Knight's Castle (12 page)

The Black Knight stepped forward, and in this moment he looked every inch King Richard the Lionhearted. He drew his sword from its sheath. "This blade," he said, "hath fought right valiantly against Saracens abroad and traitors at home. Take it, and may it do yet one more bright deed for Merrie England."

"Thanks a lot," said Jack.

And he and Roger and Eliza and Ann started walking across the lawn.

But as they drew nearer the house it kept looking bigger and bigger, and the four children felt smaller and smaller in the middle of the vast grassy expanse. There were no fierce cries from within and nothing pounced at them out of the front door. But they felt better when they gained the shelter of a hedge at the side of the house. And beyond the hedge they saw a cellar window.

The window was open what probably seemed only a crack to it, but to small Ann and Roger and Jack and Eliza it was a great yawning cavern. They slithered through the hedge, ran forward stealthily, crouched on the vast sill and looked into the room below.

What they expected to see was a grisly dungeon, with chains, and somebody grinding somebody else's bones to make his bread. That would have been unpleasant, but only to be expected. But that wasn't what they saw at all.

What they saw was a perfectly ordinary-looking rumpus room. If it hadn't been so big it might have looked rather jolly. If the people in it hadn't been so big they might have looked rather jolly, too.

They were a man (if you could call him that) and a woman (or at least a female) and a little girl (if you could describe as little a being that was at least four times as tall as Jack). Their cheeks were of a pink-and-white, china-like perfection, and their eyes were blue and staring, with long curling lashes, and their lips parted, showing pearly teeth.

And no matter what they said or did, they never stopped smiling. After a while, Ann wished they wouldn't.

There was something else peculiar about the room, too. There didn't seem to be enough furniture to go round. And Ann noticed that the train of the female giant's red velvet gown seemed to have been cut away, leaving a jagged edge. And the man giant's tail-coat didn't have any tails. And the little girl giant had blonde corkscrew curls on one side of her face, but on the other side she didn't have any. And suddenly Ann knew the secret of the Giant's Lair. She turned to Eliza to tell her.

"Shush," said Eliza. "Look." And she pointed.

The giant family was squatting down now, and gazing at something on the floor, but Ann couldn't see what it was. Then she heard a piteous voice.

"Oh, please do not play with me any more!" it cried. "I am so tired!" It was the voice of Rebecca.

And far down on the floor, the four children made out the forms of Ivanhoe and Brian de Bois-Guilbert, standing one on each side of Rebecca as though to protect her.

The voice of the female giant now made itself heard.

"Why, the very idea! What impudence. Don't you pay a bit of attention to what the horrid little thing says. You play with them. Play just as hard as you can. Play house with the girl and soldiers with the boys."

"Yes, Mama!" said the child giant. And she picked Rebecca up and started undressing her, and then got tired of that halfway through and put her down in a draft, and took hold of Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert instead, and started marching them up and down the floor in a childish and elementary manner.

Ann and Roger and Eliza looked at each other with indignation.

"It's an insult to the whole order of knighthood!" sputtered Roger.

"
I
think it's an outrage!" said Eliza.

"What have those giants got there? Dolls?" said Jack.

"No, that's Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert," Ann told him. "It's dolls that have got
them!
"

For of course that was the secret of the Giants' Lair. It was the neglected dollhouse Aunt Katharine had given Ann, that she had never played with, except to plunder its rooms when she was furbishing the Magic City.

"I knew there was something wrong with that dollhouse the minute I saw it," Eliza was saying now to Ann.

"You're right," said Ann. "They're not nice dolls."

The little girl doll (or giant) now decided to play war and make Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert have a deadly combat. She did this in crude fashion by holding one of them in each hand and then knocking them together, hard.

"Sorry, old man," said Bois-Guilbert. "Was that my boot in thy left eye?"

" 'Twas not thy fault, old fellow," said Ivanhoe. "Oops! Did I crack thy crown? Blame not me. Blame this monstrous child."

