The Ickabog(33)

When at last the wooden foot was finished, Spittleworth, Flapoon, and Major Roach came down into the dungeons to inspect it.

“Yes,” said Spittleworth slowly, examining the foot from every angle. “Very good indeed. What do you think, Roach?”

“I think that’ll do very nicely, my lord,” replied the major.

“You’ve done well, Dovetail,” Spittleworth told the carpenter. “I’ll tell the warder to give you extra rations tonight.”

“But you said I’d go free when I finished,” said Mr. Dovetail, falling to his knees, pale and exhausted. “Please, my lord. Please. I have to see my daughter … please.”

Mr. Dovetail reached for Lord Spittleworth’s bony hand, but Spittleworth snatched it back.

“Don’t touch me, traitor. You should be grateful I didn’t have you put to death. I may yet, if this foot doesn’t do the trick — so if I were you, I’d pray my plan works.”





He had to finish the monstrous wooden foot, so he could see Daisy again.

By Brooke, Age 11





That night, under cover of darkness, a party of horsemen dressed all in black rode out from Chouxville, headed by Major Roach. Hidden beneath a large bit of sacking on a wagon in their midst was the gigantic wooden foot, with its carved scales and long, sharp claws.

At last they reached the outskirts of Baronstown. Now the riders — members of the Ickabog Defense Brigade whom Spittleworth had chosen for the job — slipped from their horses and covered the animals’ hooves with sacking to muffle the noise and the shape of their prints. Then they lifted the giant foot off the wagon, remounted, and carried it between them to the house where Tubby Tenderloin the butcher lived with his wife, which was luckily a little distance from its neighbors.

Several of the soldiers now tied up their horses, stole up to Tubby’s back door, and forced entry, while the rest pressed the giant foot into the mud around his back gate.

Five minutes after the soldiers arrived, they carried Tubby and his wife, who had no children, out of their house, bound and gagged, then threw them onto the wagon. I may as well tell you now that Tubby and his wife were about to be killed, their bodies buried in the woods, in exactly the way Private Prodd had been supposed to dispose of Daisy. Spittleworth only kept alive those people for whom he had a use: Mr. Dovetail might need to repair the Ickabog foot if it got damaged, and Captain Goodfellow and his friends might need to be dragged out again someday, to repeat their lies about the Ickabog. Spittleworth couldn’t imagine ever needing a treasonous sausagemaker, though, so he’d ordered his murder. As for poor Mrs. Tenderloin, Spittleworth barely considered her at all, but I’d like you to know that she was a very kind person, who babysat her friends’ children and sang in the local choir.

Once the Tenderloins had been taken away, the remaining soldiers entered the house and smashed up the furniture as though a giant creature had wrecked it, while the rest of the men broke down the back fence and pressed the giant foot into the soft soil around Tubby’s chicken coop, so that it appeared the prowling monster had also attacked the birds. One of the soldiers even stripped off his socks and boots, and made bare footprints on the soft earth, as though Tubby had rushed outside to protect his chickens. Finally, the same man cut off the head of one of the hens and made sure plenty of blood and feathers was spread around, before breaking down the side of the coop to allow the rest of the chickens to escape.

After pressing the giant foot many more times onto the mud outside Tubby’s house, so the monster appeared to have run away onto solid ground, the soldiers heaved Mr. Dovetail’s creation back onto the wagon beside the soon-to-be-murdered butcher and his wife, remounted their horses, and disappeared into the night.





When Mr. and Mrs. Tenderloin’s neighbors woke up the next day and found chickens all over the road, they hurried to tell Tubby his birds had escaped. Imagine the neighbors’ horror when they found the enormous footprints, the blood and the feathers, the broken-down back door, and no sign of either husband or wife.

Before an hour had passed, a huge crowd had congregated around Tubby’s empty house, all examining the monstrous footprints, the smashed-in door, and the wrecked furniture. Panic set in, and within a few hours, news of the Ickabog’s raid on a Baronstown butcher’s house was spreading north, south, east, and west. Town criers rang their bells in the city squares, and within a couple of days, only the Marshlanders would be ignorant of the fact that the Ickabog had slunk south overnight and carried off two people.

Spittleworth’s Baronstown spy, who’d been mingling with the crowds all day to observe their reactions, sent word to his master that his plan had worked magnificently. However, in the early evening, just as the spy was thinking of heading off to the tavern for a celebratory sausage roll and a pint of beer, he noticed a group of men whispering together as they examined one of the Ickabog’s giant footprints. The spy sidled over.

“Terrifying, isn’t it?” the spy asked them. “The size of its feet! The length of its claws!”

One of Tubby’s neighbors straightened up, frowning.

“It’s hopping,” he said.

“Excuse me?” said the spy.

“It’s hopping,” repeated the neighbor. “Look. It’s the same left foot, over and over again. Either the Ickabog’s hopping, or …”