by Michael Kerr
CHAPTER TEN ―
LORD SYLVESTER’S CASTLE
The only creature inside the vehicle, apart from the horses, was not a person, but made of some shiny metal. It was the shape of a man, but looked to be modelled from silver Plasticine.
“Please sit down,” it said in a hollow, tinny voice. “The road is bumpy, and we may be attacked by a dragon or two before we leave the preserve. They like to charge at the cart.”
They squeezed onto narrow benches at the rear. Most of the space was taken up by the harnessed horses and the large mechanical contraption that had catapulted the animal carcasses out to the dragons.
“What...I mean, who are you?” Sam asked the silver man.
“I am known as Proteus, because I am able to be whatever shape I choose. What are you warm-blooded life forms called?”
“We are human beings,” Sam said, pointing to herself, Ben and Tommy.
“I’m half troll and half goblin,” Gorf said.
“And we are fairies, who can also change shape when we are in our own land,” Fig said, nodding to Speedy.
“Don’t forget me,” Pook said. “I am a bear. Do you have pancakes and maple syrup wherever you’re taking us?”
“I do not think so, bear,” Proteus said. “I am sure if we had such things, I would know.”
After journeying for perhaps ten miles scrunched up in the hot steel box, they were relieved when the horses stopped. Proteus opened flaps at the sides of the vehicle, then the back door, and they watched as he stepped down and walked over to a pair of towering gates set in a very thick, high wall that stretched for as far as they could see in both directions. He grasped hold of a handle and the gates creaked open as he cranked it. The horses walked through and stopped again. Proteus followed, closing the gates behind them by turning another handle.
“We are outside the preserve now,” Proteus said, climbing back inside with them.
The rest of the trip was more pleasant. They could look out at the countryside, which was now very much like the area surrounding Grassington, with green fields and trees and hedgerows.
Soon after, they crossed a bridge over a wide moat and passed through an arched gateway into the cobbled courtyard of an enormous castle. The horses’ hooves clattered like coconut shells on the stones, and a boy with long blond hair and wearing a short leather jerkin and green tights appeared from what they supposed were stables, ran over to where they rattled to a stop, and opened the door.
“Welcome to Chimera,” the boy said. “Wherever did Proteus find you?”
“We were trapped at Matamu’s tower,” Fig said.
“You mean you crossed the land where dragons dwell?” the boy asked with a look of disbelief on his face.
“Yes,” Sam said, and proceeded to tell him their names, and asked him who he was.
“I am Peter the page,” he said. “I am in the service of Sir Havalot. I polish his armour, sharpen his sword, look after his horses and do many menial chores.”
“Page...PAGE!” A muffled voice shouted. They all looked towards the stables as a tall man staggered out through a door and spun around like a top, gripping the sides of the gleaming steel helmet that covered his head.
Sam giggled. The man had a long bony body, but a potbelly that her father would call a beer-gut. He was dressed in a bright pink one-piece garment that looked the same as ‘granddad’ underwear. The top of it was long-sleeved and buttoned up to the neck. The bottom clung to thin, knobbly-kneed legs, and there was a square flap in the seat of the pants. Sam knew what that was for.
“What’s happened, sire?” Peter asked as the knight came to a panting stop in front of them.
“Are you blind as well as stupid, young oaf?” Sir Havalot said. “This new helmet is too small. When I get it off, I will go directly to the smithy and run the groat-grabbing blacksmith through with my sword.”
“Let me help,” Gorf said.
Sir Havalot lifted up the helmet’s visor to get a better look at the strangers who were standing next to Peter.
“And what might you be?” he asked, looking up into Gorf’s face.
“I am part hairy troll, and part goblin,” Gorf said. “Now, do you want me to remove your helmet, or would you rather wear it till the sun fries your brains?”
“I don’t think I like your tone, troll,” Sir Havalot said. “But yes, I would be relieved to be rid of this head-crusher.”
With Tommy, Ben and Speedy holding the knight firmly in place, Gorf grasped both sides of the helmet, and with one mighty jerk pulled it off. For a second he thought that the old man’s head had come off with it, but it hadn’t.
“Aaghh! That hurt,” Sir Havalot cried. “But thank you, one and all. I thought I might have to be cut free by that blundering maker of horseshoes.”
Sir Havalot studied the group, and they studied him. The top of his head was bald and shiny, but the long grey hair at its sides hung down to his shoulders. He had a very large, hooked nose, and a thick white moustache below it that was twisted and waxed at the ends and turned up. His eyes were so light a blue that they were almost no colour at all. And he had no eyebrows.
“You all look and smell worse than the stable does before Peter has mucked it out,” Sir Havalot said. “Are you scared of soap and water? Or do you like to offend people?”
“We don’t have any other clothes,” Sam said.
