Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Date: 2013-07-31 23:00:00+00:00
Keywords: kindle; fiction; sf; fantasy; children's fiction; anthology
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

THE CHRESTOMANCI SERIES: ENTIRE COLLECTION BOOKS 1-7

Charmed Life

The Magicians of Caprona

Witch Week

The Lives of Christopher Chant

Mixed Magics

Conrad’s Fate

The Pinhoe Egg

Diana Wynne Jones

Contents

Title Page

Charmed Life

The Magicians of Caprona

Witch Week

The Lives of Christopher Chant

Mixed Magics

Conrad’s Fate

The Pinhoe Egg

Copyright

About the Publisher

For Claire, Nicholas and Frances

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Cat Chant admired his elder sister Gwendolen. She was a witch. He admired her and he clung to her. Great changes came about in their lives and left him no one else to cling to.

The first great change came about when their parents took them out for a day trip down the river in a paddle steamer. They set out in great style, Gwendolen and her mother in white dresses with ribbons, Cat and his father in prickly blue serge Sunday suits. It was a hot day. The steamer was crammed with other people in holiday clothes, talking, laughing, eating whelks with thin slices of white bread and butter, while the paddle boat steam organ wheezed out popular tunes so that no one could hear themselves talk.

In fact the steamer was too crowded and too old. Something went wrong with the steering. The whole laughing, whelk-eating Sunday-dressed crowd was swept away in the current from the weir. They hit one of the posts which were supposed to stop people being swept away, and the paddle steamer, being old, simply broke into pieces. Cat remembered the organ playing and the paddles beating the blue sky. Clouds of steam screamed from broken pipes and drowned the screams from the crowd, as every single person aboard was swept away through the weir.

It was a terrible accident. The papers called it the Saucy Nancy Disaster. The ladies in their clinging skirts were quite unable to swim. The men in tight blue serge were very little better off. But Gwendolen was a witch, so she could not drown. And Cat, who flung his arms around Gwendolen when the boat hit the post, survived too. There were very few other survivors.

The whole country was shocked by it. The paddle boat company and the town of Wolvercote between them paid for the funerals. Gwendolen and Cat were given heavy black clothes at public expense, and rode behind the procession of hearses in a carriage pulled by black horses with black plumes on their heads. The other survivors rode with them. Cat looked at them and wondered if they were witches and warlocks, but he never found out. The Mayor of Wolvercote had set up a Fund for the survivors. Money poured in from all over the country. All the other survivors took their share and went away to start new lives elsewhere. Only Cat and Gwendolen were left and, since nobody could discover any of their relations, they stayed in Wolvercote.

They became celebrities for a time. Everyone was very kind. Everyone said what beautiful little orphans they were. It was true. They were both fair and pale, with blue eyes, and looked good in black. Gwendolen was very pretty, and tall for her age. Cat was small for his age. Gwendolen was very motherly to Cat, and people were touched.

Cat did not mind. It made up a little for the empty, lost way he was feeling. Ladies gave him cake and toys. Town Councillors came and asked how he was getting on; and the Mayor called and patted him on the head. The Mayor explained that the money from the Fund was being put into a Trust for them until they were grown up. Meanwhile, the town would pay for their education and upbringing.

“And where would you little people like to live?” he asked kindly.

Gwendolen at once said that old Mrs Sharp downstairs had offered to take them in. “She’s been ever so kind to us,” she explained. “We’d love to live with her.”

Mrs Sharp had been very kind. She was a witch too – the printed sign in her parlour said Certified Witch – and interested in Gwendolen. The Mayor was a little dubious. Like all people who had no talent for witchcraft, he did not approve of those who had. He asked Cat how he felt about Gwendolen’s plan. Cat did not mind. He preferred living in the house he was used to, even if it was downstairs. Since the Mayor felt that the two orphans ought to be made as happy as possible, he agreed. Gwendolen and Cat moved in with Mrs Sharp.

Looking back on it, Cat supposed that it was from this time on that he was certain Gwendolen was a witch. He had not been sure before. When he had asked his parents, they had shaken their heads, sighed, and looked unhappy. Cat had been puzzled, because he remembered the terrible trouble there had been when Gwendolen gave him cramps. He could not see how his parents could blame Gwendolen for it unless she truly was a witch. But all that was changed now. Mrs Sharp made no secret of it.

“You’ve a real talent for magic, dearie,” she said, beaming at Gwendolen, “and I wouldn’t be doing my duty by you if I let it go to waste. We must see about a teacher for you right away. You could do worse than go to Mr Nostrum next door for a start. He may be the worst necromancer in town, but he knows how to teach. He’ll give you a good grounding, my love.”

Mr Nostrum’s charges for teaching magic turned out to be £1 an hour for the Elementary Grades, and a guinea an hour for the Advanced Grades beyond. Rather expensive, as Mrs Sharp said. She put on her best hat with black beads and ran round to the Town Hall to see if the Fund would pay for Gwendolen’s lessons.

To her annoyance, the Mayor refused. He told Mrs Sharp that witchcraft was not part of an ordinary education. Mrs Sharp came back rattling the beads on her hat with irritation, and carrying a flat cardboard box the Mayor had given her, full of odds and ends the kind ladies had cleared out of Gwendolen’s parents’ bedroom.

“Blind prejudice!” Mrs Sharp said, dumping the box on the kitchen table. “If a person has a gift, they have a right to have it developed – and so I told him! But don’t worry, dearie,” she said, seeing that Gwendolen was looking decidedly stormy. “There’s a way round everything. Mr Nostrum would teach you for nothing, if we found the right thing to tempt him with. Let’s have a look in this box. Your poor Ma and Pa may have left something that might be just the thing.”

Accordingly, Mrs Sharp turned the box out on to the table. It was a queer collection of things – letters and lace and souvenirs. Cat did not remember having seen half of them before. There was a marriage certificate, saying that Francis John Chant had married Caroline Mary Chant twelve years ago at St Margaret’s Church, Wolvercote, and a withered nosegay his mother must have carried at the wedding. Underneath that, he found some glittery earrings he had never seen his mother wear.

Mrs Sharp’s hat rattled as she bent swiftly over these. “Those are diamond earrings!” she said. “Your Ma must have had money! Now, if I took those to Mr Nostrum – But we’d get more for them if I took them round to Mr Larkins.”

Mr Larkins kept the junk shop on the corner of the street – except that it was not always exactly junk. Among the brass fenders and chipped crockery, you could find quite valuable things and also a discreet notice saying Exotic Supplies – which meant that Mr Larkins also stocked bats’ wings, dried newts and other ingredients of magic. There was no question that Mr Larkins would be very interested in a pair of diamond earrings. Mrs Sharp’s eyes pouched up, greedy and beady, as she put out her hand to pick up the earrings.

Gwendolen put out her hand for them at the same moment. She did not say anything. Neither did Mrs Sharp. Both their hands stood still in the air. There was a feeling of fierce invisible struggle. Then Mrs Sharp took her hand away. “Thank you,” said Gwendolen coldly, and put the earrings away in the pocket of her black dress.

“You see what I mean?” Mrs Sharp said, making the best of it. “You have real talent, dearie!” She went back to sorting the other things in the box. She turned over an old pipe, ribbons, a spray of white heather, menus, concert tickets, and picked up a bundle of old letters. She ran her thumb down the edge of it. “Love letters,” she said. “His to her.” She put the bundle down without looking at it and picked up another. “Hers to him. No use.” Cat, watching Mrs Sharp’s broad mauve thumb whirring down a third bundle of letters, thought that being a witch must save a great deal of time. “Business letters,” said Mrs Sharp. Her thumb paused, and went slowly back up the pile again. “Now what have we here?” she said. She untied the pink tape round the bundle and carefully took out three letters. She unfolded them.

“Chrestomanci!” she exclaimed. And, as soon as she said it, she clapped one hand over her mouth and mumbled behind it. Her face was red. Cat could see she was surprised, frightened and greedy, all at the same time. “Now what was he doing writing to your Pa?” she said, as soon as she had recovered.

“Let’s see,” said Gwendolen.

Mrs Sharp spread the three letters out on the kitchen table, and Gwendolen and Cat bent over them. The first thing that struck Cat was the energy of the signature on all three:

The next thing he saw was that two of the letters were written in the same energetic writing as the signature. The first was dated twelve years ago, soon after his parents had been married. It said:

Dear Frank,

Now don’t get on your high horse. I only offered because I thought it might help. I still will help, in any way I can, if you let me know what I can do. I feel you have a claim on me.

Yrs ever,

Chrestomanci

The second letter was shorter:

Dear Chant,

The same to you. Go to blazes.

Chrestomanci

The third letter was dated six years ago, and it was written by someone else. Chrestomanci had only signed it.

Sir,

You were warned six years ago that something like what you relate might come to pass, and you made it quite clear that you wished for no help from this quarter. We are not interested in your troubles. Nor is this a charitable institution.

Chrestomanci

“What did your Pa say to him?” Mrs Sharp wondered, curious and awestruck. “Well – what do you think, dearie?”

Gwendolen held her hands spread out above the letters, rather as if she was warming them at a fire. Both her little fingers twitched. “I don’t know. They feel important – specially the first one and the last one – awfully important.”

“Who’s Chrestomanci?” Cat asked. It was a hard name to say. He said it in pieces, trying to remember the way Mrs Sharp had said it: KREST-OH-MAN-SEE. “Is that the right way?”

“Yes, that’s right – and never you mind who he is, my love,” said Mrs Sharp. “And important’s a weak word for it, dearie. I wish I knew what your Pa had said. Something not many people’d dare say, by the sound of it. And look at what he got in return! Three genuine signatures! Mr Nostrum would give his eyes for those, dearie. Oh, you’re in luck! He’ll teach you for those all right! So would any necromancer in the country.”

Gleefully, Mrs Sharp began packing the things away in the box again. “What have we here?” A little red book of matches had fallen out of the bundle of business letters. Mrs Sharp took it up carefully and, quite as carefully, opened it. It was less than half full of flimsy cardboard matches. But three of the matches had been burnt, without being torn out of the book first. The third one along was so very burnt that Cat supposed it must have set light to the other two.

“Hm,” said Mrs Sharp. “I think you’d better keep this, dearie.” She passed the little red book to Gwendolen, who put it in the pocket of her dress along with the earrings. “And what about you having this, my love?” Mrs Sharp said to Cat, remembering that he had a claim too. She gave him the spray of white heather. Cat wore it in his buttonhole until it fell to pieces.

Living with Mrs Sharp, Gwendolen seemed to expand. Her hair seemed brighter gold, her eyes deeper blue, and her whole manner was glad and confident. Perhaps Cat contracted a little to make room for her – he did not know. Not that he was unhappy. Mrs Sharp was quite as kind to him as she was to Gwendolen. Town Councillors and their wives called several times a week and patted him on the head in the parlour. They sent him and Gwendolen to the best school in Wolvercote.

Cat was happy there. The only drawback was that Cat was left-handed, and schoolmasters always punished him if they caught him writing with his left hand. But they did that at all the schools Cat had been to, and he was used to it. He had dozens of friends. All the same, at the heart of everything, he felt lost and lonely. So he clung to Gwendolen, because she was the only family he had.

Gwendolen was often rather impatient with him, though usually she was too busy and happy to be downright cross. “Just leave me alone, Cat,” she would say. “Or else.” Then she would pack exercise books into a music-case and hasten next door for a lesson with Mr Nostrum.

Mr Nostrum was delighted to teach Gwendolen for the letters. Mrs Sharp gave him one every term for a year, starting with the last. “Not all at once, in case he gets greedy,” she said. “And we’ll give him the best last.”

Gwendolen made excellent progress. Such a promising witch was she, indeed, that she skipped the First Grade Magic exam and went straight on to the Second. She took the Third and Fourth Grades together just after Christmas, and, by the following summer, she was starting on Advanced Magic. Mr Nostrum regarded her as his favourite pupil – he told Mrs Sharp so over the wall – and Gwendolen always came back from her lessons with him pleased and golden and glowing. She went to Mr Nostrum two evenings a week, with her magic-case under her arm, just as many people might go to music lessons. In fact, music lessons were what Mrs Sharp put Gwendolen down as having, on the accounts she kept for the Town Council. Since Mr Nostrum never got paid, except by the letters, Cat thought this was rather dishonest of Mrs Sharp.

“I have to put something by for my old age,” Mrs Sharp told him crossly. “I don’t get much for myself out of keeping you, do I? And I can’t trust your sister to remember me when she’s grown up and famous. Oh dear me no – I’ve no illusions about that!”

Cat knew Mrs Sharp was probably right. He was a little sorry for her, for she had certainly been kind, and he knew by now that she was not a very good witch herself. The Certified Witch which the notice in Mrs Sharp’s parlour window claimed her to be was, in fact, the very lowest qualification. People only came to Mrs Sharp for charms when they could not afford the three Accredited Witches further down the street. Mrs Sharp eked out her earnings by acting as an agent for Mr Larkins at the junk shop. She got him Exotic Supplies – that is to say, the stranger ingredients needed for spells – from as far away as London. She was very proud of her contacts in London. “Oh yes,” she often said to Gwendolen, “I’ve got the contacts, I have. I know those that can get me a pound of dragon’s blood any time I ask, for all it’s illegal. While you have me, you’ll never be in need.”

Perhaps, in spite of having no illusions about Gwendolen, Mrs Sharp was really hoping to become Gwendolen’s manager when Gwendolen grew up. Cat suspected she was, anyway. And he was sorry for Mrs Sharp. He was sure that Gwendolen would cast her off like an old coat when she became famous – like Mrs Sharp, Cat had no doubt that Gwendolen would be famous. So he said, “There’s me to look after you, though.” He did not fancy the idea, but he felt he ought to say it.

Mrs Sharp was warmly grateful. As a reward, she arranged for Cat to have real music lessons. “Then that Mayor will have nothing to complain of,” she said. She believed in killing two birds with one stone.

Cat started to learn the violin. He thought he was making good progress. He practised diligently. He never could understand why the new people living upstairs always banged on the floor when he started to play. Mrs Sharp, being tone-deaf herself, nodded and smiled when he played, and encouraged him greatly.

He was practising away one evening, when Gwendolen stormed in and shrieked a spell in his face. Cat found, to his dismay, that he was holding a large striped cat by the tail. He had its head tucked under his chin, and he was sawing at its back with the violin bow. He dropped it hurriedly. Even so, it bit him under the chin and scratched him painfully.

“What did you do that for?” he said. The cat stood in an arch, glaring at him.

“Because that’s just what it sounded like!” said Gwendolen. “I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. Here, pussy, pussy!” The cat did not like Gwendolen either. It scratched the hand she held out to it. Gwendolen smacked it. It ran away, with Cat in hot pursuit, shouting, “Stop it! That’s my fiddle! Stop it!” But the cat escaped, and that was the end of the violin lessons.

Mrs Sharp was very impressed with this display of talent from Gwendolen. She climbed on a chair in the yard and told Mr Nostrum about it over the wall. From there, the story spread to every witch and necromancer in the neighbourhood.

That neighbourhood was full of witches. People in the same trade like to cluster together. If Cat came out of Mrs Sharp’s front door and turned right down Coven Street, he passed, besides the three Accredited Witches, two Necromancy Offered, a Soothsayer, a Diviner, and a Willing Warlock. If he turned left, he passed MR HENRY NOSTRUM A.R.C.M. Tuition in Necromancy, a Fortune-teller, a Sorcery For All Occasions, a Clairvoyant, and lastly Mr Larkins’ shop. The air in the street, and for several streets around, was heavy with the scent of magic being done.

All these people took a great and friendly interest in Gwendolen. The story of the cat impressed them enormously. They made a great pet of the creature – naturally, it was called Fiddle. Though it remained bad-tempered, captious and unfriendly, it never went short of food. They made an even greater pet of Gwendolen. Mr Larkins gave her presents. The Willing Warlock, who was a muscular young man always in need of a shave, popped out of his house whenever he saw Gwendolen passing and presented her with a bullseye. The various witches were always looking out simple spells for her.

Gwendolen was very scornful of these spells. “Do they think I’m a baby or something? I’m miles beyond this stuff!” she would say, casting the latest spell aside.

Mrs Sharp, who was glad of any aid to witchcraft, usually gathered the spell up carefully and hid it. But once or twice, Cat found the odd spell lying about. Then he could not resist trying it. He would have liked to have had just a little of Gwendolen’s talent. He always hoped that he was a late-developer and that, some day, a spell would work for him. But they never did – not even the one for turning brass buttons into gold, which Cat particularly fancied.

The various fortune-tellers gave Gwendolen presents too. She got an old crystal ball from the Diviner and a pack of cards from the Soothsayer. The Fortune-teller told her fortune for her. Gwendolen came in golden and exultant from that.

“I’m going to be famous! He said I could rule the world if I go the right way about it!” she told Cat.

Though Cat had no doubt that Gwendolen would be famous, he could not see how she could rule the world, and he said so. “You’d only rule one country, even if you married the King,” he objected. “And the Prince of Wales got married last year.”

“There are more ways of ruling than that, stupid!” Gwendolen retorted. “Mr Nostrum has lots of ideas for me, for a start. Mind you, there are some snags. There’s a change for the worse that I have to surmount, and a dominant Dark Stranger. But when he told me I’d rule the world my fingers all twitched, so I know it’s true!” There seemed no limit to Gwendolen’s glowing confidence.

The next day, Miss Larkins the Clairvoyant called Cat into her house and offered to tell his fortune too.

Cat was alarmed by Miss Larkins. She was the daughter of Mr Larkins at the junk shop. She was young and pretty and fiercely red-headed. She wore the red hair piled into a bun on top of her head, from which red tendrils of hair escaped and tangled becomingly with earrings like hoops for parrots to sit on. She was a very talented clairvoyant, and, until the story of the cat became known, Miss Larkins had been the pet of the neighbourhood. Cat remembered that even his mother had given Miss Larkins presents. Cat knew Miss Larkins was offering to tell his fortune out of jealousy of Gwendolen

“No. No, thank you very much,” he said, backing away from Miss Larkins’ little table spread with objects of divination. “It’s quite all right. I don’t want to know.”

But Miss Larkins advanced on him and seized him by his shoulders. Cat squirmed. Miss Larkins used a scent that shrieked VIOLETS! at him, her earrings swung like manacles, and her corsets creaked when she was close to. “Silly boy!” Miss Larkins said, in her rich, melodious voice. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know.”

“But – but I don’t,” Cat said, twisting this way and that.

“Hold still,” said Miss Larkins, and tried to stare deep into Cat’s eyes.

Cat shut his eyes hastily. He squirmed harder than ever. He might have got loose, had not Miss Larkins abruptly gone off into some kind of trance. Cat found himself being gripped with a strength that would have surprised him even in the Willing Warlock. He opened his eyes to find Miss Larkins staring blankly at him. Her body shook, creaking her corsets like old doors swinging in the wind. “Oh, please let go!” Cat said. But Miss Larkins did not appear to hear. Cat took hold of the fingers gripping his shoulder and tried to prise them loose. He could not move them. After that, he could only stare helplessly at Miss Larkins’ blank face.

Miss Larkins opened her mouth, and quite a different voice came out. It was a man’s voice, brisk and kindly. “You’ve taken a weight off my mind, lad,” it said. It sounded pleased. “There’ll be a big change coming up for you now. But you’ve been awfully careless – four gone already, and only five left. You must take more care. You’re in danger from at least two directions, did you know?”

The voice stopped. By this time, Cat was so frightened that he dared not move. He could only wait until Miss Larkins came to herself, yawned, and let go of him in order to cover her mouth elegantly with one hand.

“There,” she said in her usual voice. “That was it. What did I say?”

Finding Miss Larkins had no idea what she had said brought Cat out in goose pimples. All he wanted to do was to run away. He dashed for the door.

Miss Larkins pursued him, seized his arms again and shook him. “Tell me! Tell me! What did I say?” With the violence of her shaking, her red hair came down in sheets. Her corsets sounded like bending planks. She was terrifying. “What voice did I use?” she demanded.

“A – a man’s voice,” Cat faltered. “Sort of nice, and no nonsense about it.”

Miss Larkins seemed dumbfounded. “A man? Not Bobby or Doddo – not a child’s voice, I mean?”

“No,” said Cat.

“How peculiar!” said Miss Larkins. “I never use a man. What did he say?”

Cat repeated what the voice had said. He thought he would never forget it if he lived to ninety.

It was some consolation to find that Miss Larkins was quite as puzzled by it as he was. “Well, I suppose it was a warning,” she said dubiously. She also seemed disappointed. “And nothing else? Nothing about your sister?”

“No, nothing,” said Cat.

“Oh well, can’t be helped,” Miss Larkins said discontentedly, and she let go of Cat in order to put her hair up again.

As soon as both her hands were safely occupied in pinning her bun, Cat ran. He shot out into the street, feeling very shaken.

And he was caught by two more people almost at once.

“Ah. Here is young Eric Chant now,” said Mr Nostrum, advancing down the pavement. “You are acquainted with my brother William, are you, young Cat?”

Cat was once more caught by an arm. He tried to smile. It was not that he disliked Mr Nostrum. It was just that Mr Nostrum always talked in this jocular way and called him “Young Chant” every few words, which made it very difficult to talk to Mr Nostrum in return. Mr Nostrum was small and plumpish, with two wings of grizzled hair. He had a cast in his left eye, too, which always stared out sideways. Cat found that added to the difficulty of talking to Mr Nostrum. Was he looking and listening? Or was his mind elsewhere with that wandering eye?

“Yes – yes, I’ve met your brother,” Cat reminded Mr Nostrum. Mr William Nostrum came to visit his brother regularly. Cat saw him almost once a month. He was quite a well-to-do wizard, with a practice in Eastbourne. Mrs Sharp claimed that Mr Henry Nostrum sponged on his wealthier brother, both for money and for spells that worked.

Whatever the truth of that, Cat found Mr William Nostrum even harder to talk to than his brother. He was half as large again as Mr Henry and always wore morning dress with a huge silver watch-chain across his tubby waistcoat. Otherwise, he was the image of Mr Henry Nostrum, except that both his eyes were out of true. Cat always wondered how Mr William saw anything. “How do you do, sir,” he said to him politely.

“Very well,” said Mr William in a deep gloomy voice, as if the opposite was true.

Mr Henry Nostrum glanced up at him apologetically. “The fact is, young Chant,” he explained, “we have met with a little setback. My brother is upset.” He lowered his voice, and his wandering eye wandered all round Cat’s right side. “It’s about those letters from – You Know Who. We can find out nothing. It seems Gwendolen knows nothing. Do you, young Chant, perchance know why your esteemed and lamented father should be acquainted with – with, let us call him, the August Personage who signed them?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, I’m afraid,” said Cat.

“Could he have been some relation?” suggested Mr Henry Nostrum. “Chant is a Good Name.”

“I think it must be a bad name, too,” Cat answered. “We haven’t any relations.”

“But what of your dear mother?” persisted Mr Nostrum, his odd eye travelling away, while his brother managed to stare gloomily at the pavement and the rooftops at once.

“You can see the poor boy knows nothing, Henry,” Mr William said. “I doubt if he would be able to tell us his dear mother’s maiden name.”

“Oh, I do know that,” said Cat. “It’s on their marriage lines. She was called Chant too.”

“Odd,” said Mr Nostrum, swirling an eye at his brother.

“Odd, and peculiarly unhelpful,” Mr William agreed.

Cat wanted to get away. He felt he had taken enough strange questions to last till Christmas. “Well, if you want to know that badly,” he said, “why don’t you write and ask Mr – er – Mr Chres—”

“Hush!” said Mr Henry Nostrum violently.

“Hum!” said his brother, almost equally violently.

“August Personage, I mean,” Cat said, looking at Mr William in alarm. Mr William’s eyes had gone right to the sides of his face. Cat was afraid he might be going off into a trance, like Miss Larkins.

“It will serve, Henry, it will serve!” Mr William cried out. And, with great triumph, he lifted the silver watch-chain off his middle and shook it. “Then for silver!” he cried.

“I’m so glad,” Cat said politely. “I have to be going now.” He ran off down the street as fast as he could. When he went out that afternoon, he took care to turn right and go out of Coven Street past the Willing Warlock’s house. It was rather a nuisance, since that was the long way round to where most of his friends lived, but anything was better than meeting Miss Larkins or the Nostrums again. It was almost enough to make Cat wish that school had started.

When Cat came home that evening, Gwendolen was just back from her lesson with Mr Nostrum. She had her usual glowing, exulting look, but she was looking secretive and important too.

“That was a good idea of yours of writing to Chrestomanci,” she said to Cat. “I can’t think why I didn’t think of it. Anyway, I just have.”

“Why did you do it? Couldn’t Mr Nostrum?” Cat said.

“It came more naturally from me,” said Gwendolen. “And I suppose it doesn’t matter if he gets my signature. Mr Nostrum told me what to write.”

“Why does he want to know anyway?” Cat asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” Gwendolen said exultingly.

“No,” said Cat. “I wouldn’t.” Since this had brought what happened that morning into his mind, which still made him almost wish the Autumn term had started, he said, “I wish the conkers were ripe.”

“Conkers!” Gwendolen said, in the greatest disgust. “What a low mind you have! They won’t be ready for a good six weeks.”

“I know,” said Cat, and for the next two days he carefully turned right every time he left the house.

They were the lovely golden days that happen when August is passing into September. Cat and his friends went out along the river. On the second day, they found a wall and climbed it. There was an orchard beyond, and here they were lucky enough to discover a tree loaded with sweet white apples – the kind that ripen early. They filled their pockets and their hats. Then a furious gardener chased them with a rake. They ran. Cat was very happy as he carried his full, knobby hat home. Mrs Sharp loved apples. He just hoped that she would not reward him by making gingerbread men. As a rule, gingerbread men were fun. They leapt up off the plate and ran when you tried to eat them, so that when you finally caught them you felt quite justified in eating them. It was a fair fight, and some got away. But Mrs Sharp’s gingerbread men never did that. They simply lay, feebly waving their arms, and Cat never had the heart to eat them.

Cat was so busy thinking of all this that, though he noticed a four-wheel cab standing in the road as he turned the corner by the Willing Warlock’s house, he paid no attention to it. He went to the side-door and burst into the kitchen with his hatful of apples, shouting, “I say! Look what I’ve got, Mrs Sharp!”

Mrs Sharp was not there. Instead, standing in the middle of the kitchen, was a tall and quite extraordinarily well-dressed man.

Cat stared at him in some dismay. He was clearly a rich new Town Councillor. Nobody but those kind of people wore trousers with such pearly stripes, or coats of such beautiful velvet, or carried tall hats as shiny as their boots. The man’s hair was dark. It was smooth as his hat. Cat had no doubt that this was Gwendolen’s Dark Stranger, come to help her start ruling the world. And he should not have been in the kitchen at all. Visitors were always taken straight to the parlour.

“Oh, how do you do, sir. Will you come this way, sir?” he gasped.

The Dark Stranger gave him a wondering look. And well he might, Cat thought, looking round distractedly. The kitchen was in its usual mess. The range was all ash. On the table, Cat saw, to his further dismay, Mrs Sharp had been making gingerbread men. The ingredients for the spell lay on the end of the table – all grubby newspaper packets and seedy little jars – and the gingerbread itself was strewn over the middle of the table. At the far end, the flies were gathering round the meat for lunch, which looked nearly as messy as the spell.

“Who are you?” said the Dark Stranger. “I have a feeling I should know you. What have you got in your hat?”

Cat was too busy staring round to attend properly, but he caught the last question. His pleasure returned. “Apples,” he said, showing the Stranger. “Lovely sweet ones. I’ve been scrumping.”

The Stranger looked grave. “Scrumping,” he said, “is a form of stealing.”

Cat knew that as well as he did. He thought it was very joyless, even for a Town Councillor, to point it out. “I know. But I bet you did it when you were my age.”

The Stranger coughed slightly and changed the subject. “You haven’t said yet who you are.”

“Sorry. Didn’t I?” said Cat. “I’m Eric Chant – only they always call me Cat.”

“Then is Gwendolen Chant your sister?” the Stranger asked. He was looking more and more austere and pitying. Cat suspected that he thought Mrs Sharp’s kitchen was a den of vice.

“That’s right. Won’t you come this way?” Cat said, hoping to get the Stranger out of it. “It’s neater through here.”

“I had a letter from your sister,” the Stranger said, standing where he was. “She gave me the impression you had drowned with your parents.”

“You must have made a mistake,” Cat said distractedly. “I didn’t drown because I was holding on to Gwendolen, and she’s a witch. It’s cleaner through here.”

“I see,” said the Stranger. “I’m called Chrestomanci, by the way.”

“Oh!” said Cat. This was a real crisis. He put his hat of apples down in the middle of the spell, which he very much hoped would ruin it. “Then you’ve got to come in the parlour at once.”

“Why?” said Chrestomanci, sounding rather bewildered.

“Because,” said Cat, thoroughly exasperated, “you’re far too important to stay here.”

“What makes you think I’m important?” Chrestomanci asked, still bewildered.

Cat was beginning to want to shake him. “You must be. You’re wearing important clothes. And Mrs Sharp said you were. She said Mr Nostrum would give his eyes just for your three letters.”

“Has Mr Nostrum given his eyes for my letters?” asked Chrestomanci. “It hardly seems worth it.”

“No. He just gave Gwendolen lessons for them,” said Cat.

“What? For his eyes? How uncomfortable!” said Chrestomanci.

Fortunately, there were thumping footsteps just then, and Gwendolen burst in through the kitchen door, panting, golden and jubilant. “Mr Chrestomanci?”

“Just Chrestomanci,” said the Stranger. “Yes. Would you be Gwendolen?”

“Yes. Mr Nostrum told me there was a cab here,” gasped Gwendolen.

She was followed by Mrs Sharp, nearly as breathless. The two of them took over the conversation, and Cat was thankful for it. Chrestomanci at last consented to be taken to the parlour, where Mrs Sharp deferentially offered him a cup of tea and a plate of her weakly waving gingerbread men. Chrestomanci, Cat was interested to see, did not seem to have the heart to eat them either. He drank a cup of tea – austerely, without milk or sugar – and asked questions about how Gwendolen and Cat came to be living with Mrs Sharp. Mrs Sharp tried to give the impression that she looked after them for nothing, out of the goodness of her heart. She hoped Chrestomanci might be induced to pay her for their keep, as well as the Town Council.

But Gwendolen had decided to be radiantly honest. “The town pays,” she said, “because everyone’s so sorry about the accident.” Cat was glad she had explained, even though he suspected that Gwendolen might already be casting Mrs Sharp off like an old coat.

“Then I must go and speak to the Mayor,” Chrestomanci said, and he stood up, dusting his splendid hat on his elegant sleeve. Mrs Sharp sighed and sagged. She knew what Gwendolen was doing, too. “Don’t be anxious, Mrs Sharp,” said Chrestomanci. “No one wishes you to be out of pocket.” Then he shook hands with Gwendolen and Cat and said, “I should have come to see you before, of course. Forgive me. Your father was so infernally rude to me, you see. I’ll see you again, I hope.” Then he went away in the cab, leaving Mrs Sharp very sour, Gwendolen jubilant, and Cat nervous.

“Why are you so happy?” Cat asked Gwendolen.

“Because he was touched at our orphaned state,” said Gwendolen. “He’s going to adopt us. My fortune is made!”

“Don’t talk such nonsense!” snapped Mrs Sharp. “Your fortune is the same as it ever was. He may have come here in all his finery, but he said nothing and he promised nothing.”

Gwendolen smiled confidently. “You didn’t see the heart-wringing letter I wrote.”

“Maybe. But he’s not got a heart to wring,” Mrs Sharp retorted. Cat rather agreed with Mrs Sharp – particularly as he had an uneasy feeling that, before Gwendolen and Mrs Sharp arrived, he had somehow managed to offend Chrestomanci as badly as his father once did. He hoped Gwendolen would not realise. He knew she would be furious with him.

But, to his astonishment, Gwendolen proved to be right. The Mayor called that afternoon and told them that Chrestomanci had arranged for Cat and Gwendolen to come and live with him as part of his own family. “And I see I needn’t tell you what lucky little people you are,” he said, as Gwendolen uttered a shriek of joy and hugged the dour Mrs Sharp.

Cat felt more nervous than ever. He tugged the Mayor’s sleeve. “If you please, sir, I don’t understand who Chrestomanci is.”

The Mayor patted him kindly on the head. “A very eminent gentleman,” he said. “You’ll be hobnobbing with all the crowned heads of Europe before long, my boy. What do you think of that, eh?”

Cat did not know what to think. This had told him precisely nothing, and made him more nervous than ever. He supposed Gwendolen must have written a very touching letter indeed.

So the second great change came about in Cat’s life, and very dismal he feared it would be. All that next week, while they were hurrying about being bought new clothes by Councillors’ wives, and while Gwendolen grew more and more excited and triumphant, Cat found he was missing Mrs Sharp, and everyone else, even Miss Larkins, as if he had already left them. When the time came for them to get on the train, the town gave them a splendid send-off, with flags and a brass band. It upset Cat. He sat tensely on the edge of his seat, fearing he was in for a time of strangeness and maybe even misery.

Gwendolen, however, spread out her smart new dress and arranged her nice new hat becomingly, and sank elegantly back in her seat. “I did it!” she said joyously. “Cat, isn’t it marvellous?”

“No,” Cat said miserably. “I’m homesick already. What have you done? Why do you keep being so happy?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Gwendolen. “But I’ll tell you part of it. I’ve got out of dead-and-alive Wolvercote at last – stupid Councillors and piffling necromancers! And Chrestomanci was bowled over by me. You saw that, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t notice specially,” said Cat. “I mean, I saw you were being nice to him—”

“Oh, shut up, or I’ll give you worse than cramps!” said Gwendolen. And, as the train at last chuffed and began to draw out of the station, Gwendolen waved her gloved hand to the brass band, up and down, just like Royalty. Cat realised she was setting out to rule the world.

The train journey lasted about an hour, before the train puffed into Bowbridge, where they were to get out.

“It’s frightfully small,” Gwendolen said critically.

“Bowbridge!” shouted a porter, running along the platform. “Bowbridge. The young Chants alight here, please.”

“Young Chants!” Gwendolen said disdainfully. “Can’t they treat me with more respect?” All the same, the attention pleased her. Cat could see that, as she drew on her ladylike gloves, she was shaking with excitement. He cowered behind her as they got out and watched their trunks being tossed out on to the windy platform. Gwendolen marched up to the shouting porter. “We are the young Chants,” she told him magnificently.

It fell a little flat. The porter simply beckoned and scurried away to the entrance lobby, which was windier even than the platform. Gwendolen had to hold her hat on. Here, a young man strode towards them in a billow of flapping coat.

“We are the young Chants,” Gwendolen told him.

“Gwendolen and Eric? Pleased to meet you,” said the young man. “I’m Michael Saunders. I’ll be tutoring you with the other children.”

“Other children?” Gwendolen asked him haughtily. But Mr Saunders was evidently one of those people who are not good at standing still. He had already darted off to see about their trunks. Gwendolen was a trifle annoyed. But when Mr Saunders came back and led them outside into the station yard, they found a motor car waiting – long, black and sleek. Gwendolen forgot her annoyance. She felt this was entirely fitting.

Cat wished it had been a carriage. The car jerked and thrummed and smelt of petrol. He felt sick almost at once. He felt sicker still when they left Bowbridge and thrummed along a winding country road. The only advantage he could see was that the car went very quickly. After only ten minutes, Mr Saunders said, “Look – there’s Chrestomanci Castle now. You get the best view from here.”

Cat turned his sick face and Gwendolen her fresh one the way he pointed. The Castle was grey and turreted, on the opposite hill. As the road turned, they saw it had a new part, with a spread of big windows, and a flag flying above. They could see grand trees – dark, layered cedars and big elms – and glimpse lawns and flowers.

“It looks marvellous,” Cat said sickly, rather surprised that Gwendolen had said nothing. He hoped the road did not wind too much in getting to the Castle.

It did not. The car flashed round a village green and between big gates. Then there was a long tree-lined avenue, with the great door of the old part of the Castle at the end of it. The car scrunched round on the gravel sweep in front of it. Gwendolen leant forward eagerly, ready to be the first one out. It was clear there would be a butler, and perhaps footmen too. She could hardly wait to make her grand entry.

But the car went on, past the grey, knobbly walls of the old Castle, and stopped at an obscure door where the new part began. It was almost a secretive door. There was a mass of rhododendron trees hiding it from both parts of the Castle.

“I’m taking you in this way,” Mr Saunders explained cheerfully, “because it’s the door you’ll be using mostly, and I thought it would help you find your way about if you start as you mean to go on.”

Cat did not mind. He thought the door looked more homely. But Gwendolen, cheated of her grand entry, threw Mr Saunders a seething look and wondered whether to say a most unpleasant spell at him. She decided against it. She was still wanting to give a good impression. They got out of the car and followed Mr Saunders – whose coat had a way of billowing even when there was no wind – into a square polished passageway indoors.

A most imposing lady was waiting there to meet them. She was wearing a tight purple dress, and her hair was in a very tall jet-black pile. Cat thought she must be Mrs Chrestomanci.

“This is Miss Bessemer, the housekeeper,” said Mr Saunders. “Eric and Gwendolen, Miss Bessemer. Eric’s a bit car-sick, I’m afraid.”

Cat had not realised his trouble was so obvious. He was embarrassed. Gwendolen, who was very annoyed to be met by a mere housekeeper, held her hand out coldly to Miss Bessemer.

Miss Bessemer shook hands like an Empress. Cat was just thinking she was the most awe-inspiring lady he had ever met, when she turned to him with a very kind smile. “Poor Eric,” she said. “Riding in a car bothers me ever so, too. You’ll be all right now you’re out of the thing – but if you’re not, I’ll give you something for it. Come and get washed, and have a look-see at your rooms.”

They followed the narrow purple triangle of her dress up some stairs, along corridors, and up more stairs. Cat had never seen anywhere so luxurious. There was carpet the whole way – a soft green carpet, like grass in the dewy morning – and the floor at the sides was polished so that it reflected the carpet and the clean white walls and the pictures hung on the walls. Everywhere was very quiet. They heard nothing the whole way, except their own feet and Miss Bessemer’s purple rustle.

Miss Bessemer opened a door on to a blaze of afternoon sun. “This is your room, Gwendolen. Your bathroom opens off it.”

“Thank you,” said Gwendolen, and she sailed magnificently in to take possession of it. Cat peeped past Miss Bessemer and saw the room was very big, with a rich, soft Turkey carpet covering most of the floor.

Miss Bessemer said, “The Family dines early when there are no visitors, so that they can eat with the children. But I expect you’d like some tea all the same. Whose room shall I have it sent to?”

“Mine, please,” said Gwendolen at once.

There was a short pause before Miss Bessemer said, “Well, that’s settled then, isn’t it? Your room is up here, Eric.”

The way was up a twisting staircase. Cat was pleased. It looked as if his room was going to be part of the old Castle. And he was right. When Miss Bessemer opened the door, the room beyond was round, and the three windows showed that the wall was nearly three feet thick. Cat could not resist racing across the glowing carpet to scramble on one of the deep window-seats and look out. He found he could see across the flat tops of the cedars to a great lawn like a sheet of green velvet, with flower gardens going down the hillside in steps beyond it. Then he looked round the room itself. The curved walls were whitewashed, and so was the thick fireplace. The bed had a patchwork quilt on it. There was a table, a chest-of-drawers and a bookcase with interesting-looking books in it.

“Oh, I like this!” he said to Miss Bessemer.

“I’m afraid your bathroom is down the passage,” said Miss Bessemer, as if this was a drawback. But, as Cat had never had a private bathroom before, he did not mind in the least.

As soon as Miss Bessemer had gone, he hastened along to have a look at it. To his awe, there were three sizes of red towel and a sponge as big as a melon. The bath had feet like a lion’s. One corner of the room was tiled, with red rubber curtains, for a shower. Cat could not resist experimenting. The bathroom was rather wet by the time he had finished. He went back to his room, a little damp himself. His trunk and box were there by this time, and a maid with red hair was unpacking them. She told Cat her name was Mary, and wanted to know if she was putting things in the right places. She was perfectly pleasant, but Cat was very shy of her. The red hair reminded him of Miss Larkins, and he could not think what to say to her.

“Er – may I go down and have some tea?” he stammered.

“Please yourself,” she said – rather coldly, Cat thought. He ran downstairs again, feeling he might have got off on the wrong foot with her.

Gwendolen’s trunk was standing in the middle of her room. Gwendolen herself was sitting in a very queenly way at a round table by the window, with a big pewter teapot in front of her, a plate of brown bread and butter, and a plate of biscuits.

“I told the girl I’d unpack for myself,” she said. “I’ve got secrets in my trunk and my box. And I asked her to bring tea at once because I’m starving. And just look at it! Did you ever see anything so dull? Not even jam!”

“Perhaps the biscuits are nice,” Cat said hopefully. But they were not, or not particularly.

“We shall starve, in the midst of luxury!” sighed Gwendolen.

Her room was certainly luxurious. The wallpaper seemed to be made of blue velvet. The top and bottom of the bed was upholstered like a chair, in blue velvet with buttons in it, and the blue velvet bedspread matched it exactly. The chairs were painted gold. There was a dressing-table fit for a princess, with little golden drawers, gold-backed brushes, and a long oval mirror surrounded by a gilded wreath. Gwendolen admitted that she liked the dressing-table, though she was not so sure about the wardrobe, which had painted garlands and maypole-dancers on it.

“It’s to hang clothes in, not to look at,” she said. “It distracts me. But the bathroom is lovely.”

The bathroom was tiled with blue and white tiles, and the bath was sunk down into the tiled floor. Over it, draped like a baby’s cradle, were blue curtains for when you wanted a shower. The towels matched the tiles. Cat preferred his own bathroom, but that may have been because he had to spend rather a long time in Gwendolen’s. Gwendolen locked him in it while she unpacked. Through the hiss of the shower – Gwendolen had only herself to blame that she found her bathroom thoroughly soaked afterwards – Cat heard her voice raised in annoyance at someone who had come in to take the dull tea away and caught her with her trunk open. When Gwendolen finally unlocked the bathroom door, she was still angry.

“I don’t think the servants here are very civil,” she said. “If that girl says one thing more, she’ll find herself with a boil on her nose – even if her name is Euphemia! Though,” Gwendolen added charitably, “I’m inclined to think being called Euphemia is punishment enough for anyone. You have to go and get your new suit on, Cat. She says dinner’s in half an hour and we have to change for it. Did you ever hear anything so formal and unnatural!”

“I thought you were looking forward to that kind of thing,” said Cat, who most certainly was not.

“You can be grand and natural,” Gwendolen retorted. But the thought of the coming grandeur soothed her all the same. “I shall wear my blue dress with the lace collar,” she said. “And I do think being called Euphemia is a heavy enough burden for anyone to bear, however rude they are.”

As Cat went up his winding stair, the Castle filled with a mysterious booming. It was the first noise he had heard. It alarmed him. He learnt later that it was the dressing-gong, to warn the Family that they had half an hour to change in. Cat, of course, did not take nearly that time to put his suit on. So he had yet another shower. He felt damp and weak and almost washed out of existence by the time the maid who was so unfortunate in being called Euphemia came to take him and Gwendolen downstairs to the drawing room where the Family was waiting.

Gwendolen, in her pretty blue dress, sailed in confidently. Cat crept behind. The room seemed full of people. Cat had no idea how all of them came to be part of the Family. There was an old lady in lace mittens, and a small man with large eyebrows and a loud voice who was talking about stocks and shares; Mr Saunders, whose wrists and ankles were too long for his shiny black suit; and at least two younger ladies; and at least two younger men. Cat saw Chrestomanci, quite splendid in very dark red velvet; and Chrestomanci saw Cat and Gwendolen and looked at them with a vague, perplexed smile, which made Cat quite sure that Chrestomanci had forgotten who they were.

“Oh,” said Chrestomanci. “Er. This is my wife.”

They were ushered in front of a plump lady with a mild face. She had a gorgeous lace dress on – Gwendolen’s eyes swept up and down it with considerable awe – but otherwise she was one of the most ordinary ladies they had ever seen. She gave them a friendly smile. “Eric and Gwendolen, isn’t it? You must call me Millie, my dears.” This was a relief, because neither of them had any idea what they should have called her. “And now you must meet my Julia and my Roger,” she said.

Two plump children came and stood beside her. They were both rather pale and had a tendency to breathe heavily. The girl wore a lace dress like her mother’s, and the boy had on a blue velvet suit, but no clothes could disguise the fact that they were even more ordinary-looking than their mother. They looked politely at Gwendolen and at Cat, and all four said, “How do you do?” Then there seemed nothing else to say.

Luckily, they had not stood there long before a butler came and opened the double doors at the end of the room, and told them that dinner was served. Gwendolen looked at this butler in great indignation. “Why didn’t he open the door to us?” she whispered to Cat, as they all went in a ragged sort of procession to the dining room. “Why were we fobbed off with the housekeeper?”

Cat did not answer. He was too busy clinging to Gwendolen. They were being arranged round a long polished table, and if anyone had tried to put Cat in a chair that was not next to Gwendolen’s he thought he would have fainted from terror. Luckily, no one tried. Even so, the meal was terrifying enough. Footmen kept pushing delicious food in silver plates over Cat’s left shoulder. Each time that happened, it took Cat by surprise, and he jumped and jogged the plate. He was supposed to help himself off the silver plate, and he never knew how much he was allowed to take. But the worst difficulty was that he was left-handed. The spoon and fork that he was supposed to lift the food with from the footman’s plate to his own were always the wrong way round. He tried changing them over, and dropped a spoon. He tried leaving them as they were, and spilt gravy. The footman always said, “Not to worry, sir,” and made him feel worse than ever.

The conversation was even more terrifying. At one end of the table, the small loud man talked endlessly of stocks and shares. At Cat’s end, they talked about Art. Mr Saunders seemed to have spent the summer travelling abroad. He had seen statues and paintings all over Europe and much admired them. He was so eager that he slapped the table as he talked. He spoke of Studios and Schools, Quattrocento and Dutch Interiors, until Cat’s head went round. Cat looked at Mr Saunders’s thin, square-cheeked face and marvelled at all the knowledge behind it. Then Millie and Chrestomanci joined in. Millie recited a string of names Cat had never heard in his life before. Chrestomanci made comments on them, as if these names were intimate friends of his. Whatever the rest of the Family was like, Cat thought, Chrestomanci was not ordinary. He had very black bright eyes, which were striking even when he was looking vague and dreamy. When he was interested – as he was about Art – the black eyes screwed up in a way that seemed to spill the brightness of them over the rest of his face. And, to Cat’s dismay, the two children were equally interested. They kept up a mild chirp, as if they actually knew what their parents were talking about.

Cat felt crushingly ignorant. What with this talk, and the trouble over the suddenly-appearing silver plates, and the dull biscuits he had eaten for tea, he found he had no appetite at all. He had to leave half his ice-cream pudding. He envied Gwendolen for being able to sit so calmly and scornfully enjoying her food.

It was over at last. They were allowed to escape up to Gwendolen’s luxurious room. There, Gwendolen sat on her upholstered bed with a bounce.

“What a childish trick!” she said. “They were showing off just to make us feel small. Mr Nostrum warned me they would. It’s to disguise the thinness of their souls. What an awful, dull wife! And did you ever see anyone so plain and stupid as those two children! I know I’m going to hate it here. This Castle’s crushing me already.”

“It may not be so bad once we get used to it,” Cat said, without hope.

“It’ll be worse,” Gwendolen promised him. “There’s something about this Castle. It’s a bad influence, and a deadness. It’s squashing the life and the witchcraft out of me. I can hardly breathe.”

“You’re imagining things,” said Cat, “because you want to be back with Mrs Sharp.” And he sighed. He missed Mrs Sharp badly.

“No I’m not imagining it,” said Gwendolen. “I should have thought it was strong enough even for you to feel. Go on, try. Can’t you feel the deadness?”

Cat did not really need to try, to see what she meant. There was something strange about the Castle. He had thought it was simply that it was so quiet. But it was more than that: there was a softness to the atmosphere, a weightiness, as if everything they said or did was muffled under a great feather quilt. Normal sounds, like their two voices, seemed thin. There were no echoes to them. “Yes, it is queer,” he agreed.

“It’s more than queer – it’s terrible,” said Gwendolen. “I shall be lucky if I survive.” Then she added, to Cat’s surprise, “So I’m not sorry I came.”

“I am,” said Cat.

“Oh, you would need looking after!” said Gwendolen. “All right. There’s a pack of cards on the dressing-table. They’re for divination really, but if we take the trumps out we can use them to play Snap with, if you like.”

The same softness and silence were there when the red-haired Mary woke Cat the next morning and told him it was time to get up. Bright morning sunshine was flooding the curved walls of his room. Though Cat knew now that the Castle must be full of people, he could not hear a sound from any of them. Nor could he hear anything from outside the windows.

I know what it’s like! Cat thought. It’s like when it’s snowed in the night. The idea made him feel so pleased and so warm that he went to sleep again.

“You really must get up, Eric,” Mary said, shaking him. “I’ve run your bath, and your lessons start at nine. Make haste, or you won’t have time for breakfast.”

Cat got up. He had so strong a feeling that it had snowed in the night that he was quite surprised to find his room warm in the sun. He looked out of the windows, and there were green lawns and flowers, and rooks circling the green trees, as if there had been some mistake. Mary had gone. Cat was glad, because he was not at all sure he liked her, and he was afraid of missing breakfast. When he was dressed, he went along to the bathroom and let the hot water out of the bath. Then he dashed down the twisting stairs to find Gwendolen.

“Where do we go for breakfast?” he asked her anxiously.

Gwendolen was never at her best in the morning. She was sitting on her blue velvet stool in front of her garlanded mirror, crossly combing her golden hair. Combing her hair was another thing which always made her cross. “I don’t know and I don’t care! Shut up!” she said.

“Now that’s no way to speak,” said the maid called Euphemia, briskly following Cat into the room. She was rather a pretty girl, and she did not seem to find her name the burden it should have been. “We’re waiting to give you breakfast along here. Come on.”

Gwendolen hurled her comb down expressively, and they followed Euphemia to a room just along the corridor. It was a square, airy room, with a row of big windows, but, compared with the rest of the Castle, it was rather shabby. The leather chairs were battered. The grassy carpet had stains on it. None of the cupboards would shut properly. Things like clockwork trains and tennis rackets bulged out. Julia and Roger were sitting waiting at a table by the windows, in clothes as shabby as the room.

Mary, who was waiting there too, said, “And about time!” and began to work an interesting lift in a cupboard by the fireplace. There was a clank. Mary opened the lift and fetched out a large plate of bread and butter and a steaming brown jug of cocoa. She brought these over to the table, and Euphemia poured each child a mug of the cocoa.

Gwendolen stared from her mug to the plate of bread. “Is this all there is?”

“What else do you want?” asked Euphemia.

Gwendolen could not find words to express what she wanted. Porridge, bacon and eggs, grapefruit, toast and kippers all occurred to her at once, and she went on staring.

“Make up your mind,” Euphemia said at last. “My breakfast’s waiting for me too, you know.”

“Isn’t there any marmalade?” said Gwendolen.

Euphemia and Mary looked at one another. “Julia and Roger are not allowed marmalade,” Mary said.

“Nobody forbade me to have it,” said Gwendolen. “Get me some marmalade at once.”

Mary went to a speaking tube by the lift, and, after much rumbling and another clank, a pot of marmalade arrived. Mary brought it and put it in front of Gwendolen.

“Thank you,” Cat said fervently. He felt as strongly about it as Gwendolen – more, in fact, because he hated cocoa.

“Oh, no trouble, I’m sure!” Mary said, in what was certainly a sarcastic way, and the two maids went out.

For a while, nobody said anything.

Then Roger said to Cat, “Pass the marmalade, please.”

“You’re not supposed to have it,” said Gwendolen, whose temper had not improved.

“Nobody will know if I use one of your knives,” Roger said placidly.

Cat passed him the marmalade and his knife, too. “Why aren’t you allowed it?”

Julia and Roger looked at each other in a mild, secretive way. “We’re too fat,” Julia said, calmly taking the knife and the marmalade after Roger had done with them. Cat was not surprised, when he saw how much marmalade they had managed to pile on their bread. Marmalade stood on both slices like a sticky brown cliff.

Gwendolen looked at them with disgust, and then, rather complacently, down at her trim linen dress. The contrast was certainly striking. “Your father is such a handsome man,” she said. “It must be such a disappointment to him that you’re both pudgy and plain, like your mother.”

The two children looked at her placidly over their cliffs of marmalade. “Oh, I wouldn’t know,” said Roger.

“Pudgy is comfortable,” said Julia. “It must be a nuisance to look like a china doll, the way you do.”

Gwendolen’s blue eyes glared. She made a small sign under the edge of the table. The bread and thick marmalade whisked itself from Julia’s hands and slapped itself on Julia’s face, marmalade side inwards. Julia gasped a little. “How dare you insult me!” said Gwendolen.

Julia peeled the bread slowly off her face and then fumbled out a handkerchief. Cat supposed she was going to wipe her face. But she let the marmalade stay where it was, trundling in blobs down her plump cheeks, and simply tied a knot in her handkerchief. She pulled the knot slowly tight, looking meaningly at Gwendolen while she did so. With the final pull, the half-full jug of cocoa shot steaming into the air. It hovered for a second, and then shot sideways to hang just above Gwendolen’s head. Then it began to joggle itself into tipping position.

“Stop it!” gasped Gwendolen. She put up a hand to ward the jug off. The jug dodged her and went on tipping. Gwendolen made another sign and gasped out strange words. The jug took not the slightest notice. It went on tipping, until cocoa was brimming in the very end of its spout. Gwendolen tried to lean out sideways away from it. The jug simply joggled along in the air until it was hanging over her head again.

“Shall I make it pour?” Julia asked. There was a bit of a smile under the marmalade.

“You dare!” screamed Gwendolen. “I’ll tell Chrestomanci of you! I’ll – oh!” She sat up straight again, and the jug followed her faithfully. Gwendolen made another grab at it, and it dodged again.

“Careful. You’ll make it spill. And what a shame about your pretty dress,” Roger said, watching complacently.

“Shut up, you!” Gwendolen shouted at him, leaning out the other way, so that she was nearly in Cat’s lap. Cat looked up nervously as the jug came and hovered over him too. It seemed to be going to pour.

But, at that moment, the door opened and Chrestomanci came in, wearing a flowered silk dressing-gown. It was a red and purple dressing-gown, with gold at the neck and sleeves. It made Chrestomanci look amazingly tall, amazingly thin, and astonishingly stately. He could have been an Emperor, or a particularly severe Bishop. He was smiling as he came in, but the smile vanished when he saw the jug.

The jug tried to vanish too. It fled back to the table at the sight of him, so quickly that cocoa slopped out of it on to Gwendolen’s dress – which may or may not have been an accident. Julia and Roger both looked stricken. Julia unknotted her handkerchief as if for dear life.

“Well, I was coming in to say good morning,” Chrestomanci said. “But I see that it isn’t.” He looked from the jug to Julia’s marmalade-glistening cheeks. “If you two ever want to eat marmalade again,” he said, “you’d better do as you’re told. And the same goes for all four of you.”

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Gwendolen said, as if butter – not to speak of marmalade – would not have melted in her mouth.

“Yes, you were,” said Roger.

Chrestomanci came to the end of the table and stood looking down on them, with his hands in the pockets of his noble robe. He looked so tall like that that Cat was surprised that his head was still under the ceiling. “There’s one absolute rule in this Castle,” he said, “which it will pay you all to remember. No witchcraft of any kind is to be practised by children unless Michael Saunders is here to supervise you. Have you understood, Gwendolen?”

“Yes,” said Gwendolen. She gripped her lips together and clenched her hands, but she was still shaking with rage. “I refuse to keep such a silly rule!”

Chrestomanci did not seem to hear, or to notice how angry she was. He turned to Cat. “Have you understood too, Eric?”

“Me?” Cat said in surprise. “Yes, of course.”

“Good,” said Chrestomanci. “Now I will say good morning.”

“Good morning, Daddy,” said Julia and Roger. “Er – good morning,” Cat said. Gwendolen pretended not to hear. Two could play at that game. Chrestomanci smiled and swept out of the room like a very long procession of one person.

“Tell-tale!” Gwendolen said to Roger, as soon as the door had shut. “And that was a dirty trick with that jug! You were both doing it, weren’t you?”

Roger smiled sleepily, not in the least disturbed. “Witchcraft runs in our family,” he said.

“And we’ve both inherited it,” said Julia. “I must go and wash.” She picked up three slices of bread to keep her going while she did so, and left the room, calling over her shoulder, “Tell Michael I won’t be long, Roger.”

“More cocoa?” Roger said politely, picking up the jug.

“Yes, please,” said Cat. It never bothered him to eat or drink things that had been bewitched, and he was thirsty. He thought that if he filled his mouth with marmalade and strained the cocoa through it, he might not taste the cocoa. Gwendolen, however, was sure Roger was trying to insult her. She flounced round in her chair and stayed haughtily looking at the wall, until Mr Saunders suddenly threw open a door Cat had not noticed before and said cheerfully:

“Right, all of you. Lesson time. Come on through and see how you stand up to some grilling.”

Cat hastily swallowed his cocoa-flavoured marmalade. Beyond the door was a schoolroom. It was a real, genuine schoolroom, although there were only four desks in it. There was a blackboard, a globe, the pitted school floor and the schoolroom smell. There was that kind of glass-fronted bookcase without which no schoolroom is complete, and the battered grey-green and dark blue books without which no schoolroom bookcase is complete. On the walls were big pictures of the statues Mr Saunders had found so interesting.

Two of the desks were brown and old. Two were new and yellow with varnish. Gwendolen and Cat sat silently in the new desks. Julia hurried in, with her face shining from soap, and sat in the old desk beside Roger’s, and the grilling began. Mr Saunders strode gawkily up and down in front of the blackboard, asking keen questions. His tweed jacket billowed out from his back, just as his coat had done in the wind. Perhaps that was why the sleeves of the jacket were so much too short for Mr Saunders’s long arms. The long arm shot out, and a foot of bony wrist with a keen finger on the end of it pointed at Cat. “What part did witchcraft play in the Wars of the Roses?”

“Er,” said Cat. “Ung. I’m afraid I haven’t done them yet, sir.”

“Gwendolen,” said Mr Saunders.

“Oh – a very big part,” Gwendolen guessed airily.

“Wrong,” said Mr Saunders. “Roger.”

From the grilling, it emerged that Roger and Julia had forgotten a great deal over the summer, but, even so, they were well ahead of Cat in most things, and far ahead of Gwendolen in everything.

“What did you learn at school?” Mr Saunders asked her, in some exasperation.

Gwendolen shrugged. “I’ve forgotten. It wasn’t interesting. I was concentrating on witchcraft, and I intend to go on doing that, please.”

“I’m afraid you can’t,” said Mr Saunders.

Gwendolen stared at him, hardly able to believe she had heard him right. “What!” she almost shrieked. “But – but I’m terribly talented! I have to go on with it!”

“Your talents will keep,” said Mr Saunders. “You can take up witchcraft again when you’ve learnt something else. Open your arithmetic book and do me the first four exercises. Eric, I think I’ll set you going on some History. Write me an essay on the reign of King Canute.” He moved on to set work for Roger and Julia.

Cat and Gwendolen opened books. Gwendolen’s face was red, then white. As Mr Saunders bent over Roger, her inkwell sailed up out of the socket in her desk, and emptied itself over the back of Mr Saunders’s billowing tweed jacket. Cat bit his lip in order not to laugh. Julia watched with calm interest. Mr Saunders did not seem to notice. The inkwell returned quietly to its socket.

“Gwendolen,” said Mr Saunders, without turning round. “Get the ink jar and funnel out of the bottom of the cupboard and refill that inkwell. And fill it properly, please.”

Gwendolen got up, jauntily and defiantly, found the big flask and funnel, and started to fill her inkwell. Ten minutes later, she was still pouring away. Her face was puzzled at first, then red, then white with fury again. She tried to put the flask down, and found she could not. She tried whispering a spell.

Mr Saunders turned and looked at her.

“You’re being perfectly horrible!” said Gwendolen. “Besides, I’m allowed to do witchcraft when you’re here.”

“No one is allowed to pour ink over their tutor,” Mr Saunders said cheerfully. “And I’d already told you that you’ve given up witchcraft for the time being. Keep on pouring till I tell you to stop.”

Gwendolen poured ink for the next half hour, and got angrier every minute of it.

Cat was impressed. He suspected that Mr Saunders was rather a powerful magician. Certainly, when he next looked at Mr Saunders, there was no sign of any ink on his back. Cat looked at Mr Saunders fairly often, to see whether it was safe to change his pen from his right to his left hand. He had been punished so often for writing left-handed that he was good at keeping an eye on his teachers. When Mr Saunders turned his way, Cat used his right hand. It was slow and reluctant. But as soon as Mr Saunders turned away again, Cat changed his pen over and got on like a house on fire. The main trouble was that, in order not to smudge the ink with his left hand, he had to hold the paper sideways. But he was pretty deft at flicking his book straight again whenever Mr Saunders seemed likely to look at him.

When the half hour was over, Mr Saunders, without turning round, told Gwendolen to stop pouring ink and do sums. Then, still without turning round, he said to Cat, “Eric, what are you doing?”

“An essay on King Canute,” Cat said innocently.

Then Mr Saunders did turn round, but, by that time, the paper was straight and the pen in Cat’s right hand. “Which hand were you writing with?” he said. Cat was used to this. He held up his right hand with the pen in it. “It looked like both hands to me,” Mr Saunders said, and he came over and looked at the page Cat had written. “It was both.”

“It doesn’t show,” Cat said miserably.

“Not much,” Mr Saunders agreed. “Does it amuse you to write with alternate hands, or something?”

“No,” Cat confessed. “But I’m left-handed.”

Then, as Cat had feared, Mr Saunders flew into a towering rage. His face went red. He slammed his big knobby hand down on Cat’s desk, so that Cat jumped and the inkwell jumped too, sending ink splashing over Mr Saunders’s great hand and over Cat’s essay. “Left-handed!” he roared. “Then why the Black Gentleman don’t you write with your left hand, boy?”

“They – they punish me if I do,” Cat faltered, very shaken, and very perplexed to find Mr Saunders was angry for such a peculiar reason.

“Then they deserve to be tied up in knots and roasted!” roared Mr Saunders, “whoever they are! You’re doing yourself untold harm by obeying them, boy! If I catch you writing with your right hand again, you’ll be in really serious trouble!”

“Yes,” Cat said, relieved but still very shaken. He looked mournfully at his ink-splashed essay and hoped Mr Saunders might use a little witchcraft on that too. But Mr Saunders took the book and tore the page right out.

“Now do it again properly!” he said, slapping the book back in front of Cat.

Cat was still writing all over again about Canute when Mary came in with a tray of milk and biscuits and a cup of coffee for Mr Saunders. And after the milk and biscuits, Mr Saunders told Cat and Gwendolen they were free till lunch. “Though not because of a good morning’s work,” he said. “Go out and get some fresh air.” As they went out of the schoolroom, he turned to Roger and Julia. “Now we’ll have a little witchcraft,” he said. “And let’s hope you haven’t forgotten all that, too.”

Gwendolen stopped in the doorway and looked at him.

“No. Not you,” Mr Saunders said to her. “I told you.”

Gwendolen whirled round and ran away, through the shabby playroom and down the corridor beyond. Cat ran after her as hard as he could, but he did not catch her up until they came to a much grander part of the Castle, where a big marble staircase curled away downwards and the light came from an elegant dome in the roof.

“This isn’t the right way,” Cat panted.

“Yes it is,” Gwendolen said fiercely. “I’m going to find Chrestomanci. Why should those two fat little fools learn witchcraft and not me? I’ve got twice their gifts. It took two of them just to levitate a jug of cocoa! So I want Chrestomanci.”

By a stroke of good fortune, Chrestomanci was coming along the gallery on the other side of the staircase, behind a curly marble balustrade. He was wearing a fawn-coloured suit now, instead of the imperial dressing-gown, but he looked, if possible, even more elegant. By the look on his face, his thoughts were miles away. Gwendolen ran round the head of the marble staircase and stood herself in front of him. Chrestomanci blinked, and looked vaguely from her to Cat. “Was one of you wanting me?”

“Yes. Me,” said Gwendolen. “Mr Saunders won’t give me witchcraft lessons, and I want you to tell him he must.”

“Oh, but I can’t do that,” Chrestomanci said absentmindedly. “Sorry and so on.”

Gwendolen stamped her foot. It made no noise to speak of, even there on the marble floor, and there was no echo. Gwendolen was forced to shout instead. “Why not? You must, you must, you must!”

Chrestomanci looked down at her, in a peering, surprised way, as if he had only just seen her. “You seem to be annoyed,” he said. “But I’m afraid it’s unavoidable. I told Michael Saunders that he was on no account to teach either of you witchcraft.”

“You did! Why not?” Gwendolen shouted.

“Because you were bound to misuse it, of course,” said Chrestomanci, as if it were quite obvious. “But I’ll reconsider in a year or so, if you still want to learn.” Then he smiled kindly at Gwendolen, obviously expecting her to be pleased, and drifted dreamily away down the marble stairs.

Gwendolen kicked the marble balustrade and hurt her foot. That sent her into a rage as strong as Mr Saunders’. She danced and jumped and shrieked at the head of the stairs, until Cat was quite frightened of her. She shook her fist after Chrestomanci. “I’ll show you! You wait!” she screamed. But Chrestomanci had gone out of sight round the bend in the staircase and perhaps he could not hear. Even Gwendolen’s loudest scream sounded thin and small.

Cat was puzzled. What was it about this Castle? He looked up at the dome where the light came in and thought that Gwendolen’s screaming ought to have echoed round it like the dickens. Instead, it made a small, high squawking. While he waited for her to get her temper back, Cat experimentally put his fingers to his mouth and whistled as hard as he could. It made a queer blunt noise, like a squeaky boot. It also brought the old lady with the mittens out of a door in the gallery.

“You noisy little children!” she said. “If you want to scream and whistle, you must go out in the grounds and do it there.”

“Oh, come on!” Gwendolen said crossly to Cat, and the two of them ran away to the part of the Castle they were used to. After a bit of muddling around, they discovered the door they had first come in by and let themselves outside through it.

“Let’s explore everywhere,” said Cat. Gwendolen shrugged and said it suited her, so they set off.

Beyond the shrubbery of rhododendrons, they found themselves out on the great smooth lawn with the cedar trees. It spread across the entire front of the newer part of the Castle. On the other side of it, Cat saw the most interesting high sun-soaked wall, with trees hanging over it. It was clearly the ruins of an even older castle. Cat set off towards it at a trot, past the big windows of the newer Castle, dragging Gwendolen with him. But, half-way there, Gwendolen stopped and stood poking at the shaved green grass with her toe.

“Hm,” she said, “Do you think this counts as in the Castle?”

“I expect so,” said Cat. “Do come on. I want to explore those ruins there.”

However, the first wall they came to was a very low one, and the door in it led them into a very formal garden. It had broad gravel paths, running very straight, between box hedges. There were yew trees everywhere, clipped into severe pyramids, and all the flowers were yellow, in tidy clumps.

“Boring,” said Cat, and led the way to the ruined wall beyond.

But once again there was a lower wall in the way, and this time they came out into an orchard. It was a very tidy orchard, in which all the trees were trained flat, to stand like hedges on either side of the winding gravel paths. They were loaded with apples, some of them quite big. After what Chrestomanci had said about scrumping, Cat did not quite dare pick one, but Gwendolen picked a big red Worcester and bit into it.

Instantly, a gardener appeared from round a corner and told them reproachfully that picking apples was forbidden.

Gwendolen threw the apple down in the path. “Take it then. There was a maggot in it anyway.”

They went on, leaving the gardener staring ruefully at the bitten apple. And instead of reaching the ruins, they came to a goldfish pond, and after that to a rose garden. Here Gwendolen, as an experiment, tried picking a rose. Instantly, another gardener appeared and explained respectfully that they were not allowed to pick roses. So Gwendolen threw the rose down too. Then Cat looked over his shoulder, and discovered that the ruins were somehow behind them now. He turned back. But he still did not seem to reach them. It was nearly lunch time before he suddenly turned into a steep little path between two walls and found the ruins above him, at the top of the path.

Cat pelted joyfully up the steep path. The sun-soaked wall ahead was taller than most houses, and there were trees at the top of it. When he was close enough, Cat saw that there was a giddy stone staircase jutting out of the wall, more like a stone ladder than a stair. It was so old that snapdragons and wallflowers had rooted in it, and hollyhocks had grown up against the place where the stair met the ground. Cat had to push aside a tall red hollyhock in order to put his foot on the first stair.

No sooner had he done so than yet another gardener came puffing up the steep path. “You can’t go there! That’s Chrestomanci’s garden up there, that is!”

“Why can’t we?” said Cat, deeply disappointed.

“Because it’s not allowed, that’s why.”

Slowly and reluctantly, Cat came away. The gardener stood at the foot of the stair to make sure he went. “Bother!” Cat said.

“I’m getting rather sick of Chrestomanci forbidding things,” said Gwendolen. “It’s time someone taught him a lesson.”

“What are you going to do?” said Cat.

“Wait and see,” said Gwendolen, pressing her lips together in her stormiest way.

Gwendolen refused to tell Cat what she was going to do. This meant that Cat had rather a melancholy time. After a wholesome lunch of swede and boiled mutton, they had lessons again. After that, Gwendolen ran hastily away and would not let Cat come with her. Cat did not know what to do.

“Would you care to come out and play?” Roger asked.

Cat looked at him and saw that he was just being polite. “No thank you,” he said politely. He was forced to wander round the gardens on his own. There was a wood lower down, full of horse chestnuts, but the conkers were not nearly ripe. As Cat was half-heartedly staring up into one, he saw there was a tree-house in it, about halfway up. This was more like it. Cat was just about to climb up to it, when he heard voices and saw Julia’s skirt flutter among the leaves. So that was no good. It was Julia and Roger’s private tree-house, and they were in it.

Cat wandered away again. He came to the lawn, and there was Gwendolen, crouching under one of the cedars, very busy digging a small hole.

“What are you doing?” said Cat.

“Go away,” said Gwendolen.

Cat went away. He was sure what Gwendolen was doing was witchcraft and had to do with teaching Chrestomanci a lesson, but it was no good asking Gwendolen when she was being this secretive. Cat had to wait. He waited through another terrifying dinner, and then through a long, long evening. Gwendolen locked herself in her room after dinner and told him to go away when he knocked.

Next morning, Cat woke up early and hurried to the nearest of his three windows. He saw at once what Gwendolen had been doing. The lawn was ruined. It was not a smooth stretch of green velvet any longer. It was a mass of molehills. As far as Cat could see in both directions, there were little green mounds, little heaps of raw earth, long lines of raw earth and long green furrows of raised grass. There must have been an army of moles at work on it all night. About a dozen gardeners were standing in a gloomy huddle, scratching their heads over it.

Cat threw on his clothes and dashed downstairs.

Gwendolen was leaning out of her window in her frilly cotton nightdress, glowing with pride. “Look at that!” she said to Cat. “Isn’t it marvellous! There’s acres of it, too. It took me hours yesterday evening to make sure it was all spoilt. That will make Chrestomanci think a bit!”

Cat was sure it would. He did not know how much a huge stretch of turf like that would cost to replace, but he suspected it was a great deal. He was afraid Gwendolen would be in really bad trouble.

But to his astonishment, nobody so much as mentioned the lawn. Euphemia came in a minute later, but all she said was, “You’ll both be late for your breakfast again.”

Roger and Julia said nothing at all. They silently accepted the marmalade and Cat’s knife when he passed them over, but the sole thing either of them said was when Julia dropped Cat’s knife and picked it up again all fluffy. She said, “Bother!” And when Mr Saunders called them through for lessons, the only things he talked about were what he was teaching them. Cat decided that nobody knew Gwendolen had caused the moles. They could have no idea what a strong witch she was.

There were no lessons after lunch that day. Mr Saunders explained that they always had Wednesday afternoons off. And at lunchtime, every molehill had gone. When they looked out of the playroom window, the lawn was like a sheet of velvet again.

“I don’t believe it!” Gwendolen whispered to Cat. “It must be an illusion. They’re trying to make me feel small.”

They went out and looked after lunch. They had to be fairly cautious about it, because Mr Saunders was taking his afternoon off in a deckchair under one of the cedars, reading a yellow paper-backed book which seemed to amuse him a great deal. Gwendolen sauntered out into the middle of the lawn and pretended to be admiring the Castle. She pretended to tie her bootlace and prodded the turf with her fingers.

“I don’t understand it!” she said. Being a witch, she knew the close, smooth turf was no illusion. “It really is all right! How was it done?”

“They must have carted in new turf while we were having lessons,” Cat suggested.

“Don’t be stupid!” said Gwendolen. “New turf would all be in squares still, and this isn’t.”

Mr Saunders called to them.

Gwendolen looked, for a second, more apprehensive than Cat had ever seen her. But she hid it fairly well and led the way casually over to the deckchair. Cat saw that the yellow book was in French. Fancy being able to laugh at something in French! Mr Saunders must be a learned magician as well as a strong one.

Mr Saunders laid the book face down on the once-more-beautiful grass and smiled up at them. “You two went away so quickly that you never gave me time to dish you out your pocket money. Here you are.” He handed them each a large silver coin. Cat stared at his. It was a crown piece – five whole shillings. He had never had so much money to spend in his life. Mr Saunders added to his amazement by saying, “You’ll get that every Wednesday. I don’t know whether you’re savers or spenders. What Julia and Roger usually do is to go down to the village and blue it all on sweets.”

“Thank you,” said Cat, “very much. Shall we go down to the village, Gwendolen?”

“We may as well,” Gwendolen agreed. She was divided between a defiant desire to stay at the Castle and face whatever trouble was coming over the moles, and relief at an excuse to get away. “I expect Chrestomanci will send for me as soon as he realises it was me,” she said as they walked down the avenue of trees.

“Do you think it was Mr Saunders who put the lawn right?” Cat asked.

Gwendolen frowned. “He couldn’t have. He was teaching us.”

“Those gardeners,” suggested Cat. “Some of them could be warlocks. They did turn up awfully quickly to forbid us things.”

Gwendolen laughed scornfully. “Think of the Willing Warlock.”

Cat did, a little dubiously. The Willing Warlock was not much more gifted than Mrs Sharp. He was usually hired for heavy carrying jobs, or to make the wrong horse win at the races. “All the same,” he argued, “they could be specialists – garden warlocks.”

Gwendolen only laughed again.

The village was just beyond the Castle gates, at the foot of the hill where the Castle stood. It was a pretty place, round a big green. Across the green, there were shops: a beautiful bow-fronted baker’s and an equally beautiful sweet shop and Post Office. Cat wanted to visit both, but Gwendolen stopped at a third shop, which was a junk shop. Cat did not mind going into that, either. It looked interesting. But Gwendolen shook her head irritably and stopped a village boy who was loitering near it.

“I was told a Mr Baslam lives in this village. Can you tell me where he lives?”

The boy made a face. “Him? He’s no good. Down there, at the end of that alley, if you really want to know.” And he stood looking at them, with the air of someone who has earned sixpence for his pains.

Neither Cat nor Gwendolen had any money beside their crown pieces. They had to go away without giving him anything. The boy shouted after them.

“Stuck up little witch! Mingy little warlock!”

Gwendolen did not mind this in the least, but Cat was so ashamed that he wanted to go back and explain.

Mr Baslam lived in a shabby cottage with an ill-written notice propped in one window: Eggsotick Serplys. Gwendolen looked at it rather pityingly as she hammered on the door with the dingy knocker. When Mr Baslam opened his door, he proved to be a fat person in old trousers which sagged to make room for his fatness, and with red drooping eyes like a St Bernard’s. He started to shut the door again as soon as he saw them.

“Not today, thank you,” he said, and a strong smell of beer came out with the words.

“Mr Nostrum sent me,” said Gwendolen. “Mr William Nostrum.”

The door stopped shutting. “Ah,” said Mr Baslam. “Then you better both come in. This way.” He led them into a poky room containing four chairs, a table, and several dozen cases of stuffed animals. There was hardly room for all the cases of stuffed animals. They stood higgledy-piggledy, one on top of another, and they were all very dusty. “Sit down then,” said Mr Baslam, rather grudgingly.

Cat sat down gently and tried not to breathe too deeply. Beside the beery smell from Mr Baslam, there was a faint rotting smell and a smell like pickles. Cat thought that some of the stuffed animals had not been properly cured. The smell did not seem to bother Gwendolen. She sat looking like a picture of a perfect little girl. Her cream-coloured dress spread crisply round her and her broad hat becomingly shaded her golden hair. She looked at Mr Baslam with severe blue eyes.

“I think your notice is spelt wrong.”

Mr Baslam drooped his St Bernard eyes and made gestures that were meant to be joking. “I know. I know. But I don’t want to be taken serious, do I? Not on the very threshold, as it were. Now what was you wanting? Mr William Nostrum don’t tell me too much of his plans. I’m only a humble supplier.”

“I want some supplies, of course,” said Gwendolen.

Cat listened, rather bored, to Gwendolen bargaining for the materials of witchcraft. Mr Baslam fumbled in the backs of stuffed animal cases and fetched out newspaper screws of this and that – newts’ eyes, snakes’ tongues, cardamom, hellebore, mummy, nitre, seed of moly and various resins – which probably accounted for the unpleasant smell. He wanted more for them than Gwendolen would pay. She was determined to lay out her five shillings to the best possible advantage. Mr Baslam seemed to resent it. “Know your own mind, don’t you?” he said peevishly.

“I know how much things should cost,” said Gwendolen. She took her hat off, packed the little screws of newspaper carefully into its crown, and put it neatly back on her head again. “And last, I think I shall be wanting some dragon’s blood,” she said.

“Ooooh!” said Mr Baslam, dolefully shaking his head so that his hanging cheeks flapped. “Dragon’s blood is banned from use, young lady. You ought to know that. I don’t know as I can manage you any of that.”

“Mr Nostrum – both Mr Nostrums – told me you could get anything,” said Gwendolen. “They said you were the best agent they knew. And I’m not asking for dragon’s blood now. I’m ordering some.”

Mr Baslam looked gratified at being praised by the Nostrum brothers, but he was still dubious. “It’s a fearful strong charm needs dragon’s blood,” he said plaintively. “You won’t be doing anything that strong yourself, a young lady like you, now.”

“I don’t know yet,” said Gwendolen. “But I think I might. I’m on Advanced Magic, you know. And I want dragon’s blood in case I need it.”

“It’ll come dear,” Mr Baslam warned her. “It’s costly stuff. There’s the risk to pay for, you see. I don’t want the law on me.”

“I can pay,” said Gwendolen. “I’ll pay in instalments. You can take the rest of the five shillings on account.”

Mr Baslam was unable to resist this. The way he looked at the crown piece Gwendolen handed to him made Cat see vividly a long row of frothing pints of beer. “Done,” said Mr Baslam. Gwendolen smiled graciously and got up to go. Cat thankfully leapt up too. “What about you, young gentleman?” Mr Baslam asked wheedlingly. “Aren’t you going to try your hand at a bit of necromancy at all?”

“He’s just my brother,” said Gwendolen.

“Oh. Ah. Um. Yes,” said Mr Baslam. “He’s that one, of course. Well, good day to you both. Come again, any time.”

“When will you have the dragon’s blood?” Gwendolen asked him on the doorstep.

Mr Baslam thought. “Say a week?”

Gwendolen’s face glowed. “How quick! I knew you were a good agent. Where do you get it from so quickly?”

“Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it?” said Mr Baslam. “It has to come from another world, but which one is a trade secret, young lady.”

Gwendolen was jubilant as they went back along the alley. “A week!” she said. “That’s the quickest I’ve ever heard. It has to be smuggled in from this other world, you know. He must have awfully good connections there.”

“Or he’s got some already, inside a stuffed bird,” said Cat, who had not liked Mr Baslam at all. “Whatever do you want dragon’s blood for? Mrs Sharp says it costs fifty pounds an ounce.”

“Be quiet,” said Gwendolen. “Oh, quick! Hurry, Cat! Get into that sweet shop. She mustn’t know where I’ve been.”

Out on the village green, a lady carrying a parasol was talking to a clergyman. She was Chrestomanci’s wife. Cat and Gwendolen bundled themselves into the shop and hoped she had not seen them. There, Cat bought them a bag of toffee each. Millie was still there, so he bought some liquorice too. Millie was still talking to the clergyman even then, so he bought Gwendolen a pen-wiper and himself a postcard of the Castle. Millie was still there. But Cat could not think of anything else to buy, so they had to come out of the shop.

Millie beckoned to them as soon as they did. “Come and meet the dear vicar.”

The vicar, who was old, with a weak and wandering look, shakily shook hands with them and said he would see them on Sunday. Then he said he really must be going now.

“And so must we,” said Millie. “Come on, my dears. We’ll walk back to the Castle together.”

There was nothing to do but walk beside her under the shadow of her parasol, across the green and between the lodge gates. Cat was afraid she was going to ask them why they had been visiting Mr Baslam. Gwendolen was sure she was going to ask her about the moles in the lawn. But what Millie said was, “I’m glad of a chance to talk to you, my loves. I haven’t had a moment to see how you were getting on. Are you all right? Are you finding it very strange?”

“A – a little,” Cat admitted.

“The first few days are always the worst, anywhere,” said Millie. “I’m sure you’ll soon find your way round. And don’t hesitate to use the toys in the playroom if you want. They’re for everyone. Private toys are in one’s own room. How are you liking your rooms?”

Cat looked up at her in astonishment. She was talking as if moles and witchcraft had never existed. Despite her elegant ruched dress and her lacy parasol, she was a most ordinary, kind, good-natured lady. Cat liked her. He assured Millie that he liked his room, and his bathroom – particularly the shower – and explained that he had never had a bathroom to himself before.

“Oh, I’m glad. I did so hope you’d like it,” said Millie. “Miss Bessemer wanted to put you next to Roger, but I thought that room was so dull – and it doesn’t have a shower. Look at it some time and you’ll see what I mean.”

She walked on up the avenue, chattering away, and Cat found himself doing all the rest of the talking. As soon as it was clear that Millie was not going to mention either lawns or exotic supplies, Gwendolen began to despise her. She kept up a scornful silence, and left Cat to talk. After a while, Millie asked Cat what thing about the Castle he was finding strangest.

Cat answered shyly, but without hesitation. “The way everyone talks at supper.”

Millie let out such a yell of despair that Cat jumped and Gwendolen was more scornful than ever. “Oh dear! Poor Eric! I’ve seen you looking! Isn’t it awful? Michael gets these enthusiasms, and then he can talk of nothing else. It should be wearing off in a day or so, though, and then we can have reasonable talk again and make a few jokes. I like to laugh at dinner, don’t you? I’m afraid nothing will stop poor Bernard talking about stocks and shares, but you mustn’t take any notice of that. Nobody listens to Bernard. Do you like eclairs, by the way?”

“Yes,” said Cat.

“Oh good!” said Millie. “I’ve ordered tea for us on the lawn, since this is your first Wednesday and I didn’t want to waste this lovely weather. Isn’t it funny how September’s nearly always fine? If we slip through the trees here, we should be on the lawn as soon as tea is.”

Sure enough, they followed Millie out of the shrubbery to find a whole cluster of deckchairs round the one where Mr Saunders was, and footmen putting out tables and carrying trays. Most of the Family were gathering among the deckchairs. Gwendolen followed Millie and Cat over, looking nervous and defiant. She knew Chrestomanci was going to speak to her about the lawn now, and, to make matters worse, she was not going to have a chance to take the exotic supplies out of her hat before he did.

But Chrestomanci was not there, though everyone else was. Millie pushed between stocks-and-shares Bernard and Julia, and past the old lady with mittens, to point her parasol sternly at Mr Saunders. “Michael, you are absolutely forbidden to talk about Art during tea,” she said, and spoilt the sternness rather by laughing.

The Family evidently felt much the same as Cat. Several of them said “Hear, hear!” and Roger said, “Can we start, Mummy?”

Cat enjoyed the tea. It was the first time he had enjoyed anything since he came to the Castle. There were paper-thin cucumber sandwiches and big squashy eclairs. Cat ate even more than Roger did. He was surrounded by cheerful, ordinary chat from the Family, with a hum of stocks and shares in the background, and the sun lay warm and peaceful on the green stretches of the lawn. Cat was glad someone had somehow restored it. He liked it better smooth. He began to think he could almost be happy at the Castle, with a little practice.

Gwendolen was nothing like so happy. The newspaper packets weighed on her head. Their smell spoilt the taste of the eclairs. And she knew she would have to wait until dinner before Chrestomanci spoke to her about the lawn.

Dinner was later that night, because of the tea. Dusk was falling when they filed into the dining room. There were lighted candles all down the polished table. Cat could see them, and the rest of the room, reflected in the row of long windows facing him. It was a pleasing sight, and a useful one. Cat could see the footman coming. For once he was not taken by surprise when the man thrust a tray of little fish and pickled cabbage over his shoulder. And, as he was now forbidden to use his right hand, Cat felt quite justified in changing the serving things over. He began to feel he was settling in.

Because he had not been allowed to talk about Art at tea, Mr Saunders was more than usually eloquent at dinner. He talked and he talked. He took Chrestomanci’s attention to himself, and he talked at him. Chrestomanci seemed dreamy and good-humoured. He listened and nodded. And Gwendolen grew crosser every minute. Chrestomanci said not a word about lawns, neither here nor in the drawing room beforehand. It became clearer and clearer that no one was going to mention the matter at all.

Gwendolen was furious. She wanted her powers recognised. She wanted to show Chrestomanci she was a witch to be reckoned with. So there was nothing for it but to begin on another spell. She was a little hampered by not having any ingredients to hand, but there was one thing she could do quite easily.

The dinner went on. Mr Saunders talked on. Footmen came round with the next course. Cat looked over at the windows to see when the silver plate would come to him. And he nearly screamed.

There was a skinny white creature there. It was pressed against the dark outside of the glass, mouthing and waving. It looked like the lost ghost of a lunatic. It was weak and white and loathsome. It was draggled and slimy. Even though Cat realised almost at once that it was Gwendolen’s doing, he still stared at it in horror.

Millie saw him staring. She looked herself, shuddered, and tapped Chrestomanci gently on the back of the hand with her spoon. Chrestomanci came out of his gentle dream and glanced at the window too. He gave the piteous creature a bored look, and sighed.

“And so I still think Florence is the finest of all the Italian States,” said Mr Saunders.

“People usually put in a word for Venice,” said Chrestomanci. “Frazier, would you draw the curtains, please? Thank you.”

“No, no. In my opinion, Venice is overrated,” Mr Saunders asserted, and he went on to explain why, while the butler drew the long orange curtains and shut the creature out of sight.

“Yes, maybe you’re right. Florence has more to offer,” Chrestomanci agreed. “By the way, Gwendolen, when I said the Castle, I meant of course the Castle grounds as well as indoors. Now, do carry on, Michael. Venice.”

Everyone carried on, except Cat. He could imagine the creature still mouthing and fumbling at the glass behind the orange curtains. He could not eat for thinking of it.

“It’s all right, stupid! I’ve sent it away,” said Gwendolen. Her voice was sticky with rage.

Gwendolen gave vent to her fury in her room after dinner. She jumped on her bed and threw cushions about, screaming. Cat stood prudently back against the wall waiting for her to finish. But Gwendolen did not finish until she had pledged herself to a campaign against Chrestomanci.

“I hate this place!” she bawled. “They try to cover everything up in soft sweet niceness. I hate it, I hate it!” Her voice was muffled among the velvets of her room and swallowed up in the prevailing softness of the Castle. “Do you hear it?” Gwendolen screamed. “It’s an eiderdown of hideous niceness! I wreck their lawn, so they give me tea. I conjure up a lovely apparition, and they have the curtains drawn. Frazier, would you draw the curtains, please! Ugh! Chrestomanci makes me sick!”

“I didn’t think it was a lovely apparition,” Cat said, shivering.

“Ha, ha! You didn’t know I could do that, did you?” said Gwendolen. “It wasn’t to frighten you, you idiot. It was to give Chrestomanci a shock. I hate him! He wasn’t even interested.”

“What did he have us to live here for, if he isn’t interested in you either?” Cat wondered.

Gwendolen was rather struck by this. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “It may be serious. Go away. I want to think about it. Anyway,” she shouted, as Cat was going to the door, “he’s going to be interested, if it’s the last thing I do! I’m going to do something every day until he notices!”

Once again, Cat was mournfully on his own. Remembering what Millie had said, he went along to the playroom. But Roger and Julia were there, playing with soldiers on the stained carpet. The little tin grenadiers were marching about. Some were wheeling up cannon. Others were lying behind cushions, firing their rifles with little pinpricks of bangs. Roger and Julia turned round guiltily.

“You won’t mention this, will you?” said Julia.

“Would you like to come and play too?” Roger asked politely.

“Oh, no thanks,” Cat said hastily. He knew he could never join in this kind of game unless Gwendolen helped him. But he did not dare disturb Gwendolen in her present mood. And he had nothing to do. Then he remembered that Millie had obviously expected him to poke about the Castle more than he had done. So he set off to explore, feeling rather daring.

The Castle seemed strange at night. There were dim little electric lights at regular intervals. The green carpet glowed gently, and things were reflected in the polished floor and walls even more strongly than they were by day. Cat walked softly along, accompanied by several reflected ghosts of himself, until he hardly felt real. All the doors he saw were closed. Cat listened at one or two and heard nothing. He had not quite the courage to open any of them. He went on and on.

After a while, he found he had somehow worked round to the older part of the Castle. Here the walls were whitewashed stone, and all the windows went in nearly three feet before there was any glass. Then Cat came to a staircase which was the twin of the one that twisted up to his room, except that it twisted in the opposite direction. Cat went cautiously up it.

He was just on the last bend, when a door at the top opened. A brighter square of light shone on the wall at the head of the stairs, and a shadow stood in it that could only belong to Chrestomanci. No one else’s shadow could be so tall, with such a smooth head and such a lot of ruffles on its shirt-front. Cat stopped.

“And let’s hope the wretched girl won’t try that again,” Chrestomanci said, out of sight above. He sounded a good deal more alert than usual, and rather angry.

Mr Saunders’s voice, from further away, said, “I’ve had about enough of her already, frankly. I suppose she’ll come to her senses soon. What possessed her to give away the source of her power like that?”

“Ignorance,” said Chrestomanci. “If I thought she had the least idea what she was doing, it would be the last thing she ever did in that line – or any other.”

“My back was to it,” said Mr Saunders. “Which was it? Number five?”

“No. Number three by the look of its hair. A revenant,” said Chrestomanci. “For which we must be thankful.” He began to come down the stairs. Cat was too scared to move. “I’ll have to get the Examining Board to revise their Elementary Magic Courses,” Chrestomanci called back as he came downstairs, “to include more theory. These hedge-wizards push their good pupils straight on to advanced work without any proper grounding at all.” Saying this, Chrestomanci came down round the corner and saw Cat. “Oh hallo,” he said. “I’d no idea you were here. Like to come up and have a look at Michael’s workshop?”

Cat nodded. He did not dare do otherwise.

Chrestomanci seemed quite friendly, however, and so did Mr Saunders when Chrestomanci ushered Cat into the room at the top of the stairs. “Hallo, Eric,” he said in his cheerful way. “Have a look round. Does any of this mean anything to you?”

Cat shook his head. The room was round, like his own, but larger, and it was a regular magician’s workshop. That much he could see. He recognised the five-pointed star painted on the floor. The smell coming from the burning cresset hanging from the ceiling was the same smell that had hung about Coven Street, back in Wolvercote. But he had no idea of the use of the things set out on the various trestle tables. One table was crowded with torts and limbecks, some bubbling, some empty. A second was piled with books and scrolls. The third bench had signs chalked all over it and a mummified creature of some sort lying among the signs.

Cat’s eyes travelled over all this, and over more books crammed into shelves round the walls, and more shelves filled with jars of ingredients – big jars, like the ones in sweet shops. He realised Mr Saunders worked in a big way. His scudding eyes raced over some of the labels on the huge jars: Newts’ Eyes, Gum Arabic, Elixir St John’s Wort, Dragon’s Blood (dried). This last jar was almost full of dark brown powder. Cat’s eyes went back to the mummified animal stretched among the signs chalked on the third table. Its feet had claws like a dog’s. It looked like a large lizard. But there seemed to be wings on its back. Cat was almost sure it had once been a small dragon.

“Means nothing, eh?” said Mr Saunders.

Cat turned round and found that Chrestomanci had gone. That made him a little easier. “This must have cost a lot,” he said.

“The taxpayer pays, fortunately,” said Mr Saunders. “Would you like to learn what all this is about?”

“You mean, learn witchcraft?” Cat asked. “No. No thanks. I wouldn’t be any good at it.”

“Well, I had at least two other things in mind besides witchcraft.” Mr Saunders said. “But what makes you think you’d be no good?”

“Because I can’t do it,” Cat explained. “Spells just don’t work for me.”

“Are you sure you went about them in the right way?” Mr Saunders asked. He wandered up to the mummified dragon – or whatever – and gave it an absent-minded flick. To Cat’s disgust, the thing twitched all over. Filmy wings jerked and spread on its back. Then it went lifeless again. The sight sent Cat backing towards the door. He was almost as alarmed as he was the time Miss Larkins suddenly spoke with a man’s voice. And, come to think of it, the voice had been not so unlike Mr Saunders’s.

“I went about it every way I could think,” Cat said, backing. “And I couldn’t even turn buttons into gold. And that was simple.”

Mr Saunders laughed. “Perhaps you weren’t greedy enough. All right. Cut along, if you want to go.”

Cat fled, in great relief. As he ran through the strange corridors, he thought he ought to let Gwendolen know that Chrestomanci had, after all, been interested in her apparition, and even angry. But Gwendolen had locked her door and would not answer when he called to her.

He tried again next morning. But, before he had a chance to speak to Gwendolen, Euphemia came in, carrying a letter. As Gwendolen snatched it eagerly from Euphemia, Cat recognised Mr Nostrum’s jagged writing on the envelope.

The next moment, Gwendolen was raging again. “Who did this? When did this come?” The envelope had been neatly cut open along the top.

“This morning, by the postmark,” said Euphemia. “And don’t look at me like that. Miss Bessemer gave it to me open.”

“How dare she!” said Gwendolen. “How dare she read my letters! I’m going straight to Chrestomanci about this!”

“You’ll regret it if you do,” said Euphemia, as Gwendolen pushed past her to the door.

Gwendolen whirled round on her. “Oh, shut up, you stupid frog-faced girl!” Cat thought that was a little unfair. Euphemia, though she did have rather goggling eyes, was actually quite pretty. “Come on, Cat!” Gwendolen shouted at him, and she ran away along the corridor with her letter. Cat panted behind her and, once again, did not catch up with her till they were beside the marble staircase. “Chrestomanci!” bawled Gwendolen, thin and small and unechoing.

Chrestomanci was coming up the marble staircase in a wide, flowing dressing-gown that was partly orange and partly bright pink. He looked like the Emperor of Peru. By the suave, vague look on his face, he had not noticed Gwendolen and Cat.

Gwendolen shouted down at him. “Here, you! Come here at once!” Chrestomanci’s face turned upwards and his eyebrows went up. “Someone’s been opening my letters,” said Gwendolen. “And I don’t care who it is, but I’m not having it! Do you hear?”

Cat gasped at the way she spoke. Chrestomanci seemed perplexed. “How are you not having it?” he said.

“I won’t put up with it!” Gwendolen shouted at him. “In future, my letters are going to come to me closed!”

“You mean you want me to steam them open and stick them down afterwards?” Chrestomanci asked doubtfully. “It’s more trouble, but I’ll do that if it makes you happier.”

Gwendolen stared at him. “You mean you did it? You read a letter addressed to me?”

Chrestomanci nodded blandly. “Naturally. If someone like Henry Nostrum writes letters to you, I have to make sure he’s not writing anything unsuitable. He’s a very seedy person.”

“He was my teacher!” Gwendolen said furiously. “You’ve no right to!”

“It’s a pity,” said Chrestomanci, “that you were taught by a hedge-wizard. You’ll have to unlearn such a lot. And it’s a pity too that I’ve no right to open your letters. I hope you don’t get many, or my conscience will give me no peace.”

“You intend to go on?” Gwendolen said. “Then watch out. I warn you!”

“That is very considerate of you,” said Chrestomanci. “I like to be warned.” He came up the rest of the marble stairs and went past Gwendolen and Cat. The pink and orange dressing-gown swirled, revealing a bright scarlet lining. Cat blinked.

Gwendolen stared vengefully as the dazzling dressing-gown flowed away along the gallery. “Oh no, don’t notice me, will you!” she said. “Make jokes. You wait! Cat, I’m so furious!”

“You were awfully rude,” said Cat.

“He deserved it,” said Gwendolen, and began to hurry back towards the playroom. “Opening poor Mr Nostrum’s letter! It isn’t that I mind him reading it. We arranged a code, so horrid Chrestomanci will never know what it’s really saying, but there is the signature. But it’s the insult. The indignity. I’m at their mercy in this Castle. I’m all on my own in distress and I can’t even stop them reading my letters. But I’ll show them. You wait!”

Cat knew better than to say anything. Gwendolen slammed into the playroom, flounced down at the table, and began at last to read her letter.

“I told you so,” said Euphemia, while Mary was working the lift.

Gwendolen shot her a look. “You wait, too,” she said, and went on reading. After a bit, she looked in the envelope again. “There’s one for you too,” she said to Cat, and tossed him a sheet of paper. “Mind you reply to it.”

Cat took it, wondering nervously why Mr Nostrum should write to him. But it was from Mrs Sharp. She wrote:

Me dear Cat,

Ow are you doin then me love? I fine meself lonesum an missin you both particular you the place seems so quiete. Thourght I was lookin forwards to a bit peace but missin yer voice an wishin you was comin in bringin appels. One thing happen an that was a gennelman come an give five poun for the ole cat that was yer fidel so I feel flush an had idear of packin you up a parsel of jinjerbredmen and mebbe bringin them to you one of these days but Mr Nostrum sez not to. Spect your in the lap of luckshury anyhows. Love to Gwendolen. Wish you was back here Cat and the money means nothin.

Your loving,

Ellen Sharp

Cat read this with a warm, smiling, tearful feeling. He found he was missing Mrs Sharp as much as she evidently missed him. He was so homesick he could not eat his bread, and the cocoa seemed to choke him. He did not hear one word in five that Mr Saunders said.

“Is something the matter with you, Eric?” Mr Saunders demanded.

As Cat dragged his mind back from Coven Street, the window blacked out. The room was suddenly pitch dark. Julia squeaked. Mr Saunders groped his way to the switch and turned the light on. As he did so, the window became transparent again, revealing Roger grinning, Julia startled, Gwendolen sitting demurely, and Mr Saunders with his hand on the switch looking irritably at her.

“I suppose the cause of this is outside the Castle grounds, is it?” he said.

“Outside the lodge gates,” Gwendolen said smugly. “I put it there this morning.” By this, Cat knew her campaign against Chrestomanci had been launched.

The window blacked out again.

“How often are we to expect this?” Mr Saunders said in the dark.

“Twice every half hour,” said Gwendolen.

“Thank you,” Mr Saunders said nastily, and he left the light on. “Now we can see, Gwendolen, write out one hundred times, I must keep the spirit of the law and not the letter and, Roger, take that grin off your face.”

All that day, all the windows in the Castle blacked out regularly twice every half hour. But if Gwendolen had hoped to make Chrestomanci angry, she did not succeed. Nothing happened, except that everyone kept the lights on all the time. It was rather a nuisance, but no one seemed to mind.

Before lunch, Cat went outside on to the lawn to see what the blackouts looked like from the other side. It was rather as if two black shutters were flicking regularly across the rows of windows. They started at the top right-hand corner, and flicked steadily across, along the next row from left to right and then from right to left along the next, and so on, until they reached the bottom. Then they started at the top again. Cat had watched about half a complete performance, when he found Roger beside him, watching critically with his pudgy hands in his pockets.

“Your sister must have a very tidy mind,” Roger said.

“I think all witches have,” said Cat. Then he was embarrassed. Of course he was talking to one – or at least to a warlock in the making.

“I don’t seem to have,” Roger remarked, not in the least worried. “Nor has Julia. And I don’t think Michael has, really. Would you like to come and play in our tree-house after lessons?”

Cat was very flattered. He was so pleased that he forgot how homesick he was. He spent a very happy evening down in the wood, helping to rebuild the roof of the tree-house. He came back to the Castle when the dressing-gong went, and found that the window-spell was fading. When the windows darkened, it only produced a sort of grey twilight indoors. By the following morning, it was gone, and Chrestomanci had not said a word.

Gwendolen returned to the attack the next morning. She caught the baker’s boy as he cycled through the lodge gates with the square front container of his bicycle piled high with loaves for the Castle. The baker’s boy arrived at the kitchen looking a little dazed and saying his head felt swimmy. As a consequence, the children had to have scones for breakfast. It seemed that when the bread was cut, the most interesting things happened.

“You’re giving us all a good laugh,” Mary said, as she brought the scones from the lift. “I’ll say that for your naughtiness, Gwendolen. Roberts thought he’d gone mad when he found he was cutting away at an old boot. So Cook cuts another, and next moment she and Nancy are trying to climb on the same chair because of all those white mice. But it was Mr Frazier’s face that made me laugh most, when he says ‘Let me’ and finds himself chipping at a stone. Then the—”

“Don’t encourage her. You know what she’s like,” said Euphemia.

“Be careful I don’t start on you,” Gwendolen said sourly.

Roger found out privately from Mary what had happened to the other loaves. One had become a white rabbit, one had been an ostrich egg – which had burst tremendously all over the bootboy – and another a vast white onion. After that, Gwendolen’s invention had run out and she had turned the rest into cheese. “Old bad cheese, though,” Roger said, giving honour where honour was due.

It was not known whether Chrestomanci also gave honour where it was due, because, once again, he said not a word to anyone.

The next day was Saturday. Gwendolen caught the farmer delivering the churn of milk the Castle used daily. The breakfast cocoa tasted horrible.

“I’m beginning to get annoyed,” Julia said tartly. “Daddy may take no notice, but he drinks tea with lemon.” She stared meaningly at Gwendolen. Gwendolen stared back, and there was that invisible feeling of clashing Cat had noticed when Gwendolen had wanted her mother’s earrings from Mrs Sharp. This time, however, Gwendolen did not have things all her own way. She lowered her eyes and looked peevish.

“I’m getting sick of getting up early, anyway,” she said crossly.

This, from Gwendolen, simply meant she would do something later in the day in future. But Julia thought she had beaten Gwendolen, and this was a mistake.

They had lessons on Saturday morning, which annoyed Gwendolen very much. “It’s monstrous,” she said to Mr Saunders. “Why do we have to be tormented like this?”

“It’s the price I have to pay for my holiday on Wednesday,” Mr Saunders told her. “And, speaking of tormenting, I prefer you to bewitch something other than the milk.”

“I’ll remember that,” Gwendolen said sweetly.

It rained on Saturday afternoon. Gwendolen shut herself into her room, and once again Cat did not know what to do. He wrote to Mrs Sharp on the back of his postcard of the Castle, but that only took ten minutes, and it was too wet to go out and post it. Cat was hanging about at the foot of his stairs, wondering what to do now, when Roger came out of the playroom and saw him.

“Oh good,” said Roger. “Julia won’t play soldiers. Will you?”

“But I can’t – not like you do,” Cat said.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Roger. “Honestly.”

But it did. No matter how cunningly Cat deployed his lifeless tin army, as soon as Roger’s soldiers began to march, Cat’s men fell over like ninepins. They fell in batches and droves and in battalions. Cat moved them furiously this way and that, grabbing them by handfuls and scooping them with the lid of the box, but he was always on the retreat. In five minutes, he was reduced to three soldiers hidden behind a cushion.

“This is no good,” said Roger.

“No, it isn’t,” Cat agreed mournfully.

“Julia,” said Roger.

“What?” said Julia. She was curled in the shabbiest armchair, managing to suck a lollipop, to read a book called In the Hands of the Lamas, and to knit, all at the same time. Her knitting, hardly surprisingly, looked like a vest for a giraffe which had been dipped in six shades of grey dye.

“Can you make Cat’s soldiers move for him?” said Roger.

“I’m reading,” said Julia, round the edges of the lollipop. “It’s thrilling. One of them’s got lost and they think he’s perished miserably.”

“Be a sport,” said Roger. “I’ll tell you whether he did perish, if you don’t.”

“If you do, I’ll turn your underpants to ice,” Julia said amiably. “All right.” Without taking her eyes off her book or the lollipop out of her mouth, she fumbled out her handkerchief and tied a knot in it. She laid the knotted handkerchief on the arm of her chair and went on knitting.

Cat’s fallen soldiers picked themselves up from the floor and straightened their tin tunics. This was a great improvement, though it was still not entirely satisfactory. Cat could not tell his soldiers what to do. He had to shoo them into position with his hands. The soldiers did not seem happy. They looked up at the great flapping hands above them in the greatest consternation. Cat was sure one fainted from terror. But he got them positioned in the end – with great cunning, he thought.

The battle began. The soldiers seemed to know how to do that for themselves. Cat had a company in reserve behind a cushion and, when the battle was at its fiercest, he shooed them out to fall on Roger’s right wing. Roger’s right wing turned and fought. And every one of Cat’s reserve turned and ran. The rest of his army saw them running away and ran too. In three seconds, they were all trying to hide in the toy cupboard, and Roger’s soldiers were cutting them down in swathes. Roger was exasperated.

“Julia’s soldiers always run away!”

“Because that’s just what I would do,” Julia said, putting out a knitting-needle to mark her place in her book. “I can’t think why all soldiers don’t.”

“Well, make them a bit braver,” said Roger. “It’s not fair on Eric.”

“You only said make them move,” Julia was arguing, when the door opened and Gwendolen put her head in.

“I want Cat,” she said.

“He’s busy,” said Roger.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Gwendolen. “I need him.”

Julia stretched out a knitting-needle towards Gwendolen and wrote a little cross in the air with it. The cross floated, glowing, for a second. “Out,” said Julia. “Go away.” Gwendolen backed away from the cross and shut the door again. It was as if she could not help herself. The expression on her face was very annoyed indeed. Julia smiled placidly and pointed her knitting-needle towards Cat’s soldiers. “Carry on,” she said. “I’ve filled their hearts with courage.”

When the dressing-gong sounded, Cat went to find out what Gwendolen had wanted him for. Gwendolen was very busy reading a fat, new-looking book and could not spare him any attention at first. Cat tipped his head sideways and read the title of the book. Other-world Studies, Series III. While he was doing it, Gwendolen began to laugh. “Oh, I see how it works now!” she exclaimed. “It’s even better than I thought! I know what to do now!” Then she lowered the book and asked Cat what he thought he was doing.

“Why did you need me?” said Cat. “Where did you get that book?”

“From the Castle library,” said Gwendolen. “And I don’t need you now. I was going to explain to you about Mr Nostrum’s plans, and I might even have told you about mine, but I changed my mind when you just sat there and let that fat prig Julia send me away.”

“I didn’t know Mr Nostrum had any plans,” Cat said. “The dressing-gong’s gone.”

“Of course he has plans – and I heard it – why do you think I wrote to Chrestomanci?” said Gwendolen. “But it’s no good trying to wheedle me. I’m not going to tell you and you’re going to be sorry. And piggy-priggy Julia is going to be sorrier even sooner!”

Gwendolen revenged herself on Julia at the start of dinner. A footman was just passing a bowl of soup over Julia’s shoulder, when the skirt of Julia’s dress turned to snakes. Julia jumped up with a shriek. Soup poured over the snakes and flew far and wide, and the footman yelled, “Lord have mercy on us!” among the sounds of the smashing soup-bowl.

Then there was dead silence, except for the hissing of snakes. There were twenty of them, hanging by their tails from Julia’s waistband, writhing and striking. Everyone froze, with their heads stiffly turned Julia’s way. Julia stood like a statue, with her arms up out of reach of the snakes. She swallowed and said the words of a spell.

Nobody blamed her. Mr Saunders said, “Good girl!”

Under the spell, the snakes stiffened and fanned out, so that they were standing like a ballet skirt above Julia’s petticoats. Everyone could see where Julia had torn a flounce of a petticoat building the tree-house and mended it in a hurry with red darning wool.

“Have you been bitten?” said Chrestomanci.

“No,” said Julia. “The soup muddled them. If you don’t mind, I’ll go and change this dress now.”

She left the room, walking very slowly and carefully, and Millie went with her. While the footmen, all rather green in the face, were clearing up the spilt soup, Chrestomanci said, “Spitefulness is one thing I won’t have at the dinner-table. Gwendolen, oblige me by going to the playroom. Your food will be brought to you there.”

Gwendolen got up and went without a word. As Julia and Millie did not come back, the dining table seemed rather empty that evening. It was all stocks and shares from Bernard at one end, and statues again from Mr Saunders at the other.

Cat found that Gwendolen was rather triumphant. She felt she had made an impression on Chrestomanci at last. So she returned to the attack with a will on Sunday.

On Sunday, the Family dressed in its best and walked down to Morning Service at the village church. Witches are not supposed to like church. Nor are they supposed to be able to work magic there. But this never bothered Gwendolen at all. Mrs Sharp had many times remarked on it, as showing what exceptional talents Gwendolen had. Gwendolen sat next to Cat in the Chrestomanci pew, looking the picture of demure innocence in her broderie anglaise Sunday dress and hat, and found her place in her prayer book as if she were truly saintly.

The village people nudged one another and whispered about her. This rather pleased Gwendolen. She liked to be well-known. She kept up the pretence of saintliness until the sermon had begun.

The vicar climbed shakily into the pulpit and gave his text in a weak, wandering voice. “For there were many in the congregation that were not sanctified.” This was certainly to the point. Unfortunately, nothing else he said was.

He told, in his weak wandering voice, of weak wandering episodes in his early life. He compared them with weak wandering things he thought were happening in the world today. He told them they had better be sanctified or all sorts of things – which he forgot to mention – would happen, which reminded him of a weak and wandering thing his aunts used to tell him.

Mr Saunders was asleep by this time, and so was stocks-and-shares Bernard. The old lady with mittens was nodding. One of the saints in the stained-glass windows yawned, and put up his crozier elegantly to cover his mouth. He looked round at his neighbour, who was a formidable nun. Her robes hung in severe folds, like a bundle of sticks. The bishop stretched out his stained-glass crozier and tapped the nun on the shoulder. She resented it. She marched into his window and began shaking him.

Cat saw her. He saw the coloured transparent bishop clouting the nun over the wimple, and the nun giving him as good as she got. Meanwhile, the hairy saint next to them made a dive for his neighbour, who was a kingly sort of saint, holding a model of the Castle. The kingly saint dropped his model and fled for protection, in a twinkle of glassy feet, behind the robes of a simpering lady saint. The hairy saint jumped gleefully up and down on the model of the Castle.

One by one, all the windows came to life. Almost every saint turned and fought the one next to him. Those who had no one to fight, either hitched up their robes and did silly dances, or waved to the vicar, who rambled on without noticing. The little tiny people blowing trumpets in the corners of the windows sprang and gambolled and frisked, and pulled transparent faces at anyone who was looking. The hairy saint winkled the kingly one out from behind the simpering lady and chased him from window to window in and out of all the other fighting couples.

By this time, the whole congregation had seen. Everyone stared, or whispered, or leant craning this way and that to watch the twinkling glass toes of the kingly saint.

There was such a disturbance that Mr Saunders woke up, puzzled. He looked at the windows, understood, and looked sharply at Gwendolen. She sat with her eyes demurely cast down, the picture of innocence. Cat glanced at Chrestomanci. For all he could tell, Chrestomanci was attending to the vicar’s every word and had not even noticed the windows. Millie was sitting on the edge of her seat, looking agitated. And the vicar still rambled on, quite unconscious of the turmoil.

The curate, however, felt he ought to put a stop to the unseemly behaviour of the windows. He fetched a cross and a candle. Followed by a giggling choirboy swinging incense, he went from window to window murmuring exorcisms. Gwendolen obligingly stopped each saint in its tracks as he came to it – which meant that the kingly saint was stranded halfway across the wall. But, as soon as the curate’s back was turned, he began to run again, and the free-for-all went on more riotously than before. The congregation rolled about, gasping.

Chrestomanci turned and looked at Mr Saunders. Mr Saunders nodded. There was a sort of flicker, which jolted Cat where he sat, and, when he looked at the windows, every saint was standing stiff and glassy there, as they should be.

Gwendolen’s head came up indignantly. Then she shrugged. At the back of the church, a great stone crusader sat up on his tomb and, with much rasping of stone, thumbed his nose at the vicar.

“Dearly beloved—” said the vicar. He saw the crusader. He stopped, confounded.

The curate hastened up and tried to exorcise the crusader. A look of irritation crossed the crusader’s face. He lifted his great stone sword. But Mr Saunders made a sharp gesture. The crusader, looking even more irritated, lowered his sword and lay down again with a thump that shook the church.

“There are some in this congregation who are certainly not sanctified,” the vicar said sadly. “Let us pray.”

When everyone straggled out of church, Gwendolen sauntered out among them, quite impervious to the shocked looks everyone gave her as she passed. Millie hurried after her and seized her arm. She looked most upset.

“That was disgraceful, you ungodly child! I don’t dare speak to the poor vicar. There is such a thing as going too far, you know!”

“Have I gone it?” Gwendolen asked, really interested.

“Very nearly,” said Millie.

But not quite, it seemed. Chrestomanci did not say anything to Gwendolen, though he said a great deal, very soothingly, both to the vicar and to the curate.

“Why doesn’t your father tell Gwendolen off?” Cat asked Roger as they walked back up the avenue. “Taking no notice of her just makes her worse.”

“I don’t know,” said Roger. “He comes down on us hard enough if we use witchcraft. Perhaps he thinks she’ll get tired of it. Has she told you what she’s going to do tomorrow?” It was clear Roger could hardly wait.

“No. She’s cross with me for playing soldiers with you,” said Cat.

“Her stupid fault for thinking she owns you,” said Roger. “Let’s get into old clothes and build some more of the tree-house.”

Gwendolen was angry when Cat went off with Roger again. Maybe that was why she thought of what she did next. Or perhaps, as she said, she had other reasons. At all events, when Cat woke up on Monday morning, it was dark. It felt very early. It looked even earlier. So Cat turned over and went to sleep again.

He was astonished to find Mary shaking him a minute later. “It’s twenty to nine, Eric. Get up, do!”

“But it’s dark!” Cat protested. “Is it raining?”

“No,” said Mary. “Your sister’s been hard at it again. And where she gets the strength from, a little girl like her, beats me!”

Feeling tired and Mondayish, Cat dragged himself out of bed and found he could not see out of the windows. Each window was a dark criss-cross of branches and leaves – green leaves, bluish cedar sprays, pine-needles, and leaves just turning yellow and brown. One window had a rose pressed against it, and there were bunches of grapes squashed on both of the others. And behind them, it looked as if there was a mile-thick forest. “Good Lord!” he said.

“You may well look!” said Mary. “That sister of yours has fetched every tree in the grounds and stood them as close as they can get to the Castle. You wonder what she’ll think of next.”

The darkness made Cat weary and gloomy. He did not want to get dressed. But Mary stood over him, and made him wash, too. The reason she was so dutiful, Cat suspected, was that she wanted to tell someone all about the difficulties the trees were causing. She told Cat that the yew trees from the formal garden were packed so tight by the kitchen door that the men had to hack a path for the milk to come through. There were three oak trees against the main front door, and no one could budge it. “And the apples are all underfoot among the yew trees, so it smells like a cider-press in the kitchen,” Mary said.

When Cat arrived wearily in the playroom, it was even darker there. In the deep greenish light, he could see that Gwendolen was, understandably, white and tired. But she looked satisfied enough.

“I don’t think I like these trees,” Cat whispered to her, when Roger and Julia had gone through to the schoolroom. “Why couldn’t you do something smaller and funnier?”

“Because I’m not a laughing stock!” Gwendolen hissed back. “And I needed to do it. I had to know how much power I could draw on.”

“Quite a lot, I should think,” Cat said, looking at the mass of horse-chestnut leaves pressed against the window.

Gwendolen smiled. “Better still when I’ve got my dragon’s blood.”

Cat nearly blurted out that he had seen dragon’s blood in Mr Saunders’s workshop. But he stopped himself in time. He did not care for mighty works like this.

They spent another morning with the lights on, and at lunch time, Cat, Julia and Roger went out to have a look at the trees. They were disappointed to find that it was quite easy to get out of their private door. The rhododendrons were three feet away from it. Cat thought Gwendolen must intentionally have left them a way out, until he looked up and saw, from their bent branches and mashed leaves, that the bushes had indeed been squashed against the door earlier. It looked as if the trees were retreating.

Beyond the rhododendrons, they had to fight their way through something like a jungle. The trees were rammed so tight that, not only had twigs and leaves broken off by cartloads, but great branches had been torn away too, and fallen tangled with smashed roses, broken clematis and mangled grapes. When the children tore themselves out on the other side of the jungle, blank daylight hit them like a hammer blow. They blinked. The gardens, the village, and even the hills beyond were bald. The only place where they could still see trees was above the old grey ruined wall of Chrestomanci’s garden.

“It must have been a strong spell,” said Roger.

“It’s like a desert,” said Julia. “I never thought I’d miss the trees so much!”

But, halfway through the afternoon, it became clear that the trees were going back to their proper places. They could see sky through the schoolroom window. A little later, the trees had spread out and retreated so much that Mr Saunders turned the light off. Shortly after that, Cat and Roger noticed the ruins of the tree-house, smashed to bits in the crowding, dangling out of a chestnut tree.

“Now what are you staring at?” said Mr Saunders.

“The tree-house is broken,” Roger said, looking moodily at Gwendolen.

“Perhaps Gwendolen would be kind enough to mend it again,” Mr Saunders suggested sarcastically.

If he was trying to goad Gwendolen into doing a kindly act, he failed. Gwendolen tossed her head. “Tree-houses are stupid babyish things,” she said coldly. She was very annoyed at the way the trees were retreating. “It’s too bad!” she told Cat just before dinner. By that time the trees were almost back to their usual places. The only ones nearer than they should be were those on the hill opposite. The view looked smaller, somehow. “I hoped it would do for tomorrow, too,” Gwendolen said discontentedly. “Now I shall have to think of something else.”

“Who sent them back? The garden warlocks?” Cat asked.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk nonsense,” said Gwendolen. “It’s obvious who did it.”

“You mean Mr Saunders?” said Cat. “But couldn’t the spell have been used up just pulling all the trees here?”

“You don’t know a thing about it,” said Gwendolen.

Cat knew he knew nothing of magic, but he found it queer all the same. The next day, when he went to see, there were no fallen twigs, torn-off branches or squashed grapes anywhere. The yew trees in the formal garden did not seem to have been hacked at all. And though there was not a trace of an apple underfoot round the kitchen, there were boxes of firm round apples in the courtyard. In the orchard, the apples were either hanging on the trees or being picked and put in more boxes.

While Cat was finding this out, he had to flatten himself hastily against one of the hedge-like apple-trees to make way for a galloping Jersey cow pursued by two gardeners and a farm boy. There were cows galloping in the wood, when Cat went hopefully to look at the tree-house. Alas, that was still a ruin. And the cows were doing their best to ruin the flowerbeds and not making much impression.

“Did you do the cows?” he asked Gwendolen.

“Yes. But it was just something to show them I’m not giving up,” said Gwendolen. “I shall get my dragon’s blood tomorrow and then I can do something really impressive.”

Gwendolen went down to the village to get her dragon’s blood on Wednesday afternoon. She was in high glee. There were to be guests that night at the Castle and a big dinner party. Cat knew that everyone had carefully not mentioned it before, for fear Gwendolen would take advantage of it. But she had to be told on Wednesday morning, because there were special arrangements for the children. They were to have their supper in the playroom, and they were supposed to keep out of the way after that.

“I’ll keep out of the way all right,” Gwendolen promised. “But that won’t make any difference.” She chuckled about it all the way to the village.

Cat was embarrassed when they got to the village. Everyone avoided Gwendolen. Mothers dragged their children indoors and snatched babies out of her way. Gwendolen hardly noticed. She was too intent on getting to Mr Baslam and getting her dragon’s blood. Cat did not fancy Mr Baslam, or the decaying pickle smell among his stuffed animals. He let Gwendolen go there on her own, and went to post his postcard to Mrs Sharp in the sweet shop. The people there were rather cool with him, even though he spent nearly two shillings on sweets, and they were positively cold in the cake shop next door. When Cat came out on to the green with his parcels, he found that children were being snatched out of his way, too.

This so shamed Cat that he fled back to the Castle grounds and did not wait for Gwendolen. There he wandered moodily, eating toffees and penny buns, and wishing he was back with Mrs Sharp. From time to time he saw Gwendolen in the distance. Sometimes she was dashing about. Sometimes she was squatting under a tree, carefully doing something. Cat did not go near her. If they were back with Mrs Sharp, he thought, Gwendolen would not need to do whatever impressive thing she was planning. He found himself wishing she was not quite such a strong and determined witch. He tried to imagine a Gwendolen who was not a witch, but he found himself quite unable to. She just would not be Gwendolen.

Indoors, the usual silence of the Castle was not quite the same. There were tense little noises, and the thrumming feeling of people diligently busy just out of earshot. Cat knew it was going to be a big, important dinner party.

After supper, he craned out of Gwendolen’s window watching the guests come up the piece of avenue he could see from there. They came in carriages and in cars, all very large and rich-looking. One carriage was drawn by six white horses and looked so impressive that Cat wondered if it might not even be the King.

“All the better,” said Gwendolen. She was squatting in the middle of the carpet, beside a sheet of paper. At one end of the paper was a bowl of ingredients. At the other crawled, wriggled or lay a horrid heap of things. Gwendolen had collected two frogs, an earthworm, several earwigs, a black beetle, a spider and a little pile of bones. The live things were charmed and could not move off the paper.

As soon as Cat was sure that there were no more carriages arriving, Gwendolen began pounding the ingredients together in the bowl. As she pounded, she muttered things in a groaning hum and her hair hung down and quivered over the bowl. Cat looked at the wriggling, hopping creatures and hoped that they were not going to be pounded up as ingredients too. It seemed not. Gwendolen at length sat back on her heels and said, “Now!”

She snapped her fingers over the bowl. The ingredients caught fire, all by themselves, and burnt with small blue flames. “It’s working!” Gwendolen said excitedly. She snatched up a twist of newspaper from beside her and carefully untwisted it. “Now for a pinch of dragon’s blood.” She took a pinch of the dark brown powder and sprinkled it on the flames. There was a fizzing, and a thick smell of burning. Then the flames leapt up, a foot high, blazing a furious green and purple, colouring the whole room with dancing light.

Gwendolen’s face glowed in the green and purple. She rocked on her heels, chanting, chanting, strings of things Cat could not understand. Then, still chanting, she leaned over and touched the spider. The spider grew. And grew. And grew more. It grew into a five foot monster – a greasy roundness with two little eyes on the front, hanging like a hammock amid eight bent and jointed furry legs. Gwendolen pointed. The door of the room sprang open of its own accord – which made her smile exultingly – and the huge spider went silently creeping towards it, swaying on its hairy legs. It squeezed its legs inwards to get through the door, and crept onwards, down the passage beyond.

Gwendolen touched the other creatures, one by one. The earwigs lumbered up and off, like shiny horned cows, bright brown and glistening. The frogs rose up, as big as men, and walked flap, flop on their enormous feet, with their arms trailing like gorillas. Their mottled skin quivered, and little holes in it kept opening and shutting. The puffy place under their chins made gulping movements. The black beetle crawled on branched legs, such a big black slab that it could barely get through the door. Cat could see it, and all the others, going in a slow, silent procession down the grass-green glowing corridor.

“Where are they going?” he whispered. Gwendolen chuckled. “I’m sending them to the dining room, of course. I don’t think the guests will want much supper.”

She took up a bone next, and knocked each end of it sharply on the floor. As soon as she let go of it, it floated up into the air. There was a soft clattering, and more bones came out of nowhere to join it. The green and purple flames roared and rasped. A skull arrived last of all, and a complete skeleton was dangling there in front of the flames. Gwendolen smiled with satisfaction and took up another bone.

But bones when they are bewitched have a way of remembering who they were. The dangling skeleton sighed, in a hollow singing voice, “Poor Sarah Jane. I’m poor Sarah Jane. Let me rest.”

Gwendolen waved it impatiently towards the door. It went dangling off, still sighing, and a second skeleton dangled after it, sighing, “Bob the gardener’s boy. I didn’t mean to do it.” They were followed by three more, each one singing softly and desolately of who it had been, and all five went slowly dangling after the black beetle. “Sarah Jane,” Cat heard from the corridor. “I didn’t mean to.” “I was Duke of Buckingham once.”

Gwendolen took no notice of them and turned to the earthworm. It grew too. It grew into a massive pink thing as big as a sea serpent. Loops of it rose and fell and writhed all over the room. Cat was nearly sick. Its bare pink flesh had hairs on it like a pig’s bristles. There were rings on it like the wrinkles round his own knuckles. Its great sightless front turned blindly this way and that until Gwendolen pointed to the door. Then it set off slowly after the skeletons, length after length of bare pink loops.

Gwendolen looked after it critically.

“Not bad,” she said. “I need one last touch though.”

Carefully, she dropped another tiny pinch of dragon’s blood on the flames. They burnt with a whistling sound, brighter, sicker, yellower. Gwendolen began to chant again, waving her arms this time. After a moment, a shape seemed to be gathering in the quivering air over the flames. Whiteness was boiling, moving, forming into a miserable bent thing with a big head. Three more somethings were roiling and hardening beneath it. When the first thing flopped out of the flames on to the carpet, Gwendolen gave a gurgle of pleasure. Cat was amazed at how wicked she looked.

“Oh don’t!” he said. The three other somethings flopped on to the carpet, too, and he saw they were the apparition at the window and three others like it. The first was like a baby that was too small to walk – except that it was walking, with its big head wobbling. The next was a cripple, so twisted and cramped upon itself that it could barely hobble. The third was the apparition at the window, pitiful, wrinkled and draggled. The last had its white skin barred with blue stripes. All were weak and white and horrible. Cat shuddered all over.

“Please send them away!” he said.

Gwendolen only laughed again and waved the four apparitions towards the door.

They set off, toiling weakly. But they were only halfway there, when Chrestomanci came through the door and Mr Saunders came after him. In front of them came a shower of bones and small dead creatures, pattering on to the carpet and getting squashed under Chrestomanci’s long, shiny shoes. The apparitions hesitated, gibbering. Then they fled back to the flaming bowl and vanished. The flames vanished at the same time, into thick black smelly smoke.

Gwendolen stared at Chrestomanci and Mr Saunders through the smoke. Chrestomanci was magnificent in dark blue velvet, with lace ruffles at his wrists and on the front of his shirt. Mr Saunders seemed to have made an effort to find a suit that reached to the ends of his legs and arms, but he had not quite succeeded. One of his big black patent-leather boots was unlaced, and there was a lot of shirt and wrist showing as he slowly coiled an invisible skein of something round his bony right hand. Both he and Chrestomanci looked back at Gwendolen most unpleasantly.

“You were warned, you know,” Chrestomanci said. “Carry on, Michael.”

Mr Saunders put the invisible skein in his pocket. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ve been itching to for a week now.” He strode down on Gwendolen in a billow of black coat, yanked her to her feet, hauled her to a chair and put her face down over his knee. There he dragged off his unlaced black boot and commenced spanking her with it, hard and often.

While Mr Saunders laboured away, and Gwendolen screamed and squirmed and kicked, Chrestomanci marched up to Cat and boxed Cat’s ears, twice on each side. Cat was so surprised that he would have fallen over, had not Chrestomanci hit the other side of his head each time and brought him upright again.

“What did you do that for?” Cat said indignantly, clutching both sides of his ringing face. “I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s why I hit you,” said Chrestomanci. “You didn’t try to stop her, did you?” While Cat was gasping at the unfairness of this, he turned to the labouring Mr Saunders. “I think that’ll do now, Michael.”

Mr Saunders ceased swatting, rather regretfully. Gwendolen slid to her knees on the floor, sobbing with pain, and making screams in between her sobs at being treated like this.

Chrestomanci went over and poked at her with his shiny foot. “Stop it. Get up and behave yourself.” And, when Gwendolen rose to her knees, staring piteously and looking utterly wronged, he said, “You thoroughly deserved that spanking. And, as you probably realise, Michael has taken away your witchcraft, too. You’re not a witch any longer. In future, you are not going to work one spell, unless you can prove to both of us that you are not going to do mischief with it. Is that clear? Now go to bed, and for goodness sake try and think about what you’ve been doing.”

He nodded to Mr Saunders, and they both went out, Mr Saunders hopping because he was still putting his boot back on, and squashing the rest of the dead creatures as he hopped.

Gwendolen flopped forward on her face and drummed her toes on the carpet. “The beast! The beasts! How dare they treat me like this! I shall do a worse thing than this now, and serve you all right!”

“But you can’t do things without witchcraft,” Cat said. “Was what Mr Saunders was winding up your witchcraft?”

“Go away!” Gwendolen screamed at him. “Leave me alone. You’re as bad as the rest of them!” And, as Cat went to the door, leaving her drumming and sobbing, she raised her head and shouted after him, “I’m not beaten yet! You’ll see!”

Not surprisingly, Cat had bad dreams that night. They were terrible dreams, full of giant earthworms and great slimy, porous frogs. They became more and more feverish. Cat sweated and moaned and finally woke up, feeling wet and weak and rather too bony, the way you do when you have just had a bad illness or a fearsome dream. He lay for a little while feeling wretched. Then he began to feel better and fell asleep again.

When Cat woke again, it was light. He opened his eyes on the snowy silence of the Castle and was suddenly convinced that Gwendolen had done something else. He had no idea what made him so sure. He thought he was probably imagining it. If Mr Saunders had truly taken Gwendolen’s witchcraft away from her, she could not have done a thing. But he still knew she had.

He got up and padded to the windows to see what it was. But, for once, there was nothing abnormal about the view from any of them. The cedars spread above the lawn. The gardens blazed down the hill. The day was swimming in sun and mist, and not so much as a footprint marked the pearly grey-green of the grass. But Cat was still so sure that something, somewhere, was different that he got dressed and stole off downstairs to ask Gwendolen what she had done.

When Cat opened the door of her room, he could smell the sweet, charred, heavy smell that went with witchcraft. But that could have been left over from last night. The room was quite tidy. The dead creatures and the burnt bowl had been cleared away. The only thing out of place was Gwendolen’s box, which had been pulled out of the painted wardrobe and stood with its lid half off near her bed.

Gwendolen was a sleeping hump under the blue velvet bedspread. Cat shut the door very gently behind him, in order not to disturb her. Gwendolen heard it. She sat up in bed with a bounce and stared at him.

As soon as she did, Cat knew that whatever was wrong, it was wrong with Gwendolen herself. She had her nightdress on back to front. The ribbons which usually tied it at the back were dangling at the front. That was the only thing obviously wrong. But there was something odd about the way Gwendolen was staring at him. She was astonished, and rather frightened.

“Who are you?” she said.

“I’m Cat, of course,” said Cat.

“No you’re not. You’re a boy.” said Gwendolen. “Who are you?”

Cat realised that when witches lost their witchcraft, they also lost their memories. He saw he would have to be very patient with Gwendolen.

“I’m your brother, Eric,” he said patiently, and came across to the bed so that she could look at him. “Only you always call me Cat.”

“My brother!” she exclaimed, in the greatest astonishment. “Well, that can’t be bad. I’ve always wanted a brother. And I know I can’t be dreaming. It was too cold in the bath, and it hurts when I pinch myself. So would you mind telling me where I am? It’s a Stately Home of some kind, isn’t it?”

Cat stared at her. He began to suspect that her memory was perfectly good. It was not only the way she spoke and what she said. She was thinner than she should be. Her face was the right pretty face, with the right blue eyes, but the downright look on it was not right. The golden hair hanging over her shoulders was an inch longer than it had been last night.

“You’re not Gwendolen!” he said.

“What a dreadful name!” said the girl in the bed. “I should hope not! I’m Janet Chant.”

By this time, Cat was as bewildered as the strange girl seemed to be. Chant? he thought. Chant? Has Gwendolen a twin sister she hasn’t told me about? “But my name’s Chant, too,” he said.

“Is it now?” said Janet. She knelt up in bed and scrubbed her hands thoughtfully about in her hair, in a way Gwendolen never would have done. “Truly Chant? It’s not that much of a common name. And you thought I was your sister? Well, I’ve put two and two together about a hundred times since I woke up in the bath, and I keep getting five. Where are we?”

“In Chrestomanci Castle,” said Cat. “Chrestomanci had us to live here about a year after our parents died.”

“There you are!” said Janet. “My Mum and Dad are alive and kicking – or they were when I said goodnight to them last night. Who’s Chrestomanci? Could you just sketch your life history for me?”

Puzzled and uneasy, Cat described how and why he and Gwendolen had come to live in the Castle, and what Gwendolen had done then.

“You mean Gwendolen really was a witch!” Janet exclaimed.

Cat wished she had not said was. He had a growing suspicion that he would never see the real Gwendolen again.

“Of course she is,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“Great heavens no!” said Janet. “Though I’m beginning to wonder if I mightn’t have been, if I’d lived here all my life. Witches are quite common, are they?”

“And warlocks and necromancers,” said Cat. “But wizards and magicians don’t happen so often. I think Mr Saunders is a magician.”

“Medicine-men, witch-doctors, shamans, devils, enchanters?” Janet asked rapidly. “Hags, fakirs, sorcerers? Are they thick on the ground too?”

“Most of those are for savages,” Cat explained. “Hag is rude. But we have sorcerers and enchanters. Enchanters are very strong and important. I’ve never met one.”

“I see,” said Janet. She thought for a moment and then swung herself out of bed, in a sort of scramble that was more like a boy’s than a girl’s, and again quite unlike the way Gwendolen would have done it. “We’d better have a hunt round,” she said, “in case dear Gwendolen has been kind enough to leave a message.”

“Don’t call her that,” Cat said desolately. “Where do you think she is?”

Janet looked at him and saw he was miserable. “Sorry,” she said. “I won’t again. But you do see I might be a bit cross with her, don’t you? She seems to have dumped me here and gone off somewhere. Let’s hope she has a good explanation.”

“They spanked her with a boot and took away her magic,” Cat said.

“Yes, you said,” Janet replied, pulling open drawers in the golden dressing-table. “I’m terrified of Chrestomanci already. But did they really take away her magic? How did she manage to do this, if they did?”

“I don’t understand that either,” Cat said, joining in the search. By now, he would have given his little finger for a word from Gwendolen – any kind of word. He felt horribly lonely. “Why were you in the bath?” he said, wondering whether to search the bathroom.

“I don’t know. I just woke up there,” said Janet, shaking out a tangle of hair ribbons in the bottom drawer. “I felt as if I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, and I’d no clothes on, so I was freezing.”

“Why had you no clothes on?” Cat said, stirring Gwendolen’s underclothes about, without success.

“I was hot in bed last night,” said Janet. “So naked I came into this world. And I wandered about pinching myself – ’specially after I found this fabulous room. I thought I must have been turned into a princess. But there was this nightdress lying on the bed, so I put it on—”

“You’ve got it on back to front,” said Cat.

Janet stopped scanning the things on the mantelpiece to look down at the trailing ribbons. “Have I? It won’t be the only thing I’m going to get back to front, by the sound of it. Try looking in that artistic wardrobe. Then I explored outside here, and all I found was miles of long green corridor, which gave me the creeps, and stately grounds out of the windows, so I came back in here and went to bed. I hoped that when I woke up it would all have gone away. And instead there was you. Found anything?”

“No,” said Cat. “But there’s her box—”

“It must be in there,” said Janet.

They squatted down and unpacked the box. There was not much in it. Cat knew that Gwendolen must have taken a lot of things with her to wherever she had gone. There were two books, Elementary Spells and Magic for Beginners and some pages of notes on them. Janet looked at Gwendolen’s large round writing.

“She writes just like I do. Why did she leave these books? Because they’re First Form standard and she’s up to O Levels, I suppose.” She put the books and notes to one side and, as she did so, the little red book of matches fell out from among them. Janet picked it up and opened it, and saw that half the matches were burnt without having been torn out. “That looks suspiciously like a spell to me,” she said. “What are these bundles of letters?”

“My parents’ love-letters, I think,” said Cat.

The letters were in their envelopes still, stamped and addressed. Janet squatted with a bundle in each hand. “These stamps are penny blacks! No, it’s a man’s head on them. What’s your King called?”

“Charles the Seventh,” said Cat.

“No Georges?” Janet asked. But she saw Cat was mystified and looked back at the letters again. “Your mother and father were both called Chant, I see. Were they first cousins? Mine are. Granny didn’t want them to marry, because it’s supposed to be a bad thing.”

“I don’t know. They may have been. They looked rather alike,” Cat said, and felt lonelier than ever.

Janet looked rather lonely too. She tucked the little book of matches carefully inside the pink tape that tied together the letters addressed to Miss Caroline Chant – like Gwendolen, she evidently had a tidy mind – and said, “Both tall and fair, with blue eyes? My mum’s name is Caroline too. I’m beginning to see. Come on, Gwendolen, give!” And saying this, Janet tossed aside the letters and, in a most untidy way, scrabbled up the remaining folders, papers, writing-sets, pen-wipers and the bag with Souvenir from Blackpool on it. At the very bottom of the box was a large pink sheet of paper, covered all over with Gwendolen’s best and roundest writing.

“Ah!” said Janet, pouncing on it. “I thought so! She’s got the same secretive mind as I have.” And she spread the letter on the carpet so that Cat could read it too. Gwendolen had written:

Dear Replacement,

I have to leave this terible place. Nobody understands me. Nobody notices my talents. You will soon see because you are my exact double so you will be a witch too. I have been very clever. They do not know all my resauces. I have found out how to go to another world and I am going there for good. I know I shall be Queen of it because my fortune was told and said so. There are hundreds of other worlds only some are nicer than others, they are formed when there is a big event in History like a battle or an earthquake when the result can be two or more quite diferent things. Both those things hapen but they cannot exist together so the world splits into two worlds witch start to go diferent after that. I know there must be Gwendolens in a lot of worlds but not how many. One of you will come here when I go because when I move it will make an empty space that will suck you in. Do not grieve however if your parents still live. Some other Gwendolen will move into your place and pretend to be you because we are all so clever. You can carry on here making Chrestomanci’s life a misery and I shall be greatful knowing it is in good hands.

Your loving

Gwendolen Chant

PS. Burn this.

PS2 Tell Cat I am quite sorry but he must do what Mr Nostrum says.

Having read this, Cat knelt wanly beside Janet, knowing he really would never see Gwendolen again. He seemed to be stuck with Janet instead. If you know a person as well as Cat knew Gwendolen, an exact double is hardly good enough. Janet was not a witch. The expressions on her face were nothing like the same. Looking at her now, Cat saw that, where Gwendolen would have been furious at being dragged into another world, Janet was looking as wan as he felt.

“I wonder how Mum and Dad are getting on with my Dear Replacement,” she said wryly. Then she pulled herself together. “Do you mind if I don’t burn this? It’s the only proof I’ve got that I’m not Gwendolen who’s suddenly gone mad and thinks she’s this girl called Janet Chant. May I hide it?”

“It’s your letter,” said Cat.

“And your sister,” said Janet. “God bless her dear little sugar-coated shining soul! Don’t get me wrong, Cat. I admire your sister. She thinks big. You have to admire her! All the same, I wonder if she’s thought of the clever hiding-place where I’m going to put her letter. I shall feel better if she hasn’t.”

Janet bounced up in her un-Gwendolenlike way and took the letter over to the gilded dressing-table. Cat bounced up and followed her. Janet took hold of the gold-garlanded mirror and swung it towards her on its swivels. The back was plain plywood. She dug her nails under the edge of the plywood and prised. It came free quite easily.

“I do this with my mirror at home,” Janet explained. “It’s a good hiding-place – it’s about the one place my parents never think of. Mum and Dad are dears, but they’re terribly nosy. I think it’s because I’m their only one. And I like to be private. I write private stories for my eyes only, and they will try to read them. Oh, purple spotted dalmatians!”

She raised the wood up and showed Cat the signs painted on the red-coated back of the glass itself.

“Cabbala, I think,” said Cat. “It’s a spell.”

“So she did think of it!” said Janet. “Really, it’s hell having a double. You both get the same ideas. And working on that principle,” she said, sliding Gwendolen’s letter between the plywood and the glass and pressing the plywood back in place, “I bet I know what the spell’s for. It’s so Gwendolen can have a look from time to time and see how Dear Replacement’s getting on. I hope she’s looking now.” Janet swung the mirror back to its usual position and crossed her eyes at it, hideously. She took hold of the corners of her crossed eyes and pulled them long and Chinese, and stuck her tongue out as far as it would go. Then she pushed her nose up with one finger and twisted her mouth right round to one cheek. Cat could not help laughing. “Can’t Gwendolen do this?” Janet said out of the side of her face.

“No,” Cat giggled.

That was the moment when Euphemia opened the door. Janet jumped violently. She was much more nervous than Cat had realised. “I’ll thank you to stop pulling faces,” said Euphemia, “and get out of your nightdress, Gwendolen.” She came into the room to make sure that Gwendolen did. She gave a croaking sort of shriek. Then she melted into a brown lump.

Janet’s hands went over her mouth. She and Cat stared in horror as the brown lump that had been Euphemia grew smaller and smaller. When it was about three inches high, it stopped shrinking and put out large webbed feet. On these webbed feet, it crawled forward and stared at them reproachfully out of protruding yellowish eyes near the top of its head.

“Oh dear!” said Cat. It seemed that Gwendolen’s last act had been to turn Euphemia into a frog.

Janet burst into tears. Cat was surprised. She had seemed so self-assured. Sobbing heavily, Janet knelt down and tenderly picked up the brown, crawling Euphemia. “You poor girl!” she wept. “I know just how you feel. Cat, what are we to do? How do you turn people back?”

“I don’t know,” Cat said soberly. He was suddenly burdened with huge responsibilities. Janet, in spite of the confident way she talked, clearly needed looking after. Euphemia clearly needed it even more. If it had not been for Chrestomanci, Cat would have raced off to get Mr Saunders to help that moment. But he suddenly realised that if Chrestomanci ever found out what Gwendolen had done this time, the most terrible things would happen. Cat was quite sure of this. He discovered that he was terrified of Chrestomanci. He had been terrified of him all along, without realising it. He knew he would have to keep both Janet and Euphemia a secret somehow.

Feeling desperate, Cat raced to the bathroom, found a damp towel, and brought it to Janet. “Put her down on this. She’ll need to be wet. I’ll ask Roger and Julia to turn her back. I’ll tell them you won’t. And for goodness sake don’t tell anyone you aren’t Gwendolen – please!”

Janet lowered Euphemia gently on to the towel. Euphemia scrambled round in it and continued to stare accusingly at Janet. “Don’t look like that. It wasn’t me,” Janet said, sniffing. “Cat, we’ll have to hide her. Would she be comfortable in the wardrobe?”

“She’ll have to be,” said Cat. “You get dressed.”

A look of panic came over Janet’s face. “Cat, what does Gwendolen wear?”

Cat thought all girls knew what girls wore. “The usual things – petticoats, stockings, dress, boots – you know.”

“No, I don’t,” said Janet. “I always wear trousers.”

Cat felt his problems mounting up. He hunted for clothes. Gwendolen seemed to have taken her best things with her, but he found her older boots, her green stockings and the garters to match, her second-best petticoats, her green cashmere dress with the smocking and – with some embarrassment – her knickers. “There,” he said.

“Does she really wear two petticoats?” said Janet.

“Yes,” said Cat. “Get them on.”

But Janet proved quite unable to get them on without his help. If he left her to do anything, she put it on back to front. He had to put her petticoats on her, button her up the back, tie her garters, fasten her boots, and put her dress on a second time, right way round, and tie its sash for her. When he had finished, it looked all right, but Janet had an odd air of being dressed up, rather than dressed. She looked at herself critically in the mirror. “Thanks, you’re an angel. I look rather like an Edwardian child. And I feel a right Charley.”

“Come on,” said Cat. “Breakfast.” He carried Euphemia, croaking furiously, to the wardrobe and wrapped her firmly in the towel. “Be quiet,” he told her. “I’ll get you changed back as soon as I can, so stop making a fuss, please!” He shut the door on her and wedged it with a page of Gwendolen’s notes. Faint croaking came from behind it. Euphemia had no intention of being quiet. Cat did not really blame her.

“She’s not happy in there,” Janet said, weakening. “Can’t she stay out in the room?”

“No,” said Cat. Frog though she was, Euphemia still looked like Euphemia. He knew Mary would recognise her as soon as she set eyes on her. He took Janet’s resisting elbow and towed her along to the playroom.

“Don’t you two ever get up till the last minute?” said Julia. “I’m sick of waiting politely for breakfast.”

“Eric’s been up for hours,” said Mary, hovering about. “So I don’t know what you’ve both been up to. Oh, what’s Euphemia doing?”

“Mary’s beside herself this morning,” Roger said. He winked. For a moment, there were two Marys, one real and one vague and ghostly. Janet jumped. It was only the second piece of witchcraft she had seen and she did not find it easy to get used to.

“I expect it’s Gwendolen’s fault,” said Julia, and she gave Janet one of those meaning stares.

Janet was very put out. Cat had forgotten to warn her how much Julia had disliked Gwendolen ever since the snakes. And a meaning stare from a witch is worse than a meaning stare from an ordinary person. Julia’s pushed Janet backwards across the room, until Cat put himself in the way of it.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “She’s sorry.”

“Is she?” said Julia. “Are you?” she asked, trying to get the stare round Cat to Janet again.

“Yes, horribly sorry,” Janet said fervently, not having the least idea why. “I’ve had a complete change of heart.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Julia. But she left off staring in order to watch Mary bringing the usual bread, the marmalade, and the jug of cocoa.

Janet looked, sniffed the cocoa steaming from the jug, and her face fell, rather like Gwendolen’s on the first day. “Oh, dear. I hate cocoa,” she said.

Mary rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “You and your airs and graces! You never said you hated it before.”

“I – I’ve had a revulsion of feeling,” Janet invented. “When I had my change of heart, all my taste buds changed, too. I – you haven’t any coffee, have you?”

“Where? Under the carpet or something?” Mary demanded. “All right. I’ll ask the kitchen. I’ll tell them your taste buds are revolting, shall I?”

Cat was very pleased to hear that cocoa was not compulsory after all. “Could I have coffee, too?” he asked, as Mary went to the lift. “Or I prefer tea really.”

“But you waited to say so until Euphemia goes missing and leaves me all on my own!” Mary said, getting very put-upon.

“She never does anything anyway,” Cat said in surprise.

Mary flounced crossly to the speaking-tube and ordered a pot of coffee and a pot of tea. “For Her Highness and His Nibs,” she said to it. “He seems to have caught it now. What I wouldn’t give for a nice normal child in this place, Nancy!”

“But I am a nice normal child!” Janet and Cat protested in unison.

“And so are we – nice anyhow,” Julia said comfortably.

“How can you be normal?” Mary demanded as she let down the lift. “All four of you are Chants. And when was a Chant ever normal? Answer me that.”

Janet looked questioningly at Cat, but Cat was as puzzled as she was. “I thought your name was Chrestomanci,” he said to Roger and Julia.

“That’s just Daddy’s title,” said Julia.

“You’re some kind of cousin of ours,” said Roger. “Didn’t you know? I always thought that was why Daddy had you to live here.”

As they started breakfast, Cat thought that this, if anything, made the situation more difficult than ever.

Cat watched his moment and, when Mr Saunders called them to lessons, he caught Roger’s arm and whispered, “Look, Gwendolen’s turned Euphemia into a frog and—”

Roger gave a great snore of laughter. Cat had to wait for him to stop.

“And she won’t turn her back. Can you?”

Roger tried to look serious, but laughter kept breaking through. “I don’t know. Probably not, unless she’ll tell you what spell she used. Finding out which spell without knowing is Advanced Magic, and I’m not on that yet. Oh how funny!” He bent over the table and yelled with laughter.

Naturally, Mr Saunders appeared at the door, remarking that the time for telling jokes was after lessons. They had to go through to the schoolroom. Naturally, Cat found Janet had sat in his desk by mistake. He got her out as quietly as he could and sat in it himself, distractedly wondering how he could find out which spell Gwendolen had used.

It was the most uncomfortable morning Cat had ever known. He had forgotten to tell Janet that the only thing Gwendolen knew about was witchcraft. Janet, as he rather suspected, knew a lot, about a lot of things. But it all applied to her own world. About the only subject she would have been safe in was simple arithmetic. And Mr Saunders chose that morning to give her a History test. Cat, as he scratched away left-handed at an English essay, could see the panic growing on Janet’s face.

“What do you mean, Henry V?” barked Mr Saunders. “Richard II was on the throne until long after Agincourt. What was his greatest magical achievement?”

“Defeating the French,” Janet guessed. Mr Saunders looked so exasperated that she babbled, “Well, I think it was. He hampered the French with iron underwear, and the English wore wool, so they didn’t stick in the mud, and probably their longbows were enchanted too. That would account for them not missing.”

“Who,” said Mr Saunders, “do you imagine won the battle of Agincourt?”

“The English,” said Janet. This of course was true for her world, but the panic-stricken look on her face as she said it suggested that she suspected the opposite was true in this world. Which of course it was.

Mr Saunders put his hands to his head. “No, no, no! The French! Don’t you know anything, girl?”

Janet looked to be near tears. Cat was terrified. She was going to break down any second and tell Mr Saunders she was not Gwendolen. She did not have Cat’s reasons for keeping quiet. “Gwendolen never knows anything,” he remarked loudly, hoping Janet would take the hint. She did. She sighed with relief and relaxed.

“I’m aware of that,” said Mr Saunders. “But somewhere, somewhere inside that marble head there must be a little cell of grey matter. So I keep looking.”

Unfortunately Janet, in her relief, became almost jolly. “Would you like to take my head apart and look?” she asked.

“Don’t tempt me!” cried Mr Saunders. He hid his eyes with one knobby hand and fended at Janet with the other. He looked so funny that Janet laughed. This was so unlike Gwendolen that Mr Saunders lowered his hand across his nose and stared at her suspiciously over it. “What have you been up to now?”

“Nothing,” Janet said guiltily.

“Hm,” said Mr Saunders, in a way which made both Cat and Janet very uncomfortable.

At last – very long last – it was time for Mary to bring the milk and biscuits, which she did, with a very portentous look. Crouched on the tray beside Mr Saunders’s cup of coffee was a large wet-looking brown thing. Cat’s stomach seemed to leave him and take a plunge into the Castle cellars. From the look of Janet, hers was doing the same.

“What have you got there?” said Mr Saunders.

“Gwendolen’s good deed for today,” Mary said grimly. “It’s Euphemia. Look at its face.”

Mr Saunders bent and looked. Then he whirled round on Janet so fiercely that Janet half got out of her seat. “So that’s what you were laughing about!”

“I didn’t do it!” said Janet.

“Euphemia was in Gwendolen’s room, shut in the wardrobe, croaking her poor head off,” said Mary.

“I think this calls for Chrestomanci,” Mr Saunders said. He strode towards the door.

The door opened before he got there and Chrestomanci himself came in, cheerful and busy, with some papers in one hand. “Michael,” he said, “have I caught you at the right—?” He stopped when he saw Mr Saunders’s face. “Is something wrong?”

“Will you please to look at this frog, sir,” said Mary. “It was in Gwendolen’s wardrobe.”

Chrestomanci was wearing an exquisite grey suit with faint lilac stripes to it. He held his lilac silk cravat out of the way and bent to inspect the frog. Euphemia lifted her head and croaked at him beseechingly. There was a moment of ice-cold silence. It was a moment such as Cat hoped never to live through again. “Bless my soul!” Chrestomanci said, gently as frost freezes a window. “It’s Eugenia.”

“Euphemia, Daddy,” said Julia.

“Euphemia,” said Chrestomanci. “Of course. Now who did this?” Cat wondered how such a mild voice could send the hair prickling upright at the back of his head.

“Gwendolen, sir,” said Mary.

But Chrestomanci shook his smooth black head. “No. Don’t give a dog a bad name. It couldn’t have been Gwendolen. Michael took her witchcraft away last night.”

“Oh,” said Mr Saunders, rather red in the face. “Stupid of me!”

“So who could it have been?” Chrestomanci wondered.

There was another freezing silence. It seemed to Cat about as long as an Ice Age. During it, Julia began to smile. She drummed her fingers on her desk and looked meditatively at Janet. Janet saw her and jumped. She drew in her breath sharply. Cat panicked. He was sure Janet was going to say what Gwendolen had done. He said the only thing he could think of to stop her.

“I did it,” he said loudly.

Cat could hardly bear the way they all looked at him. Julia was disgusted, Roger astonished. Mr Saunders was fiercely angry. Mary looked at him as if he was a frog himself. But Chrestomanci was politely incredulous, and he was worst of all. “I beg your pardon, Eric,” he said. “This was you?”

Cat stared at him with a strange misty wetness round his eyes. He thought it was due to terror. “It was a mistake,” he said. “I was trying a spell. I – I didn’t expect it to work. And then – and then Euphemia came in and turned into a frog. Just like that,” he explained.

Chrestomanci said, “But you were told not to practise magic on your own.”

“I know.” Cat hung his head, without having to pretend. “But I knew it wouldn’t work. Only it did of course,” he explained.

“Well, you must undo the spell at once,” said Chrestomanci.

Cat swallowed. “I can’t. I don’t know how to.”

Chrestomanci treated him to another look so polite, so scathing and so unbelieving, that Cat would gladly have crawled under his desk had he been able to move at all. “Very well,” said Chrestomanci. “Michael, perhaps you could oblige?”

Mary held the tray out. Mr Saunders took Euphemia and put her on the schoolroom table. Euphemia croaked agitatedly. “Only a minute now,” Mr Saunders said soothingly. He held his hands cupped round her. Nothing happened. Looking a little puzzled, Mr Saunders began to mutter things. Still nothing happened. Euphemia’s head bobbed anxiously above his bony fingers, and she was still a frog. Mr Saunders went from looking puzzled to looking baffled. “This is a very strange spell,” he said. “What did you use, Eric?”

“I can’t remember,” said Cat.

“Well, it doesn’t respond to anything I can do,” said Mr Saunders. “You’ll have to do it, Eric. Come over here.”

Cat looked helplessly at Chrestomanci, but Chrestomanci nodded as if he thought Mr Saunders was quite right. Cat stood up. His legs had gone thick and weak, and his stomach seemed to have taken up permanent quarters in the Castle cellars. He slunk towards the table. When Euphemia saw him coming, she showed her opinion of the matter by taking a frantic leap off the edge of the table. Mr Saunders caught her in mid-air and put her back.

“What do I do?” Cat said, and his voice sounded like Euphemia croaking.

Mr Saunders took Cat by his left wrist and planted Cat’s hand on Euphemia’s clammy back. “Now take it off her,” he said.

“I – I—” said Cat. He supposed he ought to pretend to try. “Stop being a frog and turn into Euphemia again,” he said, and wondered miserably what they would do to him when Euphemia didn’t.

But, to his astonishment, Euphemia did. The frog turned warm under his fingers and burst into growth. Cat shot a look at Mr Saunders as the brown lump grew furiously larger and larger. He was almost sure he caught a secret smile on Mr Saunders’s face. The next second, Euphemia was sitting on the edge of the table. Her clothes were a little crumpled and brown, but there was nothing else froggish about her. “I never dreamt it was you!” she said to Cat. Then she put her face in her hands and cried.

Chrestomanci came up and put his arm round her. “There, there, my dear. It must have been a terrible experience. I think you need to go and lie down.” And he took Euphemia out of the room.

“Phew!” said Janet.

Mary grimly handed out the milk and biscuits. Cat did not want his. His stomach had not yet come back from the cellars. Janet refused biscuits.

“I think the food here is awfully fattening,” she said unwisely. Julia took that as a personal insult. Her handkerchief came out and was knotted. Janet’s glass of milk slipped through her fingers and smashed on the pitted floor.

“Clean it up,” said Mr Saunders. “Then get out, you and Eric. I’ve had enough of both of you. Julia and Roger, get out magic text books, please.”

Cat took Janet out into the gardens. It seemed safest there. They wandered across the lawn, both rather limp after the morning’s experiences.

“Cat,” said Janet, “you’re going to be very annoyed with me, but it’s absolutely essential that I cling to you like a limpet all the time we’re awake, until I know how to behave. You saved my bacon twice this morning. I thought I was going to die when she brought in that frog. Rigor mortis was setting in, and then you turned her back again! I didn’t realise you were a witch too – no, it’s a warlock, isn’t it? Or are you a wizard?”

“I’m not,” said Cat. “I’m not any of those things. Mr Saunders did it to give me a fright.”

“But Julia is a witch, isn’t she?” said the shrewd Janet. “What have I done to make her hate me so – or is it just general Gwendolenitis?”

Cat explained about the snakes.

“In which case I don’t blame her,” said Janet. “But it’s hard that she’s in that schoolroom at the moment brushing up her witchcraft, and here I am without a rag of a spell to defend myself with. You don’t know of a handy karate teacher, do you?”

“I never heard of one,” Cat said cautiously, wondering what karate might be.

“Oh well,” said Janet. “Chrestomanci’s a wonderfully fancy dresser, isn’t he?”

Cat laughed. “Wait till you see him in a dressing-gown!”

“I hardly can. It must be something! Why is he so terrifying?”

“He just is,” said Cat.

“Yes,” said Janet. “He just is. When he saw the frog was Euphemia and went all mild and astonished like that, it froze the goose-pimples on my back. I couldn’t have told him I wasn’t Gwendolen – not even under the most refined modern tortures – and that’s why I shall have to stick to you. Do you mind terribly?”

“Not at all,” said Cat. But he did rather. Janet could not have been more of a burden if she had been sitting on his shoulders with her legs wrapped round his chest. And to crown it all, it seemed as if there had been no need for his false confession. He took Janet to the ruins of the tree-house because he wanted something else to think about. Janet was enchanted with it. She swung herself up into the horse-chestnut to look at it, and Cat felt rather as you do when someone else gets into your railway carriage. “Be careful,” he called crossly.

There was a strong rending noise up in the tree. “Drat!” said Janet. “These are ridiculous clothes for climbing trees in.”

“Can’t you sew?” Cat called as he climbed up too.

“I despise it as female bondage,” said Janet. “Yes, I can, actually. And I’m going to have to. It was both petticoats.” She tested the creaking floor that was all that remained of the house and stood up on it, trailing two different colours of frill below the hem of Gwendolen’s dress. “You can see into the village from here. There’s a butcher’s cart just turning in to the Castle drive.”

Cat climbed up beside her and they watched the cart and the dappled horse pulling it.

“Don’t you have cars at all?” Janet asked. “Everyone has cars in my world.”

“Rich people do,” said Cat. “Chrestomanci sent his to meet us off the train.”

“And you have electric light,” said Janet. “But everything else is old-fashioned compared with my world. I suppose people can get what they want by witchcraft. Do you have factories, or long-playing records, or high-rise blocks, or television, or aeroplanes at all?”

“I don’t know what aeroplanes are,” said Cat. He had no idea what most of the other things were either, and he was bored with this talk.

Janet saw he was. She looked round for a change of subject and saw clusters of big green conker-cases hanging all around them at the ends of the branches. The leaves there were already singed-looking round the edges, suggesting that the conkers could not be far off ripe. Janet edged out along a branch and tried to reach the nearest cluster of green cases. They bobbed at the tips of her fingers, just out of reach. “Oh dachshunds!” she said. “They look almost ripe.”

“They aren’t,” said Cat. “But I wish they were.” He took a lathe out of the wreckage of the house and slashed at the conker-cases with it. He missed, but he must have shaken them. Eight or so dropped off the tree and went plomp on the ground below.

“Who says they’re not ripe?” said Janet, leaning down.

Cat craned out of the tree and saw brown shiny conkers showing in the split green cases. “Oh, hurray!” He came down the tree like a monkey, and Janet crashed after him, with her hair full of twigs. They scooped up the conkers greedily – wonderful conkers with grain on them like the contours in a map.

“A skewer!” Janet moaned. “My kingdom for a skewer! We can thread them on my bootlaces.”

“Here’s a skewer,” said Cat. There was one lying on the ground by his left hand. It must have fallen out of the tree-house.

They drilled conkers furiously. They took the laces out of Gwendolen’s second-best boots. They discovered the rules of conkers were the same in both their worlds, and they went to the formal garden and held a battle royal there on the gravel path. As Janet firmly smashed Cat’s last conker and yelled, “Mine! Mine’s a sevener now!” Millie came round a corner past a yew tree and stood laughing at them.

“Do you know, I wouldn’t have thought the conkers were ripe yet. But it’s been a lovely summer.”

Janet looked at her in consternation. She had no idea who this plump lady in the beautiful flowered silk dress could be.

“Hallo, Millie,” said Cat. Not that this helped Janet much.

Millie smiled and opened the handbag she was carrying. “There are three things Gwendolen needs, I think. Here.” She handed Janet two safety-pins and a packet of bootlaces. “I always believe in being prepared.”

“Th-thanks,” Janet stammered. She was horribly conscious of her gaping boots, her twig-filled hair and the two trailing strips of petticoat. She was even more confused by not knowing who Millie was.

Cat knew that. He knew by now that Janet was one of those people who are not happy unless they have an explanation for everything. So he said fulsomely to Millie, “I do think Roger and Julia are lucky, having a mother like you, Millie.”

Millie beamed and Janet looked enlightened. Cat felt dishonest. He did think that, but he would never have dreamt of saying it but for Janet.

Having gathered that Millie was Chrestomanci’s wife, Janet was quite unable to resist going on and gathering as much more information as she could. “Millie,” she said. “Were Cat’s parents first cousins like – I mean, were they? And what relation is Cat to you?”

“That sounds like those questions they ask you to find out how clever you are,” said Millie. “And I don’t know the answer, Gwendolen. It’s my husband’s family you’re related to, you see, and I don’t know too much about them. We need Chrestomanci here to explain, really.”

As it happened, Chrestomanci came through the doorway in the garden wall at that moment. Millie rustled up to him, beaming.

“My love, we were needing you.”

Janet, who had her head down, trying to pin her petticoats, glanced up at Chrestomanci and then looked thoughtfully down the path, as if the stones and sand there had suddenly become rather interesting.

“It’s quite simple,” Chrestomanci said, when Millie had explained the question. “Frank and Caroline Chant were my cousins – and first cousins to one another, too, of course. When they insisted on getting married, my family made a great fuss, and my uncles cut them off without a shilling in a thoroughly old-fashioned way. It is, you see, rather a bad thing for cousins to marry when there’s witchcraft in the family. Not that cutting them off made the slightest difference, of course.” He smiled at Cat. He seemed thoroughly friendly. “Does that answer the question?”

Cat had an inkling of how Gwendolen had felt. It was confusing and exasperating the way Chrestomanci would seem friendly when one ought to have been in disgrace. He could not resist asking, “Is Euphemia all right?”

Then he wished he had not asked. Chrestomanci’s smile snapped off like a light. “Yes. She’s feeling better now. You show touching concern, Eric. I believe you were so sorry for her that you hid her in a wardrobe?”

“My love, don’t be so terrifying,” Millie said, hooking her arm through Chrestomanci’s. “It was an accident, and it’s all over now.” She led him away down the path. But, just before they went out of sight behind a yew tree, Chrestomanci turned and looked over his shoulder at Cat and Janet. It was his bewildered look, but it was far from reassuring.

“Hot cross bunwrappers! Jiminy purple creepers!” Janet whispered. “I’m beginning to hardly dare move in this place!” She finished pinning her petticoat. When Millie and Chrestomanci had had nearly a minute in which to walk out of hearing, she said, “She’s sweet – Millie – an absolute honey. But him! Cat, is it possible Chrestomanci is a rather powerful enchanter?”

“I don’t think he is,” said Cat. “Why?”

“Well,” said Janet, “partly it’s the feeling he gives—”

“I don’t get a feeling,” said Cat. “I’m just frightened of him.”

“That’s it,” said Janet. “You’re probably muddled anyhow from having lived with witches all your life. But it isn’t only a feeling. Have you noticed how he comes when people call him? He’s done it twice now.”

“Those were two complete accidents,” said Cat. “You can’t build ideas on accidents.”

“He disguises it well, I admit,” said Janet. “He comes looking as if it was something else he was doing, but—”

“Oh do shut up! You’re getting as bad as Gwendolen. She couldn’t stop thinking of him for a moment,” Cat said crossly.

Janet pounded her open right boot on the gravel. “I am not Gwendolen! I’m not even really like her! Get that into your fat head, will you!”

Cat started to laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” said Janet.

“Gwendolen always stamps when she’s angry too,” said Cat.

“Gah!” said Janet.

By the time Janet had laced both her boots, Cat was sure it was lunch-time. He hurried Janet back to the private door. They had nearly reached it, when a thick voice spoke among the rhododendrons.

“Young lady! Here a minute!”

Janet gave Cat an alarmed look and they both hurried for the door. It was not a pleasant voice. The rhododendrons clashed and rustled indignantly beside them. A fat old man in a dirty raincoat spilt out of them. Before they had recovered from the surprise of seeing him, he had scuttled round between them and the door, where he stood looking at them reproachfully out of drooping red eyes and breathing beer-scented breath over them.

“Hallo, Mr Baslam,” Cat said, for Janet’s benefit.

“Didn’t you hear me, young lady?” Mr Baslam demanded.

Cat could see Janet was frightened of him, but she answered as coolly as Gwendolen might have done. “Yes, but I thought it was the tree speaking.”

“The tree speaking!” said Mr Baslam. “After all the trouble I been to for you, you take me for a tree! Three whole pints of bitter I had to buy that butcher to have him bring me in that cart of his, and I’m fair jolted to bits!”

“What do you want?” Janet said nervously.

“It’s like this,” said Mr Baslam. He pulled aside his raincoat and searched slowly in the pockets of his loopy trousers.

“We have to go in for lunch,” said Cat.

“All in good time, young gentleman. Here we are,” said Mr Baslam. He held his pale grubby hand out towards Janet with two twinkling things in it. “These.”

“Those are my mother’s earrings!” Cat said, in surprise and for Janet’s benefit. “How did you get those?”

“Your sister gave them me to pay for a little matter of some dragon’s blood,” said Mr Baslam. “And I dare say it was in good faith, young lady, but they’re no good to me.”

“Why not?” asked Janet. “They look like – I mean they’re real diamonds.”

“True enough,” said Mr Baslam. “But you never told me they was charmed, did you? They got a fearsome strong spell on them to stop them getting lost, these have. Terrible noisy spell. They was all night in the stuffed rabbit shouting out ‘I belong to Caroline Chant’, and this morning I has to wrap them in a blanket before I dares take them to a man I know. And he wouldn’t touch them. He said he wasn’t going to risk anything shouting the name of Chant. So have them back, young lady. And you owe me fifty-five quid.”

Janet swallowed. So did Cat. “I’m very sorry,” Janet said. “I really had no idea. But – but I’m afraid I haven’t any source of income at all. Couldn’t you get the charm taken off?”

“And risk enquiries?” said Mr Baslam. “That charm’s deep in, I tell you.”

“Then why aren’t they shouting now?” said Cat.

“What do you think I am?” said Mr Baslam. “Could I sit in the joints of mutton shouting out I belonged to Miss Chant? No. This man I know obliges me with a bit of a spell on account. But he says to me, he says, ‘I can’t only shut them up for an hour or so. That’s a real strong charm. If you want it took off permanent, you’d have to take them to an enchanter. And that would cost you as much as the earrings are worth, besides getting questions asked.’ Enchanters are important people, young lady. So here I sits in them bushes, scared to death the spell’s going to wear off before you comes by, and now you say you’ve no income! No – you have them back, young lady, and hand over a little something on account instead.”

Janet looked nervously at Cat. Cat sighed and felt in his pockets. All he had was half a crown. He offered it to Mr Baslam.

Mr Baslam backed away from it with a hurt, drooping look, like a whipped St Bernard. “Fifty-five quid I asked for, and you offer me half a crown! Son, are you having a joke on me?”

“It’s all either of us has got,” said Cat, “at the moment. But we each get a crown piece every week. If we give you that, we’ll have paid you back in—” He did hurried calculations. Ten shillings a week, fifty-two weeks in a year, twenty-six pounds a year. “It’ll only take two years.” Two years was an appalling time to go without money. Still, Mr Baslam had got Gwendolen her dragon’s blood, and it seemed fair that he should be paid.

But Mr Baslam looked more hurt than ever. He turned away from Cat and Janet and gazed mournfully up at the Castle walls. “You live in a place like this, and tell me you can only get hold of ten bob a week! Don’t play cruel games with me. You can lay your hands on no end of lucre if you puts your minds to it.”

“But we can’t, honestly,” Cat protested.

“I think you should try, young gentleman,” said Mr Baslam. “I’m not unreasonable. All I’m asking is twenty quid part-payment, interest of ten per cent included, and the price of the shutting-up spell thrown in. That should come quite easy to you.”

“You know perfectly well it won’t!” Janet said indignantly. “You’d better keep those earrings. Your stuffed rabbit may look pretty in them.”

Mr Baslam gave her a very whipped look. At the same time, a thin, singing noise began to come from the palm of his hand where the earrings lay. It was too faint for Cat to pick out the words, but it put paid to any notion that Mr Baslam had been lying. Mr Baslam’s drooping look became less whipped. He looked more like a bloodhound hot on the trail. He let the earrings slide between his fat fingers and fall on the gravel.

“There they lie,” he said, “if you care to stoop for them. I may remind you, young lady, that trade in dragon’s blood is illicit, illegal and banned. I’ve obliged you in it. You’ve fobbed me off. Now I’m telling you that I need twenty quid by next Wednesday. That should give you time. If I don’t get it, then Chrestomanci hears of the dragon’s blood Wednesday evening. And if he does, then I wouldn’t be in your shoes, young lady, not for twenty thousand quid and a diamond tiara. Have I made myself clear?”

He had, appallingly. “Suppose we give you the dragon’s blood back?” Cat suggested desperately. Gwendolen had taken Mr Baslam’s dragon’s blood with her of course, but there was always that huge jar of it in Mr Saunders’s workshop.

“What would I do with dragon’s blood, son?” said Mr Baslam. “I’m not a warlock. I’m only a poor supplier, and there’s no demand for dragon’s blood round here. It’s the money I need. Twenty quid of it, by next Wednesday, and don’t forget.” He gave them a bloodhound nod which flapped his eyes and his cheeks, and edged back into the rhododendrons. They heard him rustling stealthily away.

“What a nasty old man!” Janet said in a shaken whisper. “I wish I really was Gwendolen. I’d turn him into a four-headed earwig. Ugh!” She bent and scrabbled the earrings up off the gravel.

Immediately, the air by the door was filled with high, singing voices. “I belong to Caroline Chant! I belong to Caroline Chant!”

“Oh dear!” said Janet. “They know.”

“Give them to me,” said Cat. “Quick. Someone will hear.”

Janet poured the earrings into Cat’s palm. The voices stopped at once. “I can’t get used to all this magic,” said Janet. “Cat, what am I to do? How can I pay that horrible man?”

“There must be something we can sell,” said Cat. “There’s a junk shop in the village. Come on. We must get to lunch.” They hurried up to the playroom, to find that Mary had already put plates of stew and dumplings in their places.

“Oh, look,” said Janet, who needed to relieve her feelings somehow. “Nourishing fattening lunch. How nice!”

Mary glared at both of them and left the room without speaking. Julia’s look was quite as unpleasant. As Janet sat down in front of her stew, Julia pulled her handkerchief out of her sleeve, already knotted, and laid it in her lap. Janet put her fork into a dumpling. It stuck there. The dumpling was a white pebble, swimming with two others in a plateful of mud.

Janet carefully laid down her fork, with the pebble impaled on it, and put her knife neatly across the mud. She was trying to control herself, but, for a moment, she looked like Gwendolen at her most furious. “I was quite hungry,” she said.

Julia smiled. “What a pity,” she said cosily. “And you’ve got no witchcraft to defend yourself with, have you?” She tied another smaller knot at the end of her handkerchief. “You’ve got all sorts of things in your hair, Gwendolen,” she said as she pulled it tight. The twigs sticking in Janet’s hair writhed and began dropping on the table and over her skirt. Each one was a large stripy caterpillar.

Janet was no more bothered by wriggly things than Gwendolen. She picked the caterpillars off and put them in a heap in front of Julia. “I’ve a good mind to shout for your father,” she said.

“Oh, no, don’t be a tell-tale,” said Roger. “Let her be, Julia.”

“Certainly not,” said Julia. “She’s not getting any lunch.”

After the meeting with Mr Baslam, Cat was not really very hungry. “Here,” he said, and changed his plate of stew with Janet’s mud. Janet started to protest. But, as soon as the plate of mud was in front of Cat, it was steaming stew again. And the looping heap of caterpillars was simply a pile of twigs.

Julia turned to Cat, not at all pleased. “Don’t you interfere. You annoy me. She treats you like a slave and all you do is stick up for her.”

“But I only changed the plates!” Cat said, puzzled. “Why—”

“It could have been Michael,” Roger suggested.

Julia glowered at him too. “Was it you?” Roger blandly shook his head. Julia looked at him uncertainly. “If I have to go without marmalade again,” she said at length, “Gwendolen’s going to know about it. And I hope the stew chokes you.”

Cat found it hard to concentrate on lessons that afternoon. He had to watch Janet like a hawk. Janet had decided that the only safe thing was to be totally stupid – she thought Gwendolen must have been pretty stupid anyway – and Cat knew she was overdoing it. Even Gwendolen had known the twice-times table. Cat was worried, too, in case Julia started knotting that handkerchief of hers when Mr Saunders’s back was turned. Luckily, Julia did not quite dare. But Cat’s main worry was how to find twenty pounds by next Wednesday. He could hardly bear to think of what might happen if he did not. The very least thing, he knew, would be Janet confessing she was not Gwendolen. He thought of Chrestomanci giving him that scathing stare and saying, “You went with Gwendolen to buy dragon’s blood, Eric? But you knew it was illegal. And you tried to cover up by making Janet pretend to be Gwendolen? You show touching concern, Eric.”

The mere idea made Cat shrivel up inside. But he had nothing to sell except a pair of earrings that shouted that they belonged to someone else. If he wrote to the Mayor of Wolvercote and asked if he could have twenty pounds out of the Fund, the Mayor would only write to Chrestomanci to ask why Cat wanted it. And then Chrestomanci would stare scathingly and say, “You went with Gwendolen to buy dragon’s blood, Eric?” It was hopeless.

“Are you feeling well, Eric?” Mr Saunders asked several times.

“Oh, yes,” Cat replied each time. He was fairly sure that having your mind in three places at once did not count as illness, much as it felt like it.

“Play soldiers?” Roger suggested after lessons.

Cat would have liked to, but he dared not leave Janet on her own. “I’ve got to do something,” he said.

“With Gwendolen. I know,” Roger said wearily. “Anyone would think you were her left leg, or something.”

Cat felt hurt. The annoying thing was that he knew Janet could have done without her left leg more easily than she could have done without him. As he hurried after Janet to Gwendolen’s room, he wished heartily it was really Gwendolen he was hurrying after.

Inside the room, Janet was feverishly collecting things: Gwendolen’s spell books, the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the gold-backed brush and hand-mirror off the dressing-table, the jar on the bedside table, and half the towels from the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” said Cat.

“Finding things we can sell. Is there anything you can bear to spare from your room?” said Janet. “Don’t look like that. I know it amounts to stealing, but I get so desperate when I think of that horrible Mr Bisto going to Chrestomanci that I don’t care any more.” She went to the wardrobe and rattled the clothes along the rail. “There’s an awfully good coat in here.”

“You’ll need that on Sunday if it turns cold,” Cat said drearily. “I’ll go and see what I’ve got – only promise me to stay here until I come back.”

“Sho’ ting,” said Janet. “I daren’t move widdout you, bwana. But hurry up.”

There were fewer things in Cat’s room, but he collected what he could find, and added the great sponge from the bathroom. He felt like a criminal. Janet and he wrapped their finds in two towels and crept downstairs with their chinking bundles, expecting someone to discover them any minute.

“I feel like a thief with the swag,” Janet whispered. “Someone’s going to shine a searchlight any second, and then the police will close in. Are there police here?”

“Yes,” said Cat. “Do shut up.”

But, as usual, there was no one about near the private door. They crept down the shiny passage and peeped outside. The space by the rhododendrons was empty. They crept out towards them. Trees that would hide Mr Baslam would hide them and their loot.

They were three steps outside the door when a massed choir burst into song. Janet and Cat nearly jumped out of their skins. “We belong to Chrestomanci Castle! We belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” thundered forty voices. Some were deep, some were shrill, but all were very loud. They made a shattering noise. It took them a second or so to realise that the voices were coming from their bundles.

“Creeping antimacassars!” said Janet.

They turned round and ran for the door again, with the forty voices bawling in their ears.

Miss Bessemer opened the door. She stood tall and narrow and purple, waiting for them to come through it. There was nothing Janet and Cat could do but scuttle guiltily past her into the passage, where they put their suddenly silent bundles down on the floor and steeled themselves for trouble.

“What an awful noise, my loves!” said Miss Bessemer. “I haven’t heard the like since a silly warlock tried to burgle us. What were you doing?”

Janet did not know who the stately purple lady was. She was too scared to speak. Cat had to say something. “We were wanting to play houses in the tree-house,” he said. “We needed some things for it.” He was surprised how likely he made it sound.

“You should have told me, sillies!” said Miss Bessemer. “I could have given you some things that don’t mind being taken outside. Run and put those back, and I’ll look you out some nice furnishings for tomorrow.”

They crept dismally back to Janet’s room. “I just can’t get used to the way everything’s magic here,” Janet moaned. “It’s getting me down. Who was that long purple lady? I’m offering even money she’s a sorceress.”

“Miss Bessemer. The housekeeper,” said Cat.

“Any hope that she’ll give us splendid cast-offs that will fetch twenty quid in the open market?” Janet asked. They both knew that was unlikely. They were no nearer thinking of another way to earn twenty pounds when the dressing-gong went.

Cat had warned Janet what dinner was like. She had promised not to jump when footmen passed things over her shoulder, and sworn not to try and talk about statues with Mr Saunders. She assured Cat she would not mind hearing Bernard talk of stocks and shares. So Cat thought that for once he could be easy. He helped Janet dress and even had a shower himself, and when they went into the drawing room he thought that they both did him credit.

