I listened to this while I was shelving books today… I am writing a full blown summary and will be posting it on Wikipedia as they have no entry for this book.
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Curdie is becoming more and more a man, a miner, and less of a child. “On his way to and from the mine he took less and less notice of bees and butterflies, moths and dragonflies, the flowers and the brooks and the clouds. He was gradually changing into a commonplace man.”
While walking through the woods, he shoots a pigeon with an arrow. When he goes to get his prey, he picks the limp pigeon up softly and looks into its eyes. He remembers the Princess and her pretend grandmother who lived off of pidgeon eggs and wondered if this one… but no… that was silly! He never saw Princess Irene’s great-great- grandmother and didn’t believe she was real. He had heard once before that sometimes children can’t tell the difference between a dream and reality.
He saw the grandmother’s glowing orb at the top of the castle and decided to go up and find out once and for all. She was there spinning just as the Princess had seen her. He finally believed. She asked him not to mention that he saw her but, when people spoke of her, do not laugh and agree that she is not real. The grandmother was able to heal the pigeon he shot.
He went home and told his parents over dinner. The next day he and his father were working in the mine. Some men began to speak of an old woman who appears sometimes at night. Curdie did as he said he would and supposed she was real. All the other miners laughed at him and they went on with their work. Later that day, Curdie and his father followed a glowing light until the light turned into the beautiful lady. She tells Curdie’s father, Peter, that he and his wife have royal blood that they must give up Curdie for a little while. Curdie asks how he will recognize her next time he sees her and she tells him that he must know her in more than just appearance. They leave the inside of the mountain to go home together and they come upon an old woman. It is the beautiful woman and she tells Curdie to meet her in the dove tower tomorrow night – alone.
When he we went to he, he burned his hands in a rose-fire, by her request, which gave him the gift of seeing a man’s true nature when he held their hand. She sent him home and told him to go to court the next day with no further instruction. He took off on his journey and Lina showed up just in time to help defend him against large birds. They traveled on together, Curdie thinking her a companion sent from the old beautiful princess.Eventually, Lina meets 49 other creatues which she overcomes and end up following behind her.
They went on to the town of Gwyntystorm where the King had his court. He met a baker that tripped on a large stone in the street. Curdie broke it up for him with his pickaxe and accidentally broke the barber’s window with a bit of the stone that flew up. He paid the man for the broken window. The baker’s wife liked Curdie and gave him some bread before he and Lina set off together again.
Some dogs came at them. Curdie put his pickaxe in one of their skulls and Lina broke the other’s neck. The dogs belonged to the town’s butchers who threatened to kill Lina because his dogs were dead. A crowd had gathered and they started to stone Curdie and Lina. Lina caught a stone in her mouth and turned it into gravel with a chomp. Everyone was frightened off by this and they were soon deserted in the street. “Lina,’ he said, ‘the people keep their gates open, but their houses and their hearts shut.”
An old woman and her grandchild were the only ones to treat them kindly. Derba and Barbara took them in, but very soon a mob came to take the two strangers away. They locked them up in the castle’s dungeon. Curdie, being resourceful, found a hole in the floor and they went through it. They found themselves in the wine cellar. They were able to make their way through the kitchen because the servents were all drunk. In the King’s chambers, he saw the princess Irene… and sees that she is much changed. The King is ill and Irene seems to think that the entire kingdom knows of his ill health. She tells him that they often wondered what happened to Curdie and his parents. The King had some men search all the mines in the kingdom but they found no word from Curdie.
The King’s doctor arrives, mistakes Curdie for a page and sends him down to the cellar to get the King’s medicine which is only the wine out of the cask he saw being used earlier when he was down in the cellar. It became clear to Curdie that those closest to the King were not really concerned with his health and well-being. He brings this to the Princess’ attention and they decide to regulate his food and beverage as well as hers to be safe. Irene and Lina get acquainted.
Curdie goes back into town to get the King a loaf of bread and it seems to do the King some good! The chamberlain (which we can only assume is a part of a large controversy) tries to get some papers by the King for a signature. As it turns out, the King had come to his senses a bit and refused to sign anything. Those papers were his will!
Later Curdie went downstairs to get some of the servants food for the King as he knew it would be nothing but the best with no chance of poison. Some of the servants noticed that a loaf and a pie were missing and they went hunting for the person who took them. Curdie had gone to the cellar to get some of the good wine for the King. A maid said she saw a page headed for the cellar with the missing food. Curdie and Lina were able to hear them before they entered and they snuck out the back door so they were undetected. Curdie had to wait a long time for the servants to go to sleep, but while he waited he discovered that the stones that made up the city were heavy with gold. He planned on making the King rich so he could get away from this controlling situation.