“And it’s Pook that smells so bad,” Speedy said, inclining his head in the bear’s direction.
“Only because Tommy was sick on me,” Pook explained.
“Then you must all have a hot bath,” Sir Havalot said. “My page will show you where to go, and will burn those rags you are wearing and provide you with new outfits, before I introduce you to the Lord Sylvester.”
“No need, for that,” Fig said. “We need to be on our way south to the Lake of Life.”
“Nonsense,” Sir Havalot said. “You must stay the night, at least. We always have a big feast on Malmday evening, with music, dancers, jugglers and jesters. And tomorrow there will be a grand tournament, with jousting, sword fights, and many other competitions. Maybe you could enter our archery contest, Gorf. If you are proficient with that long bow you carry.”
“I can knock out the eye of a swamp hawk on the wing,” Gorf boasted.
“Then it is settled. And the day after the tournament, young Peter and I shall escort you to the Land of the Vampires, which you must pass through to reach the lake.”
“Things just get worse,” Tommy said. “I really don’t want to meet any vampires. Isn’t there any other way to the lake?”
“I’m afraid not,” Peter said, and led them across the courtyard and around the side of the castle to a side door. They followed Peter inside, along a corridor with food stores on both sides of it, and through a kitchen that was twice the size of the one at the school Sam, Ben and Tommy had attended. Dozens of cooks were preparing food, and the smell of it made all their mouths water.
“My tummy’s rumbling,” Pook said. “I think I might faint if I don’t eat something.”
Peter stopped in front of a large oven, from the front of which a very fat and red-cheeked baker was using a paddle-shaped spatula as long as a rowing boat’s oar to take out trays of golden-crusted pies.
“May these guests of Sir Havalot sample your pies?” Peter asked the cook.
“By all means,” the man said, giving them a cheerful grin. “Take one each, and be careful, for they are piping hot.”
Thanking the baker, they took the offered pies and moved on, up some back stairs to a large changing room with wooden benches, lockers, and hooks on the walls to hang clothes on. There were also stacks of white towels, all embroidered with a crest and the words: PROPERTY OF THE LORD SYLVESTER.
“When you’ve finished eating, help yourselves to towels and go through that door,” Peter said, pointing towards the end of the room. “I’ll go and find you some new clothes.”
Go
rf had eaten his pie in two bites. He picked up three of the towels and went through to a corridor with a dozen cubicles along its length. Each one contained a cast iron bath. After he had bathed and dried himself, his thick hair was three shades lighter and all fluffed up, making him look twice his normal size. He felt much better, but would have preferred to roll around in hot sand, which was his usual method of getting rid of dirt, and any mites that had crawled into his fur.
One by one, after eating their pies, they went to bathe, and then returned to the changing room to find clean clothes neatly laid out on the benches.
All dressed in similar clothes, apart from Gorf, who had kept his leather tunic, they waited for Peter to return.
“You smell a lot better,” Ben said to Pook.
“So do you,” Pook said back.
“I could eat a horse,” Gorf said, using his fingers to try to comb the knots and tangles out of his thick fur.
“That’s what we might be given,” Sam said.
“As long as we don’t get offered any more rat eye soup,” Tommy said.
“If you’re ready,” Peter said, entering the room. “Follow me, and I’ll take you to your rooms, where you can rest until it’s time for the banquet.
He led them up to a large apartment in a lofty turret. “I’ll be back at sundown,” Peter said, before rushing away.
They were not tired, and were so used to being together that they all gathered in one of the rooms. Gorf went over to a narrow, pointed window and looked out, while the others sat on plush, padded chairs and laughed at how silly Sir Havalot had looked in his underwear, dancing about with a helmet stuck on his head.
“What do you suppose the two other things that Mephisto gave us are for?” Ben asked, taking the one he carried out of his bag.
They studied the large, ornately fashioned door key. It appeared to be made of brass.
“The lock it fits must be in the door of something we will need to enter,” Tommy said.
“And what could this be?” Fig said, holding up a large teardrop-shaped piece of amber, that was the same colour as Speedy’s eyes. Trapped Inside it was a small blue insect, frozen in the material.
“It’s fossilised resin,” Tommy said.
“What is resin? Speedy asked.
“Sticky sap from trees,” Tommy explained. “It runs out and then sets, and millions of years later it ends up like yellow, see-through rock that is called amber. Anything that got stuck in it is preserved forever.”
“At least with the glass arrow, we knew what to do with it,” Gorf said, turning away from the window.
“I think we’ll know what to use these for when the time comes,” Sam said. She went across to the window. Outside, she could see over the battlements of the castle. And in a field at the back of the stables was a giant red and white striped tent, which she supposed would be called a marquee, with many smaller tents clustered round it.