But Mr Saunders proved at last to have worn out his craze for statues. Instead, everyone began to talk about identical twins, and then about exact doubles who were no relation. Even Bernard forgot to talk about shares in his interest in this new subject.

“The really difficult point,” he boomed, leaning forward with his eyebrows working up and down his forehead, “is how such people fit in with a series of other worlds.”

And, to Cat’s dismay, the talk turned to other worlds. He might have been interested at any other time. Now he dared not look at Janet, and could only wish that everyone would stop. But they talked eagerly, all of them, particularly Bernard and Mr Saunders. Cat learnt that a lot was known about other worlds. Numbers had been visited. Those which were best known had been divided into sets, called series, according to the events in History which were the same in them. It was very uncommon for people not to have at least one exact double in a world of the same series – usually people had a whole string of doubles, all along the set.

“But what about doubles outside a series?” Mr Saunders said. “I have at least one double in Series III, and I suspect the existence of another in—”

Janet sat up sharply, gasping. “Cat, help! It’s like sitting on pins!”

Cat looked at Julia. He saw the little smile on her face, and the tail-end of her handkerchief above the table. “Change places,” he whispered, feeling rather tired. He stood up. Everyone stared.

“All of which makes me feel that a satisfactory classification has not yet been found,” Mr Saunders said, as he turned Cat’s way.

“Do you think,” said Cat, “that I could change places with J—Gwendolen, please? She can’t quite hear what Mr Saunders is saying from there.”

“Yes, and it’s rivetingly interesting,” Janet gasped, shooting from her chair.

“If you find it essential,” Chrestomanci said, a little annoyed.

Cat sat in Janet’s chair. He could feel nothing wrong with it. Julia put her head down and gave him a long, unpleasant look, and her elbows worked as she crossly untied her handkerchief. Cat saw that she was going to hate him, too, now. He sighed. It was one thing after another.

Nevertheless, when Cat fell asleep that night, he was not feeling hopeless. He could not believe things could get any worse – so they had to get better. Perhaps Miss Bessemer would give them something very valuable, and they could sell it. Or, better still, perhaps Gwendolen would be back when he woke up, and already solving all his problems.

But when he went to Gwendolen’s room in the morning, it was still Janet, struggling to tie her garters and saying over her shoulder, “These things are probably very bad for people. Do you wear them, too? Or are they a female torture? And one useful thing magic could do would be to hold one’s stockings up. It makes you think that witches can’t be very practical.”

She did talk a lot, Cat thought. But it was better than having no one in Gwendolen’s place.

At breakfast, neither Mary nor Euphemia were at all friendly, and, as soon as they left the room, one of the curtains wrapped itself round Janet’s neck and tried to strangle her. Cat took it away. It fought him like a live thing, because Julia was holding both ends of her handkerchief and pulling hard on the knot.

“Oh, do stop it, Julia!” he begged her.

“Yes, do,” Roger agreed. “It’s silly and it’s boring. I need to enjoy my food in peace.”

“I’m quite willing to be friends,” Janet offered.

“That makes one of us,” said Julia. “No.”

“Then be enemies!” Janet snapped, almost in Gwendolen’s manner. “I thought at first that you might be nice, but I can see now that you’re just a tedious, pigheaded, cold-hearted, horny-handed, cross-eyed hag!”

That, of course, was calculated to make Julia adore her.

Luckily, Mr Saunders appeared earlier than usual. There had only been time for Janet’s marmalade to turn to orange worms, and change back again when Cat gave her his instead, and for Janet’s coffee to become rich brown gravy, and turn to coffee again when Cat drank it, before Mr Saunders stuck his head round the door. At least, Cat thought it was lucky, until Mr Saunders said, “Eric, Chrestomanci wants to see you now, in his study.”

Cat stood up. His stomach, full of charmed marmalade as it was, made an unusually rapid descent to the Castle cellars. Chrestomanci’s found out, he thought. He knows about the dragon’s blood and about Janet, and he’s going to look at me politely and – Oh I do hope he isn’t an enchanter!

“Where – where do I go?” he managed to say.

“Take him, Roger,” said Mr Saunders.

“And – and why?” Cat asked.

Mr Saunders smiled. “You’ll find out. Off you go.”

Chrestomanci’s study was a large sun-filled room with books in shelves all round it. There was a desk, but Chrestomanci was not sitting at it. He was sprawled on a sofa in the sun, reading a newspaper and wearing a green dressing-gown with golden dragons on it. The gold embroidery of the dragons winked and glittered in the sun. Cat could not take his eyes off them. He stood just inside the door, not daring to go any further, and he thought: He has found out about the dragon’s blood.

Chrestomanci looked up and smiled. “Don’t look so frightened,” he said, laying down his newspaper. “Come and sit down.”

He pointed to a large leather armchair. It was all in his friendliest way, but, these days, Cat was sure this meant precisely nothing. He was sure that the friendlier Chrestomanci seemed, the angrier this meant he was. He stole over to the armchair and sat in it. It proved to be one of those deep, sloping kind of chairs. Cat slid backwards down the slippery leather slope of its seat until he found he was having to look at Chrestomanci from between his knees. He felt quite defenceless. He thought he ought to say something, so he whispered, “Good morning.”

“You don’t look as if you thought so,” observed Chrestomanci. “No doubt you have your reasons. But don’t worry. This isn’t exactly about the frog again. You see, I’ve been thinking about you—”

“Oh, you needn’t!” Cat said from his half-lying position. He felt that if Chrestomanci were to fix his thoughts on something on the other side of the universe, it would hardly be too far away.

“It didn’t hurt much,” said Chrestomanci. “Thank you all the same. As I was saying, the frog affair set me thinking. And though I fear you probably have as little moral sense as your wretched sister, I wonder if I could trust you. Do you think I can trust you?”

Cat had no idea where this could be leading, except that from the way Chrestomanci put it he did not seem to trust Cat very much. “Nobody’s ever trusted me before,” Cat said cautiously – except Janet, he thought, and only because she had no choice.

“But it might be worth trying, don’t you think?” suggested Chrestomanci. “I ask because I’m going to start you on witchcraft lessons.”

Cat had simply not expected this. He was horrified. His legs waved about in the chair with the shock. He managed to stop them, but he was still horrified. The moment Mr Saunders started trying to teach him magic, it would be obvious that Cat had no witchcraft at all. Then Chrestomanci would start to think about the frog all over again.

Cat cursed the chance that had made Janet draw in her breath and caused him to confess. “Oh you mustn’t do that!” he said. “It would be quite fatal. I mean, you can’t trust me at all. I’m black-hearted. I’m evil. It was living with Mrs Sharp that did it. If I learnt witchcraft, there’s no knowing what I’d do. Look what I did to Euphemia.”

“That,” said Chrestomanci, “is just the kind of accident I’m anxious to prevent. If you learn how and what to do, you’re far less likely to make that kind of mistake again.”

“Yes, but I’d probably do it on purpose,” Cat assured him. “You’ll be putting the means in my hands.”

“You have it there anyway,” Chrestomanci said. “And witchcraft will out, you know. No one who has it can resist using it for ever. What exactly makes you think you’re so wicked?”

That question rather stumped Cat. “I steal apples,” he said. “And,” he suggested, “I was quite keen on some of the things Gwendolen did.”

“Oh, me too,” Chrestomanci agreed. “One wondered what she would think of next. How about her procession of nasties? Or those four apparitions?”

Cat shivered. He felt sick to think of them.

“Precisely,” said Chrestomanci, and to Cat’s dismay, he smiled warmly at him. “Right. We’ll let Michael start you on elementary witchcraft on Monday.”

“Oh, please don’t!” Cat struggled out of the slippery chair in order to plead better. “I’ll bring a plague of locusts. I’ll be worse than Moses and Aaron.”

Chrestomanci said musingly, “It might be quite useful if you parted the waters of the English Channel. Think of all the sea-sickness you’d save. Don’t be so alarmed. We’ve no intention of teaching you to do things the way Gwendolen did.”

Cat trailed forlornly back to the schoolroom to find them having Geography. Mr Saunders was raging at Janet for not knowing where Atlantis was.

“How was I to know it’s what I call America?” Janet asked Cat at lunch-time. “Though, mind you, that was a lucky guess when I said it was ruled by the Incas. What’s the matter, Cat? You look ready to cry. He’s not found out about Mr Biswas, has he?”

“No, but it’s quite as bad,” said Cat, and he explained.

“This was all we needed!” said Janet. “Discovery threatens on all sides. But it may not be quite as bad as it seems, when I think. You might be able to work up a little magic if you practised first. Let’s see what we can do after school with Gwendolen’s books that the dear kind girl so obligingly left us.”

Cat was quite glad when lessons started again. He was sick of changing plates with Janet, and Julia’s handkerchief must have been worn to rags with the number of knots tied in it.

After lessons, he and Janet collected the two magic books and took them up to Cat’s room. Janet looked round it with admiration.

“I like this room much better than mine. It’s cheerful. Mine makes me feel like the Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, and they were both such sickeningly sweet girls. Now let’s get down to work. What’s a really simple spell?”

They knelt on the floor, leafing through a book each. “I wish I could find how to turn buttons into sovereigns,” said Cat. “We could pay Mr Baslam then.”

“Don’t talk about it,” said Janet. “I’m at our wits’ end. How about this? Simple flotation exercise. Take a small mirror and lay it so that your face is visible in it. Keeping face visible, move round widdershins three times, twice silently willing, the third time saying: Rise little mirror, rise in air, rise to my head and then stay there. Mirror should then rise – I think you ought to be able to manage that, Cat.”

“I’ll have a go,” Cat said dubiously. “What’s widdershins?”

“Anti-clockwise,” said Janet. “That I do know.”

“I thought it meant crawling,” Cat said humbly.

Janet looked at him consideringly. “I suppose you’re quite small still,” she said, “but you do worry me when you go all cowed. Has anyone done anything to you?”

“I don’t think so,” Cat said, rather surprised. “Why?”

“Well, I never had a brother,” said Janet. “Fetch a mirror.”

Cat got the hand-mirror from his chest of drawers and laid it carefully in the middle of the floor. “Like that?”

Janet sighed. “That’s what I mean. I knew you’d get it if I ordered you to. Do you mind not being so kind and obedient? It makes me nervous. Anyway –” She took up the book. “Can you see your face in it?”

“Almost nothing else,” said Cat.

“Funny. I can see my face,” said Janet. “Can I do it, too?”

“You’re more likely to get it to work than I am,” said Cat. So they both circled the mirror, and they said the words in chorus. The door opened. Mary came in. Janet guiltily put the book behind her back.

“Yes, here he is,” Mary said. She stood aside to let a strange young man come into the room. “This is Will Suggins,” she said. “He’s Euphemia’s young man. He wants to talk to you, Eric.”

Will Suggins was tall and burly and rather handsome. His clothes looked as if he had brushed them carefully after working in a bakery all day. He was not friendly. “It was you turned Euphemia into a frog, was it?” he said to Cat.

“Yes,” said Cat. He dared say nothing else with Mary there.

“You’re rather small,” said Will Suggins. He seemed disappointed about it. “Anyway,” he said, “whatever size you are, I’m not having Euphemia turned into things. I take exception to it. Understand?”

“I’m very sorry,” said Cat. “I won’t do it again.”

“Too right you won’t!” said Will Suggins. “You got off too light over this, by what Mary tells me. I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t forget in a hurry.”

“No you’re not!” said Janet. She marched up to Will Suggins and pushed Magic for Beginners threateningly towards him. “You’re three times his size, and he’s said he’s sorry. If you touch Cat, I shall—” She took the book out of Will Suggins’s chest in order to leaf hastily through it. “I shall induce complete immobility in the legs and trunk.”

“And very pretty I shall look, I’m sure!” Will Suggins said, much amused. “How are you going to do that without witchcraft, may I ask? And if you did, I daresay I could get out of it fast enough. I’m a fair warlock myself. Though,” he said, turning to Mary, “you might have warned me he was this small.”

“Not so small where witchcraft and mischief are concerned,” said Mary. “Neither of them are. They’re a pair of real bad lots.”

“Well, I’ll do it by witchcraft then. I’m easy,” said Will Suggins. He searched in the pockets of his slightly floury jacket. “Ah!” he said, and fetched out what seemed to be a lump of dough. For a moment he shaped it vigorously in both powerful hands. Then he rolled it into a ball and threw it at Cat’s feet. It landed on the carpet with a soft plop. Cat looked at it in great apprehension, wondering what it was supposed to do.

“That’ll lie there,” said Will Suggins, “until three o’clock Sunday. Sunday’s a bad time to be at witchcraft, but it’s my free day. I shall be waiting for you then in Bedlam field, in the form of a tiger. I make a good tiger. You can turn yourself into something as large as you like, or small and fast if you prefer, and I’ll teach you that lesson whatever you are. But if you don’t come to Bedlam field in the form of something, that lump of dough will start to work and you’ll be a frog yourself – for as long as I feel like keeping you that way. Right, Mary. I’m through now.”

Will Suggins turned and marched out of the room. Mary followed him, but she was unable to resist putting her head back round the door to say, “And see how you like that, Eric!” before she shut it.

Cat and Janet looked at one another and then at the lump of dough. “What am I going to do?” said Cat.

Janet threw her book on to Cat’s bed and tried to pick up the lump of dough. But it had grown to the carpet. She could not shift it. “You’d only get this up by cutting a hole in the floor,” she said. “Cat, this gets worse and worse. If you’ll forgive my saying so, I’ve stopped loving your sugar-coated sister even one tiny bit!”

“It was my fault,” said Cat. “I shouldn’t have lied about Euphemia. That’s what got me in this mess, not Gwendolen.”

“Mess is not a strong enough word,” said Janet. “On Sunday, you get mauled by a tiger. On Monday, it comes out that you can’t do magic. And if the whole story doesn’t come out then, it will on Wednesday, when Mr Bedlam calls for his money. Do you think Fate has something up its sleeve for Tuesday too? I suppose if you go to meet him on Sunday in the form of yourself, he can’t hurt you much, can he? It’s better than waiting to be turned into a frog.”

“I’d better do that,” Cat agreed, looking at the ominous lump of dough. “I wish I really could turn into things, though. I’d go as a flea. He’d scratch himself to bits trying to find me.”

Janet laughed. “Let’s see if there’s a spell for it.” She turned round to fetch Magic for Beginners and hit her head on the mirror. It was hanging in the air, level with her forehead. “Cat! One of us did it! Look!”

Cat looked, without much interest. He had too much on his mind. “I expect it was you. You’re the same as Gwendolen, so you’re bound to be able to work spells. But changing into things won’t be in either of these books. That’s Advanced Magic.”

“Then I’ll do the spell to get the mirror down,” said Janet. “Not that I want to be a witch. The more I see of witchcraft, the more it seems just an easy way to be nasty.”

She had opened the book, when there was a knock at the door. Janet seized the chair beside Cat’s bed and stood on it, so as to hide the mirror. Cat hastily dropped to one knee on top of the lump of dough. Neither of them wanted any more trouble.

Janet doubled Magic for Beginners inside out so that it could have been any book, and waved it at Cat. “Come into the garden, Maud,” she proclaimed.

Taking this as an invitation, Miss Bessemer opened the door and came in. She was carrying an armful of things, with a chipped teapot hanging off one finger. “The furnishings I promised you, loves,” she said.

“Oh,” said Janet. “Oh, thanks very much. We were just having a poetry reading, you know.”

“And I made sure you were talking to me!” Miss Bessemer said, laughing. “My name’s Maud. Will these be all right on the bed?”

“Yes, thanks,” said Cat.

Neither of them dared move. They twisted round to watch Miss Bessemer dump the armful on the bed, and, still twisted, they thanked her profusely. As soon as Miss Bessemer had gone, they dived to see if, by any blessed chance, any of the pile was valuable. Nothing was. As Janet said, if they really had wanted to play houses, two stools and an old carpet would have been just the thing, but from a selling point of view, they were just a dead loss.

“It was kind of her to remember,” Cat said, as he packed the heap into his cupboard.

“Except that now we’ll have to remember to play houses with them,” Janet said morosely. “As if we hadn’t enough to do. Now, I will get this mirror down. I will!”

But the mirror refused to come down. Janet tried all three spells in both books, and it still stayed hanging in the air level with her head.

“You try, Cat,” said Janet. “We can’t leave it there.”

Cat roused himself from gloomily staring at the ball of dough. It was still round. There was no sign that he had knelt on it, and that alarmed him. He knew it must be a very strong charm. But when Janet appealed to him, he sighed and reached up to pull the mirror down. His experience with Julia had taught him that a simple spell could usually be broken quite simply.

The mirror refused to descend an inch. But it slid about in the air. Cat was interested. He hung on to it with both hands, pushed off with his feet, and went travelling across the room in a most agreeable way.

“That looks fun,” said Janet.

“It is,” said Cat. “You try.”

They played with the mirror for some time after that. It could go as fast as they could push it, and it took the weight of both of them easily. Janet discovered that the best ride was to be had by standing on the chest of drawers and jumping. Then, provided you kept your feet up, you could swing across the room and land on Cat’s bed. They were whirling together across the carpet, tangled up and laughing a good deal, when Roger knocked at the door and came in.

“I say, that’s a good idea!” he said. “We’ve never thought of that. Can I have a go? And I met a peculiar cross-eyed man in the village, Gwendolen, and he gave me this letter for you.”

Cat dropped off on to the carpet and took the letter. It was from Mr Nostrum. Cat recognised the writing. He was so pleased that he said to Roger, “Have twenty goes if you want!” and rushed up to Janet with the letter. “Read it, quick! What does it say?”

Mr Nostrum could get them out of their troubles. He might not be much of a necromancer, but he was surely able to turn Cat into a flea, if Janet asked him nicely. He would certainly have a charm that could make Cat look as if he could do magic.

And though Mr Nostrum was not rich, his brother William was. He could lend Cat twenty pounds, if he thought he was helping Gwendolen.

Cat sat on the bed beside Janet and they read the letter, while Roger trundled about the room dangling from the mirror and chuckling placidly at what fun it was. Mr Nostrum wrote:

My dear and favourite pupil,

I am here, domiciled at the White Hart Inn. It is most important – I repeat, of the utmost importance – that you come to me here on Saturday afternoon, bringing your brother to be briefed by me.

Your affectionate and proud teacher,

Henry Nostrum

At this, Janet looked nervous and mystified and moaned gently.

“I hope it’s not bad news,” Roger said, sailing past with his feet hooked up behind him.

“No, it’s the best news we could have had!” Cat said. He dug Janet in the ribs to make her smile. She smiled dutifully, but he could not make her see that it was good news, even when he had a chance to explain.

“If he taught Gwendolen, he’ll know I’m not her,” she said. “And if he doesn’t know, he won’t understand why you want to be turned into a flea. It is an odd thing to go and ask, even in this world. And he’d want to know why I couldn’t do it to you. Couldn’t we tell him the truth?”

“No, because it’s Gwendolen he’s fond of,” Cat explained. Something told him that Mr Nostrum would be almost as little pleased as Chrestomanci to find that Gwendolen had departed for another world. “And he’s got some kind of plans for her.”

“Yes, this briefing,” Janet said irritably. “He obviously thinks I know all about it. If you ask me, Cat, it’s just one more damned thing!”

Nothing could convince Janet that salvation was at hand. Cat was quite sure it was. He went to sleep rejoicing, and woke up happy. He still felt happy, even when he trod on the lump of dough and it was cold and frog-like under his foot. He covered it up with Magic for Beginners. Then he had to turn his attention to the mirror. It would keep drifting into the middle of the room. Cat had to tether it to the bookcase with his Sunday bootlace in the end.

He found Janet less happy than ever. Julia’s latest idea was a mosquito. It met Janet as she came into breakfast, and it kept with her, whining in and biting, all through lessons, until Cat swatted it with his arithmetic book.

What with this, and nasty looks from both Julia and Mary, and then having to meet Mr Nostrum, Janet became both peevish and miserable.

“It’s all right for you,” she said morbidly, as they tramped down the avenue on their way to the village that afternoon. “You’ve been brought up with all this magic and you’re used to it. But I’m not. And what scares me is that it’s for ever. And it scares me even more that it isn’t for ever. Suppose Gwendolen gets tired of her new world and decides to move on again? When that happens, off we shall be dragged, a whole string of us doubles, and I’ll be having to cope in her world, and you’ll have all your troubles over again with a new one.”

“Oh, I’m sure that won’t happen,” Cat said, rather startled at the possibility. “She’s bound to come back soon.”

“Oh, is she?” said Janet. They came through the gates, and again mothers snatched children out of their sight, and the village green emptied as they reached it. “I wish I was back at home!” Janet wailed, almost in tears at the way everyone ran away.

They were ushered into a private parlour in the White Hart. Mr Henry Nostrum rolled pompously to meet them.

“My dear young friends!” He put his hands on Janet’s shoulders and kissed her. Janet started backwards, knocking her hat over one ear. Cat was a little shaken. He had forgotten Mr Nostrum’s seedy, shabby look, and the weird effect of his wandering left eye.

“Sit down, sit down!” said Mr Nostrum heartily. “Have some ginger beer.”

They sat down. They sipped ginger beer, which neither of them liked. “What did you want me for, as well as Gwendolen?” Cat asked.

“Because,” said Mr Nostrum, “to come straight to the point and not to beat about the bush, we find, as we rather feared we would, that we are quite unable to make use of those three signatures which you were kind enough to donate to me for services rendered in the tuition line. The Person Who Inhabits That Castle Yonder, whose name I disdain to say, signs his name under unbreakable protections. You may call it prudent of him. But I fear it necessitates our using Plan Two. Which was why, my dear Cat, we were so glad to arrange for you to live at the Castle.”

“What is Plan Two?” said Janet.

Mr Nostrum’s odd eye slipped sideways across Janet’s face. He did not seem to realise she was not Gwendolen. Perhaps his wandering eye did not see very well. “Plan Two is just as I described it to you, my dear Gwendolen,” he said. “We have not changed it one whit.”

Janet had to try another way to find out what he was talking about. She was getting quite good at it. “I want you to describe it to Cat, though,” she said. “He doesn’t know about it, and he may need to because – because most unfortunately they’ve taken my witchcraft away.”

Mr Nostrum wagged a playful finger at her. “Yes, naughty girl. I’ve been hearing things about you in the village. A sad thing to lose, but let us hope it will only be temporary. Now – as to explaining to young Cat – how shall I best go about it?” He thought, smoothing his frizzy wings of hair, as his habit was. Somehow, the way he did it showed Cat that whatever Mr Nostrum was going to tell him, it would not be quite the truth. It was in the movement of Mr Nostrum’s hands, and in the very sit of his silver watch-chain across his shabby, rounded waistcoat.

“Well, young Chant,” said Mr Nostrum, “this is the matter in a nutshell. There is a group, a clique, a collection of people, headed by the Master of the Castle, who are behaving very selfishly in connection with witchcraft. They are keeping all the best things to themselves, which of course makes them very dangerous – a threat to all witches, and a looming disaster to ordinary people. For instance, take dragon’s blood. You know that it is banned. These people, with That Person at their head, had it banned, and yet – mark this well, young Cat – they use it daily themselves. And – here is my point – they keep tight control of the ways to get to the worlds where dragon’s blood comes from. An ordinary necromancer like myself can only get it at great risk and expense, and our exotic suppliers have to endanger themselves to get it for us. And the same goes for almost any product from another world.

“Now, I ask you, young Cat, is this fair? No. And I’ll tell you why not, young Eric. It is not fair that the ways to other worlds should be in the hands of a few. That is the crux of the matter: the ways to other worlds. We want them opened up, made free to everyone. And that is where you come in, young Chant. The best and easiest way, the broadest Gateway to Elsewhere, if I may put it like that, is a certain enclosed garden in the grounds of this said Castle. I expect you have been forbidden to enter it—”

“Yes,” said Cat. “We have been.”

“And consider how unfair!” said Mr Nostrum. “The Master of That Place uses it every day and travels where he pleases. So what I want you to do, young Cat, and this is all Plan Two amounts to, is to go into the garden at two-thirty precisely on Sunday afternoon. Can you promise me to do that?”

“What good would that do?” asked Cat.

“It would break the seal of enchantment these dastardly persons have set on the Gateways to Elsewhere,” Mr Nostrum said.

“I’ve never quite understood,” Janet said, with a very convincing wrinkle in her forehead, “how Cat could break the seals just by going into the garden.”

Mr Nostrum looked a little irritated. “By being an ordinary innocent lad, of course. My dear Gwendolen, I have stressed to you over and over again the importance of having an innocent lad at the centre of Plan Two. You must understand.”

“Oh, I do, I do,” Janet said hastily. “And has it to be this Sunday at two-thirty?”

“As ever is,” said Mr Nostrum, smiling again. “It’s a good strong time. Will you do that for us, young Cat? Will you, by this simple act, set your sister and people like her free – free to do as they need in the practice of magic?”

“I’ll get into trouble if I’m caught,” said Cat.

“A bit of boyish cunning will see you through. Then, never fear, we’ll take care of you afterwards,” Mr Nostrum persuaded.

“I suppose I can try,” said Cat. “But do you think you can help me a bit in return? Do you think your brother could very kindly lend us twenty pounds by next Wednesday?”

A vague, though affable, look affected Mr Nostrum’s left eye. It pointed benevolently to the furthest corner of the parlour. “Anything you please, dear boy. Just get into that garden, and the fruits of all the worlds will be yours for the picking.”

“I need to be a flea half an hour later, and I want to look as if I can do magic on Monday,” said Cat. “That’s all I need, apart from the twenty pounds.”

“Anything, anything! Just get into that garden for us,” said Mr Nostrum expansively.

With that, it seemed Cat and Janet had to be content. Cat made several efforts to fix Mr Nostrum in a definite promise, but all he would say was “Just get into that garden”. Janet looked at Cat and they got up to go.

“Let us gossip,” suggested Mr Nostrum. “I have at least two items of interest to you.”

“We haven’t time,” Janet lied firmly. “Come on Cat.”

Mr Nostrum was used to Gwendolen being equally firm. He got up and led them to the Inn door like royalty and waved to them as they went out on to the green. “I’ll see you on Sunday,” he called after them.

“No you won’t!” Janet whispered. Keeping her head down, so that Gwendolen’s broad hat hid her from Mr Nostrum, she whispered to Cat, “Cat, if you do one thing that unbelievably dishonest man wants, you’ll be a fool! I know he told you a pack of lies. I don’t know what he’s really after, but please don’t do it.”

“I know—” Cat was beginning, when Mr Baslam got up from the bench outside the White Hart and shambled after them.

“Wait!” he puffed, rolling beer fumes over them. “Young lady, young sir, I hope you’re bearing in mind what I said to you. Wednesday. Don’t forget Wednesday.”

“No fear. It haunts my dreams,” said Janet. “Please. We’re busy, Mr Bustle.”

They walked quickly away across the green. The only other living soul in sight was Will Suggins, who came out of the back yard of the bread shop in order to stare meaningly after them.

“I think I’ve got to do what he wants,” Cat said.

“Don’t,” said Janet. “Though I must say I can’t see what else we can do.”

“About the only thing left is running away,” said Cat.

“Then let’s do that – at once,” said Janet.

They did not exactly run. They walked briskly out of the village on the road Cat thought pointed nearest to Wolvercote. When Janet objected that Wolvercote was the first place anyone at the Castle would think of looking, Cat explained about Mrs Sharp’s grand contacts in London. He knew Mrs Sharp would smuggle them away somewhere, and no questions asked. He made himself very homesick by talking of Mrs Sharp. He missed her dreadfully. He trudged along the country road, wishing it was Coven Street and wishing Janet was not walking beside him making objections.

“Well, you may be right,” Janet said, “and I don’t know where else we could go. How do we get to Wolvercote? Hitch-hike?” When Cat did not understand, she explained that it meant getting lifts by waving your thumb.

“That would save a lot of walking,” Cat agreed.

The road he had chosen shortly turned into a very country lane, rutted and grassy and lined with high hedges hung with red briony berries. There was no traffic of any kind.

Janet managed not to point this out. “One thing,” she said. “If we’re going to make a proper go of this, do promise me you won’t happen to mention You Know Who.” When Cat did not understand this either, she explained, “The man Mr Nostrum kept calling That Person and the Master of the Castle – you know!”

“Oh,” said Cat. “You mean Chrest—”

“Quiet!” bawled Janet. “I do mean him, and you mustn’t say it. He’s an enchanter and he comes when you call him, stupid! Just think of the way that Mr Nostrum was scared stiff to say his name.”

Cat thought about this. Gloomy and homesick as he was, he was not anxious to agree with anything Janet said. She was not really his sister, after all. Besides, Mr Nostrum had not been telling the truth. And Gwendolen had never said Chrestomanci was an enchanter. She would surely never have dared do all the magic she did if she thought he was. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

“All right. Don’t,” said Janet. “Just don’t say his name.”

“I don’t mind,” said Cat. “I hope I never see him again anyway.”

The lane grew wilder as they walked. It was a crisp warm afternoon. There were nuts in the hedges, and great bushes of blackberries. Before they had gone another half mile, Cat found his feelings had changed entirely. He was free. His troubles had been left behind. He and Janet picked the nuts, which were just ripe enough to eat, and laughed a good deal over cracking them. Janet took her hat off – as she told Cat repeatedly, she hated hats – and they filled the crown of it with blackberries for later on. They laughed when the juice oozed through the hat and dripped down Janet’s dress.

“I think running away is fun,” said Cat.

“Wait till we’re spending the night in a rat-infested barn,” said Janet. “Flitterings and squeakings. Are there ghouls and goblins in this wor—? Oh look! There’s a car coming! Thumb – no, wave. They probably don’t understand thumbing.”

They waved furiously at the big black car that was whispering and bouncing along the ruts towards them. To their delight, it sighed to a stop beside them. The nearest window rolled down. They got a very rude shock when Julia put her head out of it.

Julia was pale and agitated. “Oh please come back!” she said. “I know you ran away because of me, and I’m sorry! I swear I won’t do it any more!”

Roger put his head out of the back window. “I kept telling her you would,” he said. “And she didn’t believe me. Do come back. Please.”

The driver’s door had opened by then. Millie came hurrying round the long bonnet of the car. She looked much more homely than usual, because her skirts were looped up for driving and she was wearing stout shoes and an old hat. She was as agitated as Julia. When she reached Janet and Cat, she flung an arm round each of them and hugged them so hard and thankfully that Cat nearly fell over.

“You poor darlings! Another time you get unhappy, you must come and tell me at once! And what a thing, too! I was so afraid you’d got into real trouble, and then Julia told me it was her. I’m extremely vexed with her. A girl did that to me once and I know how miserable it made me. Now, please, please come back. I’ve got a surprise waiting for you at the Castle.”

There was nothing Cat and Janet could do but climb into the back of the car and be driven back to the Castle. They were miserable. Cat’s misery was increased by the fact that he began to feel sick from the moment Millie started to bump the car backwards down the lane to a gate where she could turn it. The smell of blackberry coming from Janet’s squashy hat made him feel worse.

Millie, Roger and Julia were very relieved to have found them. They chattered joyfully the whole way. Through his sickness, Cat got the impression that, although none of them said so, what they were particularly glad about was to have found Janet and Cat before Chrestomanci came to hear they were gone. This did not make either Cat or Janet feel any better.

In five minutes, the car had whispered up the avenue and stopped at the main door of the Castle. The butler opened it for them, just, Cat thought sadly, as Gwendolen would have wished. The butler, furthermore, ceremoniously took Janet’s leaking hat away from her. “I’ll see that these get to Cook,” he said.

Millie told Janet that her dress would just pass muster and hurried them to what was called the Little Drawing Room. “Which means of course that it’s a mere seventy feet square,” she said. “Go in. Tea will be there for you.”

They went in. In the middle of the big square room a wispy, skinny woman in beaded black clothes was sitting nervously on the edge of a gilded chair. She jumped round when the door opened.

Cat forgot he felt sick. “Mrs Sharp!” he shouted, and ran to hug her.

Mrs Sharp was overjoyed, in spite of her nervousness. “It’s my Cat, then! Here, stand back, let me look at you, and you too, Gwendolen, love. My word, you do wear fine clothes to go playing about in! You’re fatter, Cat. And Gwendolen, you’ve gone thin. I can understand that, dear, believe me! And would you just look at the tea they’ve brought for the three of us!”

It was a marvellous tea, even better than the tea on the lawn. Mrs Sharp, in her old greedy way, settled down to eat as much as she could, and to gossip hard. “Yes, we came up on the train yesterday, Mr Nostrum and me. After I got your postcard, Cat, I couldn’t rest till I’d had a look at you both, and seeing as how my contacts and other things have been paying nicely, I felt I owed it to myself. They treated me like royalty when I turned up here at the door, too. I can’t fault them. But I wish I cared for it in this Castle. Tell me, Gwendolen, love, does it get you like it gets me?”

“How does it get you?” Janet asked cautiously.

“I’m nerves all over,” said Mrs Sharp. “I feel weak and jumpy as a kitten – and that reminds me, Cat, but I’ll tell you later. It’s so quiet here. I kept trying to think what it was before you came – and you were a long time, my loves – and at last it came to me. It’s an enchantment, that’s what it is, a terrible strong one, too, against us witches. I said, ‘This Castle does not love witches, that’s what it is!’ and I felt for you, Gwendolen. Make him send you to school away somewhere. You’d be happier.”

She chattered on. She was delighted to see them both, and she kept giving Cat particularly proud and affectionate looks. Cat thought she had convinced herself she had brought him up from a baby. After all, she had known him since he was born.

“Tell us about Coven Street,” he said yearningly.

“I was coming to that,” said Mrs Sharp. “You remember Miss Larkins? Bad-tempered girl with red hair who used to tell fortunes? I never thought much to her myself. But someone did. She’s been set up by a grateful client in a Salon in Bond Street. Coven Street’s not good enough for her any more. The luck some people have! But I’ve had a stroke of luck myself, too. I told you in my letter – didn’t I, Cat? – about being give five pounds for that old cat you turned our Cat’s fiddle into, Gwendolen. Well, he was ever such a funny little man who bought him. While we were waiting to catch the old cat – you know how he never would come if you wanted him – this little man kept at me, telling me all about stocks and shares and capital investment and such like. Things I never could understand. He told me what I ought to be doing with that five pounds he was giving me, and making my head go round with it. Well, I didn’t think much of it, but I thought I’d have a go. And I did what he said, as far as I could remember. And do you know, that five pound has brought in one hundred! One hundred pounds, he got me!”

“He must have been a financial wizard,” Janet said.

She meant it as a joke to cheer herself up. She needed cheering up for several reasons. But Mrs Sharp took her literally.

“He was, my dear! You’re always so clever. I know he was, because I told Mr Nostrum, and Mr Nostrum did exactly what I did with five pounds of his own – or it may have been more – and he lost every penny of it. And another thing—”

Cat watched Mrs Sharp as she chattered on. He was puzzled and sad. He was still just as fond of Mrs Sharp. But he knew it would have been no use whatsoever running away to her. She was a weak, dishonest person. She would not have helped them. She would have sent them back to the Castle and tried to get money out of Chrestomanci for doing it. And the London contacts she was boasting of at that moment were just boasts. Cat wondered how much he had changed inside – and why he had – enough to know all this. But he did know, just as surely as if Mrs Sharp had turned round in her gilded chair and assured him of it herself, and it upset him.

As Mrs Sharp came to the end of the food, she seemed to become very nervous. Perhaps the Castle was getting her down. At length she got up and took a nervous trot to a distant window, absent-mindedly taking her teacup with her.

“Come and explain this view,” she called. “It’s so grand I can’t understand it.” Cat and Janet obligingly went over to her. Whereupon Mrs Sharp became astounded to find she had an empty teacup in her hand. “Oh, look at this,” she said. shaking with nervousness. “I’ll be carrying it away with me if I’m not careful.”

“You’d better not,” said Cat. “It’s bound to be charmed. Everything you take outside shouts where it came from.”

“Is that so?” All of a flutter, Mrs Sharp passed Janet her cup and followed it up, very guiltily, with two silver spoons and the sugar-tongs out of her handbag. “There, dear. Would you mind taking those back to the table?” Janet set off across the yards of carpet and, as soon as she was out of hearing, Mrs Sharp bent and whispered, “Have you talked to Mr Nostrum, Cat?”

Cat nodded.

Mrs Sharp at once became nervous in a much more genuine way. “Don’t do what he says, love,” she whispered. “Not on any account. You hear me? It’s a wicked, crying shame, and you’re not to do it!” Then, as Janet came slowly back – slowly, because she could see Mrs Sharp had something private to say to Cat – Mrs Sharp burst out artificially, “Oh those great immemorial oaks! They must be older than I am!”

“They’re cedars,” was all Cat could think of to say.

“Well, that was a nice tea, my loves, and lovely to see you,” said Mrs Sharp. “And I’m glad you warned me about those spoons. It’s a mean, wicked trick, enchanting property, I always think. I must be going now. Mr Nostrum’s expecting me.” And go Mrs Sharp did, through the Castle hall and away down the avenue with such speed that it was clear she was glad to go.

“You can see the Castle really upsets her,” Janet said, watching Mrs Sharp’s trotting black figure. “There is this quiet. I know what she means. But I think it’s cheerful – or it would be if everything else wasn’t so miserable. Cat, it would have been no good running away to her, I’m afraid.”

“I know,” said Cat.

“I thought you did,” said Janet.

She was wanting to say more, but they were interrupted by Roger and Julia. Julia was so contrite and trying so hard to be friendly that neither Janet nor Cat had the heart to go off on their own. They played with hand-mirrors instead. Roger fetched the mirror tethered to Cat’s bookcase, and collected his own and Julia’s and Gwendolen’s too. Julia took a firm little reef in that handkerchief of hers and sent all four aloft in the playroom. Until supper, they had great fun whizzing round the playroom, not to speak of up and down the passage outside.

Supper was in the playroom that evening. There were guests to dinner again downstairs. Roger and Julia knew, but no one had mentioned it to Cat and Janet for fear the supposed Gwendolen might try to ruin it again.

“They always entertain a lot in the month before Hallowe’en,” Julia said as they finished the blackberry tart Cook had made specially out of Janet’s hatful. “Shall we play soldiers now, or mirrors again?”

Janet was signalling so hard that she had something urgent to say, that Cat had to refuse. “I’m awfully sorry. We’ve got to talk about something Mrs Sharp told us. And don’t say Gwendolen owns me. It’s not that at all.”

“We forgive you,” Roger said. “We might forgive Gwendolen too, with luck.”

“We’ll come back when I’ve said it,” said Janet.

They hurried along to her room, and Janet locked the door in case Euphemia tried to come in.

“Mrs Sharp said I wasn’t on any account to do what Mr Nostrum says,” Cat told her. “I think she came specially to tell me.”

“Yes, she’s fond of you,” said Janet. “Oh – oh – oh drat!” She clasped her hands behind her back and marched up and down with her head bent. She looked so like Mr Saunders teaching, that Cat started to laugh. “Bother,” said Janet. “Bother, bother, bother bother botherbotherbother!” She marched some more. “Mrs Sharp is a highly dishonest person, almost as bad as Mr Nostrum, and probably worse than Mr Bistro, so if she thinks you oughtn’t to do it, it must be bad. What are you laughing about?”

“You keep getting Mr Baslam’s name wrong,” said Cat.

“He doesn’t deserve to have it got right,” Janet said, marching on. “Oh, confusticate Mrs Sharp! After I saw she wasn’t any good for any kind of help, I was in such despair that I suddenly saw the ideal way out – and she’s stopped it. You see, if that garden is a way to go to other worlds, you and I could go back to my world, and you could live there with me. Don’t you think that was a good idea? You’d be safe from Chrestomanci and Mr Baalamb, and I’m sure Will Suggins couldn’t turn you into a frog there, either, could he?”

“No,” Cat said dubiously. “But I don’t think Mr Nostrum was telling quite the truth. All sorts of things could be wrong.”

“Don’t I know it!” said Janet. “Specially after Mrs Sharp. Mum and Dad would be another difficulty too – though I’m sure they’d like you when they understood. They must be fearfully puzzled by my Dear Replacement by now, as it is. And I did have a brother, who died when he was born, so perhaps they’d think you were his Dear Replacement.”

“That’s funny!” said Cat. “I nearly died being born too.”

“Then you must be him,” said Janet, swinging round at the end of her march. “They’d be delighted – I hope. And the best of it would have been that Gwendolen would have been dragged back here to face the music – and serve her right! This is all her fault.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Cat.

“Yes, it is!” said Janet. “She did magic when she was forbidden to, and gave Mr Blastoff dud earrings for something she wasn’t supposed to have anyway, and dragged me here, and turned Euphemia into a frog, and got you into an even worse mess than I’m in. Will you stop being so loyal for a moment and notice!”

“It’s no good getting angry,” said Cat, and he sighed. He missed Gwendolen even more than he had missed Mrs Sharp.

Janet sighed too, but with exasperation. She sat down at the dressing-table with a thump and stared into her own cross face. She pushed its nose up and crossed her eyes. She had been doing this every spare minute. It relieved her feelings about Gwendolen a little.

Cat had been thinking. “I think it’s a good idea,” he said dolefully. “We’d better go to the garden. But I think you need some kind of magic to go to another world.”

“Thus we find ourselves stumped,” said Janet. “It’s dangerous, and we can’t anyway. But they’d taken Gwendolen’s witchcraft away, and she did it. How? That’s been puzzling me a lot.”

“I expect she used dragon’s blood,” said Cat. “She still had that. Mr Saunders has a whole jar of dragon’s blood up in his workshop.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Janet yelled, jumping round on her stool.

She really might have been Gwendolen. At the sight of her fierce face Cat missed Gwendolen more than ever. He resented Janet. She had been ordering him about all day. Then she tried to make out it was all Gwendolen’s fault. He shrugged mulishly and went very unhelpful. “You didn’t ask.”

“But can you get some?”

“Maybe. But,” Cat added, “I don’t want to go to another world really.”

Janet drew a long, quiet breath and managed not to tell him to stay and be turned into a frog then. She made a very ingenious face at the mirror and counted up to ten. “Cat,” she said carefully, “we really are in such a mess here that I can’t see any other way out. Can you?”

“No,” Cat admitted grudgingly. “I said I’d go.”

“And thank you, dear Janet, for your kind invitation, I notice,” Janet said. To her relief, Cat grinned. “But we’ll have to be hideously careful about going,” she said, “because I suspect that if Chrestomanci doesn’t know what we’re doing, Millie will.”

“Millie?” said Cat.

“Millie,” said Janet. “I think she’s a witch.” She ducked her head down and fiddled with the gold-backed hairbrush. “I know you think I go around seeing sorcery everywhere with my nasty suspicious mind, like you did about Chrestomanci, but I really am sure, Cat. A sweet, kind honey of a witch if you like. But she is one. How else did she know we were running away this afternoon?”

“Because Mrs Sharp came and they wanted us,” Cat said, puzzled.

“But we’d only been gone for an hour or so, and we could have been just going blackberrying. We hadn’t even taken our nightclothes,” Janet explained. “Now do you see?”

Though Cat was indeed sure that Janet had an obsession about witchcraft, and he was still feeling sulky and unhelpful, he could not help seeing that Janet had a point. “A very nice witch, then,” he conceded. “I don’t mind.”

“But, Cat, you do see how difficult she’s going to make it,” Janet said. “Do you? You know, you should be called Mule, not Cat. If you don’t want to know a thing, you don’t. How did you get to be called Cat anyway?”

“That was just a joke Gwendolen made,” said Cat. “She always said I’d got nine lives.”

“Gwendolen made jokes?” Janet asked unbelievingly. She stopped, with an arrested look, and turned stiffly away from the mirror.

“Not usually,” said Cat.

“Great heavens! I wonder!” said Janet. “In this place, where every other thing turns out to be enchanted, it almost must be! In which case, how horrible!” She pushed the mirror up until the glass faced the ceiling, jumped off the stool and raced to the wardrobe. She dragged Gwendolen’s box out of it and sorted fiercely through it. “Oh, I do hope I’m wrong! But I’m almost sure there were nine.”

“Nine what?” asked Cat.

Janet had found the bundle of letters addressed to Miss Caroline Chant. The red book of matches was tucked in front of it. Janet took the little book carefully out and chucked the letters back in the box. “Nine matches,” she said, as she opened the book. “And there are, too! Oh, good Lord, Cat! Five of them are burnt. Look.”

She held the book out to Cat. He saw there were indeed nine matches in it. The heads of the first two were black. The third was charred right down to the base. The fourth had a black head again. But the fifth had burnt so fiercely that the paper behind was singed and there was a hole in the sandpaper beneath it. It was a wonder the whole book had not caught fire – or at least the last four matches. They were as new, however. Their heads were bright red, with yellowish oily paper below, and bright white cardboard below that.

“It does look like a charm of some kind,” Cat said.

“I know it is,” said Janet. “These are your nine lives, Cat. How did you come to lose so many?”

Cat simply could not believe her. He was feeling surly and resistant anyway, and this was too much. “They can’t be,” he said. Even if he had nine lives, he knew he could only have lost three, and that was counting the time Gwendolen gave him cramps. The other two would be when he was born and on the paddle boat. But, as he thought this, Cat found he was remembering those four apparitions coming from the flaming bowl to join Gwendolen’s gruesome procession. One had been a baby, one wet. The crippled one had seemed to have cramps. But why had there been four of them, when five matches were burnt?

Cat began shivering, and this made him all the more determined to prove Janet wrong.

“You couldn’t have died in the night once or twice without noticing?” Janet wondered.

“Of course I didn’t.” Cat reached down and took the book. “Look, I’ll prove it to you.” He tore the sixth match off and dragged it along the sandpaper.

Janet leapt up, shrieking to him to stop. The match burst into flame.

So, almost at the same instant, did Cat himself.

Cat screamed. Flames burst out of him all over. He screamed again, and beat at himself with flaming hands, and went on screaming. They were pale, shimmering, transparent flames. They burst out through his clothes, and his shoes, his hair, across his face, so that, in seconds, he was wrapped in pale flame from head to foot. He fell to the floor, still screaming, and rolled there, blazing.

Janet kept her presence of mind. She dragged up the nearest corner of the carpet and threw it over Cat. She had heard that this smothered flames. But it did not smother these. To Janet’s horror, the pale ghostly flames came straight through the carpet as if it was not there, and played on the black underside of it more fiercely than ever. They did not burn the carpet, nor did they burn Janet’s hands as she frantically rolled Cat over in the carpet, and then over again. But no matter how much carpet she wrapped round Cat, the flames still came through, and Cat went on blazing and screaming. His head was half outside the flaming bundle she had made of him, and it was a sheaf of flames. She could see his screaming face inside the fire.

Janet did the only thing she could think of. She jumped up and screamed herself. “Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci! Come quickly!”

The door burst open while she was still screaming. Janet had forgotten it was locked, but the lock did not bother Chrestomanci. She could see it sticking out from the edge of the door as he flung it open. She had forgotten there were guests to dinner too. She remembered when she saw Chrestomanci’s lace ruffles, and his black velvet suit which glimmered all over like an opal, blue, crimson, yellow and green. But that did not seem to bother Chrestomanci either. He took one look at the flaming bundle on the floor and said “Good God!” Then he was down on his elegant knees unwrapping the carpet as frantically as Janet had wrapped it.

“I’m awfully sorry. I thought that would help,” Janet stammered.

“It ought to have done,” said Chrestomanci, rolling Cat over, with flames whirling through, over and along his velvet arms. “How did he do it?”

“He struck one of the matches. I told him—”

“You stupid child!” Chrestomanci was so angry that Janet burst into tears. He lugged at the last of the carpet and Cat rolled free, flaming like a straw faggot. He was not really screaming any more. He was making a long thin noise that had Janet covering her ears. Chrestomanci dived into the heart of the flames and found the book of matches. It was tightly clasped in Cat’s right hand. “Thank God he didn’t have it in the left one,” he said. “Go and turn your shower on. Quick!”

“Of course. Of course,” Janet sobbed, and raced to do it.

She fumbled with the taps and had just got a strong spray of cold water hissing into the sunken blue bath as Chrestomanci hurried in carrying Cat, in a ball of roaring flame. He dumped Cat down into the bath and held him there, turning him this way and that to get him wet all over.

Cat steamed and hissed. The water coming from the sprayhead shone like water against the sun, golden as the sun itself. It came down like a beam of light. And, as the bath began to fill up, Cat seemed to be turning and threshing in a pool of sunshine. He boiled it into golden bubbles. The room filled with steam. Coils of smoke drifted up from the bath, smelling thick and sweet. It was the same smell that Janet remembered from the morning she had first found herself there. As far as she could see through the smoke, Cat seemed to be turning black in the golden pool. But the water was wet. Chrestomanci was getting soaked.

“Don’t you understand?” he said to Janet over his shoulder while he heaved at Cat to keep his head under the spray. “You shouldn’t go telling him things like this until the Castle has had time to work on him. He wasn’t ready to understand. You’ve given him the most appalling shock.”

“I’m truly enormously sorry,” Janet said, crying heavily.

“We’ll just have to make the best of it,” said Chrestomanci. “I’ll try and explain to him. Run along to the speaking tube at the end of the corridor and tell them to send me some brandy and a pot of strong tea.”

As Janet raced away, Cat found himself soaking wet, with water hissing down on him. He tried to roll away from it. Someone held him in it. A voice said insistently in his ear, “Cat. Cat, will you listen to me. Do you understand? Cat, you’ve only got three lives left now.”

Cat knew that voice. “You told me I’d got five when you spoke to me through Miss Larkins,” he grumbled.

“Yes, but you’ve only got three now. You’ll have to be more careful,” said Chrestomanci.

Cat opened his eyes and looked up at him. Chrestomanci was fearfully wet. The usually smooth black hair was hanging over his forehead in wriggles, with drips on the ends. “Oh. Was it you?” he said.

“Yes. You took a long time recognising me, didn’t you?” said Chrestomanci. “But then I didn’t know you straight away when I saw you, either. I think you can come out of this water now.”

Cat was too weak to get out of the bath alone. But Chrestomanci heaved him out, stripped off his wet clothes, dried him and wrapped him in another towel in no time at all. Cat’s legs kept folding. “Up you come,” said Chrestomanci, and carried him again, to the blue velvet bed, and tucked him in it. “Better now, Cat?”

Cat lay back, limp but luxurious, and nodded. “Thanks. You’ve never called me Cat before.”

“Perhaps I should have done. You just might have understood.” Chrestomanci sat beside the bed, looking very serious. “You do understand now?”

“The book of matches was my nine lives,” Cat said. “And I’ve just burnt one. I know it was stupid, but I didn’t believe it. How can I have nine lives?”

“You have three,” said Chrestomanci. “Get that into your head. You did have nine. In some manner and by someone, they were put into that book of matches, and that book I am now going to put in my secret safe, sealed with the strongest enchantments I know. But that will only stop people using them. It won’t stop you losing them yourself.”

Janet came hurrying in, still tearful, but very thankful to be of use. “It’s coming,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Chrestomanci, and he gave her a long, thoughtful look. Janet was sure he was going to accuse her of not being Gwendolen, but what he said was, “You may as well hear this too, in order to prevent more accidents.”

“Can I get you a towel first?” Janet said humbly. “You’re so wet.”

“I’m drying out, thank you,” he said, smiling at her. “Now listen. People with nine lives are very important and very rare. They only happen when, for one reason or another, there are no counterparts of them living in any other world. Then the lives that would have been spread out over a whole set of worlds get concentrated in one person. And so do all the talents that those other eight people might have had.”

Cat said, “But I haven’t any talents,” and Janet said at the same time, “How rare are these people?”

“Extremely rare,” said Chrestomanci. “Apart from Cat, the only other person with nine lives that I know of on this world is myself.”

“Really?” Cat was pleased and interested. “Nine?”

“I did have nine. I’ve only got two now. I was even more careless than Cat,” Chrestomanci said. He sounded a little ashamed. “Now I have to take care to keep each life separately in the safest place I can think of. I advise Cat to do the same.”

Janet’s ready brain promptly got to work on this. “Is one life here, and the other downstairs having supper at this moment?”

Chrestomanci laughed. “It doesn’t work like that. I—”

To Janet’s disappointment, Euphemia hurried in with a tray and prevented Chrestomanci explaining how it did work. Mr Saunders came in on Euphemia’s heels, still unable to find evening clothes that covered his wrists and ankles.

“Is he all right?” Euphemia asked anxiously. “My Will was uttering threats, but if it was him I’ll never speak to him again. And whatever happened to this carpet?”

Mr Saunders was looking at the wrinkled and heaped up carpet too. “What did it?” he said. “There were surely enough charms in this carpet to stop any kind of accident.”

“I know,” said Chrestomanci. “But this was amazingly strong.” The two of them looked at one another significantly.

Then everyone fussed over Cat. He had a most enjoyable time. Mr Saunders sat him up on pillows, and Euphemia put him in a nightshirt and then stroked Cat’s head, just as if he had never confessed to turning her into a frog. “It wasn’t Will,” Cat said to her. “It was me.” Chrestomanci gave him a fierce swig of brandy and then made him drink a cup of sweet tea. Janet had a cup of tea too, and felt much better for it. Mr Saunders helped Euphemia straighten the carpet, and then asked if he should strengthen the charms in it.

“Dragon’s blood might do the trick,” he suggested.

“Frankly, I don’t think anything will,” said Chrestomanci. “Leave it.” He got up and turned the mirror straight. “Do you mind sleeping tonight in Cat’s room?” he asked Janet. “I want to be able to keep an eye on Cat.”

Janet looked from the mirror to Chrestomanci, and her face became very pink. “Er,” she said. “I’ve been making faces—”

Chrestomanci laughed. Mr Saunders was so amused that he had to sit on the blue velvet stool. “I suppose it serves me right,” said Chrestomanci. “Some of the faces were highly original.”

Janet laughed too, a little foolishly.

Cat lay, feeling comfortable and almost cheerful. For a while, everyone was there, settling him in. Then there seemed only to be Janet, talking as usual.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said. “Why did I open my big mouth about those matches? I had the dreaded umjams when you suddenly flared up, and when the carpet didn’t work, the only thing I could think of was to yell for Chrestomanci. I was right. He came before the words were out of my mouth, even though the door was locked. It was still locked when he opened it, but the lock isn’t broken, because I tried it. So he is an enchanter. And he ruined a suit over you, Cat, and didn’t seem to mind, so I think that when he isn’t being like freezing fog over the Grampians, he’s really very nice. This isn’t for the benefit of the mirror. I mean it. I suppose that mirror is the magic equivalent of—”

Cat thought he had been meaning to say something about freezing fog in the Grampians, but he drifted away to sleep while Janet talked, feeling snug and cared-for.

He woke on Sunday morning, quite the opposite: cold and quivering. This afternoon, he was due to be turned into a frog or face a tiger – and a rather heavy strong tiger Will Suggins would make too, he thought. Beyond the tiger – if there was a beyond – lay the horrors of Monday without magic. Julia and Roger might help there, except that it would be no use when Mr Baslam came on Wednesday and demanded twenty pounds Cat knew he could not get. Mr Nostrum was no help. Mrs Sharp was even less. The only hope seemed to be to take Janet and some dragon’s blood to the forbidden garden and try to get away.

Cat climbed out of bed to go and get some dragon’s blood from Mr Saunders’s workshop. Euphemia came in with his breakfast on a tray, and he had to climb back into bed again. Euphemia was quite as kind as she had been last night. Cat felt bad. And when he had finished breakfast, Millie came. She scooped Cat off his pillows and hugged him.

“You poor silly darling! Thank goodness you’re all right. I was aching to come and see you last night, but someone had to stay with our poor guests. Now, you’re to stay in bed all today, and you must ask for anything you want. What would you like?”

“I couldn’t have some dragon’s blood, could I?” Cat asked hopefully.

Millie laughed. “Good heavens, Eric! You go and have that fearsome accident and then you ask for the most dangerous stuff in the world. No, you may not have dragon’s blood. It’s one of the few things in the Castle that really are forbidden.”

“Like Chrestomanci’s garden?” Cat asked.

“Not quite like that,” Millie answered. “The garden is as old as the hills and stuffed with magic of every kind. That’s dangerous in another way. Everything’s stronger there. You’ll be taken into the garden when you know enough magic to understand it. But dragon’s blood is so harmful that I’m never happy even when Michael uses it. You’re on no account to touch any.”

Julia and Roger came in next, dressed ready for church, with armfuls of books and toys and a great many interested questions. They were so kind that Cat was quite unhappy by the time Janet arrived. He did not want to leave the Castle. He felt he was truly settling in to it.

“That lump of dough is still stuck to your carpet,” Janet said gloomily, which made Cat feel rather less settled. “I’ve just been seeing Chrestomanci, and it is hard to be punished for other people’s sins,” Janet went on, “even though I’ve been rewarded with the sight of a sky-blue dressing-gown with golden lions on it.”

“I’ve not seen that one,” said Cat.

“I think he has one for every day of the week,” said Janet. “All he needed was a flaming sword. He forbade me to go to church. The vicar won’t have me because of what Gwendolen did last Sunday. And I was so cross at being blamed for it that I’d got my mouth open to say I wasn’t Gwendolen, when I remembered that if I went to church I’d have to wear that stupid white hat with little holes in it – can he hear through that mirror, do you think?”

“No,” said Cat. “Just see. Or he’d know all about you. I’m glad you’re staying behind. We can go and get the dragon’s blood while they’re at church.”

Janet kept watch at the window to see when the Family left. After about half an hour, she said, “Here they are at last, walking in a crowd down the avenue. All the men have got toppers, but Chrestomanci looks as if he’s come out of a shop window. Who are they all, Cat? Who’s the old lady in purple mittens, and the young one in green, and the little fellow who’s always talking?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Cat. He scrambled out of bed and scuttled up to his room to find some clothes. He felt perfectly well – marvellously well, in fact. He danced round his room while he put on his shirt. He sang putting on his trousers.

Even the cold lump of dough on the carpet could not damp his spirits. He whistled tying his boots.

Janet came into the room as Cat was shooting out of it, pulling on his jacket and beaming with health. “I don’t know,” Janet said, as Cat shot past her and hammered away down the stairs. “Dying must agree with you, or something.”

“Hurry up!” Cat called from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s on the other side of the Castle from here. Millie says dragon’s blood is dangerous, so don’t you touch it. I can spare a life on it and you can’t.”

Janet wanted to remark that Cat had not spared the last one very easily, but she never caught Cat up sufficiently. Cat whirled through the green corridors and stormed up the winding stairs to Mr Saunders’s room, and Janet only reached him when he was actually inside it. Then there was too much else to take up her attention.

The room was heavy with the scent of stale magic. Though it was much the same as when Cat had seen it before, Mr Saunders had tidied it a little for Sunday. The cresset was out. The torts and limbecks and other vessels were all clean. The books and scrolls had been piled in heaps on the second bench. The five-pointed star was still there, blazoned on the floor, but there was a new set of signs chalked on the third bench, and the mummified animal had been neatly laid at one end of it.

Janet was immensely interested. “It’s like a laboratory,” she said, “except that it isn’t. What weird things! Oh, I see the dragon’s blood. Does he need all that huge jar? He won’t miss a bit out of that lot.”

There was a rustling at the end of the third bench. Janet’s head jerked towards it. The mummified creature was twitching and spreading its filmy little wings.

“It did that before,” said Cat. “I think it’s all right.” He was not so sure, however, when the creature stretched and got to its dog-like feet, yawning. The yawn showed them dozens of small sharp teeth and also let out a cloud of bluish smoke. The creature ran pattering along the bench towards them. The little wings rattled on its back as it came, and two small puffs of smoke streamed behind it from its nostrils. It stopped at the edge of the bench to look up at them inquisitively from a melting glitter of golden eyes. They backed nervously away from it.

“It’s alive!” said Janet. “I think it’s a small dragon.”

“Of course I am,” said the dragon, which made both of them jump violently. Even more alarming, tiny flames played out of its mouth as it spoke, and they could feel the heat from them where they stood.

“I didn’t know you could talk,” said Cat.

“I speak English quite well,” said the dragon, flickering flame. “Why do you want my blood?”

They looked guiltily at the great jar of powder on the shelf. “Is that all yours?” said Cat.

“If Mr Saunders is making it give blood all the time, I think that’s rather cruel,” Janet said.

“Oh, that!” said the dragon. “That’s powdered blood from older dragons. They sell it to people. You can’t have any of that.”

“Why not?” said Cat.

“Because I don’t want you to,” said the dragon, and a regular roll of fire came from its mouth, making them back away again. “How would you like to see me taking human blood and playing games with it?”

Though Cat felt the dragon had a point here, Janet did not. “It doesn’t worry me,” she said. “Where I come from we have blood transfusions and blood banks. Dad once showed me some of my blood under a microscope.”

“It worries me,” said the dragon, uttering another roll of fire. “My mother was killed by unlawful blood-stealers.” It crept to the very end of the bench and stared up at Janet. The flickers in its golden eyes melted and changed and melted again. It was like being looked at by two small golden kaleidoscopes. “I was too small to hold enough blood,” it flickered softly to Janet, “so they left me. I’d have died if Chrestomanci hadn’t found me. So you see why it worries me?”

“Yes,” said Janet. “What do baby dragons feed on? Milk?”

“Michael tried me with milk, but I didn’t like it,” said the dragon. “I have minced steak now, and I’m growing beautifully. When I’m big enough, he’s going to take me back, but meanwhile I’m helping him with his magic. I’m a great help.”

“Are you?” said Janet. “What do you do?”

“I find old things he can’t find himself.” The dragon fell into a flickering croon. “I fetch him animals from the abyss – old golden creatures, things with wings, pearl-eyed monsters from the deep sea, and whispering plants from long ago.”

It stopped and looked at Janet with its head on one side. “That was easy,” it remarked to Cat. “I’ve always wanted to do that, but no one let me before.” It sighed a long blue fume of smoke. “I wish I was bigger. I could eat her now.”

Cat took an alarmed look at Janet and found her staring like a sleep-walker, with a silly smile on her face. “Of all the mean tricks!” he said.

“I think I’ll just have a nibble,” said the dragon.

Cat realised it was being playful. “I’ll wring your neck if you do,” he said. “Haven’t you got anything else to play with?”

“You sound just like Michael,” said the dragon in a sulky roll of smoke. “I’m bored with mice.”

“Tell him to take you for walks.” Cat took Janet’s arm and shook her. Janet came to herself with a little jump and seemed quite unaware that anything had happened to her. “And I can’t help the way you feel,” said Cat to the dragon. “I need some dragon’s blood.” He pulled Janet well out of range, just to be on the safe side, and picked up a little china crucible from the next bench.

The dragon hunched up irritably and scratched itself like a dog under the chin until its wings rattled. “Michael says dragon’s blood always does harm somewhere,” it said, “even when an adept uses it. If you’re not careful, it costs a life.”

Cat and Janet looked at one another through the smoke it had made with its speech. “Well, I can spare one,” said Cat. He took the glass stopper off the big jar and scooped up some brown powder in the crucible. It had a strong, strange smell.

“I suppose Chrestomanci manages all right with two lives,” Janet said nervously.

“But he’s rather special,” said the dragon. It was standing on the very edge of the bench, rattling with anxiety. Its golden eyes followed Cat’s hands as he wrapped the crucible in his handkerchief and pushed the bundle cautiously into his pocket. It seemed so worried that Cat went over to it and, a little nervously, rubbed it under the chin where it had been scratching. The dragon stretched its neck and pressed against his fingers. The smoke came out of its nostrils in purring puffs.

“Don’t worry,” Cat said. “I’ve got three lives left, you see.”

“That explains why I like you,” said the dragon, and almost fell off the bench in its effort to follow Cat’s fingers. “Don’t go yet!”

“We’ve got to.” Cat pushed the dragon back on the bench and patted its head. Once he was used to it, he found he did not mind touching its warm horny hide a bit. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” said the dragon.

They left it staring after them like a dog whose master has gone for a walk without it.

“I think it’s bored,” Cat said when he had shut the door.

“It’s a shame! It’s only a baby,” said Janet. She stopped on the first turn of the stair. “Let’s go back and take it for a walk. It was sweet!”

Cat was sure that if Janet did any such thing, she would come to herself to find the dragon browsing on her legs. “It wasn’t that sweet,” he said. “And we’ll have to go to the garden straight away now. It’s going to tell Mr Saunders we took some dragon’s blood as soon as it sees him.”

“Yes, I suppose it does make a difference that it can talk.” Janet agreed. “We’d better hurry then.”

Cat walked very carefully through the Castle, down and out of doors, and kept a hand on his pocket in case of accidents. He was afraid he might arrive at the forbidden garden with one life less. He seemed to have lost three of his lives so easily.

That kept puzzling him. From the look of those matches, losing life number five ought to have been as much of a disaster as losing the sixth one last night. But he had not noticed it go at all. He could not understand it. His lives did not seem to be properly attached to him, like ordinary people’s. But at least he knew there were no other Cat Chants to be dragged into trouble in this world, when he left it.

It was a glorious start-of-autumn day, with everything green and gold, hot and still. There was not a soul around, and very little sound except the lonely crunch of Cat’s and Janet’s feet as they hurried through the formal garden.

Halfway through the orchard, Janet said, “If the garden we want looks like a ruined castle, we’re going away from it now.”

Cat could have sworn they were heading straight for it, but, sure enough, when he stopped and looked round, the high sun-soaked old wall was right behind them. And now he came to think of it, he could not remember how he and Gwendolen had got to it before.

They turned back and walked towards the high wall. All they found was the long, low wall of the orchard. There was no gate in it, and the forbidden garden was beyond it. They went along the orchard wall to the nearest gate. Whereupon they were in the rose garden, and the ruined wall was behind them again, towering above the orchard.

“This couldn’t be an enchantment to stop people getting into it, could it?” said Janet, as they plodded through the orchard again.

“I think it must be,” said Cat. And they were in the formal garden again, with the high wall behind them.

“They’ll be coming out of church before we’ve found it at this rate,” Janet said anxiously.

“Try keeping it in the corner of your eye and not going straight to it,” said Cat.

They did that. They walked slantwise with the garden, not really looking at it. It seemed to keep pace with them. And suddenly, they came out somehow beyond the orchard into a steep, walled path. Up at the top of it stood the high old wall, with its stairway masked by hollyhocks and bright with snapdragons, breathing warmth out of its crumbling stones into their worried faces. Neither of them dared look straight at the tall ruins, even while they were running up the path. But the wall was still there, when they reached the end, and so was the overgrown stair.

The stair made a nerve-racking climb. They had to go up it twice as high as a house, with one side of themselves pressed against the hot stones of the wall, and a sheer drop on the other side. The stairs were frighteningly old and irregular. And they grew hotter and hotter. Towards the end, Cat had to keep his head tipped up to the trees hanging over the top of the ruins, because looking anywhere else began to make him dizzy. He had glimpses of the Castle in the distance from more angles than he would have thought possible. He suspected that the ruins he was on were moving about.

There was a notch in the wall at the top, not like a proper entrance at all. They swung themselves in through it, secret and guilty, and found the ground beyond worn smooth, as if other people had been coming that way for centuries.

There were trees, thick and dark and close together. It was wonderfully cool. The smoothly worn path twined among them. Janet and Cat stole along it. As they went, the trees, as closely-growing trees often seem to do when you walk among them, appeared to move this way and that and spread into different distances. But Cat was not altogether sure it was only an appearance.

One new distance opened into a dell. And then they were in the dell.

“What a lovely place!” Janet whispered. “But how peculiar!”

The little dip was full of spring flowers. Daffodils, scillas, snowdrops, hyacinths and tiny tulips were all growing there in September in the most improbable profusion. There was a slight chill in the dip, which may have accounted for it. Janet and Cat picked their way among these flowers, shivering a little. There were the scents of spring, chilly and heady, clean and wild, but strong with magic. Before they had taken two steps, Cat and Janet were smiling gently. Another step and they were laughing.

“Oh look!” said Janet. “There’s a cat.”

It was a large stripy tom. It stood arched suspiciously beside a clump of primroses, not sure whether to run away or not. It looked at Janet. It looked at Cat. And Cat knew it. Though it was firmly and definitely a cat, there was just a suggestion of a violin about the shape of its face.

He laughed. Everything made him happy in that place. “That’s old Fiddle,” he said. “He used to be my violin. What’s he doing here?”

Janet knelt down and held out her hand. “Here, Fiddle. Here, puss.” Fiddle’s nature must have been softened by being in that dell. He let Janet rub his chin and stroke him. Then in the most unheard-of way, he let Janet pick him up and stand up hugging him. He even purred. Janet’s face glowed. She could almost have been Gwendolen coming home from a witchcraft lesson, except that she looked kinder. She winked at Cat. “I love all kinds of Cat!”

Cat laughed. He put out his left hand and stroked Fiddle’s head. It felt strange. He could feel the wood of the violin. He took his hand away quickly.

They went on through a white spread of narcissi, smelling like paradise, Janet still carrying Fiddle. There had been no white flowers until then. Cat began to be almost sure that the garden was moving round them of its own accord. When he stepped among bluebells, and then big red tulips, he was sure. He almost – but not quite – saw the trees softly and gently sliding about at the sides of what he could see. They slid him among buttercups and cow-parsley, into a sunny, sloping stretch. And here was a wild rose, tangled with a creeper covered in great blue flowers. Cat could definitely feel the sliding movement now. They were being moved round and down somehow. If he thought about the way the garden had also been moving about in the Castle grounds, he started to feel almost as sick as he did in the car. He found it was best just to keep walking and looking.

When they slid through the trees among flowers of high summer, Janet noticed too. “Aren’t we getting a lightning tour of the year?” she said. “I feel as if I’m running down a moving staircase.”

It was more than the ordinary year. Fig trees, olives and date-palms moved them round into a small desert, where there were cacti like tormented cucumbers and spiny green armchairs. Some had bright flowers on them. The sun burnt down. But they had hardly time to get uncomfortable before the trees circled around them again and brought them into a richer, sadder light, and autumn flowers. They had barely got used to that, when the trees put out berries, turned amber and lost their leaves. They moved towards a thick holly, full of red berries. It was colder. Fiddle did not like this part. He struggled out of Janet’s arms and ran away to warmer climes.

“Which are the gates to other worlds?” Janet said, brought back to a sense of purpose.

“Soon, I think,” said Cat. He felt them coming to the centre of the garden. He had seldom felt anything magical so strongly.

The trees and bushes round them now were embalmed in frost. They could see bright berries in bright casings of ice. Yet Janet had scarcely time to rub her arms and shiver, before a tree met them that was a wintry mass of pink blossom. Straight stalks of winter jasmine hung from the next, in lines of small yellow stars. And then came a mighty black thorn tree, twisted in all directions. It was just putting out a few white blossoms.

As it took them in under its dark hood, Janet looked up into its black twistings. “The one at Glastonbury looks like this,” she said. “They say it blooms at Christmas.”

Then Cat knew they were in the heart of the garden. They were in a small bowl of meadowland. All the trees were up round the edges, except one. And here it seemed the right season of the year, because the apples were just ripening on that one tree. It stood leaning over the centre of the meadow, not quite over-shadowing the queer ruin there.

As Janet and Cat passed quietly towards this place, they found a little spring of water near the roots of the apple tree, which bubbled up from nowhere, and bubbled away again into the earth almost at once. Janet thought the clear water looked unusually golden. It reminded her of the water from the shower when it stopped Cat burning.

The ruins were two sides of a broken archway. There was a slab of stone which must have fallen from the top of the arch lying nearby at the foot of the tree. There was no other sign of a gate.

“I think this is it,” said Cat. He felt very sad to be leaving.

“I think it is, too,” Janet agreed in an awed, muffled voice. “I feel a bit miserable to be going, as a matter of fact. How do we go?”

“I’m going to try sprinkling a pinch of dragon’s blood in the archway,” said Cat.

He fumbled out the crucible wrapped in his handkerchief from his pocket. He smelt the strong smell of the dragon’s blood and knew he was doing wrong. It was wrong to bring this harmful stuff into a place that was so strongly magic in such a different way.

But, since he did not know what else to do, Cat carefully took a pinch of the smelly brown powder between the finger and thumb of his right hand, wrapped the crucible away again with his left hand, and then, carefully and guiltily, sprinkled the powder between the pillars of broken stone.

The air between the pillars quivered like air that is hot. The piece of sunny meadow they could see beyond grew misty, then milky pale, then dark. The darkness cleared slowly, away into the corners of the space, and they found they could see into a huge room. There seemed acres of it. All of it was covered in a carpet of a rather ugly playing-card sort of design in red, blue and yellow. The room was full of people. They reminded Cat of playing-cards too, because they were dressed in stiff bulky clothes in flat bright colours. They were all trailing about, this way and that, looking important and agitated. The air between them and the garden was still quivering and, somehow, Cat knew they would not be able to get into the huge room.

“This is not right,” said Janet. “Where is it?”

Cat was just about to say that he did not know either, when he saw Gwendolen. She was being carried by, quite near, on a sort of bed with handholds. The eight men carrying it wore bulky golden uniforms. The bed was gold, with gold hangings and gold cushions. Gwendolen was dressed in even bulkier clothes than the rest, that were white and gold, and her hair was done up into a high golden headdress which may have been a crown.

From the way she was behaving, she was certainly a queen. She nodded to some of the important people and they leapt eagerly to the side of her bed and listened with feverish intelligence to what she was saying. She waved to some others, and they ran to do things. She made a sign at another person and he fell on his knees, begging for mercy. He was still begging when other people dragged him away. Gwendolen smiled as if this amused her. By this time, the golden bed was right beside the archway, and the space was a turmoil of people racing to do what Gwendolen wanted.

And Gwendolen saw Cat and Janet. Cat knew she did, from the expression of surprise and faint annoyance on her face. Maybe she worked some magic of her own, or maybe the magic in the dragon’s blood was simply used up. Whatever it was, the broken archway turned dark again, then milky, then to mist; and finally, there was nothing but meadow again between the pillars, and the air had stopped shimmering.

“That was Gwendolen,” Cat said.

“I thought it was,” Janet said unappreciatively. “She’ll get fat if she has herself carried about like that all the time.”

“She was enjoying herself,” Cat said wistfully.

“I could see that,” said Janet. “But how do we find my world?”

Cat was not at all sure. “Shall we try going round to the other side of the arch?”

“Seems reasonable,” Janet agreed. She started to walk round the pillars, and stopped. “We’d better get it right this time, Cat. You can only afford one more try. Or didn’t you lose a life on that one?”

“I didn’t feel—” Cat began.

Then Mr Nostrum was suddenly standing in the broken arch. He was holding the postcard Cat had sent to Mrs Sharp, and he was cross and flustered.

“My dear boy,” he said to Cat, “I told you two-thirty, not midday. It was the merest chance that I had my hand on your signature. Let us hope all is not lost.” He turned and called over his shoulder, apparently into the empty meadow, “Come on, William. The wretched boy seems to have misunderstood me, but the spell is clearly working. Don’t forget to bring the – ah – equipment with you.”

He stepped out from between the pillars, and Cat backed away before him. Everything seemed to have gone very quiet. The leaves of the apple tree did not stir, and the small bubbling from the little spring changed to a soft, slow dripping. Cat had a strong suspicion that he and Janet had done something terrible. Janet was beyond the archway with her hands to her mouth, looking horrified. She was suddenly hidden by the large figure of Mr William Nostrum, who popped into being from nowhere between the two pillars. He had a coil of rope round one arm, and there were shiny things sticking out of the pockets of his frock-coat. His eyes were swivelling in an agitated way. He was a little out of breath.

“Premature but successful, Henry,” he puffed. “The rest have been summoned.”

William Nostrum stepped imposingly out beneath the apple tree beside his brother. The ground shook a little. The garden was quite silent. Cat backed away again and found that the little spring had stopped flowing. There was nothing but a muddy hole left. Cat was quite certain now that he and Janet had done something terrible.

Behind the Nostrums, other people came hurrying through the broken archway. The first one who came was one of the Accredited Witches from further down Coven Street, puce in the face and very startled. She had been to church in her Sunday best: a monster of a hat with fruit and flowers in it, and a black and red satin dress. Most of the people who followed her were in Sunday best too: warlocks in blue serge and hard hats, witches in silk and bombazine and hats of all shapes and sizes, respectable-looking necromancers in frock-coats like William Nostrum’s, skinny sorcerers in black, and quite a sprinkling of impressive wizards, who had either been to church in long black cloaks, or playing golf in very freckled plus-fours.

They came crowding between the pillars, first by twos and threes and then by sixes and sevens, all a little hasty and startled. Among them Cat recognised most of the witches and fortune-tellers from Coven Street, though he did not see either Mrs Sharp or Miss Larkins – but this may have been simply that, in no time at all, he was being jostled this way and that in the middle of a large and steadily growing crowd.

William Nostrum was shouting to each group who hurried through, “Spread out. Spread out up the meadow. Surround the gate there! Leave no avenue of escape.”

Janet forced her way among them and seized Cat’s arm. “Cat! What have we done? Don’t tell me these aren’t all witches and warlocks, because I won’t believe you!”

“Ah, my dear Gwendolen!” said Mr Henry Nostrum. “Plan Two is under way.”

By this time, the sloping sides of the meadow were crowded with witches and warlocks. The ground quivered to their trampling and buzzed with their cheerful conversation. There were hundreds of them – a nodding of garish hats and shiny toppers, like the audience at the opening of a bazaar.

As soon as the last necromancer had hurried between the pillars, Henry Nostrum put a heavy possessive hand on Cat’s shoulder. Cat wondered uneasily whether it was just an accident that it was the same hand which held his postcard to Mrs Sharp. He saw that the Willing Warlock had stationed himself by one of the broken pillars, blue-chinned and cheerful as ever in his tight Sunday suit. Mr William Nostrum had put as much of himself as would go behind the other pillar, and, for some reason, he had taken off his heavy silver watch-chain and was swinging it in one hand.

“Now, my dear Gwendolen,” said Henry Nostrum, “would you care for the honour of summoning Chrestomanci?”

“I – I’d rather not,” said Janet.

“Then I’ll take it upon myself,” said Henry Nostrum, perfectly well pleased. He cleared his throat and shouted in a fluting tenor, “Chrestomanci! Chrestomanci! Come to me.”

And Chrestomanci was standing between the pillars.

Chrestomanci must have been on his way up the avenue from church. He had his tall grey hat in one hand, and, with the other, he was in the act of putting his prayer-book into the pocket of his beautiful dove grey coat. The assembled witches and necromancers greeted him with a sort of groaning sigh. Chrestomanci blinked round at them, in his mildest and most bewildered way. He became even vaguer and more bewildered when he happened to see Cat and Janet.

Cat opened his mouth to shout at Chrestomanci to go away. But the Willing Warlock leapt on Chrestomanci the moment he appeared. He was growling. His fingernails were growing into claws and his teeth into fangs.

Chrestomanci stuffed the prayer-book into his pocket and turned his vague look on the Willing Warlock. The Willing Warlock stood still in mid-air and shrank. He shrank so fast, he made a whirring sound. Then he was a small brown caterpillar. He dropped to the grass and wriggled there. But, while he was still shrinking, William Nostrum pounced out from behind the other pillar and deftly wrapped his watch-chain round Chrestomanci’s right hand.

“Behind you!” shrieked Cat and Janet, too late.

After barely one wriggle, the caterpillar burst up out of the grass and became the Willing Warlock again, a little dishevelled, but very pleased with himself. He threw himself on Chrestomanci again. As for Chrestomanci, it was plain that the watch-chain had somehow disabled him completely. There was a second or so of furious struggle in the archway, while the Willing Warlock tried to grab Chrestomanci in both brawny arms, and Chrestomanci tried to get the watch-chain off his wrist using his left hand, and William Nostrum hung on to it fiercely. None of them used any magic, and Chrestomanci seemed only able to shoulder the Willing Warlock weakly aside. After two attempts, the Willing Warlock wrapped his arms round Chrestomanci from behind and William Nostrum dragged a pair of silver handcuffs from his pocket and snapped them on both Chrestomanci’s wrists.

There was a scream of triumph from under the nodding hats of the audience – the scream of true witchcraft, which made the sunlight tremble. Chrestomanci, even more dishevelled than the Willing Warlock, was dragged out from between the pillars. His tall grey hat rolled near Cat’s feet and Henry Nostrum stamped on it, with the greatest satisfaction. Cat tried to get out from under Henry Nostrum’s hand while he did it. And he found he could not move. Mr Nostrum had seen to that with Mrs Sharp’s postcard. Cat had to face the fact that he was as helpless as Chrestomanci seemed to be.

“So it is true!” Henry Nostrum said joyously, as the Willing Warlock bundled Chrestomanci towards the apple tree. “The touch of silver conquers Chrestomanci – the great Chrestomanci!”

“Yes. Isn’t it a nuisance?” Chrestomanci remarked. He was dragged to the apple tree and pushed against it. William Nostrum hurried over to his brother and pulled the watch-chain off Henry’s bulging waistcoat. Two silver watch-chains from two such ample brothers were more than enough to tie Chrestomanci to the tree. William Nostrum hastily twisted the ends into two charmed knots and stood back rubbing his hands. The audience screamed eldritch laughter and clapped. Chrestomanci sagged as if he were tired. His hair hung over his face, his tie was under his left ear, and there was green from the bark of the tree all over his dove grey coat. Cat felt somehow ashamed to look at him in that state. But Chrestomanci seemed quite composed. “Now you’ve got me all tied up in silver, what do you propose doing?” he said.

William Nostrum’s eyes swirled joyfully about. “Oh, the worst we can, my dear sir,” he said. “Be assured of that. We’re sick of you imposing restraints on us, you see. Why shouldn’t we go out and conquer other worlds? Why shouldn’t we use dragon’s blood? Why shouldn’t we be as wicked as we want? Answer me that, sir!”

“You might find the answer for yourself, if you thought,” Chrestomanci suggested. But his voice was drowned in the yelling from the assembled witches and necromancers. While they shouted, Janet began edging quietly towards the tree. She supposed Cat dared not move with Henry Nostrum’s hand on his shoulder, and she felt someone ought to do something.

“Oh, yes,” said Henry Nostrum, cock-a-hoop with pleasure. “We are taking the arts of magic into our own hands today. This world will be ours by this evening. Come Hallowe’en, dear sir, we shall be going out to conquer every other world we know. We are going to destroy you, my dear fellow, and your power. But before we do that, of course, we shall have to destroy this garden.”

Chrestomanci looked thoughtfully down at his hands, hanging limply in the silver handcuffs. “I shouldn’t advise that,” he said. “This garden has things in it from the dawn of all the worlds. It’s a good deal stronger than I am. You’d be striking at the roots of witchcraft – and you’d find it shockingly hard to destroy.”

“Ah,” said Henry Nostrum. “But we know we can’t destroy you unless we destroy the garden, my wily sir. And don’t think we don’t know how to destroy the garden.” He lifted his free hand and clapped Cat on the other shoulder with it. “The means are here.”

Janet, at that moment, stumbled over the block of stone that lay in the grass near the apple tree. “Dratitude!” she said and fell heavily across it. The audience pointed and screamed with laughter, which annoyed her very much. She glared round the circle of Sunday bonnets and hats.

“Up you get, dear Gwendolen,” Henry Nostrum said gleefully. “It’s young Cat who has to go on there.” He put an arm round the helpless Cat, plucked him off the ground and carried him towards the block of stone. William Nostrum bustled up beaming and uncoiling his rope. The Willing Warlock bounced up willingly to help too.

Cat was so terrified that he managed somehow to break the spell. He twisted out of Henry Nostrum’s arms and ran for all he was worth towards the two pillars, trying to fetch out his dragon’s blood as he ran. It was only a few steps to run. But naturally every witch, warlock, necromancer and wizard there instantly cast a spell. The thick smell of magic coiled around the meadow. Cat’s legs felt like two lead posts. His heart hammered. He felt himself running in slow-motion, slower and slower, like a clockwork toy running down. He heard Janet scream at him to run, but he could not move any longer. He stuck just in front of the ruined archway, and he was stiff as a board. It was all he could do to breathe.

The Nostrum brothers and the Willing Warlock collected him from there, and wound the rope round his stiff body. Janet did her best to prevent them.

“Oh please stop! What are you doing?”

“Now, now, Gwendolen,” Henry Nostrum said, rather perplexed. “You know perfectly well. I explained to you most carefully that the garden has to be disenchanted by cutting the throat of an innocent child on that slab of stone there. You agreed it must be so.”

“I didn’t! It wasn’t me!” said Janet.

“Be quiet!” Chrestomanci said, from the tree. “Do you want to be put in Cat’s place?”

Janet stared at him, and went on staring as all the implications struck her. While she stared, Cat, stiff as a mummy and wound in rope, was carried by the Willing Warlock and dumped rather painfully down on the block of stone. Cat stared resentfully at the Willing Warlock. He had always seemed so friendly. Apart from that, Cat was not as frightened as he might have been. Of course Gwendolen had known he had lives to spare. But he hoped his throat would heal after they cut it. He was bound to be very uncomfortable until it did. He turned his eyes up to Janet, meaning to give her a reassuring look.

To his astonishment, Janet was snatched away backwards into nothingness. The only thing which remained of her was a yell of surprise. And the same yell rumbled round the meadow. Everyone there was quite as astonished as Cat.

“Oh good!” Gwendolen said, from the other side of the stone. “I got here in time.”

Everyone stared at her. Gwendolen came from between the pillars, dusting off the dragon’s blood from her fingers with one of Cat’s school essays. Cat could see his signature at the top: Eric Emelius Chant, 26 Coven St, Wolvercote, England, Europe, The World, The Universe – it was his all right. Gwendolen still had her hair up in that strange headdress, but she had taken off the massive golden robes. She had on what must have amounted to underclothes in her new world. They were more magnificent than any of Chrestomanci’s dressing-gowns.

“Gwendolen!” exclaimed Henry Nostrum. He pointed to the space Janet had vanished from. “What – who—?”

“Just a replacement,” Gwendolen explained, in her airiest way. “I saw her and Cat here just now, so I knew—” She noticed Chrestomanci limply tied to the apple tree. “Oh good! You caught him! Just a moment.” She marched over to Chrestomanci and held up her golden underclothes in order to kick him hard on both shins. “Take that! And that!”

Chrestomanci did not try to pretend the kicks did not hurt. He doubled up. The toes of Gwendolen’s shoes were as pointed as nails.

“Now, where was I?” Gwendolen said, turning back to the Nostrum brothers. “Oh, yes. I thought I’d better come back because I wanted to see the fun, and I remembered I’d forgotten to tell you Cat has nine lives. You’ll have to kill him several times, I’m afraid.”

“Nine lives!” shouted Henry Nostrum. “You foolish girl!”

After that, there was such a shouting and outcry from every witch and warlock in the meadow, that no one could have heard anything else. From where Cat lay, he could see William Nostrum leaning towards Gwendolen, red in the face, both eyes whirling, bawling furiously at her, and Gwendolen leaning forward to shout back. As the noise died down a little, he heard William Nostrum booming, “Nine lives! If he has nine lives, you stupid girl, that means he’s an enchanter in his own right!”

“I’m not stupid!” Gwendolen yelled back. “I know that as well as you do! I’ve been using his magic ever since he was a baby. But I couldn’t go on using it if you were going to kill him, could I? That’s why I had to go away. I think it was nice of me to come back and tell you. So there!”

“How can you have used his magic?” demanded Henry Nostrum, even more put out than his brother.

“I just did,” said Gwendolen. “He never minds.”

“I do mind, rather,” Cat said from his uncomfortable slab. “I am here, you know.”

Gwendolen looked down at him as if she was rather surprised that he was. But before she could say anything to Cat, William Nostrum was loudly shushing for silence. He was very agitated. He took a long shiny thing out of his pocket and nervously bent it about.

“Silence!” he said. “We’ve gone too far to draw back now. We’ll just have to discover the boy’s weak point. We certainly can’t kill him unless we find it. He must have one. All enchanters do.” So saying, William Nostrum rounded on Cat and pointed the shiny thing at him. Cat was appalled to see that it was a long silver knife. The knife pointed at his face, even though William Nostrum’s eyes did not. “What is your weak point, boy? Out with it.”

Cat was not saying. It seemed the only chance he had of keeping any of his lives.

“I know,” said Gwendolen. “I did it. I put all his lives into a book of matches. They were easier to use like that. It’s in my room in the Castle. Shall I get it?”

Everyone Cat could see from his uncomfortable position looked relieved to hear this. “That’s all right then,” said Henry Nostrum. “Can he be killed without burning a match?”

“Oh yes,” said Gwendolen. “He drowned once.”

“So the question,” said William Nostrum, very much relieved, “is simply how many lives he has left. How many have you, boy?” The knife pointed at Cat again.

Again Cat was not saying.

“He doesn’t know,” Gwendolen said impatiently. “I had to use quite a few. He lost one being born and another being drowned. And I used one to put him in the book of matches. It gave him cramps, for some reason. Then that toad tied up in silver there wouldn’t give me magic lessons and took my witchcraft away, so I had to fetch another of Cat’s lives in the night and make it send me to my nice new world. He was awfully disobliging about it, but he did it. And that was the end of that life. Oh, I nearly forgot! I put his fourth life into that violin he kept playing, to turn it into a cat – Fiddle – remember, Mr Nostrum?”

Henry Nostrum clutched his two wings of hair. Consternation broke out round the meadow again. “You are a foolish girl! Someone took that cat away. We can’t kill him at all!”

For a moment, Gwendolen looked very dashed. Then an idea struck her. “If I go away again, you can use my replacem—”

The watch-chains round Chrestomanci chinked. “Nostrum, you’re upsetting yourself needlessly. It was I who had the cat-violin removed. The creature’s around in the garden somewhere.”

Henry Nostrum swung round to look at Chrestomanci suspiciously, still hanging on to his two wings of hair as if that kept his mind in place. “I doubt you, sir, very seriously. You are known to be a very wily person.”

“You flatter me,” said Chrestomanci. “Unfortunately I can’t speak anything but the truth tied up in silver like this.”

Henry Nostrum looked at his brother. “That is correct,” William said, dubiously. “Silver constrains him to utter facts. Then I suppose the boy’s missing life must be here somewhere.”

This was enough for Gwendolen, the Willing Warlock and for most of the witches and necromancers. Gwendolen said, “I’ll go and find it then,” and minced up the meadow towards the trees as fast as she could in her pointed shoes, with the Willing Warlock bouncing ahead. As they pushed past a witch in a high green hat, the witch said, “That’s right, dear. We must all hunt for the pussy.” She turned to the crowd with a witch’s piercing scream. “Hunt for pussy, everyone!”

And everyone raced off to do it, picking up skirts and holding on Sunday hats. The meadow emptied. The trees round it shook and waved and crashed. But the garden would not let anyone get very far. Brightly coloured witches, cloaked wizards and dark warlocks kept being spilt out of the trees into the meadow again. Cat heard Chrestomanci say, “Your friends seem very ignorant, Nostrum. The way out is widdershins. Perhaps you should tell them so. The cat will certainly be in summer or spring.”

William Nostrum gave him a swirling glare and hurried off shouting, “Widdershins, brothers and sisters! Widdershins!”

“Let me tell you, sir,” Henry Nostrum said to Chrestomanci, “you are beginning to annoy me considerably.” He hovered for a second, but, as quite a crowd of people, with Gwendolen and the Willing Warlock among them, were whirled out of the trees into the meadow again, and seemed very indignant about it, Henry Nostrum set off trotting towards them, calling, “No, my dear friends! My dear pupil! Widdershins. You have to go widdershins.”

Cat and Chrestomanci were left alone for the time being by the broken arch and the apple tree.

“Cat,” said Chrestomanci, from almost behind Cat’s head. “Cat!”

Cat did not want to talk. He was lying looking up at the blue sky through the leaves of the apple tree. Every so often it went blurred. Then Cat shut his eyes and tears ran out across both his ears. Now he knew how little Gwendolen cared about him, he was not sure he wanted any lives at all. He listened to the shouting and crashing among the trees and almost wished Fiddle would be caught soon. From time to time, he had an odd feeling that he was Fiddle himself – Fiddle furious and frightened, lashing out and scratching a huge fat witch in a flower hat.

“Cat,” said Chrestomanci. He sounded almost as desperate as Fiddle. “Cat, I know how you’re feeling. We hoped you wouldn’t find out about Gwendolen for years yet. But you are an enchanter. I suspect that you’re a stronger enchanter than I am when you set your mind to it. Could you use some of your magic now, before someone catches poor Fiddle? Please. As a great favour. Just to help me get out of this wretched silver, so that I can summon the rest of my power.”

Cat was being Fiddle again while Chrestomanci talked. He climbed a tree, but the Willing Warlock and the Accredited Witch shook him out of it. He ran and he ran, and then jumped from between the Willing Warlock’s grabbing hands, a huge jump, from somewhere immensely high. It was such a sickening jump that Cat opened his eyes. The apple leaves fluttered against the sky. The apple he could see was nearly ripe.

“What do you want me to do?” he said. “I don’t know how to do anything.”

“I know,” said Chrestomanci. “I felt the same when they told me. Can you move your left hand at all?”

“Backwards and forwards,” Cat said, trying. “I can’t get it out of the rope though.”

“No need,” said Chrestomanci. “You’ve more ability in the little finger of that hand than most people – including Gwendolen – have in their entire lives. And the magic of the garden should help you. Just saw at the rope with your left hand and presume that the rope is made of silver.”

Cat tipped his head back and looked at Chrestomanci unbelievingly. Chrestomanci was untidy and pale and very much in earnest. He must be telling the truth. Cat moved his left hand against the rope. It felt rough and ropish. He told himself it was not rough rope, it was silver. And the rope felt smooth. But sawing was rather a strain. Cat lifted his hand as far as he could get it and brought the edge of it down on the silver rope.

Clink. Jingle. The rope parted.

“Thank you,” said Chrestomanci. “There go two watch-chains. But there seems to be a very firm spell on these handcuffs. Can you try again?”

The rope was a great deal looser. Cat fought his way out of it with a series of clatters and thumps – he was not sure quite what he had turned it into – and knelt up on the stone. Chrestomanci walked weakly towards him, with his hands still hanging limply in the handcuffs. At the same time, the Willing Warlock spilt out of the trees, arguing with the witch in the flower hat.

“I tell you the cat’s dead. It fell a good fifty feet.”

“But I tell you they always fall on their feet.”

“Then why didn’t it get up then?”

Cat realised there was no time to waste trying to imagine things. He put both hands to the handcuffs and wrenched.

“Ow!” said Chrestomanci.

But the handcuffs were off. Cat was suddenly very pleased with his new-found talent. He took the handcuffs in two and told them to be ferocious eagles. “Get after the Nostrums,” he said. The left handcuff took off savagely as ordered, but the right half was still a silver handcuff and it fell on the grass. Cat had to pick it up in his left hand before it would do as it was told.

Cat looked round then to see what Chrestomanci was doing. He was standing under the apple tree, and the talkative little man called Bernard was stumbling down the hillside towards him. Bernard’s Sunday cravat was comfortably undone. He was carrying a pencil and a newspaper folded open at the crossword. “Enchantment, five letters, ending in C,” he was murmuring, before he looked up and saw Chrestomanci green with tree-mould. He stared at the two watch-chains, Cat, the rope, and the numbers of people who were hurrying among the trees round the top of the meadow. “Bless my soul!” he said. “I’m sorry – I had no idea I was needed. You need the others too?”

“Rather quickly,” said Chrestomanci.

The witch in the flower hat saw him standing away from the tree and raised her voice in a witch’s scream. “They’re getting away! Stop them!”

Witches, warlocks, necromancers and wizards poured out into the meadow, with Gwendolen mincing among them, and hurriedly cast spells as they came. Muttering rolled round the garden. The smell of magic grew thick. Chrestomanci held up one hand as if he was asking for silence. The muttering grew instead, and sounded angry. But none of the people muttering came any nearer. The only ones who were still moving were William and Henry Nostrum, who kept spilling out from the trees, running hard and bawling faintly, each with a large flapping eagle after him.

Bernard chewed his pencil and his face looked ribby. “This is awful! There are so many of them!”

“Keep trying. I’m giving you all the help I can spare,” Chrestomanci said, with an anxious look at the muttering crowd.

Bernard’s bushy eyebrows bobbed up. “Ah!”

Miss Bessemer was standing above him on the slope. She had the works of a clock in one hand and a cloth in the other. Perhaps because of the slope, she seemed taller and more purple of dress than usual. She took in the situation at a glance. “You’ll need a full muster to deal with this lot,” she said to Chrestomanci.

A witch in the muttering crowd screamed, “He’s getting help!” Cat thought it was Gwendolen. The smell of magic grew, and the muttering became like a long roll of thunder. The crowd seemed to be edging forward slowly, in a bobbing of fancy hats and a bristle of dark suits. The hand Chrestomanci was holding up to stop them began to shake.

“The garden’s helping them, too,” said Bernard. “Put forth your best, Bessie-girl.” He chewed his pencil and frowned intensely. Miss Bessemer wrapped her cloth neatly round her pieces of clock and grew noticeably taller.

And suddenly the rest of the Family began to appear round the apple tree, all in the middle of the peaceful Sunday things they had been doing when they were summoned. One of the younger ladies had a skein of wool between her hands, and one of the younger men was winding it. The next man was holding a billiard cue, and the other young lady had a lump of chalk. The old lady with mittens was crocheting a new pair of mittens. Mr Saunders appeared with a thump. He had the dragon tucked playfully under one arm, and both of them looked startled to be fetched in the middle of a romp.

The dragon saw Cat. It wriggled out from under Mr Saunders’s arm, bounded across the grass, and jumped rattling and flaming into Cat’s arms. Cat found himself staggering about under the apple tree with quite a heavy dragon squirming on his chest and enthusiastically licking his face with flame. It would have burnt him badly if he had not remembered in time to tell the flames they were cool.

He looked up to see Roger and Julia appearing. They both had their arms stretched stiffly above their heads, because they had been playing mirrors again, and they were both very much astonished. “It’s the garden!” said Roger. “And loads of people!”

“You never summoned us before, Daddy,” said Julia.

“This is rather special,” said Chrestomanci. He was holding his right hand up with his left one by now, and looking tired out. “I need you to fetch your mother. Quickly.”

“We’re holding them,” Mr Saunders said. He was trying to sound encouraging, but he was nervous. The muttering crowd was coming nearer.

“No, we aren’t!” snapped the old lady in the mittens. “We can’t do anything more without Millie.”

Cat had a feeling that everyone was trying to fetch Millie. He thought he ought to help, since they needed her so much, but he did not know what to do. Besides, the dragon’s flames were so hot that he needed all his energy not to get burnt.

Roger and Julia could not fetch Millie. “What’s wrong?” said Julia. “We’ve always been able to before.”

“All these people’s spells are stopping us,” said Roger.

“Try again,” said Chrestomanci. “I can’t. Something’s stopping me, too.”

“Are you joining in the magic?” the dragon asked Cat. Cat was finding the heat of it really troublesome by now. His face was red and sore. But, as soon as the dragon spoke, he understood. He was joining in the magic. Only he was joining in on the wrong side, because Gwendolen was using him again. He was so used to her doing it that he barely noticed. But he could feel her doing it now. She was using so much of his power to stop Chrestomanci fetching Millie, that Cat was getting burnt.

For the first time in his life, Cat was angry about it. “She’s no business to!” he told the dragon. And he took his magic back. It was like a cool draught in his face.

“Cat! Stop that!” Gwendolen screamed from the crowd.

“Oh shut up!” Cat shouted back. “It’s mine!”

At his feet, the little spring ran bubbling out of the grass again. Cat was looking down at it, wondering why it should, when he noticed a sort of gladness come over the anxious Family around him. Chrestomanci was looking upwards, and a light seemed to have fallen across his face. Cat turned round and found Millie was there at last.

He supposed it was some trick of the hillside that made her look tall as the apple tree. But it seemed no trick that she had also looked kind as the end of a long day. She had Fiddle in her arms. Fiddle was draggled and miserable, but purring.

“I’m so sorry,” Millie said. “I’d have come sooner if I’d known. This poor beast had fallen off the garden wall and I wasn’t thinking of anything else.”

Chrestomanci smiled, and let his hand go. He did not seem to need it to hold back the crowd any more. They stood where they were, and their muttering had stopped. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But we must get to work now.”

The Family got to work at once. Cat found it hard to describe or remember afterwards just how they did. He remembered claps and peals of thunder, darkness and mist. He thought Chrestomanci grew taller than Millie, tall as the sky – but that could have been because the dragon got extremely scared and Cat was kneeling in the grass to make it feel safer. From there he saw the Family from time to time, striding about like giants. Witches screamed and screamed. Warlocks and wizards roared and howled. Sometimes there was whirling white rain, or whirling white snow, or perhaps just whirling white smoke, whirling and whirling. Cat was sure the whole garden was spinning, faster and faster. Among the whirling and the whiteness came flying necromancers, or Bernard striding, or Mr Saunders, billowing, with snow in his hair. Julia ran past, making knot after knot in her handkerchief. And Millie must have brought reinforcements with her. Cat glimpsed Euphemia, the butler, a footman, two gardeners and, to his alarm, Will Suggins once, breasting the whiteness in the howling, spinning, screaming garden.

The spinning got so fast that Cat was no longer giddy. It was spinning rock-steady, and humming. Chrestomanci stepped out of the whiteness and under the apple tree and held out one hand to Cat. He was wet and windswept, and Cat was still not sure how tall he was. “Can I have some of your dragon’s blood?” Chrestomanci said.

“How did you know I’d got it?” Cat said guiltily, letting go of the dragon in order to get at his crucible.

“The smell,” said Chrestomanci.

Cat passed his crucible over. “Here you are. Have I lost a life over it?”

“Not you,” said Chrestomanci. “But it was lucky you didn’t let Janet touch it.” He stepped to the whirling, and emptied the whole crucible into it. Cat saw the powder snatched away and whirled. The mist turned brownish red and the humming to a terrible bell-note that hurt Cat’s ears. He could hear witches and warlocks howling with horror. “Let them roar,” said Chrestomanci. He was leaning against the right-hand pillar of the archway. “Every single one of them has now lost his or her witchcraft. They’ll complain to their MPs and there’ll be questions asked in Parliament, but I daresay we shall survive it.” He raised his hand and beckoned.

Frantic people in soaking wet Sunday clothes came whirling out of the whiteness and were sucked through the broken arch like dead leaves in a whirlpool. More and more and more came. They sailed through the crowds. Out of the whirling many, Chrestomanci somehow collected the two Nostrums and put them down for a minute in front of Cat and the dragon. Cat was charmed to see one of his eagles sitting on Henry Nostrum’s shoulders, pecking at his bald place, and the other eagle fluttering round William stabbing at the stouter parts of him.

“Call them off,” said Chrestomanci.

Cat called them off, rather regretfully, and they fell on the grass as handcuffs. Then the handcuffs were swept away with the Nostrum brothers and whirled through the archway with them in the last of the crowd.

Last of all came Gwendolen. Chrestomanci stopped her, too. As he did so, the whiteness cleared, the humming died away and the rest of the Family began to collect on the sunny hillside, panting a little but not very wet. Cat thought the garden was probably still spinning. But perhaps it always did. Gwendolen stared round in horror.

“Let me go! I’ve got to go back and be queen.”

“Don’t be so selfish,” said Chrestomanci. “You’ve no right to keep snatching eight other people from world to world. Stay here and learn how to do it properly. And those courtiers of yours don’t really do what you say, you know. They only pretend.”

“I don’t care!” Gwendolen screamed. She held up her golden clothes, kicked off her pointed shoes, and ran for the archway. Chrestomanci reached out to stop her. Gwendolen spun round and hurled her last handful of dragon’s blood in his face, and, while Chrestomanci was forced to duck and put one arm over his face, Gwendolen backed hastily through the archway. There was a mighty bang. The space between the pillars turned black. When everyone recovered, Gwendolen was gone. There was nothing but meadow between the pillars again. Even the pointed shoes had gone.

“What did the child do?” said the old lady with mittens, very shaken.

“Sealed herself in that world,” said Chrestomanci. He was even more shaken. “Isn’t that so, Cat?” he said.

Cat nodded mulishly. It had seemed worth it. He was not sure he wanted to see Gwendolen again.

“And look what that’s done,” said Mr Saunders, nodding at the hillside.

Janet was stumbling down the slope, past Millie, and she was crying. Millie handed Fiddle carefully to Julia and put her arms round Janet. Janet sobbed heavily. The rest crowded round her. Bernard patted Janet’s back and the old lady with mittens made soothing noises.

Cat stood on his own near the ruins, with the dragon looking enquiringly up at him from the grass. Janet had been happy in her own world. She had missed her mother and father. Now she was probably in this world for good, and Cat had done it. And Chrestomanci had called Gwendolen selfish!

“No, it’s not that, quite, really,” Janet said from the midst of the Family. She tried to sit down on the fallen block of stone, and got up quickly, remembering the way it was being used when she last saw it.

Cat had a very gallant idea. He sent for a blue velvet chair from Gwendolen’s room and put it down on the grass beside Janet. Janet gave a tearful laugh. “That was kind.” She started to sit in it.

“I belong to Chrestomanci Castle,” said the chair. “I belong to Chresto—” Miss Bessemer looked at it sternly and it stopped.

Janet sat in the chair. It was a little wobbly because the grass was uneven. “Where’s Cat?” she said anxiously.

“I’m here,” said Cat. “I got the chair for you.” He thought it was kind of Janet to look so relieved to see him.

“What do you say to a little lunch?” Millie asked Miss Bessemer. “It must be nearly two o’clock.”

“Agreed,” said Miss Bessemer, and made a stately half-turn towards the butler. He nodded. The footman and the gardeners staggered forward with great hampers like laundry baskets, which, when the lids were thrown back, proved to be full of chickens, hams, meat-pies, jellies, fruit and wine.

“Oh, beautiful!” said Roger.

Everyone sat round to eat the lunch. Most of them sat on the grass, and Cat made sure to sit as far away from Will Suggins as he could. Millie sat on the stone slab. Chrestomanci splashed some of the water from the bubbling spring over his face – which seemed to refresh him wonderfully – and sat leaning against the slab. The old lady with mittens produced a tuffet out of nowhere, which she said was more comfortable; and Bernard thoughtfully shook out the remains of the rope that Cat had left by the rock. It became a hammock. Bernard strung it between the pillars of the archway and lay in it, looking defiantly comfortable, even though he had the greatest difficulty keeping his balance and eating as well. Fiddle was given a wing of chicken and took it into the apple tree to eat, out of the way of the dragon. The dragon was jealous of Fiddle. It divided its time between breathing resentful smoke up into the tree and leaning heavily against Cat, begging for chicken and meat-pie.

“I warn you,” said Mr Saunders. “That is the most spoilt dragon in the world.”

“I’m the only dragon in the world,” the dragon said smugly.

Janet was still inclined to be tearful. “My dear, we do understand,” said Millie, “and we’re so very sorry.”

“I can send you back,” said Chrestomanci. “It’s not quite so easy with Gwendolen’s world missing from the series, but don’t think it can’t be done.”

“No, no. That’s all right,” Janet gulped. “At least, it will be all right when I’m used to it. I was hoping to come back here – but it is rather a wrench. You see—” Her eyes filled and her mouth trembled. A handkerchief came out of the air and pushed itself into her hand. Cat did not know who had done it, but he wished he had thought of it.

“Thanks,” said Janet. “You see, Mum and Dad haven’t noticed the difference.” She blew her nose furiously. “I got back to my bedroom, and the other girl – she’s called Romillia really – had been writing her diary. She got called away in mid-sentence and left it lying there, so I read it. And it was all about how scared she had been in case my parents noticed she wasn’t me, and how glad she was when she was clever enough to make sure they didn’t. She was utterly terrified of being sent back. She’d had a dreadful life as an orphan in her own world, and she was miserable there. She’d written things that made me feel sorry for her. Mind you,” Janet said severely, “she was just asking for trouble keeping a diary in the same house as my parents. I wrote a note in it telling her so, and I said if she must keep one, she’d better put it in one of my good hiding places. And then – and then I sat there and rather hoped I’d come back.”

“That was kind of you,” said Cat.

“It was, and you’re truly welcome, my love,” said Millie.

“You’re sure?” Chrestomanci asked, looking searchingly at Janet over the chicken leg he was eating.

Janet nodded, quite firmly, though most of her face was still hidden in the handkerchief.

“You were the one I was most worried about,” Chrestomanci said. “I’m afraid I didn’t realise at once what had happened. Gwendolen had found out about the mirror, you see, and she worked the change in her bathroom. And anyway, none of us had the slightest idea Cat’s powers were that strong. The truth only dawned on me during the unfortunate affair of the frog, and then of course I took a look at once to see what had happened to Gwendolen and the seven other girls. Gwendolen was in her element. And Jennifer, who came after Romillia, is as tough as Gwendolen and has always wished she was an orphan; whereas Queen Caroline, whom Gwendolen displaced, was as miserable as Romillia, and had run away three times already. And it was the same with the other five. They were all much better suited – except perhaps you.”

Janet took her face out of the handkerchief and looked at him in large indignation. “Why couldn’t you have told me you knew? I wouldn’t have been nearly so scared of you! And you wouldn’t believe the troubles Cat got into because of it, not to speak of me owing Mr Bagwash twenty pounds and not knowing the Geography and History here! And you needn’t laugh!” she said, as nearly everyone did.

“I apologise,” said Chrestomanci. “Believe me, it was one of the most troubling decisions I’ve ever had to make. But who on earth is Mr Bagwash?”

“Mr Baslam,” Cat explained reluctantly. “Gwendolen bought some dragon’s blood from him and didn’t really pay.”

“He’s asking outrageously much,” said Millie. “And it is illegal, you know.”

“I’ll go and have a word with him tomorrow,” Bernard said from his hammock. “Though he’ll probably be gone by then. He knows I’ve got my eye on him.”

“Why was it a troubling decision?” Janet asked Chrestomanci.

Chrestomanci tossed his chicken bone to the dragon and slowly wiped his fingers on a handkerchief with a gold-embroidered C in one corner. This gave him an excuse to turn Cat’s way and stare, in his vaguest way, into the air above Cat’s head. Since Cat was fairly clear by now that the vaguer Chrestomanci seemed about something, the more acutely he was attending to it, he was not altogether surprised when Chrestomanci said, “Because of Cat. We would have felt a good deal easier if Cat could have brought himself to tell someone what had happened. We gave him a number of opportunities to. But when he held his tongue, we thought perhaps he did know the extent of his powers after all.”

“But I don’t,” said Cat. And Janet, who was becoming thoroughly cheerful now she was being allowed to ask questions, said, “I think you were quite wrong. We both got so frightened that we came into this garden and nearly got you and Cat killed. You should have said.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Chrestomanci, and peeled a banana in a thoughtful way. He was still turned towards Cat. “Normally we’re more than a match here for people like the Nostrums. I knew they were planning something through Gwendolen, and I thought Cat knew it too – my apologies, Cat. I wouldn’t have had Gwendolen here for a minute, except that we had to have Cat. Chrestomanci has to be a nine-lifed enchanter. No one else is strong enough for the post.”

“Post?” said Janet. “Isn’t it a hereditary title then?”

Mr Saunders laughed, and threw his bone to the dragon, too. “Heavens no! We’re all Government employees here. The job Chrestomanci has is to make sure this world isn’t run entirely by witches. Ordinary people have rights too. And he has to make sure witches don’t get out into worlds where there isn’t so much magic and play havoc there. It’s a big job. And we’re the staff that helps him.”

“And he needs us like he needs two left legs,” Bernard remarked, jerking about in the hammock as he tried to eat a jelly.

“Oh, come now!” said Chrestomanci. “I’d have been sunk without you today.”

“I was thinking of the way you found the next Chrestomanci,” Bernard said, spooning jelly off his waistcoat. “You did it, when we were just going round in circles.”

“Nine-lifed enchanters are not easy to find,” Chrestomanci explained to Janet. “In the first place, they’re very rare, and in the second, they have to use their magic before they can be found. And Cat didn’t. We were actually thinking of bringing someone in from another world, when Cat happened to fall into the hands of a clairvoyant. Even then, we only knew where he was, not who. I’d no idea he was Eric Chant, or any relation of mine at all – though I suppose I might have remembered that his parents were cousins, which doubled the chance of their children being witches. And I must confess that Frank Chant wrote to me to say his daughter was a witch and seemed to be using her younger brother in some way. Forgive me, Cat. I ignored that letter, because your father had been so very rude when I offered to make sure his children would be born without witchcraft.”

“Just as well he was rude, you know,” Bernard said.

“Was that what the letters were about?” said Cat.

“I don’t understand,” said Janet, “why you didn’t say anything at all to Cat. Why couldn’t you?”

Chrestomanci was still looking vaguely in Cat’s direction. Cat could tell he was very wary indeed. “Like this,” he said. “Remember we hadn’t known one another very long. Cat appears to have no magic at all. Yet his sister works magic far beyond her own abilities, and goes on doing it even when her witchcraft is taken away. What am I to think? Does Cat know what he’s doing? If he doesn’t, why doesn’t he? And if he does know, what is he up to? When Gwendolen removed herself, and nobody mentioned the fact, I hoped some of the answers might emerge. And Cat still does nothing—”

“What do you mean, nothing?” said Janet. “There were some fabulous conkers, and he kept stopping Julia.”

“Yes, and I couldn’t think what was happening,” Julia said, rather shamed.

Cat felt hurt and uncomfortable. “Leave me alone!” he said, and he stood up. Everyone, even Chrestomanci, went tense. The only person who did not was Janet, and Cat could hardly count her, because she was not used to magic. He found he was trying not to cry, which made him very much ashamed. “Stop treating me so carefully!” he said. “I’m not a fool, or a baby. You’re all afraid of me, aren’t you? You didn’t tell me things and you didn’t punish Gwendolen because you were afraid I’d do something dreadful. And I haven’t. I don’t know how to. I didn’t know I could.”

“My love, it was just that no one was sure,” said Millie.

“Well, be sure now!” said Cat. “The only things I did were by mistake, like coming here in this garden – and turning Euphemia into a frog, I suppose, but I didn’t know it was me.”

“You’re not to worry about that, Eric,” said Euphemia from the hillside, where she was sitting with Will Suggins. “It was the shock upset me. I know enchanters are different from us witches. And I’ll speak to Mary. I promise.”

“Speak to Will Suggins too, while you’re at it,” said Janet. “Because he’s going to turn Cat into a frog in revenge any minute now.”

Euphemia bounced round on the hillside to look at Will. “What?” she said.

“What is this, Will?” Chrestomanci asked.

“I laid it on him – for three o’clock, sir,” Will Suggins said apprehensively, “if he didn’t meet me as a tiger.”

Chrestomanci took out a large gold watch. “Hm. It’s about due now. If you don’t mind my saying so, that was a little foolish of you, Will. Suppose you carry on. Turn Cat into a frog, or yourself into a tiger, or both. I shan’t interfere.”

Will Suggins climbed heavily to his feet and stood facing Cat, looking as if he would prefer to be several miles away. “Let the dough work, then,” he said.

Cat was still feeling so upset and tearful that he wondered whether to oblige Will Suggins and become a frog. Or he could try being a flea instead. But it all seemed rather silly. “Why don’t you be a tiger?” he said.

As Cat expected, Will Suggins made a beautiful tiger, long-backed and sleek and sharply striped. He was heavy as he padded up and down the slope, but his legs slid so easily in the silky folds of his hide that he almost seemed light. But Will Suggins himself spoilt the effect by rubbing a distressed paw over his huge cat face and staring appealingly at Chrestomanci. Chrestomanci simply laughed. The dragon trotted up the hill to investigate this new beast. Will Suggins was so alarmed that he reared up on his great hind legs to get away from it. It looked so ungainly for a tiger to be doing that, that Cat turned him back to Will Suggins on the spot.

“It wasn’t real?” asked the dragon.

“No!” said Will Suggins, mopping his face with his sleeve. “All right, lad, you win. How did you do it so quick?”

“I don’t know,” Cat said apologetically. “I’ve really no idea. Shall I learn when you teach me magic?” he asked Mr Saunders.

Mr Saunders looked a little blank. “Well—”

“No, Michael,” said Chrestomanci, “is the right answer. It’s quite clear elementary magic isn’t going to mean much to Cat. I’ll have to teach you myself, Cat, and we’ll be starting on Advanced Theory, I think, by the look of it. You seem to start where most people leave off.”

“But why didn’t he know?” Janet demanded. “It always makes me angry not to know things, and I feel specially angry about this, because it seems so hard on Cat.”

“It is, I agree,” said Chrestomanci. “But it’s something in the nature of enchanters’ magic, I think. Something the same happened to me. I couldn’t do magic either. I couldn’t do anything. But they found I had nine lives – I lost them at such a rate that it soon became obvious – and they told me I had to be the next Chrestomanci when I grew up, which absolutely appalled me, because I couldn’t work the simplest spell. So they sent me to a tutor, the most terrifying old person, who was supposed to find what the trouble was. And he took one look at me and snarled, ‘Empty your pockets, Chant!’ Which I did. I was too scared not to. I took out my silver watch, and one and sixpence, and a silver charm from my godmother, and a silver tie pin I had forgotten to wear, and a silver brace I was supposed to wear in my teeth. And as soon as they were gone, I did some truly startling things. As I remember, the roof of the tutor’s house came off.”

“Is it really true about silver then?” Janet said.

“For me, yes,” said Chrestomanci.

“Yes, poor darling,” Millie said, smiling at him. “It’s so awkward with money. He can only handle pound notes and coppers.”

“He has to give us our pocket-money in pennies, if Michael hasn’t got it,” said Roger. “Imagine sixty pennies in your pocket.”

“The really difficult thing is mealtimes,” said Millie. “He can’t do a thing with a knife and fork in his hands – and Gwendolen would do awful things during dinner.”

“How stupid!” said Janet. “Why on earth don’t you use stainless steel cutlery?”

Millie and Chrestomanci looked at one another. “I never thought of it!” said Millie. “Janet, my love, it’s a good thing you’re staying here!”

Janet looked at Cat and laughed. And Cat, though he was still a little lonely and tearful, managed to laugh too.

For John

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Spells are the hardest thing in the world to get right. This was one of the first things the Montana children learnt. Anyone can hang up a charm, but when it comes to making that charm, whether it is written or spoken or sung, everything has to be just right, or the most impossible things happen.

An example of this is young Angelica Petrocchi, who turned her father bright green by singing a wrong note. It was the talk of all Caprona – indeed of all Italy – for weeks.

The best spells still come from Caprona, in spite of the recent troubles, from the Casa Montana or the Casa Petrocchi. If you are using words that really work, to improve reception on your radio or to grow tomatoes, then the chances are that someone in your family has been on a holiday to Caprona and brought the spell back. The Old Bridge in Caprona is lined with little stone booths, where long coloured envelopes, scrips and scrolls hang from strings like bunting.

You can get spells there from every spell-house in Italy. Each spell is labelled as to its use and stamped with the sign of the house which made it. If you want to find out who made your spell, look among your family papers. If you find a long cherry-coloured scrip stamped with a black leopard, then it came from the Casa Petrocchi. If you find a leaf-green envelope bearing a winged horse, then the House of Montana made it. The spells of both houses are so good that ignorant people think that even the envelopes can work magic. This, of course, is nonsense. For, as Paolo and Tonino Montana were told over and over again, a spell is the right words delivered in the right way.

The great houses of Petrocchi and Montana go back to the first founding of the State of Caprona, seven hundred years or more ago. And they are bitter rivals. They are not even on speaking terms. If a Petrocchi and a Montana meet in one of Caprona’s narrow golden-stone streets, they turn their eyes aside and edge past as if they were both walking past a pig-sty. Their children are sent to different schools and warned never, ever to exchange a word with a child from the other house.

Sometimes, however, parties of young men and women of the Montanas and the Petrocchis happen to meet when they are strolling on the wide street called the Corso in the evenings. When that happens, other citizens take shelter at once. If they fight with fists and stones, that is bad enough, but if they fight with spells, it can be appalling.

An example of this is when the dashing Rinaldo Montana caused the sky to rain cowpats on the Corso for three days. It created great distress among the tourists.

“A Petrocchi insulted me,” Rinaldo explained, with his most flashing smile. “And I happened to have a new spell in my pocket.”

The Petrocchis unkindly claimed that Rinaldo had misquoted his spell in the heat of the battle. Everyone knew that all Rinaldo’s spells were love-charms.

The grown-ups of both houses never explained to the children just what had made the Montanas and the Petrocchis hate one another so. That was a task traditionally left to the older brothers, sisters and cousins. Paolo and Tonino were told the story repeatedly, by their sisters Rosa, Corinna and Lucia, by their cousins Luigi, Carlo, Domenico and Anna, and again by their second-cousins Piero, Luca, Giovanni, Paula, Teresa, Bella, Angelo and Francesco. They told it themselves to six smaller cousins as they grew up. The Montanas were a large family.

Two hundred years ago, the story went, old Ricardo Petrocchi took it into his head that the Duke of Caprona was ordering more spells from the Montanas than from the Petrocchis, and he wrote old Francesco Montana a very insulting letter about it. Old Francesco was so angry that he promptly invited all the Petrocchis to a feast. He had, he said, a new dish he wanted them to try. Then he rolled Ricardo Petrocchi’s letter up into long spills and cast one of his strongest spells over it. And it turned into spaghetti. The Petrocchis ate it greedily and were all taken ill, particularly old Ricardo – for nothing disagrees with a person so much as having to eat his own words. He never forgave Francesco Montana, and the two families had been enemies ever since.

“And that,” said Lucia, who told the story oftenest, being only a year older than Paolo, “was the origin of spaghetti.”

It was Lucia who whispered to them all the terrible heathen customs the Petrocchis had: how they never went to Mass or confessed; how they never had baths or changed their clothes; how none of them ever got married but just – in an even lower whisper – had babies like kittens; how they were apt to drown their unwanted babies, again like kittens, and had even been known to eat unwanted uncles and aunts; and how they were so dirty that you could smell the Casa Petrocchi and hear the flies buzzing right down the Via Sant’ Angelo.

There were many other things besides, some of them far worse than these, for Lucia had a vivid imagination. Paolo and Tonino believed every one, and they hated the Petrocchis heartily, though it was years before either of them set eyes on a Petrocchi. When they were both quite small, they did sneak off one morning, down the Via Sant’ Angelo almost as far as the New Bridge, to look at the Casa Petrocchi. But there was no smell and no flies buzzing to guide them, and their sister Rosa found them before they found it. Rosa, who was eight years older than Paolo and quite grown-up even then, laughed when they explained their difficulty, and good-naturedly took them to the Casa Petrocchi. It was in the Via Cantello, not the Via Sant’ Angelo at all.

Paolo and Tonino were most disappointed in it. It was just like the Casa Montana. It was large, like the Casa Montana, and built of the same golden stone of Caprona, and probably just as old. The great front gate was old knotty wood, just like their own, and there was even the same golden figure of the Angel on the wall above the gate. Rosa told them that both Angels were in memory of the Angel who had come to the first Duke of Caprona bringing a scroll of music from Heaven – but the boys knew that. When Paolo pointed out that the Casa Petrocchi did not seem to smell much, Rosa bit her lip and said gravely that there were not many windows in the outside walls, and they were all shut.

“I expect everything happens round the yard inside, just like it does in our Casa,” she said. “Probably all the smelling goes on in there.”

They agreed that it probably did, and wanted to wait to see a Petrocchi come out. But Rosa said she thought that would be most unwise, and pulled them away. The boys looked over their shoulders as she dragged them off and saw that the Casa Petrocchi had four golden-stone towers, one at each corner, where the Casa Montana only had one, over the gate.

“It’s because the Petrocchis are show-offs,” Rosa said, dragging. “Come on.”

Since the towers were each roofed with a little hat of red pantiles, just like their own roofs or the roofs of all the houses in Caprona, Paolo and Tonino did not think they were particularly grand, but they did not like to argue with Rosa. Feeling very let down, they let her drag them back to the Casa Montana and pull them through their own large knotty gate into the bustling yard beyond. There Rosa left them and ran up the steps to the gallery, shouting, “Lucia! Lucia, where are you? I want to talk to you!”

Doors and windows opened into the yard all round, and the gallery, with its wooden railings and pantiled roof, ran round three sides of the yard and led to the rooms on the top floor. Uncles, aunts, cousins large and small, and cats were busy everywhere, laughing, cooking, discussing spells, washing, sunning themselves or playing. Paolo gave a sigh of contentment and picked up the nearest cat.

“I don’t think the Casa Petrocchi can be anything like this inside.”

Before Tonino could agree, they were swooped on lovingly by Aunt Maria, who was fatter than Aunt Gina, but not as fat as Aunt Anna. “Where have you been, my loves? I’ve been ready for your lessons for half an hour or more!”

Everyone in the Casa Montana worked very hard. Paolo and Tonino were already being taught the first rules for making spells. When Aunt Maria was busy, they were taught by their father, Antonio. Antonio was the eldest son of Old Niccolo, and would be head of the Casa Montana when Old Niccolo died. Paolo thought this weighed on his father. Antonio was a thin, worried person who laughed less often than the other Montanas. He was different. One of the differences was that, instead of letting Old Niccolo carefully choose a wife for him from a spell-house in Italy, Antonio had gone on a visit to England and come back married to Elizabeth. Elizabeth taught the boys music.

“If I’d been teaching that Angelica Petrocchi,” she was fond of saying, “she’d never have turned anything green.”

Old Niccolo said Elizabeth was the best musician in Caprona. And that, Lucia told the boys, was why Antonio got away with marrying her. But Rosa told them to take no notice. Rosa was proud of being half English.

Paolo and Tonino were probably prouder to be Montanas. It was a grand thing to know you were born into a family that was known world-wide as the greatest spell-house in Europe – if you did not count the Petrocchis. There were times when Paolo could hardly wait to grow up and be like his cousin, dashing Rinaldo. Everything came easily to Rinaldo. Girls fell in love with him, spells dripped from his pen. He had composed seven new charms before he left school. And these days, as Old Niccolo said, making a new spell was not easy. There were so many already. Paolo admired Rinaldo desperately. He told Tonino that Rinaldo was a true Montana.

Tonino agreed, because he was more than a year younger than Paolo and valued Paolo’s opinions, but it always seemed to him that it was Paolo who was the true Montana. Paolo was as quick as Rinaldo. He could learn without trying spells which took Tonino days to acquire. Tonino was slow. He could only remember things if he went over them again and again. It seemed to him that Paolo had been born with an instinct for magic which he just did not have himself.

Tonino was sometimes quite depressed about his slowness. Nobody else minded in the least. All his sisters, even the studious Corinna, spent hours helping him. Elizabeth assured him he never sang out of tune. His father scolded him for working too hard, and Paolo assured him that he would be streets ahead of the other children when he went to school. Paolo had just started school. He was as quick at ordinary lessons as he was at spells.

But when Tonino started school, he was just as slow there as he was at home. School bewildered him. He did not understand what the teachers wanted him to do. By the first Saturday he was so miserable that he had to slip away from the Casa and wander round Caprona in tears. He was missing for hours.

“I can’t help being quicker than he is!” Paolo said, almost in tears too.

Aunt Maria rushed at Paolo and hugged him. “Now, now, don’t you start too! You’re as clever as my Rinaldo, and we’re all proud of you.”

“Lucia, go and look for Tonino,” said Elizabeth. “Paolo, you mustn’t worry so. Tonino’s soaking up spells without knowing he is. I did the same when I came here. Should I tell Tonino?” she asked Antonio. Antonio had hurried in from the gallery. In the Casa Montana, if anyone was in distress, it always fetched the rest of the family.

Antonio rubbed his forehead. “Perhaps. Let’s go and ask Old Niccolo. Come on, Paolo.”

Paolo followed his thin, brisk father through the patterns of sunlight in the gallery and into the blue coolness of the Scriptorium. Here his other two sisters, Rinaldo and five other cousins, and two of his uncles, were all standing at tall desks copying spells out of big leather-bound books. Each book had a brass lock on it so that the family secrets could not be stolen. Antonio and Paolo tiptoed through. Rinaldo smiled at them without pausing in his copying. Where other pens scratched and paused, Rinaldo’s raced.

In the room beyond the Scriptorium, Uncle Lorenzo and Cousin Domenico were stamping winged horses on leaf-green envelopes. Uncle Lorenzo looked keenly at their faces as they passed and decided that the trouble was not too much for Old Niccolo alone. He winked at Paolo and threatened to stamp a winged horse on him.

Old Niccolo was in the warm mildewy library beyond, consulting over a book on a stand with Aunt Francesca. She was Old Niccolo’s sister, and therefore really a great-aunt. She was a barrel of a lady, twice as fat as Aunt Anna and even more passionate than Aunt Gina. She was saying passionately, “But the spells of the Casa Montana always have a certain elegance. This is graceless! This is—”

Both round old faces turned towards Antonio and Paolo. Old Niccolo’s face, and his eyes in it, were round and wondering as the latest baby’s. Aunt Francesca’s face was too small for her huge body, and her eyes were small and shrewd. “I was just coming,” said Old Niccolo. “I thought it was Tonino in trouble, but you bring me Paolo.”

“Paolo’s not in trouble,” said Aunt Francesca.

Old Niccolo’s round eyes blinked at Paolo. “Paolo,” he said, “what your brother feels is not your fault.”

“No,” said Paolo. “I think it’s school really.”

“We thought that perhaps Elizabeth could explain to Tonino that he can’t avoid learning spells in this Casa,” Antonio suggested.

“But Tonino has ambition!” cried Aunt Francesca.

“I don’t think he does,” said Paolo.

“No, but he is unhappy,” said his grandfather. “And we must think how best to comfort him. I know.” His baby face beamed. “Benvenuto.”

Though Old Niccolo did not say this loudly, someone in the gallery immediately shouted, “Old Niccolo wants Benvenuto!” There was running and calling down in the yard. Somebody beat on a water butt with a stick. “Benvenuto! Where’s that cat got to? Benvenuto!”

Naturally, Benvenuto took his time coming. He was boss cat at the Casa Montana. It was five minutes before Paolo heard his firm pads trotting along the tiles of the gallery roof. This was followed by a heavy thump as Benvenuto made the difficult leap down, across the gallery railing on to the floor of the gallery. Shortly, he appeared on the library windowsill.

“So there you are,” said Old Niccolo. “I was just going to get impatient.”

Benvenuto at once shot forward a shaggy black hind leg and settled down to wash it, as if that was what he had come there to do.

“Ah no, please,” said Old Niccolo. “I need your help.”

Benvenuto’s wide yellow eyes turned to Old Niccolo. He was not a handsome cat. His head was unusually wide and blunt, with grey gnarled patches on it left over from many, many fights. Those fights had pulled his ears down over his eyes, so that Benvenuto always looked as if he were wearing a ragged brown cap. A hundred bites had left those ears notched like holly leaves. Just over his nose, giving his face a leering, lop-sided look, were three white patches. Those had nothing to do with Benvenuto’s position as boss cat in a spell-house. They were the result of his partiality for steak. He had got under Aunt Gina’s feet when she was cooking, and Aunt Gina had spilt hot fat on his head. For this reason, Benvenuto and Aunt Gina always pointedly ignored one another.

“Tonino is unhappy,” said Old Niccolo.

Benvenuto seemed to feel this worthy of his attention. He withdrew his projecting leg, dropped to the library floor and arrived on top of the bookstand, all in one movement, without seeming to flex a muscle. There he stood, politely waving the one beautiful thing about him – his bushy black tail. The rest of his coat had worn to a ragged brown. Apart from the tail, the only thing which showed Benvenuto had once been a magnificent black Persian was the fluffy fur on his hind legs. And, as every other cat in Caprona knew to its cost, those fluffy breeches concealed muscles like a bulldog’s.

Paolo stared at his grandfather talking face to face with Benvenuto. He had always treated Benvenuto with respect himself, of course. It was well known that Benvenuto would not sit on your knee, and scratched you if you tried to pick him up. He knew all cats helped spells on wonderfully. But he had not realised before that cats understood so much. And he was sure Benvenuto was answering Old Niccolo, from the listening sort of pauses his grandfather made. Paolo looked at his father to see if this was true. Antonio was very ill at ease. And Paolo understood from his father’s worried face, that it was very important to be able to understand what cats said, and that Antonio never could. I shall have to start learning to understand Benvenuto, Paolo thought, very troubled.

“Which of you would you suggest?” asked Old Niccolo. Benvenuto raised his right front paw and gave it a casual lick. Old Niccolo’s face curved into his beaming baby’s smile. “Look at that!” he said. “He’ll do it himself!”

Benvenuto flicked the tip of his tail sideways. Then he was gone, leaping back to the window so fluidly and quickly that he might have been a paintbrush painting a dark line in the air. He left Aunt Francesca and Old Niccolo beaming, and Antonio still looking unhappy. “Tonino is taken care of,” Old Niccolo announced. “We shall not worry again unless he worries us.”

Tonino was already feeling soothed by the bustle in the golden streets of Caprona. In the narrower streets, he walked down the crack of sunlight in the middle, with washing flapping overhead, playing that it was sudden death to tread on the shadows. In fact, he died a number of times before he got as far as the Corso. A crowd of tourists pushed him off the sun once. So did two carts and a carriage. And once, a long, gleaming car came slowly growling along, hooting hard to clear the way.

When he was near the Corso, Tonino heard a tourist say in English, “Oh look! Punch and Judy!” Very smug at being able to understand, Tonino dived and pushed and tunnelled until he was at the front of the crowd and able to watch Punch beat Judy to death at the top of his little painted sentry-box. He clapped and cheered, and when someone puffed and panted into the crowd too, and pushed him aside, Tonino was as indignant as the rest. He had quite forgotten he was miserable. “Don’t shove!” he shouted.

“Have a heart!” protested the man. “I must see Mr Punch cheat the Hangman.”

“Then be quiet!” roared everyone, Tonino included.

“I only said—” began the man. He was a large damp-faced person, with an odd excitable manner.

“Shut up!” shouted everyone.

The man panted and grinned and watched with his mouth open Punch attack the policeman. He might have been the smallest boy there. Tonino looked irritably sideways at him and decided the man was probably an amiable lunatic. He let out such bellows of laughter at the smallest jokes, and he was so oddly dressed. He was wearing a shiny red silk suit with flashing gold buttons and glittering medals. Instead of the usual tie, he had white cloth folded at his neck, held in place by a brooch which winked like a tear-drop. There were glistening buckles on his shoes, and golden rosettes at his knees. What with his sweaty face and his white shiny teeth showing as he laughed, the man glistened all over.

Mr Punch noticed him too. “Oh what a clever fellow!” he crowed, bouncing about on his little wooden shelf. “I see gold buttons. Can it be the Pope?”

“Oh no it isn’t!” bellowed Mr Glister, highly delighted.

“Can it be the Duke?” cawed Mr Punch.

“Oh no it isn’t!” roared Mr Glister, and everyone else.

“Oh yes it is,” crowed Mr Punch.

While everyone was howling “Oh no it isn’t!” two worried-looking men pushed their way through the people to Mr Glister.

“Your Grace,” said one, “the Bishop reached the Cathedral half an hour ago.”

“Oh bother!” said Mr Glister. “Why are you lot always bullying me? Can’t I just – until this ends? I love Punch and Judy.”

The two men looked at him reproachfully.

“Oh – very well,” said Mr Glister. “You two pay the showman. Give everyone here something.” He turned and went bounding away into the Corso, puffing and panting.

For a moment, Tonino wondered if Mr Glister was actually the Duke of Caprona. But the two men made no attempt to pay the showman, or anyone else. They simply went trotting demurely after Mr Glister, as if they were afraid of losing him. From this, Tonino gathered that Mr Glister was indeed a lunatic – a rich one – and they were humouring him.

“Mean things!” crowed Mr Punch, and set about tricking the Hangman into being hanged instead of him. Tonino watched until Mr Punch bowed and retired in triumph into the little painted villa at the back of his stage. Then he turned away, remembering his unhappiness.

He did not feel like going back to the Casa Montana. He did not feel like doing anything particularly. He wandered on, the way he had been going, until he found himself in the Piazza Nuova, up on the hill at the western end of the city. Here he sat gloomily on the parapet, gazing across the River Voltava at the rich villas and the Ducal Palace, and at the long arches of the New Bridge, and wondering if he was going to spend the rest of his life in a fog of stupidity.

The Piazza Nuova had been made at the same time as the New Bridge, about seventy years ago, to give everyone the grand view of Caprona Tonino was looking at now. It was breathtaking. But the trouble was, everything Tonino looked at had something to do with the Casa Montana.

Take the Ducal Palace, whose golden-stone towers cut clear lines into the clean blue of the sky opposite. Each golden tower swept outwards at the top, so that the soldiers on the battlements, beneath the snapping red and gold flags, could not be reached by anyone climbing up from below. Tonino could see the shields built into the battlements, two a side, one cherry, one leaf-green, showing that the Montanas and the Petrocchis had added a spell to defend each tower. And the great white marble front below was inlaid with other marbles, all colours of the rainbow. And among those colours were cherry-red and leaf-green.

The long golden villas on the hillside below the Palace each had a leaf-green or cherry-red disc on their walls. Some were half hidden by the dark spires of the elegant little trees planted in front of them, but Tonino knew they were there. And the stone and metal arches of the New Bridge, sweeping away from him towards the villas and the Palace, each bore an enamel plaque, green and red alternately. The New Bridge had been sustained by the strongest spells the Casa Montana and the Casa Petrocchi could produce.

At the moment, when the river was just a shingly trickle, they did not seem necessary. But in winter, when the rain fell in the Apennines, the Voltava became a furious torrent. The arches of the New Bridge barely cleared it. The Old Bridge – which Tonino could see by craning out and sideways – was often under water, and the funny little houses along it could not be used. Only Montana and Petrocchi spells deep in its foundations stopped the Old Bridge being swept away.

Tonino had heard Old Niccolo say that the New Bridge spells had taken the entire efforts of the entire Montana family. Old Niccolo had helped make them when he was the same age as Tonino. Tonino could not have done. Miserable, he looked down at the golden walls and red pantiles of Caprona below. He was quite certain that every single one hid at least a leaf-green scrip. And the most Tonino had ever done was help stamp the winged horse on the outside. He was fairly sure that was all he ever would do.

He had a feeling somebody was calling him. Tonino looked round at the Piazza Nuova. Nobody. Despite the view, the Piazza was too far for the tourists to come. All Tonino could see were the mighty iron griffins which reared up at intervals all round the parapet, reaching iron paws to the sky. More griffins tangled into a fighting heap in the centre of the square to make a fountain. And even here, Tonino could not get away from his family. A little metal plate was set into the stone beneath the huge iron claws of the nearest griffin. It was leaf-green. Tonino found he had burst into tears.

Among his tears, he thought for a moment that one of the more distant griffins had left its stone perch and come trotting round the parapet towards him. It had left its wings behind, or else had them tightly folded. He was told, a little smugly, that cats do not need wings. Benvenuto sat down on the parapet beside him, staring accusingly.

Tonino had always been thoroughly in awe of Benvenuto. He stretched out a hand to him timidly. “Hallo, Benvenuto.”

Benvenuto ignored the hand. It was covered with water from Tonino’s eyes, he said, and it made a cat wonder why Tonino was being so silly.

“There are our spells everywhere,” Tonino explained. “And I’ll never be abley—Do you think it’s because I’m half English?”

Benvenuto was not sure quite what difference that made. All it meant, as far as he could see, was that Paolo had blue eyes like a Siamese and Rosa had white fur—

“Fair hair,” said Tonino.

—and Tonino himself had tabby hair, like the pale stripes in a tabby, Benvenuto continued, unperturbed. And those were all cats, weren’t they?

“But I’m so stupid—” Tonino began.

Benvenuto interrupted that he had heard Tonino chattering with those kittens yesterday, and he had thought Tonino was a good deal cleverer than they were. And before Tonino went and objected that those were only kittens, wasn’t Tonino only a kitten himself?

At this, Tonino laughed and dried his hand on his trousers. When he held the hand out to Benvenuto again, Benvenuto rose up, very high on all four paws, and advanced to it, purring. Tonino ventured to stroke him. Benvenuto walked round and round, arched and purring, like the smallest and friendliest kitten in the Casa. Tonino found himself grinning with pride and pleasure. He could tell from the waving of Benvenuto’s brush of a tail, in majestic, angry twitches, that Benvenuto did not altogether like being stroked – which made it all the more of an honour.

That was better, Benvenuto said. He minced up to Tonino’s bare legs and installed himself across them, like a brown muscular mat. Tonino went on stroking him. Prickles came out of one end of the mat and treadled painfully at Tonino’s thighs. Benvenuto continued to purr. Would Tonino look at it this way, he wondered, that they were both, boy and cat, a part of the most famous Casa in Caprona, which in turn was part of the most special of all the Italian States?

“I know that,” said Tonino. “It’s because I think it’s wonderful too that I—Are we really so special?”

Of course, purred Benvenuto. And if Tonino were to lean out and look across at the Cathedral, he would see why.

Obediently, Tonino leaned and looked. The huge marble bubbles of the Cathedral domes leapt up from among the houses at the end of the Corso. He knew there never was such a building as that. It floated, high and white and gold and green. And on the top of the highest dome the sun flashed on the great golden figure of the Angel, poised there with spread wings, holding in one hand a golden scroll. It seemed to bless all Caprona.

That Angel, Benvenuto informed him, was there as a sign that Caprona would be safe as long as everyone sang the tune of the Angel of Caprona. The Angel had brought that song in a scroll straight from Heaven to the First Duke of Caprona, and its power had banished the White Devil and made Caprona great. The White Devil had been prowling round Caprona ever since, trying to get back into the city, but as long as the Angel’s song was sung, it would never succeed.

“I know that,” said Tonino. “We sing the Angel every day at school.” That brought back the main part of his misery. “They keep making me learn the story – and all sorts of things – and I can’t, because I know them already, so I can’t learn properly.”

Benvenuto stopped purring. He quivered, because Tonino’s fingers had caught in one of the many lumps of matted fur in his coat. Still quivering, he demanded rather sourly why it hadn’t occurred to Tonino to tell them at school that he knew these things.

“Sorry!” Tonino hurriedly moved his fingers. “But,” he explained, “they keep saying you have to do them this way, or you’ll never learn properly.”

Well, it was up to Tonino of course, Benvenuto said, still irritable, but there seemed no point in learning things twice. A cat wouldn’t stand for it. And it was about time they were getting back to the Casa.

Tonino sighed. “I suppose so. They’ll be worried.”

He gathered Benvenuto into his arms and stood up.

Benvenuto liked that. He purred. And it had nothing to do with the Montanas being worried. The aunts would be cooking lunch, and Tonino would find it easier than Benvenuto to nick a nice piece of veal.

That made Tonino laugh. As he started down the steps to the New Bridge, he said, “You know, Benvenuto, you’d be a lot more comfortable if you let me get those lumps out of your coat and comb you a bit.”

Benvenuto stated that anyone trying to comb him would get raked with every claw he possessed.

“A brush then?”

Benvenuto said he would consider that.

It was here that Lucia encountered them. She had looked for Tonino all over Caprona by then and she was prepared to be extremely angry. But the sight of Benvenuto’s evil lop-sided countenance staring at her out of Tonino’s arms left her with almost nothing to say. “We’ll be late for lunch,” she said.

“No we won’t,” said Tonino. “We’ll be in time for you to stand guard while I steal Benvenuto some veal.”

“Trust Benvenuto to have it all worked out,” said Lucia. “What is this? The start of a profitable relationship?”

You could put it that way, Benvenuto told Tonino. “You could put it that way,” Tonino said to Lucia.

At all events, Lucia was sufficiently impressed to engage Aunt Gina in conversation while Tonino got Benvenuto his veal. And everyone was too pleased to see Tonino safely back to mind too much. Corinna and Rosa minded, however, that afternoon, when Corinna lost her scissors and Rosa her hairbrush. Both of them stormed out on to the gallery. Paolo was there, watching Tonino gently and carefully snip the mats out of Benvenuto’s coat. The hairbrush lay beside Tonino, full of brown fur.

“And you can really understand everything he says?” Paolo was saying.

“I can understand all the cats,” said Tonino. “Don’t move, Benvenuto. This one’s right on your skin.”

It says volumes for Benvenuto’s status – and therefore for Tonino’s – that neither Rosa nor Corinna dared say a word to him. They turned on Paolo instead. “What do you mean, Paolo, standing there letting him mess that brush up? Why couldn’t you make him use the kitchen scissors?”

Paolo did not mind. He was too relieved that he was not going to have to learn to understand cats himself. He would not have known how to begin.

From that time forward, Benvenuto regarded himself as Tonino’s special cat. It made a difference to both of them. Benvenuto, what with constant brushing – for Rosa bought Tonino a special hairbrush for him – and almost as constant supplies filched from under Aunt Gina’s nose, soon began to look younger and sleeker. Tonino forgot he had ever been unhappy. He was now a proud and special person. When Old Niccolo needed Benvenuto, he had to ask Tonino first. Benvenuto flatly refused to do anything for anyone without Tonino’s permission. Paolo was very amused at how angry Old Niccolo got.

“That cat has just taken advantage of me!” he stormed. “I ask him to do me a kindness and what do I get? Ingratitude!”

In the end, Tonino had to tell Benvenuto that he was to consider himself at Old Niccolo’s service while Tonino was at school. Otherwise Benvenuto simply disappeared for the day. But he always, unfailingly, reappeared around half-past three, and sat on the water butt nearest the gate, waiting for Tonino. And as soon as Tonino came through the gate, Benvenuto would jump into his arms.

This was true even at the times when Benvenuto was not available to anyone. That was mostly at full moon, when the lady cats wauled enticingly from the roofs of Caprona.

Tonino went to school on Monday, having considered Benvenuto’s advice. And, when the time came when they gave him a picture of a cat and said the shapes under it went: Ker-a-ter, Tonino gathered up his courage and whispered, “Yes. It’s a C and an A and a T. I know how to read.”

His teacher, who was new to Caprona, did not know what to make of him, and called the Headmistress. “Oh,” she was told. “It’s another Montana. I should have warned you. They all know how to read. Most of them know Latin too – they use it a lot in their spells – and some of them know English as well. You’ll find they’re about average with sums, though.”

So Tonino was given a proper book while the other children learnt their letters. It was too easy for him. He finished it in ten minutes and had to be given another. And that was how he discovered about books. To Tonino, reading a book soon became an enchantment above any spell. He could never get enough of it. He ransacked the Casa Montana and the Public Library, and he spent all his pocket money on books. It soon became well known that the best present you could give Tonino was a book – and the best book would be about the unimaginable situation where there were no spells. For Tonino preferred fantasy. In his favourite books, people had wild adventures with no magic to help or hinder them.

Benvenuto thoroughly approved. While Tonino read, he kept still, and a cat could be comfortable sitting on him. Paolo teased Tonino a little about being such a bookworm, but he did not really mind. He knew he could always persuade Tonino to leave his book if he really wanted him.

Antonio was worried. He worried about everything. He was afraid Tonino was not getting enough exercise. But everyone else in the Casa said this was nonsense. They were proud of Tonino. He was as studious as Corinna, they said, and, no doubt, both of them would end up at Caprona University, like Great-Uncle Umberto. The Montanas always had someone at the University. It meant they were not selfishly keeping the Theory of Magic to the family, and it was also very useful to have access to the spells in the University Library.

Despite these hopes for him, Tonino continued to be slow at learning spells and not particularly quick at school. Paolo was twice as quick at both. But as the years went by, both of them accepted it. It did not worry them. What worried them far more was their gradual discovery that things were not altogether well in the Casa Montana, nor in Caprona either.

It was Benvenuto who first worried Tonino. Despite all the care Tonino gave him, he became steadily thinner and more ragged again. Now Benvenuto was roughly the same age as Tonino. Tonino knew that was old for a cat, and at first he assumed that Benvenuto was just feeling his years. Then he noticed that Old Niccolo had taken to looking almost as worried as Antonio, and that Uncle Umberto called on him from the University almost every day. Each time he did, Old Niccolo or Aunt Francesca would ask for Benvenuto and Benvenuto would come back tired out. So he asked Benvenuto what was wrong.

Benvenuto’s reply was that they might let a cat have some peace, even if the Duke was a booby. And he was not going to be pestered by Tonino into the bargain.

Tonino consulted Paolo, and found Paolo worried too. Paolo had been noticing his mother. Her fair hair had lately become several shades paler with all the white in it, and she looked nervous all the time. When Paolo asked Elizabeth what was the matter, she said, “Oh nothing, Paolo – only all this makes it so difficult to find a husband for Rosa.”

Rosa was now eighteen. The entire Casa was busy discussing a husband for her, and there did, now Paolo noticed, seem much more fuss and anxiety about the matter than there had been over Cousin Claudia, three years before. Montanas had to be careful who they married. It stood to reason. They had to marry someone who had some talent at least for spells or music; and it had to be someone the rest of the family liked; and, above all, it had to be someone with no kind of connection with the Petrocchis. But Cousin Claudia had found and married Arturo without all the discussion and worry that was going on over Rosa. Paolo could only suppose the reason was “all this”, whatever Elizabeth had meant by that.

Whatever the reason, argument raged. Anxious Antonio talked of going to England and consulting someone called Chrestomanci about it. “We want a really strong spell-maker for her,” he said. To which Elizabeth replied that Rosa was Italian and should marry an Italian. The rest of the family agreed, except that they said the Italian must be from Caprona. So the question was who.

Paolo, Lucia and Tonino had no doubt. They wanted Rosa to marry their cousin Rinaldo. It seemed to them entirely fitting. Rosa was lovely, Rinaldo handsome, and none of the usual objections could possibly be made. There were two snags, however. The first was that Rinaldo showed no interest in Rosa. He was at present desperately in love with a real English girl – her name was Jane Smith, and Rinaldo had some difficulty pronouncing it – and she had come to copy some of the pictures in the Art Gallery down on the Corso. She was a romantic girl. To please her, Rinaldo had taken to wearing black, with a red scarf at his neck, like a bandit. He was said to be considering growing a bandit moustache too. All of which left him with no time for a cousin he had known all his life.

The other snag was Rosa herself. She had never cared for Rinaldo. And she seemed to be the only person in the Casa who was entirely unconcerned about who she would marry. When the argument raged loudest, she would shake the blonde hair on her shoulders and smile. “To listen to you all,” she said, “anyone would think I have no say in the matter at all. It’s really funny.”

All that autumn, the worry in the Casa Montana grew. Paolo and Tonino asked Aunt Maria what it was all about. Aunt Maria at first said that they were too young to understand. Then, since she had moments when she was as passionate as Aunt Gina or even Aunt Francesca, she told them suddenly and fervently that Caprona was going to the dogs.

“Everything’s going wrong for us,” she said. “Money’s short, tourists don’t come here, and we get weaker every year. Here are Florence, Pisa and Siena all gathering round like vultures, and each year one of them gets a few more square miles of Caprona. If this goes on we shan’t be a State any more. And on top of it all, the harvest failed this year. It’s all the fault of those degenerate Petrocchis, I tell you! Their spells don’t work any more. We Montanas can’t hold Caprona up on our own! And the Petrocchis don’t even try! They just keep turning things out in the same old way, and going from bad to worse. You can see they are, or that child wouldn’t have been able to turn her father green!”

This was disturbing enough. And it seemed to be plain fact. All the years Paolo and Tonino had been at school, they had grown used to hearing that there had been this concession to Florence; that Pisa had demanded that agreement over fishing rights; or that Siena had raised taxes on imports to Caprona. They had grown too used to it to notice. But now it all seemed ominous. And worse shortly followed. News came that the Old Bridge had been seriously cracked by the winter floods.

This news caused the Casa Montana real dismay. For that bridge should have held. If it gave, it meant that the Montana charms in the foundations had given too. Aunt Francesca ran shrieking into the yard. “Those degenerate Petrocchis! They can’t even sustain an old spell now! We’ve been betrayed!”

Though no one else put it quite that way, Aunt Francesca probably spoke for the whole family.

As if that was not enough, Rinaldo set off that evening to visit his English girl, and was led back to the Casa streaming with blood, supported by his cousins Carlo and Giovanni. Rinaldo, using curse words Paolo and Tonino had never heard before, was understood to say he had met some Petrocchis. He had called them degenerate. And it was Aunt Maria’s turn to rush shrieking through the yard, shouting dire things about the Petrocchis. Rinaldo was the apple of Aunt Maria’s eye.

Rinaldo had been bandaged and put to bed, when Antonio and Uncle Lorenzo came back from viewing the damage to the Old Bridge. Both looked very serious. Old Guido Petrocchi himself had been there, with the Duke’s contractor, Mr Andretti. Some very deep charms had given. It was going to take the whole of both families, working in shifts, at least three weeks to mend them.

“We could have used Rinaldo’s help,” Antonio said.

Rinaldo swore that he was well enough to get out of bed and help the next day, but Aunt Maria would not hear of it. Nor would the doctor. So the rest of the family was divided into shifts, and work went on day and night. Paolo, Lucia and Corinna went to the bridge straight from school every day. Tonino did not. He was still too slow to be much use. But from what Paolo told him, he did not think he was missing much. Paolo simply could not keep up with the furious pace of the spells. He was put to running errands, like poor Cousin Domenico. Tonino felt very sympathetic towards Domenico. He was the opposite of his dashing brother Rinaldo in every way, and he could not keep up with the pace of things either.

Work had been going on, often in pouring rain, for nearly a week, when the Duke of Caprona summoned Old Niccolo to speak to him.

Old Niccolo stood in the yard and tore what was left of his hair. Tonino laid down his book (it was called Machines of Death and quite fascinating) and went to see if he could help.

“Ah, Tonino,” said Old Niccolo, looking at him with the face of a grieving baby. “I have gigantic problems. Everyone is needed on the Old Bridge, and that ass Rinaldo is lying in bed, and I have to go before the Duke with some of my family. The Petrocchis have been summoned too. We cannot appear less than they are, after all. Oh why did Rinaldo choose such a time to shout stupid insults?”

Tonino had no idea what to say, so he said, “Shall I get Benvenuto?”

“No, no,” said Old Niccolo, more upset than ever. “The Duchess cannot abide cats. Benvenuto is no use here. I shall have to take those who are no use on the bridge. You shall go, Tonino, and Paolo and Domenico, and I shall take your uncle Umberto to look wise and weighty. Perhaps that way we shan’t look so very thin.”

This was perhaps not the most flattering of invitations, but Tonino and Paolo were delighted nevertheless. They were delighted even though it rained hard the next day, the drilling white rain of winter. The dawn shift came in from the Old Bridge under shiny umbrellas, damp and disgruntled. Instead of resting, they had to turn to and get the party ready for the Palace.

The Montana family coach was dragged from the coach-house to a spot under the gallery, where it was carefully dusted. It was a great black thing with glass windows and monster black wheels. The Montana winged horse was emblazoned in a green shield on its heavy doors. The rain continued to pour down. Paolo, who hated rain as much as the cats did, was glad the coach was real. The horses were not. They were four white cardboard cut-outs of horses, which were kept leaning against the wall of the coach-house. They were an economical idea of Old Niccolo’s father’s. As he said, real horses ate and needed exercise and took up space the family could live in. The coachman was another cardboard cut-out – for much the same reasons – but he was kept inside the coach.

The boys were longing to watch the cardboard figures being brought to life, but they were snatched indoors by their mother. Elizabeth’s hair was soaking from her shift on the bridge and she was yawning until her jaw creaked, but this did not prevent her doing a very thorough scrubbing, combing and dressing job on Paolo and Tonino. By the time they came down into the yard again, each with his hair scraped wet to his head and wearing uncomfortable broad white collars above their stiff Eton jackets, the spell was done. The spell-streamers had been carefully wound into the harness, and the coachman clothed in a paper coat covered with spells on the inside. Four glossy white horses were stamping as they were backed into their traces. The coachman was sitting on the box adjusting his leaf-green hat.

“Splendid!” said Old Niccolo, bustling out. He looked approvingly from the boys to the coach. “Get in, boys. Get in, Domenico. We have to pick up Umberto from the University.”

Tonino said goodbye to Benvenuto and climbed into the coach. It smelt of mould, in spite of the dusting. He was glad his grandfather was so cheerful. In fact everyone seemed to be. The family cheered as the coach rumbled to the gateway, and Old Niccolo smiled and waved back. Perhaps, Tonino thought, something good was going to come from this visit to the Duke, and no one would be so worried after this.

The journey in the coach was splendid. Tonino had never felt so grand before. The coach rumbled and swayed. The hooves of the horses clattered over the cobbles just as if they were real, and people hurried respectfully out of their way. The coachman was as good as spells could make him. Though puddles dimpled along every street, the coach was hardly splashed when they drew up at the University, with loud shouts of “Whoa there!”

Uncle Umberto climbed in, wearing his red and gold Master’s gown, as cheerful as Old Niccolo. “Morning, Tonino,” he said to Paolo. “How’s your cat? Morning,” he said to Domenico. “I hear the Petrocchis beat you up.” Domenico, who would have died sooner than insult even a Petrocchi, went redder than Uncle Umberto’s gown and swallowed noisily. But Uncle Umberto never could remember which younger Montana was which. He was too learned. He looked at Tonino as if he was wondering who he was, and turned to Old Niccolo.

“The Petrocchis are sure to help,” he said. “I had word from Chrestomanci.”

“So did I,” said Old Niccolo, but he sounded dubious.

The coach rumbled down the rainswept Corso and turned out across the New Bridge, where it rumbled even more loudly. Paolo and Tonino stared out of the rainy windows, too excited to speak. Beyond the swollen river, they clopped uphill, where cypresses bent and lashed in front of rich villas, and then among blurred old walls. Finally they rumbled under a great archway and made a crisp turn round the gigantic forecourt of the Palace.

In front of their own coach, another coach, looking like a toy under the huge marble front of the Palace, was just drawing up by the enormous marble porch. This carriage was black too, with crimson shields on its doors, in which ramped black leopards. They were too late to see the people getting out of it, but they gazed with irritated envy at the coach itself and the horses. The horses were black, beautiful slender creatures with arched necks.

“I think they’re real horses,” Paolo whispered to Tonino.

Tonino had no time to answer, because two footmen and a soldier sprang to open the carriage door and usher them down, and Paolo jumped down first. But after him, Old Niccolo and Uncle Umberto were rather slow getting down. Tonino had time to look out of the further window at the Petrocchi carriage moving away. As it turned, he distinctly saw the small crimson flutter of a spell-streamer under the harness of the nearest black horse.

So there! Tonino thought triumphantly. But he rather thought the Petrocchi coachman was real. He was a pale young man with reddish hair which did not match his cherry-coloured livery, and he had an intent, concentrating look as if it was not easy driving those unreal horses. That look was too human for a cardboard man.

When Tonino finally climbed down on Domenico’s nervous heels, he glanced up at their own coachman for comparison. He was efficient and jaunty. He touched a stiff hand to his green hat and stared straight ahead. No, the Petrocchi coachman was real all right, Tonino thought enviously.

Tonino forgot both coachmen as he and Paolo followed the others into the Palace. It was so grand, and so huge. They were taken through vast halls with shiny floors and gilded ceilings, which seemed to go on for miles. On either side of the long walls there were statues, or soldiers, or footmen, adding to the magnificence in rows. They felt so battered by all the grandeur that it was quite a relief when they were shown into a room only about the size of the Casa Montana yard. True, the floor was shiny and the ceiling painted to look like a sky full of wrestling angels, but the walls were hung with quite comfortable red cloth and there was a row of almost plain gilt chairs along each side.

Another party of people was shown into the room at the same time. Domenico took one look at them and turned his eyes instantly on the painted angels of the ceiling. Old Niccolo and Uncle Umberto behaved as if the people were not there at all. Paolo and Tonino tried to do the same, but they found it impossible.

So these were the Petrocchis, they thought, sneaking glances. There were only four of them, to their five. One up to the Montanas. And two of those were children. Clearly the Petrocchis had been as hard-pressed as the Montanas to come before the Duke with a decent party, and they had, in Paolo and Tonino’s opinion, made a bad mistake in leaving one of their family outside with the coach.

They were not impressive. Their University representative was a frail old man, far older than Uncle Umberto, who seemed almost lost in his red and gold gown. The most impressive one was the leader of the party, who must be Old Guido himself. But he was not particularly old, like Old Niccolo, and though he wore the same sort of black frock-coat as Old Niccolo and carried the same sort of shiny hat, it looked odd on Old Guido because he had a bright red beard. His hair was rather long, crinkly and black. And though he stared ahead in a bleak, important way, it was hard to forget that his daughter had once accidentally turned him green.

The two children were both girls. Both had reddish hair. Both had prim, pointed faces. Both wore bright white stockings and severe black dresses and were clearly odious. The main difference between them was that the younger – who seemed about Tonino’s age – had a large bulging forehead, which made her face even primmer than her sister’s. It was possible that one of them was the famous Angelica, who had turned Old Guido green.

The boys stared at them, trying to decide which it might be, until they encountered the prim, derisive stare of the elder girl. It was clear she thought they looked ridiculous. But Paolo and Tonino knew they still looked smart – they felt so uncomfortable – so they took no notice.

After they had waited a while, both parties began to talk quietly among themselves, as if the others were not there. Tonino murmured to Paolo, “Which one is Angelica?”

“I don’t know,” Paolo whispered.

“Didn’t you see them at the Old Bridge then?”

“I didn’t see any of them. They were all down the other—”

Part of the red hanging swung aside and a lady hurried in. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “My husband has been delayed.”

Everyone in the room bent their heads and murmured “Your Grace” because this was the Duchess. But Paolo and Tonino kept their eyes on her while they bent their heads, wanting to know what she was like. She had a stiff greyish dress on, which put them in mind of a statue of a saint, and her face might almost have been part of the same statue. It was a statue-pale face, almost waxy, as if the Duchess were carved out of slightly soapy marble. But Tonino was not sure the Duchess was really like a saint. Her eyebrows were set in a strong sarcastic arch, and her mouth was tight with what looked like impatience. For a second, Tonino thought he felt that impatience – and a number of other unsaintly feelings – pouring into the room from behind the Duchess’s waxy mask like a strong rank smell.

The Duchess smiled at Old Niccolo. “Signor Niccolo Montana?” There was no scrap of impatience, only stateliness. Tonino thought to himself, I’ve been reading too many books. Rather ashamed, he watched Old Niccolo bow and introduce them all. The Duchess nodded graciously and turned to the Petrocchis. “Signor Guido Petrocchi?”

The red-bearded man bowed in a rough, brusque way. He was nothing like as courtly as Old Niccolo. “Your Grace. With me are my great-uncle Dr Luigi Petrocchi, my elder daughter Renata, and my younger daughter Angelica.”

Paolo and Tonino stared at the younger girl, from her bulge of forehead to her thin white legs. So this was Angelica. She did not look capable of doing anything wrong, or interesting.

The Duchess said, “I believe you understand why—”

The red curtains were once more swept aside. A bulky excited-looking man raced in with his head down, and took the Duchess by one arm. “Lucrezia, you must come! The scenery looks a treat!”

The Duchess turned as a statue might turn, all one piece. Her eyebrows were very high and her mouth pinched. “My lord Duke!” she said freezingly.

Tonino stared at the bulky man. He was now wearing slightly shabby green velvet with big brass buttons. Otherwise, he was exactly the same as the big damp Mr Glister who had interrupted the Punch and Judy show that time. So he had been the Duke of Caprona after all! And he was not in the least put off by the Duchess’s frigid look. “You must come and look!” he said, tugging at her arm, as excited as ever. He turned to the Montanas and the Petrocchis as if he expected them to help him pull the Duchess out of the room – and then seemed to realise that they were not courtiers. “Who are you?”

“These,” said the Duchess – her eyebrows were still higher and her voice was strong with patience – “these are the Petrocchis and the Montanas awaiting your pleasure, my lord.”

The Duke slapped a large, damp-looking hand to his shiny forehead. “Well I’m blessed! The people who make spells! I was thinking of sending for you. Have you come about this enchanter-fellow who’s got his knife into Caprona?” he asked Old Niccolo.

“My lord!” said the Duchess, her face rigid.

But the Duke broke away from her, beaming and gleaming, and dived on the Petrocchis. He shook Old Guido’s hand hugely, and then the girl Renata’s. After that, he dived round and did the same to Old Niccolo and Paolo. Paolo had to rub his hand secretly on his trousers after he let go. He was wet. “And they say the young ones are as clever as the old ones,” the Duke said happily. “Amazing families! Just the people I need for my play – my pantomime, you know. We’re putting it on here for Christmas and I could do with some special effects.”

The Duchess gave a sigh. Paolo looked at her rigid face and thought that it must be hard, dealing with someone like the Duke.

The Duke dived on Domenico. “Can you arrange for a flight of cupids blowing trumpets?” he asked him eagerly. Domenico swallowed and managed to whisper the word “illusion”. “Oh good!” said the Duke, and dived at Angelica Petrocchi. “And you’ll love my collection of Punch and Judys,” he said. “I’ve got hundreds!”

“How nice,” Angelica answered primly.

“My lord,” said the Duchess, “these good people did not come here to discuss the theatre.”

“Maybe, maybe,” the Duke said, with an impatient, eager wave of his large hand. “But while they’re here, I might as well ask them about that too. Mightn’t I?” he said, diving at Old Niccolo.

Old Niccolo showed great presence of mind. He smiled. “Of course, Your Grace. No trouble at all. After we’ve discussed the State business we came for, we shall be happy to take orders for any stage effects you want.”

“So will we,” said Guido Petrocchi, with a sour glance at the air over Old Niccolo.

The Duchess smiled graciously at Old Niccolo for backing her up, which made Old Guido look sourer than ever, and fixed the Duke with a meaning look.

It seemed to get through to the Duke at last. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Better get down to business. It’s like this, you see—”

The Duchess interrupted, with a gentle fixed smile. “Refreshments are laid out in the small Conference Room. If you and the adults like to hold your discussion there, I will arrange something for the children here.”

Guido Petrocchi saw a chance to get even with Old Niccolo. “Your Grace,” he barked stiffly, “my daughters are as loyal to Caprona as the rest of my house. I have no secrets from them.”

The Duke flashed him a glistening smile. “Quite right! But they won’t be half as bored if they stay here, will they?”

Quite suddenly, everyone except Paolo and Tonino and the two Petrocchi girls was crowding away through another door behind the red hangings. The Duke leaned back, beaming. “I tell you what,” he said, “you must come to my pantomime, all of you. You’ll love it! I’ll send you tickets. Coming, Lucrezia.”

The four children were left standing under the ceiling full of wrestling angels.

After a moment, the Petrocchi girls walked to the chairs against the wall and sat down. Paolo and Tonino looked at one another. They marched to the chairs on the opposite side of the room and sat down there. It seemed a safe distance. From there, the Petrocchi girls were dark blurs with thin white legs and foxy blobs for heads.

“I wish I’d brought my book,” said Tonino.

They sat with their heels hooked into the rungs of their chairs, trying to feel patient. “I think the Duchess must be a saint,” said Paolo, “to be so patient with the Duke.”

Tonino was surprised Paolo should think that. He knew the Duke did not behave much like a duke should, while the Duchess was every inch a duchess. But he was not sure it was right, the way she let them know how patient she was being. “Mother dashes about like that,” he said, “and Father doesn’t mind. It stops him looking worried.”

“Father’s not a Duchess,” said Paolo.

Tonino did not argue because, at that moment, two footmen appeared, pushing a most interesting trolley. Tonino’s mouth fell open. He had never seen so many cakes together in his life before. Across the room, there were black gaps in the faces of the Petrocchi girls. Evidently they had never seen so many cakes either. Tonino shut his mouth quickly and tried to look as if he saw such sights every day.

The footmen served the Petrocchi girls first. They were very cool and seemed to take hours choosing. When the trolley was finally wheeled across to Paolo and Tonino, they found it hard to seem as composed. There were twenty different kinds of cake. They took ten each, with greedy speed, so that they had one of every kind between them and could swap if necessary. When the trolley was wheeled away, Tonino just managed to spare a glance from his plate to see how the Petrocchis were doing. Each girl had her white knees hooked up to carry a plate big enough to hold ten cakes.

They were rich cakes. By the time Paolo reached the tenth, he was going slowly, wondering if he really cared for meringue as much as he had thought, and Tonino was only on his sixth. By the time Paolo had put his plate neatly under his chair and cleaned himself with his handkerchief, Tonino, sticky with jam, smeared with chocolate and cream and infested with crumbs, was still doggedly ploughing through his eighth. And this was the moment the Duchess chose to sit smiling down beside Paolo.

“I won’t interrupt your brother,” she said, laughing. “Tell me about yourself, Paolo.” Paolo did not know what to answer. All he could think of was the mess Tonino looked. “For instance,” the Duchess asked helpfully, “does spell-making come easily to you? Do you find it hard to learn?”

“Oh no, Your Grace,” Paolo said proudly. “I learn very easily.” Then he was afraid this might upset Tonino. He looked quickly at Tonino’s pastry-plastered face and found Tonino staring gravely at the Duchess. Paolo felt ashamed and responsible. He wanted the Duchess to know that Tonino was not just a messy staring little boy. “Tonino learns slowly,” he said, “but he reads all the time. He’s read all the books in the Library. He’s almost as learned as Uncle Umberto.”

“How remarkable,” smiled the Duchess.

There was just a trace of disbelief in the arch of her eyebrows. Tonino was so embarrassed that he took a big bite out of his ninth cake. It was a great pastry puff. The instant his mouth closed round it, Tonino knew that, if he opened his mouth again, even to breathe, pastry would blow out of it like a hailstorm, all over Paolo and the Duchess. He clamped his lips together and chewed valiantly.

And, to Paolo’s embarrassment, he went on staring at the Duchess. He was wishing Benvenuto was there to tell him about the Duchess. She muddled him. As she bent smiling over Paolo, she did not look like the haughty, rigid lady who had been so patient with the Duke. And yet, perhaps because she was not being patient, Tonino felt the rank strength of the unsaintly thoughts behind her waxy smile, stronger than ever.

Paolo willed Tonino to stop chewing and goggling. But Tonino went on, and the disbelief in the Duchess’s eyebrows was so obvious, that he blurted out, “And Tonino’s the only one who can talk to Benvenuto. He’s our boss cat, Your—” He remembered the Duchess did not like cats. “Er – you don’t like cats, Your Grace.”

The Duchess laughed. “But I don’t mind hearing about them. What about Benvenuto?”

To Paolo’s relief, Tonino turned his goggle eyes from the Duchess to him. So Paolo talked on. “You see, Your Grace, spells work much better and stronger if a cat’s around, and particularly if Benvenuto is. Besides Benvenuto knows all sorts of things—”

He was interrupted by a thick noise from Tonino. Tonino was trying to speak without opening his mouth. It was clear there was going to be a pastry-storm any second. Paolo snatched out his jammy, creamy handkerchief and held it ready.

The Duchess stood up, rather hastily. “I think I’d better see how my other guests are getting on,” she said, and went swiftly gliding across to the Petrocchi girls.

The Petrocchi girls, Paolo noticed resentfully, were ready to receive her. Their handkerchiefs had been busy while the Duchess talked to Paolo, and now their plates were neatly pushed under their chairs too. Each had left at least three cakes. This much encouraged Tonino. He was feeling rather unwell. He put the rest of the ninth cake back beside the tenth and laid the plate carefully on the next chair. By this time, he had managed to swallow his mouthful.

“You shouldn’t have told her about Benvenuto,” he said, hauling out his handkerchief. “He’s a family secret.”

“Then you should have said something yourself instead of staring like a dummy,” Paolo retorted. To his mortification both Petrocchi girls were talking merrily to the Duchess. The bulge-headed Angelica was laughing. It so annoyed Paolo that he said, “Look at the way those girls are sucking up to the Duchess!”

“I didn’t do that,” Tonino pointed out.

As Paolo wanted to say he wished Tonino had, he found himself unable to say anything at all. He sat sourly watching the Duchess talking to the girls across the room, until she got up and went gliding away. She remembered to smile and wave at Paolo and Tonino as she went. Paolo thought that was good of her, considering the asses they had made of themselves.

Very soon after that, the curtains swung aside and Old Niccolo came back, walking slowly beside Guido Petrocchi. After them came the two gowned great-uncles, and Domenico came after that. It was like a procession. Everyone looked straight ahead, and it was plain they had a lot on their minds. All four children stood up, brushed crumbs off, and followed the procession. Paolo found he was walking beside the elder girl, but he was careful not to look at her. In utter silence, they marched to the great Palace door, where the carriages were moving along to receive them.

The Petrocchi carriage came first, with its black horses patched and beaded with rain. Tonino took another look at its coachman, rather hoping he had made a mistake. It was still raining and the man’s clothes were soaked. His red Petrocchi hair was brown with wet under his wet hat. He was shivering as he leant down, and there was a questioning look on his pale face, as if he was anxious to be told what the Duke had said. No, he was real all right. The Montana coachman behind stared into space, ignoring the rain and his passengers equally. Tonino felt that the Petrocchis had definitely come out best.

When the coach was moving, Old Niccolo leaned back and said, “Well, the Duke is very good-natured, I’ll say that. Perhaps he’s not such a fool as he seems.”

Uncle Umberto answered, with deepest gloom, “When my father was a boy, his father went to the Palace once a week. He was received as a friend.”

Domenico said timidly, “At least we sold some stage effects.”

“That,” said Uncle Umberto crushingly, “is just what I’m complaining of.”

Tonino and Paolo looked from one to the other, wondering what had depressed them so.

Old Niccolo noticed them looking. “Guido Petrocchi wished those disgusting daughters of his to be present while we conferred with the Duke,” he said. “I shall not—”

“Oh good Lord!” muttered Uncle Umberto. “One doesn’t listen to a Petrocchi.”

“No, but one trusts one’s grandsons,” said Old Niccolo. “Boys, old Caprona’s in a bad way, it seems. The States of Florence, Pisa and Siena have now united against her. The Duke suspects they are paying an enchanter to—”

“Huh!” said Uncle Umberto. “Paying the Petrocchis.”

Domenico, who had been rendered surprisingly bold by something, said, “Uncle, I could see the Petrocchis were no more traitors than we are!”

Both old men turned to look at him. He crumpled.

“The fact is,” Old Niccolo continued, “Caprona is not the great State she once was. There are many reasons, no doubt. But we know, and the Duke knows – even Domenico knows – that each year we set the usual charms for the defence of Caprona, and each year we set them stronger, and each year they have less effect. Something – or someone – is definitely sapping our strength. So the Duke asks what else we can do. And—”

Domenico interrupted with a squawk of laughter. “And we said we’d find the words to the Angel of Caprona!”

Paolo and Tonino expected Domenico to be crushed again, but the two old men simply looked gloomy. Their heads nodded mournfully. “But I don’t understand,” said Tonino. “The Angel of Caprona’s got words. We sing them at school.”

“Hasn’t your mother taught you—?” Old Niccolo began angrily. “Ah, no. I forgot. Your mother is English.”

“One more reason for careful marriages,” Uncle Umberto said dismally.

By this time, what with the rain ceaselessly pattering down as well, both boys were thoroughly depressed and alarmed. Domenico seemed to find them funny. He gave another squawk of laughter.

“Be quiet,” said Old Niccolo. “This is the last time I take you where brandy is served. No, boys, the Angel has not got the right words. The words you sing are a makeshift. Some people say that the glorious Angel took the words back to Heaven after the White Devil was vanquished, leaving only the tune. Or the words have been lost since. But everyone knows that Caprona cannot be truly great until the words are found.”

“In other words,” Uncle Umberto said irritably, “the Angel of Caprona is a spell like any other spell. And without the proper words, any spell is only at half force, even if it is of divine origin.” He gathered up his gown as the coach jerked to a stop outside the University. “And we – like idiots – have pledged ourselves to complete what God left unfinished,” he said. “The presumption of man!” He climbed out of the coach, calling to Old Niccolo, “I’ll look in every manuscript I can think of. There must be a clue somewhere. Oh this confounded rain!”

The door slammed and the coach jerked on again.

Paolo asked, “Have the Petrocchis said they’ll find the words too?”

Old Niccolo’s mouth bunched angrily. “They have. And I should die of shame if they did it before we did. I—” He stopped as the coach lurched round the corner into the Corso. It lurched again, and jerked. Sprays of water flew past the windows.

Domenico leaned forward. “Not driving so well, is he?”

“Quiet!” said Old Niccolo, and Paolo bit his tongue in a whole succession of jerks. Something was wrong. The coach was not making the right noise.

“I can’t hear the horses’ hooves,” Tonino said, puzzled.

“I thought that was it!” Old Niccolo snapped. “It’s the rain.” He let down the window with a bang, bringing in a gust of watery wind, and, regardless of faces staring up at him from under wet umbrellas, he leaned out and bellowed the words of a spell. “And drive quickly, coachman! There,” he said, as he pulled the window up again, “that should get us home before the horses turn to pulp. What a blessing this didn’t happen before Umberto got out!”

The noise of the horses’ hooves sounded again, clopping over the cobbles of the Corso. It seemed that the new spell was working. But, as they turned into the Via Cardinale, the noise changed to a spongy thump-thump, and when they came to the Via Magica the hooves made hardly a sound. And the lurching and jerking began again, worse than ever. As they turned to enter the gate of the Casa Montana, there came the most brutal jerk of all. The coach tipped forward, and there was a crash as the pole hit the cobbles. Paolo got his window open in time to see the limp paper figure of the coachman flop off the box into a puddle. Beyond him, two wet cardboard horses were draped over their traces.

“That spell,” said Old Niccolo, “lasted for days in my grandfather’s time.”

“Do you mean it’s that enchanter?” Paolo asked. “Is he spoiling all our spells?”

Old Niccolo stared at him, full-eyed, like a baby about to burst into tears. “No, lad. I fancy not. The truth is, the Casa Montana is in as bad a way as Caprona. The old virtue is fading. It has faded generation by generation, and now it is almost gone. I am ashamed that you should learn it like this. Let’s get out, boys, and start dragging.”

It was a wretched humiliation. Since the rest of the family were all either asleep or at work on the Old Bridge, there was no one to help them pull the coach through the gate. And Domenico was no use. He confessed afterwards that he could not remember getting home. They left him asleep in the coach and dragged it in, just the three of them. Even Benvenuto dashing through the rain did not cheer Tonino much.

“One consolation,” panted their grandfather. “The rain. There is no one about to see Old Niccolo dragging his own coach.”

