A tall, broad figure appeared in the light at the top of the stairs. It beckoned majestically and then moved back again. In nervous silence, broken only by the chattering of Spoiler’s teeth, the quest team toiled up the last few steps and moved through the archway, with Mimi in the lead.
They found themselves in a bare stone chamber lit by flaming torches fixed to the walls. The ogre was waiting for them at the far end, in front of a large door bound with bands of iron. He was a truly terrifying sight.
His clothes were of blood-red silk and velvet. His shoes were encrusted with tiny pearls, and his fingers, six on each hand, were heavy with coral rings. His long black hair was curled into oiled ringlets threaded with gold.
But his face was hideously ugly – pitted and twisted and covered in fat brown moles, each one sprouting a crop of coarse bristles. His forehead was so low that his hair and his bushy eyebrows almost met. Blunt yellow fangs protruded from his mouth, and his eyes were small and mean.
The ogre tossed back his velvet cape and puffed up his chest as his visitors crept forward in single file. But his face fell as Mimi reached him and bowed.
‘Damsels are supposed to curtsey, not bow!’ he said crossly, peering down at her from his great height.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Mimi murmured, and did her best to curtsey, without much success.
Scowling, the ogre bent to look at her. Clearly he didn’t like what he saw, because he wrinkled his bulbous nose till clumps of black hair shot, quivering, from his nostrils.
‘Damsels are also supposed to wear long, flowing skirts, not trousers,’ he growled at Mimi. ‘Your voice gave me high hopes, but you are a great disappointment. Your face is fair enough, I suppose, but your hair is much too short and you are very scrawny. You are also quite young, by the look of you. Not at all suitable for an ogre’s bride.’
Uh-oh, Leo thought.
Mimi’s face flushed with temper. Her eyes flashed, and her false meekness dropped from her like a cloak. ‘Well, I don’t want to be an ogre’s bride,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like less!’
The ogre seemed to swell. He bared his terrible fangs. Conker sprang forward. He dragged Mimi aside, thrusting her behind him.
And Spoiler was revealed, cowering in front of Bertha and Leo, trying to hide his face in the frills of his bonnet.
‘Ah!’ breathed the Ogre of Cruelcliff.
He stepped forward and put out his hand. Spoiler cringed and trembled.
‘Do not fear, little flower,’ said the ogre. ‘What is your name?’
‘D-D-Dame Dally,’ squeaked Spoiler.
‘A beautiful name,’ said the ogre, bowing. ‘A name well suited to a beautiful damsel who dresses –’ he shot a disdainful look at Mimi’ – as a proper damsel should. Will you not look up, into my eyes, Dame Dally?’
Spoiler gave a terrified giggle and shook his head.
The ogre frowned.
Leo knew he had to do something. He swallowed and moved to Spoiler’s side. ‘Dame Dally is very shy, sir,’ he said in the politest, most apologetic voice he could manage.
‘Ah, yes,’ said the ogre, his frown disappearing. ‘I should have known. All proper damsels are shy and quietly spoken. No doubt that was why the sweet thing sent that scrawny young serving wench ahead of her, to greet me in her place.’
‘Oh… yes,’ Leo agreed, glancing nervously at Mimi’s frozen expression, Conker’s thunderstruck one, and Freda’s smirk.
As he tried to work out what to say next, he heard the click of trotters behind him, and Bertha appeared on Spoiler’s other side.
Bertha curtseyed deeply to the ogre and tossed back the ribbons of her hat. ‘Dame Dally is not only shy, but very tired, and faint with hunger, sir,’ she hinted delicately.
‘Of course!’ said the ogre. ‘How thoughtless of me! Dame Dally, allow me to escort you to the feasting hall!’
He threw open the iron-banded door and offered Spoiler his arm. Spoiler recoiled.
‘Oh, a simple tray in our room will be quite sufficient,’ Bertha said hurriedly. ‘We don’t want to be any trouble.’
‘Nonsense!’ boomed the ogre. ‘This gentle lady must have the best Cruelcliff Castle has to offer.’
Again he offered Spoiler his arm, and this time, nudged urgently by Leo, Spoiler put two mittened fingers gingerly on the bulging sleeve of the red velvet coat.
The ogre puffed out his chest. ‘You will accompany us,’ he ordered Leo, Bertha, Conker, Freda and Mimi. Then he stalked from the room with Spoiler, who kept casting agonised glances over his shoulder to make sure the others were following.
Beyond the entrance chamber was a vast square hall warmed by a roaring fire and hung with huge, gold-framed portraits of the ogre and his relatives. In the centre of the hall a grand stairway led up to a broad landing and a golden door, then turned to rise to yet another level – a high gallery edged with polished wooden railings.
