The Princess and the Pea

A Very Short Tale

D I A N E S E T T E R F I E L D

E m i l y B E s t l E r B o o k s

A t r i A

New York London Toronto Sydney New De lh i

Emily Bestler Books/Atria BooksA Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.1230 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Diane Setterfield

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ISBN 978-1-4767-7300-1

ALSO BY DIANE SETTERFIELD

Bellman & Black

The Thirteenth Tale

Contents

The Princess and the Pea

About Emily Bestler Books

About Atria Books

1

There once was a giant bed, a mile high, with so

many mattresses that a ladder had to be placed

at one end to allow the sleeper to reach the top. Mattress

upon mattress upon mattress, and of every color under

the sun, all stuffed full with down and feathers. They

must have massacred a hundred thousand geese to make

such a bed.

Then, the princesses forming a queue outside the pal-

ace. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, tall and short, Eskimo

princesses, Japanese princesses, African princesses—

you name it, every kind of princess imaginable was there.

And together with the princesses were the princesses’

hairdressers, and the princesses’ ladies-in-waiting, and

the princesses’ pages, and the princesses’ laundry maids,

and the princesses’ shoeshiners, errand boys, handker-

chief holders, and corset lacers.

Night after night, one of the beauties would be admit-

2 DIANE SETTERFIELD

ted to the palace and would climb up the ladder to sleep

on the great bed. The next morning she would climb

down the ladder, hair prettily disheveled, complexion

radiant, and profess herself to be gloriously rested after

a peaceful night’s sleep. And morning after morning the

door would open and an unhappy princess would be ex-

pelled from the palace. At nightfall, the next in line was

called in, and the whole experiment began again.

What was the test in which these princesses were fail-

ing? Underneath the bottom mattress there had been

placed by the chief minister of the court, in a secret cer-

emony from which all but the prince, king, and queen

were excluded, a pea. A simple dried pea. Several peas

had been tested, and the one that was finally chosen was

more gray than green, had six or seven dimples on its sur-

face, and was very hard. This last quality had been tested

by the chief minister in person. He had placed it between

his incisor and his bottom teeth, and had then applied

pressure with his jaw. The pea had not given way, and

the minister had suffered from a toothache for several

The Princess and the Pea 3

days thereafter. In this fashion he had determined that

this was to be the pea. With great solemnity he placed it

on the floor and heaved the first mattress on top of it.

Then other manservants were called in to complete the

construction of the great bed.

But now the hopes of that great day were fading. The

queue of princesses had dwindled and whispers could be

heard in the kingdom that the prince had his reasons

for not wanting to marry, and that the king and queen

might never have the grandchild they so longed for. Dis-

tant male relatives enquired discreetly after the prince’s

health and started to weigh their chances, and the popu-

lace sighed and prepared itself for civil war.

On the day the last princess was booted out of the pal-

ace for having slept too well, the footman noticed that

the queue had mysteriously re-formed overnight. But it

was a queue of only one. A girl—well, he supposed it

was a girl—with a scruffy crop of ginger hair and black

stuff under her fingernails. She was leaning against the

palace porch, one hand resting on the bony hip that she

4 DIANE SETTERFIELD

stuck out jauntily, and looked at the footman with an

even, insolent stare. “Who might you be?” he asked.

“Princess Tuppence,” she replied, with a curl of the lip

that said, believe that if you will. The footman scratched

his head. “Daughter of King Candlestick Maker, down

Smelly Alley?” She gave him a wink.

“I don’t rightly know as that counts,” said the foot-

man, suppressing a smile, but he presented her to the

king and queen anyway. They looked at the girl. At each

other. At the girl. At each other.

“It’s out of the question,” said the queen.

“It’s impossible,” said the king.

“It wouldn’t do,” said she.

“It goes against all the rules of social propriety,” said he.

“What would our friends say?” said she.

“What would the neighbors think?” said he.

“It’s just not the done thing,” said she.

“But on the other hand . . .” said he.

“. . . what else are we to do?” said she.

“Oh, all right then,” said the two of them together.

The Princess and the Pea 5

And so the tomboy with the short ginger hair who had

no nightgown to speak of, but slept in her knickers and

her boots, got to spend a night on silken sheets, satin

pillows, and feather mattresses.

In the morning, the prince watched the skinny an-

kles in their black, holey boots descend the ladder, and

his heart, if it did not exactly skip a beat, certainly felt

the first stirrings of curiosity. The king and queen were

waiting, hopelessly it must be said, to go through with

the ritual one last time.

