A Well-Timed Enchantment (4 page)

He held up a hand to stop her, and she turned to view the knights. They were quickly closing the gap between them. The horses' hooves thundered, sending clumps of dirt flying. Closer. Closer. Deanna braced herself, but at the last second couldn't take it and closed her eyes.

"Ha!" Sir Henri shouted. "Did you see that?"

Deanna opened her eyes in time to see him give Oliver a hearty whack on the shoulder. She glanced at the field, ready to look away quickly in case of blood or obviously broken bones, but there was nothing worse than one of the knights chasing after his horse, the same who had almost been toppled in the previous run.

"Knocked Leonard clear out of the saddle!" their companion crowed. "Did you ever see the like?"

"No," Deanna admitted, which was certainly true. She checked to see Oliver's reaction.

He was holding his shoulder and looking at the old man's back with much the same expression she'd seen him use on the neighbors' dog. She put her hand on his arm. "Be polite," she whispered urgently. "Be pleasant."

He relaxed slightly, then nodded impatiently toward the forest.

Deanna shrugged helplessly.

One of the fallen knight's attendants had got ten hold of the horse by the bridle and brought it back to him. He scrambled back on, then once again faced his opponent, the knight Baylen, each of them armed with a fresh lance.

Oliver stepped closer to her. "Does this go on all afternoon, or what?"

"Shhh."

He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Does this go on all afternoon, or what?"

She didn't like it any better, but she certainly couldn't handle this situation by herself; and if they didn't get help here, what were they going to do?

The knights got closer and closer.

"Come on," Sir Henri urged, and Deanna wondered what his connection was with all this: The wronged party? An arbitrator? What did he have riding on the outcome?

Another couple of seconds...

"Oh for two," the old man said.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Deanna.

"Zero to two. Baylen's favor. If Leonard doesn't do something soon, he might as well pack up and go home."

The knights met in a mighty crash. This time Leonard's lance snapped, and it was Baylen who almost lost his saddle.

Sir Henri slapped his thighs. "That's the way, Leonard! Now you're looking alive!"

"I thought you were for Baylen," Deanna said, understanding this less and less.

"Well, I can't very well be for either one: they're both my sons."

For a moment, Deanna had a vision of family misfortune of epic proportions, but then Sir Henri said, "Did you get that?" and she saw that he was addressing the men at the table, the ones writing on the scrolls. "What's going on?" she asked.

"Extra points for that, you know, breaking a lance. Leonard's not out of this game yet."

Deanna, watching Oliver, asked, "Game?"

"This is very exciting," Sir Henri said, reading one of the scrolls over the recorder's shoulders. "The last time that the challenger didn't score 'til the third round and then snapped his lance must have been ... When was it, Ransom?"

"Thirty-eight, my Lord," one of the recorders answered. "Theobald the Grim against Ahern Three-Fingers."

"And that was an exhibition tournament."

"Excuse me," Deanna tried to interrupt.

"How about for their experience level? I mean this is only Leonard's fourth year."

"Let me see..."

"Excuse me," Deanna said again.

"What are the statistics for brothers in competition? How does that hold up to—"

"
Excuse me.
" Deanna spoke so loudly that the old man stopped talking and the recorders stopped recording. Beyond the range of her voice, the knights closed in on each other again, this time on foot, carrying blunted swords.

"I thought there was something important going on here," she said. "Oliver and I are on a life-or-death mission, and we were told to wait because something important was going on here."

"There is." The old man's tone was considerably less grandfatherly; he was obviously miffed. "Just because we're keeping score and comparing statistics doesn't mean that this is unimportant."

"Well, then—" Deanna could see the recorders put their heads down and start scribbling away; obviously Baylen and Leonard, behind her, had begun round four. "What exactly are they fighting about?"

"Whose is the fairest lady."

"Fairest..." Deanna looked from him to Oliver, who was looking determinedly noncommittal about all this. "...lady?"

Sir Henri nodded. "You see, they both went off on quests—knights errant, don't you know?—and each came home betrothed to a foreign-born princess, and—"

"You mean they haven't even seen each other's lady?"

