by Edith Nesbit
“You see it is real,” said Robert, “and they are going to attack.”
All rushed to the narrow windows.
“Yes,” said Robert, “they’re all coming out of their tents and moving about like ants. There’s that Jakin dancing about where the bridge joins on. I wish he could see me put my tongue out at him! Yah!”
The others were far too pale to wish to put their tongues out at anybody. They looked at Robert with surprised respect. Anthea said:
“You really are brave, Robert.”
“Rot!” Cyril’s pallor turned to redness now, all in a minute. “He’s been getting ready to be brave all the afternoon. And I wasn’t ready, that’s all. I shall be braver than he is in half a jiffy.”
“Oh dear!” said Jane, “what does it matter which of you is the bravest? I think Cyril was a perfect silly to wish for a castle, and I don’t want to play.”
“It isn’t”—Robert was beginning sternly, but Anthea interrupted—
“Oh yes, you do,” she said coaxingly; “it’s a very nice game, really, because they can’t possibly get in, and if they do the women and children are always spared by civilized armies.”
“But are you quite, quite sure they are civilized?” asked Jane, panting. “They seem to be such a long time ago.”
“Of course they are.” Anthea pointed cheerfully through the narrow window. “Why, look at the little flags on their lances, how bright they are—and how fine the leader is! Look, that’s him—isn’t it, Robert?—on the grey horse.”
Jane consented to look, and the scene was almost too pretty to be alarming. The green turf, the white tents, the flash of pennoned lances, the gleam of armour, and the bright colours of scarf and tunic—it was just like a splendid coloured picture. The trumpets were sounding, and when the trumpets stopped for breath the children could hear the cling-clang of armour and the murmur of voices.
A trumpeter came forward to the edge of the moat, which now seemed very much narrower than at first, and blew the longest and loudest blast they had yet heard. When the blaring noise had died away, a man who was with the trumpeter shouted:
“What ho, within there!” and his voice came plainly to the garrison in the gate-house.
“Hullo there!” Robert bellowed back at once.
“In the name of our Lord the King, and of our good lord and trusty leader Sir Wulfric de Talbot, we summon this castle to surrender—on pain of fire and sword and no quarter. Do ye surrender?”
“No,” bawled Robert, “of course we don’t! Never, Never, NEVER!”
The man answered back:
“Then your fate be on your own heads.”
“Cheer,” said Robert in a fierce whisper. “Cheer to show them we aren’t afraid, and rattle the daggers to make more noise. One, two, three! Hip, hip, hooray! Again—Hip, hip, hooray! One more—Hip, hip, hooray! ” The cheers were rather high and weak, but the rattle of the daggers lent them strength and depth.
There was another shout from the camp across the moat—and then the beleaguered fortress felt that the attack had indeed begun.
It was getting rather dark in the room above the great gate, and Jane took a very little courage as she remembered that sunset couldn’t be far off now.
“The moat is dreadfully thin,” said Anthea.
“But they can’t get into the castle even if they do swim over,” said Robert. And as he spoke he heard feet on the stair outside—heavy feet and the clank of steel. No one breathed for a moment. The steel and the feet went on up the turret stairs. Then Robert sprang softly to the door. He pulled off his shoes.
“Wait here,” he whispered, and stole quickly and softly after the boots and the spur-clank. He peeped into the upper room. The man was there—and it was Jakin, all dripping with moat-water, and he was fiddling about with the machinery which Robert felt sure worked the drawbridge. Robert banged the door suddenly, and turned the great key in the lock, just as Jakin sprang to the inside of the door. Then he tore downstairs and into the little turret at the foot of the tower where the biggest window was.
“We ought to have defended this!” he cried to the others as they followed him. He was just in time. Another man had swum over, and his fingers were on the window-ledge. Robert never knew how the man had managed to climb up out of the water. But he saw the clinging fingers, and hit them as hard as he could with an iron bar that he caught up from the floor. The man fell with a plop-plash into the moat-water. In another moment Robert was outside the little room, had banged its door and was shooting home the enormous bolts, and calling to Cyril to lend a hand.
