Two Kings
HORRORS IN DREAM DO NOT A NIGHTMARE MAKE ... were the words etched above the door, words at which King Ullie - who was staying as a guest of another King - glanced. He was being shown into salubrious sleeping-quarters by a servile Palace porter, someone who looked too much of a weakling to carry luggage at the best of times.
"If you need anything in the night, your Majesty," piped the porter, "I shall be no further than where your voice will reach, be it whisper or be it shout."
Or be it scream, thought King Ullie as he waved the porter away through the door of words.
Primary sources reveal that King Ullie was due to meet his host, King Alez, on the morrow. He had arrived late - so very late, the porter whose name was Lurkenwell (or some such name that recordings of the day made sound like Lurkenwell) had been dragged from his truckle to tend to King Ullie's supper - a duty which entailed Lurkenwell dragging the cook from his truckle who then toddled along to serve the various convenience foodstuffs to King Ullie in the huge refectory; then for Lurkenwell to chase the chambermaid back to her truckle, she having originally dragged Lurkenwell from his truckle when King Ullie first grated the door-pull. Indeed, the chambermaid had also dragged the gateman from his truckle - simply the first repercussion of her earlier spotting the distant horsebacked King Ullie's potential arrival at the Palace. Nobody could have expected King Ullie to have known that the gateman slept so deeply child-like, if not in dream, certainly under it?
The chambermaid's name - according to ancient doormats - was Tilda, the gateman's Slump and the cook's Coker. These three were duty monitors who were rarely seen - given prompt arrivals by guests - and the likes of them should never have been seen by guests, let alone had their names known.
Lurkenwell was usually sufficient sight for any pukka Palace guest, although barely seen himself.
Despite his role, Slump always wore a low profile when visitors arrived at his gate. He was merely mistaken for Lurkenwell's shadow or, even, the visitor's shadow.
As to Coker, well, the sole evidence of his existence was usually by the smelly wafts that permeated the Palace corridors. The prepared food itself was brought in by outside caterers ... except, of course, upon the occasion of there being a late arrival; then there being no option but to wake Coker and plant a ladle in his feverish hand.
Tilda's presence was like an echo, one that she left behind in the bedrooms after making the truckles. In any event, it was more of an echo than a shadow but, equally, hardly an echo. King Ullie inadvertently took Tilda's presence under the covers with him - after first grappling with his dental hygiene, an important task following one of Coker's fast food feasts.
Tilda’s presence was like a silvery ghost that vanished without a tinkle from under his body...
In the morning, as was the rumoured custom those days, business was to be conducted at a breakfast meeting, in the misguided belief that days, without making their breakfast times thus grindingly boring, were not otherwise long enough.
King Alez was due to appear at exactly that no man's land of time which is called neither a lay-in nor a getting-up-bright-and-twirly.
King Ullie already sat at the trestle, faced by a panoply of hot-plates crammed with items such as kidneys stuffed with aniseed, pancakes soaked in molasses, crimped kippers, golden-eyed eggs, rissoles weltering in wild honey, steaming rashers of back bacon, black puddings...
His survey of this menu in real-time was interrupted by the door filling with a shape, a shape cut out of the morning light by polkadotted darkness: it was King Alez in his pardish dressing-gown, feet padding in owl-slippers. His neck, beneath his unshaven pudding-chops, guttered with yellow sleep. He was wielding a giant tambourine wrapped in panther-skin.
On the other hand, contemporary documents indicate that King Alez was merely well-built, someone who dressed like a dandyish slim-minded harlequin despite being a lover of fried breakfasts and a belly like a drum.
"Ullikins!"
"Alezitty!"
The two embraced.
Who spoke the most only history, as opposed to anything else, can tell. In any event - having agreed a new dynasty combining the best of both kingdoms and having arranged various marriages among their Royal children accordingly - one of the two kings entered into a diatribe of an hour's length, a diatribe which ended thus (just before the last black pudding was turned back into blood):
"Children - who'd have them! They come out evil from the very womb. The worst child abuse is that of a child against another child. Even Royal children - or especially Royal children - need spanking so that they do not end up making our Monarchies a laughing-stock..."
At that point - or soon afterwards - the outside caterers were invited into the refectory to clear the trestles of their now cold hot-plates. There was great delight shown in the wreaking of their appetites ... and the two kings embraced again, having each pocketed one of the two tapes on which their conversation had been simultaneously recorded, so that each identical tape could now be separately transcribed by the two King's secretaries (King Ullie's secretary having already arrived secretly). The transcriptions were then amalgamated into two contracts for signing and exchanging during that very night's banquet.
Unknown to both kings, Slump and Tilda had been in the refectory's laundry-basket, fingering each other as they listened with half-an-ear-cocked to the kingly conversation and, then, later, to the distant reverberations of the heavy-duty ablutions following the Royal breakfast. Coker and Lurkenwell were in the empty kitchen, occupied in similar salaciousness. (All the servants had tiny bodies so they were hardly ever noticed nor called to perform their psychophantic roles ... unless, of course, there were late arrivals or visiting monarchs with special peccadilloes to gratify.)
The banquet was surely a quiet, business-like affair. It was behind closed doors - or, at least, beyond Slump's gate - and only guesswork, as opposed to the slightly more dependable extrapolation of history, remains. Suffice to say, primary sources showed that the end-game was sadly a no man's land of not waking, not sleeping, not dreaming and not dying, becoming, eventually, a nightmare combining ingredients of all four.
Thankfully, sanity prevailed in that the two tapes were identical,. Both were blank.
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