Knight's Castle (9 page)

"Rebecca, for the third and last time," said the Templar, getting exasperated, "stop being so stubborn! Recollect that thou art my prisoner, alone and with none to aid thee!"

"Not so," cried Ivanhoe, stepping forth into a shaft of moonlight, so that he shone all silvered on the darkling plain. "Turn, Templar, and meet thy end!"

"What?" said Bois-Guilbert, turning angrily. "Who asked thee to interrupt? How earnest thou hither, anyway? Never mind," he added quickly, as Ivanhoe started describing the Flying Saucer. "Don't tell me. I don't want to hear about it. Back to thy books, stargazer, ere I make thee see stars of a different color!"

"Bully!" cried Roger, stepping forth next to Ivanhoe.

"Fiend!" cried Eliza, stepping forth next to Roger.

"Shame on you!" cried Ann, stepping forth on the end of the line.

When he saw the three children, the Templar's dark visage whitened. "What, thou again?" he said. "And thou and thou? Witch brats, do I have to find ye in my path every time I'm just getting started? Surely 'tis an evil omen and ye were born to be my bane! Nonetheless, I fight!" And he fell upon Ivanhoe with naked sword.

And there raged such a conflict, on that dark heath, as has seldom been seen outside the pages of romantic fiction. Steel rang on steel and harsh cries sounded. Bois-Guilbert thwacked Ivanhoe and Ivanhoe thwacked him right back again. Roger and Eliza jumped up and down in excitement. Rebecca clung to the bars of the prison, her eyes shining. Ann watched with clasped hands.

The slow minutes passed, filled with clashes and grunts and heavy breathing. For a long time none could say who would be victor on that bloody battleground. And though one was good and one evil, none could help but admire the fighting form of both.

Then, at last, training told its tale.

Too long had the limbs of Ivanhoe lain stretched in studious ease upon his couch; too long had he stayed absent from the courts of tourney. Besides, he didn't have his glasses on and he couldn't see. Too long had his keen eyes been strained with poring over stirring tales of interplanetary travel and scientific experiment.

A mighty blow of the Templar's sword brought him crashing to his knees. He dropped his sword. Then he couldn't see to find it. As he crawled on his hands and knees, vainly looking for it, the Templar took careful aim.

"Take care!" cried Rebecca, from within the tower.

"Do something!" said Ann, her fingers digging into Roger's arm.

"I can't. Can I? It wouldn't be right. Would it?" said Roger. "Two against one?"

"At a time like this," said Eliza, "who cares? All is fair in love and war!" And she ran to Bois-Guilbert and tried to find a gap in his armor, to bite him.

But it was too late. The Templar's sword came crashing down on Ivanhoe's helmet in a mighty blow, and the hapless hero sank unconscious beneath it.

"Now for the death thrust," said Bois-Guilbert, pulling out his dagger.

"Help him, Roger," called Rebecca from the tower. "Use thy Elfish magic!"

"I would if I could," said Roger, "but I can't. I don't have any. Honest I don't. That's all a mistake. I'm not an elf. I'm a boy."

"Farewell to hope, then," said Rebecca. "Spare his life, Templar, and I am thine!"

"No, don't do that! Wait!" cried Eliza.

"Hocus pocus," muttered Roger. "Might as well try anything once. Abracadabra. Allez-oop." He stopped to see if anything magic would happen, but of course nothing did.

Ann was sniffling. Roger was pale. Eliza was gritting her teeth. Then suddenly her face cleared.

"What are we so worried about?" she said. "It isn't as if they were real. They're nothing but a lot of lead soldiers!"

"Stop!" Roger opened his mouth to cry, but it was too late.

"What didst thou say?" said Bois-Guilbert, dropping his sword.

"What didst thou say?" said Ivanhoe, coming to and sitting up and looking around.

"Lead soldiers, lead soldiers, lead soldiers!" said Eliza.