There must have been an edge to her voice, for Sir Henri seemed to lose some of his enthusiasm. "Well, I mean, not so much actually ... this is, so to speak, not what you might in fact,
per se,
call physically—"

"
No,
" Deanna said. "What you're saying is no. They're fighting over whose lady is the fairest, and neither has any idea what the other's lady looks like."

"Well, as a matter of fact, they don't know what their own ladies look like yet, either. That was the nature of their quests."

Deanna put her face in her hands.

"They'll be meeting them come Christmas. Which leaves them plenty of time, before then, to help you with your quest."

"I see." Did she want to get involved with people like this? Deanna straightened her shoulders. Good manners required a polite answer. "Thank you for all your help," she said, though he'd been no help at all.

"My pleasure, Lady Deanna." Sir Henri kissed her hand before she realized what he was up to.
He didn't seem to notice that her cheeks flamed brightly. "Meanwhile, why don't you go up to the castle and wait for the boys to finish here?" He pointed in the direction which they would have taken had they continued on the path the elves had indicated. Now that she looked, she could see a tower over the trees.

She hesitated, and he said, "It's the only castle within several days' journey. Most people keep clear of the woods here. Said to be enchanted, don't you know?"

"Really?" she asked weakly.

"So why don't you and..." He looked at Oliver.

"This is Oliver." Because she'd had such bad luck introducing him as her friend, she decided that young ladies of this time must not wander around unchaperoned in the company of young male friends. She added: "My squire."

"Squire!" Sir Henri sputtered.

Even Oliver gave her a startled look.

But the old man got distracted by the knights' duel. "Good!" he bellowed. "Ransom, did you get that?" He turned back to Deanna. "Well, but you're Breton. I was forgetting."

"No—" Deanna started.

"So you just run ahead and introduce yourselves to my sister, Lady Marguerite. We'll be along shortly. Did you see that parry? Did everyone see that parry?"

Deanna whirled around and started walking.

In an instant Oliver had caught up. She waited for him to say "I told you so," but he said nothing. Almost to the castle, she finally couldn't take it anymore. "Well?" she demanded. "Go ahead, say it."

But what he said was "Why squire?"

It took her a moment to recover. "Why not squire?"

"Because squires attend knights, not ladies."

"I didn't know that," Deanna admitted.

"But that's what the word means."

Wonderful. She needed help to go on existing, and the fair folk gave her a walking dictionary. Deanna stopped and turned on him. They stood nose-to-nose because he was a small youth, as he had been a small cat. Which meant he wasn't as perfect as he thought. "I didn't know that," she repeated. "Who attends ladies?"

"Pages," he suggested.

"Thank you." She turned around and resumed walking. "Stop laughing at me," she said.

"I'm not laughing."

She looked at him and realized she couldn't be sure, one way or the other.

The castle was not what Deanna had anticipated. She had assumed something along the lines of Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland, where she had gone with her parents last summer, but Sir Henri's family home was small as castles go and built of rough gray stone. No graceful spires and arches, only one stocky tower with a narrow little window high up off the ground. There was a moat, but it certainly wasn't deep enough for a moat monster, which was a major disappointment for her. She seemed to have been directed here. Was this where her watch had landed when she'd dropped it through the magic well? Or would she find someone here more helpful than Oliver—a champion who would rescue her and save the world as she knew it?

As soon as Deanna and Oliver crossed the drawbridge, they had to make room for a dusty man who appeared to be taking a group of pigs for a stroll around the unpaved courtyard.

"Keep up, Squeakers. Mind yer business, Patch. Keep clear of the lady, all." He doffed his gray woolen cap, and Deanna curtsied, which may or may not have been the appropriate response to a pigman, and held her breath until they had passed, which certainly was appropriate.

"Nice place, huh?" she said, brushing dust off her gown.

"Hard to say." Oliver glanced around. "Looks like they might have mice."

Deanna wasn't sure what to make of that. But by then another man had come around the corner. He had a shaven head, dark bushy eyebrows, and a velvet gown of midnight blue, sprinkled with embroidered gold stars. He carried a staff with a fist-sized crystal ball. "Looks like your traditional wizard," she muttered to Oliver.

