Enchantress 7 - The Royal Family

Lost for something to say, Mark finally said, "Your mom fixed my eye; do you like it?"

"You're still wearing an eye patch, let me look." She flipped up his eyepatch and saw his gold eye, just like her father. She couldn't understand the feelings that were racing through her at the moment, and whatever they were this probably wasn't the proper time for them, but they felt good. "It's handsome," was all she could get out.

They rode in silence for a long time then just before emerging from the tunnel on palace grounds Mark asked, "Do you think she's with my dad?"

"Yes, I do." said Octavia. "Your parents had a very, very special love, that's why she didn't find another husband, and there were guys interested. Yes, I'm sure they're finally together." She reached forward and patted his good knee. "Your mom's last thoughts were about the two of you, she didn't want to go until she saw you and Hollie together, so maybe she has a special insight into your love."

"Mother please..." groaned Hollie.

The palace guard gathered around Mark and they lifted him out of the carriage and into a wheelchair and moved him to a room in the palace guard barracks, a section of the castle a floor below the kitchens. "Hollie, come on, let's let them take care of their man, we will see him tomorrow."

"It's not fair," she pouted. "We get the nice rooms because we're royal and he gets the crappy rooms because he's not."

"How do you know they're crappy, have you been down there?"

"No," said Hollie. They were crappy because she couldn't go down there.

"Their rooms are designed for what they need, ours are not... except for our balcony where your father can go flying." She hugged Hollie and said, "tomorrow the cast comes off his left arm and your father starts rehabilitation of the arm and the leg. The eye and other parts I... helped."

"Mother please..." groaned Hollie.

"Come on, your brothers and sisters miss you." As they headed up the long walk to the seventh floor a page caught up with a flimsy sheet of paper.

"Personal clacks for you from the king, your majesty."

"Thank you Cecil," she took the folded clacks and the young man was shocked that the Queen knew his name. She read the clacks and muttered, "What the hell is your father up to now?" She handed Hollie the clacks message that said "ARRIVING AT 2:00 PM IN HOT DANG. NEED TRANSPORTATION FOR 11 FROM TRAIN TO CASTLE."

"Cecil," called Octavia to the retreating page. "Please inform Prince Marlon that he is in charge while we are out."

"Yes your majesty."

She handed the clacks to Cecil and said, "Reach out to Duke Prescott and ask him to arrange transportation for fourteen."

"Yes your majesty," and Cecil ran off.

"Come on Hollie," said Octavia as she started heading down the staircase.

"Where are we going?"

"Ankh-Morpork."

<><><><><>֎<><><><><>

"It ith good to thee you again mathter," said Igor as Nick stepped on the private car Lady Lucricia.

Nick smiled and said, "It's good to see you too Igor." He stuck a hand out to shake and let Igor choose what hand he was going to shake it with, he has three arms. "This is going to be difficult but Sebastian said we can make it work. I have eight homeless children to transport to Lancre."

"What are you going to do with the children?" asked the manservant.

"I'm going to create a school around them."

"Allow me to thay that this will not be the difficult part. The hard part thtarts when you get home."

"Right now we need hot water, soap and washrags, and something to feed them, they probably haven't had a proper meal in years. I'm going to go get them." Nick stepped off the car, then a moment later he returned with Cholly in his arms and the other seven tagging along behind. Darla, Tina, Codie, Albie, Hadley, Asher, and Benjy who was almost as small as Cholly climbed aboard with varying amounts of help from Findlay, Reziko, and the Archchancellor.

In the moments that Nick was off the car gathering up the children, Igor put out bowls of steaming hot water, washrags, bars of soap and towels. "Ok, wash up first," said Nick. There was a lot of groaning but Nick insisted, "hands and faces or nobody gets supper."

"What's for supper?" asked lanky Albie.

"It won't matter because if you don't wash you won't get any."

Nick sat down with Cholly and washed his tiny hands very, very carefully... so little, so fragile looking, the poor child is probably covered with mites and lice. Using a lot of soap and water he removed layers of dirt from his tiny face. "Look what I found!" said Nick proudly. "A little boy! Who knew one was hiding under all that dirt? I think Cholly is going to be number one in line for dinner."

"No fair, he had help!" complained Asher.

