Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version by Philip Pullman Read Free Book Online Page B

thinking that he might block the portrait from the young king’s eyes, but that didn’t work: the king stood on tiptoes and looked over his shoulder. And it happened just as the old king had said it would: the young man saw the portrait, and at once he fell unconscious to the floor.
    Faithful Johannes picked him up and carried him to his room. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he thought, ‘this is a bad start to his reign. What bad luck will come to us now?’
    The king soon came back to his senses, however, and said, ‘What a beautiful picture! What a beautiful girl! Who is she?’
    ‘She’s the Princess of the Golden Roof,’ said Faithful Johannes.
    ‘Oh, I’m in love, Johannes! I love her so much that if all the leaves on all the trees were tongues, they couldn’t express it. I’d risk my life to win her love. Johannes, my faithful servant, you must help me! How can we reach her?’
    Faithful Johannes thought hard about this. It was well known that the princess was a reclusive character. However, he soon thought of a plan, and went to tell the king.
    ‘Everything she has around her is gold,’ he explained, ‘tables, chairs, dishes, sofas, knives and forks, all solid gold. Now among your treasures, your majesty, as you’ll no doubt remember, are five tons of gold. What I suggest is to get the royal goldsmiths to take, say, a ton of it and make all manner of pretty things, birds and beasts and strange animals and the like. They might take her fancy, and we could try our luck.’
    The king summoned all the goldsmiths and told them what he wanted. They worked night and day and produced a large number of pieces so beautiful that the young king was sure the princess would never have seen the like.
    They loaded everything on board a ship, and Faithful Johannes and the king disguised themselves as merchants so that they were quite unrecognizable. Then they weighed anchor, and they sailed across the sea until they came to the city of the Princess of the Golden Roof.
    Faithful Johannes said to the king, ‘I think you should wait on the ship, your majesty. I’ll go ashore and see if I can interest the princess in our gold. What you’d best do is set some things out for her to look at. Decorate the ship a bit.’
    The king set to eagerly, and Faithful Johannes went ashore with some of the smaller gold objects in his apron, and went straight to the palace. In the courtyard he found a beautiful girl drawing water from two wells with two golden buckets, one for plain water and one for sparkling. She was about to turn and go in when she saw Faithful Johannes and asked who he was.
    ‘I’m a merchant,’ he said. ‘I’ve come from a far land to see if anyone’s interested in our gold.’
    He opened his apron to show her.
    ‘Oh, what lovely things!’ she said, putting the buckets down and taking up the gold pieces one after the other. ‘I must tell the princess about them. She loves gold, you know, and I’m sure she’d buy everything you’ve got.’
    She took Faithful Johannes by the hand, and led him upstairs, for she was the princess’s own chambermaid. When the princess saw the golden objects she was delighted.
    ‘I’ve never seen such beautifully made things,’ she said. ‘I can’t resist them. Name your price! I’ll buy them all.’
    Faithful Johannes said, ‘Well, your royal highness, I’m only the servant really. My master is the merchant – he usually deals with that side of things. And these little samples of mine aren’t to be compared with what he’s got on the ship. They’re the most beautiful things that have ever been made in gold.’
    ‘Bring them all here!’ she said.
    ‘Ah, well, I’d like to oblige you, but there’s so many of them. It would take days to bring them all up here, and besides, it would need so much space to set all the pieces out that I don’t think your palace has got enough rooms, big and splendid though it is.’ He thought that would make her curious, and he was right, because