"I do," said Bois-Guilbert. "I blame her more than I can say. And more of the same from her I will not suffer!" And he drew his sword and attacked the giant child.

Of course to her it was as the prick of a mere pin, but she immediately dropped both knights on the floor (stunning them badly) and began to cry, in the whining tone of all crying dolls.

"Mama," she cried. "It hurt me!"

"Why, the vicious thing," said her mother.

"We won't have any more of that!" said the father giant. "They are not fit pets for you to play with! They should be destroyed!"

At this the child giant began to cry louder, but her mother soothed her. "Wait," she said. "I have an idea. Come with me, and Mama will put some iodine on your finger, and then we will come back and Papa will get his pliers and remove their stings. Then you may play with them just as much as you want to."

And the child giant suffered herself to be led away, her father pausing only long enough to put Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert on a table, for safekeeping.

As soon as they'd gone, Eliza said, "Pssst."

Rebecca looked around the room.

"Up here," said Ann.

Rebecca's eyes found the window, high up near the ceiling, and her face lighted. " 'Tis Roger!" she cried. "And the witch and the sorceress with him!"

"Then haply we may hope again," said Ivanhoe.

"Oh Roger," said Bois-Guilbert, humbly. "Thou and I hast crossed swords more than once in days of yore, but fetch us out of this prison and I shall atone for my many sins!"

"Well, for Heaven's sake!" said Eliza, in surprise. "How you've changed, haven't you?"

"We'll save you all if we can," said Roger. "Anyway, we'll try."

"Wait there," said Jack.

"We needs must," said Ivanhoe, peering down from the table. "Other choice offereth there none."

Roger and Ann and Jack and Eliza scrambled out from their perch on the windowsill (for the drop from there was even higher than the drop from the table) and ran around the house looking for a way to the cellar. At last they found some steps leading down, with a door at the bottom.

"For a little girl," said Roger, "the door standeth ever open."

Even as he spoke and even as they looked, the door swung wide of its own accord. But getting to it was another matter.

"Take a giant step," said Eliza, bitterly, looking down at the series of perilous drops before them. But they managed it at last by hanging from the edge of each step with their hands, and then letting go. They arrived at the bottom, whole but somewhat jolted.

And once in the cellar, they faced the problem of how to get Rebecca and Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert down from the table.

"Use thy Elfish magic," suggested Ivanhoe.

"You don't ever seem to understand about that," said Roger. "There isn't any. At least there is, but we can't use it. We're sort of
in
it!"

But it was vain to attempt to explain. "Come, come," said Ivanhoe. "Thou art merely being modest."

"Think how thou hast saved us in the past," said Rebecca.

"Our fate is in thy hands," added Bois-Guilbert, piously. "Heaven hath sent thee to us in our hour of need."

After that the children had to think of something, and it was Ann who saw the end of a skein of yarn hanging down from the table, where the female giant had been knitting, and it was Jack who had the strength to pull a whole mass of the great floppy stuff down to the floor, and it was Roger and Jack who made the rope ladder, and it was Eliza who looked on and told them how to do it. Ann kept watch at the door.

"Sister Ann, what do you hear?" said Roger.

"Awful screams," said Ann. "They're putting on the iodine."

"Good," said Eliza.

At last the ladder was ready, and Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert, pulling as hard as they could on the other end of the yarn, managed to heave it up to the table.

"Ladies goeth first," said Ivanhoe to Rebecca.

"Nay," said Bois-Guilbert. "One of us strong men should precede her, to aid in her descent and break her fall shouldst she tumble."

"What a goodly thought, old man!" said Ivanhoe. "Go thou, and I shall come third."

"Not at all, my dear fellow," said Bois-Guilbert. "After thee!"

"My, you two certainly are pals all of a sudden," said Roger.

"We have sworn brotherhood," said Ivanhoe. "Brian is a new man. He hath reformed."

