Doctor Who: BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures [050] - Grimm Reality by Simon Bucher-Jones & Kelly Hale

Author:Simon Bucher-Jones & Kelly Hale
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563538417
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: 2001-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The Master-Maid

In the morning the giant had to go out and pasture his goats, and as he was leaving the house he told his new servant that he must mend his stockings while he was away. ‘And after that,’ the giant said, ‘you need not do any more work today, for you have come to a kind master, and your stories amuse me. But what I have set you to do must be done well and thoroughly, and you must on no account go into any of the rooms that lead from the west of the one in which you slept last night. If you do I will take your life.’

‘Well to be sure, he is an easy master,’ said the tailor-for-today as he walked up and down the room humming and singing to himself, for he thought there would be plenty of time to mend a pair of stockings. ‘But it would be amusing to steal a glance at the other rooms as well, for there must be something that he is afraid of my seeing as I am not allowed to enter them.’ So he went into the first room. A cauldron was hanging from the walls; it was boiling, but the servant could see no fire under it. I wonder what is inside it, he thought and dipped a piece of thread in, and the thread became just as if it were made of copper. That’s a nice kind of soup. If anyone were to taste that his throat would be gilded.

Then he went into the next chamber. There, too, a cauldron was hanging from the wall, bubbling and boiling, but there was no fire under this either. ‘I will just try what this is like, too,’ said the tailor, thrusting another piece of thread into it, and it came out silvered over. ‘Such costly soup is not to be seen in all the palaces of the world. But everything depends on how it tastes!And then he went into the third room. There, too, was a cauldron hanging from the wall, boiling, exactly the same as in the other two rooms. The tailor took pleasure in trying this also, so he dipped a piece of thread in, and it came out so brightly gilded that he declared, ‘Some talk about going from bad to worse, but this is better and better. If he boils gold here, what can he boil in there?’ He was determined to see and went through the door to the fourth room. In it was a cauldron much larger than the other three, but this hung over a huge fire in the centre of a great stone hearth, and on a bench someone was seated who was like a king’s daughter dressed as a serving girl.

‘Oh! In heaven’s name what are you doing here?’ said she who sat upon the bench.

‘I took the place of servant, tailor, dentist and doctor here two days ago,’ he explained.

‘Days you say? No manservant has lasted more than one day in service to my master,’ said she.

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