The Restless Girls Read online

  But the other girls could not share their youngest sister’s hope. Vita’s usually happy face was pale. ‘Well, she isn’t here now, and we’re going to have to be very, very clever,’ she said.

  ‘You’re right. All sorts of idiots are going to try to uncover our secret,’ said Delilah. ‘We have to make sure none of them succeeds, but we are not going to throw walnuts.’ She gave Bellina a stern look.

  ‘Frida was banished for refusing to reveal our secret,’ Chessa whispered. ‘She sacrificed her happiness for ours. So we must never stop –’ here, she mouthed the word – ‘dancing.’

  ‘That would make Frida’s banishment twice as bad,’ agreed Ariosta. ‘The tree palace is all we have now. I wonder where she is. Will she write to us, do you think?’

  Mariella was sobbing quietly. ‘I don’t want to get married,’ she said.

  ‘I certainly don’t want to marry anyone so intent on spoiling our fun,’ said Polina, looking out of the window at the line of preening men.

  ‘Exactly – someone who’s going to peer through the keyhole and creep behind us, watching everything we do,’ said Agnes with a shudder. ‘Anyway, I’m too young to be married. Surely if I’m ever picked, Father will say no?’

  Lorna bit her lip. ‘I don’t know, Aggie. That is why we have to be careful.’

  ‘But, girls,’ said Flora. ‘Whichever man comes to sit outside our door, he’ll know we’re not in there. We can’t block up the keyhole, because he’ll get suspicious. What are we going to do?’

  The princesses looked forlornly at one another, as outside the line of men grew and grew. Their situation felt impossible. It seemed inevitable that one of them – someday soon – would be taken as a reluctant bride, and the rest of them forbidden to dance ever again.

  Suddenly, Delilah’s eyes widened in excitement. ‘Oh, boy. I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t I think of this before? Bedroom. Now, before the first man gets in.’

  As princessly as they could, the eleven girls walked back to their room. They could almost see the excitement fizzing around Delilah’s head.

  Once they were all inside, and the bedroom door closed, Delilah rushed over to her dressing gown. From down below, they could hear the palace door being opened, and the sound of tramping feet as the men lined up to be registered to sleep outside the princesses’ room.

  ‘It’s got to be here somewhere,’ Delilah said, throwing leaves and soil and even a woodlouse across her bed. ‘Aha!’ She brandished her treasure at her sisters. It didn’t look very promising: a limp, dried vine of brownish colour, dangling from her hands like a worm.

  ‘That’s supposed to help us?’ said Bellina, tears welling in her eyes.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Delilah proudly. ‘Don’t you remember the first time we went to the tree palace?’ Her sisters looked at her blankly. ‘The dormidon!’ she whispered. ‘All right,’ she said, hoiking herself up on to her bed and looking round at her sisters. ‘I know it doesn’t look like much. But we haven’t much time, and we need to discuss this. Tell me what you know about the dormidon plant.’

  No one said anything. Delilah sighed. Voices could be heard coming up the corridor.

  ‘Delilah, hurry,’ said Agnes.

  ‘Girls, we are going to go dancing,’ Delilah said. She held the vine up. ‘And this is how: If you drop a dormidon vine in hot water and drain off the liquid, it will make you a tasteless sleeping draught so powerful that just one drop of it in a goblet of wine or cup of tea is enough to knock a grown man out for twelve hours.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘But you have to be very, very careful with the dormidon, because too much of it will kill someone. Only experienced botanists should handle such a powerful little plant.’

  ‘An experienced botanist like you, say?’ said Agnes, grinning.

  Delilah grinned back. ‘You know exactly where this is going, don’t you, Aggie. I’ve got enough in this bedroom for a hundred men.’

  ‘But what if you make a mistake and knock them out … forever?’ said Emelia.

  ‘Well, it’s their own damned fault for coming here to ruin our lives in the first place,’ said Ariosta. ‘Spying on us, trying to marry us without our permission.’

  ‘I’d put three dormidons in their drink if I could,’ said Vita.

  Lorna put up her hands. ‘All right, all right. We don’t want dead men on our hands. We just want them to leave us alone.’