Peter returned at dusk and led them down to the ground floor, along a hall lined with full suits of armour, and lit by candles in crystal chandeliers. Sir Havalot met them outside the banquet hall. He wore a large powdered wig, and a floor-length gold-coloured silk robe.
“Go and see to the horses, Peter,” he said. “I’ll take our guests from here.”
“Come,” Sir Havalot said to them. “It is time for you to meet the Lord Sylvester. He will be most pleased to have such unusual guests at his table.
The doors must have been soundproofed, for when another page opened them, the din of talking, laughter, singing and music hit them like a shock wave.
As they walked in, everyone in the great room turned in their direction. Sam could understand why. Fig, Speedy, Gorf and Pook looked so different. It was in all probability the first time that these people had seen little green fairies with wings and pointy ears, or anything as spectacular as a giant troll-come-goblin, and a live Teddy bear.
“My Looorrrd Sylvester,” Sir Havalot shouted theatrically. “May I present to you a band of travellers who have come from a faraway land? They have ventured through the Royal Preserve of the Dragon on foot to visit the court of Chimera to have an audience with you, before continuing on their way.”
“Step forward, strangers,” Lord Sylvester said. “Take seats at my table, and pray tell me of all you have seen and done. For no one in my kingdom has been farther than the place where dragons dwell. And only knights under training go there.”
Sam took an instant dislike to their host. He had shifty eyes, a short stubbly beard, and the false smile of a hungry hyena. He was very small, as round as a beer barrel, and wore a pleated and ruffled black and red tunic with large shoulder pads, and a frilly ruff made up of several folds of starched linen around his neck. Apart from the small crown of gold on his shaven head, Sam thought he looked very much like pictures she had seen of the beefeaters that guarded the Tower of London.
“Let us eat as we talk,” Lord Sylvester said.
The food would have fed an army, but Pook was disappointed to find that there were no pancakes.
“I am told that you are proficient with the bow, troll,” Lord Sylvester said.
“I rarely miss what I aim at,” Gorf replied, talking with his mouth full of fried goose liver.
Sylvester gave him a sly grin. “It will be important that you don’t tomorrow, for a lot will depend on you shooting straight and true.”
Gorf smiled. That must mean a fabulous prize was at stake. Though in reality there was nothing Gorf could think of that he wanted or needed. He lived for the day, and was enjoying his time with the others.
After they had told Sylvester of their adventures, but not about the chalice, he clapped his hands, and the group that were playing music on instruments that Sam thought were similar to a recorder, harp and mandolin, stopped and went off behind a curtain.
“Send on the jester,” Sylvester shouted. “I wish to be amused.”
With a fanfare of trumpets from a gallery running all around the room high above them, a little man in a tight fitting tunic patterned with black and white diamonds rode out into the room on the back of an enormous pink and black spotted pig. The pig was fitted with a saddle and reins, and did two circuits of the hall, while the jester performed acrobatics, turning around in the saddle to face backwards, then standing up on one leg, before bringing the grunting porker to a stop in front of Sylvester’s table, where he gave the lord a sweeping bow, and made the trained pig kneel down and grunt loudly.
“Bravo,” Sylvester said. “That was truly entertaining. What is your name?”
“Pintello, my Lord. And my assistant is an old ham who works for truffles.”
Sylvester laughed. He thought this new jester had promise. The last one had been decidedly unfunny, and had been hanged in the courtyard.
“And what else do you do, Pintello, besides ride a pet pig?”
“I can do magic tricks to astound you, sing like an angel, tell the most hilarious stories you are ever likely to hear, and pull the most amazing faces. And I am also known to be a liar.”
“Show me a trick, then. But be warned; if you make me look foolish, you shall at very least go home without your tasty looking assistant, whose head will be served up on a platter with an apple in its mouth.”
Pintello approached the table and looked directly at Tommy.
Tommy stopped eating. There was something about the court jester that frightened him a little. He looked very much like Punch. Had the same sort of hat with bells on, and red cheeks, and a long nose and chin. And his eyes looked like marbles made of black glass.
“You, young sir. What is your name?”
“Me?” Tommy said.
“Yes, you.”
“Er...Tommy.”
“You don’t sound too sure about that. Would you like to try again?”
Tommy felt himself blushing. Everyone in the room was looking at him and laughing. He was being made to feel a fool, by a fool.
&
nbsp; “Very well, Tommy. I am about to make you disappear in front of everyone’s eyes. Do you think that that is possible?”
“I hope not,” Tommy said.
“Have no fear. You will be amazed when you cease to be here. Now watch very closely,” Pintello said to his audience, as he reached into a pouch that was hanging from a cord around his waist and removed his hand closed in a fist.
Everyone stared intently at the jester’s raised hand. He opened it quickly and closed his eyes as, with a loud pop, a sun-bright flash of light filled the room. For a second or two, all but Pintello was blinded. When they could see again, Tommy was gone from his chair, and in his place sat a small white mouse.
