8.17
Penelope:
I was worried about what was going on with poor Ben, teetering on the cliff between his friendship with Timothy (and possibly me) and in front of an irate Queen Moragana. The latter looked like she was giving Ben what for concerning the fact that Timothy and the crew had all disobeyed direct orders. I wanted to intercede, but what if something I said made it worse?
I tugged at Timothy’s arm and whispered, “Can’t we help Ben?”
Timothy hadn’t seem overly concerned about the situation with his head chef and friend, but he looked down at me and nodded briefly.
“Queen Moragana, is the food now safe for Penelope to eat?” Timothy suddenly interjected into the very loud dressing-down currently taking place.
That brought the queen’s eyes over to us. But instead of responding to Timothy’s question, she stared at me, not even glancing at my husband
“Lord Stauff is your friend?” she asked me.
Of course I had no idea who that was until Timothy whispered, “She means Ben.”
“Oh, yes. Ben, Lord Stauff. . . Wow, he’s a lord!” I shouted out. “Is that like in: ten lords a leaping?”
Everyone in the room stared at me with blank faces, even Timothy. I guess the next time I was forced to entertain, I’d need to introduce the Twelve Days of Christmas song to everyone.
But the queen was still waiting for a response that made sense, so I replied: “Absolutely! All these guys are my best of friends. That’s Bob, Terry, Daniel, and Ben, or Lord Stauff, as you call him.” I pointed out each of them as I named them so the queen would know who was who, as well as giving her a ready answer, even though I really didn’t understand her line of questioning.
“So, you think that these males should be praised for entering Faery when ordered not to,” she taunted me as if she were an attorney just waiting for me to fall into her trap.
Timothy, knowing me as he did, squeezed my hand, which was supposed to mean: don’t antagonize the queen. I noticed that that my husband wasn’t saying anything in mind-speech. Was that because the queen could hear his thoughts when he did, which produced another of a thousand questions I needed to ask. I shuffled the query into my brain box for later.
“I think, Your Royal Queenship,” I said, forgetting how the others had addressed her. Was that title sufficient? “I think that friends will push against all rules to assist those they care about. Isn’t that the nature of friendship, that we help each other?”
The queen’s eyes continued to pierce mine. Did she have x-ray vision or something? I was just about to add something else to my argument when she let out a hump sound, then clapped her hands together once. “Let’s eat,” she said.