The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (53 page)

“Grammercy for thy courtesy, fair sir knight. The fact is, it’s like this—and I hope you’re not in a hurry, because the story’s rather a breather. Father and mother are away, and when we went down playing in the sand-pits we found a Psammead.”

“I cry thee mercy! A Sammyadd?” said the knight.

“Yes, a sort of—of fairy, or enchanter—yes, that’s it, an enchanter; and he said we could have a wish every day, and we wished first to be beautiful.”

“Thy wish was scarce granted,” muttered one of the men-at-arms, looking at Robert, who went on as if he had not heard, though he thought the remark very rude indeed.

“And then we wished for money—treasure, you know; but we couldn’t spend it. And yesterday w
e wished for wings, and we got them, and we had a ripping time to begin with—”

“Thy speech is strange and uncouth,” said Sir Wulfric de Talbot. “Repeat thy words—what hadst thou?”

“A ripping—I mean a jolly—no—we were contented with our lot—that’s what I mean; only, after we got into an awful fix.”

“What is a fix? A fray, mayhap?”

“No—not a fray. A—a—a tight place.”

“A dungeon? Alas for thy youthful fettered limbs!” said the knight, with polite sympathy.

“It wasn’t a dungeon. We just—just encountered undeserved misfortunes,” Robert explained, “and today we are punished by not being allowed to go out. That’s where I live,”—he pointed to the castle. “The others are in there, and they’re not allowed to go out. It’s all the Psammead’s—I mean the enchanter’s fault. I wish we’d never seen him.”

“He is an enchanter of might?”

“Oh yes—of might and main. Rather!”

“And thou deemest that it is the spells o
f the enchanter whom thou hast angered that have lent strength to the besieging party,” said the gallant leader; “but know thou that Wulfric de Talbot needs no enchanter’s aid to lead his followers to victory.”

“No, I’m sure you don’t,” said Robert, with hasty courtesy; “of course not—you wouldn’t, you know. But, all the same, it’s partly his fault, but we’re most to blame. You couldn’t have done anything if it hadn’t been for us.”

“How now, bold boy?” asked Sir Wulfric haughtily. “Thy speech is dark, and eke scarce courteous. Unravel me this riddle!”

“Oh,” said Robert desperately, “of course you don’t know it, but you’re not
real
at all. You’re only here because the others must have been idiots enough to wish for a castle—and when the sun sets you’ll just vanish away, and it’ll be all right.”

The captain and the men-at-arms exchanged glances at first pitying, and then sterner, as the longest-booted man said, “Beware, my noble lord; the urchin doth but feign madness to escape fro
m our clutches. Shall we not bind him?”

“I’m no more mad than you are,” said Robert angrily, “perhaps not so much—Only, I was an idiot to think you’d understand anything. Let me go—I haven’t done anything to you.”

“Whither?” asked the knight, who seemed to have believed all the enchanter story till it came to his own share in it. “Whither wouldst thou wend?”

“Home, of course.” Robert pointed to the castle.

“To carry news of succor? Nay!”

“All right, then,” said Robert, struck by a sudden idea; “then let me go somewhere else.” His mind sought eagerly among the memories of the historical romance.

“Sir Wulfric de Talbot,” he said slowly, “should think foul scorn to—to keep a chap—I mean one who has done him no hurt—when he wants to cut off quietly—I mean to depart without violence.”

“This to my face! Beshrew thee for a knave!” replied Sir Wulfric. But the appeal seemed t
o have gone home. “Yet thou sayest sooth,” he added thoughtfully. “Go where thou wilt,” he added nobly, “thou art free. Wulfric de Talbot warreth not with babes, and Jakin here shall bear thee company.”

“All right,” said Robert wildly. “Jakin will enjoy himself, I think. Come on, Jakin. Sir Wulfric, I salute thee.”

He saluted after the modern military manner, and set off running to the sand-pit, Jakin’s long boots keeping up easily.

He found the Fairy. He dug it up, he woke it up, he implored it to give him one more wish.

“I’ve done two today already,” it grumbled, “and one was as stiff a bit of work as ever I did.”

“Oh, do, do, do, do,
do
!” said Robert, while Jakin looked on with an expression of open-mouthed horror at the strange beast that talked, and gazed with its snail’s eyes at him.

“Well, what is it?” snapped the Psammead, with cross sleepiness.

“I wish I w
as with the others,” said Robert. And the Psammead began to swell. Robert never thought of wishin
g the castle and the siege away. Of course he knew they had all come out of a wish, but swords and daggers and pikes and lances seemed much too real to be wished away. Robert lost consciousness for an instant. When he opened his eyes the others were crowding round him.

