From the depths of her bucket and through her scarf, Imogene heard Luella ask, “Are we almost there yet, Bertie?”
“Almost, my dear,” Bertie assured her.
“It’s just your friends seem to have chosen such an out-of-the-way spot to camp in. I’d have thought they’d stay in town. In the castle, even. Like you said they usually do when they put on a play for kings and queens.”
Imogene suspected that Bertie’s acting troupe was not quite so famous and respected as he had been indicating. She spoke up, saying, “No actors have performed or are due to perform at the castle.” But even as she said it, she knew Luella wouldn’t believe her about that, either.
And, sure enough, Luella ignored her comment and moved on to a different topic. “What should we name her, Bertie?” Luella asked.
Once more Imogene couldn’t keep silent. “Imogene,” she croaked at them.
“She does seem rather stuck on that,” Bertie observed.
Luella said, “Which I think is cute, and you think is cute, but what if the royal family finds that offensive?” She thought for a moment. “Ooo, I know! How about Polly, like she was a parrot?” Then, in the kind of voice quite a few people use for pets and very young children, Luella said, “Can you say ‘Polly’? Say: ‘My name is Polly.’”
Imogene couldn’t help herself. “You,” she told Luella, “are a twit.”
But Luella only laughed.
“Better be careful,” Bertie said. “Some parrots have picked up quite rude language. The same might be true for our Chinese speaking frog.”
Imogene told him, “You’re a twit, too.”
Bertie said, “Since she’s already trained to say her name is Princess Imogene, why don’t we just go with that? We’ll be on to the next kingdom soon, anyway.”
Imogene groaned and clung on to her constantly shifting rock.
Till finally, after the light had grown so dim Imogene feared the sun had set, and after two more Are we there yets? from Luella, they found where Bertie’s friends had camped.
“Oh,” Luella said, and Imogene could tell from her tone that she was surprised in a not-a-good-surprise way. “It doesn’t look nearly so grand as I imagined.”
“Well, it’s night,” Bertie pointed out.
“Yes, but you kept talking about the wagon, and this is just a cart, like my father uses to haul pigs and produce to market.”
“Surely you didn’t think you were going to ride in it?” Bertie said in a tone that indicated if Luella had been thinking that, then she was more foolish than she ought to admit to. “This is to carry the costumes and props for the plays. We people of the theater always walk, which gives us the chance to rehearse our lines as we travel.”
“I see,” Luella said. But she still sounded disappointed.
“Here,” Bertie said, “let me introduce you to Ned, the leader of our troupe.”
Luella stopped walking so abruptly that the bucket with Imogene in it slapped against either Luella’s or Bertie’s leg. Water and rock and Imogene all sloshed dizzyingly. “But, Bertie, I thought you said you was the head of the troupe.”
“No, my precious. I’m the lead actor. Ned . . . is more an administrator, or manager.” They resumed walking, and Bertie called out, “Ned!”
A new voice greeted them—not warmly. “Well, Bert, you took your time getting here. You said you were going to be back early enough to help strike the set and pack from the last town and to take your turn pushing the wagon. I almost thought you’d given up on the performing life and that you’d decided to settle in as a farmer.”
Bertie ignored the complaints. “Ned, this is Luella, of whom I spoke. Luella . . . Ned.”
From the way the bucket bobbed, Luella must have curtsied. “Pleased, I’m sure,” she cooed.
Ned grunted.
Bertie explained, “Luella’s parents took longer than we thought to leave to go visit the aged aunt. And then her brother took forever to feed the chickens while we were required to take refuge in the barn.”
Ned growled, “Bert, you always make a production of everything.”
The bucket was being jostled as Luella nudged Bertie. “Show ’im what we got, Bertie. Show ’im.”
“Ah! Take a look at this, Ned.” Bertie peeled the scarf partway off the bucket—partway, so that Imogene didn’t have room to jump out and away.
Which she wouldn’t have. She was too startled by seeing that the sky was black, with a sprinkling of stars. She’d supposed that the scarf had been filtering out most of the light, but the sun had set—it was totally night. By now, she knew, her parents would have gone from being annoyed at her lateness to genuine worry.
“Ta-dah!” Luella said.
Imogene saw a man probably a little bit younger than her father peer into the bucket at her. He stroked his beard and said, “I can’t really make out . . .”
“It’s a Chinese speaking frog!” Luella announced.
“A what?”
“A Chinese speaking frog!”
The face withdrew. “What are you going on about?” Ned asked Luella.
“Listen to this,” Luella told him. Then to Imogene she said, in that same annoying singsong she’d come to use with her, “What’s your name?”
Well, Imogene thought, if they don’t believe I’m a princess frog, and if they think a Chinese speaking frog is worth keeping in order to show, let’s see what they think of a regular frog. She said, “Rrr-bitt.”
“No,” Luella corrected her gently, then prompted her, “Princess . . . ? Your name is Princess . . . ?”
Imogene just looked at her.
Obviously hoping she could outsmart a frog, Luella said, “Is your name Polly? Does Polly want a cracker?”
A mosquito came in close to investigate, and Imogene shot her tongue out and ate it.
