There had been nothing for it, and upon reaching the ground, Ralph the Timid had submitted to being taken prisoner with reasonably good grace. Oh, he'd struggled a little, so as to not look bad in front of Lady Ann - it was hard, he thought, with a name like Ralph the Timid. One had to demonstrate all the time that one was extra brave, instead of doing the sensible thing and submit peacefully so that they won't hit you, and then bravely escape later, maybe knocking one or two of the guards out in the process.
And so it was that they were now here, in Prince Rupert's throne room, and he was looking speculatively at Ralph. Ralph, however, was looking around the room and gawping open mouthed. He'd never been in a room so ornate. Lady Ann was similarly curious. She'd been in the room before, she was fairly certain, because she recognised the carpet from the glmpses she had had from under the blindfold when she had been led - supposedly unseeingly - to her tower top prison.
The room was phenomenally tastelessly decorated. It was large, with high ceilings, and beautiful, arched windows lined the walls on two sides. It could have been a beautiful room. But it was not. In the centre of the room, against the back wall, on a raised platform, was the throne. Leading up to it was a wide open space, then some steps. Corridors on either side of the throne were concealed, but visible behind thick curtains. The bones and basic set up of the room were fine, thought Lady Ann. It was just the mixture of colours and patterns and fabrics and ...and things, she thought, looking at a giant porcelain statue of a cat. The room was littered with sculptures of cats. Lifesize, minature, gigantic, the sizes ranged up and down the entire scope of scale. Some were porcelain, some bronze, some marble, some jade, some indeterminate materials that neither Lady Ann nor Ralph the Timid recognised. They were scattered haphazardly throughout the room. It was creepy, thought Ralph the Timid, although determined not to find it creepy, walking down a narrow passage lined by unblinking cats eyes.
In a strange paradox, for someone who professed to like cats as much as Prince Rupert did, the throne was covered in a large leopard skin. This clashed horribly with the stripy fabric covering the raised platform - orange and black like a tiger. The carpet on the floor was red and black, which could have been nice, had the pattern not looked as if some one who had dined only on tomatoes and coal for the last several months had been hugely sick on it. The curtains by the windows and corridors were the same, except they varied in fabric type from heavy velvet to light chiffon-y materials. They were all tied back with heavy golden tassel ties. Altogether the effect was ....ugly, more than anything else. Not particularly fear inducing, unless you counted the cats. It also SMELT like cats, which was interesting, because apart from the many statues of cats, there was not a cat to be seen.
Prince Rupert seated himself on the throne. "Leave us!" he casually ordered the guards.
The head guard paused. "Are - are you SURE, sir? Would you like us to tie them up first?"
"No, no, no!" said Prince Rupert, angrily. "Do you think I can't handle a little girl and a callow youth like this by myself? Leave us, I say!"
With a shrug of his shoulders, the head guard nodded to his men and they released Lady Ann and Ralph the Timid. Lady Ann ran to the side of her would be rescuer. "Are you all right?" she whispered into his ear, her arms around his neck.
"I'm fine!" whispered back Ralph. "I've got an idea! I'll make him angry and lure him over here, and you hit him over the head with your good luck bottle, okay?"
"Okay!" said Lady Ann, and began to feel around in the bundle made up of the dress and the bottle which was still tied to Ralph's shoulder.
As this was going on, they were too busy trying to look innocent and innocuous to notice what the head guard was saying to Prince Rupert. Ralph looked up just in time to catch the last words.
".....no one else there, your highness, but we found this sack!" he lifted the sack containing Twinkle up so Prince Rupert could look at it.
"I see..." said Prince Rupert slowly, taking in the struggling sack. "And what's in it? Anything useful?"
The head guard looked a little embarrassed. "Well, I don't really know sir. We were going to look, but it...well, it sounds a bit dangerous, sir."
Prince Rupert rolled his eyes. "You henchmen are always so stupid," he said, and snatched the bag off him. "Now get out of here before I get angry."
"Ye - As you wish, your highness," said the head guard politely, then turned to his cohorts. "Right you horrible lot, look smart, get moving, by the left -" he roared, and the rest of the guards snapped to attention, clicked their heels together, formed up into a line and marched out. "We'll return to our duties then sir," said the head guard and saluted, then followed his colleagues from the room.
Prince Rupert waited till the guards were gone and the sound of their feet could no longer be heard, then he got up, bearing the sack and walked towards Lady Ann and Ralph the Timid slowly but purposefully. He stopped a few feet away from them. Ralph the Timid gripped Lady Ann's hand tightly. She squeezed. She had got the bottle free and slipped it into her pocket, where she was holding it tightly by her other hand.