Paolo and Tonino did not find much consolation in that. Now they understood the growing unease in the Casa, and it was not pleasant. They understood why everyone was so anxious about the Old Bridge, and so delighted when, just before Christmas, it was mended at last. They understood, too, the worry about a husband for Rosa. As soon as the bridge was repaired, everyone went back to discussing that. And Paolo and Tonino knew why everyone agreed that the young man Rosa must choose, must have, if he had nothing else, a strong talent for spells.

“To improve the breed, you mean?” said Rosa. She was very sarcastic and independent about it. “Very well, dear Uncle Lorenzo, I shall only fall in love with men who can make paper horses waterproof.”

Uncle Lorenzo blushed angrily. The whole family felt humiliated by those horses. But Elizabeth was trying not to laugh. Elizabeth certainly encouraged Rosa in her independent attitude. Benvenuto informed Tonino it was the English way. Cats liked English people, he added.

“Have we really lost our virtue?” Tonino asked Benvenuto anxiously. He thought it was probably the explanation for his slowness.

Benvenuto said that he did not know what it was like in the old days, but he knew there was enough magic about now to make his coat spark. It seemed like a lot. But he sometimes wondered if it was being applied properly.

Around this time, twice as many newspapers found their way into the Casa. There were journals from Rome and magazines from Genoa and Milan, as well as the usual Caprona papers. Everyone read them eagerly and talked in mutters about the attitude of Florence, movements in Pisa and opinion hardening in Siena. Out of the worried murmurs, the word War began to sound, more and more frequently. And, instead of the usual Christmas songs, the only tune heard in the Casa Montana, night and day, was the Angel of Caprona.

The tune was sung in bass, tenor and soprano. It was played slowly on flutes, picked out on guitars and lilted on violins. Every one of the Montanas lived in hope that he or she would be the person to find the true words. Rinaldo had a new idea. He procured a drum and sat on the edge of his bed beating out the rhythm, until Aunt Francesca implored him to stop. And even that did not help. Not one of the Montanas could begin to set the right words to the tune. Antonio looked so worried that Paolo could scarcely bear to look at him.

With so much to worry about, it was hardly surprising that Paolo and Tonino looked forward daily to being invited to the Duke’s pantomime. It was the one bright spot. But Antonio and Rinaldo went to the Palace – on foot – to deliver the special effects, and came back without a word of invitation. Christmas came. The entire Montana family went to church, in the beautiful marble-fronted Church of Sant’ Angelo, and behaved with great devotion. Usually it was only Aunt Anna and Aunt Maria who were notably religious, but now everyone felt they had something to pray for. It was only when the time came to sing the Angel of Caprona that the Montana devotion slackened. An absent-minded look came over their faces, from Old Niccolo to the smallest cousin. They sang:

“Merrily his music ringing,

See an Angel cometh singing,

Words of peace and comfort bringing

To Caprona’s city fair.

Victory that faileth never,

Friendship that no strife can sever,

Lasting strength and peace for ever,

For Caprona’s city fair.

See the Devil flee astounded!

In Caprona now is founded

Virtue strong and peace unbounded—

In Caprona’s city fair.”

Every one of them was wondering what the real words were.

They came home for the family celebrations, and there was still no word from the Duke. Then Christmas was over. New Year drew on and passed too, and the boys were forced to realise that there would be no invitation after all. Each told himself he had known the Duke was like that. They did not speak of it to one another. But they were both bitterly disappointed.

They were roused from their gloom by Lucia racing along the gallery, screaming, “Come and look at Rosa’s young man!”

“What?” said Antonio, raising his worried face from a book about the Angel of Caprona. “What? Nothing’s decided yet.”

Lucia leapt from foot to foot. She was pink with excitement. “Rosa’s decided for herself! I knew she would. Come and see!”

Led by Lucia, Antonio, Paolo, Tonino and Benvenuto raced along the gallery and down the stone stairs at the end. People and cats were streaming through the courtyard from all directions, hurrying to the room called the Saloon, beyond the dining room.

Rosa was standing near the windows, looking happy but defiant, with both hands clasped round the arm of an embarrassed-looking young man with ginger hair. A bright ring winked on Rosa’s finger. Elizabeth was with them, looking as happy as Rosa and almost as defiant. When the young man saw the family streaming through the door and crowding towards him, his face became bright pink and his hand went up to loosen his smart tie. But, in spite of that, it was plain to everyone that, underneath, the young man was as happy as Rosa. And Rosa was so happy that she seemed to shine, like the Angel over the gate. This made everyone stare, marvelling. Which, of course, made the young man more embarrassed than ever.

Old Niccolo cleared his throat. “Now look here,” he said. Then he stopped. This was Antonio’s business. He looked at Antonio.

Paolo and Tonino noticed that their father looked at their mother first. Elizabeth’s happy look seemed to reassure him a little. “Now, just who are you?” he said to the young man. “How did you meet my Rosa?”

“He was one of the contractors on the Old Bridge, Father,” said Rosa.

“And he has enormous natural talent, Antonio,” said Elizabeth, “and a beautiful singing voice.”

“All right, all right,” said Antonio. “Let the boy speak for himself, women.”

The young man swallowed, and helped the swallow down with a shake of his tie. His face was now very pale. “My name is Marco Andretti,” he said in a pleasant, if husky, voice. “I – I think you met my brother at the bridge, sir. I was on the other shift. That’s how I came to meet Rosa.” The way he smiled down at Rosa left everybody hoping that he would be fit to become a Montana.

“It’ll break their hearts if Father says no,” Lucia whispered to Paolo. Paolo nodded. He could see that.

Antonio was pulling his lip, which was a thing he did when his face could hold no more worry than it did already.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve met Mario Andretti, of course. A very respectable family.” He made that sound not altogether a good thing. “But I’m sure you’re aware, Signor Andretti, that ours is a special family. We have to be careful who we marry. First, what do you think of the Petrocchis?”

Marco’s pale face went fiery red. He answered with a violence which surprised the Montanas, “I hate their guts, Signor Montana!”

He seemed so upset that Rosa pulled his arm down and patted it soothingly.

“Marco has personal family reasons, Father,” she said.

“Which I’d prefer not to go into,” Marco said.

“We – well, I’ll not press you for them,” Antonio said, and continued to pull his lip. “But, you see, our family must marry someone with at least some talent for magic. Have you any ability there, Signor Andretti?”

Marco Andretti seemed to relax at this. He smiled, and gently took Rosa’s hands off his sleeve. Then he sang. Elizabeth had been right about his voice. It was a golden tenor. Uncle Lorenzo was heard to rumble that he could not think what a voice like that was doing outside the Milan Opera.

“A golden tree there grows, a tree

Whose golden branches bud with green…”

sang Marco. As he sang, the tree came into being, rooted in the carpet between Rosa and Antonio, first as a faint gold shadow, then as a rattling metal shape, dazzling gold in the shafts of sunlight from the windows. The Montanas nodded their appreciation. The trunk and each branch, even the smallest twig, was indeed pure gold.

But Marco sang on, and as he sang, the gold twigs put out buds, pale and fist-shaped at first, then bright and pointed. Instants later, the tree was in leaf. It was moving and rattling constantly to Marco’s singing. It put out pink and white flowers in clusters, which budded, expanded and dropped, as quickly as flames in a firework. The room was full of scent, then of petals fluttering like confetti. Marco still sang, and the tree still moved. Before the last petal had fallen, pointed green fruit was swelling where the flowers had been. The fruit grew brownish and swelled, and swelled and turned bulging and yellow, until the tree drooped under the weight of a heavy crop of big yellow pears.

“…With golden fruit for everyone,”

Marco concluded. He put up a hand, picked one of the pears and held it, rather diffidently, out to Antonio.

There were murmurs of appreciation from the rest of the family. Antonio took the pear and sniffed it. And he smiled, to Marco’s evident relief. “Good fruit,” he said. “That was very elegantly done, Signor Andretti. But there is one more thing I must ask you. Would you agree to change your name to Montana? That is our custom, you see.”

“Yes, Rosa told me,” said Marco. “And – and this is a difficulty. My brother needs me in his firm, and he too wants to keep his family name. Would it be all right if I’m known as Montana when I’m here, and as – as Andretti when I’m at home with my brother?”

“You mean you and Rosa wouldn’t live here?” Antonio asked, astonished.

“Not all the time. No,” said Marco. From the way he said it, it was clear he was not going to change his mind.

This was serious. Antonio looked at Old Niccolo. And there were grave faces all round at the thought of the family being broken up.

“I don’t see why they shouldn’t,” said Elizabeth.

“Well – my great-uncle did it,” Old Niccolo said. “But it was not a success. His wife ran off to Sicily with a greasy little warlock.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to!” Rosa said.

The family wavered, with the tree gently rattling in their midst. Everyone loved Rosa. Marco was clearly nice. Nobody wanted to break their hearts. But this idea of living away from the Casa—!

Aunt Francesca heaved herself forward, saying, “I side with Elizabeth. Our Rosa has found herself a nice boy with more talent and a better voice than I’ve seen outside our family for years. Let them get married.”

Antonio looked dreadfully worried at this, but he did not pull his lip. He seemed to be relaxing, ready to agree, when Rinaldo set the tree rattling furiously by pushing his way underneath it.

“Just a moment. Aren’t we all being a bit trustful? Who is this fellow, after all? Why haven’t we come across him and his talents before?”

Paolo hung his head and watched Rinaldo under his hair. This was Rinaldo in the mood he least admired. Rinaldo loud and aggressive, with an unpleasant twist to his mouth. Rinaldo was still a little pale from the cut on his head, but this went rather well with the black clothes and the red brigand’s scarf. Rinaldo knew it did. He flung up his head with an air, and contemptuously brushed off a petal that had fallen on his black sleeve. And he looked at Marco, challenging him to answer.

The way Marco looked back showed that he was quite ready to stand up to Rinaldo. “I’ve been at college in Rome until recently,” he said. “If that’s what you mean.”

Rinaldo swung round to face the family. “So he says,” he said. “He’s done a pretty trick for us, and said all the right things – but so would anyone in his place.” He swung round on Marco. It was so dramatic that Tonino winced and even Paolo felt a little unhappy. “I don’t trust you,” said Rinaldo. “I’ve seen your face before somewhere.”

“At the Old Bridge,” said Marco.

“No, not there. It was somewhere else,” said Rinaldo.

And this must be true, Tonino realised. Marco did have a familiar look. And Tonino could not have seen him at the Old Bridge, because Tonino had never been there.

“Do you want me to fetch my brother, or my priest, to vouch for me?” asked Marco.

“No,” said Rinaldo rudely. “I want the truth.”

Marco took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be unfriendly,” he said. The arm Rosa was not holding bent, and so did the fist on the end of it. Rinaldo gave it a look as if he welcomed it, and swaggered a step nearer.

“Please!” Rosa said uselessly.

Benvenuto moved in Tonino’s arms. Into Tonino’s head came a picture of a large stripy tomcat swaggering on the Casa roof – Benvenuto’s roof. Tonino nearly laughed. Benvenuto’s muscular back legs pushed him backwards into Paolo as Benvenuto took off. Benvenuto landed between Rinaldo and Marco. There was a gentle “Ah!” from the rest of the family. They knew Benvenuto would settle it.

Benvenuto deliberately ignored Rinaldo. Arching himself tall, with his tail straight up like a cypress tree, he minced to Marco’s legs and rubbed himself round them. Marco undoubled his fist and bent to hold his hand out to Benvenuto. “Hallo,” he said. “What’s your name?” He paused, for Benvenuto to tell him. “I’m pleased to meet you, Benvenuto,” he said.

The “Ah!” from the family was loud and long this time. It was followed by cries of, “Get out of it, Rinaldo! Don’t make a fool of yourself! Leave Marco alone!”

Though Rinaldo was nothing like as easily crushed as Domenico, even he could not stand up to the whole family. When he looked at Old Niccolo and saw Old Niccolo waving him angrily aside, he gave up and shoved his way out of the room.

“Rosa and Marco,” said Antonio, “I give my provisional consent to your marriage.”

Upon that, everyone hugged everyone else, shook hands with Marco and kissed Rosa. Very flushed and happy, Marco plucked pear after pear from the golden tree and gave them to everyone, even the newest baby. They were delicious pears, ripe to perfection. They melted in mouths and dribbled down chins.

“I don’t want to be a spoilsport,” Aunt Maria said, slurping juice in Paolo’s ear, “but a tree in the Saloon is going to be a nuisance.”

But Marco had thought of that. As soon as the last pear was picked, the tree began to fade. Soon it was a clattering golden glitter, a vanishing shadow-tree, and then it was not there at all. Everyone applauded. Aunt Gina and Aunt Anna fetched bottles of wine and glasses, and the Casa drank to the health of Rosa and Marco.

“Thank goodness!” Tonino heard Elizabeth say. “I was so nervous for her!”

On the other side of Elizabeth, Old Niccolo was telling Uncle Lorenzo that Marco was a real acquisition, because he could understand cats. Tonino felt a little wistful at this. He went outside into the chilly yard. As he had expected, Benvenuto was now curled up in the sunny patch on the gallery steps. He undulated his tail in annoyance at Tonino. He had just settled down for a sleep.

But Marco could not understand cats, Benvenuto said irritably. He knew Benvenuto’s name, because Rosa had told him, but he had no idea what Benvenuto had actually said to him. Benvenuto had told him that he and Rinaldo would get thoroughly scratched if they started a fight in the Casa – neither of them was boss cat here. Now, if Tonino would go away, a cat could get some sleep.

This was a great relief to Tonino. He now felt free to like Marco as much as Paolo did. Marco was fun. He was never in the Casa for very long, because he and his brother were building a villa out beyond the New Bridge, but he was one of the few people Tonino laid down his book to talk to. And that, Lucia told Rosa, was a compliment indeed.

Rosa and Marco were to be married in the spring. They laughed about it constantly as they swept in and out of the Casa together. Antonio and Uncle Lorenzo walked out to the villa where Mario Andretti lived, and arranged it all. Mario Andretti came to the Casa to settle the details. He was a large fat man – who drove a shrewd bargain, Aunt Francesca said – and quite different from Marco. The most notable thing about him was the long white motor car he came in.

Old Niccolo looked at that car reflectively. “It smells,” he said. “But it looks more reliable than a cardboard horse.” He sighed. He still felt deeply humiliated. All the same, after Mario Andretti had driven away, Tonino was very interested to be sent out to the post with two letters. One was addressed to Ferrari, the other to Rolls-Royce in England.

In the normal way, the talk in the Casa would have been all about that car and those two letters. But they passed unnoticed in the anxious murmurs about Florence, Siena and Pisa. The only topic able to drown out the talk of war was Rosa’s wedding dress. Should it be long or short? With a train, or not? And what kind of veil? Rosa was quite as independent about that as she had been over Marco.

“I suppose I have no say in it at all,” she said. “I shall have it knee-length one side and a train ten feet long on the other, I think. And no veil. Just a black mask.”

This thoroughly offended Aunt Maria and Aunt Gina, who were the chief arguers. What with the noise they made, and the twanging the other side of the room, where Antonio had roped Marco in to help find the words to the Angel, Tonino was unable to concentrate on his book. He took it along the gallery to the library, hoping for peace there.

But Rinaldo was leaning on the gallery rail outside the library, looking remarkably sinister, and he stopped Tonino. “That Marco,” he said. “I wish I could remember where I saw him. I’ve seen him in the Art Gallery with Rosa, but it wasn’t there. I know it was somewhere much more damaging than that.”

Tonino had no doubt that Rinaldo knew all sorts of damaging places. He took his book into the library, hoping that Rinaldo would not remember the place, and settled down in the chilly mustiness to read.

The next moment, Benvenuto landed on his book with a thump.

“Oh get off!” said Tonino. “I start school tomorrow, and I want to finish this first.”

No, said Benvenuto. Tonino was to go to Old Niccolo at once. A flurry of scrips, spells, yellow parchment rolls and then a row of huge red books passed behind Tonino’s eyes. It was followed by a storm of enormous images. Giants were running, banging, smoking and burning, and they all wore red and gold. But not yet. They were preparing to fight, marching in great huge boots. Benvenuto was so urgent that it took all Tonino’s skill to sort out what he meant.

“All right,” said Tonino. “I’ll tell him.” He got up and pelted round the gallery, past Rinaldo, who said, “What’s the hurry?” to Old Niccolo’s quarters. Old Niccolo was just coming out.

“Please,” said Tonino, “Benvenuto says to get out the war-spells. The Duke is calling up the Reserves.”

Old Niccolo stood so very quiet and wide-eyed that Tonino thought he did not believe it. Old Niccolo was feeling for the door-frame. He seemed to think it was missing.

“You did hear me, did you?” Tonino asked.

“Yes,” said Old Niccolo. “Yes, I heard. It’s just so soon – so sudden. I wish the Duke had warned us. So war is coming. Pray God our strength is still enough.”

Benvenuto’s news caused a stampede in the Casa Montana. The older cousins raced to the Scriptorium and began packing away all the usual spells, inks and pens. The aunts fetched out the special inks for use in war-spells. The uncles staggered under reams of fresh paper and parchment. Antonio, Old Niccolo and Rinaldo went to the library and fetched the giant red volumes, with WAR stamped on their spines, while Elizabeth raced to the music room with all the children to put away the ordinary music and set out the tunes and instruments of war.

Meanwhile, Rosa, Marco and Domenico raced out into the Via Magica and came back with newspapers. Everyone at once left what they were doing and crowded into the dining room to see what the papers said.

They made a pile of people, all craning over the table. Rinaldo was standing on a chair, leaning over three aunts. Marco was underneath, craning anxiously sideways, head to head with Old Niccolo, as Rosa flipped over the pages. There were so many other people packed in and leaning over that Lucia, Paolo and Tonino were forced to squat with their chins on the table, in order to see at all.

“No, nothing,” Rosa said, flipping over the second paper.

“Wait,” said Marco. “Look at the Stop Press.”

Everyone swayed towards it, pushing Marco further sideways. Then Tonino almost knew where he had seen Marco before.

“There it is,” said Antonio.

All the bodies came upright, with their faces very serious.

“Reserve mobilised, right enough,” said Rosa. “Oh, Marco!”

“What’s the matter?” Rinaldo asked jeeringly from his chair. “Is Marco a Reservist?”

“No,” said Marco. “My – my brother got me out of it.”

Rinaldo laughed. “What a patriot!”

Marco looked up at him. “I’m a Final Reservist,” he said, “and I hope you are too. If you aren’t, it will be a pleasure to take you round to the Army Office in the Arsenal this moment.”

The two glared at one another. Once again there were shouts to Rinaldo to stop making a fool of himself. Sulkily, Rinaldo climbed down and stalked out.

“Rinaldo is a Final Reservist,” Paolo assured Marco.

“I thought he must be,” Marco said. “Look, I must go. I – I must tell my brother. Rosa, I’ll see you tomorrow if I can.”

When Tonino fell asleep that night, the room next door to him was full of people talking of war and the Angel of Caprona, with occasional digressions about Rosa’s wedding dress. Tonino’s head was so full of these things that he was quite surprised, when he went to school, not to hear them talked of there. But no one seemed to have noticed there might be a war. True, some of the teachers looked grave, but that might have been just their natural feelings at the start of a new term.

Consequently, Tonino came home that afternoon thinking that maybe things were not so bad after all. As usual, Benvenuto leapt off the water butt and sprang into his arms. Tonino was rubbing his face against Benvenuto’s nearest ragged ear, when he heard a carriage draw up behind him. Benvenuto promptly squirmed out of Tonino’s arms. Tonino, very surprised, looked round to find him trotting, gently and politely, with his tail well up, towards a tall man who was just coming in through the Casa gate.

Benvenuto stood, his brush of tail waving slightly at the tip, his hind legs canted slightly apart under his fluffy drawers, staring gravely at the tall man. Tonino thought peevishly that, from behind, Benvenuto often looked pretty silly. The man looked almost as bad. He was wearing an exceedingly expensive coat with a fur collar and a tweed travelling cap with daft earflaps. And he bowed to Benvenuto.

“Good afternoon, Benvenuto,” he said, as grave as Benvenuto himself. “I’m glad to see you so well. Yes, I’m very well thank you.”

Benvenuto advanced to rub himself round the stranger’s legs.

“No,” said the man. “I beg you. Your hairs come off.”

And Benvenuto stopped, without abating an ounce of his uncommon politeness.

By this time, Tonino was extremely resentful. This was the first time for years that Benvenuto had behaved as if anyone mattered more than Tonino. He raised his eyes accusingly to the stranger’s. He met eyes even darker than his own, which seemed to spill brilliance over the rest of the man’s smooth dark face. They gave Tonino a jolt, worse than the time the horses turned back to cardboard. He knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he was looking at a powerful enchanter.

“How do you do?” said the man. “No, despite your accusing glare, young man, I have never been able to understand cats – or not more than in the most general way. I wonder if you would be kind enough to translate for me what Benvenuto is saying.”

Tonino listened to Benvenuto. “He says he’s very pleased to see you again and welcome to the Casa Montana, sir.” The sir was from Benvenuto, not Tonino. Tonino was not sure he cared for strange enchanters who walked into the Casa and took up Benvenuto’s attention.

“Thank you, Benvenuto,” said the enchanter. “I’m very pleased to be back. Though, frankly, I’ve seldom had such a difficult journey. Did you know your borders with Florence and Pisa were closed?” he asked Tonino. “I had to come in by sea from Genoa in the end.”

“Did you?” Tonino said, wondering if the man thought it was his fault. “Where did you come from then?”

“Oh, England,” said the man.

Tonino warmed to that. This then could not be the enchanter the Duke had talked about. Or could he? Tonino was not sure how far away enchanters could work from.

“Makes you feel better?” asked the man.

“Mother’s English,” Tonino admitted, feeling he was giving altogether too much away.

“Ah!” said the enchanter. “Now I know who you are. You’re Antonio the Younger, aren’t you? You were a baby when I saw you last, Tonino.”

Since there is no reply to that kind of remark, Tonino was glad to see Old Niccolo hastening across the yard, followed by Aunt Francesca and Uncle Lorenzo, with Antonio and several more of the family hurrying behind them. They closed round the enchanter, leaving Tonino and Benvenuto beyond, by the gate.

“Yes, I’ve just come from the Casa Petrocchi,” Tonino heard the stranger say. To his surprise, everyone accepted it, as if it were the most natural thing for the stranger to have done – as natural as the way he took off his ridiculous English hat to Aunt Francesca.

“But you’ll stay the night with us,” said Aunt Francesca.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” the stranger said.

In the distance, as if they already knew – as they unquestionably did in a place like the Casa Montana – Aunt Maria and Aunt Anna went clambering up the gallery steps to prepare the guest room above. Aunt Gina emerged from the kitchen, held her hands up to Heaven, and dashed indoors again. Thoughtfully, Tonino gathered up Benvenuto and asked exactly who this stranger was.

Chrestomanci, of course, he was told. The most powerful enchanter in the world.

“Is he the one who’s spoiling our spells?” Tonino asked suspiciously.

Chrestomanci, he was told – impatiently, because Benvenuto evidently thought Tonino was being very stupid – is always on our side.

Tonino looked at the stranger again – or rather, at his smooth dark head sticking out from among the shorter Montanas – and understood that Chrestomanci’s coming meant there was a crisis indeed.

The stranger must have said something about him. Tonino found them all looking at him, his family smiling lovingly. He smiled back shyly.

“Oh, he’s a good boy,” said Aunt Francesca.

Then they all surged, talking, across the yard. “What makes it particularly difficult,” Tonino heard Chrestomanci saying, “is that I am, first and foremost, an employee of the British Government. And Britain is keeping out of Italian affairs. But luckily I have a fairly wide brief.”

Almost at once, Aunt Gina shot out of the kitchen again. She had cancelled the ordinary supper and started on a new one in honour of Chrestomanci. Six people were sent out at once for cakes and fruit, and two more for lettuce and cheese. Paolo, Corinna and Lucia were caught as they came in chatting from school and told to go at once to the butcher’s. But, at this point, Rinaldo erupted furiously from the Scriptorium.

“What do you mean, sending all the kids off like this!” he bawled from the gallery. “We’re up to our ears in war-spells here. I need copiers!”

Aunt Gina put her hands on her hips and bawled back at him. “And I need steak! Don’t you stand up there cheeking me, Rinaldo Montana! English people always eat steak, so steak I must have!”

“Then cut pieces off the cats!” screamed Rinaldo. “I need Corinna and Lucia up here!”

“I tell you they are going to run after me for once!” yelled Aunt Gina.

“Dear me,” said Chrestomanci, wandering into the yard. “What a very Italian scene! Can I help in any way?” He nodded and smiled from Aunt Gina to Rinaldo. Both of them smiled back, Rinaldo at his most charming.

“You would agree I need copiers, sir, wouldn’t you?” he said.

“Bah!” said Aunt Gina. “Rinaldo turns on the charm and I get left to struggle alone! As usual! All right. Because it’s war-spells, Paolo and Tonino can go for the steak. But wait while I write you a note, or you’ll come back with something no one can chew.”

“So glad to be of service,” Chrestomanci murmured, and turned away to greet Elizabeth, who came racing down from the gallery waving a sheaf of music and fell into his arms. The heads of the five little cousins Elizabeth had been teaching stared wonderingly over the gallery rail. “Elizabeth!” said Chrestomanci. “Looking younger than ever!” Tonino stared as wonderingly as his cousins. His mother was laughing and crying at once. He could not follow the torrent of English speech. “Virtue,” he heard, and “war” and, before long, the inevitable “Angel of Caprona”. He was still staring when Aunt Gina stuck her note into his hand and told him to make haste.

As they hurried to the butcher’s, Tonino said to Paolo, “I didn’t know Mother knew anyone like Chrestomanci.”

“Neither did I,” Paolo confessed. He was only a year older than Tonino, after all, and it seemed that Chrestomanci had last been in Caprona a very long time ago. “Perhaps he’s come to find the words to the Angel,” Paolo suggested. “I hope so. I don’t want Rinaldo to have to go away and fight.”

“Or Marco,” Tonino agreed. “Or Carlo or Luigi or even Domenico.”

Because of Aunt Gina’s note, the butcher treated them with great respect. “Tell her this is the last good steak she’ll see, if war is declared,” he said, and he passed them each a heavy, squashy pink armload.

They arrived back with their armfuls just as a cab set down Uncle Umberto, puffing and panting, outside the Casa gate. “I am right, Chrestomanci is here? Eh, Paolo?” Uncle Umberto asked Tonino.

Both boys nodded. It seemed easier than explaining that Paolo was Tonino.

“Good, good!” exclaimed Uncle Umberto and surged into the Casa, where he found Chrestomanci just crossing the yard. “The Angel of Caprona,” Uncle Umberto said to him eagerly. “Could you—?”

“My dear Umberto,” said Chrestomanci, shaking his hand warmly, “everyone here is asking me that. For that matter, so was everyone in the Casa Petrocchi too. And I’m afraid I know no more than you do. But I shall think about it, don’t worry.”

“If you could find just a line, to get us started,” Uncle Umberto said pleadingly.

“I will do my best!” Chrestomanci was saying, when, with a great clattering of heels, Rosa shot past. From the look on her face, she had seen Marco arriving. “I promise you that,” Chrestomanci said, as his head turned to see what Rosa was running for.

Marco came through the gate and stopped so dead, staring at Chrestomanci, that Rosa charged into him and nearly knocked him over. Marco staggered a bit, put his arms round Rosa, and went on staring at Chrestomanci. Tonino found himself holding his breath. Rinaldo was right. There was something about Marco. Chrestomanci knew it, and Marco knew he knew. From the look on Marco’s face, he expected Chrestomanci to say what it was.

Chrestomanci indeed opened his mouth to say something, but he shut it again and pursed his lips in a sort of whistle instead. Marco looked at him uncertainly.

“Oh,” said Uncle Umberto, “may I introduce—” He stopped and thought. Rosa he usually remembered, because of her fair hair, but he could not place Marco. “Corinna’s fiancé,” he suggested.

“I’m Rosa,” said Rosa. “This is Marco Andretti.”

“How do you do?” Chrestomanci said politely. Marco seemed to relax. Chrestomanci’s eyes turned to Paolo and Tonino, standing staring. “Good heavens!” he said. “Everyone here seems to live such exciting lives. What have you boys killed?”

Paolo and Tonino looked down in consternation, to find that the steak was leaking on to their shoes. Two or three cats were approaching meaningly.

Aunt Gina appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Where’s my steak?”

Paolo and Tonino sped towards her, leaving a pattering trail. “What was all that about?” Paolo panted to Tonino.

“I don’t know,” said Tonino, because he didn’t, and because he liked Marco.

Aunt Gina shortly became very sharp and passionate about the steak. The leaking trail attracted every cat in the Casa. They were underfoot in the kitchen all evening, mewing pitifully. Benvenuto was also present, at a wary distance from Aunt Gina, and he made good use of his time. Aunt Gina erupted into the yard again, trumpeting.

“Tonino! Ton-in-ooh!”

Tonino laid down his book and hurried outside. “Yes, Aunt Gina?”

“That cat of yours has stolen a whole pound of steak!” Aunt Gina trumpeted, flinging a dramatic arm skyward.

Tonino looked, and there, sure enough, Benvenuto was, crouched on the pantiles of the roof, with one paw holding down quite a large lump of meat. “Oh dear,” he said. “I don’t think I can make him give it back, Aunt Gina.”

“I don’t want it back. Look where it’s been!” screamed Aunt Gina. “Tell him from me that I shall wring his evil neck if he comes near me again!”

“My goodness, you do seem to be at the centre of everything,” Chrestomanci remarked, appearing beside Tonino in the yard. “Are you always in such demand?”

“I shall have hysterics,” declared Aunt Gina. “And no one will get any supper.”

Elizabeth and Aunt Maria and Cousins Claudia and Teresa immediately came to her assistance and led her tenderly back indoors.

“Thank the Lord!” said Chrestomanci. “I’m not sure I could stand hysterics and starvation at once. How did you know I was an enchanter, Tonino? From Benvenuto?”

“No. I just knew when I looked at you,” said Tonino.

“I see,” said Chrestomanci. “This is interesting. Most people find it impossible to tell. It makes me wonder if Old Niccolo is right, when he talks of the virtue leaving your house. Would you be able to tell another enchanter when you looked at him, do you think?”

Tonino screwed up his face and wondered. “I might. It’s the eyes. You mean, would I know the enchanter who’s spoiling our spells?”

“I think I mean that,” said Chrestomanci. “I’m beginning to believe there is someone. I’m sure, at least, that the spells on the Old Bridge were deliberately broken. Would it interfere with your plans too much, if I asked your grandfather to take you with him whenever he has to meet strangers?”

“I haven’t got any plans,” said Tonino. Then he thought, and he laughed. “I think you make jokes all the time.”

“I aim to please,” Chrestomanci said.

However, when Tonino next saw Chrestomanci, it was at supper – which was magnificent, despite Benvenuto and the hysterics – and Chrestomanci was very serious indeed. “My dear Niccolo,” he said, “my mission has to concern the misuse of magic, not the balance of power in Italy. There would be no end of trouble if I was caught trying to stop a war.”

Old Niccolo had his look of a baby about to cry. Aunt Francesca said, “We’re not asking this personally—”

“But, my dear,” said Chrestomanci, “don’t you see that I can only do something like this as a personal matter? Please ask me personally. I shan’t let the strict terms of my mission interfere with what I owe my friends.” He smiled then, and his eyes swept round everyone gathered at the great table, very affectionately. He did not seem to exclude Marco. “So,” he said, “I think my best plan for the moment is to go on to Rome. I know certain quarters there, where I can get impartial information, which should enable me to pin down this enchanter. At the moment, all we know is that he exists. If I’m lucky, I can prove whether Florence, or Siena, or Pisa is paying him – in which case, they and he can be indicted at the Court of Europe. And if, while I’m at it, I can get Rome, or Naples, to move on Caprona’s behalf, be very sure I shall do it.”

“Thank you,” said Old Niccolo.

For the rest of supper, they discussed how Chrestomanci could best get to Rome. He would have to go by sea. It seemed that the last stretch of border, between Caprona and Siena, was now closed.

Much later that night, when Paolo and Tonino were on their way to bed, they saw lights in the Scriptorium. They tiptoed along to investigate. Chrestomanci was there with Antonio, Rinaldo and Aunt Francesca, going through spells in the big red books. Everyone was speaking in mutters, but they heard Chrestomanci say, “This is a sound combination, but it’ll need new words.” And on another page, “Get Elizabeth to put this in English, as a surprise factor.” And again, “Ignore the tune. The only tune which is going to be any use to you at the moment is the Angel. He can’t block that.”

“Why just those three?” Tonino whispered.

“They’re best at making new spells,” Paolo whispered back. “We need new war-spells. It sounds as if the other enchanter knows the old ones.”

They crept to bed with an excited, urgent feeling, and neither of them found it easy to sleep.

Chrestomanci left the next morning before the children went to school. Benvenuto and Old Niccolo escorted him to the gate, one on either side, and the entire Casa gathered to wave him off. Things felt both flat and worrying once he was gone. That day, there was a great deal of talk of war at school. The teachers whispered together. Two had left, to join the Reserves. Rumours went round the classes. Someone told Tonino that war would be declared next Sunday, so that it would be a Holy War. Someone else told Paolo that all the Reserves had been issued with two left boots, so that they would not be able to fight. There was no truth in these things. It was just that everyone now knew that war was coming.

The boys hurried home, anxious for some real news. As usual, Benvenuto leapt off his water butt. While Tonino was enjoying Benvenuto’s undivided attention again, Elizabeth called from the gallery, “Tonino! Someone’s sent you a parcel.”

Tonino and Benvenuto sprang for the gallery stairs, highly excited. Tonino had never had a parcel before. But before he got anywhere near it, he was seized on by Aunt Maria, Rosa and Uncle Lorenzo. They seized on all the children who could write and hurried them to the dining room. This had been set up as another Scriptorium. By each chair was a special pen, a bottle of red war-ink and a pile of strips of paper. There the children were kept busy fully two hours, copying the same war-charm, again and again. Tonino had never been so frustrated in his life. He did not even know what shape his parcel was. He was not the only one to feel frustrated.

“Oh, why?” complained Lucia, Paolo and young Cousin Lena.

“I know,” said Aunt Maria. “Like school again. Start writing.”

“It’s exploiting children, that’s what we’re doing,” Rosa said cheerfully. “There are probably laws against it, so do complain.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” said Lucia. “I am doing.”

“As long as you write while you grumble,” said Rosa.

“It’s a new spell-scrip for the Army,” Uncle Lorenzo explained. “It’s very urgent.”

“It’s hard. It’s all new words,” Paolo grumbled.

“Your father made it last night,” said Aunt Maria. “Get writing. We’ll be watching for mistakes.”

When finally, stiff-necked and with red splodges on their fingers, they were let out into the yard, Tonino discovered that he had barely time to unwrap the parcel before supper. Supper was early that night, so that the elder Montanas could put in another shift on the army-spells before bedtime.

“It’s worse than working on the Old Bridge,” said Lucia. “What’s that, Tonino? Who sent it?”

The parcel was promisingly book-shaped. It bore the stamp and the arms of the University of Caprona. This was the only indication Tonino had that Uncle Umberto had sent it, for, when he wrenched off the thick brown paper, there was no letter, not even a card. There was only a new shiny book. Tonino’s face beamed. At least Uncle Umberto knew this much about him. He turned the book lovingly over. It was called The Boy Who Saved His Country, and the cover was the same shiny, pimpled red leather as the great volumes of war-spells.

“Is Uncle Umberto trying to give you a hint, or something?” Paolo asked, amused. He and Lucia and Corinna leant over Tonino while he flipped through the pages. There were pictures, to Tonino’s delight. Soldiers rode horses, soldiers rode machines; a boy hung from a rope and scrambled up the frowning wall of a fortress; and, most exciting of all, a boy stood on a rock with a flag, confronting a whole troop of ferocious-looking dragoons. Sighing with anticipation, Tonino turned to Chapter One: How Giorgio Uncovered an Enemy Plot.

“Supper!” howled Aunt Gina from the yard. “Oh I shall go mad! Nobody attends to me!”

Tonino was forced to shut the lovely book again and hurry down to the dining room. He watched Aunt Gina anxiously as she doled out minestrone. She looked so hectic that he was convinced Benvenuto must have been at work in the kitchen again.

“It’s all right,” Rosa said. “It’s just she thought she’d got a line from the Angel of Caprona. Then the soup boiled over and she forgot it again.”

Aunt Gina was distinctly tearful. “With so much to do, my memory is like a sieve,” she kept saying. “Now I’ve let you all down.”

“Of course you haven’t, Gina my dear,” said Old Niccolo. “This is nothing to worry about. It will come back to you.”

“But I can’t even remember what language it was in!” wailed Aunt Gina.

Everyone tried to console her. They sprinkled grated cheese on their soup and slurped it with special relish, to show Aunt Gina how much they appreciated her, but Aunt Gina continued to sniff and accuse herself. Then Rinaldo thought of pointing out that she had got further than anyone else in the Casa Montana. “None of the rest of us has any of the Angel of Caprona to forget,” he said, giving Aunt Gina his best smile.

“Bah!” said Aunt Gina. “Turning on the charm, Rinaldo Montana!” But she seemed a good deal more cheerful after that.

Tonino was glad Benvenuto had nothing to do with it this time. He looked round for Benvenuto. Benvenuto usually took up a good position for stealing scraps, near the serving table. But tonight he was nowhere to be seen. Nor, for that matter, was Marco.

“Where’s Marco?” Paolo asked Rosa.

Rosa smiled. She seemed quite cheerful about it. “He has to help his brother,” she said, “with fortifications.”

That brought home to Paolo and Tonino the fact that there was going to be a war. They looked at one another nervously. Neither of them was quite sure whether you behaved in the usual way in wartime, or not. Tonino’s mind shot to his beautiful new book, The Boy Who Saved His Country. He slurped the title through his mind, just as he was slurping his soup. Had Uncle Umberto meant to say to him, find the words to the Angel of Caprona and save your country, Tonino? It would indeed be the most marvellous thing if he, Tonino Montana, could find the words and save his country. He could hardly wait to see how the boy in the book had done it.

As soon as supper was over, he sprang up, ready to dash off and start reading. And once again he was prevented. This time it was because the children were told to wash up supper. Tonino groaned. And, again, he was not the only one.

“It isn’t fair!” Corinna said passionately. “We slave all afternoon at spells, and we slave all evening at washing-up! I know there’s going to be a war, but I still have to do my exams. How am I ever going to do my homework?” The way she flung out an impassioned arm made Paolo and Tonino think that Aunt Gina’s manner must be catching.

Rather unexpectedly, Lucia sympathised with Corinna. “I think you’re too old to be one of us children,” she said. “Why don’t you go away and do your homework and let me organise the kids?”

Corinna looked at her uncertainly. “What about your homework?”

“I’ve not got much. I’m not aiming for the University like you,” Lucia said kindly. “Run along.” And she pushed Corinna out of the dining room. As soon as the door was shut, she turned briskly to the other children. “Come on. What are you lot standing gooping for? Everyone take a pile of plates to the kitchen. Quick march, Tonino. Move, Lena and Bernardo. Paolo, you take the big bowls.”

With Lucia standing over them like a sergeant major, Tonino had no chance to slip away. He trudged to the kitchen with everyone else, where, to his surprise, Lucia ordered everyone to lay the plates and cutlery out in rows on the floor. Then she made them stand in a row themselves, facing the rows of greasy dishes.

Lucia was very pleased with herself. “Now,” she said, “this is something I’ve always wanted to try. This is washing-up-made-easy, by Lucia Montana’s patent method. I’ll tell you the words. They go to the Angel of Caprona. And you’re all to sing after me—”

“Are you sure we should?” asked Lena, who was a very law-abiding cousin.

Lucia gave her a look of scalding contempt. “If some people,” she remarked to the whitewashed beams of the ceiling, “don’t know true intelligence when they see it, they are quite at liberty to go and live with the Petrocchis.”

“I only asked,” Lena said, crushed.

“Well, don’t,” said Lucia. “This is the spell…”

Shortly, they were all singing lustily:

“Angel, clean our knives and dishes,

Clean our spoons and salad-bowls,

Wash our saucepans, hear our wishes,

Angel, make our forks quite clean.”

At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then it became clear that the orange grease was certainly slowly clearing from the plates. Then the lengths of spaghetti stuck to the bottom of the largest saucepan started unwinding and wriggling like worms. Up over the edge of the saucepan they wriggled, and over the stone floor, to ooze themselves into the waste-cans. The orange grease and the salad oil travelled after them, in rivulets. And the singing faltered a little, as people broke off to laugh.

“Sing, sing!” shouted Lucia. So they sang.

Unfortunately for Lucia, the noise penetrated to the Scriptorium. The plates were still pale pink and rather greasy, and the last of the spaghetti was still wriggling across the floor, when Elizabeth and Aunt Maria burst into the kitchen.

“Lucia!” said Elizabeth.

“You irreligious brats!” said Aunt Maria.

“I don’t see what’s so wrong,” said Lucia.

“She doesn’t see – Elizabeth, words fail!” said Aunt Maria. “How can I have taught her so little and so badly? Lucia, a spell is not instead of a thing. It is only to help that thing. And on top of that, you go and use the Angel of Caprona, as if it was any old tune, and not the most powerful song in all Italy! I – I could box your ears, Lucia!”

“So could I,” said Elizabeth. “Don’t you understand we need all our virtue – the whole combined strength of the Casa Montana – to put into the war-charms? And here you go frittering it away in the kitchen!”

“Put those plates in the sink, Paolo,” ordered Aunt Maria. “Tonino, pick up those saucepans. The rest of you pick up the cutlery. And now you’ll wash them properly.”

Very chastened, everyone obeyed. Lucia was angry as well as chastened. When Lena whispered, “I told you so!” Lucia broke a plate and jumped on the pieces.

“Lucia!” snapped Aunt Maria, glaring at her. It was the first time any of the children had seen her look likely to slap someone.

“Well, how was I to know?” Lucia stormed. “Nobody ever explained – nobody told me spells were like that!”

“Yes, but you knew perfectly well you were doing something you shouldn’t,” Elizabeth told her, “even if you didn’t know why. The rest of you, stop sniggering. Lena, you can learn from this too.”

All through doing the washing-up properly – which took nearly an hour – Tonino was saying to himself, “And then I can read my book at last.”

When it was finally done, he sped out into the yard. And there was Old Niccolo hurrying down the steps to meet him in the dark.

“Tonino, may I have Benvenuto for a while, please?”

But Benvenuto was still not to be found. Tonino began to think he would die of book-frustration. All the children joined in hunting and calling, but there was still no Benvenuto. Soon, most of the grown-ups were looking for him too, and still Benvenuto did not appear. Antonio was so exasperated that he seized Tonino’s arm and shook him.

“It’s too bad, Tonino! You must have known we’d need Benvenuto. Why did you let him go?”

“I didn’t! You know what Benvenuto’s like!” Tonino protested, equally exasperated.

“Now, now, now,” said Old Niccolo, taking each of them by a shoulder. “It is quite plain by now that Benvenuto is on the other side of town, making vile noises on a roof somewhere. All we can do is hope someone empties a jug of water on him soon. It’s not Tonino’s fault, Antonio.”

Antonio let go Tonino’s arm and rubbed both hands on his face. He looked very tired. “I’m sorry, Tonino,” he said. “Forgive me. Let us know as soon as Benvenuto comes back, won’t you?”

He and Old Niccolo hurried back to the Scriptorium. As they passed under the light, their faces were stiff with worry. “I don’t think I like war, Tonino,” Paolo said. “Let’s go and play table-tennis in the dining room.”

“I’m going to read my book,” Tonino said firmly. He thought he would get like Aunt Gina if anything else happened to stop him.

Tonino read half the night. With all the grown-ups hard at work in the Scriptorium, there was no one to tell him to go to bed. Corinna tried, when she had finished her homework, but Tonino was too deep in the book even to hear her. And Corinna went respectfully away, thinking that, as the book had come from Uncle Umberto, it was probably very learned.

It was not in the least learned. It was the most gripping story Tonino had ever read. It started with the boy, Giorgio, going along a mysterious alleyway near the docks on his way home from school. There was a peeling blue house at the end of the alley and, just as Giorgio passed it, a scrap of paper fluttered from one of its windows. It contained a mysterious message, which led Giorgio at once into a set of adventures with the enemies of his country. Each one was more exciting than the last.

Well after midnight, when Giorgio was holding a pass single-handed against the enemy, Tonino happened to hear his father and mother coming to bed. He was forced to leave Giorgio lying wounded and dive into bed himself. All night he dreamt of notes fluttering from the windows of peeling blue houses, of Giorgio – who was sometimes Tonino himself and sometimes Paolo – and of villainous enemies – most of whom seemed to have red beards and black hair, like Guido Petrocchi – and, as the sun rose, he was too excited to stay asleep. He woke up and went on reading.

When the rest of the Casa Montana began to stir, Tonino had finished the book. Giorgio had saved his country. Tonino was quivering with excitement and exhaustion. He wished the book was twice as long. If it had not been time to get up, he would have gone straight back to the beginning and started reading the book again.

And the beauty of it, he thought, eating breakfast without noticing, was that Giorgio had saved his country, not only single-handed, but without a spell coming into it anywhere. If Tonino was going to save Caprona, that was the way he would like to do it.

Around Tonino, everyone else was complaining and Lucia was sulking. The washing-up spell was still about in the kitchen. Every cup and plate was covered with a thin layer of orange spaghetti grease, and the butter tasted of soap.

“What did she use, in Heaven’s name?” groaned Uncle Lorenzo. “This coffee tastes of tomato.”

“Her own words to the Angel of Caprona,” Aunt Maria said, and shuddered as she picked up her greasy cup.

“Lucia, you fool!” said Rinaldo. “That’s the strongest tune there is.”

“All right, all right. Stop going on at me. I’m sorry!” Lucia said angrily.

“So are the rest of us, unfortunately,” sighed Uncle Lorenzo.

If only I could be like Giorgio, Tonino thought, as he got up from the table. I suppose what I should have to do is to find the words to the Angel. He went to school without seeing anything on the way, wondering how he could manage to do that, when the rest of his family had failed. He was realistic enough to know that he was simply not good enough at spells to make up the words in the ordinary way. It made him sigh heavily.

“Cheer up,” said Paolo, as they went into school.

“I’m all right,” Tonino said. He was surprised Paolo should think he was miserable. He was not miserable at all. He was wrapped in delightful dreams. Maybe I can do it by accident, he thought.

He sat in class composing strings of gibberish to the tune of the Angel, in hopes that some of it might be right. But that did not seem satisfactory, somehow. Then, in a lesson that was probably History – for he did not hear a word of it – it struck him, like a blinding light, what he had to do. He had to find the words, of course. The First Duke must have had them written down somewhere and lost the paper. Tonino was the boy whose mission it was to discover that lost paper. No nonsense about making up words, just straight detective work. And Tonino was positive that the book had been a clue. He must find a peeling blue house, and the paper with the words on would be somewhere near.

“Tonino,” asked the teacher, for the fourth time, “where did Marco Polo journey to?”

Tonino did not hear the question, but he realised he was being asked something. “The Angel of Caprona,” he said.

Nobody at school got much sense out of Tonino that day. He was full of the wonder of his discovery. It did not occur to him that Uncle Umberto had looked in every piece of writing in the University Library and not found the words to the Angel. Tonino knew.

After school, he avoided Paolo and his cousins. As soon as they were safely headed for the Casa Montana, Tonino set off in the opposite direction, towards the docks and quays by the New Bridge.

An hour later, Rosa said to Paolo, “What’s the matter with Benvenuto? Look at him.”

Paolo leant over the gallery rail beside her. Benvenuto, looking surprisingly small and piteous, was running backwards and forwards just inside the gate, mewing frantically. Every so often, as if he was too distracted to know what he was doing, he sat down, shot out a hind leg, and licked it madly. Then he leapt up and ran about again.

Paolo had never seen Benvenuto behave like this. He called out, “Benvenuto, what’s the matter?”

Benvenuto swung round, crouching low on the ground, and stared urgently up at him. His eyes were like two yellow beacons of distress. He gave a string of mews, so penetrating and so demanding that Paolo felt his stomach turn uneasily.

“What is it, Benvenuto?” called Rosa.

Benvenuto’s tail flapped in exasperation. He gave a great leap and vanished somewhere out of sight. Rosa and Paolo hung by their midriffs over the rail and craned after him. Benvenuto was now standing on the water butt, with his tail slashing. As soon as he knew they could see him, he stared fixedly at them again and uttered a truly appalling noise.

Wong wong wong wong-wong-wong!

Paolo and Rosa, without more ado, swung towards the stairs and clattered down them. Benvenuto’s wails had already attracted all the other cats in the Casa. They were running across the yard and dropping from roofs before Paolo and Rosa were halfway down the stairs. They were forced to step carefully to the water butt among smooth furry bodies and staring, anxious green or yellow eyes.

“Mee-ow-ow!” Benvenuto said peremptorily, when they reached him.

He was thinner and browner than Paolo had ever seen him. There was a new rent in his left ear, and his coat was in ragged spikes. He looked truly wretched. “Mee-ow-ow!” he reiterated, from a wide pink mouth.

“Something’s wrong,” Paolo said uneasily. “He’s trying to say something.” Guiltily, he wished he had kept his resolution to learn to understand Benvenuto. But when Tonino could do it so easily, it had never been worth the bother. Now here was Benvenuto with an urgent message – perhaps word from Chrestomanci – and he could not understand it. “We’d better get Tonino,” he said.

Benvenuto’s tail slashed again. “Mee-ow-ow!” he said, with tremendous force and meaning. Around Paolo and Rosa, the pink mouths of all the other cats opened too. “MEE-OW-OW!” It was deafening. Paolo stared helplessly.

It was Rosa who tumbled to their meaning. “Tonino!” she exclaimed. “They’re saying Tonino! Paolo, where’s Tonino?”

With a jolt of worry, Paolo realised he had not seen Tonino since breakfast. And as soon as he realised that, Rosa knew it too. And, such was the nature of the Casa Montana, that the alarm was given then and there. Aunt Gina shot out of the kitchen, holding a pair of kitchen tongs in one hand and a ladle in the other. Domenico and Aunt Maria came out of the Saloon, and Elizabeth appeared in the gallery outside the Music Room with the five little cousins. The door of the Scriptorium opened, filled with anxious faces.

Benvenuto gave a whisk of his tail and leapt for the gallery steps. He bounded up them, followed by the other cats; and Paolo and Rosa hurried up too, in a sort of shoal of leaping black and white bodies. Everyone converged on Antonio’s rooms. People poured out of the Scriptorium, Elizabeth raced round the gallery, and Aunt Maria and Aunt Gina clambered up the steps by the kitchen quicker than either had ever climbed in her life. The Casa filled with the sound of hollow running feet.

The whole family jammed themselves after Rosa and Paolo into the room where Tonino was usually to be found reading. There was no Tonino, only the red book lying on the windowsill. It was no longer shiny. The pages were thick at the edges and the red cover was curling upwards, as if the book was wet.

Benvenuto, with his jagged brown coat up in a ridge along his back and his tail fluffed like a fox’s brush, landed on the sill beside the book and rashly put his nose forward to sniff at it. He leapt back again, shaking his head, crouching, and growling like a dog. Smoke poured up from the book. People coughed and cats sneezed. The book curled and writhed on the sill, amid clouds of smoke, exactly as if it were on fire. But instead of turning black, it turned pale grey-blue where it smoked, and looked slimy. The room filled with a smell of rotting.

“Ugh!” said everybody.

Old Niccolo barged members of his family right and left to get near it. He stood over it and sang, in a strong tenor voice almost as good as Marco’s, three strange words. He sang them twice before he had to break off coughing. “Sing!” he croaked, with tears pouring down his face. “All of you.”

All the Montanas obediently broke into song, three long notes in unison. And again. And again. After that, quite a number of them had to cough, though the smoke was distinctly less. Old Niccolo recovered and waved his arms, like the conductor of a choir. All who could, sang once more. It took ten repetitions to halt the decay of the book. By that time, it was a shrivelled triangle, about half the size it had been. Gingerly, Antonio leant over and opened the window beyond it, to let out the last of the smoke.

“What was it?” he asked Old Niccolo. “Someone trying to suffocate us all?”

“I thought it came from Umberto,” Elizabeth faltered. “I never would have—”

Old Niccolo shook his head. “This thing never came from Umberto. And I don’t think it was meant to kill. Let’s see what kind of spell it is.” He snapped his fingers and held out a hand, rather like a surgeon performing an operation. Without needing to be told, Aunt Gina put her kitchen tongs into his hand. Carefully, gently, Old Niccolo used the tongs to open the cover of the book.

“A good pair of tongs ruined,” Aunt Gina said.

“Ssh!” said Old Niccolo. The shrivelled pages of the book had stuck into a gummy block. He snapped his fingers and held out his hand again. This time, Rinaldo put the pen he was carrying in it.

“And a good pen,” he said, with a grimace at Aunt Gina.

With the pen as well as the tongs, Old Niccolo was able to pry the pages of the book apart without touching them and peel them over, one by one. Chins rested on both Paolo’s shoulders as everyone craned to see, and there were chins on the shoulders of those with the chins. There was no sound but the sound of breathing.

On nearly every page, the printing had melted away, leaving a slimy, leathery surface quite unlike paper, with only a mark or so left in the middle. Old Niccolo looked closely at each mark and grunted. He grunted again at the first picture, which had faded like the print, but left a clearer mark. After that, though there was no print on any of the pages, the remaining mark was steadily clearer, up to the centre of the book, when it began to become more faded again, until the mark was barely visible on the back page.

Old Niccolo laid down the pen and the tongs in terrible silence. “Right through,” he said at length. People shifted and someone coughed, but nobody said anything. “I do not know,” said Old Niccolo, “the substance this object is made of, but I know a calling-charm when I see one. Tonino must have been like one hypnotised, if he had read all this.”

“He was a bit strange at breakfast,” Paolo whispered.

“I am sure he was,” said his grandfather. He looked reflectively at the shrivelled stump of the book and then round at the crowded faces of his family. “Now who,” he asked softly, “would want to set a strong calling-charm on Tonino Montana? Who would be mean enough to pick on a child? Who would—?” He turned suddenly on Benvenuto, crouched beside the book, and Benvenuto cowered right down, quivering, with his ragged ears flat against his flat head. “Where were you last night, Benvenuto?” he asked, more softly still.

No one understood the reply Benvenuto gave as he cowered, but everyone knew the answer. It was in Antonio and Elizabeth’s harrowed faces, in the set of Rinaldo’s chin, in Aunt Francesca’s narrowed eyes, narrowed almost out of existence, and in the way Aunt Maria looked at Uncle Lorenzo; but most of all, it was in the way Benvenuto threw himself down on his side, with his back to the room, the picture of a cat in despair.

Old Niccolo looked up. “Now isn’t that odd?” he said gently. “Benvenuto spent last night chasing a white she-cat – over the roofs of the Casa Petrocchi.” He paused to let that sink in. “So Benvenuto,” he said, “who knows a bad spell when he sees one, was not around to warn Tonino.”

“But why?” Elizabeth asked despairingly.

Old Niccolo went, if possible, quieter still. “I can only conclude, my dear, that the Petrocchis are being paid by Florence, Siena, or Pisa.”

There was another silence, thick and meaningful. Antonio broke it. “Well,” he said, in such a subdued, grim way that Paolo stared at him. “Well? Are we going?”

“Of course,” said Old Niccolo. “Domenico, fetch me my small black spell-book.”

Everyone left the room, so suddenly, quietly and purposefully that Paolo was left behind, not clear what was going on. He turned uncertainly to go to the door, and realised that Rosa had been left behind too. She was sitting on Tonino’s bed, with one hand to her head, white as Tonino’s sheets.

“Paolo,” she said, “tell Claudia I’ll have the baby, if she wants to go. I’ll have all the little ones.”

She looked up at Paolo as she said it, and she looked so strange that Paolo was suddenly frightened. He ran gladly out into the gallery. The family was gathering, still quiet and grim, in the yard. Paolo ran down there and gave his message. Protesting little ones were pushed up the steps to Rosa, but Paolo did not help. He found Elizabeth and Lucia and pushed close to them. Elizabeth put an arm round him and an arm round Lucia.

“Keep close to me, loves,” she said. “I’ll keep you safe.” Paolo looked across her at Lucia and saw that Lucia was not frightened at all. She was excited. She winked at him. Paolo winked back and felt better.

A minute later, Old Niccolo took his place at the head of the family and they all hurried to the gate. Paolo had just forced his way through, jostling his mother on one side and Domenico on the other, when a carriage drew up in the road, and Uncle Umberto scrambled out of it. He came up to Old Niccolo in that grim, quiet way in which everyone seemed to be moving.

“Who is kidnapped? Bernardo? Domenico?”

“Tonino,” replied Old Niccolo. “A book, with the University arms on the wrapping.”

Uncle Umberto answered, “Luigi Petrocchi is also a member of the University.”

“I bear that in mind,” said Old Niccolo.

“I shall come with you to the Casa Petrocchi,” said Uncle Umberto. He waved at the cab driver to tell him to go. The man was only too ready to. He nearly pulled his horses over on their sides, trying to turn them too quickly. The sight of the entire Casa Montana grimly streaming into the street seemed altogether too much for him.

That pleased Paolo. He looked back and forth as they swung down the Via Magica, and pride grew in him. There were such a lot of them. And they were so single-minded. The same intent look was in every face. And though children pattered and young men strode, though the ladies clattered on the cobbles in elegant shoes, though Old Niccolo’s steps were short and bustling, and Antonio, because he could not wait to come at the Petrocchis, walked with long lunging steps, the common purpose gave the whole family a common rhythm. Paolo could almost believe they were marching in step.

The concourse crowded down the Via Sant’ Angelo and swept round the corner into the Corso, with the Cathedral at their backs. People out shopping hastily gave them room. But Old Niccolo was too angry to use the pavement like a mere pedestrian. He led the family into the middle of the road and they marched there like a vengeful army, forcing cars and carriages to draw into the kerbs, with Old Niccolo stepping proudly at their head. It was hard to believe that a fat old man with a baby’s face could look so warlike.

The Corso bends slightly beyond the Archbishop’s Palace. Then it runs straight again by the shops, past the columns of the Art Gallery on one side and the gilded doors of the Arsenal on the other. They swung round that bend. There, approaching from the opposite direction, was another similar crowd, also walking in the road. The Petrocchis were on the march too.

“Extraordinary!” muttered Uncle Umberto.

“Perfect!” spat Old Niccolo.

The two families advanced on one another. There was utter silence now, except for the cloppering of feet. Every ordinary citizen, as soon as they saw the entire Casa Montana advancing on the entire Casa Petrocchi, made haste to get off the street. People knocked on the doors of perfect strangers and were let in without question. The manager of Grossi’s, the biggest shop in Caprona, threw open his plate-glass doors and sent his assistants out to fetch in everyone nearby. After which he clapped the doors shut and locked a steel grille down in front of them. From between the bars, white faces stared out at the oncoming spell-makers. And a troop of Reservists, newly called up and sloppily marching in crumpled new uniforms, were horrified to find themselves caught between the two parties. They broke and ran, as one crumpled Reservist, and sought frantic shelter in the Arsenal. The great gilt doors clanged shut on them just as Old Niccolo halted, face to face with Guido Petrocchi.

“Well?” said Old Niccolo, his baby eyes glaring.

“Well?” retorted Guido, his red beard jutting.

“Was it,” asked Old Niccolo, “Florence or Pisa that paid you to kidnap my grandson Tonino?”

Guido Petrocchi gave a bark of contemptuous laughter. “You mean,” he said, “was it Pisa or Siena who paid you to kidnap my daughter Angelica?”

“Do you imagine,” said Old Niccolo, “that saying that makes it any less obvious that you are a baby snatcher?”

“Do you,” asked Guido, “accuse me of lying?”

“Yes!” roared the Casa Montana. “Liar!”

“And the same to you!” howled the Casa Petrocchi, crowding up behind Guido, lean and ferocious, many of them red-haired. “Filthy liars!”

The fighting began while they were still shouting. There was no knowing who started it. The roars on either side were mixed with singing and muttering. Scrips fluttered in many hands. And the air was suddenly full of flying eggs. Paolo received one, a very greasy fried egg, right across the mouth, and it made him so angry that he began to shout egg-spells too, at the top of his voice. Eggs splattered down, fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, new-laid eggs, and eggs so horribly bad that they were like bombs when they burst. Everyone slithered on the eggy cobbles. Egg streamed off the ends of people’s hair and spattered everyone’s clothes.

Then somebody varied it with a bad tomato or so. Immediately, all manner of unpleasant things were flying about the Corso: cold spaghetti and cowpats – though these may have been Rinaldo’s idea in the first place, they were very quickly coming from both sides – and cabbages; squirts of oil and showers of ice; dead rats and chicken livers.

It was no wonder that the ordinary people kept out of the way. Egg and tomato ran down the grilles over Grossi’s windows and splashed the white columns of the Art Gallery. There were loud clangs as rotten cabbages hit the brass doors of the Arsenal.

This was the first, disorganised phase of the battle, with everyone venting his fury separately. But, by the time everyone was filthy and sticky, their fury took shape a little. Both sides began on a more organised chant. It grew, and became two strong rhythmic choruses.

The result was that the objects flying about the Corso rose up into the air and began to rain down as much more harmful things. Paolo looked up to see a cloud of transparent, glittering, frozen-looking pieces tumbling out of the sky at him. He thought it was snow at first, until a piece hit his arm and cut it.

“Vicious beasts!” Lucia screamed beside him. “It’s broken glass!”

Before the main body of the glass came down, Old Niccolo’s penetrating tenor voice soared above the yells and the chanting. “Testudo!”

Antonio’s full bass backed him up: “Testudo!” and so did Uncle Lorenzo’s baritone. Feet tramped. Paolo knew this one. He bowed over, tramping regularly, and kept up the charm with them. The whole family did it. Tramp, tramp, tramp. “Testudo, testudo, testudo!” Over their bent heads, the glass splinters bounced and showered harmlessly off an invisible barrier. “Testudo.” From the middle of the bowed backs, Elizabeth’s voice rang up sweetly in yet another spell. She was joined by Aunt Anna, Aunt Maria and Corinna. It was like a soprano descant over a rhythmic tramping chorus.

Paolo knew without being told that he must keep up the shield-charm while Elizabeth worked her spell. So did everyone else. It was extraordinary, exciting, amazing, he thought. Each Montana picked up the slightest hint and acted on it as if it were orders.

He risked glancing up and saw that the descant spell was working. Every glass splinter, as it hit the unseen shield Paolo was helping to make, turned into an angry hornet and buzzed back at the Petrocchis. But the Petrocchis simply turned them into glass splinters again and hurled them back. At the same time, Paolo could tell from the rhythm of their singing that some of them were working to destroy the shield-charm. Paolo sang and tramped harder than ever.

Meanwhile, Rinaldo’s voice and his father’s were singing gently, deeply, at work on something yet again. More of the ladies joined in the hornet-song so that the Petrocchis would not guess. And all the while, the tramp, tramp of the shield-charm was kept up by everyone else. It could have been the grandest chorus in the grandest opera ever, except that it all had a different purpose. The purpose came with a perfect roar of voices. The Petrocchis threw up their arms and staggered. The cobbles beneath them heaved and the solid Corso began to give way into a pit. Their instant reply was another huge sung chord, with discords innumerable. And the Montanas suddenly found themselves inside a wall of flame.

There was total confusion. Paolo staggered for safety, with his hair singed, over cobbles that quaked and heaved under his shoes. “Voltava!” he sang frantically. “Voltava!” Behind him, the flames hissed. Clouds of steam blotted out even the tall Art Gallery as the river answered the charm and came swirling up the Corso. Water was knee-deep round Paolo, up to his waist, and still rising. There was too much water. Someone had sung out of tune, and Paolo rather thought it was him. He saw his cousin Lena almost up to her chin in water and grabbed her. Towing Lena, he staggered through the current, over the heaving road, trying to make for the Arsenal steps.

Someone must have had the sense to work a cancel-spell. Everything suddenly cleared, steam, water and smoke together. Paolo found himself on the steps of the Art Gallery, not by the Arsenal at all. Behind him, the Corso was a mass of loose cobbles, shiny with mud and littered with cowpats, tomatoes and fried eggs. There could hardly have been more mess if Caprona had been invaded by the armies of Florence, Pisa and Siena.

Paolo felt he had had enough. Lena was crying. She was too young. She should have been left with Rosa. He could see his mother picking Lucia out of the mud, and Rinaldo helping Aunt Gina up.

“Let’s go home, Paolo,” whimpered Lena.

But the battle was not really finished. Montanas and Petrocchis were up and down the Corso in little angry, muddy groups, shouting abuse at one another.

“I’ll give you broken glass!”

“You started it!”

“You lying Petrocchi swine! Kidnapper!”

“Swine yourself! Spell-bungler! Traitor!”

Aunt Gina and Rinaldo slithered over to what looked like a muddy boulder in the street and heaved at it. The vast bulk of Aunt Francesca arose, covered with mud and angrier than Paolo had ever seen her.

“You filthy Petrocchis! I demand single combat!” she screamed. Her voice scraped like a great saw-blade and filled the Corso.

Aunt Francesca’s challenge seemed to rally both sides. A female Petrocchi voice screamed, “We agree!” and all the muddy groups hastened towards the middle of the Corso again.

Paolo reached his family to hear Old Niccolo saying, “Don’t be a fool, Francesca!” He looked more like a muddy goblin than the head of a famous family. He was almost too breathless to speak.

“They have insulted us and fought us!” said Aunt Francesca. “They deserve to be disgraced and drummed out of Caprona. And I shall do it! I’m more than a match for a Petrocchi!” She looked it, vast and muddy as she was, with her huge black dress in tatters and her grey hair half undone and streaming over one shoulder.

But the other Montanas knew Aunt Francesca was an old woman. There was a chorus of protest. Uncle Lorenzo and Rinaldo both offered to take on the Petrocchi champion in her place.

“No,” said Old Niccolo. “Rinaldo, you were wounded—”

He was interrupted by catcalls from the Petrocchis. “Cowards! We want single combat!”

Old Niccolo’s muddy face screwed up with anger. “Very well, they shall have their single combat,” he said. “Antonio, I appoint you. Step forward.”

Paolo felt a gush of pride. So his father was, as he had always thought, the best spell-maker in the Casa Montana. But the pride became mixed with alarm, when Paolo saw the way his mother clutched Antonio’s arm, and the worried, reluctant look on his father’s mud-streaked face.

“Go on!” Old Niccolo said crossly.

Slowly, Antonio advanced into the space between the two families, stumbling a little among the loose cobbles. “I’m ready,” he called to the Petrocchis. “Who’s your champion?”

It was clear that there was some indecision among the Petrocchis. A dismayed voice said, “It’s Antonio!” This was followed by a babble of talk. From the turning of heads and the uncertain heaving about, Paolo thought they were looking for a Petrocchi who was unaccountably missing. But the fuss died away, and Guido Petrocchi himself stepped forward. Paolo could see several Petrocchis looking as alarmed as Elizabeth.

“I’m ready too,” said Guido, baring his teeth angrily. Since his face was plastered with mud, it made him look quite savage. He was also large and sturdy. He made Antonio look small, gentle and fragile. “And I demand an unlimited contest!” snarled Guido. He seemed even angrier than Old Niccolo.

“Very well,” Antonio said. There could have been the least shake in his voice. “You’re aware that means a fight to the finish, are you?”

“Suits me perfectly,” said Guido. He was like a giant saying “Fee-fi-fo-fum”. Paolo was suddenly very frightened.

It was at this moment that the Ducal Police arrived. They had come in, quietly and cunningly, riding bicycles along the pavements. No one noticed them until the Chief of Police and his lieutenant were standing beside the two champions.

“Guido Petrocchi and Antonio Montana,” said the lieutenant, “I arrest you—”

Both champions jumped, and turned to find blue braided uniforms on either side of them.

“Oh go away,” said Old Niccolo, hastening forward. “What do you have to interfere for?”

“Yes, go away,” said Guido. “We’re busy.”

The lieutenant flinched at Guido’s face, but the Chief of Police was a bold and dashing man with a handsome moustache, and he had his reputation to keep up as a bold and dashing man. He bowed to Old Niccolo. “These two are under arrest,” he said. “The rest of you I order to sink your differences and remember there is about to be a war.”

“We’re at war already,” said Old Niccolo. “Go away.”

“I regret,” said the Chief of Police, “that that is impossible.”

“Then don’t say you weren’t warned,” said Guido.

There was a short burst of song from the adults of both families. Paolo wished he knew that spell. It sounded useful. As soon as it was over, Rinaldo and a swarthy young Petrocchi came over to the two policemen and towed them away backwards. They were as stiff as the tailor’s dummies in the barred windows of Grossi’s. Rinaldo and the other young man laid them against the steps of the Art Gallery and returned each to his family, without looking at one another. As for the rest of the Ducal Police, they seemed to have vanished, bicycles and all.

“Ready now?” said Guido.

“Ready,” said Antonio.

And the single combat commenced.

Looking back on it afterwards, Paolo realised that it could not have lasted more than three minutes, though it seemed endless at the time. For, in that time, the strength, skill and speed of both champions was tried to the utmost. The first, and probably the longest, part was when the two were testing one another for an opening, and comparatively little seemed to happen. Both stood, leaning slightly forward, muttering, humming, occasionally flicking a hand.

Paolo stared at his father’s strained face and wondered just what was going on. Then, momentarily, Guido was a man-shaped red-and-white check duster. Someone gasped. But Antonio almost simultaneously became a cardboard man covered with green triangles. Then both flicked back to themselves again.

The speed of it astounded Paolo. A spell had not only been cast on both sides, but also a counter-spell, and a spell counter to that, all in the time it took someone to gasp. Both combatants were panting and looking warily at each other. It was clear they were very evenly matched.

Again there was a space when nothing seemed to happen, except a sort of flickering on both sides. Then suddenly Antonio struck, and struck so hard that it was plain he had all the time been building a strong spell, beneath the flicker of trivial spells designed to keep Guido occupied. Guido gave a shout and dissolved into dust, which swept away backwards in a spiral. But, somehow, as he dissolved, he threw his strong spell at Antonio. Antonio broke into a thousand little pieces, like a spilt jigsaw puzzle.

For an ageless time, the swirl of dust and the pile of broken Antonio hung in mid-air. Both were struggling to stay together and not to patter down on the uprooted cobbles of the Corso. In fact, they were still struggling to make spells too. When, at last, Antonio staggered forward in one piece, holding some kind of red fruit in his right hand, he had barely time to dodge. Guido was a leopard in mid-spring.

Elizabeth screamed.

Antonio threw himself to one side, heaved a breath and sang. “Oliphans!” His usually silky voice was rough and ragged, but he hit the right notes. A gigantic elephant, with tusks longer than Paolo was tall, cut off the low sun and shook the Corso as it advanced, ears spread, to trample the attacking leopard. It was hard to believe the great beast was indeed worried, thin Antonio Montana.

For a shadow of a second, the leopard was Guido Petrocchi, very white in the face and luridly red in the beard, gabbling a frantic song. “Hickory-dickory-muggery-mus!” And he must have hit the right notes too. He seemed to vanish.

The Montanas were raising a cheer at Guido’s cowardice, when the elephant panicked. Paolo had the merest glimpse of a little tiny mouse scampering aggressively at the great front feet of the elephant, before he was running for his life. The shrill trumpeting of Antonio seemed to tear his ears apart. Behind him, Paolo knew that the elephant was stark, staring mad, trampling this way and that among terrified Montanas. Lucia ran past him, carrying Lena clutched backwards against her front. Paolo grabbed little Bernardo by one arm and ran with him, wincing at the horrible brazen, braying squeal from his father.

Elephants are afraid of mice, horribly afraid. And there are very few people who can shift shape without taking the nature of the shape they shift to. It seemed that Guido Petrocchi had not only won, but got most of the Montanas trampled to death into the bargain.

But when Paolo next looked, Elizabeth was standing in the elephant’s path, staring up at its wild little eyes. “Antonio!” she shouted. “Antonio, control yourself!” She looked so tiny and the elephant was coming so fast that Paolo shut his eyes.

He opened them in time to see the elephant in the act of swinging his mother up on its back. Tears of relief so clouded Paolo’s eyes that he almost failed to see Guido’s next attack. He was simply aware of a shattering noise, a horrible smell, and a sort of moving tower. He saw the elephant swing round, and Elizabeth crouch down on its back. It was now being confronted by a vast iron machine, even larger than itself, throbbing with mechanical power and filling the Corso with nasty blue smoke. This thing ground slowly towards Antonio on huge moving tracks. As it came, a gun in its front swung down to aim between the elephant’s eyes.

On the spur of the moment, Antonio became another machine. He was in such a hurry, and he knew so little about machines, that it was a very bizarre machine indeed. It was pale duck-egg blue, with enormous rubber wheels. In fact, it was probably made of rubber all through, because the bullet from Guido’s machine bounced off it and crashed into the steps of the Arsenal. Most people threw themselves flat.

“Mother’s inside that thing!” Lucia screamed to Paolo, above the noise.

Paolo realised she must be. Antonio had had no time to put Elizabeth down. And now he was barging recklessly at Guido, bang-bounce, bang-bounce. It must have been horrible for Elizabeth. Luckily, it only lasted a second. Elizabeth and Antonio suddenly appeared in their own shapes, almost under the mighty tracks of the Guido-machine. Elizabeth ran – Paolo had not known she could run so fast – like the wind towards the Arsenal. And it may have been Petrocchi viciousness, or perhaps simple confusion, but the great Guido-tank swung its gun down to point at Elizabeth.

Antonio called Guido a very bad name, and threw the tomato he still had in his hand. The red fruit hit, and splashed, and ran down the iron side. Paolo was just wondering what use that was, when the tank was not there any more. Nor was Guido. In his place was a giant tomato. It was about the size of a pumpkin. And it simply sat in the road and did not move.

That was the winning stroke. Paolo could tell it was from the look on Antonio’s face as he walked up to the tomato. Disgusted and weary, Antonio bent down to pick up the tomato. There were scattered groans from the Petrocchis, and cheers, not quite certain and even more scattered, from the Montanas.

Then somebody cast yet another spell.

This time, it was a thick wet fog. No doubt, at the beginning, it would not have seemed so terrible, but, after all the rest, just when the fight was over, Paolo felt it was the last straw. All he could see, in front of his eyes, was thick whiteness. After he had taken a breath or so, he was coughing.

He could hear coughing all round, and far off into the distance, which was the only thing which showed him he was not entirely alone. He turned his head from trying to see who else was coughing, and found he could not see Lucia. Nor could he find Bernardo, and he knew he had been holding Bernardo’s arm a second before. As soon as he realised that, he found he had lost his sense of direction too. He was all alone, coughing and shivering, in cold white emptiness.

“I am not going to lose my head,” Paolo told himself sternly. “My father didn’t, and so I shan’t. I shall find somewhere to shelter until this beastly spell is over. Then I shall go home. I don’t care if Tonino is still missing—” He stopped then, because a thought came to him, like an astonishing discovery. “We’re never going to find Tonino this way, anyway,” he said. And he knew it was true.

With his hands stretched out in front of him and his eyes spread very wide in hopes of seeing something – which was unlikely, since they were streaming from the fog, and so was his nose – Paolo coughed and sniffed and shuffled his way forward until his toes came up against stone. Paolo looked down, but he could not see what it was. He tried lifting one foot, with his toes scraping against the obstruction. And, after a few inches, the obstruction stopped and his foot shot forward. It was a ledge, then. Probably the kerb. He had been near the edge of the road when he ran away from the elephant. He got both feet on the kerb and shuffled forward six inches – then he fell upstairs over what seemed to be a body.

It gave Paolo such a shock that he dared not move at first. But he soon realised the body beneath him was shivering, as he was, and trying to cough and mutter at the same time. “Holy Mary—” Paolo heard, in a hoarse blurred voice. Very puzzled, Paolo put out a careful hand and felt the body. His fingers met cold metal buttons, uniform braid, and, a little above that, a warm face – which gave a croak as Paolo’s cold hand met its mouth – and a large furry moustache beneath the nose.

Angel of Caprona! Paolo thought. It’s the Chief of Police!

Paolo got himself to his knees on what must be the steps of the Art Gallery. There was no one around he could ask, but it did not seem fair to leave someone lying helpless in the fog. It was bad enough if you could move. So hoping he was doing the right thing, Paolo knelt and sang, very softly, the most general cancel-spell he could think of. It had no effect on the fog – that was evidently very strong magic – but he heard the Chief of Police roll over on his side and groan. Boots scraped as he tested his legs. “Mamma mia!” Paolo heard him moan.

He sounded as if he wanted to be alone. Paolo left him and crawled his way up the Gallery steps. He had no idea he had reached the top, until he hit his elbow on a pillar and drove his head into Lucia’s stomach at the same moment. Both of them said some extremely unpleasant things.

“When you’ve quite finished swearing,” Lucia said at length, “you can get between these pillars with me and keep me warm.” She coughed and shivered. “Isn’t this awful? Who did it?” She coughed again. The fog had made her hoarse.

“It wasn’t us,” said Paolo. “We’d have known. Ow, my elbow!” He took hold of her for a guide and wedged himself down beside her. He felt better like that.

“The pigs,” said Lucia. “I call this a mean trick. It’s funny – you spend your life being told what pigs they are, and thinking they can’t be, really. Then you meet them, and they’re worse than you were told. Was it you singing just now?”

“I fell over the Chief of Police on the steps,” said Paolo.

Lucia laughed. “I fell over the other one. I sang a cancel-spell too. He was lying on all the corners of the stairs and it must have bruised him all over when I fell on him.”

“It’s bad enough when you can move,” Paolo agreed. “Like being blind.”

“Horrible,” said Lucia. “That blind beggar in the Via Sant’ Angelo – I shall give him some money tomorrow.”

“The one with white eyes?” said Paolo. “Yes, so shall I. And I never want to see another spell.”

“To tell you the truth,” said Lucia, “I was wishing I dared burn the Library and the Scriptorium down. It came to me like a blinding flash – just before I fell over that policeman – that no amount of spells are going to work on those beastly kidnappers.”

“That’s just what I thought!” exclaimed Paolo. “I know the only way to find Tonino—”

“Hang on,” said Lucia. “I think the fog’s getting thinner.”

She was right. When Paolo leant forward, he could see two dark lumps below, where the Chief of Police and his lieutenant were sitting on the steps with their heads in their hands. He could see quite a stretch of the Corso beyond them – cobbles which were dark and wet-looking, but, to his surprise, neither muddy nor out of place.

“Someone’s put it all back!” said Lucia.

The fog thinned further. They could see the glimmering doors of the Arsenal now, and the entire foggy width of the Corso, with every cobblestone back where it should be. Somewhere about the middle of it, Antonio and Guido Petrocchi were standing facing one another.

“Oh, they’re not going to begin again, are they?” wailed Paolo.

But, almost at once, Antonio and Guido swung round and walked away from one another.

“Thank goodness!” said Lucia. She and Paolo turned to one another, smiling with relief.

Except that it was not Lucia. Paolo found himself staring into a white pointed face, and eyes darker, larger and shrewder than Lucia’s. Surrounding the face were draggled dark red curls. The smile died from the face and horror replaced it as Paolo stared. He felt his own face behaving the same way. He had been huddling up against a Petrocchi! He knew which one, too. It was the elder of the two who had been at the palace. Renata, that was her name. And she knew him too.

“You’re that blue-eyed Montana boy!” she exclaimed. She made it sound quite disgusting.

Both of them got up. Renata backed into the pillars, as if she was trying to get inside the stone, and Paolo backed away along the steps.

“I thought you were my sister Lucia,” he said.

“I thought you were my cousin Claudio,” Renata retorted.

Somehow, they both made it sound as if it was the other one’s fault.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Paolo said angrily. “Blame the person who made the fog, not me. There’s an enemy enchanter.”

“I know. Chrestomanci said,” said Renata.

Paolo felt he hated Chrestomanci. He had no business to go and say the same things to the Petrocchis as he said to the Montanas. But he hated the enemy enchanter even more. He had been responsible for the most embarrassing thing which had ever happened to Paolo. Muttering with shame, Paolo turned to run away.

“No, stop! Wait!” Renata said. She said it so commandingly that Paolo stopped without thinking, and gave Renata time to snatch hold of his arm. Instead of pulling away, Paolo stood quite still and attempted to behave with the dignity becoming to a Montana. He looked at his arm, and at Renata’s hand holding it, as if both had become one composite slimy toad. But Renata hung on. “Look all you like,” she said. “I don’t care. I’m not letting go until you tell me what your family has done with Angelica.”

“Nothing,” Paolo said contemptuously. “We wouldn’t touch one of you with a barge-pole. What have you lot done with Tonino?”

An odd little frown wrinkled Renata’s white forehead. “Is that your brother? Is he really missing?”

“He was sent a book with a calling-spell in it,” said Paolo.

“A book,” said Renata slowly, “got Angelica too. We only realised when it shrivelled away.”

She let go of Paolo’s arm. They stared at one another in the blowing remains of the fog.

“It must be the enemy enchanter,” said Paolo.

“Trying to take our minds off the war,” said Renata. “Tell your family, won’t you?”

“If you tell yours,” said Paolo.

“Of course I will. What do you take me for?” said Renata.

In spite of everything, Paolo found himself laughing. “I think you’re a Petrocchi!” he said.

But when Renata began to laugh too, Paolo realised it was too much. He turned to run away, and found himself facing the Chief of Police. The Chief of Police had evidently recovered his dignity. “Now then, you children. Move along,” he said.

Renata fled, without more ado, red in the face with the shame of being caught talking to a Montana. Paolo hung on. It seemed to him that he ought to report that Tonino was missing.

“I said move along!” repeated the Chief of Police, and he pulled down his jacket with a most threatening jerk.

Paolo’s nerve broke. After all, an ordinary policeman was not going to be much help against an enchanter. He ran.

He ran all the way to the Casa Montana. The fog and the wetness did not extend beyond the Corso. As soon as he turned into a side road, Paolo found himself in the bleak shadows and low red sun of a winter evening. It was like being shot back into another world – a world where things happened as they should, where one’s father did not turn into a mad elephant, where, above all, one’s sister did not turn out to be a Petrocchi.

Paolo’s face fired with shame as he ran. Of all the awful things to happen!

The Casa Montana came in sight, with the familiar Angel safely over the gate. Paolo shot in under it, and ran into his father. Antonio was standing under the archway, panting as if he too had run all the way home.

“Who!? Oh, Paolo,” said Antonio. “Stay where you are.”

“Why?” asked Paolo. He wanted to get in, where it was safe, and perhaps eat a large lump of bread and honey. He was surprised his father did not feel the same. Antonio looked tired out, and his clothes were torn and muddy rags. The arm he stretched out to keep Paolo in the gateway was half bare and covered with scratches. Paolo was going to protest, when he saw that something was indeed wrong. Most of the cats were in the gateway too, crouching around with their ears flattened. Benvenuto was patrolling the entrance to the yard, like a lean brown ferret. Paolo could hear him growling.

Antonio’s scratched hand took Paolo by the shoulder and pulled him forward so that he could see into the yard. “Look.”

Paolo found himself blinking at foot-high letters, which seemed to hang in the air in the middle of the yard. In the fading light, they were glowing an unpleasant, sick yellow.

STOP ALL SPELLS OR YOUR CHILD SUFFERS.
CASA PETROCCHI

The name was in sicker and brighter letters. They were meant to make no mistake about who had sent the message.

After what Renata had said, Paolo knew it was wrong. “It wasn’t the Petrocchis,” he said. “It’s that enchanter Chrestomanci told us about.”

“Yes, to be sure,” said Antonio.

Paolo looked up at him and saw that his father did not believe him – probably had not even attended to him. “But it’s true!” he said. “He wants us to stop making war-spells.”

Antonio sighed, and drew himself together to explain to Paolo. “Paolo,” he said, “nobody but Chrestomanci believes in this enchanter. In magic, as in everything else, the simplest explanation is always best. In other words, why invent an unknown enchanter, when you have a known enemy with known reasons for hating you? Why shouldn’t it be the Petrocchis?”

Paolo wanted to protest, but he was still too embarrassed about Renata to say that Angelica Petrocchi was missing too. He was struggling to find something that he could say, which might convince his father, when a square of light sprang up in the gallery as a door there opened.

“Rosa!” shouted Antonio. His voice cracked with anxiety.

The shape of Rosa appeared in the light, carrying Cousin Claudia’s baby. The light itself was so orange and so bright, beside the sick glow of the letters floating in the yard, that Paolo was flooded with relief.

Behind Rosa, there was Marco, carrying another little one.

“Praised be!” said Antonio. He shouted, “Are you all right, Rosa? How did those words come here?”

“We don’t know,” Rosa called back. “They just appeared. We’ve been trying to get rid of them, but we can’t.”

Marco leant over the rails and called, “It’s not true, Antonio. The Petrocchis wouldn’t do a thing like this.”

Antonio called back, “Don’t go around saying that, Marco.” He said it so forbiddingly that Paolo knew nothing he said was going to be believed. If he had had a chance of convincing Antonio, he had now lost it.

When Tonino came to his senses – at, incidentally, the precise moment when the enchanted book began to shrivel away – he had, at first, a nightmare feeling that he was shut in a cardboard box. He rolled his head sideways on his arms. He seemed to be lying on his face on a hard but faintly furry floor. In the far distance, he could blurrily see someone else, leaning up against a wall like a doll, but he felt too queer to be very interested in that. He rolled his head round the other way and saw the panels of a wall quite near. That told him he was in a fairly long room. He rolled his head to stare down at the furry floor. It was patterned, in a pattern too big for his eyes to grasp, and he supposed it was a carpet of some kind. He shut his blurry eyes and tried to think what had happened.

He remembered going down near the New Bridge. He had been full of excitement. He had read a book which he thought was telling him how to save Caprona. He knew he had to find an alleyway with a peeling blue house at the end of it. It seemed a bit silly now. Tonino knew things never happened the way they did in books. Even then, he had been rather amazed to find that there was an alleyway with, really and truly, a peeling blue house at the end of it. And, to his huge excitement, there was a scrap of paper fluttering down at his feet. The book was coming true. Tonino had bent down and picked up the paper.

And, after that, he had known nothing till this moment.

That was really true. Tonino took himself through what had happened several times, but each time his memories stopped in exactly the same place – with himself picking up the scrap of paper. After that, it was all a vague sense of nightmare. By this time, he was fairly sure he had been the victim of a spell. He began to feel ashamed of himself. So he sat up.

He saw at once why he had seemed to dream he was shut up in a cardboard box. The room he was in was long and low, almost exactly the shape of a shoebox. The walls and ceiling were painted cream-colour – a sort of whitish cardboard-colour, in fact – but they seemed to be wood, because there were carvings picked out in gold paint on them. There was a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, although the light came from four long windows in one of the longer walls; a rich carpet on the floor, and a very elegant dining-table and chairs by the wall opposite the windows. There were two silver candlesticks on the table. Altogether the place was extremely elegant – and wrong, somehow.

Tonino sat trying to puzzle out just what was wrong. The room was awfully bare. But that was not quite it. There was something strange about the daylight coming through the four long windows, as if the sun was somehow further away than it should be. But that was not quite it either. Tonino’s eyes went to the four bands of too-faded sunlight falling through the windows on to the carpet, and then travelled along the carpet. At the end, he came to the person leaning up against the wall. It was Angelica Petrocchi, who had been at the Palace. Her eyes were closed beneath her bulge of forehead, and she looked ill. So she had been caught too.

Tonino looked back at the carpet. That was an odd thing. It was not really a carpet. It had been painted on the slightly furry substance of the floor. Tonino could see the brush-strokes in the sprawling pattern. And the reason he had thought the pattern was too big, was because it was too big. It was the wrong size for the rest of the room.

More puzzled than ever, Tonino struggled to his feet. He felt a little wobbly, so he put a hand on the gilded panels of the wall to steady himself. That felt furry too, except where it was gold. The gold was flat, but not quite hard, like – Tonino thought, but no other likeness came to him – like paint. He ran his hand over the apparently carved panel. It was a total cheat. It was not even wood, and the carving was painted on, in lines of brown, blue and gold. Whoever had caught him was trying to seem richer than they were, but doing it very badly.

There were movements at the other end of the room. Angelica Petrocchi was wavering to her feet, and she too was running her hand over the painted carving. Very anxiously and cautiously, she turned and looked at Tonino.

“Will you let me go now, please?” she said.

There was a little wobble in her voice that showed Tonino she was very frightened. So was he, now he came to think of it. “I can’t let you go,” he said. “I didn’t catch you. Neither of us can go. There isn’t a door.”

That was the wrong thing he had been trying not to notice. And as soon as he said it, he wished he had kept his mouth shut. Angelica screamed. And the sound sent Tonino into a panic too. There was no door! He was shut into a cardboard box with a Petrocchi child!

Tonino may have screamed as well – he was not sure. When he caught up with himself, he had one of the elegant chairs in his hands and was battering at the nearest window with it. That was more frightening than ever. The glass did not break. It was made of some slightly rubbery stuff, and the chair bounced off. Beyond him, the Petrocchi girl was banging away at another window with one of the silver candlesticks, screaming all the time. Outside the window, Tonino could clearly see the smug spire-shape of a little cypress tree, lit by afternoon sun. So they were in one of those rich villas near the Palace, were they? Just let him get out! He lifted the chair and smashed it against the window with all his strength.

He made no impression on the window, but the chair came to pieces. Two ill-glued legs fell off it, and the rest crumpled to splintery matchwood. Tonino thought it was disgustingly badly made. He threw it to the painted carpet and fetched another chair. This time, for variety, he attacked the wall beside the window. Pieces of that chair came away and flew about, and Tonino was left with its painted seat – painted to look like embroidery, just as the floor was painted to look like carpet. He drove it into the wall, again and again. It made large brown dents. Better still, the wall shook and leapt about, sounding muffled and hollow, as if it were made of something very cheap. Tonino beat at it and yelled. Angelica beat at the wall and the window impartially with her candlestick, and went on screaming.

They were stopped by a terrible hammering. Someone seemed to be dealing hundreds of thunderous blows on the ceiling. The room was like the inside of a drum. It was too loud to bear. The Petrocchi girl dropped her candlestick and rolled on the floor. Tonino found himself crouching down, with his hands to his ears, looking up at the chandelier jiggling overhead. He thought his head would burst.

The pounding stopped. There was no sound except a whimper, which Tonino rather thought came from him.

A great huge voice spoke through the ceiling. “That’s better. Now be quiet, or you won’t get any food. And if you try any more tricks, you’ll be punished. Understand?”

Tonino and Angelica both sat up. “Let us out!” they screamed.

There was no answer, only a distant shuffling. The owner of the huge voice seemed to be going away.

“A mean trick with an amplifying spell,” Angelica said. She picked up the candlestick and looked at it with disgust. The branched part was bent at right-angles to the base. “What is this place?” she said. “Everything’s so shoddy.”

They got up and went to the windows again, in hopes of a clue. Several little spire-shaped trees were clearly to be seen, just outside, and a sort of terrace beyond that. But, peer as they might, all they could make out further off was queer blue distance, with one or two square-shaped mountains catching the sun on a glossy corner or so. There seemed to be no sky.

“It’s a spell,” said Angelica. Her voice suggested she might be going to panic again. “A spell to stop us knowing where we are.”

Tonino supposed it must be. There was no other way of accounting for the strange absence of view. “But I’m sure I know,” he said, “by those trees. We’re in one of those rich villas by the Palace.”

“You’re right,” agreed Angelica. The panic had left her voice. “I shall never envy those people again. Their lives are all show.”

They turned from the windows and discovered that the vast banging had dislodged one of the wall panels behind the dining-table. It hung open like a door. They shoved one another out of the way to reach it first. But there was only a cupboard-sized bathroom, without a window.

“Good,” said Angelica. “I was wondering what we’d do. And at least we’ll have water.” She reached out to one of the taps over the small washbasin. It came away in her hand. Under it was a blob of glue on white china. It was clear the tap had never been meant to be used. Angelica stared at it with such a ridiculous look of bewilderment that Tonino laughed. She drew herself up at that. “Don’t you laugh at me, you beastly Montana!” She stalked out into the main room and threw the useless tap on to the table with a clump. Then she sat in one of the two remaining chairs and rested her elbows gloomily on the table.

After a while, Tonino did the same. The chair creaked under him. So did the table. Though its surface was painted to look like smooth mahogany, close to, it was all blobs of varnish and huge splinters. “There’s nothing that’s not shoddy,” he said.

“Including you, Whatyoumecall Montana!” Angelica said. She was still angry.

“My name’s Tonino,” Tonino said.

“It’s the last twist of the knife, being shut up with a Montana!” Angelica said. “Whatever your name is. I shall have to put up with all your filthy habits.”

“Well, I’ve got to put up with yours,” Tonino said irritably. It suddenly struck him that he was all alone, far from the friendly bustle of the Casa Montana. Even when he was hidden in a corner of the Casa with a book, he knew the rest of the family was all round him. And Benvenuto would be purring and pricking him, to remind him he was not alone. Dear old Benvenuto. Tonino was afraid he was going to cry – in front of a Petrocchi too. “How did they catch you?” he said, to take his mind off it.

“With a book.” A slight, woeful smile appeared on Angelica’s tight white face. “It was called The Girl Who Saved Her Country, and I thought it was from Great-Uncle Luigi. I still think it was a good story.” She looked defiantly at Tonino.

Tonino was annoyed. It was not pleasant to think he had been caught by the same spell as a Petrocchi. “Me too,” he said gruffly.

“And I haven’t got any filthy habits!” snapped Angelica.

“Yes you have. All the Petrocchis have,” said Tonino. “But I expect you don’t realise because they’re normal to you.”

“I like that!” Angelica picked up the broken tap, as if she had half a mind to throw it.

“I don’t care about your habits,” said Tonino. Nor did he. All he wanted to do was find some way out of this nightmare room and go home. “How shall we get out of here?”

“Through the ceiling,” Angelica said sarcastically.

Tonino looked upwards. There was that chandelier. If they could give it a pull, it might well rip a hole in the shoddy ceiling.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Angelica. “If there’s a spell out in front, there’s bound to be one up there to stop us getting out.”

Tonino feared she was right, but it was worth a try. He climbed from his chair on to the table. He thought he could reach the chandelier from there if he stood up. There was a violent creaking. Before Tonino could begin to stand up, the table swayed away sideways, as if all four of its legs were loose.

“Get down!” said Angelica.

Tonino got down. It was clear the table would fall to pieces if he stayed on it. Gloomily he pushed the crooked legs straight again. “So that’s no good,” he said.

“Unless,” said Angelica, suddenly bright and pert, “we steady it with a spell.”

Tonino transferred his miserable look from the table legs to her sharp little face. He sighed. The subject had been bound to come up. “You’ll have to do the spell,” he said. Angelica stared at him. He could feel his face heating up. “I hardly know any spells,” he said. “I – I’m slow.”

He had expected Angelica to laugh, and she did. But he thought she need not have laughed in such a mean, exultant way, nor keep saying, “Oh that’s good!” like that.

“What’s so funny?” he said. “You can laugh! I know all about you turning your father green. You’re no better than me!”

“Want to bet?” said Angelica, still laughing.

“No,” said Tonino. “Just make the spell.”

“I can’t,” said Angelica. It was Tonino’s turn to stare, and Angelica’s turn to blush. A thin bright pink spread right up the bulge of her forehead, and she put her chin up defiantly. “I’m hopeless at spells,” she said. “I’ve never got a spell right in my life.” Seeing Tonino still staring, she said, “It’s a pity you didn’t bet. I’m much worse than you are.”

Tonino could not credit it. “How?” he said. “Why? Can’t you learn spells either, then?”

“Oh, I can learn them all right.” Angelica took up the broken tap again and scribbled angrily with it, great yellow scratches in the varnished top of the table. “I know hundreds of spells,” she said, “but I always get them wrong. For a start, I’m tone-deaf. I can’t sing a tune right to save my life. Like now.” Carefully, as if she was a craftsman doing a fine carving, she peeled up a long yellow curl of varnish from the table, using the tap as a gouge. “But it’s not only that,” she said angrily, following her work intently. “I get words wrong too – everything wrong. And my spells always work, that’s the worst of it. I’ve turned all my family all colours of the rainbow. I’ve turned the baby’s bath into wine, and the wine into gravy. I turned my own head back to front once. I’m much worse than you. I daren’t do spells. About all I’m good for is understanding cats. And I even turned my cat purple too.”

Tonino watched her working away with the tap, with rather mixed feelings. If you looked at it practically, this was the worst possible news. Neither of them had a hope against the powerful spell-maker who had caught them. On the other hand, he had never met anyone who was worse at spells than he was. He thought, a little smugly, that at least he had never made a mistake in a spell, and that made him feel good. He wondered how the Casa Montana would feel if he kept turning them all colours of the rainbow. He imagined the stern Petrocchis must hate it. “Doesn’t your family mind?” he asked.

“Not much,” Angelica said, surprisingly. “They don’t mind it half as much as I do. Everyone has a good laugh every time I make a new mistake – but they don’t let anyone talk about it outside the Casa. Papa says I’m notorious enough for turning him green, and he doesn’t like me to be even seen anywhere until I’ve grown out of it.”

“But you went to the Palace,” said Tonino. He thought Angelica must be exaggerating.

“Only because Cousin Monica was having her baby and everyone was so busy on the Old Bridge,” said Angelica. “He had to take Renata off her shift and get my brother out of bed to drive the coach, in order to have enough of us.”

“There were five of us,” Tonino said, smugly.

“Our horses collapsed in the rain.” Angelica turned from her gouging and looked at Tonino keenly. “So my brother said yours were bound to have collapsed too, because you only had a cardboard coachman.”

Uncomfortably, Tonino knew Angelica had scored a point. “Our coachman collapsed too,” he admitted.

“I thought so,” said Angelica, “from the look on your face.” She went back to scraping the table, conscious of victory.

“It wasn’t our fault!” Tonino protested. “Chrestomanci says there’s an enemy enchanter.”

Angelica took such a slice out of the varnish that the table swooped sideways and Tonino had to push it straight. “And he’s got us now,” she said. “And he’s taken care to get the two who are no good at spells. So how do we get out of here and spite him, Tonino Montana? Any ideas?”

Tonino sat with his chin in his hands and thought. He had read enough books, for goodness’ sake. People were always being kidnapped in books. And in his favourite books – this was like a bad joke – they escaped without using magic of any kind. But there was no door. That was what made it seem impossible. Wait a moment! The vast voice had promised them food. “If they think we’re behaving,” he said, “they’ll bring us supper probably. And they’ve got to bring the food in somehow. If we watch where it comes in, we ought to be able to get out the same way.”

“There’s bound to be a spell on the entrance,” Angelica said gloomily.

“Do stop bleating away about spells,” said Tonino. “Don’t you Petrocchis ever talk about anything else?”

Angelica did not reply, but simply scraped away with her tap. Tonino sat wanly in his creaking chair thinking over the few spells he really knew. The most useful seemed to be a simple cancel-spell.

“A cancel-spell,” Angelica said irritatingly, scratching carefully with the tap. The floor round her feet was heaped with yellow curls of varnish. “That might hold the entrance open. Or isn’t a cancel-spell one of the ones you know?”

“I know a cancel-spell,” said Tonino.

“So does my baby brother,” said Angelica. “He’d probably be more use.”

Their supper arrived. It appeared, without warning, on a tray, floating towards them from the windows. It took Tonino completely by surprise.

“Spell!” Angelica squawked at him. “Don’t just stare!”

Tonino sang the spell. Hurried and surprised though he was, he was sure he got it right. But it was the tray the spell worked on. The tray, and the food on it, began to grow. Within seconds, it was bigger than the table-top. And it still floated towards the table, growing as it came. Tonino found himself backing away from two steaming bath-sized bowls of soup and two great orange thickets of spaghetti, all of which were getting steadily vaster the nearer they came. By now, there was not much room round the edges of the tray. Tonino backed against the end wall, wondering if Angelica’s trouble with spells was catching. Angelica herself was squashed against the bathroom door. Both of them were in danger of being cut in two.

“Get down on the floor!” Tonino shouted.

They slithered hurriedly down the wall, underneath the tray, which hung over them like a too-low ceiling. The huge odour of spaghetti was quite oppressive.

“What have you done?” Angelica said, coming towards Tonino on hands and knees. “You didn’t get it right.”

“Yes, but if it gets much bigger, it might break the room open,” said Tonino.

Angelica sank back on her knees and looked at him with what was nearly respect. “That’s almost a good idea.”

But it was only almost. The tray certainly met all four walls. They heard it thump against them. There was a deal of swaying, creaking and squeezing, from the tray and from the walls, but the walls did not give. After a moment it was clear that the tray was not being allowed to get any bigger.

“There is a spell on this room,” Angelica said. It was not meant to be I-told-you-so. She was miserable.

Tonino gave up and sang the cancel-spell, carefully and correctly. The tray shrank at once. They were left kneeling on the floor looking at a reasonable-sized supper laid neatly in the centre of the table. “We might as well eat it,” he said.

Angelica annoyed him thoroughly again by saying, as she picked up her spoon, “Well, I’m glad to know I’m not the only person who gets my spells wrong.”

“I know I got it right,” Tonino muttered into his spoon, but Angelica chose not to hear.

After a while, he was even more annoyed to find, every time he looked up, that Angelica was staring at him curiously. “What’s the matter now?” he said at last, quite exasperated.

“I was waiting to see your filthy eating habits,” she said. “But I think you must be on your best behaviour.”

“I always eat like this!” Tonino saw that he had wound far too much spaghetti on his fork. He hurriedly unwound it.

The bulge of Angelica’s forehead was wavy with frown-lines. “No you don’t. Montanas always eat disgustingly because of the way Old Ricardo Petrocchi made them eat their words.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Tonino. “Anyway, it was Old Francesco Montana who made the Petrocchis eat their words.”

“It was not!” Angelica said heatedly. “It was the first story I ever learnt. The Petrocchis made the Montanas eat their spells disguised as spaghetti.”

“No they didn’t. It was the other way round!” said Tonino. “It was the first story I ever learnt too.”

Somehow, neither of them felt like finishing their spaghetti. They laid their forks down and went on arguing.

“And because of eating those spells,” said Angelica, “the Montanas went quite disgusting and started eating their uncles and aunts when they died.”

“We do not!” said Tonino. “You eat babies.”

“How dare you!” said Angelica. “You eat cowpats for pizzas, and you can smell the Casa Montana right on the Corso.”

“The Casa Petrocchi smells all down the Via Sant’ Angelo,” said Tonino, “and you can hear the flies buzzing from the New Bridge. You have babies like kittens and—”

“That’s a lie!” shrieked Angelica. “You just put that about because you don’t want people to know that the Montanas never get married properly!”

“Yes we do!” bawled Tonino. “It’s you who don’t!”

“I like that!” yelled Angelica. “I’ll have you know, my brother got married, in church, just after Christmas. So there!”

“I don’t believe you,” said Tonino. “And my sister’s going to get married in Spring, so—”

“I was a bridesmaid!” screamed Angelica.

While they argued, the tray quietly floated off the table and vanished somewhere near the windows. Tonino and Angelica looked irritably round for it, extremely annoyed that they had once again missed noticing how it got in and out.

“Now look what you’ve done!” said Angelica.

“It’s your fault for telling lies about my family,” said Tonino.

“If you’re not careful,” said Angelica, glowering under the bulge of her forehead, “I shall sing the first spell that comes into my head. And I hope it turns you into a slug.”

That was a threat indeed. Tonino quailed a little. But the honour of the Montanas was at stake. “Take back what you said about my family,” he said.

“Only if you take back what you said about mine,” said Angelica. “Swear by the Angel of Caprona that none of those dreadful lies are true. Look. I’ve got the Angel here. Come and swear.” Her pink finger jabbed down at the table top. She reminded Tonino of his school teacher on a bad day.

He left his creaking chair and leant over to see what she was pointing at. Angelica fussily dusted away a shower of yellow varnish to show him that she indeed had the Angel, scratched with the useless tap into the top of the table. It was quite a good drawing, considering that the tap was not a good gouge and had shown a tendency to slip about. But Tonino was not prepared to admire it. “You’ve forgotten the scroll,” he said.

Angelica jumped up, and her flimsy chair crashed over backwards. “That does it! You’ve asked for it!” She marched over to the empty space by the windows and took up a position of power. From there, with her hands raised, she looked at Tonino to see if he was going to relent. Tonino would have liked to relent. He did not want to be a slug. He sought about in his mind for some way of giving in which did not look like cowardice. But, as with everything, he was too slow. Angelica flounced round, so that her arms were no longer at quite the right angle.

“Right,” she said. “I shall make it a cancel-spell, to cancel you out.” And she began to sing.

Angelica’s voice was horrible, sharp and flat by turns, and wandering from key to key. Tonino would have liked to interrupt her, or at least distract her by making noises, but he did not quite dare. That might only make things worse.

He waited while Angelica squawked out a couple of verses of a spell which seemed to centre round the words turn the spell round, break the spell off. Since he was a boy and not a spell, Tonino rather hoped it would not do anything to him.

Angelica raised her arms higher for the third verse and changed key for the sixth time. “Turn the spell off, break the spell round—”

“That’s wrong,” said Tonino.

“Don’t you dare put me off!” snapped Angelica, and turned round to say it, which sent the angle of her arms more thoroughly wrong than ever. One hand was now pointing at a window. “I command the unbinding of that which was bound,” she sang, cross and shrill.

Tonino looked quickly down at himself, but he seemed to be still there, and the usual colour. He told himself that he had known all along that such a bungled spell could not possibly work.

There came a great creaking from the ceiling, just above the windows. The whole room swayed. Then, to Tonino’s amazement, the entire front wall of the room, windows and all, split away from the side walls and the ceiling, and fell outwards with a soft clatter – a curiously soft sound for the whole side of a house. A draught of musty-smelling air blew in through the open space.

Angelica was quite as astonished as Tonino. But that did not prevent her turning to him with a smug and triumphant smile. “See? My spells always work.”

“Let’s get out,” said Tonino. “Quick. Before somebody comes.”

They ran out across the painted panels between the windows, across the marks Tonino had made with the chair. They stepped down off the surprisingly clean, straight edge, where the wall had joined the ceiling, on to the terrace in front of the house. It appeared to be made of wood, not of stone as Tonino had expected. And beyond that—

They stopped, just in time, at the edge of a huge cliff. Both of them swayed forward, and caught at one another. The cliff went down sheer, into murky darkness. They could not see the bottom. Nor could they see much more when they looked straight ahead. There was a blaze of red-gold sunlight there, dazzling them.

“There’s still a spell on the view,” said Tonino.

“In that case,” said Angelica, “let’s just keep walking. There must be a road or a garden that we can’t see.”

There certainly should have been something of the kind, but it neither felt nor looked like that. Tonino was sure he could sense vast hollow spaces below the cliff. There were no city sounds, and only a strangely musty smell.

“Coward!” said Angelica.

“You go,” said Tonino.

“Only if you go too,” she said.

They hovered, glaring at one another. And, as they hovered, the blaze of sunlight was cut off by an immense black shape. “Naughty!” said a vast voice. “Bad children shall be punished.”

A force almost too strong to feel swept them away on to the fallen wall. The fallen wall rose briskly back into its place, sweeping Angelica and Tonino with it, helplessly sliding and rolling, until they thumped on to the painted carpet. By that time, Tonino was so breathless and dizzy that he hardly heard the wall snap back into place with a click.

After that, the dizziness grew worse. Tonino knew he was in the grip of another spell. He struggled against it furiously, but whoever was casting it was immensely strong. He felt surging and bumping. The light from the windows changed, and changed again. Almost he could have sworn, the room was being carried. It stopped with a jolt. He heard Angelica’s voice gabbling a prayer to Our Lady, and he did not blame her. Then there was a mystifying gap in what Tonino knew.

He came to himself because whoever was casting the spell wanted him to. Tonino was quite sure of that. The punishment would not be so much fun, unless Tonino knew about it.

He was in a confusion of light and noise – there was a huge blur of it to one side – and he was racing up and down a narrow wooden platform, dragging (of all things!) a string of sausages. He was wearing a bright red nightgown and there was a heaviness on the front of his face. Each time he reached one end of the wooden platform, he found a white cardboard dog there, with a frill round its neck. The dog’s cardboard mouth opened and shut. It was making feeble cardboard attempts to get the sausages.

The noise was terrific. Tonino seemed to be making some of it himself. “What a clever fellow! What a clever fellow!” he heard himself squawking, in a voice quite unlike his own. It was like the noise you make singing into paper over a comb. The rest of the noise was coming from the lighted space to one side. Vast voices were roaring and laughing, mixed with tinny music.

“This is a dream!” Tonino told himself. But he knew it was not. He had a fair idea what was happening, though his head still felt muzzy and his eyes were blurred. As he raced back down the little platform, he turned his bleary eyes inwards, towards the heaviness on his face. Sure enough, blurred and doubled, he could see a great red and pink nose there. He was Mr Punch.

Naturally, then, he tried to dig in his heels and stop racing up and down, and to lift his hand and wrench off the huge pink nose. He could not do either. More than that, whoever was making him be Mr Punch promptly took mean pleasure in making him run faster and whirl the sausages about harder.

“Oh, very good!” yelled someone from the lighted space.

Tonino thought he knew that voice. He sped toward the cardboard Dog Toby again, whirled the sausages away from its cardboard jaws and waited for his head and eyes to stop feeling so fuzzy. He was sure they would. The mean person wanted him conscious. “What a clever fellow!” he squawked. As he raced down the stage the other way, he snatched a look across his huge nose towards the lighted space, but it was a blur. So he snatched a look towards the other side.

He saw the wall of a golden villa there, with four long windows. Beside each window stood a little dark cypress tree. Now he knew why the strange room had seemed so shoddy. It was only meant as scenery. The door on the outside wall was painted on. Between the villa and the stage was a hole. The person who was working the puppets ought to have been down there, but Tonino could only see empty blackness. It was all being done by magic.

Just then he was distracted by a cardboard person diving upwards from the hole, squawking that Mr Punch had stolen his sausages. Tonino was forced to stand still and squawk back. He was glad of a rest by then. Meanwhile, the cardboard dog seized the sausages and dived out of sight with them. The audience clapped and shouted, “Look at Dog Toby!” The cardboard person sped past Tonino squawking that he would fetch the police.

Once again, Tonino tried to look out at the audience. This time, he could dimly see a brightly lit room and black bulky shapes sitting in chairs, but it was like trying to see something against the sun. His eyes watered. A tear ran down the pink beak on his face. And Tonino could feel that the mean person was delighted to see that. He thought Tonino was crying. Tonino was annoyed, but also rather pleased; it looked as if the person could be fooled by his own mean thoughts. He stared out, in spite of the dazzle, trying to see the mean person, but all he could clearly see was a carving up near the roof of the lighted room. It was the Angel of Caprona, one hand held out in blessing, the other holding the scroll.

Then he was jumped round to face Judy. On the other side of him, the wall had gone from the front of the villa. The scene was the room he knew only too well, with the chandelier artistically alight.

Judy was coming along the stage holding the white rolled-up shape of the baby. Judy wore a blue nightdress and a blue cap. Her face was mauve, with a nose in the middle of it nearly as large and red as Tonino’s. But the eyes on either side of it were Angelica’s, alternately blinking and wide with terror. She blinked beseechingly at Tonino as she squawked, “I have to go out, Mr Punch. Mind you mind the baby!”

“Don’t want to mind the baby!” he squawked.

All through the long silly conversation, he could see Angelica’s eyes blinking at him, imploring him to think of a spell to stop this. But of course Tonino could not. He did not think Rinaldo, or even Antonio, could stop anything as powerful as this. Angel of Caprona! he thought. Help us! That made him feel better, although nothing stopped the spell. Angelica planted the baby in his arms and dived out of sight.

The baby started to cry. Tonino first squawked abuse at it, then took it by the end of its long white dress and beat its brains out on the platform. The baby was much more realistic than Dog Toby. It may have been only cardboard, but it wriggled and waved its arms and cried most horribly. Tonino could almost have believed it was Cousin Claudia’s baby. It so horrified him that he found he was repeating the words of the Angel of Caprona as he swung the baby up and down. And those might not have been the right words, but he could feel they were doing something. When he finally flung the white bundle over the front of the stage, he could see the shiny floor the baby fell on, away below. And when he looked up at the clapping spectators, he could see them too, equally clearly.

The first person he saw was the Duke of Caprona. He was sitting on a gilded chair, in a glitter of buttons, laughing gigantically. Tonino wondered how he could laugh like that at something so horrible, until he remembered that he had stood himself, a score of times, and laughed himself sick, at just the same thing. But those had been only puppets. Then it dawned on Tonino that the Duke thought they were puppets. He was laughing at the skill of the showman.

“What a clever fellow!” squawked Tonino, and was made to dance about gleefully, without wanting to in the least. But as he danced, he looked sharply at the rest of the audience, to see who it was who knew he was not a puppet.

To his terror, a good half of them knew. Tonino met a knowing look on the faces of the three grave men surrounding the Duke, and the same on the elegantly made-up faces of the two ladies with the Duchess. And the Duchess – as soon as Tonino saw the amused arch of the Duchess’s eyebrows and the little, secret smile on her mouth, he knew she was the one doing it. He looked her in the eyes. Yes, she was an enchantress. That was what had so troubled him about her when he saw her before. And the Duchess saw him look, and smiled less secretly, because Tonino could do nothing about it.

That really frightened Tonino. But Angelica came swooping upwards again, with a large stick clutched in her arms, and he had no time to think.

“What have you done with the baby?” squawked Angelica. And she belaboured Tonino with the stick. It really hurt. It knocked him to his knees and went on bashing at him. Tonino could see Angelica’s lips moving. Though her silly squeaky voice kept saying, “I’ll teach you to kill the baby!” her mouth was forming the words of the Angel of Caprona. That was because she knew what came next.

Tonino said the words of the Angel too and tried to stay crouched on the floor. But it was no good. He was made to spring up, wrest the stick from Judy and beat Angelica with it. He could see the Duke laughing, and the courtiers smiling. The Duchess’s smile was very broad now, because, of course, Tonino was going to have to beat Angelica to death.

Tonino tried to hold the stick so that it would only hit Angelica lightly. She might be a Petrocchi and a thoroughly irritating girl, but she had not deserved this. But the stick leapt up and down of its own accord, and Tonino’s arms went with it. Angelica fell on her knees and then on her face. Her squawks redoubled, as Tonino smote away at her back, and then her voice stopped. She lay with her head hanging down from the front of the platform, looking just like a puppet. Tonino found himself having to kick her down the empty space between the false villa and the stage. He heard the distant flop as she fell. And then he was forced to skip and cackle with glee, while the Duchess threw back her head and laughed as heartily as the Duke.

Tonino hated her. He was so angry and so miserable that he did not mind at all when a cardboard policeman appeared and he chased him with the stick too. He laid into the policeman as if he was the Duchess and not a cardboard doll at all.

“Are you all right, Lucrezia?” he heard the Duke say.

Tonino looked sideways as he dealt another mighty swipe at the policeman’s cardboard helmet. He saw the Duchess wince as the stick landed. He was not surprised when the policeman was immediately whisked away and he himself forced into a violent capering and even louder squawking. He let himself do it. He felt truly gleeful as he squawked, “What a clever fellow!” for what felt like the thousandth time. For he understood what had happened. The Duchess was the policeman, in a sort of way. She was putting some of herself into all the puppets to make them work. But he must not let her know he knew. Tonino capered and chortled, doing his best to seem terrified, and kept his eyes on that carving of the Angel, high up over the door of the room.

And now the hooded Hangman-puppet appeared, dragging a little wooden gibbet with a string noose dangling from it. Tonino capered cautiously. This was where the Duchess did for him unless he was very careful. On the other hand, if this Punch and Judy show went as it should, he might just do for the Duchess.

The silly scene began. Tonino had never worked so hard at anything in his life. He kept repeating the words of the Angel in his head, both as a kind of prayer and as a smokescreen, so that the Duchess would not understand what he was trying to do. At the same time, he thought, fiercely and vengefully, that the Hangman was not just a puppet – it was the Duchess herself. And, also at the same time, he attended to Mr Punch’s conversation with all his might. This had to go right.

“Come along, Mr Punch,” croaked the Hangman. “Just put your head in this noose.”

“How do I do that?” asked Mr Punch and Tonino, both pretending hard to be stupid.

“You put your head in here,” croaked the Hangman, putting one hand through the noose.

Mr Punch and Tonino, both of them quivering with cunning, put his head first one side of the noose, then the other. “Is this right? Is this?” Then, pretending even harder to be stupid, “I can’t see how to do it. You’ll have to show me.”

Either the Duchess was wanting to play with Tonino’s feelings, or she was trying the same cunning. They went through this several times. Each time, the Hangman put his hand through the noose to show Mr Punch what to do. Tonino did not dare look at the Duchess. He looked at the Hangman and kept thinking, That’s the Duchess, and reciting the Angel for all he was worth. At last, to his relief, the Duke became restive.

“Come on, Mr Punch!” he shouted.

“You’ll have to put your head in and show me,” Mr Punch and Tonino said, as persuasively as he knew how.

“Oh well,” croaked the Hangman. “Since you’re so stupid.” And he put his cardboard head through the noose.

Mr Punch and Tonino promptly pulled the rope and hanged him. But Tonino thought, This is the Duchess! and went as limp and heavy as he could. For just a second, his full puppet’s weight swung on the end of the rope.

It only lasted that second. Tonino had a glimpse of the Duchess on her feet with her hands to her throat. He felt real triumph. Then he was thrown, flat on his face, across the stage, unable to move at all. There he was forced to lie. His head hung down from the front of the stage, so that he could see very little. But he gathered that the Duchess was being led tenderly away, with the Duke fussing round her.

I think I feel as pleased as Punch, he thought.

Paolo never wanted to remember that night afterwards. He was still staring at the sick yellow message in the yard, when the rest of the family arrived. He was crowded aside to let Old Niccolo and Aunt Francesca through, but Benvenuto spat at them like hot fat hitting fire and would not let them pass.

“Let be, old boy,” Old Niccolo said. “You’ve done your best.” He turned to Aunt Francesca. “I shall never forgive the Petrocchis,” he said. “Never.”

Paolo was once again struck by how wretched and goblin-like his grandfather looked. He had thought Old Niccolo was helping vast, panting, muddy Aunt Francesca along, but he now wondered if it was not the other way round.

“Well. Let’s get rid of this horrible message,” Old Niccolo said irritably to the rest of them.

He raised his arms to start the family on the spell and collapsed. His hands went to his chest. He slid to his knees, and his face was a strange colour. Paolo thought he was dead until he saw him breathing, in uneven jerks. Elizabeth, Uncle Lorenzo and Aunt Maria rushed to him.

“Heart attack,” Uncle Lorenzo said, nodding over at Antonio. “Get that spell going. We’ve got to get him indoors.”

“Paolo, run for the doctor,” said Elizabeth.

As Paolo ran, he heard the burst of singing behind him. When he came back with the doctor, the message had vanished and Old Niccolo had been carried up to bed. Aunt Francesca, still muddy, with her hair hanging down one side, was roving up and down the yard like a moving mountain, crying and wringing her hands.

“Spells are forbidden,” she called out to Paolo. “I’ve stopped everything.”

“And a good thing too!” the doctor said sourly. “A man of Niccolo Montana’s age has no business to be brawling in the streets. And make your great-aunt lie down,” he said to Paolo. “She’ll be in bed next.”

Aunt Francesca would only go to the Saloon, where she refused even to sit down. She raged up and down, wailing about Old Niccolo, weeping about Tonino, declaring that the virtue had gone from the Casa Montana for good, and uttering terrible threats against the Petrocchis. Nobody else was much better. The children cried with tiredness. Elizabeth and the aunts worried about Old Niccolo, and then about Aunt Francesca. In the Scriptorium, among all the abandoned spells, Antonio and the uncles sat rigid with worry, and the rest of the Casa was full of older cousins wandering about and cursing the Petrocchis.

Paolo found Rinaldo leaning moodily on the gallery rail, in spite of it being dark now and really quite cold. “Curse those Petrocchis,” he said gloomily to Paolo. “We can’t even earn a living now, let alone help if there’s a war.”

Paolo, in spite of his misery, was very flattered that Rinaldo seemed to think him old enough to talk family business to. He said, “Yes, it’s awful,” and tried to lean on the rail in the same elegant attitude as Rinaldo. It was not easy, since Paolo was not nearly tall enough, but he leant and prepared the arguments he would use to persuade Rinaldo that Tonino was in the hands of an enemy enchanter. That was not easy either. Paolo knew that Rinaldo would not listen to him if he dropped the least small hint that he had talked to a Petrocchi – and besides, he would have died rather than told his cousin. But he knew that, if he persuaded Rinaldo, Rinaldo would rescue Tonino in five dashing minutes. Rinaldo was a true Montana.

While he thought, Rinaldo said angrily, “What possessed that stupid brat Tonino to read that blessed book? I shall give him something to think about when we get him back!”

Paolo shivered in the cold. “Tonino always reads books.” Then he shifted a bit – the elegant attitude was not at all comfortable – and asked timidly, “How shall we get him back?”

This was not at all what he had planned to say. He was annoyed with himself.

“What’s the use?” Rinaldo said. “We know where he is – in the Casa Petrocchi. And if he’s uncomfortable there, it’s his own fault!”

“But he’s not!” Paolo protested. As far as he could see in the light from the yard lamp, Rinaldo turned and looked at him jeeringly. The discussion seemed to be getting further from the way he had planned it every second. “An enemy enchanter’s got him,” he said. “The one Chrestomanci talked about.”

Rinaldo laughed. “Load of old crab-apples, Paolo. Our friend had been talking to the Petrocchis. He invented his convenient enchanter because he wanted us all working for Caprona. Most of us saw through it at once.”

“Then who made that mist on the Corso?” Paolo said. “It wasn’t us, and it wasn’t them.”

But Rinaldo only said, “Who said it wasn’t them?”

As Paolo could not say it was Renata Petrocchi, he could not answer. Instead, he said rather desperately, “Come with me to the Casa Petrocchi. If you used a finding-spell, you could prove Tonino isn’t there.”

“What?” Rinaldo seemed astounded. “What kind of fool do you take me for, Paolo? I’m not going to take on a whole family of spell-makers single-handed. And if I go there and use a spell, and they do something to Tonino, everyone’s going to blame me, aren’t they? For something we know anyway. It’s not worth it, Paolo. But I tell you what—”

He was interrupted by Aunt Gina trumpeting below in the yard. “Notti’s is the only chemist open by now. Tell him it’s for Niccolo Montana!”

With some relief, Paolo dropped the elegant attitude entirely and leant over the rail to watch Lucia and Corinna hurry through the yard with the doctor’s prescription. The sight gave his stomach a wrench of worry. “Do you think Old Niccolo’s going to die, Rinaldo?”

Rinaldo shrugged. “Could be. He’s pretty old. It’s about time the old idiot gave up anyway. I shall be one step closer to being head of the Casa Montana then.”

A peculiar thing happened inside Paolo’s head then. He had never given much thought to who might follow Antonio – for it was clear his father would follow Old Niccolo – as head of the Casa Montana. But he had never, for some reason, thought it might be Rinaldo. Now he tried to imagine Rinaldo doing the things Old Niccolo did. And as soon as he did, he saw Rinaldo was quite unsuitable. Rinaldo was vain, and selfish – and cowardly, provided he could be a coward and still keep up a good appearance. It was as if Rinaldo had said a powerful spell to clear Paolo’s eyes.

It never occurred to Rinaldo, expert spell-maker though he was, that a few ordinary words could make such a difference. He bent towards Paolo and dropped his voice to a melodious murmur. “I was going to tell you, Paolo. I’m going round enlisting all the young ones. We’re going to swear to work a secret revenge on the Petrocchis. We’ll do something worse than make them eat their words. Are you with me? Will you swear to join the plan?”

Maybe he was in earnest. It would suit Rinaldo to work in secret, with lots of willing helpers. But Paolo was sure that this plan was a step in Rinaldo’s plans to be head of the Casa. Paolo sidled away along the rail.

“Are you game?” Rinaldo whispered, laughing a little.

Paolo sidled beyond grabbing-distance. “Tell you later.” He turned and scudded away. Rinaldo laughed and did not try to catch him. He thought Paolo was scared.

Paolo went down into the yard, feeling more lonely than he had felt in his life. Tonino was not there. Tonino was not vain, or selfish, or cowardly. And nobody would help him find Tonino. Paolo had not noticed until now how much he depended on Tonino. They did everything important together. Even if Paolo was busy on his own, he knew Tonino was there somewhere, sitting reading, ready to put his book down if Paolo needed him. Now there seemed to be nothing for Paolo to do. And the whole Casa reeked of worry.

He went to the kitchen, where there seemed, at last, to be something happening. All his small cousins were there. Rosa and Marco were trying to make soup for them.

“Come in and help, Paolo,” Rosa said. “We’re going to put them to bed after soup, but we’re having a bit of trouble.”

Both she and Marco were looking tired and flustered. Most of the little ones were grizzling, including the baby. The trouble was Lucia’s spell. Paolo understood this because Marco dumped the baby in his arms. Its wrapper was covered with orange grease. “Yuk!” said Paolo.

“I know,” said Rosa. “Well, Marco, better try again. Clean saucepan. Clean water. The very last packet of soup-powder – don’t make that face, Paolo. We’ve got through all the vegetables. They just sail away to the waste-bins, and they’re mouldy before they get there.”

Paolo looked nervously at the door, wondering if the enemy enchanter was powerful enough to overhear him. “Try a cancel-spell,” he whispered.

“Aunt Gina went through them all this afternoon,” said Rosa. “No good. Little Lucia used the Angel of Caprona, you see. We’re trying Marco’s way now. Ready, Marco?”

Rosa opened the packet of soup and held it over the saucepan. As the dry pink powder poured into the water, Marco leant over the saucepan and sang furiously. Paolo watched them nervously. This was just what the message told them not to do, he was sure. When all the powder was in the water, Rosa and Marco peered anxiously into the saucepan. “Have we done it?” asked Marco.

“I think—” Rosa began, and ended in a yell of exasperation. “Oh no!” The little pasta shells in the powder had turned into real sea-shells, little grey ones. “With creatures in!” Rosa said despairingly, dipping a spoonful out. “Where is Lucia?” she said. “Bring her here. Tell her I—No, don’t. Just fetch her, Paolo.”

“She’s gone to the chemist,” said Paolo.

There was shouting in the yard. Paolo passed the greasy baby to the nearest cousin and shot outside, dreading another sick yellow message about Tonino. Or there was just a chance the noise was Lucia.

It was neither. It was Rinaldo. The uncles must have left the Scriptorium, for Rinaldo was making a bonfire of spells in the middle of the yard. Domenico, Carlo and Luigi were busily carrying armfuls of scrips, envelopes and scrolls down from the gallery. Paolo recognised, already curling among the flames, the army-charms he and the other children had spent such a time copying. It was a shocking waste of work.

“This is what the Petrocchis have forced us to!” shouted Rinaldo, striking an attitude beside the flames. It was evidently part of his plan to enlist the young ones.

Paolo was glad to see Antonio and Uncle Lorenzo hurry out of the Saloon.

“Rinaldo!” shouted Antonio. “Rinaldo, we’re worried about Umberto. We want you to go to the University and enquire.”

“Send Domenico,” said Rinaldo, and turned back to the flames.

“No,” said Antonio. “You go.” There was something about the way he said it that caused Rinaldo to back away from him.

“I’ll go,” said Rinaldo. He held up one hand, laughing. “I was only joking, Uncle Antonio.”

He left at once. “Take those spells back,” Uncle Lorenzo said to the other three cousins. “I hate to see good work wasted.” Domenico, Carlo and Luigi obeyed without a word. Antonio and Uncle Lorenzo went to the bonfire and tried to stamp out the flames, but they were burning too strongly. Paolo saw them look at one another, rather guiltily, and then lean forward and whisper a spell over the fire. It flicked out as if it had been turned off with a switch. Paolo sighed worriedly. It was plain that no one in the Casa Montana could drop the habit of using spells. He wondered how long it would be before the enemy enchanter noticed.

“Fetch a light!” Antonio shouted to Domenico. “And sort out the ones that aren’t burnt.”

Paolo went back to the kitchen before they asked him to help. The bonfire had given him an idea.

“There is quite a bit of mince,” Rosa was saying. “Dare we try with that?”

“Why don’t you,” said Paolo, “take the food to the dining room? I’ll light a fire there, and you can cook it on that.”

“The boy’s a genius!” said Marco.

They did that. Rosa cooked by relays and Marco made cocoa. The children were fed first, Paolo included. Paolo sat on one of the long benches, thinking it was almost enjoyable – except if he thought of Tonino, or Old Niccolo in bed upstairs. He was very pleased and surprised when a sudden bundle of claw and warm-iron muscle landed on his knee. Benvenuto was missing Tonino too. He rubbed against Paolo with a kind of desperation, but he would not purr.

Rosa and Marco were getting up to put the young ones to bed, when there was a sudden great clanging, outside in the night.

“Good Heavens!” said Rosa, and opened the yard door.

The noise flooded in, an uneven metal sound, hasty and huge. The nearest – clang-clang-clang – was so near that it could only be the bell of Sant’ Angelo’s. Behind it, the bell of the Cathedral tolled. And beyond that, now near, now faint and tinny, every bell in every church in Caprona beat and boomed and clashed and chimed. Corinna and Lucia came racing in, their faces bright with cold excitement.

“We’re at war! The Duke’s declared war!”

Marco said he thought he had better go. “Oh no, don’t!” Rosa cried out. “Not yet. By the way, Lucia—”

Lucia took a quick look at the cooking in the hearth. “I’ll go and take Aunt Gina the prescription,” she said, and prudently ran away.

Marco and Rosa looked at one another. “Three States against us and no spells to fight with,” said Marco. “We’re not likely to have a long and happy marriage, are we?”

“Mr Notti says the Final Reserve is being called up tomorrow,” Corinna said encouragingly. She caught Rosa’s eye. “Come on, you kids,” she said to four cousins at random. “Bedtime.”

While the young ones were being put to bed, Paolo sat nursing Benvenuto, feeling more dismal than ever. He wondered if there would be soldiers from Florence and Pisa and Siena in Caprona by tomorrow. Would guns fire in the streets? He thought of big marble chips shot off the Cathedral, the New Bridge broken, despite all the spells in it, and swarthy enemy soldiers dragging Rosa off screaming. And he saw that all this could really have happened by the end of the week.

Here, he became quite certain that Benvenuto was trying to tell him something. He could tell from the accusing stare of Benvenuto’s yellow eyes. But he simply could not understand.

“I’ll try,” he said to Benvenuto. “I really will try.”

He had, fleetingly, the feeling that Benvenuto was glad. Encouraged by this, Paolo bent his head and stared at Benvenuto’s urgent face. But it did no good. All that Paolo could get out of it was a picture in his mind – a picture of somewhere with a coloured marble front, very large and beautiful.

“The Church of Sant’ Angelo?” he said doubtfully.

While Benvenuto’s tail was still lashing with annoyance, Rosa and Marco came back. “Oh dear!” Rosa said to Marco. “There’s Paolo taking all the troubles of the Casa on his shoulders again!”

Paolo looked up in surprise.

Marco said, “You look just like Antonio sometimes.”

“I can’t understand Benvenuto,” Paolo said despairingly.

Marco sat on the table beside him. “Then he’ll have to find some other way of telling us what he wants,” he said. “He’s a clever cat – the cleverest I’ve ever known. He’ll do it.”

He put out a hand and Benvenuto let him stroke his head. “Your ears,” said Marco, “Sir Cat, are like sea-holly without the prickles.”

Rosa perched on the table too, on the other side of Paolo. “What is it, Paolo? Tonino?”

Paolo nodded. “Nobody will believe me that the enemy enchanter’s got him.”

“We do,” said Marco.

Rosa said, “Paolo, it’s just as well he’s got Tonino and not you. Tonino’ll take it much more calmly.”

Paolo was a little bewildered. “Why do you two believe in the enchanter and no one else does?”

“What makes you think he exists?” Marco countered.

Even to Rosa and Marco, Paolo could not bring himself to tell of his embarrassing encounter with a Petrocchi. “There was a horrible fog at the end of the fight,” he said.

Rosa and Marco jumped round delightedly. Their hands met with a smack over Paolo’s head. “It worked! It worked!” And Marco added, “We were hoping someone would mention a certain fog! Did there seem to have been a large-scale cancel-spell with it, by any chance?”

“Yes,” said Paolo.

“We made that fog,” Rosa said. “Marco and me. We were hoping to stop the fighting, but it took us ages to make it, because all the magic in Caprona was going into the fight.”

Paolo digested this. That took care of the one piece of proof that did not depend on the word of a Petrocchi. Perhaps the enchanter did not exist after all. Perhaps Tonino really was at the Casa Petrocchi. He remembered that Renata had not said Angelica was missing until the fog cleared and she knew who he was. “Look,” he said. “Will you two come to the Casa Petrocchi with me and see if Tonino’s there?”

He was aware that Rosa and Marco were exchanging some kind of look above his head.

“Why?” said Rosa.

“Because,” said Paolo. “Because.” The need to persuade them cleared his wits at last. “Because Guido Petrocchi said Angelica Petrocchi was missing too.”

“I’m afraid we can’t,” Marco said, with what sounded like real regret. “You’d understand, if you knew how pressing our reasons are, believe me!”

Paolo did not understand. He knew that, with these two, it was not cowardice, or pride, or anything like that. That only made it more maddening. “Oh, nobody will help!” he cried out.

Rosa put her arm around him. “Paolo! You’re just like Father. You think you have to do everything yourself. There is one thing we can do.”

“Call Chrestomanci?” said Marco.

Paolo felt Rosa nod. “But he’s in Rome,” he objected.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Marco. “He’s that kind of enchanter. If he’s near enough and you need him enough, he comes when you call.”

“I must cook!” said Rosa, jumping off the table.

Just before the second supper was ready, Rinaldo came back, in great good spirits. Uncle Umberto and old Luigi Petrocchi had had another fight, in the dining-hall of the University. That was why Uncle Umberto had not turned up to see how Old Niccolo was. He and Luigi were both in bed, prostrated with exhaustion. Rinaldo had been drinking wine with some students who told him all about the fight. The students’ supper had been ruined. Cutlets and pasta had flown about, followed by chairs, tables and benches. Umberto had tried to drown Luigi in a soup tureen, and Luigi had replied by hurling the whole of the Doctors’ supper at Umberto. The students were going on strike. They did not mind the fight, but Luigi had shown them that the Doctors’ food was better than theirs.

Paolo listened without truly attending. He was thinking about Tonino and wondering if he dared depend on the word of a Petrocchi.

After a while, someone came and picked Tonino up. That was unpleasant. His legs and arms dragged and dangled in all directions, and he could not do anything about it. He was plunged somewhere much darker. Then he was left to lie amid a great deal of bumping and scraping, as if he were in a box which was being pushed across a floor. When it stopped, he found he could move. He sat up, trembling all over.

He was in the same room as before, but it seemed to be much smaller. He could tell that, if he stood up, his head would brush the little lighted chandelier in the ceiling. So he was larger now; where he had been three inches tall before, he must now be more like nine. The puppets must be too big for their scenery, and the false villa meant to look as if it was some distance away. And, with the Duchess suddenly taken ill, none of her helpers had bothered what size Tonino was. They had simply made sure he was shut up again.

“Tonino,” whispered Angelica.

Tonino whirled round. Half the room was full of a pile of lax puppet bodies. He scanned the cardboard head of the policeman, then his enemy the Hangman, and the white sausage of the baby, and came upon Angelica’s face halfway up the pile. It was her own face, though swollen and tearstained. Tonino clapped his hand to his nose. To his relief, the red beak was gone, though he still seemed to be wearing Mr Punch’s scarlet nightgown.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His teeth seemed to be chattering. “I tried not to hurt you. Are your bones broken?”

“No – o,” said Angelica. She did not sound too sure. “Tonino, what happened?”

“I hanged the Duchess,” Tonino said, and he felt some vicious triumph as he said it. “I didn’t kill her though,” he added regretfully.

Angelica laughed. She laughed until the heap of puppets was shaking and sliding about. But Tonino could not find it funny. He burst into tears, even though he was crying in front of a Petrocchi.

“Oh dear,” said Angelica. “Tonino, stop it! Tonino – please!” She struggled out from among the puppets and hobbled looming through the room. Her head banged the chandelier and sent it tinkling and casting mad shadows over them as she knelt down beside Tonino. “Tonino, please stop. She’ll be furious as soon as she feels better.”

Angelica was wearing Judy’s blue cap and Judy’s blue dress still. She took off the blue cap and held it out to Tonino. “Here. Blow on that. I used the baby’s dress. It made me feel better.” She tried to smile at him, but the smile went hopelessly crooked in her swollen face. Angelica’s large forehead must have hit the floor first. It was now enlarged by a huge red bump. Under it, the grin looked grotesque.

Tonino understood it was meant for a smile and smiled back, as well as he could for his chattering teeth.

“Here.” Angelica loomed back through the room to the pile of puppets and heaved at the Hangman. She returned with his black felt cape. “Put this on.”

Tonino wrapped himself in the cape and blew his nose on the blue cap and felt better.

Angelica heaved more puppets about. “I’m going to wear the policeman’s jacket,” she said. “Tonino – have you thought?”

“Not really,” said Tonino. “I sort of know.”

He had known from the moment he looked at the Duchess. She was the enchanter who was sapping the strength of Caprona and spoiling the spells of the Casa Montana. Tonino was not sure about the Duke – probably he was too stupid to count. But in spite of the Duchess’s enchantments, the spells of the Casa Montana – and the Casa Petrocchi – must still be strong enough to be a nuisance to her. So he and Angelica had been kidnapped to blackmail both houses into stopping making spells. And if they stopped, Caprona would be defeated. The frightening part was that Tonino and Angelica were the only two people who knew, and the Duchess did not care that they knew. It was not only that even someone as clever as Paolo would never think of looking in the Palace, inside a Punch and Judy show: it must mean that the two of them would be dead before anyone found them.

“We absolutely have to get away,” said Angelica. “Before she’s better from being hanged.”

“She’ll have thought of that,” said Tonino.

“I’m not sure,” said Angelica. “I could tell everyone was startled to death. They let me see you being put through the floor, and I think we could get out that way. It will be easier now we’re bigger.”

Tonino fastened the cape round him and struggled to his feet, though he felt almost too tired and bruised to bother. His head hit the chandelier too. Huge flickering shadows fled round the room, and made the heap of puppets look as if they were squirming about. “Where did they put me through?” he said.

“Just where you’re standing,” said Angelica.

Tonino backed against the windows and looked at the place. He would not have known there was any opening. But, now Angelica had told him, he could see, disguised by the painted swirls of the carpet and confused by the swinging light, the faintest black line. The outline made an oblong about the size of the shoddy dining-table. The tray of supper must have come through that way too.

“Sing an opening spell,” Angelica commanded him.

“I don’t know one,” Tonino was forced to confess.

He could tell by the stiff way Angelica stood that she was trying not to say a number of nasty things. “Well, I don’t dare,” she said. “You saw what happened last time. If I do anything, they’ll catch us again and punish us by making us be puppets. And I couldn’t bear another time.”

Tonino was not sure he could bear it either, even though, now he thought about it, he was not sure it had been a punishment. The Duchess had probably intended to make them perform anyway. She was quite mean enough. On the other hand, he was not sure he could stand another of Angelica’s botched spells, either. “Well, it’s only a trap-door,” he said. “It must be held up by one of those little hooks. Let’s try bashing at it with the candlesticks.”

“And if there’s a spell on it?” said Angelica. “Oh, come on. Let’s try.”

They seized a candlestick each and knelt beside the windows, knocking diligently at the scarcely-seen black line. The cardboard was tough and pulpy. The candlesticks shortly looked like metal weeping-willow trees. But they succeeded in making a crumbly hollow in the middle of one edge of the hidden door. Tonino thought he could see a glimmer of metal showing. He raised his bent candlestick high to deliver a mighty blow.

“Stop!” hissed Angelica.

There were large shuffling footsteps somewhere. Tonino lowered the candlestick by gentle fractions and scarcely dared breathe. A distant voice grumbled… “Mice then” … “Nothing here…” It was suddenly very much darker. Someone had switched off a light, leaving them only with the bluish glimmer of the little chandelier. The footsteps shuffled. A door bumped, and there was silence.

Angelica laid her candlestick down and began trying to tear at the cardboard with her fingers. Tonino got up and wandered away. It was no good. Someone was going to hear them, whatever they did. The Palace was full of footmen and soldiers. Tonino would have given up then and waited for the Duchess to do her worst. Only now he was standing up, the cardboard room seemed so small. Half of it was filled with the puppets. There was hardly room to move. Tonino wanted to hurl himself at the walls and scream. He did make a movement, and knocked the table. Because he was so much bigger and heavier now, the table swayed and creaked.

“I know!” he said. “Finish drawing the Angel.”

The bump on Angelica’s forehead turned up to him. “I’m not in the mood for doodling.”

“Not a doodle, a spell,” Tonino explained. “And then pull the table over us while we make a hole in the trap door.”

Angelica did not need telling that the Angel was the most potent spell in Caprona. She threw the candlestick aside and scrambled up. “That might just work,” she said. “You know, for a Montana, you have very good ideas.” Her head hit the chandelier again. In the confusion of swinging shadows, they could not find the tap Angelica had been drawing with. Tonino had to jam his head and arm into the tiny bathroom and pull off the other useless tap.

Even when the shadows stopped swinging, the Angel scratched on the table was hard to see. It now looked faint and small.

“He needs his scroll,” said Angelica. “And I’d better put in a halo to make sure he’s holy.”

Angelica was now so much bigger and stronger that she kept dropping the tap. The halo, when she had scratched it in, was too big, and the scroll would not go right. The table swayed this way and that, the tap ploughed and skidded, and there was a danger the Angel would end up a complete mess.

“It’s so fiddly!” said Angelica. “Will that do?”

“No,” said Tonino. “It needs the scroll more unrolled. Some of the words show on our Angel.”

Because he was quite right, Angelica lost her temper. “All right! Do it yourself, if you’re so clever, you horrible Montana!”

She held the tap out to Tonino and he snatched it from her, quite as angry. “Here,” he said, ploughing up a long curl of varnish. “Here’s the hanging bit. And the words go sideways. You can see Carmen pa, Venit ang, Cap and a lot more, but there won’t be room for it.”

“Our Angel,” said Angelica, “says cis saeculare, elus cantare and virtus data near the end.” Tonino scratched away and took no notice. It was hard enough shaping tiny letters with a thing like a tap, without listening to Angelica arguing. “Well it does!” said Angelica. “I’ve often wondered why it’s not the words we sing—”

The same idea came to both of them. They stared at one another, nose to nose across the scratched varnish.

“Finding the words means looking for them,” said Tonino.

“And they were over our gates all the time! Oh how stupid!” exclaimed Angelica. “Come on. We must get out now!”

Tonino left the scroll with Carmen scraped on it. There was really no room for any more. They dragged the creaking, swaying table across the hole they had made in the floor and set to work underneath it, hacking lumps out of the painted floor.

Shortly, they could see a bar of silvery metal stretching from the trap door to the floor underneath them. Tonino forced the end of his candlestick down between the battered cardboard edges and heaved sideways at the metal.

“There’s a spell on it,” he said.

“Angel of Caprona,” Angelica said at the same moment.

And the bar slipped sideways. A big oblong piece of the floor dropped away from in front of their knees and swung, leaving a very deep dark hole.

“Let’s get the Hangman’s rope,” said Angelica.

They edged along to the pile of puppets and disentangled the string from the little gibbet. Tonino tied it to the table leg.

“It’s a long way down,” he said dubiously.

“It’s only a few feet really,” Angelica said. “And we’re not heavy enough to hurt. I went all floppy when you kicked me off the stage and – well – I didn’t break anything anyway.”

Tonino let Angelica go first, swinging down into the dark space like an energetic blue monkey. Crunch went the shoddy table. Creeeak. And it swayed towards the leg where the rope was tied.

“Angel of Caprona!” Tonino whispered.

The table plunged, one corner first, down into the space. The cardboard room rattled. And, with a rending and creaking of wood, the table stuck, mostly in the hole, but with one corner out and wedged against the sides. There was a thump from below. Tonino was fairly sure he was stuck in the room for good now.

“I’m down,” Angelica whispered up. “You can pull the rope up. It nearly reaches the floor.”

Tonino leaned over and fumbled the string up from the table leg. He was sure there had been a miracle. That leg ought to have broken off, or the table ought to have gone down the hole. He whispered, “Angel of Caprona!” again as he slid down under the table into the dark.

The table creaked hideously, but it held together. The string burnt Tonino’s hands as he slid, and then it was suddenly not there. His feet hit the floor almost at once.

“Oof!” he went. His feet felt as if they had been knocked up through his legs.

Down there, they were standing on the shiny floor of a Palace room. The towering walls of the Punch and Judy show were on three sides of them. Instead of a back wall, there was a curtain, intended to hide the puppet-master, and very dim light was coming in round its edges. They pulled one end of the curtain aside. It felt coarse and heavy, like a sack. Behind it was the wall of the room. The puppet show had evidently been simply pushed away to one side. There was just space for Angelica and Tonino to squeeze past the ends of the show, into a large room lit by moonlight falling in strong silver blocks across its shiny floor.

It was the same room where the court had watched the Punch and Judy show. The puppet show had not been put away. Tonino thought of the time he and Angelica had tottered on the edge of the stage, looking into nothingness. They could have been killed. That seemed another miracle. Then, they must have been in some kind of storeroom. But, when the Duchess was so mysteriously taken ill, no one had bothered to put them back there.

The moonlight glittered on the polished face of the Angel, high up on the other side of the room, leaning out over some big double doors. There were other doors, but Tonino and Angelica set out, without hesitation, towards the Angel. Both of them took it for a guide.

“Oh bother!” said Angelica, before they reached the first block of moonlight. “We’re still small. I thought we’d be the right size as soon as we got out, didn’t you?”

Tonino’s one idea was to get out, whatever his size. “It’ll be easier to hide like this,” he said. “Someone in your Casa can easily turn you back.” He pulled the Hangman’s cloak round him and shivered. It was colder out in the big room. He could see the moon through the big windows, riding high and cold in a wintry dark blue sky. It was not going to be fun running through the streets in a red nightgown.

“But I hate being this small!” Angelica complained. “We’ll never be able to get down stairs.”

She was right to complain, as Tonino soon discovered. It seemed a mile across the polished floor. When they reached the double doors, they were tired out. High above them, the carved Angel dangled a scroll they could not possibly read, and no longer looked so friendly. But the doors were open a crack. They managed to push the crack wider by leaning their backs against the edge of both doors. It was maddening to think they could have opened them with one hand if only they had been the proper size.

Beyond was an even bigger room. This one was full of chairs and small tables. The only advantage of being doll-sized was that they could walk under every piece of furniture in a straight line to the far-too-distant door. It was like trudging through a golden moonlit forest, where every tree had an elegant swan-bend to its trunk. The floor seemed to be marble.

Before they reached the door, they were quarrelling again from sheer tiredness.

“It’s going to take all night to get out of here!” Angelica grumbled.

“Oh shut up!” said Tonino. “You make more fuss about things than my Aunt Gina!”

“Is your Aunt Gina bruised all over because you hit her?” Angelica demanded.

When they came to the half-open door at last, there was only another room, slightly smaller. This one had a carpet. Gilded sofas stood about like Dutch barns, and large frilly armchairs. Angelica gave a wail of despair.

Tonino stood on tiptoe. There seemed to be cushions on some of the seats. “Suppose we hid under a cushion for the night?” he suggested, trying to make peace.

Angelica turned on him furiously. “Stupid! No wonder you’re slow at spells! We may be small, but they’ll find us because of that. We must stink of magic. Even my baby brother could find us, and he may be a baby but he’s cleverer than you!”

Tonino was too angry to answer. He simply marched away into the carpet. At first it was a relief to his sore feet, but it soon became another trial. It was like walking through long, tufty grass – and anyone who has done that for a mile or so will know how tiring that can be. On top of that, they had to keep going round puffy armchairs that seemed as big as houses, frilly footstools and screens as big as hoardings. Some of these things would have made good hiding-places, but they were both too angry and frightened to suggest it.

Then, when they reached the door at last, it was shut. They threw themselves against the hard wood. It did not even shake.

“Now what?” said Tonino, leaning his back against it. The moon was going down by now. The carpet was in darkness. The bars of moonlight from the far-off windows only touched the tops of armchairs, or picked out the gold on the sofa backs, or the glitter from a shelf of coloured glass vases. It would be quite dark soon.

“There’s an Angel over there,” Angelica said wearily.

She was right. Tonino could just see it, as coloured flickers on wood, lit by moonlight reflected off the shelf of glass vases. There was another door under the Angel, or rather a dark space, because that door was wide open. Too tired even to speak, Tonino set off again, across another mile of tufty carpet, past beetling cliffs of furniture, to the other side of the room.

By the time they reached that open door, they were so tired that nothing seemed real any more. There were four steps down beyond the door. Very well. They went down them somehow. At the bottom was an even more brutally tufted carpet. It was quite dark.

Angelica sniffed the darkness. “Cigars.”

It could have been scillas for all Tonino cared. All he wanted was the next door. He set off, feeling round the walls for it, with Angelica stumbling after. They bumped into one huge piece of furniture, felt their way round it, and banged into another, which stuck even further into the room. And so they went, stumbling and banging, climbing across two rounded metal bars, wading in carpet, until they arrived at the four steps again. It was quite a small room – for the Palace – and it had only one door. Tonino felt for the first step, as high as his head, and did not think he had the strength to get up them again. The Angel had not been a guide after all.

“That part that stuck out,” said Angelica. “I don’t know what it was, but it was hollow, like a box. Shall we risk hiding in it?”

“Let’s find it,” said Tonino.

They found it, or something like it, by walking into it. It was a steep-sided box which came up to their armpits. There was a large piece of metal, like a very wide doorknocker, hung on the front of it. When they felt inside, they felt sheets of stiff leather, and crisper stuff that was possibly paper.

“I think it’s an open drawer,” said Tonino.

Angelica did not answer. She simply climbed in. Tonino heard her flapping and crackling among the paper – if it was paper. Well! he thought. And it was Angelica who said they smelt of magic. But he was so tired that he climbed in too, and fell into a warm crumply nest where Angelica was already asleep. Tonino was almost too tired by now to care if they were found or not. But he had the sense to drag a piece of parchment over them both before he went to sleep too.

Tonino woke up feeling chilly and puzzled. The light was pale and yellow because his sheet seemed to be over his face. Tonino gazed up at it, thinking it was a surprisingly flat, stiff sheet. It had large black letters on it too. His eyes travelled along the letters. DECLARATION OF WAR (Duplicate Copy), he read.

Then he knew, with a jump, that he was nine inches high and lying in a drawer in the Palace. And it was light! Someone would find them. In fact, someone nearly had. That was what had woken him. He could hear someone moving about the room, making obscure thumps and shuffles, and occasionally whistling a snatch of the Angel of Caprona.

Whoever it was had reached the drawer now. Tonino could hear the floor creak under him and a dress rustling, loud and near. He moved his head, gently and stiffly, and found Angelica’s frightened face resting on crumpled paper an inch or so away. The rustling dress proved the person was a woman. It must be the Duchess looking for them.

“That Duke!” said the person, in a voice no Duchess would use. “There never was such an untidy man!” Her breathing came suddenly nearer. Before either Tonino or Angelica could think what to do, the drawer moved. Helplessly, they were shunted inwards, feet first into darkness, and the drawer shut with a bang behind their heads.

“Help!” whispered Angelica.

“Ssh!”

The maid was still in the room. They could hear her move something, and then a tinkle of notes as she dusted a piano. Then a bump. And finally nothing. When they were quite sure she was gone, Angelica whispered, “What do we do now?”

There was room to sit up in the drawer, but not much else. Above their heads was a slit of light where the drawer met the desk, or whatever it was, and no way of opening it. But they could see quite well. Light was coming in at the back, beyond their feet. They tried bracing their hands against the wood overhead and heaving, but the drawer was made of solid, spicy-smelling wood and they could not budge it.

“We keep being shut in places without doors!” Angelica cried out. And she went floundering through the papers to the back of the drawer, where the light came in. Tonino crawled after her.

As soon as they got there, they realised this was the way out. The end of the drawer was lower than the front, and it did not reach the back of the wooden desk it was part of. There was quite a big gap there. When they put their heads into the space, they could see the ends of the other drawers above theirs going up like a ladder, and a slit of daylight at the top.

They squeezed through into the gap and climbed, side by side. It was as easy as climbing a ladder. They were one drawer away from the slit of daylight – which was going to be a tight squeeze – when they heard someone else in the room.

“They came down here, madam,” said a lady’s voice.

“Then we’ve caught them,” replied the Duchess. “Look very carefully.”

Tonino and Angelica hung from the back of the drawers by their fingers and toes, not daring to move. Silk dresses rustled as the Duchess and her lady moved round the room. “There’s nothing this end at all, madam.”

“And I swear this window hasn’t been opened,” said the Duchess. “Open all the drawers in the desk.”

There was a sharp rumble above Tonino’s head. Dusty white light flooded down from the open top drawer. Papers were loudly tossed over. “Nothing,” said the lady. The top drawer slammed in again. Tonino and Angelica had been hanging on to the second drawer. They climbed down to the next as fast and quietly as they could. The second drawer rumbled open, and slammed shut, nearly deafening them. The drawer they were on jerked. Luckily, it was stiff. The lady tugged and rattled at it, and that gave Tonino and Angelica just time to climb frantically up to the second drawer again and cling there. And there they hung, in the dark narrow space, while the lady opened the third drawer, slammed it shut, and pulled out the bottom drawer. They craned over their arms and watched the white light flood in from below.

“Look at this!” cried the lady. “They’ve been here! It’s like a mouse-nest!”

Silks rustled as the Duchess hurried over. “Curse it!” she said. “Not long ago too! I can smell them even through the cigars. Quick! They can’t be far away. They must have got out before the room was cleaned.”

The drawer rumbled in, bringing dusty darkness with it. There was a flurry of silks as the two women hurried away up the steps to the room with the armchairs, and the quiet, firm clap of the door closing.

“Do you think it’s a trap?” Angelica whispered.

“No,” said Tonino. He was sure the Duchess had not guessed where they were. But they were shut in this room now, by the sound, and he had no idea how they would get the door open.

All the same, even a shut room was great open spaces compared with the narrow slit at the back of the drawers. Angelica and Tonino pushed and squeezed and forced themselves through the narrow daylight slit, and finally crawled out on the top of a writing-desk. Before their eyes had got used to the light, Tonino stubbed his toe on a vast pen like a telegraph pole and then tripped over a paper-knife like an ivory plank. Angelica bumped into a china ornament standing at the back of the desk. It swayed. She swayed. She flung her arms round it. When her eyes stopped watering, she found she was hugging a china Mr Punch, nose, red nightgown and all, about the same height as she was. There was a china Judy standing at the other end of the desk.

“We can’t get away from these things!” she said.

The desk was covered in smooth red leather, very easy on the feet, and held a huge white blotter, which was even more comfortable to walk on. A chair with a matching red seat stood in front of the desk. Tonino saw they could easily jump down on to it. Even more easily, they could climb down the handles of the drawers. On the other hand, the piano the maid had dusted stood right beside the desk, and the window was round the corner from the piano. To reach the window was only a long stride from the piano. Though the window was shut, it had quite an easy-looking catch, if only they could reach it.

“Look!” said Angelica, pointing disgustedly.

A whole row of Punch and Judys stood along the top of the piano. Two were puppets on stands, very old and valuable by the look of them; two more were actually made of gold; and two others were rather arty clay models, which made Punch look like a leering ordinary man and Judy uncomfortably like the Duchess. And the music which was open on the piano was headed Arnolfini – Punch and Judy Suite.

“I think this is the Duke’s study,” said Angelica. And both of them got the giggles.

Still giggling, Tonino stepped on to the piano and started to walk to the window. Do – ti – so – fa, went the piano.

“Come back!” Angelica laughed.

Tonino came back – fa – so – ti – do – nearly in hysterics.

The door of the room opened and someone hurried down the steps. Angelica and Tonino could think of nothing better to do than stand stiffly where they were, hoping to be taken for more Punch and Judys. And, luckily, the man who came in was busy and worried. He slapped a pile of papers on the desk, without so much as glancing at the two new puppets, and hurried out again, gently closing the door behind him.

“Phew!” said Angelica.

They walked round to the front of the papers and looked at them curiously. The top one said:

Report of Campaign at 08.00 hours. Summary:

Troops advancing on all fronts to repel invasion.

Heavy Artillery and Reservists moving up in support.

Pisan front reports heavy losses. Fleet sighted—

Pisan? – steaming for mouth of Voltava.

“We’re at war!” said Tonino. “Why?”

“Because the Duchess has got us, of course,” said Angelica. “And our families daren’t make war-spells. Tonino, we must get out. We must tell them where the words to the Angel are!”

“But why does the Duchess want Caprona beaten?” Tonino said.

“I don’t know,” said Angelica. “There’s something wrong about her, I know that. Aunt Bella said there was an awful fuss when the Duke decided to marry her. Nobody likes her.”

“Let’s see if we can open the window,” said Tonino. He set off along the piano again. Do-ti-so-fa-me-re—

“Quiet!” said Angelica.

Tonino discovered that, if he put each foot down very slowly, the notes did not sound. He was halfway along the keyboard, and Angelica had one foot stretched out to follow, when they heard someone opening the door again. There was no time to be careful. Angelica fled back to the desk. Tonino, with a terrible discord, scrambled across the black notes and squeezed behind the music on the stand.

He was only just in time. When he looked – he was standing with his feet and head sideways, like an Ancient Egyptian – the Duke of Caprona himself was standing in front of the desk. Tonino thought the Duke seemed both puzzled and sad. He was tapping the Report of Campaign against his teeth and did not seem to notice Angelica standing between the Punch and Judy on his desk, although Angelica’s eyes were blinking against the glitter from the Duke’s buttons.

“But I didn’t declare war!” the Duke said to himself. “I was watching that puppet-show. How could I—?” He sighed and bit the Report worriedly between two rows of big shiny teeth. “Is my mind going?” he asked. He seemed to be talking to Angelica. She had the sense not to answer.

“I must go and ask Lucrezia,” the Duke said. He flung the Report down at Angelica’s feet and hurried out of the study.

Tonino slid cautiously down the piano-lid on to the keys again – ker-pling. Angelica was now standing at the end of the piano, pointing at the window. She was speechless with horror.

Tonino looked – and for a moment he was as frightened as Angelica. There was a brown monster glaring at him through the glass, wide-faced, wide-eyed and shaggy. The thing had eyes like yellow lamps.

Faintly, through the glass, came a slightly irritable request to pull himself together and open the window.

“Benvenuto!” shouted Tonino.

“Oh – it’s only a cat,” Angelica quavered. “How terrible it must feel to be a mouse!”

“Just a cat!” Tonino said scornfully. “That’s Benvenuto.” He tried to explain to Benvenuto that it was not easy to open windows when you were nine inches high.

Benvenuto’s impatient answer was to shove Tonino’s latest magic exercise book in front of Tonino’s mind’s eye, open at almost the first page.

“Oh, thanks,” Tonino said, rather ashamed. There were three opening-spells on that page, and none of them had stuck in his head. He chose the easiest, shut his eyes so that he could read the imaginary page more clearly, and sang the spell.

Gently and easily, the window swung open, letting in a gust of cold wind. And Benvenuto came in with the wind, almost as lightly. As Benvenuto trod gently up the scale towards him, Tonino had another moment when he knew how mice felt. Then he forgot it in the gladness of seeing Benvenuto. He stretched his arms wide to rub behind Benvenuto’s horny ears.

Benvenuto put his sticky black nose to Tonino’s face, and they both stood, delighted, holding down a long humming discord on the piano.

Benvenuto said that Paolo was not quick enough; he could not make him understand where Tonino was. Tonino must send Paolo a message. Could Tonino write this size?

“There’s a pen on the desk here,” Angelica called. And Tonino remembered her saying she could understand cats.

Rather anxiously, Benvenuto wanted to know if Tonino minded him talking to a Petrocchi.

The question astonished Tonino for a moment. He had clean forgotten that he and Angelica were supposed to hate one another. It seemed a waste of time, when they were both in such trouble. “Not at all,” he said.

“Do get off that piano, both of you,” said Angelica. “The humming’s horrible.”

Benvenuto obliged, with one great flowing leap. Tonino struggled after him with his elbows hooked over the piano-lid, pushing himself along against the black notes. By the time he reached the desk, Benvenuto and Angelica had exchanged formal introductions, and Benvenuto was advising them not to try getting out of the window. The room was three floors up. The stonework was crumbling, and even a cat had some trouble keeping his feet. If they would wait, Benvenuto would fetch help.

“But the Duchess—” said Tonino.

“And the Duke,” said Angelica. “This is the Duke’s study.”

Benvenuto considered the Duke harmless on his own. He thought they were in the safest place in the Palace. They were to stay hidden and write him a note small enough to carry in his mouth.

“Wouldn’t it be better if we tied it round your neck?” Angelica asked.

Benvenuto had never submitted to anything round his neck, and he was not going to start now. Anyway, someone in the Palace might see the message.

So Tonino put one foot on the Report of Campaign and succeeded, by heaving with both hands, in tearing off a corner of it. Angelica passed him the huge pen, which he had to hold in both hands, with the end resting on his shoulder. Then she stood on the paper to keep it steady while Tonino wielded the pen. It was such hard work, that he kept the message as short as possible. In Duke’s Palace. Duchess enchantress. T.M. & A.P.

“Tell them about the words to the Angel,” said Angelica. “Just in case.”

Tonino turned the paper over and wrote Words to Angel on Angel over gate. T & A. Then, exhausted with heaving the pen up and down, he folded the piece of paper with that message inside and the first one outside, and trod it flat. Benvenuto opened his mouth. Angelica winced at that pink cavern with its arched wrinkly roof and its row of white fangs, and let Tonino place the message across Benvenuto’s prickly tongue. Benvenuto gave Tonino a loving glare and sprang away. He struck one ringing chord from the piano, around middle C, made the slightest thump on the windowsill, and vanished.

Tonino and Angelica were staring after him and did not notice, until it was too late, that the Duke had come back.

“Funny,” said the Duke. “There’s a new Punch now, as well as a new Judy.”

Tonino and Angelica stood stiff as posts, one on each end of the blotter, in agonisingly uncomfortable attitudes.

Fortunately, the Duke noticed the open window. “Blessed maids and their fresh air!” he grumbled, and went over to shut it. Tonino seized the opportunity to stand on both feet, Angelica to uncrick her neck. Then they both jumped. An unmistakable gunshot cracked out, from somewhere below. And another. The Duke bent out of the window and seemed to be watching something. “Poor pussy,” he said. He sounded sad and resigned. “Why couldn’t you keep away, puss? She hates cats. And they make such a din, too, shooting them.” Another shot cracked out, and then several more. The Duke stood up, shaking his head sadly. “Ah well,” he said, as he shut the window. “I suppose they do eat birds.”

He came back across the study. Tonino and Angelica could not have moved if they tried. They were both too stricken.

The Duke’s face folded into shiny wrinkles. He had noticed the corner torn from the Report. “I’ve been eating paper now!” he said. His sad, puzzled face turned towards Tonino and Angelica. “I think I do forget things,” he said. “I talk to myself. That’s a bad sign. But I really don’t remember you two at all. At least, I remember the new Judy, but,” he said to Tonino, “I don’t remember you at all. How did you get here?”

Tonino was far too upset about Benvenuto to think. After all, the Duke really was speaking to him. “Please, sir,” he said, “I’ll explain—”

“Shut up!” snapped Angelica. “I’ll say a spell!”

“—only please tell me if they shot my cat,” said Tonino.

“I think so,” said the Duke. “It looked as if they got it.” Here he took a deep breath and turned his eyes carefully to the ceiling, before he looked at Tonino and Angelica again. Neither of them moved. Angelica was glaring at Tonino, promising him spells unimaginable if he said another word. And Tonino knew he had been an utter idiot anyway. Benvenuto was dead and there was no point in moving – no point in anything.

The Duke, meanwhile, slowly pulled a large handkerchief out of his pocket. A slightly crumpled cigar came out with it and flopped on the desk. The Duke picked it up and put it absent-mindedly between his glistening teeth. And then he had to take it out again to wipe his shiny face. “Both of you spoke,” he said, putting the handkerchief away and fetching out a gold lighter. “You know that?” he said, putting the cigar back into his mouth. He gave a furtive look round, clicked the lighter, and lit the cigar. “You are looking,” he said, “at a poor dotty Duke.” Smoke rolled out with his words, as much smoke as if the Duke had been a dragon.

Angelica sneezed. Tonino thought he was going to sneeze. He drew a deep breath to stop himself and burst out coughing.

“Ahah!” cried the Duke. “Got you!” His large wet hands pounced, and seized each of them round the legs. Holding them like that, firmly pinned to the blotter, he sat down in the chair and bent his triumphant shiny face until it was level with theirs. The cigar, cocked out of one side of his mouth, continued to roll smoke over them. They flailed their arms for balance and coughed and coughed. “Now what are you?” said the Duke. “Another of her fiendish devices for making me think I’m potty? Eh?”

“No we’re not!” coughed Tonino, and Angelica coughed, “Oh, please stop that smoke!”

The Duke laughed. “The old Chinese cigar-torture,” he said gleefully, “guaranteed to bring statues to life.” But his right hand moved Tonino, stumbling and swaying, across the blotter to Angelica, where his left hand gathered him in. His right hand took the cigar out of his mouth and laid it on the edge of the desk. “Now,” he said. “Let’s have a look at you.”

They scrubbed their streaming eyes and looked fearfully up at his great grinning face. It was impossible to look at all of it at once. Angelica settled for his left eye, Tonino for his right eye. Both eyes bulged at them, round and innocent, like Old Niccolo’s.

“Bless me!” said the Duke. “You’re the spell-makers’ children who were supposed to come to my pantomime! Why didn’t you come?”

“We never got an invitation, Your Grace,” Angelica said. “Did you?” she asked Tonino.

“No,” Tonino said mournfully.

The Duke’s face sagged. “So that’s why it was. I wrote them myself too. That’s my life in a nutshell. None of the orders I give ever get carried out, and an awful lot of things get done that I never ordered at all.” He opened his hand slowly. The big warm fingers peeled damply off their legs. “You feel funny wriggling about in my hand,” he said. “There, if I let you go, will you tell me how you got here?”

They told him, with one or two forced pauses when he took a puff at his cigar and set them coughing again. He listened wonderingly. It was not like explaining things to a huge grown-up Duke. Tonino felt as if he was telling a made-up story to his small cousins. From the way the Duke’s eyes popped, and the way he kept saying “Go on!” Tonino was sure the Duke was believing it no more than the little Montanas believed the story of Giovanni the Giant Killer.

Yet, when they had finished, the Duke said, “That Punch and Judy show started at eight-thirty and went on till nine-fifteen. I know, because there was a clock just over you. They say I declared war at nine o’clock last night. Did either of you notice me declaring war?”

“No,” they said. “Though,” Angelica added sourly, “I was being beaten to death at the time and I might not have noticed.”

“My apologies,” said the Duke. “But did either of you hear gunfire? No. But firing started around eleven and went on all night. It’s still going on. You can see it, but not hear it, from the tower over this study. Which means another damn spell, I suppose. And I think I’m supposed to sit here and not notice Caprona being blown to pieces around me.” He put his chin in his hands and stared at them miserably. “I know I’m a fool,” he said, “but just because I love plays and puppet-theatres, I’m not an idiot. The question is, how do we get you two out of here without Lucrezia knowing?”

Tonino and Angelica were almost too surprised and grateful to speak. And while they were still trying to say thank you, the Duke jumped upright, staring pop-eyed.

“She’s coming! I’ve got an instinct. Quick! Get in my pockets!”

He turned round sideways to the desk and held one pocket of his coat stretched against it, between two fingers. Angelica hastily lifted the pocket-flap and slid down between the two layers of cloth. The Duke stubbed out his cigar on the edge of the desk and popped it in after her. Then he turned round and held the other pocket open for Tonino. As Tonino crouched down in fuzzy darkness, he heard the door open and the voice of the Duchess.

“My lord, you’ve been smoking cigars in here again.”

Paolo woke up that morning knowing that he was going to have to look for Tonino himself. If his father, and Rinaldo, and then Rosa and Marco, all refused to try, then there was no use asking anyone else.

He sat up and realised that the Casa was full of unusual noises. Below in the yard, the gate was open. He could hear the voices of Elizabeth, Aunt Anna, Aunt Maria and Cousin Claudia, who were bringing the day’s bread.

“Just look at the Angel!” he heard his mother say. “Now what did that?”

“It’s because we’ve stopped our spells,” said Cousin Claudia.

Following that came a single note of song from Aunt Anna, cut off short with a squeak.

Aunt Maria said angrily, “No spells, Anna! Think of Tonino!”

This was intriguing, but what really interested Paolo were the noises behind the voices: marching feet, orders being shouted, a drum beating, horses’ hooves, heavy rumbling and some cursing. Paolo shot out of bed. It must be the army.

“Hundreds of them,” he heard Aunt Anna say.

“Most of them younger than my Domenico,” said Aunt Maria. “Claudia, take this basket while I shut the gate. All going to face three armies without a war-scrip between them. I could cry!”

Paolo shot along the gallery, pulling on his jacket, and hurried down the steps into the cold yellow sunlight. He was too late. The gate was barred and the war-noises shut out. The ladies were crossing the yard with their baskets.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Elizabeth called to him. “No one’s going out today. There’s going to be fighting. The schools are all closed.”

They put down their baskets to open the kitchen door. Paolo saw them recoil, with cries of dismay.

“Good Lord!” said Elizabeth.

“Don’t anyone tell Gina!” said Aunt Maria.

At the same moment, someone knocked heavily at the Casa gate.

“See who that is, Paolo,” called Aunt Anna.

Paolo went under the archway and undid the flap of the peephole. He was pleased to have this chance to see the army, and pleased that the schools were shut. He had not intended to go to school today anyway.

There was a man in uniform outside, who shouted, “Open and receive this, in the name of the Duke!” Behind him, Paolo caught glimpses of shiny marching boots and more uniforms. He unbarred the gate.

Meanwhile, it became plain that Aunt Gina was not to be kept away from the kitchen. Her feet clattered on the stairs. There was a stunned pause. Then the whole Casa filled with her voice.

“Oh my God! Mother of God! Insects!” It even drowned the noise of the military band that was marching past as Paolo opened the gate.

The man outside thrust a sheet of paper at Paolo and darted off to hammer on the next door. Paolo looked at it. He had a mad idea that he had just been handed the words to the Angel. After that, he went on staring, oblivious alike of Aunt Gina – who was now screaming what she was going to do to Lucia – and of the great gun that went rumbling past, pulled by four straining horses.

State of Caprona, Paolo read, Form FR3 Call Up of Final Reservists. The following to report to the Arsenal for immediate duty at 03.00 hrs, January 14th, 1979: Antonio Montana, Lorenzo Montana, Piero Montana, Ricardo Montana, Arturo Montana (ne Notti), Carlo Montana, Luigi Montana, Angelo Montana, Luca Montana, Giovanni Montana, Piero Iacopo Montana, Rinaldo Montana, Domenico Montana, Francesco Montana.

That was everyone! Paolo had not realised that even his father was a Final Reservist.

“Shut the gate, Paolo!” shrieked Aunt Maria.

Paolo was about to obey, when he remembered that he had not yet looked at the Angel. He dodged outside and stared up, while half a regiment of infantry marched past behind him. It looked as if, in the night, every pigeon in Caprona had chosen to sit on that one golden carving. It was plastered with bird-droppings. They were particularly thick, not unnaturally, on the outstretched arm holding the scroll, and the scroll was a crusty white mass. Paolo shuddered. It seemed like an omen. He did not notice one of the marching soldiers detach himself from the column and come up behind him.

“I should close the gate, if I were you,” said Chrestomanci.

Paolo looked up at him and wondered why people looked so different in uniform. He pulled himself together and dragged the two halves of the gate shut. Chrestomanci helped him slot the big iron bars in to lock it. As he did, he said, “I was at the Casa Petrocchi around dawn, so there’s no great need for explanations. But I would like to know what’s the matter in the kitchen this time.”

Paolo looked. Eight baskets piled high with round tan-coloured loaves stood outside the kitchen. There were agitated noises from inside it, and a curious long droning-sound. “I think it’s Lucia’s spell again,” he said.

He and Chrestomanci set off across the yard. Before they had gone three steps, the aunts burst out of the kitchen and rushed towards him. Antonio and the uncles hurried down from the gallery, and cousins arrived from everywhere else.

Aunt Francesca surged out of the Saloon. She had spent the night there, and looked as if she had. Chrestomanci was soon in the middle of a crowd and holding several conversations at once.

“You were quite right to call me,” he said to Rosa, and to Aunt Francesca, “Old Niccolo is good for years yet, but you should rest.” To Elizabeth and Antonio, he said, “I know about Tonino,” and to Rinaldo, “This is my fourth uniform today. There’s heavy fighting in the hills and I had to get through somehow. What possessed the Duke,” he asked the uncles, “to declare war so soon? I could have got help from Rome if he’d waited.” None of them knew, and they all told him so at once. “I know,” said Chrestomanci. “I know. No war-spells. I think our enemy enchanter has made a mistake over Tonino and Angelica. If it does nothing else, it allows me a free hand.” Then, as the clamour showed no sign of abating, he said, “By the way, the Final Reserve has been called up,” and nodded to Paolo to give the paper to Antonio.

In the sober hush that this produced, Chrestomanci pushed his way to the kitchen and put his head inside. “My goodness me!” Paolo heard him murmur.

Paolo ducked under all the people crowding round Antonio and looked into the kitchen under Chrestomanci’s elbow. He looked into a wall of insects. The place was black with them, and glittering, and crawling, and dense with different humming. Flies of all kinds, mosquitoes, wasps and midges filled the air-space. Beetles, ants, moths and a hundred other crawling things occupied the floor and shelves and sink.

Peering through the buzzing clouds, Paolo was almost sure he saw a swarm of locusts on the cooking-stove. It was even worse than he had imagined the Petrocchi kitchen when he was little.

Chrestomanci drew a deep breath. Paolo suspected he was trying not to laugh. They both looked round for Lucia, who was standing on one leg among the breadbaskets, wondering whether to run away. “I am sure,” Chrestomanci said to her – he was trying not to laugh; he had to start again. “I am sure people have talked to you about misusing spells. But – just out of interest – what did you use?”

“She used her own words to the Angel of Caprona!” Aunt Maria said, bursting angrily out of the crowd. “Gina’s nearly out of her mind!”

“All the children did it,” Lucia said defiantly. “It wasn’t only me.”

Chrestomanci looked at Paolo, and Paolo nodded. “A considerable tribute to the powers of the younger Montanas,” said Chrestomanci. He turned and snapped his fingers into the buzzing, crawling kitchen. Not much happened. The air cleared enough for Paolo to see that it was indeed locusts on the cooker, but that was all. Chrestomanci’s eyebrows went up a little. He tried again. This time nothing happened at all. He retreated from the buzzing, looking thoughtful.

“With all due respect,” he said to Paolo and Lucia, “to the Angel of Caprona, it should not be this powerful on its own. I’m afraid this spell will just have to wear itself out.” And he said to Aunt Maria, “No wonder the enemy enchanter is so much afraid of the Casa Montana. Does this mean there won’t be any breakfast?”

“No, no. We’ll make it in the dining-room,” Aunt Maria said, looking very flustered.

“Good,” said Chrestomanci. “There’s something I have to say to everyone, when they’re all there.”

And when everyone was gathered round the tables to eat plain rolls and drink black coffee made over the dining-room fire, Chrestomanci stood in front of the fire, holding a coffee cup, and said, “I know few of you believe Tonino is not in the Casa Petrocchi, but I swear to you he is not, and that Angelica Petrocchi is also missing. I think you are quite right to stop making spells until they are found, but I want to say this: even if I found Tonino and Angelica this minute, all the spells of the Casa Montana and the Casa Petrocchi are not going to save Caprona now. There are three armies, and the fleet of Pisa, closing in on her. The only thing which is going to help you is the true words to the Angel of Caprona. Have you all understood?”

They all had. Everyone was silent. Nobody spoke for some time. Then Uncle Lorenzo began grumbling. Moths had got into his Reservist uniform. “Someone took the spell out,” he complained. “I shan’t be fit to be seen.”

“Does it matter?” asked Rinaldo. His face was very white and he was not having anything but coffee. “You’ll only be seen dead anyway.”

“But that’s just it!” said Uncle Lorenzo. “I don’t want to be seen dead in it!”

“Oh be quiet!” Domenico snapped at him. Uncle Lorenzo was so surprised that he stopped talking. Breakfast finished in gloomy murmurs.

Paolo got up and slid behind the bench where Chrestomanci was sitting. “Excuse me, sir. Do you know where Tonino is?”

“I wish I did,” said Chrestomanci. “This enchanter is good. So far, I have only two clues. Last night, when I was coming up through Siena, somebody worked two very strange spells somewhere ahead of me.”

“Tonino?” Paolo said eagerly.

Chrestomanci shook his head. “The first one was definitely Angelica. She has what you might call an individual style. But the other one baffled me. Do you think your brother is capable of working anything strong enough to get through an enchanter’s spells? Angelica did it through sheer weirdness. Could Tonino, do you think?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Paolo. “He doesn’t know many spells, but he always gets them right and they work—”

“Then it remains a mystery,” said Chrestomanci. He sighed. Paolo thought he looked tired.

“Thanks,” he said, and slipped off, carefully thinking careless thoughts about what he would do now school was closed. He did not want anyone to notice what he meant to do.

He slipped through the coach-house, past the crumpled horses and coachman, past the coach, and opened the little door in the wall at the back. He was half through it, when Rosa said doubtfully, at the front of the coach-house, “Paolo? Are you in there?”

No, I’m not, Paolo thought, and shut the little door after him as gently as he knew how. Then he ran.

By this time, there were hardly any soldiers in the streets, and hardly anyone else either. Paolo ran past yellow houses, heavily shuttered, in a quiet broken by the uneasy ringing of bells. From time to time, he thought he could hear a dull, distant noise – a sort of booming, with a clatter in its midst. Wherever the houses opened out and Paolo could see the hills, he saw soldiers – not as soldiers, but as crawling, twinkling lines, winding upwards – and some puffs of smoke. He knew Chrestomanci was right. The fighting was very near.

