The Complete Psammead Trilogy (Illustrated Edition). Edith Nesbit
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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 from 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 to 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 to-day 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 was with the others," said Robert. And the Psammead began to swell. Robert never thought of wishing 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."
"Oh, do, do, do!" said Robert
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 braver 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 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—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."
"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