Knight's Castle by Edward Eager
Bois-Guilbert stood looking at his enemy with a cruel smile. "So we meet again," he said, "and for the last time, I think. Thou shalt rue the day thou unhorsed Bois-Guilbert in the field! But ere I finish thee, thou shalt see the end of that Lion-heart king thou servest. Guards, up with him and after me!" And once more he turned and strode through the courtyard.
The nearest guards lifted Ivanhoe and bore him after the Templar, and the whole multitude hurried along after them, curious to see the fine sport. Roger broke away from his captor and ran along with the others, and if a tear stained his cheek as he thought of the disaster he had brought upon those he had come to help I do not think you will blame him.
Suddenly, to his surprise, a friendly hand caught hold of his, and he looked up to see Rebecca, running along beside him and smiling at him with her kind sad eyes.
"Weep ye for Richard and Ivanhoe, boy?" she said. "Weep not. Fortune may yet change."
"Don't," said Roger, pulling his hand away and feeling guiltier than ever. "You wouldn't if you knew."
The people ran through the courtyard and up the stairs till they gained the roof. Then they stood in sudden hush. Bois-Guilbert was already at the parapet, waving his white pennon of truce and calling for colloquy with the Black Knight, and down below the Black Knight, tall and noble, was coming forward for the supposed parley. The drawbridge had been lowered and the Black Knight was just stepping upon it, and up above, crouched behind his battlement, the villainous Hugo was just tilting his horrid, steaming caldron.
And it was then that Roger knew what he had to do. He lowered his head, butted his way through the crowd, and with a mighty effort hoisted himself up onto the battlements, between Hugo and Bois-Guilbert. He leaned from its dizzy heights and called, "Chiggers! Look out below! Cheezit!"
The Black Knight looked up. "Who saith so?"
"Me. Roger," was all Roger could think of to say. But it was enough. The Black Knight jumped back just in time, and the molten lead splashed hotly and harmlessly upon the empty stones below.
And then the men of Robin Hood, furious at the trick that had been played, leaped into action and the siege of Torquilstone began. A green-clad archer appeared from behind every bush and tree, and arrows fell like deadly rain.
The followers of Bois-Guilbert, caught all unprepared on the castle roof, made a fine target, and many fell under that first flight of arrows.
And now Robin's men ran up nearer the castle, and their bows twanged again, and the noise of their battle cries echoed round the walls of Torquilstone.
And while they should have been calling, "A Robin, a Robin," or possibly "A Richard, a Richard," it seemed to Roger that they were saying, "A Roger, a Roger!"
Wilfred of Ivanhoe, though still pale, had leaped from his litter, seized a sword from a varlet standing near him, cleaved the varlet in half, and was now cutting a swath through the men of Torquilstone, taking them all on singlehanded, while Rebecca helped him by tripping up any who would attack him from the rear, and Rowena helped him by turning away and holding her ears.
Only Brian de Bois-Guilbert took no part in the battle that raged within and without the castle. He stood glaring at Roger, where he still clung to his lofty parapet.
"Witch-brat!" he said viciously. 'Thou shalt learn what it meaneth to thwart me, when thy brains lie dashed out on the stones below!" And he seized Roger by a foot to thrust him over and down.
Roger looked down at the stones and didn't like what he saw. Then he looked at Bois-Guilbert and liked him even less. Then, just as all hope failed, he remembered something.
"I'm not afraid of you!" he cried. "You're not even real! You wouldn't even be Bois-Guilbert, if I hadn't said you were! You're nothing but a lead soldier!"
"What?" cried Bois-Guilbert, his face deathly pale and his voice a mere whisper. "What didst thou say:
"Lead soldier!" Roger repeated wildly. "That's all any of you are! Lead soldiers, lead soldiers, lead soldiers!"
Bois-Guilbert fell back shuddering before him, and the fighting men dropped their swords and all the people fell on their knees, and a murmur of awe ran from lip to lip among the crowd.
"The Words of Power!" cried some, and "The Elfish Charm!" cried others, and "I said 'twas no mortal boy!" cried Lionel.