Ned sighed. Loudly. He told Bertie, “Fine woman you’ve found for yourself there, Bert. A most suitable match for you.” He shook his head and walked away.
“Maybe she’s tired,” Luella said.
“Perhaps,” Bertie agreed.
Luella told Imogene, “Nighty-night. Nighty-night, Princess Imogene.” She refastened the scarf, destroying Imogene’s hope that during the night, unobserved, she might have been able to work her way out the opening Bertie had uncovered.
Drat! Imogene thought.
She spent the next few hours jumping against the scarf, trying to dislodge it, until finally, exhausted, she fell asleep on her rock. The only good thing—the absolutely only good thing—was that it was just in Imogene’s dreams that the rock grew legs and chased her around the bucket.
The next morning, when Luella once more pulled back a corner of the scarf, Imogene fought back the only way she could, by promptly greeting her with another, “Rrrr-bittt!”
“Bertie!” Luella complained. “She won’t talk.”
“Maybe she’s hungry,” Bertie suggested.
“What do frogs eat?”
“I don’t know. Flies, I imagine. Bugs and beetles and so forth.”
“Ooo,” Luella said. “I think I saw a fly in the corner of the cart.” She left Imogene in Bertie’s safekeeping but promptly came back and tossed a crusty dead fly into the bucket.
Despite the fact that Imogene was very hungry, this fly looked even more unappetizing to her than the others she had eaten so far. Still, she forced her tongue out of her mouth, and she picked up the fly. She closed her mouth. She tried to swallow. She gagged, and the fly shot out of her mouth.
One of the other actors—Imogene saw there were three men, besides Bertie and Ned—had stopped to watch. He said, “I think they only eat live bugs.”
Oh, Imogene thought. She hadn’t realized that, but her frog body had.
“Oh,” Luella said. Wearing a sad expression, she covered the bucket.
The man said, “I hope you feed us better than that.”
“What?” Luella asked.
“Breakfast,” the man said. “What tasty treat were yo
u planning on preparing for us to give us the strength and stamina we need for a day on the road?”
“I wasn’t planning on preparing you anything,” Luella snapped.
“Aw, come on, please,” the man wheedled. “You’re the only woman here, and the men, if I do say so myself, we’re all terrible cooks.”
“I suppose,” Luella grumbled. “This once. But I didn’t join up to cook for you. I’m going to be an actor.”
The man barked out a laugh, but Bertie stepped in before the man could say any more. Bertie said, “Come, my love, let us do this together. We shall be a cooking ensemble. A duet of dining.”
Hmm, Imogene thought. She’d seen several groups of professional actors, and they were always men. All men. If the play called for a woman, that part was played by a young man dressed like a woman. Some of them were very convincing. But Imogene, as princess, always got a front row seat, whether in the castle or in the town square, so she could see their Adam’s apples and sometimes their beard stubble. Had Bertie failed to explain to Luella that women simply did not appear on the stage?
Throughout the day, Luella would open the bucket to throw in a leaf with an ant on it, or a ladybug, or a caterpillar. It was enough to sustain Imogene. Just barely.
In the evening, the group stopped at a small village. By the sounds, Imogene could tell that they performed some acrobatics, juggling, and magic tricks.
Luella had removed the scarf from the bucket so that she could reach in and stroke Imogene’s head, when Bertie returned. “No play?” the farm girl who wanted to act asked, with a bit of whine in her tone. “No acting?”
“Too small a venue,” Bertie said. “Any who have trod the boards know to save our creative energies for the bigger towns.” Then, though his meaning had been perfectly clear, he explained. “Trod the boards is the way we theater folk refer to putting on a play.” He flashed a smile and said, “Can you sew this button back on for me, my darling?”
Luella hesitated, but took the shirt Bertie was holding out to her.
“And, while you’re at it, shorten the sleeves?”
Imogene, doing the back float in the bucket, saw Luella narrow her eyes at Bertie, who either didn’t notice or pretended not to. He asked, “How’s the frog doing?”
Imogene spoke up for herself. “Rrr-bitt!” she said.
“Well,” Bertie told Luella, “if it’s lost the ability to speak, I suppose all it’s good for now is to eat.”
Imogene was so horrified, for a moment she lost the ability to speak in human or frog.
Luella, fortunately, was also horrified, but not to the point of speechlessness. “Bertie! No!”
“I’m just saying,” Bertie murmured.
They argued a bit about that, and about whether Luella should make supper for the group once she finished mending Bertie’s shirt. In the end, Luella won one argument and lost the other: she made supper, but it didn’t involve Chinese speaking frog.
When Luella lifted the scarf the following morning, Imogene was ready. She jumped—right out of the bucket and onto the ground, prepared to start jumping toward home. But then she hesitated. Nothing looked at all familiar.
Had they traveled east or west? Was that a river they were camped beside?
Imogene circled, trying to get her bearings.
Luella dropped the scarf over her, trapping her in the folds of fabric.
Bertie called, “Luella, my turtledove, don’t let it get away. I am so tired of warm mutton stew for supper and cold mutton stew for breakfast, I would give anything in exchange for a savory dish of leeks and crisp frog legs.”
