The Castle in the Attic (8 page)

He stopped at the door of Mrs. Phillips's room. It felt empty, although the smell of her lavender soap lingered in the air. He sat in her chair and looked out her window for a long time, watching the swallows swoop and dip over the lawn in the last, even light of
day. “Remember, she isn't gone,” he cried out suddenly. “I've still got her with me. Upstairs.”

“William? Is that you?” called a voice from the end of the hall.

William jumped up. “Dad?”

His father met him at the door. “It's me. I came home a little early. Has she left?” he asked.

“Yes,” William said. He pushed past his father. “Let's go downstairs. It's too dark and creepy up here.”

They cooked their favorite meal for dinner that night. William pressed out the waffles with the old black iron, and his father stirred chopped green peppers and Tabasco sauce into an omelet. It was an odd combination of tastes, but over the years they had gotten used to it.

“Was it hard when Mrs. Phillips left?” his father asked as they sat together at the kitchen table.

William nodded. He pretended to concentrate on the maple syrup, filling each separate waffle square before he went on to the next.

“I'm going to try and get home earlier on the nights your mother has evening hours so we can eat dinner together. We'll have to expand our repertoire, though,” he said with a smile.

“Well, we still have our pot roast with currant jelly,” William reminded him.

“And our chicken soup with bacon bits. But those things take a long time.”

“What are you thinking about, Dad?” William asked. “You've got that funny look on your face.”

“I thought we'd try Chinese.”

“Chinese?”

His father handed William a package from under the table.

“It's an early-birthday–late-goodbye-Mrs.-Phillips present from me. Go ahead, open it.”

It was a funny-shaped metal bowl with a Chinese cookbook and two sets of chopsticks inside.

William laughed. “Most fathers give their sons footballs.”

His father frowned. “Well, I'm not most fathers and you're not most sons. It's a wok. A special pan for stir-frying Chinese food. We can pick out the recipes the night before, and I'll buy the food on the way home from the office.”

“You won't forget?” William asked. The question was a fair one. His father was easily distracted.

“You can call and remind me.”

“All right. It's a deal.” William started leafing through the book. “For Thursday night, let's do beef and broccoli.”

They washed the dishes and put them away. William spread his homework out on the big table in the
living room and worked to the blare of Vivaldi's trumpets. His father loved music. Whenever he was in the house, there was music playing in all the rooms on the elaborate speaker system he'd installed himself.

“I've been meaning to get to the attic and measure the castle so I can make the moat,” his father said as William headed up the stairs to bed.

“That's all right, Dad,” William said nervously. Mrs. Phillips and the Silver Knight would have no warning. “The castle doesn't really need a moat.”

“You just think I'm going to give up on this project the way I have on some others.”

“I don't mind, Dad. I know how busy you are with everything.”

His father smiled and went back to reading the newspaper without another word.

William got into bed without checking on the lord and lady in the attic. He pretended he did not want to wake them, but he knew underneath he could not face her disapproval again. “I'm sure she'll change her mind by tomorrow,” he said out loud to nobody. Finally, he fell asleep with the solid lump of his old bear pushed comfortingly against the lump in his stomach.

But she didn't change her mind the next day or the one after that. By Thursday, William had come to dread his afternoon trip to the attic.

“How is she?” he'd ask the Silver Knight, who came up to the upper wall walk at the sound of his footsteps.

“The same,” was his inevitable reply. “She is not eating well, and I can hear her pacing long into the night.”

William tried everything. In the early morning, he brought her breakfast, small bits of toast sprinkled with butter and Marmite. In the afternoon, when he got home from school, he brought her hot tea. He allowed Sir Simon to light a fire in the fireplace in her bedroom, even though he was worried that the whole castle might go up in flames. He cut curtains for her narrow windows out of some red velvet material from his mother's
sewing closet and gave the knight some English postage stamps to paste on her wall. But nothing seemed to work. He had not even seen her since the first day he brought her to the attic.

One afternoon, Sir Simon reported that the giant had been up to visit.

“Which one?” William asked.

“The one you call Dad. He walked all around the castle and then knelt down and spread some ribbon from one corner to the other. Most peculiar behavior. I was watching him through the arrow loop in the wardrobe.”

“That was my father. He said he wanted to build a moat for the castle. I wonder if he's really going to do it. Did he see you or Mrs. Phillips?”

“No. He was not here long. I think she considered calling to him for help, but I persuaded her it would be of no use. The only thing that can restore her to her normal size is the other half of the token.”

“If only she'd let me explain,” William said for the hundredth time.

“She told me last night that she will not come out of her room until you come in and get her,” the knight said slowly.

“But she knows I can't do that,” William cried. “I'm too big.”

There was a brief silence. “I think that's what she means, William,” the knight said.

“She wants me to be small too?”

“She wants you to see how it feels.”

“But how would I ever get big again? I'd be trapped in there.” Even as he said the words, he knew what the knight was thinking. That was exactly what he had done to Mrs. Phillips. “You were part of it too, Sir Simon. It wasn't just my idea.”

“We were both too hasty. She was made small against her will, William. There is no changing that now. Every day she spends here, she loses time in her own world. But I have an idea. Meet me by the drawbridge.”

William lay down on the floor near the front entranceway to the castle. Slowly, the drawbridge was lowered. Sir Simon walked out to the end of the bridge. Then he turned and pointed up at the riddle written above the castle doors. Once again, William read it.

