Boots
There once was a miller, who had three sons. He died; and his estate was divided between them. For his inheritance, the eldest son received the mill. The second son received the miller’s donkey, and the the youngest son received nothing except the miller’s cat which roamed the mill and kept the rats away.
The first two sons decided, upon receiving their shares, to join their resources and run the mill as it had always been. But the youngest could not even find the cat which was his only due. It had run away or gone feral, and he was left with nothing but his wits with which to make his way in the world.
Well, this was a problem, and he knew it. He sat and pondered his situation.
“Had I any shred of confidence, had I any guile, I could make my way easily enough.” he said to himself. “But I don’t. I’m not very clever and I can’t see any sort of greatness about me. But I’m still young, so I guess that is something.”
Seeing as he had nothing, he decided he may as well not give himself airs; he went to the village cobbler and offered himself as an apprentice. It was honest work, though not glamorous, and the boy learned to love the wood, leather and wax of the cobbler’s bench. He felt at home with the weight of an awl in his hand.
The cobbler was an interesting man who always had an opinion to share.
“You can tell everything about a person by their shoes.” he would say. “Everything.” And then he would prove it by hefting a shoe and describe in detail how its style, color and condition dictated it’s owner. He would look at the wear of the sole and the dirt in the seams before proclaiming an honest man, a lazy man or a drunkard. To the boy’s immense surprise, the cobbler was rarely wrong.
“What do my shoes say about me?” asked the boy one day. The master looked back at him. “That’s a good question, why don’t you answer it?” he said.
The boy looked down at his feet. They looked the oldest shoes in the world… at least those bits which remained of them. They were cheap and tattered and filthy. The boy was filled with shame, and he didn’t look up; he couldn’t bear to look at his master.
“I hate them,” he whispered. “They’re awful and they’re not who I want to be.”
The boy felt his master’s hand upon his shoulder.
“Look at me.” said his master. The boy looked up. His master smiled and laid an awl in the boy’s hand. “Who do you want to be?” he asked.
High fashion is like a tide; trends come in and go out twice a day. Woe unto anyone left stranded on the beach of yesterday’s style.
But if fashion is a tide, there is a moon that pulls it, and moons, as anyone can tell you, wax and wane. So it came to pass that one year, a new name was being whispered among the ladies of the King’s court.
The Marquis de Carabas!
He was a man shrouded in mystery – enigmatic and elusive. No one knew where he had come from, or when, or where they had first heard his name. He had just appeared in the city one day and had taken society by storm.
The Marquis kept a small shop somewhere in the city. Those who knew would not say where it was. No one ever visited without permission; the Marquis worked by invitation only. From time to time, while packing up a pair of shoes, the Marquis would sigh to a client, “Ah, my dear, such a pleasure it has been. I wish you had a friend as pleasant and as beautiful as yourself. If she would drop by at precisely 2 o’clock on Wednesday, I might make some shoes for her as well.”
At 2 o’clock on Wednesday there would invariably be a friend who arrived breathless at the Marquis’s shop, and at 3 o’clock on Wednesday, there would invariably be a tea-party to tell the story of it.
The man might have been a mystery, but there was no secret about his custom leather craftwork. Everyone wanted a pair. It wasn’t that they were a new style, or a retro style, or any particular style at all. It was that you could instantly tell when a someone was wearing a pair of Marquis, because they just looked… better than any shoes you’d ever seen.
There was no signature cut or line or shape. There was no trademark arch or height or color. But there was character and personality in every shoe. No one ever lent or borrowed a shoe made by the hand of the Marquis de Carabas.
Those who had met the Marquis struggled to describe him. He was young, certainly, and the very portrait of elegance and charm. But what people remembered of him was neither his face nor his clothes, but his boots.
Of all his exquisite handiwork, the Marquis had kept the best for himself. He wore a pair of boots the like of which no one had ever seen. They flew in the face of established shoecraft. They were not a king’s boots, nor a nobleman’s boots, nor huntsman’s boots, yet they were majestic and refined and dashing all at the same time.
However, having seen them once (or twice, or three times!), no one could remember any details of what they were like.
The ladies of the court held countless arguments over whether they were black or brown and over whether they were ankle high or calf high or knee high, over whether they had buckles or straps or zippers or buttons or any fasteners at all. The one thing that all could agree on was that they wanted a pair of shoes from the hand that made them. They left an *impression*, and it was the right one.
Such was the enduring quality of the Marquis’s craft that he did not go out with the tide, or fade away with the moon, but became more famous with every day, week and month.