"The Words of Power!" cried Rebecca, from the Dolorous Tower. "The Elfish Magic!" And right away the disappearing began.

Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert grew dim and then transparent, and then they simply weren't there at all, and the gray mist came swirling down and blotted out everything, and the next Roger and Ann and Eliza knew, they were sitting on the floor of the hall outside Ann's door, looking at some toy knights and a saucer and a yellow tin wastebasket upside down with a toy lady standing on top of it, and a round shining globe that was no longer a moon but just a hall light.

"The Outer Wastes," said Roger, pointing at the wastebasket. "The Dolorous Tower."

"What happened?" said Eliza.

"You said the Words of Power," said Roger. "Didn't I tell you about them?" And he told her about them now.

The children's mother chose this moment to appear in the hall.

"Up playing at this hour, the idea," she said. "It's one o'clock in the morning. How did that saucer get on the floor?"

"It flew there," said Ann, stupidly. She was still dazed by the suddenness with which the adventure had ended.

"This," said their mother, "is no time for funny jokes. Roger and Eliza, go back to your own rooms. Ann, go to bed. You've all been dreaming. And I only hope you haven't started walking in your sleep, too, because that would be the Last Straw!"

After that there was really nothing to do but trail back to their separate rooms. Roger knocked some of the Magic City over as he trailed through his, but he didn't care. It had been a mistake. If there were any more adventures and if he had anything to say about them, they were going to be yeomanly, like the first one. Magic and modernness just didn't mix.

Eliza, on the way to
her
room, was thinking about the battle and how thrilling it had been. She wondered if Ivanhoe had lived to tell the tale, and if Rebecca had ever got out of the Dolorous Tower, and what had happened next.

Ann, in her bed in
her
room, was wondering the same thing, and wondering if she would ever know the answer.

"Magic things goeth by threes," she said to herself. "Does that mean the next adventure'll be the last one?"

She was still wondering when she fell asleep.

Roger woke up the next morning to a chinking and a clinking and a coming and going of feet, all adding up to what he recognized all too well as the sound of Putting Away.

He opened his eyes and looked across the room. The Magic City was gone, except for the castle in one corner with a part of the park and the statue of St. George Peabody, and the dollhouse in the next corner, and some fake trees along the wall in between, and Prince John's court in the fireplace.

And in the middle of the room stood his mother, gazing round at her handiwork as though she found it good.

Roger sat up in bed. His mother met his accusing look. "I know," she said, defensively, "but it just Had To Be. Think of the poor maid who's supposed to clean in here."

At this moment Ann came rushing in from the hall. "They're gone!" she cried.

"What are?" said their mother.

"Who?" said Roger.

"Ivanhoe and Rebecca and that Brian." She turned on their mother. "What did you do with them?"

Their mother gestured vaguely toward the castle. "Whatever I found I put over there somewhere."

"Oh! Now we'll never know how they would have got back if you hadn't!" Ann wailed.

"Honestly!" said their mother. "You'd almost think the things were
alive!
"

Ann and Roger exchanged a look.

On the way to breakfast they met Eliza. She was full of excited plans. "What'll we do next?" she said. "It's my turn this time, 'cause I said dibs on it. What'll we make happen tonight?"

"Nothing," said Roger. "We can't." And he reminded her about magic going by threes.

"It would!" said Eliza, bitterly. "You'd almost think it
tried
to make things harder! How'll we exist in the meantime?"

"The meantime of what?" said Jack, coming into the dining room behind them.

"You wouldn't believe it if we told you," said Roger. And they proceeded to.

Luckily the custom at Aunt Katharine's was the sensible one of having the children eat by themselves, except on special occasions; so they were able to tell Jack all through breakfast with no fear of grown-up scoffing, and spill as much maple syrup as they wanted to, in their enthusiasm, without the tyranny of table manners to interrupt.

When they'd finished they could see he was impressed.

