Knight's Castle by Edward Eager
"Rough play, by the rood!" he seemed to say. A moonbeam shining through the window struck a silver glint from his battered countenance, and for a moment he seemed to be turning to the other soldiers lined up on the floor, as though giving them a word of command. And then for another moment it seemed as though all the soldiers were moving in the soft light, marching toward Roger:
Roger rubbed his eyes and opened them again. The soldiers were still now. Nothing had happened. Naturally.
"I must be sleepier than I thought," Roger said to himself. "I'm seeing things that aren't there." And he plumped up his pillow and put his head down on it and went to sleep.
2. The Beginning
The next three days were a flurry of activity and packing and meeting each other on the stairs at odd hours with armfuls of clothes. And of course the children would forget, sometimes for half days at a time, why they were going to Baltimore, Maryland, and just be happy and excited to be going anywhere.
Roger's packing took the longest. First he dumped the whole contents of his clothes basket and his dresser drawers into his suitcase, and that was quick, and the suitcase closed quite easily after he sat on it for a while, and he didn't actually have to stand on it at all, hardly.
But then came the problem of choosing exactly the right-sized grocery carton from the pile in the attic, and then each of the two hundred and fifty-six soldiers had to be wrapped carefully in cotton and fitted into the box, not to mention sundry cannon, tanks, drawbridges, turrets from old broken castles, and other art treasures without which no boy's life can be truly rich and full.
Their mother went so far as to suggest that there were probably plenty of things to play with at Aunt Katharine's without taking toys along, but one glance at Roger's expression told her what a barbarous idea this was.
And quite soon the night of the third day came, and they were on the train. Roger and Ann had traveled in Pullman cars before, and there was nothing about this particular Pullman car to distinguish it from those they had known and loved in the past, except its name, which was Wah-Wah-Tay-See. Ann, who was making a collection of the names of Pullman cars, wrote this down on a special page in her notebook.
Their mother and father had a drawing room, and the two children were in the section nearest to it, Ann in the lower berth and Roger in the upper. And the dining car menu, like all menus in trains, had tonight's dinner listed in the middle, and then around the edges lots of far more interesting dishes that apparently no one was supposed to order, because their waiter looked very surprised when Ann asked for pickled mangoes and Roger called for a bottle of Apollinaris water. The children's mother tried to thwart them in this project, but their father gave her his well-known let-them-do-it-this-once look, and she subsided.
When they got back to their car after dinner, the usual nice old lady turned up in the section opposite, and wanted to talk to them about a dear little fairy who lived in a Pullman car. Roger and Ann were polite about this, and luckily it didn't go on for very long, because the train was getting into Baltimore, Maryland, early in the morning; so bedtime had to be early tonight.
And when Roger, in his pajamas, hung his head down over the edge of the berth and poked it through the green curtains to talk to Ann in the berth below, the usual cross other old lady in the upper berth next door rapped on the wall and said, "Quiet!"
So after that Roger lay still and tried to go to sleep, but he couldn't. Ann, down below, could look out on barns and towns and moonlight and hotdog stands, but he had only a curving wall and curtains and the dim light from the corridor to gaze at.
Pretty soon he decided he couldn't stand gazing at them any longer. He opened his curtains, let his feet down over the edge, swung wildly in space, and thumped to the floor.
He looked in on Ann. A gentle snore issued from under a mound of blankets. So then he knelt on the floor of the corridor and felt under the lower berth till he found the grocery carton of soldiers. He'd take a few of the top ones out and have a war in his berth, that's what he'd do.
To get the string off the box was but the work of a moment, but wasn't so noiseless a process as Roger would have chosen, and just as he had his hand inside the top flap, the cross old lady in the upper berth next door parted her curtains and glared down at him with a face so truly horrible that all Roger could do was gasp, grab the first soldier he found, shove the carton back, scramble up to his own berth and pull the curtains. He lay clutching the soldier, his heart beating fast, waiting for the old lady to call the conductor or pull the emergency cord and stop the train. But nothing of the kind happened.
