© 1998 Thomas Thurman.
Now, the King of the Blessed Shire lived alone in his palace in the Famous City of Verchester-- alone except for his wife, Queen Whitethorn, and their daughter the Princess Tryphena, who was as clever as a boatful of teachers, just as special as the northern star and as beautiful as the sky in spring.
When she was a little girl, a bit younger than Lucy, the Princess Tryphena used to go to school. Of course if you are a princess, and especially one as special as the northern star, you can ask your father the King to make a Law to say that Princesses don't need to go to school at all. And I'm sure he would have made the Law straight away... but the Princess Tryphena enjoyed her lessons, except for geography, and of course she was as clever as a boatful of teachers, as I think I told you before; so she went along quite happily every day. On the day I'm telling you about now, though, the school was closed because of the elections, so the Princess Tryphena had the whole day for her own to do whatever she liked in.
I know I don't need to tell you that there were lots of ways she could have spent the day. She could have played cards or read books or climbed trees or blown dandelions or invited her friends over for tea and cakes or even swum in the river (but only the safe parts, otherwise her mother, Queen Whitethorn, would have worried). So she thought about it quite a lot and decided to do all these things after her lunch, except the swimming, of course (I hope you already know why). But before lunch, in the morning, she was going to help tidy up.
What? Of course the Princess Tryphena hated to tidy up the house. But that wasn't what she was planning to do. Sometimes, you see, the Royal Magician, who was so clever he could talk to the fish and understand what they were saying, let her help to tidy up his Laboratory, and the Princess Tryphena always loved that job most of all. Actually, she wasn't really helping very much, but just sorting the great glass jars of ingredients into the right order; but the Royal Magician let her do it anyway, because (as he said) it kept her quiet and out of mischief.
The Royal Magician always hid surprises among the ingredients for the Princess Tryphena to find. And really, that was why she loved the job so much. Once she found a jar full of flat lemonade, and another jar full of the bubbles, which were hard things like little marbles: so, you could choose how fizzy the drink was by pouring them in. But the Princess Tryphena discovered that if she kept them in her pocket, she would fly up into the sky, in the same way that lemonade bubbles bubble up in your glass. She used them to fly to Baldock with, because she wanted to see Jack O'Legs; but when she got near the town, she found that she had to let the bubbles go in order to sink down towards the ground, and they flew into the clouds and vanished. So she began to feel very lost and far from home, because she had no more bubbles to get home with; but luckily the Mayor of Baldock was sorry for her, and took her back to the Castle of the Palace of the Famous City of Verchester in his great golden carriage.
Another time when the Princess Tryphena tidied up the Laboratory, she found a jar, a bit like one she had seen before at her aunt's house, all full of biscuits. So she took one out, but luckily, because it was a particularly large one, she broke it before putting it into her mouth. You've probably guessed that it was a magic biscuit-- in fact, it was a Fire Biscuit, and as it broke, some great orange and red flames shot out of the middle. The Princess Tryphena dropped it and jumped backwards, just as the Royal Magician came back into the room. He wasn't cross at all, though: he just smiled and told her that they were specially baked for dragons to eat with their cocoa in the evenings. And he gave her a few of them in a fireproof bag for her pet dragon called Jasper, who lived in the hearth of her bedroom (you've heard the story of Jasper already). So you see that tidying up the Royal Magician's Laboratory, although it had boring parts, usually had rather exciting bits every so often as well.
Anyway, this time she found a jar with lots of coloured balls in it, blue, red and yellow like the gobstoppers you can see in a jar in the post-office window, but larger-- they reminded her of the shiny baubles that she used to help hang on the Christmas Tree in the square in Verchester when she was younger. Now, the Royal Magician happened to be standing nearby, mixing blue and yellow to make green, though of course he was really waiting for her to find the jar. When he saw she'd found it, he told her it was wool for knitting, and asked her whether she could knit; of course, she had never learned, because the schools aren't sensible enough to teach it, and she had never had a Grandmother to learn it from: only an Aunt called Mary-in-Baddow, who lived in the Kingdom of Essex, too far away to teach her such important things. (If this were a fairy story, of course, she would have already found a knitting grandmother hidden away in the tower, who would have taught her to knit and then sent her to sleep for a hundred years-- and for the Princess Tryphena's sake, I'm sure you're glad that it isn't.)
So the Princess Tryphena said No, she couldn't knit; but of course, like all magicians, the Royal Magician knew all about it. (They teach it in Part IB Enchantment, you see, and I think that that is a very sensible idea.) So he explained the things you have to do, and the different sorts of stitches, and how to purl and cast off and all the other things; and because he explained it so well, because (as you guessed) the wool was really magic wool anyway, and because (as you remember) the Princess Tryphena was as clever as a boatful of teachers, she learnt all she needed in not much more than an hour. So then the Royal Magician lent her a pair of sparkly knitting needles, and she scampered off to try and knit something different, off to her own little room where she lived with Jasper the dragon, in quite a different part of the Castle of the Palace of the Famous City of Verchester. It was down in a cellar, but the sunlight came in all the same-- this was after she moved out of her room in the tower, because she was a bit frightened of heights.
