The Enchanted Castle, E. Nesbit [books to read fiction .txt] 📗

of dream, from which they only partially awakened to find themselves in a big hail, with suits of armour and old flags round the walls, the skins of beasts on the floor, and heavy oak tables and benches ranged along it.

The Princess entered, slow and stately, but once inside she twitched her sheeny train out of Jimmy’s hand and turned to the three.

“You just wait here a minute,” she said, “and mind you don’t talk while I’m away. This castle is crammed with magic, and I don’t know what will happen if you talk.” And with that, picking up the thick goldy-pink folds under her arms, she ran out, as Jimmy said afterwards, “most unprincesslike,” showing as she ran black stockings and black strap shoes.

Jimmy wanted very much to say that he didn’t believe anything would happen, only he was afraid something would happen if he did, so he merely made a face and put out his tongue. The others pretended not to see this, which was much more crushing than anything they could have said. So they sat in silence, and Gerald ground the heel of his boot upon the marble floor. Then the Princess came back, very slowly and kicking her long skirts in front of her at every step. She could not hold them up now because of the tray she carried.

It was not a silver tray, as you might have expected, but an oblong tin one. She set it down noisily on the end of the long table and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Oh! it was heavy,” she said. I don’t know what fairy feast the children’s fancy had been busy with. Anyhow, this was nothing like it. The heavy tray held a loaf of bread, a lump of cheese, and a brown jug of water. The rest of its heaviness was just plates and mugs and knives.

“Come along,” said the Princess hospitably. “I couldn’t find anything but bread and cheese⁠—but it doesn’t matter, because everything’s magic here, and unless you have some dreadful secret fault the bread and cheese will turn into anything you like. What would you like?” she asked Kathleen.

“Roast chicken,” said Kathleen, without hesitation.

The pinky Princess cut a slice of bread and laid it on a dish.

“There you are,” she said, “roast chicken. Shall I carve it, or will you?”

“You, please,” said Kathleen, and received a piece of dry bread on a plate.

“Green peas?” asked the Princess, cut a piece of cheese and laid it beside the bread.

Kathleen began to eat the bread, cutting it up with knife and fork as you would eat chicken. It was no use owning that she didn’t see any chicken and peas, or anything but cheese and dry bread, because that would be owning that she had some dreadful secret fault.

“If I have, it is a secret, even from me,” she told herself.

The others asked for roast beef and cabbage and got it, she supposed, though to her it only looked like dry bread and Dutch cheese.

“I do wonder what my dreadful secret fault is,” she thought, as the Princess remarked that, as for her, she could fancy a slice of roast peacock. “This one,” she added, lifting a second mouthful of dry bread on her fork, “is quite delicious.”

“It’s a game, isn’t it?” asked Jimmy suddenly.

“What’s a game?” asked the Princess, frowning.

“Pretending it’s beef⁠—the bread and cheese, I mean.”

“A game? But it is beef. Look at it,” said the Princess, opening her eyes very wide.

“Yes, of course,” said Jimmy feebly. “I was only joking.”

Bread and cheese is not perhaps so good as roast beef or chicken or peacock (I’m not sure about the peacock. I never tasted peacock, did you?); but bread and cheese is, at any rate, very much better than nothing when you have gone on having nothing since breakfast (gooseberries and ginger-beer hardly count) and it is long past your proper dinnertime. Everyone ate and drank and felt much better.

“Now,” said the Princess, brushing the bread crumbs off her green silk lap, “if you’re sure you won’t have any more meat you can come and see my treasures. Sure you won’t take the least bit more chicken? No? Then follow me.”

She got up and they followed her down the long hall to the end where the great stone stairs ran up at each side and joined in a broad flight leading to the gallery above. Under the stairs was a hanging of tapestry.

“Beneath this arras,” said the Princess, “is the door leading to my private apartments.” She held the tapestry up with both hands, for it was heavy, and showed a little door that had been hidden by it.

“The key,” she said, “hangs above.”

And so it did, on a large rusty nail.

“Put it in,” said the Princess, “and turn it.” Gerald did so, and the great key creaked and grated in the lock.

“Now push,” she said; “push hard, all of you.” They pushed hard, all of them. The door gave way, and they fell over each other into the dark space beyond.

The Princess dropped the curtain and came after them, closing the door behind her.

“Look out!” she said; “look out! there are two steps down.”

“Thank you,” said Gerald, rubbing his knee at the bottom of the steps. “We found that out for ourselves.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Princess, “but you can’t have hurt yourselves much. Go straight on. There aren’t any more steps.”

They went straight on in the dark.

“When you come to the door just turn the handle and go in. Then stand still till I find the matches. I know where they are.”

“Did they have matches a hundred years ago?” asked Jimmy.

“I meant the tinderbox,” said the Princess quickly. “We always called it the matches. Don’t you? Here, let me go first.”

She did, and when they had reached the door she was waiting for them with a candle in her hand. She thrust it on Gerald.

“Hold it steady,” she said, and undid the shutters of a long window, so that first a