The Royal Family Page 8

  Both horses laughed so hard that they had to stop for a second and pee.

  It was going to be a good weekend.

  It WAS going to be a good weekend.

  ‘I just wish I could be a fly on the wall, listening in on Mother talking to Daddy about you,’ Betty said the next afternoon when she went back to see Gertrude.

  ‘Would a magpie do?’ said Gertrude.

  ‘Magpie?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got a friend who is a magpie,’ said Gertrude. ‘And as everyone knows, as well as stealing shiny things and eating roadkill, magpies love stirring things up a bit. I’m sure if I asked my friend, he could fly up to your parents’ cottage and eavesdrop.

  ‘Also,’ Gertrude continued, ‘did you notice how the world went dark for a minute or so yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘I did,’ said Betty. ‘It was very weird. I thought it might have been you practising your magic.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t me,’ said Gertrude. ‘I reckon your father did something when your mother said my name.’

  ‘No way,’ said Betty. ‘My father is really bad at magic.’

  ‘I know, but I still think he did it,’ said Gertrude. ‘It just goes to show what a dramatic effect my name had on him. He also has nightmares where he dreams I am dead.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Betty.

  ‘I have my contacts,’ said Gertrude mysteriously.

  She told Betty that she had been following the family ever since Nerlin had first met Mordonna and they ran away together. Gertrude knew about the Flood children and said that out of all of them she felt the closest affinity with Betty.

  Betty was too polite and nervous to ask her aunt how she’d followed their lives for all these years and Gertrude gave no hint of how she’d done it.59

  ‘We have a lot in common,’ Gertrude said, ‘and when the time is right, I will pass the power of the Ultimate Super-Wizards on to you. For as it was given to me, I can only give it to one other person, and if I should die before I transfer this power then it will die with me.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Betty. ‘I’ve got some quite good magical powers already, but I’m sure they’re nothing like yours.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Gertrude. ‘What you have now are Standard Wizard powers, grade two or three, I would guess. Your powers are like a skateboard with three wheels missing compared to the Ultimate Super-Wizard, which is like a Bugatti Super Veyron car.’

  Gertrude told Betty that the way the power transfer worked was all or nothing. She couldn’t give her niece one or two superpowers – she’d have to do everything in one go because there could only ever be one single witch or wizard with the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers.

  ‘So does that mean once you complete the transfer, you will have no powers at all?’ Betty asked.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Gertrude. ‘Mine will be downgraded to Standard Wizard powers, grade one. You know, the basic things we all did when we were very young, like changing evil parsnips into lovely bars of chocolate.’

  ‘Did you do that, Auntie?’ said Betty, running over and throwing her arms round the old lady. ‘I did that. I drove my mum crazy.’

  ‘Me too. Still do,’ said Gertrude.

  Tears of happiness came into Gertrude’s eyes. No one had ever cuddled her before. The years alone in the drains had been long and lonely, and Gertrude found herself wishing she had come up to the surface much earlier.

  ‘You do realise, don’t you,’ she said, ‘that once you have these powers you will be the most powerful witch, not just on planet Earth, but in the entire universe, and there will be no witch or wizard whose powers will come anywhere near yours.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Betty, and then she realised what that meant.

  Betty would be the ruler of Transylvania Waters, which would become the magic centre of the entire galaxy. She would even have enough power to create new galaxies if she wanted to. And because Gertrude with her awesome powers had stayed hidden away in the drains for so long, most wizards thought that whoever was in possession of the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers had died and they had been lost forever.

  The old lady and the child stood in silence for a while as the colossal importance of all this sunk in.

  ‘Right,’ said Betty at last. ‘I don’t have to tell my parents any of this yet, do I?’

  She explained to Gertrude that Nerlin wanted to retire and he had tried to get one of his children to take over as ruler, a role no one had wanted, and that Mordonna had made them agree to take over each weekend in the hope that one of them would want to take on the job full time.

  ‘So I think it would be fun to make them all sweat for a while,’ said Betty.