"Rebecca hath reformed me," said Bois-Guilbert. "It helped to pass the time. Besides, what is chivalry for, if two knights do not unite against a common enemy? Old Wilfred and I have been through thick and thin together in this dungeon."

"There is a great deal of good in old Brian," said Ivanhoe. "We are ... What was the word Roger hath used?"

"We are pals," said Bois-Guilbert, gripping Ivanhoe by the hand.

"Good," said Eliza. "Now let's hurry."

But which of the two knights would finally have gone down the yarn ladder first will never be known. For now heavy feet were heard on the stairs, and the three smiling giants appeared in the doorway. They stood looking around the room.

"Someone has been leaving the cellar door open," said the father giant, crossing to shut it.

"Someone has been snarling up my knitting," said the mother giant, seizing the yarn ladder and pulling it apart beyond repair.

"Someone has been trying to steal my playthings," cried the little-girl giant, "and there they are now!" And she pointed at Roger and Jack and Ann and Eliza.

"Well, well," said her father. "More pets for you to play with. Aren't you the lucky girl?" And he leaned over to pick up Ann.

Ann's heart quailed, though she tried not to let it. And Eliza stepped forward courageously.

"Don't you touch her!" she said. "You'll be sorry! She may not look it, but she's a mighty sorceress. It just so happens I'm a pretty powerful witch, myself. Beware!"

"And I," said Roger, drawing himself up to his full small height, "am the great Roger. You've probably heard of me."

"No," said the giant, "I haven't. And what's more, I don't believe you." And he leaned over them again with his menacing smile.

"Help!" cried Eliza, in sudden alarm. "Jack! Use your sword!"

Jack brandished the blade King Richard had given him.

The giant's face retreated quicker than it had advanced. "What did you say?" he said.

"I told him to use his sword," said Eliza. "He will, too."

"But what was that you called him?" said the giant.

"Jack," said Eliza. "That's his name."

The child giant screamed. The mother giant turned pale.

"I don't believe you," said the father giant again, but his voice trembled. "If that's Jack, where's his beans?"

This time it was Roger who understood. "He's not that Jack," he said. "He's the other one. He's Jack the..."

"Don't say it!" cried the giantess, clutching her offspring to her. "Not before the child!" The three giants gazed at Jack in terror.

"What's the matter with them?" said Jack.

"They think you're Jack the Giant Killer," said Ann.

"Okay," said Jack. "What do I do? Kill them?"

Roger looked doubtful. "Do you suppose we have to?"

"Think of the blood," said Ann. "So
much
of it!"

"Only it'd probably be sawdust," said Roger.

"And they'd probably go right on smiling," said Eliza. "I couldn't stand it."

While this discussion was going on, the father giant had been edging toward the table. Now he suddenly caught up Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert and held them high in the air.

"I'll teach you to come invading people's homes with your nasty murdering friends," he said. "If he doesn't put away his sword, I'll smash them to smithereens."

Ann and Roger and Eliza gazed up in horror at their captive friends. Jack was so startled that he dropped his sword on the floor.

"Pay no heed," called Rebecca to Jack, from somewhere up near the ceiling, which was of skyscraper height. "Take up thy blade!"

"If we die, 'twill be in a good cause," said Ivanhoe.

"I have been a miserable wretch," said Bois-Guilbert, his voice muffled by the giant's hand, but with a sincere ring in it. "But at least I repented before 'twas too late."

"Wait," said Roger to the giant. "Can't we talk this over sensibly? Maybe we could work out some kind of truce."

"What makes you so mean?" said Ann. "What have we ever done to you?"

"Well, really! Well may you ask," said the mother doll (or giant). "It isn't that we mind being played with day and night and wheeled in baby carriages till it's monotonous. Oh no! Nor being undressed and put to bed when we aren't sleepy, and dropped on our heads and left out in the rain, either! That's just part of the normal scheme of things. It's what we were made for. We even enjoy it, in a way. It makes us feel Somebody Cares! But
you
"—her voice trembled and she sounded hurt—"never played with us at all!"