What did happen was that he felt a tickling in his hand again, like the time before, and when he turned on the little light with his other hand he saw that what he held was the old one and he was talking.
"Newfangled flummery!" he was saying. "Modern inventions, industrial revolution, rush, rush, rush, choo-choo, crash, bang! A castle that stayed put was good enough for me, aye, and my forefathers before me, and when we sallied forth 'twas a gallant steed under us, aye, and a trusty sword in hand! By my halidom!" he added.
"What did you say?" said Roger.
"Thou heardst me," said the old one.
"I did not," said Roger. "You didn't say any of that. You didn't talk that other time, either. It was a dream. So's this."
The old one reached out his small metal hand and pinched Roger hard. For such a small pinch it hurt quite a lot.
"Ow," said Roger. And then he knew. And remembering from his reading that Psammeads and Phoenixes and Mary Poppins always had to be addressed with due deference, he made his voice very respectful indeed.
"Oh Old One," he said, "I take it back. I see it all now. You are magic."
"Light dawneth," said the Old One.
"Why," said Roger, getting excited, "I suppose you must be the lucky charm of this family, like the Mouldiwarp of the House of Arden! Only I suppose you've been handed down from generation to generation till people forgot you were magic and just used you to play soldiers with! I'm sorry if we played too rough. And those times I forgot to pick you up and stepped on you afterwards by mistake. I hope the magic hasn't all gone out of you. It hasn't, has it? Did you come to make Father get well in Baltimore, Maryland? Because if I get a wish, that's what I wish."
The Old One said nothing, but Roger thought he grew a bit warmer in his hand. Encouraged, he went on.
"And if you still have any magic left in you after that, I wish we'd have an adventure in Baltimore, Maryland, while we're waiting."
"Quiet!" said the voice of the old lady next door. And she gave a really terrible rap on the partition at Roger's feet.
So Roger put out his light, and placed the Old One carefully on the pillow next to him, where the dim glow from the corridor could shine on his face. And just before he went to sleep, Roger heard the Old One speak again.
"Gadzooks!" he said. "Cannot a man retire in his old age but paltry striplings must be waking him from his soft sleep with their wearisome wishes? Wishes must be earned, sirrah! However," he added, and his voice was kinder, "wishes, like fishes, turneth up in strange dishes. Tomorrow is another day I always say." After that he was silent, and Roger knew somehow that he would not speak again, at least not now.
The next thing Roger knew, it was morning and his mother was telling him to wake up. And for the half hour after that all was bustle and squeak as he and Ann hurried to brush their teeth, hurried to pack away their pajamas and put on their clothes, and hurried to the dining car for breakfast.
Their mother had not been pleased to find the carton of soldiers untied, but she had already tied it up again, with a few pertinent remarks; so Roger put the Old One in his pocket.
And then the porter was brushing them off and they were pulling into Baltimore, Maryland, and Ann looked out of the window to see a city not orange and black, but gray with rain.
Their Aunt Katharine met them in the station. Eliza was with her, wearing her hair in pigtails and talking a blue
"Wouldn't you know?" whispered Roger to Ann.
And then Aunt Katharine was kissing them and kissing their mother and shaking hands with their father, and Jack drifted up and took a picture of the whole group, and Eliza circled round all of them, telling all about a man she had heard of who had gone to the same hospital Roger's father was going to, and had practically everything taken out, and learned to walk again perfectly well after a year.
"Really, Eliza," said Aunt Katharine, which was all she ever said when Eliza was awful.
And now a smartly dressed chauffeur had appeared and was dealing with the luggage, and Aunt Katharine turned to the children's mother. "You'll want to go to the hospital right away; so I thought I could take the children to a movie and lunch and then meet you at the house." And this was agreeable to all.