  ‘Wise to pursue?’ Delilah asked her sisters.

  ‘Wise to pursue,’ they whispered back.

  ⋇

  The first man to be admitted was – how can I put this tactfully? – a buffoon. He didn’t walk into the palace, he swaggered. He practically rolled in, as if grabbing the kingdom for himself and picking a daughter – or grabbing a daughter and picking the kingdom – was as easy as brushing his teeth.

  I forget his name. It doesn’t matter.

  It was Agnes, the most innocent-looking, the sweetest, the most childlike, who smiled and handed him a goodnight cup of milky hot chocolate as he sat on the edge of the camp bed. The man took it greedily, not even bothering to say thank you before he swigged it down. The girls were locked in their room immediately after.

  Settling in for a night of vigilance, he was asleep in five minutes.

  ⋇

  That night in the tree palace, every one of the princesses danced that little bit longer, taking extra pleasure in every whirl and jig they made, in case it was the last time they might ever be allowed. Agnes told the lioness that Frida wanted her to know that she understood, and passed on her message of goodbye. The youngest princess was surprised by the look of pride in the lioness’s eyes, where Agnes thought there might at least have been sadness.

  The next morning, Delilah’s plan had worked.

  The first man was late to his meeting with the king and had no evidence to present him as to the girls’ activity. He could barely string a sentence together and was booted out of the first floor window, and – if I recall correctly, from Emelia’s account of it – he landed slap bang in a pile of horse manure.

  The second man was given a goblet of delicious Kalian wine to drink. Again, Agnes, the saintly darling little angel that she was, was given the job of handing over the drink. He sloshed it down, and through their door the girls could hear his teeth clanking against the soft gold of the cup, followed by loud snoring. They moved aside their mother’s portrait and vanished in silence.

  That night down in the tree palace, they told Saleem and the lioness the news. Delilah was made guest of honour, and the toucans brought her a special doughnut filled with wild blueberry jam, with a diamond on top.

  ⋇

  ‘It’s all right,’ said King Alberto to himself, after the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth man entered the palace, full of confidence, only to be dismissed as unsuccessful, unable to recall a jot of what he might have seen or heard. ‘There are enough men out there. One of them will crack it, I’m sure.’

  By the failure of the eightieth man, King Alberto was nearly bursting with fury.

  Over the next four months, the line outside the palace shrank as, one by one, the men attempted to uncover the secret of the shoes and, one by one, they failed. Their tents were packed up, the smell of street food evaporated, and the entertainers left to find bigger audiences in other kingdoms. Inside the palace, King Alberto bounced up and down on his throne until his backside split a cushion. ‘Does every man in Kalia have a radish for a brain?’ he ranted, spluttering on the feathers.

  His advisers, particularly Clarence, were delighted that Alberto’s scheme was failing, but the girls didn’t know how much longer they could get away with drugging a man with dormidon every night. Delilah’s supply of the plant was running perilously low. The last time they’d gone to the forest of diamonds, they realised they’d plucked all the ripe plants, and the saplings were still growing.

  But whilst they still had the last of the dormidon to help them, the eleven sisters descended the f
ive hundred and three steps of the staircase, crossed the lagoon in their boats, walked through the three sparkling forests, and danced in their tree palace until their shoes had lost their soles. Saleem and the lioness were always happy to see them, but they always asked them if they had news of Frida, and the sisters always had to say no. The telephone lines were still disconnected, and they hadn’t even received a letter.

  And were they happy?

  Well, that’s a good question. Their happiness these days was of a strange kind. They were outsmarting those who wanted to ruin their fun, but it was a happiness that lasted in the whirl of a dance and died within a breath. It was tiring having to attend to these men every day. And it wasn’t just that. Going to bed in the early hours of morning, they felt as if an anchor of sadness was plunging through them, pinning them to their mattresses. The dancing had stopped being enough. They dearly missed their sister. They wanted her stories, her strength. They wanted to stand on their twenty-four feet together, not their twenty-two.