Then they stood in the arched gate-house, breathing hard and looking at each other.
The man fell with a plop-plash into the moat-water
Jane’s mouth was open.
“Cheer up, Jenny,” said Robert—“it won’t last much longer.”
There was a creaking above, and something rattled and shook. The pavement they stood on seemed to tremble. Then a crash told them that the drawbridge had been lowered to its place.
“That’s that beast Jakin,” said Robert. “There’s still the portcullis; I’m almost certain that’s worked from lower down.”
And now the drawbridge rang and echoed hollowly to the hoofs of horses and the tramp of armed men.
“Up—quick!” cried Robert. “Let’s drop things on them.”
Even the girls were feeling almost brave now. They followed Robert quickly, and under his directions began to drop stones out through the long narrow windows. There was a confused noise below, and some groans.
“Oh dear!” said Anthea, putting down the stone she was just going to drop out. “I’m afraid we’ve hurt somebody!”
Robert caught up the stone in a fury.
“I should just hope we had!” he said; “I’d give something for a jolly good boiling kettle of lead. Surrender, indeed!”
And now came more tramping, and a pause, and then the thundering thump of the battering-ram. And the little room was almost quite dark.
“We’ve held it,” cried Robert, “we won’t surrender! The sun must set in a minute. Here—they’re all jawing underneath again. Pity there’s no time to get more stones! Here, pour that water down on them. It’s no good, of course, but they’ll hate it.”
“Oh dear!” said Jane; “don’t you think we’d better surrender?”
“Never!” said Robert; “we’ll have a parley if you like, but we’ll never surrender. Oh, I’ll be a soldier when I grow up—you just see if I don’t. I won’t go into the Civil Service, whatever anyone says.”
“Let’s wave a handkerchief and ask for a parley,” Jane pleaded. “I don’t believe the sun’s going to set tonight at all.”
“Give them the water first—the brutes!” said the bloodthirsty Robert. So Anthea tilted the pot over the nearest lead-hole, and poured. They heard a splash below, but no one below seemed to have felt it. And again the ram battered the great door. Anthea paused.
“How idiotic,” said Robert, lying flat on the floor and putting one eye to the lead hole. “Of course the holes go straight down into the gatehouse—that’s for when the enemy has got past the door and the portcullis, and almost all is lost. Here, hand me the pot.” He crawled on to the three-cornered window-ledge in the middle of the wall, and, taking the pot from Anthea, poured the water out through the arrow-slit.
Anthea tilted the pot over the nearest lead-hole
And as he began to pour, the noise of the battering-ram and the trampling of the foe and the shouts of “Surrender!” and “De Talbot for ever!” all suddenly stopped and went out like the snuff of a candle; the little dark room seemed to whirl round and turn topsy-turvy, and when the children came to themselves there they were safe and sound, in the big front bedroom of their own house—the house with the ornamental nightmare iron-top to the roof.
They all crowded to the window and looked out. The moat and the tents and the besieging force were all gone—and there was the garden with its tangle of dah
lias and marigolds and asters and late roses, and the spiky iron railings and the quiet white road.
Everyone drew a deep breath.
“And that’s all right!” said Robert. “I told you so! And, I say, we didn’t surrender, did we?”
“Aren’t you glad now I wished for a castle?” asked Cyril.
“I think I am now,” said Anthea slowly. “But I wouldn’t wish for it again, I think, Squirrel dear!”
“Oh, it was simply splendid!” said Jane unexpectedly. “I wasn’t frightened a bit.”
“Oh, I say!” Cyril was beginning, but Anthea stopped him.
“Look here,” she said, “it’s just come into my head. This is the very first thing we’ve wished for that hasn’t got us into a row. And there hasn’t been the least little scrap of a row about this. Nobody’s raging downstairs, we’re safe and sound, we’ve had an awfully jolly day—at least, not jolly exactly, but you know what I mean. And we know now how brave Robert is—and Cyril too, of course,” she added hastily, “and Jane as well. And we haven’t got into a row with a single grown up.”
