But before the soldiers could reach Peggy, the Lord Chancellor made his voice heard above the hubbub. “Half a moment! Half a moment! Half a moment!” he kept on calling out, louder and louder, and quicker and quicker, until the words sounded like “Ar-mo! Ar-mo!” The soldiers paused, and the noise died down, until he could make himself heard.
“It is rather a serious thing to arrest a Human, your Majesty,” he said. “I don’t think it has ever been done before, and it may make a deal of trouble. We ought to be careful how we go.”
The King was still almost beside himself with rage. “Do you think I am going to let my enemy go, now I have got her in my power at last?” he cried. “Yes, that’s the odious child who made these scars.”
Since his face had become so red, a lot of little white marks had come out all over it. They were the marks of Peggy’s dear little first tooth, and she couldn’t help laughing as she looked at them, which made the King angrier still.
“How dare you laugh?” he cried passionately. “I’ll send you to prison, and keep you on bread and water and mustard. I’ll execute you. I’ll have your ears boxed three times a day, an hour before meals and half an hour after. If my mouth was big enough I’d bite your head, and see how you liked it. Arrest her instantly and take that wax doll with her as well, and the woman who dared to think she was going to marry me. Do it at once, and don’t you dare to cross my royal will any longer, Norval, or I’ll have you arrested, too.”
As the King had given way when the Lord Chancellor spoke firmly, so the Lord Chancellor now gave way when the King spoke firmly. He shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Well, I think you are making a mistake, your Majesty, but if you say it is to be done, of course it must be done.”
Wooden rose from her seat as the officials prepared to carry out the King’s orders. “If they are to go to prison,” she said, “I shall go, too, and so will mother. Then we can all keep each other company. I expect they will take us to the House of Cards, dear,” she said in a lower voice to Peggy. “It is very nice there, and there is a lovely view.”
Now it might have been thought that King Selim would have hesitated before letting Wooden go off to prison, considering he had just told her that he intended to marry her in half an hour. But he was so beside himself with rage that he hardly knew what he was doing or saying. “Take the whole lot of them off,” he ordered, “and don’t let me see their ugly faces again.” Then he gathered up his robes and stalked off the daïs and out of the Hall, by a door at the back, which he banged after him.
The royal guards now approached the five prisoners, but did not take hold of them or put handcuffs on them, or anything of that sort. For the Lord Chancellor said to them, “Go easy, now! It’s only a little flash in the pan, ladies. The King is rather irritable by nature, and I don’t think his lunch has agreed with him. But he will think better of this by-and-by, and you will all be let out again.”
“Not if I know it,” said a haughty, scornful voice.