When he finally makes it upstairs, the maid that told who took the food was up their crying because no one would believe her and she was told to always tell the truth. Curdie brought him into his confidence and they became friends. Inside the King’s chamber, Curdie and Lina hid to wait for the Dr. to arrive. When he did, Curdie was able to see him as the snake he is because of the gift of the old beautiful Princess. Lina, hiding under the bed, pulled one of the Doctor’s feet and ended up smashing the bones. He fainted and Lina dragged him to Lord Chamberlain’s door. When the Lord Chamberlain came out for all the noise, Curdie saw that he was a bird of prey.
The next day the maid warned the other servants that they should repent for thieving, and lying, and unkindness, and drinking. They all laughed at her, began to beat on her and locked her in the wine cellar. That night Curdie was expecting a more direct attack on the King. He went downstairs to go through the wine cellar into the dungeon but the door was locked. He broke in and let the maid out. When he went into the dungeon, Lina was there with the 49 beasts she had met in the forest. They snuck them all into the house.
The maid burst into the servants at dinner and gave them one more warning from the messenger. Curdie burst into the room when they still resisted to show that someone had truly come to make things right in the castle. A doorman laughed at him but when Curdie felt his hand and felt nothing but the hoof of an ox did him no harm. The butler and the cook came wielding weapons at Curdie and in burst Lina and the creatures. They tormented the servantes by chasing them through the house and subjecting them to the horrors that they created: “They were bespattered with the dirt of their own neglect; they were soused in the stinking water that had boiled greens; they were smeared with rancid dripping; their faces were rubbed in maggots.” Then they were chased out into a horrible storm and locked from the castle.
Curdie allowed the creatures to finish the lavish dinner of the servants and then they began to clean the old castle that had been neglected.
And now for the top conspirators… he overheard the lord chamberlain, the attorney-general, the master of the horse, and the king’s private secretary saying they were going to announce the King’s sudden death, read aloud the will they had drawn up and being ruling themselves. Lina took watch over the secretary and made him faint. The snake-like creature found the Lord Chamberlain in his silver bed and turned it into a cage. The tapir-like creature kept watch over the Master of the Horse. A spider wrapped the attorney general up in her webbing and kept watch over him. Another creature known as Clubhead had the butler in the wine cellar tied up next to the cask of poisoned wine.
As everyone was driven from the castle, there were no rooms in the inn for the servants needed a place to sleep. The next morning, Curdie arrived in town to fetch Derba, the old woman who was kind to him, to come and live in and be employed by the castle.
During Religion day, the snake-like creature attacked the preacher during his sermon on ‘Honest Is The Best Policy’. The town decided that the remaining preachers should exorcize the town and the castle to get rid of the demons the two strangers had brought with them. A paper was hung on a wall in the town with the King’s signature saying that whomever was unkind to strangers would be expelled the city.
The colonel of the guard had also been an honest man and, therefore, he was also “sick” under the care of the Doctor. He grew better just as the King did. The colonel sent Curdie to his regiment to act as messenger to give the real account of all that had happened. But, being told that their colonel had died they did not believe Curdie. The lord chancellor, who had been driven from the castle, went to a neighboring kingdom to form an ally to invade Gwyntystorm.
Peter and his wife had been checking the emerald the old Princess gave them every night for news on Curdie. One day it looked like the color had been burned from it. Peter ran to the King’s home but could not find anyone, not even the old Princess. So he headed to Gwyntystorm himself to help Curdie.
When the inhabitants of the town heard that an army was coming, instead of securing the borders of the city, they immediately took to their treasure to hide it. Next they wrote up an invitation to the King of the neighboring kingdom to take over their city, kill their King and annex this realm into his kingdom.
The colonel of the guard went to his regiment to ready them to fight but they thought him a ghost and shut themselves away not to hear any he had to say. The next day they are all ready for battle. The King orders horses for himself, the Princess and the colonel of the guard because Curdie would rather be on foot. Curdie asks the maid if she would be willing to fight with and die for the King. She says yes and he replies, “Were I not a man I would be a woman such as you.”
During the battle, it turns out that the maid IS the old beautiful Princess and she has many pigeons to help them in battle. They win the battle and the King shows disappointment to his people. He sent Curdie out to fill his court with human handed people. All the kingdom’s money had been squandered away but Curdie told the King that they sat on a lot of gold. Curdie’s mother and father mov into Gyntystorm. Curdie and Irene got married but had no children. So after the King died, they were King and Queen, and their death, the people chose their own King. This new King was so greedy for all the gold that he kept mining and mining under the city until one day the city collapsed and was no more.
THE END
. This is a lovely story!
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