"
Now
do you believe in magic?" said Ann.

"There might be something to it," Jack admitted. "Maybe not magic, exactly. Maybe kind of extrasensory perception, more. Maybe next time I'd better come along. Look at it scientifically."

"Huh uh," said Roger. "No more science."

"Not that old science fiction stuff,
real
science," said Jack. "Examine the facts. I'll bring my camera. "

"That'll be nice," said Ann.

They all went up to Roger's room. "Just where did it happen?" said Jack, looking around and sniffing the air, as an inquiring photographer and scientific detective should.

"It's no use. It's too late. Mother picked up," Ann told him bitterly.

"That reminds me," said Roger. He went over and investigated the castle. Their mother had piled the soldiers every which way in the keep, and it took a long time to get them sorted.

Eliza was boss, because it was her adventure next. Under her direction, they put Robin Hood and the Black Knight and Maid Marian and some Merry Men out among the fake trees, and lined up De Bracy and his followers in besieging formation outside the castle again. They stood various courtiers and attendants about the lower chambers (Rowena was still sulking in her upper one), but they couldn't find Ivanhoe or Rebecca or Brian de Bois-Guilbert anywhere.

"Let's get the Old One," said Ann.

"Who's he?" said Jack.

They told him.

But when Eliza took the Old One from the castle, and asked him what had happened to Ivanhoe and the others, he didn't answer, and at first he was so cold in their hands that they were afraid the magic was over for good. Jack was beginning to look skeptical when all of a sudden the Old One
did
warm up a little, as though to show them it wasn't over, but that was all he would do.

"Interesting," said Jack, feeling the warm Old One. "Peculiar phenomenon. Probably some quality in the metal. Retains heat."

"Why wouldn't he answer?" said Ann.

"Maybe we're not meant to know," said Roger. "Maybe we're meant to not do anything about it, and just wait till the third night."

"That's going to be hard," said Ann.

"Hard," said Eliza, "is not the word. I for one shall go raving tearing mad."

But it turned out that she didn't. And the three days passed quicker than you would have believed. Once you're friends with people, it's surprising how much you can find to do with them, even without magic to Light the Way.

Roger went on learning about photography from Jack, and met some of Jack's friends and hacked around with them, and played a lot of baseball and in general decided Jack wasn't really half so bad as he had painted him.

Ann didn't have such an easy time. With Roger so busy, she was left to Eliza's tender mercies, and the difference between eight years old and eleven-and-a-half loomed large. But Eliza was surprisingly nice, and offered to play hopscotch with her, and jacks, and one day she gave a tea party for Ann, and asked all her friends to meet her.

Ann was grateful, though she didn't enjoy the conversation much, which was mostly about which boys on the block were the best-looking. Nor did she prove proficient in dancing the Lindy, when the big girls tried to teach her how. She would rather have stayed in her room and investigated her new dollhouse, but she suppressed this thought. Eliza, she felt somehow, would disdain it.

And at last the third night came.

There had been some worry about sleeping arrangements, but their mothers were so pleased at what good friends they were getting to be that they raised no objections when Eliza wanted a cot put up in Ann's room, and Jack asked to sleep on Roger's couch.

That night four bathrobed figures assembled before the castle. It had been a big day of baseball, and Jack got down on the floor now and started moving De Bracy and his followers around in different formations, demonstrating how Roger could have won the game if he'd played differently.

"Don't!" said Ann. "Once you start moving them around you never can tell
what
might happen!"

"What could happen?" said Jack.

"Almost anything," said Eliza. "You don't know what that magic's like when it's roused!"

"Ah, don't pay any attention to them," said Roger suddenly and basely, full of his new manly importance as Jack's friend. "They're just a couple of crazy girls."

After that, Ann did not take much part in the conversation.

Eliza's reaction to being called a crazy girl was different. In the process of her reaction a chair leg came off and the floor was scratched, but no one was seriously hurt.