He was the only person about in the Via Cantello. The Casa Petrocchi was as shuttered and barred as the Casa Montana. And their Angel was covered with bird-lime too. Like the Montanas, they had stopped making spells. Which showed, thought Paolo, that Chrestomanci was right about Angelica too. He was much encouraged by that as he hammered on the rough old gate.

There was no sound from inside, but, after a second or so, a white cat jumped to the top of the gate, and crouched in the gap under the archway, looking down with eyes even bluer than Paolo’s.

Those eyes reminded Paolo that his own eyes were likely to give him away. He did not think he dared disguise them with a spell, in case the Petrocchis noticed. So he swallowed, told himself that he had to find the one person who was likely to help him look for Tonino, and said to the cat, “Renata. Could I speak to Renata?”

The white cat stared. Maybe it made some remark. Then it jumped down inside the Casa, leaving Paolo with an uncomfortable feeling that it knew who he was. But he waited. Before he had quite decided to go away again, the peephole was unlatched. To his relief, it was Renata’s pointed face that looked through the bars at him.

“Whoops!” she said. “I see why Vittoria fetched me. What a relief you came!”

“Come and help find Tonino and Angelica,” said Paolo. “Nobody will listen.”

“Ung.” Renata pulled a strip of her red hair into her mouth and bit it. “We’re forbidden to go out. Think of an excuse.”

“Your teacher’s ill and scared of the war and wants us to sit with her,” said Paolo.

“That might do,” said Renata. “Come in while I ask.” Paolo heard the gate being unbarred. “Her name’s Mrs Grimaldi,” Renata whispered, holding the gate open for him. “She lives in the Via Sant’ Angelo and she’s ever so ugly, in case they ask. Come in.”

Considerably to his amazement, Paolo entered the Casa Petrocchi, and was even more amazed not to be particularly frightened. He felt as if he was about to do an exam, keyed up, and knowing he was in for it, but that was all.

He saw a yard and a gallery so like his own that he could almost have believed he had been magically whisked back home. There were differences, of course. The gallery railings were fancy wrought-iron, with iron leopards in them at intervals. The cats that sat sunning themselves on the water butts were mostly ginger or tabby – whereas in the Casa Montana, Benvenuto had left his mark, and the cats were either black or black and white. And there was a gush of smell from the kitchen – frying onions – the like of which Paolo had not smelt since Lucia cast her unlucky spell.

“Mother!” shouted Renata.

But the first person who appeared was Marco. Marco was galloping down the steps from the gallery with a pair of long shiny boots in one hand, and a crumpled red uniform over his arm. “Mother!” Marco bellowed, in the free and easy way people always bellow for their mothers. “Mother! There’s moth in my uniform! Who took the spell out of it?”

“Stupid!” Renata said to him. “We put every single spell away last night.” And she said to Paolo, “That’s my brother Marco.”

Marco turned indignantly to Renata. “But moths take months—!” And he saw Paolo. It was hard to tell which of them was more dismayed.

At that moment, a red-haired, worried-looking lady came across the yard, carrying a little boy. The baby had black hair and the same bulging forehead as Angelica. “I don’t know, Marco,” she said. “Get Rosa to mend it. What is it, Renata?”

Marco interrupted. “Rosa,” he said, looking fixedly at Paolo, “is with her sister. Who’s your friend, Renata?”

Paolo could not resist. “I’m Paolo Andretti,” he said wickedly. Marco rewarded him with a look which dared him to say another word.

Renata was relieved, because she now knew what to call Paolo. “Paolo wants me to come and help look after Mrs Grimaldi. She’s ill in bed, Mother.”

Paolo could see by the way Marco’s eyes went first wide and then almost to slits, that Marco was extremely alarmed by this and determined to stop Renata. But Paolo could not see how Marco could do anything. He could not give away that he knew who Paolo was without giving away himself and Rosa too. It made him want to laugh.

“Oh poor Mrs Grimaldi!” said Mrs Petrocchi. “But, Renata, I don’t think—”

“Doesn’t Mrs Grimaldi realise there’s a war on?” Marco said. “Did Paolo tell you she was ill?”

“Yes,” Paolo said glibly. “My mother’s great friends with Mrs Grimaldi. She’s sorry for her because she’s so ugly.”

“And of course she knows about the war.” Renata said. “I kept telling you, Marco, how she dives under her desk if she hears a bang. She’s scared stiff of guns.”

“And it’s all been too much for her, Mother says,” Paolo added artistically.

Marco tried another tack. “But why does Mrs Grimaldi want you, Renata? Since when have you been teacher’s pet?”

Renata, who was obviously as quick as Paolo, said, “Oh, I’m not. She just wants me to amuse her with some spells—”

At this, Mrs Petrocchi and Marco said, “You’re not to use spells! Angelica—”

“—but of course I won’t,” Renata continued smoothly. “I’ll just sing songs. She likes me to sing. And Paolo’s going to read to her out of the Bible. Do say we can go, Mother. She’s lying in bed all on her own.”

“Well—” said Mrs Petrocchi.

“The streets aren’t safe,” said Marco.

“There was no one about at all,” Paolo said, giving Marco a look to make him watch it. Two could play at that.

“Mother,” said Renata, “you are going to mend Marco’s uniform, aren’t you?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Mrs Petrocchi.

Renata at once took this as permission to go with Paolo. “Come on, Paolo,” she said, and raced under Marco’s nose to what was obviously the coach-house. Paolo whizzed after her.

Marco, however, was not defeated. Before Renata’s hand was on the latch of the big door, an obvious uncle was leaning over the gallery. “Renata! Be a good girl and find me my tobacco.” An obvious aunt shot out of the kitchen. She looked like Aunt Gina with red hair, and she hooted in the same way. “Renata! Have you taken my good knife?” Two young cousins shot out of another door. “Renata, you said you’d play dressing-up!” and Mrs Petrocchi, looking anxious and undecided, was holding the baby boy out, saying, “Renata, you’ll have to mind Roberto while I’m sewing.”

“I can’t stop now!” Renata shouted back. “Poor Mrs Grimaldi!” She wrenched open the big door and pushed Paolo inside. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

It was obvious to Paolo what was going on. It was so like the Casa Montana. Marco had broadcast – not an alarm, because he dared not – a sort of general uneasiness about Renata. “Marco’s trying to stop us,” he said.

“I know that,” Renata said, hurrying him past the sleek Petrocchi coach and – to Paolo’s interest – past four black cardboard horses as crumpled and muddy as the Casa Montana ones. “Why is he? How does he know?”

Behind them was a perfect clamour of Petrocchi voices, all wanting Renata. “He just does,” Paolo said. “Be quick!”

The small door to the street had a big stiff key. Renata took it in both hands and struggled to turn it. “Does he know you?” she said sharply.

Like an answer, Marco’s voice sounded from behind the coach. “Renata!” Then, much more softly, “Paolo – Paolo Montana, come here!”

The door came open. “Run, if you’re coming!” Paolo said. They shot out into the street, both running hard. Marco came to the door and shouted something, but he did not seem to be following. Nevertheless, Paolo kept on running, which forced Renata to run too. He did not want to talk. He wanted to absorb the shock of Marco. Marco Andretti was really Marco Petrocchi – he must be Guido’s eldest son! Rosa Montana and Marco Petrocchi. How did they do it? How ever did they manage it? he kept wondering. And also – more soberly – How ever will they get away with it?

“All right. That will do,” Renata panted. By this time they had crossed the Corso and were down beside the river, trotting along empty quaysides towards the New Bridge. Renata slowed down, and Paolo did too, quite breathless. “Now,” she said, “tell me how Marco knew you, or I won’t come a step further.”

Paolo looked at her warily. He had already discovered that Renata was, as Aunt Gina would say, sharp enough to cut herself, and he did not like the way she was looking at him. “He saw me at the Palace of course,” Paolo said.

“No he didn’t,” said Renata. “He drove the coach. He knows your name and he knows why you came, doesn’t he? How?”

“I think he must have been standing behind us on the Art Gallery steps, and we didn’t see him in the fog,” said Paolo.

Renata’s shrewd eyes continued the look Paolo did not like.

“Good try,” she said. Paolo tried to break off the look by turning and sauntering on along the quays. Renata followed him, saying, “And I was meant to get all embarrassed and not ask any more. You’re sharp enough to cut yourself, Mr Montana. But what a pity. Marco wasn’t in the fight. They wanted him for the single combat, that’s how I know, and he wasn’t there, so Papa had to do it. And I can tell that you don’t want me to know how Marco knows you. And I can tell Marco doesn’t, or he’d have stopped me going by saying who you were. So—”

“You’re the one who’s going to cut yourself,” Paolo said over his shoulder, “by being too clever. I don’t know how Marco knew me, but he was being kind not say—” He stopped. He sniffed. He was level with an alleyway, where a peeling blue house bulged out on to the jetty. Paolo felt the air round that alley with a sense he hardly knew he had, inborn over generations of spellmaking. A spell had been set here – a strong spell, not long ago.

Renata came up behind. “You’re not going to wriggle out—” She stopped too. “Someone made a spell here!”

“Was it Angelica? Can you tell?” Paolo asked.

“Why?” said Renata.

Paolo told her what Chrestomanci had said. Her face went red, and she prodded with her toe at a mooring-chain in the path. “Individual style!” she said. “Him and his jokes! It’s not Angelica’s fault. She was born that way. And it’s not everyone who can get a spell to work by doing everything wrong. I think she’s a sort of back-to-front genius, and I told the Duchess of Caprona so when she laughed, too!”

“But is the spell hers?” asked Paolo. He could hear gunfire, from somewhere down the river, mixed with the dull booming from the hills. It was a blunt, bonking clomp, clomp, like a giant chopping wood. His head went up to listen as he said, “I know it’s not Tonino. His feel careful.”

“No,” said Renata, and her head was up too. “It’s a bit stale, isn’t it? And it doesn’t feel very nice. The war sounds awfully close. I think we ought to get off the quays.”

She was probably right. Paolo hesitated. He was sure they were hot on the trail. The stale spell had a slight sick feeling to it, which reminded him of the message in the yard last night.

And while he hesitated, the war seemed suddenly right on top of them. It was deafening, brazen, horrible. Paolo thought of someone holding one end of an acre of sheet metal and flapping it, or of gigantic alarm clocks. But that did not do justice to the noise. Nor did it account for some huge metallic screeches. He and Renata ducked and put their hands to their ears, and enormous things whirled above them. They went on, whatever they were, out above the river. Paolo and Renata crouched on the quay, staring at them.

They flapped across in a group – there were at least eight of them – gonging and screeching. Paolo thought first of flying machines and then of the Montana winged horse. There seemed to be legs dangling beneath the great black bodies, and their metal wings were whirling furiously. Some of them were not flying so well. One lost height, despite madly clanging with its wings, and dropped into the river with a splash that threw water all over the New Bridge and spattered Renata and Paolo. Another one lost height and whirled its iron tail for balance. Paolo recognised it as one of the iron griffins from the Piazza Nuova, as it, too, fell into a spout of water.

Renata began to laugh. “Now that is Angelica!” she said. “I’d know her spells anywhere.”

They leapt up and raced for the long flight of stairs up to the Piazza Nuova. The din from the griffins was still drowning all but the nearest gunfire. Renata and Paolo ran up the steps, turning round at every landing to see what was happening to the rest of the griffins. Two more came down in the river. A further two plunged into the gardens of rich villas. But the last two were going well. When Paolo next looked, they seemed to be struggling to gain altitude in order to get over the hills beyond the Palace. The distant clanging was fast and furious, and the metal wings a blur.

Paolo and Renata turned and climbed again.

“What is it? A call for help?” panted Paolo.

“Must be,” gasped Renata. “Angelica’s spells – always – mad kind of reasonableness.”

An echoing clang brought them whirling round. Another griffin was down, but they did not see where. Fascinated, they watched the efforts of the last one. It had now reached the marble front of the Duke’s Palace, and it was not high enough to clear it. The griffin seemed to know. It put out its claws and seemed to be clutching at the zig-zag marble battlements. But that did no good. They saw it, a distant black blot, go sliding down the coloured marble facade – they could even hear the grinding – down and down, until it crashed on to the roof of the marble gateway, where it drooped and lay still. Above it, even from here, they could see two long lines of scratches, all down the front of the Palace.

“Wow!” said Paolo.

He and Renata climbed up into the strangely bare Piazza Nuova. It was now nothing but a big paved platform surrounded by a low wall. At intervals round the wall were the snapped-off stumps of the griffins’ pedestals, each with a broken green or crimson plaque lying beside it. In the middle, what had been a tangled griffin-fountain was now a jet of water from a broken pipe.

“Just look at all these spells she’s broken!” exclaimed Renata. “I didn’t think she could do anything this strong!”

Paolo looked across at the scratched Palace, rather enviously. There were spells in the marble to stop that kind of thing. Angelica must have broken them all. The odd thing was that he could not feel the spell. The Piazza Nuova ought to have reeked of magic, but it just felt empty. He stared round, puzzled. And there, trotting slowly and wearily along the low wall, was a familiar brown shape with a trailing bush of a tail.

“Benvenuto!” he said.

For a moment, it looked as if Benvenuto was going to walk straight past Paolo, as he so often did. But that must have been because he was tired. He stopped. He glared urgently at Paolo. Then he carefully opened his mouth and spat out a small folded scrap of paper. After that, he lay down and lost interest in the world. Paolo could see his brown sides heaving when he picked up the paper.

Renata looked over Paolo’s shoulder as Paolo – rather disgustedly, because it was wet – unfolded the paper. The writing was definitely Tonino’s, though it was far too small. And, though Paolo did not know it, not much of Tonino’s message had survived. He and Renata read:

ords to Angel on Angel over

It was small wonder that Paolo and Renata misunderstood. From the Piazza Nuova, now the griffins were gone, an Angel was clearly visible. It stood, golden and serene, guarding a Caprona which was already surrounded in the smoke from gunfire, on top of the great dome of the Cathedral.

“Do you think we can get up there?” said Paolo.

Renata’s face was white. “We’d better try. But I warn you, I’m no good at heights.”

They hurried down among the red roofs and golden walls, leaving Benvenuto asleep on the wall. After a while, Benvenuto picked himself up and trotted away, restored. It took more than a few ill-aimed rifles to finish Benvenuto.

When Paolo and Renata reached the cobbled square in front of the Cathedral, the great bell in the bell-tower beside it was tolling. People were gathering into the church to pray for Caprona, and the Archbishop of Caprona himself was standing by the door blessing everyone who entered. Renata and Paolo joined the line. It seemed the easiest way to get in. They had nearly reached the door, when Marco dashed into the square towing Rosa. Rosa saw Renata’s hair and pointed. She was too blown to speak. Marco grinned. “Your spell wins,” he said.

The warm pocket holding Tonino swayed and swooped as the Duke stood up. “Of course I smoked a cigar,” he said to the Duchess, injured. “Anyone would smoke a cigar, if they found they’d declared war without knowing they had, and knew they were bound to be beaten.” His voice came rumbling to Tonino’s ears through his body, more than from outside.

“I’ve told you it’s bad for your health,” said the Duchess. “Where are you going?”

“Me? Oh,” said the Duke. The pockets swooped, then swooped again, as he climbed the steps to the door. “Off to the kitchens. I feel peckish.”

“You could send for food,” said the Duchess, but she did not sound displeased. Tonino knew she had guessed they had been in the study all along and wanted the Duke out of it while she found them.

He heard the door shut. The pocket swung rhythmically as the Duke walked. It was not too bad once Tonino was used to it. It was a large pocket. There was almost room in it for Tonino, and the Duke’s lighter, and his handkerchief, and another cigar, and some string, and some money, and a rosary, and some dice. Tonino made himself comfortable with the handkerchief as a cushion and wished the Duke would not keep patting at him to see if he was there.

“Are you all right in there?” the Duke rumbled at last. “Nobody about. You can stick your heads out. I thought of the kitchens because you didn’t seem to have had any breakfast.”

“You are kind,” Angelica’s voice came faintly. Tonino worked himself to his feet and put his head out under the flap of the pocket. He still could not see Angelica – the Duke’s generous middle was in the way – but he heard her say, “You keep rather a lot of things in your pockets, don’t you? Do you happen to know what I’ve got stuck to my foot?”

“Er – toffee, I suspect,” said the Duke. “Please oblige me by eating it.”

“Thanks,” Angelica said doubtfully.

“I say,” said Tonino. “Why didn’t the Duchess know we were in your pockets? She could smell us before.”

The Duke’s loud laugh rumbled through him. The gilded wall Tonino could see began to jolt upward, and upward, and upward. The Duke was walking downstairs. “Cigars, lad!” the Duke said. “Why do you think I smoke them? She can’t smell anything through them, and she hates that. She tried setting a spell on me to make me stop once, but I got so bad-tempered she had to take it off.”

“Excuse me, sir,” came Angelica’s voice from the other side of the Duke. “Won’t someone notice if you walk downstairs talking to yourself?”

The Duke laughed again. “Not a soul! I talk to myself all the time – and laugh, too, if something amuses me. They all think I’m potty anyway. Now, have you two thought of a way to get you out of here? The safest way would be to fetch your families here. Then I could hand you over in secret, and she’d be none the wiser.”

“Can’t you just send for them?” Tonino suggested. “Say you need them to help in the war.”

“She’d smell a rat,” said the Duke. “She says your war-charms are all washed-up anyway. Think of something that’s nothing to do with the war.”

“Special effects for another pantomime,” Tonino suggested, rather hopelessly. But he could see that even the Duke was not likely to produce a play while Caprona was being invaded.

“I know,” said Angelica. “I shall cast a spell.”

“No!” said Tonino. “Anything might happen!”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Angelica. “My family would know it’s me, and they’d come here like a shot.”

“But you might turn the Duke green!” said Tonino.

“I really wouldn’t mind,” the Duke put in mildly.

He came to the bottom of the stairs and went with long, charging strides through rooms and corridors of the Palace. Angelica and Tonino each held on to an edge of their pockets and shouted arguments round him.

“But you could help me,” said Angelica, “and your part would go right. Suppose we made it a calling-charm to fetch all the rats and mice in Caprona to the Palace. If you did the calling, we’d fetch something.”

“Yes, but what would it be?” said Tonino.

“We could make it in honour of Benvenuto,” shouted Angelica, hoping to please him.

But Tonino thought of Benvenuto lying somewhere on a Palace roof and became more obstinate than ever. He shouted that he was not going to do anything so disrespectful.

“Are you telling me you can’t do a calling-spell?” shrieked Angelica. “Even my baby brother—”

They were shouting so loudly that the Duke had to tell them to shush twice. The military man hurrying up to the Duke stared slightly. “No need to stare, Major,” the Duke said to him. “I said Shush and I meant Shush. Your boots squeak. What is it?”

“I’m afraid the forces of Caprona are in retreat in the south, Your Grace,” said the soldier. “And our coastal batteries have fallen to the Pisan fleet.”

Both pockets drooped as the Duke’s shoulders slumped. “Thank you,” he said. “Report to me personally next time you have news.” The Major saluted and went, glancing at the Duke once or twice over his shoulder. The Duke sighed. “There goes another one who thinks I’m mad. Didn’t you two say you were the only ones who knew where to find the words to the Angel?”

Tonino and Angelica put their heads out of his pockets again. “Yes,” they said.

“Then,” said the Duke, “will you please agree on a spell. You really must get out and get those words while there’s still some of Caprona left.”

“All right,” said Tonino. “Let’s call mice.” He had not seen it was so urgent.

So the Duke stood in a wide window-bay and lit the cigar stub from under Angelica with the lighter from under Tonino, to cover up the spell. Tonino leant out of his pocket and sang, slowly and carefully, the only calling-spell he knew.

Angelica stood in the other pocket with her arms upraised and spoke, quickly, confidently and – quite certainly – wrong. Afterwards, she swore it was because she nearly laughed.

Another man approached. Tonino thought it was one of the courtiers who had watched the puppet show, but he was never sure, because the Duke flipped his pocket-flaps down over their heads and began singing himself.

“Merrily his music ringing,

See an Angel cometh singing…”

roared the Duke. Even Angelica did not sing so much out of tune. Tonino had the greatest difficulty in keeping up his own song. And it was certainly around then that the spell seemed to go wrong. Tonino had the sudden feeling that his words were pulling a great weight.

The Duke broke off his abominable singing to say, “Ah, Pollio, there’s nothing like a good song while Caprona burns! Nero did it, and now me.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” the man said feebly. They heard him scuttle away.

“And he’s sure I’m mad,” said the Duke. “Finished?”

Just then, Tonino’s words came loose, with a sort of jerk, and he knew the spell had worked in some way or another. “Yes,” he said.

But nothing seemed to happen. The Duke said philosophically that it would take a mouse quite a while to run from the Corso to the Palace, and strode on to the kitchens. They thought he was mad there, too, Tonino could tell. The Duke asked for two bread rolls and two pats of butter and solemnly put one into each pocket. No doubt they thought he was madder still when he remarked to no one: “There’s a cigar cutter in my right pocket that spreads butter quite well.”

“Indeed, Your Grace?” they heard someone say dubiously.

Just then, someone rushed in screaming about the griffins from the Piazza Nuova. They were flying across the river, straight for the Palace. There was a general panic. Everyone screamed and yammered and said it was an omen of defeat. Then someone else rushed in yelling that one griffin had actually reached the Palace and was sliding down the marble front. There was more outcry. The next thing, everyone said, the great gold Angel from the Cathedral would fly away too.

Tonino was taking advantage of the confusion to bash a piece off his roll with the Duke’s lighter, when the Duke bellowed, “Nonsense!” There was sudden quiet. Tonino dared not move, because everyone was certainly looking at the Duke.

“Don’t you see?” said the Duke. “It’s just an enemy trick. But we in Caprona don’t frighten that easily, do we? Here – you – go and fetch the Montanas. And you go and get the Petrocchis. Tell them it’s urgent. Tell as many of them to come as possible. I shall be in the North gallery.” And he went striding off there, while Angelica and Tonino jigged against bread and tried not to tread in the butter.

When he got to the gallery, the Duke sat down on a window-seat. Angelica and Tonino stood half out of his pockets and managed to eat their bread and butter. The Duke amiably handed the cigar-cutter from one to the other and, in between whiles, seemed lost in thought, staring at the white puffs of shells bursting on the hills behind Caprona.

Angelica was inclined to be smug. “I told you,” she said to Tonino, “my spells always work.”

“Iron griffins,” said Tonino, “aren’t mice.”

“No, but I’ve never done anything as big as that before,” said Angelica. “I’m glad it didn’t knock the Palace down.”

The Duke said gloomily, “The guns of Pisa are going to do that soon. I can see gunboats on the river, and I’m sure they aren’t ours. I wish your families would be quick.”

But it was half an hour before a polite footman came up to the Duke, causing him to flip his pocket-flaps down and scatter buttery crumbs in all directions.

“Your Grace, members of the Montana and Petrocchi families are awaiting you in the Large Reception Saloon.”

“Good!” said the Duke. He leapt up and ran so fast that Tonino and Angelica had to brace their feet on the seams of his pockets and hang on hard to the edges. They lost their footing several times, even though the Duke tried to help them by holding his pockets as he ran. They felt him clatter to a stop. “Blast!” he said. “This is always happening!”

“What?” asked Tonino breathlessly. He felt jerked out of shape.

“They’ve told me the wrong room!” said the Duke and set off again on another swaying, jolting run. They felt him dive forward through a doorway. His pockets swung. Then they swung the other way as he slid and stopped. “Lucrezia, this is too bad! Is this why you always tell me the wrong room?”

“My lord,” came the coldest voice of the Duchess from some way off, “I can’t answer for the slackness of the footmen. What is the matter?”

“This,” said the Duke. “These—” They felt him shaking. “Those were the Montanas and the Petrocchis, weren’t they? Don’t fob me off, Lucrezia. I sent for them. I know.”

“And what if they were?” said the Duchess, rather nearer. “Do you wish to join them, my lord?”

They felt the Duke backing away. “No. No indeed! My dear, your will is always my pleasure. I – I just want to know why. They only came about some griffins.”

The Duchess’s voice moved away again as she answered. “Because, if you must know, Antonio Montana recognised me.”

“But – but—” said the Duke, laughing uneasily, “everyone knows you, my dear. You’re the Duchess of Caprona.”

“I mean, he recognised me for what I am,” said the Duchess from the distance. The sound of a door shutting followed.

“Look!” said the Duke in a shaky whisper. “Just look!” While he was still saying it, Angelica and Tonino were bracing their feet on the seams of his pockets and pushing their heads out from under the flaps.

They saw the same polished room where they had once waited and eaten cakes, the same gilded chairs and angelic ceiling. But this time the polished floor was littered with puppets. Puppets lay all over it, limp grotesque things, scattered this way and that as people might lie if they had suddenly fallen. They were in two groups. Otherwise there was no way of telling which puppet was who. There were Punches, Judys, Hangmen, Sausage-men, Policemen, and an odd Devil or so, over and over again. From the numbers, it looked as if both families had realised that Tonino and Angelica were behind the mysterious griffins and had sent nearly every grown-up in the Casas.

Tonino could not speak. Angelica said, “That hateful woman! Her mind seems to run on puppets.”

“She sees people that way,” the Duke said miserably. “I’m sorry, both of you. She’s been too many for us. Terrible female! I can’t think why I married her – but I suppose that was a spell too.”

“Do you think she suspects you’ve got us?” Tonino asked. “She must be wondering where we are.”

“Maybe, maybe,” said the Duke. He marched up and down the room, while they leant out of his pockets and looked down at the crowd of strewn floppy puppets. “She doesn’t care now, of course,” he said. “She’s done for both families anyway. Oh, I am a fool!”

“It’s not your fault,” said Angelica.

“Oh, but it is,” said the Duke. “I never show the slightest resolution. I always take the easiest way—What is it?” Darkness descended as he flipped his pocket-flaps down.

“Your Grace,” said the Major whose boots squeaked, “the Pisan fleet is landing men down beyond the New Quays. And our troops to the south are being rolled back into the suburbs.”

They felt the Duke droop. “Almost done, in fact,” he said. “Thanks—No, wait. Major! Could you be a good fellow and go to the stables and order out my coach? The lackeys have all run away, you know. Ask for it at the door in five minutes.”

“But, Your Grace—” said the Major.

“I intend to go down into the city and speak with the people,” said the Duke. “Give them what’s-it-called. Moral support.”

“A very fine aim, sir,” said the Major, with a great deal more warmth. “In five minutes, sir.” His boots went squeaking swiftly off.

“Did you hear that?” said the Duke. “He called me ‘sir’! Poor fellow. I told him a set of whoppers and he couldn’t take his eyes off all those puppets, but he called me ‘sir’, and he’ll get that coach and he won’t tell her. Cardboard box!”

The hangings whipped by as the Duke charged through a doorway into another room. This one had a long table down the middle. “Ah!” said the Duke, and charged towards a stack of boxes by the wall. The boxes proved to have wine-glasses in them, which the Duke proceeded feverishly to unload on to the table.

“I don’t understand,” Tonino said.

“Box,” said the Duke. “We can’t leave your families behind, for her to revenge herself on. I’m going to be resolute for once. I’m going to get in the coach and go, and dare her to stop me.” So saying, he stormed back to the reception room with the empty box and knelt down to collect the puppets. Angelica was bounced on the floor as his coat swung. “Sorry,” said the Duke.

“Pick them up gently,” said Tonino. “It hurts if you don’t.”

Tenderly and hastily, using both hands for each puppet, the Duke packed the puppets in layers in the cardboard box. In the process, Montanas got very thoroughly mixed with Petrocchis, but there was no way of preventing that. All three of them were expecting the Duchess to come in any moment. The Duke kept looking nervously round and then muttering to himself “Resolute!” He was still muttering it when he set off awkwardly carrying the cardboard box in his arms. “Funny to think,” he remarked, “that I’m carrying almost every spell-maker in Caprona at the moment.”

Boots squeaked towards them. “Your coach is waiting, sir,” said the voice of the Major.

“Resolute,” said the Duke. “I mean, thank you. I shall think of you in heaven, Major, since I’m sure that’s where most of us are going soon. Meanwhile, can you do two more things for me?”

“Sir?” said the Major alertly.

“First, when you think of the Angel of Caprona, what do you think of?”

“The song or the figure, sir?” the Major asked, more wary now than alert.

“The figure.”

“Why—” The Major was becoming sure that the Duke was mad again. “I – I think of the golden Angel on the Cathedral, Your Grace.”

“Good man!” the Duke cried out. “So do I! The other thing is, can you take this box and stow it in my coach for me?” Neither Tonino nor Angelica could resist peeping out to see how the Major took this request. Unfortunately, his face was hidden behind the box as the Duke thrust it at him. They felt they had missed a rare sight. “If anyone asks,” the Duke said, “it’s gifts for the war-weary people.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” The Major sounded amused and indulgent, humouring the Duke in his madness, but they heard his boots squeaking briskly off.

“Thank the lord!” said the Duke. “I’m not going to be caught with them. I can feel her coming.”

Thanks to the Duke’s charging run, it was some minutes before the Duchess caught up with them. Tonino, squinting out under the flap, could see the great marble entrance hall when the Duke skidded to a stop. He dropped the flap hastily when he heard the cold voice of the Duchess. She sounded out of breath but triumphant.

“The enemy is by the New Bridge, my lord. You’ll be killed if you go out now.”

“And I’ll be killed if I stay here too,” said the Duke. He waited for the Duchess to deny this, but she said nothing. They heard the Duke swallow. But his resolution held. “I’m going,” he said, a mite squeakily, “to drive down among my people and comfort their remaining hours.”

“Sentimental fool,” said the Duchess. She was not angry. It was what she thought the Duke was.

This made the Duke bluster. “I may not be a good ruler,” he said, “but this is what a good ruler should do. I shall – I shall pat the heads of children and join in the singing of the choir.”

The Duchess laughed. “And much good may it do you, particularly if you sing,” she said. “Very well. You can get killed down there instead of up here. Run along and pat heads.”

“Thank you, my dear,” the Duke said humbly. He surged forward again, thump, thump, thump, down marble steps. They heard the sound of hooves on gravel and felt the Duke shaking. “Let’s go, Carlo,” he said. “What is it? What are you pointing—? Oh yes. So it is a griffin. How remarkable. Drive on, can’t you?” He surged upwards. Coach springs creaked and a door clapped shut. The Duke surged down. They heard him say “Oh good!” as he sat, and the rather-too-familiar sound of cardboard being hit, as he patted the box on the seat beside him. Then the coach started, with a shrilling of wheels on gravel and a battering of hooves. They felt the Duke sigh with relief. It made them bounce. “You can come out now,” said the Duke.

They climbed cautiously out on to his wide knees. The Duke kindly moved over to the window so that they could see out. And the first thing that met their eyes was an iron griffin, very crumpled and bent, lying in quite a large crater in the Palace yard.

“You know,” said the Duke, “if my Palace wasn’t going to be broken up anyway by Pisans, or Sienese, or Florentines, I’d get damages off you two. The other griffin has scraped two great ditches all down my facade.” He laughed and patted at his glossy face with his handkerchief. He was still very nervous.

As the coach rolled out of the yard on to the road, they heard gunfire. Some of it sounded near, a rattle of shots from below by the river. Most of it was far and huge, a long grumble from the hills. The bangs were so close together that the sound was nearly continuous, but every so often, out of the grumble, came a very much nearer clap-clap-clap. It made all three of them jump each time.

“We are taking a pounding,” the Duke said unhappily.

The coach slowed down. They could hear the prim voice of the coachman among the other noise. “I fear the New Bridge is under fire, Your Grace. Where exactly are we bound?”

The Duke pushed down the window. The noise doubled. “The Cathedral. Go upriver and see if we can cross by the Old Bridge.” He pushed the window shut. “Phew! I don’t envy Carlo up there on the box!”

“Why are we going to the Cathedral?” Angelica asked anxiously. “We want to look at the Angels on our Casas.”

“No,” said the Duke. “She’ll have thought of those. That’s why I asked the Major. It seems to me that the one place where those words are always safe and always invisible must be on the Cathedral Angel. You think of it at once, but it’s up there and far away, so you forget it.”

“But it’s miles up!” said Angelica.

“It’s got a scroll, though,” said Tonino. “And the scroll looks to be more unrolled than the ones on our Angels.”

“I’m afraid it’s bound to be about the only place she might have forgotten,” said the Duke.

They rattled along briskly, except for one place, where there was a shell crater in the road. Somehow, Carlo got them round it.

“Good man, Carlo,” said the Duke. “About the one good man she hasn’t got rid of.”

The noise diminished a little as the coach went down to the river and the Piazza Martia – at least, Angelica and Tonino guessed that was where it was; they found they were too small to see any great distance. They could tell they were on the Old Bridge, by the rumble under the wheels and the little shuttered houses on either side. The Duke several times craned round, whistled and shook his head, but they could not see why. They recognised the Cathedral, when the coach wheeled towards it across the cobbles, because it was so huge and snowy white. Its great bell was still tolling. A large crowd, mostly of women and children, was slowly moving towards its door. As the coach drew up, it was near enough for Tonino and Angelica to see the Archbishop of Caprona in his spreading robes, standing at the door, sprinkling each person with holy water and murmuring a blessing.

“Now there’s a brave man,” said the Duke. “I wish I could do as well. Look, I’ll pop you two out of this door and then get out of the other one and keep everyone busy while you get up on the dome. Will that do?” He had the door nearest the Cathedral open as he spoke.

Tonino and Angelica felt lost and helpless. “But what shall we do?”

“Climb up there and read out those words,” said the Duke. He leant down, encircled them with his warm wet hands, and planted them out on the cold cobbles. They stood shivering under the vast hoop of the coach-wheel. “Be sensible,” he whispered down to them. “If I ask the Archbishop to put up ladders, she’ll guess.” That of course was quite true. They heard him surge to the other door and that door crash open.

“He always does everything so hugely,” Angelica said.

“People of Caprona!” shouted the Duke. “I’ve come here to be with you in your hour of sorrow. Believe me, I didn’t choose what has happened today—”

There was a mutter from the crowd, even a scatter of cheering. “He’s doing it quite well,” said Angelica.

“We’d better do our bit,” said Tonino. “There’s only us left now.”

Tonino and Angelica pattered over to the vast marble cliff of the Cathedral and doubtfully approached a long, sloping buttress. That was the only thing they could see which gave them some chance of climbing up. Once they were close to it, they saw it was not difficult at all. The marble looked smooth, but, to people as small as they were, it was rough enough to give a grip to their hands and feet.

They went up like monkeys, with the cold air reviving them. The truth was that, though they had had an eventful morning, it had also been a restful and stuffy one. They were full of energy and they weighed no more than a few ounces. They were scarcely panting as they scampered up the long cold slope of the lowest dome. But there the rest of the Cathedral rose before them, a complicated glacier of white and rose and green marble. They could not see the Angel at all.

Neither of them knew which way to climb next. They hung on to a golden cross and stared up. And there, brown-black hair and white fur hurtled up to them. Gold eyes glared and blue eyes gazed. A black nose and a pink nose dabbed at them.

“Benvenuto!” shouted Tonino. “Did you—?”

“Vittoria!” cried Angelica, and threw her arms round the neck of the white cat.

But the cats were hasty and very worried. Things tumbled into their heads, muddled, troubled things about Paolo and Renata, Marco and Rosa. Would Tonino and Angelica please come on, and hurry!

They began an upward scamper which they would never have believed possible. With the cats to guide them, they raced up long lead groins, and over rainbow buttresses, like dizzy bridges, to higher domes. Always the cats implored them to hurry, and always they were there if the footing was difficult. With his hand on Benvenuto’s wiry back, Tonino went gaily up marble glacis and through tiny drain-holes hanging over huge drops, and raced up high curving surfaces, where the green marble ribs of a dome seemed as tall as a wall beside him. Even when they began the long toil up the slope of the great dome itself, neither of them was troubled. Once, Angelica stumbled and saved herself by catching hold of Vittoria’s silky tail; and once Benvenuto took Tonino’s red nightgown in his teeth and heaved him aside from a deep drain. But up here it was rounded and remote. Tonino felt as if he was on the surface of the moon, in spite of the pale winter sky overhead and the wind singing. The rumble of guns was almost beyond the scope of his small ears.

At last, they scrambled between fat marble pillars on to the platform at the very top of the dome. And there was the golden Angel above them. The Angel’s tremendous feet rested on a golden pedestal rather higher than Tonino’s normal height. There was a design round the pedestal, which Tonino absently took in, of golden leopards entwined with winged horses. But he was looking up beyond, to the Angel’s flowing robes, the enormous wings outspread to a width of twenty feet or more, the huge hand high above his head, raised in blessing, and the other hand flung out against the sky, further away still, holding the great unrolled scroll. Far above that again, shone the Angel’s vast and tranquil face, unheedingly beaming its blessing over Caprona.

“He’s enormous!” Angelica said. “We’ll never get up to that scroll, if we try all day!”

The cats, however, were nudging and hustling at them, to come to a place further round the platform. Wondering, they trotted round, almost under the Angel’s scroll. And there was Paolo’s head above the balustrade, with his hair blown back in a tuft and his face exceedingly pale. He had one arm clutched over the marble railing. The other stretched away downward. Tonino peered between the marble pillars to see why. And there was the miserable humped huddle of Renata hanging on to Paolo.

“But she’s terrified of heights!” said Angelica. “How did she get this high?”

Vittoria told Angelica she was to get Renata up at once.

Angelica stuck her upper half out between the pillars. Being small certainly had its advantages. Distances which were mercilessly huge to Renata and Paolo were too far away to worry Angelica. The dome was like a whole small world to her.

Paolo said, carefully patient, “I can’t hold on much longer. Do you think you can have another try?” The answer from Renata was a sobbing shudder.

“Renata!” shouted Angelica.

Renata’s scared face turned slowly up. “Something’s happened to my eyes now! You look tiny.”

“I am tiny!” yelled Angelica.

“Both of them are!” Paolo said, staring at Tonino’s head.

“Pull me up quick,” said Renata. The size of Angelica and Tonino so worried Renata and Paolo that both of them forgot they were hundreds of feet in the air. Paolo heaved on Renata and Renata shoved at Paolo, and they scrambled over the marble rail in a second. But there, Renata looked up at the immense golden Angel and had an instant relapse. “Oh – oh!” she wailed and sank down in a heap against the golden pedestal.

Tonino and Angelica huddled behind her. The warmth of climbing had worn off. They were feeling the wind keenly through their scanty nightshirts.

Benvenuto leapt across Renata to them. Something else had to be done, and done quickly.

Tonino went again and looked through the marble pillars, where the dome curved away and down like an ice-field with ribs of green and gold. There, coming into view over the curve, was a bright red uniform, making Marco’s carroty hair look faded and sallow against it. The uniform went with Marco’s hair even less well than the crimson he had worn as a coachman. Tonino knew who Marco was in that instant. But that bothered him less than seeing Marco flattened to the surface and looking backwards, which Tonino was sure was a mistake. Beyond Marco’s boots, fair hair was wildly blowing. Rosa’s flushed face came into sight.

“I’m all right. Look after yourself,” Rosa said.

Benvenuto was beside Tonino. They were to come up quicker than that. It was important.

“Get Rosa and Marco up here quickly!” Tonino shrieked to Paolo. He did not know if he had caught the feeling from the cats or not, but he was sure Rosa and Marco were in danger.

Paolo went unwillingly to the railing and flinched at the height. “They’ve been following us and shouting the whole way,” he said. “Get up here quickly!” he shouted.

“Thank you very much!” Marco shouted back. “Whose fault is it we’re up here anyway?”

“Is Renata all right?” Rosa yelled.

Angelica and Tonino pushed themselves between the pillars. “Hurry up!” they screamed.

The sight of them worked on Rosa and Marco as it had done on Renata and Paolo. They stared at the two tiny figures, and got to their feet as they stared. Then, stooping over, with their hands hanging, they came racing up the last of the curve for a closer look. Marco tumbled over the rail and said, as he was pulling Rosa over, “I couldn’t believe my eyes at first! We’d better do a growing-spell before—”

“Get down!” said Paolo. Benvenuto’s message was so urgent that he had caught it too. Both cats were crouching, still and low, and even Benvenuto’s flat ears were flattened. Rosa stooped down. Marco grudgingly went on one knee.

“Look here, Paolo—” he began.

A savage gale hit the dome. Freezing wind shrieked across the platform, howled in the spaces between the marble pillars, and scoured across the curve of the dome below. The Angel’s wings thrummed with it. It brought stabs of rain and needles of ice, hurling so hard that Tonino was thrown flat on his face. He could hear ice rattling on the Angel and spitting on the dome. Paolo snatched him into shelter behind himself. Renata feebly scrabbled about until she found Angelica and dragged her into shelter by one arm. Marco and Rosa bowed over. It was quite clear that anyone climbing the dome would have been blown off.

The wind passed, wailing like a wolf. They raised their heads into the sun.

The Duchess was standing on the platform in front of them. She had melting ice winking and trickling from her hair and from every fold of her marble-grey dress. The smile on her waxy face was not pleasant.

“Oh no,” she said. “The Angel is not going to help anyone this time. Did you think I’d forgotten?”

Marco and Rosa looked up at the Angel’s golden arm holding the great scroll above them. If they had not understood before, they knew now. From their suddenly thoughtful faces, Tonino knew they were finding spells to use on the Duchess.

“Don’t!” squeaked Angelica. “She’s an enchantress!”

The Duchess’s lips pursed in another unpleasant little smile. “More than that,” she said. She pointed up at the Angel. “Let the words be removed from the scroll,” she said.

There was a click from the huge golden statue, followed by a grating sound, as if a spring had been released. The arm holding the scroll began to move, gently and steadily downwards, making the slightest grinding noise as it moved. They could hear it easily, in spite of a sudden clatter of gunfire from the houses beyond the river. Downwards and inwards, travelled the Angel’s arm, until it stopped with a small clunk. The scroll now hung, flashing in the sun, between them and the Duchess. There were large raised letters on it. Angelus, they saw. Capronensi populo. It was as if the Angel were holding it out for them to read.

“Exactly,” said the Duchess, though Tonino thought, from the surprised arch of her eyebrows, that this was not at all what she expected. She pointed again at the scroll, with a long white finger like a white wax pencil. “Erase,” she said. “Word by word.”

Their heads all tipped anxiously as they looked at the lines of writing. The first word read Carmen. And, sure enough, the golden capital C was sinking slowly away into the metal background. Paolo moved. He had to do something. The Duchess glanced at him, a contemptuous flick of the eyebrows. Paolo found he was twisted to the spot, with jabbing cramp in both legs.

But he could still speak, and he remembered what Marco and Rosa had said last night. Without daring to draw breath, he screamed as loud as he could. “Chrestomanci!”

There was more wind. This was one keen blaring gust. And Chrestomanci was there, beyond Renata and the cats. There was so little room on the platform that Chrestomanci rocked, and quickly took hold of the marble balustrade. He was still in uniform, but it was muddy and he looked extremely tired.

The Duchess whirled round and pointed her long finger at him. “You! I misled you!”

“Oh you did,” Chrestomanci said. If the Duchess had hoped to catch him off balance, she was too late. Chrestomanci was steady now. “You led me a proper wild-goose-chase,” he said, and put out one hand, palm forwards, towards her pointing finger. The long finger bent and began dripping white, as if it were wax indeed. The Duchess stared at it, and then looked up at Chrestomanci almost imploringly. “No,” Chrestomanci said, sounding very tired. “I think you’ve done enough harm. Take your true form, please.” He beckoned at her, like someone sick of waiting.

Instantly, the Duchess’s body was seething out of shape. Her arms gathered inwards. Her face lengthened, and yet still remained the same waxy, sardonic face. Whiskers sprang from her upper lip, and her eyes lit red, like bulging lamps. Her marble skirts turned white, billowed and gathered soapily to her ankles, revealing her feet as long pink claws. And all the time, she was shrinking. Two teeth appeared at the end of her lengthened white face. A naked pink tail, marked in rings like an earthworm, snaked from behind the soapy bundle of her skirts and lashed the marble floor angrily. She shrank again.

Finally a huge white rat with eyes like red marbles, leapt to the marble railing and crouched, chittering and glaring with its humped back twitching.

“The White Devil,” said Chrestomanci, “which the Angel was sent to expel from Caprona. Right, Benvenuto and Vittoria. She’s all yours. Make sure she never comes back.”

Benvenuto and Vittoria were already creeping forward. Their tails swept about and their eyes stared. They sprang. The rat sprang too, off the parapet with a squeal, and went racing away down the dome. Benvenuto raced with it, long and low, keeping just beside the pink whip of its tail. Vittoria raced the other side, a snowy sliver making the great rat look yellow, running at the rat’s shoulder. They saw the rat turn and try to bite her. And then, suddenly, the three were joined by a dozen smaller rats, all running and squealing. They only saw them for an instant, before the whole group ran over the slope of the dome and disappeared.

“Her helpers from the Palace,” said Chrestomanci.

“Will Vittoria be safe?” said Angelica.

“She’s the best ratter in Caprona, isn’t she?” said Chrestomanci. “Apart from Benvenuto, that is. And by the time the Devil and her friends get to the ground, they’ll have every cat in Caprona after them. Now—”

Tonino found he was the right size again. He clung to Rosa’s hand. Beyond Rosa, he could see Angelica, also the right size, shivering and pulling her flimsy blue dress down over her knees, before she grabbed for Marco’s hand. The wind was far worse on a larger body. But what made Tonino grab at Rosa was not that. The dome was not world-sized any more. It was a white hummock wheeling in a grey-brown landscape. The hills round Caprona were pitilessly clear. He could see flashes of flame and running figures which seemed to be almost beside him, or just above him, as if the tiny white dome had reeled over on its side. Yet the houses of Caprona were immeasurably deep below, and the river seemed to stand up out of them. The New Bridge appeared almost overhead, suffused in clouds of smoke. Smoke rolled in the hills and swirled giddily out of the downside-upside houses beyond the Old Bridge, and, worst of all, the boom and clap, the rattle and yammer of guns was now nearly deafening. Tonino no longer wondered what had scared Renata and Paolo so. He felt as if he was spinning to his death.

He clung to Rosa’s hand and looked desperately up at the Angel. That at least was still huge. The scroll, which it still held patiently towards them, was almost as big as the side of a house.

“—Now,” said Chrestomanci, “the best thing you can do, all of you, is to sing those words, quickly.”

“What? Me too?” said Angelica.

“Yes, all of you,” said Chrestomanci.

They gathered, the six of them, against the marble parapet, facing the golden scroll, with the New Bridge behind them, and began, somewhat uncertainly, to fit those words to the tune of the Angel of Caprona. They matched like a glove. As soon as they realised this, everyone sang lustily. Angelica and Renata stopped shivering. Tonino let go of Rosa’s hand, and Rosa put her arm over his shoulders instead. And they sang as if they had always known those words. It was only a version of the usual words in Latin, but it was what the tune had always asked for.

“Carmen pacis saeculare

Venit Angelus cantare,

Et deorsum pacem dare

Capronensi populo.

Dabit pacem eternalem,

Sine morbo immortalem,

Sine pugna triumphalem,

Capronensi populo.

En diabola albata

De Caprona expulsata,

Missa pax et virtus data

Capronensi populo.”

When they had finished, there was silence. There was not a sound from the hills, or the New Bridge, or the streets below. Every noise had stopped. So they were all the more startled at the tinny slithering with which the Angel slowly rolled up the scroll. The shining outstretched wings bent and settled against the Angel’s golden shoulders, where the Angel gave them a shake to order the feathers. And that noise was not the sound of metal, but the softer rattling of real pinions. It brought with it a scent of such sweetness that there was a moment when they were not aware of anything else.

In that moment, the Angel was in flight. As the huge golden wings passed over them, the scent came again and, with it, the sound of singing. It seemed like hundreds of voices, singing tune, harmony and descant to the Angel of Caprona. They had no idea if it was the Angel alone, or something else. They looked up and watched the golden figure wheel and soar and wheel, until it was only a golden glint in the sky. And there was still utter silence, except for the singing.

Rosa sighed. “I suppose we’d better climb down.” Renata began to shiver again at the thought.

Chrestomanci sighed too. “Don’t worry about that.”

They were suddenly down again, on solid cobbles, in the Cathedral forecourt. The Cathedral was once more a great white building, the houses were high, the hills were away beyond, and the people surrounding them were anything but quiet. Everyone was running to where they could see the Angel, flashing in the sun as he soared. The Archbishop was in tears, and so was the Duke. They were wringing one another’s hands beside the Duke’s coach.

And Chrestomanci had brought them to earth in time to see another miracle. The coach began to work and bounce on its springs. Both doors burst open. Aunt Francesca squeezed out of one, and Guido Petrocchi fell out after her. From the other door tumbled Rinaldo and the red-haired Petrocchi aunt. After them came mingled Montanas and Petrocchis, more and more and more, until anyone could see that the coach could not possibly have held that number. People stopped crowding to see the Angel and crowded to look at the Duke’s coach instead.

Rosa and Marco looked at one another and began to back away among the spectators. But Chrestomanci took them each by a shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “And if it isn’t, I’ll set you up in a spell-house in Venice.”

Antonio disentangled himself from a Petrocchi uncle and hurried with Guido towards Tonino and Angelica. “Are you all right?” both of them said. “Was it you who fetched the griffins—?” They broke off to stare coldly at one another.

“Yes,” said Tonino. “I’m sorry you were turned into puppets.”

“She was too clever for us,” said Angelica. “But be thankful you got your proper clothes back afterwards. Look at us. We—”

They were pulled apart then by aunts and cousins, fearing they were contaminating one another, and hurriedly given coats and sweaters by uncles. Paolo was swept away from Renata too, by Aunt Maria. “Don’t go near her, my love!”

“Oh well,” said Renata, as she was pulled away too. “Thanks for helping me up the dome, anyway.”

“Just a moment!” Chrestomanci said loudly. Everyone turned to him, respectful but irritable. “If each spell-house,” he said, “insists on regarding the other as monsters, I can promise you that Caprona will shortly fall again.” They stared at him, Montanas and Petrocchis, equally indignant. The Archbishop looked at the Duke, and both of them began to edge towards the shelter of the Cathedral porch.

“What are you talking about?” Rinaldo said aggressively. His dignity was damaged by being a puppet anyway. The look in his eye seemed to promise cowpats for everyone – with the largest share for Chrestomanci.

“I’m talking about the Angel of Caprona,” said Chrestomanci. “When the Angel alighted on the Cathedral, in the time of the First Duke of Caprona, bearing the safety of Caprona with him, history clearly states that the Duke appointed two men – Antonio Petrocchi and Piero Montana – to be keepers of the words of the Angel and therefore keepers of the safety of Caprona. In memory of this, each Casa has an Angel over its gate, and the great Angel stands on a pedestal showing the Petrocchi leopard entwined with the Montana winged horse.” Chrestomanci pointed upwards. “If you don’t believe me, ask for ladders and go and see. Antonio Petrocchi and Piero Montana were fast friends, and so were their families after them. There were frequent marriages between the two Casas. And Caprona became a great city and a strong State. Its decline dates from that ridiculous quarrel between Ricardo and Francesco.”

There were murmurs from Montanas and Petrocchis alike, here, that the quarrel was not ridiculous.

“Of course it was,” said Chrestomanci. “You’ve all been deceived from your cradles up. You’ve let Ricardo and Francesco fool you for two centuries. What they really quarrelled about we shall never know, but I know they both told their families the same lies. And you have all gone on believing their lies and getting deeper and deeper divided, until the White Devil was actually able to enter Caprona again.”

Again there were murmurs. Antonio said, “The Duchess was the White Devil, but—”

“Yes,” said Chrestomanci. “And she has gone for the moment, because the words were found and the Angel awakened by members of both families. I suspect it could only have been done by Montanas and Petrocchis united. The rest of you could have sung the right words separately, until you were all blue in the face, and nothing would have happened. The Angel respects only friendship. The young ones of both families are luckily less bigoted than the rest of you. Marco and Rosa have even had the courage to fall in love and get married—”

Up till then, both families had listened – restively, it was true, because it was not pleasant to be lectured in front of a crowd of fellow citizens, not to speak of the Duke and the Archbishop – but they had listened. But at this, pandemonium broke out.

“Married!” screamed the Montanas. “She’s a Montana!” screamed the Petrocchis. Insults were yelled at Rosa and at Marco. Anyone who wished to count would have found no less than ten aunts in tears at once, and all cursing as they wept.

Rosa and Marco were both white. It needed only Rinaldo to step up to Marco, glowering, and he did. “This scum,” he said to Rosa, “knocked me down and cut my head open. And you marry it!”

Chrestomanci made haste to get between Marco and Rinaldo. “I’d hoped someone would see reason,” he said to Rosa. He seemed very tired. “It had better be Venice.”

“Get out of my way!” said Rinaldo. “You double-dealing sorcerer!”

“Please move, sir,” said Marco. “I don’t need to be shielded from an idiot like him.”

“Marco,” said Chrestomanci, “have you thought what two families of powerful magicians could do to you and Rosa?”

“Of course we have!” Marco said angrily, trying to push Chrestomanci aside.

But a strange silence fell again, the silence of the Angel. The Archbishop knelt down. Awed people crowded to one side or another of the Cathedral yard. The Angel was returning. He came from far off down the Corso, on foot now, with his wing-tips brushing the cobbles and the chorus of voices swelling as he approached. As he passed through the Cathedral court, it was seen that in every place where a feather had touched the stones there grew a cluster of small golden flowers. Scent gushed over everyone as the Angel drew near and halted by the Cathedral porch, towering and golden.

There he turned his remote smiling face to everyone present. His voice was like one voice singing above many. “Caprona is at peace. Keep our covenant.”

At that he spread his wings, making them all dizzy with the scent. And he was next seen moving upwards, over lesser domes and greater, to take his place once more on the great dome, guarding Caprona in the years to come.

This is really the end of the story, except for one or two explanations.

Marco and Rosa had to tell their story many times, at least as often as Tonino and Angelica told theirs. Among the first people they told it to was Old Niccolo, who was lying restlessly in bed and only kept there because Elizabeth sat beside him all the time. “But I’m quite well!” he kept saying.

So, in order to keep him there, Elizabeth had first Tonino and then Rosa and Marco come and tell him their stories.

Rosa and Marco had met when they were both working on the Old Bridge. Falling in love and deciding to marry had been the easiest part, over in minutes. The difficulty was that they had to provide themselves with a family each which had nothing to do with either Casa. Rosa contrived a family first. She pretended to be English. She became very friendly with the English girl at the Art Gallery – the same Jane Smith that Rinaldo fancied so much. Jane Smith thought it was a great joke to pretend to be Rosa’s sister. She wrote long letters in English to Guido Petrocchi, supposed to be from Rosa’s English father, and visited the Casa Petrocchi herself the day Rosa was introduced there.

Rosa and Marco planned the introductions carefully. They used the pear-tree spell – which they worked together – in both Casas, to Jane’s amusement. But the Petrocchis, though they liked the pear-tree, were not kind to Rosa at first. In fact, some of Marco’s aunts were so unpleasant that Marco was quite disgusted with them. That was why Marco was able to tell Antonio so vehemently that he hated the Petrocchis. But the aunts became used to Rosa in time. Renata and Angelica became very fond of her. And the wedding was held just after Christmas.

All this time, Marco had been unable to find anyone to act as a family for him. He was in despair. Then, only a few days before the wedding, his father sent him with a message to the house of Mario Andretti, the builder. And Marco discovered that the Andrettis had a blind daughter. When Marco asked, Mario Andretti said he would do anything for anyone who cured his daughter.

“Even then, we hardly dared hope,” said Marco. “We didn’t know if we could cure her.”

“And apart from that,” said Rosa, “the only time we dared both go there was the night after the wedding.”

So the wedding was held in the Casa Petrocchi. Jane Smith helped Rosa make her dress and was a bridesmaid for her, together with Renata, Angelica and one of Marco’s cousins.

Jane thoroughly enjoyed the wedding and seemed, Rosa said dryly, to find Marco’s cousin Alberto at least as attractive as Rinaldo, whereas Rosa and Marco could think of almost nothing but little Maria Andretti. They hurried to the Andrettis’ house as soon as the celebrations were over.

“And I’ve never known anything so difficult,” said Rosa. “We were at it all night!”

Elizabeth was unable to contain herself here. “And I never even knew you were out!” she said.

“We took good care you didn’t,” said Rosa. “Anyway, we hadn’t done anything like that before, so we had to look up spells in the University. We tried seventeen and none of them worked. In the end we had to make up one of our own. And all the time, I was thinking: suppose this doesn’t work on the poor child either, and we’ve played with the Andrettis’ hopes.”

“Not to speak of our own,” said Marco. “Then our spell worked. Maria yelled out that the room was all colours and there were things like trees in it – she thought people looked like trees – and we all jumped about in the dawn, hugging one another. And Andretti was as good as his word, and did his brother-act so well here that I told him he ought to be on the stage.”

“He took me in,” Old Niccolo said, wonderingly.

“But someone was bound to find out in the end,” said Elizabeth. “What did you mean to do then?”

“Just hoped,” said Marco. “We thought perhaps people might get used to it—”

“In other words, you behaved like a couple of young idiots,” said Old Niccolo. “What is that terrible stench?” And he leapt up and raced out on to the gallery to investigate, with Elizabeth, Rosa and Marco racing after him to stop him.

The smell, of course, was the kitchen-spell again. The insects had vanished and a smell of drains had taken their place. All day long, the kitchen belched out stinks, which grew stronger towards evening. It was particularly unfortunate, because the whole of Caprona was preparing to feast and celebrate. Caprona was truly at peace. The troops from Florence, and Pisa and Siena, had all returned home – somewhat bewildered and wondering how they had been beaten – and the people of Caprona were dancing in the streets.

“And we can’t even cook, let alone celebrate!” wailed Aunt Gina.

Then an invitation arrived from the Casa Petrocchi. Would the Casa Montana be pleased to join in the celebrations at the Casa Petrocchi? It was a trifle stiff, but the Casa Montana did please. What could be more fortunate? Tonino and Paolo suspected that it was Chrestomanci’s doing.

The only difficulty was to stop Old Niccolo getting out of bed and going with the rest of them. Everyone said Elizabeth had done enough. Everyone, even Aunt Francesca, wanted to go.

Then, more fortunately still, Uncle Umberto turned up, and old Luigi Petrocchi with him. They said they would sit with Old Niccolo – and on him if necessary. They were too old for dancing.

So everyone else went to the Casa Petrocchi, and it proved a celebration to remember. The Duke was there, because Angelica had insisted on it. The Duke was so grateful to be invited that he had brought with him as much wine and as many cakes as his coach would hold, and six footmen in a second coach to serve it.

“The Palace is awful,” he said. “No one in it but Punch and Judys. Somehow I don’t fancy them like I used to.”

What with the wine, the cakes, and the good food baked in the Casa Petrocchi kitchen, the evening became very merry. Somebody found a barrel-organ and everyone danced to it in the yard. And, if the six footmen forgot to serve cakes and danced with the rest, who was to blame them? After all, the Duke was dancing with Aunt Francesca – a truly formidable sight.

Tonino sat with Paolo and Renata beside a charcoal brazier, watching the dancing. And while they sat, Benvenuto suddenly emerged from the shadows and sat down by the brazier, where he proceeded to give himself a fierce and thorough wash.

They had done a fine, enjoyable job on that white rat, he informed Tonino, as he stuck one leg high above his gnarled head and subjected it to punishing tongue-work. She’d not be back again.

“But is Vittoria all right?” Renata wanted to know.

Fine, was Benvenuto’s answer. She was resting. She was going to have kittens. They would be particularly good kittens because Benvenuto was the father. Tonino was to make sure to get one for the Casa Montana.

Tonino asked Renata for a kitten then and there, and Renata promised to ask Angelica. Whereupon, Benvenuto, having worked over both hind legs, wafted himself on to Tonino’s knees, where he made himself into a tight brown mat and slept for an hour.

“I wish I could understand him,” said Paolo. “He tried to tell me where you were, but all I did was see a picture of the front of the Palace.”

“But that’s how he always tells things!” said Tonino. He was surprised Paolo had not known. “You just have to read his pictures.”

“What’s he saying now?” Renata asked Paolo.

“Nothing,” said Paolo. “Snore, snore.” And they all laughed.

Sometime later, when Benvenuto had woken up and drifted off to try his luck in the kitchen, Tonino wandered in to a room nearby, without quite knowing why he did. As soon as he got inside, though, he knew it was no accident. Chrestomanci was there, with Angelica and Guido Petrocchi, and so was Antonio. Antonio was looking so worried that Tonino braced himself for trouble.

“We were discussing you, Tonino,” said Chrestomanci. “You helped Angelica fetch the griffins, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Tonino. He remembered the damage they had done and felt alarmed.

“And you helped in the kitchen-spell?” asked Chrestomanci.

Tonino said “Yes” again. Now he was sure there was trouble.

“And when you hanged the Duchess,” Chrestomanci said, to Tonino’s confusion, “how did you do that?”

Tonino wondered how he could be in trouble over that too, but he answered, “By doing what the puppet show made me do. I couldn’t get out of it, so I had to go along with it, you see.”

“I do,” said Chrestomanci, and he turned to Antonio rather triumphantly. “You see? And that was the White Devil! What interests me is that it was someone else’s spell each time.” Then before Tonino could be too puzzled, he turned back to him. “Tonino,” he said, “it seems to me that you have a new and rather useful talent. You may not be able to work many spells on your own, but you seem to be able to turn other people’s magic to your own use. I think if they had let you help on the Old Bridge, for instance, it would have been mended in half a day. I’ve been asking your father if he’d let you come back to England with me, so that we could find out just what you can do.”

Tonino looked at his father’s worried face. He hardly knew what to think. “Not for good?” he said.

Antonio smiled. “Only for a few weeks,” he said. “If Chrestomanci’s right, we’ll need you here badly.”

Tonino smiled too. “Then I don’t mind,” he said.

“But,” said Angelica, “it was me who fetched the griffins really.”

“What were you really fetching?” asked Guido.

Angelica hung her head. “Mice.” She looked resigned when her father roared with laughter.

“I wanted to talk about you too,” said Chrestomanci. He said to Guido, “Her spells always work, don’t they? It occurs to me you might learn from Angelica.”

Guido scratched his beard. “How to turn things green and get griffins, you mean?”

Chrestomanci picked up his glass of wine. “There are risks, of course, to Angelica’s methods. But I meant she can show you that a thing need not be done in the same old way in order to work. I think, in time, she will make you a whole new set of spells. Both houses can learn from her.” He raised his wine glass.

“Your health, Angelica. Tonino. The Duchess thought she was getting the weakest members of both Casas, and it turned out quite the opposite.”

Antonio and Guido raised their glasses too. “I’ll say this,” said Guido. “But for you two, we wouldn’t be celebrating tonight.”

Angelica and Tonino looked at each other and made faces. They felt very shy and very, very pleased.

Contents

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

The note said: SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH. It was written in capital letters in ordinary blue ballpoint, and it had appeared between two of the Geography books Mr Crossley was marking. Anyone could have written it. Mr Crossley rubbed his ginger moustache unhappily. He looked out over the bowed heads of Class 2Y and wondered what to do about it.

He decided not to take the note to the Headmistress. It was possibly just a joke, and Miss Cadwallader had no sense of humour to speak of. The person to take it to was the Deputy Head, Mr Wentworth. But the difficulty there was that Mr Wentworth’s son was a member of 2Y – the small boy near the back who looked younger than the rest was Brian Wentworth. No. Mr Crossley decided to ask the writer of the note to own up. He would explain just what a serious accusation it was and leave the rest to the person’s conscience.

Mr Crossley cleared his throat to speak. A number of 2Y looked up hopefully, but Mr Crossley had changed his mind by then. It was Journal time, and Journal time was only to be interrupted for a serious emergency. Larwood House was very strict about that rule.

Larwood House was very strict about a lot of things, because it was a boarding school run by the government for witch-orphans and children with other problems. The journals were to help the children with their problems. They were supposed to be strictly private. Every day, for half an hour, every pupil had to confide his or her private thoughts to their journal, and nothing else was done until everyone had. Mr Crossley admired the idea heartily.

But the real reason that Mr Crossley changed his mind was the awful thought that the note might be true. Someone in 2Y could easily be a witch. Only Miss Cadwallader knew who exactly in 2Y was a witch-orphan, but Mr Crossley suspected that a lot of them were. Other classes had given Mr Crossley feelings of pride and pleasure in being a schoolmaster. 2Y never did. Only two of them gave him any pride at all: Theresa Mullett and Simon Silverson. They were both model pupils.

The rest of the girls tailed dismally off until you came to empty chatterers like Estelle Green, or that dumpy girl, Nan Pilgrim, who was definitely the odd one out. The boys were divided into groups. Some had the sense to follow Simon Silverson’s example, but quite as many clustered round that bad boy Dan Smith, and others again admired that tall Indian boy, Nirupam Singh. Or they were loners like Brian Wentworth and that unpleasant boy Charles Morgan.

Here Mr Crossley looked at Charles Morgan and Charles Morgan looked back, with one of the blank, nasty looks he was famous for. Charles wore glasses, which enlarged the nasty look and trained it on Mr Crossley like a double laser beam. Mr Crossley looked away hastily and went back to worrying about the note. Everyone in 2Y gave up hoping for anything interesting to happen and went back to their journals.

28 October 1981, Theresa Mullett wrote in round, angelic writing.

Mr Crossley has found a note in our geography books. I thought it might be from Miss Hodge at first, because we all know Teddy is dying for love of her, but he looks so worried that I think it must be from some silly girl like Estelle green. Nan Pilgrim couldn’t get over the vaulting-horse again today. She jumped and stuck halfway. It made us all laugh.

Simon Silverson wrote:

28.10.81 I would like to know who put that note in the Geography books. It fell out when I was collecting them and I put it back in. If it was found lying about we could all be blamed. This is strictly off the record of course.

I do not know, Nirupam Singh wrote musingly, how anyone manages to write much in their journal, since everyone knows Miss Cadwallader reads them all during the holidays. I do not write my secret thoughts. I will now describe the Indian rope trick which I saw in India before my father came to live in England…

Two desks away from Nirupam, Dan Smith chewed his pen a great deal and finally wrote,

Well I mean it’s not much good if you’ve got to write your secret fealings, what I mean is it takes all the joy out of it and you don’t know what to write. It means they aren’t secret if you see what I mean.

I do not think, Estelle Green wrote, that I have any secret feelings today, but I would like to know what is in the note from Miss Hodge that Teddy has just found. I thought she scorned him utterly.

At the back of the room, Brian Wentworth wrote, sighing, Timetables just run away with me, that is my problem. During Geography, I planned a bus journey from London to Baghdad via Paris. Next lesson I shall plan the same journey via Berlin.

Nan Pilgrim meanwhile was scrawling,

This is a message to the person who reads our journals. Are you Miss Cadwallader, or does Miss Cadwallader make Mr Wentworth do it?

She stared at what she had written, rather taken aback at her own daring. This kind of thing happened to her sometimes. Still, she thought, there were hundreds of journals and hundreds of daily entries. The chances of Miss Cadwallader reading this one had to be very small – particularly if she went on and made it really boring.

I shall now be boring, she wrote. Teddy Crossley’s real name is Harold, but he got called Teddy out of the hymn that goes ‘Gladly my cross I’d bear.’ But of course everyone sings ‘Crossley my glad-eyed bear.’ Mr Crossley is glad-eyed. He thinks everyone should be upright and honourable and interested in Geography. I am sorry for him.

But the one who was best at making his journal boring was Charles Morgan. His entry read,

I got up. I felt hot at breakfast. I do not like porridge. Second lesson was Woodwork but not for long. I think we have Games next.

Looking at this, you might think Charles was either very stupid or very muddled, or both. Anyone in 2Y would have told you that it had been a chilly morning and there had been cornflakes for breakfast. Second lesson had been PE, during which Nan Pilgrim had so much amused Theresa Mullett by failing to jump the horse, and the lesson to come was Music, not Games. But Charles was not writing about the day’s work. He really was writing about his secret feelings, but he was doing it in his own private code so that no one could know.

He started every entry with I got up. It meant, I hate this school. When he wrote I do not like porridge, that was actually true, but porridge was his code-word for Simon Silverson. Simon was porridge at breakfast, potatoes at lunch, and bread at tea. All the other people he hated had code-words too. Dan Smith was cornflakes, cabbage and butter. Theresa Mullett was milk.

But when Charles wrote I felt hot, he was not talking about school at all. He meant he was remembering the witch being burnt. It was a thing that would keep coming into his head whenever he was not thinking of anything else, much as he tried to forget it.

He had been so young that he had been in a pushchair. His big sister Bernadine had been pushing him while his mother carried the shopping, and they had been crossing a road where there was a view down into the Market Square. There were crowds of people down there, and a sort of flickering. Bernadine had stopped the pushchair in the middle of the street in order to stare. She and Charles had just time to glimpse the bone-fire starting to burn, and they had seen that the witch was a large fat man. Then their mother came rushing back and scolded Bernadine on across the road.

“You mustn’t look at witches!” she said. “Only awful people do that!” So Charles had only seen the witch for an instant. He never spoke about it, but he never forgot it. It always astonished him that Bernadine seemed to forget about it completely. What Charles was really saying in his journal was that the witch came into his head during breakfast, until Simon Silverson made him forget again by eating all the toast.

When he wrote Woodwork second lesson, he meant that he had gone on to think about the second witch – which was a thing he did not think about so often. Woodwork was anything Charles liked. They only had Woodwork once a week, and Charles had chosen that for his code on the very reasonable grounds that he was not likely to enjoy anything at Larwood House any oftener than that. Charles had liked the second witch. She had been quite young and rather pretty, in spite of her torn skirt and untidy hair. She had come scrambling across the wall at the end of the garden and stumbled down the rockery to the lawn, carrying her smart shoes in one hand. Charles had been nine years old then, and he was minding his little brother on the lawn. Luckily for the witch, his parents were out.

Charles knew she was a witch. She was out of breath and obviously frightened. He could hear the yells and police whistles in the houses behind. Besides, who else but a witch would run away from the police in the middle of the afternoon in a tight skirt? But he made quite sure. He said, “Why are you running away in our garden?”

The witch rather desperately hopped on one foot. She had a large blister on the other foot, and both her stockings were laddered. “I’m a witch,” she panted. “Please help me, little boy!”

“Why can’t you magic yourself safe?” Charles asked.

“Because I can’t when I’m this frightened!” gasped the witch. “I tried, but it just went wrong! Please, little boy – sneak me out through your house and don’t say a word, and I’ll give you luck for the rest of your life. I promise.”

Charles looked at her in that intent way of his which most people found blank and nasty. He saw she was speaking the truth. He saw, too, that she understood the look as very few people seemed to. “Come in through the kitchen,” he said. And he led the witch, hobbling on her blister in her laddered stockings, through the kitchen and down the hall to the front door.

“Thanks,” she said. “You’re a love.” She smiled at him while she put her hair right in the hall mirror, and, after she had done something to her skirt that may have been witchcraft to make it seem untorn again, she bent down and kissed Charles. “If I get away, I’ll bring you luck,” she said. Then she put her smart shoes on again and went away down the front garden, trying hard not to limp. At the front gate, she waved and smiled at Charles.

That was the end of the part Charles liked. That was why he wrote But not for long next. He never saw the witch again, or heard what had happened to her. He ordered his little brother never to say a word about her – and Graham obeyed, because he always did everything Charles said – and then he watched and waited for any sign of the witch or any sign of luck. None came.

It was next to impossible for Charles to find out what might have happened to the witch, because there had been new laws since he glimpsed the first witch burning. There were no more public burnings. The bone-fires were lit inside the walls of gaols instead, and the radio would simply announce: “Two witches were burnt this morning inside Holloway Gaol.” Every time Charles heard this kind of announcement he thought it was his witch. It gave him a blunt, hurtful feeling inside. He thought of the way she had kissed him, and he was fairly sure it made you wicked too, to be kissed by a witch.

He gave up expecting to be lucky. In fact, to judge from the amount of bad luck he had had, he thought the witch must have been caught almost straight away. For the blunt, hurtful feeling he had when the radio announced a burning made him refuse to do anything his parents told him to do. He just gave them his steady stare instead. And each time he stared, he knew they thought he was being nasty. They did not understand it the way the witch did. And, since Graham imitated everything Charles did, Charles’s parents very soon decided Charles was a problem child and leading Graham astray. They arranged for him to be sent to Larwood House, because it was quite near.

When Charles wrote Games, he meant bad luck. Like everyone else in 2Y, he had seen Mr Crossley had found a note. He did not know what was in the note, but when he looked up and caught Mr Crossley’s eye, he knew it meant bad luck coming.

Mr Crossley still could not decide what to do about the note. If what it said was true, that meant Inquisitors coming to the school. And that was a thoroughly frightening thought. Mr Crossley sighed and put the note in his pocket. “Right, everyone,” he said. “Put away your journals and get into line for Music.”

As soon as 2Y had shuffled away to the school hall, Mr Crossley sped to the staff room, hoping to find someone he could consult about the note.

He was lucky enough to find Miss Hodge there. As Theresa Mullett and Estelle Green had observed, Mr Crossley was in love with Miss Hodge. But of course he never let it show. Probably the only person in the school who did not seem to know was Miss Hodge herself. Miss Hodge was a small neat person who wore neat grey skirts and blouses, and her hair was even neater and smoother than Theresa Mullett’s. She was busy making neat stacks of books on the staff room table, and she went on making them all the time Mr Crossley was telling her excitedly about the note. She spared the note one glance.

“No, I can’t tell who wrote it either,” she said.

“But what shall I do about it?” Mr Crossley pleaded. “Even if it’s true, it’s such a spiteful thing to write! And suppose it is true. Suppose one of them is—” He was in a pitiable state. He wanted so badly to attract Miss Hodge’s attention, but he knew that words like witch were not the kind of words one used in front of a lady. “I don’t like to say it in front of you.”

“I was brought up to be sorry for witches,” Miss Hodge remarked calmly.

“Oh, so was I! We all are,” Mr Crossley said hastily. “I just wondered how I should handle it—”

Miss Hodge lined up another stack of books. “I think it’s just a silly joke,” she said. “Ignore it. Aren’t you supposed to be teaching 4X?”

“Yes, yes. I suppose I am,” Mr Crossley agreed miserably. And he was forced to hurry away without Miss Hodge having looked at him once.

Miss Hodge thoughtfully squared off another stack of books, until she was sure Mr Crossley had gone. Then she smoothed her smooth hair and hurried away upstairs to find Mr Wentworth.

Mr Wentworth, as Deputy Head, had a study where he wrestled with the timetable and various other problems Miss Cadwallader gave him. When Miss Hodge tapped on the door, he was wrestling with a particularly fierce one. There were seventy people in the school orchestra. Fifty of these were also in the school choir and twenty of those fifty were in the school play. Thirty boys in the orchestra were in various football teams, and twenty of the girls played hockey for the school. At least a third played basketball as well. The volleyball team were all in the school play. Problem: how do you arrange rehearsals and practices without asking most people to be in three places at once? Mr Wentworth rubbed the thin patch at the back of his hair despairingly.

“Come in,” he said. He saw the bright, smiling, anxious face of Miss Hodge, but his mind was not on her at all.

“So spiteful of someone, and so awful if it’s true!” he heard Miss Hodge saying. And then, merrily, “But I think I have a scheme to discover who wrote the note – it must be someone in 2Y. Can we put our heads together and work it out, Mr Wentworth?” She put her own head on one side, invitingly.

Mr Wentworth had no idea what she was talking about. He scratched the place where his hair was going and stared at her. Whatever it was, it had all the marks of a scheme that ought to be squashed. “People only write anonymous notes to make themselves feel important,” he said experimentally. “You mustn’t take them seriously.”

“But it’s the perfect scheme!” Miss Hodge protested. “If I can explain—”

Not squashed yet, whatever it is, thought Mr Wentworth. “No. Just tell me the exact words of this note,” he said.

Miss Hodge instantly became crushed and shocked. “But it’s awful!” Her voice fell to a dramatic whisper. “It says someone in 2Y is a witch!”

Mr Wentworth realised that his instinct had been right. “What did I tell you?” he said heartily. “That’s the sort of stuff you can only ignore, Miss Hodge.”

“But someone in 2Y has a very sick mind!” Miss Hodge whispered.

Mr Wentworth considered 2Y, including his own son Brian. “They all have,” he said. “Either they’ll grow out of it, or we’ll see them all riding round on broomsticks in the sixth form.” Miss Hodge started back. She was genuinely shocked at this coarse language. But she hastily made herself laugh. She could see it was a joke. “Take no notice,” said Mr Wentworth. “Ignore it, Miss Hodge.” And he went back to his problem with some relief.

Miss Hodge went back to her stacks of books, not as crushed as Mr Wentworth supposed she was. Mr Wentworth had made a joke to her. He had never done that before. She must be getting somewhere. For – and this was a fact not known to Theresa Mullett or Estelle Green – Miss Hodge intended to marry Mr Wentworth. He was a widower. When Miss Cadwallader retired, Miss Hodge was sure Mr Wentworth would be Head of Larwood House. This suited Miss Hodge, who had her old father to consider. For this, she was quite willing to put up with Mr Wentworth’s bald patch and his tense and harrowed look. The only drawback was that putting up with Mr Wentworth also meant putting up with Brian. A little frown wrinkled Miss Hodge’s smooth forehead at the thought of Brian Wentworth. Now there was a boy who quite deserved the way the rest of 2Y were always on to him. Never mind. He could be sent away to another school.

Meanwhile, in Music, Mr Brubeck was asking Brian to sing on his own. 2Y had trailed their way through ‘Here we sit like birds in the wilderness’. They had made it sound like a lament. “I’d prefer a wilderness to this place,” Estelle Green whispered to her friend Karen Grigg. Then they sang ‘Cuckaburra sits in the old gum tree’. That sounded like a funeral dirge.

“What’s a cuckaburra?” Karen whispered to Estelle.

“Another kind of bird,” Estelle whispered back. “Australian.”

“No, no, no!” shouted Mr Brubeck. “Brian is the only one of you who doesn’t sound like a cockerel with a sore throat!”

“Mr Brubeck must have birds on the brain!” Estelle giggled. And Simon Silverson, who believed, strongly and sincerely, that nobody was worthy of praise except himself, gave Brian a scathingly jeering look.

But Mr Brubeck was far too addicted to music to take any notice of what the rest of 2Y thought. “‘The Cuckoo is a Pretty Bird’,” he announced. “I want Brian to sing this to you on his own.”

Estelle giggled, because it was birds again. Theresa giggled too, because anyone who stood out for any reason struck her as exceedingly funny. Brian stood up with the song book in his hands. He was never embarrassed. But instead of singing, he read the words out in an incredulous voice.

“‘The cuckoo is a pretty bird, she singeth as she flies. She bringeth us good tidings, she telleth us no lies.’ Sir, why are all these songs about birds?” he asked innocently. Charles thought that was a shrewd move of Brian’s, after the way Simon Silverson had looked at him.

But it did Brian no good. He was too unpopular. Most of the girls said, “Brian!” in shocked voices. Simon said it jeeringly.

“Quiet!” shouted Mr Brubeck. “Brian, get on and sing!” He struck notes on the piano.

Brian stood with the book in his hands, obviously wondering what to do. It was clear that he would be in trouble with Mr Brubeck if he did not sing, and that he would be hit afterwards if he did. And while Brian hesitated, the witch in 2Y took a hand. One of the long windows of the hall flew open with a clap and let in a stream of birds. Most of them were ordinary birds: sparrows, starlings, pigeons, blackbirds and thrushes, swooping round the hall in vast numbers and shedding feathers and droppings as they swooped. But among the beating wings were two curious furry creatures with large pouches, which kept uttering violent laughing sounds, and the red and yellow thing swooping among a cloud of sparrows and shouting “Cuckoo!” was clearly a parrot.

Luckily, Mr Brubeck thought it was simply the wind which had let the birds in. The rest of the lesson had to be spent in chasing the birds out again. By that time, the laughing birds with pouches had vanished. Evidently the witch had decided they were a mistake. But everyone in 2Y had clearly seen them. Simon said importantly, “If this happens again, we all ought to get together and—”

At this, Nirupam Singh turned round, towering among the beating wings. “Have you any proof that this is not perfectly natural?” he said.

Simon had not, so he said no more.

By the end of the lesson, all the birds had been sent out of the window again, except the parrot. The parrot escaped to a high curtain rail, where no one could reach it, and sat there shouting “Cuckoo!” Mr Brubeck sent 2Y away and called the caretaker to get rid of it. Charles trudged away with the rest, thinking that this must be the end of the Games he had predicted in his journal. But he was quite wrong. It was only the beginning.

And when the caretaker came grumbling along with his small white dog trailing at his heels, to get rid of the parrot, the parrot had vanished.

The next day was the day Miss Hodge tried to find out who had written the note. It was also the worst day either Nan Pilgrim or Charles Morgan had ever spent at Larwood House. It did not begin too badly for Charles, but Nan was late for breakfast.

She had broken her shoelace. She was told off by Mr Towers for being late, and then by a prefect. By this time, the only table with a place was one where all the others were boys. Nan slid into place, horribly embarrassed. They had eaten all the toast already, except one slice. Simon Silverson took the slice as Nan arrived. “Bad luck, fatso.” From further down the table, Nan saw Charles Morgan looking at her. It was meant to be a look of sympathy, but, like all Charles’s looks, it came out like a blank double-barrelled glare. Nan pretended not to see it and did her best to eat wet, pale scrambled egg on its own.

At lessons, she discovered that Theresa and her friends had started a new craze. That was a bad sign. They were always more than usually pleased with themselves at the start of a craze – even though this one had probably started so that they need not think of witches or birds. The craze was white knitting, white and clean and fluffy, which you kept wrapped in a towel so that it would stay clean. The classroom filled with mutters of, “Two purl, one plain, twist two . . .”

But the day really got into its evil stride in the middle of the morning, during PE. Larwood House had that every day, like the journals. 2Y joined with 2X and 2Z, and the boys went running in the field, while the girls went together to the Gym. The climbing-ropes were let down there.

Theresa and Estelle and the rest gave glad cries and went shinning up the ropes with easy swinging pulls. Nan tried to lurk out of sight against the wall-bars. Her heart fell with a flop into her gym shoes. This was worse even than the vaulting-horse. Nan simply could not climb ropes. She had been born without the proper muscles or something.

And, since it was that kind of day, Miss Phillips spotted Nan almost at once. “Nan, you haven’t had a turn yet. Theresa, Delia, Estelle, come on down and let Nan have her turn on the ropes.” Theresa and the rest came down readily. They knew they were about to see some fun.

Nan saw their faces and ground her teeth. This time, she vowed, she would do it. She would climb right up to the ceiling and wipe that grin off Theresa’s face. Nevertheless, the distance to the ropes seemed several hundred shiny yards. Nan’s legs, in the floppy divided skirts they wore for Gym, had gone mauve and wide, and her arms felt like weak pink puddings. When she reached the rope, the knot on the end of it seemed to hang rather higher than her head. And she was supposed to stand on that knot somehow.

She gripped the rope in her fat, weak hands and jumped. All that happened was that the knot hit her heavily in the chest and her feet dropped sharply to the floor again. A murmur of amusement began among Theresa and her friends. Nan could hardly believe it. This was ridiculous – worse than usual! She could not even get off the floor now. She took a new grip on the rope and jumped again. And again. And again. And she leapt and leapt, bounding like a floppy kangaroo, and still the knot kept hitting her in the chest and her feet kept hitting the floor. The murmurs of the rest grew into giggles and then to outright laughter. Until at last, when Nan was almost ready to give up, her feet somehow found the knot, groped, gripped and hung on. And there she clung, upside down like a sloth, breathless and sweating, from arms which did not seem to work any more. This was terrible. And she still had to climb up the rope. She wondered whether to fall off on her back and die.

Miss Phillips was beside her. “Come on, Nan. Stand up on the knot.”

Somehow, feeling it was superhuman of her, Nan managed to lever herself upright. She stood there, wobbling gently round in little circles, while Miss Phillips, with her face level with Nan’s trembling knees, kindly and patiently explained for the hundredth time exactly how to climb a rope.

Nan clenched her teeth. She would do it. Everyone else did. It must be possible. She shut her eyes to shut out the other girls’ grinning faces and did as Miss Phillips told her. She took a strong and careful grip on the rope above her head. Carefully, she put rope between the top of one foot and the bottom of the other. She kept her eyes shut. Firmly, she pulled with her arms. Crisply, she pulled her feet up behind. Gripped again. Reached up again, with fearful concentration. Yes, this was it! She was doing it at last! The secret must be to keep your eyes shut. She gripped and pulled. She could feel her body easily swinging upwards towards the ceiling, just as the others did it.

But, around her, the giggles grew to laughter, and the laughter grew into screams, then shouts, and became a perfect storm of hilarity. Puzzled, Nan opened her eyes. All round her, at knee-level, she saw laughing red faces, tears running out of eyes, and people doubled over yelling with mirth. Even Miss Phillips was biting her lip and snorting a little. And small wonder. Nan looked down to find her gym shoes still resting on the knot at the bottom of the rope. After all that climbing, she was still standing on the knot.

Nan tried to laugh too. She was sure it had been very funny. But it was hard to be amused. Her only consolation was that, after that, none of the other girls could climb the ropes either. They were too weak with laughing.

The boys, meanwhile, were running round and round the field. They were stripped to little pale-blue running shorts and splashing through the dew in big spiked shoes. It was against the rules to run in anything but spikes. They were divided into little groups of labouring legs. The quick group of legs in front, with muscles, belonged to Simon Silverson and his friends, and to Brian Wentworth. Brian was a good runner in spite of his short legs. Brian was prudently trying to keep to the rear of Simon, but every so often the sheer joy of running overcame him and he went ahead. Then he would get bumped and jostled by Simon’s friends, for everyone knew it was Simon’s right to be in front.

The group of legs behind these were paler and moved without enthusiasm. These belonged to Dan Smith and his friends. All of them could have run at least as fast as Simon Silverson, but they were saving themselves for better things. They loped along easily, chatting among themselves. Today, they kept bursting into laughter.

Behind these again laboured an assorted group of legs: mauve legs, fat legs, bright white legs, legs with no muscles at all, and the great brown legs of Nirupam Singh, which seemed too heavy for the rest of Nirupam’s skinny body to lift. Everyone in this group was too breathless to talk. Their faces wore assorted expressions of woe.

The last pair of legs, far in the rear, belonged to Charles Morgan. There was nothing particularly wrong with Charles’s legs, except that his feet were in ordinary school shoes and soaked through. He was always behind. He chose to be. This was one of the few times in the day when he could be alone to think. He had discovered that, as long as he was thinking of something else, he could keep up his slow trot for hours. And think. The only interruptions he had to fear were when the other groups came pounding past him and he was tangled up in their efforts for a few seconds. Or when Mr Towers, encased in his nice warm tracksuit, came loping up alongside and called ill-advised encouragements to Charles.

So Charles trotted slowly on, thinking. He gave himself over to hating Larwood House. He hated the field under his feet, the shivering autumn trees that dripped on him, the white goalposts, and the neat line of pine trees in front of the spiked wall that kept everyone in. Then, when he swung round the corner and had a view of the school buildings, he hated them more. They were built of a purplish sort of brick. Charles thought it was the colour a person’s face would go if they were throttling. He thought of the long corridors inside, painted caterpillar green, the thick radiators which were never warm, the brown classrooms, the frosty white dormitories, and the smell of school food, and he was almost in an ecstasy of hate. Then he looked at the groups of legs straggling round the field ahead, and he hated all the people in the school most horribly of all.

Upon that, he found he was remembering the witch being burnt. It swept into his head unbidden, as it always did. Only today, it seemed worse than usual. Charles found he was remembering things he had not noticed at the time: the exact shape of the flames, just leaping from small to large, and the way the fat man who was a witch had bent sideways away from them. He could see the man’s exact face, the rather blobby nose with a wart on it, the sweat on it, and the flames shining off the man’s eyes and the sweat. Above all, he could see the man’s expression. It was astounded. The fat man had not believed he was going to die until the moment Charles saw him. He must have thought his witchcraft could save him. Now he knew it could not. And he was horrified. Charles was horrified too. He trotted along in a sort of trance of horror.

But here was the smart red tracksuit of Mr Towers loping along beside him. “Charles, what are you doing running in walking shoes?”

The fat witch vanished. Charles should have been glad, but he was not. His thinking had been interrupted, and he was not private any more.

“I said why aren’t you wearing your spikes?” Mr Towers said.

Charles slowed down a little while he wondered what to reply. Mr Towers trotted springily beside him, waiting for an answer. Because he was not thinking any more, Charles found his legs aching and his chest sore. That annoyed him. He was even more annoyed about his spikes. He knew Dan Smith had hidden them. That was why that group were laughing. Charles could see their faces craning over their shoulders as they ran, to see what he was telling Mr Towers. That annoyed him even more. Charles did not usually have this kind of trouble, the way Brian Wentworth did. His double-barrelled nasty look had kept him safe up to now, if lonely. But he foresaw he was going to have to think of something more than just looking in future. He felt very bitter.

“I couldn’t find my spikes, sir.”

“How hard did you look?”

“Everywhere,” Charles said bitterly. Why don’t I say it was them? he wondered. And knew the answer. Life would not be worth living for the rest of term.

“In my experience,” said Mr Towers, running and talking as easily as if he were sitting still, “when a lazy boy like you says everywhere, it means nowhere. Report to me in the locker room after school and find those spikes. You stay there until you find them. Right?”

“Yes,” said Charles. Bitterly, he watched Mr Towers surge away from him and run up beside the next group to pester Nirupam Singh.

He hunted for his spikes again during break. But it was hopeless. Dan had hidden them somewhere really cunning. At least, after break, Dan Smith had something else to laugh about beside Charles. Nan Pilgrim soon found out what. As Nan came into the classroom for lessons, she was greeted by Nirupam. “Hallo,” asked Nirupam. “Will you do your rope trick for me too?”

Nan gave him a glare that was mostly astonishment and pushed past him without replying. How did he know about the ropes? she thought. The girls just never talked to the boys! How did he know?

But next moment, Simon Silverson came up to Nan, barely able to stop laughing. “My dear Dulcinea!” he said. “What a charming name you have! Were you called after the Archwitch?” After that, he doubled up with laughter, and so did most of the people near.

“Her name really is Dulcinea, you know,” Nirupam said to Charles.

This was true. Nan’s face felt to her like a balloon on fire. Nothing else, she was sure, could be so large and so hot. Dulcinea Wilkes had been the most famous witch of all time. No one was supposed to know Nan’s name was Dulcinea. She could not think how it had leaked out. She tried to stalk loftily away to her desk, but she was caught by person after person, all laughingly calling out, “Hey, Dulcinea!” She did not manage to sit down until Mr Wentworth was already in the room.

2Y usually attended during Mr Wentworth’s lessons. He was known to be absolutely merciless. Besides, he had a knack of being interesting, which made his lessons seem shorter than other teachers’. But today, no one could keep their mind on Mr Wentworth. Nan was trying not to cry.

When, a year ago, Nan’s aunts had brought her to Larwood House, even softer, plumper and more timid than she was now, Miss Cadwallader had promised that no one should know her name was Dulcinea. Miss Cadwallader had promised! So how had someone found out? The rest of 2Y kept breaking into laughter and excited whispers. Could Nan Pilgrim be a witch? Fancy anyone being called Dulcinea! It was as bad as being called Guy Fawkes! Halfway through the lesson, Theresa Mullett was so overcome by the thought of Nan’s name that she was forced to bury her face in her knitting to laugh.

Mr Wentworth promptly took the knitting away. He dumped the clean white bundle on the desk in front of him and inspected it dubiously. “What is it about this that seems so funny?” He unrolled the towel – at which Theresa gave a faint yell of dismay – and held up a very small fluffy thing with holes in it. “Just what is this?”

Everyone laughed.

“It’s a bootee!” Theresa said angrily.

“Who for?” retorted Mr Wentworth.

Everyone laughed again. But the laughter was short and guilty, because everyone knew Theresa was not to be laughed at.

Mr Wentworth seemed unaware that he had performed a miracle and made everyone laugh at Theresa, instead of the other way round. He cut the laughter even shorter by telling Dan Smith to come out to the blackboard and show him two triangles that were alike. The lesson went on. Theresa kept muttering, “It’s not funny! It’s just not funny!” Every time she said it, her friends nodded sympathetically, while the rest of the class kept looking at Nan and bursting into muffled laughter.

At the end of the lesson, Mr Wentworth uttered a few unpleasant remarks about mass punishments if people behaved like this again. Then, as he turned to leave, he said, “And by the way, if Charles Morgan, Nan Pilgrim and Nirupam Singh haven’t already looked at the main notice board, they should do so at once. They will find they are down for lunch on high table.”

Both Nan and Charles knew then that this was not just a bad day – it was the worst day ever. Miss Cadwallader sat at high table with any important visitors to the school. It was her custom to choose three pupils from the school every day to sit there with her. This was so that everyone should learn proper table manners, and so that Miss Cadwallader should get to know her pupils. It was rightly considered a terrible ordeal. Neither Nan nor Charles had ever been chosen before. Scarcely able to believe it, they went to check with the notice board. Sure enough it read: Charles Morgan 2Y, Dulcinea Pilgrim 2Y, Nirupam Singh 2Y.

Nan stared at it. So that was how everyone knew her name! Miss Cadwallader had forgotten. She had forgotten who Nan was and everything she had promised, and when she came to stick a pin in the register – or whatever she did to choose people for high table – she had simply written down the names that came under her pin.

Nirupam was looking at the notice too. He had been chosen before, but he was no less gloomy than Charles or Nan.

“You have to comb your hair and get your blazer clean,” he said. “And it really is true you have to eat with the same kind of knife or fork that Miss Cadwallader does. You have to watch and see what she uses all the time.”

Nan stood there, letting other people looking at the notices push her about. She was terrified. She suddenly knew she was going to behave very badly on high table. She was going to drop her dinner, or scream, or maybe take all her clothes off and dance among the plates. And she was terrified, because she knew she was not going to be able to stop herself.

She was still terrified when she arrived at high table with Charles and Nirupam. They had all combed their heads sore and tried to clean from the fronts of their blazers the dirt which always mysteriously arrives on the fronts of blazers, but they all felt grubby and small beside the stately company at high table. There were a number of teachers, and the Bursar, and an important-looking man called Lord Something-or-other, and tall, stringy Miss Cadwallader herself.

Miss Cadwallader smiled at them graciously and pointed to three empty chairs at her left side. All of them instantly dived for the chair furthest away from Miss Cadwallader. Nan, much to her surprise, won it, and Charles won the chair in the middle, leaving Nirupam to sit beside Miss Cadwallader.

“Now we know that won’t do, don’t we?” said Miss Cadwallader. “We always sit with a gentleman on either side of a lady, don’t we? Dulcimer must sit in the middle, and I’ll have the gentleman I haven’t yet met nearest me. Clive Morgan, isn’t it? That’s right.”

Sullenly, Charles and Nan changed their places. They stood there, while Miss Cadwallader was saying grace, looking out over the heads of the rest of the school, not very far below, but far enough to make a lot of difference. Perhaps I’m going to faint, Nan thought hopefully. She still knew she was going to behave badly, but she felt very odd as well – and fainting was a fairly respectable way of behaving badly.

She was still conscious at the end of grace. She sat down with the rest, between the glowering Charles and Nirupam. Nirupam had gone pale yellow with dread. To their relief, Miss Cadwallader at once turned to the important lord and began making gracious conversation with him. The ladies from the kitchen brought round a tray of little bowls and handed everybody one.

What was this? It was certainly not a usual part of school dinner. They looked suspiciously at the bowls. They were full of yellow stuff, not quite covering little pink things.

“I believe it may be prawns,” Nirupam said dubiously. “For a starter.”

Here Miss Cadwallader reached forth a gracious hand. Their heads at once craned round to see what implement she was going to eat out of the bowl with. Her hand picked up a fork. They picked up forks too. Nan poked hers cautiously into her bowl. Instantly she began to behave badly. She could not stop herself. “I think it’s custard,” she said loudly. “Do prawns mix with custard?” She put one of the pink things into her mouth. It felt rubbery. “Chewing gum?” she asked. “No, I think they’re jointed worms. Worms in custard.”

“Shut up!” hissed Nirupam.

“But it’s not custard,” Nan continued. She could hear her voice saying it, but there seemed no way to stop it. “The tongue-test proves that the yellow stuff has a strong taste of sour armpits, combined with – yes – just a touch of old drains. It comes from the bottom of a dustbin.”

Charles glared at her. He felt sick. If he had dared, he would have stopped eating at once. But Miss Cadwallader continued gracefully forking up prawns – unless they really were jointed worms – and Charles did not dare do differently. He wondered how he was going to put this in his journal. He had never hated Nan Pilgrim particularly before, so he had no code-word for her. Prawn? Could he call her prawn? He choked down another worm – prawn, that was – and wished he could push the whole bowlful in Nan’s face.

“A clean yellow dustbin,” Nan announced. “The kind they keep the dead fish for Biology in.”

“Prawns are eaten curried in India,” Nirupam said loudly.

Nan knew he was trying to shut her up. With a great effort, by cramming several forkfuls of worms – prawns, that was – into her mouth at once, she managed to stop herself talking. She could hardly bring herself to swallow the mouthful, but at least it kept her quiet. Most fervently, she hoped that the next course would be something ordinary, which she would not have any urge to describe, and so did Nirupam and Charles.

But alas! What came before them in platefuls next was one of the school kitchen’s more peculiar dishes. They produced it about once a month and its official name was hot-pot. With it came tinned peas and tinned tomatoes. Charles’s head and Nirupam’s craned towards Miss Cadwallader again to see what they were supposed to eat this with. Miss Cadwallader picked up a fork. They picked up forks too, and then craned a second time, to make sure that Miss Cadwallader was not going to pick up a knife as well and so make it easier for everyone. She was not. Her fork drove gracefully under a pile of tinned peas. They sighed, and found both their heads turning towards Nan then in a sort of horrified expectation.

They were not disappointed. As Nan levered loose the first greasy ring of potato, the urge to describe came upon her again. It was as if she was possessed.

“Now the aim of this dish,” she said, “is to use up leftovers. You take old potatoes and soak them in washing-up water that has been used at least twice. The water must be thoroughly scummy.” It’s like the gift of tongues! she thought. Only in my case it’s the gift of foul-mouth. “Then you take a dirty old tin and rub it round with socks that have been worn for a fortnight. You fill this tin with alternate layers of scummy potatoes and cat-food, mixed with anything else you happen to have. Old doughnuts and dead flies have been used in this case—”

Could his code-word for Nan be hot-pot? Charles wondered. It suited her. No, because they only had hot-pot once a month – fortunately – and, at this rate, he would need to hate Nan practically every day. Why didn’t someone stop her? Couldn’t Miss Cadwallader hear?

“Now these things,” Nan continued, stabbing her fork into a tinned tomato, “are small creatures that have been killed and cleverly skinned. Notice, when you taste them, the slight, sweet savour of their blood—”

Nirupam uttered a small moan and went yellower than ever.

The sound made Nan look up. Hitherto, she had been staring at the table where her plate was, in a daze of terror. Now she saw Mr Wentworth sitting opposite her across the table. He could hear her perfectly. She could tell from the expression on his face. Why doesn’t he stop me? she thought. Why do they let me go on? Why doesn’t somebody do something, like a thunderbolt strike me, or eternal detention? Why don’t I get under the table and crawl away? And, all the time, she could hear herself talking. “These did in fact start life as peas. But they have since undergone a long and deadly process. They lie for six months in a sewer, absorbing fluids and rich tastes, which is why they are called processed peas. Then—”

Here, Miss Cadwallader turned gracefully to them. Nan, to her utter relief, stopped in mid-sentence. “You have all been long enough in the school by now,” Miss Cadwallader said, “to know the town quite well. Do you know that lovely old house in the High Street?”

They all three stared at her. Charles gulped down a ring of potato. “Lovely old house?”

“It’s called the Old Gate House,” said Miss Cadwallader. “It used to be part of the gate in the old town wall. A very lovely old brick building.”

“You mean the one with a tower on top and windows like a church?” Charles asked, though he could not think why Miss Cadwallader should talk of this and not processed peas.

“That’s the one,” said Miss Cadwallader. “And it’s such a shame. It’s going to be pulled down to make way for a supermarket. You know it has a king-pin roof, don’t you?”

“Oh,” said Charles. “Has it?”

“And a queen-pin,” said Miss Cadwallader.

Charles seemed to have got saddled with the conversation. Nirupam was happy enough not to talk, and Nan dared do no more than nod intelligently, in case she started describing the food again. As Miss Cadwallader talked, and Charles was forced to answer while trying to eat tinned tomatoes – no, they were not skinned mice! – using just a fork, Charles began to feel he was undergoing a particularly refined form of torture.

He realised he needed a hate-word for Miss Cadwallader too. Hot-pot would do for her. Surely nothing as awful as this could happen to him more than once a month? But that meant he had still not got a code-word for Nan.

They took the hot-pot away. Charles had not eaten much. Miss Cadwallader continued to talk to him about houses in the town, then about stately homes in the country, until the pudding arrived. It was set before Charles, white and bleak and swimming, with little white grains in it like the corpses of ants – Lord, he was getting as bad as Nan Pilgrim! Then he realised it was the ideal word for Nan.

“Rice pudding!” he exclaimed.

“It is agreeable,” Miss Cadwallader said, smiling. “And so nourishing.” Then, incredibly, she reached to the top of her plate and picked up a fork. Charles stared. He waited. Surely Miss Cadwallader was not going to eat runny rice pudding with just a fork? But she was. She dipped the fork in and brought it up, raining weak white milk.

Slowly, Charles picked up a fork too and turned to meet Nan’s and Nirupam’s incredulous faces. It was just not possible.

Nirupam looked wretchedly down at his brimming plate. “There is a story in the Arabian Nights,” he said, “about a woman who ate rice with a pin, grain by grain.” Charles shot a terrified look at Miss Cadwallader, but she was talking to the lord again. “She turned out to be a ghoul,” Nirupam said. “She ate her fill of corpses every night.”

Charles’s terrified look shot to Nan instead. “Shut up, you fool! You’ll set her off again!”

But the possession seemed to have left Nan by then. She was able to whisper, with her head bent over her plate so that only the boys could hear, “Mr Wentworth’s using his spoon. Look.”

“Do you think we dare?” said Nirupam.

“I’m going to,” said Charles. “I’m hungry.”

So they all used their spoons. When the meal was at last over, they were all dismayed to find Mr Wentworth beckoning. But it was only Nan he was beckoning. When she came reluctantly over, he said, “See me at four in my study.” Which was, Nan felt, all she needed. And the day was still only half over.

That afternoon, Nan came into the classroom to find a besom laid across her desk. It was an old tatty broom, with only the bare minimum of twigs left in the brush end, which the groundsman sometimes used to sweep the paths. Someone had brought it in from the groundsman’s shed. Someone had tied a label to the handle: Dulcinea’s Pony. Nan recognised the round, angelic writing as Theresa’s.

Amid sniggers and titters, she looked round the assembled faces. Theresa would not have thought of stealing a broom on her own. Estelle? No. Neither Estelle nor Karen Grigg was there. No, it was Dan Smith, by the look on his face. Then she looked at Simon Silverson and was not so sure. It could not have been both of them because they never, ever did anything together.

Simon said to her, in his suavest manner, grinning all over his face, “Why don’t you hop on and have a ride, Dulcinea?”

“Yes, go on. Ride it, Dulcinea,” said Dan.

Next moment, everyone else was laughing and yelling at her to ride the broom. And Brian Wentworth, who was only too ready to torment other people when he was not being a victim himself, was leaping up and down in the gangway between the desks, screaming, “Ride, Dulcinea! Ride!”

Slowly, Nan picked up the broom. She was a mild and peaceable person who seldom lost her temper – perhaps that was her trouble – but when she did lose it, there was no knowing what she would do. As she picked up the broom, she thought she just meant to stand it haughtily against the wall. But, as her hands closed round its knobby handle, her temper left her completely. She turned round on the jeering, hooting crowd, filled with roaring rage. She lifted the broom high above her head and bared her teeth. Everyone thought that was funnier than ever.

Nan meant to smash the broom through Simon Silverson’s laughing face. She meant to bash in Dan Smith’s head. But, since Brian Wentworth was dancing and shrieking and making faces just in front of her, it was Brian she went for. Luckily for him, he saw the broom coming down and leapt clear. After that, he was forced to back away up the gangway and then into the space by the door, with his arms over his head, screaming for mercy, while Nan followed him, bashing like a madwoman.

“Help! Stop her!” Brian screamed, and backed into the door just as Miss Hodge came through it carrying a large pile of English books. Brian backed into her and sat down at her feet in a shower of books. “Ow!” he yelled.

“What is going on?” said Miss Hodge.

The uproar in the room was cut off as if with a switch. “Get up, Brian,” Simon Silverson said righteously. “It was your own fault for teasing Nan Pilgrim.”

“Really! Nan!” said Theresa. She was genuinely shocked. “Temper, temper!”

At that, Nan nearly went for Theresa with the broom. Theresa was only saved by the fortunate arrival of Estelle Green and Karen Grigg. They came scurrying in with their heads guiltily lowered and their arms wrapped round bulky bags of knitting wool. “Sorry we’re late, Miss Hodge,” Estelle panted. “We had permission to go shopping.”

Nan’s attention was distracted. The wool in the bags was fluffy and white, just like Theresa’s. Why on earth, Nan wondered scornfully, did everyone have to imitate Theresa?

Miss Hodge took the broom out of Nan’s unresisting hands and propped it neatly behind the door. “Sit down, all of you,” she said. She was very put out. She had intended to come quietly into a nice quiet classroom and galvanise 2Y by confronting them with her scheme. And here they were galvanised already, and with a witch’s broom. There was clearly no chance of catching the writer of the note or the witch by surprise. Still, she did not like to let a good scheme go to waste.

“I thought we would have a change today,” she said, when everyone was settled. “Our poetry book doesn’t seem to be going down very well, does it?” She looked brightly round the class. 2Y looked back cautiously. Some of them felt anything would be better than being asked to find poems beautiful. Some of them felt it depended on what Miss Hodge intended to do instead. Of the rest, Nan was trying not to cry, Brian was licking a scratch on his arm, and Charles was glowering. Charles liked poetry because the lines were so short. You could think your own thoughts in the spaces round the print.

“Today,” said Miss Hodge, “I want you all to do something yourselves.”

Everyone recoiled. Estelle put her hand up. “Please, Miss Hodge. I don’t know how to write poems.”

“Oh, I don’t want you to do that,” said Miss Hodge. Everyone relaxed. “I want you to act out some little plays for me.” Everyone recoiled again. Miss Hodge took no notice and explained that she was going to call them out to the front in pairs, a boy and a girl in each, and every pair was going to act out the same short scene. “That way,” she said, “we shall have fifteen different pocket dramas.”

By this time, most of 2Y were staring at her in wordless despair. Miss Hodge smiled warmly and prepared to galvanise them. Really, she thought, her scheme might go quite well after all.

“Now, we must choose a subject for our playlets. It has to be something strong and striking, with passionate possibilities. Suppose we act a pair of lovers saying good bye?” Somebody groaned, as Miss Hodge had known somebody would. “Very well. Who has a suggestion?”

Theresa’s hand was up, and Dan Smith’s.

“A television star and her admirer,” said Theresa.

“A murderer and a policeman making him confess,” said Dan. “Are we allowed torture?”

“No, we are not,” said Miss Hodge, at which Dan lost interest. “Anyone else?”

Nirupam raised a long thin arm. “A salesman deceiving a lady over a car.”

Well, Miss Hodge thought, she had not really expected anyone to make a suggestion that would give them away. She pretended to consider. “We-ell, so far the most dramatic suggestion is Dan’s. But I had in mind something really tense, which we all know about quite well.”

“We all know about murder,” Dan protested.

“Yes,” said Miss Hodge. She was watching everyone like a hawk now. “But we know even more about stealing, say, or lying, or witchcraft, or—” She let herself notice the broomstick again, with a start of surprise. It came in handy after all. “I know! Let us suppose that one of the people in our little play is suspected of being a witch, and the other is an Inquisitor. How about that?”

Nothing. Not a soul in 2Y reacted, except Dan. “That’s the same as my idea,” he grumbled. “And it’s no fun without torture.”

Miss Hodge made Dan into suspect number one at once. “Then you begin, Dan,” she said, “with Theresa. Which are you, Theresa – witch or Inquisitor?”

“Inquisitor, Miss Hodge,” Theresa said promptly.

“It’s not fair!” said Dan. “I don’t know what witches do!”

Nor did he, it was clear. And it was equally clear that Theresa had no more idea what Inquisitors did. They stood woodenly by the blackboard. Dan stared at the ceiling, while Theresa stated, “You are a witch.” Whereupon Dan told the ceiling, “No I am not.” And they went on doing this until Miss Hodge told them to stop. Regretfully, she demoted Dan from first suspect to last, and put Theresa down there with him, and called up the next pair.

Nobody behaved suspiciously. Most people’s idea was to get the acting over as quickly as possible. Some argued a little, for the look of the thing. Others tried running about to make things seem dramatic. And first prize for brevity certainly went to Simon Silverson and Karen Grigg. Simon said, “I know you’re a witch, so don’t argue.”

And Karen replied, “Yes I am. I give in. Let’s stop now.”

By the time it came to Nirupam, Miss Hodge’s list of suspects was all bottom and no top. Then Nirupam put on a terrifying performance as Inquisitor. His eyes blazed. His voice alternately roared and fell to a sinister whisper. He pointed fiercely at Estelle’s face.

“Look at your evil eyes!” he bellowed. Then he whispered, “I see you, I feel you, I know you – you are a witch!” Estelle was so frightened that she gave a real performance of terrified innocence.

But Brian Wentworth’s performance as a witch outshone even Nirupam. Brian wept, he cringed, he made obviously false excuses, and he ended kneeling at Delia Martin’s feet, sobbing for mercy and crying real tears.

Everyone was astonished, including Miss Hodge. She would dearly have liked to put Brian at the top of her list of suspects, either as the witch or the one who wrote the note. But how bothersome for her plans if she had to go to Mr Wentworth and say it was Brian. No, she decided. There was no genuine feeling in Brian’s performance, and the same went for Nirupam. They were both just good actors.

Then it was the turn of Charles and Nan. Charles had seen it coming for some time now, that he would be paired with Nan. He was very annoyed. He seemed to be haunted by her today. But he did not intend to let that stop his performance being a triumph of comic acting. He was depressed by the lack of invention everyone except Nirupam had shown. Nobody had thought of making the Inquisitor funny. “I’ll be Inquisitor,” he said quickly.

But Nan was still smarting after the broomstick. She thought Charles was getting at her and glared at him. Charles, on principle, never let anyone glare at him without giving his nastiest double-barrelled stare in return. So they shuffled to the front of the class looking daggers at one another.

There Charles beat at his forehead. “Emergency!” he exclaimed. “There are no witches for the autumn bone-fires. I shall have to find an ordinary person instead.” He pointed at Nan. “You’ll do,” he said. “Starting from now, you’re a witch.”

Nan had not realised that the acting had begun. Besides, she was too hurt and angry to care. “Oh, no I’m not!” she snapped. “Why shouldn’t you be the witch?”

“Because I can prove you’re a witch,” Charles said, trying to stick to his part. “Being an Inquisitor, I can prove anything.”

“In that case,” said Nan, angrily ignoring this fine acting, “we’ll both be Inquisitors, and I’ll prove you’re a witch too! Why not? You have four of the most evil eyes I ever saw. And your feet smell.”

All eyes turned to Charles’s feet. Since he had been forced to run round the field in the shoes he was wearing now, they were still rather wet. And, being warmed through, they were indeed exuding a slight but definite smell.

“Cheese,” murmured Simon Silverson.

Charles looked angrily down at his shoes. Nan had reminded him that he was in trouble over his missing running shoes. And she had spoilt his acting. He hated her. He was in an ecstasy of hate again. “Worms and custard and dead mice!” he said. Everyone stared at him, mystified. “Tinned peas soaked in sewage!” Charles said, beside himself with hatred. “Potatoes in scum. I’m not surprised your name’s Dulcinea. It suits you. You’re quite disgusting!”

“And so are you!” Nan shouted back at him. “I bet it was you who did those birds in Music yesterday!” This caused shocked gasps from the rest of 2Y.

Miss Hodge listened, fascinated. This was real feeling all right. And what had Charles said? It was clear to her now why the rest of 2Y had clustered so depressingly at the bottom of her list of suspects. Nan and Charles were at the top of it. It was obvious. They were always the odd ones out in 2Y. Nan must have written the note, and Charles must be the witch in question. And now let Mr Wentworth pour scorn on her scheme!

“Please, Miss Hodge, the bell’s gone,” called a number of voices.

The door opened and Mr Crossley came in. When he saw Miss Hodge, which he had come early in order to do, his face became a deep red, most interesting to Estelle and Theresa.

“Am I interrupting a lesson, Miss Hodge?”

“Not at all,” said Miss Hodge. “We had just finished. Nan and Charles go back to your places.” And she swept out of the room, without appearing to notice that Mr Crossley had leapt to hold the door open for her.

Miss Hodge hurried straight upstairs to Mr Wentworth’s study. She knew this news was going to make an impression on him. But there, to her annoyance, was Mr Wentworth dashing downstairs with a box of chalk, very late for a lesson with 3Z.

“Oh, Mr Wentworth,” panted Miss Hodge. “Can you spare a moment?”

“Not a second. Write me a memo if it’s urgent,” said Mr Wentworth, dashing on down.

Miss Hodge reached out and seized his arm. “But you must! You know 2Y and my scheme about the anonymous note—”

Mr Wentworth swung round on the end of her clutching hands and looked up at her irritably. “What about what anonymous note?”

“My scheme worked!” Miss Hodge said. “Nan Pilgrim wrote it, I’m sure. You must see her—”

“I’m seeing her at four o’clock,” said Mr Wentworth. “If you think I need to know, write me a memo, Miss Hodge.”

“Eileen,” said Miss Hodge.

“Eileen who?” said Mr Wentworth, trying to pull his arm away. “You mean two girls wrote this note?”

“My name is Eileen,” said Miss Hodge, hanging on.

“Miss Hodge,” said Mr Wentworth, “3Z will be breaking windows by now!”

“But there’s Charles Morgan too!” Miss Hodge cried out, feeling his arm pulling out of her hands. “Mr Wentworth, I swear that boy recited a spell! Worms and custard and scummy potatoes, he said. All sorts of nasty things.”

Mr Wentworth succeeded in tearing his arm loose and set off downstairs again. His voice came back to Miss Hodge. “Slugs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails. Write it all down, Miss Hodge.”

“Bother!” said Miss Hodge. “But I will write it down. He is going to notice!” She went at once to the staff room, where she spent the rest of the lesson composing an account of her experiment, in writing almost as round and angelic as Theresa’s.

Meanwhile, in the 2Y classroom, Mr Crossley shut the door behind Miss Hodge with a sigh. “Journals out,” he said. He had come to a decision about the note, and he did not intend to let his feelings about Miss Hodge interfere with his duty. So, before anyone could start writing in a journal and make it impossible for him to interrupt, he made 2Y a long and serious speech.

He told them how malicious and sneaky and unkind it was to write anonymous accusations. He asked them to consider how they would feel if someone had written a note about them. Then he told them that someone in 2Y had written just such a note.

“I’m not going to tell you what was in it,” he said. “I shall only say it accused someone of a very serious crime. I want you all to think about it while you write your journals, and after you’ve finished, I want the person who wrote the note to write me another note confessing who they are and why they wrote it. That’s all. I shan’t punish the person. I just want them to see what a serious thing they have done.”

Having said this, Mr Crossley sat back to do some marking, feeling he had settled the matter in a most understanding way. In front of him, 2Y picked up their pens. Thanks to Miss Hodge, everyone thought they knew exactly what Mr Crossley meant.

29 October, wrote Theresa. There is a witch in our class. Mr Crossley just said so. He wants the witch to confess. Mr Wentworth confiscated my knitting this morning and made jokes about it. I did not get it back till lunchtime. Estelle green has started knitting now. What a copycat that girl is. Nan Pilgrim couldn’t climb the ropes this morning and her name is Dulcinea. That made us laugh a lot.

29.10.81. Mr Crossley has just talked to us very seriously, Simon Silverson wrote, very seriously, about a guilty person in our class. I shall do my best to bring that person to justice. If we don’t catch them we might all be accused. This is off the record of course.

Nan Pilgrim is a witch, Dan Smith wrote. This is not a private thought because Mr Crossley just told us. I think she is a witch too. She is even called after that famous witch, but I can’t spell it. I hope they burn her where we can see.

Mr Crossley has been talking about serious accusations, Estelle wrote. And Miss Hodge has been making us all accuse one another. It was quite frightening. I hope none of it is true. Poor Teddy went awfully red when he saw Miss Hodge but she scorned him again.

While everyone else was writing the same sort of things, there were four people in the class who were writing something quite different.

Nirupam wrote, Today, no comment. I shall not even think about high table.

Brian Wentworth, oblivious to everything, scribbled down how he would get from Timbuktu to Uttar Pradesh by bus, allowing time for roadworks on Sundays.

Nan sat for a considerable while wondering what to write. She wanted desperately to get some of today off her chest, but she could not at first think how to do it without saying something personal. At last she wrote, in burning indignation,

I do not know if 2Y is average or not, but this is how they are. They are divided into girls and boys with an invisible line down the middle of the room and people only cross that line when teachers make them. Girls are divided into real girls (Theresa Mullett) and imitations (Estelle Green). And me. Boys are divided into real boys (Simon Silverson), brutes (Daniel Smith) and unreal boys (Nirupam Singh). And Charles Morgan. And Brian Wentworth. What makes you a real girl or boy is that no one laughs at you. If you are imitation or unreal, the rules give you a right to exist provided you do what the real ones or brutes say. What makes you into me or Charles Morgan is that the rules allow all the girls to be better than me and all the boys better than Charles Morgan. They are allowed to cross the invisible line to prove this. Everyone is allowed to cross the invisible line to be nasty to Brian Wentworth.

Nan paused here. Up to then she had been writing almost as if she was possessed, the way she had been at lunch. Now she had to think about Brian Wentworth. What was it about Brian that put him below even her?

Some of Brian’s trouble, she wrote, is that Mr Wentworth is his father, and he is small and perky and irritating with it. Another part is that Brian is really good at things and comes top in most things, and he ought to be the real boy, not Simon. But SS is so certain he is the real boy that he has managed to convince Brian too.

That, Nan thought, was still not quite it, but it was as near as she could get. The rest of her description of 2Y struck her as masterly. She was so pleased with it that she almost forgot she was miserable.

Charles wrote, I got up, I got up, I GOT UP.

That made it look as if he had sprung eagerly out of bed, which was certainly not the case, but he had so hated today that he had to work it off somehow.

My running shoes got buried in cornflakes. I felt very hot running round the field and on top of that I had lunch on high table. I do not like rice pudding. We have had Games with Miss Hodge and rice pudding and there are still about a hundred years of today still to go.

And that, he thought, about summed it up.

When the bell went, Mr Crossley hurried to pick up the books he had been marking in order to get to the staff room before Miss Hodge left it. And stared. There was another note under the pile of books. It was written in the same capitals and the same blue ballpoint as the first note. It said:

HA HA. THOUGHT I WAS GOING
TO TELL YOU. DIDN’T YOU?

Now what do I do? wondered Mr Crossley.

At the end of lessons, there was the usual stampede to be elsewhere. Theresa and her friends, Delia, Heather, Deborah, Julia and the rest, raced to the lower school girls’ playroom to bag the radiators there, so that they could sit on them and knit. Estelle and Karen hurried to bag the chillier radiators in the corridor, and sat on them to cast on their stitches.

Simon led his friends to the labs, where they added to Simon’s collection of honour marks by helping tidy up. Dan Smith left his friends to play football without him, because he had business in the shrubbery, watching the senior boys meeting their senior girlfriends there. Charles crawled reluctantly to the locker room to look for his running shoes again.

Nan went, equally reluctantly, up to Mr Wentworth’s study.

There was someone else in with Mr Wentworth when she got there. She could hear voices and see two misty shapes through the wobbly glass in the door. Nan did not mind. The longer the interview was put off the better. So she hung about in the passage for nearly twenty minutes, until a passing prefect asked her what she was doing there.

“Waiting to see Mr Wentworth,” Nan said. Then, of course, in order to prove it to the prefect, she was forced to knock at the door.

“Come!” bawled Mr Wentworth.

The prefect, placated, passed on down the passage. Nan put out her hand to open the door, but, before she could, it was pulled open by Mr Wentworth himself and Mr Crossley came out, rather red and laughing sheepishly.

“I still swear it wasn’t there when I put the books down,” he said.

“Ah, but you know you didn’t look, Harold,” Mr Wentworth said. “Our practical joker relied on your not looking. Forget it, Harold. So there you are, Nan. Did you lose your way here? Come on in. Mr Crossley’s just going.”

He went back to his desk and sat down. Mr Crossley hovered for a moment, still rather red, and then hurried away downstairs, leaving Nan to shut the door. As she did so, she noticed that Mr Wentworth was staring at three pieces of paper on his desk as if he thought they might bite him. She saw that one was in Miss Hodge’s writing and that the other two were scraps of paper with blue capital letters on them, but she was much too worried on her own account to bother about pieces of writing.

“Explain your behaviour on high table,” Mr Wentworth said to her.

Since there really was no explanation that Nan could see, she said, in a miserable whisper, “I can’t, sir,” and looked down at the parquet floor.

“Can’t?” said Mr Wentworth. “You put Lord Mulke off his lunch for no reason at all! Tell me another. Explain yourself.”

Miserably, Nan fitted one of her feet exactly into one of the parquet oblongs in the floor. “I don’t know, sir. I just said it.”

“You don’t know, you just said it,” said Mr Wentworth. “Do you mean by that you found yourself speaking without knowing you were?”

This was meant to be sarcasm, Nan knew. But it seemed to be true as well. Carefully, she fitted her other shoe into the parquet block which slanted towards her first foot, and stood unsteadily, toe to toe, while she wondered how to explain. “I didn’t know what I was going to say next, sir.”

“Why not?” demanded Mr Wentworth.

“I don’t know,” Nan said. “It was like – like being possessed.”

“Possessed!” shouted Mr Wentworth. It was the way he shouted just before he suddenly threw chalk at people. Nan went backwards to avoid the chalk which came next. But she forgot that her feet were pointing inwards and sat down heavily on the floor. From there, she could see Mr Wentworth’s surprised face, peering at her over the top of his desk. “What did that?” he said.

“Please don’t throw chalk at me!” Nan said.

At that moment, there was a knock at the door and Brian Wentworth put his head round it into the room. “Are you free yet, Dad?”

“No,” said Mr Wentworth.

Both of them looked at Nan sitting on the floor. “What’s she doing?” Brian asked.

“She says she’s possessed. Go away and come back in ten minutes,” Mr Wentworth said. “Get up, Nan.”

Brian obediently shut the door and went away. Nan struggled to her feet. It was almost as difficult as climbing a rope. She wondered a little how it felt to be Brian, with your father one of the teachers, but mostly she wondered what Mr Wentworth was going to do to her. He had his most harrowed, worried look, and he was staring again at the three papers on his desk.

“So you think you’re possessed?” he said.

“Oh no,” Nan said. “All I meant was that it was like it. I knew I was going to do something awful before I started, but I didn’t know what until I started describing the food. Then I tried to stop and I couldn’t, somehow.”

“Do you often get taken that way?” Mr Wentworth asked.

Nan was about to answer indignantly No, when she realised that she had gone for Brian with the witch’s broom in exactly the same way straight after lunch. And many and many a time, she had impulsively written things in her journal. She fitted her shoe into a parquet block again, and hastily took it away.

“Sometimes,” she said, in a low, guilty mutter. “I do sometimes – when I’m angry with people – I write what I think in my journal.”

“And do you write notes to teachers too?” asked Mr Wentworth.

“Of course not,” said Nan. “What would be the point?”

“But someone in 2Y has written Mr Crossley a note,” said Mr Wentworth. “It accused someone in the class of being a witch.”

The serious, worried way he said it made Nan understand at last. So that was why Mr Crossley had talked like that and then been to see Mr Wentworth. And they thought Nan had written the note. “The unfairness!” she burst out. “How can they think I wrote the note and call me a witch too! Just because my name’s Dulcinea!”

“You could be diverting suspicion from yourself,” Mr Wentworth pointed out. “If I asked you straight out—”

“I am not a witch!” said Nan. “And I didn’t write that note. I bet that was Theresa Mullett or Simon Silverson. They’re both born accusers! Or Daniel Smith,” she added.

“Now I wouldn’t have picked on Dan,” Mr Wentworth said. “I wasn’t aware he could write.”

The sarcastic way he said that showed Nan that she ought not to have mentioned Theresa or Simon. Like everyone else, Mr Wentworth thought of them as the real girl and the real boy. “Someone accused me,” she said bitterly.

“Well, I’ll take your word for it that you didn’t write the note,” Mr Wentworth said. “And next time you feel a possession coming on, take a deep breath and count up to ten, or you may be in serious trouble. You have a very unfortunate name, you see. You’ll have to be very careful in future. How did you come to be called Dulcinea? Were you called after the Archwitch?”

“Yes,” Nan admitted. “I’m descended from her.”

Mr Wentworth whistled. “And you’re a witch-orphan too, aren’t you? I shouldn’t let anyone else know that, if I were you. I happen to admire Dulcinea Wilkes for trying to stop witches being persecuted, but very few other people do. Keep your mouth shut, Nan – and don’t ever describe food in front of Lord Mulke again either. Off you go now.”

Nan fumbled her way out of the study and plunged down the stairs. Her eyes were so fuzzy with indignation that she could hardly see where she was going. “What does he take me for?” she muttered to herself as she went. “I’d rather admit to being descended from – from Attila the Hun or – or Guy Fawkes. Or anyone.”

It was around that time that Mr Towers, who had stood over Charles while Charles hunted unavailingly for his running shoes in the boys’ locker room, finally smothered a long yawn and left Charles to go on looking by himself.

“Bring them to me in the staff room when you’ve found them,” he said.

Charles sat down on a bench, alone among red lockers and green walls. He glowered at the slimy grey floor and the three odd football boots that always lay in one corner. He looked at nameless garments withering on pegs. He sniffed the smell of sweat and old socks.

“I hate everything,” he said. He had searched everywhere. Dan Smith had found a really cunning place for those shoes. The only way Charles was going to find them was by Dan telling him where they were.

Charles ground his teeth and stood up. “All right. Then I’ll ask him,” he said. Like everyone else, he knew Dan was in the shrubbery spying on seniors. Dan made no secret of it. He had got his uncle to send him a pair of binoculars so that he could get a really close view. And the shrubbery was only round the corner from the locker room. Charles thought he could risk going there, even if Mr Towers suddenly came back. The real risk was from the seniors in the shrubbery.

There was an invisible line round the shrubbery, just like the one Nan had described between the boys and the girls in 2Y. Anyone younger than a senior who got found in the shrubbery could be most thoroughly beaten up by the senior who found them. Still, Charles thought, as he set off, Dan was not a senior either. That should help.

The shrubbery was a messy tangle of huge evergreen bushes, with wet grass in between. Charles’s almost-dry shoes were soaked again before he found Dan. He found him quite quickly. Since it was a cold evening and the grass was so wet, there were only two pairs of seniors there, and they were all in the most trodden part, on either side of a mighty laurel bush. Ah! thought Charles. He crept to the laurel bush and pushed his face in among the wet and shiny leaves. Dan was there, among the dry branches inside.

“Dan!” hissed Charles.

Dan took his binoculars from his eyes with a jerk and whirled round. When he saw Charles’s face leaning in among the leaves at him, beaming its nastiest double-barrelled glare, he seemed almost relieved. “Pig off!” he whispered. “Magic out of here!”

“What have you done with my spikes?” said Charles.

“Whisper, can’t you?” Dan whispered. He peered nervously through the leaves at the nearest pair of seniors.

Charles could see them too. They were a tall thin boy and a very fat girl – much fatter than Nan Pilgrim – and they did not seem to have heard anything. Charles could see the thin boy’s fingers digging into the girl’s fat where his arm was round her. He wondered how anyone could enjoy grabbing, or watching, such fatness.

“Where have you hidden my spikes?” he whispered.

But Dan did not care, as long as the seniors had not heard. “I’ve forgotten,” he whispered. Beyond the bush, the thin boy leant his head against the fat girl’s head. Dan grinned. “See that? Mixing the breed.” He put his binoculars to his eyes again.

Charles spoke a little louder. “Tell me where you’ve put my spikes, or I’ll shout that you’re here.”

“Then they’ll know you’re here then too, won’t they?” Dan whispered. “I told you, magic off!”

“Not till you tell me,” said Charles.

Dan turned his back on Charles. “You’re boring me.”

Charles saw that he had no option but to raise a yell and fetch the seniors into the bush. While he was wondering whether he dared, the second pair of seniors came hurrying round the laurel bush. “Hey!” said the boy. “There’s some juniors in that bush. Sue heard them whispering.”

“Right!” said the thin boy and the fat girl. And all four seniors dived at the bush.

Charles let out a squawk of terror and ran. Behind him, he heard cracking branches, leaves swishing, grunts, crunchings, and most unladylike threats from the senior girls. He hoped Dan had been caught. But even while he was hoping, he knew Dan had got away. Charles was in the open. The seniors had seen him and it was Charles they were after. He burst out of the shrubbery with all four of them after him. With a finger across his nose to hold his glasses on, he pelted for his life round the corner of the school.

There was nothing in front of him but a long wall and open space. The lower school door was a hundred yards away. The only possible place that was any nearer was the open door of the boys’ locker room. Charles bolted through it without thinking. And skidded to a stop, realising what a fool he had been. The seniors’ feet were hammering round the corner, and the only way out of the locker room was the open door he had come in by. All Charles could think of was to dodge behind that door and stand there flat against the wall, hoping. There he stood, flattened and desperate, breathing in old sock and mildew and trying not to pant, while four pairs of feet slid to a stop outside the door.

“He’s hiding in there,” said the fat girl’s voice.

“We can’t go in. It’s boys’,” said the other girl. “You two go and bring him out.”

There were breathless grunts from the two boys, and two pairs of heavy feet tramped in through the doorway. The thin boy, by the sound, tramped into the middle of the room. His voice rumbled round the concrete space.

“Where’s he got to?”

“Must be behind the door,” rumbled the other. The door was pulled aside. Charles stood petrified at the sight of the senior it revealed. This one was huge. He towered over Charles. He even had a sort of moustache. Charles shook with terror.

But the little angry eyes, high up above the moustache, stared down through Charles, seemingly at the floor and the wall. The bulky face twitched in annoyance. “Nope,” said the senior. “Nothing here.”

“He must have made it to the lower school door,” said the thin boy.

“Magicking little witch!” said the other.

And, to Charles’s utter amazement, the two of them tramped out of the locker room. There was some annoyed exclaiming from the two girls outside, and then all four of them seemed to be going away. Charles stood where he was, shaking, for quite a while after they seemed to have gone. He was sure it was a trick. But, five minutes later, they had still not come back. It was a miracle of some kind!

Charles tottered out into the middle of the room, wondering just what kind of miracle it was that could make a huge senior look straight through you. Now he knew it had happened, Charles was sure the senior had not been pretending. He really had not seen Charles standing there.

“So what did it?” Charles asked the nameless hanging clothes. “Magic?”

He meant it to be a scornful question, the kind of thing you say when you give the whole thing up. But, somehow, it was not. As he said it, a huge, terrible suspicion which had been gathering, almost unnoticed, at the back of Charles’s head, like a headache coming on, now swung to the front of his mind, like a headache already there. Charles began shaking again.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t that. It was something else!”

But the suspicion, now it was there, demanded to be sent away at once, now, completely. “All right,” Charles said. “I’ll prove it. I know how. I hate Dan Smith anyway.”

He marched up to Dan’s locker and opened it. He looked at the jumble of clothes and shoes inside. He had searched this locker twice now. He had searched all of them twice. He was sick of looking in lockers. He took up Dan’s spiked running shoes, one in each hand, and backed away with them to the middle of the room.

“Now,” he said to the shoes, “you vanish.” He tapped them together, sole to spiked sole, to make it clear to them. “Vanish,” he said. “Abracadabra.” And, when nothing happened, he threw both shoes into the air, to give them every chance. “Hey presto,” he said.

Both shoes were gone, in mid-air, before they reached the slimy floor.

Charles stared at the spot where he had last seen them. “I didn’t mean it,” he said hopelessly. “Come back.”

Nothing happened. No shoes appeared.

“Oh well,” said Charles. “Perhaps I did mean it.”

Then, very gently, almost reverently, he went over and shut Dan’s locker. The suspicion was gone. But the certainty which hung over Charles in its place was so heavy and so hideous that it made him want to crouch on the floor. He was a witch. He would be hunted like the witch he had helped and burnt like the fat one. It would hurt. It would be horrible. He was very, very scared – so scared it was like being dead already, cold, heavy and almost unable to breathe.

Trying to pull himself together, he took his glasses off to clean them. That made him notice that he was, actually, crouching on the floor beside Dan’s locker. He dragged himself upright. What should he do? Might not the best thing be to get it over now, and go straight to Miss Cadwallader and confess?

That seemed an awful waste, but Charles could not seem to think of anything else to do. He shuffled to the door and out into the chilly evening. He had always known he was wicked, he thought. Now it was proved. The witch had kissed him because she had known he was evil too. Now he had grown so evil that he needed to be stamped out. He wouldn’t give the Inquisitors any trouble, not like some witches did.

Witchcraft must show all over him anyway. Someone had already noticed and written that note about it. Nan Pilgrim had accused him of conjuring up all those birds in Music yesterday. Charles thought he must have done that without knowing he had, just as he had made himself invisible to the seniors just now. He wondered how strong a witch he was. Were you more wicked, the stronger you were? Probably. But weak or powerful, you were burned just the same. And he was in nice time for the autumn bone-fires. It was nearly Hallowe’en now. By the time they had legally proved him a witch, it would be 5 November, and that would be the end of it.

He did not know it was possible to feel so scared and hopeless.

Thinking and thinking, in a haze of horror, Charles shuffled his way to Miss Cadwallader’s room. He stood outside the door and waited, without even the heart to knock. Minutes passed. The door opened. Seeing the misty oblong of bright light, Charles braced himself.

“So you didn’t find them?” said Mr Towers.

Charles jumped. Though he could not see what Mr Towers was doing here, he said, “No, sir.”

“I’m not surprised, if you took your glasses off to look,” said Mr Towers.

Tremulously, Charles hooked his glasses over his ears. They were ice-cold. He must have had them in his hand ever since he took them off to clean. Now he could see, he saw he was standing outside the staff room, not Miss Cadwallader’s room at all. Why was that? Still he could just as easily confess to Mr Towers. “Please, I deserve to be punished, sir. I—”

“Take a black mark for that,” Mr Towers said coldly. “I don’t like boys who crawl. Now, either you can pay for a new pair of shoes, or you can write five hundred lines every night until the end of term. Come to me tomorrow morning and tell me which you decide to do. Now get out of here.”

He slammed the door of the staff room in Charles’s face. Charles stood and looked at it. That was a fierce choice Mr Towers had given him. And a black mark. But it had jolted his horror off sideways somehow. He felt his face going red. What a fool he was! Nobody knew he was a witch. Instinct had told him this, and taken his feet to the staff room instead of to Miss Cadwallader. But only luck had saved him confessing to Mr Towers. He had better not be that stupid again. As long as he kept his mouth shut and worked no more magic, he would be perfectly safe. He almost smiled as he trudged off to supper.

But he could not stop thinking about it. Round and round and round, all through supper. How wicked was he? Could he do anything about it? Was it enough just not to do any magic? Could you go somewhere and be de-magicked, like clothes were dry-cleaned? If not, and he was found out, was it any use running away? Where did witches run to, after they had run through people’s back-gardens? Was there any certain way of being safe?

“Oh magic!” someone exclaimed, just beside him. “I left my book in the playroom!” Charles jumped and hummed, like the school gong when it was hit, at the mere word.

“Don’t swear,” said the prefect in charge.

Then Theresa Mullett, from the end of the table, called out in a way that was not quite jeering, “Nan, won’t you do something interesting and miraculous for us? We know you can.” Charles jumped and hummed again.

“No I can’t,” said Nan.

But Theresa, and Delia Martin too, kept on asking. “Nan, high table’s got some lovely bananas. Won’t you say a spell and fetch them over?”

“Nan, I feel like some ice cream. Conjure some up.”

“Nan, do you really worship the devil?”

Each time they said any of these things, Charles jumped and hummed. Though he knew it was entirely to his advantage to have everyone think Nan Pilgrim was the witch, he wanted to scream at the girls to stop. He was very relieved, halfway through supper, when Nan jumped up and stormed out of the dining room.

Nan went straight to the deserted library. Very well, she thought. If everyone was so sure she was guilty, she could at least take advantage of it and do something she had always wanted to do and never dared to do before. She took down the encyclopaedia and looked up Dulcinea Wilkes. Curiously enough, the fat book fell open at that page. It seemed as if a lot of people at Larwood House had taken an interest in the Archwitch. If so, they had all been as disappointed as Nan. The laws against witchcraft were so severe that most information about Nan’s famous ancestress was banned. The entry was quite short.

WILKES, DULCINEA. 1760–1790. Notorious witch, known as the Archwitch. Born in Steeple Bumpstead, Essex, she moved to London in 1781, where she soon became well known for her nightly broomstick flights round St Paul’s and the Houses of Parliament. Besoms are still sometimes called ‘Dulcinea’s Ponies’. Dulcinea took a leading part in the Witches’ Uprising of 1789. She was arrested and burnt, along with the other leaders. While she was burning, it is said that the lead on the roof of St Paul’s melted and ran off the dome. She continued to be burnt in effigy every bone-fire day until 1845, when the practice was discontinued owing to the high price of lead.

Nan sighed and put the encyclopaedia back. When the bell rang, she went slowly to the classroom to do the work that had been set during the day. It was called devvy at Larwood House, no one knew why. Everyone else was there when Nan arrived. The room was full of the slap of exercise books round Brian Wentworth’s head and Brian squealing. But the noise stopped as Nan came in, showing that Mr Crossley had come in behind her.

“Charles Morgan,” said Mr Crossley. “Mr Wentworth wants to see you.”

Charles dragged his mind with a jolt from imaginary flames whirling round him. He got up and trudged off, like a boy in a dream, along corridors and through swing doors to the part of the school where teachers who lived in the school had their private rooms. He had only been to Mr Wentworth’s room once before. He had to tear his mind away from thoughts of burning and look at the names on the doors. He supposed Mr Wentworth wanted him because of his beastly shoes. Blast and magic Dan Smith! He knocked on the door.

“Come!” said Mr Wentworth.

He was sitting in an armchair smoking a pipe. The room was full of strong smoke. Charles was surprised to see how shabby Mr Wentworth’s room was. The armchair was worn out. There were holes in the soles of Mr Wentworth’s slippers, and holes in the hearthrug the slippers rested on. But the gas fire was churring away comfortably and the room was beautifully warm compared with the rest of school.

“Ah, Charles.” Mr Wentworth laid his pipe in an ashtray that looked like Brian’s first attempt at pottery. “Charles, I was told this afternoon that you might be a witch.”

Charles had thought, in the locker room, that he had been as frightened as a person could possibly be. Now he discovered this was not so. Mr Wentworth’s words seemed to hit him heavy separate blows. Under the blows, Charles felt as if he were dissolving and falling away somewhere far, far below. He thought at first he was falling somewhere so sickeningly deep that the whole of his mind had become one long horrible scream. Then he felt he was rising up as he screamed.

The shabby room was blurred and swaying, but Charles could have sworn he was now looking down on it from somewhere near the ceiling. He seemed to be hanging there, screaming, looking down on the top of his own head, and the slightly bald top of Mr Wentworth’s head, and the smoke writhing from the pipe in the ashtray. And that terrified him too. He must have divided into two parts. Mr Wentworth was bound to notice.

To his surprise, the part of himself left standing on the worn carpet answered Mr Wentworth quite normally. He heard his own voice, with just the right amount of amazement and innocence, saying, “Who, me? I’m not a witch, sir.”

“I didn’t say you were, Charles,” Mr Wentworth replied. “I just said someone said you were. From the account I was given, you had a public row with Nan Pilgrim, in the course of which you spoke of worms and dead mice, and a number of other unpleasant things.”

The part of Charles left standing on the carpet answered indignantly, “Well I did. But I was only saying some of the things she said at lunch. You were there, sir. Didn’t you hear her, sir?” Meanwhile, the part of Charles hovering near the ceiling was thanking whatever lucky stars looked after witches that Mr Wentworth had chanced to sit opposite Nan Pilgrim at high table.

“I did,” said Mr Wentworth. “I recognised your reference at once. But my informant thought you were reciting a spell.”

“But I wasn’t, sir,” protested the part of Charles on the carpet.

“But you sounded as if you were,” Mr Wentworth said. “You can’t be too careful, Charles, in these troubled times. It sounds as if I’d better explain the position to you.”

He picked up his pipe to help him in the explanation. In the way of pipes, it had gone out by then. Mr Wentworth struck matches and puffed, and struck more matches and puffed. Smoke does not seem to mean fire where pipes are concerned. Mr Wentworth used ten matches before the pipe was alight. As Charles watched, it dawned on him that Mr Wentworth did not think he was a witch. Nor did Mr Wentworth seem to have noticed the odd way he had split into two. Perhaps the part of him hovering near the ceiling was imaginary, and simply due to panic.

As Charles thought this, he found the part of him near the ceiling slowly descending into the part of him standing normally on the carpet. By the time Mr Wentworth risked putting his pipe out again by pressing the matchbox down on it, Charles found himself in one piece. He was still fizzing all over with terror, it is true, but he was feeling nothing like so peculiar.

“Now, Charles,” said Mr Wentworth. “You know witchcraft has always been illegal. But I think it’s true to say that the laws against it have never been as strict as they are now. You’ve heard of the Witches’ Uprising of course, in 1789, under the Archwitch Dulcinea Wilkes?”

Charles nodded. Everyone knew about Dulcinea. It was like being asked if you knew about Guy Fawkes.

“Now that,” said Mr Wentworth, “was a respectable sort of uprising in its way. The witches were protesting against being persecuted and burnt. Dulcinea said, reasonably enough, that they couldn’t help being born the way they were, and they didn’t want to be killed for something they couldn’t help. She kept promising that witches would use their powers only for good, if people would stop burning them. Dulcinea wasn’t at all the awful creature everyone says, you know. She was young and pretty and clever – but she had a terribly hot temper. When people wouldn’t agree not to burn witches, she lost her temper and worked a number of huge and violent spells. That was a mistake. It made people absolutely terrified of witchcraft, and when the uprising was put down, there were an awful lot of bone-fires and some really strict laws. But you’ll know all that.”

Charles nodded again. Apart from the fact that he had been taught that Dulcinea was an evil old hag, and a stupid one, this was what everyone knew.

“But,” said Mr Wentworth, pointing his pipe at Charles, “what you may not know is that there was another, much more unpleasant uprising, just before you were born. Surprised? Yes, I thought you were. It was hushed up rather. The witches leading it were all unpleasant people, and their aim was to take over the country. The main conspirators were all civil servants and army generals, and the leader was a cabinet minister. You can imagine how scared and shocked everyone was at that.”

“Yes, sir,” said Charles. He had almost stopped being frightened by now. He found himself trying to imagine the Prime Minister as a witch. It was an interesting idea.

Mr Wentworth put his pipe in his mouth and puffed out smoke expressively. “The minister was burnt in Trafalgar Square,” he said. “And Parliament passed the Witchcraft Emergency Act in an effort to stamp out witches for good. That act, Charles, is still in force today. It gives the Inquisitors enormous powers. They can arrest someone on the mere suspicion of witchcraft – even if they’re only your age, Charles.”

“My age?” Charles said hoarsely.

“Yes. Witches keep on being born,” said Mr Wentworth. “And it was discovered that the minister’s family had known he was a witch since he was eleven years old. A lot of research has been done since on witches. There are a hundred different kinds of witch-detector. But most of the research has been towards discovering when witches first come into their powers, and it seems that most witches start at around your age, Charles. So, these days, the Inquisitors keep a special eye on all schools. And a school like this one, where at least half the pupils are witch-orphans anyway, is going to attract their notice at once. Understand?”

“No, sir,” said Charles. “Why are you telling me?”

“Someone thought you recited a spell,” Mr Wentworth said. “Think, boy! If I hadn’t happened to know what you were really saying, you’d be under arrest by now. So now you’ll have to be extra specially careful. Now do you see?”

“Yes, sir,” said Charles. He was almost frightened again.

“Then off you go, back to devvy,” said Mr Wentworth. Charles turned round and trudged over the threadbare carpet to the door. “And Charles,” called Mr Wentworth. Charles turned round. “Take a black mark to remind you to be careful,” said Mr Wentworth.

Charles opened the door. Two black marks in one evening! If you got three black marks in a week, you went to Miss Cadwallader and were in real trouble. Two black marks! Both for things which were not his fault! Charles turned round while he was closing the door and directed the full force of his nastiest double-barrelled glare at Mr Wentworth. He was seething.

He trudged up the corridor to the swing door, still seething. The swing door swung as he reached it, and, to his surprise, Miss Hodge came through it. Miss Hodge did not live in school. As Estelle had speedily found out and told everyone, she lived with her old father in town. She was not usually here in the evenings at all.

“Charles!” said Miss Hodge. “How convenient! Have you been seeing Mr Wentworth?”

It did not occur to Charles to wonder how Miss Hodge knew that. In his experience, teachers always knew far too much anyway. “Yes,” he said.

“Then you can tell me which his room is,” said Miss Hodge.

Charles pointed out the room and applied his shoulder to the swing door. He had just forced his way out into the corridor beyond, when it swung again and again let Miss Hodge through.

“Charles, are you sure Mr Wentworth was there? He didn’t answer when I knocked.”

“He was sitting by his fire,” Charles said.

“Then perhaps I knocked at the wrong door,” Miss Hodge said. “Can you come and show me? Would you mind very much?”

Yes I would mind, Charles thought. He sighed and went back through the swing door with Miss Hodge. Miss Hodge seemed pleased to have his company, which surprised him a little.

Miss Hodge was thinking how fortunate it was she had met Charles. Since the afternoon, she had been thinking carefully. And she saw that her next and most certain move towards marrying Mr Wentworth was to go to him and impulsively take back her accusation against Charles. It was unpleasant to think of anyone being burned, even if Charles did have the most evil glare of any boy she knew. She would look so generous. And here she was, actually with Charles, to prove she bore him no malice.

Charles looked at Mr Wentworth’s name on the door and wondered how Miss Hodge could have got the wrong room.

“Oh,” said Miss Hodge. “It was the right door. That’s his name.”

She knocked, and knocked again, with golden visions of her romance with Mr Wentworth growing as, together, they tried to protect Charles from the clutches of the Inquisitors. But there was no answer from the room. She turned to Charles in perplexity.

“Maybe he’s gone to sleep,” Charles said. “It was warm in there.”

“Suppose we open the door and take a peep?” Miss Hodge said, fluttering a little.

“You do it,” said Charles.

“No, you,” said Miss Hodge. “I’ll take all responsibility.”

Charles sighed, and opened Mr Wentworth’s door for the second time that evening. A gust of cold, smoky air blew in their faces. The room was dark, except for a faint glow from the cooling gas-fire. Even that vanished when Miss Hodge imperiously switched on the light and stood fanning the smoke away from her.

“Dear, dear,” she said, looking round. “That man needs a woman’s hand here. Are you sure he was here, Charles?”

“Just this minute,” Charles said doggedly, but horror was beginning to descend on him. It was almost as if Mr Wentworth had never been. He walked over to the bald patch of carpet in front of the fire and felt the fire. It was quite hot. Mr Wentworth’s pipe was lying in the pottery ashtray still, and that was warm too, but cooling in the icy air from the open window. Perhaps, Charles thought hopefully, Mr Wentworth had just felt tired and gone to bed. There was a door in the opposite wall, beyond the blowing curtains of the window, which was probably the door to his bedroom.

But Miss Hodge boldly walked over and opened that door. It was a cupboard, stuffed with schoolbooks. “He didn’t go this way,” she said. “Has he a bedroom along the corridor, do you know?”

“He must have,” said Charles. But he knew Mr Wentworth had not gone down the corridor. He could not have come out of this room without Charles seeing him as he went to the swing door, or Miss Hodge seeing him as she pushed past Charles the other way. There was only one other possibility. Charles had looked daggers at Mr Wentworth. He had given him his very nastiest glare. And that glare had caused Mr Wentworth to disappear, just as Dan’s running shoes had disappeared. It was what they called the Evil Eye.

“I don’t think there’s any point in waiting,” Miss Hodge said discontentedly. “Oh well. I can speak to him tomorrow.”

Charles was only too glad to go. He was only too glad to accompany Miss Hodge down to the door where she had left her bicycle. He talked to her most politely all the way. It kept his mind off what he had done. And he thought that if he talked hard enough and made himself truly charming, Miss Hodge might not realise that Charles had been the last person to set eyes on Mr Wentworth.

They talked of poems, football, bicycles, the caretaker’s dog and Mr Hodge’s garden. The result was that Miss Hodge mounted her bicycle and rode off, thinking that Charles Morgan was a very nice child once you got to know him. It made it all the better that she intended to withdraw her accusation against him. A teacher, she told herself, should always try to get to know her pupils.

Charles puffed out a big sigh of relief and trudged off again, weighted with new guilt. By the time he reached the classroom, nearly all the others had finished their work and were trooping off to choir practice. Charles had the room to himself, apart from Nan Pilgrim, who also seemed to be behindhand. They did not speak to one another, of course, but it was doubtful that either did much work. Nan was thinking miserably that if only she was a witch like Dulcinea Wilkes, she would not mind what anyone said. Charles was thinking about Mr Wentworth.

First the birds in Music, now Mr Wentworth. Being invisible to the senior didn’t count, because no one knew about that. What terrified Charles was that he would seem to keep using witchcraft by accident, where it showed. If only he could stop himself doing that, then he still might have a chance. Miss Hodge might give him an alibi over Mr Wentworth, if he went on being nice to her. But how did you stop yourself working magic?

“This has been an awful day,” Nan said, as she packed up to leave. “I’m so glad it’s nearly over.”

Charles stared at her, wondering how she knew. Then he packed up and left too. He was very much afraid that today was not over for him yet, by a long way. He had heard the Inquisitors usually came for you in the night. So they would come for him, as soon as someone discovered Mr Wentworth was missing. Charles thought about Mr Wentworth all the time he was washing. He had rather liked Mr Wentworth on the whole. He felt very bad about him. Perhaps the way to stop himself doing it again, to Mr Crossley or someone, was to think hard about how it felt to be burnt. It would hurt.

It hurts to be burnt, he repeated to himself as he undressed. It hurts to be burnt. He was shivering as he climbed into bed, and not only from the cold air in the long spartan dormitory.

Brian Wentworth was being beaten up again a few beds along from him. Brian was crouching on his bed with his arms over his head, while Simon Silverson and his friends hit him with their pillows. They were laughing, but they meant it too. “Show off!” they were saying. “Boot-licker! Show off!”

Up till then, Charles had always been almost glad he was in this dormitory, and not in the next-door one like Nirupam, where Dan Smith ruled with his friends from 2X and 2Z. Now he wondered whether to sneak off and sleep in the lower school boys’ playroom. Brian’s yells – for Brian could never be hit quietly – kept cutting through Charles’s miserable meditations and reminding him what he had done to Brian’s father. It grew so bothersome that Charles nearly got out of bed and joined in hitting Brian too, just to relieve his feelings. But by this time he had gathered the reason for the pillows. Mr Brubeck had asked Brian to sing a solo at the school concert, and Brian had unwisely agreed. Everyone else knew that it was Simon’s right to sing solo.

This meant that hitting Brian would be sucking up to Simon. That Charles would not do. He went back to his desperate wonderings. There was no way of keeping Mr Wentworth’s disappearance secret that he could see. But there was quite a chance that no one would realise Charles had done it. So, if only he could think of some sure-fire way of stopping himself working magic by accident – that was it! Sure fire. It hurts to be burnt.

Charles got out of bed. He unhooked his glasses from his bed-rail, hooked them on his ears and thumped across to the flurry of pillows.

“Can I borrow the emergency candle for five minutes?” he said loudly to Simon.

Simon of course was dormitory monitor. He paused in belabouring Brian and became official. “The candle’s only for emergencies. What do you want it for?”

“You’ll see if you give it me,” said Charles.

Simon hesitated, torn between curiosity and his usual desire never to give anyone anything. “You’ll have to tell me what you want it for first. I can’t let you have it for no reason.”

“I’m not going to tell you,” said Charles. “Just give it me.”

Simon considered. Long experience of Charles Morgan had shown him that when Charles said he was not going to tell, nothing would make him tell, not pillows or even wild horses. His curiosity, as Charles had hoped, was thoroughly aroused. “If I give it you,” he said righteously, “I shall be breaking the rules. You owe me compensation for risking getting into trouble, you know.”

This was only to be expected. “What do you want?” said Charles.

Simon smiled graciously, wondering how great Charles’s need was. “Your pocket money every week for the rest of term,” he said. “How about that?”

“Too much,” said Charles.

Simon turned away and picked up his pillow again. “Take it or leave it,” he said. “That’s my final offer.”

“I’ll take it,” said Charles, hating Simon.

Simon turned back to him in astonishment. He had expected Charles either to protest or give up asking. His friends stared at Charles, equally astonished. In fact, by this time, nobody was hitting Brian any more. Here was something really odd going on. Even Brian was staring at Charles. How could anyone want a candle that much? “Very well,” Simon said. “I’ll accept your offer, Charles. But remember you promised in front of witnesses. You’d better pay up.”

“I’ll pay up,” said Charles. “Every week when Mr Crossley gives us our money. Now give me the candle.”

Simon, with busy efficiency, fetched his keyring from his blazer and unlocked the cupboard on the wall where the First Aid kit and the candle were kept. If a miracle happened, Charles thought, and the Inquisitors did not come for him after all, he had put himself in a true mess now. No pocket money until Christmas. That meant he could not pay for new running shoes. He would have to write five hundred lines every day for Mr Towers. But he did not really believe he would be around to do that very long. Everyone said the Inquisitors found witches whatever they did.

Simon put the candle in his hands. It was unlit, in a white enamel candle-holder. Charles looked at it. He looked up to see Simon and all the other boys, even Brian, grinning.

“You forgot to ask for matches,” Simon pointed out.

Charles looked at him. He glared. He did more than glare. It was the nastiest look he had ever given anyone. He hoped it would shrivel Simon on the spot.

All that happened was that Simon stepped backwards from him. Even so, he looked as superior as ever. “But I’ll give you the matches free,” he said. “It’s all part of the service.” He tossed a box of matches towards Charles.

Charles put the candlestick down on the floor. With everyone staring at him, he struck a match and lit the candle. He knelt down beside it. It hurts to be burnt, he thought. It hurts to be burnt. He put out his finger and held it in the small yellow flame.

“Why on earth are you doing that?” asked Ronald West.

Charles did not answer. For a second, he thought the flame was not going to burn him. It just felt warm and wet. Then, quite suddenly, it was hot and it hurt very much indeed. It hurt, as Charles had expected, in quite a different way from cutting yourself or stubbing your toe. This was a much nastier pain, sharp and dull together, which brought Charles’s back out in goose-pimples and jangled the nerves all the way up his arm.

Imagine this all over you, he thought. It hurts to be burnt. He took hold of his wrist with his other hand and held it hard to stop himself snatching his finger out of the pain. It hurts to be burnt. It did hurt too. It was making sweat prickle out just beneath his eyes.

“It must be for a dare or a bet,” he heard Simon saying. “Which is it? Tell, or I’ll put the candle away again.”

“A bet,” Charles answered at random. It hurts to be burnt. It hurts to be burnt. He thought this over and over, intent on branding it into his brain – or into whatever part of him it was that did magic. It hurts to be—Oh, it hurts! – hurts to be burnt.

“Some people,” Simon remarked, “make awfully stupid bets.”

Charles ignored him and tried to keep his jerking finger steady. It was trying to jump out of the flame of its own accord. The finger was now red, with a white band across the red. He could hear a funny noise, a sort of tiny frizzling, as if his skin was frying. Then, suddenly, he could bear no more. He found himself snatching his finger away and blowing out the candle. The boys watching him all let out a sigh, as if they had been holding their breath.

“I suppose,” Simon said discontentedly, as Charles handed him the candle back, “you make more money on this bet than you owe me now.”

“No, I don’t,” Charles said quickly. He was afraid Simon would be after that money too. Simon was quite capable of telling Mr Crossley about the candle if Charles did not pay. “I don’t get anything. The bet was to burn my finger right off.”

The prefect on duty appeared in the doorway, shouting, “Lights out! No more talking!”

Charles got into bed, sucking his burnt finger, hoping and praying that he had now taught himself not to work magic by accident. His tongue could feel a big pulpy blister rising between the first and second joint of his finger. It hurt more than ever.

Simon said, out of the darkness, “I always knew Charles Morgan was mad. What a brainless thing to do!”

Ronald West said, “You don’t expect brains in an animal.”

“Animals have more sense,” said Geoffrey Baines.

“Charles Morgan,” said Simon, “is a lower life form.”

These kinds of comments went on for some time. It was perfectly safe to talk because there was always such a noise from the next dormitory. Charles lay and waited for them to stop. He knew he was not going to sleep. Nor did he.

Long after Simon and his friends had fallen silent, long after two prefects and the master in charge had come along and shut up the boys next door, Charles lay stiff as a log of wood, staring up into the shadows.

He was frightened – terrified. But the terror was now a dreary long-distance kind of terror, which he was sure he was going to feel all the time, for the rest of his life now. Suppose by some miracle, no Inquisitors came for him, then he was going to be afraid that they would, every minute of every day, for years and years. He wondered if you learnt to get used to it. He hoped so, because at this moment he felt like springing out of bed and confessing, just to get it over.

What would Simon say, if Charles jumped up shouting “I’m a witch!” Probably he would think Charles was mad. It was funny that Simon had not disappeared too. Charles sucked his finger and puzzled over that. He certainly hated Simon enough. He had not hated Mr Wentworth at all really – or only in the way you hate any master who gives you a black mark you do not deserve. Perhaps witchcraft had to be sort of clinical to work properly.

Then Charles thought of his other troubles. Two black marks in one day. No running shoes. No money. Five hundred lines a day. And none of it was his fault! It was not his fault he had been born a witch, either, for that matter. It was all so unfair! He wished he did not have to feel so guilty about Mr Wentworth on top of it all. It hurts to be burnt.

Charles’s thoughts slowly grew less connected after this point. He realised afterwards that he must have been to sleep. But if it was sleep, it was only a light horrified doze, in which his thoughts kept on clanking about in his head, as if he was a piece of machinery with the switch jammed to ON. But he did not know he had been to sleep.

It seemed to him at the time that he sat up in bed after thinking things out in a perfectly orderly way. It was all quite obvious. He was a witch. He dared not be found out. Therefore he had to use some more witchcraft in order not to be found out. In other words, he had better go somewhere private like the toilets downstairs and conjure up first Mr Wentworth and then his running shoes.

Charles got up. He remembered to put on his glasses. He even thought of arranging his bedclothes in heaps to make it look as if he was still in bed. He could see to do that by the dim light shining in from the corridor. By that light, he could see to creep past the sleeping humps of all the other boys. He crept out into the corridor, which seemed light as day by comparison.

There was a lot of noise coming from the next dormitory. There was rustling, and some heavy thumps, followed by some giggles hurriedly choked off. Charles stopped. It sounded as if they were having one of their midnight feasts in there. The thumps would be the floorboards coming up so that they could get at their hidden food. It was a bad time to wander about. If the master in charge heard the noise, Charles would be caught too.

But the corridor remained empty. After a while, Charles dared to go on. He went along the corridor and down the dark pit of the concrete stairs at the end. It was cold. The heating, which was never warm anyway, was turned down for the night. The chill striking up through Charles’s bare feet and in through his pyjamas served to wake him up a little. He wondered if it was the pain in his finger which had woken him in the first place. It was throbbing steadily. Charles held it against the cold wall to soothe it and, while his feet felt their way from stair to cold stair, he tried to plan what he would do. Mr Wentworth was obviously the most important one to get back – if he could. But he did need those running shoes too.

“I’ll practise on the shoes,” Charles muttered. “If I get those, I’ll try for Mr Wentworth.”

He stumbled off the end of the stairs and turned left towards the toilets. They were in a cross-passage down at the end. Charles was halfway to the corner, when the cross-passage became full of dull moving light. A half-lit figure loomed there, swinging a giant torch. The moving light caught the small white creature trundling at the figure’s heels. The caretaker and his dog were on their way to inspect the toilets for vandals.

Charles turned and tiptoed the other way. The passage promptly filled with a shrill yap, like one very small clap of thunder. The dog had heard him. Charles ran. Behind him, he heard the caretaker shout, “Who’s there?” and come clattering along the passage.

Charles ran. He ran past the end of the stairs, hoping the caretaker would think he had gone up them again, and went on, with his arms out in front of him, until he met the swing-door beyond. Gently, he pushed the door open a small way. Softly, he slid round it, holding the edge of the door so that it would not thump shut and give him away. Then he stood there hoping.

It was no good. The caretaker was not fooled. A muzz of light grew in the glass of the door. The shadow of the stair-rails swung across it and fell away, and the light went on growing brighter as the caretaker advanced.

Charles let the door go and ran again, thumping along dark corridors until he had no idea where he was and could hardly breathe. He shook off the caretaker, but he lost himself. Then he ran round a corner and blinked in the orange light from a far-off street-light shining through a window. Beyond the window was the unmistakable door of the lower school boys’ playroom. Even in that dim light, Charles knew the kick marks at the bottom of the door, and the cracked glass in the upper panel where Nirupam Singh had tried to hit Dan Smith and missed. It seemed like home just then. There were worse places to practise magic in, Charles thought. He opened the door and crept in.

In the faint light, someone else jumped round to face him.

Charles jumped back against the door. He squeaked. The other person squeaked. “Who are you?” they both said at once. Then Charles found the light switch. He moved it down and then back up in one swift waggle, dazzling both of them. What he saw made him lean against the door, confounded, blinking green darkness. The other person was Brian Wentworth. That was odd enough. But the oddest thing, in that dazzling moment of light, was that Charles had clearly seen that Brian was in tears. Charles was amazed. Brian, as was well known, never cried. He shrieked and yowled and yelled for mercy when he was hit, but he had never, ever been known to shed tears. Charles went very quickly from amazement to horror. For it clearly took something out of the ordinary to make Brian cry – and that thing must be that Brian had discovered his father was mysteriously missing.

“I came down to make it all right again,” Charles said guiltily.

“What can you do?” said Brian’s voice out of the dark, thick and throaty with crying. “The only reason you’re better off than me is because you glare at people and they leave you alone. I wish I had a dirty look like yours. Then I could stop them getting at me and hitting me all the time!”

He began crying again, loud jerky sobs. Charles could hear the crying moving off into the middle of the playroom, but he could not see Brian at first for green dazzle. He really could not believe Brian minded being hit that much. It happened so often that Brian must be thoroughly used to it. By this time, he could see that Brian was crouching in the centre of the concrete floor. Charles went over and crouched down facing him.

“Is that the only thing that’s the matter?” he enquired cautiously.

“Only!” said Brian. “Only thing! What else do you want them to do? Tear me apart limb from limb or something! Sometimes I wish they would. I’d be dead then. I wouldn’t have to put up with them getting at me then, hour after hour, day after day! I hate this school!”

“Yes,” Charles said feelingly. “So do I.” It gave him wonderful pleasure to say it, but it did not help bring the subject round to the disappearance of Mr Wentworth. He took a deep breath to encourage himself. “Er – have you seen your father—?”

Brian broke in, almost with a scream. “Of course I’ve been to my magicking father! I go to him nearly every day and ask him to let me leave this place. I went to him this afternoon and asked him. I said why couldn’t I go to Forest Road School, like Stephen Towers does, and you know what he said? He said Forest Road was a private school and he couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t afford it!” Brian said bitterly.

“I ask you! Why can’t he afford it, if Mr Towers can? He must get paid twice as much as Mr Towers! I bet he earns almost as much as Miss Cadwallader. And he says he can’t afford it!”

Charles wondered. He remembered the threadbare hearthrug and the holes in Mr Wentworth’s slippers. That looked like poverty to him. But he supposed it could be meanness. And that brought him back to his guilt. With Mr Wentworth gone, Brian would have to stay at Larwood House for ever. “But have you seen your father since then?” he asked.

“No,” said Brian. “He told me not to keep coming whining to him.” And he began to cry again.

So Brian had not found out yet. Charles felt huge relief. There was still time to get Mr Wentworth back. But that meant that it really was only being got at which was making Brian so unhappy. Despite the evidence, that surprised Charles. Brian always seemed so perky and unconcerned.

Brian was talking again, through his sobs. “Whatever I do,” he said, “they get at me. I can’t help my father being a teacher here! I can’t help being good at things! I didn’t ask Mr Brubeck to give me a solo to sing. He just did. But of course magicking Simon Silverson thinks he ought to sing it. That’s the thing I hate most,” Brian said vehemently. “The way everyone does what Simon Silverson says!”

“I hate him too,” said Charles. “Badly.”

“Oh it doesn’t matter how we feel,” Brian said. “Simon’s word is law. It’s like that game – you know, Simon Says – where you have to do things if they say Simon Says first. And what is he anyway? A stuck up—”

“Prat,” said Charles, “who sucks up to teachers—”

“With golden hair and a saintly expression. Don’t forget the smug look,” said Brian.

“Who could?” said Charles. “He kicks you in the pants, and then looks as if it’s your fault his foot came up.”

He was enjoying this. But he stopped enjoying it when Brian said, “Thanks for stopping them hitting me this evening. What gave you the idea of burning your finger like that? And trust Simon Silverson to rip you off all your money just for a candle!” Brian hesitated a second and then added, “I suppose I’d better pay you half of it.”

Charles just managed to stop himself backing away. That would be really unkind. But what was he to do now? Brian clearly thought Charles had come downstairs in order to comfort him. Probably he would expect Charles to be his friend in future. Well, Charles supposed, he had deserved it. This was what you got for putting the Evil Eye on people’s fathers. But quite apart from Mr Wentworth, quite apart from the fact that Brian was lowest of the low in 2Y, even quite apart from the fact that Charles did not like Brian, Charles knew he could not be friends with anyone now. He was a witch.

He could get anyone who was friends with him arrested too.

“You mustn’t pay me anything,” he said. “You don’t owe me a thing.”

Brian seemed distinctly relieved. “Then I’ll tell you something instead,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this place. If my father won’t take me away, I’m going to run away.”

“Where to?” said Charles. He had thought about running away himself, a while back, but he had had to give up the idea because there was nowhere to run away to.

“No idea,” said Brian. “I shall just go.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Charles. This was one friendly thing he could say at least. “You have to plan it properly. If you just go, they’ll call in tracker dogs and bring you straight back. Then you’ll be punished.”

“But I’ll go mad if I stay here!” Brian said hysterically. Then he appeared to stop and consider, with his teeth chattering. “I think I see a way,” he said.

By this time, both of them were shivering. It was cold in the playroom. Charles wondered how he could make Brian go back to bed without going himself. He could not think of a way. So they both went on crouching face to face in the middle of the concrete floor, until there was a sudden little pattering outside the cracked door. Both of them jumped.

“Caretaker’s dog,” whispered Charles.

Brian giggled. “Stupid creature. It looks just like Theresa Mullett’s knitting.”

Charles, before he could stop himself, gave a shriek of laughter. “It does! It does!”

“Shut up!” hissed Brian. “The caretaker’s coming!”

Sure enough, the cracked glass of the door was showing misty torchlight. The dog began yapping furiously on the other side of it. It knew they were there.

Brian and Charles sprang up and fled, through the playroom and out of its other door. As it thumped shut behind them, the cracked door thumped open and the hollow playroom echoed with the dog’s little thunderclaps. Without a word, Charles ran one way and Brian ran another. Where Brian went, Charles never knew. He heard the second door thump open as he ran, and the patter of tiny feet behind him. Charles held his glasses on and ran desperately. It was just like the seniors in the shrubbery. What made everyone chase him? Did he smell of witch, or something?

He found an outside door, but it was locked. He pelted on. Behind him, in the distance, he could hear the caretaker bawling to his dog to come back. That made the dog hesitate. Charles, quite terrified by now, put on a spurt and hurled himself through the next door he came to.

There was a feeling of large cold space inside this door. Charles went forward a few cautious steps and hit his foot with a clang on a row of steel chairs. He stood frozen, waiting to be discovered. He could hardly hear for the blood banging in his ears at first. Then he found he could hear the dog yapping again, somewhere quite far off. It seemed to have lost him. At the same time, he found he could see the faint shapes of huge windows, high up, beyond the chairs. He was in the school hall.

It came to Charles that he was not going to get a better opportunity than this. Better summon up his shoes at once. No – forget the shoes. Mr Wentworth was far more urgent. Get Mr Wentworth, and when Mr Wentworth appeared, perhaps Charles could put in a word about Brian.

It was at this point that Charles realised that he dared not fetch Mr Wentworth back. If Mr Wentworth did not know who had made him vanish, he would know as soon as he arrived back and found Charles.

“Flaming witches!” Charles moaned. “Why didn’t I think?”

The dog, not too distant, gave another yap. Hunted and undecided, Charles shuffled forwards and fell across more chairs. He was in a perfect maze of chairs. He stood where he was and tried to think.

He could still get the shoes, he thought. He could say he was sleepwalking with worry about them when the caretaker found him. Uncertainly, he held up both arms. That dog was definitely coming nearer again.

“Shoes,” Charles said hurriedly, and his voice cracked with fear and cold and lack of breath. “Shoes. Come to me. Hey presto. Abracadabra. Shoes, I say!” The dog sounded almost outside the hall door now. Charles made dragging movements with his hands and then crossed them over his chest. “Shoes!”

A thing that, by the sound, could have been a shoe, fell on the chair next to him. Despite the yapping dog, Charles grinned with pleasure. The second shoe fell on the other side of him. Charles put out groping hands to find them. And two more fell on his head. Several more flopped down near his feet. Now he could hear shoes dropping down all round him. He seemed to be in the centre of a rain of shoes. And the dog was scrabbling at the door now as it yapped. A wellington boot, by the feel, hit Charles on the shoulder as he turned and groped along the chairs, stumbling over gym shoes, football boots and lace-ups, with more and more dropping round him as he groped.

The caretaker was nearly at the door now. Charles could see the torchlight advancing through the glass. It helped him find his way. For he knew there was no question of any nonsense about sleepwalking now. He had to get out, and fast. He floundered among the pattering, flopping shoes, between the rows of chairs to the side of the hall, where he bolted for the door that the teachers came in by.

Pitch dark descended on the other side of that door. Charles supposed he was in the staff room, but he never knew for sure. Stumbling, with his hands held out in front of him, dreamlike with panic, he fell over a stool. As he picked himself up, he remembered his second witch, the one who came through the garden. He should have thought about her earlier, he realised, as he knocked into a pile of books. She had said you couldn’t work magic when you were frightened. She was right. Something had gone very wrong out there in the hall. Obviously, Charles thought, having a mad tangle with a coat of some kind, you needed to be cool and collected to be sure of getting it right. Oh thank Heaven! Here was a door.

Charles plunged out of the door and found himself not far from the main stairs. He fled up them. As he went, his thumb found the fat painful blister on his finger and he rubbed it as he ran upwards. What a waste! What an utter waste of money! Burning his finger seemed to have taught him nothing at all. And here was the beautiful, welcoming green night-light of the dormitory corridors. Not far now.

Charles did not remember getting into bed. His last clear thought was to wonder whether Brian had come back or whether he had run away on the spot. When the clanging bell dragged him awake in the morning, he had a sort of feeling that he had gone to sleep on the dormitory floor near the end of Brian’s bed. But no. He was in his own bed. His glasses were hooked on the bed-rail. He began to hope he had dreamed last night. But, long before he was awake enough to sit up and yawn, the room filled with indignant voices.

“I can’t find my shoes!”

“I say, what’s happened to all our shoes?”

“My slippers aren’t here either!”

As Charles managed to sit up, Simon said, “Are you a shoe-thief now, Brian?” and smacked Brian’s head in a jolly, careless way, to show he did not think Brian was capable of being anything so enterprising. Brian was kneeling up in bed, looking as sleepy as Charles felt. He did not answer Simon or look at Charles.

In the next dormitory, they had no shoes either. And a senior could be heard coming down the corridor, shouting, “Hey! Have you lot pinched our shoes?”

Everyone was annoyed. Everyone thought there was a practical joke going on. Charles just hoped they would go on thinking that. Everyone was forced to go without shoes and slither around in socks. Charles’s shoes were missing too – he was glad he seemed to have been that thorough – and he was just dragging on a second pair of socks, when rumour spread along the corridor. In the way of rumours, it was quite mysterious. Nobody knew who started it.

“We’re to go down to the hall. All the shoes are there.”

Charles joined the slithering rush for the hall. That rush was joined in the downstairs passage by all the girls, also in socks, also making for the hall. The seniors naturally occupied the door of the hall. Everyone from the lower school streamed outside into the quadrangle to look through the hall windows. There, everyone’s first reaction was simple awe.

A school with six hundred pupils owns an awful lot of shoes. There would be twelve hundred even if everyone simply had one pair. But at Larwood House, everyone had to have special shoes for almost everything they did. So you had to add to that number all the gym shoes, running shoes, tennis shoes, trainers, dancing shoes, spare shoes, best shoes, sandals, football boots, hockey boots, wellington boots and galoshes. The number of shoes is swiftly in thousands.

Add to those all the shoes owned by the staff too: Miss Cadwallader’s characteristic footgear with heels like cotton reels; the cook’s extra-wide fitting; the groundsman’s hobnails; Mr Crossley’s hand-made suede; Mr Brubeck’s brogues; Matron’s sixteen pairs of stiletto heels; someone’s purple fur boots; and even the odd pair of riding boots; not to speak of many more. And you have truly formidable numbers.

The chairs in the hall were buried under a monstrous mountain of shoes.

Amid the general marvelling, Theresa’s voice was heard. “If this is someone’s idea of a joke, I don’t think it’s funny. My bedsocks are all muddy!” She was wearing blue fluffy bedsocks over her school socks.

After this, there was something of a free-for-all. People scrambled in through doors and windows and slithered on the pile of shoes, digging for shoes they thought were theirs – or, failing that, simply a pair that would fit.

Until a voice began bellowing, “OUT! GET OUT ALL OF YOU! LEAVE ALL THE SHOES THERE!”

Charles was pushed backwards by the rather slower rush to leave the hall, and had to crane to see who was shouting.

It was Mr Wentworth. Charles was so amazed that he stopped moving and was left by a sort of eddy inside the hall, just by the door. From there, he could clearly see Mr Wentworth walking down the edge of the pile of shoes. He was wearing his usual shabby suit, but his feet were completely bare. Otherwise there was nothing wrong with him at all. After him came Mr Crossley in bright yellow socks and Mr Brubeck with a large hole in the heel of his left sock. After them came the caretaker. After him of course trundled the caretaker’s dog, which was manifestly wishing to raise a leg against the pile of shoes.

“I don’t know who done it!” the caretaker was protesting. “But I know there was people sneaking round my building half the night. The dog nearly caught one, right in this very hall.”

“Did you come in here and investigate?” Mr Wentworth said.

“Door was shut,” said the caretaker. “Thought it was locked.”

Mr Wentworth turned from him in disgust. “Someone was pretty busy in here all last night,” he said to Mr Crossley, “and he didn’t even look!”

“Thought it was locked,” repeated the caretaker.

“Oh shut up!” snapped Mr Wentworth. “And stop your dog peeing on that shoe. It’s Miss Cadwallader’s.”

Charles slipped out into the corridor, trying to keep the grin on his face down to decent proportions. Mr Wentworth was all right. He must have slipped off to bed after all last night, while Miss Hodge was asking Charles the way. And, better still, everyone thought the shoes had arrived in the hall quite naturally. Charles could have danced and sung.

But here was Dan Smith beside him. That sobered Charles somewhat. “Hey,” said Dan. “Did those seniors catch you last night?”

“No, I ran away,” Charles replied airily.

“You must have run pretty fast!” said Dan. It was grudging, but it was praise, coming from Dan. “Know anything about who did these shoes?” Dan asked, jerking his head towards the hall.

Charles would dearly have loved to say it was him and watch the respect grow on Dan’s face. But he was not that much of a fool. “No,” he said.

“I do,” said Dan. “It was the witch in our class, I bet.”

Mr Wentworth appeared in the doorway of the hall. There were loud shushings up and down the packed corridor. “Breakfast is going to be late,” Mr Wentworth shouted. He looked very harrowed. “You can’t expect the kitchen staff to work without shoes. You are all to go to your classrooms and wait there. Meanwhile, teachers and sixth formers are going to be working hard laying all the shoes out in the main quadrangle. When you are called – when you are called, understand? – you are to come by classes and pick out the shoes which are yours. Off you all go. Sixth form stay behind.”

Everyone milled off in a reluctant crowd. Charles was so pleased with himself that he risked grinning at Brian. But Brian was staring dreamily at the wall and did not notice. He did not move or even yell when Simon slapped him absent-mindedly round the head. “Where’s Nan Pilgrim?” Simon asked, laughing. “Turned herself invisible?”

Nan was keeping out of the way, lurking in the top corridor by the girls’ bathrooms. From there, she had an excellent view of the quadrangle being covered with row upon row of shoes, and the kitchen ladies tiptoeing about the rows in stockings looking for their work shoes. It did not amuse her. Theresa’s friend Delia Martin and Estelle’s friend Karen Grigg had already made it quite plain that they thought it was Nan’s doing. The fact that these two normally did not speak to one another, or to Nan either, only seemed to make it worse.

Breakfast was ready before 2Y had been called to find their shoes. Theresa was forced to walk through the corridors in her blue bedsocks. They were, by this time, quite black underneath, which upset her considerably. Breakfast was so late that assembly was cancelled. Instead, Miss Cadwallader stood up in front of high table, with her face all stringy with displeasure and one foot noticeably damp, and made a short speech.

“A singularly silly trick has been played on the school,” she said. “The people who played it no doubt think it very funny, but they must be able to see by now what a stupid and dishonourable thing they have done. I want them to be honourable now. I want them to come to me and confess. And I want anyone else who knows or suspects who did it to be equally honourable and come and tell me what they know. I shall be in my study all morning. That is all.”

