Knight's Castle (3 page)

"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 streak. Jack was not to be seen, but a moment later the children caught a back view of him. He had his camera well in hand, and was focusing on some rather uninteresting-looking murals on the station ceiling.

"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 the different rooms and then taking their pictures.

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.

The afternoon passed quickly and happily, save for a few moments when the strong personalities of Eliza and Roger met and clashed. By the time dinnertime came, the castle presented a spectacular appearance.

Bois-Guilbert was on the battlements pleading with Rebecca to give him her love and Rebecca was threatening to throw herself over the edge to the courtyard below. De Bracy was in a rich chamber of the castle pleading with Rowena to give him her love and Rowena was looking self-righteous.

Cedric the Saxon was in the dungeon with Wamba the jester beside him. Wilfred of Ivanhoe languished wounded in an upper room, his middle tied up in a bandage Eliza had made out of a dollhouse kitchen curtain.

A few stray knights, henchmen of the two villains, lounged about the castle courtyard, and at a safe distance outside on the greensward (carpet), Robin Hood and the Black Knight (a knight in black armor, naturally), with Maid Marian, who
would
come along (Eliza chose the most athletic-looking of the ladies), lay in ambush with a band of trusty archers, waiting to attack the castle. Eliza made the ambush out of some fluffy green stuff from the dollhouse bath mat.

Jack thought they ought to have the wicked Prince John, too, and found a bearded knight with a crown and a squint who looked the part. There wasn't any logical place in the castle for him, and he belonged in another part of the story anyway; so Jack pushed back the sliding wrought-iron screen of the fireplace, and the space within made an excellent throne room. Jack put a few stray knights in there with him, for courtiers. An armchair from the dollhouse made an imposing throne.

Anybody left over was an attendant. Halfway through arranging these, Roger remembered his precious soldiers from home, still packed in their cotton. But then he decided their uniforms wouldn't go with the armor of the others, and besides, now that he had the castle full of knights, the charm of British grenadiers and Spanish War veterans paled. So he left them in their box on top of the bureau.

But he did take the Old One out of his pocket, and put him in the castle, among the attendants, just in case.

And then, just as it was the moment for the Black Knight and Robin Hood and their followers to begin attacking the castle, Aunt Katharine appeared in the doorway and said, "All right, time to wash your hands and faces for dinner."

There really couldn't have been a worse time for her to say this, and Eliza let her know it. "Honestly!" she fumed. "You'd think mothers just waited outside the door till they're
sure
it's the wrong moment! We can't possibly come now; we're having a siege!"

"Really, Eliza," said Aunt Katharine. And then Eliza's father, who was Uncle John, appeared firmly in the doorway, and that was that.