Penelope and the Parade

Bright crayons lay on top of soft white blankets, threatening to spoil the purity with stains of vivid colour. A number of books were strewn haphazardly across the bed, one open to a page where a child’s pink scribbles accurately claimed that two times two equals four. But that child was no longer sitting with the book on her lap; she had grown bored of mathematics and was dancing about her room, watching the kaleidoscope fabric of her skirt swish as she moved.

King Claudius popped his head into his youngest daughter’s room to see how the studies were progressing, only to find her precious diamond tiara slipping from a mess of golden ringlets and her shimmering satin skirt, which had been flawlessly pressed that morning, now a maze of wrinkles. The soft silly music that Princess Penelope heard in her head was quickly broken by the rumbling sound of her father clearing his throat and she ceased spinning, though it took a few moments for the room to stop spinning as well. King Claudius shook his head.

“Why have you not finished your lessons as you were instructed to do?”

Penelope did not answer as she looked down at her feet; her white shoes peeked out from under the hem of her skirt and she could see the tiny bow that decorated each.

“Your mother will be very disappointed in you, Penelope. You are going to have to stay in your bedroom this afternoon until you complete everything; your tutor will be here this evening to see how you are progressing.”

The king left the room, shutting the door behind him, closing off any chance for conversation. Penelope scrambled back onto her bed, pulling together the gauzy fabric of the canopy so that she was separated from the rest of the room. She took an orange crayon into her hand and puzzled over the next question:

3 x 6 =

Outside she could hear the sound of metal clashing against metal as her eldest brother enthusiastically practiced his swordsmanship. Even though he usually found her company distracting, she loved to cheer him on as he battled the guards in the courtyard. But today she tried not to let the noise distract her too much as she thought about her answer. Was it 24? No, that seemed to be too much.

Picking up a box that was filled with more colourful crayons, Penelope turned it upside down and let the wax sticks spill out over her bed. Then she began to arrange them into rainbows of colour, six crayons to a row that transformed from red to yellow to blue. She created three rows in this manner, and then set to counting how many filled the three rows.

The princess had succeeded in counting up to the thirteenth crayon when she heard a trumpet blare from outside. She sprang out from behind the curtains of her bed and raced to the window. In the main street, just outside the castle walls, Penelope could see flags and banners and great crowds of people gathering. Then the severity of her father’s punishment finally struck her; today was Midsummer and the customary parade was about to begin! Princess Penelope found herself face to face with a dilemma: she could obey her father and finish her studies, or she could sneak out of the castle and watch the grand parade she looked forward to every year.

A moment later, Penelope found herself wincing as the heavy wooden door creaked noisily when she pushed it open with her shoulder. She tiptoed out into the cold stone corridor. In the direction of the main stairway she could make out the shadow of a chambermaid going into another room so she slinked through the shadows in the opposite direction, towards the back stairway. She checked over her shoulder a number of times to verify that the maid had not noticed her before turning a corner to the safety of a vacant hallway.

Penelope did some quick multiplications in her head before moving forward, trying her best even though she had no crayons with her to help. She remembered that her father generally had a guard outside the back stairway on every third floor. She knew, then, that there should be guards on the third, sixth and ninth floors, and since her bedroom was on the eighth, she would be able to enter the stairway without being seen, and as long as no one else used the stairs she would be able to scramble her way down to the very first floor.

Heaving open the door to the dark staircase, Penelope strained her tiny ears for nearby voices but heard none. She padded quickly and quietly down the stone steps, being extra careful not to make sounds when she was near the third and sixth floors. When she reached the main floor she released a long breath; so far the journey had proven easier than she thought. She pulled the door open slightly to see if her path was clear, and then found herself jumping back again.

There was a guard outside the door! Fortunately, he had not spotted the young princess; his back had been turned towards her and he appeared to have been stretching, which looked difficult to do underneath the layers of heavy armour. Penelope felt a bit shaken as she tried to figure out how she had calculated things incorrectly. She realised that the guards must have been placed on the first, fourth and seventh floors; so she retreated to the second floor, determined to find another route.

