Knight's Castle (8 page)

"Roger. Like that. It means oke," said the second guard.

"Oak? Oh, you mean oke," said Roger.

Eliza, who had been fuming at this delay, now burst out. "He is
too
Roger," she said, "and this"—pointing at Ann—"is a mighty sorceress. You'd better let us in or you'll be sorry. I'm a pretty well-known witch, myself!"

The second guard turned to his friend. "Maybe it's true, Perce. They've got on pajamas, the way they say Roger did when he done the deed and won the battle! They talk the old ancient yeomanly language, too!"

"I couldn't take the responsibility," said Percy, for that was the first guard's fitting name. "Not for some old impostors. It's your deal." And he returned to his game.

The second guard winked at Roger. "Run along in, kids," he said. "One flight up and the first door on your right. Don't say we sent you."

And the three children pushed past the guards and ran through the great hall of the castle, shuddering at its new modern glass and chromium furniture, and up the stairs.

The first door to the right was open, and they looked in on a disillusioning spectacle. For a minute even Eliza was speechless.

Wilfred of Ivanhoe, in dressing gown and slippers, lay on a couch deep in study. He still wore a bandage round his middle, and he also wore a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. His face looked pale and thin and scholarly. He was reading a book with a red cover, and every so often he stopped and made a note. Roger recognized the book at once. It was called
The Angry Planet,
and he had brought it with him from home, and Ann had used it when she built a public library for the Magic City.

Across the room from Ivanhoe sat Rowena. She had grown much plumper, and was lolling in an armchair, eating chocolate-covered cherries.

"My dear," Ivanhoe was saying, "did you know that Mars is only one-third as big as the earth and so the force of gravity is only one-third as strong?"

"Pass the stuffed dates," said Rowena.

Ivanhoe didn't hear her. He was making a note. Rowena sighed. Then she put on a coaxing expression. "Ivanhoe, when will the siege be over? When will we be married?"

"One moment, my dear," said Ivanhoe. He finished working out his arithmetic problem. "Amazing! That would mean that the Martians must be eighteen feet tall. Otherwise they'd bounce."

"Not necessarily," said Roger from the doorway. "They might be made of something heavier than we are. They might be made of lead. They might be wide instead of high."

"Don't talk so fast," said Ivanhoe, his pencil traveling madly over the paper. "I can't get it all down."

"Who are you?" said Rowena. "How dare you enter this chamber unannounced?"

"I'm Roger," said Roger.

"You don't say?" Ivanhoe looked up with a smile of welcome. "Come in, my dear fellow! Forgive my not getting up. My old wound still troubles me. Sit down. I'm delighted to see you. The old stories always
said
you'd come again some day. To finish the siege, but we don't have to talk about that now, do we?"

"Yes, we do," said Rowena. "I'd
like
to talk about it. You said you'd marry me when the siege was over, but how can the siege be over if you never fight?"

"Please, my dear," said Ivanhoe. "Not now. Roger must have lots more interesting things to tell us. Coming from Elfland, he must know all kinds of things. Tell me"—and he turned to Roger again—"how high exactly
is
the moon?"

"The moon," said Roger, promptly, "is two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles from the earth. Approximately."

"Fascinating," said Ivanhoe. "Is it inhabited?"

"I don't know," said Roger. "Nobody knows."

"Then you can't be Roger," said Ivanhoe. "Roger knows everything."

"Not quite," said Roger, modestly. "I'm only in six-one-A. Now about that siege."

"I'm afraid my fighting days are over," said Ivanhoe. "My old wound, you know."

"Wilfred, that's just your imagination," said Rowena. "That old wound must have healed by now. Goodness knows I make you enough bandages, don't I?"

"Not like the kind Rebecca used to make," said Ivanhoe.

Rowena looked hurt. "Wilfred!" she said. "I thought we agreed never to mention that name!"