There was a bad moment when Roger and Ann said good-bye to their father, for a thought that didn't bear thinking couldn't help flashing through both their minds. But their father grinned and said, "I'll be seeing you," and after that they felt better. And their mother and father rode off in Aunt Katharine's big black car, while Jack summoned a taxi in rather a grown-up fashion, and the others got in.
On the way uptown Roger and Ann hung out the window looking for points of interest, but there weren't any till the cab stopped for a traffic light near a large statue. Ann read the name on the statue, George Peabody. She caught Roger's eye and they both started giggling, for no reason at all, as sometimes happens in families. To their surprise, Eliza giggled, too.
"George Cornbody," said Roger.
"George Squashbody," said Ann.
"George Beanbody," said Eliza. "George Applebody, George Prunebody."
Jack didn't say anything. He was leaning out the window of the cab, taking a picture of the statue. But after that Roger and Ann and Eliza felt friendlier, the way you do when you've all giggled at the same thing.
"Really, Eliza," said Aunt Katharine. "What movie shall we see?"
Jack and Eliza started talking at once. Jack wanted to see a picture about wheat growing that was full of interesting camera angles while Eliza was loud in asserting that Scarface Returns was absolutely the only decent thing in town.
Aunt Katharine shook her head. "I thought Ivanhoe " she said. Roger's eyes glowed, for his father had read him the book last year. And everyone else had to admit that Ivanhoe sounded just dandy.
And it was. It was in glorious Technicolor, and it was just about as yeomanly as a movie could be. Roger and Ann sat enthralled, and so, surprisingly enough, did Aunt Katharine. Jack quite approved of the photography, and as for Eliza, during the final combat between Ivanhoe and the wicked Knight Templar she bounced up and down in her seat and muttered, "Pow! Zowie! Wham!" till everybody sitting around said, "Shush," and Aunt Katharine said, "Really, Eliza."
But after the picture, as they sat eating a late and filling lunch of strange and wonderful seafood, Jack became critical.
"The tournament wasn't quite right," he said. "That isn't the way they did it, really."
"Were you ever in one?" said Aunt Katharine, turning suddenly on her son.
"No," said Jack, surprised.
"Then don't talk about what you don't know about," said his mother. "I thought it was quite a nice little tournament. Not like the ones King Arthur used to have, of course."
"Honestly, Mother," said Eliza. "Anybody'd think you'd been alive back then!"
Aunt Katharine blushed, and if you have read a book called Half Magic you will know why. But all she said was, "Who wants what for dessert?" And there were seventeen things to choose from (because Roger counted), and that took silent concentration from everyone.
But a few minutes later Eliza looked up from her hot butterscotch ice-cream shortcake. "I don't see why he had to marry that old Rowena," she said. "Rebecca was lots prettier. Why couldn't he have married her?"
"That wasn't what the author wrote," said Roger, a bit shocked.
"Oh, that old Sir Walter Scott!" cried Eliza. "A lot he knew about anything!"
"Sir Walter Scott?" said Ann. "We have him in our Authors game."
"You don't still play Authors, do you?" said Eliza. "That's almost as babyish as
After that Ann didn't feel so friendly about Eliza. Deciding not to talk, she got out her notebook, and started a new page headed, "Interesting Things About Baltimore, Maryland."
"Good movies. Good lunches. Statue of George Peabody," she wrote, and that seemed to be all the interesting things, so far. And then it was time to pay the bill.
As they rode to Aunt Katharine's house in another taxi, they passed a toyshop window, and Roger had an unworthy thought. He had hoped Aunt Katharine would give him and Ann presents; she usually did when she saw them. Still, they had had the movie and lunch, hadn't they? Roger decided his thought was very unworthy and should be suppressed.
Their mother was waiting for them at Aunt Katharine's, and told them everything was fine with their father so far. And then Aunt Katharine took them to see their rooms. "You'll have the whole east wing to yourselves," she said.
"My," said Ann. "We shall be in the lap of luxury."