Now, I don't know whether the wool was really magic wool, or whether the sparkly knitting needles from the Royal Magician were really magic wands in disguise, or whether it was both of them and the Princess Tryphena being as special as the northern star; but strange things began to happen when she started to knit with the wool. First, she tried to knit a pair of yellow socks for her mother, Queen Whitethorn. But as soon as they were done, the socks inconveniently turned to gold-- they were awfully pretty, but rather heavy to wear. She took them to Queen Whitethorn anyway, who was doing the accounts; Queen Whitethorn hugged the Princess Tryphena and said thank you, a pair of gold socks was what she had always wanted. So then the Princess Tryphena went back to her room and knitted a new crown for her father the King; and she also knitted a gold teapot for special occasions. The spare bits of wool turned into gold as well, and Jasper came and snuggled down on them as dragons always will.
She wondered whether, if the yellow wool turned into gold, what would happen with the red and the blue wool? Perhaps, she thought, they would turn into rubies and sapphires (or maybe lapis lazuli-- she knew a lot about precious stones, because she was a Princess). As an experiment, she knitted a red woollen jumper for her father, the King of the Blessed Shire, and when it was done (though it was rather a funny shape, because she still wasn't very good at knitting yet, and because she had hurried) she laid it down on the table in her room, well out of reach of Jasper the dragon, and waited to see what it would turn into. But all of a sudden, the jumper jumped up and tried to climb out of the chimney-- so she could tell that the red wool made things come alive. She decided, and I think it was a very sensible decision, not to knit her father any socks with it: I'm sure he could have won any race he wanted to enter if he'd been wearing them, but it would probably have been cheating, and that isn't a good thing even for Kings. So she laid the red wool to one side for the moment.
By now, it was time for tea, but the Princess Tryphena couldn't bear to wait to try knitting something with the blue wool as well, so straight away she began to knit a scarf for the Royal Magician. Now, you very probably know more about knitting than I do, but we both know that it's difficult to knit a picture or even a pattern until you're very good at it. So the Princess Tryphena wasn't planning to make wavy lines or triangles or writing saying MAGICIAN or anything like that on the scarf, but just a plain dark blue scarf such as the Royal Magician might have been given if he'd been any good at sport (and if he'd gone to a different university). But the strange thing was that as she knitted, the wool changed colour by colour as it left the ball, and the different colours, all knitted together into the scarf she made, turned into a beautiful picture of the sea at Weymouth with the tide coming in and the waves breaking along the shore.
Of course she knew that her tea would be getting cold by now, but she wanted to try making another picture with the blue wool. And I suppose that some of the yellow wool must have got mixed in with it, because the first few rows were all blue and gold; when she had knitted as much of the picture as a sheet of writing-paper, she saw that the wool had made a picture of a lighthouse in the night, on some rocks in the sea. The blue in the wool was the blue of the night-time sky, and the gold was the light of its lamp-- not at all of the moon, because in the picture the moon wasn't out. And besides, the light of the moon is silver.
She was just about to go back upstairs to the Royal Dining-Room of the Castle of the Palace of the Famous City of Verchester and have her tea (which must really by then have been almost too cold to drink) with her parents, the King of the Blessed Shire and Queen Whitethorn, when something strange happened. You might think that she would have been quite prepared for that after all that had just happened, but things as strange as this really aren't the sort of thing you can ever get used to. You see, the wool was more magic than she'd thought.
You've read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader? Do you remember what happened to Lucy when she saw the picture of the ship? The same thing happened to the Princess Tryphena now. The water began to froth and the waves began to roll, and the Princess Tryphena could smell the salt of the water and the cold of the night air, and the lamp of the lighthouse turned and the foghorn boomed across the sea. And just like Lucy in the book, the Princess Tryphena fell into the picture and into the sea. Luckily she could swim, because she'd often practised in the safe parts of the river, as I told you before; and the lighthouse-keeper, looking out of his living-room window, saw her in the water and saved her from the cold and the great octopus that lived on the rocks.
When she was dry again, the lighthouse-keeper asked her who she was and where she came from, so she explained as best she could how she had come to be in the sea, and that she was the Princess Tryphena who (by the way) was as beautiful as the sky in spring. (The lighthouse-keeper was one of those understanding kind of people who will believe you if you tell them the truth, even if it's as strange as the truth of how the Princess Tryphena had got to this lighthouse.) So then the Princess Tryphena asked the lighthouse-keeper who he was and what he did, as you should always ask people you meet, even if it's just out of politeness.
"I am the lighthouse-keeper," he said, "and I look after the lighthouse, which stands here on the rocks and keeps the beaches shipwreck-free. I keep the lamp turning and the foghorn sounding, so that the ships aren't wrecked on the rocks with all lives lost."
"What do you do when there are no ships there?" asked the Princess Tryphena.
"Oh, I have lots of things to keep me occupied." said the lighthouse-keeper, and laughed. "I have a wonderful book called Hailsbury's Laws of England, so big that it takes up quite a wall on its own; I read that, and pray for the soul of Henry Bracton; when I'm not doing that, I practice my bagpipes. It's very useful living in a lighthouse, because my nearest neighbours are too many miles away ever to complain about the noise. What do you do when you're not being a princess?"