And Roger jumped down from his perch and pushed his way through them, and as he did so they seemed to grow paler and dimmer, and as he ran down the stairs the walls of the castle seemed to grow fainter, the way the picture on your television set does when a tube is ailing and your mother has to send for the man.
In the courtyard a figure with a white beard appeared in Roger's path. Roger didn't recognize him but he seemed to recognize Roger, and to shake his head at him rather sorrowfully as he ran past. And yet just before everything faded out completely there seemed to be a twinkle in the figure's dim eye.
And now the castle had vanished and the sound of battle had died away, and all around and before Roger was nothing but gray mist. Then suddenly the plateau loomed whitely in his path as he ran, and he had just strength enough to scramble up the rock path to the top before darkness overtook him and he knew no more.
The next thing he did know, it was still dark, and he was sitting up in bed, and his mother was standing over him. "Did you have a bad dream?" she said. "You pushed the covers all off onto the floor."
"Yes," said Roger, sleepily, "I had a dream. Some of it was bad. Some of it wasn't, though. Anyway, it's over." And he rolled over and went back to sleep.
But it wasn't over.
3. The Magic City
When Roger woke up for the second time it was morning, and the castle was its normal self again, and yet he remembered it all too clearly when it hadn't been. And looking back on his behavior in the cold light of morning, he decided it could only be called un-yeomanly!
Of course there had been that one stirring moment when he saved the Black Knight's life, and the air rang with shouts of "A Roger, a Roger!" He guessed lots of people he knew would call a moment like that the high point of their whole lives.
But on the other hand the Black Knight's life wouldn't have needed saving if Roger hadn't given him away in the first place. And then at the end what did he do but run away without waiting to see who won the siege?
He wondered whether he would ever have a second chance, or if the whole thing was a mere failure. And it was as he was lying there wondering that Ann came bouncing into the room and sat on the bed (and on part of Roger) and said, "Let's play. Let's play with the castle."
"Go away. It's too early. I'm asleep," said Roger.
Eliza appeared in the doorway in her pajamas and bathrobe. "Let's play with the castle," she said.
"He says he's asleep," said Ann.
"I'll fix that," said Eliza. She laid hold of Roger and pulled. Roger kicked out. A small table bit the dust and several knees were skinned.
Jack appeared in the doorway. "What's the matter?" he asked.
"It's Roger," said Ann, from the sidelines. "He won't play with the castle."
"Oh. Well, I guess it's his castle," said Jack. He went out again.
Roger got up from the floor, got back into bed, and pulled the covers over his head. They came out at the foot. His bare toes emerged, and he could not feel that he made a dignified picture. He sat up again.
Eliza was staring at his bare feet with an expression of disdain. "It's not fair," she said. "Here we've been waiting all night to start playing with the castle, and you've been in here in the thick of it, just glutting yourself with it till you're tired of it!"
"That's not it," said Roger.
"What is, then?" said Eliza.
Roger didn't answer. The two girls sniffed, put their noses in the air, and went out arm in arm.
Breakfast was no better. Ann and Eliza made private jokes and giggled together. They did not address Roger. Roger felt depressed.
He wished he could ask them to play with the castle, but he couldn't. Now that he had known the knights in al
Not only that, but there was the wish he had made about his father's getting well in Baltimore, Maryland. The Old One had said wishes had to be earned, and Roger felt that his behavior last night could not have done his father one bit of good.
But after breakfast their mother took them to see their father, and he didn't seem a bit worse, and they stayed for lunch and Roger was cheered. And when they got back to Aunt Katharine's, Jack asked him if he wanted to see some pictures being developed, and it was surprising how interesting photography turned out to be.
Ann heard Roger laughing in the darkroom, and was encouraged. She opened the door. "Now can we play with the castle?"
Roger turned on her with a face of fury. "Now see what you've done!" he said. "You've ruined the negatives. Never open the door of a darkroom!"
It was Ann's turn to feel depressed. She wandered upstairs to Roger's room. Eliza was curled up on the bed, reading The Magic City. "I'd forgotten what a good book this is," she said.