  Eventually, the last man turned his back on the palace, thwarted in his attempt to unmask the princesses’ secret. The king was exhausted, regretting deeply that he’d ever agreed to such a ridiculous scheme. He blamed his advisers for suggesting it, and they duly apologised.

  For the girls, never had a victory tasted so bittersweet. A bit like pre-boiled dormidon, in fact.

  The palace was quiet. None of the girls felt like dancing. Not even a tiny jig.

  And then, just like that, everything in Kalia changed forever.

  Seven

  A Coronation

  It was Vita who heard it first: a faint buzzing in the sky. It was coming, she suspected, from across the sea.

  It was their hour of recreation, and the eleven girls were in the palace garden, wandering aimlessly amongst the palms and hothouse flowers, whose bright pinks no longer cheered them. The high walls that surrounded them cut most of the sunshine at this time of day, and the garden had no view.

  But Vita heard it, all the same. She looked up, and saw only the bright rectangle of cloudless blue above her. Yet the buzzing was getting louder. ‘Ariosta,’ she said to her sister, ‘give me a leg-up against that wall.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Listen. Can’t you hear that?’

  ‘It’s just an angry bee.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. No bee is ever that angry. I want to see!’

  In the end, it took Emelia standing on Flora, standing on Delilah, standing on Mariella, standing on Vita, standing on Bellina, standing on Chessa, standing on Ariosta, standing on Lorna, standing on Polina – with Agnes, who was the smallest, at the top on Emelia’s shoulders – even to be able to peer over the top of the wall, taking a few precious seconds before the guards came back and all of them tumbled to the ground.

  ‘What is it?’ hissed Polina. ‘Please hurry up – my shoulders are killing me!’

  ‘Oh my, oh my,’ said Agnes. ‘It’s an aeroplane.’

  ‘Is that all? I think I’d rather it was an angry bee.’

  ‘No you wouldn’t, Pol – this one’s about to land on the beach!’

  Agnes scaled down her sisters’ arms and legs, and ran out of the garden to find a better view. The others followed, the plane’s engines reverberating deep in their bodies. No one stopped them, because by now everyone had heard that a plane was trying to land on the royal beach, and the palace was in uproar, maids running hither and thither, advisers reaching for their robes, the guards trying to find their weapons. Nothing this exciting had happened in Kalia for ages.

  From a high balcony, the princesses looked down and saw a small biplane circling above the turquoise surf. Whoever was flying it was an expert pilot, making circles and ovals, dipping down and soaring up into the sky. It was as if the pilot wanted to make sure that everyone in Lago Puera had seen this display, and the eleven princesses in particular, seeing as this was happening directly outside the palace. Eventually, it was time for the plane to land properly, and the girls watched its tail scud away before it turned round and came down upon the vast, empty stretch of royal sand that ribboned round the palace. The pilot landed effortlessly with a single bump, and cut the engines.

  The sisters watched with an exquisite mixture of excitement and dread as the palace guards rushed towards the aircraft, their revolvers at the ready. A group of advisers, led by Clarence, hurried after them. The cockpit window opened, and a tall, slender young man pushed his arms up, then his body, then his legs, before jumping down easily on to the sand. He was wearing a pilot’s jumpsuit, a flying jacket, a white scarf, a leather cap and a pair of goggles, but even with these covering his face, the princesses could see he was handsome.

  They strained their ears to hear the conversation taking place on the beach. The pilot had pushed his goggles up on to his forehead and was now shading his eyes against the punishing sun as he admired the sea. ‘What a beautiful beach,’ he said. ‘Is this the kingdom of Kalia?’

  ‘It might be,’ said Clarence. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  The pilot fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced a piece of paper, which fluttered in the breeze. He steadied himself against the wing. ‘I’m here to see the king,’ he said. ‘King Alberto, I believe?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Polina. ‘He’s holding one of Father’s decrees!’

  Bellina groaned. ‘I thought we’d seen the last of those silly men.’

  ‘But he’s so handsome,’ said Chessa. ‘And he’s got a plane.’

