Knight's Castle (5 page)

"Form bucket brigades!" Bois-Guilbert was saying. "Some in the dungeon and some in the fuel magazine. Observe fire prevention rules. Watch out for flying sparks! Put out any flame thou seest!"

Some of the guards scurried off to do his bidding.

"You can't do that; it's not in the book!" cried Roger, running up to Bois-Guilbert.

"What is this talk of books?" said the Templar. "Out of my way!" He gave Roger a push to one side, and turned to some of the others. "Fetch me hither the wounded knight Rebecca hath been tending," he said grimly. "Stay not to be over-gentle with him, neither!"

"I didn't mean it! I take it back! It isn't him!" Roger cried, forgetting all grammar and running up on Bois-Guilbert's other side, to pummel at him vainly, as high up as he could reach.

But already more guards had hurried away to fetch Ivanhoe, and Bois-Guilbert, shaking Roger off, turned to the rest of his followers. "To arms!" he cried. "Enemies are without! A scurvy outlaw band led by him who calleth himself the Black Knight. But we shall be ready for them. Hugo, prepare the molten lead. De Bracy, wave a white pennon from the parapet and ask for parley. When the Black Knight steppeth upon the drawbridge, Hugo, empty thy caldron."

"What, and kill the king?" said De Bracy.

"Oh, no," said Roger.

"Prince John will thank us for it," said the Templar. "Besides, how were we to know who he was? People who goeth about in disguise can just take the consequences. The molten lead will make him unrecognizable, anyway."

"I'll have no part in it," said Maurice De Bracy.

"Good for you," said Roger.

"Oh, very well," said Bois-Guilbert. "Do I have to do everything myself around here?" And he turned and started for the courtyard.

Roger, made brave by guilt and fear, ran to bar the way. "Treason! Murder! Help!" he cried.

The Templar looked down at him with a face of utter exasperation. "Really!" he said. "Will no one cage this bratling for me?"

Ready hands seized Roger and dragged him back, and for a moment he decided he was going to end up in the dungeon with the rats after all. But there was an interruption.

The guards who had been sent to fetch Ivanhoe returned, carrying that gallant knight, still wounded and palely loitering upon a litter. They set the litter down, and Rebecca rushed in after them and flung herself on her knees beside him. A moment later Rowena rushed in, pushed Rebecca out of the way, and flung herself on
her
knees where Rebecca had been.

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.

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 all their lifelike glory, just merely playing with them didn't seem possible. It would be a mockery.

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."