There were only two other ways down to the main floor of the castle. The first was the servants’ stairway, which led to the kitchen and was usually a hustle and bustle of activity. The other was the large main stairway, which varied between being unoccupied and being crowded, depending on what events were going on within the castle. Penelope hoped that with all of the activity happening in the town today, the main parts of the castle would be more or less deserted and she would be able to escape unseen.

Luckily the corridor was deserted, save for the large portraits of her forefathers that hung on the wall and stared down upon her tiny figure with reproachful eyes. There was no one in sight near the top of the stairs and the soft red carpet muffled the sound of the princess’s footsteps. There were twenty steps in all, with one platform in the middle where the stairs turned, so Penelope calculated that there must be ten steps in each flight. She jumped down the last three steps and landed with a clank on the marble floor of the Great Hall.

Her shoes clattered as she scampered across the room towards the entrance way to the castle. She was about to heave open the large door and step outside when she suddenly halted and retreated; she had realised that there would surely be guards outside the doors and she had almost walked immediately into defeat.

Penelope rethought her escape route yet again. There were three other ways to exit the castle: one was from the kitchen, which she already knew would be filled with a great army of cooks and maids who would overthrow the princess’s plans. The second was near the back stairway, but she already knew a guard was there. Her last hope was to exit into the vast maze of gardens and find a way out of the castle grounds and into the town.

To the right of the stairs, a glass door led into deeper parts of the castle: the library, the ballroom, the dining room, the kitchen and the museum. It was the last that the princess had to pass through in order to enter the gardens. Romantic paintings of flowers, lakes and lovers lined the whitewashed walls, gifts from many talented artists to Penelope’s father and the generations that came before him. A long stretch of sculptures lined one of the hallways, taking on the shapes of knights, angels, kings and queens. Her favourite was a marble statue no more than a foot high, a fairy with intricate wings outstretched.

The princess paused to admire the statue for the millionth time when a woman’s voice came floating down the hall; she immediately recognised it as her mother’s, the Queen Amelia. Penelope considered running back down the hall into other parts of the museum but knew that her mother would catch her. She glanced around the hall frantically for a place to hide.

Between the wall and a large stone throne, Penelope found a gap just large enough for her to squeeze into. She resisted the desire to peek around and see where her mother was. The voices of the queen and her eldest daughter rose and fell as they slowly admired the artwork. Penelope began to quiver when the steps came close and paused at one of the nearby statues, but soon the ladies had continued on their way and she was able to emerge.

Penelope sprinted through the remainder of the museum in case her mother returned, rapidly heading towards stain glass doors that led to the garden. She pushed one open and walked into a tamed jungle of flowers and trees where she was greeted by fresh air and a sense of relief; she had only to make it across the garden and then her adventure would be a success. Yet to get to the other side of the garden, where a secret entrance to the town lay hidden, Princess Penelope had to carefully navigate through a maze of bushes and plants.

Penelope knew that the maze was a complicated one with many forks in the path that led to dead ends. In the case of an emergency, she had been taught that any time the path forked into three different paths, she should take the one to the left; she should go right if there were only two paths to choose from. From her memory, Penelope remembered that she would come across fifteen crossroads in all and at eight of them she would turn left. She deducted then that she would turn to the right seven times.

The princess stepped towards the entrance of the maze, encouraging herself in hopes that she would not get lost, when suddenly she heard someone approach behind her.

“What are you up to, little Miss Penelope?”

She slowly turned around to face her eldest brother and the heir to the throne, the Prince Ronald. She shuffled her feet and twiddled her fingers in front of her as she replied, “I wanted to get some fresh air.”

“I don’t think you need to go all the way to town for air.”

Penelope knew that she had been caught. A tear ran down her cheek as she replied, “I didn’t want to miss the Midsummer parade but Father told me to do my homework.”

Ronald bent down in front of his sister and wiped away the tear with a gentle hand. “Oh, Penny, why didn’t you say so? I’ll take you to see the parade. It’ll be our little secret.”

