The Old Man who Laughed All the Way to Market

Once upon Saturday the 13th of October, at 11.43am, a wizened old man looked guilelessly into a young man's eyes while desperately biting the insides of his cheeks to stop himself from crowing with victory.

The young man picked up each vicia faba and peered at it from every angle, his face clenched in the tight scowl of a knowledgeable connoisseur. Or at least one with a bowel obstruction.

The old man was not fooled; only the buyers went so far as to inspect the beans.

"But they look rather normal," the young man

"Oh yes, most wise and benevolent young master!" (Flattery had never been known to hurt anyone in the old man's lengthy experience) "A little too normal, some might say. That's how you knows they're magic."

The young man nibbled his lower lip and looked doubtfully to his cow then to the beans. "What did you say they did?"

The old man hesitated then pulled him around to the other side of the cow. Conspiratorially, the old man peeked over the top of the cow, checking up and down the road, then whispered, "Oh wary and inquisitory young master, it is right that you should ask. But one so worldly and intelligent as your incomparable personage must know that to ask what a wish was means it can't come true. It is the way with all magic, question it and it don't work; estimable, ingenuous, daring ..." he trailed off as the indecision in the young man's eyes began tipping in favour of suspicion. 'Tell you what, you've got eight in hand, I'll throw in ten more and this lovely pewter mug," the object in question magically materialised in the old man's hand, "and all for the low, low price of one scrawny cow. I know what you're thinking; this opportunity is too good to be true! And it is at great detriment to my self I offer it to you. My little one's won't eat for a week but I can see you are the man destined to have these beans."

"Destined..." the young man murmured. "My ma says I'm a good for nothing layabout and I'll never find my purpose."

"And she was the one who sent you to market with the cow, I'll wager. Like nothing better than a common farmhand she thinks you. Listen, you give me this old cow and you take these and go seek your fortune. I believe in you!" the old man exclaimed, grabbing the young man by the shoulders, apparent sincerity burning from his eyes.

The old man thought for a moment he had lain it on a smidgen thick but then the young man wrenched himself from the old man's grasp and ran off down the road, practically wetting himself in his excitement to get home.

Chuckling quietly, the old man rubbed one of the cow's ears and patted its head, then led it sedately in the opposite direction towards market.

.o.o.o.

The Entrepreneurial Woman

Once upon Saturday the 13th of October, at 3.52pm, the jam maker surreptitiously rubbed the back of her neck where her tray's suspender was digging in and struggled not to roll her eyes. Despite the large signs shouting 'Get away, you foolish woman!' that her instincts had put up as soon as the tailor's shout had stampeded up the street, she had returned to his shop in the misguided hope that maybe he had wanted more jam.

He hadn't.

What he wanted was to show her the seven corpses strewn across his work table, slain by the almighty might of his great leather belt.

The jam maker looked at the dead flies, then at the tailor, then back at the flies, and then, for the sake of symmetry, frowned at the tailor again.

"… And?" she asked, after an extensive pause that was long past pregnant and happily putting three children through school.

"And now I am off to seek my fortune. I am too great a man to be confined to this village! The world shall know of my deeds and tremble, in terror or desire depending on that particular part of the world's sex. I want the women to fancy me not the men," he clarified. The jam maker continued to stare. "For I have slain seven with one blow, as you see here on my belt. And the whole world shall see it also and tremble, the men in fear and the women–"

"Yes, yes, I heard you the first time," the jam maker cut in. "And you think you're going to get girls because of some words – badly stitched words! – on a second rate leather belt? Well, I'll tell you right now I'm not feeling the least inclination to turn into a quivering mass of desire."

"Just you wait, jelly maker. Just you wait," the tailor said with terrible gravity before waltzing past her and out of the village.

Two months later, the jam maker brought out her newly branded jam just in time for the coronation. Valiant Preserves: Because even heroes get in a jam sometimes! Endorsed by our new king.

He did not endorse it exactly, but then he did not want the general populace to know exactly what he had slain, seven with one blow.

.o.o.o.

The Maid who had Allergies

Once upon Saturday the 13th of October, at 8.31pm, a pot maid looked up and saw her good friend, the chambermaid, in dire need of assistance. It was not so much that the chambermaid had a rash, but that a rash in a sudden fit of whimsy had taken to walking around in the shape of a chambermaid.

"What happened? Sit down right now and I'll get some chicken fat and doc leaves on it." The pot maid bustled over to the cold cabinet and scooped a large dollop of congealed fat out of a large blue jug. She hustled over to the window sill and picked the largest leaf she could find then returned to the chambermaid, a large slightly self-satisfied smile on her face as her friend had done exactly what she had been told and collapsed on a stout wooden stool.

"Now, tell me all about." The pot maid seized one blotched arm and rubbed it with the doc leaves then smothered it with fat. The chambermaid shuddered and sent the pot maid a look that said quite clearly, you have no idea what you are doing, do you? with only a small lift of an eyebrow and twist of the lips.

"This is how my mother did it," the pot maid replied crisply.

"And heavens forbid I slander your dear redoubtable ma. Though who was it again that made her late husband's daughter a slave in her own home?"

It would be the greatest ambition of any ice age to achieve the chilliness of the silence that followed.

"But, my goodness, how wonderfully not itchy my arm now is," the chambermaid blurted. "And did you see that girl who came in from the storm? I'm sure you could tell me many shrewd and wittily scathing things about her!"

The pot maid sniffed, but divulged in a mollified tone, "The gates men say she's a princess but they would be turned by a pretty face. Personally, I'm very suspicious of a girl who wanders around in the middle of a storm and just happens to come across the castle instead of one of the houses in town and happens to be a princess who deserves the best food and bed –"

The chambermaid groaned. "Please, don't mention that word!"

"Oh, yes," the pot maid said with a start. "What happened? Last I heard you were sent to make up her ... article of furniture on which she shall sleep," she finished carefully.

"Matresses! Twenty enormous, pox-ridden, fluffy, vile, stupid, scratchy feather mattresses is what happened. And I'm a inflamed mass of allergies for what?!" the beleaguered chambermaid shrieked. "So a pea can get squashed flat before anyone even gets in the bed! But I got my own back." She smirked.

"Pray tell."

"You know how the assistant gardener is sweet on me?" The pot maid nodded. "Well, let's just say that when left alone for three hours to make up a misbegotten bed it is very easy to slip out and return with a kilo of gravel to fill up the top mattress without anyone noticing. It will serve them right when our mummy's boy of a prince has to marry some girl who walked in off the street."

"Oh, you are too bad," gasped the pot maid, grinning. "When can I tell everyone?"

"Just as soon as their marriage is official," the chambermaid laughed, idly itching one sore red arm.

The end.


What?! You saw through my dastardly plan of pretending three short conversations constituted one story by saying they happened on the same day? But how?!
Does anyone actually know what went on rashes prior to modern medicine? I got a bit stuck on that one. The old man got all the roast beef and the young man got none, so yes the other allusions are deliberate also. Indeed I did change the jam maker's description slightly so it would have the same number of syllables as 'Enry 'Iggins. O, and the pun on pregnant pause: in my opinion, funniest thing I've ever written.

Just thought someone might like to know.

Gah! that was hideously disjointed. I apologise.