The Castle in the Attic (2 page)

He put his hand into her large wrinkled one and
allowed himself to be led up the last few steps like a baby.

At the top she squeezed his hand and let it go. “You may look now, William,” she whispered.

“You brought it,” he cried, gazing down on the enormous stone and wooden castle she had told him about ever since he was little.

“It's yours, William. I'm giving it to you.”

“Forever?” he whispered.

“Yes. It's my goodbye present.”

“Then I don't want it.” He sat down on the top step with his back to her and the castle.

“Even if you don't take it, I will be leaving, William. I hope I don't have to drag it back to England with me. It belongs here with you now.”

“Why?” William asked without turning around.

“I haven't been reading you
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
all these years for nothing.” She poked him in the arm, but he didn't answer. “It's more than that. I know that you are the right person for it. You have the kind of gentle soul that accepts the rules of chivalry. If you hadn't turned out the way you did, William, I would never have entrusted the castle to you. I wouldn't give it to just anybody.” Her voice seemed to get smaller, as if the words were having a hard time finding their way out, and he wondered
if she was going to cry. What did she mean by all that stuff about a gentle soul? She seemed to think he was special or something. He didn't like it that he cried too easily and was smaller than the other kids in his class, if that's what she meant by “gentle.”

“All right, show it to me,” he said.

“We'll start at the drawbridge,” she explained, moving around to one side of the castle wall. “Got to do this thing properly.” Down on their hands and knees, with their heads close together, they first inspected the defenses of the castle. “You pull this lever to lower the drawbridge,” she said, reaching down inside the front tower of the gatehouse. “Then this chain raises the portcullis, that metal grating just beyond the double wooden doors.”

“I know what a portcullis is,” William said.

“I'll take away the wooden bar that holds the doors while you work the chain.”

William reached inside and pulled, the links of the chain rubbing back and forth between his thumb and index finger. The metal grille disappeared into the wall above.

“Good, we are inside,” Mrs. Phillips said. “I'll give you the grand tour.”

With their eyes and fingers, they walked through the lower floor first, opening wooden doors and peering into the round tower rooms of the gatehouse, then
across the open courtyard to the stable. If he put his head right inside the courtyard, William could see into the empty stalls.

“This is the armory,” Mrs. Phillips explained as she pulled open the small door beyond. “The weapons are kept here.” Shields, lances, and swords were attached to the walls.

“The kitchen doors slide back. To the left is the buttery, where food and drink are kept cold, and to the right is the scullery where the dishes are washed up. That door in the corner opens to the tower stairs that lead up to the master chambers.”

“The kitchen has a fireplace,” William said, pleased.

“All the main rooms do. Look at the great hall.” She slid open the door across the courtyard. On either side of the fireplace, the walls of the large banquet hall were draped with cloth tapestries. Up above, William could just see the minstrels' gallery, where troubadours and jesters sang to entertain the lords and ladies dining below.

“Feel those round circles of metal around the corner?” Mrs. Phillips said.

He nodded.

“If you pull on those, the door to the chapel will open. You can see it from this side through the stained-glass window.”

He pulled and, like magic, the door opened. He ran
his finger across the cold stone floor.

“Now for the second floor,” she said. “Both of the rear towers have staircases that lead to the upper chambers and also on the left and right to the wall walk. These two roof sections lift off,” she said, picking them up to reveal the upper-story rooms. “On this side you see the minstrels' gallery and then down into the great hall. The other side is the master bedchamber.”

“What's this little room?” William asked, poking his finger into a small space next to the bedchamber.

“That's the wardrobe, where the clothes are kept. The two rooms over the armory and stable are smaller bedrooms for servants or children. You enter them through the master chamber or through the door from the allure, which is the correct name for the wall walk. And that's the end of the official tour.”

William crawled all the way around the castle. He hooked one finger into an arrow loop, blew the dust off the staircases, fastened all the doors. At last, he sat back on his heels. “It's wonderful,” he said. “It's an even better surprise than I thought it would be.”

“I knew you'd like it.”

“Are there any knights?”

“Just one,” Mrs. Phillips said, pulling a small box out of the pocket of her sweater and handing it over. “Save him for later.”

“Why?” he asked.

“It's a family tradition. You're supposed to meet the Silver Knight on your own. My father made me do it that way,” she explained with a shrug. “You know me, I love rituals.”

“All right.” He put the box down in the middle of the courtyard, even though he wanted very much to open it. But he supposed she was right. For now the castle was enough. He wanted her to know how much he liked it. “The castle's really wonderful,” he said again.

She looked pleased. “Time to start dinner. It's just the two of us tonight. Your mother has a school board meeting, and your father went to look at a site.”

“Where did the castle come from? Tell me again,” William said at dinner.

When they ate alone, they always sat in the kitchen. The checkered curtains, the yeasty smell of Mrs. Phillips's toast spread with Marmite, and the circle of light that the green shaded lamp cast around them made William feel cozy in the big, creaky house.

She did not settle into her seat until everything was in place on the table; their plates, the salt and pepper, honey for her tea, ketchup for his noodles, and chocolate syrup for his milk.

“I hate to get up in the middle of a meal,” she said.

“You say that every night.”