The prince received a big smile in response. He stood and took his sister’s tiny hand in his. Then the pair raced through the maze, Prince Ronald showing Penelope where to turn. When Penelope found a stone wall in front of her, instead of the green bushes of the maze, she squeezed her brother’s hand and grinned. Together they heaved open the stone door of the castle wall.

They stepped out into the town and became immersed in a long line of townspeople gathered at the edge of the street. Penelope could not see over the heads of the adults in front of her but her brother did not hesitate to lift her up on his shoulders just in time to see the elephants saunter by with tapestries hanging from their backs and colourful bows dangling from their tails.

Penelope laughed with delight as four people walked by on long, tall stilts, towering over the nearby market stands. One of them shook a tambourine; another had a pair of maracas. They were followed by Penelope’s favourite part of the parade, women in long, flowing skirts who danced and twirled down the street while waving long strands of ribbon that glowed against the clear sky.

Penelope heard a rumbling of a voice being cleared and she scrambled down from Ronald’s shoulders. Before she could disappear into the crowd, a hand decorated with gold and ruby rings caught her arm. With a guilty look on her face, she turned to meet her father’s eyes. Then she looked down at her shoes again, now brown from the dirt of the gardens and street, and tried to think of an explanation.

The music from a marching band came next and Ronald said to his sister, “Penny, if the band has three instruments, trumpets, drums and tubas, and six people play each type of instrument, how many people are in the band?”

The princess thought for a moment, wishing she could pour a box of crayons out in front of her. She asked tentatively, “Eighteen?”

Prince Ronald grinned up at her as a woman wearing a large fake peacock tail strutted past.

The siblings continued to watch the parade until a pair of white stallions passed. Then Ronald said to his sister, “We had better be going back to the castle soon. One of the cooks will have a snack ready for me soon, since I always get one after sword practice.”

Penelope pouted. “I wanted to watch until the end, though.”

“Don’t whine. I was nice enough to bring you, but I don’t want to get in trouble for it.”

Prince Ronald squatted so that Penelope could scramble down from his shoulders. Then he took her hand and led a moping princess back through the maze. They cut across the gardens to the servant entrance, where gardeners, guards, maids and cooks were constantly coming and going. The pair managed to squeeze through the doors before anyone came from the opposite direction, and they wound up in a dark, thin corridor that Penelope was rarely in.

“All right, Penny, I’m going to go have my snack in the kitchen. The stairs are just up ahead, you can find your way back to your room from there.”

Penelope shook her head. “I want a glass of water,” she informed her brother.

Ronald sighed and took his sister into the kitchen, where a crowd of busy cooks and maids greeted them with bows and curtseys. One led the prince to a little table where a tossed salad awaited him; he began to munch on it immediately and left the princess to take care of herself.

By the time it had occurred to Penelope that Ronald would not get a drink for her, though, all of the servants had returned to their busy tasks throughout the kitchen. Since the princess did not want to be rude and distract them from their duties, it took some time before someone noticed her standing there.

“What can I get for you, little princess?” One of the elderly cooks asked her.

“I would like a glass of water, please.”

“Is that all? My goodness, you should have spoken up sooner!” The gentleman poured a glass of water into a goblet for the child as he spoke. “Don’t hesitate to ask for anything else you may require, your highness.”

Penelope thanked the gentleman and retreated from the kitchen. She climbed the small servants’ stairway until she reached the floor of the castle on which her room was located. She pattered down the hallway towards her bedroom when suddenly she found herself face to face with her father.

Princess Penelope gulped nervously as her father stared down at her. “Why aren’t you in your room studying?” King Claudius asked his youngest child.

“I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water,” Penelope told him. “Now I’m going to go study some more.”

The king smiled. “Have you been having any trouble?”

“At first I couldn’t remember what three times six was, but I know the answer now.”

“Would you like me to help you with the rest of your homework?” Claudius offered. “After all, you might need someone to tell you what five times seven is.”

“Yes, please,” Penelope replied, slipping her tiny hand into her father’s large one and walking with him towards her bedroom. “I think it might be 35, but I’m not sure.”