"I want to know what you meant when you said you were my brother," said Prince Rupert, menacingly. "I have no brother."
"You do." said Ralph the Timid. "You have a twin."
"A TWIN? Ah ha ha ha!" Prince Rupert laughed, but not for as long as he usually did. It was a mocking laugh, rather than a celebration of evil deeds. "Ah ha ha haaa. A twin indeed. We don't even look like each other. I suppose I'm the evil twin?" he said sarcastically.
"No, not at all," said Ralph, trying to keep him talking until he was close enough to hit. But he didn't seem to be coming any closer. "I'm the evil twin. I was abandoned in the mountains years ago, because my charts said I was destined to grow up to be super evil and bad. But I was raised by a humble woodcutter and his wife, so it hasn't materialised till now. My evillness and villainy, I mean."
Lady Ann was having great trouble supressing her laughter at this. Ralph the Timid, with his honest good looks, homespun clothes and manly physique looked so far from being evil or villainous that it was comical. And yet he seemed to believe it was true.
Prince Rupert was looking very sceptical. He said, with disbelief clear in his tone , "You expect me to believe a tale like that? Then why were you rescuing her? If you're so evil."
Ralph thought quickly. He said, imaginatively, "I wasn't rescuing her. I was - uh, I was stealing her! From you! Because I'm evil. Ah ha ha ha ha! Ah ha." He tried to imitate Prince Rupert's evil laugh, but failed.
Lady Ann gave him a look. It seemed to say 'That was pathetic, my darling. You are going to have to do better than that to get us out of here, sweetie pumpkin dearie pie.' Lady Ann was good at mixing criticism with loving endearments.
"That's ridiculous," said Prince Rupert, with a sardonic sneer. "Do you expect me to believe a ridiculous story like that?" he brandished the sack with Twinkle in it. "And what's this?"
Ralph thought quickly. "Don't open that!" he shouted. "Don't let it out! It will destroy us all."
Prince Rupert laughed, a full throated evil laugh. "Muwha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ahh! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha h ah aha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha ah ah ha! So you think you can fool me that easily, young man?"
"Don't call me young man!" Ralph the Timid snapped angrily. "You're the same age as me! We're twins! And don't open that sack!"
"Twins!" snorted Prince Rupert, "next thing you'll be telling me we're identical. What IS in this sack?" He started to untie the knot that held the sack closed. He peered into the sack ....and then everything seemed to happen all at once.
With a howl like five hundred banshees on All Hallows Eve, Twinkle shot out of the sack, clawed his way up the front of Prince Rupert, who didn't even have time to either say "nice kitty!" or look horrified, and clung to Prince Rupert's face and head with all his claws and teeth, hissing and spitting with the anger of a cat who has been kept in a sack for a journey across country for many days.
"Quick!" said Ralph, and seizing Lady Ann by the hand, dragged her towards the door. She picked up her skirts and, clutching the bottle in ehr pocket through the material so as not to drop it, she ran after him. They were through the door of the throne room and away before Prince Rupert could rip the hissing, spitting, yowling fiend from the sack off his face and throw it across the room.
"DAMN CAT!" yelled Prince Rupert, and ran after Ralph and Lady Ann, only to be tripped up by dozens of his pet cats who had come to investigate the noise. He hopped and tripped and leapt and skipped over them, and reached the door in time to see Ralph and Lady Ann disappearing around a corner at the end of a hallway. He gave chase.
Lady Ann gasped for breath as she ran - not just from the speed, but also because of the giggles that kept welling up inside her. The expression on Prince Rupert's face for the split second before it was covered by the raging form of the spitting ginger cat.
They burst out of the keep into the open air and, clutching each other, convulsed into laughter. "Did - did you see his face?" asked Lady Ann through her giggles. Ralph said nothing but nodded and laughed all the harder.
"It looks like something is very funny," said a voice in front of them. "Care to share the joke?"
Their laughter stopped abruptly as they looked up and saw the figure of Prince Rupert standing in front of them. Near him, but slightly behind were Mad Pete, Ginger McSporran and Ethel, all in chains.
"What?" said Ralph the Timid. "How?"
Just then, Prince Rupert dashed out of the castle behind them. "I've got you now!" he said triumphantly, and then looking at the rest of the people before him, he stopped dead. "What?" he asked, "how? what?"
(Word Count: 48666)
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