“And I mean it every night.” She poured some honey into her tea. The floating spirals of gold slipped underneath the surface, one little circle after another. “Now about the castle. Every family has its own traditions that reach back into that family's history, into another time. Other people pass on Bibles or journals or old wedding dresses. My family has always passed on the castle. It goes back as far as my father's great-grandfather and probably to before that, although we don't have certain proof of it.” She took a bite and chewed on it thoughtfully. “You remember when I went back to England last year?”

William nodded, his mouth full.

“I found the castle in my parents' house when my brother Richard and I were clearing it out. That's when I had it shipped to America.”

“All the way from Stow-on-the-Wold, England?” said William. He used any excuse to roll that funny name around on his tongue.

“Now all the way to Riveredge Lane, Southbrook, New York, care of William Edward Lawrence, complete with drawbridge, chapel, armory, minstrels' gallery, and one Silver Knight. The tapioca pudding is in the icebox. None for me tonight.”

He cleared the table and rinsed the plates. “What about the Silver Knight?” he asked, his voice raised
over the running water. “Has he always been in the castle?”

“As far as I know. I think there might have been other soldiers originally because my great-grandfather mentioned some in a letter about the castle, but I've never seen them. When I was a child, there was only the Silver Knight. There was some legend that was passed down about him. I remember bits and pieces of it. He was thrown out of his kingdom long ago by an enemy of some sort, and it's said that one day he'll come back to life and return to reclaim his land. But the whole time I played with the castle, he was as stiff and cold as lead.”

William sat down again. He made paths in his pudding with his spoon before taking the first bite. He wasn't really listening to her story. The question of her leaving hung between them. It took up as much room at the table as he did.

“Afterward,” he started, his voice almost choking on the word, “will I have dinner alone on a night like this?”

“Oh, William,” she said quietly. When he looked up, he saw tears in her eyes. “Of course not. Don't you see, if I go now, your mother and father will spend more time with you. You and I, we're almost too close. It leaves other people out.”

“The castle doesn't make any difference,” said William, getting up. “I'm still going to figure out a way to make you stay.”

Mrs. Phillips didn't say anything. He went upstairs to do his homework.

William lay in bed for a long time without sleeping. He heard the front door close gently.

“That's Mom. One more to go,” he whispered to Bear, who lay beside him, dressed in William's old sweatshirt.

William's mother was a pediatrician. She had evening office hours so that working parents could bring their children in for checkups. “So who takes me to checkups?” William once asked.

“Mrs. Phillips,” his mother replied. “That's why I'm able to work. I know you're in good hands.”

William didn't answer because he knew that was true. But something about it gnawed at him.

Last year, his mother had run for the school board, so now she had meetings after office hours twice a
month. But that was all right, too, because Mrs. Phillips was always there on weeknights.

William listened to the sounds his mother made as she moved through the house. “Let's pretend we're asleep,” he whispered to Bear. He lay still as she pulled the blankets up to his shoulder and tucked them under his chin. She leaned over and kissed him on the right temple. The smell of her perfume hung in the air after she'd left.

The headlights of the second car swept across the ceiling as Dad pulled into the driveway. “Number two,” William mumbled into the pillow. More doors and running water and some whispering in the hall, and then the big house was quiet.

He let a little more time go by, just to be on the safe side, and then got very quietly out of bed. “Come on, Bear, let's go upstairs and get that knight out of his box.” He pulled his reading flashlight out of the drawer in his bedside table and crept down the hall with Bear tucked securely under his arm.

William knew just how far to open the attic door so that it wouldn't creak. He and Bear slipped through without a sound. He flipped on the light switch and left his flashlight on the bottom step. The castle loomed above him, a great gray shadow. He was glad he had brought Bear.

“All right, your lordship, I have come to meet you,” William announced in a loud voice in order to cheer himself on. There was an odd, expectant feeling in the attic.

He propped Bear up against an old trunk and knelt down. In the middle of the courtyard the small box sat right where William had left it. He picked it up and opened it. In a soft bed of crumpled tissue paper lay the Silver Knight. He carried a shield decorated with a cross in one corner and the small carved figure of a lion in the other. William noticed the sword was missing from the knight's scabbard, although his dagger was in place on his right hip. His right hand was raised with a clenched fist, as if he were challenging some unseen enemy. After studying him for a moment, William picked him up.

To his amazement, the figure felt soft and wrinkled and warm. And it moved. William screamed and dropped it. With a tiny clanking noise, the knight fell back down into the courtyard.

William grabbed Bear and pounded down the stairs. He stopped outside the attic door. “He couldn't really be alive. I must have imagined it,” he said as he tightened his hold on Bear. He opened the door again and peered up the stairs. There was no sound. “Come on,” he said. “I'm not going to be scared by a lead
knight that's two inches high.” With that pronouncement, he marched back up the stairs and peered over the wall of the castle.

The knight was still lying on the ground where William had dropped him. William gave him a little push with his finger. The man's tiny arm fell across his chest.
He really is alive
, William thought.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

He watched as the small man rolled slowly over on to his side and pushed himself up into a sitting position. He pulled the metal helmet off his head and set it down carefully beside him, smoothing the red plume with his fingers. At last, he looked up a very great distance to William. When he opened his mouth to speak, William leaned down to listen.