The knights and courtiers clapped and cheered, for they had never before been entertained so well by a jester.
“Tommy!” Sam exclaimed, looking down at the plump rodent. “Very clever,” she said to Pintello. “Now turn him back...Please.”
There was no time for Pintello to do anything. One of the castle’s cats – a large, one-eyed individual, striped like a tiger, and having only half a tail, since it had attempted to steal fish from the kitchen and not been quick enough to fully escape the meat cleaver blade that a chef struck it with – leapt up onto the chair and grasped the mouse in its mouth. There was a shrill squeak, followed by a crunching of small bones, and the cat swallowed the mouse and ran off.
“It ate Tommy!” Pook said, and began to cry.
“The boy was a guest,” Lord Sylvester said to Pintello, his face dark with anger. “Return him at once, or you shall be hung in a cage from the highest tower of the castle until your bones are picked clean by vultures.”
Ben looked at the seat Tommy had been sitting on. There were a few spots of the mouse’s blood on it. He didn’t believe for a second that the fool could bring Frog back. His pal was now a chewed-up mouse in the stomach of a fat cat.
Pintello smiled. If anything, the trick had been improved by the unforeseen eating of the mouse. Everyone believed that he had not just made the boy disappear, but had also turned him into a mouse, that was now dead. But he knew better. Magic was trickery, used to make an audience believe that the impossible had been performed. What they did not know was, that after arriving at the castle the day before, he had examined the banquet hall, and with his assistant – a dwarf who answered to the name of Turquin – had cut out a hatch in the floor of the raised platform, under the table that Lord Sylvester and his party sat at. The trapdoor was hard to see in the gloom, and could be opened from beneath, to swing down silently on well-oiled hinges.
All tricks depended on split-second timing and distraction if they were to fool everybody. Pintello had used an exploding powder to blind them. The powder had been sold to him by an old man who mixed secret ingredients to create colourful effects and explosions. Pintello had put a small amount of the black powder into a rice-paper bag, with a touch-paper attached to it that he lit by striking two slivers of flint together and making a spark. It was not easy, and had taken a lot of practise to master. Now, he could put his hand into his pouch, light the touch paper, take out the bag, and release it just as the powder was turned into a bright ball of fire. He always wore a flesh-coloured leather glove to protect his hand from being badly burned in the event of something going wrong. But that evening everything had gone perfectly. As the powder ignited and exploded, Turquin had dropped the trapdoor in front of where Tommy was sitting, to pull him down under the platform, before placing the mouse on the chair and bolting the trapdoor back in place. No one saw or heard a thing.
Tommy was too shocked to scream. He didn’t know what had happened.
“Shush!” Turquin whispered. “It’s just a trick. We need to move quickly, to make you appear somewhere else and amaze the Lord Sylvester and his guests.”
“But you have no right to―”
“Please, help us,” Turquin said. “If Sylvester is not amused by Pintello, he will have him taken to the dungeons to be tortured, or perhaps feed him to the meat-eating fish that live in the moat. You have come to no harm by being made to disappear.”
“Okay,” Tommy said, not wanting to be responsible for the jester being hurt or killed. “What do you want me to do?”
“Follow me,” Turquin said, and crawled off towards the back of the platform, to where heavy maroon curtains hung down to the floor behind it.
Tommy followed the dwarf on his hands and knees. He could hear voices above them, and wondered what the others thought to his being made to vanish.
Turquin led him behind the curtain to the corner of the room, and up a small spiral stairway set into the wall to the gallery above.
Pintello heard his assistant cough, which was the signal.
“My Lord Sylvester, knights of the realm, and all other illustrious guests,” Pintello said. “Look up to the balcony, and you will see that I have returned the boy alive and well, no worse for wear after being changed into a mouse and eaten by a cat.”
There was a loud gasp of amazement as Tommy appeared and waved to the people below.
“Amazing,” Sylvester said. “Are you a sorcerer, jester?”
“No, my lord,” Pintello said. “Just a wandering fool who uses trickery to make things appear to be what they are not.”
“Then you shall stay at the castle and entertain me once every sevenday. I shall pay you handsomely, and you shall live in a fine apartment, with all the trappings befitting your skills.”
It was very late when Sam and the others got back to their quarters. Tommy told them what had actually happened, and they all laughed.
“We thought you’d been turned into a mouse and ended up as cat food,” Ben said.
“That jester is a clever magician,” Fig said.
“He’d better be,” Sam said. “I think Sylvester has horrible things done to anyone who doesn’t please him. If Pintello has an off night, it could be his last.”
“We should leave as soon as the tournament is over tomorrow,” Ben said.
They all agreed on that. None of them felt safe at the castle. And if they had known just how much terrible danger would present itself at the tournament, they would have sneaked away that very instant.
―