"I tried it," said Ann, "but the words were too big." She sat down on a chair, feeling lonely. Eliza glanced at her.
"Oh, all right," she said, in a long-suffering voice. "I suppose I'll have to start over, and read it to you."
"Would you?" said Ann, in surprise. Really, she thought, Eliza could be quite nice, once you were used to her. Her bark was worse than her bite. And she read out loud beautifully, putting in all the expression.
The Magic City proved to be all about a boy named Philip, who built a town of blocks and books and ornaments and peopled it with all his toys, and then one night the town came to life, and Philip found himself in the middle of it, and the magic adventures began.
"This," said Ann, after chapter one, "is a good book."
"This," she said, after chapter two, "is one of the crowned masterpieces of literature which have advanced civilization."
Eliza put the book down. She looked from the book to the castle in a significant manner. "What are we waiting for?" she said.
Ann looked shocked. "We couldn't. What about Roger?"
"He won't mind. It won't be playing with it at all, exactly. We won't even touch the castle, hardly. We'll detour round it, sort of. He'll never even know."
"Well," said Ann, hesitating.
Half an hour later Jack and Roger came into the room. Roger was whistling a merry tune that broke off in the middle as he stopped and stared.
The castle was still there and the dollhouse was still there and Prince John still held court in the fireplace. But all around and between and among them, the room was littered with books and ashtrays and tumblers turned upside down till it looked as though someone were holding a rummage sale on the floor. And down on the carpet, amid the coffee cups and boxes and perfume bottles sat Ann and Eliza, with two pairs of manicure scissors, busily cutting roses out of the flowered quilt from the dollhouse master bedroom and gluing them onto wooden matchsticks.
"What are you doing?" said Roger.
"Making a magic city," said Ann, happily, balancing one of the matchsticks upright on the carpet and sticking it there with some Scotch tape. "This is the rose garden."
"Well, you can just unmake it again," said Roger.
It was then that the mild and agreeable nature of Ann suffered a change. She got up and threw the scissors down on the floor. "I hate you," she said. "You're mean. And spoilsport and doggish in the manger!"
Jack looked at the city. "What's wrong with it?" he said, reasonably.
Roger looked at it, too. A sidewalk of stone blocks led away from the castle, flanked by a double row of glittering columns that ended suddenly where the supply of old ginger ale bottles had given out. There was an imposing building made of books, labeled "Public Library," and another beautiful one made of different-colored cakes of soap, labeled "Public Baths." And since you can always find more drinking glasses and glass ashtrays and perfume bottles than you can anything else when you're building a magic city, the whole area sparkled with transparent domes and pinnacles.
"It's too modern," Roger said. "All that glass. It looks all streamlined. It isn't yeomanly. Castles didn't have sidewalks."
"This one does," said Ann.
"It's a good city. If you like that kind of thing," said Jack, looking down on it from his superior height of twelve-and-a-half years. "I vote it stays." And he went out of the room.
"Majority rules," said Eliza. "Three out of four."
"But it's all changed around and everything's spoiled!" Roger burst out desperately. "It just isn't Torquilstone any more! I hoped maybe I'd have a second chance, and now I know it won't happen again, and I never will!"
"Never will what?" said Eliza.
"Nothing," said Roger.
"Come on, Ann," said Eliza. "Let's go finish our book someplace else. He's crazy. Let him tear the old city down if he wants to."
"No, it's all right," Roger said. "Let it stay."
"Well, it won't be any fun unless we all do it together," said Ann. And she started out of the room after Eliza.
Roger had a change of heart. Ann was right; things were more fun when you did them together. "Wait," he started to say. But a closing door was his only answer.
The rest of Roger's day is better left untold. Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. Suffice it to say that night came at last, and another day dawned, as usual, and Roger woke up with the sun in his eyes. He looked across at the castle. The castle looked back at him, small and toylike. Not a thing had happened. The magic was over. He had had his chance and he had failed.
Then suddenly as he looked he remembered the old man with the white beard he had met in the castle. And he went over and found the Old One and held him in his hand.
