The Ogre of Oglefort (7 page)

T
he ogre was not getting better—in fact he was getting worse. His thighs throbbed, his forehead pounded, blisters had come out on his stomach. At night he had terrible dreams and occasionally he screamed in his sleep—horrible screams which echoed through the castle.

“Oh why did Germania have to die?” he moaned. “It's all hopeless since Germania died.”

Germania was his wife, the ogress he had loved so much.

The troll did his best to nurse him but the ogre was not a good patient. He didn't like his medicine; he wouldn't get out of bed to do his exercises, so that he got weaker and weaker; and he wouldn't let the troll bathe him.

“Ogres don't have baths,” he said. “It's not what they do.”

So a family of wood lice settled behind his ears, liking the warm dampness; leeches clung to his yellow toes; a spittlebug lived in his left nostril.

Everyone did their best. The Hag remembered a spell for bringing down swellings which she had used in the Dribble, but as soon as one part of the ogre subsided, another part swelled up again. The wizard mixed potion after potion but the ogre just turned his head away. The only thing he wanted them to do was sit by his bed and listen to his dreams, which were mostly about his aunts. The ogre had three aunts who lived in separate places a long way away. There was the Aunt-with-the-Ears who could hear a man turning over in his bed on the other side of a mountain, and the Aunt-with-the-Nose who could smell people at a distance of twenty furlongs, and the Aunt-with-the-Eyes who could see an insect stirring in a neighboring county.

But the rescuers were not only trying to look after the ogre. Every room in the castle was dirty and neglected; there was very little food; and the couple in the dungeon only came out to ask for breakfast or lunch or dinner and went back in again.

“We'd better see what there is outside,” said Ulf.

So they went out over the drawbridge. In the moat they came across the gudgeon whom the ogre had changed. He seemed to be happy and contented, though they couldn't be sure. Finding out what fish are thinking has never been easy.

On the other side of the bridge they found a walled kitchen garden and an orchard, both overgrown and full of weeds. There were a few vegetables still in the ground and the soil was good, but there was a terrible lot of work to do—and in the orchard rotten apples lay where they had fallen. They were on their way back when Charlie took off suddenly and, following him, they came to a large mound entirely covered in bare, gnawed bones. To their surprise Charlie did not pick up a single bone but sat down respectfully with a few quiet wags of his tail. Coming closer, they saw that the mound was a grave, and on top was a tombstone with the words:
HERE LIES GERMANIA HENBANE OF OGLEFORT, BELOVED OGRESS AND WIFE OF DENNIS CONSANDINE. MUCH MISSED.

“Oh dear,” said the Hag. “That's another thing that needs doing. We'll have to tend the grave. Some of those bones look dreadfully untidy. Those Grumblers down in the dungeon will have to come and help or go away. We can't do everything on our own.”

But the Grumblers wouldn't help and they wouldn't go away. They turned out to be a married couple called Hilary and Neville Hummock, and they had come to Ostland because they didn't like each other anymore.

“In fact we hate each other,” Mrs. Hummock had explained. “So I'm going to be a wombat and live on land and Neville is going to be a mudskipper and live in the water, and that way we won't see each other.”

Ivo thought he had never heard anything so silly—but it was Mirella that everyone was worried about. She hadn't eaten anything since she'd come and she was still locked in her room. After all they had come to rescue the princess and as far she they could see she was just fading away.

“I'll have one more go,” said Ivo. “I don't know if it'll be any use but I'll try.”

This time he took Charlie straightaway. Mirella didn't open the door at first but when the dog scratched at the wood, the handle turned slowly.

“What do you want?”

Ivo put down the tray. “I want you to come down and help. I want you to be sensible. The Hag's working her fingers to the bone and those horrible people in the dungeon won't do anything and the ogre's taken to his bed and here you are just sulking.” He paused. “Please, Mirella. Please? I thought maybe we could be friends—there isn't anyone else my own age.”

But he was shocked by the way she looked. Her black eyes had rings under them; she seemed hardly to have slept; her hair was in tangles. If she wasn't ill already she soon would be, and Charlie, too, seemed to be worried as he sniffed round her ankles and whimpered.

“It's no use. My parents will find me sooner or later. They're bound to. They'll send out armies and all that sort of stuff, and when that happens I'll jump out of the window. I'd die rather than go back.”

“That's silly. You're just being a coward.”

“I am
not
!” Mirella rounded on him. “I came over the bridge above the ravine in the dark, and there were some ghastly creatures sort of moaning and gibbering and trying to get me. Then I walked for miles and miles without food and it was scary, but I didn't mind because I thought when I got to the ogre he would change me into a bird and everything would be all right, but now I can't be bothered with anything.”

