The Ickabog(3)
Bert Beamish was one such little boy. When a family called the Dovetails came over for dinner one night, Mr. Dovetail entertained everybody with what he claimed was the latest news of the Ickabog. That night, five-year-old Bert woke, sobbing and terrified, from a dream in which the monster’s huge white eyes were gleaming at him across a foggy marsh into which he was slowly sinking.
“There, there,” whispered his mother, who’d tiptoed into his room with a candle and now rocked him backward and forward in her lap. “There is no Ickabog, Bertie. It’s just a silly story.”
“B-but Mr. Dovetail said sheep have g-gone missing!” hiccupped Bert.
“So they have,” said Mrs. Beamish, “but not because a monster took them. Sheep are foolish creatures. They wander off and get lost in the marsh.”
“B-but Mr. Dovetail said p-people disappear too!”
“Only people who’re silly enough to stray into the marsh at night,” said Mrs. Beamish. “Hush now, Bertie, there is no monster.”
“But Mr. D-Dovetail said p-people heard voices outside their windows and in the m-morning their chickens were gone!”
Mrs. Beamish couldn’t help but laugh.
“The voices they heard are ordinary thieves, Bertie. Up in the Marshlands they pilfer from one another all the time. It’s easier to blame the Ickabog than to admit their neighbors are stealing from them!”
“Stealing?” gasped Bert, sitting up in his mother’s lap and gazing at her with solemn eyes. “Stealing’s very naughty, isn’t it, Mummy?”
“It’s very naughty indeed,” said Mrs. Beamish, lifting up Bert, placing him tenderly back into his warm bed, and tucking him in. “But luckily, we don’t live near those lawless Marshlanders.”
She picked up her candle and tiptoed back toward the bedroom door.
“Night, night,” she whispered from the doorway. She’d normally have added “don’t let the Ickabog bite,” which was what parents across Cornucopia said to their children at bedtime, but instead she said, “Sleep tight.”
Bert fell asleep again, and saw no more monsters in his dreams.
It so happened that Mr. Dovetail and Mrs. Beamish were great friends. They’d been in the same class at school, and had known each other all their lives. When Mr. Dovetail heard that he’d given Bert nightmares, he felt guilty. As he was the best carpenter in all of Chouxville, he decided to carve the little boy an Ickabog. It had a wide, smiling mouth full of teeth and big, clawed feet, and at once it became Bert’s favorite toy.
If Bert, or his parents, or the Dovetails next door, or anybody else in the whole kingdom of Cornucopia had been told that terrible troubles were about to engulf Cornucopia, all because of the myth of the Ickabog, they’d have laughed. They lived in the happiest kingdom in the world. What harm could the Ickabog do?
The Beamish and Dovetail families both lived in a place called the City-Within-The-City. This was the part of Chouxville where all the people who worked for King Fred had houses. Gardeners, cooks, tailors, pageboys, seamstresses, stonemasons, grooms, carpenters, footmen, and maids: all of them occupied neat little cottages just outside the palace grounds.
The City-Within-The-City was separated from the rest of Chouxville by a high white wall, and the gates in the wall stood open during the day, so that the residents could visit friends and family in the rest of Chouxville, and go to the markets. By night, the sturdy gates were closed, and everyone in the City-Within-The-City slept, like the king, under the protection of the Royal Guard.
Major Beamish, Bert’s father, was head of the Royal Guard. A handsome, cheerful man who rode a steel-gray horse, he accompanied King Fred, Lord Spittleworth, and Lord Flapoon on their hunting trips, which usually happened five times a week. The king liked Major Beamish, and he also liked Bert’s mother, because Bertha Beamish was the king’s own private pastry chef, a high honor in that city of world-class bakers. Due to Bertha’s habit of bringing home fancy cakes that hadn’t turned out absolutely perfectly, Bert was a plump little boy, and sometimes, I regret to say, the other children called him “Butterball” and made him cry.
Bert’s best friend was Daisy Dovetail. The two children had been born days apart, and acted more like brother and sister than playmates. Daisy was Bert’s defender against bullies. She was skinny but fast, and more than ready to fight anyone who called Bert “Butterball.”
Daisy’s father, Dan Dovetail, was the king’s carpenter, repairing and replacing the wheels and shafts on his carriages. As Mr. Dovetail was so clever at carving, he also made bits of furniture for the palace.
Daisy’s mother, Dora Dovetail, was the Head Seamstress of the palace — another honored job, because King Fred liked clothes, and kept a whole team of tailors busy making him new costumes every month.
It was the king’s great fondness for finery that led to a nasty incident which the history books of Cornucopia would later record as the beginning of all the troubles that were to engulf that happy little kingdom. At the time it happened, only a few people within the City-Within-The-City knew anything about it, though for some, it was an awful tragedy.
What happened was this.
The King of Pluritania came to pay a formal visit to Fred (still hoping, perhaps, to exchange one of his daughters for a lifetime’s supply of Hopes-of-Heaven) and Fred decided that he must have a brand-new set of clothes made for the occasion: dull purple, overlaid with silver lace, with amethyst buttons, and gray fur at the cuffs.