"The one with the frog?" he asked.

It took her a moment to remember. "Would you forget the frog?"

"You're the one—"

"Shh."

The man, headed for the entrance to the castle proper, had seen them. He did a double take, staring at Deanna. This was not, she sensed, someone who would put her mistakes in language down to being Breton.

"Greetings," he said, smiling, showing more teeth than a weekday-afternoon game-show host. "Welcome to Castle Belesse."

Inexplicably, she found herself pondering the question: Would
you buy a
vowel
from this man?
She took a step away. "No," she said.

The teeth disappeared. "No? Welcome to Castle Belesse—no?"

"Er, yes."

"Yes?" Decidedly cool now.

"Thank you," Oliver supplied.

The wizard's eyes shifted from her to him, back to her. He gave a tight smile, like Deanna's Aunt Verna, who suffered from chronic indigestion. "Hmm," he said. "Well. I'm Sir Henri's brother, Algernon."

"Deanna." She held out her hand.

Perhaps she was supposed to have recognized his name. In any case, she obviously wasn't supposed to offer a handshake. He stared at her outstretched hand, and after a moment she used it to indicate Oliver. "And this is Oliver, my page."

The wizard gave Oliver's sword the same long, meaningful gaze he had given her hand. "Not from anywhere near here," he observed.

"From Greeley."

"Ah! Greeley. Which is..."

She had been willing to tell Sir Henri, but she was darned if she was going to tell this character Algernon. "Across the sea."

He flashed that toothy game-show smile again. "Which sea?"

"Several of them actually. Is Lady Marguerite in? Sir Henri sent us." Which was true only in the strictest sense, but this wizard was making her desperately nervous.

He folded his arms across his chest "Ah, the Lady Marguerite. I'm her brother, too."

But then another voice cut in: "I can take you to see her—miss, sir." The speaker was a tall, skinny girl with a struggling goose tucked under her arm. "The lady's in her room, of course, this time of day. But she'll be glad for the company."

The wizard glared at the servant girl, but then he bowed to Deanna. "My pleasure," he murmured. "We must talk again at greater length, my Lady Deanna."

"If we must, we must," Deanna said, hoping
she'd be long gone before that. She rushed to catch up with the goosegirl.

Oliver moved in beside her, which she knew by seeing him, never by hearing: his steps were quick and quiet, and his breathing never became labored as the goosegirl led them up several flights of steep stairs.

"Keep an eye out for that one," Deanna whispered.

Oliver shot her a quizzical look, mouthing the words: Eye out?

"He's the one." Oliver's persistent blank look was becoming infuriating. "The one who's going to find the watch and change history, like the fair folk warned."

"Algernon?" Oliver whispered. "How can you tell?"

"Well, just look at him."

He glanced back the way they had come. "But Deanna, he's not here."

"I mean, you can tell—I can tell—by the way he looks. He looks like a troublemaker. Trust me, Oliver. I know what I'm talking about"

"I trust you," Oliver said, with enough sincerity to make the hairs on her arms stand on end. Surely he didn't consider
her
the leader?

"That wizard." She raised her voice for the servant girl to hear, "Algernon. Is he a good wizard or a wicked one?"

"Oh, I couldn't ever say anything bad about Lord Algernon."

Couldn't?
Deanna wondered, but before she could ask, the girl finally stopped in front of a heavy wooden door and rapped her knuckles against it.

"Visitors, Lady Marguerite."

Deanna heard no answer, but the girl pushed the door open, then curtsied at Deanna and Oliver. "Good day, miss." She covered a giggle with her hand. "Sir." And she scurried away down the hall, leaving them to enter the room or go back the way they had come.

The room was dimly lit. Heavy tapestries hung on the walls, floor to ceiling, blocking out all hint of sunlight if there were, in fact, windows behind them. There were a few candles placed on the various chests and tables in the room, giving the place the look and scent of a church between services. Except, of course, for the big bed in the center of the room. And the lady in it, surrounded by so many pillows it was hard to tell where they ended and she began.