones who’d first christened Bert Beamish ‘Butterball’ – came running into the front garden and jumped up and down, cheering and waving Cornucopian flags. King Fred beamed and waved back at the boys. Weeks passed, and King Fred forgot all about the Dovetails, and was happy again.
Chapter 5
Daisy Dovetail
For some months after Mrs Dovetail’s shocking death, the king’s servants were divided into two groups. The first group whispered that King Fred had been to blame for the way she’d died. The second preferred to believe there’d been some kind of mistake, and that the king couldn’t have known how ill Mrs Dovetail was before giving the order that she must finish his suit.
Mrs Beamish, the pastry chef, belonged to the second group. The king had always been very nice to Mrs Beamish, sometimes even inviting her into the dining room to congratulate her on particularly fine batches of Dukes’ Delights or Folderol Fancies, so she was sure he was a kind, generous, and considerate man.
‘You mark my words, somebody forgot to give the king a message,’ she told her husband, Major Beamish. ‘He’d never make an ill servant work. I know he must feel simply awful about what happened.’
‘Yes,’ said Major Beamish, ‘I’m sure he does.’
Like his wife, Major Beamish wanted to think the best of the king, because he, his father, and his grandfather before him had all served loyally in the Royal Guard. So even though Major Beamish observed that King Fred seemed quite cheerful after Mrs Dovetail’s death, hunting as regularly as ever, and though Major Beamish knew that the Dovetails had been moved out of their old house to live down by the graveyard, he tried to believe that the king was sorry for what had happened to his seamstress, and that he’d had no hand in moving her husband and daughter.
The Dovetails’ new cottage was a gloomy place. Sunlight was blocked out by the high yew trees that bordered the graveyard, although Daisy’s bedroom window gave her a clear view of her mother’s grave, through a gap between dark branches. As she no longer lived next door to Bert, Daisy saw less of him in her free time, although Bert went to visit Daisy as often as possible. There was much less room to play in her new garden, but they adjusted their games to fit.
What Mr Dovetail thought about his new house, or the king, nobody knew. He never discussed these matters with his fellow servants, but went quietly about his work, earning the money he needed to support his daughter and raising Daisy as best he could without her mother.
Daisy, who liked helping her father in his carpenter’s workshop, had always been happiest in overalls. She was the kind of person who didn’t mind getting dirty and she wasn’t very interested in clothes. Yet in the days following the funeral, she wore a different dress every day to take a fresh posy to her mother’s grave. While alive, Mrs Dovetail had always tried to make her daughter look, as she put it, ‘like a little lady’, and had made her many beautiful little gowns, sometimes from the offcuts of material that King Fred graciously let her keep after she’d made his superb costumes.
And so a week passed, then a month, and then a year, until the dresses her mother had sewn her were all too small for Daisy, but she still kept them carefully in her wardrobe. Other people seemed to have forgotten what had happened to Daisy, or had got used to the idea of her mother being gone. Daisy pretended that she was used to it too. On the surface, her life returned to something like normal. She helped her father in the workshop, did her schoolwork and played with her best friend, Bert, but they never spoke about her mother, and they never talked about the king. Every night, Daisy lay with her eyes fixed on the distant white headstone shining in the moonlight, until she fell asleep.
Chapter 6
The Fight in the Courtyard
There was a courtyard behind the palace where peacocks walked, fountains played, and statues of former kings and queens kept watch. As long as they didn’t pull the peacocks’ tails, jump in the fountains, or climb the statues, the children of the palace servants were allowed to play in the courtyard after school. Sometimes Lady Eslanda, who liked children, would come and make daisy chains with them, but the most exciting thing of all was when King Fred came out onto the balcony and waved, which made all the children cheer, bow, and curtsy as their parents had taught them.
The only time the children fell silent, ceased their games of hopscotch, and stopped pretending to fight the Ickabog, was when the lords Spittleworth and Flapoon passed through the courtyard. These two lords weren’t fond of children at all. They thought the little brats made far too much noise in the late afternoon, which was precisely the time when Spittleworth and Flapoon liked to take a nap between hunting and dinner.
One day, shortly after Bert and Daisy’s seventh birthdays, when everyone was playing as usual between the fountains and the peacocks, the daughter of the new Head Seamstress, who was wearing a beautiful dress of rose-pink brocade, said:
‘Oh, I do hope the king waves at us today!’
‘Well, I don’t,’ said Daisy, who couldn’t help herself, and didn’t realise how loudly she’d spoken.
The children all gasped and turned to look at her. Daisy felt hot and cold at once, seeing them all glaring.
‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ whispered Bert. As he was standing right next to Daisy, the other children were staring at him too.
‘I don’t care,’ said Daisy, colour rising in her face. She’d started now, so she might as well finish. ‘If he hadn’t worked my mother so hard, she’d still be alive.’
Daisy felt as though she’d been wanting to say that out loud for a very long time.
There was another gasp from all the surrounding children, and a maid’s daughter actually squealed in terror.
‘He’s the best king of Cornucopia we’ve ever had,’ said Bert, who’d heard his mother say so many times.
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Daisy loudly. ‘He’s selfish, vain, and cruel!’
‘Daisy!’ whispered Bert, horrified. ‘Don’t be – don’t be silly!’
It was the word ‘silly’ that did it. ‘Silly’, when the new Head Seamstress’s daughter smirked and whispered behind her hand to her friends, while pointing at Daisy’s overalls? ‘Silly’, when her father wiped away his tears in the evenings, thinking Daisy wasn’t looking? ‘Silly’, when to talk to her mother she had to visit a cold white headstone?