The door was opened suddenly and fiercely.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” said the voice of Martha, and they could tell by her voice that she was very angry indeed. “I thought you couldn’t last through the day without getting up to some doggery! A person can’t take a breath of air on the front doorstep but you must be emptying the wash-hand jug on to their heads! Off you go to bed, the lot of you, and try to get up better children in the morning. Now then—don’t let me have to tell you twice. If I find any of you not in bed in ten minutes I’ll let you know it, that’s all! A new cap, and everything!”
She flounced out amid a disregarded chorus of regrets and apologies. The children were very sorry, but really it was not their faults. You can’t help it if you are pouring water on a besieging foe, and your castle suddenly changes into your house—and everything changes with it except the water, and that happens to fall on somebody else’s clean cap.
“I don’t know why the water didn’t change into nothing, though,” said Cyril.
“Why should it?” asked Robert. “Water’s water all the world over.
“I expect the castle well was the same as ours in the stable-yard,” said Jane. And that was really the case.
“I thought we couldn’t get through a wish-day without a row,” said Cyril; “it was much too good to be true. Come on, Bobs, my military hero. If we lick into bed sharp she won’t be so frumious, and perhaps she’ll bring us up some supper. I’m jolly hungry! Good-night, kids.”
“Good-night. I hope the castle won’t come creeping back in the night,” said Jane.
“Of course it won’t,” said Anthea briskly, “but Martha will—not in the night, but in a minute. Here, turn round, I’ll get that knot out of your pinafore strings.”
“Wouldn’t it have been degrading for Sir Wulfric de Talbot,” said Jane dreamily, “if he could have known that half the besieged garrison wore pinafores?”
“And the other half knickerbockers. Yes—frightfully. Do stand still—you’re only tightening the knot,” said Anthea.
CHAPTER VIII
BIGGER THAN THE BAKER’S BOY
Look here,” said Cyril. “I’ve got an idea.” “Does it hurt much?” said Robert sympathetically. “Don’t be a jackape! I’m not humbugging.”
“Shut up, Bobs!” said Anthea.
“Silence for the Squirrel’s oration,” said Robert.
Cyril balanced himself on the edge of the water-butt in the back-yard, where they all happened to be, and spoke.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen—and women—we found a Sammyadd. We have had wishes. We’ve had wings, and being beautiful as the day—ugh!—that was pretty jolly beastly if you like—and wealth and castles, and that rotten gipsy business with the Lamb. But we’re no forrader.bg We haven’t really got anything worth having for our wishes.”
“We’ve had things happening,” said Robert; “that’s always something.”
“It’s not enough, unless they’re the right things,” said Cyril firmly. “Now I’ve been thinking—”
“Not really?” whispered Robert.
“In the silent what’s-its-names of the night. It’s like suddenly being asked something out of history—the date of the Conquest or something; you know it all right all the time, but when you’re asked it all goes out of your head. Ladies and gentlemen, you know jolly well that when we’re all rotting about in the usual way heaps of things keep cropping up, and then real earnest wishes come into the heads of the beholder—”
“Hear, hear!” said Robert.
“—of the beholder, however stupid he is,” Cyril went on. “Why, even Robert might happen to think of a really useful wish if he didn’t injure his poor little brains trying so hard to think.—Shut up, Bobs, I tell you!—You’ll have the whole show over.”
A struggle on the edge of a water-butt is exciting, but damp. When it was over, and the boys were partially dried, Anthea said:
“It really was you began it, Bobs. Now honour is satisfied, do let Squirrel go on. We’re wasting the whole morning.”
“Well then,” said Cyril, still wringing the water out of the tails of his jacket, “I’ll call it paxbh if Bobs will.”
“Pax then,” said Robert sulkily. “But I’ve got a lump as big as a cricket ball over my eye.”
Anthea patiently offered a dust-coloured handkerchief, and Robert bathed his wounds in silence. “Now, Squirrel,” she said.
“Well then—let’s just play bandits, or forts, or soldiers, or any of the old games. We’re dead sure to think of something if we try not to. You always do.”