“We never heard you come in,” they said. “How awfully jolly of you to wish it to give us our wish!”

“Of course we understood that was what you’d done.”

“But you ought to have told us. Suppose we’d wished something silly.”

“Silly?” said Robert, very crossly indeed. “How much sillier could you have been, I’d like to know? You nearly settled
me
—I can tell you.”

Then he told his story, and the others admitted that it certainly had been rough on him. But they praised his courage and cleverness so much that he presently got back his lost temper, and felt bra
ver than ever, and consented to be captain of the besieged force.

“We haven’t done anything yet,” said Anthea comfortably; “we waited for you. We’re going to shoot at them through these little loopholes with the bow and arrows uncle gave you, and you shall have first shot.”

“I don’t think I would,” said Robert cautiously; “you don’t know what they’re like near to. They’ve got
real
bows and arrows—an awful length—and swords and pikes and daggers, and all sorts of sharp things. They’re all quite, quite real. It’s not just a—a picture, or a vision or anything; they can
hurt us
—or kill us even, I shouldn’t wonder. I can feel my ear all sore yet. Look here—have you explored the castle? Because I think we’d better let them alone as long as they let us alone. I heard that Jakin man say they weren’t going to attack till just before sundown. We can be getting ready for the attack. Are there any soldiers in the castle to defend it?”

“We don’t know,” said Cyril. “You see, directly I’d wished we were in
a besieged castle, everything seemed to go upside down, and when it came straight we looked out of the window, and saw the camp and things and you—and of course we kept on looking at everything. Isn’t this room jolly? It’s as real as real!”

It was. It was square, with stone walls four feet thick, and great beams for ceiling. A low door at the corner led to a flight of steps, up and down. The children went down; they found themselves in a great arched gate-house—the enormous doors were shut and barred. There was a window in a little room at the bottom of the round turret up which the stair wound, rather larger than the other windows, and looking through it they saw that the drawbridge was up and the portcullis down; the moat looked very wide and deep. Opposite the great door that led to the moat was another great door, with a little door in it. The children went through this, and found themselves in a big courtyard, with the great grey walls of the castle rising dark and heavy on all four sides.

Near the midd
le of the courtyard stood Martha, moving her right hand backwards and forwards in the air. The cook was stooping down and moving her hands, also in a very curious way. But the oddest and at the same time most terrible thing was the Lamb, who was sitting on nothing, about three feet from the ground, laughing happily.

The children ran towards him. Just as Anthea was reaching out her arms to take him, Martha said crossly, “Let him alone—do, miss, when he
is
good.”

“But what’s he
doing
?” said Anthea.

“Doing? Why, a-setting in his high chair as good as gold, a precious, watching me doing of the ironing. Get along with you, do—my iron’s cold again.”

She went towards the cook, and seemed to poke an invisible fire with an unseen poker—the cook seemed to be putting an unseen dish into an invisible oven.

“Run along with you, do,” she said; “I’m behindhand as it is. You won’t get no dinner if you come a-hindering of me like this. Come, off yo
u goes, or I’ll pin a discloth to some of your tails.”

“You’re
sure
the Lamb’s all right?” asked Jane anxiously.

“Right as ninepence, if you don’t come unsettling of him. I thought you’d like to be rid of him for today; but take him, if you want him, for gracious’ sake.”

“No, no,” they said, and hastened away. They would have to defend the castle presently, and the Lamb was safer even suspended in mid air in an invisible kitchen than in the guard-room of the besieged castle. They went through the first doorway they came to, and sat down helplessly on a wooden bench that ran along the room inside.

“How awful!” said Anthea and Jane together; and Jane added, “I feel as if I was in a lunatic asylum.”

“What does it mean?” Anthea said. “It’s creepy; I don’t like it. I wish we’d wished for something plain—a rocking-horse, or a donkey, or something.”

“It’s no use wishing
now
,” said Robert bitterly; and Cyril
said—

“Do be quiet; I want to think.”

He buried his face in his hands, and the others looked about them. They were in a long room with an arched roof. There were wooden tables along it, and one across at the end of the room, on a sort of raised platform. The room was very dim and dark. The floor was strewn with dry things like sticks, and they did not smell nice.

