At this point we must travel away from the intrepid journeymen and their stinky several years old slimy salami sandwich adn turn again to our heroine, the lovely Lady Antoinetta Bernadetta Clarissa Drusilla Eleanora Georgetta Henrietta Isabella Juanita Katherina Lolita Marguerita Nerissa Octavia Petunia Quintessa Roberta Suzetta Tabitha Ursula Venitia Wilhelmina Xenia Zelda of Erd. There she stands, in the centre of her tower room, staring at the door. She is still, as if she is part of a video which had just been paused.
It is time to press play.
Prince Rupert rapped again on the door, more loudly. "Knock, knock!" he called, trying to sound simultaneously manly and gallant and cute and appealing with faint traces of evil. He thought that Lady Ann would surely recognise his voice and probably swoon in a romantic manner.
Lady Ann did not recognise the voice. She called back, sounding puzzled, "Who is it?" She darted a glance across the room to where the bottle lay hidden behind a particularly low flying ornately embroided tapestry that hung from the roof to the floor. Could she get to it before the door opened?
"It is I, Prince Rupert, your captor." said Prince Rupert in the same attempt at a voice that was simultaneously manly and gallant and cute and appealing and just the right amount of menacing. "May I come in?" he added, just to be polite. Just because you were an evil abducting dastardly bad guy who kidnapped unsuspecting princesses to force them into matrimony didn't mean you should forget you manners. And to be fair to Prince Rupert, he didn't abduct princessES - just Lady Ann.
"Oh." said Lady Ann rather flatly. She moved toward the tapestry. "What do you want?"
"To come in," said Prince Rupert rather impatiently, abandoning the voice, which did not seem to be having the desired effect. "Open this door!" he demanded, rather more rudely.
Lady Ann sighed and leaned against the tapestry coloured wall. "If I could open that door, Prince Rupert," she said, her voice tinged with an over sweet note, "I would not still be in this - this- this -" words failed her, though she usually had quite a way with them "this - ROOM!" The last word burst from her in a most exclamatory way.
Prince Rupert was silent. She was right, of course. He'd gotten all carried away with his politeness. With some care - and to give himself time to recover his slightly bruised dignity, for Prince Rupert did not care to be seen doing or thinking anything stupid - he lifted the bar that kept Lady Ann's door locked from the outside. It made a scraping sound as it lifted. Lady Ann hurriedly groped for her whacking bottle. Blast! It was at the other end of the tapestry. Did she have time to move?
But then the door swung open and Prince Rupert strode into the room in what he considered to be a swashbuckling swagger, but came across rather more like a sumo wrestler with a limp trying to wade through knee high quicksand.He saw Lady Ann standing against the tapestry in her blue dress, her blond locks brushed neatly back from her face, her chin up. She looked at him defiantly. She was certainly determined not to be one of those wet damsels in distress who fainted all the time and cried all the rest of the time.
Prince Rupert, wanting to exert his authority, stopped in the centre of the room, placed his hands on his hips, threw back his head and let loose his by now traditional evil laugh. "Ah ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ah he ahe eha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaa!" He had to stop then because he had run out of breath and his stomach muscles were tired from so much laughing. His scar twitched as he tried to keep his laughter under control. He glared at Lady Ann from under shaggy black eyebrows.
"So, Lady Antoinetta. You have been my prisoner these several days now. What say you now on the matter of marriage?" said Prince Rupert, pronouncing each word with a flourish and a toss of his hair.
Lady Ann struggled not to roll her eyes. It was all so overdone. "I say nothing will convince me to ever marry you! And there is no way to compell me to do so!" she replied with as much defiance as she could muster, her eyes flashing brilliantly.
She made a lovely picture there, standing against the largely purple tapestry. It would have made a wonderful painting, had some artist been there to capture the moment. Unfortunately there was no artist, just Lady Ann and Prince Rupert, both of whom were indifferently talented in this respect.
And so it was that no one painted a picture of it. Lady Ann just stood her ground, and Prince Rupert stood his. His eyes roamed around the room. He caught sight of the pile of letters on the table, and the kitten pictures sorted into order of cutest to least cute.
"Ah ha!" he said, striding with what was meant to be bombastic fervour over to the table. "I see you like your presents of pictures! Aren't kittens sweet?" He looked fondly at the pictures, his eyes becoming soft and nearly filling with tears. He did so like cats. Blinking rapidly to clear his vision, he turned back to Lady Ann. "You know, my lady, that were you to surrender to my wishes, you would be in a most fortunate position, you who clearly loves cats as much as I myself do. For you would not only become the Princess of Xanadu, a much esteemed region of Ablet with great power and influence, and have me for your husband, " he stroked his hand through his hair as if to display how glossy and black it was, "but you would also become the mistress of all these kittens! And more besides!"
