The Tortoise Who Stayed Up a Hundred Years
Once there was a small castle on a green hill. It had a kitchen garden, a clock in every room, and a very tall hedge of roses all the way round. In the kitchen garden lived a tortoise called Ada.
Ada had never in her life been in a hurry, and she saw no reason to start. If somebody dropped a pea, Ada went to see about it. The pea was always gone by the time she got there. She went anyway, because a dropped pea ought to be seen about.
On the day this story begins, Princess Hattie was one year old. The party was in the kitchen, because it was the warmest room. Cook stood by the table, holding up a spoonful of custard to see if it was thick enough. The king sat by the fire, trying not to yawn. The cat was just beginning a good stretch. And Hattie sat in her cradle in a paper crown.
Then the door flew open, and in came the fairy, Mother Mallow, a year late for the christening. Fairies keep loose time. The christening gift was still in a pocket, and everyone was very polite about it.
Mother Mallow leaned over the cradle, held up a wand, and said, “She shall always be well rested.”
That was a lovely gift, and it ought to have stopped there. But Mother Mallow was fond of babies and generous with everything. The wand gave a great swish. “Very well rested!” said Mother Mallow. “Thoroughly! As rested as anyone has ever been!”
And the magic went out of the wand like a warm wind, in a tremendous hurry.
It went round the cradle and over the cake, up the stairs and out to the stables. Everyone it touched fell asleep just where they were, in the middle of just what they were doing. Cook fell asleep with her spoon of custard held up in the air, out over her clean floor. The cat fell asleep halfway through its stretch, back end up and front end down. The king fell asleep halfway through his yawn. Mother Mallow fell asleep in the middle of the swish. And Hattie fell asleep smiling, with her crown on sideways.
The magic missed only one.
Ada was crossing the kitchen floor at the time, to see about a crumb. Now, magic in a hurry does not look closely, and to anyone who does not look closely, a tortoise is a stone. The magic went straight over Ada’s shell and out of the window.
The magic was in a hurry, and Ada was not.
When Ada got to the crumb, she ate it. Then she looked round.
Everyone was asleep, and they all looked very comfortable. Ada thought it over, which took her until the next afternoon. Mother Mallow had said thoroughly, and Ada knew what thoroughly meant. It meant a long time.
When they woke, they would want their breakfast. They would want their hats. They would want to know what time it was. So Ada decided that whenever they woke, everything would be ready, and everything would be just right.
Under that, so far down she hardly noticed it, was another wish. Ada would have liked a nap. But that could wait. Tortoises are very good at waiting.
So Ada kept the castle.
Every morning she took a goose feather in her mouth and dusted the sleepers, from the king’s beard to the cat’s tail. Then she dusted the hats on their pegs by the door, and the king’s crown most of all.
Every afternoon she wound a clock. By the time she had wound the last one, the first one needed winding again. You may be wondering how a tortoise winds a clock. Slowly. That is the whole answer.
Every day she ate one leaf off the rose hedge, from wherever it had grown too far. In some sleeping castles the hedge grows so thick that nobody can find the door. Not in this one.
Every spring she climbed the kitchen dresser and turned one cup upside down, so she would know how many years had gone. It took her a morning to climb up and an afternoon to climb down. There were exactly a hundred cups on that dresser, which Ada thought was very sensible of whoever bought them.
And there was the custard. It dripped from Cook’s spoon once every eleven years. Ada was not going to have custard on Cook’s clean floor. So she fetched a thimble from the sewing basket and set it underneath, and every eleven years, plip, a drop went in.
Every autumn Ada felt the pull that all tortoises feel, to dig down under the leaves and sleep until the snowdrops. And every autumn she looked at the clocks, and thought about the hats, and stayed up.
On the morning of the hundredth spring, Ada climbed the dresser. She took hold of the hundredth cup and turned it over, and it went clink on the shelf.
And the whole castle woke at once.
The king finished his yawn. The cat finished its stretch. Cook tasted the custard and said, “Needs sugar.” Mother Mallow finished the swish, looked round, and said, “Oh dear. Was that me?” Hattie woke still one year old, because sleeping does not count. And every clock in every room struck nine together, because Ada had kept them right.
The king had a hundred years of letters to answer. Cook had a hundred years of breakfasts to get. Everyone wanted their boots and their porridge and their hats, and they wanted them now.
Ada climbed down as fast as she could, which was not fast. She carried Mother Mallow’s tall hat across the floor on her shell, and Mother Mallow stepped over her twice, looking for it. Next she took the king’s crown, but by the time she reached him he had found an old hat in a drawer and gone. She set off after him, and got as far as the doorway, and there her eyes closed. People stepped over her all day.
The castle was in a hurry, and Ada was not.
Only one person in the castle had nothing to rush for. Hattie had no letters to answer and no breakfasts to get, and she did not need a hat, because she had a crown. She sat up in her cradle and saw a tortoise asleep in the doorway.
She climbed out of her low cradle and crawled the long way round a spilled pot of porridge. She took hold of Ada with both hands and pushed her, a little at a time, all the long way back round the porridge. Ada was not a big tortoise, and Hattie was a strong baby, but it still took some doing. She heaved Ada over the side of the cradle and tucked the blanket in all round.
Then Hattie patted Ada, pat, pat, pat, slow and steady, the way she had been patted every night of her life.
“Sh,” said Hattie, which was most of what she could say. “Sh. Sh.”
Ada opened one eye, saw who it was, and closed it again.
That was when the king came hurrying through with an armful of letters. He stopped. “Why,” said the king, “is there a tortoise in the baby’s bed?”
Cook came to look. Then she saw the thimble on the floor by the table. She picked it up and held it to the lamp.
“Nine drops,” said Cook. “Nine drops of my custard, and not one on my floor.”
Then they all looked properly. They looked at the clocks, every one right to the minute. They looked out at the rose hedge, trimmed to the very leaf. They looked at the dresser, with a hundred cups turned upside down in rows. The king picked up his crown from the doorway. There was not a speck of dust on it.
“She has been up,” said the king. “All this time. Minding us.”
“And we stepped over her,” said Cook.
“Oh, the dear thing,” said Mother Mallow, and raised the wand. “I could give her a little rest—”
“No,” said the whole kitchen at once, as quietly as it could.
Mother Mallow put the wand away in the cutlery drawer.
So the castle tiptoed. The king took his boots off and answered his letters in his socks. Cook stirred the porridge with a wooden spoon, so it would not clink. Hattie patted the shell whenever she remembered, which was often.
The castle was not in a hurry any more, and neither was Ada.
She slept. Some say she slept a hundred years, but she didn’t. She slept until Thursday, which for a tortoise is a nice short nap, and for a whole castle is a long time to go about in socks.
When she woke, there was lettuce by the cradle, and the thimble of custard, which Cook said was hers by rights. And everyone in the castle came by on tiptoe to tell her how glad they were of her.
To this day the hundredth cup stays upside down on the kitchen dresser. Nobody drinks from it, and nobody turns it over. It is Ada’s cup. And whenever Ada feels like a nap, she goes and sits under the dresser, and the whole castle takes its boots off.