The Princess Bride

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Change Of Time

Prince Hans summoned Cluster to his chambers. Cluster came immediately, though he dreaded what it was, he knew, about to happen. As a fatter of fact, Cluster already had resignation written and in an envelope in his pocket. "Your highness," Cluster began.

"Report," Prince Hans said. He was dressed brilliantly in white, his wedding costume. He still looked devilishly handsome, but brighter.

"All your wishes have been carried out, highness. Personally I have attended to each detail." He was very tired, Cluster was, and his nerves long past frayed.

"Specify," said the Prince. He was seventy-five minutes away from his first female murder, and he wondered if he could get if fingers to her throat before even that start of a scream. He had been practising on a giant sausages all the afternoon and had the movements down pretty pat, but then, giant sausages weren't necks and all the wishing in the world wouldn't make them so. 

"All passages to the castle have been resealed this morning, except the main gate. That is now the only way in, and the only way out.  I have changed the lock to the main gate.  There is only one key to the new lock and I keep it wherever I am. When I am outside with the hundred troops, the key is in the outside lock and no one can leave the castle from the inside. When I am with you, as I am now, the key is in the inside lock, and no one may enter from the outside. 

"Follow," Said the Prince, as he moved to the large widow of his chambers. He pointed outside.  Below the window was a lovely planted garden.  Beyond that the Prince's private stables.  Beyond that, naturally, the outside castle wall.  "This is how they will come," he said.  "Over the stables, past my garden, to my window, throttle the Queen and then go back the way they came before we know it."

"They?" Cluster said, though he knew the answer.

"The Guilderians, of course."

"But the wall where you suggest is the highest wall surrounding all of Florin Castle-it is fifty feet height at that point-so that would seem the least likely point of attack." He was trying desperately to keep himself under control.

"All the more reason why they should chose this spot; besides, the world knows that the Guilderians are surpassed as climbers."

Cluster had never heard that. He had always thought that Swiss were the ones who were surpassed as climbers.  "Highness," he said, in one last attempt, " I have not yet, from a single spy, heard a single word about a single plot against the Princess."

"I have it on unimpeachable authority that there will be an attempt made to strangle the Princess this very night."

"In that case," Cluster said, and he dropped to one knee and held out the envelope, "I must resign." It was a difficult decision-the Clusters had headed enforcement in Florin for generations, and they took their work more than seriously. "I am not a capable job, sire.  Please forgive me and believe me when I say that my failures were those of the body and mind and not of the heart."

Prince Hans founded himself, quite suddenly, in a genuine pickle, for once the war was finished, he needed someone to stay in Guilder and run it, since he couldn't be in two places at once, and the only men he trusted were Cluster and the Count, and the Count would never take the job, being obsessed, as he was these days, with finishing his stupid Pain Primer.  "I do not accept your resignation, you are doing a capable job, there is not plot, I shall slaughter the Queen myself this very evening, You shall run Guilder for me after the war, now get back on your feet."

Cluster didn't know what to say. "Thank you" seemed to inadequate, but it was all he could come up with. 

"Once the wedding is done with I shall send her here to make ready while I shall, it's boots carefully procured in advance make tracks leading from the wall to the bedroom and returning then from the bedroom to the wall.  Since you are in charge of law enforcement, I expect you will not take long to verify my fears that the prints could only be made by the boots of Guilderian soldiers. Once we have that, we'll need a royal proclamation or two, my farther can resign as being unfit for battle, and you, dear Cluster, will soon be living in Guilder Castle."

Cluster knew a dismissal speech when he heard one. "I leave with no thought in my heart but to serve you."

"Thank you," Hans said, pleased, because, after all, loyalty was the one thing you couldn't buy.  And in that mood, he said to Cluster but the door, "And, oh, if you see the albino, tell him he may stand in the back for my wedding; it's quite alright with me."

"I will, highness," Cluster said, adding, "but I don't know where my cousin is-I went looking for him less then an hour again and he was nowhere to be found."

The Prince he understood important news when he heard it because he wasn't the greatest hunter for nothing and, even mor, because if there was one thing you could say about the albino it was that he was always to be found. "My god, you don't suppose there is a plot, do you? It's perfect time; the country celebrates; if Guilder were about to five hundred years old, I know I would attack them."

"I will rush to the gate and fight, to the death if necessary," Cluster said.

"Good man," the Prince called after him. If there was an attack, it would come at the busiest time, during the wedding, so he would have to move that up. State affairs went slowly, but, still, he had authority. Six o'clock was out.  He would be married no later than half past five or now the reason why.