How the Marquis Got His Coat Back
Based on characters, setting, and title by Neil Gaiman
It was a fine day that spring when the Marquis de Carabas presented himself to the South of France. It was on a long-delayed quest to find his best coat, which had been missing since a wily thief had stolen it from his cache of treasures many years before. "Excuse me, good sir, but what is the name of this castle?" called the Marquis to a peasant driving down the road.
"It's nowhere that you need to go!" said the peasant, and proceeded to tell a dark tale of the monster who lived there. The marquis cut off his tale, apologized to the mouse in his pocket, and told the peasant that that was exactly the information he needed, "for i seek this monster, as he has stolen my best coat."
The marquis marched across the drawbridge into the castle yard and called out for the castle's master. "Hallo, ogre!"
A great voice echoed from the castle within. "Is that you, Marquis?" it hollered, "The Marquis who all these years ago killed my very brother?"
"Yes, it is I," shouted the Marquis with perfect flair, "I who killed your brother many years ago. I have come for my best coat!"
Theogre yelled again. "I do not have your best coat, Marquis! I have only my coat, which is ratty and old and has no pockets!"
The marquis knew the ogre was lying, for why would he have talked of the pockets otherwise? For the Marquis loved his best coat for many reasons, but the first and best reason was its pockets that would always be as deep as the wearer could reach.
"I shall come back another time, then, ogre, and see if you have found my coat then!" the Marquis trod to the gate as loudly as he could, set the mouse by the inside wall, then crept as silently as any cat around to the back of the castle yard. The portcullis slammed shut, and the Ogre laughed. "Ho ho ho, the Marquis is so gullible! I told him that I did not have his best coat, even as I wear his best coat, and he believed every word that I said!"
The mouse trotted forward to the castle. "Fee fudd fungus! I spy a mouse!" shouted the ogre, who always shouted, and mixed up several phrases in the process. "Come here, mouse, so I may eat you!"
The mouse pretended to quiver in fear, since it did not fear the ogre half as much as it feared failing the Marquis. "No, good ogre, I want to tell you something!"
The ogre swept its giant hand down at the mouse, but the mouse crawled between its clumsy fingers with ease. "You don't want to eat me if I can tell you something!"
The ogre shouted again, shouting "I always want to eat you, because I'm an ogre, and we eat things!" But the mouse pretended gain to cower in fear, hurrying between the fingers of the ogre's other hand as it landed, trapping the ogre's hands in its stupidity. "I can tell you how to eat the Marquis!"
The ogre thought for a minute, because that is how long it takes an ogre to think even a small thought. "Tell me how to eat the marquis!" The ogre shouted.
As the mouse whispered the plan, the Marquis sauntered to the portcullis winch and carefully sawed halfway through the rope. The ogre bellowed a laugh from inside the castle, and the Marquis knew again that his plan would work, and his plans always worked.
The ogre shouted for the portcullis to open, and it did, for that was the sort of castle it was; it was a magic castle, the kind that carried out its master's orders. The Marquis called out to the mouse, and the mouse ran off of the ogre's hands, freeing the ogre from that particular example of its stupidity.
"Oh, ogre!" the Marquis cried, standing below the portcullis, refusing to enter or exit as his kind often do where there is a freshly opened door. "I am defenseless now that your gate is open!" The ogre rushed out of the castle into the yard, revealing how ugly it was, and that it was wearing the Marquis' best coat. The coat stretched to fit any wearer perfectly, though the Marquis knew that this was all to his benefit as no giant oafish ogre would tear the shoulders while trying to put it on. "You don't want to get my blood on that wonderful coat you are wearing, do you?" called out the Marquis, who knew that the ogre, like all ogres, was as vain as it was hideous. The ogre, of course, stopped to take off the coat before resuming its charge. As the ogre ran toward the Marquis, the mouse continued chewing at the rope where the Marquis had sawn halfway through it, and the Marquis tumbled beneath the ogre. The ogre tumbled head over heels to land with its neck below the portcullis, and the Marquis landed behind it with not a spot of dirt on his clothing, hands, or face. The mouse finished chewing through the rope holding up the portcullis, which promptly fell and severed the ogre's head. As everyone knows, even a magic portcullis will fall if you cut its rope.
The Marquis told the Portcullis rope to fix itself, which it did, since he was the new master of the castle. He told the castle's brooms to sweep the ogre's body into the moat, and kicked the head into the moat himself (because like all cats, the Marquis must play with his prey), and told the moat to swallow the ogre's body and never let it resurface. The Marquis then retrieved the mouse from where it had landed far outside of the castle, flung by the force of the cut rope and the falling portcullis, and said that its favor was complete. The mouse thanked the Marquis, and returned swiftly to its family in London that the Marquis had helped to rescue.
It was a long time before the marquis felt wanderlust, because he had a new, magic castle and his best coat. But of course the Marquis eventually felt the need to leave the castle, in search of game both to eat and to play.
And that is the story of How the Marquis Got His Coat Back.