Boots – Part III

I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.

This is Puss in Boots, minus the kitty (Part 3). Part 1. Part 2.

Come back next Monday for Jack and the Beanstalk (w/out the Beanstalk) part 1.

It was the Princess’s weekly visit to the Marquis de Carabas, but she was unhappy.

“The problem,” sighed the Princess, “is my father.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“And my mother.”
“And the court.”

The Marquis looked up from the pair of summer sandals he was fitting on her.

“They might say that the problem is *me*” he said dryly. “Or perhaps you.”

The Marquis stood up; he looked as his feet. “As dashing and impressive as my boots are,” he said, “I don’t think your father or your mother or the court will ever accept a cobbler as the suitor of a princess. Even such a cobbler as the Marquis of Carabas. I can shoe you, but not suit you. I can bear a sole, but can never bare a soul. I…”

“Shush,” said the Princess. “This is serious. I can’t keep on buying shoes like this. My father’s getting wise. Besides, all the neighboring princes are starting to get impatient. I can’t keep stringing them along forever.”

What she said was true. The King *had* been noticing the Princess’s sudden interest in shoe shopping. “She can’t possibly wear all those shoes,” he had grumbled, and the Princess hadn’t known what to say, because she really *couldn’t* wear all those shoes.
She wasn’t buying shoes, she was buying time with the Marquis, and it was rapidly coming time to settle the tab.

“If nothing changes,” said the Princess, “I’ll have to stop coming. I’ll have to marry one of the princes.”

“The Marquis de Carabas can’t be a cobbler.” said the Marquis de Carabas. He looked down at his boots once more. “It’s a shame. I liked these shoes.”

But the Marquis de Carabas made one last trip in his favorite boots, and it was to an ogre’s castle. The ogre lived on the edge of the kingdom. He held a castle with much land, and had plagued the King for years. He had annexed the King’s land, eaten his people, slain his knights. Though everyone hated him, no one could do anything about him.

The ogre was surprised by the arrival of the Marquis, for he solicited no vistors. In fact, he usually ate visitors. He was ten feet tall, and near as wide, but as soon as he opened his castle gate, the Marquis swept him away by sheer force of personality.

“I’m here to see you, my dear.” cried the Marquis, “on a matter of the utmost importance.”

The Marquis blew right past the ogre, up to the Great Hall of the castle, and straight to the ogre’s chair. He draped himself across it, putting his boots up on the Ogre’s table, brushing the bones of the ogre’s supper away with his heels.

“The court, my dear, is so dull!” he exclaimed. “There’s no challenge, no invention. These courtiers all want the same things, and so awful! A lady yesterday asked me for rhinestones! Rhinestones!”

The Marquis flitted off the chair and came close to the ogre, lowering his voice and adopting a tone of secrecy.

“I’d tell you who it was, but you wouldn’t believe it. Horrible! Simply ghastly. But you, my dear… Such lovely large feet that walk oh so far off the beaten path. What challenge, what interest! To my eyes, the most beautiful feet in the world.”

The ogre looked down. He could scarce see his feet for his belly, making out only the the corner of a huge toe. The ogre’s feet were hard as iron and matted all over with coarse, thick black hair.

“I need no shoes” rumbled the ogre.

The Marquis sidled closer to the ogre. “If half the rumours I hear in the court are true,” he said slyly, “Those aren’t the only feet you have.”

In the flash of the eye the ogre disappeared; in his place stood a huge tiger, roaring and snarling. The Marquis was utterly terrified.

“M-M-Marvelous, my dear,” he stuttered. “Boots for claws and paws! What a delightful challenge.”

Suddenly the ogre was back, towering over him.

“You like it?” he smirked.

The Marquis was struggling to reclaim his breath and his nerves. “I love it, it’s fabulous.” he said. “But my specialty, my dear, my claim to fame, is my attention to detail, my meticulous and perfect work at things too small for the human eye to appreciate. Have you not,” here he paused and dropped his voice to near a whisper, “have you not a *tiny* set of feet against which I can test my skill?”

In the flash of an eye, the ogre disappeared, and in his place stood the tiniest of white mice.

The Marquis wasted no time, for seeing the ogre thus transformed was his sole purpose in coming. He killed the mouse with a single blow of his heel.

When the King received an invitation to a ball, signed “The Marquis de Carabas”, he felt it must be some sort of joke.
“The cobbler?” he cried. “A craftsman seeks to entertain a King?”
He was about to burn the card when the Queen quietly pointed out that the ball was being held at the Ogre’s castle.

“You might want to see what it’s about.” she said. The truth was, she didn’t care about the Ogre, but she was sure of one thing. If the Marquis de Carabas was holding a ball, she was not going to miss it. Cobbler or not, a place on the Marquis’s schedule was not a thing to be gambled with.

So it was that the King, the Queen, and the whole court made their way to the Ogre’s castle. Oh, and the Princess came as well, though to her ladies in waiting she appeared flushed, agitated and quite unfit to travel.

Driving through the countryside, the King could not resist stopping the carriage at every possible opportunity to interrogate the road-side serfs. It infuriated the Queen to no end, but the King would have his way.

“To whom does this cornfield belong?” he would demand.
“To whom does this mill belong?”
“To whom does this forest belong?”

“The Marquis de Carabas,” was the invariable reply.

“A cobbler owns half my country, and I have yet to hear of it!” cried the King. The truth was, all the land he had lost to the Ogre had been lost by force, and he was frightened of meeting anyone powerful enough to slay him.

When the guests arrived at the castle, they were escorted with great courtesy to the banquet hall, where places had been laid for one and all. The hall was thick with the tantalizing aroma of exotic meats and sauces, but thicker still was the feeling of anticipation and anxiety.

What manner of host had brought them here?

The guests had scarce taken their seats when a trumpet sounded, and they all, King, Queen, Princess and court, lept out of them again. The Marquis de Carabas was entering the hall.

Aftwerwards, as they gathered for the dance, every noble poured forth praise of the Marquis – the authority of his presence, his nobility, his grace. They marvelled at the eloquence of his welcoming speech. They extolled his courtesy.

They rhapsodized at the splendour of the castle. The lords mouthed amazement over the lavish feast he had provided. The ladies swooned at the cut of the crystal.

“No cobbler, he.” was the unanimous verdict. Indeed, the dastardly cobbler was dismissed in an instant. Such a wretch he was, to claim the name of such a nobleman as the Marquis de Carabas! “I’ll never visit him again!” was the indignant cry of every noblewoman. (And then, quieter, “But I simply can’t waste the perfectly good pair I already have from him.”) Truthfully, the appearance of the *real* Marquis proved such a blow to the reputation of the cobbler that he must have fled the country, for after that night he was never heard from again.

There was only one person in the hall who said nothing about either the nobleman *or* the cobbler.
She’d looked at his face, and not at his feet.

It was sometime the next morning, and the party was close to wrapping up, when the Princess stumbled upon the King and the Marquis, having a conversation in one of the smoking rooms. The King’s arm was draped over the Marquis’s shoulders.

“Seriously, m’lord,” he was slurring, “she only cares about her blasted shoes. She won’t look twice at any of the princes. I can’t blame her. Halfwits and ne’er-do-wells all! But a man of character, now…”

The King’s voice trailed off. The Marquis de Carabas laid him down on the sofa.

“He doesn’t half snore, does he?” shouted the Marquis.
The Princess grinned. “You’d better get used to it.” she yelled. “It’s hereditary!”