But the mention of Rebecca had roused Eliza from her spellbound silence at the door. "Oh, for Heaven's sake!" she interrupted. She marched straight into the middle of the room and stood looking down scornfully. "Wilfred of Ivanhoe, you get right up this minute!" she said. "While you're just lying there, Brian de What's-his-name has kidnapped Rebecca!"

"What?" Ivanhoe leaped up. "Why didn't you say so before?"

"I was just going to," said Roger, sheepishly. "I kind of got sidetracked."

Ivanhoe strode across the room, his eyes flashing fire behind their spectacles. "Perfidious wretch! He shall die for this!"

"Now, Wilfred," said Rowena, following him fussily, "it isn't as if it were the first time. In my opinion people who go round getting themselves kidnapped don't deserve a bit of sympathy! You don't see anyone kidnapping
me,
do you?"

"No," muttered Ivanhoe, "I certainly don't." He was rummaging in a corner. "Where is my new armor? What have you done with my helmet? What is this sticky stuff all over my best sword? Have you been using it to toast marshmallows again?"

"Wilfred," said Rowena, "you get right back on that couch. You're not well."

"A minute ago you wanted me to get up and fight."

"A minute ago," said Rowena, "was different."

"Tush to thy puling," said Ivanhoe, falling into the old yeomanly talk now there was occasion for it. "Hold this cuirass."

"I won't," said Rowena.

"All right,
thou
holdst it, then," said Ivanhoe to Ann, who was nearest. And Ann reached up and held it for him to put on, feeling very romantic and like a lady in a storybook.

The armor was a bit large for him, now he had grown thinner, but he looked quite knightly in it, particularly after he took off his spectacles, which he did because they wouldn't fit under the helmet. "By my halidom!" he cried, when the armor was all on. "I feel like a new man! My old wound scarce troubleth me at all!"

Eliza nudged Roger, and Roger formally introduced Ivanhoe to Ann the mighty sorceress and Eliza the well-known witch. Ivanhoe assured them he was honored, and made a low bow and kissed their hands, while Ann and Eliza giggled, and blushed, and tried to make grand sweeping curtsies, and looked, in Roger's opinion, very silly.

"And now," said Ivanhoe, "where hath the vile villain taken her?"

"To the Dolorous Tower, he said," said Eliza, "wherever that is."

Ivanhoe turned pale, as Rebecca had before him. "It lieth in the Outer Wastes, beyond the edge of the world," he said.

"You mean in Outer Space?" Roger's eyes glowed.

Ivanhoe nodded. "Thou mightst say that it doth. In a way."

"Golly!" said Eliza. This adventure was getting better and better, after all.

Ann didn't think it was. She thought it was getting worse and worse. But before she could say so, there was an interruption.

"That settles it!" said Rowena to Ivanhoe. "You're not going gallivanting off into any Outer Space after any old Rebecca! Why, you might never come back!"

"That's true," said Ivanhoe, brightening and sounding as though he rather liked the idea. "I might never! Besides," he went on, "this giveth me a good chance to try out my Flying Saucer. I've always wanted to."

"Flying Saucer?" cried Ann, in utter alarm. "You don't have one of
those,
do you? Don't look at
meV
she said quickly to Roger. "I didn't put
that
in!"

"I know," said Roger. "
I
did."

"Then you're just as bad as I am," said Ann.

"Come along," said Ivanhoe.

"Stop!" said Rowena, barring their way, but they pushed past her and went down the stairs and through the courtyard and out of the castle.

Ann, who had never so much as been up in an airplane in all her eight years and three months, was a prey to conflicting emotions. She didn't want to go up in a Flying Saucer, but she wanted even less to say so, because that would be putting herself in a class with Rowena, which was not a place where she ever wanted to be.

And now Ivanhoe was leading them behind the castle, and there the Flying Saucer waited, lashed down and straining at its moorings like a live thing. Eliza recognized it at once. "Why, that's part of our breakfast set," she said. "It's Wedgewood."

"Edgeworld," Ivanhoe corrected her. "A pretty thought, is it not? I thought of it. It saileth over the edge of the world. Gettest thou the point?"

"Yes," said Ann, with sinking heart. "I do."