  ‘You’d think anyone would jump at the chance of being a king or queen,’ said Gertrude. ‘Especially in a place as brilliant as Transylvania Waters.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Betty. ‘I mean, the good bits like travelling around wearing a crown and going to other countries for state visits and getting your picture on postage stamps and that sort of stuff is only a tiny part of it. Most of it’s pretty boring, like having to sit in judgement over two idiots arguing about who gets to kiss the enchanted frog and then deciding who has to pay for the mouthwash when the frog turns out to be a real frog and not a princess.’

  ‘But when you are Queen, you won’t have to bother with all that rubbish,’ said Gertrude. ‘You’ll have the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers, so you can get other people to do the boring stuff while you enjoy life.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Betty.

  ‘Just think of the fun you can have travelling the world with princes falling at your feet wanting to marry you,’ said Gertrude.

  ‘Did you do that?’

  ‘No, I was stuck down the drains. Not a lot of princes live in drains and the ones who do are really weird. They like collecting strange things like purple growths on embarrassing parts of their bodies, and that’s just the younger, more handsome ones. You wouldn’t believe the state of the old princes with bits of themselves that keep falling off and have to be carried round in shopping bags,’ said Gertrude. ‘No, I decided a life alone was better than having a husband who shed skin every night.’

  ‘There’s still time, Auntie,’ said Betty. ‘Maybe you should come to Dreary. We can find you a nice, kind, oldish wizard who likes washing up and gardening. After all, once you move into your retirement cottage up in the mountains, you’ll need someone to weed the deadly nightshade and prune the hemlock.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Gertrude. ‘Once I downgrade to Standard Wizard powers, grade one, I might not be able to do all that washing up and gardening using spells. We’ll see, there’s no rush.’

  Betty realised that, even with her ultimate powers, her old aunt was anxious about returning to a world full of people.

  Although Gertrude had often been lonely, she had also liked being alone with none of modern life’s complications, and the thought of sharing her life with a partner was pretty scary.

  As the sun slipped down the back of the mountains and the moon woke up to take its place, Nerlin and Mordonna arrived at their cottage in the Enchanted Valley. Nerlin was pretty much back to normal, having no recollection of the ‘G’ word.

  Mordonna was torn in several directions. The ‘G’ word wouldn’t leave her alone. Should she ask Nerlin about it again or not? Maybe not, after what had happened the first time, but it was driving her crazy. Who was this Gertrude?

  She decided to keep it to herself and wait until they got home, where she could confront Betty and demand an explanation.

  It did take the edge off her weekend, though.

  Nerlin, however, couldn’t remember when he had felt happier. The cottage was even better than how he’d dreamt it to be. The weather was perfect – a lovely mist in the morning that slowly faded away as the new day’s sunshine rose over the mountains. Everything tasted better than in his best memories and the silence in the valley was interrupted only by the birds singing in the trees. Not that Tran
sylvania Waters or even Dreary were particularly noisy places. Everything was fitted with a silencer invented by Winchflat, so that the smallest and quietest things such as slugs,60 as well as boiling kettles, did their business in silence.

  The Enchanted Valley was not called the Enchanted Valley for nothing.61

  ‘It’s going to be really hard going back to Dreary,’ said Nerlin, and for once Mordonna found herself beginning to agree with him.

  Mordonna liked being Queen. She enjoyed being in charge of everything, because although everyone adored King Nerlin, they all knew he was pretty useless as a wizard and that it was Mordonna who made the important decisions. But it seemed to suit everybody. Everyone looked forward to Monday mornings when a notice declaring Nerlin’s orders for the following week was pinned up outside Castle Twilight.