"Oh Old One," he said, "what's wrong? Is it the mistakes I made or is it because Ann built the city?"
To his joy he felt the familiar sensation of the Old One growing warm in his hand, and the tiny, leaden voice began to speak.
"Ods bodikins!" said the Old One. "Hath it come to this? Hath the race sunk so low that all useful knowledge is forgotten, by the mass? Modern education, psychoanalysis, nuclear physics, a pox on it! What booteth thy newfangled fads and fancies if thou forgettest the good old rule that magic goeth by threes?"
"Do you mean..." began Roger.
"Canst count, sirrah? Didst thou think magic hath naught else to do but be waiting on thee hand and foot, day in, day out, maybe yes, maybe no, whenever it please thy puling fancy? Think thyself lucky if it smile on thee one night in three!"
"The third night's tomorrow," said Roger.
"Grand news," said the Old One.
There was a silence. Roger waited. Then he said, "Is there anything else? That I ought to know?"
The Old One was already growing colder in his hand, but his voice came again, only fainter.
"And didst think thou couldst do it all alone, selfish? Rode ever knight on gallant quest without his gentle lady to speed him on and hark to his tale and tell him how he should have done it differently? 'Oh woman, in our hour of ease uncertain, coy and hard to please, when pain and anguish wring the brow a ministering angel thou,' as the poet saith. A trusty friend may oft prove helpful, too. Not to speak of cousins."
"Oh," said Roger. "Yes. I see what you mean."
"Then act upon it," said the voice, dying away. And the Old One lay cold and silent in Roger's hand.
"I will," said Roger. "Right away. I was just going to."
"What did you say?" said Ann, coming into the room in her nightgown.
"Nothing," said Roger, from force of habit. Then he went on quickly. "Yes, I did, too. I was talking to him." And he told Ann all about it, and Eliza came in in the middle of it, and asked questions, and he had to start over, and tell it again, from the beginning. Ann believed it right away, the way she always did, but Eliza was disposed to scoff.
"The boy's raving," she said. "Too much reading has turned his fee
Roger shook his head. "Honest," he said.
"Scout's honor?" said Eliza.
"By my halidom," said Roger.
And of course after that Eliza believed, and was all too ready to run the whole thing, and wanted the magic to start happening right away.
"It can't," said Roger. "Not till tomorrow night."
"Why not?"
"Hast thou sunk so low that thou hast forgotten the good old rule that magic goeth by threes?"
"Well, I think it's silly of it," said Eliza.
"I hate arithmetic," said Ann.
"I think it makes it more interesting," said Roger. "And it gives us time to plan. The first thing is to get the castle back the way it was."
"Why?" said Eliza.
"I think we ought to go by the book. Just to be on the safe side."
"They didn't," Ann pointed out. "Once the magic began and you got to be their size, they did just as they pleased. I mean to do just as I please from the start!"
Roger began to see what the Old One meant about women.
"After all," Ann went on, "you had your chance. I think we ought to take turns from now on. I get this turn, 'cause I'm your sister. And I don't think we ought to plan at all. I think we ought to build just whatever comes into our heads, and then leave it up to them. I think it'll be more exciting that way."
This was such a long and spunky speech for Ann to make that the others were too surprised to argue.
"I guess it's only fair," said Roger. "Don't say I didn't warn you. Have it your own way."
"Good," said Ann.
"I get dibs on next time," said Eliza.
After breakfast they tried to interest Jack in the magic, but he would have none of it. He said he had too much to do to listen to a lot of nutty talk, and went off to his darkroom to develop the pictures he'd taken to replace the ones Ann had spoiled when she walked into the darkroom yesterday.
Ann and Eliza and Roger didn't mind. They were too busy roaming the house, collecting material for the magic city. An old toy chest in Eliza's room yielded a store of battered playthings, and Ann added toy autos and parts of electric train to the city with reckless abandon. Roger and Eliza invaded the kitchen, and borrowed so many cooky cutters and jelly molds that the cook cried out and said she'd have to speak to the madam.