When the lady doth ply her needle

And the lord his sword doth test
,

Then the squire shall cross the drawbridge

And the time will be right for a quest
.

“So what?” he said.

“We have the lord and we have the lady. We are only missing the squire,” Sir Simon said. “Think about
it, William.” Without another word, he went back inside and raised the drawbridge for the night.

The next day, William waited for Jason after school. He needed desperately to talk to somebody. Jason looked surprised to see him.

“Want to bike into town?” William suggested cautiously. “I have to get some food for dinner.”

“Sure, I don't have anything better to do.” They pulled their bikes out of the rack and headed out to the main road.

“How's the castle?” Jason asked, drawing up alongside.

“Okay. Mrs. Phillips left last week. She said to say goodbye to you.”

“I didn't think she was going that quickly.”

The traffic was bad, and the two of them had to concentrate on steering for the rest of the ride into town. Jason did seem a bit surprised when William led him through the grocery store to the vegetable section along the rear wall.

“Ginger, broccoli, soy sauce. That's it. We've got the flank steak at home.”

“What's the deal?” Jason asked.

“My father and I are cooking Chinese the nights that Mom works late. Want to have dinner with us tonight?”

Jason shook his head. “I'll let you practice for a couple more weeks,” he said with a grin.

“Want to come back with me now?”

“Sure.”

William was glad he didn't have to talk about his problems right there on the sidewalk. When they got home, he walked through the house turning on the lights.

“I always do that first when I get home,” William explained.

Jason nodded. “Must be weird coming home to an empty house after all the years of Mrs. Phillips being here. Kind of neat too. I wish my mother wasn't always hanging around asking about my day at school.”

They settled down at the kitchen table with two big bowls of cold cereal.

“Jason, what if you had a friend who really needed your help but you couldn't help him unless you changed yourself,” said William.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, pretend somebody was beating me up and your glasses got knocked off and you couldn't find them. Would you try to do something anyway?”

“Sure, but I wouldn't be much help.”

“But would you try and fight the guy off anyway?” William asked.

“Well, I wouldn't go away and leave you if you
were in trouble like that.”

“That's what I thought you'd say.”

“What's this all about?” Jason asked.

William wanted to tell him everything. All about the castle and the Silver Knight and what he'd done to Mrs. Phillips. He knew Jason would not laugh at him, but he also knew that keeping the secret to himself was part of what he had to go through. He'd gotten himself into this mess, and he had to get himself out.

“I'm doing a story for English class and I'm not sure how it's going to end,” he said. It was a lame excuse, but Jason didn't question him further.

Maybe when it's all over, I can tell Jason about it
, William thought later that night.
When I come back. If I come back
.

He sat up in bed. “If I'm talking about coming back, I must have decided to go,” he said to the empty room.

William kept his decision to himself for a couple of days. His visits to the attic were brief and businesslike. He ignored the meaningful looks from the knight and his hints that Mrs. Phillips's health was deteriorating.

On Sunday afternoon when William came in from a special gymnastics practice, his father called him down to his workroom in the cellar. Sitting on the cement floor was a wooden platform, which was surrounded by a separate wooden rectangle.

“Do you like it?” William's father asked.

“What is it?”

“The platform is for the castle. The outer frame is a wall so that when you let down the drawbridge it can rest right here.” His father pointed to a notch in the outer wall. “The tunnel in between them is the moat. You take the wall,” he said, lifting up the platform.

“Dad, where are you going?” William called.

“Up to the attic.” His father's voice floated back to him from the top of the cellar steps.

William picked up the rectangular wall and hurried after him. How was he going to get up there in time to warn Sir Simon?

“Dad, wait, let me go first,” he called, but his father was already on the second floor.

“I can't stop now, William. This thing is heavy,” he shouted back, and before William could say anything more, he heard the tramp of his father's shoes on the attic steps.

By the time he got upstairs, his father had settled the platform down next to the castle.

“It still smells like smoke up here. I noticed it the other day when I came up to measure the castle,” Mr. Lawrence said. “Do you smell it?”

“No,” William said quickly. “It's always this way. I'll pick up the castle and you slip the platform under.”

“It's too big for you to lift alone,” his father said.
“We'll each lift one side and push the platform under with our feet. Ready? Heave-ho.”

William lifted his side of the castle very carefully, trying to keep even with his father. Looking down from above, he could see the terrified face of the Silver Knight staring up at him from behind the stable door. Mrs. Phillips was probably in her bedchamber, safely hidden under the roof. They had disturbed Sir Simon's dinner. His plate spilled off the table and rolled across the courtyard while they were pushing the platform into place with their feet.

“All right, let her down, William. There, that's perfect.” Mr. Lawrence lowered the outer wall over the castle. “Drop the drawbridge and we'll see how it fits.” The drawbridge settled easily into the notch in the wood.

“That's terrific, Dad.” William was trying desperately to lure his father back down the steps, but he was pacing around the castle, sniffing the air.

“Odd smell. I don't remember it before. I'd better have a smoke alarm installed up here. Oh, one more part. I have it in my pocket.” Mr. Lawrence pulled out a triangular wedge of wood and connected it to the end of the drawbridge. “Now the returning victorious army can get up the ramp.”