“What is honourable,” Nirupam said loudly, as everyone stood up, “about going and telling tales?”

By saying that, he did Nan a service, whether he meant to or not. No one in 2Y wanted a name for telling tales. Nobody went to Miss Cadwallader. Instead, they all went out into the quadrangle, where a little freezing drizzle of rain was now falling, and walked up and down the spread-out rows of damp footgear, finding their shoes. Nan was forced to go too.

“Oh look! Here comes Archwitch Dulcinea,” said Simon. “Why did you do it to your own shoes too, Dulcinea? Thought it would look more innocent, did you?”

And Theresa said, “Really, Nan! My bedsocks are ruined! It isn’t funny!”

“Do something really funny now, Nan,” Karen Grigg suggested.

“Hurry up!” Mr Crossley shouted from the shelter of the porch. Everyone at once became very busy turning over shoes. The only one who did not was Brian. He simply wandered about, staring into space. In the end, Nirupam found his shoes for him and bundled them into Brian’s lax arms.

“Are you all right?”

Nirupam asked him. “Who? Me? Oh yes,” Brian said.

“Are you sure? One of your eyes is sort of set sideways,” Nirupam said.

“Is it?” Brian asked vaguely, and wandered off.

Nirupam turned severely to Simon. “I think you hit him on the head once too often.”

Simon laughed, a little uneasily. Nirupam was a head taller than he was. “Nonsense! There’s nothing in his head to get hurt.”

“Well, you watch it,” said Nirupam, and might have said more, except that they were interrupted by an annoyed outcry from Dan Smith.

“I’ll get someone for this!” Dan was shouting. He was very pale and cross after last night’s midnight feast, and he looked quite savage. “I’ll get them even if they’re a magicking senior. Someone’s gone off with my running shoes! I can’t find them anywhere.”

“Look again, carefully!” Mr Crossley bawled from the porch.

This was a queer fact. Dan searched up and down the rows, and so did Charles, until their socks were soaked and their hair was trickling rain, but neither Dan’s spikes nor Charles’s were there. By this time, 1X, 1Z and 1Y had been allowed out to collect their shoes too before they all got too wet, and almost the only footgear left was the three odd football boots, the riding boots, and a pair of luminous green trainers that nobody seemed to want.

Dan uttered such threats that Charles was glad that it did not seem to occur to Dan that this had anything to do with Charles Morgan.

But it meant that Charles had to go to Mr Towers next and confess that his running shoes had still not turned up. He was fed up as he stood and trickled rain outside the staff room. After all his trouble!

“I did look, sir,” he assured Mr Towers.

Mr Towers glanced at Charles’s soaking hair and rain-dewed glasses. “Anyone can stand in the rain,” he said. “Are you paying for new ones or writing lines?”

“Doing lines,” Charles said resentfully.

“In detention every evening until Christmas then,” Mr Towers said. The idea seemed to please him. “Wait.” He dodged back into the staff room and came out again with a fat old book. “Here,” he said, handing the book to Charles. “Copy five hundred lines of this out every evening. It will show you what a real schoolboy should be like. When you’ve copied it all, I’ll give you the sequel.”

Charles stood in front of the staff room and looked at the book. It was called The Pluckiest Boy in School. It smelt of mildew. Inside, the pages were furry and brownish, and the first line of the story went: “What ripping fun!” exclaimed Watts Minor. “I’m down for scrum half this afternoon!”

Charles looked from this to the fat, transparent and useless blister on his finger and felt rather ill. “Magicking hell,” he said.

“Good morning, Charles,” said Miss Hodge, tripping towards the staff room all fresh and unaware. “That looks a nice old book. I’m glad to see you doing some serious reading at last.”

She was most disconcerted to receive one of Charles’s heaviest double-barrelled glares. What a moody boy he was to be sure! she thought as she neatly stripped off her raincoat. She was equally surprised to find the staff room in some kind of uproar, with a pile of boots and shoes in the middle. Still, there was Mr Wentworth at last, flying past on his way somewhere else. Miss Hodge stood in his way.

“Oh, Mr Wentworth, I want to apologise for making that accusation against Charles Morgan.” That was pretty generous of her, she thought, after the way Charles had just looked at her. She smiled generously at Mr Wentworth.

To her annoyance, Mr Wentworth simply said, “I’m glad to hear it,” and brushed past her quite rudely. But he did have a lot on his mind, Miss Hodge realised, when Mr Crossley told her excitedly all about the shoes. She did not hold it against Mr Wentworth. She collected books – they had got spilled all over the floor somehow – and went off to give 2Y another English lesson.

She arrived to find Simon Silverson holding aloft The Pluckiest Boy in School. “Listen to this!” he was saying. “Swelling with pride, Watts Minor gazed into the eyes of his one true friend. Here was a boy above all, straight alike in body and mind—”

Theresa and Delia were screaming with laughter, with their faces buried in their knitting. Charles was glaring blue murder.

“Really, Simon!” said Miss Hodge. “That was unworthy of you.” Simon looked at her in astonishment. He knew he never did anything unworthy. “But Charles,” said Miss Hodge, “I do think you made rather an unfortunate choice of book.” For the second time that day, Charles turned his glare on her. Miss Hodge flinched. Really, if she had not known now that Charles was a nice boy underneath, that glare of his would make her think seriously of the Evil Eye.

Nirupam held up his long arm. “Are we going to do acting again?” he asked hopefully.

“No we are not,” Miss Hodge said, with great firmness. “Get out your poetry books.”

The lesson, and the rest of the morning, dragged past. Theresa finished her second bootee and cast on stitches for a matinee jacket. Estelle knitted quite a lot of a baby’s bonnet. Brian gave up staring at the wall and instead seemed to be attacked by violent industry. Whenever anyone looked at him, he was scribbling furiously in a different exercise book.

Charles sat and brooded, rather surprised at the things going on in his mind. He was not frightened at all now. He seemed to be accepting the fact he was a witch quite calmly after all. No one had noticed. They all thought the witch was Nan Pilgrim, because of her name, which suited Charles very well. But the really strange thing was the way he had stopped being worried by the witch he had seen being burnt.

He tried remembering him, cautiously at first, then boldly, when he found it did not bother him. Then he went on to the second witch, who came over the wall. Neither troubled him now. They were in the past: they were gone. It was like having toothache that suddenly stops. In the peace that came with this, Charles saw that his mind must have been trying to tell him he was going to grow up a witch. And now he knew, it stopped nagging him.

Then, to see if this made him frightened, he thought of Inquisitors. It hurts to be burnt, he thought, and looked at his fat blister. It had taught him something after all. And that was: Don’t get found out.

Good, thought Charles. And turned his mind to what he was going to do to Simon Silverson. Dan Smith next, but Simon definitely first. What could he do to Simon that would be worth nearly a whole term’s pocket money? It was difficult. It had to be something bad enough, and yet with no connection with Charles. Charles was quite stumped at first. He wanted it to be artistic. He wanted Simon to suffer. He wanted everyone else to know about it, but not to know it was Charles who did it. What could he do?

The last lesson before lunch was the daily PE. Today, it was the boys’ turn in the gym. They were to climb ropes too. Charles sat by the wall-bars and pretended to tie his gym shoe. Unlike Nan, he could get up a rope if he wanted, but he did not want to. He wanted to sit and think what to do to Simon. Simon, of course, was one of the first to the ceiling. He saw Charles and shouted something down. The result was that someone from 2Z came and dug Charles in the back.

“Simon says you’re to stop lazing about.”

“Simon says that, does he?” said Charles. He stood up. He was inspired. It was something Brian had said last night. That game, Simon Says. Suppose it was not just a game. Suppose everything Simon said really came true. At the very worst it ought to be pretty funny. At best, people might even think Simon was a witch.

Charles went up a rope. He dragged himself up it, nice and slow and gentle, so that he could go on thinking. He was obviously not going to be able to stand anywhere near Simon to put the spell on him. Someone would notice. But instinct told Charles that this was not the kind of magic you could work at a distance. It was too strong and personal. What he needed, in order to do it safely, was something which was not Simon himself, but something which belonged to Simon so personally that any witchcraft worked on it would work on Simon at the same time – a detachable piece of Simon, really.

What removable parts had Simon? Teeth, toenails, fingernails, hair? He could hardly go up to Simon and pull any of those off him. Wait a minute! Hair. Simon combed his hair this morning. With any luck, there might be some hair stuck in Simon’s comb.

Charles slid jubilantly down the rope – so fast that he was reminded again that it hurts to be burnt. He had to blow on his hands to cool them. After lunch was the time. He could sneak up to the dormitory then.

After lunch proved to be important for Nan too. At lunch, she managed to escape Karen Grigg and Delia Martin by sitting at a table full of much older girls who did not seem to know Nan was there. They towered over her, talking of their own things. The food was almost as bad as yesterday, but Nan felt no urge to describe it. She rather wished she was dead.

Then it occurred to her that if any of 2Y went and told a teacher she was a witch, she would be dead, quite soon after that. She realised at once that she did not wish she was dead. That made her feel better. No one had gone to a teacher yet, after all. “It’s only their usual silliness,” she told herself. “They’ll forget about it by Christmas. I’ll just have to keep out of their way till they do.”

Accordingly, after lunch, Nan sneaked upstairs to lurk in the passage outside the girls’ bathrooms again. But Karen Grigg had been keeping tabs on her. She and Theresa appeared in the passage in front of Nan. When Nan turned round to make off, she found Delia and the other girls coming along the passage from the other end.

“Let’s go in this bathroom,” Theresa suggested. “We want to ask you something, Nan.”

Nan could tell there was an ordeal coming. For a moment, she wondered whether to charge Theresa and Karen like a bull and burst past them. But they would only catch her tonight in the dormitory. Best get it over. “OK,” she said, and sauntered into the bathroom as if she did not care.

Almost at the same moment, Charles hastened furtively into the boys’ dormitory. White and clean and cold, the beds stood like rows of deserted icebergs, each with its little white locker at its side. Charles hurried to Simon’s. It was locked. Simon was an inveterate locker of things. Even his watch had a little key to lock it on his wrist.

But Charles did not let that bother him. He held out his hand imperiously in front of the locked door. “Comb,” he said. “Abracadabra.”

Simon’s comb came gliding out through the white wooden surface, like a fish swimming out of milk, and darted fishlike into Charles’s hand. It was beautiful. Better still, there were three of Simon’s curly golden hairs clinging to the teeth of the comb. Charles carefully pulled them off. He held the hairs in the finger and thumb of his left hand and carefully ran his right finger and thumb down the length of them. And down again. Over and over, he did it.

“Simon Says,” he whispered to them. “Simon Says, Simon Says. Whatever Simon says is true.”

After about a minute, when he had done it often enough to give him the feeling that the spell was going to take, Charles carefully threaded the hairs back into the comb again. He did not intend to leave any evidence against himself. He had just finished, when Brian said, from behind him, “I want a bit of help from you, Charles.”

Charles jumped as if Brian had shot him. He bent over, in white horror, to hide the comb in his hand and, with terrible guilty haste, gave it a push towards the locker. It went in, to his surprise, not quite like a fish this time – more like a comb being pushed through a door – but at least it went. “What do you want?” Charles said ungraciously to Brian.

“Take me down to Matron in the sick bay,” Brian said.

It was a school rule that a person who felt ill had to find another person to take them to Matron. It had been made because, before that, the sick bay had been crowded with healthy people trying to get an afternoon off. The idea was that you could not deceive your friends. It did not work very well. Estelle Green, for instance, got Karen to take her to Matron at least twice a week. As far as Charles could see, Brian looked his usual pink and perky self, just like Estelle.

“You don’t look ill to me,” he said. He wanted to find Simon and see if the spell was working.

“How about this then?” said Brian. To Charles’s surprise, he suddenly turned pale. He stared vaguely at the wall, with one eye pointing inwards slightly. “This is it,” Brian said. “Don’t I look rather as if I’d been hypnotised?”

“You look as if you’ve been hit on the head,” Charles said rudely. “Get Nirupam to take you.”

“He looked after me this morning,” said Brian. “I want as many witnesses as possible. I helped you last night. You help me now.”

“You didn’t help me last night,” said Charles.

“Yes I did,” said Brian. “You came in and you went to sleep on the floor, just at the end of my bed. I got you in your bed. I even hooked your glasses on your bed-rail for you.” And he looked at Charles, very meaningly.

Charles stared back. Brian was so thin and small that it was hard to believe he could lift anyone into bed. But, whether it was true or not, Charles realised that Brian had got him over a barrel. He knew Charles had been up last night. He had caught him with Simon’s comb in his hands just now. Charles could not see why Brian wanted to go to Matron, but that was his own affair. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take you.”

Inside the bathroom, on the other side of the quadrangle, the girls crowded in round Nan. “Where’s Estelle?” asked Theresa.

“Outside, keeping watch,” said Karen. “That’s all she would do.”

“What’s this about?” Nan asked aggressively.

“We want you to do some proper witchcraft,” said Theresa. “Here, where we can see you. We’ve none of us seen any before. And we know you can. Come on. We won’t give you away.”

The other girls joined in. “Come on, Nan. We won’t tell.”

The bathroom was a very public one. There were six baths in it, in a row. As the girls all crowded forward, Nan backed away, down the space between two of the baths. This was evidently just what they had wanted. Delia said, “That’s it.” Heather said, “Fetch it out.” And Karen bent and pulled the groundsman’s old besom out from under the left-hand bath. Julia and Deborah seized it and propped it across the two baths in front of Nan, penning her in. Nan looked from it to them.

“We want you to get on it and fly about,” Theresa explained.

“Everyone knows that’s what witches do,” said Karen.

“We’re asking you very nicely,” said Theresa.

Typical Theresa double-think, Nan thought angrily. She was not asking her nicely. It was a smiling jeer. But if anyone asked Theresa afterwards, she would say, with honest innocence, that she had been perfectly kind.

“We can prove you’re a witch anyway, if you won’t,” Theresa said kindly.

“Yes, everyone knows that witches don’t drown,” said Delia. “You can put them right under water and they stay alive.”

At this cue, Karen leaned over and put the plug in the nearest bath. Heather turned on the cold tap, just a little trickle, to show Nan they meant business.

“You know perfectly well,” Nan said, “that I’m not a witch, and I can’t fly on this broomstick. It’s just an excuse to be nasty!”

“Nasty?” said Theresa. “Who’s being nasty? We’re asking you quite politely to ride the broomstick.” Behind her, the tap trickled steadily into the bath.

“You can fetch all the shoes here again if you like,” Delia said. “We don’t mind which.”

“But you’ve got to do something,” said Karen. “Or how would you like a nice deep cold bath with all your clothes on?”

Nan was annoyed enough by that to put one leg over the broomstick in order to climb out and get at Karen. Seeing it, Theresa gave a delighted jump and a giggle. “Oh, she’s going to ride!”

The rest of them joined in. “She’s going to ride it! Ride it, Nan!”

Very red in the face, Nan stood astride the broom and explained, “I am not going to ride. I do not know how to ride. You know I can’t. I know I can’t. Look. Look at me. I am sitting on the broomstick.” Unwisely, she sat. It was extremely uncomfortable and she was forced to bounce upright again. This amused everyone highly. Angrier than ever, Nan shouted, “How can I ride a broomstick? I can’t even climb a rope!”

They knew that. They were falling about laughing, when Estelle burst in, screaming with excitement. “Come and look, come and look! Look at what Simon Silverson’s doing!”

This caused a stampede to the door, to look out of the windows in the corridor. Nan heard cries of, “Good Heavens! Just look at that!” This was followed by a further stampede as everyone raced off down to the quadrangle. Nan was left astride an old besom propped on two baths.

“Thank goodness!” was the first thing she said. She had been precious near crying. “Stupid hussies!” she said next. “As if I could ride this thing. Look at it!” She jogged the broom. “Just an old broom!” Then she noticed the water still trickling into the bath behind her. She leant sideways and back and turned off the tap.

That was the moment the old besom chose to rise sharply to the ceiling.

Nan shrieked. She was suddenly dangling head-down over a bath of cold water. The broom staggered a bit under her weight, but it went on climbing, swinging Nan right over the water. Nan bent her leg as hard as she could over its knobby stick, and managed to clench one hand in its sparse brushwood end. The broom reached the ceiling and levelled out. It did not leave room for Nan to climb on top of it, even if she had possessed the muscles. Blood thudded in her head from hanging upside down, but she did not dare let go.

“Stop it!” she squealed at the broom. “Please!”

It took no notice. It simply went on a solemn, lopsided, bumping flight all round the bathroom, with Nan dangling desperately underneath it and getting this-way-and-that glimpses of hard white baths frighteningly far below.

“I’m glad this didn’t happen while the others were here,” she gasped. “I must look a right idiot!” She began to laugh. She must look so silly. “Do go down,” she said to the broom. “Suppose someone else comes in here.”

The broom seemed struck by this. It gave a little start and slanted steeply down towards the floor. As soon as the floor was near enough, Nan clutched the handle in both hands and tried to unhook her leg. A mistake. The broom went steeply up again and hovered where it was just too high for Nan to dare to fall off. But her arms were getting tired and she had to do something. Wriggling and squirming, she managed to kick herself over, until she was more or less lying along the knobby handle, looking down at the row of baths. She hooked her feet on the brush and stayed there, panting.

Now what was she to do? This broom seemed determined to be ridden. There was a sad feeling about it. Once, long ago, it had been ridden, and it missed its witch. “But that’s all very well,” Nan said to it. “I really daren’t ride you now. Don’t you understand? It’s illegal. Suppose I promise to ride you tonight. Would you let me down then?”

There was a hesitating sort of hover to the broom.

“I swear to,” said Nan. “Listen, I tell you what. You fly me down the passage to our dormitory. That will make a bit of a flight at least. Then you can hide yourself on top of the cupboard, right at the back. No one will see you there. And I’ll promise to take you out tonight. What do you say?”

Though the broom could not speak, it evidently meant Yes! It turned and swept through the bathroom doorway in a glad swoop that made Nan seasick. It sped down the passage. She had to shut her eyes in order not to see the walls whirling by. It made a hair-raising turn into the dormitory. And it stopped there with such a jerk that Nan nearly fell round underneath it again.

“I see I shall have to train you,” she gasped.

The broom gave an indignant buck and a bounce.

“I mean you’ll have to train me,” Nan said quickly. “Go down now. I have to get off you.”

The broom hovered, questioning.

“I promised,” Nan said.

At that, the broom came sweetly to the ground and Nan was able to get off, very wobbly in the legs. As soon as she was off, the broom fell to the floor, lifeless. “You poor thing!” Nan said. “I see. You need a rider to move at all. All right. Let’s get you on top of the cupboard.”

In this way, she missed the first manifestation of the Simon Says spell. Charles missed it too. Neither of them discovered how Simon first found out that everything he said came true. Charles left Brian with a thermometer in his mouth, staring cross-eyed at the wall, and trudged back to the quadrangle to find an excited group round Simon. At first, Charles thought that the brightness flaring at Simon’s feet was simply the sun shining off a puddle. But it was not. It was a heap of gold coins. People were passing him pennies and stones and dead leaves.

To each thing as he took it, Simon said, “This is a gold coin. This is another gold coin.” When that got boring, he said, “This is a rare gold coin. These are pieces of eight. This is a doubloon…”

Charles shoved his way to the front of the crowd and watched, utterly disgusted. Trust Simon to turn things to his own advantage! Gold chinked down on the heap. Simon must have been a millionaire by this time.

With a great clatter of running feet, the girls arrived. Theresa, with her knitting-bag hanging on her arm, pushed her way to the front, beside Charles. She was so astonished at the size of the pile of gold that she crossed the invisible line and spoke to Simon.

“How are you doing it, Simon?”

Simon laughed. He was like a drunk person by this time. “I’ve got the Golden Touch!” he said. Of course this immediately became the truth. “Just like that king in the story. Look.” He reached for Theresa’s knitting. Theresa indignantly snatched the knitting away and gave Simon a push at the same time. The result was that Simon touched her hand.

The knitting fell on the ground. Theresa screamed, and stood holding her hand out, and then screamed again because her hand was too heavy to hold up. It dropped down against her skirt, a bright golden metal hand, on the end of an ordinary human arm.

Out of the shocked silence which followed, Nirupam said, “Be very careful what you say, Simon.”

“Why?” said Simon.

“Because everything you say becomes true,” Nirupam said.

Evidently, Simon had not quite seen the extent of his powers. “You mean,” he said, “I haven’t got the Golden Touch.” Instantly, he hadn’t. “Let’s test this,” he said. He bent down and picked up Theresa’s knitting. It was still knitting, in a slightly muddy bag.

“Put it down!” Theresa said faintly. “I shall go to Miss Cadwallader.”

“No you won’t,” said Simon, and that was true too. He looked at the knitting and considered. “This knitting,” he announced, “is really two little caretaker’s dogs.”

The bag began to writhe about in his hands. Simon hurriedly dropped it with a sharp chink, on to the heap of gold. The bag heaved. Little shrill yappings came from inside it, and furious scrabbling. One little white bootee-dog burst out of it, shortly followed by a second. They ran on little minute legs, down the heap of gold and in among people’s legs. Everyone got rather quickly out of their way. Everyone turned and watched as the two tiny white dogs went running and running into the distance across the quadrangle.

Theresa started to cry. “That was my knitting, you beast!”

“So?” Simon said, laughing.

Theresa lifted up her golden hand with her ordinary one and hit him with it. It was stupid of her, because she risked breaking her arm, but it was certainly effective. It nearly knocked Simon out. He sat down heavily on his heap of gold. “Ow!” said Theresa. “And I hope that hurt!”

“It didn’t,” said Simon, and got up smiling and, of course, unhurt.

Theresa went for him again, double-handed.

Simon skipped aside. “You haven’t got one golden hand,” he said.

There was suddenly space where Theresa’s heavy golden hand had been. Her arm ended in a round pink wrist. Theresa stared at it. “How shall I knit?” she said.

“I mean,” Simon said carefully, “that you have two ordinary hands.”

Theresa looked at her two perfectly ordinary human hands and burst into strange, artificial-sounding laughter. “Somebody kill him for me!” she said. “Quickly!”

Nobody offered to. Everybody was too shattered. Delia took Theresa’s arm and led her tenderly away. The bell rang for afternoon lessons as they went.

“This is marvellous fun!” Simon said. “From now on, I’m all in favour of witchcraft.”

Charles trudged off to lessons, wondering how he could cancel the spell.

Simon arrived late for lessons. He had been making sure his heap of gold was safe. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said to Mr Crossley. And sorry he was. Tears came into his eyes, he was so sorry.

“That’s all right, Simon,” Mr Crossley said kindly, and everyone else felt compelled to look at Simon with deep sympathy.

You can’t win with people like Simon, Charles thought bitterly. Anyone else would have been in bad trouble by now. And it was exasperating the way nobody so much as dreamed of accusing Simon of witchcraft. They kept looking at Nan Pilgrim instead.

Nan felt much the same about Theresa. Theresa arrived ten minutes after Simon, very white and sniffing rather. She was led in tenderly by Delia, and received almost as much sympathy as Simon. “Just gave her an aspirin and sent her away!” Nan heard Delia whisper indignantly to Karen. “I do think she ought to have been allowed to lie down, after all she’s been through!”

What about all I’ve been through? Nan thought. No, it was Theresa’s right to be in the right, as much as it was Simon’s.

Nan had been given the full story by Estelle. Estelle was always ready to talk in class, and she was particularly ready, now that Karen seemed to have joined Theresa’s friends. She knitted away under her desk at her baby’s bonnet, and whispered and whispered. Nor was she the only one. Mr Crossley kept calling for quiet, but the whispers and rustling hardly abated at all. Notes kept arriving on Nan’s desk. The first to arrive was from Dan Smith.

Make me the same as Simon and I’ll be your friend for ever, it said.

Most of the other notes said the same. All were very respectful. But one note was different. This one said, Meet me round the back after lessons. I think you need help and I can advise you. It was not signed. Nan wondered about it. She had seen the writing before, but she did not know whose it was.

She supposed she did need help. She really was a witch now. No one but a witch could fly a broomstick. She knew she was in danger and she knew she should be terrified. But she was not. She felt happy and strong, with a happiness and strength that seemed to be welling up from deep inside her. She kept remembering the way she had started to laugh when the broomstick went flying round the bathroom with herself dangling underneath it, and the way she seemed to understand by instinct what the broom wanted. Hair-raising as it had been, she had enjoyed it thoroughly. It was like coming into her birthright.

“Of course, Simon always said you were a witch,” Estelle whispered.

That reduced Nan’s joy a little. There was another witch in 2Y, she did not doubt that. And that witch had, for some mad reason, made everything Simon said come true. He must be one of Simon’s friends. And it was quite possible that Simon, while he was under the spell, had happened to say that Nan was a witch. So of course she would have become one.

Nan refused to believe it. She was a witch. She wanted to be one. She came of a long line of witches, stretching back beyond even Dulcinea Wilkes herself. She felt she had a right to be a witch.

All this while, Mr Crossley was trying to give 2Y a Geography lesson. He had got to the point where he was precious near giving up and giving everyone detention instead. He had one last try. He could see that the unrest was centring on Simon, with a sub-centre round Nan, so he tried to make use of it by asking Simon questions.

“Now the geography of Finland is very much affected by the last Ice Age. Simon, what happens in an Ice Age?”

Simon dragged his mind away from dreams of gold and glory. “Everything is very cold,” he said. A blast of cold air swept through the room, making everyone’s teeth chatter. “And goes on getting colder, I suppose,” Simon added unwisely. The air in the room swiftly became icy. 2Y’s breath rolled out in steam. The windows misted over and froze, almost at once, into frosty patterns. Icicles began to grow under the radiators. Frost whitened the desks.

There was a chorus of shivers and groans, and Nirupam hissed, “Watch it!”

“I mean everything gets very hot,” Simon said hastily.

Before Mr Crossley had time to wonder why he was shivering, the cold was replaced by tropical heat. The frost slid away down the windows. The icicles tinkled off the radiators. For an instant, the room seemed fine and warm, until the frozen water evaporated. This produced a thick, steamy fog. In the murk, people were gasping. Some faces turned red, others white, and sweat ran on foreheads, adding to the fog.

Mr Crossley put a hand to his forehead, thinking he might be starting flu. The room seemed so dim suddenly. “Some theories do say that an Ice Age starts with extreme heat,” he said uncertainly.

“But I say everything is normal for this time of year,” Simon said, desperately trying to adjust the temperature.

Instantly it was. The classroom reverted to its usual way of being not quite warm enough, though still a little damp. Mr Crossley found he felt better. “Stop talking nonsense, Simon!” he said angrily.

Simon, with incredulity, realised that he might get into trouble. He tried to pass the whole thing off in his usual lordly way. “Well, sir, nobody really knows a thing about Ice Ages, do they?”

“We’ll see about that,” Mr Crossley said grimly. And of course nobody did. When he came to ask Estelle to describe an Ice Age, Mr Crossley found himself wondering just why he was asking about something which did not exist. No wonder Estelle looked so blank. He rounded back on Simon. “Is this a joke of some kind? What are you thinking of?”

“Me? I’m not thinking of anything!” Simon said defensively. With disastrous results.

Ah! This is more like it! Charles thought, watching the look of complete vacancy growing on Simon’s face.

Theresa saw Simon’s eyes glaze and his jaw drop and jumped to her feet with a scream. “Stop him!” she screamed. “Kill him! Do something to him before he says another word!”

“Sit down, Theresa,” said Mr Crossley.

Theresa stayed standing up. “You wouldn’t believe what he’s done already!” she shouted. “And now look at him. If he says a word in that state—”

Mr Crossley looked at Simon. The boy seemed to be pretending to be an idiot now. What was the matter with everyone?

“Take that look off your face, Simon,” he said. “You’re not that much of a fool.”

Simon was now in a state of perfect blankness. And in that state, people have a way of picking up and echoing anything that is said to them. “Not that much of a fool,” he said slurrily. The vacancy of his face was joined by a look of deep cunning. Perhaps that was just as well, Charles thought. There was no doubt that Theresa had a point.

“Don’t speak to him!” Theresa shouted. “Don’t you understand? It’s every word he says! And—” She swung round and pointed at Nan. “It’s all her fault!”

Before lunch, Nan would have quailed in front of Theresa’s pointing finger and everyone’s eyes turned on her. But she had ridden a broomstick now, and things were different. She was able to look scornfully at Theresa. “What nonsense!” she said.

Mr Crossley was forced to agree that Nan was right. “Don’t be ridiculous, Theresa,” he said. “I told you to sit down.” And he relieved his feelings by giving both Theresa and Simon an hour in detention.

“Detention!” Theresa exclaimed, and sat down with a bump. She was outraged.

Simon, however, uttered a cunning chuckle. “You think you’ve got me, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes, I do,” said Mr Crossley. “Make it an hour and a half.”

Simon opened his mouth to say something else. But here Nirupam intervened. He leant over and whispered to Simon, “You’re very clever. Clever people keep their mouths shut.”

Simon nodded slowly, with immense, stupid wisdom. And, to Charles’s disappointment, he seemed to take Nirupam’s advice.

“Get your journals out,” Mr Crossley said wearily. There should be some peace now at least, he thought.

People opened their journals. They spread today’s page in front of them. They picked up pens. And, at that point, even those who had not realised already, saw that there was almost nothing they dared write down. It was most frustrating. Here they were, with real, interesting events going on for once, and plenty of things to say, and almost none of it was fit for Miss Cadwallader’s eyes.

People chewed pens, shifted, scratched their heads, and stared at the ceiling. The most pitiable ones were those who were planning to ask Nan to endow them with the Golden Touch, or instant fame, or some other good thing. If they described any of the magic Nan was thought to have done, she would be arrested for witchcraft, and they would have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Nan Pilgrim is not really a witch, Dan Smith wrote, after much hard thinking. He had rather a stomach ache after last night’s midnight feast and it made his mind go slow.

I never thought she was really, it was just Mr Crossley having a joke. There was a practical joke this morning, it must have been hard work pinching everyone’s shoes like that and then someone pinched my spikes and got me really mad. The caretakers dog peed—

And there Dan stopped, remembering Miss Cadwallader would read this too. Got quite carried away there, he thought.

No comment again today, Nirupam wrote swiftly. Someone is riding for a fall. Not that I blame them for this afternoon, but the shoes were silly.

He put down his pen and went to sleep. He had been up half the night eating buns from under the floorboards.

My bedsocks were ruined, Theresa complained in her angel-writing. My knitting was destroyed. Today has been awful. I do not want to tell tales and I know Simon Sihverson is not in his right mind but someone Should do something. Teddy Crossley is useless and unfair and Estelle green always thinks she knows best but she can’t keep her knitting clean. Matron was unfair too. She sent me away with an aspirin and she let Brian Wentworth lie down and I was really ill. I shall never speak to Nan Pilgrim again.

Most people, though they could not attain Theresa’s eloquence, managed to write something in the end. But three people still sat staring at blank paper. These were Simon, Charles and Nan.

Simon was very cunning. He was clever. He was thoroughly suspicious of the whole thing. They were trying to catch him out somehow. The safest and cleverest thing was not to commit anything to writing. He was sure of that. On the other hand, it would not do to let everyone know how clever he had gone. It would look peculiar. He ought to write just one thing. So, after more than half an hour of deep thought, he wrote:

Doggies.

It took him five minutes. Then he sat back, confident that he had fooled everyone.

Charles was stumped because he simply had no code for most of the things which had happened. He knew he had to write something, but the more he tried to think, the more difficult it seemed. At one point, he almost went to sleep like Nirupam.

He pulled himself together. Think! Well, he could not write I got up for a start, because he had almost enjoyed today. Nor could he write I didn’t get up because that made no sense. But he had better mention the shoes, because everyone else would. And he could talk about Simon under the code of potatoes. Mr Towers could get a mention too.

It was nearly time for the bell before Charles sorted all this out. Hastily he scrawled:

Our shoes all went to play Games. I thought about potatoes having hair hanging on a rope. I have Games with a bad book.

As Mr Crossley told them to put away their journals, Charles thought of something else and dashed it down.

I shall never be hot again.

Nan wrote nothing at all. She sat smiling at her empty page, feeling no need to describe anything. When the bell went, as a gesture, she wrote down the date: 30 October. Then she shut her journal.

The instant Mr Crossley left the room, Nan was surrounded. “You got my note?” people clamoured at her. “Can you make it that whenever I touch a penny it turns to gold? Just pennies.”

“Can you make my hair go like Theresa’s?”

“Can you give me three wishes every time I say Buttons?”

“I want big muscles like Dan Smith.”

“Can you get us ice cream for supper?”

“I need good luck for the rest of my life.”

Nan looked over at where Simon sat, hunched up with cunning and darting shrewd, stupid looks at Nirupam, who was sitting watchfully over him. If it was Simon who was responsible, there was no knowing when he would say something to cancel her witchcraft. Nan refused to believe it was Simon, but it was silly to make rash promises, whatever had made her a witch.

“There isn’t time to work magic now,” she told the clamouring crowd. And when that brought a volley of appeals and groans, she shouted, “It takes hours, don’t you understand? You don’t only have to mutter spells and brew potions. You have got to go out and pick strange herbs, and say stranger incantations, at dawn and full moon, before you can even begin. And when you’ve done all that, it doesn’t necessarily work straight away. Most of the time, you have to fly round and round the smoking herbs all night, chanting sounds of unutterable sweetness, before anything happens at all. Now do you see?”

Utter silence greeted this piece of invention. Much encouraged, Nan added, “Besides, what have any of you done to deserve me going to all that trouble?”

“What indeed?” Mr Wentworth asked, from behind her. “What exactly is going on here?”

Nan spun round. Mr Wentworth was right in the middle of the room and had probably heard every word. Around her, everyone was slinking back to their seats. “That was my speech for the school concert, sir,” she said. “Do you think it’s any good?”

“It has possibilities,” said Mr Wentworth. “But it will need a little more working up to be quite good enough. Maths books out, please.”

Nan sank down into her seat, weak with relief. For one awful moment, she had thought Mr Wentworth might have her arrested.

“I said Maths books out, Simon,” Mr Wentworth said. “Why are you giving me that awful cunning look? Is it such a peculiar thing to ask?”

Simon considered this. Nirupam, and a number of other people, doubled their legs under their chairs, ready to spring up and gag Simon if necessary. Theresa once more jumped to her feet.

“Mr Wentworth, if he says another word, I’m not staying!”

Unfortunately, this attracted Simon’s attention. “You,” he said to Theresa, “stink.”

“He seems to have spoken,” said Mr Wentworth. “Get out and stand in the corridor, Theresa, with a black mark for bad behaviour. Simon can have another, and the rest of us will have a lesson.”

Theresa, redder in the face than anyone had ever seen her, raced for the door. She could not, however, beat the truly awful smell which rolled off her and filled the room as she ran.

“Pooh!” said Dan Smith.

Somebody kicked him, and everybody looked nervously at Mr Wentworth to see if he could smell it too. But, as often happens to people who smoke a pipe, Mr Wentworth had less than the average sense of smell. It was not for five minutes, during which he had written numerous things on the board and said many more, none of which 2Y were in a fit state to attend to, that he said, “Estelle, put down that grey bag you’re knitting and open a window, will you? There’s rather a smell in here. Has someone let off a stink-bomb?”

Nobody answered. Nirupam resourcefully passed Simon a note, saying, Say there is no smell in here.

Simon spelled it out. He considered it carefully, with his head on one side. He could see there was a trick in it somewhere. So he cunningly decided to say nothing.

Luckily, the open window, though it made the room almost as cold as Simon’s Ice Age, did slowly disperse the smell. But nothing could disperse it from Theresa, who stood in the passage giving out scents of sludge, kippers and old dustbins until the end of afternoon school.

When the bell had rung and Mr Wentworth swept from the room, everyone relaxed with a groan. No one had known what Simon was going to say next. Even Charles had found it a strain. He had to admit that the results of his spell had taken him thoroughly by surprise.

Meanwhile, Delia and Karen, with most of Theresa’s main friends, were determined to retrieve Theresa’s honour. They surrounded Simon. “Take that smell off her at once,” Delia said. “It’s not funny. You’ve been on at her all afternoon, Simon Silverson!”

Simon considered them. Nirupam leapt up so quickly that he knocked over his desk, and tried to put his hand over Simon’s mouth. But he got there too late. “You girls,” said Simon, “all stink.”

The result was almost overpowering. So was the noise the girls made. The only girls who escaped were the lucky few, like Nan, who had already left the room. It was clear something had to be done. Most people were either smelling or choking. And Simon was slowly opening his mouth to say something else.

Nirupam left off trying to pick up his desk and seized hold of Simon by his shoulders. “You can break this spell,” he said to him. “You could have stopped it straight away if you had any brain at all. But you would be greedy.”

Simon looked at Nirupam in slow, dawning annoyance. He was being accused of being stupid. Him! He opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t say anything!” everyone near him shouted.

Simon gazed round at them, wondering what trick they were up to now. Nirupam shook him. “Say this after me,” he said. And, when Simon’s dull, cunning eyes turned to him, Nirupam said, slowly and loudly, “Nothing I said this afternoon came true. Go on. Say it.” “Say it!” everyone yelled.

Simon’s slow mind was not proof against all this yelling. It gave in. “Nothing I said this afternoon came true,” he said obediently.

The smell instantly stopped. Presumably everything else was also undone, because Simon at once became his usual self again. He had almost no memory of the afternoon. But he could see Nirupam was taking unheard-of liberties. He looked at Nirupam’s hands, one on each of his shoulders, in surprise and annoyance. “Get off!” he said. “Take your face away.”

The spell was still working. Nirupam was forced to let go and stand back from Simon. But, as soon as he had, he plunged back again and once more took hold of Simon’s shoulders. He stared into Simon’s face like a great dark hypnotist. “Now say,” he said, “Nothing I say is going to come true in the future.”

Simon protested at this. He had great plans for the future. “Now, look here!” he said. And of course Nirupam did. He looked at Simon with such intensity that Simon blinked as he went on with his protest. “But I’ll fail every exam I ever ta – a – a – ake !” His voice faded out into a sort of hoot, as he realised what he had said. For Simon loved passing exams. He collected A’s and ninety percents as fervently as he collected honour marks. And what he had just said had stopped all that.

“Exactly,” said Nirupam. “Now you’ve got to say it. Nothing I say—”

“Oh, all right. Nothing I say is going to come true in future,” Simon said peevishly.

Nirupam let go of him with a sigh of relief and went back to pick up his desk. Everyone sighed. Charles turned sadly away. Well, it had been good while it lasted.

“What’s the matter?” Nirupam asked, catching sight of Charles’s doleful face as he stood his desk on its legs again.

“Nothing,” Charles said. “I – I’ve got detention.” Then, with a good deal more pleasure, he turned to Simon. “So have you,” he said.

Simon was scandalised. “What? I’ve never had detention all the time I’ve been at this school!”

It was explained to him that this was untrue. Quite a number of people were surprisingly ready to give Simon details of how he had rendered himself mindless and gained an hour and a half of detention from Mr Crossley. Simon took it in very bad part and stormed off muttering.

Charles was about to trudge away after Simon, when Nirupam caught his arm. “Sit in the back bench,” he said. “There’s a store of comics in the middle, on the shelf underneath.”

“Thanks,” said Charles. He was so unused to people being friendly that he said it with enormous surprise and almost forgot to take Mr Towers’s awful book with him.

He trudged towards the old lab, where detention was held, and shortly found himself trudging behind Theresa Mullett. Theresa was proceeding towards detention, looking wronged and tragic, supported by a crowd of her friends, with Karen Grigg in addition.

“It’s only for an hour,” Charles heard Karen say consolingly.

“A whole hour!” Theresa exclaimed. “I shall never forgive Teddy Crossley for this! I hope Miss Hodge kicks him in the teeth!”

In order not to go behind Theresa’s procession the whole way, Charles turned off halfway through the quadrangle and went by the way that was always called “round the back”. It was a grassy space which had once been a second quadrangle. But the new labs and the lecture room and the library had been built in the space, sticking out into the grass at odd angles, so that the space had been pared down to a zigzag of grassy passage, where, for some reason, there was always a piercing wind blowing.

It was a place where people only went to keep out of the way. So Charles was not particularly surprised to see Nan Pilgrim loitering about there. He prepared to glare at her as he trudged by. But Nan got in first with a very unfriendly look and moved off round the library corner.

I’m glad it wasn’t Charles Morgan who wrote me that note, Nan thought, as Charles went on without speaking. I don’t want any help from him.

She loitered out into the keen wind again, wondering if she needed help from anyone. She still felt a strong, confident inner witchiness. It was marvellous. It was like laughter bubbling up through everything she thought. She could not believe that it might be only Simon’s doing. On the other hand, no one knew better than Nan how quickly inner confidence could drain away. Particularly if someone like Theresa laughed at you.

Another person was coming. Brian Wentworth this time. But he scurried by on the other side of the passage, to Nan’s relief. She did not think Brian could help anyone. And – this place seemed unusually popular this evening – here was Nirupam Singh now, wandering up from the other direction, looking rather pleased with himself.

“I took the spell off Simon Silverson,” he said to Nan. “I got him to say nothing he said was true.”

“Good,” said Nan. She wandered away round the library corner again. Did this mean she was no longer a witch then? She poked with one foot at the leaves and crisp packets the wind had blown into the corner. She could test it by turning them into something, she supposed.

But Nirupam had followed her round the corner. “No, wait,” he said. “It was me that sent you that note.”

Nan found this extremely embarrassing. She pretended to be very interested in the dead leaves. “I don’t need help,” she said gruffly.

Nirupam smiled and leant against the library wall as if he was sunning himself. Nirupam had rather a strong personality, Nan realised. Though the sun was thin and yellow and the wind was whirling crisp packets about, Nirupam gave out such a strong impression of basking that Nan almost felt warm. “Everyone thinks you’re a witch,” he said.

“Well I am,” Nan insisted, because she wanted to be sure of it herself.

“You shouldn’t admit it,” said Nirupam. “But it makes no difference. The point is, it’s only a matter of time before someone goes to Miss Cadwallader and accuses you.”

“Are you sure? They all want me to do things,” said Nan.

“Theresa doesn’t,” said Nirupam. “Besides, you can’t please everybody. Someone will get annoyed before long. I know this, because my brother tried to please all the servants. But one of them thought my brother was giving more to the other servants and told the police. And my brother was burnt in the streets of Delhi.”

“I’m sorry – I didn’t know,” said Nan. She looked across at Nirupam. His profile was like a chubby hawk, she thought. It looked desperately sad.

“My mother was burnt too, for trying to save him,” Nirupam said. “That was why my father came to this country, but things are just the same here. What I want to tell you is this – I have heard of a witches’ underground rescue service in England. They help accused witches to escape, if you can get to one of their branches before the Inquisitors come. I don’t know where they send you, or who to ask, but Estelle does. If you are accused, you must get Estelle to help.”

“Estelle?” Nan said. She thought of Estelle’s soft brown eyes and soft wriggly curls, and of Estelle’s irritating chatter, and of Estelle’s even more irritating way of imitating Theresa. She could not see Estelle helping anyone.

“Estelle is rather nice,” said Nirupam. “I come round here and talk to her quite often.”

“You mean Estelle talks to you,” said Nan.

Nirupam grinned. “She does talk a lot,” he agreed. “But she will help. She told me she likes you. She was sad you didn’t like her.”

Nan gaped. Estelle? It was not possible. No one liked Nan. But, now she remembered, Estelle had refused to come and threaten to drown her in the bathroom. “All right,” she said. “I’ll ask her. Thanks. But are you sure I’ll be accused?”

Nirupam nodded. “There is this, you see. There are at least two other witches in 2Y—”

“Two?” said Nan. “I mean, I know there’s one more. It’s obvious. But why two?”

“I told you,” said Nirupam, “I’ve had experience of witches. Each one has their own style. It’s like the way everyone’s writing is different. And I tell you that it was not the same person who did the birds in Music and the spell on Simon today. Those are two quite different outlooks on life. But both those people must know they have been very silly to do anything at all, and they will both be wanting to put the blame on you. It could well be one of them who accuses you. So you must be very careful. I will do my part and warn you if I hear of any trouble coming. Then you must ask Estelle to help you. Do you see now?”

“Yes, and I’m awfully grateful,” said Nan. Regretfully, she saw she did not dare try turning the dead leaves into anything. And, in spite of her promise to the old broom, she had better not ride it again. She was quite frightened. Yet she still felt the laughing confidence bubbling up inside, even though there might not be anything now to be confident about. Watch it! she told herself. You must be mad!

The old lab was not used for anything much except detention. But there was still a faint smell of old science clinging to it, from generations of experiments which had gone wrong. Charles slid into the splintery back bench and propped Mr Towers’s awful book against the stump of an old gas-pipe. The comics were there, stacked on the shelf underneath, just below a place where someone had spent industrious hours carving Cadwallader is a bag on the bench top. The rest of the people in the room were all at the front. They were mostly from 1X or 1Z, and probably did not know about the comics.

Simon came in. Charles gave him a medium-strength glare to discourage him from the back bench. Simon went and sat haughtily in the very middle of the middle bench. Good. Then Mr Wentworth came in. Not so good. Mr Wentworth was carefully carrying a steaming mug of coffee, which everyone in the room looked at with mute envy. It would have to be Mr Wentworth! Charles thought resentfully.

Mr Wentworth set his cup of coffee carefully down on the master’s bench and looked round to see who was doing time. He seemed surprised to see Simon and not at all surprised to see Charles. “Anyone need paper for lines?” he asked.

Charles did. He went up with most of 1X and was handed a lump of someone’s old exam. The exam had only used one side of the paper, so, Charles supposed, it made sense to use the other side for lines. But it did, all the same, seem like a deliberate way of showing people how pointlessly they were wasting time here. Wasting waste-paper. And Charles could tell, as Mr Wentworth gave the paper out, that he was in his nastiest and most harrowed mood.

Not good at all, Charles thought, as he slid back behind the back bench. For, though Charles had not particularly thought about it, it was obvious to him that he was going to use witchcraft to copy out Mr Towers’s awful book. What was the point of being a witch if you didn’t make use of it? But he would have to go carefully with Mr Wentworth in this mood.

The door opened. Theresa made an entry with her crowd of supporters.

Mr Wentworth looked at them. “Come in,” he said. “So glad you were able to make it, all of you. Sit down, Delia. Find a seat, Karen. Heather, Deborah, Julia, Theresa and the rest can no doubt all squeeze in round Simon.”

“We haven’t got detention, sir,” Delia said.

“We just came to bring Theresa,” Deborah explained.

“Why? Didn’t she know the way?” said Mr Wentworth. “Well, you all have detention now—”

“But, sir! We only came—!”

“—unless you get out this second,” said Mr Wentworth.

Theresa’s friends vanished. Theresa looked angrily at Simon, who was sitting in the place she would otherwise have chosen, and carefully selected a place at the end of the bench just behind him. “This is all your fault,” she whispered to Simon.

“Drop dead!” said Simon.

It was, Charles thought, rather a pity that Nirupam had managed to break the Simon Says spell.

Silence descended, the woeful, restless silence of people who wish they were elsewhere. Mr Wentworth opened a book and picked up his coffee. Charles waited until Mr Wentworth seemed thoroughly into his book, and then brought out his ballpoint pen. He ran his finger and thumb down it, just as he had done with Simon’s hair, down and down again.

Write lines, he thought to it. Write five hundred lines out of this book. Write lines.

Then, very grudgingly, he wrote out the first sentence for it – “What ripping fun!” exclaimed Watts Minor. “I’m down for scrum half this afternoon!” – to show it what to do. Then he cautiously let go of it. And the pen not only stood where he had left it but began to write industriously.

Charles arranged Mr Towers’s book so that it would hide the scribbling pen. Then, with a sigh of satisfaction, he fetched out one of the comics and settled down as comfortably as Mr Wentworth.

Five minutes later, he thought a thunderbolt hit him.

The pen fell down and rolled on the floor. The comic was snatched away. His right ear was in agony. Charles looked up – mistily, because his glasses were now hanging from his left ear – to find Mr Wentworth towering over him. The pain in his ear was from the excruciatingly tight grip Mr Wentworth had on it.

“Get up,” Mr Wentworth said, dragging at the ear.

Charles got up perforce. Mr Wentworth led him, like that, by the ear, with his head painfully on one side, to the front of the room. Halfway there, Charles’s glasses fell off his other ear. He almost had not the heart to catch them. In fact, he only saved them by reflex. He was fairly sure he would not be needing them much longer.

At the front, he could see just well enough to watch Mr Wentworth cram the comic one-handed into the wastepaper basket. “Let that teach you to read comics in detention!” Mr Wentworth said. “Now come with me.”

He led Charles, still by the ear, to the door. There, he turned round and spoke to the others in the room. “If anyone so much as stirs,” he said, “while I’m gone, he or she will be here for double the time, every night till Christmas.” Upon this, he towed Charles outside.

He towed Charles some distance up the covered way outside. Then he let go of Charles’s ear, took hold of his shoulders, and commenced shaking him. Charles had never been shaken like it. He bit his tongue. He thought his neck was breaking. He thought the whole of him was coming apart.

He grabbed his left hand in his right one to try and hold himself together – and felt his glasses snap into two pieces. That was it, then. He could hardly breathe when Mr Wentworth at last let go of him.

“I warned you!” Mr Wentworth said, furiously angry. “I called you to my room and purposely warned you! Are you a complete fool, boy? How much more frightened do you have to be? Do you need to be in front of the Inquisitors before you stop?”

“I—” gasped Charles. “I—” He had never known Mr Wentworth could be this angry.

Mr Wentworth went on, in a lifting undertone that was far more frightening than shouting, “Three times – three times today to my knowledge – you’ve used witchcraft. And the Lord knows how many times I don’t know about. Are you trying to give yourself away? Have you the least idea what risk you run? What kind of a show-off are you? All the shoes in the school this morning—”

“That – that was a mistake, sir,” Charles panted. “I – I was trying to find my spikes.”

“A stupid thing to waste witchcraft on!” said Mr Wentworth. “And not content with a public display like that, you then go and cast spells on Simon Silverson!”

“How did you know that was me?” said Charles.

“One look at your face, boy. And what’s more, you were sitting there letting the unfortunate Nan Pilgrim take the blame. I call that thoroughly selfish and despicable! And now this! Writing lines where anyone could see you! You are lucky, let me tell you, boy, very lucky not to be down at the police station at this moment, waiting for the Inquisitor. You deserve to be there. Don’t you?” He shook Charles again. “Don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Charles.

“And you will be,” said Mr Wentworth, “if you do one more thing. You’re to forget about witchcraft, understand? Forget about magic. Try to be normal, if you know what that means. Because I promise you that if you do it again, you will be really in trouble. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” said Charles.

“Now get back in there and write properly!” Mr Wentworth shoved Charles in front with one hand, and Charles could feel that hand shaking with anger. Frightening though that was, Charles was glad of it. He could barely see a thing without his glasses. When Mr Wentworth burst back with him into the old lab, the room was just a large fuzzy blur. But he could tell everyone was looking at him. The air was thick with people thinking, I’m glad it wasn’t me!

“Get back to your seat,” Mr Wentworth said, and let go of Charles with a sharp push.

Charles felt his way through swimming coloured blurs, down to the other end of the old lab. Those crooked white squares must be the book and the old exam paper. But his pen, he remembered, had fallen on the floor. How was he to find it, in this state, let alone write with it?

“What are you standing there for?” Mr Wentworth barked at him. “Put your glasses on and get back to work!”

Charles jumped with terror. He found himself diving for his seat, and hooking his glasses on as he dived. The world clicked into focus. He saw his pen lying almost under his feet and bent to pick it up. But surely, he thought, as he was half under the bench, his glasses had been in two pieces? He had heard a dreadfully final snapping noise. He thought he had felt them come apart.

He put his hand up hurriedly and felt his glasses – there was no point taking them off and looking, because then he would not be able to see. They felt all right. Entire and whole. Either he had made a mistake, or the plastic had snapped and not the metal inside. Much relieved, Charles sat up with the pen in his hand.

And stared at what it had written by itself.

I am Watts down scrum Minor ripping this fun afternoon. I fun Minor am half this afternoon Watts…; and so on, for two whole pages. It was no good. Mr Towers was bound to notice. Charles sighed and began writing. Perhaps he should stop doing witchcraft. Nothing seemed to go right.

Consequently, the rest of the evening was rather quiet. Charles sat in devvy running his thumb over the fat cushion of blister on his finger, not wanting to give up witchcraft and knowing he dared not go on. He felt such a mixture of regret and terror that it quite bewildered him. Simon was subdued too. Brian Wentworth was back, sitting scribbling industriously, with one eye still turned slightly inwards, but Simon seemed to have lost his desire to hit Brian for the time being. And Simon’s friends followed Simon’s lead.

Nan kept quiet also, because of what Nirupam had said, but, however hard she reasoned with herself, she could not get rid of that bubbling inner confidence. It was still with her in the dormitory that night. It stayed, in spite of Delia, Deborah, Heather and the rest, who began on her in their usual way.

“It was a bit much, that spell on Simon!”

“Really, Nan, I know we asked you, but you should think first.”

“Look what he did to Theresa. And she lost her knitting over it.”

And Nan, instead of submitting or apologising, as she usually did, said, “What’s put it into your pretty little heads that that spell was mine?”

“Because we know you’re a witch,” said Heather.

“Of course,” said Nan. “But what gave you the idea I was the only one? You think, Heather, instead of just opening your little pink mouth and letting words trickle out. I told you, it takes time to make a spell. I told you about picking herbs and flying round and chanting, didn’t I? And I left out the way you have to catch bats. That takes ages, even on a fast modern broomstick, because bats are so good at dodging. And you were with me in the bathroom, and with me all the time all this last week, and you know I haven’t had time to catch bats or pick herbs, and you’ve seen I haven’t been muttering and incantating. So you see? It wasn’t me.”

She could tell they were convinced, because they all looked so disappointed. Heather muttered, “And you said you couldn’t fly that broomstick!” but she said nothing more. Nan was pleased. She seemed to have shut them up without losing her reputation as a witch.

All except Karen. Karen was newly admitted to the number of Theresa’s friends. That made her very zealous.

“Well I think you should work a spell now,” she said. “Theresa’s lost a pair of bootees she spent hours knitting, and I think the least you can do is get them back for her.”

“No trouble at all,” Nan said airily. “But does Theresa want me to try?”

Theresa finished buttoning her pyjamas and turned away to brush her hair. “She’s not going to try, Karen,” she said. “I should be ashamed to get my knitting back that way!”

“Lights out,” said a prefect at the door. “Do these belong to anyone? The caretaker found them in his dog’s basket.” She held up two grey fluffy things with holes in.

The look everyone gave Nan, as Theresa went to claim her bootees, made Nan wonder if she had been wise to talk like that. And I don’t even really know if I’m still a witch, she thought, as she got into bed. I’ll keep my mouth shut in future. And that broomstick stays on top of the cupboard. I don’t care if I did promise it.

Right in the middle of the night, she was woken by something prodding at her. Nan, in her sleep, rolled out of the way, and rolled again, until she woke up in the act of falling out of bed. There was a swift swishing noise. Something she only dimly saw in the near-dark dived over her and then dived under her. Nan woke up completely to find herself six feet off the floor and doubled over the broomstick, with her head hanging down one side and her feet the other. The knobby handle was a painful thing to be draped over. Nevertheless, Nan began to laugh. I am a witch after all! she thought joyfully.

“Put me down, you big fraud!” she whispered. “You were just playing for sympathy, pretending you needed a rider, weren’t you? Put me down and go and fly yourself!”

The broomstick’s answer was to rise up to the ceiling. Nan’s bed looked a small dim oblong from there. She knew she would miss it if she tried to jump off.

“You big bully!” she said. “I know I promised, but that was before—”

The broom drifted suggestively towards the window. Nan became alarmed. The window was open because Theresa believed in fresh air. She had visions of herself being carted over the countryside, draped over the stick in nothing but pyjamas. She gave in.

“All right. I’ll fly you. But let me go down and get some blankets first. I’m not going to go like this!”

The broom whirled round and swooped back to Nan’s bed. Nan’s legs flew out and she landed on the mattress with a bounce. The broom did not trust her in the least. It hovered over her while she dragged the pink school blankets from her bed, and as soon as she had wrapped them round her, it made quite sure of her by darting underneath her and swooping up to the ceiling again. Nan was thrown backwards. She nearly ended hanging underneath again.

“Go carefully!” she whispered. “Let me get settled.”

The broom hovered impatiently while Nan tried to balance herself and get comfortable. She did not dare take too long over it. All the swooping and whispering was disturbing the other girls. Quite a few of them were turning over and murmuring crossly. Nan tried to sit on the broom and toppled over sideways. She got tangled in her blankets. In the end, she simply fell forward on her face and settled for lying along the handle again, in a bundle of blanket, with her feet hooked up on the brush.

Before she had even got comfortable like that, the broomstick swooped to the window, nudged it further open, and darted outside. There was pitch black night out there. It was cold, with a drizzle of rain falling. Nan wrinkled her face against it and tried to get used to being high up. The broom flew with a strange choppy movement, not altogether pleasant for a person lying on her face.

Nan talked, to take her mind off it. “How is this,” she said, “for romantic dreams come true? I always thought of myself flying a broomstick on a warm summer night, outlined against an enormous moon, with a nightingale or so singing its head off. And look at us!” Underneath her, the broomstick jerked. It was obviously a shrug.

“Yes, I daresay it is the best we can do,” Nan said. “But I don’t feel very glamorous like this, and I’m getting wet. I bet Dulcinea Wilkes used to sit on her broom, gracefully, sidesaddle probably, with her long hair flowing out behind. And because it was London, she probably wore an elegant silk dress, with lots of lacy petticoats showing from underneath. Did you know I was descended from Dulcinea Wilkes?”

The rippling underneath her might have been the broom’s way of nodding. But it could have been laughing at the contrast.

Nan found she could see in the dark now. She looked down and blenched. The broomstick felt very flimsy to be this high. It had soared and turned while she was talking, so that the square shapes of the school were a long way below and to one side. The pale spread of the playing field was directly underneath, and beyond that Nan could see the entire town, filling the valley ahead. The houses were all dark, with orange chains of street lights in between. And in spite of the drifting drizzle, Nan could see as far as the blackness of Larwood Forest on the hill opposite.

“Let’s fly over the forest,” she said.

The broom swept off. Once you got used to it, it really would be a nice feeling, Nan told herself firmly, blinking against the drizzle. Secret, silent flight. It was in her blood. She held the end of the broom handle in both hands and tried to point it at the town. But the broom had other ideas. It wanted to go round the edge of the town. The result was that they flew sideways, jolting a little.

“Fly over the houses,” said Nan.

The broom gave a shake that nearly sent her tumbling off. No.

“I suppose someone might look up and see us,” Nan agreed. “All right. You win again. Bully.” And it occurred to her that her dreams of flying against a huge full moon were really the most arrant romantic nonsense. No witch in her senses would do that, for fear the Inquisitors saw her.

So they swooped over the fields and across the main road in a rush of rain. The rain at first came at Nan’s face in separate drops out of the orange haze made by the street lights. Then it was just wetness out of darkness, as they reached Larwood Forest, and the wetness brought a smell with it of autumn leaves and mushroom. But even a dark wood is not quite black at night. Nan could see paler trees, which still had yellow leaves, and she could clearly see mist caused by the rain smoking out above the trees. Some of it seemed to be real smoke. Nan smelt fire, distinctly. A wet fire, burning smokily.

She suddenly felt rather quiet. “I say, that can’t be a bone-fire, can it? If it’s after midnight, it is Hallowe’en, isn’t it?”

The idea seemed to upset the broom. It stopped with a jerk. For a second, its front end tipped downwards as if it were thinking of landing. Nan had to grip hard in order not to slide off head first. Then it began actually flying backwards, wagging its brush in agitated sweeps, so that Nan’s feet were swirled from side to side.

“Stop it!” she said. “I shall be sick in a minute!”

They did, she knew, sometimes burn witch’s brooms with the witch they belonged to. So she was not surprised when the broom swung round, away from the smell of smoke, and began flying back towards the school, in a stately sort of way, as if that was the way it had meant to go all along.

“You don’t fool me,” she said. “But you can go back if you want. I’m soaked.”

The broom continued on its wet and stately way, high above the fields and the main road, until the pale flatness of the playing field appeared beneath them once more. Nan was just thinking that she would be in bed any minute now, when a new notion seemed to strike the broom. It dived a sickening fifty feet and put on speed. Nan found herself hurtling over the field, about twenty feet up, and oozing off backwards with the speed. She hung on and shouted to it to stop. Nothing she said made any difference. The broom continued to hurtle.

“Oh really!” Nan gasped. “You are the most wilful thing I’ve ever known! Stop!”

The rain beat in her face, but she could see something ahead now, all the same. It was something dark against the grass, and it was quite big, too big for a broom, although it was flying too, floating gently away across the field. The broom was racing towards it. As they plunged on, Nan saw that the thing was flat underneath, with the shape of a person on top of it. It got bigger and bigger. Nan decided it could only be a small carpet with a man sitting on it. She tugged and jerked at the broom handle, but there seemed nothing she could do to stop the broom.

The broom plunged gladly up alongside the dark shape. It was a man on a small carpet. The broom swooped round it, wagging its end so hard that Nan bit her tongue. It nuzzled and nudged and jogged at the carpet, jerking Nan this way and that as it went. And the carpet seemed equally delighted to meet the broom. It was jiggling and flapping, and rippling so that the man on top of it was rolled this way and that. Nan shrank down and clung to the broom, hoping that she just looked like a roll of blankets to whoever this witch on a carpet was.

But the man was becoming annoyed by the antics of the carpet and the broom. “Can’t you control that thing yet?” he snapped.

Nan shrank down even further. Her bitten tongue made it hard to speak anyway, and she was almost glad of it. She knew that voice. It was Mr Wentworth’s.

“And I told you never to ride that thing in term time, Brian,” Mr Wentworth said. When Nan still did not say anything, he added, “I know, I know. But this wretched hearthrug insists on going out every night.”

This is worse and worse! Nan thought. Mr Wentworth thought she was Brian. So Brian must be—With a fierce effort, she managed to wrench the broom round, away from the hearthrug. With an even fiercer effort, she got it going again, towards the school. By kicking it hard with her bare toes, she kept it going. When she was some way away, she risked turning round and whispering, “Sorry.” She hoped Mr Wentworth would go on thinking she was Brian.

Mr Wentworth called something after her as the broomstick lumbered away, but Nan did not even try to hear what it was. She did not want to know. She could still barely believe it. Besides, she needed all her attention to make the broom go. It was very reluctant. It flew across the field in a dismal, trudging way, which reminded Nan irresistibly of Charles Morgan, but at least it went. Nan was pleased to discover that she could control it after all, when she had to.

It made particularly heavy weather of lifting Nan upwards to her dormitory window. She almost believed it groaned. Some of the difficulty may have been real. All Nan’s pink school blankets were soaked through by now and they must have weighed a great deal. But Nan remembered what an act the broom had put on in the afternoon and resolved to be pitiless. She drummed with her toes again. Up went the broom through the dark rainy night, up and up the wall, until at last they were outside the half-open dormitory window. Nan helped the broom shoulder the window open wider, and then swooped to the floor on her stomach. What a relief! she thought.

Someone whispered, “I put dry blankets on your bed.”

Nan nearly fainted. After a pause to recover, she rolled herself off the broom and knelt up in her sopping blankets. A dim figure in regulation school pyjamas was standing in front of her, bending down a little, so that Nan could see the hair was curly. Heather? No, don’t be daft! Estelle. “Estelle?” she whispered.

“Hush!” whispered Estelle. “Come and help put these blankets in the airing cupboard. We can talk there.”

“But the broom—?” Nan whispered.

“Send it away.”

A good idea, Nan thought, if only the broom would obey. She picked it up, shedding soaking blankets as she went, and carried it to the window. “Go to the groundsman’s shed,” she told it in a severe whisper, and sent it off with a firm shove. Knowing the kind of broom it was, she would not have been surprised if it had simply clattered to the ground. But it obeyed her, rather to her astonishment – or at least, it flew off into the rainy night.

Estelle was already lugging the heap of blankets to the door. Nan tiptoed to help her. Together they dragged the heap down the passage and into the fateful bathroom. There, Estelle shut the door and daringly turned on the light.

“It’ll be all right if we don’t talk too loud,” she said. “I’m awfully sorry – Theresa woke up while I was making your bed. I had to tell her you’d been sick. I said you were in the loo being sick again. Can you remember that if she asks tomorrow?”

“Thanks,” said Nan. “That was kind of you. Did I wake you going out?”

“Yes, but it was training mostly,” Estelle said. She opened the big airing cupboard. “If we fold these blankets and put them right at the back, no one’s going to find them for weeks. They might even be dry by then, but with this school’s heating there’s no relying on that.”

It was not a quick job. They had to take out the piles of pale pink dry blankets stacked in the cupboard, fold the heavy bright pink wet ones, put them in at the back, and then put all the dry ones back to hide them.

“Why did you say training woke you up?” Nan asked Estelle as they worked.

“Training with the witches’ underground escape route,” said Estelle. “My mum used to belong to it, and I used to help her. It took me right back, when I heard you going out – though it was usually people coming in that used to wake me up. And I knew you’d be wet when you came back, and need help. Mum brought me up to think of everything like that. We used to have witches coming in on brooms at all hours of the night, poor things. Most of them were as wet as you – and much more frightened of course. Hold the blanket down with your chin. That’s the best way to get it folded.”

“Why did your mum send you away to this school?” Nan asked. “You must have been such a help.”

Estelle’s bright face saddened. “She didn’t. The Inquisitors sent me. They had a big campaign and broke up all our branch of the organisation. My mum got caught. She’s in prison now, for helping witches. But,” Estelle’s soft brown eyes looked earnestly into Nan’s face, “please don’t say. I couldn’t bear anyone else to know. You’re the only one I’ve ever told.”

The next morning, Brian Wentworth did not get up. Simon threw a pillow at him as he lay there, but Brian did not stir.

“Wakey, wakey, Brian!” Simon said. “Get up, or I’ll strip your bed off.” When Brian still did not move, Simon advanced on his bed.

“Let him alone,” Charles said. “He was ill yesterday.”

“Anything you say, Charles,” said Simon. “Your word is my command.” And he pulled all the covers off Brian’s bed.

Brian was not in it. Instead, there was a line of three pillows, artfully overlapped to give the shape of a body.

Everyone gathered round and stared. Ronald West bent down and looked under the bed – as if he thought Brian might be there – and came up holding a piece of paper.

“Here,” he said. “This must have come off with the bedclothes. Take a look!”

Simon snatched the paper from him. Everyone else craned and pushed to see it too. It was written in capital letters, in ordinary blue ballpoint, and it said:

HA HA. I HAVE GOT BRIAN WENTWORTH
IN MY POWER. SIGNED, THE WITCH.

The slightly tense look on Simon’s face gave way to righteous concern. He had known at once that Brian’s disappearance had nothing to do with him. “We’re not going to panic,” he said. “Someone get the master on duty.”

There was instant emergency. Voices jabbered, rumours roared. Charles fetched Mr Crossley, since everyone else seemed too astonished to think. After that, Mr Crossley and prefects came and went, asking everyone when they had last seen Brian. People from the other dormitories crowded in the doorway, calling comments.

Everyone was very eager to say something, but nothing very useful came out. A lot of people had noticed Brian was pale and cross-eyed the day before. Somebody said he had been ill and gone to Matron. A number of other people said he had come back later and seemed very busy writing. Everyone swore Brian had gone to bed as usual the night before.

Long before Mr Crossley had sorted even this much out, Charles was tiptoeing hastily away downstairs. He felt sick. Up to last night, he had supposed Brian was trying to get himself invalided out of school. Now he knew better. Brian had run away, just as he had said he would. And he had taken the advice Charles had given him in the middle of the night before and confused his trail. But what had given Brian the idea of blaming the witch? Could it have been the shoes, and the sight of Charles muttering over some hairs from Simon’s comb? Charles was fairly sure it was.

As Charles pushed through the boys in the corridor, he heard the words “witch” and “Nan Pilgrim” coming from all sides. Fine, as long as they went on blaming Nan. But would they? Charles took a look at his burnt finger as he went down the stairs. The transparent juicy cushion of blister on it was fatter than ever. It hurts to be burnt.

Charles went the rest of the way down at a crazy gallop. He too remembered Brian scribbling and scribbling during devvy. Brian must have written pages. If there was one word about Charles Morgan in those pages, he was going to make sure no one else saw them. He pelted along the corridors. He flung himself into the classroom, squawking for breath.

Brian’s desk was open. Nirupam was bending over it. He did not seem in the least surprised to see Charles. “Brian has been very eloquent,” he said. “Come and see.”

Behind the raised lid of the desk, Nirupam had lined up six exercise books, each of them open to a double page of hurried blue scrawl.

Help, help, help, help, Charles read in the first. The witch has the Evil Eye on me. HELP. I am being dragged away I know not where. HELP. My mind is in thrall. Nameless deeds are being forced upon me. HELP. The world is turning grey. The spell is working. Help… And so on, for the whole two pages.

“There’s yards of it!” said Charles.

“I know,” said Nirupam, opening Brian’s French book. “This is full of it too.”

“Does he give names?” Charles asked tensely.

“Not so far,” said Nirupam.

Charles was not going to take Nirupam’s word for that. He picked up each book in turn and read the scrawl through.

Help. Wild chanting and horrible smells fill my ears. HELP. I can FEEL MYSELF GOING. The witch’s will is strong. I must obey. Grey humming and horrible words. HELP. My spirit is being dragged from TIMBUKTU to UTTAR PRADESH. To utter destruction I mean. Help…

It went on like this for all six books. Enough of it was in capitals for Charles to be quite sure that Brian had written the note in his bed himself.

After that, he read each of the rest of Brian’s books as Nirupam finished with it. It was all the same kind of thing. To Charles’s relief, Brian named no names. But there was still Brian’s journal, at the bottom of the pile.

“If he’s said anything definite, it will be in this,” Nirupam said, picking up the journal. Charles reached out for it too. If necessary, he was going to force it out of Nirupam’s hands by witchcraft. Or was it better just to make all the pages blank? But did he dare do either?

His hand hesitated.

As Charles hesitated, they heard Mr Crossley’s voice out in the corridor. Charles and Nirupam frantically crammed the books back into Brian’s desk and shut it. They raced to their own desks, sat down, got out books, and pretended to be busy finishing devvy from the night before.

“You boys should be going along to breakfast now,” Mr Crossley said, when he came in. “Go along.”

Both of them had to go, without a chance of looking at Brian’s journal. Charles wondered why Nirupam looked so frustrated. But he was too frightened on his own account to bother much about Nirupam’s feelings.

In the corridor outside the dining hall, Mr Wentworth rushed past them, looking even more harrowed than usual. Inside the dining hall, the rumour was going round that the police had just arrived.

“You wait,” Simon said knowingly. “The Inquisitor will be here before dinner time. You’ll see.”

Nirupam slid into a seat beside Nan. “Brian has written in all his school books about a witch putting a spell on him,” he murmured to her.

Nan hardly needed this to show her the trouble she was in. Karen and Delia had already asked her several times what she had done to Brian. And Theresa had added, not looking at Nan, “Some people can’t leave people alone, can they?”

“But he didn’t name any names,” Nirupam muttered, also not looking at Nan.

Brian didn’t need to name names, Nan thought desperately. Everyone else would do that for him. And, if that was not enough, Estelle knew she had been out on the broomstick last night. She looked round for Estelle, but Estelle seemed to be avoiding her. She was at another table. At that, the last traces of witchy inner confidence left Nan completely. For once in her life, she had no appetite for breakfast. Charles was not much better. Whatever he tried to eat, the fat blister on his finger seemed to get in the way.

At the end of breakfast, another rumour went round: the police had sent for tracker dogs.

A short while after this, Miss Hodge arrived, to find the school in an uproar. It took her some time to find out what had happened, since Mr Crossley was nowhere to be found. When Miss Phillips finally told her, Miss Hodge was delighted. Brian Wentworth had vanished! That is, Miss Hodge thought hastily, it was very sad and worrying of course, but it did give her a real excuse to attract Mr Wentworth’s attention again.

Yesterday had been most frustrating. After Mr Wentworth had brushed aside her generous apology over Charles Morgan, she had not been able to think of any other move towards getting him to marry her. But this was ideal. She could go to Mr Wentworth and be terribly sympathetic. She could enter into his sorrow. The only difficulty was that Mr Wentworth was not to be found, any more than Mr Crossley. It seemed that they were both with the police in Miss Cadwallader’s study.

As everyone went into the hall for assembly, they could see a police van in the quadrangle. Several healthy Alsatians were getting out of it, with their pink tongues draped over their large white fangs in a way that suggested they could hardly wait to get on and hunt something.

A number of faces turned pale. There was a lot of nervous giggling.

“It doesn’t matter if the dogs don’t find anything,” Simon could be heard explaining. “The Inquisitor will simply run his witch-detector over everyone in the class, and they’ll find the witch that way.”

To Nan’s relief, Estelle came pushing along the line and stood next to her. “Estelle—!” Nan began violently.

“Not now,” Estelle whispered. “Wait for the singing.”

Neither Mr Wentworth nor Miss Cadwallader came into assembly. Mr Brubeck and Mr Towers, who sat in the main chairs instead, did not explain about that, and neither of them mentioned Brian. This seemed to make it all much more serious. Mr Towers chose his favourite hymn. It was, to Nan’s misery, “He who would valiant be”. This hymn always caused Theresa to look at Nan and giggle, when it came to “To be a pilgrim”. Nan had to wait for Theresa to do that before she dared to speak to Estelle, and, she thought, Theresa’s giggle was rather nastier than usual.

“Estelle,” Nan whispered, as soon as everyone had started the second verse. “Estelle, you don’t think I went out – last night, the way I did – because of Brian, do you? I swear I didn’t.”

“I know you didn’t,” Estelle whispered back. “What would anyone want Brian for, anyway?”

“But everyone thinks I did! What shall I do?” Nan whispered back.

“It’s PE second lesson. I’ll show you then,” said Estelle.

Charles was also whispering under cover of the singing, to Nirupam. “What are witch-detectors? Do they work?”

“Machines in black boxes,” Nirupam said breathily at his hymn book. “And they always find a witch with them.”

Mr Wentworth had talked about witch-detectors too. So, Charles thought, if the rumour was right and the Inquisitor got here before lunch time, today was the end of Charles. Charles hated Brian. Selfish beast. Yes, all right, he had been selfish too, but Brian was even worse. There was only one thing to do now, and that was to run away as well. But those tracker dogs made that nearly impossible.

When they got to the classroom, Brian’s desk had been taken away. Charles looked at the empty space in horror. Fingerprints! he thought. Nirupam had gone quite yellow.

“They took it to give the dogs the scent,” said Dan Smith. He added thoughtfully, “They’re trained to tear people to pieces, those police dogs. I wonder if they’ll tear Brian up, or just the witch.”

Charles looked at the blister on his finger and realised that burning was not the only thing that hurt. His first thought had been to run away during break. Now he decided to go in PE, next lesson. He wished there was not a whole lesson in between.

That lesson seemed to last about a year. And for most of that lesson, policemen were continually going past the windows with dogs on leads. Back and forth they went. Wherever Brian had gone, they seemed to be finding it hard to pick up his scent.

By this time, Nan’s hands were shaking so that she could hardly hold her pen. Thanks to last night, she knew exactly why Brian had left no scent. It was that double-dealing broomstick. It must have flown Brian out before it came and woke her up. Nan was sure of it. She could have taken the police to the exact spot where Brian was. That was no bone-fire she had smelt over Larwood Forest last night. It had been Brian’s camp-fire. The broomstick had brought her right over the spot and then realised its mistake. That was why it had got so agitated and tried to fly away backwards.

She was so angry with Brian for getting her blamed that she wished she really could tell them where he was. But the moment she did that, she proved that she was a witch and incriminated Mr Wentworth into the bargain. Oh, it was too bad of Brian! Nan just hoped Estelle could think of some kind of rescue before someone accused her, and she started accusing Brian and Mr Wentworth.

Just before the end of that lesson, the dogs must have found some kind of scent. When the girls walked round the outside of the school on their way to the girls’ locker room, to change for PE, there was not a policeman or a dog in sight.

As the line of girls went past the shrubbery, Estelle gently took hold of Nan’s arm and pulled her towards the bushes. Nan let herself be pulled. She did not know if she was more relieved or more terrified. It was a little early in the day to find seniors in the shrubbery, but even so, surely somebody would notice?

“We have to go into town,” Estelle whispered, as they pushed among the wet bushes. “To the Old Gate House.”

“Why?” Nan asked, thrusting her way after Estelle.

“Because,” Estelle whispered over her shoulder, “the lady there runs the Larwood branch of the witches’ escape route.”

They came out into the grass beside the huge laurel bush. Nan looked from Estelle’s scared face to Estelle’s trim blazer and school skirt. Then she looked down at her own plump shape. Different as they were, they were both obviously in Larwood House school uniform. “But if someone sees us in town, they’ll report us to Miss Cadwallader.”

“I was hoping,” Estelle whispered, “that you might be able to change us into ordinary clothes.”

Nan realised that the only witchcraft she had ever done was to fly that broom. She had not the least idea how you changed clothes. But Estelle was relying on her and it really was urgent. Feeling an awful fool, Nan held out both shaking hands and said the first thing remotely like a spell that came into her head.

“Eeny, meeny, miney, mo,

Out of uniform we go!”

There was a swirling feeling around her. Estelle was suddenly in a small snowstorm that seemed to be made of little bits of rag. Navy blue rag, then dark rag. The rags settled like burnt paper, clinging to Estelle and hanging, and clinging to Nan too. And there they both were in seconds, dressed as witches, in long trailing black dresses, pointed black hats and all.

Estelle clapped both hands to her mouth to stop a giggle. Nan snorted with laughter. “This won’t do! Try again,” giggled Estelle.

“What do you want to wear?” Nan asked.

Estelle’s eyes shone. “Riding clothes,” she whispered ardently. “With a red jumper, please.”

Nan stretched out her hands again. Now she knew she could do it, she felt quite confident.

“Agga, tagga, ragga, roast,

Wear the clothes you want the most.”

The rag-storm began again. In Estelle’s case, it started black and swirled very promisingly into pale brown and red. Around Nan, it seemed to be turning pink. When the storm stopped, there was Estelle, looking very trim and pretty in jodhpurs, red sweater and hard hat, with her legs in shiny boots, pointing at Nan with a riding crop and making helpless bursting noises.

Nan looked down at herself. It seemed that the sort of clothes she wanted most was the dress she had imagined Dulcinea Wilkes wearing to ride her broomstick round London in. She was in a shiny pink silk balldress. The full skirt swept the wet grass. The tight pink bodice left her shoulders bare. It had blue bows up the front and lace in the sleeves. No wonder Estelle was laughing! Pink silk was definitely a mistake for someone as plump as Nan. Why pink? she wondered. Probably she had got that idea from the school blankets.

She had her hands stretched out to try again, when they heard Karen Grigg shouting outside the shrubbery.

“Estelle! Estelle! Where are you? Miss Phillips wants to know where you’ve got to!”

Estelle and Nan turned and ran. Estelle’s clothes were ideal for sprinting through bushes. Nan’s were not. She lumbered and puffed behind Estelle, and wet leaves kept showering her bare shoulders with water. Her sleeves got in her way. Her skirt wrapped round her legs and kept catching on bushes. Just at the edge of the shrubbery, the dress got stuck on a twig and tore with such a loud ripping noise that Estelle whirled round in horror.

“Wait!” panted Nan. She wrenched the pink skirt loose and tore the whole bottom part of it off. She wrapped the torn bit like a scarf round her wet shoulders. “That’s better.”

After that, she could keep up with Estelle quite easily. They slipped through on to the school drive and pelted down it and out through the iron gates. Nan meant to stop and change the pink dress into something else in the road outside, but there was a man sweeping the pavement just beyond the gates. He stopped sweeping and stared at the two of them.

A little further on, there were two ladies with shopping bags, who stared even harder. Nan put her head down in acute embarrassment as they walked past the ladies. She had strips of torn pink silk hanging down and clinging to the pale blue stockings she seemed to have changed her socks into. Below that, she seemed to have given herself pink ballet shoes.

“Will you call for me at my ballet class after you’ve had your riding lesson?” she said loudly and desperately to Estelle.

“I might. But I’m scared of your ballet teacher,” Estelle said, playing up bravely.

They got past the ladies, but there were more people further down the road. The further they got into town, the more people there were. By the time they came to the shops, Nan knew she was not going to get a chance to change the pink balldress.

“You look awfully pretty. Really,” Estelle said consolingly.

“No, I don’t. It’s like a bad dream,” said Nan.

“In my bad dreams like that, I don’t have any clothes on at all,” said Estelle.

At last they reached the strange red brick castle which was the Old Gate House. Estelle, looking white and nervous, led Nan up the steps and under the pointed porch. Nan pulled the large bell-pull hanging beside the pointed front door. Then they stood under the arch and waited, more nervous than ever.

For a long time, they thought nobody was going to answer the door. Then, after nearly five minutes, it opened, very slowly and creaking a great deal. A very old lady stood there, leaning on a stick, looking at them in some surprise.

Estelle was so nervous by then that she stuttered. “A – A w-way out in the n-name of D-Dulcinea,” she said.

“Oh dear!” said the old lady. “My dears, I’m so sorry. The Inquisitors broke up the organisation here several years ago. If it wasn’t for my age, I’d be in prison now. They come and check up on me every week. I daren’t do a thing.”

They stood and stared at her in utter dismay.

The old lady saw it. “If it’s a real emergency,” she said, “I can give you a spell. That’s all I can think of. Would you like that?”

They nodded, dismally.

“Then wait a moment, while I write it down,” said the old lady. She left the front door open and hobbled aside to a table at one side of the dark old hall. She opened a drawer in it and fumbled out some paper. She searched out a pen. Then she looked across at them.

“You know, my dears, in order not to attract attention, you really should look as if you were collecting for charity. I can pretend to be writing you a cheque. Can either of you manage collecting boxes?”

“I can,” said Nan. She had almost lost her voice with fright and dismay. She had to cough. She did not dare risk saying spells, standing there on the steps of the old house, up above the busy street. She simply waved a quivering hand and hoped.

Instant weight bore her hand down. A mighty collecting tin dangled from her arm, and another dangled from Estelle’s. Each was as big as a tin of paint. Each had a huge red cross on one side and chinked loudly from their nervous trembling.

“That’s better,” said the old lady, and started, very slowly, to write.

The outsize tins did indeed make Nan and Estelle feel easier while they waited. People passing certainly looked up at them curiously, but most of them smiled when they saw the tins. And they were standing there for quite a long time, because, as well as writing very slowly, the old lady kept calling across to them.

“Do either of you know the Portway Oaks?” she called. They shook their heads. “Pity. You have to go there to say this,” said the old lady. “It’s a ring of trees just below the forest. I’d better draw you a map then.” She drew, slowly. Then she called, “I don’t know why they’re called the Oaks. Every single tree there is a beech tree.” Later still, she called, “Now I’m writing down the way you should pronounce it.”

The girls still stood there. Nan was beginning to wonder if the old lady was really in league with the Inquisitors and keeping them there on purpose, when the old lady at last folded up the paper and shuffled back to the front door.

“There you are, my dears. I wish I could do more for you.”

Nan took the paper. Estelle produced a bright artificial smile. “Thanks awfully,” she said. “What does it do?”

“I’m not sure,” said the old lady. “It’s been handed down in my family for use in emergencies, but no one has ever used it before. I’m told it’s very powerful.”

Like many old people, the old lady spoke rather too loudly. Nan and Estelle looked nervously over their shoulders at the street below, but nobody seemed to have heard. They thanked the old lady politely and, when the front door shut, they went drearily back down the steps, lugging their huge collecting tins.

“I suppose we’d better use it,” said Estelle. “We daren’t go back now.”

Charles jogged round the playing field towards the groundsman’s hut. He hoped anyone who saw him would think he was out running for PE. For this reason, he had changed into his small sky-blue running shorts before he slipped away. When he had time, he supposed he could transform the shorts into jeans or something. But the important thing at the moment was to get hold of that mangy old besom people had been taunting Nan Pilgrim with the other day. If he got to that before anyone noticed he was missing, he could ride away on it and no dog on earth could pick up his trail.

He reached the hut, in its corner beside the kitchen gardens. He crept round it to its door. At the same moment, Nirupam crept round it from the opposite side, also in sky-blue shorts, and stretched out his long arm for the door too. The two of them stared at one another. All sorts of ideas for things to say streamed through Charles’s mind, from explaining he was just dodging PE, to accusing Nirupam of kidnapping Brian. In the end, he said none of these things. Nirupam had hold of the doorlatch by then.

“Bags I the broomstick,” Charles said.

“Only if there are two of them,” said Nirupam. His face was yellow with fear. He pulled open the door and dodged into the hut. Charles dived in after him.

There was not even the one old broomstick. There were flowerpots, buckets, an old roller, a new roller, four rakes, two spades, a hoe, and an old wet-mop propped in one of the buckets. And that was all.

“Who took it?” Charles said wildly.

“Nobody brought it back,” said Nirupam.

“Oh magic it all!” said Charles. “What shall we do?”

“Use something else,” said Nirupam. “Or walk.” He seized the nearest spade and stood astride it, bending and stretching his great long legs. “Fly,” he told the spade. “Go on, fly, magic you!”

Nirupam had the right idea, Charles saw. A witch surely ought to be able to make anything fly. “I should think a rake would fly better,” he said, and quickly grabbed hold of the wet-mop for himself.

The mop was so old that it had stuck to the bucket. Charles was forced to put one foot on the bucket and pull, before it came loose, and a lot of the head got left behind in the bucket. The result was a stick ending in a scraggly grey stump. Charles seized it and stood astride it. He jumped up and down. “Fly!” he told the mop. “Quick!”

Nirupam threw the spade down and snatched up the hoe. Together they jumped desperately round the hut. “Fly!” they panted. “Fly!”

In an old, soggy, dispirited way, the mop obeyed. It wallowed up about three feet into the air and wove towards the hut door. Nirupam was wailing in despair, when the hoe took off too, with a buck and a rush, as if it did not want to be left behind. Nirupam shot past Charles with his huge legs flailing. “It works!” he panted triumphantly, and went off in another kangaroo bound towards the kitchen gardens.

They were forbidden to go in the kitchen gardens, but it seemed the most secret way out of school. Charles followed Nirupam through the gate and down the gravel path, both of them trying to control their mounts. The mop wallowed and wove. It was like an old, old person, feebly hobbling through the air. The hoe either went by kangaroo surges, or it slanted and trailed its metal end along the path. Nirupam had to stick his feet out in front in order not to leave a scent on the ground. His eyes rolled in agony. He kept overtaking Charles and dropping behind. When they got to the wall at the end of the garden, both implements stopped. The mop wallowed about in the air. The hoe jittered its end on the gravel.

“They can’t go high enough to get over,” said Charles. “Now what?”

That might have been the end of their journey, had not the caretaker’s dog been sniffing about in the kitchen gardens and suddenly caught their scent. It came racing down the long path towards them, yapping. The hoe and the mop took off like startled cats. They soared over the wall, with Charles and Nirupam hanging on anyhow, and went bucking off down the fields beyond. They raced towards the main road, the mop surging, the hoe plunging and trailing, clearing hedges by a whisker and missing trees by inches. They did not slow down until they had put three fields between them and the caretaker’s dog.

“They must hate that dog as much as we do,” Nirupam gasped. “Was it you that did the Simon Says spell?”

“Yes,” said Charles. “Did you do the birds in Music?”

“No,” said Nirupam, much to Charles’s surprise. “I did only one thing, and that was secret, but I daren’t stay if the Inquisitors are going to bring a witch-detector. They always get you with those.”

“What did you do?” said Charles.

“You know that night all our shoes went into the hall,” said Nirupam. “Well, we had a feast that night. Dan Smith made me get up the floorboards and get the food out. He says I have no right to be so large and so weak,” Nirupam said resentfully, “and I was hating him for it, when I took the boards up and found a pair of running shoes, with spikes, hidden there with the food. I turned those shoes into a chocolate cake. I knew Dan was so greedy that he would eat it all himself. And he did eat it. He didn’t let anyone else have any. You may have noticed that he wasn’t quite himself the next day.”

So much had happened to Charles that particular day, that he could not remember Dan seeming anything at all. He had not the heart to explain all the trouble Nirupam had caused him. “Those were my spikes,” he said sadly. He wobbled along on the mop, rather awed at the thought of iron spikes passing through Dan’s stomach. “He must have a digestion like an ostrich!”

“The spikes were turned into cherries,” said Nirupam. “The soles were the cream. The shoes as a whole became what is called a Black Forest gâteau.”

Here they reached the main road and saw the tops of cars whipping past beyond the hedge. “We’ll have to wait for a gap in that traffic,” Charles said. “Stop!” he commanded the mop.

“Stop!” Nirupam cried to the hoe.

Neither implement took the slightest notice. Since Charles and Nirupam did not dare put their feet down for fear of leaving a scent for the dogs, they could find no way of stopping at all. They were carried helplessly over the hedge. Luckily, the road was down in a slight dip, and they had just height enough to clear the whizzing cars. Nirupam frantically bent his huge legs up. Charles tried not to let his legs dangle. Horns honked. He saw faces peering up at them, outraged and grinning.

Charles suddenly saw how ridiculous they must look, both in their little blue shorts: himself with the disgraceful dirty old mop-head wagging behind him; Nirupam lunging through the air in bunny-hops, with a look of anguish on his face.

Horns were still sounding as they cleared the hedge on the other side of the road.

“Oh help!” gasped Nirupam. “Make for the woods, quick, before somebody gets the police!”

Larwood Forest was only a short hillside away and, luckily, their panic seemed to get through to the mop and the hoe. Both put on speed. The wagging and slewing of the mop nearly threw Charles off. The hoe helped itself along by digging its metal end fiercely into the ground, so that Nirupam went upwards like someone on a pogo-stick, yelping at each leap. Horns were still sounding from the road as first Nirupam, then Charles, reached the trees and plunged in among them.

By this time, Nirupam was so far ahead that Charles thought he had lost him. Probably just as well, Charles thought. They might be safer going separate ways. But the mop had other ideas. After dithering a bit, as if it had lost the scent, it set off again at top wallow. Charles was wagged round tree trunks and swayed through a prickly undergrowth. Finally he was slewed through a bed of nettles.

He yelled. Nirupam yelled too, just beyond the nettles. The hoe tipped him off into a blackberry bush and darted gladly towards an old threadbare broomstick which was leaning on the other side of the brambles. At the sight, the mop threw Charles into the nettles and went bouncing flirtatiously towards the broomstick too, looking just like a granny on an outing.

Charles and Nirupam picked themselves bad-temperedly up. They listened. The motorists on the road seemed to have got tired of sounding their horns. They looked. Beyond the jumping hoe and the nuzzling mop, there was a well-made campfire. Behind the fire, concealed by more brambles, was a small orange tent. Brian Wentworth was standing by the tent, glowering at them.

“I thought I’d got at least one of you arrested,” Brian said. “Get lost, can’t you! Or are you trying to get me caught?”

“No, we are not!” Charles said angrily. “We’re—Hey, listen!”

Somewhere uphill, in the thick part of the wood, a dog gave one whirring, excited bark, and stopped suddenly. Birds were clapping up out of the trees. And Charles’s straining ears could also hear a rhythmic swishing, as of heavy feet marching through undergrowth.

“That’s the police,” he said.

“You fools! You’ve brought them down on me!” Brian said in a screaming whisper. He grabbed the old broom from between the mop and the hoe and, in one practised jump, he was on the broom and gliding away across the brambles.

“He did the birds in Music,” Nirupam said, and snatched the hoe. Charles seized the mop and both of them set off after Brian, wavering and hopping across the brambles and in among low trees. Charles kept his head down, because branches were raking at his hair, and thought that Nirupam must be right. Those birds had appeared promptly in time to save Brian having to sing. And a parrot shouting “Cuckoo!” was exactly Brian’s kind of thing.

They were catching the broom up, not because they wanted to, but because the mop and the hoe were plainly determined to stay with the broom. They must have spent years together in the groundsman’s hut and, Charles supposed irritably, they had got touchingly fond of one another. Nothing he or Nirupam could do would make either implement go a different way. Shortly, Brian was gliding among the trees only a few yards ahead of them.

He turned and glared at them. “Leave me alone! You’ve spoilt my escape and made me lose my tent. Go away!”

“It was the mop and the hoe,” said Charles.

“The police are looking for you, not us,” Nirupam panted. “What did you expect? You went missing.”

“I didn’t expect two great idiots crashing about the forest and bringing the police after me,” Brian snarled. “Why couldn’t you stay in school?”

“If you didn’t want us, you shouldn’t have written all that rubbish about a witch putting a spell on you,” said Charles. “There’s an Inquisitor coming today because of you.”

“Well, you advised me to do it,” Brian said.

Charles opened his mouth and shut it again, quite unable to speak for indignation. They were coming to the edge of the woods now. He could see green fields through a mass of yellow hazel leaves, and he tried to turn the mop aside yet again. If they came out of the wood, they would be seen at once. But the mop obstinately followed the broom.

As they forced their way among whippy hazel boughs, Nirupam panted severely, “You ought to be glad of some friends with you, Brian.”

Brian laughed hysterically. “Friends! I wouldn’t be friends with either of you if you paid me! Everyone in 2Y laughs at you!”

As Brian said this, there was a sudden clamour of dog noises behind them in the wood. A voice shouted something about a tent. It was plain that the police had found Brian’s camp. Brian and the broomstick put on speed and surged out into the field beyond. Charles and Nirupam found themselves being dragged anyhow through the hazel boughs as the mop and the hoe tried to keep up.

Scratched and breathless, they were whirled out into the field on the side of the wood that faced the town. Brian was some way ahead, flying low and fast downhill, towards a clump of trees in the middle of the field. The mop and the hoe surged after him.

“I know Brian is nasty, but I had always thought it was his situation before this,” Nirupam remarked, in jerks, as the hoe kangaroo-hopped down the field.

Charles could not answer at once, because he was not sure that a person’s character could be separated from their situation in quite this way. While he was wondering how you said this kind of thing aboard a speeding, wallowing mop, when you were hanging on with one hand and holding your glasses with the other, Brian reached the clump of trees and disappeared among them. They heard his voice again, shrill and annoyed, echoing out of the trees.

“Is Brian trying to bring the police after us?” Nirupam panted.

Both of them looked over their shoulders, expecting men and dogs to come charging out through the edge of the wood. There was nothing. Next moment, they were swishing through low branches covered with carroty beech leaves. The mop and the hoe jolted to a stop. Charles put his nettled legs down and stood up in a windy rustling space surrounded by pewter-coloured tree trunks. He stared at Estelle Green, looking as if she had mislaid a horse. He stared at Nan Pilgrim in ragged pink silk, with the broomstick hopping and sidling affectionately round her.

Brian was standing angrily beside them. “Look at this!” he said to Charles and Nirupam. “The place is alive with you lot! Why can’t you let a person run away in peace?”

“Will one of you please shut Brian up,” Estelle said, with great dignity. “We are just about to say a spell that will rescue us all.”

“These trees are called the Portway Oaks,” Nan explained, and bit the inside of her cheek in order not to laugh. Nirupam riding a hoe was one of the funniest things she had ever seen. And Charles Morgan’s mop looked as if he had slain an old age pensioner. But she knew she and Estelle looked equally silly, and the boys had not laughed at them.

Brian was still talking angrily. Nirupam let the hoe loose to jump delightedly around the broom and clapped one long brown hand firmly over Brian’s mouth. “Go ahead,” he said.

“And make it quick,” said Charles.

Nan and Estelle bent over their fluttering piece of paper again. The old lady had written just one strange word three times at the top of the paper. Under that, as she had told them, she had written, in shaky capitals, how to say this word: KREST-OH-MAN-SEE. After that she had put, Go to Portway Oaks and say word three times. The rest of the paper was full of a very wobbly map.

Estelle and Nan pronounced the word together, three times. “Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci.”

“Is that all?” asked Nirupam. He took his hand from Brian’s face.

“Somebody swindled you!” Brian said. “That’s no spell!”

It seemed as if a great gust of wind hit the clump of trees. The branches all round them lashed, and creaked with the strain, so that the air was full of the rushing of leaves. The dead orange leaves from the ground leapt in the air and swirled round them all, round and round, as if the inside of the clump was the centre of a whirlwind. This was followed by a sudden stillness. Leaves stayed where they were, in the air, surrounding everyone. No one could see anything but leaves, and there was not a sound to be heard from anywhere. Then, very slowly, sound began again. There was a gentle rustling as the suspended leaves dropped back to the ground. Where they had been, there was a man standing.

He seemed utterly bewildered. His first act was to put his hands up and smooth his hair, which was a thing that hardly needed doing, since the wind had not disturbed even the merest wisp of it. It was smooth and black and shiny as new tar. Having smoothed his hair, this man rearranged his starched white shirt cuffs and straightened his already straight pale grey cravat. After that, he carefully pulled down his dove-mauve waistcoat and, equally carefully, brushed some imaginary dust off his beautiful dove-grey suit. All the while he was doing this, he was looking from one to the other of the five of them in increasing perplexity. His eyebrows rose higher with everything he saw.

They were all thoroughly embarrassed. Nirupam tried to hide behind Charles as the man looked at his little blue shorts. Charles tried to slither behind Brian. Brian tried to knock the mud off the knees of his jeans without looking as if he was. The man’s eyes turned to Nan. They were bright black eyes, which did not seem quite as bewildered as the rest of the man’s face, and they made Nan feel that she would rather have had no clothes on at all than a ragged pink balldress. The man looked on towards Estelle, as if Nan were too painful a sight. Nan looked at Estelle too. Estelle, as she set her hard hat straight, was gazing adoringly up into the man’s handsome face.

That was all we needed! Nan thought. Evidently this was the kind of man that Estelle fell instantly in love with. So, not only had they somehow summoned up an over-elegant stranger, but they were no nearer being safe and, to crown it all, there would probably be no sense to be had from Estelle from now on.

“Bless my soul!” murmured the man. He was now staring at the mop, the hoe and the broom, which were jigging about in a little group like an old folks’ reunion. “I think you’d definitely better go,” he said to them. All three implements vanished, with a faint whistling sound. The man turned to Nan. “What are we all doing here?” he said, a little plaintively. “And where are we?”

A dog barked excitedly up the hill. Everyone except the stranger jumped.

“I think we must go now, sir,” Nirupam said politely. “That was a police dog. They were looking for Brian, but I think they’re looking for the rest of us now.”

“What do you expect them to do if they find you?” the man asked.

“Burn us,” said Charles, and his thumb ran back and forth over the fat blister on his finger.

“We’re all witches, you see, except Estelle,” Nan explained.

“So if you don’t mind us leaving you—” said Nirupam.

“How very barbarous,” said the man. “I think it would be much better if the police and their dogs simply didn’t see this clump of trees where we all are, don’t you?” He looked vaguely round to see what they thought of this idea. Everyone looked dubious, and Brian downright scornful. “I assure you,” the man said to Brian, “that if you go into the field outside and look, you will not see these trees any more than the police will. If the word of an enchanter is not enough for you, go out and see for yourself.”

“What enchanter?” Brian said rudely. But of course no one dared leave the trees. They all waited, with their backs prickling, while the voices of policemen came slowly nearer. Finally, they seemed to be just outside the trees.

“Nothing,” they heard a policeman saying. “Everyone go back and concentrate on the woods. Hills and MacIver, you two go down and see what those motorists by the hedge are waving about. The rest of you get the dogs back to that tent and start again from there.”

After that, the voices all went away. Everyone relaxed a little, and Nan even began to hope that the stranger might be some help. But then he went all plaintive again. “Would one of you tell me where we are now?” he said.

“Just outside Larwood Forest,” Nan said. “Hertfordshire.”

“In England, the British Isles, the world, the solar system, the Milky Way, the Universe,” Brian said scornfully.

“Ah yes,” said the man. “But which one?”

Brian stared. “I mean,” the man said patiently, “do you happen to know which world, galaxy, universe, etcetera? There happen to be infinite numbers of them, and unless I know which this one is, I shall not find it very easy to help you.”

This gave Charles a very strange feeling. He thought of outer space and bug-eyed monsters, and his stomach turned over. His eyes ran over the man’s elegant jacket, fascinated, trying to make out if there was room under it for an extra pair of arms. There was not. The man was obviously a human being. “You’re not really from another world, are you?” he said.

“I am precisely that,” said the man. “Another world full of people just like you, running side by side with this one. There are myriads of them. So which one is this one?”

As far as most of them knew, the world was just the world. Everyone looked blank, except Estelle. Estelle said shyly, “There is one other world. It’s the one the witches’ rescue people send witches into to be safe.”

“Ah!” The man turned to Estelle, and Estelle blushed violently. “Tell me about this safe world.”

Estelle shook her head. “I don’t know any more,” she whispered, overwhelmed.

“Then let’s get at it another way,” the man suggested. “You tell me all the events that led up to you summoning me here—”

“Is Chrestomanci your name then?” Estelle interrupted in an adoring whisper.

“I’m usually called that. Yes,” said the man. “Was it you who summoned me then?”

Estelle nodded. “Some spell!” Brian said jeeringly.

Brian was plainly determined not to help in any way. He stayed scornfully silent while the rest of them explained the events which had led up to their being here.

Nobody told Chrestomanci quite everything. Brian’s contemptuous look made it all feel like a pack of lies anyway. Nan did not mention her meeting with Mr Wentworth on his hearthrug. She felt rather noble not saying anything about that, considering the way Brian was behaving. She did not mention the way she had described the food, either, though Charles did.

On the other hand, Charles did not feel the need to mention the Simon Says spell. Nirupam told Chrestomanci about that, but he somehow forgot to say that Dan Smith had eaten Charles’s shoes. And when the rest of them had finished, Chrestomanci looked at Brian.

“Your narrative now, please,” he said politely.

It was a very powerful politeness. Everyone had thought that Brian was not going to tell anything at all, but, grudgingly, he did. First he admitted to causing the birds in Music. Then he claimed that Charles had advised him in the night to run away from school and confuse his trail by blaming the witch. And, while Charles was still stuttering with anger over that, Brian coolly explained that he had discovered Charles was a witch the next morning anyway and got Charles to take him to Matron so that Matron could see the effects of the Evil Eye at first hand. Finally, more grudgingly still, he confessed that he had written the anonymous note to Mr Crossley and started everything. Then, as an afterthought, he turned on Nan.

“And you kept stealing my broomstick, didn’t you?”

“It’s not yours. It belongs to the school,” said Nan.

At the same time, Charles was saying angrily to Chrestomanci, “It’s not true I advised him to blame the witch!”

Chrestomanci was staring vaguely up into the beech trees and did not seem to hear. “The situation is quite impossible,” he remarked. “Let us all go and see the old lady who used to run the witches’ rescue service.”

This struck them all as an excellent idea. It was clear the old lady could rescue them if she wanted. They agreed vigorously. Nirupam said, “But the police—“

“Invisibly, of course,” said Chrestomanci. He was still obviously thinking of something else. He turned to walk away between the tree trunks, and, as he did so, everyone flicked out of sight. All that could be seen was the rustling circle of autumn beeches. “Come along,” said Chrestomanci’s voice.

There followed a minute or so of almost indescribable confusion. It started with Nan assuming she had no body and walking into a tree. She was just as solid as ever, and knocked herself quite silly for a second. “Oh sorry!” she said to the tree.

The rest of them somehow forced their way under the low branches and found themselves out in the field. There, the first thing everybody saw was two cars parked almost in the hedge below, and a number of people from the cars leaning over the hedge to talk to two policemen. From the way all the people kept pointing up at the wood, it was clear they were describing how they saw two witches ride across the road on a mop and a hoe.

That panicked everyone. They all set off the other way, towards the town, in a hurry. But as soon as they did, they saw that there was no one ahead of them and waited for the rest to catch up. Then they heard someone speak some way ahead, and ran to catch up. But of course they could not tell where the people they were running after were. Shortly, nobody knew where anybody was or what to do about it.

“Perhaps,” Chrestomanci’s voice said out of the air, “you could all bring yourselves to hold hands? I have no idea where the Old Gate House is, you see.”

Thankfully, everyone grabbed for everyone else. Nan found herself holding Brian’s hand and Charles Morgan’s. She had never thought the time would come when she would be glad to do that. Estelle had managed to be the one holding Chrestomanci’s hand. That became clear when the line of them began to move briskly down to the path that led into town and Estelle’s voice could be heard in front, piping up in answer to Chrestomanci’s questions.

As soon as there was no chance of anyone else hearing them, Chrestomanci began asking a great many questions. He asked who was prime minister, and which were the most important countries, and what was the EEC, and how many world wars there had been. Then he asked about things from History. Before long, everyone was giving him answers, and feeling a little superior, because it was really remarkable the number of things Chrestomanci seemed not to know.

He had heard of Hitler, though he asked Brian to refresh his memory about him, but he had only the haziest notion about Gandhi or Einstein, and he had never heard of Walt Disney or reggae. Nor had he heard of Dulcinea Wilkes. Nan explained about Dulcinea, and found herself saying, with great pride, that she was descended from Dulcinea.

Why am I saying that? she thought, in sudden alarm. I don’t really know it’s safe to tell him! And yet, as soon as she thought that, Nan began to see why she had said it. It was the way Chrestomanci was asking those questions. It reminded Nan of the time she had kept coming out in a rash, and her aunt had taken her to a very important specialist. The specialist had worn a very good suit, though it was nothing like as beautiful as Chrestomanci’s, and he had asked questions in just the same way, trying to get at Nan’s symptoms.

Remembering this specialist made Nan feel a lot more hopeful. If you thought of Chrestomanci, in spite of his vagueness and his elegance, as a sort of specialist trying to solve their problems, then you could believe that he might just be able to help them. He was certainly a strong and expert witch. Perhaps he could make the old lady send them somewhere really safe.

When the path led them into the busy streets of the town, Chrestomanci stopped asking questions, but it was clear to Nan that he went on finding symptoms. He made everyone stop while he examined a lorry parked by the supermarket. It was just an ordinary lorry with Leyland on the front of it and Heinz Meanz Beanz on the side, but Chrestomanci murmured “Good Lord!” as if he was really astonished, before dragging them over to look through the windows of the supermarket.

Then he towed them up and down in front of some cars. This part was really frightening. The car windows, the hubcaps, and the glass of the supermarket, all showed faint, misty reflections of the six of them. They were quite sure some of the people who were shopping would notice any second.

At last, Chrestomanci let Estelle drag him up the street as far as the tatty draper’s where nobody ever seemed to buy anything. “How long have you had decimal currency?” he asked. While they were telling him, the misty reflection in the draper’s window showed his tall shape bending to look at some packets of tights and a dingy blue nylon nightdress. “What are these stockings made of?”

“Nylon of course!” snapped Charles. He was wondering whether to let go of Nan’s hand and run away.

Estelle, feeling much the same, heaved on Chrestomanci’s hand and led them all in a rush to the doorway of the Old Gate House. She dragged them up the steps and hurriedly rang the bell before Chrestomanci could ask any more questions.

“There was no need to disturb her,” Chrestomanci remarked. As he said it, the pointed porch dissolved away around them. Instead, they were in an old-fashioned drawing room, full of little tables with bobbly cloths on and ornaments on the cloth. The old lady was reaching for her stick and trying to lever herself out of her chair, muttering something about “An endless stream of callers today!”

Chrestomanci flicked into sight, tall and elegant and somehow very much in place in that old-fashioned room. Estelle, Nan, Charles, Nirupam and Brian also flicked into sight, and they looked as much out of place as people could be. The old lady sank back in her chair and stared.

“Forgive the intrusion, madam,” Chrestomanci said.

The old lady beamed up at him. “What a splendid surprise!” she said. “No one’s appeared like this for years! Forgive me if I don’t get up. My knees are very arthritic these days. Would you care for some tea?”

“We won’t trouble you, madam,” said Chrestomanci. “We came because I understand you are a keeper of some kind of way through.”

“Yes, I am,” said the old lady. She looked dubious. “If you all have to use it, I suppose you have to, but it will take us hours. It’s down in the cellar, you see, hidden from the Inquisitors under seven tons of coal.”

“I assure you, we haven’t come to ask you to heave coal, madam,” said Chrestomanci. No, Charles thought, looking at Chrestomanci’s white shirt cuffs. It will be us that does that. “What I really need to know,” Chrestomanci went on, “is just which world it is on the other side of the way through.”

“I haven’t seen it,” the old lady said regretfully. “But I’ve always understood that it’s a world exactly like ours, only with no witchcraft.”

“Thank you. I wonder—” said Chrestomanci. He seemed to have gone very vague again. “What do you know of Dulcinea Wilkes? Was there much witchcraft here before her day?”

“The Archwitch? Good gracious yes!” said the old lady. “There were witches all over the place long before Dulcinea. I think it was Oliver Cromwell who made the first laws against witches, but it may be before that. Somebody did once tell me that Elizabeth I was probably a witch. Because of the storm which wrecked the Spanish Armada, you know.”

Nan watched Chrestomanci nodding as he listened to this and realised that he was collecting symptoms again. She sighed, and wondered whether to offer to start shovelling the coal.

Chrestomanci sighed a little too. “Pity,” he said. “I was hoping the Archwitch was the key to the problems here. Perhaps Oliver Cromwell—?”

“I’m afraid I’m not a historian,” the old lady said firmly. “And you won’t find many people who know much more. Witch history is banned. All those kind of books were burnt long ago.”

Charles, who was as impatient as Nan, butted in here. “Mr Wentworth knows a lot of witch history, but—”

“Yes!” Nan interrupted eagerly. “If you really want to know, you could summon Mr Wentworth here. He’s a witch too, so it wouldn’t matter.” Here she realised that Brian was giving her a glare almost up to Charles Morgan’s standards, and that Charles himself was staring at her wildly. “Yes he is,” she said. “You know he is, Brian. I met him out flying on his hearthrug last night, and he thought I was you on your broomstick.”

That explained everything, Charles thought. The night Mr Wentworth had vanished, he had gone out flying. The window had been wide open and, now he understood, Charles could remember distinctly the bald place in front of the gas-fire where the ragged hearthrug had been. And it explained that time in detention, too, when he had thought his glasses were broken. They were broken, and Mr Wentworth had restored them by witchcraft.

“Can’t you keep your big mouth shut?” Brian said furiously to Nan. He pointed to Chrestomanci. “How do we know he’s safe? For all we know, he could be the Devil that you summoned up!”

“Oh, you flatter me, Brian,” Chrestomanci said.

The old lady looked shocked. “What an unpleasant thing to say,” she said to Brian. “Hasn’t anyone told you that the Devil, however he appears, is never a perfect gentleman? Quite unlike this Mr – er – Mr—?” She looked at Chrestomanci with her eyebrows politely raised.

“Chrestomanci, madam,” he said. “Which reminds me. I wish you would tell me how you came to give Estelle and Nan my name.”

The old lady laughed. “Was that what the spell was? I had no idea. It has been handed down in my family from my great-grandmother’s time, with strict instructions that it’s only to be used in an emergency. And those two poor girls were in such trouble – but I refuse to believe you can be that old, my dear sir.”

Chrestomanci smiled. “No. Brian will be sorry to hear that the spell must have been meant to call one of my predecessors. Now. Shall we go? We must go to your school and consult Mr Wentworth, evidently.”

They stared at him, even the old lady. Then, as it dawned on them that Chrestomanci was not going to let them go into the coal-cellar to safety, everyone broke out into protests. Brian, Charles and Nan said, “Oh no! Please!” The old lady said, “Aren’t you taking rather a risk?” at the same moment as Nirupam said, “But I told you there’s an Inquisitor coming to school!” And Estelle added, “Couldn’t we just all stay here quietly while you go and see Mr Wentworth?”

Chrestomanci looked from Estelle, to Nirupam, to Nan, and then at Brian and Charles. He seemed astounded, and not vague at all. The room seemed to go very quiet and sinister and unloving. “What’s all this?” he said. It was so gentle that they all shivered. “I did understand you, did I? The five of you, between you, turn your school upside down. You cause what I am sure is a great deal of trouble to a great many teachers and policemen. You summon me a long way from some extremely important business, in a manner which makes it very difficult for me to get back. And now you all propose just to walk out and leave the mess you’ve made. Is that what you mean?”

“I didn’t summon you,” said Brian.

“It wasn’t our fault,” Charles said. “I didn’t ask to be a witch.”

Chrestomanci looked at him with faint, chilly surprise. “Didn’t you?” The way he said it made Charles actually wonder, for a moment, if he had somehow chosen to be born a witch. “And so,” said Chrestomanci, “you think your troubles give you a right to get this lady into much worse trouble with the Inquisitors? Is that what you all say?”

Nobody said anything.

“I think we shall be going now,” Chrestomanci said, “if you would all hold one another’s hands again, please.” Wordlessly, they all held out hands and took hold. Chrestomanci took hold of Brian’s, but, before he took hold of Estelle’s in the other hand, he took the old lady’s veined and knobby hand and kissed it. The old lady was delighted. She winked excitedly at Nan over Chrestomanci’s smooth head. Nan did not even feel up to smiling back. “Lead the way, Estelle,” Chrestomanci said, straightening up and taking Estelle’s hand. They found themselves invisible again. And, the same instant, they were outside in the street.

Estelle set off toward Larwood House. If it had been anybody else but Estelle in the lead, Charles thought, they might have thought of taking the line of them somewhere else – anywhere else – because Chrestomanci would not know. But Estelle led them straight to school, and everyone else shuffled after, too crushed and nervous to do anything else. Brian was the only one who protested. Whenever there were no people about, his voice could be heard saying that it wasn’t fair. “What did you girls have to fetch him for?” he kept saying.

By the time they were through the school gates and shuffling up the drive, Brian gave up protesting. Estelle led them to the main door, the grand one, which was only used for parents or visitors like Lord Mulke. There were two police cars parked on the gravel beside it, but they were empty and there was no one about.

Here, in a sharp scuffling of gravel, Brian made a determined effort to run away. To judge by the sounds, and by the way Estelle came feeling her way along Nirupam and Nan, Chrestomanci was after Brian like a shot. Three thumps, and a scatter of small stones, and Chrestomanci suddenly reappeared, beside the nearest police car. He seemed to be on his own, but his right arm was stiffly bent and jerking a little, as the invisible Brian writhed on the end of it.

“I do advise you all to keep quite close to me,” he said, as if nothing had happened. “You will only be invisible within ten yards of me.”

“I can make myself invisible,” Brian’s voice said, from beside Chrestomanci’s dove-grey elbow. “I’m a witch too.”

“Quite probably,” Chrestomanci agreed. “But I am not a witch, as it happens. I am an enchanter. And, among other differences, an enchanter is ten times as strong as a witch. Who is at the end of the line now? Charles. Charles, will you be good enough to walk up the steps to the door and ring the bell?”

Charles trudged forward, towing the others behind him, and rang the bell. There seemed nothing else to do.

The door was opened almost at once by the school secretary. Chrestomanci stood there, apparently alone, with his dove-grey suit quite unruffled and not a hair out of
place, smiling pleasantly at the secretary. It was hard to believe that he had Brian gripped in one hand and Estelle clinging to the other, and three more people crowded uncomfortably around him. He bowed slightly.

“Name of Chant,” he said. “I believe you were expecting me. I’m the Inquisitor.”

The school secretary dissolved into dither. She gushed. It was just as well. Otherwise she might have heard five gasps out of the air round Chrestomanci.

“Oh do come in, Inquisitor,” the secretary gushed. “Miss Cadwallader is expecting you. And I’m awfully sorry – we seem to have got your name wrong. We were told to expect a Mr Littleton.”

“Quite right,” Chrestomanci said blandly. “Littleton is the Regional Inquisitor. But Head Office decided the matter was too grave to be merely Regional. I’m the Divisional Inquisitor.”

“Oh!” said the secretary, and seemed quite overawed. She ushered Chrestomanci in and through the tiled hall. Chrestomanci stepped after her, slow and stately, in a way that allowed plenty of time for everyone to squeeze round him into the hall and tiptoe beside him across the tiles. The secretary threw wide the door to Miss Cadwallader’s study. “Mr Chant, Miss Cadwallader. The Divisional Inquisitor.” Chrestomanci went into the study even more slowly, lugging Brian and pulling Estelle. Nan and Nirupam squeezed after, and Charles just got in too by jamming himself against the doorpost as the secretary backed reverently out. He did not want to be left outside the circle of invisibility.

Miss Cadwallader sprang forward in a quite unusual flutter and shook hands with Chrestomanci. The rest of them heard Brian thump away sideways as Chrestomanci let go of him. “Oh good morning, Inquisitor!”

“Morning, morning,” said Chrestomanci. He seemed to have gone vague again. He looked absently round the room while he was shaking hands. “Nice place you have here, Miss – er – Cudwollander.”

This was true. Perhaps on the grounds that she had to persuade government officials and parents that Larwood House was a really good school, Miss Cadwallader had surrounded herself in luxury. Her carpet was like deep crimson grass. Her chairs were purple clouds of softness. She had marble statues on her mantelpiece and large gilt frames round her hundred or so pictures. She had a cocktail cabinet with a little refrigerator built into it and a coffee-maker on top. Her hi-fi and tape-deck took up most of one wall.

Charles looked yearningly at her vast television with a crinoline doll on top. It seemed years since he had watched any telly. Nan gazed at the wall of bright new books. Most of them seemed to be mystery stories. She would have loved to have a closer look at them, but she did not dare let go of Nirupam or Charles in case she never found them again.

“I’m so glad you approve, Inquisitor,” fluttered Miss Cadwallader. “My room is entirely at your disposal, if you wish to use it to interview children in. I take it that you will need to interview some of the children in 2Y?”

“All the children in 2Y,” Chrestomanci said gravely, “and probably all their teachers too.” Miss Cadwallader looked thoroughly dismayed by this. “I shall expect to interview everyone in the school before I’m through,” Chrestomanci went on. “I shall stay here for as long as it takes – weeks if necessary – to get to the bottom of this matter.”

By this time, Miss Cadwallader was distinctly pale. She clasped her hands nervously. “Are you sure it’s that serious, Inquisitor? It is only a boy in the second year who disappeared in the night. His father happens to be one of our masters here, which is really why we’re so concerned. I know you were told that the boy left a large number of notes accusing a witch of abducting him, but the police have telephoned since to say they have found a camp in the forest with the boy’s scent on it. Don’t you think the whole thing could be cleared up quite easily and quickly?”

Chrestomanci gravely shook his head. “I have been kept abreast of the facts too, Miss – er – Kidwelly. The boy has still not turned up, has he? One can’t be too careful in a case like this. I think someone in 2Y knows more about this than you think.”

Up to now, everyone listening had been feeling more and more relieved. If Miss Cadwallader had known there were four other people missing besides Brian, she would surely have said so. But their feelings changed at what Miss Cadwallader said next.

“You must interview a girl called Theresa Mullett straight away, Inquisitor, and I think you will find that the matter will be cleared up at once. Theresa is one of our good girls. She came to me in break and told me that the witch is almost certainly a child called Dulcinea Pilgrim. Dulcinea is not one of our good girls, Inquisitor, I’m sorry to say. Some of her journal entries have been very free-spoken and disaffected. She questions everything and makes jokes about serious matters. If you like, I can send for Dulcinea’s journal and you can see for yourself.”

“I shall read all the journals in 2Y,” said Chrestomanci, “in good time. But is this all you have to go on, Miss – er – Collander? I can’t find a girl a witch simply on hearsay and a few jokes. It’s not professional. Have you no other suspects? Teachers, for instance—“

“Teachers here are all above suspicion, Inquisitor.” Miss Cadwallader said this very firmly, although her voice was a little shrill. “But 2Y as a class are not. It is a sad fact, Inquisitor, in a school like this, that a number of children come to us as witch-orphans, having had one or both parents burnt. There are an unusual number of these in 2Y. I would pick out, for your immediate attention, Nirupam Singh, who had a brother burnt, Estelle Green, whose mother is in prison for helping witches escape, and a boy called Charles Morgan, who is almost as undesirable as the Pilgrim girl.”

“Dear me! What a poisonous state of affairs!” said Chrestomanci. “I see I must get down to work at once.”

“I shall leave you this room of mine to work in then, Inquisitor,” Miss Cadwallader said graciously. She seemed to have recovered from her flutter.

“Oh, I can’t possibly trouble you,” Chrestomanci said, quite as graciously. “Doesn’t your Deputy Head have a study I could use?”

Intense relief shone through Miss Cadwallader’s stately manner. “Yes, indeed he does, Inquisitor. What an excellent idea! I shall take you to Mr Wentworth myself, at once.”

Miss Cadwallader swept out of her room, almost too relieved to be stately. Chrestomanci located Brian as easily as if he could see him, took his arm and swept off after her.

The other four were forced to tiptoe furiously to keep up. None of them wanted to see Mr Wentworth. In fact, after what Miss Cadwallader had just said, the one thing they all longed to do was to sneak off and run away again. But the instant they got more than ten yards away from Chrestomanci, there they would be, in riding-clothes, little blue shorts and pink balldress, for Miss Cadwallader or anyone else they passed to see. That was enough to keep them all tiptoeing hard, along the corridors and up the stairs.

Miss Cadwallader rapped on the glass of Mr Wentworth’s study. “Come!” said Mr Wentworth’s voice. Miss Cadwallader threw the door open and made ushering motions to Chrestomanci. Chrestomanci nodded vaguely and once more made a slow and imposing entry, with a slight dragging noise as he pulled the resisting Brian through the doorway. That gave the other four plenty of time to slip inside past Miss Cadwallader.

“I’ll leave you with Mr Wentworth for now, Inquisitor,” Miss Cadwallader said, in the doorway. Mr Wentworth, at that, looked up from his timetables. When he saw Chrestomanci, his face went pale, and he stood up slowly, looking thoroughly harrowed. “Mr Wentworth,” said Miss Cadwallader, “this is Mr Chant, who is the Divisional Inquisitor. Come to my study for sherry before lunch, both of you, please.” Then obviously feeling she had done enough, Miss Cadwallader shut the door and went away.

“Good morning,” Chrestomanci said politely.

“G-good morning,” said Mr Wentworth. His hands were trembling and rustling the timetables. He swallowed, loudly. “I – I didn’t realise there were Divisional Inquisitors. New post, is it?”

“Oh, do you not have Divisional ones?” Chrestomanci said. “What a shame. I thought it sounded so imposing.”

He nodded. Everybody was suddenly visible again. Nan, Charles and Nirupam all tried to hide behind each other. Brian was revealed tugging crossly to get his arm loose from Chrestomanci, and Estelle was hanging on to Chrestomanci’s other hand again. She let go hurriedly and took her hard hat off. But it was quite certain that Mr Wentworth did not notice any of these things. He backed against the window, staring from Chrestomanci to Brian, and he was more than harrowed now: he was terrified.

“What’s going on?” he said. “Brian, what have you lent yourself to?”

“Nothing,” Brian said irritably. “He isn’t an Inquisitor. He’s an enchanter or something. It’s not my fault he’s here.”

“What does he want?” Mr Wentworth said wildly. “I haven’t anything I can give him!”

“My dear sir,” said Chrestomanci, “please try and be calm. I only want your help.”

Mr Wentworth pressed back against the window. “I don’t know what you mean!”

“Yes you do,” Chrestomanci said pleasantly. “But let me explain. I am Chrestomanci. This is the title that goes with my post, and my job is controlling witchcraft. My world is somewhat more happily placed than yours, I believe, because witchcraft is not illegal there. In fact, this very morning I was chairing a meeting of the Walpurgis Committee, in the middle of making final arrangements for the Hallowe’en celebrations, when I was rather suddenly summoned away by these pupils of yours—”

“Is that why you’re wearing those beautiful clothes?” Estelle asked admiringly.

Everyone winced a little, except for Chrestomanci, who seemed to think it was a perfectly reasonable question. “Well, no, to be quite honest,” he said. “I like to be well-dressed, because I am always liable to be called elsewhere, the way you called me. But I have to confess that I have several times been fetched away in my dressing gown, in spite of all my care.” He looked at Mr Wentworth again, obviously expecting him to have calmed down by now. “There are real problems with this particular call,” he said. “Your world is all wrong, in a number of ways. That’s why I would appreciate your help, sir.”

Unfortunately, Mr Wentworth was by no means calm. “How dare you talk to me like this!” he said. “It’s pure blackmail! You’ll get no help from me!”

“Now that is unreasonable, sir,” Chrestomanci said. “These children are in acute trouble. You are in the same trouble yourself. Your whole world is in even greater trouble. Please, try if you can to forget that you have been scared for years, both for yourself and Brian, and listen to the questions I am going to ask you.”

But Mr Wentworth seemed unable to be reasonable. Nan looked at him sorrowfully. She had always thought he was such a firm person up till now. She felt quite disillusioned. So did Charles. He remembered Mr Wentworth’s hand on his shoulder, pushing him back into detention. He had thought that hand had been shaking with anger, but he realised now that it had been terror.

“It’s a trick!” Mr Wentworth said. “You’re trying to get a confession out of me. You’re using Brian. You are an Inquisitor!”

Just as he said that, there was a little tap at the door, and Miss Hodge came brightly in. She had just given 2Y an English lesson – the last one until next Tuesday, thank goodness! Naturally, she had noticed that four other people besides Brian were now missing. At first, she had assumed that they were all being questioned by the Inquisitor. They were the obvious ones. But then someone in the staff room had remarked that the Inquisitor still hadn’t come. Miss Hodge saw at once that this was the excuse she needed to go to Mr Wentworth and start sympathising with him about Brian. She came in as soon as she had knocked, to make quite sure that Mr Wentworth did not get away again.

The room for an instant seemed quite full of people, and poor Mr Wentworth was looking so upset and shouting at what seemed to be the Inquisitor after all. The Inquisitor gave Miss Hodge a vague look and then waved his hand, just the smallest bit. After that, there did only seem to be the Inquisitor and Mr Wentworth in the room besides Miss Hodge. But Miss Hodge knew what she had seen. She thought about it while she said what she had come to say.

“Oh, Mr Wentworth, I’m afraid there are four more people missing from 2Y now.” And the four people had all been here in the room, Miss Hodge knew. Wearing such peculiar things too. And Brian had been there as well. That settled it. Mr Wentworth might look upset, but he was not sorrowing about Brian. That meant that she either had to think of some other way to get his attention, or use the advantage she knew she had. The man who was supposed to be an Inquisitor was politely putting forward a chair for her to sit in. A smooth villain.

Miss Hodge ignored the chair. “I think I’m interrupting a witches’ Sabbath,” she said brightly.

The man with the chair raised his eyebrows as if he thought she was mad. A very smooth villain. Mr Wentworth said, in a strangled sort of way, “This is the Divisional Inquisitor, Miss Hodge.”

Miss Hodge laughed, triumphantly. “Mr Wentworth! You and I both know that there’s no such thing as a Divisional Inquisitor! Is this man annoying you? If so, I shall go straight to Miss Cadwallader. I think she has a right to know that your study is full of witches.”

Chrestomanci sighed and wandered away to Mr Wentworth’s desk, where he idly picked up one of the timetables. Mr Wentworth’s eyes followed him as if Chrestomanci was annoying him very much, but he said, in a resigned way, “There’s absolutely no point in going to Miss Cadwallader, Miss Hodge. Miss Cadwallader has known I’m a witch for years. She takes most of my salary in return for not telling anyone.”

“I didn’t know you—!” Miss Hodge began. She had not realised Mr Wentworth was a witch too. That made quite a difference. She smiled more triumphantly than before. “In that case, let me offer you an alliance against Miss Cadwallader, Mr Wentworth. You marry me, and we’ll both fight her.”

“Marry you?” Mr Wentworth stared at Miss Hodge in obvious horror. “Oh no. You can’t. I can’t—”

Brian’s voice said out of the air, “I’m not having her as a mother!”

Chrestomanci looked up from the timetable. He shrugged. Brian appeared on the other side of the room, looking as horrified as Mr Wentworth. Miss Hodge smiled again. “So I was right!” she said.

“Miss Hodge,” Mr Wentworth said, shakily trying to sound calm and reasonable, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I can’t marry anyone. My wife is still alive. She was arrested as a witch, but she managed to get away through someone’s back garden and get to the witches’ rescue service. So you see—”

“Well, you’d better pretend she was burnt,” Miss Hodge said. She was very angry. She felt cheated. She marched up to Mr Wentworth’s desk and took hold of the receiver of Mr Wentworth’s telephone. “You agree to marry me, or I ring the police about you. Now.”

“No, please—!” said Mr Wentworth.

“I mean it,” said Miss Hodge. She tried to pick the receiver up off the telephone. It seemed to be stuck. Miss Hodge jiggled it angrily. It gave out a lot of tinkling, but it would not seem to move. Miss Hodge looked round to find Chrestomanci looking at her in an interested way. “You stop that!” she said to him.

“When you tell me one thing,” Chrestomanci said. “You don’t seem at all alarmed to find yourself in a roomful of witches. Why not?”

“Of course I’m not,” Miss Hodge retorted. “I pity witches. Now will you please allow me to ring the police about Mr Wentworth. He’s been deceiving everyone for years!”

“But my dear young lady,” said Chrestomanci, “so have you. The only sort of person who would behave as you do must be a witch herself.”

Miss Hodge stared at him haughtily. “I have never used a spell in my life,” she said.

“A slight exaggeration,” Chrestomanci said. “You used one small spell, to make sure no one knew you were a witch.”

Why didn’t I think of that? Charles wondered, watching the look of fear and dismay grow in Miss Hodge’s face. He was very shaken. He could not get used to the idea that his second witch had probably been Brian’s mother.

Miss Hodge once more jiggled the telephone. It was still stuck. “Very well,” she said. “I’m not afraid of you. You can disable all the phones in the school if you like, but you won’t stop me going and telling everyone I meet, about you and Mr Wentworth and Brian, and the other four, unless Mr Wentworth agrees to marry me this instant. I think I shall start with Harold Crossley.” She made as if to turn away and leave the room. It was clear she meant it.

Chrestomanci sighed and put one finger down on the timetable he was holding, very carefully and precisely, in the middle of one of the rectangles marked Miss Hodge 2Y. And Miss Hodge was not there any more. The telephone gave out a small ting, and she was gone. At the same moment, Nan, Estelle, Nirupam and Charles all found themselves visible again. It was clear to them that Miss Hodge was not just invisible in their place. The room felt empty of her, and a small gust of wind ruffling the papers on Mr Wentworth’s desk seemed to prove she was gone.

“Fancy her being a witch!” said Nirupam. “Where is she?”

Chrestomanci examined the timetable. “Er – next Tuesday, I believe. That should give us time to sort out this wretched situation. Unless we are very unlucky, of course.” He looked at Mr Wentworth. “Perhaps you would be ready to help us do that now, sir?”

But Mr Wentworth sank into the chair behind his desk and covered his face with his hands.

“You never told me Mum got away,” Brian said to him accusingly. “And you never said a word about Miss Cadwallader.”

“You never told me you intended to go and camp in the forest,” Mr Wentworth said wearily. “Oh Lord! Where shall I get an extra teacher from? I’ve got to find someone to take Miss Hodge’s lessons this afternoon somehow.”

Chrestomanci sat in the chair he had put out for Miss Hodge. “It never ceases to amaze me,” he said, “the way people always manage to worry about the wrong things. My dear sir, do you realise that you, your son, and four of your pupils, are all likely to be burnt unless we do something? And here are you worrying about timetables.”

Mr Wentworth lifted his harrowed face and stared past Chrestomanci. “How did she do it?” he said. “How does she keep it up? How can Miss Hodge be a teacher and not use witchcraft at all? I use it all the time. How else can I have eyes in the back of my head?”

“One of the great mysteries of our time,” Chrestomanci agreed. “Now please listen to me. You are aware, I believe, that there is at least one other world besides this one. It seems to be your custom to send escaped witches there. I presume your wife is there. What you may not realise is that these are only two out of a multitude of worlds, all very different from one another. I come from one of the other ones myself.”

To everyone’s relief, Mr Wentworth listened to this. “Alternative worlds, you mean?” he said. “There’s been some speculation about that. If-worlds, counterfactuals, and so on. You mean they’re real?”

“As real as you are,” Chrestomanci said.

Nirupam was very interested in this. He doubled himself up on the floor beside Chrestomanci’s beautifully creased trousers and said, “They are made from the great events in History, I believe, sir, where it is possible for things to go two ways. It is easiest to understand with battles. Both sides cannot win a battle, so each war makes two possible worlds, with a different side winning. Like the Battle of Waterloo. In our world, Napoleon lost it, but another world at once split off from ours, in which Napoleon won the battle.”

“Exactly,” said Chrestomanci. “I find that world a rather trying one. Everyone speaks French there and winces at my accent. The only place they speak English there, oddly enough, is in India, where they are very British and eat treacle pudding after their curry.”

“I should like that,” Nirupam said.

“Everyone to his taste,” Chrestomanci said with a slight shudder. “But, as you will see, exactly who won the Battle of Waterloo made a great deal of difference between those two worlds. And that is the rule. A surprisingly small change always alters the new world almost out of recognition. Except in the case of this world of yours, where we all now are.”

He looked at Mr Wentworth. “This is what I need your help about, sir. There is something badly wrong with this world. The fact that witches are extremely common, and illegal, should have made as much difference here as it does in my own world, where witches are equally common, but quite legal. But it does not. Estelle, perhaps you can tell us about the world where the witches’ rescue service sends witches.”

Estelle beamed up at him adoringly from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. “The old lady said it was just like this one, only with no witchcraft,” she said.

“And that is just the trouble,” said Chrestomanci. “I know that world rather well, because I have a young ward who used to belong in it. And since I have been here, I have discovered that events in History here, cars, advertisements, goods in shops, money – everything I can check – are all exactly the same as those in my ward’s world. And this is quite wrong. No two worlds are ever this alike.”

Mr Wentworth was attending quite keenly now. He frowned. “What do you think has gone wrong?” And Nan thought, So he was finding out symptoms!

Chrestomanci looked round them all, vaguely and dubiously, before he said, “If you’ll forgive me saying, your world should not exist.” They all stared. “I mean it,” Chrestomanci said, apologetically. “I have often wondered why there is so little witchcraft in my ward’s world. I see now that it is all in this one. Something – I don’t know what – has caused your world to separate from the other one, taking all the witchcraft with it. But instead of breaking off cleanly, it has somehow remained partly joined to the first world, so that it almost is that world. I think there has been some kind of accident. You shouldn’t get a civilised world where witches are burnt. As I said, it ought not to exist. So, as I have been trying to explain to you all along, Mr Wentworth, I urgently need a short history of witchcraft, in order to discover what kind of accident happened here. Was Elizabeth I a witch?”

Mr Wentworth shook his head. “Nobody knows for sure. But witchcraft didn’t seem to be that much of a problem in her reign. Witches were mostly just old women in villages then. No – modern witchcraft really started soon after Elizabeth I died. There seems to have been a big increase in about 1606, when the first official bone-fires started. The first Witchcraft Edict was passed in 1612. Oliver Cromwell passed more. There had been thirty-four Witchcraft Acts passed by 1760, the year Dulcinea Wilkes—”

But Chrestomanci held up one hand to stop him there. “Thank you. I know about the Archwitch. You’ve told me what I need to know. The present state of witchcraft began quite suddenly soon after 1600. That means that the accident we’re looking for must have happened around then. Have you any idea what it might be?”

Mr Wentworth shook his head again, rather glumly. “I haven’t a notion. But – suppose you did know, what could you do about it?”

“One of two things,” said Chrestomanci. “Either we could break this world away completely from the other one, which I don’t consider a good idea, because then you would certainly all be burnt—” Everybody shuddered, and Charles’s thumb found itself running back and forth over the blister on his finger. “Or,” said Chrestomanci, “and this is a much better idea, we could put your world back into the other one, where it really belongs.”

“What would happen to us if you did?” asked Charles.

“Nothing much. You would simply melt quietly into the people you really are in that world,” said Chrestomanci.

Everyone considered this in silence for a moment. “Can that really be done?” Mr Wentworth asked hopefully.

“Well,” said Chrestomanci, “it can, as long as we can find what caused the split in the first place. It will take strong magic. But it is Hallowe’en and there ought to be a great deal of magic loose in this world particularly, and we can draw on that. Yes. I’m sure it can be done, though it may not be easy.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Mr Wentworth. The idea seemed to restore him to his usual self. He stood up, and his eyes roved grimly across the riding clothes, the sky-blue shorts and Brian’s jeans, and rested incredulously upon the tattered pink balldress. “If you lot think you can appear in class like that,” he said. He was back to being a schoolmaster again.

“Er, leave Brian, I think,” Chrestomanci said quickly.

“You will have plenty of time to reconsider in detention,” Mr Wentworth finished. Nan, Estelle, Charles and Nirupam all scrambled hurriedly to their feet. And as soon as they were standing up, they found they were wearing school uniform. They looked round for Brian, but he did not seem to be there.

“I’m invisible again!” Brian said disgustedly, out of the air.

Chrestomanci was smiling. “Not bad, sir,” he said to Mr Wentworth. Mr Wentworth looked pleased, and, as he shepherded the four of them to the door, he smiled back at Chrestomanci in quite a friendly way.

“Why is Brian allowed to stay invisible?” Estelle complained, as Mr Wentworth marched them back towards the classroom.

“Because he gives Chrestomanci an excuse to go on staying here as an Inquisitor,” Nirupam whispered. “He is supposed to be finding what the witch has done with Brian.”

“But don’t tell Brian,” Charles muttered, as they arrived outside the door of 2Y. “He’d spoil it. He’s like that.” The truth was, he was not so sure he would not spoil things himself if he got the chance. Nothing had been changed. He was still in as much trouble as ever.

Mr Wentworth opened the door and ushered the four of them into the classroom, into a blast of stares and whispers. “I’m afraid I had to kidnap these four,” Mr Wentworth said to Mr Crossley, who happened to be teaching the rest. “We’ve been arranging my study for the Inquisitor to use.”

Mr Crossley seemed to believe this without question. 2Y, to judge from their faces, felt it was an awful let-down. They had expected all four of them to have been arrested. But they made the best of it.

“Mr Towers is looking for you two,” Simon whispered righteously to Nirupam and Charles. And Theresa said to Estelle, “Miss Phillips wants you.” Nan was lucky. Miss Phillips never remembered Nan if she could help it.

They had arrived back so late that there was only a short piece of lesson left before lunch time. When the bell rang for lunch, Charles and Nirupam kept to the thickest crowds. Neither of them wanted Mr Towers to see them. But Charles had his usual bad luck. Mr Towers was on duty at the door of the dining hall. Charles was very relieved when he slipped past without Mr Towers showing any interest in him at all.

Nirupam nudged Charles as they sat down after grace. Chrestomanci was sitting beside Miss Cadwallader at high table, looking bland and vague. Everyone craned to look at him. Word went round that this was the Divisional Inquisitor.

“I don’t fancy getting on the wrong side of him,” Dan Smith observed. “You can see that sleepy look’s just there to fool you.”

“He looks feeble,” said Simon. “I’m not going to let him scare me.”

Charles craned to look too. He knew what Simon meant, but he was quite sure by now that Chrestomanci’s vague look was as deceptive as Dan thought. Mr Wentworth was up at high table too. Charles wondered where Brian was and how Brian would get any lunch.

Charles turned back to the table to hear Theresa saying, “He’s so super looking, he makes me feel quite weak!”

To everyone’s surprise, Estelle jumped to her feet and leant across the table, glaring at Theresa. “Theresa Mullet!” she said. “You just dare be in love with the Inquisitor and see what you get! He’s mine. I met him first and I love him! So you just dare!”

Nobody said a word for a moment. Theresa was too astonished even to giggle. Everyone was so unused to seeing Estelle so fierce that even the prefect in charge could not think what to say.

During the silence, it became clear how Brian was going to get lunch. Charles and Nirupam felt themselves being pushed apart by an invisible body. Both of them were jabbed by invisible elbows as the body climbed on to the bench between them and sat. “You’ll have to let me eat off your plates,” whispered Brian’s voice. “I hope it’s not stew.”

Luckily, Simon broke the silence just as Brian spoke. He said, in a jeering, not-quite-believing way, “And what took you all so long to arrange for Mr Feeble Inquisitor?”

From the way everyone looked then, Nan knew nobody had believed Mr Wentworth’s excuse for an instant. She could see most of them suspected something like the truth. Help! thought Nan. “Well we had to put a lot of electric wiring into the study,” she invented hastily. “He has to have a bright light arranged to shine into people’s faces. It helps break them down.”

“Not for electric shocks at all?” Dan asked hopefully.

“Some of it may have been,” Nan admitted. “There were quite a lot of bare wires, and a sort of helmet-thing with electrodes sticking out of it. Charles wired that. Charles is very good with electricity.”

“And what else?” Dan asked breathlessly. He was far too fascinated by now to notice he was talking to a girl.

“The walls were all draped in black,” invented Nan. “Estelle and I did that.”

Lunch was served just then. It was potato pie. This was fortunate for Brian, who dared not use a knife and fork, but not so lucky for Charles and Nirupam. Both of them gave grunts of indignation as a large curved chunk vanished from their plates. Brian had taken a handful from each. They were more annoyed still, when lumps of potato began to flop down between them.

“Don’t waste it!” snapped Nirupam.

“Can’t you tell where your mouth is?” Charles whispered angrily.

“Yes. But I don’t know where my hands are,” Brian whispered back. “You try, if you think you’re so clever!”

While they whispered, Nan was being eagerly questioned by Dan, and forced to invent more and more Inquisitor’s equipment for Mr Wentworth’s study. “Yes, there were these things with little chromium screws in,” she was saying. “I think you’re right – those must have been thumbscrews. But some of them looked big enough to get an arm or a leg in. I don’t think he stops at thumbs.”

Nirupam dug Brian’s invisible side with his elbow. “Attend to this!” he whispered. “It all has to be there if he calls Dan in.”

“I’m not a fool,” Brian’s voice retorted with its mouth full.

“And of course there were a lot of other things we had to hang on the wall. All sizes of handcuffs,” Nan went on. She was inspired now and her invention seemed boundless. She just could not seem to stop. Charles began to wonder if one small study could possibly hold all the things she was describing – or even only the half of it that Brian managed to remember.

Fortunately, Estelle, who was far too busy watching Chrestomanci to eat, caused a sudden diversion by shouting out, “Look, look! Miss Cadwallader’s only using a fork, and he’s using a knife and a fork! Oh, isn’t he brave!”

At that, Nirupam seized the opportunity to try and shut Nan up. He gave her a sinister stare and said loudly, “You realise that the Inquisitor will probably be questioning every one of us very searchingly indeed, after lunch is over.”

Though Nirupam meant this simply as a warning to Nan, it caused a worried silence. A surprising number of people did not seem very keen on the treacle tart which followed the potato pie. Nirupam seized the opportunity too. He took third and fourth helpings and shared them with Brian.

Straight after lunch, Mr Wentworth came and marshalled the whole of 2Y into alphabetical order. The worried silence became a scared one. From the looks they saw on the faces of the rest of the school, the scare was catching. Even seniors looked alarmed as 2Y were marched away. They marched upstairs and were lined up half in the passage and half on the stairs, while Mr Wentworth went into his study to tell Chrestomanci they were ready. Those at the front of the line were able to see that the wavy glass in the door was now black as night.

Then it turned out that Chrestomanci wanted to see them in reverse alphabetical order. They all had to march up and down and round again, so that Heather Young and Ronald West were at the front of the line instead of Geoffrey Baines and Deborah Clifton. They did it with none of the usual grumbling and scuffling. Even Charles, who was quite certain that they were only marching to give Chrestomanci time to put all Nan’s inventions in, found himself a little quiet and queasy, with his thumb rubbing at that blister. Heather and Ronald looked quite ill with terror. Dan Smith – who was third now that Brian was missing – asked Nirupam in an urgent whisper, “What’s he going to do with us?”

Nirupam had no more idea than Dan. He had not even known that Chrestomanci really was going to question them. He tried to look sinister. “You’ll see.” Dan’s face went cream-coloured.

Chrestomanci did not see people for the same length of time. Heather disappeared into the study for what seemed an endless age, and she came out as frightened as she went in. Ronald was only in for a minute, and he came out from behind the darkened door looking relieved. He leant across Dan and Nirupam to whisper to Simon, “No problem at all!”

“I knew there wouldn’t be,” Simon lied loftily.

“Quiet!” bellowed Mr Wentworth. “Next – Daniel Smith.”

Dan Smith was not gone long either, but he did not come out looking as if there were no problem. His face was more like cheese than cream.

Nirupam was gone for much longer than either Nan or Charles had expected. When he came out, he was frowning and uneasy. He was followed by Simon. There was another endless wait. During it, the bell rang for afternoon lessons, and was followed by the usual surge of hurrying feet. The silence of lessons which came after that had gone on for so long before Simon came out that there was not a soul in 2Y who did not feel like an outcast. Simon came out at last. He was an odd colour. He would not speak to any of the friends who were leaning out of the line wanting to know what had happened. He just walked to the wall like a sleepwalker and leant against it, staring into space.

This did not make anyone feel better. Nan wondered what Chrestomanci was doing to people in there. By the time the three girls who came between her and Simon had all come out looking as bad as Heather Young, Nan was so scared that she could hardly make her legs work. But it was her turn. She had to go. She shuffled round the dark door somehow.

Inside, she stood and stared. Chrestomanci had indeed been very busy while 2Y marched up and down outside. Mr Wentworth’s study was entirely lined with black curtains. A black carpet Nan had forgotten to invent covered the parquet floor. Hung on the walls and glimmering against the black background were manacles, a noose, festoons of chains, several kinds of scourge and a cat o’ nine tails. There was a large can in one corner labelled PETROL, DIV. INQ. OFFICE, FOR USE IN TORTURE ONLY.

Chrestomanci himself was only dimly visible behind a huge glittering lamp, which reminded Nan uncomfortably of the light over an operating table. The light from it beamed on to Mr Wentworth’s desk, draped in more black cloth, where there was a sort of jeweller’s display of shiny thumbscrews and other displeasing objects. The wired-up helmet was there. So was a bouquet of bare wires, spitting blue sparks. Behind those were a pile of fat black books.

“Can you see anything Brian forgot?” asked the dim shape of Chrestomanci.

Nan began to laugh. “I didn’t say the carpet or the petrol!”

“Brian suggested a carpet. And I thought that corner looked a little bare,” Chrestomanci admitted.

Nan pointed to the pile of black books. “What are those?”

“Disguised timetables,” said Chrestomanci. “Oh – I see what you mean. Obviously they are Acts of Parliament and Witchcraft Edicts, torture manuals, and The Observer’s Guide to Witch-Spotting. No Inquisitor would be without them.”

Nan could tell from his voice that he was laughing. “I accuse you of enjoying yourself,” she said, “while everyone outside gibbers.”

“I confess to that.” Chrestomanci came round the desk under the light. He pushed the spitting bunch of wires casually aside – it did not appear to give him any kind of shock – and sat on the black-draped desk so that his face was level with Nan’s. She suddenly found it almost impossible to look away. “I accuse you of enjoying yourself too,” he said.

“Yes I have!” Nan said defiantly. “For about the first time since I came to this beastly school!”

Chrestomanci looked at her almost anxiously. “You enjoy being a witch?” Nan nodded vigorously. “And you’ve enjoyed making things up and describing them – thumbscrews and so on?” Nan nodded again. “Which did you enjoy most?” Chrestomanci asked.

“Oh, being a witch,” Nan declared. “It’s made me feel – well – just so confident, I suppose.”

“Describe the things you’ve invented so far to do as a witch,” said Chrestomanci.

“I—” Nan looked at Chrestomanci, lit from one side by the strong light of the lamp and, from the other, by the flickering wires, and was rather puzzled to find how little she had done as a witch. All she had done, when you came down to it, was to ride a broomstick and to give herself and Estelle the wrong kind of clothes and some decidedly odd collecting tins. “I haven’t had much time to do things yet,” she said.

“But Charles Morgan has had about the same amount of time, and according to the things people have been telling me, he has been very inventive indeed,” Chrestomanci said. “Wouldn’t you say that, now you’ve been a witch, and got your confidence, you might really prefer describing things even to witchcraft?”

Nan thought about it. “I suppose I would,” she said, rather surprised. “If only we didn’t have to do it in our journals!”

“Good,” said Chrestomanci. “I think I can promise you one really good opportunity to describe things, nothing to do with journals. I told you it would take strong magic to put this world back into the one where it belongs. When I find the way to do it, I shall need everyone’s help, in order to harness all the magic there is in the world to make the change. When the time comes, can I rely on you to explain all this?”

Nan nodded. She felt hugely flattered and responsible.

While she was feeling this way, Chrestomanci added, “Just as well you prefer describing things. I’m afraid you won’t be a witch when the change comes.” Nan stared at him. He was not joking. “I know you are descended from the Archwitch,” Chrestomanci said, “but talents don’t always descend in the same shape. Yours seem to have come to you in the form of making-up and describing. My advice is to stick with that if you can. Now name me one character out of History.”

Nan blinked at the change of subject “Er – Christopher Columbus,” she said miserably.

Chrestomanci took out a little gold notebook and unclipped a gold pencil. “Would you mind explaining who he was?” he said, a little helplessly.

It was astonishing the way Chrestomanci seemed not to know the most obvious things, Nan thought. She told him all about Christopher Columbus, as kindly as she could, and Chrestomanci wrote it down in his gold notebook. “Admirable,” he murmured as he wrote. “Clear and vivid.”

The result was that Nan went out of the study one half delighted that Chrestomanci thought she was so good at describing things, and the other half desperately sad at not being a witch before long. Dan Smith’s friend Lance Osgood, who was next one in, looked hard at Nan’s face as she came out and did not know what to make of it.

Lance was not in the study long. Nor was Theresa Mullet, who came next. By this time, Estelle had just got up to the top of the stairs, near the end of the line. Estelle craned round the corner as Theresa came out, searching for signs of love in Theresa, but Theresa looked peevish and puzzled. Everyone saw that the Inquisitor had not treated Theresa with proper respect. Delia was whispering across to Heather about it when Charles went in.

Charles was not in the least frightened by this time. He was sure by now that Chrestomanci was treating everybody exactly as they deserved. He grinned when he saw the study all draped in black, and pushed his glasses up his nose to look at the things hung on the walls.

Chrestomanci was a dim shape behind the lamp and the spitting wires. “You approve?” he said.

“It’s not bad,” said Charles. “Where’s Brian?”

“Over here,” said Brian’s voice. Two pairs of handcuffs on the black-draped wall lifted and jingled. “How long is this going on? I’m magicking bored already, and you’ve only got to M.”

“Why have you got him in here?” Charles asked Chrestomanci. He kept his finger on his glasses in order to give Brian his best double-barrelled glare.

“I have my reasons,” Chrestomanci said quietly. Quiet though it was, it made Charles feel as if something very cold and rather deadly was crawling down his back. “I want to talk to you,” Chrestomanci continued, in the same quiet way, “about your Simon Says spell.”

The cold spread from Charles’s spine right through the rest of him, and settled particularly in his stomach. He knew that this interview was not going to be anything like the joke he had thought it would be. “What about it?” he muttered.

“I can’t understand,” Chrestomanci said, mild and puzzled and more deadly quiet than ever, “how you forgot to mention that spell. How did it come to slip your mind?”

It was like being embedded in ice. Charles tried to break out of the ice by blustering. “There was no point in telling you. It was only a spell – it wasn’t important and Simon deserved it! And Nirupam took it off him anyway!”

“I beg your pardon. I wasn’t aware that you had a defence,” Chrestomanci said.

Sarcasm like this is hard enough to bear, and even worse if you know someone like Brian is listening in. Charles mustered another glare. But he found it hard to direct at Chrestomanci, hidden beyond the light, and swung it round at Brian again instead. Or rather, at the handcuffs where Brian might be.

“It wasn’t that important,” he said.

Chrestomanci seemed more puzzled than ever. “Not important? My dear boy, what is so unimportant about a spell that could break the world up? You may know better, of course, but my impression is that Simon could easily have chanced to say something very silly, like – say – ‘Two and two are five’. If he had, everything to do with numbers would have fallen apart at once. And since everything can be counted, everything would have come apart – the earth, the sun in the sky, the cells in bodies, anything else you can think of. No doubt you have a mind above such things, but I can’t help finding that quite important myself.”

Charles glowered at the handcuffs to disguise how awful this made him feel. And Brian had heard every word! “I didn’t realise – how could I? Simon had it coming to him, anyway. He deserved something.” He was rather glad, as he said it, that no one knew he intended to do something to Dan Smith next.

“Simon deserved it?” wondered Chrestomanci. “Simon certainly has a large opinion of himself, but – Brian, you tell us. You have an ego at least as big as Simon’s. Do you or Simon deserve to have such power put in your hands?”

“No,” Brian’s voice said sulkily. “Not to destroy the world.”

Charles was cold all through with horror at what he had almost done. But he was not going to admit it. “Nirupam took it off him,” he said, “before Simon did anything really.”

“Brian seems to be learning,” Chrestomanci remarked, “even if you are not, Charles. I grant you that, because magic is forbidden here, nobody has ever taught you what it can do or how to use it. But you could have worked it out. And you are still not thinking. Nirupam did not take that spell off Simon. He simply turned it back to front. Nothing the poor boy says comes true now. I have had to order him to keep his mouth shut.”

“Poor boy!” Charles exclaimed. “You can’t be sorry for him!”

“I am,” said Brian’s voice. “And if I hadn’t been in the sick bay, I’d have tried to take it off him myself. I’d have managed better than Nirupam, too!”

“Now there, Charles,” said Chrestomanci, “you have an excellent example, quite apart from rights and wrongs, of why it is such a bad idea to do things to people. Everyone is now sorry for Simon. Which is not what you want at all, is it?”

“No.” Charles looked down at the shadowy black carpet and decided regretfully to think again about Dan Smith. This time he would get it right.

“Make him take the spell off Simon,” Brian suggested.

“I doubt if he could,” said Chrestomanci. “It’s a fearsomely strong thing. Charles must have powers way up in the enchanter class in order to have worked it at all.”

Charles kept his face turned to the carpet, hoping that would hide the huge smug grin he could feel spreading on his face. “It will take a number of special circumstances to get that spell off Simon,” Chrestomanci continued. “For a start, Charles must want to take the spell off. And he doesn’t. Do you, Charles?”

“No,” said Charles. The idea of Simon having to hold his tongue for the rest of his life gave him such pleasure that he did not bother to listen to all the names Brian began calling him. He held his finger out, into the lamplight, and admired the way the strong light and the spitting wires made patterns in the yellow cushion of blister. Wickedness was branded into him, he thought.

Chrestomanci waited for Brian to run out of names to call Charles. Then he said, “I’m sorry you feel this way, Charles. We are all going to need your help when we try to put this world back where it belongs. Won’t you reconsider?”

“Not after the way you went on at me in front of Brian,” said Charles. And he went on admiring his blister.

Chrestomanci sighed. “You and Brian are both as bad as one another,” he said. “People in Larwood House are always developing into witches, Mr Wentworth tells me, but he tells me he had had no trouble in stopping any of them giving themselves away, until it came to you and Brian. Brian was so anxious to be noticed that he didn’t care if he was burnt—”

“Hey!” Brian said indignantly.

So Chrestomanci was trying to make it fair by getting at Brian now, Charles thought. It was a bit late for that. He was not going to help.

“So he is going to have to help, or stay invisible for the rest of his life,” Chrestomanci went on. He ignored indignant, miserable noises from Brian and turned to Charles. “You, Charles, seem to have bottled yourself up, hating everything, until your witchcraft came along and blew the stopper off you. Now, either you are going to have to bottle yourself up again or be burnt, or you are going to have to help us. Since your talent for witchcraft is so strong, it seems certain that, in your right world, you will have an equally strong talent for something else, and you should find that easier. So which do you choose?”

Lose his witchcraft? Charles pressed one finger to his glasses and glared through the strong light at Chrestomanci. He did not think he even hated Simon or Dan as much as he hated Chrestomanci. “I’m going to go on being a witch! So there!”

The dim shape of Chrestomanci shrugged behind the light. “Warlock is the usual term for people who mess about the way you do. Very well. Now name me one historical personage, please.”

“Jack the Ripper,” snarled Charles.

The gold notebook flashed in the lamplight. “Thank you,” said Chrestomanci. “Send the next person in as you go out.”

As Charles turned and trudged to the door, Brian began calling him names again.

“Brian,” Chrestomanci said quietly, “I told you I would take your voice away, and I shall if you speak to anyone else.”

Typical! Charles thought angrily. He tore open the door, wondering what he dared do to Nan and Estelle for calling Chrestomanci here, and found himself staring into Delia Martin’s face. He must have looked quite frightening. Delia went white. She actually spoke to him. “What’s he like?”

“Magicking horrible!” Charles said loudly. He hoped Chrestomanci heard him.

The rest of 2Y shuffled slowly in and out of the study. Some came out white, some came out relieved. Estelle came out misty-eyed and beaming.

“Really!” said Theresa. “Some people!”

Estelle shot her a look of utter scorn and went up to Nan. She put both hands round one of Nan’s ears and whispered wetly, “He says that where we’re going, my mum won’t be in prison!”

“Oh good!” said Nan, and she thought, in sudden excitement, And my mum will still be alive then!

Chrestomanci himself came out of the study with Geoffrey Baines, who was last, and exchanged a deep look with Mr Wentworth.

Nan could tell that he had not found out how to change the world. She saw they were both worried.

“Right. In line and back to the classroom,” shouted Mr Wentworth. He was looking so harrowed and hurried them down the stairs so fast that Nan knew Chrestomanci’s luck was running out. Perhaps the real Inquisitor had arrived by now. The bell for the end of the first lesson rang as 2Y marched through the corridors, which increased the urgent feeling. Other classes hurried past them, and gave them looks of pitying curiosity.

Simon’s friends kept trying to talk to him as they went. Simon shook his head madly and pointed to his mouth. “He knows who the witch is, but his lips are sealed,” Ronald West said wisely.

This caused Delia and Karen to skip out of line and walk beside Simon. “Tell us who the witch is, Simon,” they whispered. “We won’t say.” The more Simon shook his head, the more they asked.

“Quiet!” barked Mr Wentworth.

Everyone filed into the classroom. There stood Mr Crossley, expecting to sit with 2Y while they wrote their journals.

“You’d better treat this as a free period, Harold,” Mr Wentworth said to him. Mr Crossley nodded, highly pleased, and went off to the staff room, hoping to catch Miss Hodge there.

“Poor Teddy,” Estelle whispered to Nan. “He doesn’t know she’s in next Tuesday. Mind you, I don’t think she’d ever have him anyway.”

Chrestomanci came into the classroom, looking suave and vague. No one could have guessed from the look of him that time was running out and he was probably just as anxious as Mr Wentworth. He coughed for attention. He got instant silence, complete and attentive. Mr Wentworth looked a little envious.

“This is a miserable affair,” Chrestomanci said. “We have a witch in our midst. And this witch has cast a spell on Simon Silverson—”

The room rustled with people turning to look at Simon. Charles glowered. Simon was looking almost happy again. He was in the limelight, where he belonged.

“Now, most unfortunately,” Chrestomanci went on, “someone made a well-meant but misguided effort to break the spell and turned it back to front.” Nirupam looked morbid. “You can’t blame this person,” said Chrestomanci, “but the result is most unhappy. It was a very strong spell. Everything Simon now says does not only not happen, but it never has happened. I have had to warn Simon not to open his mouth until we get to the bottom of the matter.”

As he said this, Chrestomanci’s eyes turned, vaguely and absently, towards Charles. Charles gave his blankest and nastiest look in reply. If Chrestomanci thought he could make him take the spell off this way, Chrestomanci could just think again. What Charles did not notice was that Chrestomanci’s eyes moved towards Nan after that. Nobody else noticed at all, because three people had put their hands up: Delia, Karen and Theresa. Delia spoke for all three.

“Mr Inquisitor, sir, we told you who the witch is. It’s Nan Pilgrim.”

Estelle’s desk went over with a crash. Books, journal, papers and knitting skidded in all directions. Estelle stood in the middle of them, red with anger. “It is not Nan Pilgrim!” she shouted. “Nan never harmed anyone in her life! It’s you lot that do the harm, spreading tales all the time, you and Theresa and Karen. And I’m ashamed I was ever friends with Karen!”

Nan put her hot face in her hands. Estelle was a bit too loyal for comfort.

“Pick that desk up, Estelle,” said Mr Wentworth.

Simon forgot himself and opened his mouth to make a jeering comment. Chrestomanci’s eyes just happened to glance at him. Simon’s mouth shut with a snap and his eyes popped.

And that was all the notice Chrestomanci took of the interruption. “If you will all attend,” he said. Everyone did, immediately. “Thank you. Before we name the witch, I want you all to give the name of a second historical personage. You in the front, you begin – er – um – Theresa – er – Fish.”

Everyone had already given one name. Everyone was convinced that the Inquisitor would know the witch by the name they gave. It was obviously important not to name anybody wicked. So Theresa, although she was offended by the way the Inquisitor got her name wrong, thought very carefully indeed. And, as usually happens, her mind was instantly filled with all the villains in History. She sat there dumbly, running through Burke and Hare, Crippen, Judas Iscariot, Nero and Torquemada, and quite unable to think of anybody good.

“Come along – er – Tatiana,” said Chrestomanci.

“Theresa,” said Theresa. And then, with inspiration, “Saint Theresa, I mean.”

Chrestomanci wrote that down in his gold notebook and pointed to Delia. “Saint George,” said Delia.

“Didn’t exist in any world,” said Chrestomanci. “Try again.”

Delia racked her brains and eventually came up with Lady Godiva. Chrestomanci’s pointing finger moved on round the class, causing everyone the same trouble. Villains poured through their minds – Attila the Hun, Richard III, Lucrezia Borgia, Joseph Stalin – and when they did manage to think of anyone less villainous, it always seemed to be people like Anne Boleyn or Galileo, who had been put to death.

Most people did not like to mention those either, though Nirupam, because he knew Chrestomanci was not really an Inquisitor, took a risk and said Charles I. Chrestomanci turned to Mr Wentworth after most names were mentioned, and Mr Wentworth told him who they were. Most of 2Y could not think why the Inquisitor needed to do that, unless it was to prove that Mr Wentworth was a mastermind, but Nan thought, He’s collecting symptoms again. Why? Somebody in History must be very important, I think.

Charles watched Chrestomanci’s finger point towards him. He thought, You don’t get me like that! “Saint Francis,” he said. Chrestomanci’s finger simply moved on to Dan Smith.

Dan was stumped. “Please, sir, I’ve got stomach ache. I can’t think.”

The finger went on pointing.

“Oh,” said Dan. “Er – Dick Turpin.”

This evoked a gasp from 2Y, and a near-groan of disappointment when Chrestomanci’s finger moved on, across the gangway and pointed to Estelle.

Estelle had picked up her desk and most of her books by now, but her knitting wool had rolled under several desks and come unwound as it went. Estelle was on her knees reeling it in, greyer than ever, and did not notice. Nan leant down and poked her. Estelle jumped. “Is it me now? Sorry. Guy Fawkes – has anyone had Guy Fawkes yet?” She went back to her wool.

“One moment,” said Chrestomanci. A curious hush seemed to grow in the room. “Can you tell me about Guy Fawkes?”

Estelle looked up again. Everyone was looking at her, wondering if she was the witch, but Estelle was only thinking about her wool. “Guy Fawkes?” she said. “They put him on a bone-fire for blowing up the Houses of Parliament.”

“Blowing them up?” said Chrestomanci.

Simon opened his mouth to say Estelle was quite right, and shut it again hastily. Estelle nodded. A number of people called out, “Yes, sir. He did, sir!”

Chrestomanci looked at Mr Wentworth. Mr Wentworth said, “In 1605, Guy Fawkes was smuggled into the Parliament cellars with some kegs of gunpowder, in order to blow up the Government and the King. But he seems to have made a mistake. The gunpowder blew up in the night and destroyed both Houses, without killing anyone. Guy Fawkes got out unhurt, but they caught him almost at once.”

It sounded like all the other times Mr Wentworth had told Chrestomanci a piece of History, but somehow it was not. Chrestomanci’s eyes had a special gleam, very bright and black, and he looked straight at Nan as he remarked, “A mistake, eh? That doesn’t surprise me. That fellow Fawkes never could get anything right.” He pointed at Nan.

“Richard the Lionheart,” said Nan. And she thought, He’s got it! Guy Fawkes is the reason our world went different. But why? He’ll want me to describe it and I don’t know why.

She thought and thought, while Chrestomanci was collecting names no one needed now from the rest of 2Y. 5 November 1605. All Nan could remember was something her mother had once said, long ago, before the Inquisitors took her away.

Mum had said 5 November was the last day of Witch Week. Witch Week began on Hallowe’en, and today was Hallowe’en. Did that help? It must do, though Nan could not see how. But she knew she was right, and that Chrestomanci had found the answer, because he had such a smooth, pleased look as he stood beside Mr Wentworth.

“Now,” he said. “We shall reveal the witch.”

He had gone vague again. He was slowly fetching a slim golden case from a dove-grey pocket and, if he was looking at anyone, it was at Charles now. Good, thought Nan. He’s giving me time to think. And Charles thought, All right. Reveal me then. But I’m still not going to help.

Chrestomanci held the flat gold box out so that everyone could see it. “This,” he said, “is the very latest modern witch-finder. Look at it carefully.” Charles did. He was almost certain that the witch-finder was a gold cigarette case. “When I let go of this machine,” Chrestomanci said, “it will travel by itself through the air, and it will point to everyone in turn, except Simon. When it points to a witch, it is programmed to make a noise. I want the witch it points to to come and stand beside me.”

2Y stared at the gold oblong, tense and excited. There were gasps. It had bobbed in Chrestomanci’s hand. Chrestomanci let go of it and it stayed in the air, bobbing about by itself. Charles glowered. He understood. Brian. Brian was going to carry it invisibly round. That did it! If Chrestomanci thought he could get round Charles by giving Brian all the fun, he was going to be really disappointed.

The bobbing case upended itself. Charles saw it split open a fraction along the top edge, as Brian took a quick peep to see if it was indeed a cigarette case. It was. Charles glimpsed white cigarettes in it.

“Off you go,” Chrestomanci said to it.

The gold box shut with a loud snap, making everybody jump, and then travelled swiftly to the first desk. It stopped level with Ronald West’s head. It gave out a shrill beeping-sound. Everybody jumped again, including Ronald and the gold box.

“Come out here,” Chrestomanci said.

Ronald, looking quite dumbfounded, got out of his desk and stumbled towards Chrestomanci. “I never—!” he protested.

“Yes you are, you know,” Chrestomanci said. And he said to the gold box, “Carry on.”

A little uncertainly, the box travelled to Geoffrey Baines. It beeped again. Chrestomanci beckoned. Out came Geoffrey, white-faced but not protesting.

“How did it know?” he said drearily.

“Modern technology,” said Chrestomanci.

This time the gold box went on without being told. It beeped, moved, and beeped again. Person after person got miserably up and trailed out to the front. Charles thought it was a dirty trick. Chrestomanci was just trying to break his nerve. The box was level with Lance Osgood now. Everyone waited for it to beep. And waited. The box stayed beside Lance, pointing until Lance’s eyes were crossed with looking at it. But nothing happened.

“Go on,” said Chrestomanci. “He’s not a witch.”

The box moved to Dan Smith. Here, it made the longest, loudest noise yet. Dan blenched. “I covered up my tracks!” he said.

“Out here,” said Chrestomanci.

Dan got up slowly. “It’s not fair! My stomach aches.”

“No doubt you deserve it,” said Chrestomanci. “By the noise, you’ve used witchcraft quite recently. What did you do?”

“Only hid a pair of running shoes,” Dan mumbled. He did not look at Charles as he slouched up the gangway. Charles did not look at Dan either. He was beginning to see that Chrestomanci was not pretending that people were witches.

By now, the front of the class was quite crowded. The box went to Nirupam next. Nirupam was waiting for it. It beeped even louder for him than it had for Dan. The moment it did, Nirupam got up and fled with long strides to the front of the room, in order not to be asked what witchcraft he had done. Then the box came to Charles. The noise was deafening.

“All right, all right!” Charles muttered. He too trudged to the front of the class. So Chrestomanci was playing fair, but he was still obviously trying to teach Charles a lesson by devaluing witchcraft. Charles looked round the other people standing out in front. He knew his was the strongest magic of the lot. And he wanted to keep it.

There were still a thousand things he could do with it. He did not want to blend with another world, even if they did not burn witches there. As to being burnt – Charles looked down at his blister – he found he rather enjoyed being frightened, once he got used to it. It made life interesting.

Meanwhile, the gold box followed Charles down the gangway and pointed to Delia. There was silence. Delia did not try to hide her smirk. But the smirk came off her face when the box moved to Theresa. It gave one small clear beep.

Theresa stood up, scandalised. “Who? Me!”

“Only a very small, third-grade sort of witch,” Chrestomanci told her comfortingly.

It did not comfort Theresa in the least. If she was to be a witch, she felt she should at least be a first-class one. It was a disgrace either way. She was really angry when the box moved to Karen and did not beep for Karen either. But she was equally annoyed when the box went on and beeped for Heather, Deborah and all her other friends. She stood there with the most dreadful mixed feelings.

Then the box beeped for Estelle too. Theresa tossed her head angrily. But Estelle sprang up beaming. “Oh good! I’m a witch! I’m a witch!” She skipped out to the front, grinning all over her face.

“Some people!” Theresa said unconvincingly.

Estelle did not care. She laughed when the box beeped loudly for Nan and Nan came thoughtfully to join her. “I think most people in the world must be witches,” Estelle whispered to her. Nan nodded. She was sure it was true. She was sure this fitted in with all the other things Chrestomanci had discovered, but she still could not think how to explain it.

This left four people scattered about the room. They were all, even Simon, looking peevish and left-out.

“It’s not fair!” said Karen.

“At least we won’t be burnt,” said Delia.

Chrestomanci beckoned to the box. It wandered up the gangway and put itself in his hand. Chrestomanci put it back in his pocket while he looked round the crowd of witches. He ignored Charles. He had given him up. He looked at Nan and then across at Mr Wentworth, who had been crowded against the door in the crush. “Well, Wentworth,” he said. “This looks quite promising, doesn’t it? We’ve got a fair amount of witchcraft to draw on here. I suggest we make our push now. If Nan is ready to explain to everyone—”

Nan was nothing like ready. She was about to say so, when the classroom door flew open. Mr Wentworth was barged aside. And Miss Cadwallader stood in his place, stiff and upright and stringy with anger.

“What are you all doing, 2Y?” she said. “Back to your seats with the utmost rapidity.”

Mr Wentworth was behind the door, white and shaking. Everyone looked doubtfully at Chrestomanci. He had gone very vague. So everybody did the prudent thing and scuttled back to their desks. As they went, three more people came into the room behind Miss Cadwallader.

Miss Cadwallader faced Chrestomanci in angry triumph. “Mr Chant,” she said, “you are an imposter. Here is the real Inquisitor. Inquisitor Littleton.” She stood aside and shut the door, so that everyone could see the Inquisitor.

Inquisitor Littleton was a small man in a blue pinstriped suit. He had a huge man on either side of him in the black uniform of the Inquisition. Each of these huge men had a gun holster, a truncheon and a folded whip in his belt. At the sight of them, Charles’s burnt finger doubled itself up and hid inside his fist like a guilty secret.

“You move, and I’ll order you shot!” Inquisitor Littleton snapped at Chrestomanci. His voice was harsh. His little watery eyes glared at Chrestomanci from a little blunt face covered with bright red veins. His blue suit did not fit him very well, as if Inquisitor Littleton had shrunk and hardened some time after the suit was bought, into a new shape, dense with power.

“Good afternoon, Inquisitor,” Chrestomanci said politely. “I’d been half expecting you.” He looked across his shoulder, to Simon. “Nod, if I’m right,” he said. “Did you say an Inquisitor would be here before lunch?” Simon nodded, looking shattered.

Inquisitor Littleton narrowed his watery eyes. “So it was witchcraft that made my car break down?” he said. “I knew it!” He unslung a black box he was carrying on a strap over his shoulder. He pointed it at Chrestomanci and turned a knob. Everyone saw the violent twitching of the dials on top. “Thought so,” grated Inquisitor Littleton. “It’s a witch.” He jerked his blunt chin at Mr Wentworth. “Now get me that one.”

One of the huge men reached out a huge hand and dragged Mr Wentworth over from beside the door as easily as if Mr Wentworth had been a guy stuffed with straw. Miss Cadwallader looked as if she would like to protest about this, but she gave it up as useless. Inquisitor Littleton trained his black box on Mr Wentworth.

Before he could turn the knob, the black box was torn out of his hands. With its broken strap trailing, it hurried from the Inquisitor to Chrestomanci.

“I think that was a mistake, Brian,” said Chrestomanci.

Both huge men drew their guns. Inquisitor Littleton backed away and pointed at Chrestomanci. His face was purple and full of a queer mixture of hate and horror and pleasure. “Look at that!” he shouted out. “It has a demon to wait on it! Oh, I’ve got you now!”

Chrestomanci looked almost irritated. “My good man,” he said, “that really is a most ignorant assumption. Only a hedge wizard would stoop to using a demon.”

“I’m not a demon!” shouted Brian’s shrill voice. “I’m Brian Wentworth!”

Delia screamed. The huge man who was not holding Mr Wentworth seemed to lose his nerve. Glaring with fear, he held his gun out in both hands, and aimed it at the black box.

“Throw it!” said Chrestomanci.

Brian obeyed. The black box sailed towards the window. The huge man was muddled into following it round with his gun. He fired. There was a tremendous crash. Quite a few people screamed this time. The black box exploded into a muddle of wire and metal plates and half of the window blew out. A gust of rain blew in.

“You fool!” said Inquisitor Littleton. “That was my very latest model witch-finder!” He glared at Chrestomanci. “Right. I’ve had enough of this foul thing. Get it for me.”

The huge man put his gun back in its holster and marched towards Chrestomanci. Nirupam quickly stuck up a long arm. “Please. Just a moment. I think Miss Cadwallader may be a witch too.”

Everyone at once looked at Miss Cadwallader. She said, “How dare you, child!” but she was as white as Mr Wentworth.

And this, Nan realised, was where she came in. She was not sure how, but she surged to her feet all the same, in such haste that she nearly knocked her desk over like Estelle. Everyone stared at her. Nan felt terrible. For a long, long instant she went on standing there without one scrap of confidence to help her. But she knew she could not just sit down again. She began to talk.

“Just a moment,” she said. “Before you do another thing, I’ve got to tell you about Guy Fawkes. He’s the reason almost everybody in the world is a witch, you know. The main thing about Guy Fawkes is that he was the kind of man who can never do anything right. He meant well, but he was a failure—”

“Make that girl shut up!” Inquisitor Littleton said, in his harsh bossy voice. Nan looked at him nervously, and then at the two huge men. None of them moved. In fact, now she looked, everyone seemed to be stuck and frozen exactly where they were when she first stood up. She looked at Chrestomanci. He was staring vaguely into the distance and did not seem to be doing anything either, but Nan was suddenly sure that Chrestomanci was somehow holding everything in one place to give her a chance to explain. That made her feel much better.

She had gone on talking all the time she was looking round, explaining about the Gunpowder Plot, and what a mistake the conspirators made choosing Guy Fawkes to do the blowing up. Now she seemed to be going on to explain about other worlds.

“There were an awful lot of Guy Fawkeses in an awful lot of worlds,” she heard herself saying. “And he was a failure in every one. Some people are like that. There are millions of other worlds, you know. The big differences get made at the big events in History, where a battle gets either won or lost. Both things can’t happen in one world, so a new one splits off and goes different after that. But there are all sorts of smaller things that can go two ways as well, which don’t make a world split off. You’ve probably all had those kind of dreams that are like your usual life, except that a lot of things are not the same, and you seem to know the future in them. Well, this is because these other worlds where two things can happen spread out from our own world like rainbows, and sort of flow into one another—”

Nan found herself rather admiring this description. She was inspired now. She could have talked for hours. But there was not much point unless she could persuade the rest of 2Y to do something. Everyone was just staring at her.

“Now our world should really just be a rainbow stripe in another proper world,” she said. “But it isn’t. And I’m going to tell you why, so that we can all do something about it. I told you Guy Fawkes was a failure. Well, the trouble was, he knew he was. And that made him very nervous, because he wanted to do at least this one thing right and blow up Parliament properly. He kept going over in his mind all the things that could go wrong: he could be betrayed, or the gunpowder would be damp, or his candle would go out, or his fuse wouldn’t light – he thought of all the possibilities, all the things that make the rainbow-stripes of not-quite-different worlds. And in the middle of the night, he got so nervous that he went and lit the fuse, just to make sure it would light. He wasn’t thinking that 5 November, the day he was doing it, was the last day of Witch Week, when there is so much magic around in the world that all sorts of peculiar things happen—”

“Will somebody silence that girl!” said Inquisitor Littleton.

He made Charles jump. Charles had been sitting all this time trying to understand the way he was feeling. He seemed to have divided into two again, but inside himself, where it did not show. Half of him was plain terrified. It felt as if it had been buried alive, in screaming, shut-in despair. The other half was angry, angry with Chrestomanci, Miss Cadwallader, 2Y, Inquisitor Littleton – everything.

Now, when Inquisitor Littleton suddenly spoke in his loud grating voice, Charles looked at the Inquisitor. He was a small man with a stupid face, in a blue suit which did not fit, who enjoyed arresting witches.

Charles found himself remembering his first witch again. The fat man who had been so astonished at being burnt. And he suddenly understood the witch’s amazement. It was because someone so ordinary, so plain stupid as Inquisitor Littleton had the power to burn him. And that was all wrong.

“Oh come on, all of you!” said Nan. “Don’t you see? When Guy Fawkes lit that fuse, that made a new spread of rainbow possibilities. In our proper world, the world we ought to belong to, the fuse should have gone straight out again, and the Houses of Parliament would have been perfectly safe. But once the fuse was alight, the night watchman could have smelt it, or Guy Fawkes could have put it out with water, or the thing could have happened which made us the way we are. Guy Fawkes could have stamped the fuse out, but left just one tiny spark alight, which went on burning and creeping towards the kegs of gunpowder—”

“I told you to shut that girl up!” said Inquisitor Littleton.