  ‘I don’t care if he’s handsome! I don’t care if he’s got twenty planes! We still have to make him drink the dormidon!’ said Ariosta, crossing her arms. ‘Turning up here with one of those dratted pieces of paper –’

  ‘Of course, sweetest,’ said Polina, but she also found it rather hard to draw her eyes from the youth, who was by now walking in the centre of the guards, striding up the beach, leaving nimble boot prints in the sand.

  ‘Imagine dancing with him,’ breathed Agnes. ‘Oof, I bet he’s an excellent dancer.’

  ⋇

  The sisters hid behind a curtain and listened as the pilot spoke with their father.

  ‘And where are you from?’ King Alberto asked him.

  ‘From across the sea,’ the pilot replied. Now that they were closer to him, the girls could hear his voice properly. It was low and calm, and ever so slightly musical.

  ‘You’ve got a nice, um … aeroplane,’ said King Alberto. He sounded very un-king-like. (He’d given up hope, you understand – and it’s not often you see someone so fine-looking, so confident, someone who looks so perfectly like your future heir.) Alberto felt as if he was looking at one of his heroes from the fairytales he’d read as a little boy. And a pilot, no less. How modern, how daring, to live up in the air!

  ‘Thank you,’ said the youth, smiling. ‘In my kingdom, we guard our vehicles well – for battle, mainly.’

  ‘Been in any battles, have you?’

  ‘Of sorts. My people fight a particular type of war.’

  ‘Excellent. And d’you hunt?’

  ‘I have chased illusions, Your Majesty.’

  King Alberto nodded, pretending that he’d understood. He’d never met such an impressive fellow. ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘And I assume you’re here to see if you can uncover the secret of my daughters’ shoes?’

  The youth handed over the crumpled decree. ‘I am.’

  ‘It’ll take a miracle. My daughters have cleared this town of men.’

  ‘Well, miracles happen. And is it still true, sire, that you will crown me if I am successful?’

  The king spread his hands. ‘But of course! A king never goes back on his word. Moreover, it’s time for my retirement. And you would do perfectly, a good strapping lad like you. You’re not … a prince, by any chance?’

  The man bowed. ‘A royal since birth, Your Majesty.’

  The king clapped with joy. ‘Oh, marvellous, marvellous!’ he cried. Clarence craned his neck with new interest
towards the young man. King Alberto patted the pilot on the back and went off humming, thinking about the hobbies he would take up once he was no longer king.

  ⋇

  That night, Delilah prepared the last of the dormidon in the girls’ little bathroom. And, as usual, Agnes was the one to offer it to the young pilot, this time in a glass of sweet mint tea. The pilot was sitting upright on the camp bed, his back against the wall. He looked thoughtful, and a little sad, his gaze cast towards the floor as he turned the glass of tea round and round in his hands. He wouldn’t look at her, but Agnes was used to this by now – so few of the men who’d come to find their secret had bothered to acknowledge her. But this one hadn’t looked at any of the princesses as they’d filed past him; instead, he’d kept his chin down, half his face tucked in his scarf, deep in thought, eyes averted.

  Agnes stood in front of him. ‘It’s very good tea,’ she said. ‘You should drink it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he mumbled into the scarf.

  ‘Well, go on then. Drink it up.’

  ‘You seem very keen for me to drink this tea, Princess Agnes,’ he said, looking into the glass. Fragrant steam rose off the top of the liquid.

  ‘I –’ said Agnes.

  ‘Do you like it here, Agnes?’ the pilot asked.

  ‘I … used to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we used to do experiments, and play music, and explore. Of course, we still have the –’ Agnes stopped herself just in time. She’d found it strangely easy to talk to this pilot, but if any of her sisters heard her nearly reveal the tree palace, they’d be furious.

  ‘You still have the secret,’ the pilot said, attempting to finish her sentence. ‘You’ve guarded it well. From what I’ve heard, I’m about the thousandth person to try to uncover it.’ He laughed, and Agnes couldn’t help grinning.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  ‘And do you like being a princess?’ the pilot asked.

  ‘Bits of it.’

  ‘What bits?’

  Agnes shifted from foot to foot. None of the other men had ever asked her any questions, and she wasn’t used to it. ‘I like being with my sisters,’ she said. ‘But you want to take one of us away.’