Work Text:
The Prince and the Pea
by Ciejye
Once upon a time there a certain Prince Walter who wanted to marry a prince; but he would have to be a real prince. Prince Walter traveled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted. There were princes enough, but it was difficult to find out whether they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real prince.
One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and Queen Scully went to open it.
It was a prince standing out there in front of the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind had made him look. The water ran down from his brown hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of his shoes and out again at the heels. And yet he said that he was Fox, a real prince.
"Well, we'll soon find that out," thought Queen Scully. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on t he pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.
On this Fox the prince had to lie all night. In the morning he was asked how he had slept.
"Oh, very badly!" said Fox the prince. "I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It's horrible!"
Now they knew that he was a real princess because he had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds.
Nobody but a real prince could be as sensitive as that.
So the prince Walter took Fox the prince for his husband, for now he knew that he had a real prince; and the pea was put in the museum, where it may still be seen, if no one has stolen it.
On their wedding night, Prince Walter took Fox the prince over his knee, and began spanking him with his big round hairbrush. "So you were black and blue from laying on a pea?" He asked as the hairbrush swatted his husband's bottom. Fox the prince yelped and cried as he was spanked. "I had to tell them something didn't I? I couldn't very well say it was because you caught me sneaking out of bed and spanked my bottom."
"Well my husband, I will keep your bottom so well spanked that you will be able to feel a pea under a hundred mattresses!" And that is exactly what Prince Walter did.
There, that is a true story.
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