“Did you feed the falcons?” he snapped.
“They wouldn’t eat those mice,” replied the squire, not daring to look at his master.
“What did you say?” The Spiky Knight angrily got to his feet and went over to the birds. The tip of his shoe nudged the golden lid aside. In her fright, Igraine bit her lips until they were almost bleeding.
“You haven’t been giving them fruit and vegetables again, have you?” growled Rowan the Heartless.
The squire’s head bent even lower.
“Those falcons are carnivores,” said his master in a menacingly quiet voice. “Meat eaters, hunters, birds of prey. If you feed them anything but mice once more,” he said, treading right on the lid, “I’ll tell Osmund to turn you into a mouse, and perhaps the falcons will like you. Understood?”
“Understood, sir!” breathed the squire.
“Then go and get … what the devil’s this?” Heartless raised his foot and picked up the shining lid. “Feeding the birds out of golden boxes now, are you?”
“I … I don’t know, sir,” stammered the squire. “No, sir, no, I really haven’t. I was just …”
Rowan Heartless examined the lid. He even smelled it. “Strange,” he murmured suspiciously.
It was high time to get out of there — more than high time. Quietly as a cat, Igraine was tiptoeing toward the tent flap when there was a strange noise outside. It sounded like a hoarse trumpet.
“Go and find out what’s up!” Rowan Heartless snapped at his squire. The boy shot past Igraine and out of the tent like lightning.
“Sir, there — there — there’s a strange knight on the castle battlements!” he stammered when he stumbled back in again.
“What kind of strange knight?” growled Heartless, standing up.
Igraine’s heart beat faster.
“He — he — he’s challenging you to single combat!” stuttered the boy.
His master pushed him aside and marched out of the tent. Igraine waited for only a split second. Then she followed him.
23
Everyone streamed out to the moat, and Igraine let the crowd sweep her along, not that there was anything else she could do. She clutched the dragon skin tightly in case it slipped off in the general turmoil, made her way past the shying horses, and walked through a throng of baffled soldiers who stared straight through her. When she reached the moat she stopped behind a catapult. Rowan Heartless was only a few paces away, surrounded by his squires and looking up at the battlements of Pimpernel Castle.
There stood the Sorrowful Knight, without his helmet on and without his shield. Bertram was peering over the wall beside him. So he had made it into the tunnel. He was holding a horn that had been lying around gathering dust in the armory for years. That was probably what Igraine had heard in the Spiky Knight’s tent. She would have loved to wave to the two of them, but among so many enemies she didn’t even dare to bring a hand out from under the dragon skin.
“Is that one of the two mysterious knights who slipped through the guards’ fingers in the wood?” Igraine heard Heartless ask. “Devil knows he doesn’t look as huge and terrible as they claimed.”
The crowd parted behind him, and Osmund’s servants put their master’s armchair down beside the castellan. Water was still dripping from the red upholstery. Three men had turned into fish as they hauled it out of the moat.
“What’s all this?” asked Osmund in astonishment when he saw the Sorrowful Knight up on the battlements. “How did that knight get into the castle?”
“He’s done what we’ve been trying to do for days,” replied Rowan Heartless, never taking his eyes off his challenger. “The guards told me about a fight on the outskirts of the forest last night. It seems that the huge stone lion there came to life and swallowed up two knights.”
Angrily, Osmund turned to his men. “Have everyone who was on guard in the forest last night thrown into the enchanted moat,” he ordered. “At once!”
The six guards had no time to run away. They were dragged to the moat and pushed in — and next moment, covered in silvery scales, they were diving down among the water lilies.
“Rowan Heartless, now castellan to Osmund the Greedy, hear me!” the Sorrowful Knight called down from the battlements. “I, the Sorrowful Knight of the Mount of Tears, challenge you to single combat. When the sun touches the treetops of the woods, I will cross lances with you outside the walls of this castle that your rapacious army is besieging.”
Igraine looked around. Everyone was staring up at the strange knight who dared to challenge Osmund’s invincible castellan. This was her moment. It was too far to get to the escape route along the tunnel. She decided to swim the moat.
