Five Have a Wonderful Time (11 page)

"No. Who wants to waste time going over a ruined old castle?" said Bufflo, scornfully. "Not me!"

He went off to his caravan, spinning rope-rings as he went with an ease that Dick couldn't help envying from the bottom of his heart. What a pity he hadn't begun to learn these things early enough. He was afraid he would never be really good at them now. He was too old!

"George! Jo! It's time we went," called Julian. "Put down those snakes, and come along. Anne! Are you ready?"

Mr. Slither went to collect his snakes. They glided over him in delight, and he ran his hands over their smooth, gleaming bodies.

"I must wash my hands before I go," said George. "They're a bit snaky. Coming, Jo?"

Jo didn't really see why it was necessary to wash snaky hands, but she went with George to the stream and they rinsed them thoroughly. George wiped her hands on a rather dirty hanky, and Jo wiped hers on a much dirtier skirt. She looked at George's shorts enviously. What a pity to have to wear skirts!

They didn't lock up the caravans. Julian felt sure that the fair-folk were now really friendly to them, and would not take anything from them themselves, nor permit anyone else to do so. They all walked down the hillside, Timmy bounding along joyfully, under the impression that he was going to take them for a nice long walk.

They climbed over the stile, walked up the lane a little way, and came to the wooden gate that opened on to the steep path up to the castle. Now that it was so near to them it looked almost as if it might fall on top of them!

They went up the path and came to the small tower in which was the little door giving entrance to the castle.

An old woman was there, looking a little like a witch. If she had had green eyes Anne would most certainly have set her down as a descendant of a witch! But she had eyes like black beads. She had no teeth at all and it was difficult to understand what she said.

"Five, please," said Julian, giving her twenty-five pence.

"You can't take the dog in," said the old woman, mumbling so much that they couldn't make out what she said. She pointed to the dog and repeated her remark again, shaking her head all the time.

"Oh — can't we really take our dog?" said George. "He won't do any harm."

The old woman pointed to a set of rules: "DOGS NOT ALLOWED IN."

"All right. We'll leave him outside then," said George, crossly. "What a silly rule! Timmy, stay here. We won't be long."

Timmy put his tail down. He didn't approve of this. But he knew that he was not allowed into certain places, such as churches, and he imagined this place must be an enormous church — the kind of place into which George so often disappeared on Sundays. He lay down in a sunny corner.

The five children went in through the clicking turnstile. They opened the door beyond and went into the castle grounds. The door shut behind them.

"Wait — we ought to get a guide-book," said Julian. "I want to know something about that tower."

He went back and bought one for another five pence. They stood in the great castle yard and looked at the book. It gave the history of the old place — a history of peace and war, quarrels and truces, family feuds, marriages and all the other things that make up history.

"It would be an exciting story if it was written up properly," said Julian. "Look — here's the plan. There
are
dungeons!"

"Not open to the public," quoted Dick, in disappointment. "What a pity."

"It was once a very strong and powerful castle," said Julian, looking at the plan. "It always had the strong wall that is still round it — and the castle itself is built in the middle of a great courtyard that runs all round. It says the walls of the castle itself are eight feet thick. Eight feet thick! No wonder most of it is still standing!"

They looked at the silent ruins in awe. The castle towered up, broken here and there, with sometimes a whole wall missing, and with all the doorways misshapen.

"There were four towers, of course," said Julian, still with his nose glued to the guide-book. "It says three are almost completely ruined now—but the fourth one is in fairly good condition, though the stone stairway that led up to the top has fallen in."

"Well then — you couldn't have seen a face at that window," said George, looking up at the fourth tower. "If the stairway has fallen in, no one could get up there."

"Hm. We'll see how much fallen in it is," said Julian. "It may be dangerous to the public, and perhaps we'll find a notice warning us off — but it might be quite climbable in places."

"Shall we go up it if so?" said Jo, her eyes shining. "What shall we do if we find the Face?"

"We'll wait till we find it first!" said Julian. He shut the guide-book and put it into his pocket. "Well, we seem to be the only people here. Let's get going. We'll walk round the courtyard first."

They walked round the courtyard that surrounded the castle. It was strewn with great white stones that had fallen from the walls of the castle itself. In one place a whole wall had fallen in, and they could see the inside of the castle, dark and forbidding.

They came round to the front of it again. "Let's go in at the front door — if you can call that great stone archway that," said Julian. "I say — can't you imagine knights on horseback riding round this courtyard, impatient to be off to some tournament, their horses' hoofs clip-clopping all the time?"

"Yes!" said Dick. "I can just imagine it!"

They went in at the arched entrance, and wandered through room after room with stone floors and walls, and with small slit-like windows that gave very little light indeed.

"They had no glass for panes in those days," said Dick. "I bet they were glad on cold windy days that the windows were so tiny. Brrrrrrr! This must have been a terribly cold place to live in."

"The floors used to be covered with rushes, and tapestry was hung on the walls," said Anne, remembering a history lesson. "Julian — let's go and look for the stairway to that tower now. Do let's! I'm longing to find out whether there really
is
a face up in that tower!"

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"CHACK-CHACK-CHACK! Chack-chack-chack!" The jackdaws circled round the old castle, calling to one another in their cheerful, friendly voices. The five children looked up and watched them.

"You can see the grey at the backs of their necks," said Dick. "I wonder how many years jackdaws have lived round and about this castle."