The ogre closed the door through which they had come and drew a bunch of keys from an inside pocket of his blood-red coat. ‘This is the only way in or out of my castle, Dame Dally,’ he said to Spoiler, selecting the largest of the keys and fitting it into the door’s massive brass keyhole. ‘Once it is secure, we will not be disturbed.’
Spoiler gave a muffled squeak of anguish as the key turned. Leo knew exactly how he felt. The sound of that heavy lock clunking into place was terrifying.
Appearing not to notice his companions’ distress, the ogre tucked the bunch of keys back under his coat. ‘The feasting hall is upstairs,’ he told Spoiler, guiding him to the staircase. ‘As are all the main reception rooms. This floor merely houses storerooms and cellars. Oh, and the dungeons, of course. What would a castle be without dungeons?’ He laughed uproariously.
Spoiler made another small, terrified sound and again looked over his shoulder.
‘Do not fear, dear lady,’ said the ogre tenderly. ‘Your servants are close behind us. They will not leave you. They would not dare to disobey me.’
He led Spoiler up the stairs, pointing out various portraits on the way. ‘That was my father, the first Ogre of Cruelcliff,’ he said, gesturing at one particularly large, dim picture of a ghastly old creature who had chosen to be painted holding a dead seagull by the neck. ‘And there beside him –’ he nodded at a smaller portrait of a fair, round-faced young woman wearing a pearl-encrusted wedding dress and staring vacantly over a bunch of flowers’ – is my dear mother. Unfortunately she died young.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Freda muttered, far too loudly.
Leo went cold, but the ogre didn’t turn around. Either he was too intent on impressing Dame Dally to notice sounds behind him, or he was hard of hearing as well as shortsighted.
They reached the top of the first flight of stairs and the ogre opened the golden door. For a split second it was pitch dark beyond the door, but light spilled onto the landing the moment the ogre and Spoiler stepped across the threshold. The quest team followed cautiously.
The room they entered was enormous, and lavishly furnished with vast chairs and sofas and long, low tables. Candles fixed around great metal rings suspended from the ceiling shed soft circles of light. Lush rugs covered the stone floor. Polished, glass-fronted cabinets filled with gold, silver and crystal ornaments lined the walls, and precious objects glittered on every surface.
‘Keep your eyes open for the you-know-what,’ Conker urged under his breath. ‘If you see it, grab it. Then we can get out of here as soon as the tide goes down.’
‘Get out?’ Leo whispered. ‘How? The only door’s locked, and the ogre’s got the key!’
‘We’ll steal the key while he’s asleep,’ said Mimi, as if this was going to be the easiest thing in the world.
‘Good plan,’ Conker agreed.
It sounded like no plan at all to Leo, but he didn’t even try to argue. What was the point? He couldn’t think of a better idea.
He could see by Bertha’s anxious expression that she also felt doubtful about their chances of stealing the ogre’s key and surviving long enough to use it. Freda, on the other hand, looked quite unruffled. She was walking along slowly, peering into every cabinet she passed and scanning the contents before moving on.
Her total concentration was strangely calming. Leo felt his panic die down. Freda’s right, he told himself. Our job now is to find what we came here to find.
Plus stay alive in the meantime, a treacherous voice in his mind reminded him. Resolutely he ignored it and began to follow Freda’s example, checking cabinets, tabletops and shelves.
Chatting to Spoiler all the while, the ogre led the way through another room, and then another, and another. Each room was more brightly lit and more magnificent than the last, and each was crowded with treasures. But though Leo searched till his eyes watered, he saw no sign of a heart-shaped silver box.
Outside, thunder rumbled and waves pounded, the sound muffled by walls of heavy stone and the thick velvet curtains that covered every window. Leo knew that it would be dark outside – dark, cold and wild. But he would a hundred times rather have been out there, taking his chances, than trapped in this luxurious prison.
‘I am extremely rich, as you can see, Dame Dally,’ the ogre declared, as at last he threw open a pair of tall double doors and candles burst into flaming life around the walls of an elegant dining room. ‘My castle is filled with gold, jewels, works of art and all manner of unique and curious wonders. But what good are riches, I ask myself, when I have no one to share my life?’
Spoiler gave a strangled yip and flapped his mittened hands. Leo wondered how they were going to get through the meal to come. It would surely be impossible for Spoiler to keep up his Dame Dally impersonation for very long once he and the ogre were sitting side by side. And what the ogre would do when he discovered the fraud, Leo hated to think.
Spoiler obviously felt the same way, for the moment he saw the throne-like golden chair at the head of the long dining table, he snatched his fingers from the ogre’s arm, picked up his skirts, and ran to sit in a smaller golden chair at the table’s foot.