<><><><><>

Octavia and Hollie emerged from L-Space in the library of the Unseen University in Ankh Morpork. Just as the ill-tempered head librarian Bérenger Clodporrage was about to shout something, Octavia pointed Virga at him and said "DON'T!" She wasn't loud but the force of her command vibrated in Bérenger's head for a long time. Virga's eye opened and glared at Bérenger Clodporrage and the mouthy librarian was unable to speak.

"He seems to be highly nervous your majesty. I do not think he got this job legitimately. A library with this amount of magical books requires a senior master librarian, I believe he is a technical librarian first class."

"Good to know," said Octavia and they stormed out of the library and headed toward the Archchancellors office. "BURSAR!" Octavia cried. The bursar, Reginald Nutt, leaned out of his office to see who was shouting for him. "Does the Archchancellor know where my husband is?"

"They are together your majesty, at the train station."

"Right, follow me Hollie," said Octavia and she stepped out of the University administration offices and walked out on the quad. She mounted Virga sidesaddle like a witch riding a broom and began to rise.

"Mom! I can't fly."

"You've flown twice tonight. Don't think about it, just do it."

Hollie relaxed, mounted her broom and got it to float, then she closed her eyes and cleared her mind. "It's not working."

"Open your eyes," said Octavia. They were fifty feet in the air and heading toward the train station. Octavia flew to the station and buzzed along the platforms looking for her husband. Hollie was right behind her gathering confidence as they swooped through the train shed. "Careful of the platform roof!" she said as she flew over a made up passenger train and began to inspect the other trains. Then she saw the car with the gold script letters on the side, Lady Lucrecia, that had to be it. They set down on the platform and heard the cries of excited children inside.

Climbing into the train car Octavia found it filled with filthy children. They were clustered around bowls of hot water and were scrubbing layers of filth off their faces and hands and were cheering each other on. Reziko and Findlay were crouched down helping little boys wash up and shouts of "He didn't say anything about my arms!" and "My ears aren't part of my face!" while Igor behind the bar was making sandwiches.

Back in the corner she saw Nick with a tiny boy on each knee. Both looked terrified but their faces and hands were clean. He was talking to them softly like he did with Gwendolyn when she had night terrors. Nick would cuddle his little girl and walk back and forth in the small cottage keeping her quiet with gentle stories. A voice that Nick recognized as Darla called out, "Yay! Girls are here!" but he continued to talk to the little guys.

Octavia knelt down next to Nick and she didn't need to asked what was going on, from the horrible condition of these children she realized that he got them out of the gutter he grew up in. "Who is this?" asked Octavia.

"The clean one is Cholly, and the one that Cholly and I are cleaning up is Benjy. Right Cholly?" Cholly looked terrified but he nodded yes. "I was coming back from the meeting with the patrician and I was going to show the Archchancellor where I used to live and I found my house full of kids, right Benji?" and he nodded yes.

"That was my house!" shouted Darla.

"And you did very good with it," said Nick.

Octavia sat down next to Nick, her mind spinning with what she was seeing. It was organized chaos; it was joyful pandemonium. One by one the children came up to Nick who inspected them like he did with his own six children when he lived on the farm, hands face ears neck all checked for dirt as he gently took care of the littlest of them. It was so Nick. "Ok, everybody is washed, are the bowls washed out?"

"Yeeeeessss!" they chimed.

"And the washrags and towels given back to Igor?"

"YEEEEEESSSS!" they shrieked.

"Ok, let's have supper," and Igor put a huge platter of sandwiches on the table in the center of the car and the kids minus Cholly and Benjy dove in. "Reziko, bring me the peanut butter and jelly for my assistants here."

Darla wrinkled her nose and demanded, "why does he call you your majesty?"

"It's part of his job description. It's a little complicated, you know paperwork," said Nick with a smile.

"Yeah, paperwork," said Darla as she devoured her sandwich. Obviously paperwork is the bane of abandoned children too.

Octavia sat next to Nick, and Cholly leaned toward Octavia holding his freshly washed hands out to her. "Oh, my poor little angel," she crooned as she lifted Cholly off Nick's lap.

"He helped me find the rest of them, didn't you Cholly?" and the little boy nodded. He settled in on Octavia's lap and for the first time that evening he stopped trembling. He studied the piece of sandwich that Octavia tore off and gave to him before putting it in his mouth. Meanwhile, once Benjy got a taste of the sandwich he ate it without any prodding by Nick.