“So you want to fight me?” Rowan Heartless called up to his challenger. “Why not? This siege is very tedious and boring. I’ve no objection to a passage at arms with my jousting lance. And there won’t be more than one, unless you’ve learned to joust better since I last defeated you. Don’t think I didn’t recognize you, Sorrowful Knight! Why did you creep into this castle by the back door? To play nursemaid to that jug-eared, snotty-nosed beanpole of a boy and his little sister in her silly suit of armor?”
That horrible, horrible, horrible Hedgehog! Perhaps she ought to drag him into the moat with her! Igraine was quivering with rage, but Albert had taught her how to control her anger. “Sissle-sassle-Pimpernel, hush, red anger, now be still,” she whispered, and her heartbeat slowed down; her head could think again. Back to the castle, Igraine, she thought, slipping past the catapult and making for the moat.
“A knight does not fight with insults, Heartless!” called the Sorrowful Knight. “I want your word of knightly honor that if I defeat you, your disgraceful master Osmund will raise the siege and leave with all his soldiers.”
“You have my word of honor!” replied Osmund instead of his castellan, but his mocking smile said more clearly than any words what he thought of the strange knight’s chances of victory.
“Very well, that’s settled!” Rowan Heartless called to his challenger. “But what’s my reward if I defeat you? Will these badly behaved brats finally hand over the Singing Books?”
“Never!” cried Albert, jumping up on the wall beside the Sorrowful Knight. “Those books have been entrusted to our family for more than three hundred years. The Queen of the Wood Sprites herself gave them into our care.”
Keep on talking, Albert, thought Igraine, you do it brilliantly. Distract their attention, just for a moment. And she jumped into the moat.
“Something’s fallen into the water, sir!” she heard one of Osmund’s soldiers calling.
“One of you blockheads, I expect,” replied Osmund without turning around. He was still looking up at Albert.
“Yes, you heard me, Osmund!” Albert called. “The wood sprites themselves made the books. Their pages would wither like autumn leaves in your greedy fingers. They’d never sing their spells for you. Never. Not if you live to be as old as our castle. So raise this stupid siege of yours!”
The water in the moat had no effect on Igraine; it didn’t harm any member of her family. She need not fear the water snakes, either; far from it. They had taught her to swim almost before she could walk, and as for her armor, the Books of Magic hadn’t been exaggerating. It really was waterproof. But the dragon skin kept almost drifting away from her, and that made swimming hard work.
I know, she thought, why don’t I ask the snakes for help? Two of them were coiling past her at that very moment, but of course they didn’t see her. Igraine hissed quietly, as she often did when she was feeding them, and took hold of one by the spines on its back.
“Hush,” she whispered as the snake reared its head back in alarm and bared its fangs, hissing. “It’s only me, Igraine. Take me to the small gate, would you? Quick!”
The small gate in the castle wall, the one that Sisyphus liked to use when he went down to the moat, was only a foot or two above the water. Apparently Igraine’s grandmother always us
ed to sink her jewelry in the moat there when enemies were approaching.
The snake easily carried Igraine through the water, but it wasn’t necessarily taking the shortest route, and she saw in alarm that some of the soldiers were looking her way.
“So the Books of Magic will not be my reward if I win!” cried Rowan the Heartless. “But you still say that we are to raise the siege if I am defeated? What kind of a bargain is that?”
“Are you not said to be invincible?” the Sorrowful Knight called back. “If you are, why should the price I ask for victory concern you?”
“And anyway,” called Albert, “there’ll be a reward for you too. Of course. If you win I’ll turn every spear point and every sword outside this castle into pure gold. Your greedy master would like that, wouldn’t he?”
A murmur ran through the ranks of the besiegers. Osmund frowned, and whispered something to his castellan.
“Very well, I accept your challenge!” cried the Spiky Knight. “When the sun touches the treetops of the woods, I will meet you outside the castle, and before the sun has set, I’ll have sent you tumbling in the dust.”