"I'm always a princess," said the Princess Tryphena, "but when I'm not at school, I like knitting. I've been practicing ever such a lot today, because I've never done it before. I've brought my wool with me, and it's almost dry again from the sea. Would you like me to knit you something?"
"That's very nice of you." said the lighthouse-keeper. "I tell you what I've always wanted someone to knit for me. In the cold weather around November, my bagpipes always get very chilly-- always, almost until Burns Night. What I'd like is someone to knit me a red woollen bagpipe cosy, in order to keep them warm enough to play."
So the Princess Tryphena knitted him a red woollen bagpipe cosy, in order to keep his bagpipes warm. But the lighthouse-keeper didn't get to try it out just then. Just as she'd finished knitting, the light in their room went out with a quiet click, and so did the lamp at the top of the tower; the foghorn stopped its booming too. The Princess Tryphena suddenly felt a little bit afraid. Even Princesses are scared sometimes, you see.
"Don't worry," said the lighthouse-keeper, though he looked a bit worried too. "It's probably just that I need to put some more money in the meter. We'll have it right as rain again in no time at all."
But he couldn't make the light work again, and neither could the Princess Tryphena, even though (as I must have told you sometimes before) she was as clever as a boatful of teachers. Whatever could they do to stop the ships being wrecked on the rocks below?
Suddenly the Princess Tryphena had an idea. "Can you play your bagpipes very loudly?" she asked. "Then the ships will think it's a foghorn and keep away from the rocks. Or aren't your bagpipes warm enough today?"
"That's a good idea," said the lighthouse-keeper, "and they're just piping hot and ready to play, but that won't do to replace the lamp, now, will it?"
"I know what we can do, then." said the Princess Tryphena. "My yellow wool here is magic, and if I knit with it, it turns to gold. If I knit with it up at the top of the tower then it will all glitter and sparkle until the ships will see it and keep away from the rocks."
The lighthouse-keeper thought this was an excellent idea. But (as I'm sure you remember) the Princess Tryphena was a bit afraid of heights, and the top of the tower was an awful way up some cold and winding and spiderwebby stairs. And I'm afraid the lighthouse-keeper didn't know anything about knitting, and wasn't at all good at it when the Princess Tryphena tried to teach him. The lighthouse-keeper thought that perhaps she could climb up on top of Hailsbury's Laws of England instead of using the stairs, but she'd only got to Conveyancing and Contract Law before she felt giddy and had to come down.
While they were sitting there in the living-room of the lighthouse, wondering what to do about this, the red woollen bagpipe cosy that the Princess Tryphena had just knitted for the lighthouse-keeper jumped up from the floor and ran around. Of course, thought the Princess Tryphena, the red wool was magic! But although the red woollen bagpipe cosy wasn't at all afraid of heights, it couldn't carry the weight of the Princess Tryphena up to the top of the tower.
When the red woollen bagpipe cosy put her gently down again, she dropped one of her knitting needles, and the cosy picked that up instead and brandished it around. The Princess Tryphena wondered whether it was clever enough to know how to knit (just as the Royal Magician had been), so she gave it the other needle and a ball of yellow wool. She soon discovered that it knew all about how to use them, because it was a knitted creature itself. Straight away, the red woollen bagpipe cosy scuttled away to the top of the tower to knit. Of course it had enough legs to hold the needles and the wool, and plenty over to climb with. Perhaps it thought of itself as a spider.
Now that everything was back to normal, and the red woollen bagpipe cosy had shown that many hands make light work, I'm sure you've guessed that the Princess Tryphena began to want to go back home to her friends and have tea and cakes. But she got very miserable when the lighthouse-keeper told her that there was only one boat every three months, and that that wasn't coming for weeks. She could easily see that there would be little to do other than learning the bagpipes and reading about the Law of Tort-- and that might have been interesting at another time, but she wanted to go home.
"You'll just have to keep practising your knitting." said the lighthouse-keeper sympathetically. "You'll get even better with practice-- though you're doing very well at the moment. I like this picture of a house you've made." He picked up the picture that the Princess Tryphena had knitted and fallen through, which she had brought with her along with the balls of wool and the knitting needles.
The Princess Tryphena looked at it carefully and saw that it wasn't a picture of a lighthouse any longer, since that bit of magic had been used up; instead, it had become a picture of just an ordinary house. Indeed, it was a house that the Princess Tryphena knew very well indeed: it was Mary-in-Baddow's house in the Kingdom of Essex. Perhaps if they fell through that, they could go there too?
The Princess Tryphena put the picture on the floor, and she and the lighthouse-keeper held hands and jumped into the picture. Luckily they found themselves in Mary-in-Baddow's garden (even though they were up to their knees in her pond) and so they were both safe and sound. Mary-in-Baddow was very pleased (and surprised) to see them both, and invited them both in for tea.
Now you know that The Little White Horse thinks it has a happy ending if all the people get married. But I think we have a happy ending if all the people get cakes. So then, here ends our story.
