This is me. All abridging remarks and other comments will be in red so you’ll know. When I said at the start that I’d never read this book, that’s true. My father read it to me, and I just quick skimmed along, crossing out whole sections when I did the abridging, leaving everything just as it was in the original Morgenstern.
This chapter is totally intact. My intrusion here is because of the way Morgenstern uses parentheses. The copy editor at Harcourt kept filling the margins of the galley proofs with questions: ‘How can it bebeforeEurope butafterParis?’ And ‘How is it possible this happensbeforeglamour when glamour is an ancient concept? See “glamer” in the Oxford English Dictionary.’ And eventually: I am going crazy. What am I to make of these parentheses? When does this book take place? I don’t understand anything. Hellllppppp!!!’ Denise, the copy editor, has done all my books since Boys and Girls Together and she had never been as emotional in the margins with me before.
I couldn’t help her.
Either Morgenstern meant them seriously or he didn’t. Or maybe he meant some of them seriously and some others he didn’t. But he never said which were the seriously ones. Or maybe it was the author’s way of telling the reader stylistically that ‘this isn’t real; it never happened.’ That’s what I think, in spite of the fact that if you read back into Florinese history, it did happen. The facts, anyway; no one can say about the actual motivations. All I can suggest to you is, if the parentheses bug you, don’t read them.
“Quick—quick—come—” Buttercup’s father stood in his farmhouse, staring out the window.
“Why?” This from the mother. She gave away nothing when it came to obedience.
The father made a quick finger point. “Look—”
“You look; you know how.” Buttercup’s parents did not have exactly what you might call a happy marriage. All they ever dreamed of was leaving each other.
Buttercup’s father shrugged and went back to the window. “Ahhhh,” he said after a while. And a little later, again, “Ahhhh.”
Buttercup’s mother glanced up briefly from her cooking.
“Such riches,” Buttercup’s father said. “Glorious.”
Buttercup’s mother hesitated, then put her stew spoon down. (This was after stew, but so is everything. When the first man first clambered from the slime and made his first home on land, what he had for supper that first night was stew.)
“The heart swells at the magnificence,” Buttercup’s father muttered very loudly.
“What exactly is it, dumpling?” Buttercup’s mother wanted to know.
“You look; you know how” was all he replied. (This was their thirty-third spat of the day—this was long after spats—and he was behind, thirteen to twenty, but he had made up a lot of distance since lunch, when it was seventeen to two against him.)
“Donkey,” the mother said, and came over to the window. A moment later she was going “Ahhh” right along with him.
They stood there, the two of them, tiny and awed.
From setting the dinner table, Buttercup watched them.
“They must be going to meet Prince Humperdinck someplace,” Buttercup’s mother said.
The father nodded. “Hunting. That’s what the Prince does.”
“How lucky we are to have seen them pass by,” Buttercup’s mother said, and she took her husband’s hand.
The old man nodded. “Now I can die.”
She glanced at him. “Don’t.” Her tone was surprisingly tender, and probably she sensed how important he really was to her, because when he did die, two years further on, she went right after, and most of the people who knew her well agreed it was the sudden lack of opposition that undid her.
Buttercup came close and stood behind them, staring over them, and soon she was gasping too, because the Count and Countess and all their pages and soldiers and servants and courtiers and champions and carriages were passing by the cart track at the front of the farm.
The three stood in silence as the procession moved forward. Buttercup’s father was a tiny mutt of a man who had always dreamed of living like the Count. He had once been two miles from where the Count and Prince had been hunting, and until this moment that had been the high point of his life. He was a terrible farmer, and not much of a husband either. There wasn’t really much in this world he excelled at, and he could never quite figure out how he happened to sire his daughter, but he knew, deep down, that it must have been some kind of wonderful mistake, the nature of which he had no intention of investigating.
Buttercup’s mother was a gnarled shrimp of a woman, thorny and worrying, who had always dreamed of somehow just once being popular, like the Countess was said to be. She was a terrible cook, an even more limited housekeeper. How Buttercup slid from her womb was, of course, beyond her. But she had been there when it happened; that was enough for her.
Buttercup herself, standing half a head over her parents, still holding the dinner dishes, still smelling of Horse, only wished that the great procession wasn’t quite so far away, so she could see if the Countess’s clothes really were all that lovely.
As if in answer to her request, the procession turned and began entering the farm.
“Here?” Buttercup’s father managed. “My God, why?”
Buttercup’s mother whirled on him. “Did you forget to pay your taxes?” (This was after taxes. But everything is after taxes. Taxes were here even before stew.)
“Even if I did, they wouldn’t need allthat to collect them,” and he gestured toward the front of his farm, where now the Count and Countess and all their pages and soldiers and servants and courtiers and champions and carriages were coming closer and closer. “What could they want to ask me about?” he said.