Charles was in one piece again now. He looked from the Inquisitor to Chrestomanci. Chrestomanci did not look so elegant just then. His suit was crumpled as if he had fallen away inside it, and his face was pale and hollow. Charles could see sweat on his forehead. And he understood that Chrestomanci was putting out a huge effort and somehow holding the whole world still, to give Nan time to persuade 2Y to use their combined witchcraft to change it.

But 2Y were still sitting there like dumb things. That was why Inquisitor Littleton had started talking again. He was obviously one of those people who were very hard to keep quiet, and Chrestomanci had had to let go of him in order to have strength to hold everything else.

“Will you be quiet, girl!” said Inquisitor Littleton.

“BOOM!” said Nan. “And up went Parliament, but with no people in it. It wasn’t very important, because even Guy Fawkes wasn’t killed. But remember it was Witch Week. That made it a much worse explosion than it should have been. In it, this whole stripe of the rainbow, where we are now, and all the magic anywhere near, got blown out of the rest of the world, like a sort of long coloured splinter. But it wasn’t blown quite free. It was still joined to the rest of the rainbow at both ends. And that’s the way it still is. And we could put it back if only we could make it so that the explosion never happened. And because it’s Hallowe’en today, and there’s even more magic about than usual—”

Charles saw that Chrestomanci was beginning to shake. He looked tired out. At this rate, Chrestomanci was not going to have any strength left to put their splinter of world back where it belonged. Charles jumped up. He wanted to apologise. It was obvious that someone with power like Chrestomanci’s could easily have just gone away the moment Inquisitor Littleton arrived. Instead, he had chosen to stay and help them. But saying sorry would have to wait. Charles knew he had to do something. And thanks to Nan, he knew just what to do.

“Sit down, boy!” rasped Inquisitor Littleton.

Charles took no notice. He dived across the gangway and took hold of Simon Silverson by the front of his blazer. “Simon. Say what Guy Fawkes did. Quick!”

Simon gazed at Charles. He shook his head and pointed to his mouth.

“Go on! Say it, you fool!” said Charles, and he shook Simon.

Simon kept his mouth shut. He was afraid to say anything. It was like a bad dream. “Say what Guy Fawkes did!” Charles yelled at him. He gave up shaking Simon and poured witchcraft at him to make him say it. And Simon just shook his head.

Nirupam saw the point. “Say it, Simon!” he said. And that made all the rest of 2Y understand what Charles was trying to do.

Everyone stood up in their seats and shouted at Simon: “SAY IT, SIMON!” Mr Wentworth shouted. Brian’s voice joined in. Witchcraft was blasting at Simon from all sides, and even Karen and Delia were shouting at him. Nan joined in the shouting. She was bubbling with pride and delight. She had done this, just by describing what happened. It was as good as witchcraft any day.

“SAY IT, SIMON!” everyone screamed.

Simon opened his mouth. “I – Oh, leave off!” He was terrified of what might happen, but once he had started to speak, all the witchcraft beating at him was too much for him. “He – he – Guy Fawkes blew up the Houses of Parliament.”

Everything at once began to ripple.

It was as if the world had turned into a vast curtain, hanging in folds, with every fold in it rippling in and out. The ripples ran through desks, windows, walls and people alike. Each person was rippled through. They were tugged, and rippled again, until everyone felt they were coming to pieces. By then, the ripples were so strong and steep that everyone could see right down into the folds.

For just a moment, on the outside of each fold, was the classroom everyone knew, with the Inquisitor and his huge men on the same fold as Miss Cadwallader, and Chrestomanci on another fold beside them. The inner parts of the folds were all different places.

Charles realised that if he was going to apologise to Chrestomanci, he had better do it at once. He turned round to say it. But the folds had already rippled flat and nothing was the same any more.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” said one of the boys. He sounded as if he meant it, for a wonder.

Mr Crossley jumped, and wondered if he had been asleep. He seemed to have had that kind of shiver that makes you say “Someone walked over my grave.” He looked up from the books he was marking.

The janitor was in the classroom. What was his name? He had a raucous voice and a lot of stupid opinions. Littleton, that was it. Littleton seemed to be clearing up broken glass. Mr Crossley was puzzled, because he did not remember a window being broken. But when he looked over at the windows, he saw one of them was newly mended, with a lot of putty and many thumbprints.

“There you are, Mr Crossley. All tidy now,” Mr Littleton rasped.

“Thank you, Littleton,” Mr Crossley said coldly. If you let Littleton get talking, he stayed and tried to teach the class. He watched the janitor collect his things and back himself through the door. Thank goodness!

“Thank you, Charles,” said someone.

Mr Crossley jerked round and discovered a total stranger in the room. This man was tall and tired-looking and seemed, from his clothes, to be on his way to a wedding. Mr Crossley thought he must be a school governor and started to stand up politely.

“Oh, please don’t get up,” Chrestomanci said. “I’m just on my way out.” He walked to the door. Before he went out of it, he looked round 2Y and said, “If any of you want me again, a message to the Old Gate House should find me.”

The door closed behind him. Mr Crossley sat down to his marking again. He stared. There was a note on top of the topmost exercise book. He knew it had not been there before. It was written in ordinary blue ballpoint, in capital letters, and it gave Mr Crossley the oddest feeling of having been in the same situation before.

Why was that? He must have dozed off and had a dream. Yes. Now Mr Crossley thought about it, he had had the strangest dream. He had dreamed he taught in a dreadful boarding school called Larwood House. He looked thankfully up at the bent, busy heads of 2Y.

This was, as he well knew, Portway Oaks Comprehensive, and everyone went home every evening. Thank goodness! Mr Crossley hated the idea of teaching in a boarding school. You were always on the job.

He wondered who had written the note. And here, as his eyes went over the class, he had a momentary feeling of shock. A lot of faces were missing from his dream. He remembered a batch of tiresome girls: Theresa Mullett, Delia Martin, Heather Something, Karen Something Else. None of them were there. Nor was Daniel Smith.

Ah but—Mr Crossley remembered now. Dan Smith should have been there. He was in hospital. Two days ago, the stupid boy had eaten a handful of tin-tacks for a bet. No one had believed he had, at first. But when Mr Wentworth, the Headmaster, had put Dan in his car and driven him to be X-rayed, there he was, full of tin-tacks. Idiots some boys were!

And here was another mad thing about Mr Crossley’s dream: he had dreamt that Miss Cadwallader was Head in place of Mr Wentworth! Quite mad. Mr Crossley knew perfectly well that Miss Cadwallader was the lady who ran The Gate House School for Girls, where Eileen Hodge was a teacher. Come to think of it, that must have been why he dreamt of Theresa Mullett and her friends. He had seen their faces staring out at him from the prim line of girls walking behind Eileen Hodge.

And now Mr Crossley remembered something else that almost made him forget his dream and the mysterious note. Eileen Hodge had at last agreed to go out with him. He was to call for her on Tuesday, because she was going away for half-term. He was getting somewhere at last!

But even through his pleasure about Eileen, the dream and the note kept nagging at Mr Crossley. Why should it bother him who had written the note? He looked at Brian Wentworth, sitting next to his great friend Simon Silverson. The two of them were giggling about something. The note was quite probably one of Brian’s jokes. But it could equally well be some deep scheme masterminded by Charles Morgan and Nirupam Singh. Mr Crossley looked at those two.

Charles looked back at Mr Crossley over his glasses and across the piece of paper he was supposed to be writing on. How much did Mr Crossley know? Charles’s writing had got no further than the title: Hallowe’en Poem. Neither had Nirupam’s. On the floor between them was a pair of spiked running shoes and, filling them with wonder, was the name marked on the shoes: Daniel Smith. Both of them knew that Dan did not own any running shoes. Of course, Smith was not exactly an uncommon name, but – both of them were struggling with strange double memories.

Charles wondered particularly at the sense of relief and peace he had. He felt at ease inside. He also felt rather hungry. One part of his memory told him that this was because Brian Wentworth had invisibly eaten half his lunch. The other half suggested that it was because chess club had taken up most of the dinner hour. And here was an odd thing. Up till that moment, Charles had intended to be a chess grand master. Now those double memories caused him to change his mind.

Someone – whose name he could not quite remember now – had suggested to him that he was going to have a very strong talent indeed for something, and it was not for chess, Charles was sure now. Perhaps he would be an inventor instead. Anyway, the chess club half of his memory, which seemed to be the important half, suggested that he hurried home early so he could eat the last of the cornflakes before his sister Bernadine hogged them.

“Guy Fawkes,” Nirupam murmured.

Charles did not know if Nirupam was referring to witchcraft, or to Dan Smith’s idea for half-term. They had been going to collect money for the guy, using Nirupam for a guy. Nirupam, in the Morgans’ old pushchair, made a beautiful long, thin, floppy guy. Now they were both wondering if they would have the nerve to do it on their own, without Dan to keep them up to it.

“Why did you have to bet Dan he couldn’t eat tin-tacks?” Charles whispered to Nirupam.

“Because I didn’t think he would!” Nirupam answered grumpily. He had been in a lot of trouble with Mr Wentworth about that bet. “Could we get Estelle and Nan to help push me?”

“They’re girls,” Charles objected. But he considered the idea while he underlined Hallowe’en Poem in red ink, with blood-drops. Those two girls might just do it, at that. As he inked the last drop of blood, he noticed a blister on his finger. It had reached the flat, white, empty stage by now. Carefully, Charles inked it bright red. He was not sure he wanted to forget about things that soon.

Mr Crossley was still considering the note. It could be another flight of fancy from Nan Pilgrim. Nan, as usual, since she had arrived at the school from Essex at the beginning of term, was sitting next to Estelle Green. They were thick as thieves, those two. A good thing, because Estelle had been rather lonely before Nan arrived.

Nan glanced up at Mr Crossley, and down again at her pen rushing across her paper. Fascinated, she read:

And in this part of the rainbow, Guy Fawkes stamped the fuse out, but a little, tiny smouldering spark remained. The spark crept and ate its way to the kegs of gunpowder. BOOM!!!

“Estelle! Look at this!”

Estelle leaned over, looked, and goggled. “Do you know what I think?” she whispered. “When you grow up to be an author and write books, you’ll think you’re making the books up, but they’ll all really be true, somewhere.” She sighed. “My poem’s going to be about a great enchanter.”

Mr Crossley suddenly wondered why he was worrying about the note. It was only a joke, after all. He cleared his throat. Everyone looked up hopefully.

“Somebody,” said Mr Crossley, “seems to have sent me a Hallowe’en message.” And he read out the note.

“SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH.”

2Y thought this was splendid news. Hands shot up all over the room like a bed of beansprouts.

“It’s me, Mr Crossley!”

“Mr Crossley, I’m the witch!”

“Can I be the witch, Mr Crossley?”

“Me, Mr Crossley, me, me, me!”

This book is for Leo,
who got hit on the head
with a cricket bat

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

It was years before Christopher told anyone about his dreams. This was because he mostly lived in the nurseries at the top of the big London house, and the nursery maids who looked after him changed every few months.

He scarcely saw his parents. When Christopher was small, he was terrified that he would meet Papa out walking in the park one day and not recognise him. He used to kneel down and look through the banisters on the rare days when Papa came home from the City before bedtime, hoping to fix Papa’s face in his mind. All he got was a foreshortened view of a figure in a frock coat with a great deal of well-combed black whisker, handing a tall black hat to the footman, and then a view of a very neat white parting in black hair, as Papa marched rapidly under the stairway and out of sight. Beyond knowing that Papa was taller than most footmen, Christopher knew little else.

Some evenings, Mama was on the stairs to meet Papa, blocking Christopher’s view with wide silk skirts and a multitude of frills and draperies. “Remind your master,” she would say icily to the footman, “that there is a Reception in this house tonight and that he is required, for once in his life, to act as host.”

Papa, hidden behind Mama’s wide clothing, would reply in a deep gloomy voice, “Tell Madam I have a great deal of work brought home from the office tonight. Tell her she should have warned me in advance.”

“Inform your master,” Mama would reply to the footman, “that if I’d warned him, he would have found an excuse not to be here. Point out to him that it is my money that finances his business and that I shall remove it if he does not do this small thing for me.”

Then Papa would sigh. “Tell Madam I am going up to dress,” he would say. “Under protest. Ask her to stand aside from the stairs.”

Mama never did stand aside, to Christopher’s disappointment. She always gathered up her skirts and sailed upstairs ahead of Papa, to make sure Papa did as she wanted. Mama had huge lustrous eyes, a perfect figure and piles of glossy brown curls. The nursery maids told Christopher Mama was a Beauty. At this stage in his life Christopher thought everyone’s parents were like this; but he did wish Mama would give him a view of Papa just once.

He thought everyone had the kind of dreams he had, too. He did not think they were worth mentioning. The dreams always began the same way. Christopher got out of bed and walked round the corner of the night-nursery wall – the part with the fireplace, which jutted out – on to a rocky path high on the side of a valley. The valley was green and steep, with a stream rushing from waterfall to waterfall down the middle, but Christopher never felt there was much point in following the stream down the valley. Instead he went up the path, round a large rock, into the part he always thought of as The Place Between. Christopher thought it was probably a left-over piece of the world, from before somebody came along and made the world properly.

Formless slopes of rock towered and slanted in all directions. Some of it was hard and steep, some of it piled and rubbly, and none of it had much shape. Nor did it have much colour – most of it was the ugly brown you get from mixing every colour in a paintbox. There was always a formless wet mist hanging round this place, adding to the vagueness of everything. You could never see the sky. In fact, Christopher sometimes thought there might not be a sky: he had an idea the formless rock went on and on in a great arch overhead – but when he thought about it, that did not seem possible.

Christopher always knew in his dream that you could get to Almost Anywhere from The Place Between. He called it Almost Anywhere, because there was one place that did not want you to go to it. It was quite near, but he always found himself avoiding it. He set off sliding, scrambling, edging across bulging wet rock, and climbing up or down, until he found another valley and another path. There were hundreds of them. He called them the Anywheres.

The Anywheres were mostly quite different from London. They were hotter or colder, with strange trees and stranger houses. Sometimes the people in them looked ordinary, sometimes their skin was bluish or reddish and their eyes were peculiar, but they were always very kind to Christopher. He had a new adventure every time he went on a dream. In the active adventures people helped him escape through cellars of odd buildings, or he helped them in wars, or in rounding up dangerous animals. In the calm adventures, he got new things to eat and people gave him toys. He lost most of the toys as he was scrambling back home over the rocks, but he did manage to bring back the shiny shell necklace the silly ladies gave him, because he could hang it round his neck.

He went to the Anywhere with the silly ladies several times. It had blue sea and white sand, perfect for digging and building in. There were ordinary people in it, but Christopher only saw them in the distance. The silly ladies came and sat on rocks out of the sea and giggled at him while he made sand-castles.

“Oh clistoffer!” they would coo, in lisping voices. “Tell uth what make you a clistoffer.” And they would all burst into screams of high laughter.

They were the only ladies he had seen without clothes on. Their skins were greenish and so was their hair. He was fascinated by the way the ends of them were big silvery tails that could curl and flip almost like a fish, and send powerful sprays of water over him from their big finned feet. He never could persuade them that he was not a strange animal called a clistoffer.

Every time he went to that Anywhere, the latest nursery maid complained about all the sand in his bed. He had learnt very early on that they complained even louder when they found his pyjamas muddy, wet and torn from climbing through The Place Between. He took a set of clothes out on to the rocky path and left them there to change into. He had to put new clothes there every year or so, when he grew out of the latest torn and muddy suit, but the nursery maids changed so often that none of them noticed. Nor did they notice the strange toys he brought back over the years. There was a clockwork dragon, a horse that was really a flute, and the necklace from the silly ladies which, when you looked closely, was a string of tiny pearl skulls.

Christopher thought about the silly ladies. He looked at his latest nursemaid’s feet, and he thought that her shoes were about big enough to hide flippers. But you could never see any more of any lady because of her skirts. He kept wondering how Mama and the nursery maid walked about on nothing but a big limber tail instead of legs.

His chance to find out came one afternoon when the nursery maid put him into an unpleasant sailor-suit and led him downstairs to the drawing room. Mama and some other ladies were there with someone called Lady Badgett, who was a kind of cousin of Papa’s. She had asked to see Christopher. Christopher stared at her long nose and her wrinkles. “Is she a witch, Mama?” he asked loudly.

Everyone except Lady Badgett – who went more wrinkled than ever – said, “Hush, dear!” After that, Christopher was glad to find they seemed to have forgotten him. He quietly lay down on his back on the carpet, and rolled from lady to lady. When they caught him, he was under the sofa gazing up Lady Badgett’s petticoats. He was dragged out of the room in disgrace, very disappointed to discover that all the ladies had big thick legs, except Lady Badgett: her legs were thin and yellow like a chicken’s.

Mama sent for him in her dressing-room later that day. “Oh, Christopher, how could you!” she said. “I’d just got Lady Badgett to the point of calling on me, and she’ll never come again. You’ve undone the work of years!”

It was very hard work, Christopher realised, being a Beauty. Mama was very busy in front of her mirror with all sorts of little cut glass bottles and jars. Behind her, a maid was even busier, far busier than the nursery maids ever were, working on Mama’s glossy curls. Christopher was so ashamed to have wasted all this work that he picked up a glass jar to hide his confusion.

Mama told him sharply to put it down. “Money isn’t everything, you see, Christopher,” she explained. “A good place in Society is worth far more. Lady Badgett could have helped us both. Why do you think I married your papa?”

Since Christopher had simply no idea what could have brought Mama and Papa together, he put out his hand to pick up the jar again. But he remembered in time that he was not supposed to touch it, and picked up a big pad of false hair instead. He turned it round in his hands while Mama talked.

“You are going to grow up with Papa’s good family and my money,” she said. “I want you to promise me now that you will take your place in Society alongside the very best people. Mama intends you to be a great man – Christopher, are you listening?”

Christopher had given up trying to understand Mama. He held the false hair out instead. “What’s this for?”

“Bulking out my hair,” Mama said. “Please attend, Christopher. It’s very important you begin now preparing yourself for the future. Put that hair down.”

Christopher put the pad of hair back. “I thought it might be a dead rat,” he said. And somehow Mama must have made a mistake because, to Christopher’s great interest, the thing really was a dead rat. Mama and her maid both screamed. Christopher was hustled away while a footman came running with a shovel.

After that, Mama called Christopher to her dressing-room and talked to him quite often. He stood trying to remember not to fiddle with the jars, staring at his reflection in her mirror, wondering why his curls were black and Mama’s rich brown, and why his eyes were so much more like coal than Mama’s. Something seemed to stop there ever being another dead rat, but sometimes a spider could be encouraged to let itself down in front of the mirror, whenever Mama’s talk became too alarming.

He understood that Mama cared very urgently about his future. He knew he was going to have to enter Society with the best people. But the only Society he had heard of was the Aid the Heathen Society that he had to give a penny to every Sunday in church, and he thought Mama meant that.

Christopher made careful enquiries from the nursery maid with the big feet. She told him Heathens were savages who ate people. Missionaries were the best people, and they were the ones Heathens ate. Christopher saw that he was going to be a missionary when he grew up. He found Mama’s talk increasingly alarming. He wished she had chosen another career for him.

He also asked the nursery maid about the kind of ladies who had tails like fish. “Oh, you mean mermaids!” the girl said, laughing. “Those aren’t real.”

Christopher knew mermaids were not real, because he only met them in dreams. Now he was convinced that he would meet Heathens too, if he went to the wrong Almost Anywhere. For a time, he was so frightened of meeting Heathens that when he came to a new valley from The Place Between, he lay down and looked carefully at the Anywhere it led to, to see what the people were like there before he went on. But after a while, when nobody tried to eat him, he decided that the Heathens probably lived in the Anywhere which stopped you going to it, and gave up worrying until he was older.

When he was a little older, people in the Anywheres sometimes gave him money. Christopher learnt to refuse coins. As soon as he touched them, everything just stopped. He landed in bed with a jolt and woke up sweating. Once this happened when a pretty lady, who reminded him of Mama, tried laughingly to hang an earring in his ear. Christopher would have asked the nursery maid with big feet about it, but she had left long ago. Most of the ones who came after simply said, “Don’t bother me now – I’m busy!” when he asked them things.

Until he learnt to read, Christopher thought this was what all nursery maids did: they stayed a month, too busy to talk, and then set their mouths in a nasty line and flounced out. He was amazed to read of Old Retainers, who stayed with families for a whole lifetime and could be persuaded to tell long (and sometimes very boring) stories about the family in the past. In his house, none of the servants stayed more than six months.

The reason seemed to be that Mama and Papa had given up speaking to one another even through the footman. They handed the servants notes to give to one another instead. Since it never occurred to either Mama or Papa to seal the notes, sooner or later someone would bring the note up to the nursery floor and read it aloud to the nursery maid. Christopher learnt that Mama was always short and to the point.

“Mr Chant is requested to smoke cigars only in his own room.” Or, “Will Mr Chant please take note that the new laundry maid has complained of holes burnt in his shirts.” Or, “Mr Chant caused me much embarrassment by leaving in the middle of my Breakfast Party.”

Papa usually let the notes build up and then answered the lot in a kind of rambling rage.

My dear Miranda,

I shall smoke where I please and it is the job of that lazy laundry maid to deal with the results. But then your extravagance in employing foolish layabouts and rude louts is only for your own selfish comfort and never for mine. If you wish me to remain at your parties, try to employ a cook who knows bacon from old shoes and refrain from giving that idiotic tinkling laugh all the time.

Papa’s replies usually caused the servants to leave overnight.

Christopher rather enjoyed the insight these notes gave him. Papa seemed more like a person, somehow, even if he was so critical. It was quite a blow to Christopher when he was cut off from them by the arrival of his first governess.

Mama sent for him. She was in tears. “Your papa has overreached himself this time,” she said. “It’s a mother’s place to see to the education of her child. I want you to go to a good school, Christopher. It’s most important. But I don’t want to force you into learning. I want your ambition to flower as well. But your papa comes crashing in with his grim notions and goes behind my back by appointing this governess who, knowing your papa, is bound to be terrible! Oh my poor child!”

Christopher realised that the governess was his first step towards becoming a missionary. He felt solemn and alarmed. But when the governess came, she was simply a drab lady with pink eyes, who was far too discreet to talk to servants. She only stayed a month, to Mama’s jubilation.

“Now we can really start your education,” Mama said. “I shall choose the next governess myself.”

Mama said that quite often over the next two years, for governesses came and went just like nursery maids before them. They were all drab, discreet ladies, and Christopher got their names muddled up. He decided that the chief difference between a governess and a nursery maid was that a governess usually burst into tears before she left – and that was the only time a governess ever said anything interesting about Mama and Papa.

“I’m sorry to do this to you,” the third – or maybe the fourth – governess wept, “because you’re a nice little boy, even if you are a bit remote, but the atmosphere in this house! Every night he’s home – which thank God is rarely! – I have to sit at the dining-table with them in utter silence. And she passes me a note to give to him, and he passes me one for her. Then they open the notes and look daggers at one another and then at me. I can’t stand any more!”

The ninth – or maybe the tenth – governess was even more indiscreet. “I know they hate one another,” she sobbed, “but she’s no call to hate me too! She’s one of those who can’t abide other women. And she’s a sorceress, I think – I can’t be sure, because she only does little things – and he’s at least as strong as she is. He may even be an enchanter. Between them they make such an atmosphere – it’s no wonder they can’t keep any servants! Oh, Christopher, forgive me for talking like this about your parents!”

All the governesses asked Christopher to forgive them and he forgave them very readily, for this was the only time now that he had news of Mama and Papa. It gave him a wistful sort of feeling that perhaps other people had parents who were not like his. He was also sure that there was some sort of crisis brewing. The hushed thunder of it reached as far as the schoolroom, even though the governesses would not let him gossip with the servants any more.

He remembered the night the crisis broke, because that was the night when he went to an Anywhere where a man under a yellow umbrella gave him a sort of candlestick of little bells. It was so beautiful that Christopher was determined to bring it home. He held it in his teeth as he scrambled across the rocks of The Place Between. To his joy, it was in his bed when he woke up. But there was quite a different feeling to the house. The twelfth governess packed and left straight after breakfast.

Christopher was called to Mama’s dressing-room that afternoon. There was a new governess sitting on the only hard chair, wearing the usual sort of ugly greyish clothes and a hat that was uglier than usual. Her drab cotton gloves were folded on her dull bag and her head hung down as if she were timid or put-upon, or both. Christopher found her of no interest. All the interest in the room was centred on the man standing behind Mama’s chair with his hand on Mama’s shoulder.

“Christopher, this is my brother,” Mama said happily. “Your Uncle Ralph.”

Mama pronounced it Rafe. It was more than a year before Christopher discovered it was the name he read as Ralph.

Uncle Ralph took his fancy completely. To begin with, he was smoking a cigar. The scents of the dressing-room were changed and mixed with the rich incense-like smoke, and Mama was not protesting by even so much as sniffing. That alone was enough to show that Uncle Ralph was in a class by himself. Then he was wearing tweeds, strong and tangy and almost fox-coloured, which were a little baggy here and there, but blended beautifully with the darker foxiness of Uncle Ralph’s hair and the redder foxiness of his moustache. Christopher had seldom seen a man in tweeds or without whiskers. This did even more to assure him that Uncle Ralph was someone special. As a final touch, Uncle Ralph smiled at him like sunlight on an autumn forest. It was such an engaging smile that Christopher’s face broke into a return smile almost of its own accord.

“Hallo, old chap,” said Uncle Ralph, rolling out blue smoke above Mama’s glossy hair. “I know this is not the best way for an uncle to recommend himself to a nephew, but I’ve been sorting the family affairs out, and I’m afraid I’ve had to do one or two quite shocking things, like bringing you a new governess and arranging for you to start school in autumn. Governess over there. Miss Bell. I hope you like one another. Enough to forgive me anyway.”

He smiled at Christopher in a sunny, humorous way which had Christopher rapidly approaching adoration. All the same, Christopher glanced dubiously at Miss Bell. She looked back, and there was an instant when a sort of hidden prettiness in her almost came out into the open. Then she blinked pale eyelashes and murmured, “Pleased to meet you,” in a voice as uninteresting as her clothes.

“She’ll be your last governess, I hope,” said Mama. Because of that, Christopher ever after thought of Miss Bell as the Last Governess. “She’s going to prepare you for school. I wasn’t meaning to send you away yet, but your uncle says—Anyway, a good education is important for your career and, to be blunt with you, Christopher, your papa has made a most vexatious hash of the money – which is mine, not his, as you know – and lost practically all of it. Luckily I had your uncle to turn to and—”

“And once turned to, I don’t let people down,” Uncle Ralph said, with a quick flick of a glance at the governess. Maybe he meant she should not be hearing this. “Fortunately, there’s plenty left to send you to school, and then your mama is going to recoup a bit by living abroad. She’ll like that – eh, Miranda? And Miss Bell is going to be found another post with glowing references. Everyone’s going to be fine.”

His smile went to all of them one by one, full of warmth and confidence. Mama laughed and dabbed scent behind her ears. The Last Governess almost smiled, so that the hidden prettiness half-emerged again. Christopher tried to grin a strong manly grin at Uncle Ralph, because that seemed to be the only way to express the huge, almost hopeless adoration that was growing in him. Uncle Ralph laughed, a golden brown laugh, and completed the conquest of Christopher by fishing in a tweed pocket and tipping his nephew a bright new sixpence.

Christopher would have died rather than spend that sixpence. Whenever he changed clothes, he transferred the sixpence to the new pockets. It was another way of expressing his adoration of Uncle Ralph. It was clear that Uncle Ralph had stepped in to save Mama from ruin, and this made him the first good man that Christopher had met. And on top of that, he was the only person outside the Anywheres who had bothered to speak to Christopher in that friendly man-to-man way.

Christopher tried to treasure the Last Governess too, for Uncle Ralph’s sake, but that was not so easy. She was so very boring. She had a drab, calm way of speaking, and she never raised her voice or showed impatience, even when he was stupid about Mental Arithmetic or Levitation, both of which all the other governesses had somehow missed out on.

“If a herring and a half cost three-ha’pence, Christopher,” she explained drearily, “that’s a penny and a half for a fish and a half. How much for a whole fish?”

“I don’t know,” he said, trying not to yawn.

“Very well,” the Last Governess said calmly. “We’ll think again tomorrow. Now look in this mirror and see if you can’t make it rise in the air just an inch.”

But Christopher could not move the mirror any more than he could understand what a herring cost. The Last Governess put the mirror aside and quietly went on to puzzle him about French. After a few days of this, Christopher tried to make her angry, hoping she would turn more interesting when she shouted. But she just said calmly, “Christopher, you’re getting silly. You may play with your toys now. But remember you only take one out at a time, and you put that back before you get out another. That is our rule.”

Christopher had become rapidly and dismally accustomed to this rule. It reduced the fun a lot. He had also become used to the Last Governess sitting beside him while he played. The other governesses had seized the chance to rest, but this one sat in a hard chair efficiently mending his clothes, which reduced the fun even more. Nevertheless, he got the candlestick of chiming bells out of the cupboard, because that was fascinating in its way. It was so arranged that it played different tunes, depending on which bell you touched first.

When he had finished with it, the Last Governess paused in her darning to say, “That goes in the middle of the top shelf. Put it back before you take that clockwork dragon.” She waited to listen to the chiming that showed Christopher had done what she said. Then, as she drove the needle into the sock again, she asked in her dullest way, “Who gave you the bells, Christopher?”

No one had ever asked Christopher about anything he had brought back from the Anywheres before. He was rather at a loss. “A man under a yellow umbrella,” he answered. “He said they bring luck on my house.”

“What man where?” the Last Governess wanted to know – except that she did not sound as if she cared if she knew or not.

“An Almost Anywhere,” Christopher said. “The hot one with the smells and the snake charmers. The man didn’t say his name.”

“That’s not an answer, Christopher,” the Last Governess said calmly, but she did not say anything more until the next time, two days later, when Christopher got out the chiming bells again. “Remember where they go when you’ve finished with them,” she said. “Have you thought yet where the man with the yellow umbrella was?”

“Outside a painted place where some gods live,” Christopher said, setting the small silvery bellcups ringing. “He was nice. He said it didn’t matter about money.”

“Very generous,” remarked the Last Governess. “Where was this painted house for gods, Christopher?”

“I told you. It was an Almost Anywhere,” Christopher said.

“And I told you that that is not an answer,” the Last Governess said. She folded up her darning. “Christopher, I insist that you tell me where those bells came from.”

“Why do you want to know?” Christopher asked, wishing she would leave him in peace.

“Because,” the Last Governess said with truly ominous calm, “you are not being frank and open like a nice boy should be. I suspect you stole those bells.”

At this monstrous injustice, Christopher’s face reddened and tears stood in his eyes. “I haven’t!” he cried out. “He gave them to me! People always give me things in the Anywheres, only I drop most of them. Look.” And regardless of her one-toy-at-a-time rule, he rushed to the cupboard, fetched the horse flute, the mermaids’ necklace and the clockwork dragon, and banged them down in her darning basket. “Look! These are from other Anywheres.”

The Last Governess gazed at them with terrible impassiveness. “Am I to believe you have stolen these too?” she said. She put the basket and the toys on the floor and stood up. “Come with me. This must be reported to your mama at once.”

She seized Christopher’s arm and in spite of his yells of “I didn’t, I didn’t!” she marched him inexorably downstairs.

Christopher leant backwards and dragged his feet and implored her not to. He knew he would never be able to explain to Mama. All the notice the Last Governess took was to say, “Stop that disgraceful noise. You’re a big boy now.”

This was something all the governesses agreed on. But Christopher no longer cared about being big. Tears poured disgracefully down his cheeks and he screamed the name of the one person he knew who saved people. “Uncle Ralph! I’ll explain to Uncle Ralph!”

The Last Governess glanced down at him at that. Just for a moment, the hidden prettiness flickered in her face. But to Christopher’s despair, she dragged him to Mama’s dressing-room and knocked on the door.

Mama turned from her mirror in surprise. She looked at Christopher, red-faced and gulping and wet with tears. She looked at the Last Governess. “Whatever is going on? Is he ill?”

“No, Madam,” the Last Governess said in her dullest way. “Something has happened which I think your brother should be informed of at once.”

“Ralph?” said Mama. “You mean I’m to write to Ralph? Or is it more urgent that that?”

“Urgent, Madam, I think,” the Last Governess said drearily. “Christopher said that he is willing to confess to his uncle. I suggest, if I may make so bold, that you summon him now.”

Mama yawned. This governess bored her terribly. “I’ll do my best,” she said, “but I don’t answer for my brother’s temper. He lives a very busy life, you know.” Carelessly, she pulled one of her dark glossy hairs out of the silver backed brush she had been using. Then, much more carefully, she began teasing hairs out of her silver and crystal hair-tidy.

Most of the hairs were Mama’s own dark ones, but Christopher, watching Mama’s beautiful pearly nails delicately pinching and pulling at the hairs, while he sobbed and swallowed and sobbed again, saw that one of the hairs was a much redder colour. This was the one Mama pulled out. She laid it across her own hair from the brush. Then, picking up what seemed to be a hatpin with a glittery knob, she laid that across both hairs and tapped it with one sharp, impatient nail. “Ralph,” she said, “Ralph Weatherby Argent. Miranda wants you.”

One of the mirrors of the dressing-table turned out to be a window, with Uncle Ralph looking through it, rather irritably, while he knotted his tie. “What is it?” he said. “I’m busy today.”

“When aren’t you?” asked Mama. “Listen, that governess is here looking like a wet week as usual. She’s brought Christopher. Something about a confession. Could you come and sort it out? It’s beyond me.”

“Is she?” said Uncle Ralph. He leaned sideways to look through the mirror – or window, or whatever – and when he saw Christopher, he winked and broke into his sunniest smile. “Dear, dear. This does look upsetting. I’ll be along at once.”

Christopher saw him leave the window and walk away to one side. Mama had only time to turn to the Last Governess and say, “There, I’ve done my best!” before the door of her dressing-room opened and Uncle Ralph strode in.

Christopher quite forgot his sobs in the interest of all this. He tried to think what was on the other side of the wall of Mama’s dressing-room. The stairs, as far as he knew. He supposed Uncle Ralph could have a secret room in the wall about one foot wide, but he was much more inclined to think he had been seeing real magic. As he decided this, Uncle Ralph secretly passed him a large white handkerchief and walked cheerfully into the middle of the room to allow Christopher time to wipe his face.

“Now what’s all this about?” he said.

“I’ve no idea,” said Mama. “She’ll explain, no doubt.”

Uncle Ralph cocked a ginger eyebrow at the Last Governess.

“I found Christopher playing with an artefact,” the Governess said tediously, “of a kind I have never seen before, made of metal that is totally unknown to me. He then revealed he had three more artefacts, each one different from the other, but he was unable to explain how he had come by them.”

Uncle Ralph looked at Christopher, who hid the handkerchief behind him and looked nervously back. “Enough to get anyone into hot water, old chap,” Uncle Ralph said. “Suppose you take me to look at these things and explain where they do come from?”

Christopher heaved a great happy sigh. He had known he could count on Uncle Ralph to save him. “Yes, please,” he said.

They went back upstairs with the Last Governess processing ahead and Christopher hanging gratefully on to Uncle Ralph’s large warm hand. When they got there, the Governess sat quietly down to her sewing again as if she felt she had done her bit. Uncle Ralph picked up the bells and jingled them. “By Jove!” he said. “These sound like nothing else in the universe!”

He took them to the window and carefully examined each bell. “Bullseye!” he said. “You clever woman! They are like nothing else in the universe. Some kind of strange alloy, I think, different for each bell. Handmade by the look of them.” He pointed genially to the tuffet by the fire. “Sit there, old chap, and oblige me by explaining what you did to get these bells here.”

Christopher sat down, full of willing eagerness. “I had to hold them in my mouth while I climbed through The Place Between,” he explained.

“No, no,” said Uncle Ralph. “That sounds like near the end. Start with what you did in the beginning before you got the bells.”

“I went down the valley to the snake-charming town,” Christopher said.

“No, before that, old chap,” said Uncle Ralph. “When you set off from here. What time of day was it, for instance? After breakfast? Before lunch?”

“No, in the night,” Christopher explained. “It was one of the dreams.”

In this way, by going carefully back every time Christopher missed out a step, Uncle Ralph got Christopher to tell him in detail about the dreams, and The Place Between, and the Almost Anywheres he came to down the valleys. Since Uncle Ralph, far from being angry, seemed steadily more delighted, Christopher told him everything he could think of.

“What did I tell you!” he said, possibly to the Governess. “I can always trust my hunches. Something had to come out of a heredity like this! By Jove, Christopher old chap, you must be the only person in the world who can bring back solid objects from a spirit trip! I doubt if even old de Witt can do that!”

Christopher glowed to find Uncle Ralph so pleased with him, but he could not help feeling resentful about the Last Governess. “She said I stole them.”

“Take no notice of her. Women are always jumping to the wrong conclusions,” Uncle Ralph said, lighting a cigar. At this, the Last Governess shrugged her shoulders up and smiled a little. The hidden prettiness came out stronger than Christopher had ever seen it, almost as if she was human and sharing a joke.

Uncle Ralph blew a roll of blue smoke over them both, beaming like the sun coming through the clouds. “Now the next thing, old chap,” he said, “is to do a few experiments to test this gift of yours. Can you control these dreams of yours? Can you say when you’re about to go off to your Almost Anywheres – or can’t you?”

Christopher thought about it. “I go when I want to,” he said.

“Then have you any objection to doing me a test run, say tomorrow night?” Uncle Ralph asked.

“I could go tonight,” Christopher offered.

“No, tomorrow,” said Uncle Ralph. “It’ll take me a day to get things set up. And when you go, this is what I want you to do.”

He leant forward and pointed his cigar at Christopher, to let him know he was serious. “You set out as usual when you’re ready and try to do two experiments for me. First, I’m going to arrange to have a man waiting for you in your Place Between. I want you to see if you can find him. You may have to shout to find him – I don’t know: I’m not a spirit traveller myself – but anyway, you climb about and see if you can make contact with him. If you do, then you do the second experiment. The man will tell you what that is. And if they both work, then we can experiment some more. Do you think you can do that? You’d like to help, wouldn’t you, old chap?”

“Yes!” said Christopher.

Uncle Ralph stood up and patted his shoulder. “Good lad. Don’t let anyone deceive you, old chap. You have a very exciting and important gift here. It’s so important that I advise you not to talk about it to anyone but me and Miss Bell over there. Don’t tell anyone, not even your mama. Right?”

“Right,” said Christopher. It was wonderful that Uncle Ralph thought him important. He was so glad and delighted that he would have done far more for Uncle Ralph than just not tell anyone. That was easy. There was no one to tell.

“So it’s our secret,” said Uncle Ralph, going to the door. “Just the three of us – and the man I’m going to send, of course. Don’t forget you may have to look quite hard to find him, will you?”

“I won’t forget,” Christopher promised eagerly.

“Good lad,” said Uncle Ralph, and went out of the door in a waft of cigar smoke.

Christopher thought he would never live through the time until tomorrow night. He burned to show Uncle Ralph what he could do. If it had not been for the Last Governess, he would have made himself ill with excitement, but she managed to be so boring that she somehow made everything else boring too. By the time Christopher went to bed that next night, he was almost wondering if it was worth dreaming.

But he did dream, because Uncle Ralph had asked him to, and got out of bed as usual and walked round the fireplace to the valley, where his clothes were lying on the rocky path as usual. By now this lot of clothes were torn, covered with mud and assorted filth from a hundred Almost Anywheres, and at least two sizes too small. Christopher put them on quickly, without bothering to do up buttons that would not meet. He never wore shoes because they got in the way as he climbed the rocks. He pattered round the crag in his bare feet into The Place Between.

It was formless and unfinished as ever, all slides and jumbles of rocks rearing in every direction and high overhead. The mist billowed as formlessly as the rocks. It was one of the times when rain slanted in it, driven this way and that by the hither-thither winds that blew in The Place Between. Christopher hoped he would not have to spend too long here hunting for Uncle Ralph’s man. It made him feel so small, besides being cold and wet. He dutifully braced himself on a slide of rubbly sand and shouted.

“Hallo!”

The Place Between made his voice sound no louder than a bird cheeping. The windy fog seemed to snatch the sound away and bury it in a flurry of rain. Christopher listened for a reply, but for minutes on end the only noise was the hissing hum of the wind.

He was wondering whether to shout again, when he heard a little cheeping thread of sound, wailing its thin way back to him across the rocks. “Hallooo!” It was his own shout. Christopher was sure of it. Right from the start of his dreams, he had known that The Place Between liked to have everything that did not belong back to the place it came from. That was why he always climbed back to bed faster than he did when he climbed out to a new valley. The Place pushed him back.

Christopher thought about this. It probably did no good to shout. If Uncle Ralph’s man was out there in the mist, he would not be able to stand and wait for very long, without getting pushed back to the valley he came from. So the man would have to wait in the mouth of a valley and hope that Christopher found him.

Christopher sighed. There were such thousands and thousands of valleys, high up, low down, turning off at every angle you could think of, and some valleys turned off other valleys – and that was only if you crawled round the side of the Place that was nearest. If you went the other way, towards the Anywhere that did not want people, there were probably many thousands more. On the other hand, Uncle Ralph would not want to make it too difficult. The man must be quite near.

Determined to make Uncle Ralph’s experiment a success if he could, Christopher set off, climbing, sliding, inching across wet rock with his face close to the cold hard smell of it. The first valley he came to was empty. “Hallo?” he called into it. But the river rushed down green empty space and he could see no one was there. He backed out and climbed up and sideways to the next. And there, before he reached the opening, he could see someone through the mist, dark and shiny with rain, crouching on a rock and scrabbling for a handhold overhead.

“Hallo?” Christopher asked.

“Well, I’ll be – is that Christopher?” the person asked. It was a strong young man’s voice. “Come on out where we can see one another.”

With a certain amount of heaving and slipping, both of them scrambled round a bulge of rock and dropped down into another valley, where the air was calm and warm. The grass here was lit pink by a sunset in the distance.

“Well, well,” said Uncle Ralph’s man. “You’re about half the size I expected. Pleased to meet you, Christopher. I’m Tacroy.”

He grinned down at Christopher. Tacroy was as strong and young as his voice, rather squarely and sturdily built, with a roundish brown face and merry-looking hazel eyes.

Christopher liked him at once – partly because Tacroy was the first grown man he had met who had curly hair like his own. It was not quite like. Where Christopher’s hair made loose black rounds, Tacroy’s hair coiled tight, like a mass of little pale brown springs. Christopher thought Tacroy’s hair must hurt when a governess or someone made him comb it. This made him notice that Tacroy’s curls were quite dry. Nor was there any trace of the shiny wetness that had been on his clothes a moment before. Tacroy was wearing a greenish worsted suit, rather shabby, but it was not even damp.

“How did you get dry so quickly?” Christopher asked him.

Tacroy laughed. “I’m not here quite as bodily as you seem to be. And you’re soaked through. How was that?”

“The rain in The Place Between,” Christopher said. “You were wet there too.”

“Was I?” said Tacroy. “I don’t visualise at all on the Passage – it’s more like night with a few stars to guide by. I find it quite hard to visualise even here on the World Edge – though I can see you quite well, of course, since we’re both willing it.”

He saw that Christopher was staring at him, not understanding more than a word of this, and screwed his eyes up thoughtfully. This made little laughing wrinkles all round Tacroy’s eyes. Christopher liked him better than ever. “Tell me,” Tacroy said, waving a brown hand towards the rest of the valley, “what do you see here?”

“A valley,” Christopher said, wondering what Tacroy saw, “with green grass. The sun’s setting and it’s making the stream down the middle look pink.”

“Is it now?” said Tacroy. “Then I expect it would surprise you very much to know that all I can see is a slightly pink fog.”

“Why?” said Christopher.

“Because I’m only here in spirit, while you seem to be actually here in the flesh,” Tacroy said. “Back in London, my valuable body is lying on a sofa in a deep trance, tucked up in blankets and warmed by stone hot-water bottles, while a beautiful and agreeable young lady plays tunes to me on her harp. I insisted on the young lady as part of my pay. Do you think you’re tucked up in bed somewhere too?”

When Tacroy saw that this question made Christopher both puzzled and impatient, his eyes screwed up again. “Let’s get going,” he said. “The next part of the experiment is to see if you can bring a prepared package back. I’ve made my mark. Make yours, and we’ll get down into this world.”

“Mark?” said Christopher.

“Mark,” said Tacroy. “If you don’t make a mark, how do you think you will find your way in and out of this world, or know which one it is when you come to it?”

“Valleys are quite easy to find,” Christopher protested. “And I can tell that I’ve been to this Anywhere before. It’s got the smallest stream of all of them.”

Tacroy shrugged with his eyes screwed right up. “My boy, you’re giving me the creeps. Be kind and please me and scratch the number nine on a rock or something. I don’t want to be the one who loses you.”

Christopher obligingly picked up a pointed flint and dug away at the mud of the path until he had made a large wobbly 9 there.

He looked up to find Tacroy staring as if he was a ghost. “What’s the matter?”

Tacroy gave a short wild-sounding laugh. “Oh nothing much. I can see it, that’s all. That’s only unheard of, that’s all. Can you see my mark?”

Christopher looked everywhere he could think of, including up at the sunset sky, and had to confess that he could see nothing like a mark.

“Thank Heaven!” said Tacroy. “At least that’s normal! But I’m still seriously wondering what you are. I begin to understand why your uncle got so excited.”

They sauntered together down the valley. Tacroy had his hands in his pockets and he seemed quite casual, but Christopher got the feeling, all the same, that Tacroy usually went into an Anywhere in some way that was quicker and quite different. He caught Tacroy glancing at him several times, as if Tacroy was not sure of the way to go and was waiting to see what Christopher did. He seemed very relieved when they came to the end of the valley and found themselves on the rutty road among huge jungle trees. The sun was almost down. There were lights at the windows of the tumbledown old inn in front of them.

This was one of the first Anywheres Christopher had been to. He remembered it hotter and wetter. The big trees had been bright green and dripping. Now they seemed brown and a bit wilted, as far as he could tell in the pink light. When he followed Tacroy on to the crazily-built wooden verandah of the inn, he saw that the blobs of coloured fungus that had fascinated him last time had all turned dry and white. He wondered if the landlord would remember him.

“Landlord!” Tacroy shouted. When nothing happened, he said to Christopher, “Can you bang on the table? I can’t.”

Christopher noticed that the bent boards of the verandah creaked under his own feet, but not under Tacroy’s. It did seem as if Tacroy was not really there in some way. He picked up a wooden bowl and rapped hard on the twisted table with it. It was another thing that made Tacroy’s eyes screw up.

When the landlord shuffled out, he was wrapped in at least three knitted shawls and too unhappy to notice Christopher, let alone remember him.

“Ralph’s messenger,” Tacroy said. “I believe you have a package for me.”

“Ah yes,” shivered the landlord. “Won’t you come inside out of this exceptionally bitter weather, sir? This is the hardest winter anyone has known for years.”

Tacroy’s eyebrows went up and he looked at Christopher. “I’m quite warm,” Christopher said.

“Then we’ll stay outside,” Tacroy said. “The package?”

“Directly, sir,” shivered the landlord. “But won’t you take something hot to warm you up? On the house, sir.”

“Yes, please,” Christopher said quickly. Last time he was here he had been given something chocolatish which was not cocoa but much nicer. The landlord nodded and smiled and shuffled shivering back indoors. Christopher sat at the table. Even though it was almost dark now, he felt deliciously warm. His clothes were drying nicely. Crowds of fleshy moth-things were flopping at the lighted windows, but enough light came between them for him to see Tacroy sit down in the air and then slide himself sideways on to the chair on the other side of the table.

“You’ll have to drink whatever-it-is for me,” Tacroy said.

“That won’t worry me,” Christopher said. “Why did you tell me to write the number nine?”

“Because this set of worlds is known as Series Nine,” Tacroy explained. “Your uncle seems to have a lot of dealings here. That was why it was easy to set the experiment up. If it works, I think he’s planning a whole set of trips, all along the Related Worlds. You’d find that a bit boring, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh no. I’d like it,” Christopher said. “How many are there after nine?”

“Ours is Twelve,” said Tacroy. “Then they go down to One, along the other way. Don’t ask me why they go back to front. It’s traditional.”

Christopher frowned over this. There were a great many more valleys than that in The Place Between, all arranged higgledy-piggledy, too, not in any neat way that made you need to count up to twelve. But he supposed there must be some way in which Tacroy knew best – or Uncle Ralph did.

The landlord shuffled hastily out again. He was carrying two cups that steamed out a dark chocolate smell, although this lovely aroma was rather spoilt by a much less pleasant smell coming from a round leather container on a long strap, which he dumped on the table beside the cups. “Here we are,” he said. “That’s the package and here’s to take the chill off you and drink to further dealings, sir. I don’t know how you two can stand it out here!”

“We come from a cold and misty climate,” Tacroy said. “Thanks,” he added to the landlord’s back, as the landlord scampered indoors again. “I suppose it must be tropical here usually,” he remarked as the door slammed. “I wouldn’t know. I can’t feel heat or cold in the spirit. Is that stuff nice?”

Christopher nodded happily. He had already drained one tiny cup. It was dark, hot and delicious. He pulled Tacroy’s cup over and drank that in sips, to make the taste last as long as possible. The round leather bottle smelt so offensive that it got in the way of the taste. Christopher put it on the floor out of the way.

“You can lift it, I see, and drink,” Tacroy said, watching him. “Your uncle told me to make quite sure, but I haven’t any doubt myself. He said you lose things on the Passage.”

“That’s because it’s hard carrying things across the rocks,” Christopher explained. “I need both hands for climbing.”

Tacroy thought. “Hm. That explains the strap on the bottle. But there could be all sorts of other reasons. I’d love to find out. For instance, have you ever tried to bring back something alive?”

“Like a mouse?” Christopher suggested. “I could put it in my pocket.”

A sudden gleeful look came into Tacroy’s face. He looked, Christopher thought, like a person about to be thoroughly naughty. “Let’s try it,” he said. “Let’s see if you can bring back a small animal next. I’ll persuade your uncle that we need to know that. I think I’ll die of curiosity if we don’t try it, even if it’s the last thing you do for us!”

After that Tacroy seemed to get more and more impatient. At last he stood up in such a hurry that he stood right through the chair as if it wasn’t there. “Haven’t you finished yet? Let’s get going.”

Christopher regretfully stood the tiny cup on his face to get at the last drops. He picked up the round bottle and hung it around his neck by the strap. Then he jumped off the verandah and set off down the rutty road, full of eagerness to show Tacroy the town. Fungus grew like corals on all the porches. Tacroy would like that.

Tacroy called after him. “Hey! Where are you off to?”

Christopher stopped and explained. “No way,” said Tacroy. “It doesn’t matter if the fungus is sky-blue-pink. I can’t hold this trance much longer, and I want to make sure you get back too.”

This was disappointing. But when Christopher came close and peered at him, Tacroy did seem to be developing a faint, fluttery look, as if he might dissolve into the dark, or turn into one of the moth-things beating at the windows of the inn. Rather alarmed by this, Christopher put a hand on Tacroy’s sleeve to hold him in place. For a moment, the arm hardly felt as if it was there – like the feathery balls of dust that grew under Christopher’s bed – but after that first moment it firmed up nicely. Tacroy’s outline grew hard and black against the dark trees. And Tacroy himself stood very still.

“I do believe,” he said, as if he did not believe it at all, “that you’ve done something to fix me. What did you do?”

“Hardened you up,” Christopher said. “You needed it so that we could go and look at the town. Come on.”

But Tacroy laughed and took a firm grip on Christopher’s arm – so firm that Christopher was sorry he had hardened him. “No, we’ll see the fungus another time. Now I know you can do this too, it’s going to be much easier. But I only contracted for an hour this trip. Come on.”

As they went back up the valley, Tacroy kept peering round. “If it wasn’t so dark,” he said, “I’m sure I’d be seeing this as a valley too. I can hear the stream. This is amazing!” But it was clear that he could not see The Place Between. When they got to it, Tacroy went on walking as if he thought it was still the valley. When the wind blew the mist aside, he was not there any more.

Christopher wondered whether to go back into Nine, or on into another valley. But it did not seem such fun without company, so he let The Place Between push him back home.

By the next morning, Christopher was heartily sick of the smell – it was more of a reek really – from the leather bottle. He put it under his bed, but it was still so bad that he had to get up and cover it with a pillow before he could get to sleep.

When the Last Governess came in to tell him to get up, she found it at once by the smell. “Dear Heavens above!” she said, dragging it out by its strap. “Would you credit this! I didn’t believe even your uncle could ask for a whole bottleful of this stuff! Didn’t he think of the danger?”

Christopher blinked up at her. He had never seen her so emotional. All her hidden prettiness had come out and she was staring at the bottle as if she did not know whether to be angry or scared or pleased. “What’s in it?” he said.

“Dragons’ blood,” said the Last Governess. “And it’s not even dried! I’m going to get this straight off to your uncle while you get dressed, or your mama will throw fits.” She hurried away with the bottle at arm’s length, swinging on its strap. “I think your uncle’s going to be very pleased,” she called over her shoulder.

There was no doubt about that. A day later a big parcel arrived for Christopher. The Last Governess brought it up to the schoolroom with some scissors and let him cut the string for himself, which added much to the excitement. Inside was a huge box of chocolates, with a vast red bow and a picture of a boy blowing bubbles on the top. Chocolates were so rare in Christopher’s life that he almost failed to notice the envelope tucked into the bow. It had a gold sovereign in it and a note from Uncle Ralph.

Well done!!!! it said. Next experiment in a week. Miss Bell will tell you when. Congratulations from your loving uncle.

This so delighted Christopher that he let the Last Governess have first pick from the chocolates. “I think,” she said dryly, as she picked the nutty kind that Christopher never liked, “that your Mama would like to be offered one before too many are gone.” Then she plucked the note out of Christopher’s fingers and put it in the fire as a hint that he was not to explain to Mama what he had done to earn the chocolates.

Christopher prudently ate the first layer before he offered the box to Mama. “Oh dear, these are so bad for your teeth!” Mama said, while her fingers hovered over the strawberry and then the truffle. “You do seem to have taken your uncle’s fancy – and that’s just as well, since I’ve had to put all my money in his hands. It’ll be your money one day,” she said as her fingers closed on the fudge. “Don’t let my brother spoil him too much,” she said to the Last Governess. “And I think you’d better take him to a dentist.”

“Yes, Madam,” said the Last Governess, all meek and drab.

It was clear that Mama did not have the least suspicion what the chocolates were really about. Christopher was pleased to have been so faithful to Uncle Ralph’s wishes, though he did wish Mama had not chosen the fudge.

The rest of the chocolates did not last quite the whole week, but they did take Christopher’s mind off the excitement of the next experiment. In fact, when the Last Governess said calmly, the next Friday before bedtime, “Your uncle wants you to go on another dream tonight,” Christopher felt more business-like than excited. “You are to try to get to Series Ten,” said the Last Governess, “and meet the same man as before. Do you think you can do that?”

“Easy!” Christopher said loftily. “I could do it standing on my head.”

“Which is getting a little swelled,” remarked the Last Governess. “Don’t forget to brush your hair and clean your teeth and don’t get too confident. This is not really a game.”

Christopher did honestly try not to feel too confident, but it was easy. He went out on to the path, where he put on his muddy clothes, and then climbed through The Place Between looking for Tacroy. The only difficulty was that the valleys were not arranged in the right order. Number Ten was not next one on from Nine, but quite a way lower down and further on. Christopher almost thought he was not going to find it. But at length he slid down a long slope of yellowish scree and saw Tacroy shining wetly through the mist as he crouched uncomfortably on the valley’s lip. He held out a dripping arm to Christopher.

“Lord!” he said. “I thought you were never coming. Firm me up, will you? I’m fading back already. The latest girl is nothing like so effective.”

Christopher took hold of Tacroy’s cold woolly-feeling hand. Tacroy began firming up at once. Soon he was hard and wet and as solid as Christopher, and very pleased about it too. “This was the part your uncle found hardest to believe,” he said while they climbed into the valley. “But I swore to him that I’d be able to see – oh – um. What do you see, Christopher?”

“It’s the Anywhere where I got my bells,” Christopher said, smiling round the steep green slopes. He remembered it perfectly. This Anywhere had a particular twist to the stream half-way down. But there was something new here – a sort of mistiness just beside the path. “What’s that?” he asked, forgetting that Tacroy could not see the valley.

But Tacroy evidently could see the valley now he was firmed up. He stared at the mistiness with his eyes ruefully wrinkled.

“Part of your uncle’s experiment that doesn’t seem to have worked,” he said. “It’s supposed to be a horseless carriage. He was trying to send it through to meet us. Do you think you can firm that up too?”

Christopher went to the mistiness and tried to put his hand on it. But the thing did not seem to be there enough for him to touch. His hand just went through.

“Never mind,” said Tacroy. “Your uncle will just have to think again. And the carriage was only one of three experiments tonight.” He insisted that Christopher wrote a big 10 in the dirt of the path, and then they set off down the valley. “If the carriage had worked,” Tacroy explained, “we’d have tried for something bulky. As it is, I get my way and we try for an animal. Lordy! I’m glad you came when you did. I was almost as bad as that carriage. It’s all that girl’s fault.”

“The lovely young lady with the harp?” asked Christopher.

“Alas, no,” Tacroy said regretfully. “She took a fit when you firmed me up last time. It seems my body there in London went down to a thread of mist and she thought I was a goner. Screamed and broke her harp strings. Left as soon as I came back. She said she wasn’t paid to harbour ghosts, pointed out that her contract was only for one trance, and refused to come back for twice the money. Pity. I hoped she was made of sterner stuff. She reminded me very much of another young lady with a harp who was once the light of my life.” For a short while, he looked as sad as someone with such a merry face could. Then he smiled. “But I couldn’t ask either of them to share my garret,” he said. “So it’s probably just as well.”

“Did you need to get another one?” Christopher asked.

“I can’t do without, unfortunately, unlike you,” Tacroy said. “A professional spirit traveller has to have another medium to keep him anchored – music’s the best way – and to call him back in case of trouble, and keep him warm, and make sure he’s not interrupted by tradesmen with bills and so forth. So your uncle found this new girl in a bit of a hurry. She’s stern stuff all right. Voice like a hatchet. Plays the flute like someone using wet chalk on a blackboard.” Tacroy shuddered slightly. “I can hear it faintly all the time if I listen.”

Christopher could hear a squealing noise too, but he thought it was probably the pipes of the snake charmers who sat in rows against the city wall in this Anywhere. They could see the city now. It was very hot here, far hotter than Nine. The high muddy-looking walls and the strange-shaped domes above them quivered in the heat, like things under water. Sandy dust blew up in clouds, almost hiding the dirty-white row of old men squatting in front of baskets blowing into pipes. Christopher looked nervously at the fat snakes, each one swaying upright in its basket.

Tacroy laughed. “Don’t worry. Your uncle doesn’t want a snake any more than you do!”

The City had a towering but narrow gate. By the time they reached it both were covered in sandy dust and Christopher was sweating through it, in trickles. Tacroy seemed enviably cool. Inside the walls it was even hotter. This was the one drawback to a thoroughly nice Anywhere.

The shady edges of the streets were crowded with people and goats and makeshift stalls under coloured umbrellas, so that Christopher was forced to walk with Tacroy down the blinding stripe of sun in the middle. Everyone shouted and chattered cheerfully. The air was thick with strange smells, the bleating of goats, the squawks of chickens, and strange clinking music. All the colours were bright, and brightest of all were the small gilded dolls-house things at the corners of streets. These were always heaped with flowers and dishes of food. Christopher thought they must belong to very small gods.

A lady under an electric blue umbrella gave him some of the sweetmeat she was selling. It was like a crisp bird’s-nest soaked in honey. Christopher gave some to Tacroy, but Tacroy said he could only taste it the way you tasted food in dreams, even when Christopher firmed him up again.

“Does Uncle Ralph want me to fetch a goat?” Christopher asked, licking honey from his fingers.

“We’d have tried if the carriage had worked,” Tacroy said. “But what your uncle’s really hoping for is a cat from one of the temples. We have to find the Temple of Asheth.”

Christopher led the way to the big square where all the large houses for gods were. The man with the yellow umbrella was still there, on the steps of the largest temple. “Ah yes. That’s it,” Tacroy said. But when Christopher set off hopefully to talk to the man with the yellow umbrella again, Tacroy said, “No, I think our best bet is to get in round the side somewhere.”

They found their way down narrow side alleys that ran all round the temple. There were no other doors to the temple at all, nor did it have any windows. The walls were high and muddy-looking and totally blank except for wicked spikes on the top. Tacroy stopped quite cheerfully in a baking alley where someone had thrown away a cartload of old cabbages and looked up at the spikes. The ends of flowering creepers were twined among the spikes from the other side of the wall.

“This looks promising,” he said, and leant against the wall. His cheerful look vanished. For a moment he looked frustrated and rather annoyed. “Here’s a turn-up,” he said. “You’ve made me too solid to get through, darn it!” He thought about it, and shrugged. “This was supposed to be experiment three anyway. Your uncle thought that if you could broach a way between the worlds, you could probably pass through a wall too. Are you game to try? Do you think you can get in and pick up a cat without me?”

Tacroy seemed very nervous and worried about it. Christopher looked at the frowning wall and thought that it was probably impossible. “I can try,” he said, and largely to console Tacroy, he stepped up against the hot stones of the wall and tried to push himself through them. At first it was impossible. But after a moment, he found that if he turned himself sort of sideways in a peculiar way, he began to sink into the stones. He turned and smiled encouragingly at Tacroy’s worried face. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“I don’t like letting you go on your own,” Tacroy was saying, when there came a noise like SHLUCK! and Christopher found himself on the other side of the wall all mixed up in creepers. For a second he was blinded in the sun there. He could see and hear and feel that things were moving all over the yard in front of him, rushing away from him in a stealthy, blurred way that had him almost paralysed with terror. Snakes! he thought, and blinked and squinted and blinked again, trying to see them properly.

They were only cats, running away from the noise he had made coming through the wall. Most of them were well out of reach by the time he could see. Some had climbed high up the creepers and the rest had bolted for the various dark archways round the yard. But one white cat was slower than the others and was left trotting uncertainly and heavily across the harsh shadow in one corner.

That was the one to get. Christopher set off after it.

By the time he had torn himself free of the creepers, the white cat had taken fright. It ran. Christopher ran after it, through an archway hung with more creepers, across another, shadier yard, and then through a doorway with a curtain instead of a door. The cat slipped round the curtain. Christopher flung the curtain aside and dived after it, only to find it was so dark beyond that he was once more blinded.

“Who are you?” said a voice from the darkness. It sounded surprised and haughty. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Who are you?” Christopher said cautiously, wishing he could see something besides blue and green dazzle.

“I’m the Goddess of course,” said the voice. “The Living Asheth. What are you doing here? I’m not supposed to see anyone but priestesses until the Day of Festival.”

“I only came to get a cat,” said Christopher. “I’ll go away when I have.”

“You’re not allowed to,” said the Goddess. “Cats are sacred to Asheth. Besides, if it’s Bethi you’re after, she’s mine, and she’s going to have kittens again.”

Christopher’s eyes were adjusting. If he peered hard at the corner where the voice came from, he could see someone about the same size as he was, sitting on what seemed to be a pile of cushions, and pick out the white hump of the cat clutched in the person’s arms. He took a step forward to see better.

“Stay where you are,” said the Goddess, “or I’ll call down fire to blast you!”

Christopher, much to his surprise, found he could not move from the spot. He shuffled his feet to make sure. It was as if his bare soles were fastened to the tiles with strong rubbery glue. While he shuffled, his eyes started working properly.

The Goddess was a girl with a round, ordinary face and long mouse-coloured hair. She was wearing a sleeveless rust-brown robe and rather a lot of turquoise jewellery, including at least twenty bracelets and a little turquoise-studded coronet. She looked a bit younger than he was – much too young to be able to fasten someone’s feet to the floor. Christopher was impressed. “How did you do it?” he said.

The Goddess shrugged. “The power of the Living Asheth,” she said. “I was chosen from among all the other applicants because I’m the best vessel for her power. Asheth picked me out by giving me the mark of a cat on my foot. Look.” She tipped herself sideways on her cushions and stretched one bare foot with an anklet round it towards Christopher. It had a big purple birthmark on the sole. Christopher did not think it looked much like a cat, even when he screwed his eyes up so much that he felt like Tacroy. “You don’t believe me,” the Goddess said, rather accusingly.

“I don’t know,” said Christopher. “I’ve never met a goddess before. What do you do?”

“I stay in the temple unseen, except for one day every year, when I ride through the city and bless it,” said the Goddess. Christopher thought that this did not sound very interesting, but before he could say so, the Goddess added, “It’s not much fun, actually, but that’s the way things are when you’re honoured like I am. The Living Asheth always has to be a young girl, you see,”

“Do you stop being Asheth when you grow up then?” Christopher asked.

The Goddess frowned. Clearly she was not sure. “Well, the Living Asheth never is grown up, so I suppose so – they haven’t said.” Her round, solemn face brightened up. “That’s something to look forward to, eh Bethi?” she said, stroking the white cat.

“If I can’t have that cat, will you let me have another one?” Christopher asked.

“It depends,” said the Goddess. “I don’t think I’m allowed to give them away. What do you want it for?”

“My uncle wants one,” Christopher explained. “We’re doing an experiment to see if I can fetch a live animal from your Anywhere to ours. Yours is Ten and ours is Twelve. And it’s quite difficult climbing across The Place Between, so if you do let me have a cat, could you lend me a basket too, please?”

The Goddess considered. “How many Anywheres are there?” she asked in a testing kind of way.

“Hundreds,” said Christopher, “but Tacroy thinks there’s only twelve.”

“The priestesses say there are twelve known Otherwheres,” the Goddess said, nodding. “But Mother Proudfoot is fairly sure there are many more than that. Yes, and how did you get into the Temple?”

“Through the wall,” said Christopher. “Nobody saw me.”

“Then you could get in and out again if you wanted to?” said the Goddess.

“Easy!” said Christopher.

“Good,” said the Goddess. She dumped the white cat in the cushions and sprang to her feet, with a smart jangle and clack from all her jewellery. “I’ll swop you a cat,” she said. “But first you must swear by the Goddess to come back and bring me what I want in exchange, or I’ll keep your feet stuck to the floor and shout for the Arm of Asheth to come and kill you.”

“What do you want in exchange?” asked Christopher.

“Swear first,” said the Goddess.

“I swear,” said Christopher. But that was not enough. The Goddess hooked her thumbs into her jewelled sash and stared stonily. She was actually a little shorter than Christopher, but that did not make the stare any less impressive. “I swear by the Goddess that I’ll come back with what you want in exchange for the cat – will that do?” said Christopher. “Now what do you want?”

“Books to read,” said the Goddess. “I’m bored,” she explained. She did not say it in a whine, but in a brisk way that made Christopher see it was true.

“Aren’t there any books here?” he said.

“Hundreds,” the Goddess said gloomily. “But they’re all educational or holy. And the Living Goddess isn’t allowed to touch anything in this world outside the Temple. Anything in this world. Do you understand?”

Christopher nodded. He understood perfectly. “Which cat can I have?”

“Throgmorten,” said the Goddess. Upon that word, Christopher’s feet came loose from the tiles. He was able to walk beside the Goddess as she lifted the curtain from the doorway and went out into the shady yard. “I don’t mind you taking Throgmorten,” she said. “He smells and he scratches and he bullies all the other cats. I hate him. But we’ll have to be quick about catching him. The priestesses will be waking up from siesta quite soon. Just a moment!”

She dashed aside into an archway in a clash of anklets that made Christopher jump. She whirled back almost at once, a whirl of rusty robe, flying girdle, and swirling mouse-coloured hair. She was carrying a basket with a lid. “This should do,” she said. “The lid has a good strong fastening.” She led the way through the creeper-hung archway into the courtyard with the blinding sunlight. “He’s usually lording it over the other cats somewhere here,” she said. “Yes, there he is – that’s him in the corner.”

Throgmorten was ginger. He was at that moment glaring at a black and white female cat, who had lowered herself into a miserable crouch while she tried to back humbly away. Throgmorten swaggered towards her, lashing a stripy snake-like tail, until the black and white cat’s nerve broke and she bolted. Then he turned to see what Christopher and the Goddess wanted.

“Isn’t he horrible?” said the Goddess. She thrust the basket at Christopher. “Hold it open and shut the lid down quick after I’ve got him into it.”

Throgmorten was, Christopher had to admit, a truly unpleasant cat. His yellow eyes stared at them with a blank and insolent leer, and there was something about the set of his ears – one higher than the other – which told Christopher that Throgmorten would attack viciously anything that got in his way. This being so, he was puzzled that Throgmorten should remind him remarkably much of Uncle Ralph. He supposed it must be the gingerness.

At this moment, Throgmorten sensed they were after him. His back arched incredulously. Then, he fairly levitated up into the creepers on the wall, racing and scrambling higher and higher, until he was far above their heads.

“No, you don’t!” said the Goddess.

And Throgmorten’s arched ginger body came flying out of the creepers like a furry orange boomerang and landed slap in the basket. Christopher was deeply impressed – so impressed that he was a bit slow getting the lid down. Throgmorten came pouring over the edge of the basket again in an instant ginger stream. The Goddess seized him and crammed him back, whereupon a large number of flailing ginger legs – at least seven, to Christopher’s bemused eyes – clawed hold of her bracelets and her robe and her legs under the robe, and tore pieces off them.

Christopher waited and aimed for an instant when one of Throgmorten’s heads – he seemed to have at least three, each with more fangs than seemed possible – came into range. Then he banged the basket lid on it, hard. Throgmorten, for the blink of an eye, became an ordinary dazed cat instead of a fighting devil. The Goddess shook him off into the basket. Christopher slapped the lid on. A huge ginger paw loaded with long pink razors at once oozed itself out of the latch hole and tore several strips off Christopher while he fastened the basket.

“Thanks,” he said, sucking his wounds.

“I’m glad to see the back of him,” said the Goddess, licking a slash on her arm and mopping blood off her leg with her torn robe.

A melodious voice called from the creeper-hung archway. “Goddess, dear! Where are you?”

“I have to go,” whispered the Goddess. “Don’t forget the books. You swore to a swop. Coming!” she called, and went running back to the archway, clash-tink, clash-tink.

Christopher turned quickly to the wall and tried to go through it. And he could not. No matter how he tried turning that peculiar sideways way, it would not work. He knew it was Throgmorten. Holding a live cat snarling in a basket made him part of this Anywhere and he had to obey its usual rules. What was he to do? More melodious voices were calling to the Goddess in the distance, and he could see people moving inside at least two more of the archways round the yard. He never really considered putting the basket down. Uncle Ralph wanted this cat. Christopher ran for it instead, sprinting for the nearest archway that seemed to be empty.

Unfortunately the jigging of the basket assured Throgmorten that he was certainly being kidnapped. He protested about it at the top of his voice – and Christopher would never have believed that a mere cat could make such a powerful noise. Throgmorten’s voice filled the dark passages beyond the archway, wailing, throbbing, rising to a shriek like a dying vampire’s, and then falling to a strong curdled contralto howl. Then it went up to a shriek again.

Before Christopher had run twenty yards, there were shouts behind him, and the slap of sandals and the thumping of bare feet. He ran faster than ever, twisting into a new passage whenever he came to one, and sprinting down that, but all the time Throgmorten kept up his yells of protest from the basket, showing the pursuers exactly where to follow. Worse, he fetched more. There were twice the number of shouts and thumping feet behind by the time Christopher saw daylight. He burst out into it, followed by a jostling mob.

And it was not really daylight, but a huge confusing temple, full of worshippers and statues and fat painted pillars. The daylight was coming from great open doors a hundred yards away. Christopher could see the man with the yellow umbrella outlined beyond the doors and knew exactly where he was. He dashed for the doors, dodging pillars and sprinting round people praying. “Wong – wong – WONG-WONG!” howled Throgmorten from the basket in his hand.

“Stop thief!” screamed the people chasing him. “Arm of Asheth!”

Christopher saw a man in a silver mask, or maybe a woman – a silver-masked person anyway – standing on a flight of steps carefully aiming a spear at him. He tried to dodge, but there was no time, or the spear followed him somehow. It crashed into his chest with a jolting thud.

Things seemed to go very slowly then. Christopher stood still, clutching the howling basket, and stared disbelievingly at the shaft of the spear sticking out of his chest through his dirty shirt. He saw it in tremendous detail. It was made of beautifully polished brown wood, with words and pictures carved along it. About half-way up was a shiny silver hand-grip which had designs that were almost rubbed out with wear. A few drops of blood were coming out where the wood met his shirt. The spear-head must be buried deep inside him. He looked up to see the masked person advancing triumphantly towards him. Beyond, in the doorway, Tacroy must have been fetched by the noise. He was standing frozen there, staring in horror.

Falteringly, Christopher put out his free hand and took hold of the spear by the hand-grip to pull it out. And everything stopped with a bump.

It was early morning. Christopher realised that what had woken him were angry cat noises from the basket lying on its side in the middle of the floor. Throgmorten wanted out. Instantly. Christopher sat up beaming with triumph because he had proved he could bring a live animal from an Anywhere. Then he remembered he had a spear sticking out of his chest. He looked down. There was no sign of a spear. There was no blood. Nothing hurt. He felt his chest. Then he undid his pyjamas and looked. Incredibly he saw only smooth pale skin without a sign of a wound.

He was all right. The Anywheres were really only a kind of dream after all. He laughed.

“Wong!” Throgmorten said angrily, making the basket roll about.

Christopher supposed he had better let the beast out. Remembering those spiked tearing claws, he stood up on his bed and unhitched the heavy bar that held the curtains. It was hard to manoeuvre with the curtains hanging from it and sliding about, but Christopher rather thought he might need the curtains to shield him from Throgmorten’s rage, so he kept them in a bunch in front of him. After a bit of swaying and prodding, he managed to get the brass point at the end of the curtain bar under the latch of the lid and open the basket.

The cat sounds stopped. Throgmorten seemed to have decided that this was a trick. Christopher waited, gently bouncing on his bed and clutching the bar and the bundle of curtain, for Throgmorten to attack. But nothing happened. Christopher leant forward cautiously until he could see into the basket. It contained a round ginger bundle gently moving up and down. Throgmorten, disdaining freedom now he had it, had curled up and gone to sleep.

“All right then,” said Christopher. “Be like that!” With a bit of a struggle, he hitched the curtain pole back on its supports again and went to sleep himself.

Next time he woke, Throgmorten was exploring the room. Christopher lay on his back and warily watched Throgmorten jump from one piece of furniture to another all round the room. As far as he could tell, Throgmorten was not angry any more. He seemed simply full of curiosity.

Or maybe, Christopher thought, as Throgmorten gathered himself and jumped from the top of the wardrobe to the curtain pole, Throgmorten had a bet on with himself that he could get all round the night-nursery without touching the floor. As Throgmorten began scrambling along the pole, hanging on to it and the curtains with those remarkable claws of his, Christopher was sure of it.

What happened then was definitely not Throgmorten’s fault. Christopher knew it was his own fault for not putting the curtain pole back properly. The end furthest from Throgmorten and nearest Christopher came loose and plunged down like a harpoon, with the curtains rattling along it and Throgmorten hanging on frantically.

For an instant, Christopher had Throgmorten’s terror-stricken eyes glaring into his own as Throgmorten rode the pole down. Then the brass end hit the middle of Christopher’s chest. It went in like the spear. It was not sharp and it was not heavy, but it went right into him all the same. Throgmorten landed on his stomach an instant later, all claws and panic. Christopher thought he screamed. Anyway, either he or Throgmorten made enough noise to fetch the Last Governess running. The last thing Christopher saw for the time being was the Last Governess in her white night dress, grey with horror, moving her hands in quick peculiar gestures and gabbling very odd words…

He woke up a long time later, in the afternoon by the light, very sore in front and not too sure of very much, to hear Uncle Ralph’s voice.

“This is a damned nuisance, Effie, just when things were looking so promising! Is he going to be all right?”

“I think so,” the Last Governess replied. The two of them were standing by Christopher’s bed. “I got there in time to say a staunching spell and it seems to be healing.” While Christopher was thinking, Funny, I didn’t know she was a witch! she went on, “I haven’t dared breathe a word to your sister.”

“Don’t,” said Uncle Ralph. “She has her plans for him cut and dried, and she’ll put a stop to mine if she finds out. Drat that cat! I’ve got things set up all over the Related Worlds on the strength of that first run and I don’t want to cancel them. You think he’ll recover?”

“In time,” said the Last Governess. “There’s a strong spell in the dressing.”

“Then I shall have to postpone everything,” Uncle Ralph said, not sounding at all pleased. “At least we’ve got the cat. Where’s the thing got to?”

“Under the bed. I tried to fetch it out but I just got scratched for my pains,” said the Last Governess.

“Women!” said Uncle Ralph. “I’ll get it.” Christopher heard his knees thump on the floor. His voice came up from underneath. “Here. Nice pussy. Come here, pussy.”

There was a very serious outbreak of cat noises.

Uncle Ralph’s knees went thumping away backwards and his voice said quite a string of bad words. “The creature’s a perfect devil!” he added. “It’s torn lumps off me!” Then his voice came from higher up and further away. “Don’t let it get away. Put a holding spell on this room until I get back.”

“Where are you going?” the Last Governess asked.

“To fetch some thick leather gloves and a vet,” Uncle Ralph said from by the door. “That’s an Asheth Temple cat. It’s almost priceless. Wizards will pay five hundred pounds just for an inch of its guts or one of its claws. Its eyes will fetch several thousand pounds each – so make sure you set a good tight spell. It may take me an hour or so to find a vet.”

There was silence after that. Christopher dozed. He woke up feeling so much better that he sat up and took a look at his wound. The Last Governess had efficiently covered it with smooth white bandage. Christopher peered down inside it with great interest. The wound was a round red hole, much smaller than he expected. It hardly hurt at all.

While he wondered how to find out how deep it was, there was a piercing wail from the windowsill behind him. He looked round. The window was open – the Last Governess had a passion for fresh air – and Throgmorten was crouched on the sill beside it, glaring appealingly. When he saw Christopher was looking, Throgmorten put out one of his razor-loaded paws and scraped it down the space between the window and the frame. The empty air made a sound like someone scratching a blackboard.

“Wong,” Throgmorten commanded.

Christopher wondered why Throgmorten should think he was on his side. One way or another, Throgmorten had half killed him.

“Wong?” Throgmorten asked piteously.

On the other hand, Christopher thought, none of the half-killing had been Throgmorten’s fault. And though Throgmorten was probably the ugliest and most vicious cat in any Anywhere, it did not seem fair to kidnap him and drag him to a strange world and then let him be sold to wizards, parcel by parcel.

“All right,” he said and climbed out of bed. Throgmorten stood up eagerly, with his thin ginger snake of a tail straight up behind. “Yes, but I’m not sure how to break spells,” Christopher said, approaching very cautiously. Throgmorten backed away and made no attempt to scratch. Christopher put his hand out to the open part of the window. The empty space felt rubbery and gave when he pressed it, but he could not put his hand through even if he shoved it hard. So he did the only thing he could think of and opened the window wider. He felt the spell tear like a rather tough cobweb.

“Wong!” Throgmorten uttered appreciatively. Then he was off. Christopher watching him gallop down a slanting drain and levitate to a windowsill when the drain stopped. From there it was an easy jump to the top of a bay window and then to the ground. Throgmorten’s ginger shape went trotting away into the bushes and squeezed under the next-door fence, already with the air of looking for birds to kill and other cats to bully. Christopher put the window carefully back the way it had been and got back to bed.

When he woke up next, Mama was outside the door saying anxiously, “How is he? I hope it’s not infectious.”

“Not in the least, Madam,” said the Last Governess.

So Mama came in, filling the room with her scents – which was just as well, since Throgmorten had left his own penetrating odour under the bed – and looked at Christopher. “He seems a bit pale,” she said. “Do we need a doctor?”

“I saw to all that, Madam,” said the Last Governess.

“Thank you,” said Mama. “Make sure it doesn’t interrupt his education.”

When Mama had gone, the Last Governess fetched her umbrella and poked it under the bed and behind the furniture, looking for Throgmorten. “Where has it got to?” she said, climbing up to jab at the space on top of the wardrobe.

“I don’t know,” Christopher said truthfully, since he knew Throgmorten would be many streets away by now. “He was here before I went to sleep.”

“It’s vanished!” said the Last Governess. “A cat can’t just vanish!”

Christopher said experimentally, “He was an Asheth Temple cat.”

“True,” said the Last Governess. “They are wildly magic by all accounts. But your uncle’s not going to be at all pleased to find it gone.”

This made Christopher feel decidedly guilty. He could not go back to sleep, and when, about an hour later, he heard brisk heavy feet approaching the door, he sat up at once, wondering what he was going to say to Uncle Ralph.

But the man who came in was not Uncle Ralph. He was a total stranger – no, it was Papa! Christopher recognised the black whiskers. Papa’s face was fairly familiar too, because it was quite like his own, except for the whiskers and a solemn, anxious look. Christopher was astonished because he had somehow thought – without anyone ever having exactly said so – that Papa had left the house in disgrace after whatever went wrong with the money.

“Are you all right, son?” Papa said, and the hurried, worried way he spoke, and the way he looked round nervously at the door, told Christopher that Papa had indeed left the house and did not want to be found here. This made it plain that Papa had come specially to see Christopher, which astonished Christopher even more.

“I’m quite well, thank you,” Christopher said politely. He had not the least idea how to talk to Papa, face to face. Politeness seemed safest.

“Are you sure?” Papa asked, staring attentively at him. “The life-spell I have for you showed—In fact it stopped, as if you were – um—Frankly I thought you might be dead.”

Christopher was more astonished still. “Oh no, I’m feeling much better now,” he said.

“Thank God for that!” said Papa. “I must have made an error setting the spell – it seems a habit with me just now. But I have drawn up your horoscope too, and checked it several times, and I must warn you that the next year and a half will be a time of acute danger for you, my son. You must be very careful.”

“Yes,” said Christopher. “I will.” He meant it. He could still see the curtain rod coming down if he shut his eyes. And he had to keep trying not to think at all of the way the spear had stuck out of him.

Papa leant a little closer and looked furtively at the door again. “That brother of your mama’s – Ralph Argent – I hear he’s managing your mama’s affairs,” he said. “Try to have as little to do with him as you can, my son. He is not a nice person to know.” And having said that, Papa patted Christopher’s shoulder and hurried away. Christopher was quite relieved. One way and another, Papa had made him very uncomfortable. Now he was even more worried about what he would say to Uncle Ralph.

But to his great relief, the Last Governess told him that Uncle Ralph was not coming. He said that he was too annoyed about losing Throgmorten to make a good sick-visitor.

Christopher sighed thankfully and settled down to enjoy being an invalid. He drew pictures, he ate grapes, he read books, and he spun out his illness as long as he could. This was not easy. The next morning his wound was only a round itchy scab, and on the third day it was hardly there at all. On the fourth day, the Last Governess made him get up and have lessons as usual; but it had been lovely while it lasted.

On the day after that, the Last Governess said, “Your uncle wants to try another experiment tomorrow. He wants you to meet the man at Series Eight this time. Do you think you feel well enough?”

Christopher felt perfectly well, and provided nobody wanted him to go near Series Ten again, he was quite willing to go on another dream.

Series Eight turned out to be the bleak and stony Anywhere up above Nine. Christopher had not cared for it much when he had explored it on his own, but Tacroy was so glad to see him that it would have made up for a far worse place.

“Am I glad to see you!” Tacroy said, while Christopher was firming him up. “I’d resigned myself to being the cause of your death. I could kick myself for persuading your uncle to get you to fetch an animal! Everyone knows living creatures cause all sorts of problems, and I’ve told him we’re never going to try that again. Are you really all right?”

“Fine,” said Christopher. “My chest was smooth when I woke up.” In fact the funny thing about both accidents was that Throgmorten’s scratches had taken twice as long to heal as either wound. But Tacroy seemed to find this so hard to believe and to be so full of self-blame that Christopher got embarrassed and changed the subject. “Have you still got the young lady who’s stern stuff?”

“Sterner than ever,” Tacroy said, becoming much more cheerful at once. “The wretched girl’s setting my teeth on edge with that flute at this moment. Take a look down the valley. Your uncle’s been busy since you – since your accident.”

Uncle Ralph had perfected the horseless carriage. It was sitting on the sparse stony grass beside the stream as firm as anything, though it looked more like a rough wooden sled than any kind of carriage. Something had been done so that Tacroy was able to take hold of the rope fastened to the front. When he pulled, the carriage came gliding down the valley after him without really touching the ground.

“It’s supposed to return to London with me when I go back to my garret,” he explained. “I know that doesn’t seem likely, but your uncle swears he’s got it right this time. The question is, will it go back with a load on it, or will the load stay behind? That’s what tonight’s experiment is to find out.”

Christopher had to help Tacroy haul the sled up the long stony trail beyond the valley. Tacroy was never quite firm enough to give a good pull. At length they came to a bleak stone farm crouched half-way up the hill, where a group of thick-armed silent women were waiting in the yard beside a heap of packages carefully wrapped in oiled silk. The packages smelt odd, but that smell was drowned by the thick garlic breath from the women. As soon as the sled came to a stop, garlic rolled out in waves as the women picked up the packages and tried to load them on the sled. The parcels dropped straight through it and fell on the ground.

“No good,” said Tacroy. “I thought you were warned. Let Christopher do it.”

It was hard work. The women watched untrustingly while Christopher loaded the parcels and tied them in place with rope. Tacroy tried to help, but he was not firm enough and his hands went through the parcels. Christopher got tired and cold in the strong wind. When one of the women gave a stern, friendly smile and asked him if he would like to come indoors for a drink, he said yes gladly.

“Not today, thank you,” Tacroy said. “This thing’s still experimental and we’re not sure how long the spells will hold. We’d better get back.” He could see Christopher was disappointed. As they towed the sled away downhill, he said, “I don’t blame you. Call this just a business trip. Your uncle aims to get this carriage corrected by the way it performs tonight. My devout hope is that he can make it firm enough to be loaded by the people who bring the load, and then we can count you out of it altogether.”

“But I like helping,” Christopher protested. “Besides, how would you pull it if I’m not there to firm you up?”

“There is that,” Tacroy said. He thought about it while they got to the bottom of the hill and he started plodding up the valley with the rope straining over his shoulder. “There’s something I must say to you,” he panted. “Are you learning magic at all?”

“I don’t think so,” Christopher said.

“Well you should be,” Tacroy panted. “You must have the strongest talent I’ve ever encountered. Ask your mother to let you have lessons.”

“I think Mama wants me to be a missionary,” Christopher said.

Tacroy screwed his eyes up over that. “Are you sure? Might you have misheard her? Wouldn’t the word be magician?”

“No,” said Christopher. “She says I’m to go into Society.”

“Ah Society!” Tacroy panted wistfully. “I have dreams of myself in Society, looking handsome in a velvet suit and surrounded by young ladies playing harps.”

“Do missionaries wear velvet suits?” asked Christopher. “Or do you mean Heaven?”

Tacroy looked up at the stormy grey sky. “I don’t think this conversation is getting anywhere,” he remarked to it. “Try again. Your uncle tells me you’re going away to school soon. If it’s any kind of a decent school, they should teach magic as an extra. Promise me that you’ll ask to be allowed to take it.”

“All right,” said Christopher. The mention of school gave him a jab of nerves somewhere deep in his stomach. “What are schools like?”

“Full of children,” said Tacroy. “I won’t prejudice you.” By this time he had laboured his way to the top of the valley, where the mists of The Place Between were swirling in front of them. “Now comes the tricky part,” he said. “Your uncle thought this thing might have more chance of arriving with its load if you gave it a push as I leave. But before I go – next time you find yourself in a Heathen Temple and they start chasing you, drop everything and get out through the nearest wall. Understand? By the look of things, I’ll be seeing you in a week or so.”

Christopher put his shoulder against the back of the carriage and shoved as Tacroy stepped off into the mist holding the rope. The carriage tilted and slid downwards after him. As soon as it was in the mists it looked all light and papery like a kite, and like a kite it plunged and wallowed down out of sight.

Christopher climbed back home thoughtfully. It shook him to find he had been in the Anywhere where the Heathens lived without knowing it. He had been right to be nervous of Heathens. Nothing, he thought, would possess him to go back to Series Ten now. And he did wish that Mama had not decided that he should be a missionary.

From then on, Uncle Ralph arranged a new experiment every week. He had, Tacroy said, been very pleased because the carriage and the packages had arrived in Tacroy’s garret with no hitch at all. Two wizards and a sorcerer had refined the spell on it until it could stay in another Anywhere for up to a day. The experiments became much more fun. Tacroy and Christopher would tow the carriage to the place where the load was waiting, always carefully wrapped in packages the right size for Christopher to handle. After Christopher had loaded them, he and Tacroy would go exploring.

Tacroy insisted on the exploring. “It’s his perks,” he explained to the people with the packages. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”

In Series One they went and looked at the amazing ring-trains, where the rings were on pylons high above the ground and miles apart, and the trains went hurtling through them with a noise like the sky tearing, without even touching the rings. In Series Two they wandered a maze of bridges over a tangle of rivers and looked down at giant eels resting their chins on sandbars, while even stranger creatures grunted and stirred in the mud under the bridges. Christopher suspected that Tacroy enjoyed exploring as much as he did. He was always very cheerful during this part.

“It makes a change from sloping ceilings and peeling walls. I don’t get out of London very much,” Tacroy confessed while he was advising Christopher how to build a better sand-castle on the sea-shore in Series Five. Series Five turned out to be the Anywhere where Christopher had met the silly ladies. It was all islands. “This is better than a Bank Holiday at Brighton any day!” Tacroy said, looking out across the bright blue crashing waves. “Almost as good as an afternoon’s cricket. I wish I could afford to get away more.”

“Have you lost all your money then?” Christopher asked sympathetically.

“I never had any money to lose,” Tacroy said. “I was a foundling child.”

Christopher did not ask any more just then, because he was busy hoping that the mermaids would appear the way they used to. But though he looked and waited, not a single mermaid came.

He went back to the subject the following week in Series Seven. As they followed a gypsy-looking man who was guiding them to see the Great Glacier, he asked Tacroy what it meant to be a foundling child.

“It means someone found me,” Tacroy said cheerfully. “The someone in my case was a very agreeable and very devout Sea Captain, who picked me up as a baby on an island somewhere. He said the Lord had sent me. I don’t know who my parents were.”

Christopher was impressed. “Is that why you’re always so cheerful?”

Tacroy laughed. “I’m mostly cheerful,” he said. “But today I feel particularly good because I’ve got rid of the flute-playing girl at last. Your uncle’s found me a nice grandmotherly person who plays the violin quite well. And maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s your influence, but I feel firmer with every step.”

Christopher looked at him, walking ahead along the mountain path. Tacroy looked as hard as the rocks towering on one side and as real as the gypsy-looking man striding ahead of them both. “I think you’re getting better at it,” he said.

“Could be,” said Tacroy. “I think you’ve raised my standards. And yet, do you know, young Christopher, until you came along, I was considered the best spirit traveller in the country?”

Here the gypsy man shouted and waved to them to come and look at the glacier. It sat above them in the rocks in a huge dirty-white V. Christopher did not think much of it. He could see it was mostly just dirty old snow – though it was certainly very big. Its giant icy lip hung over them, almost transparent grey, and water dribbled and poured off it. Series Seven was a strange world, all mountains and snow, but surprisingly hot too. Where the water poured off the glacier, the heat had caused a great growth of strident green ferns and flowing tropical trees. Violent green moss grew scarlet cups as big as hats, all dewed with water. It was like looking at the North Pole and the Equator at once. The three of them seemed tiny beneath it.

“Impressive,” said Tacroy. “I know two people who are like this thing. One of them is your uncle.”

Christopher thought that was a silly thing to say. Uncle Ralph was nothing like the Giant Glacier. He was annoyed with Tacroy all the following week. But he relented when the Last Governess suddenly presented him with a heap of new clothes, all sturdy and practical things. “You’re to wear these when you go on the next experiment,” she said. “Your uncle’s man has been making a fuss. He says you always wear rags and your teeth were chattering in the snow last time. We don’t want you ill, do we?”

Christopher never noticed being cold, but he was grateful to Tacroy. His old clothes had got so much too small that they got in the way when he climbed through The Place Between. He decided he liked Tacroy after all.

“I say,” he said, as he loaded packages in a huge metal shed in Series Four, “can I come and visit you in your garret? We live in London too.”

“You live in quite a different part,” Tacroy said hastily. “You wouldn’t like the area my garret’s in at all.”

Christopher protested that this didn’t matter. He wanted to see Tacroy in the flesh and he was very curious to see the garret. But Tacroy kept making excuses. Christopher kept on asking, at least twice every experiment, until they went to bleak and stony Series Eight again, where Christopher was exceedingly glad of his warm clothes. There, while Christopher stood over the farmhouse fire warming his fingers round a mug of bitter malty tea, gratitude to Tacroy made him say yet again, “Oh, please can’t I visit you in your garret?”

“Oh, do stow it, Christopher,” Tacroy said, sounding rather tired of it all. “I’d invite you like a shot, but your uncle made a condition that you only see me like this while we’re on an experiment. If I told you where I live, I’d lose this job. It’s as simple as that.”

“I could go round all the garrets,” Christopher suggested cunningly, “and shout Tacroy and ask people until I found you.”

“You could not,” said Tacroy. “You’d draw a complete blank if you tried. Tacroy is my spirit name. I have quite a different name in the flesh.”

Christopher had to give in and accept it, though he did not understand in the least.

Meanwhile, the time when he was to go to school was suddenly almost there. Christopher tried carefully not to think of it, but it was hard to forget when he had to spend such a lot of time trying on new clothes. The Last Governess sewed name tapes – C. CHANT – on the clothes and packed them in a shiny black tin trunk – also labelled C. CHANT in bold white letters. This trunk was shortly taken away by a carrier whose thick arms reminded Christopher of the women in Series Eight, and the same carrier took away all Mama’s trunks too, only hers were addressed to Baden Baden while Christopher’s said, ‘Penge School, Surrey’.

The day after that, Mama left for Baden Baden. She came to say goodbye to Christopher, dabbing her eyes with a blue lace handkerchief that matched her travelling suit. “Remember to be good and learn a lot,” she said. “And don’t forget your mama wants to be very proud of you when you grow up.” She put her scented cheek down for Christopher to kiss and said to the Last Governess, “Mind you take him to the dentist now.”

“I won’t forget, Madam,” the Last Governess said in her dreariest way. Somehow her hidden prettiness never seemed to come out in front of Mama.

Christopher did not enjoy the dentist. After banging and scraping round Christopher’s teeth as if he were trying to make them fall out, the dentist made a long speech about how crooked and out of place they were, until Christopher began to think of himself with fangs like Throgmorten’s. He made Christopher wear a big shiny toothbrace, which he was supposed never to take out, even at night. Christopher hated the brace. He hated it so much that it almost took his mind off his fears about school.

The servants covered the furniture with dust sheets and left one by one, until Christopher and the Last Governess were the only people in the house. The Last Governess took him to the station in a cab that afternoon and put him on the train to school.

On the platform, now the time had come, Christopher was suddenly scared stiff. This really was the first step on the road to becoming a missionary and being eaten by Heathens. Terror seemed to drain the life out of him, down from his face, which went stiff, and out through his legs, which went wobbly. It seemed to make his terror worse that he had not the slightest idea what school was like.

He hardly heard the Last Governess say, “Goodbye, Christopher. Your uncle says he’ll give you a month at school to settle down. He’ll expect you to meet his man as usual on October the eighth in Series Six. October the eighth. Have you got that?”

“Yes,” Christopher said, not attending to a word, and got into the carriage like someone going to be executed.

There were two other new boys in the carriage. The small thin one called Fenning was so nervous that he had to keep leaning out of the window to be sick. The other one was called Oneir, and he was restfully ordinary. By the time the train drew into the school station, Christopher was firm friends with them both. They decided to call themselves the Terrible Three, but in fact everyone in the school called them the Three Bears. “Someone’s been sitting in my chair!” they shouted whenever the three came into a room together. This was because Christopher was tall, though he had not known he was before, and Fenning was small, while Oneir was comfortably in the middle.

Before the end of the first week, Christopher was wondering what he had been so frightened of. School had its drawbacks, of course, like its food, and some of the masters, and quite a few of the older boys, but those were nothing beside the sheer fun of being with a lot of boys your own age and having two real friends of your own. Christopher discovered that you dealt with obnoxious masters and most older boys the way you dealt with Governesses: you quite politely told them the truth in the way they wanted to hear it, so that they thought they had won and left you in peace.

Lessons were easy. In fact most of the new things Christopher learnt were from the other boys. After less than three days, he had learnt enough – without quite knowing how – to realise that Mama had never intended him to be a missionary at all. This made him feel a bit of a fool, but he did not let it bother him. When he thought of Mama, he thought much more kindly of her, and threw himself into school with complete enjoyment.

The one lesson he did not enjoy was magic. Christopher found, rather to his surprise, that someone had put him down for magic as an extra. He had a dim notion that Tacroy might have arranged it. If so, Christopher showed no sign of the strong gift for magic Tacroy thought he had. The elementary spells he had to learn bored him nearly to tears.

“Please control your enthusiasm, Chant,” the magic master said acidly. “I’m heartily sick of looking at your tonsils.” Two weeks into the term, he suggested Christopher gave up magic.

Christopher was tempted to agree. But he had discovered by then that he was good at other lessons, and he hated the thought of being a failure even in one thing. Besides, the Goddess had stuck his feet to the spot by magic, and he wanted very much to learn to do that too. “But my mother’s paying for these lessons, sir,” he said virtuously. “I will try in future.” He went away and made an arrangement with Oneir, whereby Christopher did Oneir’s algebra and Oneir made the boring spells work for Christopher. After that, he cultivated a vague look to disguise his boredom and stared out of the window.

“Wool-gathering again, Chant?” the magic teacher took to asking. “Can’t you muster an honest yawn these days?”

Apart from this one weekly lesson, school was so entirely to Christopher’s taste that he did not think of Uncle Ralph or anything to do with the past for well over a month. Looking back on it later, he often thought that if he had known what a short time he was going to be at that school, he would have taken care to enjoy it even more.

At the start of November, he got a letter from Uncle Ralph:

Old chap,

What exactly are you playing at? I thought we had an arrangement. The experiments have been waiting for you since October and a lot of people’s plans have been thrown out. If something’s wrong and you can’t do it, write and tell me. Otherwise get off your hambones, there’s a good chap, and contact my man as usual next Thursday.

Your affectionate but puzzled uncle,

Ralph

This caused Christopher quite a rush of guilt. Oddly enough, though he did think of Tacroy going uselessly into trances in his garret, most of his guilt was about the Goddess. School had taught him that you did not take swears and swops lightly. He had sworn to swop Throgmorten for books, and he had let the Goddess down, even though she was only a girl. School considered that far worse than not doing what your uncle wanted. In his guilt, Christopher realised that he was going to have to spend Uncle Ralph’s sovereign at last, if he was to give the Goddess anything near as valuable as Throgmorten. A pity, because he now knew that a gold sovereign was big money. But at least he would still have Uncle Ralph’s sixpence.

The trouble was, school had also taught him that girls were a Complete Mystery and quite different from boys. He had no idea what books girls liked. He was forced to consult Oneir, who had an older sister.

“All sorts of slush,” Oneir said, shrugging. “I can’t remember what.”

“Then could you come down to the bookshop with me and see if you can see some of them?” Christopher asked.

“I might,” Oneir agreed. “What’s in it for me?”

“I’ll do your geometry tonight as well as your algebra,” Christopher said.

On this understanding, Oneir went down to the bookshop with Christopher in the space between lessons and tea. There he almost immediately picked out The Arabian Nights (Unexpurgated). “This one’s good,” he said. He followed it with something called Little Tanya and the Fairies, which Christopher took one look at and put hastily back on the shelf. “I know my sister’s read that one,” Oneir said, rather injured. “Who’s the girl you want it for?”

“She’s about the same age as us,” Christopher said and, since Oneir was looking at him for a further explanation and he was fairly sure Oneir was not going to believe in someone called the Goddess, he added, “I’ve got this cousin called Caroline.” This was quite true. Mama had once shown him a studio photo of his cousin, all lace and curls. Oneir was not to know that this had nothing whatsoever to do with the sentence that had gone before.

“Wait a sec then,” Oneir said, “and I’ll see if I can spot some of the real slush.” He wandered on along the shelf, leaving Christopher to flip through The Arabian Nights. It did look good, Christopher thought. Unfortunately he could see from the pictures that it was all about somewhere very like the Goddess’s own Anywhere. He suspected the Goddess would call it educational. “Ah, here we are! This is sure-fire slush!” Oneir called, pointing to a whole row of books. “These Millie books. Our house is full of the things.”

Millie Goes to School, Christopher read, Millie of Lowood House, Millie Plays the Game. He picked up one called Millie’s Finest Hour. It had some very brightly-coloured schoolgirls on the front and in small print: “Another moral and uplifting story about your favourite schoolgirl. You will weep with Millie, rejoice with Millie, and meet all your friends from Lowood House School again …”

“Does your sister really like these?” he asked incredulously.

“Wallows in them,” said Oneir. “She reads them over and over again and cries every time.”

Though this seemed a funny way to enjoy a book, Christopher was sure Oneir knew best. The books were two and sixpence each. Christopher chose out the first five, up to Millie in the Upper Fourth, and bought The Arabian Nights for himself with the rest of the money. After all, it was his gold sovereign. “Could you wrap the Millie books in something waterproof?” he asked the assistant. “They have to go to a foreign country.” The assistant obligingly produced some sheets of waxed paper and, without being asked, made a handle for the parcel out of string.

That night Christopher hid the parcel in his bed. Oneir pinched a candle from the kitchens and read aloud from The Arabian Nights, which turned out to have been a remarkably good buy. ‘Unexpurgated’ seemed to mean that all sorts of interesting dirty bits had been put in. Christopher was so absorbed that he almost forgot to work out how he might get to The Place Between from the dormitory. It was probably important to go round a corner. He decided the best corner was the one beyond the wash-stands, just beside Fenning’s bed, and then settled down to listen to Oneir until the candle burnt out. After that, he would be on his way.

To his exasperation, nothing happened at all. Christopher lay and listened to the snores, the mutters and the heavy breathing of the other boys for hours. At length he got up with the parcel and tiptoed across the cold floor to the corner beyond Fenning’s bed. But he knew this was not right, even before he bumped into the wash-stands. He went back to bed, where he lay for further hours, and nothing happened even when he went to sleep.

The next day was Thursday, the day he was supposed to meet Tacroy. Knowing he would be too busy to deliver the books that night, Christopher left them in his bedside locker and read aloud from The Arabian Nights himself, so that he could control the time when everyone went to sleep. And so he did. All the other boys duly began to snore and mutter and puff as they always did, and Christopher was left lying awake alone, unable to get to The Place Between or to fall asleep either.

By this time he was seriously worried. Perhaps the only way to get to the Anywheres was from the night nursery of the house in London. Or perhaps it was an ability he had simply grown out of. He thought of Tacroy in a useless trance and the Goddess vowing the vengeance of Asheth on him, and he heard the birds beginning to sing before he got to sleep that night.

The next morning Matron noticed Christopher stumbling about aching-eyed and scarcely awake. She pounced on him. “Can’t sleep, can you?” she said. “I always watch the ones with toothbraces. I don’t think these dentists realise how uncomfortable they are. I’m going to come and take that away from you before lights out tonight and you can come and fetch it in the morning. I make Mainwright Major do that too – it works wonders, you’ll see.”

Christopher had absolutely no faith in this idea. Everyone knew this was one of the bees in Matron’s bonnet. But, to his surprise, it worked. He found himself dropping asleep as soon as Fenning began reading The Arabian Nights. He had just presence of mind to fumble the parcel of books from his locker, before he was dead to the world. And here an even more surprising thing happened. He got out of bed, carrying the parcel, and walked across the dormitory without anyone appearing to notice him at all. He walked right beside Fenning, and Fenning just went on reading with the stolen candle balanced on his pillow. Nobody seemed to realise when Christopher walked round the corner, out of the dormitory and on to the valley path.

His clothes were lying in the path and he put them on, hanging the parcel from his belt so that he would have both hands free for The Place Between. And there was The Place Between.

So much had happened since Christopher had last been here that he saw it as if this was the first time. His eyes tried to make sense of the shapeless way the rocks slanted, and couldn’t. The formlessness stirred a formless kind of fear in him, which the wind and the mist and the rain beating in the mist made worse. The utter emptiness was more frightening still.

As Christopher set off climbing and sliding down to Series Ten, with the wind wailing round him and the fog drops making the rocks wet and slippery, he thought he had been right to think, when he was small, that this was the part left over when all the worlds were made. The Place Between was exactly that. There was no one here to help him if he slipped and broke a leg. When the parcel of books unbalanced him and he did slip, and skidded twenty feet before he could stop, his heart was in his mouth. If he had not known that he had climbed across here a hundred times, he would have known he was mad to try.

It was quite a relief to clamber into the hot valley and walk down to the muddy-walled city. The old men were still charming snakes outside it. Inside was the same hot clamour of smells and goats and people under umbrellas. And Christopher found he was still afraid, except that now he was afraid of someone pointing at him and shouting, “There’s the thief that stole the Temple cat!” He kept feeling that spear thudding into his chest. He began to get annoyed with himself. It was as if school had taught him how to be frightened.

When he got to the alley beside the Temple wall – where turnips had been thrown away this time – he was almost too scared to go on. He had to make himself push into the spiked wall by counting to a hundred and then telling himself he had to go. And when he was most of the way through, he stopped again, staring through the creepers at the cats in the blazing sun, and did not seem to be able to go on. But the cats took no notice of him. No one was about. Christopher told himself that it was silly to come all this way just to stand in a wall. He pulled himself out of the creepers and tiptoed to the overgrown archway, with the parcel of books butting him heavily with every step.

The Goddess was sitting on the ground in the middle of the shady yard, playing with a large family of kittens. Two of them were ginger, with a strong look of Throgmorten. When she saw Christopher, the Goddess jumped to her feet with an energetic clash of jewellery, scattering kittens in all directions.

“You’ve brought the books!” she said. “I never thought you would.”

“I always keep my word,” Christopher said, showing off a little.

The Goddess watched him unhitch the parcel from his belt as if she could still scarcely believe it. Her hands trembled a little as she took the waxy parcel, and trembled even more as she knelt on the tiles and tore and ripped and pulled until the paper and string came off. The kittens seized on the string and the wrappings and did all sorts of acrobatics with them, but the Goddess had eyes only for the books. She knelt and gazed. “Ooh! Five of them!”

“Just like Christmas,” Christopher remarked.

“What’s Christmas?” the Goddess asked absently. She was absorbed in stroking the covers of the books. When she had done that, she opened each one, peeped inside, and then shut it hastily as if the sight was too much. “Oh, I remember,” she said. “Christmas is a Heathen festival, isn’t it?”

“The other way round,” said Christopher. “You’re the Heathens.”

“No, we’re not. Asheth’s true,” said the Goddess, not really attending. “Five,” she said. “That should last me a week if I read slowly on purpose. Which is the best one to start with?”

“I brought you the first five,” Christopher said. “Start with Millie Goes to School.”

“You mean there are more!” the Goddess exclaimed. “How many?”

“I didn’t count – about five,” Christopher said.

“Five! You don’t want another cat, do you?” said the Goddess.

“No,” Christopher said firmly. “One Throgmorten is quite enough, thanks.”

“But I’ve nothing else to swop!” said the Goddess. “I must have those other five books!” She jumped up with an impetuous clash of jewellery and began wrestling to unwind a snake-like bracelet from the top of her arm. “Perhaps Mother Proudfoot won’t notice if this is missing. There’s a whole chest of bracelets in there.”

Christopher wondered what she thought he would do with the bracelet. Wear it? He knew what school would think of that.

“Hadn’t you better read these books first? You might not like them,” he pointed out.

“I know they’re perfect,” said the Goddess, still wrestling.

“I’ll bring you the other books as a present,” Christopher said hastily.

“But that means I’ll have to do something for you. Asheth always pays her debts,” the Goddess said. The bracelet came off with a twang. “Here. I’ll buy the books from you with this. Take it.” She pushed the bracelet into Christopher’s hand.

The moment it touched him, Christopher found himself falling through everything that was there. The yard, the creepers, the kittens, all turned to mist – as did the Goddess’s round face, frozen in the middle of changing from eagerness to astonishment – and Christopher fell out of it, down and down, and landed violently on his bed in the dark dormitory. CRASH!

“What was that?” said Fenning, quavering a little, and Oneir remarked, apparently in his sleep, “Help, someone’s fallen off the ceiling.”

“Shall I fetch Matron?” asked someone else.

“Don’t be an ass. I just had a dream,” Christopher said, rather irritably, because it had given him quite a shock. It was a further shock to find he was in pyjamas and not in the clothes he knew he had put on in the valley. When the other boys had settled down, he felt all over his bed for the parcel of books, and when they did not seem to be there, felt for the bracelet instead. He could not find that either.

He searched again in the morning, but there was no sign of it. He supposed that was not so surprising, when he thought how much Uncle Ralph had said Throgmorten was worth. Twelve-and-sixpenceworth of books was a pretty poor swop for several thousand poundsworth of cat. Something must have noticed he was cheating the Goddess.

He knew he was going to have to find the money for those other five books somehow and take them to the Goddess. Meanwhile, he had missed Tacroy, and he supposed he had better try to meet him next Thursday instead. He was not looking forward to it. Tacroy was bound to be pretty annoyed by now.

When Thursday came, Christopher nearly forgot Tacroy. It was only by accident that he happened to fall asleep during a particularly tedious story in The Arabian Nights. The Arabian Nights had become the dormitory’s favourite reading. They took it in turns to steal a candle and read aloud to the others. It was Oneir’s turn that night, and Oneir read all on one note like the school Chaplain reading the Bible. And that night he was deep into a confusing set of people who were called Calendars – Fenning made everyone groan by suggesting they got their name from living in the part of the world where dates grew – and Christopher dropped off to sleep. Next thing he knew, he was walking out into the valley.

Tacroy was sitting in the path beside the heap of Christopher’s clothes. Christopher eyed those clothes and wondered how they got there. Tacroy was sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees as if he were resigned to a long wait, and he seemed quite surprised to see Christopher.

“I didn’t expect to see you!” he said, and he grinned, though he looked tired.

Christopher felt ashamed and awkward. “I suppose you must be pretty angry—” he began.

“Stow it,” said Tacroy. “I get paid for going into trances and you don’t. It’s just a job for me – though I must say I miss you being around to firm me up.” He stretched his legs out across the path, and Christopher could see stones and grass through the green worsted trousers. Then he stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “You don’t really want to go on with these experiments, do you?” he asked. “You’ve been busy with school, and that’s much more fun than climbing into valleys of a night, isn’t it?”

Because Tacroy was being so nice about it, Christopher felt more ashamed than ever. He had forgotten how nice Tacroy was. Now he thought about it, he had missed him quite badly. “Of course I want to go on,” he said. “Where are we going tonight?”

“Nowhere,” said Tacroy. “I’m nearly out of this trance as it is. This was just an effort to contact you. But if you really want to go on, your uncle is sending the carriage to Series Six next Thursday – you know, the place that’s living in an Ice Age. You do want to go on – really?” Tacroy looked at Christopher with his eyes screwed into anxious lines. “You don’t have to, you know.”

“Yes, but I will,” Christopher said. “See you next Thursday.” And he dashed back to bed, where, to his delight, something seemed to be happening to the Calendars at last.

The rest of that term passed very swiftly, from lesson to lesson, from tale to tale in The Arabian Nights, from Thursday to Thursday. Climbing across The Place Between to meet Tacroy the first Thursday, Christopher still felt quite frightened, but it made a difference knowing that Tacroy was waiting for him outside the fifth valley along. Soon he was used to it again, and the experiments went on as before.

Someone had arranged for Christopher to stay for the Christmas holidays with Uncle Charles and Aunt Alice, the parents of his cousin Caroline. They lived in a big house in the country quite near, in Surrey too, and Cousin Caroline, in spite of being three years younger and a girl, turned out to be good fun. Christopher enjoyed learning all the things people did in the country, including snowballing with the stable lads and Caroline, and trying to sit on Caroline’s fat pony, but he was puzzled that no one mentioned Papa. Uncle Charles was Papa’s brother. He realised that Papa must be in disgrace with his whole family. In spite of this, Aunt Alice made sure he had a good Christmas, which was kind of her. Christopher’s most welcome Christmas present was another gold sovereign inside a card from Uncle Ralph. That meant he could afford more books for the Goddess.

As soon as school started again, he went down to the bookshop and bought the other five Millie books, and had them wrapped in waxed paper like the others. That was another twelve-and-sixpence towards the cost of Throgmorten. At this rate, he thought, he would be carrying parcels of books across The Place Between for the rest of his life.

In the Temple, the Goddess was in her dimly-lit room bent over Millie’s Finest Hour. When Christopher came in, she jumped and stuffed the book guiltily under her cushions.

“Oh, it’s only you!” she said. “Don’t ever come in quietly like that again, or I shall be a Dead Asheth on the spot! Whatever happened last time? You turned into a ghost and went down through the floor.”

“I’ve no idea,” said Christopher, “except that I fell on my bed with a crash. I’ve brought you the other five books.”

“Wonderfu—!” the Goddess began eagerly. Then she stopped and said soberly, “It’s very kind of you, but I’m not sure Asheth wants me to have them, after what happened when I tried to give you the bracelet.”

“No,” said Christopher. “I think Asheth must know that Throgmorten’s worth thousands of pounds. I could bring you the whole school library and it still wouldn’t pay for him.”

“Oh,” said the Goddess. “In that case—How is Throgmorten, by the way?”

Since Christopher had no idea, he said airily, “Trotting around bullying other cats and scratching people,” and changed the subject before the Goddess realised he was only guessing. “Were the first five books all right?”

The Goddess’s round face became all smile, so much smile that her face could hardly hold it and she spread her arms out as well. “They’re the most marvellous books in this world! It’s like really being at Lowood House School. I cry every time I read them.”

Oneir had got it right, Christopher thought, watching the Goddess unwrap the new parcel with little cries of pleasure and much chinking of bracelets.

“Oh Millie does get to be Head Girl!” she cried out, picking up Head Girl Millie. “I’ve been wondering and wondering whether she would. She must have got the better of that awful prig Delphinia after all.”

She stroked the book lovingly, and then took Christopher by surprise by asking, “What happened when you took Throgmorten? Mother Proudfoot told me that the Arm of Asheth killed the thief.”

“They tried,” Christopher said awkwardly, trying to sound casual.

“In that case,” said the Goddess, “you were very brave to honour the swop and you deserve to be rewarded. Would you like a reward – not a swop or a payment, a reward?”

“If you can think of one,” Christopher said cautiously.

“Then come with me,” said the Goddess. She got up briskly, clash-tink. She collected the new books and the old one from among the cushions, and gathered up the paper and the string. Then she threw the whole bundle at the wall. All of it, all six books and the wrapping, turned over on itself and shut itself out of sight, as if a lid had come down on an invisible box. There was nothing to tell that any of it had been there. Once again Christopher was impressed. “That’s so Mother Proudfoot won’t know,” the Goddess explained as she led the way into the shady yard. “I like her a lot, but she’s very stern and she’s into everything.”

“How do you get the books back?” asked Christopher.

“I beckon the one I want,” said the Goddess, pushing through the creeper in the archway. “It’s a by-product of being the Living Asheth.”

She led him across the blazing yard, among the cats, to an archway he remembered rather too well for comfort. It was the one he had fled into with Throgmorten yowling in the basket. Christopher began to be nervously and gloomily certain that the Goddess’s idea of a reward was nothing like his own.

“Won’t there be a lot of people?” he asked, hanging back rather.

“Not for a while. They snore for hours in the hot season,” the Goddess said confidently.

Christopher followed her reluctantly along a set of dark passages, not quite the way he had run before, he thought, though it was hard to be sure. At length they came to a wide archway hung with nearly-transparent yellow curtains. There was a rich gleam of daylight beyond. The Goddess parted the curtains and waved Christopher through, tink-clash. There seemed to be an old, dark tree in front of them, so old that it was thoroughly worm-eaten and had lost most of its branches. And something was making a suffocating smell, a little like church incense, but much thicker and stronger. The Goddess marched round the tree, down some shallow steps, and into the space full of rich daylight, which was blocked off by more yellow curtains a few yards away, like a tall golden room. Here she turned round to face the tree.

“This is the Shrine of Asheth,” she said. “Only initiates are allowed here. This is your reward. Look. Here I am.”

Christopher turned round and felt decidedly cheated. From this side, the tree turned out to be a monstrous statue of a woman with four arms. From the front it looked solid gold. Clearly the Temple had not bothered to coat the back of the wooden statue with gold, but they had made up for it on the front. Every visible inch of the woman shone buttery yellow gold, and she was hung with golden chains, bracelets, anklets and ear-rings. Her skirt was cloth-of-gold and she had a big ruby embedded in each of her four golden palms. More precious stones blazed from her high crown. The Shrine was made so that daylight slanted dramatically down from the roof, touching each precious stone with splendour, but veiled by the thick smoke climbing from golden burners beside the woman’s huge golden feet. The effect was decidedly Heathen.

After waiting a moment for Christopher to say something, the Goddess said, “This is Asheth. She’s me and I’m her, and this is her Divine Aspect. I thought you’d like to meet me as I really am.”

Christopher turned to the Goddess, meaning to say, No you’re not: you haven’t got four arms. But the Goddess was standing in the smoky yellow space with her arms stretched out to the side in the same position as the statue’s top pair of arms, and she did indeed have four arms. The lower pair were misty and he could see the yellow curtain through them, but they had the same sort of bracelets and they were arranged just like the statue’s lower pair of arms. They were obviously as real as Tacroy before he was firmed up. So he looked up at the statue’s smooth golden face. He thought it looked hard and a little cruel behind its blank golden stare.

“She doesn’t look as clever as you,” he said. It was the only thing he could think of that was not rude.

“She’s got her Very Stupid expression on,” the Goddess said. “Don’t be fooled by that. She doesn’t want people to know how clever she really is. It’s a very useful expression. I use it a lot in lessons when Mother Proudfoot or Mother Dowson go boring on.”

It was a useful expression, Christopher thought, a good deal better than his vague look which he used in magic lessons. “How do you make it?” he asked with great interest.

Before the Goddess could reply, footsteps padded behind the statue. A strong voice, musical but sharp, called out, “Goddess? What are you doing in the Shrine at this hour?”

Christopher and the Goddess went into two separate states of panic. Christopher turned to plunge out through the other set of yellow curtains, heard sandals slapping about out there too, and turned back in despair. The Goddess whispered, “Oh blast Mother Proudfoot! She seems to know where I am by instinct somehow!” and she spun round in circles trying to wrestle a bracelet off her upper arm.

A long bare foot and most of a leg in a rust-coloured robe appeared round the golden statue. Christopher gave himself up for lost. But the Goddess, seeing she was never going to get the bracelet off in time, snatched his hand and held it against the whole heap of jingling jewellery on her arm.

Just as before, everything turned misty and Christopher fell through it, into his bed in the dormitory. Crash!

“I wish you wouldn’t do that!” Fenning said, waking up with a jump. “Can’t you control those dreams of yours?”

“Yes,” Christopher said, sweating at his narrow escape. “I’m never going to have a dream like that again.” It was a silly set-up anyway – a live girl pretending to be a goddess, who was only a worm-eaten wooden statue. He had nothing against the Goddess herself. He admired her quick thinking, and he would have liked to learn both the Very Stupid expression and how you did that vanishing trick with the books. But it was not worth the danger.

For the rest of the spring term, Christopher went regularly to the Anywheres with Tacroy, but he did not try to go to one on his own. By now Uncle Ralph seemed to have a whole round of experiments set up. Christopher met Tacroy in Series One, Three, Five, Seven and Nine, and then in Eight, Six, Four and Two, always in that order, but not always in the same place or outside the same valley.

In each Anywhere people would be waiting with a pile of packages which, by the weight and feel, had different things inside each time. The parcels in Series One were always knobby and heavy, and in Four they were smooth boxes. In Series Two and Five, they were squashy and smelt of fish, which made sense since both those Anywheres had so much water in them. In Series Eight, the women always breathed garlic and those parcels had the same strong odour every time. Beyond that, there seemed no rule.

Christopher got to know most of the people who supplied the packages, and he laughed and joked with them as he loaded the horseless carriage. And as the experiments went on, Uncle Ralph’s wizards gradually perfected the carriage. By the end of term, it moved under its own power and Tacroy and Christopher no longer had to drag it up the valleys to The Place Between.

In fact, the experiments had become so routine that they were not much of a change from school. Christopher thought of other things while he worked, just as he did in magic lessons and English and Chapel at school.

“Why don’t we ever go to Series Eleven?” he asked as they walked up one of the valleys from Series One with another heavy knobby load gliding behind on the carriage.

“Nobody goes to Eleven,” Tacroy said shortly. Christopher could see he wanted to change the subject. He asked why. “Because,” said Tacroy, “because they’re peculiar, unfriendly people there, I suppose – if you can call them people. Nobody knows much about them because they make damn sure nobody sees them. And that’s all I know, except that Eleven’s not a Series. There’s only one world.” Tacroy refused to say more than that, which was annoying, because Christopher had a strong feeling that Tacroy did know more. But Tacroy was in a bad mood that week. His grandmotherly lady had gone down with flu and Tacroy was making do with the stern flute-playing young lady.

“Somewhere in our world,” he said, sighing, “there is a young lady who plays the harp and doesn’t mind if I turn transparent, but there are too many difficulties in the way between us.”

Probably because Tacroy kept saying things like this, Christopher now had a very romantic image of him starving in his garret and crossed in love. “Why won’t Uncle Ralph let me come and see you in London?” he asked.

“I told you to stow it, Christopher,” Tacroy said, and he stopped further talk by stepping out into the mists of The Place Between with the carriage billowing behind him.

Tacroy’s romantic background nagged at Christopher all that term, particularly when a casual word he dropped in the dormitory made it clear that none of the other boys had ever met a foundling child. “I wish I was one,” Oneir said. “I wouldn’t have to go into my father’s business then.” After that, Christopher felt he would not even mind meeting the flute-playing young lady.

But this was driven out of his mind when there proved to be a muddle over the arrangements for the Easter holidays. Mama wrote and said he was to come to her in Genoa, but at the last moment she turned out to be going to Weimar instead, where there was no room for Christopher. He had to spend nearly a week at school on his own after everyone had gone home, while the school wrote to Uncle Charles, and Uncle Charles arranged for Papa’s other brother, Uncle Conrad, to have him in four days’ time. Meanwhile, since the school was closing, Christopher was sent to stay with Uncle Ralph in London.

Uncle Ralph was away, to Christopher’s disappointment. Most of his house was shut up, with locked doors everywhere, and the only person there was the housekeeper. Christopher spent the few days wandering round London by himself.

It was almost as good as exploring an Anywhere. There were parks and monuments and street musicians, and every road, however narrow, was choked with high-wheeled carts and carriages. On the second day Christopher found himself at Covent Garden market, among piles of fruit and vegetables, and he stayed there till the evening, fascinated by the porters. Each of them could carry at least six loaded baskets in a tall pile on his head, without even wobbling. At last, he turned to come away and saw a familiar sturdy figure in a green worsted suit walking down the narrow street ahead of him.

“Tacroy!” Christopher screamed and went racing after him.

Tacroy did not appear to hear. He went walking on, with his curly head bent in a rather dejected way, and turned the corner into the next narrow street before Christopher had caught up. When Christopher skidded round the corner, there was no sign of him. But he knew it had been, unmistakably, Tacroy. The garret must be somewhere quite near. He spent the rest of his stay in London hanging round Covent Garden, hoping for another glimpse of Tacroy, but it did no good. Tacroy did not appear again.

After that, Christopher went to stay at Uncle Conrad’s house in Wiltshire, where the sole drawback proved to be his cousin Francis. Cousin Francis was the same age as Christopher, and he was the kind of boy Fenning called “a stuck up pratterel”. Christopher despised Francis on this account, and Francis despised Christopher for having been brought up in town and never having ridden to hounds. In fact, there was another reason too, which emerged when Christopher fell heavily off the quietest pony in the stables for the seventh time.

“Can’t do magic, can you?” Francis said, looking smugly down at Christopher from the great height of his trim bay gelding. “I’m not surprised. It’s your father’s fault for marrying that awful Argent woman. No one in my family has anything to do with your father now.”

Since Christopher was fairly sure that Francis had used magic to bring him off the pony, there was not much he could do but clench his teeth and feel that Papa was well shot of this particular branch of the Chants. It was a relief to go back to school again.

It was more than a relief. It was the cricket season. Christopher became obsessed with cricket almost overnight. So did Oneir. “It’s the King of Games,” Oneir said devoutly, and went and bought every book on the subject that he could afford. He and Christopher decided they were going to be professional cricketers when they grew up. “And my father’s business can just go hang!” Oneir said.

Christopher quite agreed, only in his case it was Mama’s plans for Society. I’ve made up my mind for myself! he thought. It was like being released from a vow. He was quite surprised to find how determined and ambitious he was. He and Oneir practised all day, and Fenning, who was no good really, was persuaded to run after the balls. In between they talked cricket, and at night Christopher had normal ordinary dreams, all about cricket.

It seemed quite an interruption on the first Thursday, when he had to give up dreams of cricket and meet Tacroy in Series Five.

“I saw you in London,” Christopher said to him. “Your garret’s near Covent Garden, isn’t it?”

“Covent Garden?” Tacroy said blankly. “It’s nowhere near there. You must have seen someone else.” And he stuck to that, even when Christopher described in great detail which street it was and what Tacroy had looked like. “No,” he said. “You must have been running after a complete stranger.”

Christopher knew it had been Tacroy. He was puzzled. But there seemed no point in going on arguing. He began loading the carriage with fishy smelling bundles and went back to thinking about cricket. Naturally, not thinking what he was doing, he let go of a bundle in the wrong place. It fell half through Tacroy and slapped to the ground, where it lay leaking an even fishier smell than before. “Pooh!” said Christopher. “What is this stuff?”

“No idea,” said Tacroy. “I’m only your uncle’s errand boy. What’s the matter? Is your mind somewhere else tonight?”

“Sorry,” Christopher said, collecting the bundle. “I was thinking of cricket.”

Tacroy’s face lit up. “Are you bowler or batsman?”

“Batsman,” said Christopher. “I want to be a professional.”

“I’m a bowler myself,” said Tacroy. “Slow leg-spin and though I say it myself, I’m not half bad. I play quite a lot for – well, it’s a village team really, but we usually win. I usually end up taking seven wickets – and I can bat a bit too. What are you, an opener?”

“No, I fancy myself as a stroke player,” Christopher said.

They talked cricket all the time Christopher was loading the carriage. After that they walked on the beach with the blue surf crashing beside them and went on talking cricket. Tacroy several times tried to demonstrate his skill by picking up a pebble, but he could not get firm enough to hold it. So Christopher found a piece of driftwood to act as a bat and Tacroy gave him advice on how to hit.

After that, Tacroy gave Christopher a coaching session in whatever Anywhere they happened to be, and both of them talked cricket non-stop. Tacroy was a good coach. Christopher learnt far more from him than he did from the sports master at school. He had more and more splendid ambitions of playing professionally for Surrey or somewhere, cracking the ball firmly to the boundary all round the ground. In fact, Tacroy taught him so well that he began to have quite real, everyday ambitions of getting into the school team.

They were reading Oneir’s cricket books aloud in the dormitory now. Matron had discovered The Arabian Nights and taken it away, but nobody minded. Every boy in the dormitory, even Fenning, was cricket mad. And Christopher was most obsessed of all.

Then disaster struck. It began with Tacroy saying, “By the way, there’s a change of plan. Can you meet me in Series Ten next Thursday? Someone seems to be trying to spoil your uncle’s experiments, so we have to change the routine.”

Christopher was distracted from cricket by slight guilt at that. He knew he ought to make a further payment for Throgmorten, and he was afraid that the Goddess might have supernatural means of knowing he had been to Series Ten without bringing her any more books. He went rather warily to the valley.

Tacroy was not there. It took Christopher a good hour of climbing and scrambling to locate him at the mouth of quite a different valley. By this time Tacroy had become distinctly misty and unfirm.

“Dunderhead,” Tacroy said while Christopher hastily firmed him up. “I was going to lose this trance any second. You know there’s more than one place in a series. What got into you?”

“I was probably thinking of cricket,” Christopher said.

The place beyond the new valley was nothing like as primitive and Heathen-seeming as the place where the Goddess lived. It was a vast dockside with tremendous cranes towering overhead. Some of the biggest ships Christopher had ever seen, enormous rusty iron ships, very strangely shaped, were tied up to cables so big that he had to step over them as if they were logs. But he knew it was still Series Ten when the man waiting with an iron cart full of little kegs said, “Praise Asheth! I thought you were never coming!”

“Yes, make haste,” Tacroy said. “This place is safer than that Heathen city, but there may be enemies around all the same. Besides, the sooner you finish, the sooner we can get to work on your forward defensive play.”

Christopher hurried to roll the little kegs from the iron cart to the carriage. When all the kegs were in, he hurried to fasten the straps that held the loads on it. And, of course, because he was hurrying, one of the straps slithered out of his hand and fell back on the other side of the carriage. He had to lean right over the load to get it. He could hear iron clanking in the distance and a few shouts, but he thought nothing of it, until Tacroy suddenly sprang into sight beside him.

“Off there! Get off!” Tacroy shouted, tugging uselessly at Christopher with misty hands.

Christopher, still lying across the kegs, looked up to see a giant hook on the end of a chain travelling towards him faster than he could run.

That was really all he knew about it. The next thing he knew – rather dimly – was that he was lying in the path in his own valley beside his pyjamas. He realised that the iron hook must have knocked him out and it was lucky that he had been more or less lying across the carriage or Tacroy would never have got him home. A little shakily, he got back into his pyjamas. His head ached, so he shambled straight back to bed in the dormitory.

In the morning he did not even have a headache. He forgot about it and went straight out after breakfast to play cricket with Oneir and six other boys.

“Bags I bat first!” he shouted.

Everyone shouted it at the same time. But Oneir had been carrying the bat and he was not going to let go. Everyone, including Christopher, grabbed at him. There was a silly laughing tussle, which ended when Oneir swung the bat round in a playful, threatening circle.

The bat met Christopher’s head with a heavy THUK. It hurt. He remembered hearing several other distinct cracks, just over his left ear, as if the bones of his skull were breaking up like an ice puddle. Then, in a way that was remarkably like the night before, he knew nothing at all for quite a long time.

When he came round, he knew it was much later in the day. Though the sheet had somehow got over his face, he could see late evening light coming in through a window high up in one corner. He was very cold, particularly his feet. Someone had obviously taken his shoes and socks off to put him to bed. But where had they put him? The window was in the wrong place for the dormitory – or for any other room he had slept in for that matter. He pushed the sheet off and sat up.

He was on a marble slab in a cold, dim room. It was no wonder he felt cold. He was only wearing underclothes. All round him were other marble slabs, most of them empty. But some slabs had people lying on them, very still and covered all over with white sheets.

Christopher began to suspect where he might be. Wrapping the sheet round him for what little warmth it gave, he slid down from the marble slab and went over to the nearest white slab with a person on it. Carefully he pulled back the sheet. This person had been an old tramp and he was dead as a doornail – Christopher poked his cold, bristly face to make sure. Then he told himself to keep quite calm, which was a sensible thing to tell himself, but much too late. He was already in the biggest panic of his life.

There was a big metal door down at the other end of the cold room. Christopher seized its handle and tugged. When the door turned out to be locked, he kicked it and beat at it with both hands and rattled the handle. He was still telling himself to be sensible, but he was shaking all over, and the panic was rapidly getting out of control.

After a minute or so, the door was wrenched open by a fat, jolly-looking man in a white overall, who stared into the room irritably. He did not see Christopher at first. He was looking over Christopher’s head, expecting someone taller.

Christopher wrapped the sheet round himself accusingly. “What do you mean by locking this door?” he demanded. “Everybody’s dead in here. They’re not going to run away.”

The man’s eyes turned down to Christopher. He gave a slight moan. His eyes rolled up to the ceiling. His plump body slid down the door and landed at Christopher’s feet in a dead faint.

Christopher thought he was dead too. It put the last touch to his panic. He jumped over the man’s body and rushed down the corridor beyond, where he found himself in a hospital. There a nurse tried to stop him, but Christopher was beyond reason by then. “Where’s school?” he shrieked at her. “I’m missing cricket practice!” For half an hour after that the hospital was in total confusion, while everyone tried to catch a five foot corpse clothed mostly in a flying sheet, which raced up and down the corridors shrieking that it was missing cricket practice.

They caught him at last outside the maternity ward, where a doctor hastily gave him something to make him sleep. “Calm down, son,” he said. “It’s a shock to us too, you know. When I last saw you, your head was like a run-over pumpkin.”

“I’m missing cricket practice, I tell you!” Christopher said.

He woke up next day in a hospital bed. Mama and Papa were both there, facing one another across it, dark clothes and whiskers on one side, scents and pretty colours on the other. As if to make it clear to Christopher that this was a bad crisis, the two of them were actually speaking to one another.

“Nonsense, Cosimo,” Mama was saying. “The doctors just made a mistake. It was only a bad concussion after all and we’ve both had a fright for nothing.”

“The school Matron said he was dead too,” Papa said sombrely.

“And she’s a flighty sort of type,” Mama said. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Well I do,” said Papa. “He had more than one life, Miranda. It explains things about his horoscope that have always puzzled—”

“Oh fudge to your wretched horoscopes!” Mama cried. “Be quiet!”

“I shall not be quiet where I know the truth!” Papa more or less shouted. “I have done what needs to be done and sent a telegram to de Witt about him.”

This obviously horrified Mama. “What a wicked thing to do!” she raged. “And without consulting me! I tell you I shall not lose Christopher to your gloomy connivings, Cosimo!”

At this point both Mama and Papa became so angry that Christopher closed his eyes. Since the stuff the doctor had given him was still making him feel sleepy, he dropped off almost at once, but he could still hear the quarrel, even asleep. In the end he climbed out of bed, slipping past Mama and Papa without either of them noticing, and went to The Place Between. He found a new valley there, leading to somewhere where there was some kind of circus going on. Nobody in that world spoke English, but Christopher got by quite well, as he had often done before, by pretending to be deaf and dumb.

When he came slipping back, the room was full of soberly-dressed people who were obviously just leaving. Christopher slipped past a stout, solemn young man in a tight collar, and a lady in a grey dress who was carrying a black leather instrument case. Neither of them knew he was there. By the look of things, the part of him left lying in the bed had just been examined by a specialist. As Christopher slipped round Mama and got back into bed, he realised that the specialist was just outside the door, with Papa and another man in a beard.

“I agree that you were right in the circumstances to call me in,” Christopher heard an old, dry voice saying, “but there is only one life present, Mr Chant. I admit freakish things can happen, of course, but we have the report of the school magic teacher to back up our findings in this case. I am afraid I am not convinced at all…” The old, dry voice went away up the corridor, still talking, and the other people followed, all except Mama.

“What a relief!” Mama said. “Christopher, are you awake? I thought for a moment that that dreadful old man was going to get hold of you, and I would never have forgiven your papa! Never! I don’t want you to grow up into a boring, law-abiding policeman sort of person, Christopher. Mama wants to be proud of you.”

Christopher went back to school the next day. He was rather afraid that Mama was going to be disappointed in him when he turned out to be a professional cricketer, but that did not alter his ambition in the least.

Everyone at school treated him as if he were a miracle. Oneir apologised, almost in tears. That was the only thing which made Christopher uncomfortable. Otherwise he basked in the attention he got. He insisted on playing cricket just as before, and he could hardly wait for next Thursday to come so that he could tell Tacroy all his adventures.

On Wednesday morning the Headmaster sent for Christopher. To his surprise, Papa was there with the Head, both of them standing uneasily beside the Head’s mahogany desk. “Well, Chant,” the Head said, “we shall be sorry to lose our nine days’ wonder so quickly. Your father has come to fetch you away. It seems you are to go to a private tutor instead.”

“What? Leave school, sir?” Christopher said. “But it’s cricket practice this afternoon, sir!”

“I have suggested to your father that you might remain at least until the end of term,” the Head said, “but it seems that the great Dr Pawson will not agree to it.”

Papa cleared his throat. “These Cambridge Dons,” he said. “We both know what they are, Headmaster.” He and the Head smiled at one another, rather falsely.

“Matron is packing you a bag now,” said the Head. “In due course, your box and your school report will be sent after you. Now we must say goodbye, as I gather your train leaves in half an hour.” He shook hands with Christopher, a brisk, hard, headmasterly shake, and Christopher was whisked away, there and then, in a cab with Papa, without even a chance to say goodbye to Oneir and Fenning.

He sat in the train seething about it, staring resentfully at Papa’s whiskered profile.

“I was hoping to get into the school cricket team,” he said pointedly, when Papa did not seem to be going to explain.

“Shame about that,” Papa said, “but there will be other cricket teams no doubt. Your future is more important than cricket, my son.”

“My future is cricket,” Christopher said boldly. It was the first time he had come right out with his ambition to an adult. He went hot and cold at his daring in speaking like this to Papa. But he was glad too, because this was an important step on the road to his career.

Papa gave a melancholy smile. “There was a time when I myself wanted to be an engine driver,” he said. “These whims pass. It was more important to get you to Dr Pawson before the end of term. Your mama was planning to take you abroad with her then.”

Christopher’s teeth clenched so tightly with anger that his toothbrace cut his lip. Cricket a whim indeed! “Why is it so important?”

“Dr Pawson is the most eminent Diviner in the country,” said Papa. “I had to pull a few strings to get him to take you on at such short notice, but when I put the case to him, he himself said that it was urgent not to give de Witt time to forget about you. De Witt will revise his opinion of you when he finds you have a gift for magic after all.”

“But I can’t do magic,” Christopher pointed out.

“And there must be some reason why not,” said Papa. “On the face of it, your gifts should be enormous, since I am an enchanter, and so are both my brothers, while your mama – this I will grant her – is a highly gifted sorceress. And her brother, that wretched Argent fellow, is an enchanter too.”

Christopher watched houses rushing past behind Papa’s profile as the train streamed into the outskirts of London, while he tried to digest this. No one had told him about his heredity before. Still, he supposed there were duds born into the most wizardly families. He thought he must be a dud. So Papa was truly an enchanter? Christopher resentfully searched Papa for the signs of power and riches that went with an enchanter, and the signs did not seem to be there. Papa struck him as threadbare and mournful. The cuffs of his frock coat were worn and his hat looked dull and unprosperous. Even the black whiskers were thinner than Christopher remembered, with streaks of grey in them.

But the fact was, enchanter or not, Papa had snatched him out of school in the height of the cricket season, and from the way the Head had talked, he was not expected to go back. Why not? Why had Papa taken it into his head to do this to him?

Christopher brooded about this while the train drew into the Great Southern terminus and Papa towed him through the bustle to a cab. Galloping and rattling towards St Pancras Cross, he realised that it was going to be difficult even to see Tacroy and get some cricket coaching that way. Papa had told him to have nothing to do with Uncle Ralph, and Papa was an enchanter.

In the small sooty carriage of the train to Cambridge, Christopher asked resentfully, “Papa, what made you decide to take me to Dr Pawson?”

“I thought I had explained,” Papa said. That, for a while seemed all he was going to say. Then he turned towards Christopher, sighing rather, and Christopher saw that he had just been gathering himself for a serious talk. “Last Friday,” he said, “you were certified dead, my son, by two doctors and a number of other people. Yet when I arrived to identify your body on Saturday, you were alive and recovering and showing no signs of injury. This made me certain that you had more than one life – the more so as I suspect that this has happened once before. Tell me, Christopher, that time last year when they told me a curtain pole had fallen on you – you were mortally injured then, weren’t you? You may confess to me. I shan’t be angry.”

“Yes,” Christopher said reluctantly. “I suppose I was.”

“I thought so!” Papa said with dismal satisfaction. “Now, my son, those people who are lucky enough to have several lives are always, invariably, highly gifted enchanters. It was clear to me last Saturday that you are one. This was why I sent for Gabriel de Witt. Now Monsignor de Witt—” Here Papa lowered his voice and looked nervously round the sooty carriage as if he thought Monsignor de Witt could hear “—is the strongest enchanter in the world. He has nine lives. Nine, Christopher. This makes him strong enough to control the practice of magic throughout this world and several others. The Government has given him that task. For this reason you will hear some people call him the Chrestomanci. The post bears that title.”

“But,” said Christopher, “what has all this and the kress toe mancy got to do with pulling me out of school?”

“Because I wish de Witt to take an interest in your case,” said Papa. “I am a poor man now. I can do nothing for you. I have made considerable sacrifices to afford Dr Pawson’s fee, because I think de Witt was wrong when he said you were a normal boy with only one life. My hope is that Dr Pawson can prove he was wrong and that de Witt can then be persuaded to take you on to his staff. If he does, your future is assured.”

Take me on to his staff, Christopher thought. Like Oneir in his father’s business having to start as an office boy. “I don’t think,” he said, “that I want my future assured like that.”

His father looked at him sorrowfully. “There speaks your mama in you,” he said. “Proper tuition should cure that sort of levity.”

This did nothing to reconcile Christopher to Papa’s plans. But I said that for myself! he thought angrily. It had nothing to do with Mama! He was still in a state of seething resentment when the train steamed into Cambridge, and he walked with Papa through streets full of young men in gowns like the coats people wore in Series Seven, past tall turreted buildings that reminded him of the Temple of Asheth, except that the Cambridge buildings had more windows. Papa had rented rooms in a lodging house, a dark, mingy place that smelt of old dinners.

“We shall be staying here together while Dr Pawson sorts you out,” he told Christopher. “I have brought ample work with me, so that I can keep a personal eye on your wellbeing.”

This about put the lid on Christopher’s angry misery. He wondered if he dared go to The Place Between to meet Tacroy on Thursday with a full grown enchanter keeping a careful eye on him. To crown it all, the lodging house bed was even worse than the beds at school and twanged every time he moved. He went to sleep thinking he was about as miserable as he could be. But that was before he saw Dr Pawson and realised his miseries had only just begun.

Papa delivered him to Dr Pawson’s house in the Trumpington Road at ten the next morning. “Dr Pawson’s learning gives him a disconcerting manner at times,” Papa said, “but I know I can trust my son to bear himself with proper politeness notwithstanding.”

This sounded ominous. Christopher’s knees wobbled while the housemaid showed him into Dr Pawson’s room. It was a bright, bright room stuffed full of clutter. A harsh voice shouted out of the clutter.

“Stop!”

Christopher stood where he was, bewildered.

“Not a step further. And keep your knees still, boy! Lord, how the young do fidget!” the harsh voice bellowed. “How am I to assess you if you won’t stay still? Now, what do you say?”

The largest thing among the clutter was a fat armchair. Dr Pawson was sitting in it, not moving a muscle except for a quiver from his vast purple jowls. He was probably too fat to move. He was vastly, hugely, grossly fat. His belly was like a small mountain with a checked waistcoat stretched over it. His hands reminded Christopher of some purple bananas he had seen in Series Five. His face was stretched, and purple too, and out of it glared two merciless watery eyes.

“How do you do, sir?” Christopher said, since Papa trusted him to be polite.

“No, no!” shouted Dr Pawson. “This is an examination, not a social call. What’s your problem – Chant your name is, isn’t it? State your problem, Chant.”

“I can’t do magic, sir,” Christopher said.

“So can’t a lot of people. Some are born that way,” Dr Pawson bawled. “Do better than that, Chant. Show me. Don’t do some magic and let me see.”

Christopher hesitated, out of bewilderment mostly.

“Go on, boy!” howled Dr Pawson. “Don’t do it!”

“I can’t not do something I can’t do,” Christopher said, thoroughly harassed.

“Of course you can!” yelled Dr Pawson. “That’s the essence of magic. Get on with it. Mirror on the table beside you. Levitate it and be quick about it!”

If Dr Pawson hoped to startle Christopher into succeeding, he failed. Christopher stumbled to the table, looked into the elegant silver-framed mirror that was lying there, and went through the words and gestures he had learnt at school. Nothing at all happened.

“Hm,” said Dr Pawson. “Don’t do it again.”

Christopher realised he was supposed to try once more. He tried, with shaking hands and voice, and exasperated misery growing inside him. This was hopeless! He hated Papa for dragging him off to be terrorised by this appalling fat man. He wanted to cry, and he had to remind himself, just as if he were his own Governess, that he was far too big for that. And, as before, the mirror simply lay where it was.

“Um,” said Dr Pawson. “Turn round, Chant. No, right round boy, slowly, so that I can see all of you. Stop!”

Christopher stopped and stood and waited. Dr Pawson shut his watery eyes and lowered his purple chins. Christopher suspected he had gone to sleep. There was utter silence in the room except for clocks ticking among the clutter. Two clocks were the kind with all the works showing, one was a grandfather, and one was a mighty marble timepiece that looked as if it had come off someone’s grave. Christopher nearly jumped out of his skin when Dr Pawson suddenly barked at him like the clap of doom.

“EMPTY YOUR POCKETS, CHANT!”

Eh? thought Christopher. But he did not dare disobey. He began hurriedly unloading the pockets of his Norfolk jacket: Uncle Ralph’s sixpence which he always kept, a shilling of his own, a greyish handkerchief, a note from Oneir about algebra, and then he was down to shaming things like string and rubber bands and furry toffees. He hesitated.

“All of it!” yelled Dr Pawson. “Out of every single pocket. Put it all down on the table.”

Christopher went on unloading: a chewed rubber, a bit of pencil, peas for Fenning’s pea-shooter, a silver threepenny bit he had not known about, a cough drop, fluff, more fluff, string, a marble, an old pen nib, more rubber bands, more fluff, more string. And that was it.

Dr Pawson’s eyes glared over him. “No, that’s not all! What else have you got on you? Tie-pin. Get rid of that too.”

Reluctantly Christopher unpinned the nice silver tie-pin Aunt Alice had given him for Christmas. And Dr Pawson’s eyes continued to glare at him.

“Ah!” Dr Pawson said. “And that stupid thing you have on your teeth. That’s got to go too. Get it out of your mouth and put it on the table. What the devil’s it for anyway?”

“To stop my teeth growing crooked,” Christopher said rather huffily. Much as he hated the toothbrace, he hated even more being criticised about it.

“What’s wrong with crooked teeth?” howled Dr Pawson, and he bared his own teeth. Christopher rather started back from the sight. Dr Pawson’s teeth were brown, and they lay higgledy-piggledy in all directions, like a fence trampled by cows. While Christopher was blinking at them, Dr Pawson bellowed, “Now do that levitation spell again!”

Christopher ground his teeth – which felt quite straight by contrast and very smooth without the brace – and turned to the mirror again. Once more he looked into it, once more said the words, and once more raised his arms aloft. And as his arms went up, he felt something come loose with them – come loose with a vengeance.

Everything in the room went upwards except Christopher, the mirror, the tie-pin, the toothbrace and the money. These slid to the floor as the table surged upwards, but were collected by the carpet which came billowing up after it. Christopher hastily stepped off the carpet and stood watching everything soar around him – all the clocks, several tables, chairs, rugs, pictures, vases, ornaments, and Dr Pawson too. He and his armchair both went up, majestically, like a balloon, and bumped against the ceiling. The ceiling bellied upwards and the chandelier plastered itself sideways against it. From above came crashing, shrieks, and an immense airy grinding. Christopher could feel that the roof of the house had come off and was on its way to the sky, pursued by the attics. It was an incredible feeling.

“STOP THAT!” Dr Pawson roared.

Christopher guiltily took his arms down.

Instantly everything began raining back to the ground again. The tables plunged, the carpets sank, vases, pictures and clocks crashed to the floor all round. Dr Pawson’s armchair plummeted with the rest, followed by pieces of the chandelier, but Dr Pawson himself floated down smoothly, having clearly done some prudent magic of his own.

Up above, the roof came down thunderously. Christopher could hear tiles falling and chimneys crashing, as well as smashings and howls from upstairs. The upper floors seemed now to be trying to get through to the ground. The walls of the room buckled and oozed plaster, while the windows bent and fell to pieces. It was about five minutes before the slidings and smashings died away, and the dust settled even more slowly. Dr Pawson sat among the wreckage and the blowing dust and stared at Christopher. Christopher stared back, very much wanting to laugh.

A little old lady suddenly materialised in the armchair opposite Dr Pawson’s. She was wearing a white nightgown and a lacy cap over her white hair. She smiled at Christopher in a steely way. “So it was you, child,” she said to Christopher. “Mary-Ellen is in hysterics. Don’t ever do that again, or I’ll put a Visitation on you. I’m still famed for my Visitations, you know.” Having said this, she was gone as suddenly as she had come.

“My old mother,” said Dr Pawson. “She’s normally bedridden, but as you can see, she’s very strongly moved. As is almost everything else.” He sat and stared at Christopher a while longer, and Christopher went on struggling not to laugh. “Silver,” Dr Pawson said at last.

“Silver?” asked Christopher.

“Silver,” said Dr Pawson. “Silver’s the thing that’s stopping you, Chant. Don’t ask me why at the moment. Maybe we’ll never get to the bottom of it, but there’s no question about the facts. If you want to work magic, you’ll have to give up money except for coppers and sovereigns, throw away that tie-pin, and get rid of that stupid brace.”

Christopher thought about Papa, about school, about cricket, in a flood of anger and frustration which gave him courage to say, “But I don’t think I do want to work magic, sir.”

“Yes you do, Chant,” said Dr Pawson. “For at least the next month.” And while Christopher was wondering how to contradict him without being too rude, Dr Pawson gave out another vast bellow. “YOU HAVE TO PUT EVERYTHING BACK, CHANT!”

And this is just what Christopher had to do. For the rest of the morning he went round the house, up to every floor and then outside into the garden, while Dr Pawson trundled beside him in his armchair and showed him how to cast holding-spells to stop the house falling down. Dr Pawson never seemed to leave that armchair. In all the time Christopher spent with him, he never saw Dr Pawson walk. Around midday, Dr Pawson sent his chair gliding into the kitchen, where a cook-maid was sitting dolefully in the midst of smashed butter crocks, spilt milk, bits of basin and dented saucepans, and dabbing at her eyes with her apron.

“Not hurt in here are you?” Dr Pawson barked. “I put a holder on first thing to make sure the range didn’t burst and set the house on fire – that sort of thing. That held, didn’t it? Water pipes secure?”

“Yes, sir,” gulped the cook-maid. “But lunch is ruined, sir.”

“We’ll have to have a scratch lunch for once,” said Dr Pawson. His chair swung round to face Christopher. “By this evening,” he said, “this kitchen is going to be mended. Not holding-spells. Everything as new. I’ll show you how. Can’t have the kitchen out of action. It’s the most important place in the house.”

“I’m sure it is, sir,” Christopher said, eyeing Dr Pawson’s mountain of a stomach.

Dr Pawson glared at him. “I can dine in college,” he said, “but my mother needs her nourishment.”

For the rest of that day Christopher mended the kitchen, putting crockery back together, recapturing spilt milk and cooking sherry, taking dents out of pans, and sealing a dangerous split at the back of the range. While he did, Dr Pawson sat in his armchair warming himself by the range fire and barking things like, “Now put the eggs together, Chant. You’ll need the spell to raise them first, then the dirt-dispeller you used on the milk. Then you can start the mending-spell.”

While Christopher laboured, the cook-maid, who was obviously even more frightened of Dr Pawson than Christopher was, edged round him trying to bake a cake and prepare the roast for supper.

One way and another, Christopher probably learnt more practical magic that day than he had in two and a half terms at school. By the evening he was exhausted. Dr Pawson barked, “You can go back to your father for now. Be here at nine tomorrow prompt. There’s still the rest of the house to see to.”

“Oh Lord!” Christopher groaned, too weary to be polite. “Can’t someone help me at all? I’ve learnt my lesson.”

“What gave you the idea there was only one lesson to learn?” bawled Dr Pawson.

Christopher tottered back to the lodging house carrying the toothbrace, the money and the tie-pin wrapped in the grey handkerchief. Papa looked up from a table spread with horoscope sheets. “Well?” he asked with gloomy eagerness.

Christopher fell into a lumpy chair. “Silver,” he said. “Silver stops me working magic. And I hope I have got more than one life because Dr Pawson’s going to kill me at this rate.”

“Silver?” said Papa. “Oh dear! Oh dear, dear!” He was very sad and silent all through the cabbage soup and sausages the lodging house provided for supper. After supper he said, “My son, I have a confession to make. It is my fault that silver stops you working magic. Not only did I cast your horoscope when you were born, but I also cast every other spell I knew to divine your future. And you can imagine my horror when each kind of forecast foretold that silver would mean danger or death to you.”

Papa paused, drumming his fingers on the horoscope sheets and staring absently at the wall. “Argent,” he said musingly. “Argent means silver. Could I have got it wrong?” He pulled himself sadly back together. “Well it is too late to do anything about that, except to warn you again to have nothing to do with your Uncle Ralph.”

“But why is it your fault?” Christopher asked, very uncomfortable at the way Papa’s thoughts were going.

“There is no getting round Fate,” Papa said, “as I should have known. I cast my strongest spells and put forth all my power to make silver neutral to you. Silver – any contact with silver – seems to transform you at once into an ordinary person without a magic gift at all – and I see now that this could have its dangers. I take it you can work magic when you are not touching silver?”

Christopher gave a weary laugh. “Oh yes. Like anything.”

Papa brightened a little. “That’s a relief. Then my sacrifice here was not in vain. As you may know, Christopher, I very foolishly lost your mama’s money and my own by investing it where I thought my horoscopes told me to.” He shook his head sadly. “Horoscopes are tricky, particularly with money. Be that as it may, I am finished. I regard myself as a failure. You are all I have left to live for, my son. Any success I am to know, I shall know through you.”

If Christopher had not been so tired, he would have found this decidedly embarrassing. Even through his weariness, he found he was annoyed that he was expected to live for Papa and not on his own account. Would it be fair, he wondered, to use magic to make yourself a famous cricketer? You could make the ball go anywhere you wanted. Would Papa regard this as success? He knew perfectly well that Papa would not.

By this time, his eyes were closing themselves and his head was nodding. When Papa sent him off to bed, Christopher fell on to the twanging mattress and slept like a log. He had meant, honestly meant, to go to The Place Between and tell Tacroy all that had happened, but either he was just too tired or too scared that Papa would guess. Whatever the reason was, he did not have dreams of any kind that night.

For the next three weeks, Dr Pawson kept Christopher so hard at work mending the house that he fell into bed each night too weary to dream. Each morning when Christopher arrived, Dr Pawson was sitting in his armchair in the hall, waiting for him.

“To work, Chant!” he would bark.

Christopher took to replying, “Really, sir? I thought we were going to have a lazy day like yesterday.”

The strange thing about Dr Pawson was that he did not mind this kind of remark in the least. Once Christopher got used to him, he discovered that Dr Pawson rather liked people to stand up to him, and once he had discovered that, Christopher found that he did not really hate Dr Pawson – or only in the way you hate a violent thunderstorm you happen to be caught in. He found he quite liked rebuilding the house, though perhaps the thing which he really liked was working magic that actually did something.

Every spell he did had a real use. That made it far more interesting than the silly things he had tried to learn at school. And the hard work was much easier to bear when he was able to say things to Dr Pawson that would have caused masters at school to twist his ears and threaten to cane him for insolence.

“Chant!” Dr Pawson howled from his armchair in the middle of the lawn. “Chant! The chimney pots on the right are crooked.”

Christopher was balanced on the tiles of the roof, shivering in the wind. It was raining that day, so he was having to maintain a shelter-spell for the roof and for the lawn while he worked. And he had put the chimneys straight four times already. “Yes, sir, of course, sir!” he screamed back. “Would you like them turned to gold too, sir?”

“None of that or I’ll make you do it!” Dr Pawson yelled.

When Christopher came to mend Dr Pawson’s mother’s room, he made the mistake of trying to treat old Mrs Pawson the same way. She was sitting up in a bed heaped with plaster from the ceiling, looking quite comfortable and composed, knitting something striped and long. “I saved the looking-glass, child,” she remarked with a pleasant smile, “but that is as far as my powers stretch. Be good enough to mend the chamber-pot first, and count yourself fortunate, child, that it had not been used. You will find it under the bed.”

Christopher fished it out in three broken white pieces and got to work.

“Mend it quite straight,” old Mrs Pawson said, her knitting needles clattering away. “Make sure the handle is not crooked and the gold rim round the top is quite regular. Please do not leave any uncomfortable lumps or unsightly bulges, child.”

Her voice was gentle and pleasant and it kept interrupting the spell. At length Christopher asked in exasperation, “Would you like it studded with diamonds, too? Or shall I just give it a posy of roses in the bottom?”

“Thank you, child,” said Mrs Pawson. “The posy of roses, please. I think that’s a charming idea.”

Dr Pawson, sitting by in his armchair, was full of glee at Christopher’s discomfiture. “Sarcasm never pays, Chant,” he bawled. “Roses require a creation-spell. Listen carefully.”

After that, Christopher had to tackle the maids’ rooms. Then he had to mend all the plumbing. Dr Pawson gave him a day off on Sundays so that Papa could take him to church. Christopher, now he knew what he could do, toyed with the idea of making the church spire melt like a candle, but he never quite dared to do it, with Papa pacing soberly beside him. Instead, he experimented in other ways.

Every morning, while he was walking up the Trumpington Road, he tried to coax the trees that lined it into a different pattern. He got so good at it that before long he could shunt them up the road in a long line and crowd them into a wood at the end.

In the evenings, tired though he was, he could not resist trying to make the lodging-house supper taste better. But food magic was not easy.

“What do they put in sausages these days?” Papa remarked. “These taste of strawberry.”

Then came a morning when Dr Pawson shouted from his chair in the hall, “Right, Chant, from now on you finish the mending in the afternoons. In the mornings we teach you some control.”

“Control?” Christopher said blankly. By this time the house was nearly finished and he was hoping that Dr Pawson would soon have finished with him too.

“That’s right,” Dr Pawson bawled. “You didn’t think I’d let you loose on the world without teaching you to control your power, did you? As you are now, you’re a menace to everyone. And don’t tell me you haven’t been trying to see what you can do, because I won’t believe you.”

Christopher looked at his feet and thought of what he had just been doing with the trees in the Trumpington Road. “I’ve hardly done anything, sir.”

“Hardly anything! What do boys know of restraint?” said Dr Pawson. “Into the garden. We’re going to raise a wind, and you’re going to learn to do it without moving so much as a blade of grass.”

They went into the garden, where Christopher raised a whirlwind. He thought it rather expressed his feelings. Luckily it was quite small and only destroyed the rose bed. Dr Pawson cancelled it with one flap of his purple banana hand. “Do it again, Chant.”

Learning control was boring, but it was a good deal more restful. Dr Pawson obviously knew this. He began setting Christopher homework to do in the evenings. All the same, even after disentangling the interlacing spells in the problems he had been set, Christopher began to feel for the first time that he had some brain left over to think with. He thought about silver first. Keeping Uncle Ralph’s silver sixpence in his pocket had stopped him doing such a lot. And that beastly toothbrace had stopped him doing even more. What a waste! No wonder he had not been able to take the books to the Goddess until Matron made him take the brace out.

He must have been using magic to get to the Anywheres all these years without knowing it – except that he had known it, in an underneath sort of way. Tacroy had known, and he had been impressed. And the Goddess must have realised too, when her silver bracelet turned Christopher into a ghost. Here Christopher tried to go on thinking about the Goddess, but he found he kept thinking of Tacroy instead. Tacroy would now have gone into a trance uselessly for three weeks running. Tacroy made light of it, but Christopher suspected that going into a trance took a lot out of a person. He really would have to let Uncle Ralph know what had happened.

Glancing over at Papa, who was hard at work with a special pen marking special symbols on horoscopes under the big oil lamp, Christopher started writing a letter to Uncle Ralph, pretending it was part of his homework. The oil lamp cast shadows on Papa’s face, removing the threadbare look and making him look unusually kind and stern. Christopher told himself uneasily that Papa and Uncle Ralph just did not like one another. Besides, Papa had not actually forbidden him to write to Uncle Ralph.

All the same, it took several nights to write the letter. Christopher did not want to seem disloyal to Papa. In the end, he simply wrote that Papa had taken him away from school to be taught by Dr Pawson. It was a lot of effort for such a short letter. He posted it next day on his way up the Trumpington Road with a sense of relief and virtue.

Three days later, Papa had a letter from Mama. Christopher could tell at once from Papa’s face that Uncle Ralph had told Mama where they were. Papa threw the letter on the fire and fetched his hat. “Christopher,” he said, “I shall be coming with you to Dr Pawson’s today.”

This made Christopher certain that Mama was in Cambridge too. As he walked up the Trumpington Road beside Papa, he tried to work out what his feelings were about that.

But he did not have much time to think. A strong wind, scented with roses, swept round the pair of them, hurling Christopher sideways and snatching Papa’s hat from his head. Papa made a movement to chase his hat – which was just rolling under a brewer’s dray – and then dived round and seized Christopher’s arm instead.

“Hats are expendable,” he said. “Keep walking, son.”

They kept walking, with the wind hurling and buffeting round them. Christopher could actually feel it trying to curl around him in order to pull him away. But for Papa’s grip on his arm, he would have been carried across the road. He was impressed. He had not known Mama’s magic was this strong.

“I can control it if you want,” he called to Papa above the noise. “Dr Pawson taught me wind control.”

“No, Christopher,” Papa panted sternly, looking strange and most undignified, with his coat flapping and his hair blowing in all directions. “A gentleman never works magic against a woman, particularly his own mama.”

Gentlemen, it seemed to Christopher, made things unreasonably difficult for themselves in that case. The wind blew stronger and stronger, the nearer they got to the gate of Dr Pawson’s house. Christopher thought they would never cover the last yard or so. Papa was forced to seize the gatepost to hold them both in place while he tried to undo the latch. Whereupon the wind made a last, savage snatch. Christopher felt his feet leave the ground, and knew he was about to soar away.

He made himself very heavy just in time. He did it because it was a contest, really, because he did not like being on the losing side. He would not at all have minded seeing Mama. But he very much hoped Papa would not notice the rather large dents his feet had made in the ground just outside the gate.

Inside the gate there was no more wind. Papa smoothed his hair and rang the doorbell.

“Aha!” shouted Dr Pawson from his armchair while Mary-Ellen was opening the door. “The expected trouble has come to pass, I see. Chant, oblige me by going upstairs and reading aloud to my mother while I talk to your father.”

Christopher went up the stairs as slowly as he dared, hoping to hear what was being said. All he caught was Dr Pawson’s voice, hardly shouting at all. “I’ve been in touch almost daily for a week, but they still can’t—” After that the door shut.

Christopher went on up the stairs and knocked at the door of old Mrs Pawson’s room.

She was sitting up in bed, still knitting. “Come and sit on that chair so that I can hear you,” she said in her gentle voice, and gave him a gentle but piercing smile. “The Bible is here on the bedside table. You may start from the beginning of Genesis, child, and see how far you can get. I expect the negotiations will take time. Such things always do.”

Christopher sat down and began to read. He was stumbling among the people who begat other people when Mary-Ellen came in with coffee and biscuits and gave him a welcome break. Ten minutes later, old Mrs Pawson took up her knitting and said, “Continue, child.” Christopher had got well into Sodom and Gomorrah and was beginning to run out of voice, when old Mrs Pawson cocked her white head on one side and said, “Stop now, child. They want you downstairs in the study.”

Much relieved and very curious, Christopher put the Bible down and shot to the ground floor. Papa and Dr Pawson were sitting facing one another in Dr Pawson’s crowded room. It had become more cluttered than ever over the last weeks, since it was stacked with pieces of clocks and ornaments from all over the house, waiting for Christopher to mend. Now it looked more disorganised still. Tables and carpets had been pushed to the walls to leave a large stretch of bare floorboards, and a design had been chalked on the boards. Christopher looked at it with interest, wondering what it had to do with Mama. It was a five-pointed star inside a circle. He looked at Papa, who was obviously delighted about something, and then at Dr Pawson, who was just as usual.

“News for you, Chant,” said Dr Pawson. “I’ve run a lot of tests on you these last weeks – don’t stare, boy, you didn’t know I was doing it – and every one of those tests gives you nine lives. Nine lives and some of the strongest magic I’ve met. Naturally I got in touch with Gabriel de Witt. I happen to know he’s been looking for a successor for years. Naturally all I got was a lot of guff about the way they’d already tested you and drawn a blank. That’s Civil Servants for you. They need a bomb under them before they’ll change their minds. So today, after the bother with your mama had given me the excuse we needed, I had a good old shout at them. They caved in, Chant. They’re sending a man to fetch you to Chrestomanci Castle now.”

Here Papa broke in as if he could not stop himself. “It’s just what I’ve been hoping for, my son! Gabriel de Witt is to become your legal guardian, and in due course you will be the next Chrestomanci.”

“Next Chrestomanci?” Christopher echoed. He stared at Papa, knowing there was no chance of deciding on a career for himself now. It was all settled. His visions of himself as a famous cricketer faded and fell and turned to ashes. “But I don’t want—”

Papa thought Christopher did not understand. “You will become a very important man,” he said. “You will watch over all the magic in this world and prevent any harm being done with it.”

“But—” Christopher began angrily.

It was too late. The misty shape of a person was forming inside the five-pointed star. It solidified into a pale plump young man with a long face, very soberly dressed in a grey suit and a wide starched collar that looked much too tight for him. He was carrying a thing like a telescope. Christopher remembered him. The young man was one of the people who had been in the hospital room after everyone had thought Christopher was dead.

“Good morning,” the young man said, stepping out of the star. “My name is Flavian Temple. Monsignor de Witt has sent me to examine your candidate.”

“EXAMINE HIM!” shouted Dr Pawson. “I’ve already done that! What do you people take me for?” He rolled his angry eyes at Papa. “Civil Servants!”

Flavian Temple obviously found Dr Pawson quite as alarming as Christopher did. He flinched a bit. “Yes, doctor, we know you have. But my instructions are to verify your findings before proceeding. If this lad could just step into the pentagram.”

“Go on, son,” said Papa. “Stand inside the star.”

With a furious, helpless feeling, Christopher stepped into the chalked pattern and stood there while Flavian Temple sighted down the telescope-thing at him. There must be a way of making yourself look as if you only had one life, he thought. There had to be! But he had no idea what it was you did.

Flavian Temple frowned. “I can only make it seven lives.”

“He’s already lost TWO, you fat young fool!” Dr Pawson bellowed. “Didn’t they tell you anything? Tell him, Chant.”

“I’ve lost two lives already,” Christopher found himself saying. There was some kind of spell on the pattern. Otherwise he would have denied everything.

“SEE?” howled Dr Pawson.

Flavian Temple managed to turn a wince into a polite bow. “I do see, doctor. That being the case, I will of course take the boy to be interviewed by Monsignor de Witt.”

Christopher perked up at this. Perhaps it was not settled after all. But Papa seemed to think it was. He came and laid an arm round Christopher’s shoulders. “Goodbye, my son. This makes me a very proud and happy man. Say goodbye to Dr Pawson.”

Dr Pawson behaved as if it was settled too. His chair trundled forward and he held out a big purple banana finger to Christopher. “Bye, Chant. Take no notice of the official way they go on. This Flavian’s a fool Civil Servant like the rest of them.”

As Christopher shook the purple finger, old Mrs Pawson materialised, sitting on the arm of Dr Pawson’s chair in her crisp white nightdress, holding her knitting wrapped into a stripy bundle. “Goodbye, child,” she said. “You read very nicely. Here is a present I’ve knitted for you. It’s full of protection spells.” She leaned forwards and draped the knitting round Christopher’s neck. It was a scarf about ten feet long, striped in the colours of the rainbow.

“Thank you,” Christopher said politely.

“Just move up – er, Christopher – but don’t leave the pentagram,” said Flavian. He stepped back inside the chalk marks, taking up more than half the space, and took hold of Christopher’s arm to keep him inside it. Old Mrs Pawson waved a withered hand. And without anything more being said, Christopher found himself somewhere quite different. It was even more disconcerting than being carried off from school by Papa.

He and Flavian were standing in a much bigger pentagram that was made of white bricks, or tiles, built into the floor of a lofty space with a glass dome high overhead. Under the glass dome, a majestic pink marble staircase curled up to the next floor. Stately panelled doors with statues over them opened off the space all round – the most stately had a clock above it as well as a statue – and an enormous crystal chandelier hung from the glass dome on a long chain. Behind Christopher, when he twisted round to look, was a very grand front door. He could see he was in the front hall of a very big mansion, but nobody thought to tell him where he was.

There were people standing round the tiled pentagram, waiting for them. And a stately, dismal lot they looked too! Christopher thought. All of them, men and women alike, were dressed in black or grey. The men wore shiny white collars and cuffs and the women all wore neat black lace mittens. Christopher felt their eyes on him, sizing up, disapproving, coldly staring. He shrank into a very small grubby boy under those eyes and realised that he had been wearing the same set of clothes ever since he had left school.

Before he had a chance to do more than look around, a man with a little pointed grey beard stepped up to him and took the striped scarf away. “He won’t be needing this,” he said, rather shocked about it.

Christopher thought the man was Gabriel de Witt and was all prepared to hate him, until Flavian said, “No, of course, Dr Simonson,” apologising for Christopher. “The old lady gave it to him, you know. Shall I—?”

Christopher decided to hate the bearded man anyway.

One of the ladies, a small plump one, stepped forward then. “Thank you, Flavian,” she said in a final, bossy sort of way. “I’ll take Christopher to Gabriel now. Follow me, young man.” She turned and went swishing off towards the pink marble stairs. Flavian gave Christopher a nudge, and Christopher stepped out of the tiled pattern and followed her, feeling about a foot high and dirty all over. He knew his collar was sticking up at one side, and that his shoes were dusty, and he could feel the hole in his left sock sliding out of its shoe and showing itself to everyone in the hall as he went upstairs after the lady.

At the top of the stairs was a very tall solid-looking door, the only one in a row of doors that was painted black. The lady swished up to the black door and knocked. She opened it and pushed Christopher firmly inside. “Here he is, Gabriel,” she said. Then she shut the door behind him and went away, leaving Christopher alone in an oval-shaped room where it seemed to be twilight or sunset.

The room was panelled in dark brown wood, with a dark brown carpet on the floor. The only furniture seemed to be a huge dark desk. As Christopher came in, a long thin figure reared up from behind the desk – about six foot six of skinny old man, Christopher realised, when his heart stopped thumping. The old man had a lot of white hair and the whitest face and hands Christopher had ever seen. His eyebrows jutted and his cheeks stood out in wide peaks, making the eyes between them look sunken and staring. Below that was a hooked beak of nose. The rest of the old man’s face went into a small, sharp point, containing a long, grim mouth.

The mouth opened to say, “I am Gabriel de Witt. So we meet again, Master Chant.”

Christopher knew he would have remembered if he had ever seen this old man before. Gabriel de Witt was even more memorable than Dr Pawson. “I’ve never seen you in my life before,” he said.

“I have met you. You were unconscious at the time,” Gabriel de Witt said. “I suppose this accounts for our being so strangely mistaken in you. I can see now at a glance that you do indeed have seven lives and should have nine.”

There were quite a lot of windows in the twilight room, Christopher saw, at least six, in a high curving row near the ceiling. The ceiling was a sort of orange, which seemed to keep all the light from the windows to itself. All the same, it was a mystery to Christopher how a room with quite so many windows could end up being so very dark.

“In spite of this,” Gabriel de Witt said, “I am very dubious about taking you on. Your heredity frankly appals me. The Chants give themselves out as a race of respectable enchanters, but they produce a black sheep every generation, while the Argents, though admittedly gifted, are the kind of people I would not nod to in the street. These traits have come out in both your parents. I gather your father is bankrupt and your mother a contemptible social climber.”

Even Cousin Francis had not said anything quite as bald as this. Anger flared through Christopher. “Oh thank you, sir,” he said. “There’s nothing I like more than a polite warm welcome like that.”

The old man’s eagle eyes stared. He seemed puzzled. “I felt it only fair to be frank with you,” he said. “I wished you to understand that I have agreed to become your legal guardian because we do not consider either of your parents a fit person to have charge of the future Chrestomanci.”

“Yes, sir,” said Christopher, angrier than ever. “But you needn’t bother. I don’t want to be the next Chrestomanci. I’d rather lose all my lives first.”

Gabriel de Witt simply looked impatient. “Yes, yes, this is often the way, until we realise the job needs doing,” he said. “I refused the post myself when it was first offered to me, but I was in my twenties and you are a mere child, even less capable of deciding than I was. Besides, we have no choice in the matter. You and I are the only nine-lifed enchanters in all the Related Worlds.”

He made a gesture with one white hand. A small bell chimed somewhere and the plump young lady swished into the room. “Miss Rosalie here is my chief assistant,” Gabriel de Witt said. “She will show you to your room and get you settled in. I have allotted Flavian Temple to you as a tutor, though I can ill spare him, and I will of course be teaching you myself twice a week as well.”

Christopher followed Miss Rosalie’s swishing skirt past the line of doors and down a long corridor. Nobody seemed to care what he felt. He wondered whether to show them by raising another whirlwind. But there was a spell on this place, a strong, thick spell. After Dr Pawson’s teaching Christopher was sensitive to all spells, and though he was not sure what this one did, he was fairly sure it would make things like whirlwinds pretty useless. “Is this Chrestomanci Castle?” he asked angrily.

“That’s right,” Miss Rosalie said. “The Government took it over two hundred years ago after the last really wicked enchanter was beheaded.” She turned to smile at him over her shoulder. “Gabriel de Witt’s a dear, isn’t he? I know he seems a bit dry at first, but he’s adorable when you get to know him.”

Christopher stared. Dear and adorable seemed to him the last words he would ever use to describe Gabriel de Witt.

Miss Rosalie did not see him stare. She was throwing open a door at the end of the corridor. “There,” she said, rather proudly. “I hope you like it. We’re not used to having children here, so we’ve all been racking our brains over how to make you feel at home.”

There was not much sign of it, Christopher thought, staring round a large brown room with one high white bed looking rather lonely in one corner. “Thanks,” he said glumly.

When Miss Rosalie left him, he found there was a brown spartan washroom at the other end of the room and a shelf by the window. There was a teddy bear on the shelf, a game of Snakes and Ladders and a copy of The Arabian Nights with all the dirty bits taken out. He put them in a heap on the floor and jumped on them. He knew he was going to hate Chrestomanci Castle.

For the first week, Christopher could think of nothing else but how much he hated Chrestomanci Castle and the people in it. It seemed to combine the worst things about school and home, with a few special awfulnesses of its own. It was very grand and very big, and except when he was doing lessons, Christopher was forced to wander about entirely on his own, missing Oneir and Fenning and the other boys and cricket acutely, while the Castle people got on with their grown-up affairs as if Christopher was not there at all. He had nearly all his meals alone in the schoolroom, just like home, except that the schoolroom looked out on to the empty, shaven Castle lawns.

“We thought you’d be happier not having to listen to our grown-up talk,” Miss Rosalie told him as they walked up the long drive from church on Sunday. “But of course you’ll have Sunday lunch with us.”

So Christopher sat at the long table with everyone else in their sober Sunday clothes and thought it would have made no difference if he hadn’t been there. Voices hummed among the chinking cutlery, and not one of them spoke to him.

“And you have to add copper to sublimate, whatever the manuals say,” the bearded Dr Simonson was telling Flavian Temple, “but after that you can, I find, put it straight to the pentacle with a modicum of fire.”

“The Wraith’s illegal dragon’s blood is simply flooding the market now,” said a young lady across the table. “Even the honest suppliers are not reporting it. They know they can evade taxes.”

“But the correct words present problems,” Dr Simonson told Flavian.

“I know statistics are misleading,” said a younger man beside Christopher, “but my latest sample had twice the legal limit of poison balm. You only have to extrapolate to see how much the gang is bringing in.”

“The flaming tincture must then be passed through gold,” Dr Simonson proclaimed, and another voice cut across his saying, “That magic mushroom essence certainly came from Ten, but I think the trap we set there stopped that outlet.” While Dr Simonson added, “If you wish to proceed without copper, you’ll find it far more complicated.”

Miss Rosalie’s voice rang through his explanation from the other end of the table. “But Gabriel, they had actually butchered a whole tribe of mermaids! I know it’s partly our wizards’ fault for being willing to pay the earth for mermaid parts, but the Wraith really has to be stopped!”

Gabriel’s dry voice answered in the distance, “That part of the operation has been closed down. It’s the weapons coming in from One that present the biggest problem.”

“My advice is that you then start with pentacle and fire,” Dr Simonson droned on, “using the simpler form of words to start the process, but…”

Christopher sat silent, thinking that if he did get to be the next Chrestomanci he would forbid people to talk about their work at meal-times. Ever. He was glad when he was allowed to get up from the table and go. But when he did, the only thing to do was to wander about, feeling all the spells on the place itching at him like gnat bites. There were spells in the formal gardens to keep weeds down and encourage worms, spells to keep the giant cedars on the lawns healthy, and spells all round the grounds to keep intruders out. Christopher thought he could have broken that set quite easily and simply run away, except that the sensitivity he had learnt from Dr Pawson showed him that breaking that boundary spell would set alarms ringing in the lodge at the gate and probably all over the Castle too.

The Castle itself had an old crusty part with turrets, and a newer part, which were fused together into a rambling whole. But there was an extra piece of castle that stood out in the gardens and looked even older, so old that there were trees growing on top of its broken walls.

Christopher naturally wanted to explore this part, but there was a strong misdirection spell on it, which caused it to appear behind him, or to one side, whenever he tried to get to it.

So he gave up and wandered indoors, where the spells, instead of itching, pressed down on him like a weight. He hated the Castle spells most of all. They would not allow him to be as angry as he felt. They made everything blunt and muffled. In order to express his hatred, Christopher fell back more and more on silent scorn. When people did speak to him, and he had to answer, he was as sarcastic as he knew how to be.

This did not help him get on with Flavian Temple. Flavian was a kind and earnest tutor. In the ordinary way, Christopher would have quite liked him, even though Flavian wore his collars too tight and tried far too hard to be hushed and dignified like the rest of Gabriel de Witt’s people. But he hated Flavian for being one of those people – and he very soon discovered that Flavian had no sense of humour at all.