Lady Ann stared at him. "Do I understand you correctly, sir? Are you - do you - do you own ALL these kittens?" She said incredulously. There was a huge stack of pictures on the table. She had been given at least one with every meal.
"And more besides! Many, many more! They all have names and they all have special chefs!" said Prince Rupert, reverting to his debonair yet evil voice. "And they all sleep on my bed, with me!" He wiggled his eyebrows up and down in way that completely failed to be seductive or appealing in any way at all.
Lady Ann inwardly cringed. She liked cats as well as the next person, but there was a limit to the number of cats that were acceptable at one time. Was it not bad enough that her captor was an evil abductor with designs on her hand in marriage, but he was also a crazy cat man? Why was life so cruel to her? Outwardly she raised her eyebrows slightly but said nothing. She did not wish to provoke him. She wished she had the bottle in her hand.
Prince Rupert did not seem to notice she was not saying anything. He swung back to the table and was looking at the letters. "Have you read my letters?" he inquired with avid curiousity. He picked one up and examined it. "Ah! I see that you have been reading them intently. This one is all creased in odd ways." He gently smoothed out the folds of Lady Ann's latest dart attempt while she breathed a sigh of relief at his inability to see what seemed to her to be obvious. "Did you like my poem?" There was a hint of pride in his voice.
If she had known Prince Rupert better, she would have recognised that as more than a hint of pride. Prince Rupert considered his poetry writing skills to be beyond comparision with the skills of any other poet. He was, in simple terms, the greatest poet in Xanadu. No, the greatest poet in Ablet. No, he was the greatest poet in all the world!
"Um." said Lady Ann. She had no wish to offend the Prince - who knew what he might do? but she had also been brought up to be honest. She sought to answer in a way that would distract the prince from his question. "I um..ah...um....ahem."
"What's that?" said Prince Rupert, leaving the poem and advancing on her again. "Couldn't quite make out what you said there. Did you like the poem?"
Lady Ann edged sideways, trying to put more distance between them. "Um. Well. Er. It was..it used a lot of repetition!" she said desperately.
Prince Rupert smiled happily. He seemed to take this as a compliment. "Yes, that's one of my favourite poetic devices. I think it really emphasises whatever point I'm trying to make. In this case, of course, it was your lovely loveliness." He smiled more broadly, if that was possible, and moved closer.Lady Ann tried to push herself further into the wall. It of course did not work, seeing as the wall behind her was made of solid stone.
"Don't you think it worked?" said Prince Rupert, moving to stand now very close.
"Um. Well. Hem." said Lady Ann, ducking past him and moving swiftly to the other side of the room.
"Playing hard to get, are we?" said Prince Rupert, moving after her.
"Ah - ah - " Lady Ann tried to think of something to distract him. "I - I - ah, I couldn't quite read one of the lines of the poem. What was um...what was the line for K?"
That stopped Prince Rupert dead in his tracks. He thought. He thought long. He thought hard. He thought long and hard. "I wrote...I wrote..." He racked his brain for an adjective that started with the letter K, but all he could think of was khaki. He was pausing too long, he thought desperately. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He was losing his edge as a dark evil guy with a soft sensitive side who wrote poetry if he couldn't even think of an adjective that rhymed with K. "I wrote KISSABLE!" he yelled suddenly as the word came to him, and advancing on Lady Ann, took her in his arms and tried to kiss her.
Lady Ann shrieked loudly and headbutted him in the nose. He let go of her immediately, dropping her to the floor. She scuttled away without standing up, crawling to the tapestry. She stood up and drew herself up very tall. "HOW DARE YOU?!" she shrieked, channelling the screams of all the times she had unexpectedly encountered spiders. "Was it not enough that you abduct me and imprison me here in this tiny room after jouncing me here in the MOST uncomfortable manner, but now you attempt to lay your hands on me too!" She looked outraged.
Prince Rupert clutched his nose and groaned in a most undastardly manner. "OW!" he said once and very loudly.
"If you leave me some ink, Prince Rupert, you shall get your answer in writing," said Lady Ann, her voice dripping with icy scorn. Although possibly that would be with icicles of scorn hanging from her words, as icy things do not tend drip very much.
Prince Rupert shot her a dirty look and slunk out of the room, slamming it behind them.
Lady Ann slid down the wall and sat on the floor by the tapestry. She was flummoxed by how easy it had been to get Prince Rupert to agree to giving her ink. Now she just had to wait for it to be brought to her and she could implement her plan....
(Word Count: 35104)
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