Instead of Three Wishes (11 page)

“Well, it could very easily have been shortened to Nele. We won't say any more about it now,” he said. “Let me give you a silver piece…” He looked at Nele, who was still standing like a lump. He handed the silver piece to Bet instead. “To keep your thoughts to yourself,” Orvis said. He looked at Bet significantly and left.

“What do you think of that?” Bet asked Nele.

“What I think,” said Nele, “is that if that man is my councillor, I wouldn't want to be king.”

“Definitely on the sneaky side,” said Bet. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to have wine and cheese with my dinner tonight and share it with you.” He swept the silver coin out of Bet's hand and tossed it in the air. “He can't take back what we've already eaten.”

 

The next morning, Bet was careful to remind the other bakers of Nele's joke the day before. With elaborate courtesy, he addressed him as King Nele. The bakers and their early-morning customers laughed, and for the rest of the day people bowed and called King Nele to please come collect the snakes from the pantry and bring up baking supplies when he was done. King Nele waved his hands, declaring that it would be his royal pleasure to haul sacks of flour.

But that evening, when all the bread was sold and the shop was closed, Nele went to see Orvis in his home on the east side of the island. Nele didn't like the house very much. Most of the houses on Monemvassia were small and dark, built with thick stone walls and small windows. But unlike its neighbors, this house had no garden, no patio, no pleasant place to sit on warm evenings. Instead, Nele and Orvis sat in a small room behind the kitchen. Previously it had been a garden, but it had been roofed over and turned into Orvis's private office. Nele thought the minister's sharp and unpleasant personality might have been fostered by too much paperwork about parades, read in a room that
smelled like last week's fish and onion dinner.

Orvis asked Nele a lot of questions about his childhood that Nele answered in short, not very clever sentences. It pleased Orvis that Nele seemed not too bright and would make an easily malleable king. After all, Orvis thought, who knew more about puppet shows than a man who had planned them every summer for years?

“Now, you don't remember much of your father, right?”

“Right.”

“So you don't know for sure that he wasn't the king of Monemvassia, right?”

“Right.”

“So he could have been king?”

“I suppose.”

“Let's say he is.”

“Okay.”

“So this is what your childhood was like,” and Orvis explained everything in detail. Every few sentences, he asked Nele to repeat back what he had heard. Nele made a lot of mistakes, but eventually seemed to get the material down pat. Orvis gave him another silver coin and told him to come back the next evening.

In the morning, he convinced the council to delay the vote on the two nominees for kingship. He suggested they wait a few more weeks just in case the true king actually arrived. After all, the militia could be called out right up to the last minute and
nobody needed to know that they would be armed only with boat hooks and cooking knives. After nine years, waiting was a habit the council found hard to break. The ministers agreed to hold off the vote until Spiro's arrival was imminent.

Every night, Orvis drilled Nele. Every day, he racked his brains to come up with a way to explain how the king of Monemvassia could show up as an employee in a local bakery. He would have liked to pretend that Nele, the baker, had fallen off a cliff, and that his candidate for king was someone entirely new, but he didn't think Nele was smart enough to keep up with the pretense. And Monemvassia was a small enough island that there were too many people who were bound to recognize him.

“Well,” Nele suggested one night, “maybe the real king fell out of the carriage and got lost and the baker took him in?”

“I told you to stop saying ‘the real king,'” Orvis snapped. “You are the real king. Remember that.”

“Right,” said Nele sheepishly. “Well, maybe the real, I mean maybe I didn't fall out of the carriage. Maybe I jumped out because I didn't want to be king.”

“That's ridiculous,” snarled Orvis. “And it would be hard to explain how your father's name came to be signed on your apprentice papers.” Every possible plan fell to pieces when it struck the apprentice papers. Each apprenticeship in the kingdom was recorded in the Monemvassia archives, with the
name of the apprentice as well as his parent or guardian's signature.

“Nah,” said Nele. “My dad's name isn't on mine. One of the neighbors brought me in and signed the papers because my dad was sick.”

“Oh?” said Orvis.

“Yeah,” said Nele, at his most innocent. “Maybe you could tell everyone that the old king didn't really send the prince off to school. He got one of his ministers to take me, I mean him, I mean me, down to the bakery and sign me up as an apprentice. Maybe he wanted the prince, you know, to get an idea of everyday life.”

Orvis thought for a moment. “Much too farfetched,” he said. “That sort of thing could never have happened.” He outlined instead a story in which the crown prince fell out of the carriage and was found lost by a good citizen who took him to the bakery to learn a trade. The next night, he started drilling Nele on authenticating details.

Meanwhile, the bandit king, Spiro the Unpopular, had been getting closer and closer. He had been sending messages about his whereabouts and further details of his billeting requirements. He sent a long list of loyal retainers that he suggested be put up in the royal palace. The king's councillors blanched, mainly because there wasn't a royal palace. The king had always lived in a house only slightly larger than that of a common citizen in Monemvassia. It was distinguished by the
pleasantness of its gardens, not by the luxury of its rooms.

“No matter,” said the messenger who had carried Spiro's letter. “I'm sure he would have wanted to build a whole new palace anyway.”

The council went on debating the relative merits of the two chosen royal candidates, and Spiro the Unpopular got closer. Finally, Spiro's army arrived on the edge of the sandbar leading to the harbor gate. The tide was rising fast so he sent a message by boat to say that he would cross to the island at low tide the following morning and he hoped the royal palace was ready.

Low tide the next day wasn't until ten o'clock. The council agreed to meet before then to settle the question of kings once and for all. Orvis spent the night drilling Nele until he was sure that if the halfwit would just keep to the script, then Orvis would be the next prime minister and the power behind the throne.