  The most anticipated and important notice was which biscuit was officially declared Biscuit of the Week. It was usually Custard Creams, though sometimes it was Bourbons.62 Now and then, if Mordonna told Nerlin he needed to lose a little weight, everyone would spend the week eating Rich Tea biscuits, which are the sort of biscuits you eat when you know you shouldn’t be eating between meals. The trouble with Rich Teas was that most people followed them with a bar of chocolate to make them more exciting. When Nerlin was feeling really happy, he advised all his subjects to have a big spoonful of condensed milk.63

  Meanwhile, back in her room at Castle Twilight, Betty was thinking about deep and meaningful things.

  When you are young, she thought, your parents are in charge. And when they were young, their parents were in charge of them. The thing is, people don’t always wait until their parents die to take charge of things.

  ‘So, my question is,’ she said to Ffiona, ‘how old do you have to be in order to be in charge? To put it another way, how old do your parents have to be for you to take over?’

  ‘I reckon that would depend on your parents,’ Ffiona said. ‘I can’t see your mother ever letting you take over.’

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ said Betty. ‘Though Dad is really keen to retire and Mum is getting older.’

  ‘Yes, but if none of you agree to take over as ruler, I reckon your mother will do it,’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Until we met Auntie Gertrude I would have agreed with you,’ Betty replied. ‘Though now that Mum thinks Auntie Gertrude might claim the throne, everything is different.’

  ‘But your auntie doesn’t want to be Queen.’

  ‘Yes, but Mum and Dad don’t know that,’ said Betty. ‘So I reckon I could persuade them to retire and let me take over.’

  ‘I think you could have a fight on your hands,’ said Ffiona. ‘You know your mum doesn’t like you doing anything better than she can.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Betty said and grinned. ‘When Mum discovers that Gertrude has given me the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers and that Gertrude is the rightful ruler of Transylvania Waters and that she and Dad might get thrown into the dungeons, Mum might be persuaded to change her mind.’

  The only problem Betty had was that she was planning to give her parents’ retirement cottage to Gertrude, but she soon discovered the matter could be easily fixed. Betty could just get Winchflat to clone the entire Enchanted Valley at the other end of the country, so then Gertrude would get the identical cottage and her parents could keep the original one. It would be a lot bigger than anything Winchflat had ever copied before, but Betty guessed that this was the sort of challenge her brother enjoyed.

  In the meantime, Betty would carry on pretending that she did not want to take over as monarch.

  ‘Why?’ Ffiona asked.

  ‘Just to be cantankerous,’ said Betty. ‘You know, for a laugh. I’m not going to do anything until all my brothers and sisters have had at least one turn each running the country. I also think that with each weekend up in the Enchanted Valley, Dad will love it more and more.’

  ‘You’re mean and wicked, you are,’ said Ffiona with a smile.

  ‘Yeah, great, isn’t it?’ said Betty.

  ‘So, what nasty little law did you make this weekend, madam?’ Mordonna asked when she and Nerlin returned to Castle Twilight.

  ‘Law? Oh, I didn’t bother,’ said Betty, wearing her super-special-innocent expression on her face.

  Mordonna was instantly suspicious and spent hours checking and searching until she finally had to admit that there didn’t seem to have been any new laws registered since the last one she herself had created seven weeks ago making it illegal to eat custard in the bath.

  Betty is up to something, she thought. And then she remembered …

  … Gertrude.

  Mordonna sent a servant to find her daughter immediately.

  ‘Right, young lady, tell me right now – who is Gertrude?’ she demanded.

  ‘Didn’t Daddy tell you?’ said Betty, super-special-innocent expression still on her face.

  ‘And you can wipe that super-special-innocent expression off your face right away!’ Mordonna snapped.

  ‘Did you forget to ask him?’ said Betty. ‘I told you to, remember?’

  Mordonna told Betty what had happened when she’d asked Nerlin and how his reaction had been so dramatic that she’d been too scared to ask him again.

  ‘The whole world went black,’ she said. ‘The Total Darkness Spell. You’ve most likely never heard of it or, if you have, you probably didn’t think it was real like I did.’

  Betty shook her head in wide-eyed innocence. Everything was going so well. It was hard not to burst out laughing.