“You wouldn’t see a joke if it jumped up and hit you, would you?” Christopher said, the second afternoon. Afternoons were always devoted to magic theory or magic practical.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Flavian said. “Something in Punch made me smile last week. Now, to get back to what we were saying – how many worlds do you think make up the Related Worlds?”

“Twelve,” said Christopher, because he remembered that Tacroy sometimes called the Anywheres the Related Worlds.

“Very good!” said Flavian. “Though, actually, there are more than that, because each world is really a set of worlds, which we call a Series. The only one which is just a single world is Eleven, but we needn’t bother with that. All the worlds were probably one world to begin with – and then something happened back in prehistory which could have ended in two contradictory ways. Let’s say a continent blew up. Or it didn’t blow up. The two things couldn’t both be true at once in the same world, so that world became two worlds, side by side but quite separate, one with that continent and one without. And so on, until there were twelve.”

Christopher listened to this with some interest, because he had always wondered how the Anywheres had come about. “And did the Series happen the same way?” he asked.

“Yes indeed,” said Flavian, obviously thinking Christopher was a very good pupil. “Take Series Seven, which is a mountain Series. In prehistory, the earth’s crust must have buckled many more times than it did here. Or Series Five, where all the land became islands, none of them larger than France. Now these are the same right across the Series, but the course of history in each world is different. It’s history that makes the differences. The easiest example is our own Series, Twelve, where our world, which we call World A, is orientated on magic – which is normal for most worlds. But the next world, World B, split off in the Fourteenth Century and turned to science and machinery. The world beyond that, World C, split off in Roman times and became divided into large empires. And it went on like that up to nine. There are usually nine to a Series.”

“Why are they numbered back to front?” Christopher asked.

“Because we think One was the original world of the twelve,” Flavian said. “Anyway it was the great Mages of One who first discovered the other worlds, and they did the numbering.”

This was a much better explanation than the one Tacroy had given. Christopher felt obliged to Flavian for it. So that when Flavian asked, “Now what do you think makes us call these twelve the Related Worlds?” Christopher felt he owed him an answer.

“They all speak the same languages,” he said.

“Very good!” said Flavian. His pale face went pink with surprise and pleasure. “You are a good pupil!”

“Oh, I’m absolutely brilliant,” Christopher said bitterly.

Unfortunately, when Flavian turned to practical magic on alternate afternoons, Christopher was anything but brilliant. With Dr Pawson he had become used to spells that really did something. But with Flavian he went back to small elementary magics of the kind he had been doing at school. They bored Christopher stiff. He yawned and he spilt things and usually, keeping a special vague look on his face so that Flavian would not notice what he was doing, he made the spells work without going through more than half the steps.

“Oh, no,” Flavian said anxiously, when he did notice. “That’s enchanter’s magic. We’ll be starting on that in a couple of weeks. But you have to know basic witchcraft first. It’s most important for you to know whether a witch or wizard is misusing the craft when you come to be the next Chrestomanci.”

That was the trouble with Flavian. He was always saying, “When you come to be the next Chrestomanci.” Christopher felt bitterly angry.

“Is Gabriel de Witt going to die soon?” he said.

“I don’t imagine so. He still has eight lives left,” said Flavian. “Why do you ask?”

“It was a whim,” Christopher said, thinking angrily of Papa.

“Oh dear,” Flavian said, worrying because he was failing to keep his pupil interested. “I know – we’ll go out into the gardens and study the properties of herbs. You may like that part of witchcraft better.”

Down into the gardens they went, into a raw grey day. It was one of those summers that was more like winter than many winters are. Flavian stopped under a huge cedar and invited Christopher to consider the ancient lore about cedarwood. Christopher was in fact quite interested to hear that cedar was part of the funeral pyre from which the Phoenix was reborn, but he was not going to let Flavian see he was.

As Flavian talked, his eye fell on the separate ruined piece of castle, and he knew that if he asked about that Flavian would only tell him that they would be doing misdirection spells next month – which put another thing he wanted to know into his mind. “When am I going to learn how to fasten a person’s feet to the spot?” he asked.

Flavian gave him a sideways look. “We won’t be doing magic that affects other people until next year,” he said. “Come over to the laurel bushes now and let’s consider those.”

Christopher sighed as he followed Flavian over to the big laurels by the drive. He might have known Flavian was not going to teach him anything useful! As they approached the nearest bush, a ginger cat emerged from among the shiny leaves, stretching and glaring irritably. When it saw Flavian and Christopher, it advanced on them at a trot, purpose all over its savage, lop-eared face.

“Look out!” Flavian said urgently.

Christopher did not need telling. He knew what this particular cat could do. But he was so astonished at seeing Throgmorten here at Chrestomanci Castle that he forgot to move. “Who – whose cat is that?” he said.

Throgmorten recognised Christopher too. His tail went up, thinner and more snaky than ever, and he stopped and stared. “Wong?” he said incredulously. And he advanced again, but in a much more stately way, like a Prime Minister greeting a foreign President. “Wong,” he said.

“Careful!” said Flavian, prudently backing behind Christopher. “It’s an Asheth Temple cat. It’s safest not to go near it.”

Christopher of course knew that, but Throgmorten was so evidently meaning to be polite that he risked squatting down and cautiously holding out his hand. “Yes, wong to you too,” he said. Throgmorten put forward his moth-eaten-looking orange nose and dabbed at Christopher’s hand with it.

“Great heavens! The thing actually likes you!” said Flavian. “Nobody else dares get within yards of it. Gabriel’s had to give all the outdoor staff special shielding spells or they said they’d leave. It tears strips off people through ordinary spells.”

“How did it get here?” Christopher said, letting Throgmorten politely investigate his hand.

“Nobody knows – at least how it wandered in here from Series Ten,” Flavian said. “Mordecai found it in London, brave man, and brought it here in a basket. He recognised it by its aura, and he said if he could, then most wizards would too and they’d kill it for its magical properties. Most of us think that wouldn’t be much loss, but Gabriel agreed with Mordecai.”

Christopher had still not learnt the names of all the sober-suited men round the Sunday lunch-table. “Which one is Mr Mordecai?” he said.

“Mordecai Roberts – he’s a particular friend of mine, but you won’t have met him yet,” said Flavian. “He works for us in London these days. Perhaps we could get on with herb lore now.”

At that moment, a strange noise broke from Throgmorten’s throat, a sound like wooden cogwheels not connecting very well. Throgmorten was purring. Christopher was unexpectedly touched. “Does he have a name?” he asked.

“Most people just call him That Thing,” said Flavian.

“I shall call him Throgmorten,” said Christopher, at which Throgmorten’s cogwheels went round more noisily than ever.

“It suits him,” said Flavian. “Now, please – consider this laurel.”

With Throgmorten sauntering amiably beside him, Christopher heard all about laurels and found it all much easier to take. It amused him the way Flavian took care to keep well out of reach of Throgmorten.

From then on, in a stand-offish way, Throgmorten became Christopher’s only friend in the Castle. They both seemed to have the same opinion of the people in it. Christopher once saw Throgmorten encounter Gabriel de Witt coming down the pink marble stairs. Throgmorten spat and flew at Gabriel’s long thin legs, and Christopher was charmed and delighted at the speed with which those long thin legs raced up the stairs again to get away.

Christopher hated Gabriel more every time he had a lesson with him. He decided that the reason Gabriel’s room always seemed so dark in spite of all its windows was because it reflected Gabriel’s personality.

Gabriel never laughed. He had no patience with slowness, or mistakes, and he seemed to think Christopher ought to know everything he taught him at once, by instinct.

The trouble was that, the first week, when Flavian and Gabriel were teaching him about the Related Worlds, Christopher had known all about them, from the Anywheres, and this seemed to have given Gabriel the idea that Christopher was a good learner. But after that, they went on to the different kinds of magics, and Christopher just could not seem to get it through his head why witchcraft and enchanters’ magic were not the same, or how wizardry differed from sorcery and both from magicians’ magic.

It was always a great relief to Christopher when his lesson with Gabriel was over. Afterwards, Christopher usually sneaked Throgmorten indoors and the two of them explored the Castle together. Throgmorten was not allowed inside the Castle, which was why Christopher liked to have him there.

Once or twice, with luck and cunning from both of them, Throgmorten spent the night on the end of Christopher’s bed, purring like a football rattle. But Miss Rosalie had a way of knowing where Throgmorten was. She nearly always arrived wearing gardening gloves and chased Throgmorten out with a besom. Luckily Miss Rosalie was often busy straight after lessons, so Throgmorten galloped beside Christopher down the long corridors and through the rambling attics, thrusting his face into odd corners and remarking “Wong!” from time to time.

The Castle was huge. The weighty, baffling spells hung heavily over most of it, but there were parts that nobody used, where the spells seemed to have worn thin. Christopher and Throgmorten were both happiest in those parts. The third week, they discovered a big round room in a tower, which looked to have been a wizard’s workshop at one time. It had shelves round the walls, three long workbenches, and a pentagram painted on the stone floor. But it was deserted and dusty and stuffy with the smell of old, old magic.

“Wong,” Throgmorten said happily.

“Yes,” Christopher agreed. It seemed a waste of a good room. When I’m the next Chrestomanci, he thought, I shall make sure this room is used. Then he was angry with himself, because he was not going to be the next Chrestomanci. He had caught the habit from Flavian.

But I could make this a secret workshop of my own, he thought. I could sneak stuff up here bit by bit.

The next day, he and Throgmorten went exploring for a new attic where there might be things Christopher could use to furnish the tower room. And they discovered a second tower up a second, smaller winding stair. The spells were worn away almost entirely here, because this tower was ruinous. It was smaller than the other tower room and half its roof was missing. Half the floor was wet with that afternoon’s rain. Beyond that there was what had once been a mullioned window. It was now a slope of wet rubbly wall with one stone pillar standing out of it.

“Wong, wong!” Throgmorten uttered approvingly. He went trotting over the wet floor and jumped up on to the broken wall.

Christopher followed him eagerly. They both climbed out on to the slope of rubble beyond what was left of the window and looked down at the smooth lawn and the tops of the cedar trees. Christopher caught a glimpse of the separate piece of castle with the misdirection spell on it. It was almost out of sight beyond the knobbly stonework of the tower, but he thought he should be high enough to see into it over the trees growing on top of it. Holding on to the pillar that had been part of the window, he stepped further out on the broken slope and leaned right out to see.

The pillar snapped in half.

Christopher’s feet shot forward on the slippery stones. He felt himself plunge through the air and saw the cedars rushing past upside down. Bother! he thought. Another life! He remembered that the ground stopped him with a terrible jolt. And he had a vague notion that Throgmorten somehow followed him down and then proceeded to make an appalling noise.

They said he had broken his neck this time. Miss Rosalie told him that the spells on the Castle should have stopped his falling, or at least alerted people when he did fall. But as the spells were worn out there, it had been Throgmorten’s howls that had fetched a horrified gardener. Because of this, Throgmorten was respectfully allowed to spend that night on the end of Christopher’s bed, until the maids complained of the smell in the morning. Then Miss Rosalie appeared with her gardening gloves and her broom and chased Throgmorten out.

Christopher thought resentfully that there was very little difference between the way the Castle people treated Throgmorten and the way they treated him. The bearded Dr Simonson, when he was not instructing everyone how to put tinctures to fire, turned out to be a medical magician. He came the following morning and, in an off-handed disapproving way, examined Christopher’s neck.

“As I thought,” he said. “Now the new life has taken over there is no sign of the break. Better stay in bed today because of the shock. Gabriel is going to want to talk to you about this escapade.”

Then he went away and nobody else came near Christopher apart from maids with trays, except Flavian, who came and stood in the doorway sniffing cautiously at the strong odour Throgmorten had left in the room.

“It’s all right,” Christopher said. “Miss Rosalie’s just chased him out.”

“Good,” said Flavian and he came over to Christopher’s bed carrying a big armful of books.

“Oh wonderful!” Christopher said, eyeing the armful. “Lots of lovely work. I’ve been lying here itching to get on with some algebra!”

Flavian looked a little injured. “Well, no,” he said. “These are things from the Castle library that I thought you might like.” And he went away.

Christopher looked through the books and found they were stories from different parts of the world. Some were from different worlds. All of them looked pretty good. Christopher had not realised there was anything worth reading in the Castle library before and, as he settled down to read, he decided he would go and have a look for himself tomorrow.

But the smell of Throgmorten interrupted him. The combination of the smell and the books kept reminding him of the Goddess, and he kept remembering that he still had not paid for the hundredth part of Throgmorten. It took him quite an effort to forget about Series Ten and concentrate on his book, and as soon as he did, Miss Rosalie came in, flushed and breathless from a long pursuit of Throgmorten, and interrupted him again.

“Gabriel wants to see you about that fall,” she said. “You’re to go to his office at nine o’clock tomorrow.” As she turned to go, she said, “I see you’ve got some books. Is there anything else I can get you? Games? You’ve got Snakes and Ladders, haven’t you?”

“It takes two to play that,” Christopher told her pointedly.

“Oh dear,” Miss Rosalie said. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about games.” Then she went away again.

Christopher laid his book down and stared round his brown empty room, hating the Castle and all the people in it quite passionately. The room now had his school trunk in one corner, which made it seem emptier than ever by reminding him of all the company he was missing at school. There was an ideal corner for getting to the Anywheres between the trunk and the bare fireplace. He wished he could run away to somewhere where even magic could not find him, and never come back.

Then he realised that he could get away, after a fashion, by going to an Anywhere. He wondered why he had not tried all the time he had been at the Castle. He put it down to the Castle spells. They muffled your mind so. But now, either the shock of breaking his neck, or the new life he could feel sturdily and healthily inside him, or both, had started him thinking again. Perhaps he could go to an Anywhere and stay there for good.

The trouble was, when he went to the Anywheres, he seemed to have to leave a piece of himself behind in bed. But it must be possible to take the whole of yourself. From the things Flavian and Gabriel had said when they talked about the Related Worlds, Christopher was sure that some people did go to worlds in the other Series. He would just have to wait and learn how it was done. Meanwhile, there was nothing to stop him looking round for a suitable Anywhere to escape to.

Christopher read his books innocently until the maid came and turned out his gaslight for the night. Then he lay staring into the dark, trying to detach the part of himself that could go to the Anywheres. For quite a while, he could not do it. The Castle spells lay heavy on him, squashing all the parts of him into a whole. Then, as he got sleepier, he realised the way, and slipped out sideways from himself and went padding round the corner between the trunk and the fireplace.

There, it was like walking into a sheet of thick rubber that bounced him back into the room. The Castle spells again. Christopher set his teeth, turned his shoulder into the rubberiness, and pushed. And pushed, and pushed, and walked forward a little with each push, but quietly and gently, not to alert anyone in the Castle – until, after about half an hour, he had the spell stretched as thin as it would go. Then he took a pinch of it in each hand and tore it gently apart.

It was wonderful to walk out through the split he had made, into the valley, and find his clothes still lying there, a little damp and too small again, but there. He put them on. Then, instead of going into The Place Between, he set off the other way, down the valley. It stood to reason that the valley led to one of the other worlds in Series Twelve. Christopher hoped it would be World B. One of his cunning ideas had been to hide quite near in the non-magical world, where he was sure no one, even Gabriel de Witt, would think of looking.

Probably it was World B, but he only stayed there half a minute. When he got to the end of the valley it was raining, pouring – souping down steadily sideways. Christopher found himself in a city full of rushing machines, speeding all round him on wheels that hissed on the wet black road. A loud noise made him look round just in time to see a huge red machine charging down on him out of the white curtain of rain. He saw a number on it and the words TUFNELL PARK, and sheets of water flew over him as he got frantically out of its way.

Christopher escaped up the valley again, soaking wet. World B was the worst Anywhere he had ever been in. But he still had his other cunning idea, and that was to go to World Eleven, the world nobody ever went to. He went up the valley and round the jutting rock into The Place Between.

The Place was so desolate, so shapeless and so empty, that if he had not just been somewhere even more terrible he might have turned back. As it was, Christopher felt the same lonely horror he had felt the first time he had gone to The Place Between from school. But he ignored it and set off resolutely in the direction of the Anywhere that did not want you to get to it. He was sure now that this must be Eleven.

The way was across the mouth of his own valley, down, and then up a cliff of sheer slippery rock. Christopher had to cling with fingers and toes that were already cold and wet from World B. The Anywhere above kept pushing him away and the wind sweeping across reminded him of Mama’s attack in Cambridge. Up, cling. Feel for a foothold. Then a handhold. Cling. Up.

Half-way up his foot slipped. A new gust of wind made his cold fingers too weak to hang on, and he fell.

He pitched down further than he had climbed up, upside down on to the back of his head. When he got to his knees, things in his neck grated and his head wobbled about. He felt very queer.

Somehow he made it back to the jutting crag, helped by the way The Place Between always pushed him back where he came from. Somehow he put his pyjamas on again and got through the slit in the Castle spells, back into bed. He fell asleep with a strong suspicion that he had broken his neck again. Good, he thought. Now I won’t have to go and see Gabriel de Witt in the morning.

But there was nothing at all wrong with him when he woke up. Christopher would have been very puzzled had he not been dreading seeing Gabriel. He crawled along to breakfast and found there was a pretty, scented letter from Mama on his tray. Christopher picked it up eagerly, hoping it would take his mind off Gabriel. And it did not, or not straight away. He could tell it had been opened and then stuck down again. He could feel the spell still hanging about it. Hating the people in the Castle more than ever, he unfolded the letter.

Dear Christopher,

The laws are so unjust. Only your Papa’s signature was required to sell you into slavery with that dreadful old man, and I have still not forgiven your Papa. Your uncle sends his sympathies and hopes to hear from you by next Thursday. Be polite to him, dear.

Your affectionate

Mama

Christopher was very pleased to think that Gabriel had read himself being called ‘that dreadful old man’ and he was impressed at the cunning way Uncle Ralph had sent his message through Mama. As he ate his breakfast, he rejoiced at the thought of seeing Tacroy again next Thursday. What a lucky thing he had made that split in the Castle spells! And ‘slavery’ was the right word for it, he thought, as he got up to go to Gabriel’s office.

But on the way, he found himself thinking of the Goddess again, very guiltily this time. He really would have to take her some more books. Throgmorten was a cat worth paying for.

In his twilight room, Gabriel stood up behind his great black desk. That was a bad sign, but Christopher now had so many other things to think of that he was not as scared as he might have been. “Really, Christopher,” Gabriel said in his driest voice, “a boy your age should know better than to climb about in a ruined tower. The result is that you have foolishly and carelessly wasted a life and now have only six left. You will need those lives when you are the next Chrestomanci. What have you to say for yourself?”

Christopher’s anger rose. He felt it being pushed down again by the Castle spells, and that made him angrier than ever. “Why don’t you make Throgmorten the next Chrestomanci?” he said. “He’s got nine lives too.”

Gabriel stared at him a second. “This is not a matter for jokes,” he said. “Do you not realise the trouble you have caused? Some of my staff will have to go to the towers, and to the attics and cellars, in case you take it into your head to climb about there too, and it will take them days to make it all safe.” At this, Christopher thought ruefully that they would certainly find and mend the split he had made and he would have to make another. “Please attend,” said Gabriel. “I can ill spare any of my staff at this time. You are too young to be aware of this, but I wish to explain that we are all working full stretch just now in an effort to catch a gang of interworld villains.” He looked at Christopher fiercely. “You have probably never heard of the Wraith.”

After three boring Sunday lunches, Christopher felt he knew all about the Wraith. It was what everyone talked of all the time. But he sensed that Gabriel was quite likely to get side-tracked from telling him off if he went on explaining about the gang, so he said, “No, I haven’t, sir.”

“The Wraith is a gang of smugglers,” Gabriel said. “We know they operate through London, but that is about all we know, for they are slippery as eels. In some way, despite all our traps and watchfulness, they smuggle in illicit magical produce by the hundredweight from all over the Related Worlds. They have brought in cartloads of dragons’ blood, narcotic dew, magic mushrooms, eel livers from Series Two, poison balm from Six, dream juice from Nine and eternal fire from Ten. We set a trap in Ten, which took out at least one of their operatives, but that did not stop them. The only success we have had is in Series Five, where the Wraith was butchering mermaids and selling the parts in London. There we were helped by the local police and were able to put a stop to it. But—” By this time, Gabriel had his eyes fixed on the sunset light of his ceiling and seemed lost in his worries. “But this year,” he said, “we have had reports of the most appalling weapons that the Wraith is bringing in from Series One, each one capable of destroying the strongest enchanter, and we still cannot lay hands on the gang.” Here, to Christopher’s dismay, Gabriel turned his eyes down to him. “You see what mischief your careless climbing could do? While we rush round the Castle on your account, we could miss our one chance of catching this gang. You should learn to think of others, Christopher.”

“I do,” Christopher said bitterly, “but none of you think of me. When most people die, they don’t get told off for it.”

“Go down to the library,” said Gabriel, “and write one hundred times ‘I must look before I leap’. And kindly shut the door when you leave.”

Christopher went to the door and opened it, but he did not shut it. He left it swinging so that Gabriel would hear what he said as he went towards the pink marble staircase. “I must be the only person in the world,” he called out, “ever to be punished for breaking my neck!”

“Wong,” agreed Throgmorten, who was waiting for him on the landing.

Christopher did not see Throgmorten in time. He tripped over him and went crashing and sliding the whole way down the staircase. As he went, he could hear Throgmorten wailing again. Oh no! he thought.

When his next life took over, he was lying on his back near the pentacle in the hall, looking up into the glass dome. Almost the first thing he saw was the clock over the library, which said half past nine. It seemed as if every time he lost a life, the new one took over more quickly and easily than the last. The next thing he saw was everyone in the Castle, standing round him staring solemnly. Just like a funeral! he thought.

“Did I break my neck again?” he asked.

“You did,” said Gabriel de Witt, stepping up to lean over him. “Really, after what I had just said to you, it is too bad! Can you get up?”

Christopher turned over and got to his knees. He felt slightly bruised but otherwise all right. Dr Simonson strode over and felt his neck. “The fracture has vanished already,” he said. Christopher could tell from his manner that he was not going to be allowed to stay in bed this time.

“Very well,” said Gabriel. “Go to the library now, Christopher, and write the lines I gave you. In addition write one hundred times ‘I have only five lives remaining’. That might teach you prudence.”

Christopher limped to the library and wrote the lines at one of the red leather tables on paper headed Government Property. As he wrote, his mind was elsewhere, thinking how odd it was that Throgmorten always seemed to be there when he lost a life. And there was that time in Series Ten. Just before the hook hit him, a man had mentioned Asheth. Christopher began to be afraid he might be under a curse from Asheth. It made another very good reason for taking the Goddess some more books.

When the lines were done, Christopher got up and inspected the bookshelves. The library was large and lofty and seemed to contain thousands of books. But Christopher discovered that there were really ten times as many as the ones you saw. There was a spell-plate at the end of each shelf. When Christopher put his hand on one, the books at the right of the shelf moved up and vanished and new books appeared on the left. Christopher found the storybook section and stood with his hand on the plate, keeping the line of books slowly moving until he found the kind he wanted.

It was a long row of fat books by someone called Angela Brazil. Most of them had School in the title. Christopher knew at a glance they were just right for the Goddess. He took three and spread the others out. Each of them was labelled Rare Book: Imported from World XIIB, which made Christopher hope that they might just be valuable enough to pay for Throgmorten at last.

He carried the books up to his room in a pile of others he thought he might like to read himself, and it seemed just his luck that he had to meet Flavian in the corridor. “Lessons as usual this afternoon,” Flavian said cheerfully. “Dr Simonson doesn’t seem to think they’ll harm you.”

“Slavery as usual!” Christopher muttered as he went into his room.

But in fact that afternoon was not so bad. In the middle of practical magic, Flavian said suddenly, “Are you interested in cricket at all?”

What a question! Christopher felt his face light up even while he was answering coolly, “No, I’m only passionate about it. Why?”

“Good,” said Flavian. “The Castle plays the village on Saturday, down on the village green. We thought you might like to work the scoreboard for us.”

“Only if someone takes me out through the gate,” Christopher said acidly. “The spell stops me going through on my own. Otherwise, yes – like a shot.”

“Oh Lord! I should have got you a pass!” Flavian said. “I didn’t realise you liked to go out. I go on long hikes all the time. I’ll take you with me next time I go – there are all sorts of outdoor practicals we can do – only I think you’d better master witch-sight first.”

Christopher saw that Flavian was trying to bribe him. They were on enchanter’s magic now. Christopher had had no trouble learning how to conjure things from one place to another – it was a little like the levitation he had worked so spectacularly for Dr Pawson, and not unlike raising a wind too – and he had learnt with only a little more difficulty how to make things invisible. He thought he would not have too much trouble conjuring fire, either, as soon as Flavian allowed him to try. But he could not get the hang of witch-sight.

It was quite simple, Flavian kept telling him. It was only making yourself see through a magical disguise to what was really there. But when Flavian put an illusion spell on his right hand and held that hand out as a lion’s paw, a lion’s paw was all Christopher could see.

Flavian did it over and over again. Christopher yawned and looked vague and kept seeing a lion’s paw. The only good thing was that while his mind wandered he hit on the perfect way to keep those books for the Goddess dry in The Place Between.

That night Christopher went round the corner between his trunk and the fireplace all prepared to tear a new split in the Castle spells. To his surprise, the split was still there. It looked as though the Castle people had no idea he had made it. Very gently, not to disturb it, he tore two long strips off it, one wide and one narrow. Then, with a vague shimmering piece of spell in each hand, he went back to the books and wrapped them in the wide piece. The narrow piece he used like string to tie the parcel up, leaving a loose length to tie to his belt. When he spat on the parcel, the spit rolled off it in little round balls. Good.

Then it was like old times, climbing across the rocks the well-known way, in clothes that had got even shorter and tighter since yesterday night. It did not worry Christopher at all that he had fallen last time. He knew this way too well. And again like old times, the old men were still charming snakes in front of the city walls. They must do it for religion or something, Christopher supposed, because they did not seem to want money for it. Inside the gates, the city was still the same loud smelly place, full of goats and umbrellas, and the small shrines at the street corners were still surrounded with offerings. The only difference was that it did not seem quite so hot here as last time, though it was still plenty hot enough for someone who had just come from an English summer.

Yet, oddly enough, Christopher was not comfortable here. He was not frightened of people throwing spears. It was because, after the hushed dignity and dark clothes at the Castle, this city made every nerve he had jangle. He had a headache long before he got to the Temple of Asheth. It made him need to rest a bit among the latest pile of old cabbages in the alley, before he could muster the inclination to push his way through the wall and the creepers. The cats were still sunning themselves in the yard. No one was about.

The Goddess was in a room further along from her usual one. She was on a big white cushion that was probably a bed, with more white cushions to prop her up and a shawl over her in spite of the heat. She had grown too, though not as much as Christopher. But he thought she might be ill. She was lying there, staring into nothing, and her face was not as round as he remembered, and a good deal paler.

“Oh, thanks,” she said, as if she was thinking of something else, when Christopher dumped the parcel of books on her shawl. “I’ve nothing to swop.”

“I’m still paying for Throgmorten,” Christopher said.

“Was he that valuable?” the Goddess said listlessly. In a slow, lacklustre way she began stripping the spell off the books. Christopher was interested to see that she had no more trouble tearing it than he had. Being the Living Asheth obviously meant you were given strong magic. “These look good books,” the Goddess said politely. “I’ll read them – when I can concentrate.”

“You’re ill, aren’t you?” said Christopher. “What have you got?”

“Not germs,” the Goddess said weakly. “It’s the Festival. It was three days ago. You know it’s the one day in the year when I go out, don’t you? After months and months all quiet and dark here in the Temple, there I am suddenly out in the sun, riding in a cart, dressed in huge heavy clothes and hung with jewels, with my face covered with paint. Everyone shouts. And they all jump up on the cart and try to touch me – for luck, you know, and not as if I was a person.” Tears began slowly rolling down her face. “I don’t think they notice I’m alive. And it goes on all day, the shouting and the sun and hands banging at me until I’m bruised all over.” The tears rolled faster. “It used to be exciting when I was small,” she said. “But now it’s too much.”

The Goddess’s white cat came galloping into the room and jumped possessively on to her lap. The Goddess stroked it weakly. Like Throgmorten sitting on my bed, Christopher thought. Temple cats know when their people are upset. He thought he could understand a little, after his own feelings in the city just now, the way the Festival had felt to the Goddess.

“I think it’s being inside all year and then suddenly going out,” the Goddess explained as she stroked Bethi.

Christopher had meant to ask if it was the curse of Asheth that kept killing him all the time, but he could see this was not the moment. The Goddess needed her mind taken off Asheth. He sat down on the tiles beside her cushions. “It was clever of you to see that silver stopped me doing magic,” he said. “I didn’t know myself – not until Papa took me to Dr Pawson.” Then he told her about the levitation spell.

The Goddess smiled. When he told her about old Mrs Pawson and the chamberpot, she turned her face to him and almost laughed. It was obviously doing her so much good that he went on and told her about the Castle and Gabriel de Witt, and even managed to make that funny too. When he told her about the way he kept seeing a lion’s paw, he had her in fits of laughter.

“But that’s stupid of you!” she chuckled. “When there are things I can’t do for Mother Proudfoot, I just pretend I can. Just say you can see his hand. He’ll believe you.”

“I never thought of that,” Christopher confessed.

“No, you’re too honest,” she said, and looked at him closely. “Silver forces you to tell the truth,” she said. “The Gift of Asheth tells me. So you got into the habit of never lying.” Mentioning Asheth sobered her up. “Thank you for telling me about yourself,” she said seriously. “I think you’ve had a rotten life, even worse than mine!” Quite suddenly she was crying again. “People only want either of us for what use we are to them!” she sobbed. “You for your nine lives and me for my Goddess attributes. And both of us are caught and stuck and trapped in a life with a future all planned out by someone else – like a long, long tunnel with no way out!”

Christopher was a little astonished at this way of putting things, even though his anger at being forced to be the next Chrestomanci certainly made him feel trapped most of the time. But he saw the Goddess was mostly talking about herself. “You stop being the Living Asheth when you grow up,” he pointed out.

“Oh, I do so want to stop!” the Goddess wept. “I want to stop being her now! I want to go to school, like Millie in the Millie books. I want to do Prep and eat stodge and learn French and play hockey and write lines—”

“You wouldn’t want to write lines,” Christopher said, quite anxious at how emotional she was getting. “Honestly, you wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I do!” screamed the Goddess. “I want to cheek the Prefects and cheat in Geography tests and sneak on my friends! I want to be bad as well as good! I want to go to school and be bad, do you hear!”

By this time she was kneeling up on her cushion, with tears pouring off her face into the white cat’s fur, making more noise than Throgmorten had when Christopher ran through the Temple with him in the basket. It was not surprising that somebody in sandals came hurrying and stumbling through the rooms beyond, calling breathlessly, “Goddess, dear! Goddess! What’s wrong, love?”

Christopher spun himself round and dived through the nearest wall without bothering to get up first. He came out face down in the hot yard full of cats. There he picked himself up and sprinted for the outside wall. After that, he did not stop running until he reached the city gate. Girls! he thought. They really were a Complete Mystery. Fancy wanting to write lines!

Nevertheless, as he went up the valley and climbed through The Place Between, Christopher found himself thinking seriously about some of the things the Goddess had said. His life did indeed seem to be a long tunnel planned out by somebody else. And the reason he hated everyone so at the Castle was that he was just a Thing to them, a useful Thing with nine lives that was going to be moulded into the next Chrestomanci some day. He thought he would tell Tacroy that. Tacroy would understand. Tomorrow was Thursday, and he could see Tacroy. He thought he had never looked forward to a Thursday more.

And he knew how to pretend he had witch-sight now. The next afternoon, when Flavian held out a lion’s paw to him, Christopher said, “It’s your hand. I can see it now.”

Flavian was delighted. “Then we’ll go on a nice long hike tomorrow,” he said.

Christopher was not altogether sure he was looking forward to that. But he could hardly wait to see Tacroy again. Tacroy was the only person he knew who did not treat him as a useful Thing. He scrambled out of bed almost as soon as he was in it and shot through the slit in the spells, hoping Tacroy would realise and be early.

Tacroy was there, leaning against the crag at the end of the valley with his arms folded, looking as if he was resigned to a long wait. “Hallo!” he said, and sounded quite surprised to see Christopher at all.

Christopher realised that it was not going to be as easy as he had thought to pour out his troubles to Tacroy, but he beamed at Tacroy as he started scrambling into his clothes. “It’s good to see you again,” he said. “There’s no end of things to tell you. Where are we going tonight?”

Tacroy said in a careful sort of way, “The horseless carriage is waiting in Eight. Are you sure you want to go?”

“Of course,” Christopher said, doing up his belt.

“You can tell me your news just as well here,” Tacroy said.

This was off-putting. Christopher looked up and saw that Tacroy was unusually serious. His eyes were crinkled up unsmilingly. This made it too awkward to start telling Tacroy anything. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Tacroy shrugged. “Well,” he said, “for a start, the last time I saw you, your head was bashed in—”

Christopher had forgotten that. “Oh, I never thanked you for getting me back here!” he said.

“Think nothing of it,” said Tacroy. “Though I must say it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in any line of work, keeping myself firm enough to bring the carriage through the interworld and heave you off here. I kept wondering why I was doing it too. You looked pretty thoroughly dead to me.”

“I’ve got nine lives,” Christopher explained.

“You’ve obviously got more than one,” Tacroy agreed, grinning as if he did not really believe it. “Look, didn’t that accident make you think? Your uncle’s done hundreds of these experiments by now. We’ve fetched him a mass of results. It’s all right for me – I get paid. But there’s nothing in it for you that I can see, except the danger of getting hurt again.”

Tacroy truly meant this, Christopher could see. “I don’t mind,” he protested. “Honestly. And Uncle Ralph did give me two sovereigns.”

At this Tacroy threw back his curly head and laughed. “Two sovereigns! Some of the things we got him were worth hundreds of pounds – like that Asheth Temple cat, for instance.”

“I know,” Christopher said, “but I want to keep on with the experiments. The way things are now, it’s the only pleasure I have in life.” There, he thought. Now Tacroy will have to ask about my troubles.

But Tacroy only sighed. “Let’s get going then.”

It was not possible to talk to Tacroy in The Place Between. While Christopher climbed and slithered and panted, Tacroy was a floating nebulous ghost nearby, drifting in the wind, with rain beating through him. He did not firm up until the opening of the valley where Christopher had long ago written a large 8 in the mud of the path. The 8 was still there, as if it had been written yesterday. Beyond it the carriage floated. It had been improved again and was now painted a smart duck-egg blue.

“All set, I see,” Tacroy said. They climbed down and picked up the guide ropes of the carriage. It immediately started to follow them smoothly down the valley. “How’s the cricket?” Tacroy asked in a social sort of way.

Now was Christopher’s chance to tell him things. “I haven’t played,” he said gloomily, “since Papa took me away from school. Up till yesterday, I didn’t think they’d even heard of cricket at the Castle – you know I’m living at the Castle now?”

“No,” said Tacroy. “Your uncle never has told me much about you. Which castle is this?”

“Chrestomanci Castle,” said Christopher. “But yesterday my tutor said there was a match against the village this Saturday. Nobody dreams of asking me to play of course, but I get to work the scoreboard for it.”

“Do you indeed?” said Tacroy. His eyes screwed into wrinkles.

“They don’t know I’m here, of course,” Christopher said.

“I should just think they don’t!” Tacroy said, and the way he said it seemed to stop the conversation dead. They walked on in front of the carriage without speaking, until they came to the long hillside with the farmhouse squatting in a dip half-way up it. The place looked bleaker and more lonely than ever, under a heavy grey sky that made the rolls of moor and hill seem yellowish. Before they reached the farm, Tacroy stopped and kicked the carriage out of the way when it nudged the back of his legs, trying to go on. His face was as bleak and yellowish and wrinkled as the moors. “Listen, Christopher,” he said, “those folk at Chrestomanci Castle are not going to be pleased to find you’ve been here doing this.”

Christopher laughed. “They aren’t! But they’re not going to find out!”

“Don’t be too sure about that,” Tacroy said. “They’re experts in every kind of magic there.”

“That’s what makes it such a good revenge on them,” Christopher explained. “Here I am slipping out from under their stupid stuffy boring noses, when they think they’ve got me. I’m just a Thing to them. They’re using me.”

The people at the farmhouse had seen them coming. A little group of women ran out into the yard and stood beside a heap of bundles. One waved. Christopher waved back and, since Tacroy did not seem to be as interested in his feelings as he had hoped, he set off up the hill. That started the carriage moving again.

Tacroy hurried to catch up. “Doesn’t it occur to you,” he said, “that your uncle may be using you too?”

“Not like the Castle people are,” said Christopher. “I do these experiments of my own free will.”

At this, Tacroy looked up at the low cloudy sky. “Don’t say I didn’t try!” he said to it.

The women breathed garlic over Christopher when they greeted him in the farmyard, just as they always did. As usual, that smell mixed with the smell from the bundles as he loaded them. The bundles always had this smell in Eight – a sharp, heady, coppery smell. Now, after the practical lessons he had had from Flavian, Christopher paused and sniffed it. He knew what the smell was. Dragons’ blood! It surprised him, because this was the most dangerous and powerful ingredient of magic. He put the next bundle on the carriage much more carefully and as he gingerly picked up the next one, knowing some of the things it could do, he looked across at Tacroy to see if Tacroy knew what the bundles were. But Tacroy was leaning against the wall of the yard staring sadly up the hill. Tacroy said he never had much sense of smell when he was out of his body anyway.

As Christopher looked, Tacroy’s eyes went wide and he jumped away from the wall. “I say!” he said.

One of the women yelled and pointed away up the hill. Christopher turned to see what was the matter, and stared, and went on staring in amazement, standing where he was with the bundle in his hands. A very large creature was on its way down towards the farm. It was a kind of purplish black.

The moment Christopher first saw it, it was folding its great leathery wings and putting its clawed feet down to land, gliding down the hill so fast that he did not see at once how very large it was. While he was still thinking it was a house-sized animal half-way up the hill, it had landed just behind the farm, and he realised he could still see most of it towering up above the farmhouse.

“It’s a dragon!” Tacroy shrieked. “Christopher, get down! Look away!”

Around Christopher, the women were running for the barns. One came running back, carrying a big heavy gun in both arms, which she tried frantically to wrestle up on to a tripod. She got it up and it fell down.

While she picked the gun up again, the dragon put its gigantic jagged black head down on the farm roof between the chimneys, crushing it in quite casually, and gazed at the farmyard with huge shining green eyes.

“It’s huge!” Christopher said. He had never seen anything like it.

“Down!” Tacroy screamed at him.

The dragon’s eyes met Christopher’s, almost soulfully. Among the ruins and rafters of the farm roof, it opened its huge mouth. It was rather as if a door had opened into the heart of a sun. A white-orange prominence spouted from the sun, one strong accurate shaft of it, straight at Christopher. WHOOF. He was in a furnace. He heard his skin fry. During an instant of utter agony, he had time to think, Oh bother! Another hundred lines!

Tacroy’s panting was the first thing Christopher heard, some time after that. He found Tacroy struggling to heave him off the charred bed of the horseless carriage on to the path. The carriage and Tacroy were wobbling about just beside Christopher’s pyjamas.

“It’s all right,” Christopher said, sitting up wincingly. His skin smarted all over. His clothes seemed to have been burnt off him. The parts of him he could see were a raw pink and smirched with charcoal from the half-burnt carriage. “Thanks,” he gasped, because he could see that Tacroy had rescued him again.

“You’re welcome,” Tacroy panted. He was fading to a grey shadow of himself. But he put forth a great effort. His eyes closed and his mouth spread into a grin with it, all transparent, with the grass of the valley shining through his face. Then, for a second, he became clear and solid. He bent over Christopher. “This is it!” he said. “You’re not going on these jaunts ever again. You drop it, see? You stop. You come out here again and I won’t be here.” By this time he was fading to grey, and then to milkiness beyond the grey. “I’ll square your uncle,” his voice whispered. Christopher had to guess that the last word was “uncle”. Tacroy had faded out by then.

Christopher flopped off the carriage and that disappeared too, leaving nothing but the empty, peaceful valley and a strong smell of burning.

“But I don’t want to drop it!” Christopher said. His voice sounded so dry and cracked that he could hardly hear it above the brawling of the stream in the valley. A couple of tears made smarting tracks down his face while he collected his pyjamas and crawled back through the split in the spells.

Again there was nothing wrong with Christopher when he woke up. He listened to Flavian that morning with a polite, vague look on his face while he marvelled about the dragon. His marvelling kept being interrupted by gusts of misery that he would never see Tacroy again, and he had to work quite hard to think of the dragon. It was awesome. It was almost worth losing a life to have seen a sight like that. He wondered how long it would be before someone in the Castle noticed he had lost another life. And a small anxious part of him kept saying, But have I lost it – yet?

“I’ve ordered us a packed lunch,” Flavian said cheerfully, “and the housekeeper’s dug out an oilskin that should fit you. We’ll be off on our hike just as soon as you’ve finished that French.”

It was raining quite heavily. Christopher took his time over the French, hoping that Flavian would decide that it was too wet for walking. But when Christopher could not think of any further ways to spin out the history of the pen of his aunt, Flavian said, “A little soaking never did anyone any harm,” and they set out into a strong drizzle a little after midday.

Flavian was very cheerful. Tramping in the wet, with thick socks and a knapsack, was obviously his idea of heaven. Christopher licked up the water that kept running off his nose from his hair and thought that at least he was out of the Castle. But if he had to be out in wind and wet, he would have preferred to be in The Place Between. That brought him back to Tacroy, and he had to struggle with gusts of misery again. He tried to think of the dragon, but it was too wet. While they tramped across several miles of heath, all Christopher could think of was how much he was going to miss Tacroy, and how the soaking gorse bushes looked just as desolate as he felt. He hoped they would stop for lunch soon so that he could think about something else.

They came to the edge of the heath. Flavian pointed in a breezy, open-air way to a hill that was grey with distance. “That’s where we’ll stop for lunch. In those woods on that hill there.”

“It’s miles away!” Christopher said, appalled.

“Only about five miles. We’ll just drop down into the valley between and them climb up again,” Flavian said, striding cheerfully down the hill.

Long before they reached that hill, Christopher had stopped thinking of Tacroy and could only think how cold and wet and tired and hungry he was. It seemed to him to be nearer tea-time than lunch-time when he finally struggled after Flavian into a clearing in that far-distant wood.

“Now,” said Flavian, tossing off the knapsack and rubbing his hands together. “We’ll have some really practical magic. You’re going to collect sticks and make a good pile of them. Then you can try your hand at conjuring fire. When you’ve got a good fire going, we can fry sausages on sticks and have lunch.”

Christopher looked up at the boughs overhead, hung with huge transparent blobs of rain. He looked around at the soaking grass. He looked at Flavian to see if he was really meaning to be fiendish. No. Flavian just thought this way was fun. “The sticks will be wet,” Christopher said. “The whole wood’s dripping.”

“Makes it more of a challenge,” Flavian said.

Christopher saw there was no point in telling Flavian he was weak with hunger. He grimly collected sticks. He piled them in a soggy heap, which collapsed, so he built the heap again, and then knelt with cold rain soaking into his knees and trickling under his collar, to conjure fire. Ridiculous. He conjured a thin yellow spire of smoke. It lasted about a second. The sticks were not even warm from it.

“Plenty of will as you raise your hands,” Flavian said.

“I know!” Christopher said and willed savagely. Fire! Fire! FIRE!!

The pile of sticks went up with a roar in a sheet of flame ten feet high. Christopher once more heard his skin fry, and his wet oilskin crackled and burst into flame too. He was part of a bonfire almost instantly. This is the life the dragon burnt! he thought amid the agony.

When his fifth life took over, which seemed to be about ten minutes later, he heard Flavian saying hysterically, “Yes, I know, but it ought to have been perfectly safe! The wood is sopping wet. That’s why I told him to try.”

“Dr Pawson rather suggested that very little is safe once Christopher gets going,” a dry voice observed from further away.

Christopher rolled over. He was covered with Flavian’s oilskin and, under it, his skin felt very new and soft. The ground in front of him was burnt black, wet and smelly with rain. Overhead, the wet leaves on the trees were brown and curled. Gabriel de Witt was sitting on a folding stool some yards away, under a large black umbrella, looking annoyed and very much out of place. As Christopher saw him, the smoking grass beside the stool burst into little orange flames. Gabriel frowned at the flames. They shrank down into smoke again.

“Ah, you appear to have taken up the threads of life again,” he said. “Kindly douse this forest fire of yours. It is uncommonly persistent and I do not wish to leave the countryside burning.”

“Can I have something to eat first?” said Christopher “I’m starving.”

“Give him a sandwich,” Gabriel said to Flavian. “I recall that when I lost my life, the new life required a great deal of energy as it took over.” He waited until Flavian had passed Christopher a packet of egg sandwiches. While Christopher was wolfing them down, he said: “Flavian says he takes full responsibility for this latest stupidity. You may thank him that I am lenient with you. I will simply point out that you have caused me to be called away at the moment when we were about to lay hands on a member of the Wraith gang I told you of. If he slips through our fingers, it will be your fault, Christopher. Now please get up and extinguish the fire.”

Christopher stood up in some relief. He had been afraid that Gabriel was going to forbid him to work the scoreboard for the cricket match tomorrow. “Dousing a fire is like conjuring in reverse,” Flavian told him. So Christopher did that. It was easy, except that his relief about the cricket caused little spurts of flame to keep breaking out all round the clearing.

When even the smoke was gone, Gabriel said, “Now I warn you, Christopher – if you have one more accident, fatal or not, I shall take very severe steps indeed.” Having said this, Gabriel stood up and folded his stool with a snap. With the stool tucked under his arm, he reached into the umbrella and started to take it down. As the umbrella folded, Christopher found himself, with Flavian beside him, in the middle of the pentacle in the Castle hall. Miss Rosalie was standing on the stairs.

“He got away, Gabriel,” she said. “But at least we know how they’re doing it now.”

Gabriel turned and looked at Christopher, witheringly. “Take him to his room, Flavian,” he said, “and then come back for a conference.” He called out to Miss Rosalie, “Tell Frederick to prepare for a trance at once. I want the World Edge patrolled constantly from now on.”

Christopher pattered off beside Flavian, shivering under the oilskin. Even his shoes had been burnt. “You were a crisp!” Flavian told him. “I was terrified!” Christopher believed him. That dragon had crisped him thoroughly. He was absolutely sure now that if he lost a life in an Anywhere, it somehow did not count, and he had to lose that life properly in his own world, in a way that was as like the death in the Anywhere as possible. Moral, he thought: be careful in the Anywheres in future. And while he was putting on more clothes he skipped about with relief that Gabriel had not forbidden him to go to the cricket match. But he was afraid the rain would stop the game anyway. It was still pouring.

The rain stopped in the night, though the weather was still grey and chilly. Christopher went down to the village green with the Castle team, which was a motley mixture of Castle sorcerers, a footman, a gardener, a stable lad, Dr Simonson, Flavian, a young wizard who had come down from Oxford specially and, to Christopher’s great surprise, Miss Rosalie. Miss Rosalie looked pink and almost fetching in a white dress and white mittens. She tripped along in little white shoes, loudly bewailing the fact that the trap to catch the Wraith had gone wrong. “I told Gabriel all along that we’d have to patrol the World Edge,” she said. “By the time they get the stuff to London there are too many places for them to hide.”

Gabriel himself met them on the village green, carrying his folding stool in one hand and a telegram in the other. He was dressed for the occasion in a striped blazer that looked about a hundred years old and a wide Panama hat. “Bad news,” he said. “Mordecai Roberts has dislocated his shoulder and is not coming.”

“Oh no!” everyone exclaimed in the greatest dismay.

“And how typical!” Miss Rosalie added. She pounced round on Christopher. “Can you bat, dear? Enough to come in at the end if necessary?”

Christopher tried to keep a cool look on his face, but it was impossible. “I should hope so,” he said.

The afternoon was pure bliss. One of the stable lads lent Christopher some rather large whites, which a sorcerer obligingly conjured down from the Castle for him, and he was sent to field on the boundary. The village batted first – and they made rather a lot of runs, because the missing Mordecai Roberts had been the Castle’s best bowler. Christopher got very cold in the chilly wind, but like a dream come true, he took a catch out there to dismiss the blacksmith. All the rest of the Castle people, standing round the green in warm clothes, clapped furiously.

When the Castle began their innings, Christopher sat with the rest of the team waiting his turn – or rather, hoping that he would get a turn – and was fascinated to discover that Miss Rosalie was a fine and dashing batswoman. She hit balls all round the field in the way Christopher had always wanted to do. Unfortunately, the blacksmith turned out to be a demonically cunning spin bowler. He had all the tricks that Tacroy had so often described to Christopher. He got Dr Simonson out for one run and the Oxford wizard out for two. After that the Castle team collapsed round Miss Rosalie. But Miss Rosalie kept at it, with her hair coming down on one shoulder and her face glowing with effort. She did so well that, when Flavian went out to bat at number ten, the Castle only needed two runs to win. Christopher buckled on his borrowed pads, fairly sure he would never get a chance to bat.

“You never know,” said the Castle boot-boy, who was working the scoreboard instead of Christopher. “Look at him. He’s hopeless!”

Flavian was hopeless. Christopher had never seen anyone so bad. His bat either groped about like a blind man’s stick or made wild swings in the wrong place. It was obvious he was going to be out any second. Christopher picked up his borrowed bat hopefully. And Miss Rosalie was out instead. The blacksmith clean bowled her. The village people packed round the green roared, knowing they had won. Amid the roars, Christopher stood up.

“Good luck!” said all the Castle people round him. The boot-boy was the only one who said it as if he thought Christopher had a chance.

Christopher waded out to the middle of the green – the borrowed pads were two sizes too large – to the sound of shouts and catcalls. “Do your best, dear,” Miss Rosalie said rather hopelessly as she passed him coming in. Christopher waded on, surprised to find that he was not in the least nervous.

As he took his guard, the village team licked its lips. They crowded in close round Christopher, crouching expectantly. Wherever he looked there were large horny hands spread out and brown faces wearing jeering grins.

“Oh I say!” Flavian said at the other end. “He’s only a boy!”

“We know,” said the village captain, grinning even wider.

The blacksmith, equally contemptuous, bowled Christopher a slow, loopy ball. While Christopher was watching it arc up, he had time to remember every word of Tacroy’s coaching. And since the entire village team was crowded round him in a ring, he knew he only had to get the ball past that ring to score runs. He watched the ball all the way on to the bat with perfect self-possession. It turned a little, but not much. He cracked it firmly away into the covers.

“Two!” he called crisply to Flavian.

Flavian gave him a startled look and ran. Christopher ran, with the borrowed pads going flurp, flurp, flurp at every stride. The village team turned and chased the ball frantically, but Flavian and Christopher had plenty of time to make two runs. They had time to have run three, even with the borrowed pads. The Castle had won. Christopher went warm with pride and joy.

The Castle watchers cheered. Gabriel congratulated him. The boot-boy shook his hand. Miss Rosalie, with her hair still trailing, banged him on the back. Everyone crowded round Christopher saying that they did not need Mordecai Roberts after all, and the sun came out behind the church tower for the first time that day. For that short time, Christopher felt that living in the Castle was not so bad after all.

But by Sunday lunch-time it was back to the usual ways. The talk at lunch was all about anxious schemes to catch the Wraith gang, except that Mr Wilkinson, the elderly sorcerer who looked after the Castle library, kept saying, “Those three rare books are still missing. I cannot imagine who would wish to make away with three girl’s books from World B, but I cannot detect them anywhere in the Castle.”

Since they were girl’s books, Mr Wilkinson obviously did not suspect Christopher. In fact, neither he nor anyone else remembered Christopher was there unless they wanted him to pass the salt.

On Monday, Christopher said acidly to Flavian, “Doesn’t it occur to anyone that I could help catch the Wraith?” This was the nearest he had ever come to mentioning the Anywheres to Flavian. Sunday had driven him to it.

“For heaven’s sake! People who can cut up mermaids would soon make short work of you!” Flavian said.

Christopher sighed. “Mermaids don’t come to life again. I do,” he pointed out.

“The whole Wraith thing makes me sick,” Flavian said and changed the subject.

Christopher felt, more than ever, that he was in a tunnel with no way out. He was worse off than the Goddess, too, because she could stop being the Living Asheth when she grew up, while he had to go on and turn into someone like Gabriel de Witt. His feelings were not improved when, later that week, he had a letter from Papa. This one had been opened and sealed up also, but unlike the letter from Mama, it had the most interesting stamps. Papa was in Japan.

My son,

My spells assure me that a time of utmost danger is coming for you. I implore you to be careful and not to endanger your future.

Your loving

Papa

From the date on the letter, it had been written a month ago. “Bother my future!” Christopher said. “His spells probably mean the lives I’ve just lost.” And the worst of it, he thought, going back to his misery, was that he could not look forward to seeing Tacroy any more.

All the same, that Thursday night, Christopher went out through the split in the spell, hoping Tacroy would be there. But the valley was empty. He stood there for a moment feeling blank. Then he went back into his room, put on his clothes and set off through The Place Between to visit the Goddess again. She was the only other person he knew who did not try to make use of him.

The Goddess was in her bedroom-place, sitting cross-legged on the white cushions with her chin on her fists, evidently brooding. Though she did not look ill any more, there was a new feeling about her, like thunder in the air, which Christopher rather wondered about as he came in.

The Goddess’s jewellery went tunk as she looked up and saw him. “Oh good,” she said. “I’d been hoping you’d come back soon. I’ve got to talk to you – you’re the only person I know who’ll understand.”

“The same goes for me,” Christopher said, and he sat down on the tiles with his back against the wall. “There’s you shut up here with your Priestesses, and me shut up in the Castle with Gabriel’s people. Both of us are in this tunnel—”

“But that’s just my trouble,” the Goddess interrupted. “I’m not sure there is a tunnel for me. Tunnels have ends, after all.” Her voice filled with the new thunderous feeling as she said this. The white cat knew at once. It got up from among the cushions and climbed heavily into her lap.

“What do you mean?” Christopher asked, thinking once more that girls really were a Complete Mystery.

“Poor Bethi,” the Goddess said, stroking the white cat with a rhythmic tink-tink of bracelets. “She’s going to have kittens again. I wish she wouldn’t keep on having them – it wears her out. What I meant is that I’ve been thinking of all sorts of things since I was ill. I’ve been thinking of you and wondering how you manage to keep coming here from another world. Isn’t it difficult?”

“No, it’s easy,” said Christopher. “Or it is for me. I think it’s because I’ve got several lives. What I think I do is leave one of them behind in bed and set the other ones loose to wander.”

“The luck of it!” the Goddess said. “But I mean what do you do to get to this world?”

Christopher told her about the valley and The Place Between and how he always had to find a corner in the bedroom to go round.

The Goddess’s eyes travelled reflectively round the dim archways of her room. “I wish I had more than one life,” she said. “But with me – you remember how you said when you were here last that I’d stop being the Living Asheth when I grew up?”

“You told me that when I first came here,” Christopher reminded her. “You said, ‘The Living Asheth is always a little girl.’ Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, but nobody said it the way round that you did,” the Goddess said. “It made me think. What happens to the Living Asheth when she isn’t a little girl any longer? I’m not little now. I’m nearly the age when other people are officially women.”

That must happen remarkably early in Series Ten, Christopher thought. He wished he was anything like officially a man. “Don’t you get made into a Priestess?”

“No,” said the Goddess. “I’ve listened and I’ve asked and read all their records – and none of the Priestesses were ever the Goddess.” She began sticking the white cat’s fur up in ridges between fingers that trembled slightly. “When I asked,” she said, “Mother Proudfoot said I wasn’t to bother my head because Asheth takes care of all that. What do you think that means?”

She seemed to Christopher to be getting all emotional again. “I think you just get shoved out of the Temple and go home,” he said soothingly. The idea made him feel envious. “But you’ve got all your Asheth gifts. You must be able to use those to find out for certain.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” the Goddess all but screamed. Her bracelets chanked as she tossed the unfortunate Bethi aside and bounded to her feet, glaring at Christopher. “You stupid boy! I’ve thought and thought, all this week, until my head buzzes!”

Christopher hurriedly got to his feet and pressed his back to the wall, ready to go through it at once if the Goddess went for him. But all she did was to jump up and down in front of him, screaming.

“Think of a way I can find out, if you’re so clever! Think of a WAY!”

As always when the Goddess screamed, feet flapped in the rooms beyond and a breathless voice called, “I’m coming, Goddess! What is it?”

Christopher backed away into the wall, swiftly and gently. The Goddess flung him a brief look that seemed to be of triumph and went rushing into the arms of the skinny old woman who appeared in the archway. “Oh, Mother Proudfoot! I had such an awful dream again!”

Christopher, to his horror, found that he was stuck in the wall. He could not come out forwards and he could not push through backwards. The only thing he could seem to do was use what Flavian had taught him to make himself invisible. He did that at once. He had been moving with his face forward and his rear out, so that most of his head was outside the wall. Invisible or not, he felt like one of the stuffed animal heads on the walls of the Castle dining room.

At least he could see and hear and breathe, he thought in a stunned way. He was confounded at the treachery of the Goddess.

She was led away into the further rooms, with soothing murmurs. After about ten minutes, by which time Christopher had a cricked neck and cramp in one leg, she came back again, looking perfectly calm.

“There’s no point in looking invisible,” she said. “Everyone here has witch-sight, even if you don’t. Look, I’m sorry about this, but I do terribly need help and I promise I’ll let you go when you’ve helped me.”

Christopher did not make himself visible again. He felt safer like that. “You don’t need help – you need hitting over the head,” he said angrily. “How can I help anyone like this? I’m dying of discomfort.”

“Then get comfortable and then help me,” the Goddess said.

Christopher found he could move a little. The wall round him seemed to turn jelly-like, so that he could straighten up and move his arms a little and get his legs into a proper standing position. He tried doing some rapid squirming, in hopes that the jelly would give enough to let him out, but it would not. He could tell that what was holding him there was the same thing that the Goddess had used to fasten his feet to the floor when he first met her, and that was still just as mysterious to him as it had been then. “How do you want me to help?” he asked resignedly.

“By taking me with you to your world,” the Goddess said eagerly, “so that I can go to a school like the one in the Millie books. I thought you could hide me somewhere in your Castle while I looked round for a school.”

Christopher thought of Gabriel de Witt discovering the Goddess hiding in an attic. “No,” he said. “I can’t. I absolutely can’t. And what’s more I won’t. Now let me out of here!”

“You took Throgmorten,” said the Goddess. “You can take me.”

“Throgmorten’s a cat,” said Christopher. “He has nine lives like me. I told you I could only get here by leaving one of my lives behind. You’ve only got one life, so it stands to reason that I can’t get you to my world because you’d be dead if I did!”

“That’s just the point!” the Goddess whispered at him ferociously. He could tell she was trying very hard not to scream again. Tears rolled down her face. “I know I’ve only got one life and I don’t want to lose it. Take me with you.”

“Just so that you can go to a school out of a book!” Christopher snarled back, feeling more than ever like an animal head on a wall. “Stop being so stupid!”

“Then you can just stay in that wall until you change your mind!” the Goddess said, and flounced away with a chank and a jingle.

Christopher stood, sagging into the jelly of the wall, and cursed the day he had brought the Goddess those Millie books. Then he cursed himself for thinking the Goddess was sympathetic. She was just as selfish and ruthless as everyone else he knew. He squirmed and struggled and heaved to get out of the wall, but since he had not the first idea what had gone into the spell, it held him as fast as ever.

The worst of it was that now the Temple had woken up from its midday sleep, it was a decidedly busy place. Behind him, through the wall, Christopher could hear a crowd of people in the hot yard counting the cats and feeding them. Mixed with those sounds was a female voice barking orders, and the sound of armour clashing and spear butts thumping on the ground. Christopher began to be terribly afraid that his invisible backside was sticking out of the wall into that yard. He kept imagining a spear plunging into him there, and he squirmed and squidged and pulled himself in to make sure that it was not. He was not sure which he dreaded most: the feeling of a spear driving into him, or what Gabriel would do if he lost another life.

From in front of him, beyond the archway, he could hear the Goddess talking with at least three Priestesses and then all their voices muttering prayers. Why hadn’t Flavian taught him any useful magic? There were probably six hundred quiet ways of breaking this spell and sliding invisibly out of the wall, and Christopher did not know one. He wondered if he could do it by blasting loose in a combined levitation, whirlwind and fire-conjuring. Maybe – although it would be terribly hard without his hands free – and people would still come running after him with spears. He decided he would try argument and cunning first.

Before long, the Goddess came in to see if he had changed his mind.

“I’ll fetch it, dear,” said one of the Priestesses beyond the archway.

“No, I want to have another look at Bethi, too,” the Goddess said over her shoulder. For honesty’s sake, she went over to look at the white cat, which was lying on her bed cushions panting and looking sorry for itself. The Goddess stroked it before she came over and put her face close to Christopher’s.

“Well? Are you going to help me?”

“What happens,” asked Christopher, “if one of them comes in and notices my face sticking out of the wall?”

“You’d better agree to help before they do. They’d kill you,” the Goddess whispered back.

“But I wouldn’t be any use to you dead,” Christopher pointed out. “Let me go or I’ll start yelling.”

“You dare!” said the Goddess, and flounced out.

The trouble was Christopher did not dare. That line of argument only seemed to end in deadlock. Next time she came in, he tried a different line. “Look,” he said, “I really am being awfully considerate. I could easily blast a huge hole in the Temple and get away this minute, but I’m not doing it because I don’t want to give you away. Asheth and your Priestesses are not going to be pleased if they find out you’re trying to go to another world, are they?”

Tears flooded the Goddess’s eyes. “I’m not asking very much,” she said, twisting a bangle miserably. “I thought you were kind.”

This argument seemed to be making an impression. “I’m going to have to blow this Temple up before long, if you don’t let me go,” Christopher said. “If I’m not back before morning, someone in the Castle is going to come in and find only one life of me lying in bed. Then they’ll tell Gabriel de Witt and we’ll both be in trouble. I told you he knows how to get to other worlds. If he comes here, you won’t like it.”

“You’re selfish!” the Goddess said. “You aren’t sympathetic at all – you’re just scared.”

At this Christopher lost his temper. “Let me go,” he said, “or I’ll blow the whole place sky high!”

The Goddess simply ran from the room, mopping at her face with a piece of her robe.

“Is something wrong, dear?” asked a Priestess outside.

“No, no,” Christopher heard the Goddess say. “Bethi isn’t very well, that’s all.”

She was gone for quite a long time after that. Probably she had to distract the Priestesses from coming and looking at the white cat. But soon after that, smells of spicy food began to fill the air. Christopher grew seriously alarmed. Time was getting on and it really would be morning at the Castle soon. Then he would be in real trouble. More time passed. He could hear people in the yard behind counting the cats and feeding them again. “Bethi’s missing,” someone said.

“She’s with the Living One still,” someone else answered. “Her kittens are due soon.”

Still more time passed. By the time the Goddess reappeared, desperation had forced Christopher’s mind into quite a new tack. He saw that he would have to give her some kind of help, even if it was not what she wanted, or he would never get away before morning.

The Goddess in her ruthless way was obviously meaning to be kind-hearted. When she came in this time, she was carrying a spicy pancake thing wrapped round hot meat and vegetables. She tore bits off it and popped them into Christopher’s mouth. There was some searing kind of pepper in it. His eyes watered. “Listen,” he choked. “What’s really the matter with you? What made you suddenly decide to make me help you?”

“I told you!” the Goddess said impatiently. “It was what you said when I was ill – that I wasn’t going to be the Living Asheth when I grow up. After that I couldn’t think of anything else but what was going to happen to me then.”

“So you want to know for certain?” Christopher said.

“More than anything else in this world!” the Goddess said.

“Then will you let me go if I help you find out what’s really going to happen to you?” Christopher bargained. “I can’t take you to my world – you know I can’t – but I can help you this way.”

The Goddess stood twisting the last piece of pancake about in her fingers. “Yes,” she said. “All right. But I can’t see how you can find out any better than I can.”

“I can,” said Christopher. “What you have to do is go and stand in front of that golden statue of Asheth you showed me and ask it what’s going to happen to you when you stop being the Living Asheth. If it doesn’t say anything, you’ll know nothing much is going to happen and you’ll be able to leave this Temple and go to school.” This struck him as pretty cunning, since there was no way that he could see that a golden statue could talk.

“Now why didn’t I think of that!” the Goddess exclaimed. “That’s clever! But—” She twisted the piece of pancake about again. “But Asheth doesn’t talk, you know, not exactly. She does everything by signs. Portents and omens and things. And she doesn’t always give one when people ask.”

This was annoying. “But she’ll give you one,” Christopher said persuasively. “You’re supposed to be her, after all, so it only amounts to asking her to remind you of something both of you know already. Go and tell her to do you a portent – only make her put a time-limit on it, so that if there isn’t one, you’ll know that there isn’t.”

“I will,” said the Goddess decisively. She stuffed the piece of pancake into Christopher’s mouth and dusted her hands with a determined jangle. “I’ll go and ask her this minute!” And she strode out of the room, chank-chink, chank-chink, sounding rather like the soldiers at that moment marching round the yard behind Christopher’s back.

He spat the pancake out, shut his eyes to squeeze the water out, and wished he was able to cross his fingers.

Five minutes later, the Goddess strode back looking much more cheerful. “Done it!” she said. “She didn’t want to tell me. I had to bully her. But I told her to take her Very Stupid face off and stop trying to fool me, and she gave in.” She looked at Christopher rather wonderingly. “I’ve never got the upper hand of her before!”

“Yes, but what did she say?” Christopher asked. He would have danced with impatience if the wall had not stopped him.

“Oh, nothing yet,” said the Goddess. “But I promise faithfully I’ll let you go when she does. She said she couldn’t manage it at once. She wanted to wait till tomorrow, but I said that was far too long. So she said that the very earliest she could manage a portent was midnight tonight—”

“Midnight!” Christopher exclaimed.

“That’s only three hours away now,” the Goddess told him soothingly. “And I said she had to make it on the dot, or I’d be really angry. You must understand her point of view – she has to pull the strings of Fate and that does take time.”

With his heart sinking, Christopher tried to calculate what time that would make it back at the Castle. The very earliest he could get it to was ten o’clock in the morning. But perhaps the maid who came to wake him would simply think he was tired. It would take her an hour or so to get worried enough to tell Flavian or someone, and by that time he would be back with any luck. “Midnight then,” he said, sighing a bit. “And you’re to let me go then, or I’ll summon a whirlwind, set everything on fire and take the roof off the Temple.”

During those three hours, he kept wondering why he did not do that at once. It was only partly that he did not want to lose another life. He felt a sort of duty to wait and set the Goddess’s mind at rest. He had started her worrying by making that remark, and before that he had made her discontented by bringing her those school stories.

He had a lot of fellow-feeling for her in her strange lonely life. And of course Papa had told him that you did not use magic against a lady. Somehow all these things combined to keep Christopher sagging in a half-sitting way in the wall, patiently waiting for midnight.

Some of the time the Goddess sat on her cushions, tensely stroking the white cat, as if she expected the portent any moment. Much of the time she was busy. She was called away to lessons, and then to prayers, and finally to have a bath. While she was away, Christopher had the rather desperate idea that he might be able to get in touch with the life he knew must be lying in bed at the Castle. He thought he might be able to get it to get up and do lessons for him. But though he had a sort of feeling of a separate piece of him quite clearly, he did not seem to be in touch with it – or if he was, he had no means of knowing. Do lessons! he thought. Get out of bed and behave like me! And he wondered for the hundredth time why he did not simply blow up the Temple and leave.

Finally the Goddess came back in a long white nightgown and only two bracelets. She kissed Mother Proudfoot goodnight in the archway and got among her white cushions with her arms lovingly round her white cat.

“It won’t be long now,” she told Christopher.

“It had better not be!” he said. “Honestly, I can’t think why you grumble about your life. I’d swop your Mother Proudfoot for Flavian and Gabriel any day!”

“Yes, maybe I am being silly,” the Goddess agreed, rather drowsily. “On the other hand, I can tell you don’t believe in Asheth and that makes you see it quite differently from me.”

Christopher could tell by her breathing that she dropped off to sleep then. He must have dozed himself in the end. The jelly-like wall was not really uncomfortable.

He was roused by a strange high cheeping noise. It was an oddly desperate sound, a little like the noise baby birds make calling and calling to be fed. Christopher jumped awake to find a big bar of white moonlight falling across the tiles on the floor.

“Oh look!” said the Goddess. “It’s the portent.” Her pointing arm came into the moonlight, with a bracelet dangling from it. She was pointing at Bethi the white cat. Bethi was lying stiffly stretched out in the bar of moonlight. Something tiny and very, very white was crawling and scrambling all over Bethi, filling the air with desperate high crying.

The Goddess surged off her cushions and on to her knees and picked the tiny thing up. “It’s frozen,” she said. “Bethi’s had a kitten and—” There was a long pause. “Christopher,” said the Goddess, obviously trying to sound calm, “Bethi’s dead. That means I’m going to die when they get a new Living Asheth.”

Kneeling by the dead cat, she screamed and screamed and screamed.

Lights went on. Feet flapped on the tiles, running. Christopher struggled to get himself as far back in the wall as he could. He knew how the Goddess felt. He had felt the same when he woke up in the mortuary. But he wished she would stop screaming. As skinny Mother Proudfoot rushed into the room followed by two other Priestesses, he did his best to begin a levitation spell.

But the Goddess kept her promise. Still screaming, she backed away from Bethi’s pathetic corpse as if it horrified her, and flung out one arm dramatically, so that her dangling bracelet flipped Christopher’s invisible nose. Luckily the bracelet was silver.

Christopher landed back in his own bed in the Castle with the crash he was now used to. He was solid and visible and in his pyjamas, and, by the light, it was nearly midday. He sat up hastily. Gabriel de Witt was sitting in the wooden chair across the room, staring at him even more grimly than usual.

Gabriel had his elbows on the arms of the chair and his long knob-knuckled hands together in a point under his eagle nose. Over them, his eyes seemed as hard to look away from as the dragon’s.

“So you have been spirit travelling,” he said. “I suspect you do so habitually. That would explain a great deal. Will you kindly inform me just where you have been and why it took you so long to come back.”

There was nothing Christopher could do but explain. He rather wished he could have died instead. Losing a life was nothing compared with the way Gabriel looked at him.

“The Temple of Asheth!” Gabriel said. “You foolish boy! Asheth is one of the most vicious and vengeful goddesses in the Related Worlds. Her military Arm has been known to pursue people across worlds and over many years, on far slighter grounds than you have given her. Thank goodness you refrained from blowing a hole in her Temple. And I am relieved that you at least had the sense to leave the Living Asheth to her fate.”

“Her fate? They weren’t really going to kill her off, were they?” Christopher asked.

“Of course they will,” Gabriel said in his calmest and driest way. “That was the meaning of the portent: the older Goddess dies when the new Living Asheth is chosen. The theory, I believe, is that the older one will enrich the power of the deity. This one must be particularly valuable to them, as she seems to be quite an enchantress in her own right.”

Christopher was horrified. He saw suddenly that the Goddess had known, or at least suspected, what was going to happen to her. That was why she had tried to get him to help her. “How can you be so calm about it?” he said. “She’s only got one life. Can’t you do something to help her?”

“My good Christopher,” said Gabriel, “there are, over all the Series of all the Related Worlds, more than a hundred worlds, and in more than half of them there are practices which horrify any civilised person. If I were to expend my time and sympathy on these, I would have none left over to do what I am paid to do – which is to prevent the misuse of magic here. This is why I must take action over you. Do you deny that you have been misusing magic?”

“I—” said Christopher.

“You most certainly have,” said Gabriel. “You must have lost at least three of your lives in some other world – and you may, for all I know, have lost all six while you were spirit travelling. But since the outer life, the life you should have lost, was lying here apparently asleep, natural laws have been forced to bend in order to enable you to lose it in the proper way. Much more of this, and you will set up a serious singularity throughout Series Twelve.”

“I didn’t lose one this time,” Christopher said defensively.

“Then you must have lost it last time you went spirit travelling,” Gabriel said. “You are definitely one short again. And this is not going to occur any more, Christopher. Oblige me by getting dressed at once and coming with me to my office.”

“Er—” Christopher said. “I haven’t had breakfast yet. Can I—?”

“No,” said Gabriel.

By this Christopher knew that things were very bad indeed. He found he was shaking as he got up and went to the washroom. The door of the washroom would not shut. Christopher could tell Gabriel was holding it open with a strong spell to make sure he did not try to get away. Under Gabriel’s eyes, he washed and dressed quicker than he had ever done in his life.

“Christopher,” Gabriel said, while he was hurriedly brushing his hair, “you must realise that I am deeply concerned about you. Nobody should lose lives at the rate that you do. What is wrong?”

“I don’t do it just to annoy you,” Christopher said bitterly, “if that’s what you think.”

Gabriel sighed. “I may be a poor guardian, but I know my duty,” he said. “Come along.”

He stalked silently through the corridors with Christopher half running to keep up. What had become of his sixth life? Christopher wondered, with the bit of his mind that was not taken up with terror. He was inclined to think that Gabriel had miscounted.

Inside the twilight office, Miss Rosalie and Dr Simonson were waiting with one of the younger men on the Castle staff. All of them were swathed in a shimmering transparent spell.

Christopher’s eyes flicked anxiously from them to the leather couch in the middle of the dark floor. It reminded him of a dentist’s chair. Beyond it was a stand holding two bell jars. The one on the left had a large bobbin hanging from nothing inside it, while the one on the right seemed to be empty except for a curtain ring or something lying at the bottom.

“What are you going to do?” Christopher said, and his voice came out more than a little squeaky.

Miss Rosalie stepped up to Gabriel and handed him some gloves on a glass tray. As Gabriel worked his fingers into the gloves, he said, “This is the severe step I warned you of after your fire. I intend to remove your ninth life from you without harming either it or you. Afterwards I shall put it in the Castle safe, under nine charms that only I can unlock. Since you will then only be able to have that life by coming to me and asking me to unlock those nine charms, this might induce you to be more careful with the two lives you will have left.”

Miss Rosalie and Dr Simonson began wrapping Gabriel in a sheeny spell like their own. “Taking a life out intact is something only Gabriel knows how to do,” Miss Rosalie said proudly.

Dr Simonson, to Christopher’s surprise, seemed to be trying to be kind. He said, “These spells are only for hygiene. Don’t look so alarmed. Lie down on this couch now. I promise you it won’t hurt a bit.”

Just what the dentist said! Christopher thought as he quakingly lay down.

Gabriel turned this way and that to let the spell settle round him. “The reason Frederick Parkinson is here,” he said, “and not patrolling the World Edge as he should be, is to make sure that you do no spirit travelling while your life is being detached. That would put you in extreme peril, Christopher, so please try to remain in this world while we work.”

Someone cast a very strong sleep spell then. Christopher went out like a light. Dr Simonson turned out to have told the truth. He felt nothing at all for several hours. When he woke up, ravenously hungry and slightly itchy deep inside somewhere, he simply felt rather cheated. If he did have to have a life taken away, he would have liked to have watched how it was done.

Gabriel and the others were leaning against the black desk, drinking tea and looking exhausted. Frederick Parkinson said, “You kept trying to spirit travel. I had my work cut out to stop you.”

Miss Rosalie hurried to bring Christopher a cup of tea too.

“We kept you asleep until your life was all on the bobbin,” she said. “It’s just winding down into the gold ring now – look.” She pointed to the two bell jars. The bobbin inside the left hand jar was almost full of shiny pinkish thread, and it was rotating in a slow stately way in the air. In the right hand jar, the ring was up in the air now too, spinning fast and jerkily. “How are you now, dear?” Miss Rosalie asked.

“Can you feel anything? Are you quite well?” Gabriel asked. He sounded quite anxious.

Dr Simonson seemed quite as concerned. He took Christopher’s pulse and then tested his mind by asking him to do sums. “He does seem to be fine,” he told the others.

“Thank goodness!” Gabriel said, rubbing his face with his hands. “Tell Flavian – no he’s out on the World Edge, isn’t he? Frederick, would you put Christopher to bed and tell the housekeeper that he’s ready for that nourishing meal now?”

Everyone was so nervous and concerned about him that Christopher realised that no one had ever tried to take someone’s spare life away before. He was not sure what he felt about that. What would they have done if it hadn’t worked? he wondered, while he was sitting in bed eating almost more chicken and cream puffs than he could hold. Frederick Parkinson sat by him while he ate, and went on sitting by him all evening. Christopher did not know which irritated him most: Frederick or the itch deep down inside him. He went to sleep early in order to get rid of both.

He woke up in the middle of the night to find himself alone in the room with the gaslight still burning. He got out of bed at once and went to see if the slit in the Castle spells had been mended. To his surprise, it was still there. It looked as if nobody had realised how he went to the Anywheres. He was just about to go through the slit, when he happened to look back at his bed. The boy lying there among the rumpled covers had a vague unreal look, like Tacroy before he was firmed up. The sight gave Christopher a most unpleasant jolt. He really did have only two lives left now. The last life was locked away in the Castle safe and there was no way he could use it without Gabriel’s permission. Hating Gabriel more than ever, he went back to bed.

Flavian brought Christopher his breakfast in the morning. “Are you all right for lessons today?” he asked anxiously. “I thought we could take it easy – I had a fairly heavy day yesterday, in and out of the World Edge to absolutely no effect, so I could do with a quiet morning too. I thought we’d go down to the library and look at some of the standard reference books – Moore’s Almanac, Prynne’s List and so forth.”

The itch inside Christopher had gone. He felt fine, probably better than Flavian, who looked pale and tired. He was irritated at the way everyone was keeping watch on him, but he knew there was no point in complaining, so he ate his breakfast and got dressed and went along the corridors with Flavian to the pink marble staircase.

They were half-way down the stairs when the five-pointed star in the hall filled with sudden action. Frederick Parkinson sprang into being first. He waved at Flavian. “We’ve got some of them at last!” His jubilant shout was still ringing round the hall when Miss Rosalie appeared, struggling to keep hold of an angry old woman who was trying to hit her over the head with a violin. Two policemen materialised behind her. They were carrying someone between them, one at the man’s head and one at his legs. They staggered round Miss Rosalie and the fighting old woman and laid the man carefully on the tiles, where he stayed, spread out a bit as if he was asleep, with his curly head turned peacefully towards the stairs.

Christopher found himself staring down at Tacroy.

At the same moment, Flavian said, “My God! It’s Mordecai Roberts!”

“I’m afraid so,” Frederick Parkinson called up to him. “He’s one of the Wraith gang all right. I followed him all the way into Series Seven before I went back to trace his body. He was one of their couriers. There was quite a lot of loot with him.” More policemen were appearing behind him, carrying boxes and the kind of waterproof bundles Christopher knew rather well.

Gabriel de Witt hurried past Christopher and Flavian and stood at the foot of the stairs looking down at Tacroy like a black, brooding bird. “So Roberts was their carrier, was he?” he said. “No wonder we were making no headway.” By then the hall was filled with people: more policemen, the rest of the Castle staff, footmen, the butler, and a crowd of interested housemaids. “Take him to the trance room,” Gabriel told Dr Simonson, “but don’t let him suspect anything. I want whatever he was fetching if possible.” He turned to look up at Flavian and Christopher. “Christopher, you had better be present at the questioning when Roberts returns to his body,” he said. “It will be valuable experience for you.”

Christopher threaded his way across the hall beside Flavian, feeling rather as if he was out of his body too. He was empty with horror. So this was what Uncle Ralph’s ‘experiments’ really were! Oh no! he thought. Let it all be a mistake!

He found it quite impossible to concentrate in the library. He kept hearing Miss Rosalie’s voice saying, “But Gabriel, they had actually butchered a whole tribe of mermaids!” and his mind kept going to those fishy bundles he had loaded on the horseless carriage in Series Five, and then to the silly ladies who had thought he was something called a clistoffer. He told himself that those fishy bundles had not been bundles of mermaid. It was all some terrible mistake. But then he thought of the way Tacroy had tried to warn him off, not only the time the dragon came, but several times before that, and he knew it was no mistake. He felt sick.

Flavian was almost as bad. “Fancy it being Mordecai!” he kept saying. “He’s been on the Castle staff for years. I used to like him!”

Both of them jumped up with a sort of relief when a footman came to fetch them to the Middle Drawing Room. At least, Christopher thought, as he followed Flavian across the hall, when everything came out nobody would expect him to be the next Chrestomanci any longer. Somehow the thought was not as comforting as he had hoped.

In the enormous drawing room, Gabriel was sitting at the centre of a half-circle of gilded armchairs, like an old black and grey king on his throne. To one side of him sat serious and important-looking policemen with notebooks and three men carrying briefcases who all wore whiskers more imposing than Papa’s. Flavian whispered that these were men from the Government. Miss Rosalie and the rest of Gabriel’s staff sat on the other side of the semicircle. Christopher was beckoned to a chair about half-way along. He had an excellent view when two sturdy warlock footmen brought Tacroy in and sat him in a chair facing the others.

“Mordecai Roberts,” one of the policemen said, “you are under arrest and I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence later. Do you wish to have a lawyer present with you?”

“Not particularly,” said Tacroy. In his body, he was not quite the Tacroy Christopher knew. Instead of the old green suit, he was wearing a much smarter brown one, with a blue silk cravat and a handkerchief that matched it in his top pocket. His boots were handmade calf. Though his curls were exactly the same, there were lines on his face that never appeared on the face of his spirit, laugh-lines set in a rather insolent and bitter pattern. He was pretending to lounge in his chair with one handmade boot swinging in a carefree way, but Christopher could tell he was not carefree at all.

“No point in a lawyer,” he said. “You caught me in the act after all. I’ve been a double agent for years now. There’s no way I could deny it.”

“What made you do it?” Miss Rosalie cried out.

“Money,” Tacroy said carelessly.

“Would you care to expand on that?” Gabriel said. “When you left the Castle in order to infiltrate the Wraith organisation, the Government agreed to pay you a good salary and to provide comfortable lodgings in Baker Street. You still have both.”

So much for the garret in Covent Garden! Christopher thought bitterly.

“Ah, but that was in the early days,” said Tacroy, “when the Wraith only operated in Series Twelve. He couldn’t offer me enough to tempt me then. As soon as he expanded into the rest of the Related Worlds, he offered me anything I cared to ask.” He took the silk handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully flicked imaginary dust off his good boots. “I didn’t take the offer straightaway, you know,” he said. “I got deeper in by degrees. Extravagance gets a hold on you.”

“Who is the Wraith?” Gabriel asked. “You owe the Government that information at least.”

Tacroy’s foot swung. He folded the handkerchief neatly and his eyes went carelessly round the half-circle of people facing him. Christopher kept the vaguest look on his face that he could manage, but Tacroy’s eyes passed over him just as they passed over everyone else, as if Tacroy had never seen him before. “There I can’t help you,” he said. “The man guards his identity very carefully. I only had dealings with his underlings.”

“Such as the woman Effisia Bell who owns the house in Kensington where your body was seized?” one of the policemen asked.

Tacroy shrugged. “She was one of them. Yes.”

Miss Bell, the Last Governess, Christopher thought. She had to be one of them. He kept his face so vague that it felt as stiff as the golden statue of Asheth.

“Who else can you name?” someone else asked.

“Nobody much, I’m afraid,” Tacroy said.

Several other people asked him the same question in different ways, but Tacroy simply swung his foot and said he couldn’t remember. At length Gabriel leaned forward. “We have taken a brief look at that horseless carriage on which your spirit smuggled the plunder,” he said. “It’s an ingenious object, Roberts.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Tacroy agreed. “It must have taken quite a while to perfect. You can see it had to be fluid enough to cross the World Edge, but solid enough so that the people in the other Series could load it when I got it there. I got the impression that the Wraith had to wait until he’d got the carriage right before he could expand into the Related Worlds.”

That’s not true! Christopher thought. And I used to load it! He’s lying about everything!

“Several wizards must have worked on that thing, Mordecai,” Miss Rosalie said. “Who were they?”

“Heaven knows,” said Tacroy. “No – wait a minute. Effie Bell dropped a name. Phelps, was it? Felper? Felperin?”

Gabriel and the policemen exchanged glances. Flavian murmured, “The Felperin brothers! We’ve suspected they were crooked for years.”

“Another curious thing, Roberts,” Gabriel said. “Our brief inspection of the carriage shows that it seems at one time to have been almost destroyed by fire.”

Christopher found that he had stopped breathing.

“Accident in the workshop, I suppose,” Tacroy said.

“Dragon fire, Mordecai,” said Dr Simonson. “I recognised it at once.”

Tacroy let his bitter, anxious, laughing eyes travel round everyone’s faces. Christopher still could not breathe. But once again Tacroy’s eyes passed over Christopher as if he had never seen him before.

He laughed. “I was joking. The sight of you all sitting round in judgement brings out the worst in me. Yes, it was burnt by a dragon objecting to a load of dragons’ blood I was collecting in Series Eight. It happened about a year ago.” Christopher began breathing at that. “I lost the whole load,” Tacroy said, “and was nearly too scalded to get back into my body. We had to suspend operations most of last autumn until the carriage was repaired. If you remember, I reported to you that the Wraith seemed to have stopped importing then.”

Christopher drew in some long relieved breaths and tried not to make them too obvious. Then one of the whiskered Government men spoke up. “Did you always go out alone?” he asked, and Christopher almost stopped breathing again.

“Of course I was alone,” said Tacroy. “What use would another traveller be? Mind you, I have absolutely no way of knowing how many other carriages the Wraith was sending out. He could have hundreds.”

And that’s nonsense! Christopher thought. Ours was the only one, or they wouldn’t have had to stop last autumn when I went to school and forgot. If he had not realised by then that Tacroy was protecting him, he would have known by the end of the morning. The questions went on and on. Tacroy’s eyes slid across Christopher over and over again, without a trace of recognition. And every time Tacroy’s answer should have incriminated Christopher, Tacroy lied, and followed the lie up with a smokescreen of other confessions to take people’s minds off the question. Christopher’s face went stiff from keeping the vague look on it. He stared at Tacroy’s bitter face and felt worse and worse. At least twice, he nearly jumped up and confessed. But that seemed such a waste of all Tacroy’s trouble.

The questions did not stop for lunch. The butler wheeled in a trolley of sandwiches, which everyone ate over pages of notes, while they asked more questions. Christopher was glad to see one of the footmen taking Tacroy some sandwiches too. Tacroy was pale as the milkiest coffee by then and his swinging boot was shaking. He bit into the sandwiches as if he was starving and answered the next questions with his mouth full.

Christopher bit into his own sandwich. It was salmon. He thought of mermaids and was nearly sick.

“What’s the matter?” whispered Flavian.

“Nothing. I just don’t like salmon,” Christopher whispered back. It would be stupid to give himself away now after Tacroy had worked so hard to keep him out of it. He put the sandwich to his mouth, but he just could not bring himself to take another bite.

“It could be the effect of that life-removal,” Flavian murmured anxiously.

“Yes, I expect that’s it,” Christopher said. He laid the sandwich down again, wondering how Tacroy could bear to eat his so ravenously.

The questions were still going on when the butler wheeled the trolley away. He came back again almost at once and whispered discreetly to Gabriel de Witt. Gabriel thought, decided something, and nodded. Then, to Christopher’s surprise, the butler came and leaned over him.

“Your mother is here, Master Christopher, waiting in the Small Saloon. If you will follow me.”

Christopher looked at Gabriel, but Gabriel was leaning forward to ask Tacroy who collected the packages when they arrived in London. Christopher got up to follow the butler. Tacroy’s eyes flickered after him. “Sorry,” Christopher heard him say. “My mind’s getting like a sieve. You’ll have to ask me that again.”

Mermaids, Christopher thought, as he crossed the hall after the butler. Fishy packages. Bundles of dragon’s blood. I knew it was dragon’s blood in Series Eight, but I didn’t know the dragon was objecting. What’s going to happen to Tacroy now? When the butler opened the door of the Small Saloon and ushered him in, he could hardly focus his mind on the large elegant room or the two ladies sitting in it.

Two ladies?

Christopher blinked at two wide silk skirts. The pink and lavender one belonged to Mama, who looked pale and upset. The brown and gold skirt that was quite as elegant belonged to the Last Governess. Christopher’s mind snapped away from mermaids and dragon’s blood and he stopped short half-way across the oriental carpet.

Mama held out a lavender glove to him. “Darling boy!” she said shakily. “How tall you are! You remember dear Miss Bell, don’t you, Christopher? She’s my companion these days. Your uncle has found us a nice house in Kensington.”

“Walls have ears,” remarked Miss Bell in her dullest voice. Christopher remembered how her hidden prettiness never did come out in front of Mama. He felt sorry for Mama.

“Christopher can deal with that, can’t you, dear?” said Mama.

Christopher pulled himself together. He had no doubt that the Saloon was hung with listening spells, probably one to each gold-framed picture. I ought to tell the police the Last Governess is here, he thought. But if the Last Governess was living with Mama, that would get Mama into trouble too. And he knew that if he gave the Last Governess away, she would tell about him and waste all Tacroy’s trouble.

“How did you get in?” he said. “There’s a spell round the grounds.”

“Your mama cried her eyes out at the lodge gates,” the Last Governess said, and gestured meaningly round the room to tell Christopher to do something about the listening spells.

Christopher would have liked to pretend not to understand, but he knew he dared not offend the Last Governess. A blanketing spell was enchanter’s magic and easy enough. He summoned one with an angry blink and, as usual, he overdid it. He thought he had gone deaf. Then he saw that Mama was tapping the side of her face with a puzzled expression and the Last Governess was shaking her head, trying to clear her ears. Hastily he scraped out the middle of the spell so that they could all hear one another inside the deafness.

“Darling,” Mama said tearfully, “we’ve come to take you away from all this. There’s a cab from the station waiting outside, and you’re coming back to Kensington to live with me. Your uncle wants me to be happy and he says he knows I can’t be happy until I’ve got you. He’s quite right of course.”

Only this morning, Christopher thought angrily, he would have danced with joy to hear Mama say this. Now he knew it was just another way to waste Tacroy’s trouble. And another plot of Uncle Ralph’s of course. Uncle Wraith! he thought. He looked at Mama and Mama looked appealingly back. He could see she meant what she said, even though she had let Uncle Ralph rule her mind completely. Christopher could hardly blame her for that. After all, he had let Uncle Ralph fascinate him, that time when Uncle Ralph tipped him sixpence years ago.

He looked at the Last Governess. “Your mama is quite well off now,” she told him in her smooth, composed way. “Your uncle has already restored nearly half your mama’s fortune.”

Nearly half! Christopher thought. Then what has he done with the rest of the money I earned him for nothing? He must be a millionaire several times over by now!

“And with you to help,” said the Last Governess, “in the way you always used to, you can restore the rest of your mama’s money in no time.”

In the way I always used to! Christopher thought. He remembered the smooth way the Last Governess had worked on him, first to find out about the Anywheres and then to get him to do exactly what Uncle Ralph wanted. He could not forgive her for that, though she was even more devoted to Uncle Ralph than Mama was. And remembering that, he looked at Mama again. Mama’s love for Christopher might be perfectly real, but she had left him to nursery maids and Governesses and she would leave him to the Last Governess as soon as they got to Kensington.

“We’re relying on you, darling,” said Mama. “Why are you looking so vague? All you have to do is climb out of this window and hide in the cab, and we’ll drive away without anyone being the wiser.”

I see, Christopher thought. Uncle Ralph knew Tacroy had been caught. So now he wanted Christopher to go on with the smuggling. He had sent Mama to fetch Christopher and the Last Governess to see that they did as Uncle Ralph wanted. Perhaps he was afraid Tacroy would give Christopher away. Well, if Tacroy could lie, so could Christopher.

“I wish I could,” he said, in a sad, hesitating way, although underneath he was suddenly as smooth and composed as the Last Governess. “I’d love to get out of here – but I can’t. When the dragon burnt me in Series Eight, that was my last life but one. Gabriel de Witt was so angry that he took my lives and hid them. If I go outside the Castle now I’ll die.”

Mama burst into tears. “That horrid old man! How awkward for everyone!”

“I think,” said the Last Governess, standing up, “that in that case there’s nothing to detain us here.”

“You’re right, dear,” Mama sobbed. She dried her eyes and gave Christopher a scented kiss.

“How terrible not to be able to call one’s lives one’s own!” she said. “Perhaps your uncle can think of something.”

Christopher watched the two of them hurry away, rustling expensively over the carpet as soon as they came out from the silence spell. He cancelled the spell with a dejected wave. Though he knew what both of them were like, he still felt hurt and disillusioned as he watched them through the window climbing into the cab that was waiting under the cedar trees of the drive. The only person he knew who had not tried to use him was Tacroy. And Tacroy was a criminal and a double crosser.

And so am I! Christopher thought. Now he had finally admitted this to himself, he found he could not bear to go back to the Middle Drawing Room to listen to people asking Tacroy questions. He trudged miserably up to his room instead. He opened the door. He stared.

A small girl in a dripping wet brown robe was sitting shivering on the edge of his bed. Her hair hung in damp tails round her pale round face. In one hand she seemed to be gripping a handful of soaking white fur. Her other hand was clutching a large waxed-paper parcel of what looked like books.

This was all I needed! Christopher thought. The Goddess had somehow got here and she had clearly brought her possessions with her.

“How did you get here?” Christopher said. The Goddess shook with shivers. She had left all her jewellery behind, which made her look very odd and plain. “B-by remembering what you said,” she answered through chattering teeth, “about having to leave a l-life b-behind. And of course there are t-two of me if you count the g-golden statue as one. B-but it wasn’t easy. I w-walked into the w-wall s-six times round the corner of m-my r-room b-before I g-got it right. Y-you m-must be b-brave to keep g-going through th-that awful P-place B-between. It was h-horrible – I n-nearly d-dropped P-proudfoot t-twice.”

“Proudfoot?” said Christopher.

The Goddess opened her hand with the white fur in it. The white fur squeaked in protest and began shivering too. “My kitten,” the Goddess explained. Christopher remembered how hot it was in Series Ten. Some time ago someone had put the scarf old Mrs Pawson had knitted him neatly away in his chest of drawers. He began searching for it. “I c-couldn’t leave her,” the Goddess said pleadingly. “I brought her feeding bottle with m-me. And I had to g-get away as soon as they l-left me alone after the p-portent. They know I know. I heard M-mother P-proudfoot saying they were going to have to l-look for a new L-living One at once.”

And clothes for the Goddess too, Christopher realised, hearing the way her teeth chattered. He tossed her the scarf. “Wrap the kitten in that. It was knitted by a witch so it’ll probably keep her safe. How on earth did you find the Castle?”

“B-by looking into every v-valley I c-came to,” said the Goddess. “I c-can’t think why you s-said you didn’t have w-witch-sight. I n-nearly m-missed the s-slit in the s-spell. It’s really f-faint!”

“Is that witch-sight?” Christopher said distractedly. He dumped an armful of his warmest clothes on the bed beside her. “Go in the washroom and get those on before you freeze.”

The Goddess put the kitten down carefully wrapped in a nest of scarf. It was still so young that it looked like a white rat. Christopher wondered how it had survived at all. “B-boy’s clothes?” the Goddess said.

“They’re all I’ve got,” he said. “And be quick. Maids come in and out of here all the time. You’ve got to hide. Gabriel de Witt told me not to have anything to do with Asheth. I don’t know what he’d do if he found you here!”

At this, the Goddess jumped off the bed and snatched up the clothes. Christopher was glad to see that she looked truly alarmed. He dashed for the door. “I’ll go and get a hiding place ready,” he said. “Wait here.”

Off he went at a run to the larger of the two old tower rooms, the one that had once been a wizard’s workshop. A runaway Goddess just about put the lid on his troubles, he thought. Still it was probably very lucky that everyone was taken up with poor Tacroy. With a bit of cunning, he ought to be able to keep the Goddess hidden here while he wrote to Dr Pawson to ask what on earth to do with her permanently.

He dashed up the spiral stair and looked round the dusty room. One way and another, he had not made much progress furnishing it as a den. It was empty apart from an old stool, worm-eaten workbenches and a rusty iron brazier. Hopeless for the Goddess! Christopher began conjuring desperately. He fetched all the cushions from the Small Saloon. Then on second thoughts he knew someone would notice.

He sent most of them back and conjured cushions from the Large Drawing Room, the Large Saloon, the Middle Saloon, the Small Drawing Room and anywhere else where he thought there would be nobody to see. Charcoal from the gardeners’ shed next to fill the brazier. Christopher summoned fire for it, almost in too much of a hurry to notice he had got it right for once. He remembered a saucepan and an old kettle by the stables and fetched those. A bucket of water he brought from the pump by the kitchen door.

What else? Milk for the kitten. It came in a whole churn and he had to tip some out into the saucepan and then send the churn back – the trouble was that he had no idea where things were kept in the Castle. Teapot, tea – he had no idea where those came from, and did the Goddess drink tea? She would have to. What then? Oh, cup, saucer, plates. He fetched the ones out of the grand cabinet in the dining room. They were quite pretty. She would like those. Then spoon, knife, fork. Of course none of the silver ones would respond. Christopher fetched what must have been the whole kitchen cutlery drawer with a crash, sorted hastily through it and sent it back like the churn. And she would need food. What was in the pantry?

The salmon sandwiches arrived, neatly wrapped in a white napkin. Christopher gagged. Mermaids. But he arranged them with the other things on the bench before taking a hasty look round. The charcoal had began to glow red in the brazier, but it needed something else to make it look homely. Yes, a carpet. The nice round one from the library would do. When the carpet came, it turned out twice as big as he had thought. He had to move the brazier to make room. There. Perfect.

He dashed back to his room. He arrived at the exact moment when Flavian opened its door and started to walk in.

Christopher hastily cast the fiercest invisibility spell he could. Flavian opened the door on utter blankness. To Christopher’s relief, he stood and stared at it.

“Er-hem!” Christopher said behind him. Flavian whirled round as if Christopher had stabbed him. Christopher said airily, and as loudly as he could, “Just practising my practical magic, Flavian.” The stumbling sounds he could hear from inside the blankness stopped. The Goddess knew Flavian was there. But he had to get her out of there.

“Oh. Were you? Good,” Flavian said. “Then I’m sorry to interrupt, but Gabriel says I’m to give you a lesson now because I won’t be here tomorrow. He wants a full muster of Castle staff to go after the Wraith.”

While Flavian was speaking, Christopher felt inside the invisibility in his room – using a magical sixth sense which up to then he did not know he had – and located first the Goddess standing by his bed, then the kitten nestled in the scarf on the bed, and sent them both fiercely to the tower room. At least, he hoped he had. He had never transported living things before and he had no idea if it was the same. He heard a heavy whoosh of displaced air from among the invisibility, which was the same kind of noise the milk churn had made, and he knew the Goddess had gone somewhere. He just had to hope she would understand. She had after all shown she could look after herself.

He cancelled the invisibility. The room seemed to be empty. “I like to practise in private,” he told Flavian.

Flavian shot him a look. “Come to the schoolroom.”

As they walked along the corridor, Christopher caught up with what Flavian had been saying. “You’re going after the Wraith tomorrow?”

“If we can get him,” Flavian said. “After you left, Mordecai cracked open enough to give us a few names and addresses. We think he was telling the truth.” He sighed. “I’d look forward to catching them, except that I can’t get over Mordecai being one of them!”

What about Mama? Christopher wondered anxiously. He wished he could think of a way to warn her, but he had no idea where in Kensington she was living.

They reached the schoolroom. The moment they got there, Christopher realised that he had only cancelled the invisibility on his room, not on the Goddess or the kitten. He fumbled around with his mind, trying to find her in the tower room – or wherever – and get her visible again. But wherever he had sent her, she seemed too far away for him to find. The result was that he did not hear anything Flavian said for at least twenty minutes.

“I said,” Flavian said heavily, “that you seem a bit vague.”

He had said it several times, Christopher could tell. He said hastily, “I was wondering what was going to happen to Ta—Mordecai Roberts now.”

“Prison, I suppose,” Flavian answered sadly. “He’ll be in clink for years.”

“But they’ll have to put a special clink round his spirit to stop that getting away, won’t they?” Christopher said.

To his surprise, Flavian exploded. “That’s just the kind of damn-fool, frivolous, unfeeling remark you would make!” he cried out. “Of all the hard-hearted, toffee-nosed, superior little beggars I’ve ever met, you’re the worst! Sometimes I don’t think you have a soul – just a bundle of worthless lives instead!”

Christopher stared at Flavian’s usually pale face all pink with passion, and tried to protest that he had not meant to be unfeeling. He had only meant that it must be quite hard to keep a spirit traveller in prison. But Flavian, now he had started, seemed quite unable to stop.

“You seem to think,” he shouted, “that those nine lives give you the right to behave like the Lord of Creation! That, or there’s a stone wall round you. If anyone so much as tries to be friendly, all they get is haughty stares, vague looks, or pure damn rudeness! Goodness knows, I’ve tried. Gabriel’s tried. Rosalie’s tried. So have all the maids, and they say you don’t even notice them! And now you make jokes about poor Mordecai! I’ve had enough! I’m sick of you!”

Christopher had no idea that people saw him like this. He was astounded. What’s gone wrong with me? he thought. I’m nice really! When he went to the Anywheres as a small boy, everyone had liked him. Everybody had smiled. Total strangers had given him things. Christopher saw that he had gone on thinking that people only had to see him to like him, and it was only too clear that nobody did.

He looked at Flavian, breathing hard and glaring at him. He seemed to have hurt Flavian’s feelings badly. He had not thought Flavian had feelings to hurt. And it made it worse somehow that he had not meant to make a joke about Tacroy – not when Tacroy had just spent the whole day lying on his behalf. He liked Tacroy. The trouble was, he did not dare tell Flavian he did. Nor did he dare say that his mind had mostly been on the Goddess. So what could he say?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly sorry.” His voice came out wobbly with shock. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings – not this time anyway – really.”

“Well!” said Flavian. The pink in his face died away. He leaned back in his chair, staring. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say sorry – meaning it, that is. I suppose it’s some kind of breakthrough.” He clapped his chair back to the floor and stood up. “Sorry I lost my temper. But I don’t think I can go on with this lesson today. I feel too emotional. Run away, and I’ll make up for it after tomorrow.”

Christopher found himself free – and with mixed feelings about it – to go and look for the Goddess. He hurried to the tower room.

To his great relief she was there, in a strong smell of boiled-over milk, sitting on the many-coloured silk cushions, feeding the kitten out of a tiny dolls’ feeding bottle. With the charcoal warming the air and the carpet – which now had a singed patch beside the brazier – covering stone floor, the room seemed suddenly homely.

The Goddess greeted him with a most unGoddesslike giggle. “You forgot to make me visible again! I’ve never done invisibility – it took me ages to find how to cancel it, and I had to stand still the whole time in case I trod on Proudfoot. Thanks for doing this room. Those cups are really pretty.”

Christopher giggled too at the sight of the Goddess in his Norfolk jacket and knee-breeches. If you looked just at the clothes, she was a plump boy, rather like Oneir, but if you looked at her grubby bare feet and her long hair, you hardly knew what she was. “You don’t look much like the Living Asheth—” he began.

“Don’t!” The Goddess sprang to her knees, carefully bringing the kitten and its bottle with her. “Don’t say that name! Don’t even think it! She’s me, you know, as much as I’m her, and if anyone reminds her, she’ll notice where I am and send the Arm of Asheth!”

Christopher realised that this must be true or the Goddess could not have got to his world alive. “Then what am I supposed to call you?”

“Millie,” said the Goddess firmly, “like the girl in the school books.”

He had known she would get round to school before long. He tried to keep her off the subject by asking, “Why do you call the kitten Proudfoot? Isn’t that dangerous too?”

“A bit,” the Goddess agreed. “But I had to put Mother Proudfoot off the scent – she was ever so flattered – I felt mean deceiving her. Luckily there was an even better reason to call her that. Look.”

She laid the dolls’ bottle down and gently spread one of the kitten’s tiny front paws out over the top of her finger. Its claws were pink. The paw looked like a very small daisy, Christopher thought, kneeling down to look. Then he realised that there were an awful lot of pink claws – at least seven of them in fact. “She has a holy foot,” the Goddess said solemnly. “That means she carries the luck of a certain golden deity. When I saw it, I knew it meant I should get here and go to school.”

They were back on the Goddess’s favourite subject again. Fortunately, at that moment a powerful contralto voice spoke outside the door. “Wong,” it said.

“Throgmorten!” Christopher said. He jumped up in great relief and went to open the door. “He won’t hurt the kitten, will he?”

“He’d better not!” said the Goddess.

But Throgmorten was entirely glad to see all of them. He ran to the Goddess with his tail up and the Goddess, despite greeting him, “Hallo, you vile cat!” rubbed Throgmorten’s ears and was obviously delighted to see him. Throgmorten gave the kitten an owner-like sniff and then settled down between Christopher and the fire, purring like a rusty clock.

In spite of this interruption, it was only a matter of time before the Goddess got round to school again. “You got into trouble – didn’t you? – when I kept you in the wall,” she said, thoughtfully eating a salmon sandwich. Christopher had to look away. “I know you did, or you’d have said. What are these funny fishy things?”

“Salmon sandwiches,” Christopher said with a shudder, and he told her about the way Gabriel had put his ninth life in a gold ring, in order to take his mind off mermaids.

“Without even asking you first?” the Goddess said indignantly. “Now you’re the one who’s worst off. Just let me get settled in at school and I’ll think of a way to get that life back for you.”

Christopher realised that the time had come to explain the realities of life in Series Twelve to the Goddess. “Look,” he said, as kindly as he could, “I don’t think you can go to school – or not to a boarding school like the one in your books. They cost no end of money. Even the uniforms are expensive. And you haven’t even brought your jewellery to sell.”

To his surprise, the Goddess was quite unconcerned. “My jewellery was nearly all silver. I couldn’t bring it without harming you,” she pointed out. “I came prepared to earn the money.” Christopher wondered how. By showing her four arms in a freak show? “I know I will,” the Goddess said confidently. “I have Proudfoot’s holy foot as an omen.”

She really did seem to believe this. “My idea was to write to Dr Pawson,” Christopher said.

“That might help,” the Goddess agreed. “When Millie’s friend Cora Hope-fforbes’s father broke his neck hunting, she had to borrow her school fees. I do know all about these things, you see.”

Christopher sighed and conjured some paper and a pen from the schoolroom to write to Dr Pawson with. This intrigued the Goddess mightily.

“How did you do that? Can I learn to do it too?” she wanted to know.

“Why not?” said Christopher. “Gabriel said you were obviously an enchantress. The main rule is to visualise the thing you want to bring on its own. When Flavian started me conjuring, I kept fetching bits of wall and table too.”

They spent the next hour or so conjuring things the Goddess needed: more charcoal, a dirt-tray for the kitten, socks for the Goddess, a blanket and several scent-sprays to counteract the strong odour of Throgmorten. In between, they considered what to write to Dr Pawson and the Goddess made notes about it in slanting foreign-looking handwriting. They had not made much progress with the letter when the gong sounded distantly for supper. Then Christopher had to agree that the Goddess could conjure his supper tray to the tower. “But I have to go to the schoolroom first,” he warned her, “or the maid that brings it will guess. Give me five minutes.”

He arrived at the schoolroom at the same time as the maid. Remembering Flavian’s outburst, Christopher looked at the maid carefully and then smiled at her – at least, it was partly to keep her from suspecting about the Goddess, but he smiled at her anyway.

The maid was obviously delighted to be noticed. She leant on the table beside the tray and started to talk. “The police carried off that old woman,” she said, “about an hour ago. Kicking and shouting, she was. Sally and I sneaked into the hall to watch. It was as good as a play!”

“What about Ta—Mordecai Roberts?” Christopher asked.

“Held for further questioning,” said the maid, “with spells all over him. Poor Mr Roberts – Sally said he looked tired to death when she took him in his supper. He’s in that little room next to the library. I know he’s done wrong, but I keep trying to make an excuse to go in and have a chat to him – cheer him up a bit. Bertha’s been in. She got to make up the bed there, lucky thing!”

Christopher was interested, in spite of wishing the maid would go. “You know Mordecai Roberts then?”

“Know him!” said the maid. “When he was working at the Castle, I reckon we were all a bit sweet on him.” Here Christopher noticed that his supper tray was beginning to jiggle. He slammed his hand down on it. “You must admit,” the maid said, luckily not looking at the tray, “Mr Roberts is that good-looking – and so pleasant with it. I’ll name no names, but there were quite a few girls who went out of their way to bump into Mr Roberts in corridors. Silly things! Everyone knew he only had eyes for Miss Rosalie.”

“Miss Rosalie!” Christopher exclaimed, more interested than ever, and he held the tray down with all his strength. The Goddess clearly thought she had got something wrong and was summoning it mightily.

“Oh yes. It was Mr Roberts taught Miss Rosalie to play cricket,” said the maid. “But somehow they never could agree. It was said that it was because of her that Mr Roberts got himself sent off on that job in London. She did him a bad turn, did Miss Rosalie.” Then, to Christopher’s relief, she added, “But I ought to get along and let you eat your supper before it’s cold.”

“Yes,” Christopher said thankfully, leaning on the tray for all he was worth and desperately trying not to seem rude at the same time. “Er – if you do get to see Tac—Mr Roberts, give him my regards. I met him in London once.”

“Will do,” the maid said cheerfully and left at last. Christopher’s arms were weak by then. The tray exploded out from under his hands and vanished. A good deal of the table vanished with it. Christopher pelted back to the tower.

“You silly fool!” he began as he opened the door.

The Goddess just pointed to two-thirds of the schoolroom table perched on a workbench. Both of them screamed with laughter.

This was wonderfully jolly, Christopher thought, when he had recovered enough to share his supper with the Goddess and Throgmorten. It was thoroughly companionable knowing a person who had the same sort of magic. He had a feeling that this was the real reason why he had kept visiting the Temple of Asheth. All the same, now that the maid had put Tacroy into his head again, Christopher could not get him out of it. While he talked and laughed with the Goddess, he could actually feel Tacroy, downstairs somewhere, at the other end of the Castle, and the spells which held him, which were obviously uncomfortable. He could feel that Tacroy had no hope at all.

“Would you help me do something?” he asked the Goddess. “I know I didn’t help you—”

“But you did!” said the Goddess. “You’re helping me now, without even grumbling about the nuisance.”

“There’s a friend of mine who’s a prisoner downstairs,” Christopher said. “I think it’s going to take two of us to break the spells and get him away safely.”

“Of course,” said the Goddess. She said it so readily that Christopher realised he would have to tell her why Tacroy was there. If he let her help without telling her what she was in for, he would be as bad as Uncle Ralph.

“Wait,” he said. “I’m as bad as he is.” And he told her about the Wraith and Uncle Ralph’s experiments and even about the mermaids – all of it.

“Gosh!” said the Goddess. It was a word she must have picked up from her Millie books. “You are in a mess! Did Throgmorten really scratch your uncle? Good cat!”

She was all for going to rescue Tacroy at once. Christopher had to hang on to the back of the Norfolk jacket to stop her. “No, listen!” he said. “They’re all going to round up the rest of the Wraith gang tomorrow. We can set Tacroy free while they’re gone. And if they catch my uncle, Gabriel might be so pleased that he won’t mind finding Tacroy gone.”

The Goddess consented to wait till morning. Christopher conjured her a pair of his pyjamas and left her finishing the salmon sandwiches as a bedtime snack. But, remembering her treachery over the portent, he took care to seal the door behind him with the strongest spell he knew.

He was woken up next morning by a churn of milk landing beside his bed. This was followed by the remains of the schoolroom table. Christopher sent both back to the right places and rushed to the tower, dressing as he went. It looked as if the Goddess was getting impatient.

He found her standing helplessly over a hamper of loaves and a huge ham. “I’ve forgotten the right way to send things back,” she confessed. “And I boiled that packet of tea in the kettle, but it doesn’t taste nice. What did I do wrong?”

Christopher sorted her out as well as he could and chased off to the schoolroom for his own breakfast. The maid was already there, holding the tray, looking quizzical. Christopher smiled at her nervously. She grinned and nodded towards the table. It had all four legs at one end, two of them sticking up into the air.

“Oh,” he said. “I – er—”

“Come clean,” she said. “It was you disappeared the antique cups in the dining room, wasn’t it? I told the butler I’d tax you with it.”

“Well, yes,” said Christopher, knowing the Goddess was drinking freshly made tea out of one at the moment. “I’ll put them back. They’re not broken.”

“They’d better not be,” said the maid. “They’re worth a fortune, those cups. Now do you mind putting this table to rights so that I can put this tray down before I drop it?” While Christopher was turning the table to its proper shape, she remarked, “Feeling your gifts all of a sudden, aren’t you? Things keep popping in and out all over the Castle this morning. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll have everything back in its proper place before ten o’clock. After Monsignor de Witt and the others leave to catch those thieves, the butler’s going to go round checking the whole Castle.”

She stayed and ate some of his toast and marmalade. As she remarked, she had had her breakfast two hours ago. Her name turned out to be Erica and she was a valuable source of information as well as being nice. But Christopher knew he should not have taught the Goddess to conjure. He would never keep her a secret at this rate. Then, when Erica had gone and he was free to consider his problems, it dawned on Christopher that he could solve two of them at one go. All he had to do was to ask Tacroy to take the Goddess with him when he escaped. That made it more urgent than ever to get Tacroy free.

Gabriel de Witt and his assistants left promptly at ten. Everyone gathered in the hall round the five-pointed star, some of them carrying leather cases, some simply in outdoor clothes. Most of the footmen and two of the stable-hands were going too. Everyone looked sober and determined and Flavian, for one, looked outright nervous. He kept running his finger round his high starched collar. Christopher could see him sweating even from the top of the stairs.

Christopher and the Goddess watched from behind the marble balustrade near the black door of Gabriel’s study. They were inside a very carefully constructed cloud of invisibility, which blotted out the two of them completely but not Throgmorten trotting at their heels. Throgmorten had refused to come near enough to be blotted out too, but nothing would stop him following them.

“Leave him,” the Goddess said. “He knows what I’d do to him if he gives us away.”

As the silver-voiced clock over the library struck ten, Gabriel came out of his study and stalked down the staircase, wearing a hat even taller and shinier than Papa’s. Throgmorten, to Christopher’s relief, ignored him. But he felt a strong wrench of worry about Mama. She was certainly going to be arrested, and all she had done was to believe the lies Uncle Ralph had told her.

Gabriel reached the hall and took a look round to see that all his troops were ready. When he saw they were, he pulled on a pair of black gloves and paced into the centre of the five-pointed star, where he went on pacing, growing smaller and smaller and further away as he walked. Miss Rosalie and Dr Simonson followed and began to diminish too. The others went after them two by two. When there was only a tiny, distant black line of them, Christopher said. “I think we can go now.”

They began to creep downstairs, still in the cloud of invisibility. The distant line of Gabriel’s troops disappeared before they were three stairs down. They went faster. But they were still only half-way down when things began to go wrong.

Flames burst out all over the surface of the star. They were malignant-looking green-purple flames that filled the hall with vile-smelling green smoke. “What is it?” the Goddess coughed.

“They’re using dragons’ blood,” Christopher said. He meant to sound soothing, but he found he was staring uneasily at those flames.

All at once, the pentacle thundered up into a tall five-pointed fire, ten feet, twenty feet high. The Goddess’s invisible hair frizzled. Before they could back up the stairs out of range, the flames had parted, leaning majestically to left and right. Out of the gap Miss Rosalie stumbled, pulling Flavian by one arm. Following them came Dr Simonson dragging a screaming Castle sorceress – Beryl, Christopher thought her name was. By this time, he was standing stock still, staring at the utter rout of Gabriel’s troops. Singed and wretched and staggering, all the people who had just set off came pouring back through the gap in the flames and backed away to the sides of the hall with their arms up in front of their faces, coughing in the green smoke.

Christopher looked and looked, but he could not see Gabriel de Witt anywhere among them.

As soon as Frederick Parkinson and the last footman had staggered out into the hall, the flames dipped and died, leaving the pink marble and the dome stained green. The pentagram shimmered into little blades of fire burning over blackness. Uncle Ralph came carefully stepping out among the flames. He had a long gun under one arm and what seemed to be a bag in his hand. Christopher was reminded of nothing so much as one of his Chant uncles going shooting over a stubble field. Probably it was Uncle Ralph’s freckled tweeds which put that into his mind. Rather sadly, he wished he had known more about people when he first met Uncle Ralph. He had a foxy, shoddy look. Christopher knew he would never admire someone like Uncle Ralph now.

“Would you like me to throw a marble washstand at him?” whispered the Goddess.

“Wait – I think he’s an enchanter too,” Christopher whispered back.

“CHRISTOPHER!” shouted Uncle Ralph. The greened dome rang with it. “Christopher, where are you hiding? I can feel you near. Come out, or you’ll regret it!”

Reluctantly, Christopher parted the invisibility round himself and stepped to the middle of the staircase. “What happened to Gabriel de Witt?” he said.

Uncle Ralph laughed. “This.” He threw the bag he was carrying so that it spread and skidded to a stop at the foot of the stairs. Christopher stared down – rather as he had stared down at Tacroy – at a long, limp, transparent shape that was unquestionably Gabriel de Witt’s. “That’s his eighth life there,” said Uncle Ralph. “I did that with those weapons you brought me from Series One, Christopher. This one works a treat.” He patted the gun under his arm.

“I spread the rest of his lives out all over the Related Worlds. He won’t trouble us again. And the other weapons you brought me work even better.” He gave his moustache a sly tweak and grinned up at Christopher. “I had the weapons all set up to meet de Witt’s folk and took the magic out of them in a twinkling. None of them can cast a spell to save their lives now. So there’s nothing to stop us working together just like the old days. You are still working for me, aren’t you, Christopher?”

“No,” said Christopher, and stood there expecting to have his remaining lives blasted in all directions the next second.

Uncle Ralph only laughed. “Yes, you are, stupid boy. You’re unmasked. All these people standing here know you were my main carrier now. You have to work with me or go to prison – and I’m moving into this Castle with you to make sure of you.”

There was a long, warbling cry from behind Christopher. A ginger streak shot downstairs past him. Uncle Ralph stared, saw his danger, and made to raise his gun. But Throgmorten was almost on him by then. Uncle Ralph realised he had no time to shoot and prudently vanished instead, in a spiral of green steam. All Throgmorten got of him was a three-cornered piece of tweed with some blood on it. He stood in a frustrated arch on the blackened pentacle, spitting his rage.

Christopher raced down the stairs. “Shut all the doors!” he shouted to the stunned, staring Castle people. “Don’t let Throgmorten out of the hall! I want him on guard to stop Uncle Ralph coming back.”

“Don’t be stupid!” the Goddess shouted, galloping after him, visible to everyone. “Throgmorten’s a Temple cat – he understands speech. Just ask him.”

Christopher wished he had known that before. Since it was too late to do anything much about anything else, he knelt on the greenishly charred floor and spoke to Throgmorten. “Can you guard this pentacle, please, and make sure Uncle Ralph doesn’t come back? You know Uncle Ralph wanted to cut you to pieces? Well, you can cut him to pieces if he shows up again.”

“Wong!” Throgmorten agreed with his tail lashing enthusiastically. He sat himself down at one point of the star and stared fixedly at it, as still as if he were watching a giant mousehole. Malice oozed out of every hair of him.

It was clear Uncle Ralph would not get past Throgmorten in a hurry. Christopher stood up to find himself and the Goddess inside a ring of Gabriel’s dejected helpers. Most of them were staring at the Goddess.

“This is my friend the G—Millie,” he said.

“Pleased to meet you,” Flavian said wanly.

Dr Simonson swept Flavian aside. “Well what are we going to do now?” he said. “Gabriel’s gone and we’re left with this brat – who turns out to be the little crook I always suspected he was – and not a spell to rub together between us! What I say—”

“We must inform the Minister,” said Mr Wilkinson the librarian.

“Now wait a moment,” said Miss Rosalie. “The Minister’s only a minor warlock, and Christopher said he wasn’t working for the Wraith any more.”

“That child would say anything,” said Dr Simonson.

In their usual way, they were behaving as if Christopher were not there. He beckoned to the Goddess and backed out from among them, leaving them crowded round Miss Rosalie arguing.

“What are we doing?” the Goddess asked.

“Getting Tacroy out before they think of stopping us,” said Christopher. “After that, I want to make sure Throgmorten catches Uncle Ralph, even if it’s the last thing I do.”

They found Tacroy sitting dejectedly by the table in an empty little room. From the tumbled look of the camp bed in the corner, Tacroy had not managed to get much sleep that night. The door of the room was half open and at first sight there seemed no reason why Tacroy did not simply walk out. But now the Goddess had made it clear to Christopher what witch-sight was, all he had to do was look at the room the way he looked at The Place Between to understand why Tacroy stayed where he was. There were strands of spell across the doorway. The floor was knee-deep in more, criss-crossed all over. Tacroy himself was inside a perfect mass of other spells, intricately knotted over him, particularly round his head.

“You were right about it needing two of us,” the Goddess said. “You do him, and I’ll go and look for a broom and do the rest.”

Christopher pushed through the spells over the door and waded through the others until he reached Tacroy. Tacroy did not look up. Perhaps he could not even see Christopher or hear him. Christopher began gently picking the spells undone, rather in the way you untie a mass of tight knots round a parcel, and because it was so boring and fiddly, he talked to Tacroy while he worked. He talked all the time the Goddess was gone. Naturally, most of what he told him was about that cricket match. “You missed that deliberately, didn’t you?” he said. “Were you afraid I’d give you away?”

Tacroy gave no sign of having heard, but as Christopher went on to tell him the way Miss Rosalie batted and how bad Flavian was, the hard tired lines of his face gradually smoothed out behind the strands of spell, and he grew more like the Tacroy Christopher knew from The Place Between.

“So, thanks to you teaching me, we won by two runs,” Christopher was saying, when the Goddess reappeared with the broom Miss Rosalie used to chase Throgmorten and started sweeping the room-spells into heaps as if they were cobwebs.

Tacroy almost smiled. Christopher told him who the Goddess was and then explained what had just happened in the hall. The smile clouded away from Tacroy’s face. He said, a little thickly, “Then I rather wasted my time trying to keep you out of it, didn’t I?”

“Not really,” said Christopher, wrestling with a spell-knot above Tacroy’s left ear.

The bitter lines came back to Tacroy’s face. “Don’t run away with the idea that I’m a knight in shining armour,” he said. “I knew what was in most of those parcels.”

“The mermaids?” Christopher asked. It was the most important question he had ever asked.

“Not till afterwards,” Tacroy admitted. “But you notice I didn’t stop when I knew. When I first met you, I would have reported you quite cheerfully to Gabriel de Witt if you hadn’t been that small. And I knew Gabriel had some kind of a trap set up in Series Ten that time you lost a life. I just hadn’t expected it would be that lethal. And—”

“Stow it, Tacroy,” said Christopher.

“Tacroy?” said Tacroy. “Is that my spirit name?” When Christopher nodded, concentrating on the knot, Tacroy muttered, “Well, that’s one less hold they have.” Then as the Goddess, having dealt with the room-spells, came and leant on her broom, watching his face as Christopher worked, he said, “You’ll know me again, young lady.”

The Goddess nodded. “You’re like Christopher and me, aren’t you? There’s a part of you that’s somewhere else.”

Tacroy’s face flushed a sudden red. Christopher could feel sweat on it under his fingers. Very surprised, he asked, “Where is the rest of you?”

He saw Tacroy’s eyes swivel towards his, imploringly. “Series Eleven – don’t ask any more! Don’t ask me!” he said. “Under these spells I’d have to tell you and then we’d all catch it!”

He sounded so desperate that Christopher considerately did not ask any more – though he could not resist exchanging a look with the Goddess – and worked until he got that knot undone at last. It proved to be the key knot. The rest of the spell at once fell away in dissolving strands round Tacroy’s handmade boots. Tacroy stood up stiffly and stretched.

“Thanks,” he said. “What a relief! You can’t imagine how vile it feels having a net bag round your spirit. What now?”

“Start running,” said Christopher. “Do you want me to break the spells round the grounds for you?”

Tacroy’s arms stopped in the middle of a stretch. “Now you stow it!” he said. “From what you said, there’s no one apart from you two youngsters and me in this Castle with any magic worth speaking of, and your uncle could come back any minute. And you expect me just to walk out?”

“Well—”

But at that moment, Miss Rosalie came in with Dr Simonson and most of the rest of Gabriel’s staff crowding behind her. “Why, Mordecai!” she said brightly. “Do I actually hear you uttering a noble sentiment?”

Tacroy took his arms down and folded them. “Strictly practical,” he said. “You know me, Rosalie. Have you come to lock me up again? I can’t see you doing it without your magic, but you’re welcome to try.”

Miss Rosalie drew herself up to a majestic five feet. “I wasn’t coming to see you at all,” she said. “We were looking for Christopher. Christopher, we’re going to have to ask you to take over as the next Chrestomanci, at least for the moment. The Government will probably appoint some other enchanter in the end, but this is such a crisis. Do you think you can do it, dear?”

They were all staring at Christopher appealingly, even Dr Simonson. Christopher wanted to laugh. “You knew I’d have to,” he said, “and I will on two conditions. I want Mordecai Roberts set free and not arrested again afterwards. And I want the G—Millie as my chief helper and she’s to be paid by being sent to a boarding school.”

“Anything you want, dear,” Miss Rosalie said hastily.

“Good,” said Christopher. “Then let’s go back to the hall.”

In the hall, people were gathering dejectedly under the green-stained dome. The butler was there and two men in cook’s hats, and the housekeeper with most of the maids and footmen. “Tell them to get the gardeners and the stable people too,” Christopher said, and went to look at the five-pointed star where Throgmorten sat watching. By screwing up his eyes and forcing his witch-sight to its utmost, he could see a tiny round space in the middle of the star – a sort of ghostly mousehole – which Throgmorten never took his eyes off. Throgmorten had quite impressive magic. On the other hand, Throgmorten would be only too pleased if Uncle Ralph came back. “How do we stop someone coming through?” Christopher asked.

Tacroy ran to a cupboard under the staircase and came back with an armful of queer candles in star-shaped holders. He showed Christopher and the Goddess where to put them and what words to say. Then he had Christopher stand back and conjure all the candles to flame. Tacroy was, Christopher realised, among other things, a fully-trained magician. As the candles flared up, Throgmorten’s tail twitched scornfully.

“The cat’s right,” Tacroy said. “This would stop most people, but with the amount of dragon’s blood your uncle has stored away, he could break through any time he wants.”

“Then we’ll catch him when he does,” Christopher said. He knew what he would do himself, if he knew Throgmorten was lying in wait, and he was fairly sure Uncle Ralph would do the same. He suspected their minds worked the same way. If he was right, it would take Uncle Ralph a little time to get ready.

By this time, quite a crowd of people had come into the hall through the big front door, where they were standing clutching their caps and awkwardly brushing earth off their boots. Christopher went to stand a little way up the staircase, looking down on the long, limp remains of Gabriel de Witt and everyone’s faces, anxious and depressed, lit half by the flames of the strange candles. He knew just what needed saying. And he was surprised to find he was enjoying himself hugely.

He shouted, “Hands up everyone who can do magic.”

Most of the gardeners’ hands went up and so did a couple of the stable lads’. When he looked at the indoor people, he saw the butler’s hand was up and one of the cooks’. There was the boot-boy who had worked the scoreboard and three of the maids, one of whom was Erica. Tacroy’s hand was up and so was the Goddess’s. Everyone else was looking at the floor, dismally.

Christopher shouted, “Now hands up anyone who can do woodwork or metalwork.”

Quite a number of the dismal people put their hands up, looking surprised. Dr Simonson was one, Flavian was another. All the stable people had their hands up, and the gardeners too. Good. Now all they needed was encouragement.

“Right,” said Christopher. “We’ve got two things to do. We’ve got to keep my uncle out of here until we’re ready to catch him. And we’ve got to get Gabriel de Witt back.”

The second thing made everyone murmur with surprise, and then with hope. Christopher knew he had been right to say it, even though he was not sure it could be done – and as far as his own feelings went, Gabriel could stay in eight limp pieces for the rest of both their lives. He found he was enjoying himself more than ever.

“That’s what I said,” he said. “My uncle didn’t kill Gabriel. He just scattered all his lives. We’ll have to find them and put them together. But first—” he looked at the greened glass of the dome and the chandelier that hung from it on its long chain “—I want a birdcage-thing made, big enough to cover the pentacle, and hung from there, so that it can be triggered by a spell to come down over anything that tries to get through.” He pointed to Dr Simonson. “You’re in charge of making it. Collect everyone who can do woodwork and metalwork, but make sure some of them can do magic too. I want it reinforced with spells to stop anyone breaking out of it.”

Dr Simonson’s beard began to jut in a proud, responsible way. He gave a slightly mocking bow. “It shall be done.”

Christopher supposed he deserved that. The way he was behaving would have had the Last Governess accusing him of having a swelled head. But then he was beginning to suspect that he worked best when he was feeling bumptious. He was annoyed with the Last Governess for stopping him realising this before.

“But before anyone starts on the birdcage,” he said, “the spells round the ground need reinforcing, or my uncle will try to bring the Wraith organisation in that way. I want everyone except T—Mordecai and the G—Millie to go all round the fences and walls and hedges casting every spell they can think of that will keep people out.”

That made a mixed murmur. Gardeners and housemaids looked at one another doubtfully. One of the gardeners’ hands went up. “Mr McLintock, Head Gardener,” he announced himself. “I’m not questioning your wisdom, lad – just wishing to explain that our speciality is growing things, green fingers, and the like, and not any too much to do with defence.”

“But you can grow cactuses and bushes with long spines and ten-foot nettles and so on, can’t you?” Christopher said.

Mr McLintock nodded, with a pawky sort of grin. “Aye. Thistles too and poison ivy.”

This emboldened the cook to put his hand up. “Je suis chef de cuisine,” he said. “A cook only. My magic is with the good food.”

“I bet you can reverse it,” said Christopher. “Go and poison the walls. Or if you can’t, hang rotten steaks and mouldy soufflées on them.”

“Not since my student days have I—” the cook began indignantly. But this seemed to bring back memories to him. A wistful look came over his face, which was followed by a gleeful grin. “I will try,” he said.

Now Erica’s hand was up. “If you please,” she said, “me and Sally and Bertha can only really do little things – charms and sendings and the like.”

“Well go and do them – as many as you can,” Christopher said. “A wall is built brick by brick after all.” That expression pleased him. He caught the Goddess’s eye. “If you can’t think what charms to work, consult my assistant, Millie. She’s full of ideas.”

The Goddess grinned. So did the boot-boy. From the look on his face, he was full of appalling notions which he could hardly wait to try. Christopher watched the boot-boy troop out with the gardeners, the cook and the maids, and rather envied him.

He beckoned Flavian over. “Flavian, there’s still loads of magic I don’t know. Would you mind standing by to teach me things as they come up?”

“Well, I—” Flavian gave an embarrassed sideways look at Tacroy leaning on the banisters below Christopher. “Mordecai could do that just as well.”

“Yes, but I’m going to need him to go into trances and look for Gabriel’s lives,” said Christopher.

“Are you indeed?” said Tacroy. “And Gabriel’s going to burst into tears of joy when he sees me, isn’t he?”

“I’ll go with you,” said Christopher.

“Quite like old times,” said Tacroy. “Gabriel’s going to burst into tears when he sees you too. What it is to be loved!” His eyes flickered over at Miss Rosalie. “If only I had my young lady who plays the harp now—”

“Don’t be absurd, Mordecai,” said Miss Rosalie. “You shall have everything you need. What do you want the rest of us to do, Christopher? Mr Wilkinson and I are no good at woodwork, and nor are Beryl and Yolande.”

“You can act as advisers,” said Christopher.

The next twenty-four hours were the busiest Christopher had ever spent. They held a council-of-war in Gabriel’s twilight office, where Christopher discovered that some of the dark panels rolled back to connect it with the rooms on either side. Christopher had the desks and the typewriting machines shoved to the walls and turned the whole space into one big operations room. It was much lighter like that, and became more and more crowded and busy as the various plans were set up.

There were, everyone told Christopher, many different ways of divining whether a living person was present in a world. Mr Wilkinson had whole lists of methods. It was agreed that they try to use these to narrow down Tacroy’s search for Gabriel. One of every kind was set up, but since nobody was sure if Gabriel’s separated lives quite counted as alive, they all had to be set to maximum strength, and it turned out that, apart from Christopher, only the Goddess had strong enough magic to activate them and tune them from Series to Series. But anyone could watch them. The room was soon full of tense helpers staring into globes, mirrors, pools of mercury or ink, and spare sheets coated with liquid crystal, while the Goddess was kept busy adjusting the various spells and making a chart, in her foreign writing, of the readings from all the devices.

Miss Rosalie insisted that the council-of-war should also decide how to tell the Ministry what was going on, but that never did get decided, because Christopher kept getting called away. First Dr Simonson called him down to the hall to explain how they planned to make the birdcage. Dr Simonson was taking it much more seriously than Christopher expected. “It’s highly unorthodox,” he said, “but who cares so long as it catches our man?”

Christopher was half-way upstairs again when the butler came to tell Christopher that they had done all they could think of to defend the grounds, and would Master Christopher come and see? So Christopher went – and marvelled. The main gates, and the other smaller ones, were hung with curses and dripping poison. Brambles with six-inch thorns had been grown along the walls, while the hedges put Christopher in mind of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, so high and thick with thorns, nettles and poison weeds were they. Ten-foot thistles and giant cactus guarded the fences, and every single weak place had been booby-trapped by the boot-boy.

He demonstrated, using his pet ferret, how anything that stepped here would become a caterpillar; or here would sink into bottomless sewage; or here would be seized by giant lobster-claws; or here – anyway, he had made nineteen, each one nastier than the last. Christopher ran back to the Castle thinking that if they did manage to get Gabriel back, he would have to ask him to promote the boot-boy. He was too good to waste on boots.

Back in the operations room, he had a set of magic mirrors set up, each focused on a different part of the defences, so that they would know at once if anyone tried to attack. Flavian was just showing him how to activate the spells painted on the backs of the mirrors, when it was the housekeeper’s turn to interrupt. “Master Christopher, this Castle isn’t supplied to stand a siege. How am I to get the butcher and the baker and the milk through? There’s a lot of mouths to feed here.”

Christopher had to make a list of when the deliveries arrived, so that he and the Goddess could conjure them through at the right moment. The Goddess pinned it up beside the mirror-watch rota, the divining charts, the duty rota, the patrol rota – the wall was getting covered with lists.

In the midst of all this, two ladies called Yolande and Beryl (whom Christopher still could not tell apart) sat themselves down at the typewriters and started to clatter away. “We may not be sorceresses any longer,” said Beryl (unless she was Yolande), “but that doesn’t stop us trying to keep the usual business running. We can deal with urgent enquiries or advice at least.”

Shortly they were calling Christopher away too. “The trouble is,” Yolande (unless her name was Beryl) confessed, “Gabriel usually signs all the letters. We don’t think you should forge his signature, but we wondered if you simply wrote Chrestomanci—?”

“Before you conjure the mailbag down to the Post Office for us,” Beryl (or maybe Yolande) added.

They showed Christopher how to set the sign of a nine-lifed enchanter on the word Chrestomanci, to protect it from being used against him in witchcraft. Christopher had great fun developing a dashing style of signature, sizzling with the enchanter’s mark that kept it safe even from Uncle Ralph. It occurred to him then that he was enjoying himself more than he had ever done in his life. Papa had been right. He really was cut out to be the next Chrestomanci. But suppose he hadn’t been? Christopher thought, making another sizzling signature. It was simply luck that he was. Well then, he thought, something could have been done about it. There had been no need at all to feel trapped.

Someone called him from the other end of the room then. “I think I’ve got the most restful job,” Tacroy laughed up at him from the couch in the middle, where he was preparing to go into his first trance. They had agreed that Tacroy should try a whole lot of short trances, to cover as many worlds as possible. And Miss Rosalie had agreed to play the harp for him, despite not having any magic. She was sitting on the end of the couch. As Christopher passed, Tacroy shut his eyes and Miss Rosalie struck a sweet rippling chord. Tacroy’s eyes shot open. “For crying out loud, woman! Are you trying to clog my spirit in toffee or something? Don’t you know any reasonable music?”

“As I remember, you always object to anything I play!” Miss Rosalie retorted. “So I shall play something I like, regardless!”

“I hate your taste in music!” Tacroy snarled.

“Calm down, or you won’t go into a trance. I don’t want to have sore fingers for nothing!” Miss Rosalie snapped.

They reminded Christopher of something – of someone. He looked back on his way over to the pool of ink where Flavian was beckoning. Tacroy and Miss Rosalie were staring at each other, both making sure the other knew their feelings were deeply hurt. Who have I seen look like that before? Christopher wondered. Underneath, he could tell, Tacroy and Miss Rosalie were longing to stop being rude to one another, but both too proud to make the first move. Who was that like?

As Christopher bent over the pool of ink, he got it. Papa and Mama! They had been exactly the same!

When the pool of ink was showing World C in Series Eight, Christopher went back past Miss Rosalie staring stormily ahead and playing a jig, to where Yolande and Beryl were typing. “Can I send someone an official letter of my own?” he asked.

“Just dictate,” Yolande (or possibly Beryl) said, with her fingers on the keys.

Christopher gave her Dr Pawson’s address. “Dear Sir,” he said, in the way all the letters he had signed went. “This office would be obliged if you would divine the whereabouts of Mr Cosimo Chant, last heard of in Japan, and forward his address to Mrs Miranda Chant, last heard of living in Kensington.” Blushing a bit, he asked, “Will that do?”

“For Dr Pawson,” Beryl (or perhaps Yolande) said, “you have to add, ‘The customary fee will be forwarded.’ Dr Pawson never works without a fee. I’ll put the request through Accounts for you. Mr Wilkinson needs you at the quicksilver bowl now.”

While Christopher rushed back across the room, the Goddess remembered that Proudfoot the kitten would be starving by then. She conjured her from the tower room, scarf, bottle and all. One of the helpers ran for milk. It took a while. Proudfoot, impatient with the delay, opened eyes like two chips of sapphire and glared blearily around. “Mi-i-i-i-ilk!” she demanded from an astonishingly wide pink mouth.

Even when an ordinary kitten opens its eyes for the first time, it is a remarkable moment. Since Proudfoot was an Asheth Temple cat, the effect was startling. She suddenly had a personality at least as strong as Throgmorten’s, except that it seemed to be just the opposite. She was passed from hand to hand for people to take turns at cooing over her and feeding her. Flavian was so besotted with her that he would not let go of her until Tacroy came out of his trance, very dejected because he had not been able to sense Gabriel in any of the three worlds he had visited. Flavian gave him Proudfoot to cheer him up. Tacroy put her under his chin and purred at her, but Miss Rosalie took her away in order to give Tacroy a strong cup of tea instead, and then spent the next half hour doting on Proudfoot herself.

All this devotion seemed to Christopher to be unfair on Throgmorten. He went out on the stairs to see if Throgmorten was all right, where he paused for a moment, struck with how different it all was. The green from the dragon’s blood was fading, but there was still quite a greenish tinge in the light from the dome. Under it, Dr Simonson, Frederick Parkinson and a crowd of helpers were sawing, hammering and welding in their shirt-sleeves. The hall was littered with timber, tools and metal rods, and more helpers were constantly bringing further wood and tools in through the open front door. Various people sat on the stairs drinking cups of tea while they waited to take a turn in front of the divining spells. If someone had told Christopher a week ago that Chrestomanci Castle would look like a rather disorderly workshop, he would never have believed them, he thought.

The candles were still burning, flaring sideways in the draught from the front door, and there in the blackened pentacle Throgmorten sat like a statue, staring fiercely at his Uncle Ralph mousehole. Christopher was glad to see that he was surrounded by all that a cat could desire. An earth-tray, a bowl of milk, saucers of fish, a plate of meat and a chicken wing had been carefully pushed between the candle-holders to the edges of the star. But Throgmorten was ignoring it all.

It was clear no one had liked to disturb Gabriel’s life. It was still lying on the floor where Uncle Ralph had thrown it, limp and transparent. Someone had carefully fenced it off with black rope tied round four chairs from the library. Christopher stared down at it. No wonder Tacroy couldn’t find anything and none of the divining spells showed anything, if all the lives were like this, he was thinking, when one of the gardeners ran in through the front door and waved at him urgently.

“Can you come and look?” he panted. “We don’t know if it’s the Wraith or not. There’s hundreds of them, all round the grounds in fancy-dress-like!”

“I’ll look in the mirrors,” Christopher called back. He raced back into the operations room to the magic mirrors. The one trained on the main gate was giving a perfect view of the peculiar soldiers staring through the bars. They wore short tunics and silver masks and they were all carrying spears. Christopher’s stomach jumped nastily at the sight. He turned round and looked at the Goddess. She was white.

“It’s the Arm of Asheth,” she whispered, “They’ve found me.”

“I’ll go and make sure they can’t get in,” Christopher said. He ran back down the stairs and through the hall and then out into the grounds with the gardener. On the lawn, Mr McLintock was lining up all the rest of the outside workers and making sure each of them had a billhook or a sharp hoe.

“I’m not letting any of those heathen bodies into my gardens,” he said.

“Yes, but those spears are deadly. You’ll have to keep everyone out of throwing-range,” Christopher said. He felt a sharp stabbing pain in his chest just at the thought.

He went round the gardens with Mr McLintock, as near as they dared to the fences and walls. The soldiers of the Arm of Asheth were just standing outside, as if the spells were keeping them out, but to be on the safe side, Christopher doubled the strength of each one as he came to it. The distant glimpses he got of silver masks and spear points made him feel ill.

As he turned and hurried back to the Castle, he realised that he was not enjoying himself any longer. He felt weak and young and anxious. Uncle Ralph was one thing, but he knew he just did not know how to deal with the Arm of Asheth. If only Gabriel was here! he found himself thinking. Gabriel knew all about the Temple of Asheth. Probably he could have sent the soldiers away with one cool, dry word. And then, Christopher thought, he’d punish me for hiding the Goddess here when he told me not to, but even that would be worth it.

He went back through the hall, where the birdcage was only a pile of sawn wood and three bent rods. He knew it would be nothing like ready by the night, and Uncle Ralph was bound to try to come back tonight. Past Gabriel’s limp fenced-off life, he went, and up the stairs into the operations room, to find Tacroy coming out of another trance shaking his head dismally. The Goddess was white and trembling and everyone else was exasperated because none of the various shadows and flickers in the divining spells seemed to be anything to do with Gabriel.

“I think I’d better conjure out a telegram to the Ministry to send in the army,” Christopher said dejectedly.

“You’ll do no such thing!” snapped Miss Rosalie. She made Christopher and the Goddess sit beside Tacroy on the couch and made them all drink the hot, sweet tea that Erica had just brought in. “Now listen, Christopher,” she said. “If you let the Ministry know what’s happened to Gabriel, they’ll insist on sending some adult enchanter to take over, and he won’t be the slightest good because his magic won’t be as strong as yours. You’re the only nine-lifed enchanter left. We need you to put Gabriel back together when we find him. You’re the only one who can. And it’s not as if the Arm of Asheth can get into the grounds, is it?”

“No – I doubled the spells,” Christopher said.

“Good,” said Miss Rosalie. “Then we’re no worse off than we were. I didn’t argue all this through with Dr Simonson just to have you let me down, Christopher! We’ll find Gabriel before long and then everything will be all right, you’ll see.”

“Mother Proudfoot always says the darkest hour is before the dawn,” the Goddess put in. But she did not say it as if she believed it.

As if to prove Mother Proudfoot right, Christopher was just finishing his tea when Flavian cried out, “Oh, I understand now!” Flavian was sitting at the big dark desk trying to make sense of all the shadows and flickers showing up on the divining spells. All the people sitting slumped around the operations room sat up and looked at him hopefully.

“It’s taking Gabriel’s lives a long time to settle,” Flavian said. “There are clear signs of one drifting about Series Nine, and another in Series Two, but neither of them have come down into a world yet. I think we may find the rest of them are still floating about the World Edge if we retune all the spells.”

Tacroy jumped up and came to look over Flavian’s shoulder. “You may be right at that!” he said. “The one time I thought I caught a whiff of Gabriel was on the World Edge near Series One. Does anything show up there?”

The World Edge means The Place Between, Christopher thought, as he hurried with the Goddess to adjust all the divining apparatus. “I can go and climb about there and bring them in,” he said.

There was an instant outcry against him. “No,” said Flavian. “I’m still your tutor and I forbid it.”

“We need you here to deal with your uncle,” Tacroy said.

“You can’t leave me here with the Arm of Asheth!” said the Goddess. “Besides, what happens if you lose another life?”

“Exactly,” said Miss Rosalie. “Your last life is shut in the safe under charms only Gabriel can break. You daren’t risk losing another one. We’ll just have to wait until the lives settle. Then we can set up a properly guarded Gate and send you through to collect them.”

With even the Goddess against him, Christopher gave in for the moment. He knew he could always sneak off to The Place Between if he needed to. Just now, Uncle Ralph was more important than Gabriel and probably more of a danger even than the Arm of Asheth.

He arranged watches and patrols for the night with Tacroy and Mr McLintock. They had supper camped about the hall and up the stairs, under the ladders and planks Dr Simonson was using to lower the chandelier. At this stage, the birdcage was still only a collection of metal hoops and wooden rods. The cooks carried cauldrons and casseroles to Dr Simonson’s team as they worked, so that they could carry on until the daylight failed, but Christopher knew they were not going to get it finished that day. Throgmorten came off duty long enough to eat a plate of caviar to strengthen him for the night’s work. Proudfoot was taken to the kitchen for safety, to be doted on there, and everyone settled down tensely for the night.

Christopher had arranged the watches so that there was always a mixture of able-bodied people with ones that still had magic. He took the first watch himself. The Goddess took the next one. Christopher was asleep in the library next to Frederick Parkinson when something happened in the middle of the Goddess’s watch. The Goddess was panting and flustered and said she was sure Uncle Ralph had tried to come through the pentacle. “I conjured him away,” she kept saying. There was certainly a wild hullaballoo from Throgmorten. But by the time Christopher got there all he saw was a wisp of steam rising from the invisible mousehole and Throgmorten pacing round it like a frustrated tiger.

Oddly enough, there was no smell of dragons’ blood. It looked as if Uncle Ralph had either been testing their defences or trying to deceive them about his plans. The real attack came just before dawn, when Tacroy and the boot-boy were on watch. And it came from outside the Castle grounds. Bells rang all over the Castle, showing that the spells had been breached. As Christopher pelted across the dewy lawn, he thought that the screams, yells and clangs coming from the walls would have woken everyone even if the bells had not rung. Again he got there too late. He arrived to find Tacroy and the boot-boy furiously chanting spells to fill two gaps in Mr McLintock’s vast spiny hedge. He could dimly see a few figures in silver armour milling about beyond the gaps. Christopher hastily reinforced the spells for all he was worth.

“What happened?” he panted.

“The Wraith seems to have walked into the Arm of Asheth,” Tacroy said, shivering in the early mist. “It’s an ill wind.” While the gardeners hurried up with cactuses to fill the gaps and the boot-boy booby-trapped them, he said he thought that a small army of the Wraith’s men had tried to break into the grounds. But the Arm of Asheth must have thought the Wraith was attacking them and accidentally defended the Castle. At all events, the attackers had run for their lives.

Christopher sniffed the reek of dragons’ blood in the mist and thought Tacroy was certainly right.

By the time he got back to the Castle, it was light enough for Dr Simonson and his helpers to be hard at work again. Flavian was stumbling about the operations room, pale and yawning from having been up all night. “I was right about Gabriel’s lives!” he said jubilantly. “They’re all settling down into the Related Worlds. I’ve got six of them more or less pin-pointed now – though I can’t spot the seventh at all yet. I suggest you go and collect those six anyway as soon as they’ve finished that lobster pot of yours.”

The Lobster Pot, as everyone came to call it, was hoisted triumphantly up into the air above the pentacle soon after breakfast. Christopher jumped into the star himself to test it. The spell tripped, just as it was supposed to, and the cage came crashing down around him. Throgmorten looked up irritably. Christopher grinned and tried to conjure the thing away. It would not budge. He rattled the flimsy bars with his hands and tried to heave up one edge, but he could not budge it that way either. In something of a panic, he realised that the thing was impossible to get out of, even though he had set most of the spells on it himself.

“Your face was rather a study,” the Goddess said, with a weak chuckle. “You should have seen the relief on it when they hauled it up again!” The Goddess was not at all happy. She was pale and nervous in spite of trying to joke.

She has only one life, Christopher reminded himself, and the Arm of Asheth is waiting outside for her. “Why don’t you come with me to collect Gabriel’s lives?” he said. “It will puzzle the Arm of Asheth no end if you start hopping from world to world.”

“Oh may I?” the Goddess said gladly. “I feel so responsible.”

There had been much discussion, some of it very learned, among Flavian, Beryl, Yolande and Mr Wilkinson about how to collect Gabriel’s lives. Christopher had no idea there were so many ways to send people to different worlds. Miss Rosalie settled it by saying briskly, “We set up a Gate here in this room and send Mordecai into a trance with a spirit-trace so that we can focus the Gate on him as soon as he finds a Gabriel. Then Christopher and Millie go through and persuade the Gabriel that he’s needed at the Castle. What could be simpler?”

Many things could have been simpler, Christopher thought, as he and the Goddess worked on the complex magics of the Gate to Flavian’s endless, patient instructions. He felt slow and reluctant anyway. Even though only Gabriel could give him his ninth life back, even though Gabriel was desperately needed, Christopher did not want him back. All the fun would end then. Everything in the Castle would go quiet and respectable and grown-up again. Only the fact that he always liked working on magic that really did something kept Christopher working properly on the Gate.

When it was finished, the Gate looked simple indeed. It was a tall square frame of metal, with two mirrors sloping together to make a triangle at the back of it. No one would know, to look at it, how difficult it had been to do.

Christopher left Tacroy lying on the couch with the little blue blob of the spirit-trace on his forehead and went, rather moodily, to conjure the baker’s cart into the Castle grounds. This is the last time they’ll let me do this, he thought, as the Arm of Asheth angrily shook their spears at the baker.

When he came back, Tacroy was pale and still, covered with blankets and Miss Rosalie was gently playing her harp.

“There he is in the Gate,” Flavian said.

The two mirrors had become one slightly misty picture of somewhere in Series One. Christopher could see a line of the great pylons that carried the ring trains stretching away into the distance. Tacroy was standing under the nearest one, wearing the green suit Christopher knew so well. It must be what Tacroy’s spirit always wore. The spirit had its hands spread out frustratedly.

“Something seems to be wrong,” Flavian said.

Everyone jumped when the body lying on the couch spoke suddenly in a strange, husky voice. “I had him!” Tacroy’s body said. “He was watching the trains. He was just telling me he could invent a better train. Then he simply vanished! What do I do?”

“Go and try for the Gabriel in Series Two,” Miss Rosalie said, plucking a rippling, soothing tune.

“It’ll take a moment,” Tacroy’s body croaked.

The picture in the Gate vanished. Christopher imagined Tacroy scrambling and wafting through The Place Between. Everyone round him wondered anxiously what had gone wrong.

“Maybe Gabriel’s lives just don’t trust Mordecai,” Flavian suggested.

The mirrors combined into a picture again. This time they all saw Gabriel’s life. It was standing on a hump-backed bridge, gazing down into the river below. It was surprisingly frail and bent and old, so old that Christopher realised that the Gabriel he knew was nothing like as elderly as he had thought. Tacroy’s spirit was there too, edging gently up the hump of the bridge towards Gabriel’s life, for all the world like Throgmorten stalking a big black bird. Gabriel did not seem to see Tacroy. He did not look round. But his bent black figure was suddenly not there any more. There was only Tacroy on the bridge, staring at the place where Gabriel had been.

“That one went too,” Tacroy’s body uttered from the couch. “What is this?”

“Hold it!” Flavian whispered and ran to check the nearest divining spells.

“Stay there a moment, Mordecai,” Miss Rosalie said gently.

In the mirrors, Tacroy’s spirit leant its elbows on the bridge and tried to look patient.

“I don’t believe this!” Flavian cried out. “Everyone check, quickly! All the lives seem to be disappearing! Better call Mordecai back, Rosalie, or he’ll waste his strength for nothing.”

There was a rush for the crystals, bowls, mirrors and scrying pools. Miss Rosalie swept both hands across her harp and, inside the Gate, Tacroy’s spirit looked up, looked surprised and vanished as suddenly as Gabriel’s life. Miss Rosalie leant over and watched anxiously as Tacroy’s body stirred. Colour flooded back to his face. His eyes opened. “What’s going on?” he said, pushing the blankets back.

“We’ve no idea,” said Miss Rosalie. “All the Gabriels are disappearing—”

“No they’re not!” Flavian called excitedly. “They’re all collecting into a bunch, and they’re coming this way, the lot of them!”

There was a tense half-hour, during which everyone’s hopes and fears see-sawed. Since Christopher’s hopes and fears on the whole went the opposite way to everyone else’s, he thought he could not have borne it without Proudfoot the kitten. Erica brought Proudfoot with her when she hurried in with a tray of tea to restore Tacroy. Proudfoot became very busy taking her first long walk, all the way under Gabriel’s black desk, with her string of a tail whipping about for balance. She was something much better to watch than the queer clots and whorls that Gabriel’s lives made as they drifted steadily towards Series Twelve. Christopher was watching Proudfoot when Flavian said, “Oh dear!” and turned away from the scrying pool.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Flavian’s shoulders drooped. He tore off his tight, crumpled collar and threw it on the floor. “All the lives have stopped,” he said. “They’re faint but certain. They’re in Series Eleven, I’m afraid. I think that was where the seventh life was all along. So much for our hopes!”

“Why?” said Christopher.

“Nobody can get there, dear,” said Miss Rosalie. She looked as if she might cry. “At least, nobody ever comes back from there if they do.”

Christopher looked at Tacroy. Tacroy had gone pale, paler even than he went in a trance. He was the colour of milk with a dash of coffee in it.

Here was the perfect excuse to stop looking for Gabriel. Christopher expected to have a short struggle with himself. He quite took himself by surprise when he stood up straight away. He did not even have to think that the Goddess had also heard Tacroy confess that part of himself was in Series Eleven. “Tacroy,” he said. He knew it was important to call Tacroy by his spirit name. “Tacroy, come to that empty office for a moment. I have to talk to you.”

Slowly and reluctantly Tacroy stood up. Miss Rosalie said sharply, “Mordecai, you look ill. Do you want me to come with you?”

“No!” Tacroy and Christopher said together.

Tacroy sat on the edge of a desk in the empty office and put his face in his hands. Christopher was sorry for him. He had to remind himself that he and Tacroy were the ones who had brought Uncle Ralph the weapon which had blown Gabriel’s lives apart, before he could say, “I’ve got to ask you.”

“I know that,” Tacroy said.

“So what is it about Series Eleven?” said Christopher.

Tacroy raised his head. “Put the strongest spell of silence and privacy round us that you can,” he said. Christopher did so, even more fiercely than he had done for Miss Bell and Mama. It was so extreme that he went numb and could hardly feel to scrape out the centre of the spell so that he and Tacroy could hear one another. When he had done it, he was fairly sure that even someone standing just beside them could not have overheard a word. But Tacroy shrugged. “They can probably hear anyway,” he said. “Their magic’s nothing like ours. And they have my soul, you see. They know most of what I do from that, and what they don’t know I have to go and report to them in spirit. You saw me going there once – they summon me to a place near Covent Garden.”

“Your soul?” said Christopher.

“Yes,” Tacroy said bitterly. “The part that makes you the person you are. With you, it’s the part that carries on from life to life. Mine was detached from me when I was born, as it is with all Eleven people. They kept it there when they sent me here to Twelve as a baby.”

Christopher stared at Tacroy. He had always known that Tacroy did not look quite like other people, with his coffee-coloured skin and curly hair, but he had not thought about it before because he had met so many stranger people in the Anywheres. “Why did they send you?”

“To be their guinea pig,” said Tacroy. “The Dright puts someone in another world from time to time when he wants to study it. This time he decided he wanted to study good and evil, so he ordered me to work for Gabriel first and then for the worst villain he could find – who happened to be your uncle. They don’t go by right and wrong in Eleven. They don’t consider themselves human – or no, I suppose they think they’re the only real people, and they study the rest of you like something in a zoo when the Dright happens to feel interested.”

Christopher could tell from Tacroy’s voice that he hated the Eleven people very deeply. He well understood that. Tacroy was even worse off than the Goddess. “Who’s the Dright?”

“King, priest, chief magician—” Tacroy shrugged. “No he’s not quite any of those, quite. He’s called High Father of the Sept and he’s thousands of years old. He’s lived that long because he eats someone’s soul whenever his power fails – but he’s quite within his rights, doing that. All the Eleven people and their souls belong to him by Eleven law. I belong to him.”

“What’s the law about him fetching himself all Gabriel’s lives?” Christopher asked. “That’s what he’s done, hasn’t he?”

“I knew he had – as soon as Flavian said ‘Series Eleven’,” Tacroy said. “I know he’s always wanted to study someone with nine lives. They can’t get them in Eleven, because there’s only one world there, not a Series. The Dright keeps it down to one world so he won’t have any rivals. And you know how your nine lives came about – don’t you? – because all the doubles you might have had in the other worlds in Twelve never got born for some reason.”

“Yes, but what’s Eleven law about pinching most of an enchanter?” Christopher insisted.

“I’m not sure,” Tacroy confessed. “I’m not sure they have laws like we do. It’s probably legal if the Dright can get away with it. They go by pride and appearance and what people do mostly.”

Christopher at once resolved that the Dright should not get away with this if he could help it. “I suppose he just waited to see how many lives there were loose and then collected them,” he said. “Tell me everything about Eleven that you can think of.”

“Well,” said Tacroy, “I’ve never been there, but I know they control everything with magic. They have the weather controlled, so that they can live out in the open forest and control what trees grow and where. Food comes when they call and they don’t use fire to cook it. They don’t use fire at all. They think you’re all savages for using it, and they’re just as scornful about the kind of magic all the other worlds use. The only time they think any of you are any good is when one of you is absolutely loyal to a king or chief or someone. They admire people like that, particularly if they cheat and lie out of loyalty…”

Tacroy talked for the next half hour. He talked as if it was a relief for him to tell it at last, but Christopher could see it was a strain too. Halfway through, when the lines on Tacroy’s face made him look haggard, Christopher told him to wait and slipped out of the secrecy spell to the door. As he had expected, Miss Rosalie was standing outside looking more than usually fierce.

“Mordecai’s worked himself to the bone for you, one way and another!” she hissed at him. “What are you doing to him in there?”

“Nothing, but he needs something to keep him going,” Christopher said. “Could you—?”

“What do you take me for?” snapped Miss Rosalie. Erica rushed up with a tray almost at once. As well as tea, and two plates piled high with cakes, there was a tiny bottle of brandy nestling in the corner of the tray. When Christopher carried the tray back inside the spell, Tacroy looked at the brandy, grinned and poured a good dollop of it into his cup of tea. It seemed to revive him as much as the cakes revived Christopher. While they polished off the trayful together, Tacroy thought of a whole new set of things to say.

One of the things he said was, “If you saw some Eleven people without being warned, you might take them for noble savages, but you’d be making a big mistake if you did. They’re very, very civilised. As for being noble—” Tacroy paused with a cake halfway to his mouth.

“Eat your elevenses,” said Christopher.

Tacroy gave a brief grin at the joke. “Your worlds know about them a bit,” he said. “They’re the people who gave rise to all the stories about Elves. If you think about them like that – cold, unearthly people who go by quite different rules – that will give you some idea. I don’t understand them really, even though I was born one of them.”

By this time Christopher knew that getting Gabriel back was going to be the toughest thing he had ever done in his lives. If it was not impossible. “Can you bear to come to Eleven with me?” he asked Tacroy. “To stop me making mistakes.”

“As soon as they realise I’ve told you, they’ll haul me back there anyway,” Tacroy said. He was very pale again. “And you’re in danger for knowing.”

“In that case,” said Christopher, “we’ll tell everyone in the Castle, and get Yolande and Beryl to type a report to the Government about it. The Dright can’t kill everyone.”

Tacroy did not look any too sure about this, but he went back with Christopher to the operations room to explain. Naturally, it caused another outcry. “Eleven!” everyone exclaimed. “You can’t!” People crowded in from the rest of the Castle to tell Christopher he was being a fool and that getting Gabriel back was quite impossible. Dr Simonson left off making final adjustments to the Lobster Pot to march upstairs and forbid Christopher to go.

Christopher had expected this. “Fudge!” he said. “You can catch the Wraith without me now.”

What he had not expected was that the Goddess would wait for the clamour to die down and then announce, “And I’m coming with you.”

“Why?” said Christopher.

“Out of loyalty,” the Goddess explained. “In the Millie books, Millie never let her chums down.”

There was no accounting for the Goddess’s obsession, Christopher thought. He suspected she was really afraid to stay where the Arm of Asheth could find her on her own, but he did not say so. And if she came along, she would almost double the amount of magic they had between them.

Then, on Tacroy’s advice, he dressed for the journey. “Fur,” Tacroy said. “The more you wear, the higher your rank.” Christopher conjured the tigerskin rug from the Middle Saloon and the Goddess cut a hole in it for his head. Miss Rosalie found him a lordly belt with great brass studs in it to go round the middle, while the housekeeper produced a fox fur to wrap round his neck and a mink stole for the Goddess. “And it would help to have it hung all over with ornaments,” said Tacroy.

“Not silver ones, remember,” Christopher called as everyone rushed away to find things.

He ended up with three gold necklaces and a rope of pearls. Yolande’s entire stock of earrings was pinned artfully here and there on the tigerskin, with Beryl’s brooches in between. Round his head he had Miss Rosalie’s gold evening belt with Erica’s mother’s mourning brooch pinned to the front of it over his forehead. He tinked in a stately way when he moved, rather like the Goddess in the Temple. The Goddess herself merely had a cluster of ostrich feathers at the front of her head and somebody’s gold bracelets round the bottom of her Norfolk breeches. They wanted to make it clear that Christopher was the most important one. Tacroy stayed just as he was.

“They know me,” he said. “I have no rank in the Sept at all.”

They shook hands with everyone in the operations room and turned to the Gate. It was now tuned to Eleven as far as Flavian and Tacroy knew, but Miss Rosalie warned Christopher that the spells round Eleven would probably take all their strength to break, and even that might not be enough. So Christopher paced tinking in the lead, pushing with all his might, and the Goddess walked after with her ghostly pair of arms spread under the real pair. Behind them, Tacroy muttered an incantation.

And it was easy. Suspiciously easy, they all felt at once. There was an instant of formlessness, like one short breath of The Place Between. Then they were in a forest and a man who looked like Tacroy was staring at them.

The forest was smoothly beautiful, with a green grassy floor and no bushes of any kind. There were simply tall slender trees that all seemed to be the same kind. Among the smooth and slightly shiny trunks, the man was poised on one foot, something like a startled deer, looking over his naked brown shoulder at them. He was like Tacroy in that he had the same sort of coffee-coloured skin and paler curly hair, but there the likeness ended. He was naked except for a short fur skirt, which made him look like a particularly stylish Greek statue, apart from his face. The expression on the man’s face reminded Christopher of a camel. It was all haughty dislike and scorn.

“Call him. Remember what I told you,” Tacroy whispered.

You had to be rude to Eleven people or they did not respect you. “Hey, you!” Christopher called out in the most lordly way he could. “You there! Take me to the Dright at once!”

The man behaved as if he had not heard. After staring a second longer, he took the step he had been in the middle of and walked away among the trees.

“Didn’t he hear?” asked the Goddess.

“Probably,” said Tacroy. “But he wanted to make it clear he was more important than you. He was obviously low in the Sept. Even the lowest ones like to think they’re better than anyone else in the Related Worlds. Walk on, and we’ll see if anything comes of it.”

“Which way?” asked Christopher.

“Any way,” said Tacroy, with a slight smile. “They control distance and direction here.”

They walked forward the way they were facing. The trees were all so much the same and so evenly spaced that, after about twenty steps, Christopher wondered if they were moving at all. He looked round and was relieved to see the square frame of the Gate among the tree-trunks about the right distance behind. He wondered if the whole of Eleven was covered with trees. If it was, it was hardly surprising that its people did not use fire. They would risk burning the whole forest down. He looked to the front again and found that, without any change in the landscape, they were somehow walking towards a fence.

The fence stretched for as far as they could see into the trees on either side. It was made of stakes of wood, nicely varnished and wickedly pointed on top, driven into the turf about a foot apart. The points at the top only came to Tacroy’s waist. It did not look much of a barrier. But when they turned sideways to get between the stakes, the stakes seemed much too close together to let them through. When Tacroy took his jacket off to cover the points on top so that they could climb over, his jacket would not go anywhere that was not their side of the fence. As Tacroy picked his jacket up for the sixth time, the Goddess looked to the left and Christopher looked to the right, and they discovered that the fence was now all round them. Behind them, there was no sign of the Gate among the trees – nothing but a row of stakes blocking the way back.

“He did hear,” said the Goddess.

“I think they were expecting us,” said Christopher.

Tacroy spread his jacket on the grass and sat on it. “We’ll just have to wait and see,” he said glumly. “No, not you,” he said to Christopher as Christopher started to sit down too. “The important people always stand here. I was told that the Dright hasn’t sat down for years.”

The Goddess sank down beside Tacroy and rubbed her bare toes on the grass. “Then I’m not going to be important,” she said. “I’m sick of being important anyway. I say! Was he here before?”

A nervous-looking boy with a scruffy piece of sheepskin wound round his hips like a towel was standing on the other side of Tacroy. “I was here,” he said shyly. “You just didn’t seem to see me. I’ve been inside this fence all morning.”

The fence surrounded a small grassy space no bigger than the tower room where Christopher had hidden the Goddess. Christopher could not understand how they could have missed seeing the boy, but given the queerness of everything, perhaps they could. Judging by the boy’s lank white body and straight fair hair, he was not one of the Eleven people.

“Did the Dright take you prisoner?” the Goddess asked.

The boy rubbed his funny little hooked nose in a puzzled way. “I’m not sure. I don’t seem to remember coming here. What are you doing here?”

“Looking for someone,” said Tacroy. “You don’t happen to have seen a man – or several men, maybe – called Gabriel de Witt, do you?”

“Gabriel de Witt!” said the boy. “But that’s my name!”

They stared at him. He was a timid, gangling boy with mild blue eyes. He was the kind of boy Christopher – and probably the Goddess too – would naturally have started to boss about in the next minute or so. They would have bossed him quite kindly though, because it was easy to see that it would not take much to upset him and make him sick with nerves, rather like Fenning at school. In fact, Christopher thought, this boy reminded him of a tall, thin Fenning more than anything else. But now he knew, he saw that the boy’s face had the same pointed outline as Gabriel’s.

“How many lives have you?” he asked disbelievingly.

The boy seemed to look within himself. “That’s odd,” he said. “Usually I have nine. But I can only seem to find seven.”

“Then we’ve got all of him,” said the Goddess.

“With complications,” said Tacroy. “Does the title Chrestomanci mean anything to you?” he asked the boy.

“Isn’t he some boring old enchanter?” asked the boy. “I think his real name’s Benjamin Allworthy, isn’t it?”

Gabriel had gone right back to being a boy. Benjamin Allworthy had been the last Chrestomanci but one. “Don’t you remember Mordecai Roberts or me?” Christopher asked. “I’m Christopher Chant.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Gabriel de Witt said, with a polite, shy smile. Christopher stared at him, wondering how Gabriel had come to grow up so forbidding.

“It’s no use,” Tacroy said. “Neither of us was born when he was that age.”

“More people,” said the Goddess.

There were four of them, three men and a woman, a little way off among the trees. The men all wore fur tunics that only covered one shoulder and the woman had a longer one that was more like a dress. The four of them stood half turned away from the fence, chatting together. Occasionally one of them looked scornfully over a bare shoulder at the fence.

Tacroy sank down into himself. His face was full of misery. “Take no notice, Christopher, definitely,” he whispered. “Those are the ones I usually had to report to. I think they’re important.”

Christopher stood and stared haughtily over everyone’s heads. His feet began to ache.

“They keep turning up like that,” Gabriel said. “Rude beasts! I asked them for something to eat and they pretended not to hear.”

Five minutes passed. Christopher’s feet felt wider and hotter and more over-used every second. He began to hate Eleven. There seemed to be no birds here, no animals, no wind. Just ranks of beautiful trees that all looked alike. The temperature never changed from just right. And the people were horrible.

“I hate this forest,” Gabriel said. “It’s so samey.”

“That woman-one,” said the Goddess, “reminds me of Mother Anstey. She’s going to giggle about us behind her hand any moment, I know she is.”

The woman put her hand up to her mouth and gave a scornful, tinkling laugh.

“What did I tell you?” the Goddess said. “And good riddance!”

The group of people was suddenly gone.

Christopher stood on one foot, then on the other. It made no difference to the ache. “You were lucky, Tacroy,” he said. “If they hadn’t dumped you in our world, you’d have had to live here.” Tacroy looked up with a crinkled, unhappy smile and shrugged.

A minute or so after that, the man they had seen first was back, strolling among the trees a little way off. Tacroy nodded at Christopher. Christopher called out loudly and angrily, “Hey, you! I told you to take us to the Dright! What do you mean by disobeying me like this?”

The man gave no sign that he had heard. He came and leaned on the fence and stared at them as if they were something in a zoo. In order to put his elbows on top of the sharp stakes, he had somehow made a wooden armrest appear. Christopher could not fathom the peculiar magic he used to do that. But the Goddess always seemed a little quicker on the uptake than Christopher. She frowned at the armrest and seemed to get the hang of it. The block of wood hurtled away into the trees sending the man’s arms down on to the spikes, quite hard. Gabriel laughed, an ordinary, unforbidding gurgle. The man sprang upright indignantly, went to rub his arm and then remembered that he should not show pain before inferiors. He swung round and went marching away.

Christopher was annoyed, both with the man and with the Goddess for being so much quicker than he was. The two things together made him so angry that he raised his arms and tried to hurl the man upwards, the way he had levitated all the things in Dr Pawson’s house. It was almost impossible to do. True, the man went up six feet or so. But he came down again gently and easily the next second, and looked jeeringly over his shoulder as he slipped earthwards.

This seemed to make the Goddess even angrier than Christopher. “All do it!” she said. “Come on, Gabriel!”

Gabriel shot her a mischievous grin and they all heaved together. Between them they only seemed to be able to raise the man three feet into the air, but they found they could keep him there. He pretended nothing was happening and kept walking as if he was still on the ground, which looked decidedly silly. “Take us to the Dright!” Christopher yelled.

“Now down,” said the Goddess. And they bumped him to the ground again. He walked away, still pretending nothing was happening, which gave Gabriel a fit of the giggles.

“Did that do any good?” Christopher asked Tacroy.

“No way of knowing,” said Tacroy. “They always like to keep you waiting until you’re too tired and angry to think straight.” He settled down in a miserable huddle, with his arms round his knees.

They waited. Christopher was wondering whether it was worth the enormous effort it would take to levitate himself in order to get the weight off his feet, when he noticed that the trees were sliding aside, to the right and left of the fence. Or perhaps the fenced enclosure was moving forward without any change to the smooth grass inside or out. It was hard to tell which. Either made Christopher feel queasy. He swallowed and kept his eyes haughtily on the trees ahead. But in less than a second those trees had wheeled away to nowhere, leaving a widening green glade. A person was in sight at the distant end of the glade, a tall, bulky person, who was sauntering slowly towards them.

Tacroy gulped a little. “That’s the Dright.”

Christopher narrowed his eyes to get his witch-sight working and watched the trees sliding further and further apart. It reminded him of the way he had played at shunting the trees up the Trumpington Road. He could see the Dright doing it now. In order to work magic in this world, you seemed to have to work in a way that was tipped sideways from the way you did it on any other world, with a bend and a ripple to the magic, as if you were watching yourself work it in a wavy glass ball. Christopher was not sure he was going to be able to do it.

“I don’t get the hang of this foreign magic,” Gabriel sighed.

As the Dright sauntered slowly nearer, Christopher squeezed the corners of his mouth in, in order to stop a grin of delight at the thought that he was actually quicker at understanding it than Gabriel was. By now, the trees had sped away to leave a big circular meadow full of greenish sunlight. The Dright was near enough for them to see that he was dressed rather like Christopher in at least two lion skins hung all over with bright chinking ornaments. His curly hair and his crisp beard were white. There were rings on the toes of his smooth brown feet.

“He looks like one of those rather nasty gods – the ones that eat their own children,” Gabriel said in a clear and carrying voice.

Christopher had to bite his tongue or he would have laughed. He was beginning to like this version of Gabriel. By the time he had the laugh under control, he was standing facing the Dright some yards outside the fence. He looked back incredulously. The Goddess and Gabriel were standing behind the fence, still prisoners, looking a little stupefied. Tacroy was still sitting on the ground, doing his best not to be noticed.

Christopher lifted his chin and looked up at the Dright’s face. The smooth brown features did not have any expression on them at all. But Christopher stared, trying to see the person behind the blankness. What feelings the Dright had were so different from his own, and so lofty, that for a moment he felt like an insect. Then he remembered that glacier, years ago in Series Seven, which Tacroy had said reminded him of two people. Christopher knew that one of the people was the Dright. Like the glacier, the Dright was cold and high and too crusted with ancient knowledge for ordinary people to understand.

On the other hand, the other person the glacier had reminded Tacroy of was Uncle Ralph. Christopher looked carefully for any signs that the Dright was like Uncle Ralph. There was not much of Uncle Ralph’s shoddy look to the Dright’s grand face, but his features did not seem sincere. Christopher could tell that the Dright would cheat and lie if it suited him, like Uncle Ralph, but he thought that the main way the two were alike was that they were both utterly selfish. Uncle Ralph used people. So did the Dright.

“What are you?” the Dright said. His voice was deep and scornful.

“I’m the Dright,” said Christopher. “Dright for world Twelve A. The word for it there is Chrestomanci, but it amounts to the same thing.” His legs were shaking at the sheer cheek of this. But Tacroy had said that the one thing the Dright respected was pride. He held his knees stiff and made his face haughty.

There was no way of telling whether the Dright believed Christopher or not. He did not answer and his face was blank. But Christopher could feel the Dright putting out small tendrils of sideways, rippled Eleven magic, testing him, feeling at him to see what his powers were and what were his weak points. To himself, Christopher felt he was all weak points. But it seemed to him that, since the magic here was so peculiar, he had no idea what his own powers were, and that meant the Dright probably had no idea either.

The meadow behind the Dright became full of people. They had not been there at first, but they were there now, a pale-headed, brown-skinned crowd, wearing all possible degrees of fur, from tiny loin-wraps to long bear-skin robes. It seemed that the Dright was saying, “Call yourself Dright if you like, but take a look at the power I have.” Every one of the people was staring at Christopher with contempt and dislike. Christopher put his face into the same expression and stared back. And he realised that his face was rather used to looking this way. He had worn this expression most of the time he had lived at the Castle. It gave him an unpleasant shock to find that he had been quite as horrible as these Eleven people.

“Why are you here?” said the Dright.

Christopher pushed aside his shock. If I get out of here, I’ll try to be nicer, he thought, and then concentrated carefully on what Tacroy had told him might be the best thing to say. “I’ve come to fetch back something of my own,” he said. “But first let me introduce you to my colleague the Living Asheth. Goddess, this is the Dright of Eleven.” The ostrich feather fluttered on the Goddess’s head as she stepped up to the sharp stakes and bowed graciously. There was the slightest twitch to the Dright’s features that suggested he was impressed that Christopher had actually brought the Living Asheth, but the Goddess was still behind the fence in spite of that. “And of course you know my man Mordecai Roberts already,” Christopher said grandly, trying to slip that point past as a piece of pride.

The Dright said nothing about that either. But behind him, the people were now all sitting down. It was as if they had never been any other way. By this, the Dright seemed to be saying, “Very well. You are my equal, but I’d like to point out that my followers outnumber yours by several thousand to one – and mine are obedient to my slightest whim.”

Christopher was amazed that he had won even this much. He tried to squash down his amazement by watching the people. Some were talking and laughing together, though he could not hear them. Some of them were cooking food over little balls of bluish witch-fire, which they seemed to use instead of fire. There were very few children. The two or three Christopher could see were sitting sedately doing nothing. I’d hate to grow up on Eleven! he thought. It must be a hundred times more boring than the Castle.

“What thing of your own have you allowed to stray into my world?” the Dright said at length.

They were getting down to business at last, even though the Dright was trying to pretend that Christopher had been careless. Christopher smiled and shook his head, to show he thought that was a joke of the Dright’s. “Two things,” he said. “First, I have to thank you for retrieving the lives of Gabriel de Witt for me. It saved me a lot of trouble. But you seem to have put the lives together in the wrong way and made Gabriel into a boy.”

“I put them into the form which is easiest to deal with,” said the Dright. Like everything he said, this was full of other meanings.

“If you mean that boys are easy to deal with,” Christopher said, “I’m afraid this is not the case. Not boys from Twelve A.”

“And not girls either,” the Goddess said loudly. “Not from anywhere.”

“What is Gabriel de Witt to you?” the Dright asked.

“He is as father to son,” said Christopher. Rather proud of the way he had carefully not said who was which, he glanced through the fence at Tacroy. Tacroy was still sitting wrapped into a ball, but Christopher thought his curly head nodded slightly.

“You have a claim to de Witt,” the Dright said. “He can be yours, depending on what else you have to say.” The fence round the other three slid and poured smoothly away sideways until it was out of sight, just as the trees had.

Gabriel looked puzzled. The Goddess stood where she was, clearly suspicious. Christopher looked warily at the Dright. This was too good to be true. “The other thing I have to say,” he said, “is about this man of mine who is usually known as Mordecai Roberts. I believe he used to be yours, which means you still have his soul. Since he is my man now, perhaps you could let me have his soul?”

Tacroy’s head came up and he stared at Christopher in horror and alarm. Christopher took no notice. He had known this would be pressing his luck, but he had always meant to try for Tacroy’s soul. He planted his aching feet astride, folded his arms across his fur and jewellery, and tried to smile at the Dright as if what he was asking was the most ordinary and reasonable thing in any world.

The Dright gave no sign of anger or surprise. It was not simply self-control or pride. Christopher knew the Dright had been expecting him to ask and did not mind if Christopher knew. His mind began to work furiously. The Dright had made it easy for them to come to Eleven. He had pretended to accept Christopher as an equal, and he had told him he could have Gabriel’s lives. That meant there was something the Dright expected to get out of this, something he must want very much indeed. But what?