And they very nearly were. There was a big bedroom for their mother, with her own bath, and a smaller bedroom for Ann, and another bath, and another big room that would be Roger's room and a playroom combined.
And when Roger and Ann saw this room, they stood and stared.
There was a big, fancy dollhouse, with a family of dolls, in one corner, and in another was an immense castle, the most wonderful castle Roger had ever seen, rich with turrets and battlements and a portcullis and a pretend moat, and a keep with a front wall that swung out on a hinge, so you could see what was going on inside. The dollhouse and the castle were from Aunt Katharine.
"Only I told her what to get," said Eliza, proudly. "Except not the dollhouse. I despise dolls, don't you:
So of course Ann, who didn't, had to pretend that she did, only not loud enough for Aunt Katharine to hear and have her feelings hurt.
And their Uncle Mark in New York City had sent a big box of model soldiers, but these weren't like any Roger had ever seen before. They were from a wonderful shop called The Knight's Castle, and there were no two alike. There were knights of all sorts with beards of divers colors, and some young ones with no beards at all. There were squires and pages and bowmen in Lincoln green, and a few obvious dastardly villains and half a dozen ladies of high degree. Ann was sure one of the bowmen in green was Robin Hood and Roger found a stalwart, handsome young knight that everyone agreed could be only Wilfred of Ivanhoe.
There was still another present, from Aunt Jane, sent all the way from London by air mail.
"Isn't that just like Jane?" said Aunt Katharine to their mother. "So dashing and extravagant." Aunt Jane was in London for the Coronation, of course.
Wherever there was the most going on, Aunt Jane usually was. "Eliza is just like her," their Aunt Katharine added in a low voice, but Ann heard her.
Aunt Jane's package, when opened, proved to contain a lot of little books in blue covers. Eliza pushed in ahead of the others, to see what they were. "The Magic City by E. Nesbit," she said, in tones of scorn. "I read that ages ago! Magic is baby stuff."
Roger opened his mouth to agree with her. Then he remembered last night. His hand went into his pocket and encountered the Old One, still lying there. He proceeded with caution. "I know what you mean," he said. "Of course there might be a little something to it, though."
Eliza uttered a contemptuous snort.
And then the children's mother went downstairs with Aunt Katharine to have a good talk, and the children were left to play with the castle.
Only they couldn't get at the castle right now, because Jack was there before them, putting different knights in position in
Roger's fingers itched to get the knights out of Jack's hands. You could tell from the way he was setting them up that he didn't know a thing about the laws of chivalry. He just didn't have the touch. But after all, he was the host and Roger was the guest and had to be polite.
Eliza had no such scruples. "Get out of the way," she said, and pushed in next to her brother.
After that Roger decided it was free for all, and knelt down by the castle, jostling Eliza on one side and Jack on the other.
Ann would have liked to play quietly with her dollhouse in its corner but after what Eliza had said she didn't dare; so she joined the group around the castle.
"Let's have it be the one in Ivanhoe," said Eliza. "The one where the siege was."
"You mean Torquilstone?" said Roger, feeling rather superior.
"Whatever its name was," said Eliza.
So it was decided that the castle was to be that ill-starred fortress where the villains Bois-Guilbert and De Bracy held Ivanhoe and most of the other characters prisoner during the most exciting part of the story.
Luckily one of the knights had a Templar's shield; so he could be Bois-Guilbert, and Roger found a thin, overdressed one for De Bracy. Ann chose the darkest and most beautiful of the ladies to be Rebecca, and Eliza picked a simpering inferior-looking blonde for Rowena. Jack took pictures of the different characters.
There was a jester in the assortment, to be the jester Wamba, and an elderly knight made a fine Cedric the Saxon, Ivanhoe's father.
"Only he wouldn't be wearing just armor, silly," said Eliza. While Ann watched in alarm, she found some manicure scissors and went over to the dollhouse, and quickly made Cedric a scarlet cloak from the train of the ballgown of the mother doll, trimmed with fur cut from the same lady's fur coat.