Igor had started to make gourmet sandwiches that Lucricia and the Archchancellor would like but Nick said "No, something simple." Igor made peanut butter, peanut butter and jelly, and ham and cheese. They were made with thick slices of fresh baked bread and the kids ate ferociously, even surprising Nick who knew the hunger they were experiencing.

"Why?" asked Octavia trying not to laugh.

"Because every baby you gave me got old. You're not going to get old on me, are you Benjy?" Benjy wasn't sure how to answer that so he nodded yes.

After the kids ate sandwiches and drank all the mixer in the bar, Nick took the guitar that the Archchancellor handed him and played softly as the kids told their stories to Octavia at Nick's insistence. As they did that, Igor and Archchancellor Dashwood ran to get groceries. The queen was shocked to hear the stories of these little children being tossed out onto the street for reasons that were never explained to them but Nick whispered, "Their mothers were probably prostitutes and they got in the way, or their parents were drug addicts and simply threw them away."

"You?"

"My dad Ivo was addicted to Skim, a nasty addictive drug," he whispered, then louder he said, "Who knows what skim is?" a half dozen hands went up. "Who knows what vegetables are?" and one hand went up. "This is life on the street." He noticed a pair of watchmen checking on the car, peeking through the windows getting closer and closer to the door. "Last question, who wants to go to my house with me and lady Octavia and start our very own school?" and Hollie counted ten hands from eight children, even Cholly and Benjy raised their hands. "Ok, I'm taking that as a contract between you and me. Do you know what that means?" Eight little heads shook no, and Nick said, "that means we agree with each other, it's a good thing."

The watchmen stepped aboard the car and looked around. "I'm going to ask that everyone here get out of the car," said the shorter watchman who wore sergeant stripes.

"No," said Nick. "These are my students and you're interrupting their very first music lesson, now my secretary, Mister MacIver will show you out." Findlay opened the door to the end vestibule but the policemen didn't move. Nick continued to play the guitar and the watchmen began to grow closer.

"What do you think the owner of this car would say if he came through that door right now?" said the Sergeant pointing to the door with a truncheon.

"He would say, 'I got the groceries you asked for, your majesty,'" said Nick.

"I'm done asking you, now I'm telling you," said Sergeant Stonepaper almost shrieking in anger, "everyone here get out of the car!"

"That request exceeds your authority, sergeant," said Nick as he continued to strum the guitar. "If you leave I won't report you."

"That did it, I had enough of your mouth," said the larger cop, Constable Frothwater, and he raised his truncheon high above his head to strike Nick, but suddenly a very, very sharp sword was pushing into his chin.

"Say the word, your majesty," said Reziko Pants eager to dispatch this embarrassment that gives cops a bad name.

"Awww, you went and started an international... you know, wosname..." said Nick, pretending to be stupid.

"Dialogue?" asked Findlay.

"No, not that."

"War?" suggested Hollie.

"Nnnno, close, but no, not war," said Nick.

"Incident," said Octavia.

"That's the ticket, incident, you went and started an international incident. But you get too many international incidents and Bob's your uncle, you got a war." Nick looked at the little sergeant and said, "Go tell Commander Carrot that your trainee almost assaulted a foreign sovereign and is being held on charges of attempted regicide."

"And who should I say did my stupid trainee try to kill?" sneered Sergeant Stonepaper.

"Allow me to introduce you to his royal highness, King Verence the third, her majesty Queen Octavia of Lancre, and her majesty Princess Hollie Worblehat-Stein," said Reziko.

"The man who is waiting for permission to kill the constable is my personal bodyguard Lieutenant Reziko Pants, the head of Lancre Palace Security and sword training," said Nick.

The little sergeant's eyes grew big around as pie pans and he gasped and ran off leaving Constable Frothwater behind.

"Where did the kids go?" asked Hollie. The only children visible were Cholly and Benjy who were sitting in Nick and Octavia's laps. They looked terrified and Cholly started trembling again.

"Come on out, this one was a bad boy and he's going to get a spanking," said Nick and one by one the kids emerged from their hiding spaces. "I promise you, when you get to my house you'll never have to do that again."

Darla planted her feet in front of Nick and said, "Isn't this your house?" which caused Nick and Octavia to start laughing.

"Ok," said Octavia, "bedtime! Let's everyone find a bunk mate and get into bed!" Octavia led them to the compartment that Igor made up before going out for groceries with the Archchancellor. "And get out of those filthy dirty clothes!"