“That’s what you think!” muttered Igraine. The snake had reached the gateway at last. It raised its head, tongue flickering, and reared up out of the water until Igraine was just outside the little gate. She quickly found a foothold on the ledge below it, and luckily she was still invisible under the soaking-wet dragon skin, but when she tried to open the gate, her heart missed a beat.
It was locked.
It’s never kept locked! thought Igraine. Never! She desperately rattled the iron handle, though that didn’t help at all, and finally her foot slid off the wet ledge. In alarm she grabbed for the dragon skin, but it had already slipped off her head and Igraine stood in front of the closed door, clinging to its handle, and watched her cover float down the moat.
“Look!” cried one of Osmund’s soldiers, pointing his lance at her. “There’s a knight in silver armor trying to get into the castle.”
The archers immediately took arrows out of their quivers. Two soldiers drew their heavy crossbows. Now we’ll see what this armor is good for, thought Igraine as she went on shaking the handle.
“Stop!” she heard Rowan Heartless shout. She’d have known his voice among thousands. It was as cold as mist. “Don’t shoot!” he said. “That’s the little minx, can’t you see?” He thrust a couple of soldiers aside with the hilt of his sword and made his way through them until he was opposite Igraine on the other side of the moat. “Were you planning to go on a little outing or to run away, girl-knight?”
“Leave my sister alone, Hedgehog!” Albert shouted down from the wall. “If you hurt a hair on her head I’ll turn you into a real hedgehog, roast you on a spit, and serve you to our cat!”
Heartless just cast him a scornful glance. “You terrify me, jug-eared brat!” he shouted. “Can’t you hear my knees knocking? Once we’ve captured this ridiculous castle I’ll put you in a cage like a monkey and take you to Darkrock with me.”
“An interesting idea!” Albert called back, crooking three fingers unobtrusively and pointing them Igraine’s way. The lock of the gate clicked. Once, twice. And before Igraine could fling all the insults she had on the tip of her tongue back at the Spiky Knight, the gate swung open, and a gust of wind that smelled very much like Albert blew her roughly through the open door.
24
“My word, that was a close shave!” sighed Albert as he dried Igraine’s wet armor in front of a magic fire. “And all your cat’s fault, too. He kicked up such a fuss in your room that I let him out, but Father didn’t want him eating any more knight-fish — because after all he’s planning to turn them back into men again once this stupid business is over — so I locked the gate! How was I to know you’d be coming back that way?”
“All right, all right,” muttered Igraine, pushing a strand of dripping hair back from her forehead. “No harm done.”
They were sitting near the main gate in one of the turrets on the battlements. Bertram and the Sorrowful Knight were on watch up on the wall, but at the moment, all was calm outside the castle. Perhaps Osmund was tired of letting Albert make a fool of him, for the time being — or alternatively he was sitting in his tent thinking up a few brand-new nasty tricks. Whatever the reason, Igraine was glad of the silence.
“We had a terrible fright when Bertram came back without you,” said Albert, undoing a knot in the tail of one of his mice. “Luckily he remembers magic spells better than you do, and he got the stone lion to open its mouth. When we heard about the fix you were in, your friend the sighing knight had the idea of distracting Heartless’s attention by making his challenge right away, to give you a chance to escape. And it worked. But jumping into the moat like that …” Albert shook his head. “You’ve always been so impulsive, little sister.”
“You’re right.” Sighing, Igraine shook a tiny fish out of her shoe and threw it through the window and back into the moat. “I’m sorry about the dragon skin.”
“Don’t worry,” said Albert, blowing the magic fire out. “The water snakes will fish it out.”
They were just imagining what their parents would turn Osmund into — currently Albert favored the idea of throwing him and his castellan into the moat as a pair of particularly fat fish, and then letting Sisyphus loose on them — when the Sorrowful Knight hesitantly joined them.
“So the lance really was enchanted?” he asked.
Igraine nodded. “Oh, yes. But Albert’s powder put out the green glow. So you’ll have your first fair fight with him this evening — and I’m going to be your squire!”