"I suppose the sticks lying all over this courtyard must have been dropped by them," said Julian. "They make their nests of big twigs — really, they must drop as many as they use! Just look at that pile over there!"

"Very wasteful of them!" said Dick. "I wish they would come and drop some near our caravan to save me going to get firewood each day for the fire!"

They were standing at the great archway that made the entrance to the castle. Anne grew impatient. "Do let's look at the towers now," she said.

They went to the nearest one, but it was almost impossible to realize that it
had
been a tower. It was just a great heap of fallen stones, piled one on top of another.

They went to the only good tower. They had hoped to find some remains of a stone stairway, but to their great disappointment they could not even look up into the tower! One of the inner walls had fallen in, and the floor was piled up, completely blocked. There was no sign of a stairway. Either it too had fallen in, or it was covered by the stones of the ruined wall.

Julian was astonished. It was obvious that nobody could possibly climb up the tower from the inside! Then how in the world could there have been a face at the tower window? He began to feel rather uncomfortable.

Was it a real face? If not what could it have been?

"This is queer," said Dick, thinking the same as Julian, and pointing to the heaped-up stones on the ground floor of the tower. "It does look absolutely impossible for anyone to get up into the top of the tower. Well —

what about that face then?"

"Let's go and ask that old woman if there
is
any way at all of getting up into the tower," said Julian. "She might know."

So they left the castle, walked across the courtyard, back to

the little tower in the outer wall that guarded the big gateway.

The old woman was sitting by the turnstile, knitting.

"Could you tell us, please, if there is any way of getting up into the tower over there?" asked Julian.

The old woman answered something, but it was difficult to

understand a word she said. However, as she shook her head

vigorously, it was plain that there
was
no way up to the tower. It was very puzzling.

"Is there a better plan of the castle than this?" asked Julian, showing his guide-book. "A plan of the dungeons, for instance

— and a plan of the towers as they once were, before they were

ruined?"

The old lady said something that sounded like "Society of Reservation of something-or-other."

"What did you say?" asked Julian, patiently.

The witch-like woman was evidently getting tired of these questions. She opened a big book that showed the amount of people and fees paid, and looked down it. She put her finger on something written there, and showed it to Julian.

"Society for Preservation of Old Buildings," he read. "Oh — did somebody come from them lately? Would they know more than it says in the guide-book?"

"Yes," said the old woman. "Two men came. They spent all day here — last Thursday. You ask that Society what you want to know — not me. I only take the money."

She sounded quite intelligible all of a sudden. Then she relapsed into mumbles again, and no one could understand a word.

"Anyway, she's told us what we want to know," said Julian. "We'll telephone the Society and ask them if they can tell us any more about the castle. There may be secret passages and things not shown in the guide-book at all."

"How exciting!" said George, thrilled. "I say, let's go back to that tower and look at the
outside
of it. It might be climbable there."

They went back to see — but it
wasn't
climbable. Although the stones it was built of were uneven enough to form slight foot-holds and hand-holds it would be much too dangerous for anyone to try to climb up — even the cat-footed Jo. For one thing it would not be possible to tell which stones were loose and crumbling until the climber caught hold — and then down he would go!

All the same, Jo was willing to try. "I might be able to do it," she said, slipping off one of her shoes.

"Put your shoe on," said Dick at once. "You are NOT going to try any tricks of that sort. There isn't even ivy for you to cling to."

Jo put back her shoe sulkily, looking astonishingly like George as she scowled. And then, to everyone's enormous astonishment, who should come bounding up to them but Timmy!

"Timmy! Wherever have you come from?" said George, in surprise. "There's no way in except through the turnstile — and the door behind it is shut. We shut it ourselves!
How
did you get in?"

"Woof," said Timmy, trying to explain. He ran to the good tower, made his way over the blocks of stone lying about and stopped by a small space between three or four of the fallen stones. "Woof," he said again, and pawed at one of the stones.

"He came out there," said George. She tugged at a big stone, but she couldn't move it an inch, of course. "I don't know how in the world Timmy squeezed himself out of this space — it doesn't look big enough for a rabbit. Certainly none of
us
could get inside!"

"What puzzles
me
," said Julian, "is how Timmy got in from the outside. We left him right outside the castle

— so he must have run round the outer wall somewhere and found a small hole. He must have squeezed into that."

"Yes. That's right," said Dick. "We know the walls are eight feet thick, so he must have found a place where a bit of it had broken at the bottom, and forced his way in. But — would there be a hole right through the whole thickness of eight feet?"

This was really puzzling. They all looked at Timmy, and he wagged his tail expectantly. Then he barked loudly and capered round as if he wanted a game.

The door behind the turnstile opened at once and the old lady appeared. "How did that dog get here?" she called. "He's to go out at once!"

"We don't know how he got in," said Dick. "Is there a hole in the outer wall?"

"No," said the old woman. "Not one. You must have let that dog in when I wasn't looking. He's to go out.

And you too. You've been here long enough."

"We may as well go," said Julian. "We've seen all there is to see — or all that we are
allowed
to see. I'm quite sure there is some way of getting up into that tower although the stairway is in ruins. I'm going to ring up the Society for the Preservation of Old Buildings and ask them to put me in touch with the fellows who examined the castle last week. They must have been experts."

"Yes. They would probably have a complete plan," said Dick. "Secret passages, dungeons, hidden rooms and all — if there are any!"