Princess Lottie Inside the Harp
Once there was a kingdom of flag-topped towers, and in its castle lived seven princesses. Lottie was the youngest of them, and by a long way the smallest.
She was so small that to see out of the castle windows she had to stand on the castle dog. It was a big, brown, patient dog with a back as flat as a bench. Lottie stood on it so often that it now sat down under any window it passed, just in case.
Her six sisters were tall and kind and always in a hurry. After “Good morning,” the words heard most often in that castle were “Someone lift Lottie up.” Someone lifted her onto chairs, onto the garden wall, and onto the back of the throne to watch the parades go by.
But Lottie had one gift that nobody else had. When the court sang together, she could hear the one note that was wrong. “It’s Father,” she would say, “on the word summer. He goes down when he should go up.” And it always was the King.
The King was jolly and round. He loved dancing and he loved announcements even more. He had also lost his spare crown three summers ago, and he still asked about it most mornings at breakfast.
Over the hill lived a giant called Barnaby. He was so shy that he usually said hello from behind the hill. Barnaby had a golden harp as tall as a tower. Once, when the river was high, he had laid it flat across the water, and the whole royal family had walked over it like a bridge while the strings played a little tune under their shoes.
Every Midsummer, Barnaby carried his harp over the hill to play at the castle dance. When that harp played, nobody in the kingdom could keep still. The guards danced in their helmets. The King danced, though to be fair he would have danced anyway. Even the cows in the far fields swayed from side to side and looked surprised at themselves.
And every Midsummer, Barnaby lifted Lottie onto his shoulder, and she danced up there all night. From his shoulder she was higher than the flags on the towers. It was the one night of the year when Lottie looked down on everybody, and she started looking forward to it the morning after.
This Midsummer morning, Barnaby came over the hill with the harp on his back, and the ground went thum under every step. He set it down in the castle meadow, stretched his fingers, and plucked the longest string.
The string went plup. It sounded like a stone dropped into a bucket of porridge.
Barnaby bent right down and squinted through the sound-hole, which was round and no bigger than a dinner plate.
“Oh dear,” he said. “The little peg for the long string has slipped. It’s fallen down inside.”
“Can’t you play without it?” said the King.
Barnaby went pink from his collar to the tips of his ears, which on a giant is a great deal of pink. “Everyone would hear,” he said. “There’d be a hole in the tune.” And he went and sat down behind the stables, which hid about half of him.
No harp meant no dance, and no dance meant no shoulder. Lottie looked up at the flags she had planned to look down on, and decided something must be done.
Sir Strong was the biggest knight in the kingdom, and he always went first. He went first now. “Stand back,” he said. “This is a job for a strong arm.”
The whole court crowded round, and Lottie could see nothing but elbows. “Someone lift Lottie up,” said her eldest sister. Somebody stood her on the dog, which sat down politely even though there was no window anywhere near.
Sir Strong pushed his hand, in its iron gauntlet, into the sound-hole. It went in as far as the elbow, where the iron was thickest, and stuck. He pulled. The harp rocked. He pulled harder, and his arm came out, and the iron sleeve stayed behind, stopping up the hole like a cork in a bottle. It took six princesses pulling in a line to get it out again. It came out with a pop that sat them all down in a heap.
“I would fit in there,” said Lottie.
But Sir Strong was saying a great many things about armour, and nobody heard her.
Next came the court carpenter, who climbed a ladder and fished down through the sound-hole with a long brass hook for most of the morning. The hook caught nothing at all, except once, by accident, a string. It went twang, and every person in the meadow did a single hop, and so did the cows.
“Someone lift Lottie up,” said her second sister, and somebody stood her on the bottom rung of the ladder.
“I would fit in there,” said Lottie.
“Hush, Lottie,” said everybody. “The carpenter is concentrating.”
Then the King stepped forward with a scroll. In his biggest voice, straight into the sound-hole, he read, “By order of the King, the peg will kindly come out of the harp at once!”
The harp took the words and sang them back, round and golden, at once, at once, at once. It was beautiful. The peg stayed exactly where it was.
Lottie was tugging at his robe. “Someone lift Lottie up,” said the King, a little crossly, and since nobody else did, he lifted her himself, onto his shoulders. And there was the sound-hole, right in front of her nose.
“I would fit in there,” said Lottie.
This time the harp sang it back. Fit in there, fit in there, it sang, so sweetly that the whole meadow went quiet.
Her sisters looked at the hole. They looked at Lottie. They looked at the hole again.
“She would,” said the eldest.
If you are wondering why nobody thought of it sooner, it is because the smallest of seven is mostly asked to stand out of the way.
They fetched the little glass lantern from the nursery. “Someone lift Lottie up,” said the King. Sir Strong lifted her very gently and posted her through the sound-hole, feet first, like a letter.
Inside, the harp was a hall made of gold. Lottie held up the lantern, and the gold shone back at her from every side. Above her, the ends of the strings came down through the golden ceiling in a long row, each one held tight by its own little peg. All but one, which hung loose.
The peg was lying in a corner. Beside it lay something round and glinting. It was the King’s spare crown.
Lottie had the lantern in one hand and the peg in the other, so she put the crown on her head. It came down over her eyes. She pushed it back up and went to work.
She fitted the peg into its place at the end of the loose string. Then she turned it, slowly, and hummed the low note, the deep warm one at the bottom of the Midsummer tune. She had heard it every year from Barnaby’s shoulder. She had felt it in her shoes.
The string sang out, too high. She turned the peg back. Too low. She turned it forward the width of a fingernail and hummed again, and the string and Lottie found the same note together. It rang through the whole harp, deep and golden.
Behind the stables, Barnaby stood up. All of him.
When they drew Lottie out of the sound-hole, she was wearing the crown.
“My spare crown!” said the King. “I’ve looked for that for three summers!”
“It was beside the peg,” said Lottie.
Then Barnaby sat down at his harp. Lottie’s sisters reached for her out of habit, and the eldest began, “Someone lift Lottie—” but Barnaby had already bent down. He held out one hand, flat as a table. Lottie stepped onto it, and he lifted her up past the windows and past the flags, and set her on his shoulder.
“Thank you, Lottie,” he said. “I was so glad to hear that note.”
And he played.
The whole kingdom danced. The guards danced, and the carpenter danced at the top of the ladder. Sir Strong danced first, of course. The King spun until his robe flew out like a bell. The castle dog danced the only way it knew, which was by sitting down and standing up again, very fast.
When the moon came up over the hill, the King climbed onto a barrel and made the best proclamation of his life.
“Princess Lottie,” he said, “is Keeper of the Harp. And from now on, in this kingdom, when something is stuck, we will ask the smallest person first.”
“After you, Princess,” said Sir Strong, and bowed.
Before the last tune, Barnaby bent a curl of gold wire with the tips of his enormous fingers, very carefully, into a tuning key no bigger than Lottie’s little finger. He hung it round her neck on a blue ribbon.
Down below, the castle dog came and sat at Barnaby’s feet, just in case.
So Lottie danced on Barnaby’s shoulder under the Midsummer moon, with the King’s spare crown on her head and her own golden key at her neck, and the whole bright kingdom dancing below her. She was the smallest princess in the land, and that night she was the highest, and nobody anywhere was gladder.