At eight-fifteen the following morning, he checked to make sure that all the councillors were in their seats and waiting for the prime minister to call the meeting to order. He threw open the council room doors and marched in with his purple ministerial robe billowing behind him and announced, after waving one arm in a theatrical manner that produced a satisfying shushing noise from the robe, that he had found the king.

He swept up and down the council chamber as
he explained the peculiar but providential intuition that made him think that the absent king might in fact be under their very noses.

“And so,” he said, waving his arms as he spoke, because waving made him feel grand and impressive, “I have carefully scrutinized each citizen of our kingdom, examined each and every one, from the oldest to the very youngest, looking”—he put on his most sincere expression—“for our dear lost prince.” He shook his arms one more time. “And I have found”—he paused—“our king.”

The minister of finance sat with his arms crossed and looked unimpressed. The prime minister looked very grave.

“So,” said Orvis briskly, “we can skip the vote electing a new king and move right to calling out the militia.”

“Doesn't the king want to do that himself?” asked one minister.

“Couldn't we, uh, meet the king?” asked the minister for trade.

“Like to, uh, discuss a few things with him,” said the minister of the armed forces.

“Like what he's going to wear to the coronation,” mumbled the minister of the royal wardrobe to himself.

“Like where he's been for nine years,” said the prime minister.

“Right,” said Orvis. “I'll be back in a moment.” And he stalked back out of the council room doors
toward the anteroom where he had left Nele. He was followed by every single councillor, because none of them wanted to wait to meet this unknown king.

When the whole crowd of ministers had squeezed into the anteroom, they found that besides themselves, it was empty. No one else was there. The councillors looked askance at Orvis, who swore that the king had been left there moments before he, Orvis, had gone to address the council.

“God help us, we've lost him again,” said one minister.

“Quick,” shouted Orvis, flapping his arms in their purple sleeves, “everyone spread out and look for him! He has to be here somewhere!”

Monemvassia's council building was only slightly larger than the royal residence (it was likewise distinguished by its fine garden), so there were not many rooms to search. Nele was quickly found in the throne room bent over the throne and examining it closely. He turned to face Orvis when he and the other ministers crowded through the door.

“You know,” said Nele, “there's a terrible curse on this chair. I don't think I want to sit on it after all.” And he pushed past the ministers and out the door. “Sorry,” he said to Orvis as he passed.

Well, all the ministers knew about the curse, of course. It promised death and destruction to any usurper who sat on Monemvassia's throne. No one was sure if it was just a story or not, but even if it was
a real curse, surely it wouldn't bother the true heir to the throne…if he was the true heir to the throne. The ministers turned as one to look at Orvis.

Orvis turned pink. “Perhaps,” he said in a very small voice, “I was incorrect.” But he got no further with an explanation before Spiro the Unpopular arrived, pushing his way through the crowd of purple robes much the same way he had pushed through the tide before it had left the sandbar completely. He was wet to the knees and not in a happy mood.

“At least,” he said, “you are waiting for me in the throne room.”

No one explained why, because no one had time. Spiro stamped to the front of the room and up the steps to the throne.

He said, “I, Spiro the Popular, declare myself king of Monemvassia, henceforth to be known as Spiroland,” and he plumped his ample bottom down on the seat cushion.

Almost immediately he fell over dead, bitten by the cliff snake that Nele had left sleeping right there on that cushion. The snake had not been happy to have his sleep interrupted by anything as ample and invasive as Spiro's bottom, and after sinking both fangs into a particularly fleshy part of it, the snake slipped off the edge of the cushions and under the seat of the throne to continue its nap, hidden by the drapery. No one but the prime minister saw it go.

The king's ministers one and all stared at Spiro.
Clearly the curse was a real one and very powerful, too. Very quietly they returned to the council chamber to review their options. Both candidates for the kingship withdrew their nominations.

“So we can't call out the royal militia?” said the minister of finance.

“Not legally,” said the minister of armed forces.

“Oh, dear,” said the minister of the royal wardrobe, and for once all the other ministers agreed with him.

“What do you think the bandits will do when they hear Spiro is dead?”

“Loot the town, probably,” said the minister of the armed forces with a sigh.

“We could close the harbor gate and keep them out,” suggested the minister of finance.

“Did that, actually,” said the minister of the armed forces.

“So we'll starve instead,” said the minister of trade.

“Surely we have fish and olives and grapes to eat?” said the minister of finance.

“Not a balanced diet,” said the minister of health. “The children will all have runny noses.”

“Oh, dear,” said the minister of the royal wardrobe.

 

A breathless messenger burst through the council chamber's doors. “The bandits, the bandits,” he gasped.

“Yes, yes,” said the minister of the royal wardrobe, “we already know all about the bandits.”

“They're leaving,” said the messenger. It seemed that the bandits were a superstitious bunch, and when they heard about the scene in the throne room, they had remembered that they hadn't been keen to take over a kingdom of fish and wooden spools anyway. They were heading back to the mountains to hold up trade. As for Spiro, he had been called the Unpopular for a reason. No one much cared what happened to him.

After a few moments of relieved discussion, the prime minister asked, “Where's that boy, Orvis? The one you said was king?”

Orvis with a lot of smooth talking managed to convince the council that it had all been a terrible mistake, an error on his part, an unfortunate misunderstanding. The council decided that they had disposed of Spiro so easily that they really didn't need a king after all. The prime minister recommended that they keep the position open, nonetheless, just in case the true king someday returned.

 

That afternoon, Nele had a visitor at the bakery, come to remind him that only members of the council and the royal family knew about the curse.

“Oops,” said Nele.

“I don't think anyone else has thought about it,” said the prime minister. “I take it that you have enjoyed your apprenticeship?”

“I have,” said Nele.

“You'll let me know if you change your mind about being king?”

“I will,” said Nele. “Call me if you need me again?”