"I don't have any more clothes," pouted Tina.

"Your clothes will be nice and clean and mended when you get them back in the morning," said Octavia and she said, "come on, get them off."

"I'm shy," said the oldest boy Codie.

Hollie sighed and said, "I've got two sisters, three brothers, and I've raised cows, chickens, horses, goats, a thousand sheep and a million rabbits and you don't have anything I've never seen before. Clothes off!" Soon Darla and Tina were in the lower bunks with Cholly and Benjy who were happy to be back with their mommies. The four boys climbed into the two upper bunks and after a round of tickling and laughing started to drift off to sleep.

Commander Carrot Ironfounderson, Captain Angua von Überwald and Sergeant Cyrus Stonepaper approached the private rail car, it was sitting right where Stonepaper said it would be. Carrot had a bad feeling about this, especially when Angua swore when she saw her Aunt Lucricia's name on the side of the rail car. "This is property of a foreign dignitary," whispered Angua and Carrot nodded. They entered the car at the sleep compartment end as a naked little boy stepped out of the toilet half awake and darted into a sleeper compartment and burrowed under the covers. At the end of the walkway was a witch wearing a scowl. "Where is that child's clothes?" asked Angua.

"They're being washed and mended courtesy of the kingdom of Lancre," said the witch. "When has Ankh Morpork shown him that kind of kindness?"

Ignoring the question, Commander Carrot asked, "Could you step out of the way ma'am?"

From behind her Findlay MacIver's voice could be heard. "The proper term of address is 'Your Majesty,'" and Carrot and Angua realize that they were confronting the Witch Princess Hollie Worblehat-Stein.

"I'm going to recuse myself," said Angua.

"Why?"

"Her brother is married to my niece, weren't you paying attention at the wedding?"

Now Carrot swore {to himself}. How much worse could this get? Hollie stepped aside and he saw behind her a man softly playing the guitar. He turned to Carrot and said, "Welcome Commander." Carrot saw the man's crockelgator skin eyepatch and almost wept. It was the king of Lancre.

"Good evening your majesty, what brings you to our fair city?"

"I had a meeting with The Patrician and the Duke of Ankh this evening. The queen and I are taking the train home. We will be leaving in..." he looked at his pocket watch, "four hours. Well, it's supposed to be three hours and forty eight minutes but this is the AM and SP railroad."

"I'm going to ask you to leave the children."

"You're in no position to ask me anything Commander, you should return to your office and mark in your ledger that we spoke and you went back to bed."

"They are citizens of Ankh Morpork..." Carrot started but Nick shut him down.

"They are now citizens of Lancre, they have sworn their fealty to me and depend on me for their protection. You have no claim to them, and touching a hair on their heads would be an act of war. Nick sprang from his chair and glared up at Carrot. "Are you ready to go to war over eight children commander Carrot? Are you? Because I am. I was one of those kids thrown in the trash by Ankh Morpork, and when I found them hiding in the same trash heap that I used to live in I said it stops now. Do you know what war looks like Commander Carrot? I do, and I can show you. I've learned quite well how it works."

"You really need to leave," said Octavia with a slight smile, "you're making him mad."

"I need to take Constable Frothwater with me," said Carrot.

"Constable Frothwater will be taken to Überwald to be tried on charges of attempted regicide," said Nick as he glared up at carrot who stood over a foot taller than Nick.

"Überwald?" asked Carrot. He glanced at Corporal Frothwater who looked like he was about to wet himself.

"He was on Überwald property when the alleged assault occurred," said Angua.

Just then, the owner of the car stepped aboard and said, "We have the groceries you asked for your majesty," called Archchancellor Dashwood as he boarded with several sacks of groceries and Igor carrying two cases of fruit juice.

"That is the owner of the car returning," said Nick softly and he began to play a slow funeral dirge on the guitar. Sergeant Stonepaper nearly cried as the Archchancellor recited everything that Nick said he would say.

An hour later the Duke of Ankh, commander of all Ankh Morpork men under arms stepped aboard the car. "Your majesty," said Samuel Vimes with a bow.

"Your grace," said Nick returning the bow. They shook hands and sat down.

"What's this I hear about children?" asked Sam as Igor opened a cigar box and offered Archchancellor Dashwood, Nick, Sam, and Octavia a cigar.