Albert rolled his eyes and left them alone without another word. The Sorrowful Knight, however, folded his arms and looked down at the place that Osmund’s men were preparing for the single combat.
“You would be an excellent squire, no doubt about it,” he said. “And I thank you with all my heart for the offer, but a knight without honor can manage without a squire, too. Truly, you have shown quite enough proof of your courage. And your brother and your parents will need you this evening.”
“Not half as much as you will!” replied Igraine, picking a few water-lily petals off her armor. “You can talk as much as you want, I’ve made my mind up. I’m going to be your squire whether you like it or not. There’s nothing you can do about it! I’ll hand you your lances, catch your horse if she throws you, make sure Osmund doesn’t go casting any spells — and if the Spiky Knight tries any nasty tricks,” she added, as her lips began to tremble, “then … then I’ll push him off his horse with my own hands. I will, as true as you can call me Fearless Igraine. Because we’re friends. Aren’t we?”
Once again the Sorrowful Knight looked down at the tilting ground where he was to fight the Spiky Knight, and for a moment Igraine thought she saw something like a smile on his lips. “Yes, we’re friends,” he said, “and what I call you is Brave Igraine. So you shall have your way. You will be my squire, and I’ll try to prove myself worthy of your service.”
25
Sir Lamorak and the Fair Melisande almost got their curly tails in a twist when they heard about their daughter’s latest idea. But what could they do about it? They knew Igraine, and they were well aware that there was no point in forbidding her to do anything when she made the face that said: I’ll do it anyway, even if I have to climb out of the tower window.
Bertram just shook his head on learning of her decision, and muttered something like, “No surprise there, then!” As for Albert, he tapped her armor and said, “I just hope this stuff is as good as the books claim. Keep your visor closed and never look Osmund in the eye. Don’t forget, he is a magician, if not a particularly good one.”
The sun was moving across the sky, the shadows were lengthening, and the magic concoction was slowly changing into thousands of tiny, shimmering globes that hopped about like popcorn, while Igraine’s parents and all the Books of Magic kept trotting around it, sometimes clockwise, sometimes co
unterclockwise. You could get quite dizzy just watching them. The books sang and sang until their little voices were hoarse, while Bertram prepared the bathhouse.
Down below the castle, the sound of weapons had died away again after a few halfhearted assaults on the drawbridge. It had taken Albert only a weary snap of his fingers to deal with those. Everything was going as the Sorrowful Knight had hoped: Osmund’s soldiers were hanging around among the tents, doing nothing, while Rowan Heartless’s squires prepared the tilting ground. Osmund had ordered all fighting gear to be moved away from the area between the tents and the moat, but it had taken hours to smooth the churned-up ground. Now a large rectangle had been marked out on the empty space, with torches burning on all four sides, and on the side nearest the camp, the squires had put up a wooden platform adorned with Osmund’s banner and his coat of arms.
Albert and Bertram were watching these preparations from the battlements, but Igraine was searching the armory for lances for the Sorrowful Knight. She found five jousting lances in working order, and asked Albert to cast a spell to remove the rust from her great-grandfather’s best sword. That much magic must count as fair play — after all, the knight had broken his own sword on the drawbridge. Then she carried it all down to the Great Hall, where the Sorrowful Knight was sitting under the portraits of her ancestors, cleaning his helmet.
Igraine put the sword on the table in front of him, and took the helmet from his hands. “I’m afraid this is the best blade I could find,” she said. “And polishing helmets is a squire’s job.”
“If you say so!” The knight smiled, and swung the sword through the air to try it out. “My word, not a bad sword. But with a good many notches on the blade. Your great-grandfather must have fought many a battle with it.”
“Yes, he did; I’ve read all about them in the family histories.” Igraine picked up Sisyphus, who was rubbing restlessly around her feet. “My great-grandfather Pelleas was always having to protect his friends the dragons from other knights, and back then even the King was trying to steal the Books of Magic.”