The ogre blinked in surprise, then slowly nodded with approval. ‘It warms my heart to see you take your rightful place as hostess at my table, Dame Dally,’ he said. ‘That is the chair my mother preferred, so my father always told me.’
Roughly he gestured for his other guests to be seated. Then he clapped his hands. Instantly doors at the side of the room banged open, and with a great bustling and flapping, dozens of silver platters with feathery white wings flew in, loaded with food.
There were platters heaped with fish, crabs, octopus and lobsters. There were platters overflowing with giant meatballs, boiled turnips and baked potatoes. There were platters of steaming seaweed, loaves of bread, whole wheels of cheese and bunches of swollen purple grapes. There were platters on which vast jellies shaped like the creatures of the sea wobbled dangerously.
The platters came in to land on the table, shedding feathers, spilling food and clattering noisily as they jostled for position like seabirds in a crowded nesting spot. No sooner had they settled down and folded their wings than a small flock of fat silver jugs flew in and forced their way between them, slopping gravy, melted butter, iced water and dark red wine onto the tablecloth.
The ogre looked slyly down the table to see if Dame Dally was impressed.
Everyone else was staring at the spectacle, open-mouthed. But Spoiler was merely looking hungrily at the food, as if trying to decide what he would eat first. Perhaps, Leo thought, he had seen so many wonders in the Blue Queen’s castle that the ogre’s flying platters didn’t seem anything very special.
But the ogre was starting to look disappointed, and that was dangerous.
‘This is – amazing,’ Leo said, kicking Spoiler under the table. ‘Isn’t it amazing, Dame Dally?’
‘Oh!’ squeaked Spoiler, dropping a meatball he had just picked up. ‘Oh, yes!’
The ogre beamed, and at once seized a whole lobster, tore off its head and began to eat. If he had learned his eating habits from his father, it was easy to understand why his mother had preferred to sit at the far end of the table. He tore at his food and gulped his drink with such savagery and greed that food scraps, wine and spit flew everywhere, spattering the table, the floor, and his neighbours.
Conker and Bertha, who were the nearest, were the worst affected. Conker, no doubt hardened by years of squashing dots for a living, merely turned slightly away, so that his back and shoulders took most of the spattering. Bertha, however, shuddered fastidiously, and after a while stopped even pretending to eat.
‘What’s wrong with you, pig?’ roared the ogre with his mouth full. He had drunk several glasses of the dark red wine by now, and was in the mood for an argument.
Bertha wisely declined to answer, merely flicking a chunk of chewed crab from a hat ribbon.
‘My table manners disgust you, I suppose,’ said the ogre, with a mocking, crab-clotted grin. My young brother was always telling me I should improve them. He had beautiful manners – and a revoltingly kind nature as well. And where did it get him? Some chit of a girl fell in love with him and kissed him, and he turned into a handsome prince!’
‘Doesn’t sound too bad to me,’ said Conker incautiously.
‘It was a disgrace!’ roared the ogre, pounding the table with his fist and spitting crab and meatball fragments far and wide. ‘The shame of it killed my poor father, and I have lived under its shadow ever since. So I am horribly cruel and dangerous, and have bad manners and pick my teeth! So what? I’m an ogre, aren’t I? Outsiders can take me as I am. I am sick of being compared to my perfect brother. Sick! Sick! Sick!’
‘I know just how you feel,’ Spoiler said unexpectedly from the other end of the table. ‘Good, kind, well-mannered, perfect brothers can ruin a person’s life. People are always comparing you. And you’re the one who always comes out the villain.’
Leo sat up in alarm. Spoiler was suspiciously bright in the eyes as though he, too, had drunk rather a lot of wine.
‘Dame Dally understands me!’ said the ogre in a broken voice, leaning forward with his elbows in one of the jelly platters. ‘She understands me, as no one else ever has. Tomorrow we shall be married, and my loneliness will be at an end.’
He blinked blearily at the appalled faces around the table. ‘I find that I am a little tired, so I will now show you to your bedchambers,’ he said. ‘You see? I am offering you hospitality, as a true ogre should.’
A clap of thunder shook the room. The ogre paused, cocked his head and nodded appreciatively. ‘Outside the storm rages, but here, thanks to me, you will be safe and sheltered,’ he went on. ‘You will have everything the castle can provide, and you may wander it at will. There is only one room you may not enter.’
‘Here we go,’ Freda muttered.
‘Which room?’ Conker demanded eagerly.
‘I will show it to you on our way,’ said the ogre, standing up so abruptly that his chair toppled backwards onto the floor. ‘But I urge you to restrain your curiosity, and obey my order. The room is forbidden. You enter it at your peril!’