The others consented. Bandits was hastily chosen for the game. “It’s as good as anything else,” said Jane gloomily. It must be owned that Robert was at first but a half-hearted bandit, but when Anthea had borrowed from Martha the red-spotted handkerchief in which the keeper had brought her mushrooms that morning, and had tied up Robert’s head with it so that he could be the wounded hero who had saved the bandit captain’s life the day before, he cheered up wonderfully. All were soon armed. Bows and arrows slung on the back look well; and umbrellas and cricket stumps stuck through the belt give a fine impression of the wearer’s being armed to the teeth. The white cotton hats that men wear in the country nowadays have a very brigandish effect when a few turkey’s feathers are stuck in them. The Lamb’s mail-cart was covered with a red-and-blue checked tablecloth, and made an admirable baggage-wagon. The Lamb asleep inside it was not at all in the way. So the banditti set out along the road that led to the sand-pit.
“We ought to be near the Sammyadd,” said Cyril, “in case we think of anything suddenly.”
It is all very well to make up your minds to play bandits—or chess, or ping-pong, or any other agreeable game—but it is not easy to do it with spirit when all the wonderful wishes you can think of, or can’t think of, are waiting for you round the corner. The game was dragging a little, and some of the bandits were beginning to feel that the others were disagreeable things, and were saying so candidly, when the baker’s boy came along the road with loaves in a basket. The opportunity was not one to be lost.
“Stand and deliver!” cried Cyril.
“Your money or your life!” said Robert.
And they stood on each side of the baker’s boy. Unfortunately, he did not seem to enter into the spirit of the thing at all. He was a baker’s boy of an unusually large size. He merely said:
“Chuck it now,bi d’ye hear!” and pushed the bandits aside most disrespectfully. Then Robert lassoed him with Jane’s skipping-rope, and instead of going round his shoulders, as Robert intended, it went round his feet and tripped him up. The basket was upset, the beautiful new loaves went bumping and bouncing all over the dusty chalky road. The girls ran to pick them up, and all in a moment Robert and the baker’s boy were fighting it out, man to man, with Cyril to see fair play, and the skipping-rope twisting round their legs
like an interested snake that wished to be a peacemaker. It did not succeed; indeed the way the boxwood handles sprang up and hit the fighters on the shins and ankles was not at all peace-making. I know this is the second fight—or contest—in this chapter, but I can’t help it. It was that sort of day. You know yourself there are days when rows seem to keep on happening, quite without your meaning them to. If I were a writer of tales of adventure such as those which used to appear in The Boys of England when I was young, of course I should be able to describe the fight, but I cannot do it. I never can see what happens during a fight, even when it is only dogs. Also, if I had been one of these Boys of Englandbj writers, Robert would have got the best of it. But I am like George Washington—I cannot tell a lie, even about a cherry-tree, much less about a fight, and I cannot conceal from you that Robert was badly beaten, for the second time that day. The baker’s boy blacked his other eye, and, being ignorant of the first rules of fair play and gentlemanly behaviour, he also pulled Robert’s hair, and kicked him on the knee. Robert always used to say he could have licked the butcher if it hadn’t been for the girls. But I am not sure. Anyway, what happened was this, and very painful it was to self-respecting boys.
He also pulled Robert’s hair
Cyril was just tearing off his coat so as to help his brother in proper style, when Jane threw her arms round his legs and began to cry and ask him not to go and be beaten too. That “too” was very nice for Robert, as you can imagine—but it was nothing to what he felt when Anthea rushed in between him and the baker’s boy, and caught that unfair and degraded fighter round the waist, imploring him not to fight any more.
“Oh, don’t hurt my brother any more!” she said in floods of tears. “He didn’t mean it—it’s only play. And I’m sure he’s very sorry.”
You see how unfair this was to Robert. Because, if the baker’s boy had had any right and chivalrous instincts, and had yielded to Anthea’s pleading and accepted her despicable apology, Robert could not, in honour, have done anything to him at a future time. But Robert’s fears, if he had any, were soon dispelled. Chivalry was a stranger to the breast of the baker’s boy. He pushed Anthea away very roughly, and he chased Robert with kicks and unpleasant conversation right down the road to the sand-pit, and there, with one last kick, he landed him in a heap of sand.