  ‘I noticed that,’ she said. ‘I thought some alien had come and stolen the sun. So he didn’t tell you who Gertrude is, then?’

  For the first time in her life, Betty thought her mother was going to cry and she almost felt sorry for her.

  ‘It must be another woman,’ Mordonna said, as seven tears ran down her face onto her dress, where they burnt seven small holes before evaporating.

  It hadn’t occurred to Betty that this would happen.

  ‘No, Mother, it isn’t another woman,’ she said. ‘Well, actually, it is, but not in the way that you think. Father hasn’t got a girlfriend or anything gross like that.’

  ‘So, who is she then?’ said Mordonna, pulling herself together.64

  ‘Dad’s sister.’

  ‘Sister?’ said Mordonna. ‘He hasn’t got a sister. He would have told me, otherwise.’

  ‘Dad’s twin sister.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Mordonna. ‘You’ve just made all this up to annoy me.’

  ‘Then why did he do the Total Darkness Spell?’ said Betty. ‘And by the way, I do know about the spell.’

  She then told her mother that not only was Gertrude really Nerlin’s twin, but she was seven hours, seven minutes and seven seconds older than Nerlin and was therefore the rightful ruler of Transylvania Waters. If Mordonna had not already been whiter than fresh snow, she would have gone white. As it was, she could feel her blood turning white.

  Mordonna’s first thought was to accuse Betty of lying. It was exactly the sort of game her daughter would play. But then there was the Total Darkness Spell, and there was no way Nerlin would have had that sort of reaction to a wind-up.

  Her second thought was to assume Gertrude was as useless at magic as her twin brother, so it would be pretty easy to get rid of her.

  ‘I expect you’re thinking Auntie Gertrude will be easy to get rid of, aren’t you?’ said Betty.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Mordonna lied.

  ‘Good,’ said Betty. ‘Because she’s got the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers and she could eat you for breakfast, lunch and dinner.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mordonna. ‘No one has the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers. The last wizard to have had them died before he could pass them on.’

  Betty assured her mother that the powers had, in fact, been given to Gertrude. She nearly said that Gertrude was going to pass them on to her, but decided to keep that wonderful bit of inform
ation to herself – for the moment.

  ‘So, where is this Gertrude?’ said Mordonna. ‘I think I should meet her. I’m sure we can sort something out.’

  Yeah, right, Betty thought. My mother the negotiator. NOT!

  ‘Auntie Gertrude will meet you when she is ready,’ said Betty. ‘She told me to let you know that, in the meantime, anything you want to say to her you can tell me and I’ll pass it on.’

  ‘Right. OK. Where is she, then?’

  ‘Not here,’ said Betty.

  She’s probably hiding back down the drains, Mordonna thought. Daddy should have totally destroyed them when he had the chance. I think I should finish the job for him.

  Of course Gertrude was not down in the drains, but she and her niece both guessed that Mordonna would assume she was and would set about destroying Gertrude’s home. And because there were bits of Mordonna’s brain that were just like her crazy father Ex-King Quatorze’s, she could sometimes do ridiculous rage-inspired things without thinking about the consequences.

  ‘By the way, Mother, it wouldn’t be a good idea to blow up the drains like your mad dad tried to do. First off, Auntie G isn’t actually down there, and if you did that, it would block up every lavatory in town,’ said Betty.

  She then told her mother that she would leave her to think things over and to maybe try to approach Nerlin about the whole thing.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about Dad doing the Total Darkness Spell again. Auntie has put a temporary block on it,’ said Betty.

  ‘Oh, and one more thing,’ she continued. ‘Best not have me followed when I go to see Auntie G again. The Ultimate Super-Wizard powers are unimaginably awesome, and if you send someone after me not only will they be turned into burnt toast, you yourself will be turned into the scorched jam on top of the toast.’

  Mordonna said nothing, but she refused to believe that any sister of Nerlin’s could be smart enough to outwit her, and as far she she was concerned the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers were made up to scare people.