“No,” Luella said, scooping up scarf and frog. “You can’t eat something what knows its own name.”
“But it doesn’t,” Bertie pointed out. “Not anymore it doesn’t. Maybe they forget how to talk once they reach a certain age.”
Imogene couldn’t stop trembling, unsure what to do.
“I think she’s homesick,” Luella argued. She shook the scarf out over the bucket so that Imogene fell back in. “I think this isn’t what she expected, and she’s missing home.”
Bertie folded his arms across his chest. “It will get better, oh apple of my eye. We’ll be at a big town the day after tomorrow. And then we’ll put on”—he held his arms out expansively—“a play!”
“And will I have a part in it?”
“Oh, yes,” Bertie said without hesitation.
“All right,” Luella said. “But you ain’t eating the frog.”
“But, my love bunny, it’s such a burden for you to carry that bucket, to be looking for flies and such all the time. The others are beginning to talk. And look, the poor thing has begun to get pale and pasty. Better to eat it now than to watch it waste away.”
He had a point, Imogene knew. Not about eating her, of course, but that she was slowly fading from lack of proper nourishment, and from being cooped up in a small bucket with the same old water she’d been in for two days now. Not to mention that slippery, bouncing rock.
Luella hugged the bucket to her chest and spoke to Imogene in a voice little more than a whisper. “Please get better, little froggy. Please eat, and be happy, and speak. I could keep you in something bigger than this bucket, and let you run loose once in a while so’s you could chase after your own food—food that’s more to your liking—if I wasn’t a-feared you’d run away.”
Bertie tugged the bucket away from her. “Luella,” he said, in the firm voice of a grownup wanting a child to behave, to accept something he knew she wouldn’t like.
The time for silence had passed. Imogene spoke up. “All right. All right, I’ll talk.” She sighed. “And I promise I won’t try to run away.”
And that was how Princess Imogene Eustacia Wellington joined a traveling band of performers.
Chapter 8:
A Princess Is as Good as Her Word
(Which word would that be?)
Luella sent Bertie to fetch Ned and the other actors.
Imogene allowed herself to grow hopeful. Surely, she told herself, these actors were likely to have more sense than Luella and Bertie. Actually, she was fairly confident that just about anyone was likely to have more sense than Luella and Bertie. The actors would have traveled and seen the world, which she was almost certain wasn’t the case with Bertie, no matter what he said; and they wouldn’t be so set on making themselves look important. Surely people like that would be sophisticated enough not to believe in a Chinese speaking frog. She could convince them about what had happened to her. And they would return her to her home—and even if they wouldn’t do so because it was the right thing to do, at least they would do it for the royal reward they would receive.
But she quickly saw she was not off to a good start. Apparently the men had discovered one of the wheels on the cart was wobbly, and they had been trying to fix it when Bertie interrupted them. Now they made no attempt to hide their impatience as they followed him back to where Luella sat on the ground holding Imogene in her hand, and Ned was striding briskly, demanding even before he got there, “This better be good, Bert.”
Princess Imogene cleared her throat and said, “Hello, Ned. And you other actors. Bertie and Luella wanted me to talk for you.”
Ned stopped so quickly, the other three men walked into him, one right after the other. Then he looked from Imogene to Bertie to Imogene and back to Bertie. “How did you do that?” he asked Bertie.
Luella laughed. “Bertie ain’t doing nothing, Ned. It’s the frog. Tell ’im your name, clever froggy.”
Imogene said, “I’m Princess Imogene Eustacia Wellington. And, actually, I am not a clever froggy. I am a princess who has had a spell put on me by a witch.”
Ned’s look of amazement broadened into a grin. Speaking to Bertie, he asked, “How did you ever train a frog to croak in a way that sounds so much like words?”
While Imogene took the time to stamp a little green foot irritably, Bertie said, “Well, it required patience and persistence, but in the en
d I am quite pleased with the results.”
Luella looked as surprised as Imogene felt at this version of the story; but Luella recovered first. “She’s a Chinese speaking frog. She already knew a lot of words when we found her.”
Bertie continued, “I mean, it made a few almost-human sounds, so I diligently kept coaching it.”
Imogene’s temper snapped. She shouted at Ned, at all of them, “There is no such thing as a Chinese speaking frog!”
Her mother would have told her, “A princess does not shout like a common fishwife.”
Ned, however, was plainly pleased. “Well, well. This is fine, indeed. We’ll try easing the little creature into our program tonight. It should be a sensation!” He picked up both scarf and bucket from where Luella had set them on the ground and said, “Let us put the frog back in here, then we can pack this in the cart so that there’s no chance of the little fellow getting loose.”
Little fellow?
No chance of getting loose?
Before Imogene had time to be offended or worried, Luella stood. But even though she stepped forward, that was for emphasis, not surrender, for she still held Imogene protectively. “I promised her a bigger bucket in return for her promise not to try to escape.”
Ned roared with laughter. “The frog promised not to try to escape?”
“Yes,” Luella said.
“Yes,” Imogene said.
“Yes,” even Bertie said.
“Dear Luella,” Ned said, “what’s a frog’s word worth? I’d wager it isn’t even as good as an actor’s word.”