Cyril sat up suddenly and said—

“Look here—it’s all right. I think it’s like this. You know, we wished that the servants shouldn’t notice any difference when we got wishes. And nothing happens to the Lamb unless we specially wish it to. So of course they don’t notice the castle or anything. But then the castle is on the same place where our house was—is, I mean—and the servants have to go on being in the house, or else they
would
notice. But you can’t have a castle mixed up with our house—and so
we
can’t see the house, because we see the castle; and they can’t see the castle, because they go o
n seeing the house; and so—”

“Oh,
don’t
,” said Jane; “you make my head go all swimmy, like being on a roundabout. It doesn’t matter! Only, I hope we shall be able to see our dinner, that’s all—because if it’s invisible it’ll be unfeelable as well, and then we can’t eat it! I
know
it will, because I tried to feel if I could feel the Lamb’s chair and there was nothing under him at all but air. And we can’t eat air, and I feel just as if I hadn’t had any breakfast for years and years.”

“It’s no use thinking about it,” said Anthea. “Let’s go on exploring. Perhaps we might find something to eat.”

This lighted hope in every breast, and they went on exploring the castle. But though it was the most perfect and delightful castle you can possibly imagine, and furnished in the most complete and beautiful manner, neither food nor men-at-arms were to be found in it.

“If you’d only thought of wishing to be besieged in a castle thoroughly garrisoned and provisioned!” said Jane reproachfully.

“Y
ou can’t think of everything, you know,” said Anthea. “I should think it must be nearly dinner-time by now.”

It wasn’t; but they hung about watching the strange movements of the servants in the middle of the courtyard, because, of course, they couldn’t be sure where the dining-room of the invisible house was. Presently they saw Martha carrying an invisible tray across the courtyard, for it seemed that, by the most fortunate accident, the dining-room of the house and the banqueting-hall of the castle were in the same place. But oh, how their hearts sank when they perceived that the tray
was
invisible!

They waited in wretched silence while Martha went through the form of carving an unseen leg of mutton and serving invisible greens and potatoes with a spoon that no one could see. When she had left the room, the children looked at the empty table, and then at each other.

“This is worse than anything,” said Robert, who had not till now been particularly keen on his dinner.

“I’m not so very hungry,” said Anthea, trying to make
the best of things, as usual.

Cyril tightened his belt ostentatiously. Jane burst into tears.

CHAPTER VII

A SIEGE AND BED

The children were sitting in the gloomy banqueting-hall, at the end of one of the long bare wooden tables. There was now no hope. Martha had brought in the dinner, and the dinner was invi
sible, and unfeelable too; for, when they rubbed their hands along the table, they knew but too well that for them there was nothing there
but
table.

Suddenly Cyril felt in his pocket.

“Right,
oh
!” he cried. “Look here! Biscuits.”

Somewhat broken and crumbled, certainly, but still biscuits. Three whole ones, and a generous handful of crumbs and fragments.

“I got them this morning—cook—and I’d quite forgotten,” he explained as he divided them with scrupulous fairness into four heaps.

They were eaten in a happy silence, though they had an odd taste, because they had been in Cyril’s pocket all the morning with a hank of tarred twine, some green fir-cones, and a ball of cobbler’s wax.

“Yes, but look h
ere, Squirrel,” said Robert; “you’re so clever at explaining about invisibleness and all that. How is it the biscuits are here, and all the bread and meat and things have disappeared?”

“I don’t know,” said Cyril after a pause, “unless it’s because
we
had them. Nothing about
us
has changed. Everything’s in my pocket all right.”

“Then if we
had
the mutton it would be real,” said Robert. “Oh, don’t I wish we could find it!”

“But we can’t find it. I suppose it isn’t ours till we’ve got it in our mouths.”

“Or in our pockets,” said Jane, thinking of the biscuits.

“Who puts mutton in their pockets, goose-girl?” said Cyril. “But I know—at any rate, I’ll try it!”

He leaned over the table with his face about an inch from it, and kept opening and shutting his mouth as if he were taking bites out of air.

“It’s no good,” said Robert in deep dejection. “You’ll only— Hullo!”

Cyril st
ood up with a grin of triumph, holding a square piece of bread in his mouth. It was quite real. Everyone saw it. It is true that, directly he bit a piece off, the rest vanished; but it was all right, because he knew he had it in his hand though he could neither see nor feel it. He took another bite from the air between his fingers, and it turned into bread as he bit. The next moment all the others were following his example, and opening and shutting their mouths an inch or so from the bare-looking table. Robert captured a slice of mutton, and—but I think I will draw a veil over the rest of this painful scene. It is enough to say that they all had enough mutton, and that when Martha came to change the plates she said she had never seen such a mess in all her born days.

The pudding was, fortunately, a plain suet one, and in answer to Martha’s questions the children all with one accord said that they would
not
have molasses on it—nor jam, nor sugar—“Just plain, please,” they said. Martha said, “Well, I never—what next, I wonder!” an
d went away.

Then ensued another scene on which I will not dwell, for nobody looks nice picking up slices of suet pudding from the table in its mouth, like a dog.