“Go see, go see,” Buttercup’s mother told him.
“You go. Please.”
“No. You. Please.”
“We’ll both go.”
They both went. Trembling . . .
“Cows,” the Count said, when they reached his golden carriage. “I would like to talk about your cows.” He spoke from inside, his dark face darkened by shadow.
“My cows?” Buttercup’s father said.
“Yes. You see, I’m thinking of starting a little dairy of my own, and since your cows are known throughout the land as being Florin’s finest, I thought I might pry your secrets from you.”
“My cows,” Buttercup’s father managed to repeat, hoping he was not going mad. Because the truth was, and he knew it well, he had terrible cows. For years, nothing but complaints from the people in the village. If anyone else had had milk to sell, he would have been out of business in a minute. Now granted, things had improved since the farm boy had come to slave for him—no question, the farm boy had certain skills, and the complaints were quite nonexistent now—but that didn’t make his the finest cows in Florin. Still, you didn’t argue with the Count. Buttercup’s father turned to his wife. “What would you say my secret is, my dear?” he asked.
“Oh, there are so many,” she said—she was no dummy, not when it came to the quality of their livestock.
“You two are childless, are you?” the Count asked then.
“No, sir,” the mother answered.
“Then let me see her,” the Count went on—”perhaps she will be quicker with her answers than her parents.”
“Buttercup,” the father called, turning. “Come out please.”
“How did you know we had a daughter?” Buttercup’s mother wondered.
“A guess. I assumed it had to be one or the other. Some days I’m luckier than—” He simply stopped talking then.
Because Buttercup moved into view, hurrying from the house to her parents.
The Count left the carriage. Gracefully, he moved to the ground and stood very still. He was a big man, with black hair and black eyes and great shoulders and a black cape and gloves.
“Curtsy, dear,” Buttercup’s mother whispered.
Buttercup did her best.
And the Count could not stop looking at her.
Understand now, she was barely rated in the top twenty; her hair was uncombed, unclean; her age was just seventeen, so there was still, in occasional places, the remains of baby fat. Nothing had been done to the child. Nothing was really there but potential.
But the Count still could not rip his eyes away.
“The Count would like to know the secrets behind our cows’ greatness, is that not correct, sir?” Buttercup’s father said.
The Count only nodded, staring.
Even Buttercup’s mother noted a certain tension in the air.
“Ask the farm boy; he tends them,” Buttercup said.
“And is that the farm boy?”came a new voice from inside the carriage. Then the Countess’s face was framed in the carriage doorway.
Her lips were painted a perfect red; her green eyes lined in black. All the colors of the world were muted in her gown. Buttercup wanted to shield her eyes from the brilliance.
Buttercup’s father glanced back toward the lone figure peering around the corner of the house. “It is.”
“Bring him to me.”
“He is not dressed properly for such an occasion,” Buttercup’s mother said.
“I have seen bare chests before,” the Countess replied. Then she called out:”You!” and pointed at the farm boy. “Comehere .” Her fingers snapped on “here.”
The farm boy did as he was told.
And when he was close, the Countess left the carriage.
When he was a few paces behind Buttercup, he stopped, head properly bowed. He was ashamed of his attire, worn boots and torn blue jeans (blue jeans were invented considerably before most people suppose), and his hands were tight together in almost a gesture of supplication.
“Have you a name, farm boy?”
“Westley, Countess.”
“Well, Westley, perhaps you can help us with our problem.” She crossed to him. The fabric of her gown grazed his skin. “We are all of us here passionately interested in the subject of cows. We are practically reaching the point of frenzy, such is our curiosity. Why, do you suppose, Westley, that the cows of this particular farm are the finest in all Florin. What do you do to them?”
“I just feed them, Countess.”
“Well then, there it is, the mystery is solved, the secret out; we can all rest. Clearly, the magic is in Westley’s feeding. Show me how you do it, would you, Westley?”
“Feed the cows for you, Countess?”
“Bright lad.”
“When?”
“Now will be soon enough,” and she held out her arm to him. “Lead me, Westley.”
Westley had no choice but to take her arm. Gently. “It’s behind the house, madam; it’s terribly muddy back there. Your gown will be ruined.”
“I wear them only once, Westley, and I burn to see you in action.”
So off they went to the cowshed.
Throughout all this, the Count kept watching Buttercup.
“I’ll help you,” Buttercup called after Westley.
“Perhaps I’d best see just how he does it,” the Count decided.
“Strange things are happening,” Buttercup’s parents said, and off they went too, bringing up the rear of the cow-feeding trip, watching the Count, who was watching their daughter, who was watching the Countess.
Who was watching Westley.