An attendant with a white beard helped them up the ladder into the Saucer. This time Roger recognized him. It was the Old One. He did not speak, but winked at Roger and Eliza, and gave Ann an encouraging pat on the head. This comforted Ann a little, but not much.

They took their places on the rim of the saucer, Ann between Roger and Ivanhoe. "What makes it go?" Roger wanted to know.

Ivanhoe shook his head. "I know not I never dared ride it before." This did not add to Ann's confidence.

The next minute the mechanism, whatever it was, started, and she was thrown heavily against the armored Ivanhoe, who hurt. And the
next
minute they rose, spinning, straight up in the air.

At first the sensation was horrible, like a thousand Empire State Building elevator rides mixed up with a thousand merry-go-rounds, but by the time the machine gained its top speed it was revolving so fast that the children hardly realized it was turning at all, any more than you feel the earth turning under your feet, as the schoolbooks would have you believe it does.

After a bit Ann took courage to look down over the edge. She saw the castle and the city fast disappearing below, and before them not the ghost of shores, before them only shoreless skies.

"This is super," said Roger, hanging his head over the edge next to her, and shouting against the wind.

"Is it?" said Ann.

"Look!" said Eliza, pointing.

They looked. Far above and ahead of them, but coming nearer every second, hung a round shining globe.

"The moon!" cried Eliza, in tones of wild excitement, and "The moon!" cried Roger, in tones of awe, and "The moon!" breathed Ivanhoe in such a tone as Columbus might have used on a certain famous occasion.

"The moon?" said Ann, doubtfully. It didn't look quite right to her. It reminded her of something else.

"We can make it if we just keepeth on," Ivanhoe was saying.

"What about Rebecca?" Ann reminded him.

"Ah yes. I was almost forgetting," said Ivanhoe, with something almost like regret.

"Too bad," said Eliza.

"Maybe some other day," said Roger.

They all peered down over the edge again. The city had vanished, except for a faint glow in the far distance. Otherwise there was nothing to be seen but vast, airy, empty moonlit nothingness. "We had best land at once," said Ivanhoe. "We be over the edge of the world right now."

"How do we make it go down?" Roger wanted to know.

"I know not," Ivanhoe admitted. "What thinkst thou if we all make ourselves as heavy as we can, and then bear down hard?"

This didn't seem very scientific to Roger, but strange to say, it did the trick. The Edgeworld plunged straight downward in the neat habit of all Flying Saucers, with no sissy business of gliding and banking, like your mere airplanes, and at last, after what felt like a thousand
more
Empire State elevator rides (only going down this time, which is far worse), it came to rest as lightly as a large feather on something that felt pleasantly like solid earth.

"Where are we?" said Eliza, clambering down the portable ladder and looking round at the scenery (only there wasn't any).

"The Outer Wastes," said Ivanhoe.

"No, it isn't," said Ann, jumping down and feeling the familiar stubble underfoot. "It's the hall..." But she was interrupted.

"Hist!" said Ivanhoe, a little distance away. "Hark!"

They harked. From somewhere not far off a voice was speaking, and it was the voice of Brian de Bois-Guilbert.

And then, only a little way across the stubbly plain, they saw a tower built all of yellow metal, palely shining in the moonlight. And inside the tower Rebecca languished in durance vile, while Bois-Guilbert stood outside looking in at her, and uttered a cruel laugh.

" 'Tis the Dolorous Tower!" whispered Ivanhoe. And he and Roger and Eliza and Ann moved stealthily nearer.

Bois-Guilbert stood with his back to them, and he didn't turn around as they crept close. "Relent, Rebecca," he was saying. "Proffer me but one kind word, else I must leave thee to perish in this lonely prison on this blasted heath."

"Nay," said Rebecca.

"Rebecca," said Bois-Guilbert again, "think what thou art saying! Do not force me to do this dread deed, for it grieveth me greatly. Only smile on my suit, and thou art free. And if thou lovest me not yet, mayhap thou canst learn."

"Never," said Rebecca.