a princess at his side who agreed with every single thing he said, however stupid? But then he smiled.
‘Florizella,’ he said, ‘I think I agree with you. I won’t choose a princess to marry, either. I shall tell my mother and father. And I should like to be best friends with you.’
So Princess Florizella and Prince Bennett shook hands and rode back side by side in the starlight.
When Florizella got home, the king and queen were waiting for her at the door of the palace.
‘How did you get on?’ asked the queen.
‘Who did he choose for his bride?’ asked the king.
‘How many princesses were there at the ball?’ asked the queen.
‘Did he choose the princess of Three Rivers?’ the king asked.
Florizella laughed and jumped out of the carriage.
‘I had a lovely time,’ she said. ‘And he decided not to marry anybody just yet. There were one hundred and twenty princesses there as well as me, and I didn’t spot the princess of the Three Rivers, but the place was so awash with princesses that I didn’t even see the princess of the Two Mountains, who promised to meet me there.’
‘Not choosing a bride!’ said the king.
‘Not choosing a bride!’ said the queen.
Then they both fell on Florizella at once, demanding to know what on earth could have made him decide not to choose a princess at a princess-choosing ball. They were secretly afraid that Florizella had somehow put him off marriage.
So Florizella explained that Prince Bennett thought the nice princesses might have been just pretending to be nice and might be secretly rather awful to live with, and he hadn’t wanted to take the chance.
‘Did he ask no one at all, then?’ demanded the king. ‘Not one of them?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Florizella. ‘He asked me. But I told him I didn’t want to marry yet.’
The king and queen stared at each other for a stunned moment, then they both rushed at Florizella again and made her sit down and tell them all about the ball and the breakfast and the horseride and the picnic for two and Prince Bennett asking her to marry him under the stars. They took a lot of interest in the stars. And if there was a nightingale singing. Then the king jumped to his feet and went to the window and said, ‘Undoubtedly! Undootedly!’ a great many times, very softly.
And the queen had a little smile on her face as she looked at Florizella.
‘What a match!’ said the king. ‘Prince Bennett’s kingdom! The Land of Deep Lakes! It’s beyond my wildest dreams!’
‘What a triumph!’ said the queen. ‘And everyone always said she was such an odd sort of princess!’
Florizella looked from one to the other.
‘I said I didn’t want to marry him, and we agreed to be just friends,’ she said. But she could tell they weren’t listening.
The next day, her father the king laughed and teased her all day, calling her the Queen of the Land of Deep Lakes, which was rather irritating.
The second day, the queen spoke of inviting Prince Bennett over to stay.
The next couple of days there were lots of letters between Prince Bennett’s parents and Florizella’s mother and father. Then on the fifth day the king told Florizella that she was going to marry Bennett whether she wanted to or not.
Florizella looked at him as if he were crazy. ‘You can’t make me marry someone if I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘It’s just wrong.’
‘Oh, can’t I?’ said the king.
He snatched Florizella up and bundled her upstairs, and locked her in her bedroom.
‘You’ll stay there until you agree to marry Prince Bennett!’ he bawled through the keyhole.
‘Nonsense,’ said Florizella. She knew perfectly well that her father had no right to lock her up, or to order her to marry anyone. No one can tell a girl who she has to marry. She also knew that if she wanted to leave, nothing was easier than to open her bedroom window and climb down the drainpipe. After all, she went out like that most mornings to go horseriding. It was so much easier than opening the great double doors, raising the portcullis and lowering the drawbridge on her own. But, instead of running off, she thought she would wait until her father came to let her out and talk the whole thing over with him. So she got one of her favourite storybooks and settled down for a quiet morning’s reading.
Florizella’s lunch was served on a tray in her room by ten footmen.
At teatime they arrived again with a cup of tea and a slice of cake.
By dinnertime Florizella had finished her book and was pretty bored.
At bedtime her father came to the door and said in his most kingly voice, ‘My daughter, Princess Florizella, this is your father.’
‘I did know that already,’ she said.
‘Do you agree to marry Prince Bennett?’
Florizella, who was rather sulky, for she had wasted a whole day indoors while the sun was shining outside, said, ‘Certainly not! And you know you shouldn’t treat a daughter like this. Not even in a fairy story.’
At that, the king stamped off to bed in a terrible temper. He was cross because Florizella would not do as he wanted, and he was cross because he knew perfectly well he was in the wrong.
‘She’s acting like she thinks she’s a prince!’ he complained to the queen as they went to bed that night.
‘A princess is just a prince with more s’s,’ she replied.
The king thought for a moment. ‘What do the s’s stand for?’
‘Sass,’ she said. ‘Sass and science, sensibility and scepticism. Sincerity, spirit and certainty.’
‘That’s a c,’ said the king. ‘Undoubtedly.’
‘And tomorrow,’ the queen continued, ‘Florizella is to be let out, whatever she says about Prince Bennett.’
The king said, ‘Humph,’ as if he meant No. But he really meant Yes. There is nothing more boring than being a tyrant.
But next morning, before anyone was up, there was a great Tooroo! Tooroo! at the palace gates, and in galloped Prince Bennett with half a dozen of his courtiers, a dozen soldiers and a couple of trumpeters. Just a small informal visit.
He had come to see the king, for someone had told him that Princess Florizella was locked in her room and that the king would not let her out until she promised to marry the prince.
Prince Bennett popped up to the king’s bedroom and argued with him while the king sat up in bed and longed for his morning tea. He had never liked Bennett less than he did at that moment.
Just think