“How did you sleep?”

“Sleep? You’re asking me how I slept? On that?” The

regents were startled into paying attention. It was true:

she did not look rested. The purple shadows under the

dark eyes did not tell of a reposeful night. The pale

cheeks had none of the bloom of morning. And the eyes,

red rimmed and sore, implied nothing more than that

the princess had not slept a wink. To put it in a nut-

shell, she looked a wreck. A scruffy, skinny, interest-

ing-looking wreck. The curiosity that was toying with

6 DIANE SETTERFIELD

the prince’s heart began to make itself felt in other parts

of his princely anatomy.

The princess spoke. “I haven’t closed my eyes all night.

Tossin’ and turnin’ I was from dusk till dawn. I have heard

the church clock strike every hour of the night. I don’t

mind tellin’ you, I’ve never had a worse night’s sleep. I’ve

slept better on a bale of hay, that’s for sure.”

The king turned to the queen and the queen turned to

the king, and their expressions were poised exactly half-

way between horror and joy. The prince’s emotion was

by no means so divided: he took the daughter of King

Candlestick Maker by the hand, and planted an inexpe-

rienced but unmistakably enthusiastic kiss on her lips.

And the band, who had been present (just in case) at

every one of these occasions, a specially composed “An-

them to Joy” open on their music stands, were taken by

surprise; those who had been watching the regents found

themselves a bar and a half behind those who had taken

their cue from the prince. So one half of the orchestra

had to toot at double speed to catch up, whilst the other

The Princess and the Pea 7

half slowed down in an attempt to meet them halfway.

There were great jumbles of sound where the notes fell

over each other and squabbled, but then the oboe found

itself on the brink of silence and filled the abyss with

the most perfect C minor the world had ever heard. The

white-haired court composer just happened to be passing

at the time. He pricked up his ears, frowned, and then

an intense excitement wiped the wrinkles from his face.

He raced home like a man of twenty to write the con-

certo which was to become the pinnacle of his career and

which changed the course of music forever. But that’s all

by the by.

The prince took advantage of the sudden burst of

noise to lean and eagerly whisper into his fiancée’s ear,

“But how did you know about the pea?”

“The pea?”

“The pea! You know, the one under the pile of mat-

tresses that made you black and blue and kept you from

sleeping?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about no pea,” she said, “I’m

8 DIANE SETTERFIELD

allergic to feathers.”

Over the prince’s shoulder the princess caught sight of

the footman trying to keep a straight face as he stood in

position by the door. He winked at her. She winked back.

The prince and the princess got married and lived

happily ever after—well, as happy as most of us are, and

for as long as most of us do, which is the best anyone can

hope for. The princess had her own separate room on

account of preferring to sleep on a bale of hay, and they

had a hundred and one children, some of whom looked

rather like the prince and others not a jot. But they all

had ginger hair.

The End

9

About Emily Bestler Books

Remember the first time you fell in love with

a book? We hope to recapture that feeling

for you over and over. Emily Bestler Books was founded

with one guiding principle in mind: to find the very best

reads available and to put them into the hands of as many

readers as possible. We are passionate about this mission

and in pursuit of it have decided to give ourselves as much

leeway as possible and open the imprint up to a number of

different categories. After all, books are as varied as their

readers. On our shelves you will find fiction and nonfic-

tion, pulse-pounding thrillers, delectable cookbooks, dis-

tinctive memoirs, international crime fiction, and smart,

deeply felt novels with a literary flair. In short, we have a

book for everyone.

10

Atria. Where great books come to light.

Atria, defined as “a central living space open to

the air and sky,” perfectly describes the vision

of its publisher, Judith Curr, and her team. In her words,

“When we launched Atria Books in 2002, we hoped to

create an environment where new ideas could flourish,

the best writers of fiction and nonfiction could thrive and

connect with an ever-widening readership, and the best

practices of traditional publishing could be integrated

with cutting-edge developments in the digital world. In

short, a place where great books could come to light.”

In the decade plus that has followed, the Atria Pub-

lishing Group has realized this vision, its creative and

motivated staff acquiring, publishing, and marketing a

list of successful and highly acclaimed books, many of

them award winners and bestsellers. Under the Atria

banner, beloved brand-name authors soar to new heights

11

while the finest new voices—the bestsellers of tomor-

row—are discovered and nurtured with an eye toward a

limitless future.

The Atria Publishing Group is proud to publish

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Atria Unbound, Washington Square Press, Emily Best-

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