Fantastic Stories Read online

  ‘Doesn’t that make it rather hard to fight in?’ said Nicobobinus as they helped him to stand upright.

  ‘Hopeless,’ admitted the guard. ‘But it is very expensive. Now, have you seen two children go past here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Beatrice. ‘They went that way!’ And she pointed down the passageway.

  ‘Thanks!’ said the guard and ran off as fast as his expensive armour would allow him. He’d got round the corner before he must have realized he’d made a mistake, for there was a crash and a muffled curse, as he tried to stop and turn, but fell over again instead.

  ‘Come on!’ yelled Rosie.

  ‘Is this fun?’ asked Beatrice, as they ran up another staircase and onto a long balcony and looked out over a narrow street.

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’ asked Nicobobinus.

  ‘So-so,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Then it’s probably fun,’ said Nicobobinus.

  ‘Oh! Stop wittering, you two!’ exclaimed Rosie. ‘And help me down off here!’ Rosie was already climbing over the balustrade and hanging from the balcony.

  ‘That’s too far a drop!’ exclaimed Beatrice.

  ‘You wait!’ grinned Nicobobinus. ‘We’ve done this before.’ He whipped his belt off, and before you could say ‘Venice and chips!’ Rosie was clinging to the end, and being lowered down into the street.

  ‘Oo-er!’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Come on!’ called Rosie, as Nicobobinus hauled his belt back up again. ‘It’s fine!’

  ‘Are you sure this is fun?’ whispered Beatrice.

  ‘Well it beats enjoying yourself!’ shouted Nicobobinus, as several guards suddenly appeared at the far end of the balcony.

  ‘Hurry!’ he said, and thrust the end of the belt into her hand.

  ‘There they are!’ shouted one of the guards. And without giving another thought, Beatrice followed Rosie down into the street.

  ‘Nicobobinus!’ yelled Rosie. ‘How are you going to get down?’

  ‘I’ll be OK!’ yelled Nicobobinus, although his main thought, as he avoided the spears of the charging guards by ducking through a window, was actually ‘Cripes!’

  ‘I thought you’d done this before?’ said Beatrice as she and Rosie legged it down the street.

  ‘Well… maybe not from quite such a high balcony,’ admitted Rosie, and they disappeared round the corner.

  Nicobobinus meanwhile had made a discovery. He had discovered that the window that looked out onto the long balcony that looked over the Calle de San Marco was the window of the office of the Prime Minister. He also made a second discovery: it was office hours. The Prime Minister was sitting on a sort of throne, holding an audience with several rather scruffy individuals who looked scared out of their wits.

  ‘… and then take their heads off,’ the Prime Minister was saying, as Nicobobinus backed in through the window and landed on the floor in front of him.

  ‘Ah!’ smiled the Prime Minister, signalling to one of his guards, ‘another customer.’

  Some time later, Nicobobinus found himself chained and shackled and being dragged into the Grand Audience Chamber of the Doge of Venice himself. It was a particularly magnificent room, and nowadays people come from all over the world to gaze up at the ornate ceiling and stare at the fine furnishings, while a guide talks too quickly in a language they can’t understand and tells them about all the boring and pompous men and women with famous names that have come and gone through the doors of that famous place. But one story they never tell (and I don’t know why) is the story I’m telling you now.

  At that particular moment, however, the one thing Nicobobinus was not interested in was the magnificent decor of the Grand Audience Chamber. His one and only concern was how to get out again as quickly as possible (which, come to think of it, is probably what most of today’s tourists are thinking too!).

  ‘Bring the boy here,’ yawned the Doge (who was actually wishing he was back in bed).

  ‘We could start by simply cutting his feet off, and then move on up to his knees…’ the Prime Minister was whispering in the Doge’s ear as Nicobobinus was thrown onto the floor in front of them.

  All eyes were upon him, and an excited buzz went around the Audience Chamber. The Doge looked at him for several moments and then said: ‘What are your demands?’

  Nicobobinus thought he hadn’t heard right, so he said: ‘I beg your pardon, …Your Highness?’

  ‘Where is she?’ shrieked the Prime Minister, and suddenly everyone in the room was muttering and shouting the same thing.

  ‘Silence!’ commanded the Doge. Then he turned to Nicobobinus once more and said: ‘You have kidnapped my daughter. I will give you what you want, providing you return her at once – unharmed.’

  Nicobobinus was just about to say: ‘No! I haven’t kidnapped your daughter’, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked around at all the heavy, brooding faces, the wine-soaked noses and the sunken eyes of all the important, pompous folk of Venice, and he said: ‘I want one thing.’

  ‘Yes?’ said the Doge.

  ‘And it isn’t for me,’ went on Nicobobinus.

  ‘It’s for your master,’ assumed the Doge – his voice cracking between concern for his daughter and contempt for Nicobobinus.

  ‘No,’ replied Nicobobinus, ‘it’s for your daughter.’ A gasp went up around the room. ‘It’s something you must give Beatrice.’

  The Doge couldn’t speak for a moment, but eventually he managed to say: ‘And what is it?’

  ‘Fun,’ said Nicobobinus.

  ‘Fun?’ said the Doge.

  ‘Fun?’ said all the pompous and important people of Venice.

  ‘Fun!’ said another voice, and there was Beatrice, the Doge’s daughter, standing at the entrance to the Grand Audience Chamber, holding Rosie’s hand. ‘We’ve been having fun!’

  Well, to cut a long story short, the Prime Minister still wanted to chop off Nicobobinus’s and Rosie’s heads and drown them in the Grand Canal at midnight, until the Lord Chief Advocate pointed out (after consulting various medical authorities) that you can’t drown someone once you’ve cut their head off.

  ‘Then just drown them like the rats they are!’ exclaimed the Prime Minister.

  ‘But they’re only children,’ said the Doge’s mother.

  ‘That’s beside the point!’ screamed the Prime Minister. ‘It’s the principle that matters! If you don’t drown them, soon you’ll have all the riff-raff of Venice climbing into the palace and making demands!’

  But the Doge had fallen asleep, and his mother ordered that Beatrice should decide what was to become of Nicobobinus and Rosie. Beatrice said they had to come and play with her every Monday. And so that was that.

  Later that evening, as the Doge was getting into bed, and all the assistants were gone, he said to his wife: ‘You know, my dear, a most extraordinary thing… Just now… Do you know what I found in my trousers?’

  At about the same time, Nicobobinus and Rosie were sitting on Nicobobinus’s doorstep laughing and laughing as Nicobobinus described how he had managed to slip the wriggling fish past the Doge’s belt and into his trousers while the Doge’s mother was kissing him goodnight.

  ‘But one thing puzzles me,’ said Rosie. ‘When did you stick your tongue out at the Prime Minister?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ replied Nicobobinus. ‘That happened in a totally different adventure.’

  ‘Was it the one where we set off to find the Land of Dragons?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘Ah!’ said Nicobobinus. ‘That would be telling …’

 

 

 
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