Five Children and It by E. Nesbit (top 100 novels of all time .txt) 📕

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 [Pg 177]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 middle 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—[Pg 178]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 you 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 to-day; 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."[Pg 179]

"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 [Pg 180]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 on 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 [Pg 181]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.

"You 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 [Pg 182]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.[Pg 183]

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 invisible, 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.[Pg 184]

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 here, 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!"[Pg 185]

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 stood 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 [Pg 186]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!" and 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.

The great thing, after all, was that they had had dinner; and now everyone felt more courage to prepare for the attack that was to be delivered before sunset. Robert, as captain, insisted on climbing to the top of one of the towers to reconnoitre, so up they all went. And now they could see all round the castle, and could see, too, that beyond the moat, on every side, tents of the besieging party were pitched. Rather uncomfortable shivers ran down the children's backs as they saw that all the men were very busy cleaning or sharpening their arms, re-stringing their bows, and polishing their shields. A large party came along [Pg 187]the road, with horses dragging along the great trunk of a tree; and Cyril felt quite pale, because he knew this was for a battering-ram.

"What a good thing we've got a moat," he said; "and what a good thing the drawbridge is up—I should never have known how to work it."

"Of course it would be up in a besieged castle."

"You'd think there ought to have been soldiers in it, wouldn't you?" said Robert.

"You see you don't know how long it's been besieged," said Cyril darkly; "perhaps most of the brave defenders were killed early in the siege and all the provisions eaten, and now there are only a few intrepid survivors,—that's us, and we are going to defend it to the death."

"How do you begin—defending to the death, I mean?" asked Anthea.

"We ought to be heavily armed—and then shoot at them when they advance to the attack."

"They used to pour boiling lead down on besiegers when they got too close," said An[Pg 188]thea. "Father showed me the holes on purpose for pouring it down through at Bodiam Castle. And there are holes like it in the gate-tower here."

"I think I'm glad it's only a game; it is only a game, isn't it?" said Jane.

But no one answered.

The children found plenty of strange weapons in the castle, and if they were armed at all it was soon plain that they would be, as Cyril said, "armed heavily"—for these swords and lances and crossbows were far too weighty even for Cyril's manly strength; and as for the longbows, none of the children could even begin to bend them. The daggers were better; but Jane hoped that the besiegers would not come close enough for daggers to be of any use.

"Never mind, we can hurl them like javelins," said Cyril, "or drop them on people's heads. I say—there are lots of stones on the other side of the courtyard. If we took some of those up? Just to drop on their heads if they were to try swimming the moat."[Pg 189]

So a heap of stones grew apace, up in the room above the gate; and another heap, a shiny spiky dangerous-looking heap, of daggers and knives.

As Anthea was crossing the courtyard for more stones, a sudden and valuable idea came to her.

She went to Martha and said, "May we have just biscuits for tea? We're going to play at besieged castles, and we'd like the biscuits to provision the garrison. Put mine in my pocket, please, my hands are so dirty. And I'll tell the others to fetch theirs."

This was indeed a happy thought, for now with four generous handfuls of air, which turned to biscuits as Martha crammed it into their pockets, the garrison was well provisioned till sundown.

They brought up some iron pots of cold water to pour on the besiegers instead of hot lead, with which the castle