One day, a royal carriage pulled up in front of the shop of the Marquis de Carabas. From the carriage climbed maid after maid, each full of giggles and oohs and ahs. The princess was shoe shopping, and she had brought a full retinue.
Princesses can get away with things that no-one else can; for a full day the mysterious shop of the Marquis was open and flamboyant. As a host, he was bursting with jokes and gaiety. A tornado of activity, he was continuously darting into the back room of his shop and returning with pair after pair of breathtaking shoes. His wares on open display, the marquis pampered the entire group.
It was a tremendous party, and each maid left exhausted, flushed with exhilaration and carrying several pairs of shoes.
The next time the princess visited the Marquis, she came alone, cloaked and hooded. The Marquis glanced up from his workbench when he heard the bell above his door jingle.
“I’m closed, my dear.” he said.
The Princess removed her hood. “I’m not here to buy shoes,” she said.
On recognizing the Princess, The Marquis showed no surprise, but he looked at her very very closely.
“I should think not, my dear,” he said. “Certainly not after last week’s extravaganza. Such a marvellous party, and such a delightful retinue you have. Simply darling, each and every one of them.”
“Except,” and here he quirked an eyebrow, “I don’t often forget a foot, and I would swear that I never fitted a shoe to yours that day. I know shoes, and noblewomen,” said the Marquis, “and you don’t fit the mould.”
“When I came last week,” said the princess, “You didn’t give my maidens shoes. You gave them something else, something more, and I don’t know what it was.”
“Ah,” said the Marquis. “You’re more observant than most. Come, sit down, and I’ll tell you about what I do.”
When the princess was seated, and tea made and poured for the both of them, the Marquis was silent for a long, long time. The princess waited expectantly.
“Do you know why people buy shoes?” said the Marquis at last. “They buy shoes because they want to be someone. I see it every day. People come in and ask me to make them a pair of shoes, but what they really want is for me to make them into someone else.”
“As I measure their feet I talk to them and find out what person they want to be. Then, I make that person’s shoes. People love me for it; they pay any price I ask. But,” he said, and here his voice became sad, ” I can’t give them what they really want. I live a charade, I play a game. I play it well, but it is a game nonetheless, and I can never be quite sure how it will end.”
“And now,” concluded the Marquis, “I will show you something that I have never shown anyone else.”
He vanished into the small back room and returned carrying a pair of shoes. They were the poorest pair of shoes the princess had ever seen. Their tatters had tatters; their stains had stains, their holes… had holes.
To the princess’s shock, the Marquis slid off his boots (those gorgeous, fabulous, exquisite boots!) and strapped on the pair of filthy clogs.
The Marquis looked down at his feet and smiled. He waggled his toes. They poked cheekily out, unencumbered by any genuine presence of shoe.
“I wasn’t always a Marquis.” he said. “I’m not really one now. It’s not a real title and I don’t have real land. Carabas is just a word that sounds nice.”
The Marquis broke into a grin, and he winked at the princess.
“But my boots fit, and they’re comfortable, and they keep my feet dry.”
He took off the clogs and reached for his boots to put them back on, but he was stopped by the princess, who laid her hand on his arm. The Marquis looked up, and she locked her eyes directly on his.
“I never looked at your shoes.” said the princess quietly. “I don’t care what shoes you wear.”
“When I was seven years old,” the princess said, “my Father held a great ball. All the neighboring kings and princes were invited. Everyone told me that one of the princes was sure to be my husband someday. When it was time to get ready, I went to my room and my entire outfit was laid out on the bed for me… including the shoes.”
“Someone had chosen them for me,” she said. “Someone had picked my clothes, my shoes, and presumably my groom as well. Those shoes hurt my feet. They pinched and cramped and made the night a misery. Ever since that night I’ve hated shoes.
“All the women of the court love shoes,” continued the princess, “and I can’t stand them. Last week, I came here because my servants made me.
“But you don’t really sell people shoes, and what you do isn’t a game. You don’t make people into something, but you give them the hope of something, the picture of what they can become, if they choose to do so.”
She reached out and picked up the filthy clogs. The Marquis gasped as he saw her shake off her slipper and slip her foot into one of them.
The princess’s feet were covered in white silk stockings, and the fashionable part of the Marquis cried out in seeing such beauty soiled with the coarse, dirty leather of a peasant’s shoe.
But the princess just smiled and waggled her toes in the empty air.
“Comfortable,” she grinned. “I’ll take them.”
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, leapt out of them again. The Marquis de Carabas was entering the hall.
Afterwards, 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!”