“And suppose he had changed you—perhaps it wouldn't be so marvelous. You'd have to eat things like ants, which you kept as pets in the palace, and all sorts of insects.”

“No I wouldn't. I'd be a seabird and swoop down into the waves.”

“Oh yes? I suppose spearing fish in your beak would be better? I suppose you think fish don't feel pain—you've seen them twitch and wiggle on the end of a line.”

Ivo was getting angry again. “When I think of the people who've been told they're ill and they're going to die—children even—and they'd give anything they've got—”

But he couldn't get through to Mirella. She had sunk into a black hole where nothing existed except her own despair.

“Isn't there anything we can do about her?” Ivo asked the Hag. “How can she not want to be a human being . . . a person with arms and legs and
thoughts
? Why does she want to throw it all away?”

He looked out of the window at the brilliantly green grass, the clear blue sky. They had expected only darkness and danger but it was very beautiful at Oglefort. There was so much to learn and see and do, and he and Mirella could have done it together.

The Hag put an arm around his shoulder.

“Give her time,” she said.

But time was something that they didn't have. Mirella was quite simply dwindling away—and after a sleepless night Ivo took his courage in both hands and went to see the ogre.

What he was going to ask of him was difficult but he couldn't see what else there was to do.

I
vo had never spent any time in the ogre's bedroom—it was the troll who did the nursing. Now he waited till everybody was out of the way and crept up to the door.

From inside came a kind of heaving, juddering noise which grew to a climax, faded away, and began again. The ogre was snoring.

Ivo pushed open the door and walked in.

The ogre's bedroom was vast and gray and had a strange and rather unpleasant smell. The more the troll tried to get his patient to wash, the more the ogre said he did not hold with that kind of nonsense.

As his eyes got used to the gloom, Ivo noticed the medicine bottles by the bed, the spittoon for spitting into, the pile of torn-up sheets which the troll had given him to use for handkerchiefs. On the ogre's warty nose, as it rose and fell, the spittlebug was taking an evening walk.

When he got up to the bed, Ivo coughed. Then he coughed harder. After Ivo's third cough, the ogre gave a great roar and sat up in bed. Still half asleep, he bared his teeth hungrily—then he remembered that he was no longer a flesh-eating ogre but a person with a nervous breakdown.

“What do you want, squirty boy?” he roared.

“Please, I need to speak with you about—”

But the ogre now remembered that he needed a lot of things, and that the troll had gone away with some nonsense about seeing to some trees.

“My pillow needs turning,” said the ogre, and lifted his head so that Ivo could manhandle the huge cushion full of chicken feathers. It was heavy and smelled of blood, because the feathers it was stuffed with had not been cleaned.

“And I need some of that blue medicine,” said the ogre, pointing to a large bottle. “Three spoonfuls. It's very nasty but if it wasn't it wouldn't do me any good.”

Ivo poured out the medicine.

“And I think I better have one of those pink pills in the saucer.”

When he had swallowed all these he lay back and said, “Now that you're here, squirty boy, I'll tell you about my dream. It was about one of my aunts. The Aunt-with-the-Ears, we called her. You could have set up camp inside her ears, they were so huge. Well, in this dream . . .”

The ogre was off and Ivo listened as well as he could. Dreams are not often interesting—they don't have a beginning, a middle, and an end like proper stories—but he knew that people who have them want to tell you about them, so he tried to be patient.

But when it was over and the ogre suggested that Ivo might give him another pill, he summoned up his courage.

“Please,” he said. “I've got a favor to ask you. It's an important one. Very important.”

The ogre did not like the sound of this.

“I'm ill,” he said. He groaned a couple of times to make this clear. “I'm having a nervous—”

“I know. But it's about Mirella, the princess. She's not eating anything and she just cries and I'm afraid she's going to get ill.”

“I'm ill,” said the ogre crossly. “I'm very ill indeed. I'm ill all over.”

“Yes,” said Ivo, “I'm sure you are. But about Mirella—”

“She should go home, back to her parents,” said the ogre. “She ought to be glad I haven't eaten her.”

“Well, she won't. She says she'd rather die and I think she may really. You see, she had a sort of vision thing, a proper one like the saints used to on mountaintops. She saw these white birds on the roof of the palace, and they were so free and above all the fuss and all she wants is to be like that, too. Absolutely any white bird would do—well perhaps not those owls that fly at night and bang into things but—oh you know—gulls and gannets and all those. Then she would fly off and she'd never bother you again.”

The ogre lifted his head from the pillow. “Are you suggesting I change her?” he yelled. “When you know that I have given up all that sort of thing forever and ever—and that I am having a nervous breakdown. You must be out of your mind. Do you know how much force is needed even to change a hedgehog into a flea?”

“No. But—”

“Have a look at my left toe. See those swellings. And my stomach.”

