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CHAPTER 27
More Vengeance
As soon as they were gone, Curdie brought the creatures back to the
servants' hall, and told them to eat up everything on the table.
it was a sight to see them all standing round it - except such as
had to get upon it - eating and drinking, each after its fashion,
without a smile, or a word, or a glance of fellowship in the act.
A very few moments served to make everything eatable vanish, and
then Curdie requested them to clean house, and the page who stood
by to assist them.
Every one set about it except Ballbody: he could do nothing at
cleaning, for the more he rolled, the more he spread the dirt.
Curdie was curious to know what he had been, and how he had come to
be such as he was: but he could only conjecture that he was a
gluttonous alderman whom nature had treated homeopathically.
And now there was such a cleaning and clearing out of neglected
places, such a burying and burning of refuse, such a rinsing of
jugs, such a swilling of sinks, and such a flushing of drains as
would have delighted the eyes of all true housekeepers and lovers
of cleanliness generally.
Curdie meantime was with the king, telling him all he had done.
They had heard a little noise, but not much, for he had told the
avengers to repress outcry as much as possible; and they had seen
to it that the more anyone cried out the more he had to cry out
upon, while the patient ones they scarcely hurt at all.
Having promised His Majesty and Her Royal Highness a good
breakfast, Curdie now went to finish the business. The courtiers
must be dealt with. A few who were the worst, and the leaders of
the rest, must be made examples of; the others should be driven to
the street.
He found the chiefs of the conspiracy holding a final consultation
in the smaller room off the hall. These were the lord chamberlain,
the attorney-general, the master of the horse, and the king's
private secretary: the lord chancellor and the rest, as foolish as
faithless, were but the tools of these.
The housemaid had shown him a little closet, opening from a passage
behind, where he could overhear all that passed in that room; and
now Curdie heard enough to understand that they had determined, in
the dead of that night, rather in the deepest dark before the
morning, to bring a certain company of soldiers into the palace,
make away with the king, secure the princess, announce the sudden
death of His Majesty, read as his the will they had drawn up, and
proceed to govern the country at their ease, and with results: they
would at once levy severer taxes, and pick a quarrel with the most
powerful of their neighbours. Everything settled, they agreed to
retire, and have a few hours' quiet sleep first - all but the
secretary, who was to sit up and call them at the proper moment.
Curdie allowed them half an hour to get to bed, and then set about
completing his purgation of the palace.
First he called Lina, and opened the door of the room where the
secretary sat. She crept in, and laid herself down against it.
When the secretary, rising to stretch his legs, caught sight of her
eyes, he stood frozen with terror. She made neither motion nor
sound. Gathering courage, and taking the thing for a spectral
illusion, he made a step forward. She showed her other teeth, with
a growl neither more than audible nor less than horrible. The
secretary sank fainting into a chair. He was not a brave man, and
besides, his conscience had gone over to the enemy, and was sitting
against the door by Lina.
To the lord chamberlain's door next, Curdie conducted the
legserpent, and let him in.
Now His Lordship had had a bedstead made for himself, sweetly
fashioned of rods of silver gilt: upon it the legserpent found him
asleep, and under it he crept. But out he came on the other side,
and crept over it next, and again under it, and so over it, under
it, over it, five or six times, every time leaving a coil of
himself behind him, until he had softly folded all his length about
the lord chamberlain and his bed. This done, he set up his head,
looking down with curved neck right over His Lordship's, and began
to hiss in his face.
He woke in terror unspeakable, and would have started up but the
moment he moved, the legserpent drew his coils closer, and closer
still, and drew and drew until the quaking traitor heard the joints
of his bedstead grinding and gnarring. Presently he persuaded
himself that it was only a horrid nightmare, and began to struggle
with all his strength to throw it off. Thereupon the legserpent
gave his hooked nose such a bite that his teeth met through it -
but it was hardly thicker than the bowl of a spoon; and then the
vulture knew that he was in the grasp of his enemy the snake, and
yielded.
As soon as he was quiet the legserpent began to untwist and
retwist, to uncoil and recoil himself, swinging and swaying,
knotting and relaxing himself with strangest curves and
convolutions, always, however, leaving at least one coil around his
victim. At last he undid himself entirely, and crept from the bed.
Then first the lord chamberlain discovered that his tormentor had
bent and twisted the bedstead, legs and canopy and all, so about
him that he was shut in a silver cage out of which it was
impossible for him to find a way. Once more, thinking his enemy
was gone, he began to shout for help. But the instant he opened
his mouth his keeper darted at him and bit him, and after three or
four such essays, he lay still.
The master of the horse Curdie gave in charge to the tapir. When
the soldier saw him enter - for he was not yet asleep - he sprang
from his bed, and flew at him with his sword. But the creature's
hide was invulnerable to his blows, and he pecked at his legs with
his proboscis until he jumped into bed again, groaning, and covered
himself up; after which the tapir contented himself with now and
then paying a visit to his toes.
As for the attorney-general, Curdie led to his door a huge spider,
about two feet long in the body, which, having made an excellent
supper, was full of webbing. The attorney-general had not gone to
bed, but sat in a chair asleep before a great mirror. He had been
trying the effect of a diamond star which he had that morning taken
from the jewel room. When he woke he fancied himself paralysed;
every limb, every finger even, was motionless: coils and coils of
broad spider ribbon bandaged his members to his body, and all to
the chair. In the glass he saw himself wound about with slavery
infinite. On a footstool a yard off sat the spider glaring at him.
Clubhead had mounted guard over the butler, where he lay tied hand
and foot under the third cask. From that cask he had seen the wine
run into a great bath, and therein he expected to be drowned. The
doctor, with his crushed leg, needed no one to guard him.
And now Curdie proceeded to the expulsion of the rest. Great men
or underlings, he treated them all alike. From room to room over
the house he went, and sleeping or waking took the man by the hand.
Such was the state to which a year of wicked rule had reduced the
moral condition of the court, that in it all he found but three
with human hands. The possessors of these he allowed to dress
themselves and depart in peace. When they perceived his mission,
and how he was backed, they yielded.
Then commenced a general hunt, to clear the house of the vermin.
Out of their beds in their night clothing, out of their rooms,
gorgeous chambers or garret nooks, the creatures hunted them. Not
one was allowed to escape. Tumult and noise there was little, for
fear was too deadly for outcry. Ferreting them out everywhere,
following them upstairs and downstairs, yielding no instant of
repose except upon the way out, the avengers persecuted the
miscreants, until the last of them was shivering outside the palace
gates, with hardly sense enough left to know where to turn.
When they set out to look for shelter, they found every inn full of
the servants expelled before them, and not one would yield his
place to a superior suddenly levelled with himself. Most houses
refused to admit them on the ground of the wickedness that must
have drawn on them such a punishment; and not a few would have been
left in the streets all night, had not Derba, roused by the vain
entreaties at the doors on each side of her cottage, opened hers,
and given up everything to them. The lord chancellor was only too
glad to share a mattress with a stableboy, and steal his bare feet
under his jacket.
In the morning Curdie appeared, and the outcasts were in terror,
thinking he had come after them again. But he took no notice of
them: his object was to request Derba to go to the palace: the king
required her services. She need take no trouble about her cottage,
he said; the palace was henceforward her home: she was the king's
chatelaine over men and maidens of his household. And this very
morning she must cook His Majesty a nice breakfast.
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