‘Have I got this right? Aces are higher than Kings, even though Kings rule the Kingdoms and Kings are higher than Queens? Well, that seems obvious, except in Britain. In Britain the Queens should beat the Kings! Why aren’t there any princesses? Who do the Jacks, or should they be “Jacques” get to marry? How is the Royal line propagated?’
Caractacus appeared to be having difficulties with the basics of poker,
‘I can understand that a pair is two of a kind, but how is the house full if you only have three of one thing and two of another. Why is that better than a straight? All the numbers are in the right order in a straight? We should be encouraging the correct use of mathematics.’
‘Just play,’ growled Bull, who was thinking how much he would enjoy killing Mascarpone for this social disaster. He was finding it harder to cheat with the extra players around the table, although the British players didn’t appear to need cheating, they simply seemed to have no idea how to play.
‘This is a very enjoyable activity,’ said Boo Dikka, engaging Louie-Louie, ‘an impressively civilised way to spend the night before your wedding.’
‘Thank you,’ said Louie-Louie uncertainly, ‘Usually there is a lot of drinking on these nights. Sometimes things can get a bit out of hand.’
‘I hope so!’ said Dorf, who had already collected a number of drinks and was doing little to reassure the French, who thought that they may have just invited in a bunch of savages.
‘What do they do in your country?’ asked Louie-Louie politely.
‘In my country,’ replied Boo Dikka proudly, ‘a week before a man is due to marry, he and his friends must make a sacred journey to the coast of our island. There they must stay, until the man has consumed his own weight several times over in alcohol. He and his friends must sing the sacred chants of our islands over and over again until the tribesmen who live by the coast can endure their drunken wailings no longer. At that point the man must perform some kind of challenge that he is neither fit nor sober enough to achieve. After he has catastrophically and, hopefully painfully, failed to achieve this he may return to his own village and wed.’
‘Barbarians!’ observed Bull.
‘Is that so?’ Louie-Louie was beginning to regret his politeness,
‘It is an improvement on the Old Ways,’ said Boo Dikka.
‘The Old Ways?’ asked Louie-Louie fearfully.
‘In the old days…’ began Boo Dikka, but before she could further appal the French Monarch with the barbarous customs of Britain, Heinrich noisily entered the gambling room and shouted,
‘We have captured Beowulf!’
Eugene D’Orbergene missed this moment of triumph as he had just sneaked out towards the kitchen area, where he hoped an amorous encounter with Amarilla awaited him. He slunk noiselessly down the corridor until he identified the door that was most likely to be the door to the meat store. He knocked, discreetly.
‘Amarilla, it is I, Eugene D’Orbergene; I have come!’
From behind the door he heard the sound of movement and then heard Amarilla’s voice,
‘Eugene! I have been waiting for this moment! Come in!’
D’Orbergene needed no second asking and immediately pushed the door open and stepped inside. As he entered (swiftly, to avoid detection), D’Orbergene noticed that the room was unexpectedly dark; when the door closed behind him, he realised that it was completely dark.
‘Amarilla,’ he whispered, ‘I am here. Where are you?’
‘Eugene!’ she replied, ‘I am here, at the back of the room, come to me!’
D’Orbergene began to pick his way slowly through the darkness. He noticed, with disgust that he was making his way through a number of hanging animal carcasses; however he was sure his journey would be worthwhile and so he pressed on.
‘You are nearly there!’ he heard, he also thought he heard more movement and he was worried that there seemed to be sounds from more than one person in the blackness. ‘Reach out to me, Eugene!’
He reached out. As he did so he felt something brush against his leg and a sharp shove in the back. He fell with a muffled shout and then heard a door bang.
‘I will be back in a little while, Eugene,’ he heard Amarilla say. Then he heard footsteps going away and giggling. He was sure that he heard two different female voices. The first whispered,
‘Oh Eugene, you will be so happy in my cupboard.’
The second said in a low voice, ‘That will take care of him girls. Now we will go to the kitchen to sort out your disguise.’
D’Orbergene carefully picked himself up.
‘Amarilla,’ he whispered, ‘Are you out there?’
There was no reply. He was very angry and worried. What had happened? Had someone taken Amarilla? He tried to find his way back to the door, but the room seemed to have become a lot smaller than he remembered it. He groped around in the darkness and found three stone walls, all within an arms’ length. The other wall was made of wood, like some kind of heavy door. It was not the door he remembered from entering the meat store. He was at a loss to explain how this transformation had occurred. It was well beyond his meagre mental processes to imagine that Amarilla could have lured him into a store cupboard and then locked him inside; however, with the aid of Emsie (the trip) and Mme Frappedelapins (the shove) that was exactly what had happened.
‘Amarilla, Amarilla!’ he whispered, in case someone else could overhear, ‘I’m still here!’
‘And that is where you will remain!’ thought Amarilla, with a degree of satisfaction as she made her way out of the meat store and followed Mme Frappedelapins into the kitchen.
‘Sit,’ ordered Mme Frappedelapins and gestured to a low stool in a corner of the kitchen. Amarilla sat.
‘The trouble with your disguise is that it is no disguise at all. You have just put on some cheap clothes and you think that makes you look like a poor girl. That is not the case; you just look like yourself in another girl’s clothes. I will help you!’
First Mme Frappedelapins took Amarilla’s long, straight, dark hair and, having dipped her hand into a large stockpot, smeared a brown and viscous liquid through it. Next she twisted and teased the hair, until its natural shape had quite disappeared.
‘Good,’ she observed.
Next she grabbed a handful of soot from out of the corner of the chimney and began to artfully smear this across Amarilla’s face. The result was frightful and would have greatly upset Amarilla, had she been able to see it.
‘Now,’ said Mme Frappedelapins to Emsie, ‘just clean her up. You won’t be able too, but you will at least make her almost presentable. No one will think that she is Amarilla De Cassiones, looking like that!’
Emsie began to do as she was told and Mme Frappedelapins returned to running the kitchen.
‘Hurry up!’ she shouted at the girls, there is more food to serve and I don’t want it going cold while you two waste your time prettifying yourselves!’