He began to fumble with the bedclothes, but Ivo did not feel up to the ogre's stomach, and he handed him another pink pill and a green pill, which the ogre swallowed greedily.

“It wouldn't take long,” begged Ivo.

“NO. I absolutely refuse. Go away.”

Ivo stood up. Then he turned and said, “You could do it in your dressing gown. You wouldn't even have to go out of the room. And your slippers.”

“NO!” yelled the ogre again.

He closed his eyes and pretended to snore. But Ivo stood his ground—the image of Mirella in a huddled heap wouldn't go out of his mind.

“If we didn't have to keep looking after the princess we could do important things,” he said, “like tending your wife's grave. The bones are all over the place.”

“Oh they are, are they?” The ogre didn't like this. “Germania was very tidy.”

“We could get some unusual bones, maybe,” Ivo went on, “and make an interesting pattern.”

“What sort of a pattern?”

“Something with skulls would be good. A sort of pyramid. We could make it look really nice. But it would take time and we can't leave the princess.”

The ogre shook his head. “I can't do it, I'm too tired,” he said, and let his head fall back on the pillow again.

Ivo had reached the door when the ogre opened one eye.

“In my dressing gown and slippers, did you say?”

And Ivo said, “Yes.”

The Changing was to take place in the Hall so as to give Mirella plenty of room to fly up and away, but it had to be kept secret from the Grumblers. There would have been a riot if they'd known that Mirella was to be changed and they weren't.

Ivo's face was streaked with tears. Though he and Mirella had quarreled every time they met, he minded losing her more than he could have believed.

The Hag and the other rescuers, too, were very unhappy about what was to happen.

“I used to think it would be nice to be a frog when I lived in the Dribble” she said. “Just plopping in and out of puddles . . . But it was only a fancy. This is too much magic, it's too strong.”

But what could they do when Mirella was determined to starve herself to death? So now they assembled in the Hall, waiting. The troll had strewn some pine needles on the floor of the platform where she was to stand; the Hag had picked a red rose for Mirella to hold while she still had hands.

Then Mirella came in. She had cleaned herself up as well as she could, rubbing her face with a wet cloth and shaking out her hair, but she still looked rather a mess—and very small, dwarfed by the huge room.

Then the door opened and the troll, straining all his muscles, pushed in the ogre in a wheelchair which his grandmother had used in her last days. He still wore his pajamas and his legs were covered in a blanket made of moleskins which had been nibbled rather badly by mice.

Charlie, sitting at Ivo's feet, gave a whimper. The ogre put one foot on the ground and moaned.

“My back,” he moaned. “The pain . . .”

But as no one took any notice, he managed to stand up and stood there, swaying.

The Hag came forward and put the rose in Mirella's hand.

Mirella stood as though she was made of stone. If she was frightened she didn't show it. In a few minutes—a few seconds even—she would be flying over the heads of everyone. She looked around to see how she would get away afterward, and Ivo came up to her and said, “I've left the window open—the round one above the banners,” and she whispered her thanks.

The ogre began to pass his hands back and forth over Mirella's head.

In the Hall everyone held their breath.

Everyone except Charlie.

The little white dog had been watching, his piebald ears pricked as the ogre bent over Mirella. Now for some reason he left Ivo, leaped onto the platform, and ran up to Mirella, yapping excitedly, and began to wag his tail and lick her feet.

Mirella bent down to him. “It's all right, Charlie,” she said. “Lie down. Be quiet.” And to Ivo she said, “Call him off, can't you?”

“No, I can't,” said Ivo. “He has a perfect right to say good-bye. He wants you to stroke him.”

“I know perfectly well what he wants,” snapped Mirella.

She had never touched Charlie before. Now as she felt his rough coat under her hand, his warm tongue licking her bare leg, something extraordinary happened to her. It was as though the scales fell from her eyes. She saw the Hag, so old and weary, who had trekked miles believing Mirella to be in danger. She saw the other rescuers—the troll and the wizard—and Ivo, who had thought she might be his friend. Above all, she saw the living, warm, excited little dog.

And suddenly a feeling flooded through her—of thankfulness for being alive, of joy in the world. She looked up at the window through which in a few moments she would fly out and away forever and felt panic, thinking of the loneliness that would follow.

But she had to go through with it now. She had suffered so much to get here, she had been so obstinate and determined—she couldn't now change her mind. She closed her eyes and lifted her head as the ogre's hand came down toward her.

The hand never reached her. The ogre gave a terrible cry, took two tottering paces forward, and fell to the ground with a crash that echoed through the Hall.

Everyone rushed forward, but the ogre could not move; he only pointed with his great arm to the doorway, where a figure as large and hideous as he was himself was standing, wreathed in a ghostly mist.

“Germania,” whispered the ogre—and fainted.