“If my Septman claims to be your man, you should have his soulname,” the Dright observed. “Has he given you that name?”

“Yes,” said Christopher. “It’s Tacroy.”

The faces of all the people sitting in the meadow behind the Dright turned his way. Every one of them was outraged. But the Dright only said, “And what has Tacroy done to make himself yours?”

“He lied for me for a whole day,” Christopher said. “And he was believed.”

The first real sound in this place swept through the seated people. It was a long throaty murmur. Of awe? Approval? Whatever it was, Christopher knew he had said the right thing. As Tacroy had told him, these people naturally lied for their Dright. And to lie convincingly for a whole day showed the utmost loyalty.

“He could then be yours,” the Dright admitted, “but on two conditions. I make two conditions because you have asked me for two things. The first one is of course that you show you know which the Septman’s soul is.” He made a small gesture with one powerful brown hand.

A movement in the trees to one side caught Christopher’s eye. He looked and found the slender trunks pouring silently aside there. When they stopped, there was a grassy lane leading to the square framework of the Gate. It was about fifty feet away. The Dright was showing him that he could get home, provided he did what was wanted.

“There’s a huge block of their magic in the way,” the Goddess whispered.

Gabriel craned over his shoulder to look longingly at the Gate. “Yes, it’s just a carrot in front of the donkey,” he agreed.

Tacroy simply groaned, with his head on his knees.

In front of Christopher, people were bringing things and laying them out in a wide crescent-shape. Each man or woman brought two or three, and stared derisively at Christopher as he or she thunked the things down in the growing line. He looked at the things. Some were almost black, some yellowish, and others white or shiny. He was not sure if they were statuettes or blobs of stuff that had melted and hardened into peculiar shapes. A few of them looked vaguely human. Most were no shape that meant anything. But the stuff they were made of meant a great deal. Christopher’s stomach twisted and he had a hard job to go on staring haughtily as he realised that all the things were made of silver.

When there were about a hundred of the objects sitting on the green turf, the Dright waved his hand again and the people stopped bringing them. “Pick out the soul of Tacroy from the souls of my people,” he said.

Miserably, Christopher paced along the curving row with his hands clasped behind him to stop them trembling and Beryl’s ornaments clinking. He felt like a general reviewing an army of metal goblins. He paced the entire line, from left to right, and none of the objects meant anything to him. Use witch-sight, he told himself, as he wheeled on the right wing and started back again. It might just work on the silver statues provided he did not touch them.

He forced himself to look in that special way at the statues. It was a real effort to do it through the wavy sideways magic of Eleven. And, as he had feared, the things looked just the same, just as grotesque, just as meaningless. His witch-sight was working, he knew. He could tell that a number of the people sitting in the meadow were not really there. They were in other parts of the forest busy with other schemes of the Dright’s and projecting their images here in obedience to the Dright’s command. But his witch-sight would not work on silver.

So how else could he tell? He paced along the line, thinking. The people watched him jeeringly and the Dright’s head turned majestically to follow him as he passed. They were all so unpleasant, he thought, that it was no wonder their souls were like little silver monsters. Tacroy was the only nice one – Ah! There was Tacroy’s soul! It was some way round to the left. It looked no more human than any of the others, but it looked nice, fifty times nicer than the rest.

Christopher tried to go on pacing towards it as if he had not seen it, wondering what would happen when he picked it up and lost every scrap of his magic. He would have to rely on the Goddess. He hoped she realised.

His face must have changed. The Dright knew he had found the right soul and instantly began to cheat – as Christopher had known he would. The line of twisty objects was suddenly a good mile long, with Tacroy’s soul away in the far distance. And all of them were changing shape, melting into new queer blobs and fresh formless forms.

Then, with a sort of wavy jolt, everything went back to the way it was at first. Thank goodness! Christopher thought. The Goddess! He had kept his eye on the soul and it was quite near. He dived forward and picked it up. As soon as he touched it, he was weak and heavy and tired. He felt like crying, but he stood up holding the soul. Sure enough, the Goddess was staring at the Dright with her arms spread. Christopher was surprised to find that, even without his magic, he could see her second pair of ghostly arms spread out underneath.

“My priestesses taught me that it was low to cheat,” she said. “I’d have thought you were too proud to stoop to it.”

The Dright looked down his nose at her. “I named no rules,” he said. Being without magic was a little like another kind of witch-sight, Christopher thought. The Dright looked smaller to him now and not nearly so magnificent. There were clear signs of the shoddiness that he had seen in Uncle Ralph. Christopher was still scared stiff, but he felt much better about things now he had seen that.

While the Goddess and the Dright stared at one another, he lumbered weakly over to Tacroy. “Here you are,” he said, thrusting the strange statue at him. Tacroy scrambled on to one knee, looking as if he could not believe it. His hands shook as they closed round the soul. As soon as he had hold of it, the thing melted into his hands. The fingernails and the veins turned silvery. An instant later, Tacroy’s face flushed silvery too. Then the flush faded and Tacroy looked much as usual, except that there was a glow about him which made him much more like the Tacroy Christopher knew from The Place Between.

“Now I really am your man!” Tacroy said. He was laughing in a way that was rather like sobbing. “You can see I couldn’t ask Rosalie – watch the Dright!”

Christopher spun round and found the Goddess on her knees, looking bewildered. It was not surprising. The Dright had thousands of years of experience. “Leave her alone!” he said.

The Dright looked at him and for a moment Christopher felt the strange distorted magic trying to force him to his knees too. Then it stopped. The Dright still had not got what he wanted from Christopher. “We now come to my second condition,” the Dright said calmly. “I am moderate. You came here demanding seven lives and a soul. I give you them. All I ask in exchange is one life.”

Gabriel laughed nervously. “I have got a few to spare,” he said. “If it means getting out of here—”

This was what the Dright wanted, Christopher realised. He had been aiming for the life of a nine-lifed enchanter, freely handed over, all along. If Christopher had not dared to ask for Tacroy’s soul, he would have asked for a life for setting Gabriel free. For just a second, Christopher thought they might as well let him have one of Gabriel’s lives. He had seven, after all, and another lying on the floor back in the Castle. Then he saw it would be the most dangerous thing he could do. It would give the Dright a hold over Gabriel – the same hold he had had over Tacroy – for as long as his other lives lasted. The Dright was aiming to control the Chrestomanci, just like Uncle Ralph was aiming to control Christopher. They did not dare give him one of Gabriel’s lives.

“All right,” Christopher said. For the first time, he was truly grateful to Gabriel that his ninth life was safely locked in the Castle safe. “As you see, I’ve still got two lives left. You can have one of them,” he said, naming conditions very carefully, because he knew the Dright would cheat if he could, “because if you take more than one it would kill me and give my world the right to punish yours. Once you have the life in your hands, your conditions are fulfilled and you must let all four of us go through the Gate back to Twelve A.”

“Agreed,” said the Dright. He was keeping his face as expressionless as always, but underneath Christopher could tell he was hugging himself and chuckling. He stepped solemnly up to Christopher. Christopher braced himself and hoped it would not hurt much. In fact, it hurt so little that he was almost taken by surprise. The Dright stepped back a mere instant later with a floppy transparent shape dangling in his hands. The shape was wearing a ghostly tiger skin and it had a dim gold band fluttering from its transparent head.

Christopher conjured fire to that shape, hard and sideways and wavily, with all the power he had. Fire was the one thing the Dright was not used to. He knew it was the one thing that might cancel out those thousand years of experience. To his relief, the Goddess had made exactly the same calculations. He had a glimpse of her, with all four arms spread, conjuring fire down as he called it up.

His seventh life leapt into flame all over at once. The Dright hung on to its shoulders as it blazed, grimly trying to quench it, but Christopher had been right. Fire magic was the Dright’s weak point. His attempt to reverse the spell was slow and hesitating. But he kept trying, and hung on to the life by its shoulders, until he had to let go or lose both hands. By that time the front of his lion skin was on fire too. Christopher glimpsed him trying to beat it out and coughing in the smoke, as he collapsed himself into a writhing heap on the turf. It was worse than being crisped by the dragon. He was in agony. He had not realised it would hurt at all, let alone this much.

Tacroy scooped him up, threw him over one shoulder in a fireman’s hoist, and raced for the Gate. Every step bumped Christopher and every bump was torment. But his watering eyes caught sight of the Goddess seizing Gabriel’s arm in at least three hands and dragging him to the Gate in a mixture of brute force and magic. They all reached it together and plunged through. Christopher kept just enough sense to cancel the spells and slam the Gate shut behind them.

The pain stopped the instant the Gate shut. Tacroy lowered Christopher gently to the floor, and looked at him to see if he was all right, and made for Miss Rosalie.

“Gosh – look!” said the Goddess, pointing at Gabriel.

Tacroy did not look. He was too busy hugging Miss Rosalie. Christopher sat on the floor and stared with the rest of the people in the operations room. As the Dright’s magic left him, Gabriel was growing up in bursts. First he was a young man with a floral silk tie and a keen, wistful look; then he was an older keener man in a dingy suit. After that he was middle-aged and bleached and somehow hopeless and desperate, as if everything he hoped for was gone. The next instant, this man had pulled himself together into a brisk, silvery gentleman; and then the same gentleman, older and grimmer.

Christopher stared, awed and rather touched. He realised that Gabriel had hated being the Chrestomanci, and they were seeing the stages by which he had come to terms with it. I’m glad I’m going to find it easier than that! Christopher thought, as Gabriel finally became the grim old man that Christopher knew. At which point, Gabriel tottered to Tacroy’s trance-couch and folded down on to it.

Beryl and Yolande rushed forward with cups of tea. Gabriel drank Beryl’s (or Yolande’s) at a gulp. Then he took Yolande’s (or Beryl’s) and sipped it slowly with his eyes almost shut. “My heartiest thanks, Christopher,” he said. “I hope the pain has gone.”

“Yes, thanks,” Christopher said, taking the cup of tea Erica handed him.

Gabriel glanced to where Tacroy was still wrapped round Miss Rosalie. “By the look of him, Mordecai has even more to thank you for than I have.”

“Don’t let him get sent to prison,” Christopher said. And there was the boot-boy to ask about too, he thought distractedly.

“I’ll do what I can,” Gabriel promised. “Now that I know the circumstances. That fearsome Dright has much to answer for – though I may be right in supposing that Mordecai went on working with you for your equally fearsome uncle, because he knew that any other spirit traveller your uncle chose would have turned you into a hardened criminal before long. Would you agree?”

“Well,” said Christopher, trying to be honest, “I think some of it was because we were both so keen on cricket.”

“Really?” Gabriel said politely. He turned to the Goddess. She had found Proudfoot and was holding her lovingly in both hands. Gabriel looked from the kitten to the Goddess’s bare feet. “Young lady,” he said. “You are a young lady, are you not? Pray show me the sole of your left foot.”

A little defiantly, the Goddess turned round and tipped her foot up. Gabriel looked at the purple-blue mark. He looked at Christopher.

“Yes, I am really Asheth,” said the Goddess, “but you’re not to look at Christopher like that! I came here of my own accord. I did it quite capably.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “By using the Goddess Asheth as your second life?” Gabriel put down his empty cup and took the full one Flavian handed him. “My dear girl,” he said as he sipped it, “what a very foolish thing to have done! You are clearly a powerful enchantress in your own right. You had no need to use Asheth. You have simply given her a hold over you. The Arm of Asheth is going to haunt you for the rest of your life.”

“But I thought that the magic I can do came from Asheth!” the Goddess protested.

“Oh no,” said Gabriel. “Asheth has powers, but she never shares them. The ones you have are yours.”

The Goddess’s mouth dropped open. She looked as if she might cry.

Flavian said apologetically, “Gabriel, I’m afraid the Arm of Asheth is all round—”

There was a violent CRASH from below as the Lobster Pot came down.

Everyone raced for the stairs, except for Gabriel. He put his cup down slowly, obviously wondering what was happening. Christopher dashed to the stairs and then, for speed, did what he had always longed to do and slid down the rosy curve of marble bannister. The Goddess followed him. When they tumbled off at the bottom, Gabriel was already there, standing by the black rope gazing down at his limp transparent life. But no one else had eyes for that.

Uncle Ralph had come through the pentacle in a suit of armour, carrying a heavy mace. Christopher had thought he might. If he had brought any anti-cat spells, however, these obviously did not work on Temple cats. The Lobster Pot had come down precisely over the pentacle, trapping Throgmorten in with Uncle Ralph, and Throgmorten was doing his best to get Uncle Ralph.

Through the wreathing smoke of dragons’ blood, Uncle Ralph could be seen tramping slowly round and round inside the cage, smashing cat-saucers under his metal feet and taking violent swings at Throgmorten with his mace. Throgmorten could move faster than Uncle Ralph, or his mace, and he could climb the walls of the Lobster Pot, but he could not get at Uncle Ralph through his armour. All he could do was make shrill metal scratches on it. It was a stand off.

Christopher looked round to find Gabriel beside him. Gabriel’s face had a most unusual big wicked smile on it – no, not unusual, Christopher thought: it was the same smile Gabriel had worn when they levitated the man in Eleven.

“Shall we give the cat his chance?” Gabriel said. “For one minute?”

Christopher nodded.

Uncle Ralph’s armour vanished, leaving him in his foxy tweed suit. Throgmorten instantly became a seven-legged, three-headed, razor-clawed, flying, spitting fury. He was up and down and all over Uncle Ralph several times in the first second. So much blood got shed that Christopher was quite sorry for Uncle Ralph after fifteen such seconds. After thirty seconds, he was quite glad when Throgmorten vanished with a snarl and a jerk.

Throgmorten reappeared kicking and struggling over the Goddess’s arm. “No, Throgmorten,” she said. “I told you before you’re not to go for people’s eyes. That’s not nice.”

“Nice or not,” Gabriel said regretfully, “I was enjoying it.” He was busy winding something unseen into a careful skein over one hand. “Simonson,” he called. “Simonson, are you in charge of the cage? I got his magic off him while his mind was elsewhere. You can move the cage now and shut him up until the police can come for him.”

This produced another stand off. Throgmorten leapt for the space under the cage as soon as it started to rise. Uncle Ralph screamed. In the end, one of the stable lads had to climb up and unhook the cage from the chandelier chain. Then the cage was shoved across the floor with Uncle Ralph stumbling inside it and Throgmorten prowling after, uttering low throbbing sounds.

As soon as the cage was off the pentacle, a silver pillar rose out of the blood-spattered floor. The pillar looked human, but it was impossibly tall for a human, a good foot taller than Gabriel. Up and up it rose, a woman robed in silver, wearing a silver mask and carrying a silver spear.

The Goddess wailed with terror and tried to hide behind Christopher. “Silver,” he warned her. “I can’t help against silver.” His teeth chattered. For the first time, he realised how naked and soft it felt to have only one life.

The Goddess dashed behind Gabriel and clutched his black frock coat. “It’s Asheth! Save me!”

“Madam,” Gabriel said politely to the apparition, “to what do we owe the honour of this visitation?”

The apparition looked keenly through the slits in its mask, first at Gabriel and the Goddess crouching behind him, then at Christopher, then at the Lobster Pot and the general chaos in the hall. “I had hoped to find this a more respectable establishment,” she said. The voice was deep and melodious. She pushed up her mask to the top of her head, revealing a severe narrow old face. It was the kind of face that at once made Christopher feel very silly to be dressed in a tiger rug and earrings.

“Mother Proudfoot!” exclaimed the Goddess.

“I’ve been trying to get through this pentacle ever since I traced you, child,” Mother Proudfoot said testily. “I wish you had talked to me before you bolted like that. You surely knew I would have stretched the rules for you if I could.” She turned commandingly to Gabriel. “You seem respectable enough. You’re that Twelve A enchanter, de Witt, aren’t you?”

“At your service, madam,” said Gabriel. “Do forgive our present disorder. There have been problems. We are usually a highly respectable body of people.”

“That was what I thought,” Mother Proudfoot said. “Would you be able to take charge of this Asheth Daughter for me? It would suit me ideally if you could, since I have to report her dead.”

“In what way – take charge?” Gabriel asked cautiously.

“See her educated at a good school and so forth – consider becoming her legal guardian,” said Mother Proudfoot. She stepped majestically down from what seemed to be her pedestal. Now she was about the same height as Gabriel. They were quite alike in a gaunt, stern way. “This one was always my favourite Asheth,” she explained. “I usually try to spare their lives anyway when they get too old, but most of them are such stupid little lumps that I don’t bother to do much more. But as soon as I knew this one was different, I started saving from the Temple funds. I think I have enough to pay her way.”

She swept her trailing skirt aside. The pedestal turned out to be a small strong chest. Mother Proudfoot threw back the lid of it with a flourish. Inside, it seemed to be full of blurred glassy quartz in little pieces, like road gravel. But Gabriel’s face was awestruck. Christopher caught sight of Tacroy and Flavian mouthing a word at one another with their eyes popping. The word seemed to be “Diamonds!”

“The diamonds are uncut, I’m afraid,” said Mother Proudfoot. “Do you think there will be enough of them?”

“I think less than half that number would be more than adequate,” Gabriel said.

“But I had in mind a Swiss finishing school too,” Mother Proudfoot said sharply. “I’ve studied this world and I want no skimping. Will you do this for me? Naturally I shall make sure that followers of Asheth will do any favour you care to ask in return.”

Gabriel looked from Mother Proudfoot to the Goddess. He hesitated. He looked at Christopher. “Very well,” he said at last.

“Gosh, you darling!” said the Goddess. She scrambled to the front of Gabriel and hugged him. Then she hurled herself on Mother Proudfoot and hugged her mightily too. “I love you, Mother Proudfoot,” she said, all mixed in silver drapery.

Mother Proudfoot sniffed a little as she hugged the Goddess in return. But she pulled herself together and looked sternly at Gabriel over the Goddess’s head. “There is one tiresome detail,” she said. “Asheth truly does require a life, you know, one for each living Asheth.” Christopher sighed. Everyone in all the Anywheres seemed to want him to give them lives. Now he would be down to the one in the Castle safe.

Gabriel drew himself up, looking his most forbidding.

“Asheth isn’t very discriminating,” Mother Proudfoot said, before he could speak. “I usually strip a life off one of the Temple cats.” She pointed with her silver spear to where Throgmorten was stalking round the Lobster Pot making noises like a kettle boiling. “That old ginger’s still got three lives or so left. I’ll take one of his.”

The kettle noises stopped. Throgmorten showed what he thought of this proposal by becoming a ginger streak racing upstairs.

“No matter,” Gabriel said. “Now I think of it, I have a spare life, as it happens.” He stepped over to the black ropes and picked his limp transparent likeness out from among the library chairs. Courteously, he draped it over the end of Mother Proudfoot’s spear. “There. Will this one serve?”

“Admirably,” said Mother Proudfoot. “Thank you.” She gave the Goddess a kiss and descended majestically into the ground beside the chest of diamonds.

The Goddess shut the chest and sat on it. “School!” she said, smiling blissfully. “Rice pudding, prefects, dormitories, midnight feasts, playing the game—” She stopped without changing the smile, although it was not a smile any more. “Honour,” she said. “Owning up. Sir de Witt, I think I’d better stay in the Castle because of all the trouble I caused Christopher. He – er – he’s lonely, you know.”

“I would be a fool not to have realised that,” Gabriel said. “I am in the middle of arranging with the Ministry to bring a number of young enchanters here to be trained. At the moment, you know, I am only able to employ them as domestics – like young Jason the boot-boy over there – but this will shortly change. There is no reason why you should not go to school—”

“But there is!” said the Goddess. Her face was very red and there were tears in her eyes. “I have to own up, like they do in the books. I don’t deserve to go to school! I’m very wicked. I didn’t use Asheth as my second life in order to come here. I used one of Christopher’s. I didn’t dare use Asheth in case she stopped me, so I took one of Christopher’s lives when he was stuck in the wall and used that instead.” Tears ran down her face.

“Where is it?” Christopher asked, very much astonished.

“Still in the wall,” the Goddess sobbed. “I pushed it right in so that no one will find it, but I’ve felt bad ever since. I’ve tried to help and atone for it, but I haven’t done much and I think I ought to be punished.”

“There is absolutely no need,” said Gabriel. “Now we know where the life is, we can send Mordecai Roberts to fetch it. Stop crying, young lady. You will have to go to school because I should be misusing your chest of diamonds if you do not. Regard that as your punishment. You may come and live in the Castle with the rest of the young enchanters during the holidays.”

The Goddess’s blissful smile came back and diverted the tears on her face round her ears and into her hair. “Hols,” she corrected Gabriel. “The books always call them the hols.”

That is really all, except for a letter that arrived for Christopher from Japan soon after New Year.

Darling Christopher,

Why did you not tell me that your dear papa was settled here in Japan? It is such an elegant country, once one is used to the customs, and your papa and I are both very happy here. Your papa’s horoscopes have had the honour to interest some people who have the ear of the Emperor. We are already moving in the highest circles and hope to move higher still before long.

Your dear papa sends love and best wishes for your future as the next Chrestomanci. My love as well.

Mama

Excerpt

There are thousands of worlds, all different from ours. Chrestomanci’s world is the one next door to us, and the difference here is that magic is as common as music is with us. It is full of people working magic – warlocks, witches, thaumaturges, sorcerers, fakirs, conjurors, hexers, magicians, mages, shamans, diviners and many more – from the lowest Certified witch right up to the most powerful of enchanters. Enchanters are strange as well as powerful. Their magic is different and stronger and many of them have more than one life.

Now, if someone did not control all these busy magic-users, ordinary people would have a horrible time and probably end up as slaves. So the government appoints the very strongest enchanter there is to make sure no one misuses magic. This enchanter has nine lives and is known as ‘the Chrestomanci’. You pronounce it KREST-OH-MAN-SEE. He has to have a strong personality as well as strong magic.

Diana Wynne Jones

Contents

Title Page

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

The Willing Warlock was a born loser. He lost his magic when Chrestomanci took it away, and that meant he lost his usual way of making a living. So he decided to take up a life of crime instead by stealing a motor car, because he loved motor cars, and selling it. He found a beautiful car in Wolvercote High Street, but he lost his head when a policeman saw him trying to pick the lock and cycled up to know what he was doing. He ran.

The policeman pedalled after him, blowing his whistle, and the Willing Warlock climbed over the nearest wall and ran again, with the whistle still sounding, until he arrived in the backyard of a one-time Accredited Witch who was a friend of his. “What shall I do?” he panted.

“How should I know?” said the Accredited Witch. “I’m not used to doing without magic any more than you are. The only soul I know who’s still in business is a French wizard in Shepherd’s Bush.”

“Tell me his address,” said the Willing Warlock.

The Accredited Witch told him. “But it won’t do you a scrap of good,” she said unhelpfully. “Jean-Pierre always charges the earth. Now I’ll thank you to get out of here before you bring the police down on me too.”

The Willing Warlock went out of the Witch’s front door into Coven Street and blenched at the sound of police whistles still shrilling in the distance. Since it seemed to him that he had no time to waste, he hurried to the nearest toyshop and parted with his last half-crown for a toy pistol. Armed with this, he walked into the first Post Office he came to.

“Your money or your life,” he said to the Postmistress. The Willing Warlock was a bulky young man who always looked as if he needed to shave and the Postmistress was sure he was a desperate character. She let him clear out her safe.

The Willing Warlock put the money and the pistol in his pocket and hailed a taxi in which he drove all the way to Shepherd’s Bush, feeling this was the next best thing to having a car of his own. It cost a lot, but he arrived at the French wizard’s office still with £273 6s 4d in his pocket.

The French wizard shrugged in a very French way. “What is it you expect me to do for you, my friend? Me, I try not to offend the police. If you wish me to help it will cost you.”

“A hundred pounds,” said the Willing Warlock. “Hide me somehow.”

Jean-Pierre did another shrug. “For that money,” he said, “I could hide you two ways. I could turn you into a small round stone—”

“No thanks,” said the Willing Warlock.

“—and keep you in a drawer,” said Jean-Pierre. “Or I could send you to another world entirely. I could even send you to a world where you would have your magic again—”

“Have my magic?” exclaimed the Willing Warlock.

“—but that would cost you twice as much,” said Jean-Pierre. “Yes, naturally you could have your magic again, if you went somewhere where Chrestomanci has no power. The man is not all-powerful.”

“Then I’ll go to one of those places,” said the Willing Warlock.

“Very well.” In a bored sort of way, Jean-Pierre picked up a pack of cards and fanned them out. “Choose a card. This decides which world you will grace with your blue chin.”

As the Willing Warlock stretched out his hand to take a card, Jean-Pierre moved them out of reach. “Whatever world it is,” he said, “the money there will be quite different from your pounds, shillings and pence. You might as well give me all you have.”

So the Willing Warlock handed over all his £273 6s 4d. Then he was allowed to pick a card. It was the ten of clubs. Not a bad card, the Willing Warlock thought. He was no Fortune Teller, of course, but he knew the ten of clubs meant that someone would bully somebody. He decided that he would be the one doing the bullying, and handed back the card. Jean-Pierre tossed all the cards carelessly down on a table. The Willing Warlock just had time to see that every single one was the ten of clubs, before he found himself still in Shepherd’s Bush, but in another world entirely.

He was standing in what seemed to be a car park beside a big road. On that road, more cars than he had ever seen in his life were rushing past, together with lorries and the occasional big red bus. There were cars standing all round him. This was a good world indeed!

The Willing Warlock sniffed the delicious smell of petrol and turned to the nearest parked car to see how it worked. It looked rather different from the one he had tried to steal in Wolvercote. Experimentally, he made a magic pass over its bonnet. To his delight, the bonnet promptly sprang open an inch or so. The French wizard had not lied. He had his magic back.

The Willing Warlock was just about to heave up the bonnet and plunge into the mysteries beneath, when he saw a large lady in uniform, with a yellow band round her cap, tramping meaningly towards him. She must be a policewoman. Now he had his magic back, the Willing Warlock did not panic. He simply let go of the bonnet and sauntered casually away. Rather to his surprise, the policewoman did not follow him. She just gave him a look of deep contempt and tucked a message of some kind behind the wiper of the car.

All the same, the Willing Warlock felt it prudent to go on walking. He walked to another street, looking at cars all the time, until something made him look up. In front of him was a grand marble building. CITY BANK, it said, in rich gold letters. Now here, thought the Willing Warlock, was a better way to get a car than simply stealing it. If he robbed this bank, he could buy a car of his very own. He took the toy pistol out of his pocket and went in through the grand door.

Inside it was very hushed and polite and calm. Though there were quite a lot of people there, waiting in front of the cashiers or walking about in the background, nobody seemed to notice the Willing Warlock standing uncertainly waving his pistol. He was forced to go and push the nearest queue of people aside and point the pistol at the lady behind the glass there.

“Money or your life,” he said.

They seemed to notice him then. Somebody screamed. The lady behind the glass went white and put her thumb on a button near her cash-drawer. “How – how much money, sir?” she faltered.

“All of it,” said the Willing Warlock. “Quickly.” Maybe, he thought afterwards, that was a bit greedy. But it seemed so easy. Everyone, on both sides of the glassed-in counter, was standing frozen, staring at him, afraid of the pistol. And the lady readily opened her cash-drawer and began counting out wads of five-pound notes, fumbling with haste and eagerness.

While she was doing it, the door of the bank opened and someone came in. The Willing Warlock glanced over his shoulder and saw it was only a small man in a pin-striped suit, who seemed to be staring like everybody else. The lady was actually passing the Willing Warlock the first bundle of money, when the small man shouted out in a very big voice, “Don’t be a fool! He’s only joking. That’s a toy pistol!”

At once everyone near turned on the Willing Warlock. Three men tried to grab him. An old lady swung her handbag and clouted him round the head. “Take that, you thief!” A bell began to ring loudly. And, worse still, an unholy howling started somewhere outside, coming closer and closer. “That’s the police coming!” screamed the old lady, and she went for the Willing Warlock again.

The Willing Warlock turned and ran, with everyone trying to stop him and getting in his way. The last person who got in his way was the small man in the pin-striped suit. He took hold of the Willing Warlock’s sleeve and said, “Wait a minute—”

The Willing Warlock was so desperate by then that he fired the toy pistol at him. A stream of water came out of it and caught the small man in one eye, drenching his smart suit. The small man ducked and let go. The Willing Warlock burst out through the door of the bank.

The howling outside was hideous. It was coming from a white car labelled POLICE, with a blue flashing light on top, which was racing down the street towards him. There was rather a nice car parked by the kerb, facing towards the police car. A big, shiny, expensive car. Even in his panic, and wondering how the police had been fetched so quickly, that car caught the Willing Warlock’s eye. As the police car screamed to a stop and policemen started to jump out of it, the Willing Warlock tore open the door of the nice car, jumped into the seat behind the steering-wheel, and set it going in a burst of desperate magic.

Behind him, the policemen jumped back into their car, which then did a screaming U-turn and came after him. The Willing Warlock saw them coming in a little mirror somebody had thoughtfully fixed to the windscreen. He flung the nice car round a corner out of sight. But the police car followed. The Willing Warlock screamed round another corner, and another. But the police car stuck to him like a leech.

The Willing Warlock realised that he had better spare a little magic from making the car go in order to make the car look different. So, as he screamed round yet another corner into the main road he had first seen, he put out his last ounce of magic and turned the car bright pink. To his relief, the police car went past him and roared away into the distance.

The Willing Warlock relaxed a little. He had a nice car of his own now and he seemed to be safe for the moment. But he still had to learn how to make the thing go properly, instead of by magic, and, as he soon discovered, there seemed to be all sorts of other rules to driving that he had never even imagined.

For one thing, all the cars kept to the left-hand side, and motorists seemed to get very annoyed when they found a large pink car coming towards them on the other side of the road. Then there were some streets where all the cars seemed to be coming towards the pink car, and the people in those cars shook their fists and pointed and hooted at the Willing Warlock. Then again, sometimes there were lights at crossroads, and people did not seem to like you going past them when they were red.

The Willing Warlock was not very clever, but he did realise quite soon that cars were not often pink. A pink car that broke all these rules was bound to be noticed. So, while he drove on and on, looking for some quiet street where he could learn how the car really worked, he sought about for some other way to disguise the car. He saw that all cars had a plate in front and behind, with letters and numbers on. That made it easy.

He changed the front number plate to WW100 and the back one to XYZ123 and let the car return to its nice shiny grey colour and drove soberly on till he found some back streets lined with quiet houses. By this time, he was quite tired. He had never had much magic and he was out of practice anyway. He was glad to stop and look for the knob that made the engine go.

There were rows of knobs, but none of them seemed to be the one he wanted. One knob squirted water all over the front window. Another opened the side windows and brought wet windy air sighing in. Another flashed lights. Yet another made a loud hooting, which made the Willing Warlock jump. People would notice!

He became panicky, and found his neck going hot and cold in gusts, with a specially cold, panicky spot in the middle, at the back, just above his collar. He tried another knob. That played music. The next knob made voices speak. “Over and out… Yes. Pink. I don’t know how he got a respray that quick, but it’s definitely him…”

The Willing Warlock, in even more of a panic, realised he was listening to the police by magic, and that they were still hunting him. In his panic, he pressed another knob, which made wipers start furiously waving across the windscreen, wiping off the water the first knob had squirted.

“Doh!” said the Willing Warlock, and put up his hand irritably to rub that panicky cold spot at the back of his neck.

The cold place was connected to a long warm hairy muzzle. Whatever owned the muzzle objected to being wiped away. It let out a deep bass growl and a blast of warm smelly air.

The Willing Warlock snatched his hand away. In his terror, he pressed another button, which caused the seat he was in to collapse gently backwards until he was lying on his back. He found himself staring up into the face of the largest dog he had ever seen. It was a great pepper-coloured brute, with white fangs to match the size of the rest of it. Evidently he had stolen a dog as well as a car.

“Grrrrr,” repeated the dog. It bent its great head until the noise vibrated the Willing Warlock’s skull like a road drill, and sniffed his face loudly.

“Get off,” said the Willing Warlock tremulously.

Worse followed. Something surged in the back seat beside the huge dog. A small, shrill voice, sounding very sleepy, said, “Why have we stopped for, Daddy?”

“Oh my gawd!” said the Willing Warlock. He turned his eyes gently sideways under the great dog’s face. Sure enough, there was a child on the back seat beside the dog, a rather small child with reddish hair and a slobbery sleepy face.

“You’re not my Daddy,” this child said accusingly.

The Willing Warlock rather liked children on the whole, but he knew he would have to get rid of this one somehow. To steal a car and a dog and a child would probably put him in prison for life. People really did not like you stealing children.

Frantically he reached forward and pushed knobs. Lights lit, wipers swatted and unswatted, voices spoke, a hooter sounded, but at last he pushed the right one and the seat rose gracefully upright again. He used his magic on the rear door and it sprang open.

“Out,” he said. “Both of you. Get out and wait and your Daddy will find you.”

Dog and child turned and stared at the open door. Their faces turned back to the Willing Warlock, puzzled and slightly indignant. It was their car, after all.

The Willing Warlock tried a bit of coaxing. “Get out. Nice dog. Good boy.”

“Grrrr,” said the dog, and the child said, “I’m not a boy.”

“I meant the dog,” the Willing Warlock said hastily. The dog’s growl enlarged to a rumble that shook the car. Perhaps the dog was not a boy either. The Willing Warlock knew when he was beaten. It was a pity, when it was such a nice car, but this world was full of cars. Provided he made sure the next one was empty, he could steal one any time he liked. He slammed the rear door shut and started to open his own.

The dog was too quick for him. Before he had reached the handle, its great teeth were fastened into the shoulder of his jacket, right through the cloth. He could feel them digging into his skin underneath. And it growled harder than ever. “Let go,” the Willing Warlock said, without hope, and sat very still.

“Go on driving,” commanded the child.

“Why?” said the Willing Warlock.

“Because I like driving in cars,” said the child. “Towser will let you go when you drive.”

“I don’t know how to make the car go,” the Willing Warlock said sullenly.

“Stupid,” said the child. “Daddy uses those keys there, and he pushes on the pedals with his feet.”

Towser backed this up with another growl, and dug his teeth in a little. Towser clearly knew his job, and his job seemed to be to back up anything the child said. The Willing Warlock sighed, thinking of years in prison, but he found the keys and located the pedals. He turned the keys. He pushed on the pedals. The engine started with a roar.

Then another voice spoke. “You have forgotten to fasten your seatbelt,” it said. “I cannot proceed until you do so.”

It was here that the Willing Warlock realised that his troubles had only just begun. The car was bullying him now. He had no idea where the seatbelt was, but it is amazing what you can do if a mouthful of white fangs are fastened into your shoulder. The Willing Warlock found the seatbelt. He did it up. He found a lever that said forwards and pushed it. He pressed on pedals. The engine roared, but nothing else happened.

“You are wasting petrol,” the car told him acidly. “Release the handbrake. I cannot pro—”

The Willing Warlock found a sort of stick in the floor and moved it. It snapped like a crocodile and the car jerked. “You are wasting petrol,” the car said, boringly. “Release the footbrake. I cannot proceed—”

Luckily, since Towser was growling even louder than the car, the Willing Warlock took his left foot off a pedal first. They shot off down the road. “You are wasting petrol,” the car told him.

“Oh shut up,” the Willing Warlock said. But nothing shut the car up, he discovered, except not pressing so hard on the right-hand pedal. Towser, on the other hand, seemed satisfied as soon as the car moved. He let go of the Willing Warlock and loomed behind him on the back seat, while the child sat and chanted, “Go on, go on, go on driving.”

The Willing Warlock kept on driving. There is nothing else you can do if a child, a dog the size of Towser, and a car, all combine to make you. At least the car was easy to drive. All the Willing Warlock had to do was sit there not pressing the pedal too much and keep turning into the emptiest streets. He had time to think. He knew the dog’s name. If he could find out the child’s name, then he could work a spell on them both to make them let him go.

“What’s your name?” he asked, turning into a wide straight road with room for three cars abreast in it.

“Jemima Jane,” said the child. “Go on, go on, go on driving.”

The Willing Warlock drove, muttering a spell. While he did, Towser made a flowing sort of jump and landed in the passenger seat beside him, where he sat in a royal way, staring out at the road. The Willing Warlock cowered away from him and finished the spell in a gabble. The beast was as big as a lion!

“You are wasting petrol,” remarked the car.

Perhaps these things caused the Willing Warlock to muddle the spell. All that happened was that Towser turned invisible.

There was an instant shriek from the back seat. “Where’s Towser?”

The invisible space on the front passenger seat growled horribly. The Willing Warlock did not know where its teeth were. He hurriedly revoked the spell. Towser loomed beside him, looking reproachful.

“You’re not to do that again!” said Jemima Jane.

“I won’t if we all get out and walk,” the Willing Warlock said cunningly.

A silence met this suggestion, with an undercurrent of snarl to it. The Willing Warlock gave up for the moment and kept on driving. There were no houses by the road any more, only trees, grass and a few cows, and the road stretched into the distance, endlessly. The nice grey car, labelled WW100 in front and XYZ123 behind, zoomed gently onwards for nearly an hour. The sun began setting in gory clouds, behind some low green hills.

“I want my supper,” announced Jemima Jane. At the word supper, Towser yawned and started to dribble. He turned to look thoughtfully at the Willing Warlock, obviously wondering which bits of him tasted best. “Towser’s hungry too,” said Jemima Jane.

The Willing Warlock turned his eyes sideways to look at Towser’s great pink tongue draped over Towser’s large white fangs. “I’ll stop at the first place we see,” he said obligingly. He began turning over schemes for giving both of them – not to speak of the car – the slip the moment they allowed him to stop. If he made himself invisible, so that the dog could not find him—

He seemed to be in luck. Just then a large blue notice that said HARBURY SERVICES came into view, with a picture of a knife and fork underneath. The Willing Warlock turned into it with a squeal of tyres. “You are wasting petrol,” the car protested.

The Willing Warlock took no notice. He stopped with a jolt among a lot of other cars, turned himself invisible and tried to jump out. But he had forgotten the seatbelt. It held him in place long enough for Towser to fix his fangs in the sleeve of his coat, and that seemed to be enough to make Towser turn invisible too. “You have forgotten to set the handbrake,” said the car.

“Doh!” snarled the Willing Warlock miserably, and put the handbrake on. It was not easy, with Towser’s invisible fangs grating his arm.

“You’re to fetch me lots and lots,” Jemima Jane said. It did not seem to trouble her that both of them had vanished. “Towser, make sure he brings me an ice cream.”

The Willing Warlock climbed out of the car, lugging the invisible Towser. He tried some more cunning. “Come with me and show me which ice cream you want,” he called back. Several people in the car park looked round to see where the invisible voice was coming from.

“I want to stay in the car. I’m tired,” whined Jemima Jane.

The invisible teeth fastened in the Willing Warlock’s sleeve rumbled a little. Invisible dribble ran on his hand. “Oh all right,” he said, and set off for the restaurant, accompanied by four invisible heavy paws.

Maybe it was a good thing they were both invisible. There was a big sign on the door: NO DOGS. And the Willing Warlock still had no money. He went to the long counter and picked up pies and scones with the hand Towser left him free. He stuffed them into his pocket so that they would become invisible too.

Someone pointed to the Danish pastry he picked up next and screamed, “Look! A ghost!” Then there were screams further down the counter. The Willing Warlock looked. A very large chocolate gateau, with a snout-shaped piece missing from it, was trotting at chest-level across the dining area. Towser was helping himself too. People backed away, yelling. The gateau broke into a gallop and barged out through the glass doors with a splat. At the same moment, someone grabbed the Danish pastry from the Willing Warlock’s hand.

It was the girl behind the cash-desk, who was not afraid of ghosts. “You’re the Invisible Man or something,” she said. “Give that back.”

The Willing Warlock panicked again and ran after the gateau. He meant to go on running, as fast as he could, in the opposite direction to the nice car. But as soon as he barged through the door, he found the gateau waiting for him, lying on the ground. A warning growl and hot breath on his hand suggested that he pick the gateau up and come along. Teeth in his trouser-leg backed up this suggestion. Dismally, the Willing Warlock obeyed.

“Where’s my ice cream?” Jemima Jane asked ungratefully.

“There wasn’t any,” said the Willing Warlock as Towser herded him into the car. He threw the gateau, the scones and a pork pie on to the back seat. “Be thankful for what you’ve got.”

“Why?” asked Jemima Jane.

The Willing Warlock gave up. He turned himself visible again and sat in the driving seat to eat the other pork pie. He could feel Towser snuffing him from time to time to make sure he stayed there. In between, he could hear Towser eating. Towser made such a noise that the Willing Warlock was glad he was invisible. He looked to make sure. And there was Towser, visible again in all his hugeness, sitting in the back seat licking his vast chops. As for Jemima Jane – the Willing Warlock had to look away quickly. She was chocolate all over. There was a river of chocolate down her front and more plastered into her red curls like mud.

“Why aren’t you going on driving for?” Jemima Jane demanded. Towser at once surged to his huge feet to back up the demand.

“I am, I am!” the Willing Warlock said, hastily starting the engine.

“You have forgotten to fasten your seatbelt,” the car reminded him priggishly. And as the car moved forward, it added, “It is now lighting-up time. You require headlights.”

The Willing Warlock started the wipers, rolled down the windows, played music, and finally managed to turn on the lights. He drove back on to the big road, hating all three of them. And drove. Jemima Jane stood up on the back seat behind him. The gateau had made her distressingly lively. She wanted to talk. She grabbed one of the Willing Warlock’s ears in a sticky chocolate hand for balance, and breathed gateau-fumes and questions into his other ear.

“Why did you take our car for? What are all those prickles on your chin for? Why don’t you like me holding your nose for? Why don’t you smell nice? Where are we going to? Shall we drive in the car all night?” and many more such questions.

The Willing Warlock was forced to answer all these questions in the right way. If he did not answer, Jemima Jane dragged at his hair, or twisted his ear, or took hold of his nose. If the answer he gave did not please Jemima Jane, Towser rose up growling, and the Willing Warlock had quickly to think of a better answer. It was not long before he was as plastered with chocolate as Jemima Jane was. He thought that it was not possible for a person to be more unhappy.

He was wrong. Towser suddenly stood up and staggered about the back seat, making odd noises.

“Towser’s going to go sick,” Jemima Jane said.

The Willing Warlock squealed to a halt on the hard shoulder and threw all four doors open wide. Towser would have to get out, he thought. Then he could drive straight off again and leave Towser by the roadside.

As he thought that, Towser landed heavily on top of him. Sitting on the Willing Warlock, he got rid of the gateau on to the edge of the motorway. It took him some time. Meanwhile, the Willing Warlock wondered if Towser was actually as heavy as a cow, or whether he only felt that way.

“Now go on, go on driving,” Jemima Jane said, when Towser at last had finished.

The Willing Warlock obeyed. He drove on. Then it was the car’s turn. It flashed a red light at him. “You are running out of petrol,” it remarked.

“Good,” said the Willing Warlock feelingly.

“Go on driving,” said Jemima Jane, and Towser, as usual, backed her up.

The Willing Warlock drove on through the night. A new and unpleasant smell now filled the car. It did not mix well with chocolate. The Willing Warlock supposed it must be Towser. He drove, and the car boringly repeated its remark about petrol, until, as they passed a sign saying BENTWELL SERVICES, the car suddenly changed its tune and said, “You have started on the reserve tank.” Then it became quite talkative and added, “You have petrol for ten more miles only. You are running out of petrol…”

“I heard you,” said the Willing Warlock. “I shall have to stop,” he told Jemima Jane and Towser, with great relief. Then, to stop Jemima Jane telling him to drive on, and because the new smell was mixing with the chocolate worse than ever, he said, “And what is this smell in here?”

“Me,” Jemima Jane said, rather defiantly. “I went in my pants. It’s your fault. You didn’t take me to the Ladies.”

At which Towser at once sprang up, growling, and the car added, “You are running out of petrol.”

The Willing Warlock groaned aloud and went squealing into BENTWELL SERVICES. The car told him reproachfully that he was wasting petrol and then added that he was running out of it, but the Willing Warlock was too far gone to attend to it. He sprang out of the car and once more tried to run away. Towser sprang out after him and fastened his teeth in the Willing Warlock’s now tattered trouser-leg. And Jemima Jane scrambled out after Towser.

“Take me to the Ladies,” she said. “You have to change my knickers. My clean ones are in the bag at the back.”

“I can’t take you to the Ladies!” the Willing Warlock said. He had no idea what to do. What did one do? You have one grown-up male Warlock, one female child and one dog fastened to the Warlock’s trouser-leg that might be male or female. Did you go to the Gents or the Ladies? The Willing Warlock just did not know.

He had to settle for doing it publicly in the car park. It made him ill. It was the last straw. Jemima Jane gave him loud directions in a ringing bossy voice. Towser growled steadily. As he struggled with the gruesome task, the Willing Warlock heard people gathering round, sniggering. He hardly cared. He was a broken Warlock by then. When he looked up to find himself in a ring of policemen, and the small man in the pin-striped suit standing just beside him, he felt nothing but extreme relief. “I’ll come quietly,” he said.

“Hello, Daddy!” Jemima Jane shouted. She suddenly looked enchanting, in spite of the chocolate. And Towser changed character too and fawned and gambolled round the small man, squeaking like a puppy.

The small man picked up Jemima Jane, chocolate and all, and looked forbiddingly at the Willing Warlock. “If you’ve harmed Prudence, or the dog either,” he said, “you’re for it, you know.”

“Harmed!” the Willing Warlock said hysterically. “That child’s the biggest bully in the world – bar that car or that dog! And the dog’s a thief too! I’m the one that’s harmed! Anyway, she said her name was Jemima Jane.”

“That’s just a jingle I taught her, to prevent people trying name-magic,” the small man said, laughing rather. “The dog has a secret name anyway. All Kathayack Demon Dogs do. Do you know who I am, Warlock?”

“No,” said the Willing Warlock, trying not to look respectfully at the fawning Towser. He had heard of Demon Dogs. The beast probably had more magic than he did.

“Kathusa,” said the man. “Financial wizard. I’m Chrestomanci’s agent in this world. That crook Jean-Pierre keeps sending people here and they all get into trouble. It’s my job to pick them up. I was coming into the bank to help you, Warlock, and you go and pinch my car.”

“Oh,” said the Willing Warlock. The policemen coughed and began to close in. He resigned himself to a long time in prison.

But Kathusa held up a hand to stop the policemen. “See here, Warlock,” he said, “you have a choice. I need a man to look after my cars and exercise Towser. You can do that and go straight, or you can go to prison. Which is it to be?”

It was a terrible choice. Towser met the Willing Warlock’s eye and licked his lips. The Willing Warlock decided he preferred prison. But Jemima Jane – or rather Prudence – turned to the policemen, beaming. “He’s going to look after me and Towser,” she announced. “He likes his nose being pulled.”

The Willing Warlock tried not to groan.

Cat Chant was not altogether happy, either with himself or with other people. The reason was the Italian boy that Chrestomanci had unexpectedly brought back to Chrestomanci Castle after his trip to Italy.

“Cat,” said Chrestomanci, who was looking rather tired after his travels, “this is Antonio Montana. You’ll find he has some very interesting magic.”

Cat looked at the Italian boy, and the Italian boy held out his hand and said, “How do you do. Please call me Tonino,” in excellent English, but with a slight halt at the end of each word, as if he was used to words that mostly ended in ‘o’. Cat knew at that instant that he was going to count the days until someone took Tonino back to Italy again. And he hoped someone would do it soon.

It was not just the beautiful English and the good manners. Tonino had fair hair – that almost greyish fair hair people usually call ash blond – which Cat had never imagined an Italian could have. It looked very sophisticated and it made Cat’s hair look a crude straw colour by comparison. As if this was not enough, Tonino had trusting brown eyes and a nervous expression, and he was evidently younger than Cat. He looked so sweet that Cat shook hands as quickly as he could without being rude, knowing at once that everyone would expect him to look after Tonino.

“Pleased to meet you,” he lied.

Sure enough, Chrestomanci said, “Cat, I’m sure I can trust you to show Tonino the ropes here and keep an eye on him until he finds his feet in England.”

Cat sighed. He knew he was going to be very bored.

But it was worse than that. The other children in the castle thought Tonino was lovely. They all did their best to be friends with him. Chrestomanci’s daughter Julia patiently taught Tonino all the games you played in England, including cricket. Chrestomanci’s son Roger joined in the cricket lessons and then spent hours gravely comparing spells with Tonino. Chrestomanci’s ward Janet spent further hours enthusiastically asking Tonino about Italy. Janet came from another world where Italy was quite different, and she was interested in the differences.

And yet, despite all this attention, Tonino went around with a lost, lonely look which made Cat avoid him. He could tell Tonino was acutely homesick. In fact, Cat was fairly sure Tonino was feeling just like Cat had felt himself when he first came to Chrestomanci Castle, and Cat could not get over the annoyance of having someone have feelings that were his. He knew this was stupid – this was partly why he was not happy with himself – but he was not happy with Julia, Roger and Janet either. He considered that they were making a stupid fuss over Tonino. The fact was that Julia and Roger normally looked after Cat. He had grown used to being the youngest and unhappiest person in the castle, until Tonino had come along and stolen his thunder. Cat knew all this perfectly well, but it did not make the slightest difference to the way he felt.

To make things worse, Chrestomanci himself was extremely interested in Tonino’s magic. He spent large parts of the next few days with Tonino doing experiments to discover just what the extent of Tonino’s powers was, while Cat, who was used to being the one with the interesting magic, was left to wrestle with problems of Magic Theory by himself in Chrestomanci’s study.

“Tonino,” Chrestomanci said, by way of explanation, “can, it seems, not only reinforce other people’s spells, but also make use of any magic other people do. If it’s true, it’s a highly unusual ability. And by the way,” he added, turning round in the doorway, looking tall enough to brush the ceiling, “you don’t seem to have shown Tonino round the castle yet. How come?”

“I was busy – I forgot,” Cat muttered sulkily.

“Fit it into your crowded schedule soon, please,” Chrestomanci said, “or I may find myself becoming seriously irritated.”

Cat sighed, but nodded. No one disobeyed Chrestomanci when he got like this. But now he had to face the fact that Chrestomanci knew exactly how Cat was feeling and had absolutely no patience with it. Cat sighed again as he got down to his problems.

Magic Theory left him completely bewildered. His trouble was that he could, instinctively, do magic that used very advanced Magic Theory indeed, and he had no idea how he did it. Sometimes he did not even know he was doing magic. Chrestomanci said Cat must learn Theory or he might one day do something quite terrible by mistake. As far as Cat was concerned, the one thing he wanted magic to do was to solve Theory problems, and that seemed to be the one thing you couldn’t use it for.

He got six answers he knew were nonsense. Then, feeling very neglected and put-upon, he took Tonino on a tour of the castle. It was not a success. Tonino looked white and tired and timid almost the whole time, and shivered in the long cold passages and on all the dark chilly staircases. Cat could not think of anything to say except utterly obvious things like, “This is called the Small Drawing Room,” or, “This is the schoolroom – we have lessons here with Michael Saunders, but he’s away in Greenland just now,” or, “Here’s the front hall – it’s made of marble.”

The only time Tonino showed the slightest interest was when they came to the big windows that overlooked the velvety green lawn and the great cedars of the gardens. He actually hooked a knee on the windowsill to look down at it.

“My mother has told me of this,” he said, “but I never thought it would be so wet and green.”

“How does your mother know about the gardens?” Cat asked.

“She is English. She was brought up here in this castle when Gabriel de Witt, who was Chrestomanci before this one, collected many children with magic talents to be trained here,” Tonino replied.

Cat felt annoyed and somehow cheated that Tonino had a connection with the castle anyway. “Then you’re English too,” he said. It came out as if he were accusing Tonino of a crime.

“No, I am Italian,” Tonino said firmly. He added, with great pride, “I belong to the foremost spell-house in Italy.”

There did not seem to be any reply to this. Cat did think of saying, “And I’m going to be the next Chrestomanci – I’ve got nine lives, you know,” but he knew this would be silly and boastful. Tonino had not been boasting really. He had been trying to say why he did not belong in the castle. So Cat simply took Tonino back to the playroom, where Julia was only too ready to teach him card games, and mooched away, feeling he had done his duty. He tried to avoid Tonino after that. He did not like being made to feel the way Tonino made him feel.

Unfortunately, Julia went down with measles the next day, and Roger the day after that. Cat had had measles long before he came to the castle, and so had Tonino. Janet could not remember whether she had had them or not, although she assured them that there was measles in the world she came from, because you could be injected against it. “Maybe I’ve been injected,” she suggested hopefully.

Chrestomanci’s wife Millie gave Janet a worried look. “I think you’d better stay away from Roger and Julia all the same,” she said.

“But you’re an enchantress,” Janet said. “You could stop me getting them.”

“Magic has almost no effect on measles,” Millie told her. “I wish it did, but it doesn’t. Cat can see Roger and Julia if he wants, but you keep away.”

Cat went to Roger’s bedroom and then Julia’s and was shocked at how ill they both were. He could see it was going to be weeks before they were well enough to look after Tonino. He found himself, quite urgently and cold-bloodedly (and in spite of what Millie had said) putting a spell on Janet to make sure she did not go down with measles too. He knew as he did it that it was probably the most selfish thing he had ever done, but he simply could not bear to be the only one left to look after Tonino. By the time he got back to the schoolroom, he was in a very bad mood.

“How are they?” Janet asked him anxiously.

“Awful,” Cat said out of his bad mood. “Roger’s sort of purple and Julia’s uglier than ever.”

“Do you think Julia’s ugly then?” Janet said. “I mean, in the normal way.”

“Yes,” said Cat. “Plump and pudgy, like you said.”

“I was angry when I told you that and being unfair,” said Janet. “You shouldn’t believe me when I’m angry, Cat. I’ll take a bet with you, if you like, that Julia grows up a raving beauty, as good-looking as her father. She’s got his bones to her face. And, you must admit, Chrestomanci is taller and darker and handsomer than any man has any right to be!”

She kept giving little dry coughs as she spoke. Cat examined her with concern. Janet’s extremely pretty face showed no sign of any spots, but her golden hair was hanging in lifeless hanks and her big blue eyes were slightly red about the rims. He suspected that he had been too late with his spell. “And Roger?” he asked. “Is he going to grow up ravingly beautiful too?”

Janet looked dubious. “He takes after Millie. But,” she added, coughing again, “he’ll be very nice.”

“Not like me then,” Cat said sadly. “I’m nastier than everyone. I think I’m growing into an evil enchanter. And I think you’ve got measles too.”

“I have not!” Janet exclaimed indignantly.

But she had. By that evening she was in bed too, freckled purple all over and looking uglier than Julia. The maids once again ran up and down stairs with possets to bring down fever, while Millie used the new telephone at the top of the marble stairs to ask the doctor to call again.

“I shall go mad,” she told Cat. “Janet’s really ill, worse than the other two. Go and make sure Tonino’s not feeling too neglected, there’s a good boy.”

I knew it! Cat thought and went very slowly back to the playroom.

Behind him, the telephone rang again. He heard Millie answer it. He had gone three slow steps when he heard the telephone go back on its rest. Millie uttered a great groan and Chrestomanci at once came out of the office to see what was wrong. Cat prudently made himself invisible.

“Oh lord!” Millie said. “That was Mordecai Roberts. Why does everything happen at once? Gabriel de Witt wants to see Tonino tomorrow.”

“That’s awkward,” Chrestomanci said. “Tomorrow I’ve got to be in Series One for the Conclave of Mages.”

“But I really must stay here with the other children,” Millie said. “Janet’s going to need all magic can do for her, particularly for her eyes. Can we put Gabriel off?”

“I don’t think so,” Chrestomanci replied, unusually seriously. “Tomorrow could be Gabriel’s last chance to see anyone. His lives are leaving him steadily now. And he was thrilled when I told him about Tonino. He’s always hoped we’d find someone with back-up magic one day. I know what, though. We can send Cat with Tonino. Gabriel’s almost equally interested in Cat, and the responsibility will do Cat good.”

No it won’t! Cat thought. I hate responsibility! As he fled invisibly back to the playroom, he thought Why me? Why can’t they send one of the wizards on the staff, or Miss Bessemer, or someone? But of course everyone was going to be busy, with Chrestomanci away and Millie looking after Janet.

In the playroom, Tonino was curled up on one of the shabby sofas deep in one of Julia’s favourite books. He barely looked up as the door seemed to open by itself and Cat shook himself visible again.

Tonino, Cat realised, was an avid reader. He knew the signs from Janet and Julia. That was a relief. Cat went quietly away to his own room and collected all the books there that Janet had been trying to make him read and that Cat had somehow not got round to – how could Janet expect him to read books called Millie Goes to School anyway? – and brought the whole armful back to the playroom.

“Here,” he said, dumping them on the floor beside Tonino. “Janet says these are good.”

And he thought, as he curled up on the other battered sofa, that this was exactly how a person got to be an evil enchanter, by doing a whole lot of good things for bad reasons. He tried to think of ways to get out of looking after Tonino tomorrow.

Cat always dreaded going to visit Gabriel de Witt anyway. He was so old-fashioned and sharp and so obviously an enchanter, and you had to remember to behave in an old-fashioned polite way all the time you were there. But these days it was worse than that. As Chrestomanci had said, old Gabriel’s nine lives were leaving him one by one. Every time Cat was taken to see him, Gabriel de Witt looked iller and older and more gaunt, and Cat’s secret dread was that one day he would be there, making polite conversation, and actually see one of Gabriel’s lives as it went away. If he did, he knew he would scream.

The dread of this happening so haunted Cat that he could scarcely speak to Gabriel for watching and waiting for a life to leave. Gabriel de Witt told Chrestomanci that Cat was a strange, reserved boy. To which Chrestomanci answered “Really?” in his most sarcastic way.

People, Cat thought, should be looking after him, and not breaking his spirit by forcing him to take Italian boys to see elderly enchanters. But he could think of no way to get out of it that Millie or Chrestomanci would not see through at once. Chrestomanci seemed to know when Cat was being dishonest even before Cat knew it himself. Cat sighed and went to bed hoping that Chrestomanci would have changed his mind in the morning and decided to send someone else with Tonino.

This was not to be. At breakfast, Chrestomanci appeared (in a sea-green dressing gown with a design of waves breaking on it) to tell Cat and Tonino that they were catching the ten thirty train to Dulwich to visit Gabriel de Witt. Then he went away and Millie – who looked very tired from having sat up half the night with Janet – rustled in to give them their train fare.

Tonino frowned. “I do not understand. Was not Monsignor de Witt the former Chrestomanci, Lady Chant?”

“Call me Millie, please,” said Millie. “Yes, that’s right. Gabriel stayed in the post until he felt Christopher was ready to take over and then he retired – Oh, I see! You thought he was dead! Oh no, far from it. Gabriel’s as lively and sharp as ever he was, you’ll see.”

There was a time when Cat had thought that the last Chrestomanci was dead too. He had thought that the present Chrestomanci had to die before the next one took over, and he used to watch this Chrestomanci rather anxiously in case Chrestomanci showed signs of losing his last two lives and thrusting Cat into all the huge responsibility of looking after the magic in this world. He had been quite relieved to find it was more normal than that.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Millie said. “Mordecai Roberts is going to meet you at the station and then he’ll take you back there in a cab after lunch. And Tom is going to drive you to the station here in the car and meet you off the three nineteen when you get back. Here’s the money, Cat, and an extra five shillings in case you need a snack on the way back – because efficient as I know Miss Rosalie is, she doesn’t have any idea how much boys need to eat. She never did have and she hasn’t changed. And I want to hear all about it when you get home.”

She gave them a warm hug each and rushed away, murmuring, “Lemon barley, febrifuge in half an hour, and then the eye-salve.”

Tonino pushed away his cocoa. “I think I am ill on trains.”

This proved to be true. Luckily Cat managed to get them a carriage to themselves after the young man who acted as Chrestomanci’s secretary had dropped them at the station. Tonino sat at the far corner of the smoky little space, with the window pulled down as low as it would go and his handkerchief pressed to his mouth. Though he did not actually bring up his breakfast, he went whiter and whiter, until Cat could hardly credit that a person could be so pale.

“Were you like this all the way from Italy?” Cat asked him, slightly awed.

“Rather worse,” Tonino said through the handkerchief, and swallowed desperately.

Cat knew he should sympathise. He got travel-sick himself, but only in cars. But instead of feeling sorry for Tonino, he did not know whether to feel superior or annoyed that Tonino, once again, was more to be pitied than he was.

At least it meant that Cat did not have to talk to him.

Dulwich was a pleasant village a little south of London and, once the train had chuffed away from the platform, full of fresh air swaying the trees. Tonino breathed the air deeply and began to get his colour back.

“Bad traveller, is he?” Mordecai Roberts asked sympathetically as he led them to the cab waiting for them outside the station.

This Mr Mordecai Roberts always puzzled Cat slightly. With his light, almost white, curly hair and his dark coffee complexion, he looked a great deal more foreign than Tonino did, and yet when he spoke it was in perfect, unforeign English. It was educated English, too, which was another puzzle, because Cat had always vaguely supposed that Mr Roberts was a sort of valet hired to look after Gabriel de Witt in his retirement. But Mr Roberts also seemed to be a strong magic user. He looked at Cat rather reproachfully as they got into the cab and said, “There are hundreds of spells against travel sickness, you know.”

“I think I did stop him being sick,” Cat said uncomfortably. Here was his old problem again, of not being sure when he was using magic and when he was not. But what really made Cat uncomfortable was the knowledge that if he had used magic on Tonino, it was not for Tonino’s sake. Cat hated seeing people be sick. Here he was doing a good thing for a bad selfish reason again. At this rate he was, quite definitely, going to end up as an evil enchanter.

Gabriel de Witt lived in a spacious, comfortable modern house with wide windows and a metal rail along the roof in the latest style. It was set among trees in a new road that gave the house a view of the countryside beyond.

Miss Rosalie threw open its clean white front door and welcomed them all inside. She was a funny little woman with a lot of grey in her black hair, who always, invariably, wore grey lace mittens. She was another puzzle. There was a big gold wedding-ring lurking under the grey lace of her left-hand mitten, which Cat thought might mean she was married to Mr Roberts, but she always had to be called Miss Rosalie. For another thing, she behaved as if she was a witch. But she wasn’t. As she shut the front door, she made brisk gestures as if she were setting wards of safety on it. But it was Mr Roberts who really set the wards.

“You’ll have to go upstairs boys,” Miss Rosalie said. “I kept him in bed today. He was fretting himself ill about meeting young Antonio. So excited about the new magic. Up this way.”

They followed Miss Rosalie up the deeply carpeted stairs and into a big sunny bedroom, where white curtains were gently blowing at the big windows. Everything possible was white: the walls, the carpet, the bed with its stacked white pillows and white bedspread, the spray of lilies-of-the-valley on the bedside table – and so neat that it looked like a room no one was using.

“Ah, Eric Chant and Antonio Montana!” Gabriel de Witt said from the bank of pillows. His thin dry voice sounded quite eager. “Glad to see you. Come and take a seat where I can look at you.”

Two plain white chairs had been set one on each side of the bed and about halfway down it. Tonino slid sideways into the nearest, looking thoroughly intimidated. Cat could understand that. He thought, as he went round to the other chair, that the whiteness of the room must be to make Gabriel de Witt show up. Gabriel was so thin and pale that you would hardly have seen him among ordinary colours. His white hair melted into the white of the pillows. His face had shrunk so that it seemed like two caves, made from Gabriel’s jutting cheekbones and his tall white forehead, out of which two strong eyes glared feverishly. Cat tried not to look at the tangle of white chest hair sticking out of the white nightshirt under Gabriel’s too-pointed chin. It seemed indecent, somehow.

But probably the most upsetting thing, Cat thought as he sat down, was the smell of illness and old man in the room, and the way that, in spite of the whiteness, there was a darkness at the edges of everything. The corners of the room felt grey, and they loomed. Cat kept his eyes on Gabriel’s long, veiny, enchanter’s hands, folded together on the white bedspread, because these seemed the most normal things about him, and hoped this visit would not last too long.

“Now, young Antonio,” Gabriel said, and his pale lips moved in a dry way Cat could not look at, “I hear that your best magic is done when you use someone else’s spell.”

Tonino nodded timidly. “I think so, sir.”

Cat kept his eyes on Gabriel’s unmoving, folded hands and braced himself for an hour or more of talk about Magic Theory. But, to his surprise, the kind of talk Cat could not understand only went on for about five minutes. Then Gabriel was saying, “In that case, I would like to try a little experiment, with your permission. A very little simple one. As you can see, I am very feeble today. I would like to do a small enchantment to enable myself to sit up, but I believe it would not come to much without your help. Would you do that for me?”

“Of course,” Tonino said. “Would – would a strength-spell be correct for this? I would have to sing, if that is all right, because that is the way we do things in the Casa Montana.”

“By all means,” agreed Gabriel. “When you’re ready then.”

Tonino put back his head and sang, to Cat’s surprise, very sweetly and tunefully, in what seemed to be Latin, while Gabriel’s hands moved on the bedspread, just slightly. As the song finished, the pillows behind Gabriel’s head rebuilt themselves into a swelling stack, which pushed the old man into sitting position. After that, they pushed him away from themselves so that he was sitting up on his own, quite steadily.

“Well done!” said Gabriel. He was clearly delighted. A faint pink crept over his jutting cheeks and his eyes glittered in their caves. “You have very strong and unusual magic, young man.” He turned eagerly to Cat. “Now I can talk to you, Eric. This is important. Are your remaining lives quite safe? I have reason to believe that someone is looking for them as well as for mine.”

Cat’s mind went to a certain cardboard book of matches, more than half of them used. “Well, Chrestomanci has them locked in the castle safe, with a lot of spells on them. They feel all right.”

Gabriel’s eyes glittered into distance while he considered Cat’s lives too. “True,” he said. “They feel secure. But I was never totally happy while Christopher’s other life was locked in there. I put his last life into a gold ring, you know, and locked it in that same safe – this was at a time when he seemed to be losing a life once a week, and something had to be done, you understand – but it was a great relief to me when he married and we could give the life to Millie as her wedding ring. I would greatly prefer it if your lives were equally well guarded. A book of matches is such a flimsy thing.”

Cat knew this. But Chrestomanci seemed to him to be the best guardian there could be. “Who do you think is looking for them?” he asked.

“Now that is the odd thing,” Gabriel answered, still looking into distance. “The only person who seems to fit the shapes of the magics I am sensing has, I swear, been dead and gone at least two hundred years. An enchanter known as Neville Spiderman. He was one of the last of the really bad ones.”

Cat stared at Gabriel staring into distance like a bony old prophet. On the other side of the bed, Tonino was staring too, looking as scared as Cat felt. “What,” Cat asked huskily, “makes you think it might be someone from the past?”

“For this reason—” Gabriel began.

Then the thing Cat had been dreading happened.

Gabriel de Witt’s face suddenly lost all expression. Behind him, the pillows began slowly subsiding, letting the old man down into lying position again. As they did so, Gabriel de Witt seemed to climb out of himself. A tall old man in a long white nightshirt unfolded himself from the old man who was lying down and stood for a moment looking rather sadly from Cat to Tonino, before he walked away into a distance that was somehow not part of the white bedroom.

Both their heads turned to follow him as he walked. Cat realised he could see Tonino through the shape of the departing old man, and the lilies-of-the-valley on the bedside table, and then the corner of the white wardrobe. The old man was getting smaller all the time as he walked, until at last he was lost into white distance.

Cat was astonished not to find himself screaming – although he almost did when he looked back at Gabriel de Witt lying on his pillows and found Gabriel’s face blue-pale and more sunken than ever, and his mouth slowly dropping wider and wider open. Cat could not seem to utter a sound, or move either, until Tonino whispered, “I saw you through him!”

Cat gulped. “Me too. I saw you. Why was that?”

“Was that his last life?” Tonino asked. “Is he truly dead now?”

“I don’t know,” said Cat. “I think we ought to call someone.”

But it seemed as if someone already knew. Footsteps thumped on the carpet outside and Miss Rosalie burst into the room, followed by Mr Roberts, who both rushed to the bed and stared anxiously down at Gabriel de Witt as if they expected him to wake up any minute. Cat snatched another look at that gaping mouth and strange, blue-wax complexion, and thought that he had never seen anyone more obviously dead. He had seen his parents just before their funeral, but they had looked almost asleep and not like this at all.

“Don’t worry, boys,” Miss Rosalie said. “It’s only another life gone. He’s still got two more.”

“No, you’re forgetting the life he gave to Asheth,” Mr Roberts reminded her.

“Oh, so I am,” Miss Rosalie said. “Silly of me. But he’s still got one left. Why don’t you go downstairs, boys, until the new life takes over. It can sometimes be quite a while.”

Cat and Tonino jumped thankfully out of their chairs. But as they did so, Gabriel stirred. His mouth shut with a snap and his face became the face of a person again – a person who looked pale and unwell, but full of strong feelings despite that.

“Rosalie,” he said, weak and fretful, “warn Chrestomanci. Neville Spiderman is sniffing round this house. I felt him very clearly just now.”

“Oh, nonsense, Gabriel!” Miss Rosalie said, brisk and bossy. “How could he be? You know Neville Spiderman – whatever his real name was – lived at the time of the first Chrestomanci. That was more than a hundred years before you were born!”

“I felt him, I tell you!” Gabriel insisted. “He was there when my last life was leaving.”

“You can’t possibly know that,” Miss Rosalie insisted.

“I do know. I made a study of the man,” Gabriel insisted in return. His voice was more and more weak and quavery. “When I was first made Chrestomanci, I studied him, because I needed to know what a really evil enchanter was like and he was the most ingenious of the lot. And this is very ingenious, Rosalie. He’s trying to make himself stronger than any Chrestomanci ever was. Warn Christopher he’s not safe. Warn Eric particularly.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Miss Rosalie said, so obviously humouring him that Gabriel began rolling about in distress, spilling bedclothes on to the floor. “Of course I’ll warn them,” Miss Rosalie said, hauling blankets back. “Settle down, Gabriel, before you make yourself ill, and we’ll do everything you want.” She made meaning faces at Mr Roberts to take Cat and Tonino out of the room.

Mr Roberts nodded. He put a hand on each boy’s shoulder and steered them out on to the landing. Behind them, as he gently shut the door, they heard Gabriel say, “Listen, Rosalie, my mind is not wandering! Spiderman has learnt to travel in time. He’s dangerous. I mean what I say.”

Gabriel de Witt sounded so weak and so upset that Mr Roberts said, looking extremely worried, “Look, I think you boys had better go home now. I don’t think he’ll be well enough to talk to you again today. I’ll call you a cab and telephone the castle to say you’ll be back on an earlier train.”

There was nothing Cat wanted more by this time. Tonino, from the look of him, felt the same. The only thing Cat regretted was that they were going to miss lunch. Still, Miss Rosalie’s idea of lunch was usually a tomato and some lettuce, and they did have Millie’s five shillings. He followed Mr Roberts downstairs thinking of doughnuts and station pies.

Luckily there was a cab just clopping along the road as they reached the front gate. It was one of those old-fashioned horse drawn hackneys, like a big upright box on wheels, with the driver sitting up on top of the box. It was shabby and the horse was scrawny, but Mr Roberts hailed it with strong relief and paid the driver for them as the boys climbed in. “You can just catch the twelve thirty,” he said. “Hurry it along, driver.”

He shut the door and the cab set off. It was smelly and jolting and its wheels squeaked, but Cat felt it was worth it just to get away so soon. It was not far to the station. Cat sat back in the half dark inside the box and felt his mind go empty with relief. He did not want to think of Gabriel de Witt again for a very long time. He thought about station pies and corned beef sandwiches instead.

But half an hour of jolting, smelling and squeaking later, something began puzzling him. He turned to the other boy in the dimness beside him. “Where were we going?”

Tonino – if that was his name: Cat found he was not at all sure – shook his head uncertainly. “We are travelling north east,” he said. “I feel sick.”

“Keep swallowing then,” Cat told him. One thing he seemed to be sure of was that he was supposed to look after this boy, whoever he was. “It can’t be that far now,” he said soothingly. Then he wondered what, or where, was ‘not far’. He was a little puzzled to find he had no idea.

At least he seemed to be right about its not being far. Five minutes later, just as the other boy’s swallowing was getting quite desperate, the cab squealed to a stop with a great yell of “Woa there!” from the driver up above, and the door beside Cat was pulled open. Cat blinked out into grey light upon a dirty pavement and a row of old, old houses as far as he could see in both directions. We must be in the outskirts of London, he thought. While Cat puzzled about this, the driver said, “Two blondie lads, just like you said, governor.”

The person who had opened the door leaned round it to peer in at them. They found themselves face to face with a smallish elderly man in a dirty black gown. The peering round brown eyes and the brown whiskery face, full of lines and wrinkles, were so like a monkey’s that it was only the soft black priestly sort of hat on the man’s head that showed he was a man and not a monkey. Or probably not. Cat found, in some strange way, that he was not sure of anything.

The monkey’s flat mouth spread in a grin. “Ah yes, the right two,” the man said, “as ordered.” He had a dry, snapping voice, which snapped out, “Out you get then. Make haste now.”

While Cat and Tonino obediently scrambled out to find themselves in a long street of the old tumbledown houses – all slightly different, like cottages built for a town – the man in the black gown handed up a gold coin to the driver. “Charmed to take you back,” he muttered. It was hard to tell if he was speaking to himself or to the driver, but the driver touched his hat to him anyway with great respect, cracked his whip and drove away, squealing and clattering. The cab seemed to move away from them up the tumbledown street in jerks, and each jerk seemed to make it harder to see. Before it quite reached the end of the street, it had jerked out of sight entirely.

They stared after it. “Why did that happen?” Tonino asked.

“Belongs to the future, doesn’t it?” the monkey-like man snapped. Again he might have been talking to himself. But he seemed to notice them then. “Come along now. No stupid questions. It’s not every day I hire two apprentices from the poorhouse and I want you indoors earning your keep. Come along.”

He turned and hurried into the house beside them. They followed, quite bewildered, past an unpainted front door – which closed with a slam behind them – into a dark, wooden hallway. Beyond this was a big room which was much lighter because of a row of filthy windows looking out on to bushes. As the monkey-man hurried them on through it, Cat recognised the place as a magician’s workshop. It breathed out the smell of magic and of dragon’s blood, and there were symbols chalked over most of the floor. Cat had a tantalising feeling that he should have known what most of those symbols were supposed to do, and that they were not quite in any order he was used to, but when he thought about this, the symbols meant nothing to him.

The main thing he noticed was the row of star charts along one wall. There were eight of them, getting newer and newer from the old, brown one at the far left, to the one on the right, after a gap where a ninth chart had been torn down, which was white and freshly drawn.

“Gave up on that one. Too well protected,” the monkey-man remarked as Cat looked at the gap. Again he was probably talking to himself, for he swung round at once and opened a door at the end of the room. “Come along, come along,” he snapped and hurried on down a sideways flight of stone steps into the cold stone basement under the house. Cat, as he hurried after, only had time to think that the last chart, after the torn-down one, had looked uncomfortably familiar in some way, before the monkey-man swung round on both of them at the bottom of the steps. “Now then,” he said, “what are your names?”

It seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, but they stood shivering on the chilly flagstones, staring from him to one another. Neither of them had the least idea.

The man sighed at their stupidity. “Too much of the forgettery,” he muttered in that way that seemed to be talking to himself. He pointed to Cat. “All right,” he said to Tonino. “What’s his name?”

“Er—” said Tonino, “it means something. In Latin, I think. Felix, or something like that. Yes, Felix.”

“And,” the man said to Cat, “his name is?”

“Tony,” said Cat. This did not strike him as quite right, any more than Felix did, but he did not seem to be able to get any closer than that. “His name’s Tony.”

“Not Eric?” snapped the man. “Which of you is Eric?”

They both shook their heads, although Cat had a faint, fleeting idea that the name meant a protected kind of heather. That was such an idiotic idea that he gave it up at once.

“Very well,” snapped the man. “Tony and Felix, you are now my apprentices. This room here is where you will eat and sleep. You will find mattresses over there.” He pointed a brown hairy hand at a dim corner. “In that other corner, there are brooms and dustpan. I require you to sweep this room and make it as clean and tidy as you can. When that is done, you may lay out the mattresses.”

“Please, sir—” Tonino began. He stopped, looking frightened, as the withered old monkey face swung round to stare at him. Then he said something that was obviously not what he had started to say. “Please, sir, what should we call you?”

“I am known as Master Spiderman,” snapped the man. “You will address me as Master.”

Cat felt a small, chilly jolt of alarm at the name. He put it down to the fact that he was already disliking this monkey-faced old man very much indeed. There was a smell that came off him, of old clothes, mustiness and illness, which reminded Cat of – of – of something he could not quite remember, except that it made him frightened and uneasy. So, to make himself feel better, he said what he knew Tonino had really been going to say.

“Sir, we haven’t had any lunch yet.”

Master Spiderman’s round monkey eyes blinked Cat’s way. “Is that so? Well, you may have food as soon as you have swept and tidied this room.” At that, he turned and ran up the stone steps to the door, with his musty black coat swirling. He stopped at the top. “Do not try to do any magic,” he said. “I’ll have nothing like that here. Nothing stupid. This place is in a time apart from any other time and you must behave yourselves here.” He went out through the door and shut it behind him. They heard a bolt shoot home on the other side of it.

That door was the only way out of the basement. The only other opening in the stone walls was a high up window, fast shut and too dirty to see through, which let in a meagre grey light. Cat and Tonino stared from the door to the window, and then at one another. “What did he mean,” asked Tonino, “to do no magic? Can you do magic?”

“I don’t think so,” said Cat. “Can you?”

“I – I can’t remember,” Tonino said miserably. “I am blank.”

So was Cat, whenever he thought about it. He was uncertain of everything, including why they were here and whether he ought to be frightened about it, or just miserable. He clung to the two things he was certain about. Tonino was younger than he was and Cat ought to be looking after him.

Tonino was shivering. “Let’s find the brooms and start sweeping,” Cat said. “It’ll warm us up and he’ll give us something to eat when we’ve done it.”

“He might,” Tonino said. “Do you believe him or trust him?”

“No,” said Cat. This was something else his fuzzy mind was clear about completely. “We’d better not give him an excuse not to give us any food.”

They found two worn down brooms and a long-handled dustpan in the corner by the stairs, along with a heap of amazingly various rubbish – rusty cans, cobwebby planks, rags so old they had turned into piles of dirt, walking sticks, broken jars, butterfly nets, fishing rods, half a carriage wheel, broken umbrellas, works of clocks and things that had decayed too much for anyone to guess what they had once been – and they set about cleaning the room.

Without needing to discuss it, they started at the end where the stairs were. It was clearer that end. The rest of the room was filled with a clutter of old splintery work benches and broken chairs, which got more and more jumbled towards the far end, where the entire wall was completely draped in cobwebs, thicker and dustier than Cat would have thought possible. For another thing, when they were near the stairs, they could hear Master Spiderman creaking and muttering about in the room overhead and it seemed reasonable to think that he could hear them too. It was in both their minds that, if he heard them truly hard at work, he might decide to bring them something to eat.

They swept for what seemed hours. They used the least smelly of the old rags for dusters. Cat found an old sack, into which they noisily poured panloads of dust, cobwebs and broken glass. They thumped with their brooms. Tonino hauled out another load of rubbish from another corner, making a tremendous clatter, and found the mattresses among it. They were filthy, lumpy things, so damp they felt wet.

Cat slammed about making a heap of the most broken chairs and hung the mattresses over it in a gust of mildew-smell, to air. By this time, slightly to Cat’s surprise, more than half the room was clear. Dust hung in the air, making Tonino’s nose and eyes run, filling their clothes and their hair, and streaking their faces with grey. Their hands were black and their fingernails blacker. They were hungry, thirsty, and tired out.

“I need a drink,” Tonino croaked.

Cat swept the stairs a second time, very noisily, but Master Spiderman gave no sign of having heard. Perhaps if he called out…? It seemed to take a real effort to muster the courage. And, somehow, Cat could not bring himself to call Master Spiderman “Master”, try as he would. He knocked politely on the door and called out, “Excuse me, sir! Excuse me, please, we’re terribly thirsty.”

There was no reply. When Cat put his ear to the door he could no longer hear any sounds of Master Spiderman moving about. He came gloomily back down the stairs. “I don’t think he’s there now.”

Tonino sighed. “He will know when this room is cleared and he will come back then, but not before. I am fairly sure he is an enchanter.”

“There’s nothing to stop us having a rest anyway,” Cat said. He dragged the two mattresses over to the wall and made a seat out of them. They both sat down thankfully. The mattresses were still extremely damp and they smelt horrible. Both of them tried not to notice. “How do you know he’s an enchanter?” Cat asked, to take his mind off the smell and the wetness.

“The eyes,” said Tonino. “Your eyes are the same.”

Cat thought of Master Spiderman’s round, glossy eyes and shuddered. “They’re nothing like the same!” he said. “My eyes are blue.”

Tonino put his head down and held it in both hands. “Sorry,” he said. “For a moment I thought you were an enchanter. Now I don’t know what I think.”

This made Cat shift about uncomfortably. It was frightening, if he let himself notice it, how whenever he thought about anything, particularly about magic, there seemed to be nothing to think. There seemed to be only here and now in this cold basement, and the horrible bad-breath smell coming up from the mattresses, and the damp creeping up with the smell and coming through his clothes.

Beside him, Tonino was shivering again. “This is no good,” Cat said. “Get up.”

Tonino climbed to his feet. “I think it is a spell to keep us obedient,” he said. “He told us we could lay the mattresses out after the room was clean.”

“I don’t care,” said Cat. He picked up the top mattress and shook it, trying to shake the smell – or the spell – out.

This proved to be a bad mistake. The whole basement became full, almost instantly, of thick, choking, bad-smelling, chaffy dust. They could hardly see one another. What Cat could see of Tonino was alarming. He was bending over coughing and coughing, a terrible hacking cough, with a whooping, choking sound whenever Tonino tried to breathe in. It sounded as if Tonino was choking to death, and it frightened Cat out of what few wits he seemed to have.

He dropped the mattress in a further cloud of dust, snatched up a broom and ran up the stairs in a frenzy of fear and guilt, where he battered on the door with the broom handle. “Help!” he screamed. “Tony’s suffocating! Help!”

Nothing happened. As soon as Cat stopped beating on the door, he could tell from the sort of silence beyond that Master Spiderman was not bothering to listen. He ran down again, into the thick, thick dust, seized the choking Tonino by one elbow and pushed him up the stairs.

“Get up by the door,” he said. “It’s clearer there.” He could hear Tonino choking his way upwards as he himself ran towards the dirty, murky high-up window and slammed the end of the broom handle into it like a spear.

Cat had meant to smash out a pane. But the grimy glass simply splintered into a white star and would not break any further however hard Cat poked at it with the broom. By this time he was coughing almost as wretchedly as Tonino. And angry. Master Spiderman was trying to break their spirits. Well, he was not going to! Cat dragged one of the heavy, splintery work benches under the window and climbed on it.

The window was one of the kind that slides up and down. Standing on the bench brought Cat’s nose level with the rusty old catch that held the two halves shut in the middle. He took hold of the catch and wrenched at it angrily. It came to pieces in his hand, but at least it was not holding the window shut any more. Cat threw the broken pieces down and gripped the dirty frame with both sets of fingers. And pulled. And heaved. And rattled.

“Let me help,” Tonino said hoarsely, climbing up beside Cat, and breathed out hugely because he had been holding his breath as he came across the room.

Cat moved to one side gratefully and they both pulled. To their joy, the top half of the window juddered and slid, making an opening about four inches wide above their heads. Through it, they could just see the bottom of a set of railings, level with the pavement outside, and pairs of feet walking past – feet in old-fashioned sort of shoes with high heels and buckles on the front.

This struck them as strange. So did the way that warm wafts of fresh air came blowing in their faces through the open gap at the same time as clouds of the dust went streaming out. But they did not stop to think about either of these things. It had dawned on both of them that if they could pull the top half of the window right down, they could climb through and get away. They hung by their hands from the top of the window, pulling grimly.

But no amount of pulling seemed to get the window any further open. As Cat left off, panting, Tonino hammered the lower half of the window with his fist and shouted at the next pair of buckled shoes that walked past.

“Help! Help! We’re shut in!”

The feet went by without pausing.

“They didn’t hear,” said Cat. “It must be a spell.”

“Then what do we do?” Tonino wailed. “I am so hungry!”

So was Cat. As far as he could tell, it was at least teatime by then. He thought of tea going on at the castle, with cress sandwiches and cream cakes – Hang on! What castle? But the flash of memory was gone, leaving just the notion of cress sandwiches, luxurious ones with all the crusts cut off, and cakes oozing jam and cream. Cat’s stomach grumbled and he felt ready to wail like Tonino. But he knew he had to be sensible, because he was older than Tonino.

“He said we could have food when we’d cleaned the whole room,” he reminded Tonino. “We’d better get on and finish it.”

They climbed down and set to work again. This time, Cat tried to organise it properly. He made sure they worked only in short bursts and he found two not-so-broken chairs so that they could sit on them and rest while the latest lot of dust was sucked away out through the open window. Slowly they worked their way towards the far end of the basement. By the time the light filtering in past the dirt on the window was golden, late evening light, they were ready to start on the end wall.

They were not looking forward to this. From ceiling to floor, that end was draped in a mass of filthy, dust-hung cobwebs at least two feet thick, fluttering and heaving grey and sinister in the small draught from the window. Under the draped webs, they could just see another of the splintery work benches. On it, in the very middle, there seemed to be a small black container of some kind.

“What do you think that is?” Tonino wondered.

“I’ll see. More old rubbish, I expect.” Cat shudderingly put his left hand through the cobwebs, hating the sticky, tender touch of them, and took hold of the black thing.

As soon as his fingers closed round it, he had a feeling it was important. But when he had pulled it gently out, avoiding touching the cobwebs where he could, it was just an old black cannister with a round hole clumsily punched in its lid. “Only a tin tea caddy,” he said. “It looks as if someone’s tried to make it into a money box.” He shook it. Something inside rattled quite sharply.

“See what’s in there,” said Tonino. “It might be valuable.”

Cat pried at the lid, getting a big new patch of black dirt on his front as he did so. The tin was coated in generations of sooty grease. But the lid was quite easy to move and came off with a clatter. Inside were a very few red kidney beans. Seven of them.

Cat tipped them out on to his hand to be sure, and they were indeed, most disappointingly, beans. They must have been in that tin a very long time. Four of them were wrinkled and shrivelled, and one was so old it was just a withered brown lump. It was clear they were nothing valuable at all.

“Beans!” Cat said disgustedly.

“Oh yes,” said Tonino, “but think of Jack and the Beanstalk.”

They stared at one another. In an enchanter’s basement anything was possible. Both had visions of mighty bean plants growing through the ceiling and on through the roof of the house, and each of them climbing one, away from Master Spiderman and out of his power. And while they stared, they heard the sound of the door being unbolted at the other end of the room.

Cat hastily thrust the handful of beans into his pocket and jammed the lid back on the cannister while Tonino picked up his broom. Tonino waited until Cat had carefully put the old tin back through the cobwebs, into the dust-free circle on the wooden bench where it had stood before, and then reached up with the broom and began virtuously sweeping billows of cobweb off the wall.

Master Spiderman threw open the door and raced down the stone steps, shouting, “No, no, no, you wretched boy! Stop that at once! Don’t you know a spell when you see one?” He came rushing through the room and advanced on Tonino with his hand raised in a fist.

Tonino dropped the broom with a clatter and backed away. Cat was not sure whether Master Spiderman was going to hit Tonino or cast a spell on him, but he got between them quickly anyway. “You’ve no call to hurt him,” he said. “You told us to clean the place up.”

For a moment, Master Spiderman bent over the two of them, clearly seething with rage. Cat smelt the unclean old-man smell from Master Spiderman’s breath and the mildew from his black coat. He looked into the round glaring eyes, and at the moving wrinkles and long hairs on Master Spiderman’s face, and he felt as much sick as he was frightened.

“And you promised us some food when we’d done it,” he added.

Master Spiderman ignored this, but he seemed to control his rage a little. “For this spell,” he said, in that way he had of almost talking to himself. There were little flecks of white round his wide, lipless mouth. “For this spell, I have kept myself alive for countless years beyond my natural span. This spell will change the world. This spell will give me the world! And one miserable boy nearly ruins it by trying to sweep it off the wall!”

“I didn’t know it was a spell,” Tonino protested. “What is it supposed to do?”

Master Spiderman laughed – a private sort of laugh, with his mouth closed as if he were shutting in secrets. “Supposed?” he said. “It is supposed to make a ten-lifed enchanter, who is to be more powerful than any of your Chrestomancis. It will do so, as long as neither of you meddles with it again. Don’t dare touch it!”

He stepped around them and made gestures at the wall, rather as if he were plaiting or twisting something. The grey swathe of cobweb which Tonino had brought down billowed itself and lifted upwards. Master Spiderman made flattening and twiddling motions with his hands then, and the cobwebs began moving this way and that, growing thicker as they moved, and wafting themselves up to stick to the ceiling. Cat thought he could see a host of little half-invisible creeping things scurrying about among the grey swathes, repairing the spell the way Master Spiderman wanted it, and had to look away. Tonino, however, stared at them, amazed and interested.

“There,” Master Spiderman said at last. “Don’t go near it again.” He turned to leave.

“Hang on,” said Cat. “You promised us something to eat. Sir,” he added quickly, as Master Spiderman swung angrily round at him. “We have cleaned the room, sir.”

“I’ll give you food,” Master Spiderman said, “when you tell me which of you is Eric.”

As before, the name meant nothing to either of them. But they were both so hungry by then that Cat instantly pointed to Tonino and Tonino just as promptly pointed at Cat. “He is,” they said in chorus.

“I see,” snapped Master Spiderman. “You don’t know.” He swung round again and hurried away, muttering to himself. The mutters turned into distinct speech while Master Spiderman was clambering up the steps. He must have thought they could not hear him from there. “I don’t know which of you is either, damn it! I’ll just have to kill both of you – one of you more than once, I imagine.”

As the door shut with a boom, Cat and Tonino stared at one another, really frightened for the first time. “Let’s try the window again,” Cat said.

But the window still would not budge. Cat was standing on the work bench wagging the broom handle out through the open space in hopes of breaking the spell on it, when he heard the door opening again. He came down hastily and kept hold of the broom for a weapon.

Master Spiderman came through the door with a lighted lamp, which he put down on the top step. They were glad to see the light. It was getting quite dark in the basement by then. They watched Master Spiderman turn and push a tray out on to the top step beside the lamp. “Here is your supper, boys,” he said. “And here is what I want you to do next. Listen carefully. I want you to watch that spell at the end of the room. Don’t take your eyes off it. And the moment you see anything different about it, you are to come and knock on the door and tell me. Do that, and you shall have a currant cake each as a reward.”

There was a sort of oily friendliness about Master Spiderman now which made both boys very uneasy. Cat nudged Tonino and Tonino at once began trying to find out what this new friendliness was about. “What are you expecting to happen to the spell?” he asked, looking very earnest and innocent.

“So we know what to look for,” Cat explained.

Master Spiderman hesitated, obviously wondering what to tell them. “You will see a disturbance,” he said. “Yes, a disturbance among the webs. It will look quite strange, but you must not be frightened. It will only be the soul of an enchanter who is presently on his deathbed, and it will, almost at once, turn harmlessly into a bean. Make sure that the bean has dropped correctly into the container on the bench and then tell me. Then you shall each have a currant cake. You will do that and you shall have a cake each. You are good boys, are you not?”

“Oh yes,” they both assured him.

“Good.” Master Spiderman backed out through the door and shut it again.

Cat and Tonino went cautiously up the stairs to look at the tray. On it was a tin jug of water, a small stale loaf, and a block of cheese so old and sweaty that it looked like a piece of soap someone had just washed with.

“Do you think it’s poisoned?” Tonino whispered.

Cat thought about it. In a way, it was a triumph, that they had forced Master Spiderman to give them anything to eat, but it was quite plain that, even so, Master Spiderman was not going to waste decent food on people he was planning to kill. Giving them this food was just to lull them. “No,” Cat said. “He’d use better food. I bet it’s the currant cakes that are going to be poisoned.”

Tonino was evidently thinking as well, while they carried the lamp and the tray down the steps and set both up on a work bench in the middle of the room. “He said,” he observed, “that he has kept himself alive much longer than his normal lifetime. Do you think he does this by killing boys – his apprentices?”

Cat dragged the two least rickety chairs up beside the bench. “I don’t know,” he said, “but he might. I think when that enchanter’s ghost gets here, we ought to ask it to help.”

“A good idea,” said Tonino. Then he added dubiously, “If it can.”

“Of course it can,” Cat said. “He’ll still be an enchanter even if he is a ghost.”

They tore the hard bread into lumps and set to work to gnaw at these and the rubbery cheese, taking it in turns to swig water out of the tin jug. The water tasted stale and pond-like. Cat’s stomach began to hurt almost at once. Perhaps, he thought, his reasoning had been wrong and this nasty supper was poisoned after all. On the other hand, it could be that this food was simply indigestible – or just that the mere idea of poison had made his stomach think it was.

He watched Tonino carefully to see if he was showing any signs of poisoning. But Tonino evidently trusted Cat’s judgement. Under the soft lamplight, Tonino’s eyes became brighter as he ate and his dirty drawn-looking cheeks became rounder and pinker. Cat watched him use his teeth to scrape the very last of the cheese off the rind and decided that there was no poison in this food. His stomach unclenched a little.

“I’m still hungry,” Tonino said, laying the rind down regretfully. “I’m so hungry I could even eat those dry beans.”

Cat remembered that he had crammed those beans into his pocket when Master Spiderman had come charging down the steps. He fetched them out and laid all seven under the lamp. He was surprised to see that they were glossier and plumper than they had been. Four of them had lost their wrinkles entirely. Even the oldest and most withered one looked more like a bean and less like a dried brown lump. They glowed soft reds and purples under the light. “I wonder,” he said, pushing at them with a finger. “I wonder if these are all enchanters too.”

“They might be,” Tonino said, staring at them. “He said he was to make a ten-lifed enchanter. Here might be seven lives, with an eighth one coming soon. Where does he get the other two lives from though?”

From us, Cat thought, and hoped that Tonino would not think of this too.

But at that moment, the newest and glossiest bean gave a sudden jump and flipped over, end to end. Tonino forgot what they had been talking about and leaned over it, fascinated. “This one is alive! Are all the others living too?”

It seemed that they were. One by one, each of the beans stirred and then flipped, until they were all rolling and hopping about, even the oldest bean, although this one only seemed to be able to rock from side to side. The newest bean was now flipping so vigorously that it nearly jumped off the work bench. Cat caught it and put it back among the others. “I wonder if they’re going to grow,” he said.

“Beanstalks,” Tonino said. “Oh, please, yes!”

As he spoke, the newest bean split down its length to show a pale, greenish interior, which was clearly very much alive. But it was not so much like a bean growing. It was more like a beetle spreading its wings. For an instant, the boys could see the two mottled purplish-red halves of its skin, spread out like wing-covers, and then these seemed to melt into the rest of it. What spread out then was a pale, greenish, transparent growing thing. The growing thing very quickly spread into a flatness with several points, until it looked like nothing so much as a large floating sycamore leaf made of greenish light. There were delicate veins in it and it pulsed slightly.

By this time, five of the others were splitting and spreading too. Each grew points and veins, but in slightly different shapes, so that Cat thought of them as an ivy leaf, a fig leaf, a vine leaf, a maple leaf, and a leaf from a plane tree. Even the oldest seventh bean was trying to split. But it was so withered and hard and evidently having such difficulty that Tonino put a forefinger on each half of it and helped it break open. “Oh, enchanters, please help us!” he said, as the bean spread into a smaller, more stunted shape.

Wild service tree leaf, Cat thought, and wondered a little how he knew about trees. He looked sadly at the cluster of frail, quivering, greenish shapes gathered by the base of the lamp and realised that Tonino had been right to be doubtful in the first place. The green shapes might once have been enchanters – Cat thought Tonino was right about that – but they were not ghosts. These beings were soft, helpless and bewildered. It was like asking newly hatched butterflies for help.

“I don’t think they can help,” he said. “They don’t even know what’s happened to them.”

Tonino sighed. “They do feel awfully old,” he agreed. “But they feel new too. We shall have to help them instead. Make them hide from Master Spiderman.”

He tried to catch the old, stunted leaf, but it fluttered away from his fingers, frantically. This seemed to alarm the rest. They all fluttered and trembled and moved in a glowing group to safety behind the tin jug.

“Leave off! You’re frightening them!” Cat said. As he said it, he heard a sort of scuffling from behind him, at the end of the room. He and Tonino both whipped round to look.

There, glowing faintly among the draped cobwebs, another leaf-shaped thing, a big one, was struggling among the clinging, dusty threads. It was struggling even more frantically than the stunted leaf had struggled to get away from Tonino, but every flap and wriggle only brought it further into the midst of the tangled webs and lower and lower towards the black cannister.

“This is the dead enchanter!” Tonino said. “Oh, quickly! Help it!”

Cat got up slowly. He was rather afraid of the thing. It was like the times when a bird gets into your bedroom – a panic that was desperately catching – but when he saw the thing suddenly turn into a bean and plummet towards the black cannister he raced to the end of the room and pushed his hands nervously into the grey tangled shrouds of cobweb. He was just in time to deflect it with the edge of his left hand. The bean pinged against the cannister and bounced out on to the floor. Cat scooped it up. The instant it was in his hand, the bean split and grew and became a bigger, brighter and more pointed leaf-shape than any of the others. Cat carried it, whirring between his hands, and deposited it carefully beside the rest, where it lay beside the others as part of a transparent, pulsing, living group, shining under the lamp. Like a shoal of fish, Cat thought.

“He’s coming!” gasped Tonino. “Make them escape!”

Cat heard the door at the top of the steps opening. He flapped his hands at the cluster of leaf-shapes. “Shoo!” he whispered. “Hide somewhere!” All the leaf-shapes flinched from his hands but, maddeningly, they all stayed where they were, hovering behind the tin jug.

“Oh, go!” Tonino implored them as Master Spiderman came storming down the steps. But they would not move.

“What are you boys playing at?” Master Spiderman demanded. He went hurrying through the room towards the draped cobwebs. “According to my star chart, Gabriel de Witt died nearly twenty minutes ago. His soul must have arrived here by now. Why have you not knocked on the door? Are you too busy feeding your faces to notice? Is that it?”

He stormed past the lamp and the work bench without looking at them. All the leaf-shapes flinched as the angry gust of his passing hit them. Then, to Cat’s extreme relief, the big new leaf-shape lifted one side of itself in a sort of beckoning gesture and slid quietly over the edge of the bench into the shadows underneath it. The others turned themselves and flitted after it, like a row of flat fish diving, with the old, stunted one hastening after in last place. Cat and Tonino turned their eyes sideways to make sure they were hidden and then looked quickly back at Master Spiderman. He was hurling cobwebs right and left in order to get at the black cannister.

He snatched it up. He shook it. He turned round clutching it to his chest, in such amazement and despair that Cat almost felt sorry for him. “It’s empty!” he said. His face was the face of the saddest monkey in the most unkind zoo in any world. “Empty!” he repeated. “All gone – all the souls I have collected are gone! The souls of seven nine-lifed enchanters are missing and the new one is not here! My lifetime’s work! What has gone wrong?” As he asked this, the grief in his face hardened suddenly to anger and suspicion. “What have you boys done?”

Cat had been prepared to feel very frightened when Master Spiderman realised it was their fault. He was slightly surprised to feel more tense than frightened, and quite businesslike. It was a great help to have Tonino opposite him, looking calm and sturdy. “They got out,” he said.

“They started to grow,” Tonino said. “They were beans, you know, and beans grow. Why are you upset, sir? Were you meaning to swallow them?”

“Of course I was!” Master Spiderman more or less howled. “I have been intercepting the souls of dead Chrestomancis for more than two hundred years, you stupid little boy! When there were nine, and I swallowed them, I would be the strongest enchanter there has ever been! And you let them get out!”

“But there were only eight,” Tonino pointed out.

Master Spiderman hugged the cannister to himself and spread his mouth into a wide smile. “No,” he said. “Nine. One of you boys has my ninth soul – and the other eight have no way to get out of this room.” And he shouted, loudly and suddenly, “Where have they gone?”

Cat and Tonino both jumped and tried to look as if they had no idea. But the shout obviously terrified the dead souls lurking under the table. One of the middle-sized ones, the one like a fig leaf, made a dash for freedom, between the broken rungs of Cat’s chair and out towards the stairs and the open door at the top. The others all followed an instant later, as if they could not bear to be left behind, streaming after it in a luminous line.

“Aha!” shouted Master Spiderman. He dropped the cannister and ran at an incredible speed through the room and up the first three stairs, where he was just in time to block the path of the escaping souls. Above him, the door banged shut. The line of leaf shapes swirled to a stop almost level with the lowest stair, where they dithered in the air a little and then darted away sideways with the big new soul in the lead and the smallest, oldest one fluttering rather desperately in the rear.

At this, Master Spiderman leapt down the steps and snatched up a butterfly net from the heap of rubbish. “Lively, are you?” he muttered. “Soon put a stop to that!” Two more butterfly nets left the heap and planted themselves, one in Cat’s hand and one in Tonino’s. “You let them out,” he said. “You get them caught again.” And with that, he went leaping after the streaming line of souls with his butterfly net held sideways to scoop them up.

Cat and Tonino jumped up and began pretending to chase the fleeing souls too, getting in Master Spiderman’s way whenever they could. Tonino galumphed backwards and forwards, waving his net and shouting, “Got you!” and “Oh bother, I missed!” in all the wrong places, and particularly when he was nowhere near the streaming line of souls. Cat sprinted beside Master Spiderman and, whenever Master Spiderman lunged to scoop up the souls, Cat made sure to lunge too, and either to jog Master Spiderman’s elbow or to cross Master Spiderman’s butterfly net with his own so that he missed.

Master Spiderman howled and snarled at him, but he was too intent on catching the souls to do anything to Cat. Round the basement they sped, like people in a mad game of lacrosse, with Tonino galloping in the middle, upsetting broken furniture into their path, while the line of shining, desperately frightened souls sped round the room at waist level, swerved outwards to miss the draped cobwebs, and rushed along the wall with the window in it, slightly higher up.

Window! Cat thought at them as he chased beside Master Spiderman. Window’s open! But they were too frightened to notice the window and streamed on towards the steps again. There, the ivy-leaf soul must have had the idea that the door was still open and tried to dart up the steps. The others all stopped and swirled round to follow it.

Seeing this, Master Spiderman shouted “Aha!” again and rushed towards them with his net ready. Cat and Tonino had to do some fast and artistic jumping about on the stairs, or the whole lot would have been scooped up there and then.

Then separate, you fools! Cat thought. Why don’t you all fly different ways?

But this, it seemed, the terrified souls could not bear to do. Cat could feel them thinking that they would be lost if they were alone. They streamed on in a cluster, up into the corner of the room and then on round it again, just below the ceiling, with Master Spiderman close behind, net raised, and Cat pelting after him. There was a heart-stopping moment then when the old, small soul flew too near the draped cobwebs and got tangled in them. Again the other souls swirled to a stop and waited. Cat only got there just in time. Butterfly nets clashed as Cat managed to stumble into the cobwebs and carve them apart to let the trapped soul loose.

As it went fluttering after the others, Tonino galloped across the room and squeezed behind the bench that Cat had stood on to open the window. The bench went over with a crash. The line of souls had just gathered speed again, but this brought them almost to a standstill. Tonino stood waving his net back and forth beside the window, trying to give them a hint.

The souls understood – or at least the big new one which had been Gabriel de Witt seemed to. It made for the window in a glad swoop. The luminous green line of the others followed and all went whirling out through the gap into the dark night as if they had been sucked out by the draught.

Thank goodness! Cat thought, leaning on his butterfly net and panting. Now he won’t need to kill us either.

Master Spiderman uttered a great scream of rage. “You opened the window! You broke my spells!” He made a throwing motion towards Cat and then at Tonino. Cat felt a light, strong stickiness close about him. He had barely time to think that it felt remarkably like when you brush through a cobweb by accident, before Master Spiderman was rushing up the basement steps. Cat and Tonino, sweaty and breathless and covered with dirt as they were, found they were forced to rush up the steps behind him.

“I am not letting you out of my sight from now on!” Master Spiderman panted as they pelted through the room overhead. They were going too fast for Tonino, who nearly fell on his face as they reached the hallway. Cat dragged him upright while Master Spiderman was hurling open the front door, and they pelted on, out into the street. It was pitch dark out there. Curtains were drawn over the windows of all the houses and there were no kind of streetlights anywhere. Master Spiderman stopped, panting heavily, and seemed to be staring wildly around.

For a second or so, Cat had hopes that the escaped souls had got away, or at least had had the sense to hide.

But the souls had no sense. They did not have proper brains to have sense with, Cat thought sadly. They were hovering in a little cluster at the end of the street, just as greenly luminous and easy to see as they had been in the basement, and bobbing anxiously together as if they were discussing what to do now.

“There!” Master Spiderman cried out triumphantly. He dived down the street, nearly pulling Cat and Tonino over.

“Oh fly away! Go somewhere safe!” Tonino panted as they stumbled on down the pavement.

The souls saw them at the last possible moment – or they made up their non-minds what to do, Cat was not sure which. At all events, as Master Spiderman’s butterfly net was sweeping towards them, they swirled upwards in a spiral, with the big soul that had been Gabriel de Witt’s leading, and vanished across the roof of the house on the corner.

Master Spiderman screamed with frustration and rose into the air too. Cat and Tonino were lugged up into the air after him, spinning and dangling sideways. Before they could right themselves, they were being towed across chimney pots and roofs at a furious speed.

By the time Cat had hauled on Tonino and Tonino had clutched at Cat, and they had discovered that they could use the butterfly nets they still held to balance themselves upright in the air, they were going even faster, with the wind of speed in their eyes and whipping at their hair. They could see the small green cluster of souls fleeing ahead of them above a ragged field with donkeys in it, and then above a wood. There was a big half moon that Cat had not noticed before, lying on its back among clouds, which served to show the souls up even more bright and green.

“Faster!” Master Spiderman snapped, as they all hurtled across the wood too.

“Go as fast as he does, go as fast as he does,” Cat heard Tonino whisper.

This was exactly what seemed to happen. Master Spiderman snapped, “Faster!” several times, once when the moon vanished and there were suddenly a thousand more roofs and chimneys whirling beneath them; again when it came on to rain briefly; and yet again when there was a full moon shining down on some kind of park below. Yet the small green cluster of souls speeding ahead stayed precisely the same distance in front of them. The dark landscape underneath changed again, but they were still no nearer, and no further away either.

“Curses!” panted Master Spiderman. “They’re travelling into the future. This is a hundred and fifty years now. Boys, give me your strength. I command it!”

Cat felt energy draining strongly out of him through the invisible cobwebs that were towing him after Master Spiderman. Although this was not a pleasant feeling, it seemed to lift some of the fuzzy blankness in his mind. Cat found dim memories flitting through his head as they sped on, of faces and places mostly – a castle, a handsome dark-haired man saying something sarcastic, a lady in mittens, a very old man lying in bed. And a smell. Around the very old man in bed there had hung the same musty, sick smell that came strongly, in gusts, off Master Spiderman as he whirled along in front. But Cat could not put these memories together to make sense. It was easier to notice that the chimney pots beneath now seemed to be growing out into the countryside, in lines along the sides of fields, and to listen to Tonino, who was still whispering, “Go as fast as we do, go as fast as we do!” over and over.

“Are you using his spell or something?” Cat whispered.

“I think so,” Tonino whispered back. “I seem to remember doing this before.”

Cat seemed to remember Tonino could do this sort of thing too, but before he could discover how he knew, the landscape below jerked into another different shape. There were handsome gas streetlights down there now, trees lining wide roads and houses that stood apart from one another in gardens. Ahead, the small glowing group of souls hurtled across a village green and then over a dimly gleaming railway line.

“I know this place!” Cat said. “I think we were here this morning.”

Almost at the same time, Master Spiderman was making confused noises. “I thought he was taking them to his home,” he said, “but we have passed it. Where are they going then?”

In front of them, the souls streamed above some tall trees and almost instantly dived down beyond, towards a tall building with rows of lighted windows. Still making puzzled noises, and grunting with the effort, Master Spiderman dragged himself and Cat and Tonino across the treetops after them.

They were in time to see the souls, in a luminous line with the big one still leading, go streaming sedately in through the big arched door in the middle of the building. At the sight, Master Spiderman yelled with rage and plunged them all downwards so quickly that Cat had to shut his eyes. It was even quicker than falling.

They landed with a fairly violent bump on what was luckily a soft lawn. Tonino and Cat got up quickly, but Master Spiderman was winded and staggered about gasping, looking so thin and bent and hollow-faced that he might almost have been a real monkey. They could see him clearly, propping himself on his butterfly net and puffing, because there was a large light over the arched door of the building. The light shone on letters carved into the stone of the arch: HOSPITAL OF THE SACRED HEART.

“A hospital!” Master Spiderman panted. “Why would they want to come here? Don’t stand there staring, you stupid boys! We have to catch them!” And he was off again, using the butterfly net like a walking stick and muttering, “Oh why do I always get so old when I come to the future? Come on, you wretched boys, come on!”

He dragged them in through the doorway into a most obvious hospital corridor, long, pale green and well lit, and smelling so strongly of antiseptic that it drowned even the smell of Master Spiderman. Cat and Tonino both became extremely conscious of how dirty they were. They tried to hang back. But there near the end of the corridor, almost transparent yellow in the strong light, was the little cluster of souls, floating nervously near a staircase, as if they were again undecided what to do. The sight seemed to inspire Master Spiderman to a second wind. He broke into a gallop, waving his butterfly net, and the boys were dragged into a gallop too.

When they were halfway along the corridor, a nun came out of a doorway, carrying a kidney dish. She was one of those nuns with a headdress that was made of big starched points, like a ship in full sail.

Not a headdress to dodge in, Cat would have thought. But dodge she did as Master Spiderman came charging down on her like a wild monkey in a flying black coat, with Cat and Tonino helplessly sprinting behind him. The nun’s headdress gave an outraged rattle, and she backed into a doorway, clutching her kidney dish and staring as they all rushed past.

The souls saw them coming and made up their minds. The big one darted for the staircase and the others went streaming after, up alongside the crisp green line painted on the wall. Master Spiderman hopped on one foot in order to stop, spun round and went hammering up the stairs behind them. So, perforce, did Cat and Tonino.

As they all got to the top, another nun was just coming through a swing door, holding it open with her back so that she could wrestle a big tray with bottles on it through the door too. The souls swirled neatly around her huge starched headdress and on into the ward beyond. The nun did not see them. But she saw Master Spiderman with his face stretched into a grin of effort bounding towards the door like a maniac monkey, and the two dirty, perspiring, cobwebby boys behind him. She dropped the tray and screamed.

Master Spiderman barged her aside and dashed into the ward, dragging the boys with him.

They were in a long, dimly lighted space with a row of beds on either side. The souls were about halfway down the room, flitting cautiously in their usual cluster. But the place was not quiet. Cat had the strange feeling that they had just burst into a rookery. The air rang with peculiar cawing noises.

It took him a second or so to realise that the cawing was coming from little white cradles that were hooked to the bottom of each bed. All the people in the beds were ladies, all looking rather exhausted, and in each cradle there was a tiny, wrinkly, red-faced new born baby – at least, there were two of them in the cradle nearest Cat – and it was the babies who were making the noise, more and more of them, as the nun’s scream and the crash of the bottles, followed by the thunder of the door and the shout of anger Master Spiderman gave as he towed Cat and Tonino between the beds, woke every single baby there up.

“We’re in a maternity ward,” Cat said, wishing he could back straight out of here again.

Tonino was horribly out of breath, but he managed to grin. “I know. The souls are being clever after all.”

Master Spiderman was shouting, “Stop them! Don’t let them get into any babies! They’ll be gone for good then!” He dived at the cluster of souls with his butterfly net raised.

The souls did seem to be showing intelligence at last. As Master Spiderman dived, they rose up in a group above his waving net and then peeled apart in eight different directions. For a second or so, Master Spiderman did manage to keep most of them up in the air by swatting at them and shouting, but then two dived over behind him.

Like a pair of shooting stars, the ivy leaf and the fig leaf shot downward to two of the cradles. Each poised for a moment over a yelling baby and then softly descended into the baby’s wide-open bawling mouth. And were gone. A look of acute surprise crossed the face of each baby. Then they were yelling louder than ever with their faces screwed up and their short arms batting the air. It must feel very strange, Cat thought, suddenly to find you had two souls, but he could not see that it did any harm. And it was the perfect place to hide from Master Spiderman.

He nudged Tonino. “I think we’d better help them.”

Tonino nodded. They set off down the ward just as things began to get difficult. Master Spiderman was speeding this way and that, scooping at darting souls, and most of the new mothers, tired as they were, were beginning to sit up and object. They could not seem to see the souls, but they could see Master Spiderman.

“What do you think you’re doing?” several ladies demanded.

Another said, “I’m not letting that madman near my baby!” She picked her howling baby out of its cradle, just as the fluttering maple leaf soul was poised above it, and hugged it to her chest. The maple leaf was forced to swoop on to the next cradle, where Master Spiderman’s butterfly net scooped at it and missed.

“He’s a lunatic,” said the mother in the next bed. “Ring the bell for help.”

“I already did,” said a mother in the bed opposite. “I rang twice now.”

“It’s too bad!” several mothers said. And several more shouted at Master Spiderman to get out or they would have the law on him.

Meanwhile, soul after soul darted away from Master Spiderman and vanished into babies. By this time, only two were left, the oldest and the newest. The oldest leaf was still stunted, though it seemed to have grown a little, but it was evidently bewildered and weak. All its efforts to get into babies were timid and slow, and whenever Master Spiderman’s butterfly net swept towards it, all it seemed able to do was to flutter up towards the ceiling again, where the newest and biggest leaf-shape hovered, perhaps trying to tell the old leaf what to do.

The old soul timorously descended again as Cat and Tonino set off to help it. Master Spiderman pelted back to catch it. But he skidded to a stop when the ward doors clapped open and an awesome voice asked, “And what, pray, is the meaning of this?”

It was the Mother Superior. It did not take the hugeness of her starched headdress, the severity of her dark blue habit, the large silver cross hanging from her waist, or even her six feet of height, to tell you who and what she was. It was obvious. Such was the power of her personality that, as she advanced down the ward, nearly all the babies stopped crying.

The big soul that had been Gabriel de Witt hastily plunged from near the ceiling and was just in time to vanish into the only baby still crying. The mothers who were sitting up all hurriedly lay down again and the one who had picked her baby up guiltily popped it back into its cradle and lay down too. Cat and Tonino, feeling as guilty as the rest, stood still and tried to look as if they were visiting a new little brother or sister. Master Spiderman’s flat mouth hung open as if the Mother Superior had cast a spell on him. But Cat did not think it was magic. As the Mother Superior’s cold eye passed over him, he knew it was pure personality. He wanted to sink into the floor.

“I do not,” said the Mother Superior to Master Spiderman, “wish to know what you are doing here, my good man. I want you simply to take your butterfly net and your filthy street urchins, and leave. Now.”

“Very good, ma’am.” Master Spiderman cringed. His hairy monkey face twisted with guilt. For an instant, it seemed as if he was going to do as he was told and go away. But the stunted and bewildered old soul, which had been hovering miserably up near the ceiling, suddenly decided that the Mother Superior was the one to keep it safe. It came down in a fluttering spiral and landed on her great white headdress, where it nestled, frail and quivering, upon the highest starched point. Master Spiderman stared at it urgently, with round monkey eyes.

“Off you go,” said the Mother Superior, “my good man.”

Master Spiderman’s face bunched up. “I’ll have this one at least,” Cat heard him mutter. He made one of his throwing gestures. “Freeze,” he said.

The Mother Superior promptly became as stiff and still as a statue. Most of the babies started to cry again.

“Good,” said Master Spiderman. “I never did hold with nuns. Nasty religious creatures.” He stood on tiptoe to swat the roosting old soul into his net. But the Mother Superior’s headdress was just too high for him. It flapped and rattled as he hit it, and the Mother Superior herself swayed about, and the soul, instead of being swatted into the net, was shot off sideways into the cradle that contained the twins. Both were bawling just then.

Cat saw the soul dive thankfully, but he did not see which twin got it, because Master Spiderman pushed him angrily aside and tried to unhook the cradle from the bed. “I’ll have this one at least!” he cried out. “I’ll start all over again, but I’ll have one!”

“You will not!” said the mother of the twins. She climbed out of bed and advanced on Master Spiderman. She was enormous. She had huge arms that looked as if they had ploughed and reaped fields, made dough and pounded washing clean, until they were stronger than the arms of most men. The rest of her was in a vast white nightgown with a frill round its neck and, on top of the frill, was a surprisingly pretty and very determined face.

Cat took one look at her and respectfully handed her his butterfly net as she marched past him. She gave him a nod of thanks and absently turned it back to front, with the net near her hand. “Let go that cradle,” she said, “or I shall make you very sorry.”

Master Spiderman hastily hooked the cradle on to the bed again and backed away. “Let’s be reasonable here, madam,” he said in his most oily and placating manner. “You have two fine babies there. Suppose I were to give you a gold piece for the pair of them.”

“I never,” said the huge lady, “heard anything so disgusting in my life!” And she swung the shaft of the butterfly net with both hands.

Master Spiderman had just time to yell. “Two gold pieces then!” before the handle of the net met his head with a whistling crack. His hat came off, revealing his wispy brown scalp, and he tottered sideways, shrieking. Tottered some more and fell against the Mother Superior. Cat and Tonino were just in time to hold her upright by leaning against her as Master Spiderman slid howling down the front of her.

And as he slid, his bare head hit the silver cross hanging from the Mother Superior’s waist. There was a strange crackling sound, followed by a strong smell. Master Spiderman jerked all over and hit the floor with an empty sort of flop. Cat found himself staring down at an old brown dead thing, that was so dried out and so withered that it might have been a mummified monkey. It looked as if it had died centuries before.

Cat’s first act was to look anxiously around for any sign of Master Spiderman’s soul. He did not want that getting into a baby. But it seemed almost as if any soul Master Spiderman had had was gone long ago. He could see and feel nothing of it. Then he looked down at the brown mummified thing again and thought, shuddering, If that’s an evil enchanter, I don’t want to be anything like that! At which point, he found he remembered who he was and that he was an enchanter too. And he was suddenly so engulfed in feelings and memories that he could not move.

Around him, the babies were all crying at full strength and most of their mothers were cheering. The mother of the twins was sitting on her bed saying she felt rather queer.

“I’m not surprised!” said the Mother Superior. “You did very well, my dear. A good flush hit – one of the best I’ve ever seen.”

On the other side of the Mother Superior, Tonino was doing what Cat realised he should have been doing hours ago, and shouting at the top of his strong, clear voice. “Chrestomanci! Chrestomanci, come here quickly!”

There was a blat of warm moving air, like a train passing, combined with a strange spicy smell from another universe entirely, and Chrestomanci was standing in the ward, almost face to face with Mother Superior.

The effect was extremely odd. The Conclave of Mages seemed to require Chrestomanci to wear a skinny thigh-length white tunic above enormously baggy black trousers. It made him look even taller than the Mother Superior, and a great deal thinner.

“Ah, Mother Jannissary,” he said. “Good evening. We met last year, I believe.”

“At the canonical conference, and my name is Mother Justinia,” the Mother Superior replied. “I am extremely glad to see you, Sir Christopher. We seem to have a spot of bother here.”

“So I see,” said Chrestomanci. He looked down at the remains of Master Spiderman and then across at Cat and Tonino. After that, his gaze travelled round the ward, the howling babies and the staring mothers, and he began to get his most bewildered look. “It seems a little late in the day for hospital visiting,” he said. “Perhaps someone will tell me why we are all here.” His brow creased and he made a little gesture, at which all the babies stopped crying and fell peacefully asleep. “That’s better,” he said. “Tonino, you explain.”

Tonino told it, clearly and well. There were several occasions when Cat might have interrupted with some further explanations, but he scarcely said anything, because he was so ashamed. It was not just that he, a nine-lifed enchanter, had let Master Spiderman cast a spell on him to make him forget what he was – and he knew he should have noticed the spell: it must have been inside that old hackney cab – but the fact that he, Cat, had been so busy resenting Tonino that he had nearly got both of them killed.

It made him feel worse that Tonino kept saying that Cat had behaved well, and that Cat had been managing to work magic in spite of Master Spiderman’s spells. Cat did not think either of these things were true. The most he could say for himself was he was glad he had been sorry for the trapped souls, enough to help rescue them. And he supposed he was glad to find he liked Tonino after all. Tonino had been so calm and sturdy through it all – the perfect companion. And he suspected that Tonino’s back-up magic had done twice as much as his own.

“So Gabriel de Witt is dead,” Chrestomanci said sadly.

“Not really,” Tonino said, gesturing round at the sleeping babies. “He is here somewhere.”

“Ah yes, but I imagine he – or she – doesn’t know who he is now,” Chrestomanci answered. He sighed. “So Neville Spiderman was hiding out in a time-bubble, collecting the souls of all the Chrestomancis, was he? And probably killing apprentices to prolong his own life while he waited. It was lucky he kidnapped the two of you. We’d never have caught him without that. But now we have, I think we’d better get rid of what’s left of him – it looks infectious to me. How old is this hospital?” he asked the Mother Superior.

“About seventy years old,” she replied, rather surprised.

“And what was here before it was built, do you know?” Chrestomanci asked.

She shrugged, rattling her headdress. “Just green fields, I think.”

“Good,” said Chrestomanci. “Then I can send him back in time without moving him. It’s a bit hard on the person who falls over him in the field, but it fits with what I remember. He was supposed to have been found dead in a ditch somewhere near Dulwich. Will everyone please stand back?”

Cat, Tonino and Mother Justinia all backed away a pace. Before they had quite finished moving, a blue glow appeared round the monkey-like thing on the floor and Neville Spiderman was gone. This was followed by a rapidly evaporating puddle with a strong smell of hospital.

“Disinfectant,” Chrestomanci explained. “Now, we have eight souls to account for still. Cat, can you remember which babies they all went to?”

Cat was more ashamed than ever. The babies all looked alike to him. And it had all been so confusing, with souls darting in all directions. “I’ve no idea,” he confessed. “One of the twins, but I don’t know which. And that’s all.”

“They all went everywhere,” Tonino explained. “Won’t their mothers know?”

“Most people,” said Chrestomanci, “can’t see souls. It takes magic. Oh well. We’ll have to do it the hard way.”

He turned round and snapped his fingers. The young man who acted as Chrestomanci’s secretary jumped into existence further up the ward. He was obviously not used to this kind of summons. He was in the middle of tying a spotted bow tie and almost dropped it. Cat could see him staring round at the mothers, the babies and the Mother Superior, and then at the filthy and dishevelled boys, and trying to look as if he saw such things every day.

“Tom,” Chrestomanci said to him, “be a good fellow and go round and get the names and addresses of all the mothers and every baby here, will you?”

“Certainly, sir,” Tom said, trying to look efficient and understanding.

Some of the mothers looked indignant at this, and Mother Justinia said, “Is that really necessary? We like to be confidential here.”

“Absolutely necessary,” Chrestomanci said. He raised his voice so that all the mothers could hear him. “Some of your babies are going to grow up with very powerful magic. They might have strange memories, too, which could frighten both you and them. We want to be able to help them if this happens. We also want to educate them properly in the use of their magic. But, since none of us know which children are going to have these gifts, we are going to have to keep track of you all. So we are going to give each baby here a government grant of five hundred pounds a year until he or she is eighteen. Does this made you feel better about it?”

“You mean they get the money if they have magic or not?” somebody asked.

“Exactly,” said Chrestomanci. “Of course they only get the grant when they come to Chrestomanci Castle once a year for magical testing.”

“Mine might have magic anyway,” someone else murmured. “My mother’s father—”

The twins’ mother said, “Well, I’m taking the money. I was at my wits’ end how to give them all they need. I wasn’t reckoning on twins. Thank you, sir.”

“My pleasure, madam,” Chrestomanci said, bowing to her. “Tom will give you any further details.” Tom, who had just conjured himself a notebook and a pen, looked pleading and alarmed at this. Chrestomanci ignored him. “He can cope,” he said to Cat. “That’s what he’s paid for. You and Tonino look as if you need a bath and a square meal. Let’s take you both home.”

“But—” said Cat.

“But what?” asked Chrestomanci.

Cat did not know how to put the shame he felt. He was fairly sure he had been starting to turn into someone like Neville Spiderman, but he did not dare tell Chrestomanci that. “I don’t deserve anything,” he said.

“No more than those twins deserve five hundred pounds a year each,” Chrestomanci said cheerfully. “I don’t know what’s biting you, Cat, but it seems to me that you’ve managed rather well in a dangerous situation without thinking you can rely on magic to help you. Think about it.”

Beside Cat, Tonino exclaimed. Cat looked up from the floor to find they were in the grand central hall of Chrestomanci Castle, standing in the five pointed star under the chandelier. Millie was rushing down the marble stairs to meet them.

“Oh, you found them!” she called out. “I’ve been so worried. Mordecai telephoned to say he put them in a cab which disappeared at the end of the street. He was terribly upset. And Gabriel de Witt died this evening, did you hear?”

“After a fashion,” Chrestomanci said. “In one way, Gabriel’s still very much with us.” He looked from Millie to Cat and Tonino. “Dear, dear. Everyone looks exhausted. I tell you what. I can borrow a villa in the South of France once the measles have abated – with a swimming pool. Tonino can go on to Italy from there. Would you like that, Tonino?”

“Yes, but I cannot swim,” Tonino said.

“Neither can I,” Cat said. “But we can both learn.”

Tonino beamed at him and Cat was glad to discover he still liked Tonino, rather a lot.

Carol Oneir was the world’s youngest best-selling dreamer. The newspapers called her the Infant Genius. Her photograph appeared regularly in all the daily papers and monthly magazines, either sitting alone in an armchair looking soulful, or nestling lovingly against her mama.

Mama was very proud of Carol. So were Carol’s publishers, Wizard Reverie Ltd. They marketed her product in big bright blue genie jars tied with cherry-coloured satin ribbon; but you could also buy the Carol Oneir Omnibus Pillow, bright pink and heart shaped, Carol’s Dreamie Comics, the Carol Oneir Dream Hatband, the Carol Oneir Charm Bracelet and a half a hundred other spin-offs.

Carol had discovered at the age of seven that she was one of those lucky people who can control what they dream about, and then loosen the dream in their minds so that a competent wizard can spin it off and bottle it for other people to enjoy. Carol loved dreaming. She had made no less than ninety-nine full-length dreams. She loved all the attention she got and all the expensive things her mama was able to buy for her. So it was a terrible blow to her when she lay down one night to start dreaming her hundredth dream and nothing happened at all.

It was a terrible blow to Mama too, who had just ordered a champagne breakfast to celebrate Carol’s Dream Century. Wizard Reverie Ltd were just as upset as Mama. Their nice Mr Ploys got up in the middle of the night and came down to Surrey by the milk train. He soothed Mama, and he soothed Carol, and he persuaded Carol to lie down and try to dream again. But Carol still could not dream. She tried every day for the following week, but she had no dreams at all, not even the kind of dreams ordinary people have.

The only person who took it calmly was Dad. He went fishing as soon as the crisis started. Mr Ploys and Mama took Carol to all the best doctors, in case Carol was overtired or ill. But she wasn’t. So Mama took Carol up to Harley Street to consult Herman Mindelbaum the famous mind wizard. But Mr Mindelbaum could find nothing wrong either. He said Carol’s mind was in perfect order and that her self-confidence was rather surprisingly high, considering.

In the car going home, Mama wept and Carol sobbed. Mr Ploys said frantically, “Whatever happens, we mustn’t let a hint of this get to the newspapers!” But of course it was too late. Next day the papers all had headlines saying CAROL ONEIR SEES MIND SPECIALIST and IS CAROL ALL DREAMED OUT? Mama burst into tears again, and Carol could not eat any breakfast.

Dad came home from fishing later that day to find reporters sitting in rows on the front steps. He prodded his way politely through them with his fishing rod, saying, “There is nothing to get excited about. My daughter is just very tired, and we’re taking her to Switzerland for a rest.” When he finally got indoors, he said, “We’re in luck. I’ve managed to arrange for Carol to see an expert.”

“Don’t be silly, dear. We saw Mr Mindelbaum yesterday,” Mama sobbed.

“I know, dear. But I said an expert, not a specialist,” said Dad. “You see, I used to be at school with Chrestomanci – once, long ago, when we were both younger than Carol. In fact, he lost his first life because I hit him round the head with a cricket bat. Now, of course, being a nine-lifed enchanter, he’s a great deal more important than Carol is, and I had a lot of trouble getting hold of him. I was afraid he wouldn’t want to remember me, but he did. He said he’d see Carol. The snag is, he’s on holiday in the South of France and he doesn’t want the resort filling with newspapermen—”

“I’ll see to all that,” Mr Ploys cried joyfully. “Chrestomanci! Mr Oneir, I’m awed. I’m struck dumb!”

Two days later, Carol and her parents and Mr Ploys boarded first class sleepers in Calais on the Swiss Orient Express. The reporters boarded it too, in second class sleepers and third class seats, and they were joined by French and German reporters standing in the corridors. The crowded train rattled away through France until, in the middle of the night, it came to Strasbourg, where a lot of shunting always went on. Carol’s sleeper, with Carol and her parents asleep in it, was shunted off and hitched to the back of the Riviera Golden Arrow, and the Swiss Orient went on to Zurich without her.

Mr Ploys went to Switzerland with it. He told Carol that, although he was really a dream wizard, he had skill enough to keep the reporters thinking Carol was still on the train. “If Chrestomanci wants to be private,” he said, “it could cost me my job if I let one of these near him.”

By the time the reporters discovered the deception, Carol and her parents had arrived in the seaside resort of Teignes on the French Riviera. There Dad – not without one or two wistful looks at the casino – unpacked his rods and went fishing. Mama and Carol took a horse-drawn cab up the hill to the private villa where Chrestomanci was staying.

They dressed in their best for the appointment. Neither of them had met anyone before who was more important than Carol. Carol wore ruched blue satin the same colour as her genie bottles, with no less than three hand-embroidered lace petticoats underneath it. She had on matching button boots and a blue ribbon in her carefully curled hair, and she carried a blue satin parasol. She also wore her diamond heart pendant, her brooch that said CAROL in diamonds, her two sapphire bracelets, and all six of her gold bangles. Her blue satin bag had diamond clasps in the shape of two Cs. Mama was even more magnificent in a cherry-coloured Paris gown, a pink hat, and all her emeralds.

They were shown up to a terrace by a rather plain lady who, as Mama whispered to Carol behind her fan, was really rather overdressed for a servant. Carol envied Mama her fan.

There were so many stairs to the terrace that she was too hot to speak when they got there. She let Mama exclaim at the wonderful view. You could see the sea and the beach, and look into the streets of Teignes from here. As Mama said, the casino looked charming and the golf links so peaceful. On the other side, the villa had its own private swimming pool. This was full of splashing, screaming children, and, to Carol’s mind, it rather spoiled the view.

Chrestomanci was sitting reading in a deck chair. He looked up and blinked a little as they came. Then he seemed to remember who they were and stood up with great politeness to shake hands. He was wearing a beautifully tailored natural-silk suit. Carol saw at a glance that it had cost at least as much as Mama’s Paris gown. But her first thought on seeing Chrestomanci was, Oh my! He’s twice as good-looking as Francis! She pushed that thought down quickly and trod it under. It belonged to the thoughts she never even told Mama. But it meant that she rather despised Chrestomanci for being quite so tall and for having hair so black and such flashing dark eyes. She knew he was going to be no more help than Mr Mindelbaum, and Mr Mindelbaum had reminded her of Melville.

Mama meanwhile was holding Chrestomanci’s hand between both of hers and saying, “Oh, sir! This is so good of you to interrupt your holiday on our account! But when even Mr Mindelbaum couldn’t find out what’s stopping her dreams—”

“Not at all,” Chrestomanci said, wrestling for his hand rather. “To be frank, I was intrigued by a case even Mindelbaum couldn’t fathom.” He signalled to the serving lady who had brought them to the terrace. “Millie, do you think you could take Mrs… er… O’Dear downstairs while I talk to Carol?”

“There’s no need for that, sir,” Mama said, smiling. “I always go everywhere with my darling. Carol knows I’ll sit quite quietly and not interrupt.”

“No wonder Mindelbaum got nowhere,” Chrestomanci murmured.

Then – Carol, who prided herself on being very observant, was never quite sure how it happened – Mama was suddenly not on the terrace any more. Carol herself was sitting in a deck chair facing Chrestomanci in his deck chair, listening to Mama’s voice floating up from below somewhere. “I never let Carol go anywhere alone. She’s my one ewe lamb…”

Chrestomanci leaned back comfortably and crossed his elegant legs. “Now,” he said, “be kind enough to tell me exactly what you do when you make a dream.”

This was something Carol had done hundreds of times by now. She smiled graciously and began, “I get a feeling in my head first, which means a dream is ready to happen. Dreams come when they will, you know, and there is no stopping them or putting them off. So I tell Mama, and we go up to my boudoir, where she helps me to get settled on the special couch Mr Ploys had made for me. Then Mama sets the spin-off spool turning and tiptoes away, and I drop off to sleep to the sound of it gently humming and whirling. Then the dream takes me…”

Chrestomanci did not take notes like Mr Mindelbaum and the reporters. He did not nod at her encouragingly the way Mr Mindelbaum had. He simply stared vaguely out to sea. Carol thought that the least he might do was to tell those children in the pool to keep quiet. The screaming and splashing was so loud that she almost had to shout. Carol thought he was being very inconsiderate, but she kept on.

“I have learned not to be frightened and to go where the dream takes me. It is like a voyage of discovery—”

“When is this?” Chrestomanci interrupted in an off-hand sort of way. “Does this dreaming happen at night?”

“It can happen at any time,” said Carol. “If a dream is ready, I can go to my couch and sleep during the day.”

“How very useful,” murmured Chrestomanci. “So you can put up your hand in a dull lesson and say ‘Please can I be excused to go and dream?’ Do they let you go home?”

“I ought to have explained,” Carol said, keeping her dignity with an effort, “that Mama arranges lessons for me at home so that I can dream any time I need to. It’s like a voyage of discovery, sometimes in caves underground, sometimes in palaces in the clouds—”

“Yes. And how long do you dream for? Six hours? Ten minutes?” Chrestomanci interrupted again.

“About half an hour,” said Carol. “Sometimes in the clouds, or maybe in the southern seas. I never know where I will go or whom I will meet on my journey—”

“Do you finish a whole dream in half an hour?” Chrestomanci interrupted yet again.

“Of course not. Some of my dreams last for more than three hours,” Carol said. “As for the people I meet, they are strange and wonderful—”

“So you dream in half-hour stretches,” said Chrestomanci. “And I suppose you have to take a dream up again exactly where you left it at the end of the half hour before.”

“Obviously,” said Carol. “People must have told you – I can control my dreams. And I do my best work in regular half-hour stints. I wish you wouldn’t keep interrupting, when I’m doing my best to tell you!”

Chrestomanci turned his face from the sea and looked at her. He seemed surprised. “My dear young lady, you are not doing your best to tell me. I do read the papers, you know. You are giving me precisely the same flannel you gave The Times and the Croydon Gazette and the People’s Monthly, and doubtless poor Mindelbaum as well. You are telling me your dreams come unbidden – but you have one for half an hour every day – and that you never know where you’ll go in them or what will happen – but you can control your dreams perfectly. That can’t all be true, can it?”

Carol slid the bangles up and down her arm and tried to keep her temper. It was difficult to do when the sun was so hot and the noise coming from that pool so loud. She thought seriously of demoting Melville and making Chrestomanci into the villain in her next dream – until she remembered that there might not be a next dream unless Chrestomanci helped her. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Let’s talk about the dreams themselves then,” said Chrestomanci. He pointed down the terrace steps to the blue, blue water of the pool. “There you see my ward, Janet. She’s the fair-haired girl the others are just pushing off the diving board. She loves your dreams. She has all ninety-nine of them – though I am afraid Julia and the boys are very contemptuous about it. They say your dreams are slush and all exactly the same.”

Naturally Carol was deeply hurt that anyone could call her dreams slush, but she knew better than to say so. She smiled graciously down at the large splash which was all she could see of Janet.

“Janet is hoping to meet you later,” said Chrestomanci. Carol’s smile broadened. She loved meeting admirers. “When I heard you were coming,” Chrestomanci said, “I borrowed Janet’s latest Omnibus Pillow.” Carol’s smile narrowed a bit. Chrestomanci did not seem the kind of person who would enjoy her dreams at all.

“I enjoyed it rather,” Chrestomanci confessed. Carol’s smile widened. Well! “But Julia and the boys are right, you know,” Chrestomanci went on. “Your happy endings are pretty slushy, and the same sort of things happen in all of them.” Carol’s smile narrowed again distinctly at this. “But they’re terribly lively,” Chrestomanci said. “There’s so much action and so many people. I like all those crowds – what your blurbs call your ‘cast of thousands’ – but I must confess I don’t find your settings very convincing. That Arabian setting in the ninety-sixth dream was awful, even making allowances for how young you are. On the other hand, your fairground in the latest dream seemed to show the makings of a real gift.”

By this time, Carol’s smile was going broad and narrow like the streets of Dublin’s Fair City. She was almost caught off guard when Chrestomanci said, “And though you never appear in your dreams yourself, a number of characters do come in over and over again – in various disguises of course. I make it about five or six main actors in all.”

This was getting far too close to the things Carol never told even Mama. Luckily some reporters had made the same observation. “This is the way dreams are,” she said. “And I am only the Seeing Eye.”

“As you told the Manchester Guardian,” Chrestomanci agreed, “if that is what they meant by ‘Oosung Oyo’. I see that must have been a misprint now.” He was looking very vague, to Carol’s relief, and did not seem to notice her dismay. “Now,” he said, “I suggest the time has come for you to go to sleep and let me see what happened to send your hundredth dream so wrong that you refused to record it.”

“But nothing went wrong!” Carol protested. “I just didn’t dream.”

“So you say,” said Chrestomanci. “Close your eyes. Feel free to snore if you wish.”

“But… but I can’t just go to sleep in the middle of a visit!” Carol said. “And… and those children in the pool are making far too much noise.”

Chrestomanci put one hand casually down to the paving of the terrace. Carol saw his arm go up as if he were pulling something up out of the stones. The terrace went quiet. She could see the children splashing below, and their mouths opening and shutting, but not a sound came to her ears. “Have you run out of excuses now?” he asked.

“They’re not excuses. And how are you going to know whether I dream or not without a proper dream-spool and a qualified dream-wizard to read it?” Carol demanded.

“Oh, I daresay I can manage quite well without,” Chrestomanci remarked. Though he said it in a mild, sleepy sort of way, Carol suddenly remembered that he was a nine-lifed enchanter, and more important than she was. She supposed he thought he was powerful enough on his own. Well, let him. She would humour him. Carol arranged her blue parasol to keep some of the sun off her and settled back in her deck chair, knowing nothing was going to happen…

…And she was at the fairground, where her ninety-ninth dream had left off. In front of her was a wide space of muddy grass, covered with bits of paper and other rubbish. She could see the Big Wheel in the distance behind some flapping tents and half-dismantled stalls, and another tall thing that seemed to be most of the Helter Skelter tower. The place seemed quite deserted.

“Well really!” Carol said. “They still haven’t cleared anything up! What are Martha and Paul thinking of?”

As soon as she said that, she clapped her hands guiltily to her mouth and whirled round to make sure that Chrestomanci had not come stalking up behind her. But there was nothing behind her but more dreary, litter-covered grass. Good! Carol thought. I knew nobody could come behind the scenes in a Carol Oneir private dream unless I let them! She relaxed. She was boss here. This was part of the things she never even told Mama – though, for a moment, back on the terrace at Teignes, she had been afraid that Chrestomanci was on to her.

The fact was, as Chrestomanci had noticed, Carol did only have six main characters working for her. There was Francis, tall and fair and handsome, with a beautiful baritone voice, who did all the heroes. He always ended up marrying the gentle but spirited Lucy, who was fair too and very pretty. Then there was Melville, who was thin and dark, with an evil white face, who did all the villains. Melville was so good at being a Baddie that Carol often used him several times in one dream. But he was always the gentleman, which was why polite Mr Mindelbaum had reminded Carol of Melville.

The other three were Bimbo, who was oldish and who did all the Wise Old Men, Pathetic Cripples, and Weak Tyrants; Martha, who was the Older Woman and did the Aunts, Mothers, and Wicked Queens, either straight wicked or with Hearts of Gold; and Paul, who was small and boyish looking. Paul’s speciality was the Faithful Boy Assistant, though he did Second Baddie too and tended to get killed quite often in both kinds of parts. Paul and Martha, since they never had very big parts, were supposed to see that the cast of thousands cleared everything up between dreams.

Except that they hadn’t this time.

“Paul!” Carol shouted. “Martha! Where’s my cast of thousands?”

Nothing happened. Her voice just went rolling away into emptiness.

“Very well!” Carol called out. “I shall come and find you, and you won’t like it when I do!”

She set off, picking her way disgustedly through the rubbish, toward those flapping tents. It really was too bad of them, she thought, to let her down like this, when she had gone to all the trouble of making them up and giving them a hundred disguises, and had made them as famous as she was herself, in a way. As Carol thought this, her bare foot came down in a melted ice cream. She jumped back with a shudder and found she was, for some reason, wearing a bathing suit like the children in Chrestomanci’s pool.

“Oh really!” she said crossly. She remembered now that her other attempt at a hundredth dream had gone like this too, up to the point where she had scrapped it. Anyone would think this was the kind of dream ordinary people had. It wouldn’t even make a decent Hatband dream. This time, with a sternly controlled effort, she made herself wear her blue button boots and the blue dress with all its petticoats underneath. It was hotter like that, but it showed that she was in charge. And she marched on, until she came to the flapping tents.

Here it nearly came like a common dream again. Carol walked up and down among empty tents and collapsed stalls, under the great framework of the Big Wheel and repeatedly past the topless Helter Skelter tower, past roundabout after empty roundabout, without seeing a soul.

It was only her stern annoyance that kept her going until she did see someone, and then she nearly went straight past him, thinking he was one of the dummies from the Waxworks Show. He was sitting on a box beside a painted organ from a roundabout, staring. Perhaps some of the cast of thousands did work as dummies when necessary, Carol thought. She had no idea really. But this one was fair, so that meant he was a Goodie and generally worked with Francis.

“Hey, you!” she said. “Where’s Francis?”

He gave her a dull, unfinished sort of look. “Rhubarb,” he said. “Abracadabra.”

“Yes, but you’re not doing a crowd scene now,” Carol told him. “I want to know where my Main Characters are.”

The man pointed vaguely beyond the Big Wheel. “In their quarters,” he said. “Committee meeting.” So Carol set off that way. She had barely gone two steps when the man called out from behind her. “Hey you! Say thank you!”

How rude! thought Carol. She turned and glared at him. He was now drinking out of a very strong-smelling green bottle. “You’re drunk!” she said. “Where did you get that? I don’t allow real drink in my dreams.”

“Name’s Norman,” said the man. “Drowning sorrows.”

Carol saw that she was not going to get any sense out of him. So she said “Thank you,” to stop him shouting after her again and went the way he had pointed. It led her among a huddle of gypsy caravans. Since these all had a blurred cardboard sort of look, Carol went straight past them, knowing they must belong to the cast of thousands. She knew the caravan she wanted would look properly clear and real. And it did. It was more like a tarry black shed on wheels than a caravan, but there was real black smoke pouring out of its rusty iron chimney.

Carol sniffed it. “Funny. It smells almost like toffee!” But she decided not to give her people any further warning. She marched up the black wooden ladder to the door and flung the door open.

Smoke and heat and the smell of drink and toffee rolled out at her. Her people were all inside, but instead of turning politely to receive their orders as they usually did, none of them at first took any notice of her at all. Francis was sitting at the table playing cards with Martha, Paul, and Bimbo by the light of candles stuck in green bottles. Glasses of strong-smelling drink stood at each of their elbows, but most of the drink smell, to Carol’s horror, was coming from the bottle Lucy was drinking out of. Beautiful, gentle Lucy was sitting on a bunk at the back, giggling and nursing a green bottle. As far as Carol could see in the poor light, Lucy’s face looked like a gnome’s and her hair was what Mama would describe as “in tetters”. Melville was cooking at the stove near the door. Carol was ashamed to look at him. He was wearing a grubby white apron and smiling a dreamy smile as he stirred his saucepan. Anything less villainous was hard to imagine.

“And just what,” said Carol, “do you think you’re all doing?”

At that, Francis turned around enough for her to see that he had not shaved for days. “Shut that blesh door, can’ you!” he said irritably. It was possible he spoke that way because he had a large cigar between his teeth, but Carol feared it was more likely to be because Francis was drunk.

She shut the door and stood in front of it with her arms folded. “I want an explanation,” she said. “I’m waiting.”

Paul slapped down his cards and briskly pulled a pile of money toward himself. Then he took the cigar out of his boyish mouth to say, “And you can go on waiting, unless you’ve come to negotiate at last. We’re on strike.”

“On strike!” said Carol.

“On strike,” Paul said. “All of us. I brought the cast of thousands out straight after the last dream. We want better working conditions and a bigger slice of the cake.” He gave Carol a challenging and not very pleasant grin and put the cigar back in his mouth – a mouth that was not so boyish, now Carol looked at it closely. Paul was older than she had realised, with little cynical lines all over his face.

“Paul’s our shop steward,” Martha said. Martha, to Carol’s surprise, was quite young, with reddish hair and a sulky, righteous look. Her voice had a bit of a whine to it when she went on. “We have our rights, you know. The conditions the cast of thousands have to live in are appalling, and it’s one dream straight after another and no free time at all for any of us. And it’s not as if we get job satisfaction, either. The rotten parts Paul and I do!”

“Measly walk-ons,” Paul said, busy dealing out cards. “One of the things we’re protesting is being killed almost every dream. The cast of thousands gets gunned down in every final scene, and not only do they get no compensation, they have to get straight up and fight all through the next dream.”

“’nd never allowsh ush any dthrink,” Bimbo put in. Carol could see he was very drunk. His nose was purple with it, and his white hair looked damp. “Got shick of coloured water. Had to shteal fruit from Enshanted Garden dream to make firsht wine. Make whishky now. It’sh better.”

“It’s not as if you paid us anything,” Martha whined. “We have to take what reward we can get for our services.”

“Then where did you get all that money?” Carol demanded, pointing to the large heap in front of Paul.

“The Arabian treasure scene and so forth,” said Paul. “Pirates’ hoard. Most of it’s only painted paper.”

Francis suddenly said, in a loud slurry voice, “I want recognition. I’ve been ninety-nine different heroes, but not a word of credit goes on any pillow or jar.” He banged the table. “Exploitation! That’s what it is!”

“Yes, we all want our names on the next dream,” Paul said. “Melville, give her our list of complaints, will you?”

“Melville’s our Strike Committee Secretary,” said Martha.

Francis banged the table again and shouted, “Melville!” Then everyone else shouted, “MELVILLE!” until Melville finally turned round from the stove holding his saucepan in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other.

“I didn’t want to spoil my fudge,” Melville said apologetically. He handed the paper to Carol. “There, my dear. This wasn’t my idea, but I didn’t wish to let the others down.”

Carol, by this time, was backed against the door, more or less in tears. This dream seemed to be a nightmare. “Lucy!” she called out desperately. “Lucy, are you in this too?”

“Don’t you disturb her,” said Martha, whom Carol was beginning to dislike very much. “Lucy’s suffered enough. She’s had her fill of parts that make her a plaything and property of men. Haven’t you, love?” she called to Lucy.

Lucy looked up. “Nobody understands,” she said, staring mournfully at the wall. “I hate Francis. And I always have to marry him and live hap-hic-hallipy ever after.”

This, not surprisingly, annoyed Francis. “And I hate you!” he bawled, jumping up as he shouted. The table went over with a crash, and the glasses, money, cards, and candles went with it. In the terrifying dark scramble that followed, the door somehow burst open behind Carol, and she got herself out through it as fast as she could…

…And found herself sitting on a deck chair on the sunny terrace again. She was holding a paper in one hand, and her parasol was rolling by her feet. To her annoyance, someone had spilt a long sticky trickle of what seemed to be fudge all down her blue dress.

“Tonino! Vieni qui!” somebody called.

Carol looked up to find Chrestomanci trying to put together a broken deck chair in the midst of a crowd of people who were all pushing past him and hurrying away down the terrace steps. Carol could not think who the people were at first, until she caught a glimpse of Francis among them, and then Lucy, who had one hand clutched around her bottle and the other in the hand of Norman, the man Carol had first met sitting on a box. The rest of them must be the cast of thousands, she supposed. She was still trying to imagine what had happened, when Chrestomanci dropped the broken deck chair and stopped the very last person to cross the terrace.

“Excuse me, sir,” Chrestomanci said. “Would you mind explaining a few things before you leave.”

It was Melville, still in his cook’s apron, waving smoke away from his saucepan with one long, villainous hand and peering down at his fudge with a very doleful look on his long, villainous face. “I think it’s spoiled,” he said. “You want to know what happened? Well, I think the cast of thousands started it, around the time Lucy fell in love with Norman, so it may have been Norman’s doing to begin with. Anyway, they began complaining that they never got a chance to be real people, and Paul heard them. Paul is very ambitious, you know, and he knew, as we all did, that Francis isn’t really cut out to be a hero—”

“No indeed. He has a weak chin,” Chrestomanci agreed.

Carol gasped and was just about to make a protest – which would have been a rather tearful one at that moment – when she recalled that Francis’s bristly chin had indeed looked rather small and wobbly under that cigar.

“Oh you shouldn’t judge by chins,” said Melville. “Look at mine – and I’m no more a villain than Francis is a hero. But Francis has his petulant side, and Paul played on that, with the help of Bimbo and his whisky, and Lucy was with Paul anyway because she hated being forced to wear frilly dresses and simper at Francis. She and Norman want to take up farming. And Martha, who is a very frivolous girl to my mind, came in with them because she cannot abide having to clear up the scenery at such short notice. So then they all came to me.”

“And you held out?” asked Chrestomanci.

“All through The Cripple of Monte Christo and The Arabian Knight,” Melville admitted, ambling across the terrace to park his saucepan on the balustrade. “I am fond of Carol, you see, and I am quite ready to be three villains at once for her if that is what she wants. But when she started on the Fairground dream straight after The Tyrant of London Town, I had to admit that we were all being thoroughly overworked. None of us got any time to be ourselves. Dear me,” he added. “I think the cast of thousands is preparing to paint the town red.”

Chrestomanci came and leaned on the balustrade to see. “I fear so,” he said. “What do you think makes Carol work you all so hard? Ambition?”

There was now such a noise coming from the town that Carol could not resist getting up to look too. Large numbers of the cast of thousands had made straight for the beach. They were joyously racing into the water, pulling little wheeled bathing huts after them, or simply casting their clothes away and plunging in. This was causing quite an outcry from the regular holidaymakers. More outcries came from the main square below the casino, where the cast of thousands had flooded into all the elegant cafés, shouting for ice cream, wine, and frogs’ legs.

“It looks rather fun,” said Melville. “No, not ambition exactly, sir. Say rather that Carol was caught up in success, and her mama was caught up with her. It is not easy to stop something when one’s mama expects one to go on and on.”

A horse-drawn cab was now galloping along the main street, pursued by shouting, scrambling, excited people. Pursuing these was a little posse of gendarmes. This seemed to be because the white-bearded person in the cab was throwing handfuls of jewels in all directions in the most abandoned way. Arabian jewels and pirates’ treasure mostly, Carol thought. She wondered if they would turn out to be glass, or real jewels.

“Poor Bimbo,” said Melville. “He sees himself as a sort of kingly Santa Claus these days. He has played those parts too often. I think he should retire.”

“And what a pity your mama told your cab to wait,” Chrestomanci said to Carol. “Isn’t that Francis, Martha and Paul, there? Just going into the casino.”

They were, too. Carol saw them waltzing arm in arm up the marble steps, three people obviously going on a spree.

“Paul,” said Melville, “tells me he has a system to break the bank.”

“A fairly common delusion,” said Chrestomanci.

“But he can’t!” said Carol. “He hasn’t got any real money!” She chanced to look down as she spoke. Her diamond pendant was gone. So was her diamond brooch. Her sapphire bangles and every one of her gold ones were missing. Even the clasps of her handbag had been torn off. “They robbed me!” she cried out.

“That would be Martha,” Melville said sadly. “Remember she picked pockets in The Tyrant of London Town.”

“It sounds as if you owed them quite a sum in wages,” Chrestomanci said.

“But what shall I do?” Carol wailed. “How am I going to get everyone back?”

Melville looked worried for her. It came out as a villainous grimace, but Carol understood perfectly. Melville was sweet. Chrestomanci just looked surprised and a little bored. “You mean you want all these people back?” he said.

Carol opened her mouth to say yes, of course she did! But she did not say it. They were having such fun. Bimbo was having the time of his life galloping through the streets throwing jewels. The people in the sea were a happy splashing mass, and waiters were hurrying about down in the square, taking orders and slapping down plates and glasses in front of the cast of thousands in the cafés. Carol just hoped they were using real money. If she turned her head, she could see that some of the cast of thousands had now got as far as the golf course, where most of them seemed to be under the impression that golf was a team game that you played rather like hockey.

“While Carol makes up her mind,” said Chrestomanci, “what, Melville, is your personal opinion of her dreams? As one who has an inside view?”

Melville pulled his moustache unhappily. “I was afraid you were going to ask me that,” he said. “She has tremendous talent, of course, or she couldn’t do it at all, but I do sometimes feel that she – well – she repeats herself. Put it like this: I think maybe Carol doesn’t give herself a chance to be herself any more than she gives us.”

Melville, Carol realised, was the only one of her people she really liked. She was heartily sick of all the others. Though she had not admitted it, they had bored her for years, but she had never had time to think of anyone more interesting, because she had always been so busy getting on with the next dream. Suppose she gave them all the sack? But wouldn’t that hurt Melville’s feelings?

“Melville,” she said anxiously, “do you enjoy being villains?”

“My dear,” said Melville, “it’s up to you entirely, but I confess that sometimes I would like to try being someone… well… not black-hearted. Say, grey-hearted, and a little more complicated.”

This was difficult. “If I did that,” Carol said, thinking about it, “I’d have to stop dreaming for a while and spend a time – maybe a long time – sort of getting a new outlook on people. Would you mind waiting? It might take over a year.”

“Not at all,” said Melville. “Just call me when you need me.” And he bent over and kissed Carol’s hand, in his best and most villainous manner…

…And Carol was once again sitting up in her deck chair. This time, however, she was rubbing her eyes, and the terrace was empty except for Chrestomanci, holding a broken deck chair, and talking in what seemed to be Italian to a skinny little boy. The boy seemed to have come up from the bathing pool. He was wearing bathing trunks and dripping water all over the paving.

“Oh!” said Carol. “So it was only a dream really!” She noticed she must have dropped her parasol while she was asleep and reached to pick it up. Someone seemed to have trodden on it. And there was a long trickle of fudge on her dress. Then of course she looked for her brooch, her pendant, and her bangles. They were gone. Someone had torn her dress pulling the brooch off. Her eyes leaped to the balustrade and found a small burnt saucepan standing on it.

At that, Carol jumped and ran to the balustrade, hoping to see Melville on his way down the stairs from the terrace. The stairs were empty. But she was in time to see Bimbo’s cab, surrounded by gendarmes and stopped at the end of the parade. Bimbo did not seem to be in it. It looked as if he had worked the disappearing act she had invented for him in The Cripple of Monte Christo.

Down on the beach, crowds of the cast of thousands were coming out of the sea and lying down to sunbathe, or politely borrowing beach-balls from the other holidaymakers. She could hardly tell them from the regular tourists, in fact. Out on the golf links, the cast of thousands there was being sorted out by a man in a red blazer, and lined up to practise tee shots. Carol looked at the casino then, but there was no sign of Paul or Martha or Francis. Around the square, however, there was singing coming from the crowded cafés – steady, swelling singing, for, of course, there were several massed choirs among the cast of thousands. Carol turned and looked accusingly at Chrestomanci.

Chrestomanci broke off his Italian conversation in order to bring the small boy over by one wet, skinny shoulder. “Tonino here,” he said, “is a rather unusual magician. He reinforces other people’s magic. When I saw the way your thoughts were going, I thought we’d better have him up to back up your decision. I suspected you might do something like this. That’s why I didn’t want any reporters. Wouldn’t you like to come down to the pool now? I’m sure Janet can lend you a swimsuit and probably a clean dress as well.”

“Well… thank you… yes, please… but…” Carol began, when the small boy pointed to something behind her.

“I speaka Eengleesh,” he said. “You droppa youra paper.”

Carol dived around and picked it up. In beautiful sloping writing, it said:

Carol Oneir hereby releases Francis, Lucy, Martha, Paul, and Bimbo from all further professional duties and gives the cast of thousands leave of indefinite absence. I am taking a holiday with your kind permission, and I remain

Your servant,

Melville.

“Oh good!” said Carol. “Oh dear! What shall I do about Mr Ploys? And how shall I break it to Mama?”

“I can speak to Ploys,” said Chrestomanci, “but your mama is strictly your problem, though your father, when he gets back from the casin – er, fishing – will certainly back you up.

Dad did back Carol up some hours later, and Mama was slightly easier to deal with than usual anyway, because she was so confused at the way she had mistaken Chrestomanci’s wife for a servant. By that time, however, the main thing Carol wanted to tell Dad was that she had been pushed off the diving board sixteen times and had learned to swim two strokes – well, almost.

There was a world called Theare in which Heaven was very well organised. Everything was so precisely worked out that every god knew his or her exact duties, correct prayers, right times for business, utterly exact character and unmistakable place above or below the gods.

This was the case from Great Zond, the King of the Gods, through every god, godlet, deity, minor deity and numen, down to the most immaterial nymph. Even the invisible dragons that lived in the rivers had their invisible lines of demarcation. The universe ran like clockwork. Mankind was not always so regular, but the gods were there to set him right. It had been like this for centuries.

So it was a breach in the very nature of things when, in the middle of the yearly Festival of Water, at which only watery deities were entitled to be present, Great Zond looked up to see Imperion, god of the sun, storming towards him down the halls of Heaven.

“Go away!” cried Zond, aghast.

But Imperion swept on, causing the watery deities gathered there to steam and hiss, and arrived in a wave of heat and warm water at the foot of Zond’s high throne.

“Father!” Imperion cried urgently.

A high god like Imperion was entitled to call Zond Father. Zond did not recall whether or not he was actually Imperion’s father. The origins of the gods were not quite so orderly at their present existence. But Zond knew that, son of his or not, Imperion had breached all the rules. “Abase yourself,” Zond said sternly.

Imperion ignored this command too. Perhaps this was just as well, since the floor of Heaven was awash already, and steaming. Imperion kept his flaming gaze on Zond. “Father! The Sage of Dissolution has been born!”

Zond shuddered in the clouds of hot vapour and tried to feel resigned. “It is written,” he said, “a Sage shall be born who shall question everything. His questions shall bring down the exquisite order of Heaven and cast all the gods into disorder. It is also written—”

Here Zond realised that Imperion had made him break the rules too. The correct procedure was for Zond to summon the god of prophecy and have that god consult the Book of Heaven. Then he realised that Imperion was the god of prophecy. It was one of his precisely allocated duties. Zond rounded on Imperion. “What do you mean coming and telling me? You’re god of prophecy! Go and look in the Book of Heaven!”

“I already have, Father,” said Imperion. “I find I prophesied the coming of the Sage of Dissolution when the gods first began. It is written that the Sage shall be born and that I shall not know.”

“Then,” said Zond, scoring a point, “how is it you’re here telling me he has been born?”

“The mere fact,” Imperion said, “that I can come here and interrupt the Water Festival, shows that the Sage has been born. Our Dissolution has obviously begun.”

There was a splash of consternation among the watery gods. They were gathered down the hall as far as they could get from Imperion, but they had all heard. Zond tried to gather his wits. What with the steam raised by Imperion and the spume of dismay thrown out by the rest, the halls of Heaven were in a state nearer chaos than he had known for millennia. Any more of this, and there would be no need for the Sage to ask questions.

“Leave us,” Zond said to the watery gods. “Events even beyond my control cause this Festival to be stopped. You will be informed later of any decision I make.” To Zond’s dismay, the watery ones hesitated – further evidence of Dissolution. “I promise,” he said.

The watery ones made up their minds. They left in waves, all except one. This one was Ock, god of all oceans. Ock was equal in status to Imperion and heat did not threaten him. He stayed where he was.

Zond was not pleased. Ock, it always seemed to him, was the least orderly of the gods. He did not know his place. He was as restless and unfathomable as mankind. But, with Dissolution already begun, what could Zond do?

“You have our permission to stay,” he said graciously to Ock, and to Imperion: “Well, how did you know the Sage was born?”

“I was consulting the Book of Heaven on another matter,” said Imperion, “and the page opened at my prophecy concerning the Sage of Dissolution. Since it said that I would not know the day and hour when the Sage was born, it followed that he has already been born, or I would not have known. The rest of the prophecy was commendably precise, however. Twenty years from now, he will start questioning Heaven. What shall we do to stop him?”

“I don’t see what we can do,” Zond said hopelessly. “A prophecy is a prophecy.”

“But we must do something!” blazed Imperion. “I insist! I am a god of order, even more than you are. Think what would happen if the sun went inaccurate! This means more to me than anyone. I want the Sage of Dissolution found and killed before he can ask questions.”

Zond was shocked. “I can’t do that! If the prophecy says he has to ask questions, then he has to ask them.”

Here Ock approached. “Every prophecy has a loophole,” he said.

“Of course,” snapped Imperion. “I can see the loophole as well as you. I’m taking advantage of the disorder caused by the birth of the Sage to ask Great Zond to kill him and overthrow the prophecy. Thus restoring order.”

“Logic-chopping is not what I meant,” said Ock.

The two gods faced one another. Steam from Ock suffused Imperion and then rained back on Ock, as regularly as breathing. “What did you mean, then?” said Imperion.

“The prophecy,” said Ock, “does not appear to say which world the Sage will ask his questions in. There are many other worlds. Mankind calls them if-worlds, meaning that they were once the same world as Theare, but split off and went their own ways after each doubtful event in history. Each if-world has its own Heaven. There must be one world in which the gods are not as orderly as we are here. Let the Sage be put in that world. Let him ask his predestined questions there.”

“Good idea!” Zond clapped his hands in relief, causing untoward tempests in all Theare. “Agreed, Imperion?”

“Yes,” said Imperion. He flamed with relief. And, being unguarded, he at once became prophetic. “But I must warn you,” he said, “that strange things happen when destiny is tampered with.”

“Strange things maybe, but never disorderly,” Zond asserted. He called the water gods back and, with them, every god in Theare. He told them that an infant had just been born who was destined to spread Dissolution, and he ordered each one of them to search the ends of the earth for this child.

(“The ends of the earth” was a legal formula. Zond did not believe that Theare was flat. But the expression had been unchanged for centuries, just like the rest of Heaven. It meant “Look everywhere.”)

The whole of Heaven looked high and low. Nymphs and godlets scanned mountains, caves and woods. Household gods peered into cradles. Watery gods searched beaches, banks and margins. The goddess of love went deeply into her records, to find who the Sage’s parents might be. The invisible dragons swam to look inside barges and houseboats. Since there was a god for everything in Theare, nowhere was missed, nothing was omitted. Imperion searched harder than any, blazing into every nook and crevice on one side of the world, and exhorting the moon goddess to do the same on the other side.

And nobody found the Sage. There were one or two false alarms, such as when a household goddess reported an infant that never stopped crying. This baby, she said, was driving her up the wall and, if this was not Dissolution, she would like to know what was. There were also several reports of infants born with teeth, or six fingers, or suchlike strangeness. But, in each case, Zond was able to prove that the child had nothing to do with Dissolution. After a month, it became clear that the infant Sage was not going to be found.

Imperion was in despair, for, as he had told Zond, order meant more to him than to any other god. He became so worried that he was actually causing the sun to lose heat. At length, the goddess of love advised him to go off and relax with a mortal woman before he brought about Dissolution himself.

Imperion saw she was right. He went down to visit the human woman he had loved for some years. It was established custom for gods to love mortals. Some visited their loves in all sorts of fanciful shapes, and some had many loves at once. But Imperion was both honest and faithful. He never visited Nestara as anything but a handsome man, and he loved her devotedly. Three years ago, she had borne him a son, whom Imperion loved almost as much as he loved Nestara. Before the Sage was born to trouble him, Imperion had been trying to bend the rules of Heaven a little, to get his son approved as a god too.

The child’s name was Thasper. As Imperion descended to earth, he could see Thasper digging in some sand outside Nestara’s house – a beautiful child, fair-haired and blue-eyed. Imperion wondered fondly if Thasper was talking properly yet. Nestara had been worried about how slow he was learning to speak.

Imperion alighted beside his son. “Hello, Thasper. What are you digging so busily?”

Instead of answering, Thasper raised his golden head and shouted. “Mum!” he yelled. “Why does it go so bright when Dad comes?”

All Imperion’s pleasure vanished. Of course no one could ask questions until he had learned to speak. But it would be too cruel if his own son turned out to be the Sage of Dissolution. “Why shouldn’t it go bright?” he asked defensively.

Thasper scowled up at him. “I want to know. Why does it?”

“Perhaps because you feel happy to see me,” Imperion suggested.

“I’m not happy,” Thasper said. His lower lip came out. Tears filled his big blue eyes. “Why does it go bright? I want to know. Mum! I’m not happy!”

Nestara came racing out of the house, almost too concerned to smile at Imperion. “Thasper love, what’s the matter?”

“I want to know!” wailed Thasper.

“What do you want to know? I’ve never known such an enquiring mind,” Nestara said proudly to Imperion, as she picked Thasper up. “That’s why he was so slow talking. He wouldn’t speak until he’d found out how to ask questions. And if you don’t give him an exact answer, he’ll cry for hours.”

“When did he first start asking questions?” Imperion inquired tensely.

“About a month ago,” said Nestara.

This made Imperion truly miserable, but he concealed it. It was clear to him that Thasper was indeed the Sage of Dissolution and he was going to have to take him away to another world. He smiled and said, “My love, I have wonderful news for you. Thasper has been accepted as a god. Great Zond himself will have him as cupbearer.”

“Oh not now!” cried Nestara. “He’s so little!”

She made numerous other objections too. But, in the end, she let Imperion take Thasper. After all, what better future could there be for a child? She put Thasper into Imperion’s arms with all sorts of anxious advice about what he ate and when he went to bed. Imperion kissed her goodbye, heavy-hearted. He was not a god of deception. He knew he dared not see her again for fear he told her the truth.

Then, with Thasper in his arms, Imperion went up to the middle-regions below Heaven, to look for another world.

Thasper looked down with interest at the great blue curve of the world. “Why—?” he began.

Imperion hastily enclosed him in a sphere of forgetfulness. He could not afford to let Thasper ask things here. Questions that spread Dissolution on earth would have an even more powerful effect in the middle-region. The sphere was a silver globe, neither transparent nor opaque. In it, Thasper would stay seemingly asleep, not moving and not growing, until the sphere was opened. With the child thus safe, Imperion hung the sphere from one shoulder and stepped into the next-door world.

He went from world to world. He was pleased to find there were an almost infinite number of them, for the choice proved supremely difficult. Some worlds were so disorderly that he shrank from leaving Thasper in them. In some, the gods resented Imperion’s intrusion and shouted at him to be off. In others, it was mankind that was resentful. One world he came to was so rational that, to his horror, he found the gods were dead. There were many others he thought might do, until he let the spirit of prophecy blow through him, and in each case this told him that harm would come to Thasper here.

But at last he found a good world. It seemed calm and elegant. The few gods there seemed civilised but casual. Indeed, Imperion was a little puzzled to find that these gods seemed to share quite a lot of their power with mankind. But mankind did not seem to abuse this power, and the spirit of prophesy assured him that, if he left Thasper here inside his sphere of forgetfulness, it would be opened by someone who would treat the boy well.

Imperion put the sphere down in a wood and sped back to Theare, heartily relieved. There, he reported what he had done to Zond, and all Heaven rejoiced. Imperion made sure that Nestara married a very rich man who gave her not only wealth and happiness but plenty of children to replace Thasper. Then, a little sadly, he went back to the ordered life of Heaven. The exquisite organisation of Theare went on untroubled by Dissolution.

Seven years passed.

All that while, Thasper knew nothing and remained three years old. Then one day, the sphere of forgetfulness fell in two halves and he blinked in sunlight somewhat less golden than he had known.

“So that’s what was causing all the disturbance,” a tall man murmured.

“Poor little soul,” said a lady.

There was a wood around Thasper, and people standing in it looking at him, but, as far as Thasper knew, nothing had happened since he soared to the middle-region with his father. He went on with the question he had been in the middle of asking. “Why is the world round?” he said.

“Interesting question,” said the tall man. “The answer usually given is because the corners wore off spinning around the sun. But it could be designed to make us end where we began.”

“Sir, you’ll muddle him, talking like that,” said another lady. “He’s only little.”

“No, he’s interested,” said another man. “Look at him.”

Thasper was indeed interested. He approved of the tall man. He was a little puzzled about where he had come from but he supposed the tall man must have been put there because he answered questions better than Imperion. He wondered where Imperion had got to. “Why aren’t you my dad?” he asked the tall man.

“Another most penetrating question,” said the tall man. “Because, as far as we can find out, your father lives in another world. Tell me your name.”

This was another point in the tall man’s favour. Thasper never answered questions: he only asked them. But this was a command. The tall man understood Thasper.

“Thasper,” Thasper answered obediently.

“He’s sweet!” said the first lady. “I want to adopt him.” To which the other ladies gathered around most heartily agreed.

“Impossible,” said the tall man. His tone was mild as milk and rock firm. The ladies were reduced to begging to be able to look after Thasper for a day, then. An hour. “No,” the tall man said mildly. “He must go back at once.” At which all the ladies cried out that Thasper might be in great danger in his own home. The tall man said, “I shall take care of that, of course.” Then he stretched out a hand and pulled Thasper up. “Come along, Thasper.”

As soon as Thasper was out of it, the two halves of the sphere vanished. One of the ladies took his other hand and he was led away, first on a jiggly ride, which he much enjoyed, and then into a huge house, where there was a very perplexing room. In this room, Thasper sat in a five-pointed star and pictures kept appearing around him. People kept shaking their heads. “No, not that world either.” The tall man answered all Thasper’s questions, and Thasper was too interested even to be annoyed when they would not allow him anything to eat.

“Why not?” he said.

“Because, just by being here, you are causing the world to jolt about,” the tall man explained. “If you put food inside you, food is a heavy part of this world, and it might jolt you to pieces.”

Soon after that, a new picture appeared. Everyone said “Ah!” and the tall man said, “So it’s Theare!” He looked at Thasper in a surprised way. “You must have struck someone as disorderly,” he said. Then he looked at the picture again, in a lazy, careful kind of way. “No disorder,” he said. “No danger. Come with me.”

He took Thasper’s hand again and led him into the picture. As he did so, Thasper’s hair turned much darker. “A simple precaution,” the tall man murmured, a little apologetically, but Thasper did not even notice. He was not aware what colour his hair had been to start with, and besides, he was taken up with surprise at how fast they were going. They whizzed into a city, and stopped abruptly. It was a good house, just on the edge of a poorer district. “Here is someone who will do,” the tall man said, and he knocked at the door.

A sad-looking lady opened the door.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” said the tall man. “Have you by any chance lost a small boy?”

“Yes,” said the lady. “But this isn’t—” She blinked, “Yes it is!” she cried out. “Oh Thasper! How could you run off like that? Thank you so much, sir.” But the tall man had gone.

The lady’s name was Alina Altun, and she was so convinced that she was Thasper’s mother that Thasper was soon convinced too. He settled in happily with her and her husband, who was a doctor, hard-working but not very rich.

Thasper soon forgot the tall man, Imperion and Nestara. Sometimes it did puzzle him – and his new mother too – that when she showed him off to her friends she always felt bound to say, “This is Badien, but we always call him Thasper.” Thanks to the tall man, none of them ever knew that the real Badien had wandered away the day Thasper came, and fallen in the river, where an invisible dragon ate him.

If Thasper had remembered the tall man, he might also have wondered why his arrival seemed to start Dr Altun on the road to prosperity. The people in the poorer district nearby suddenly discovered what a good doctor Dr Altun was, and how little he charged. Alina was shortly able to afford to send Thasper to a very good school, where Thasper often exasperated his teachers by his many questions. He had, as his new mother often proudly said, a most enquiring mind. Although he learned quicker than most the Ten First Lessons and the Nine Graces of Childhood, his teachers were nonetheless often annoyed enough to snap, “Oh, go and ask an invisible dragon!” which is what people in Theare often said when they thought they were being pestered.

Thasper did, with difficulty, gradually cure himself of his habit of never answering questions. But he always preferred asking to answering. At home, he asked questions all the time: “Why does the kitchen god go and report to Heaven once a year? Is it so I can steal biscuits? Why are invisible dragons? Is there a god for everything? Why is there a god for everything? If the gods make people ill, how can Dad cure them? Why must I have a baby brother or sister?”

Alina Altun was a good mother. She most diligently answered all these questions, including the last. She told Thasper how babies were made, ending her account with, “Then, if the gods bless my womb, a baby will come.” She was a devout person.

“I don’t want you to be blessed!” Thasper said, resorting to a statement, which he only did when he was strongly moved.

He seemed to have no choice in the matter. By the time he was ten years old, the gods had thought fit to bless him with two brothers and two sisters. In Thasper’s opinion, they were, as blessings, very low grade. They were just too young to be any use. “Why can’t they be the same age as me?” he demanded many times. He began to bear the gods a small but definite grudge about this.

Dr Altun continued to prosper and his earnings more than kept pace with his family. Alina employed a nursemaid, a cook and a number of rather impermanent houseboys. It was one of these houseboys who, when Thasper was eleven, shyly presented Thasper with a folded square of paper. Wondering, Thasper unfolded it. It gave him a curious feeling to touch, as if the paper was vibrating a little in his fingers. It also gave out a very strong warning that he was not to mention it to anybody. It said:

Dear Thasper,

Your situation is an odd one. Make sure that you call me at the moment when you come face to face with yourself. I shall be watching and I will come at once.

Yrs, Chrestomanci

Since Thasper by now had not the slightest recollection of his early life, this letter puzzled him extremely. He knew he was not supposed to tell anyone about it, but he also knew that this did not include the houseboy. With the letter in his hand, he hurried after the houseboy to the kitchen.

He was stopped at the head of the kitchen stairs by a tremendous smashing of china from below. This was followed immediately by the cook’s voice raised in nonstop abuse. Thasper knew it was no good trying to go into the kitchen.

The houseboy – who went by the odd name of Cat – was in the process of getting fired, like all the other houseboys before him. He had better go and wait for Cat outside the back door. Thasper looked at the letter in his hand. As he did so, his fingers tingled. The letter vanished.

“It’s gone!” he exclaimed, showing by this statement how astonished he was. He never could account for what he did next. Instead of going to wait for the houseboy, he ran to the living-room, intending to tell his mother about it, in spite of the warning.

“Do you know what?” he began. He had invented this meaningless question so that he could tell people things and still make it into an enquiry. “Do you know what?” Alina looked up. Thasper, though he fully intended to tell her about the mysterious letter, found himself saying, “The cook’s just sacked the new houseboy.”

“Oh bother!” said Alina. “I shall have to find another one now.”

Annoyed with himself, Thasper tried to tell her again. “Do you know what? I’m surprised the cook doesn’t sack the kitchen god too.”

“Hush dear. Don’t talk about the gods that way!” said the devout lady.

By this time, the houseboy had left and Thasper lost the urge to tell anyone about the letter. It remained with him as his own personal exciting secret. He thought of it as The Letter From A Person Unknown. He sometimes whispered the strange name of The Person Unknown to himself when no one could hear. But nothing ever happened, even when he said the name out loud. He gave up doing that after a while. He had other things to think about. He became fascinated by Rules, Laws and Systems.

Rules and Systems were an important part of the life of mankind in Theare. It stood to reason, with Heaven so well organised. People codified all behaviour into things like the Seven Subtle Politenesses, or the Hundred Roads to Godliness. Thasper had been taught these things from the time he was three years old.

He was accustomed to hearing Alina argue the niceties of the Seventy-Two Household Laws with her friends. Now Thasper suddenly discovered for himself that all Rules made a magnificent framework for one’s mind to clamber about in. He made lists of rules, and refinements on rules, and possible ways of doing the opposite of what the rules said while still keeping the rules. He invented new codes of rules. He filled books and made charts. He invented games with huge and complicated rules, and played them with his friends.

Onlookers found these games both rough and muddled, but Thasper and his friends revelled in them. The best moment in any game was when somebody stopped playing and shouted, “I’ve thought of a new rule!”

This obsession with rules lasted until Thasper was fifteen. He was walking home from school one day, thinking over a list of rules for Twenty Fashionable Hairstyles. From this, it will be seen that Thasper was noticing girls, though none of the girls had so far seemed to notice him. And he was thinking which girl should wear which hairstyle, when his attention was caught by words chalked on the wall:

IF RULES MAKE A FRAMEWORK FOR
THE MIND TO CLIMB ABOUT IN,
WHY SHOULD THE MIND NOT CLIMB RIGHT OUT?
SAYS THE SAGE OF DISSOLUTION

That same day, there was consternation again in Heaven. Zond summoned all the high gods to his throne. “The Sage of Dissolution has started to preach,” he announced direfully. “Imperion, I thought you got rid of him.”

“I thought I did,” Imperion said. He was even more appalled than Zond. If the Sage had started to preach, it meant that Imperion had got rid of Thasper and deprived himself of Nestara quite unnecessarily. “I must have been mistaken,” he admitted.

Here Ock spoke up, steaming gently. “Father Zond,” he said, “may I respectfully suggest that you deal with the Sage yourself, so that there will be no mistake this time?”

“That was just what I was about to suggest,” Zond said gratefully. “Are you all agreed?”

All the gods agreed. They were too used to order to do otherwise.

As for Thasper, he was staring at the chalked words, shivering to the soles of his sandals. What was this? Who was using his own private thoughts about rules? Who was this Sage of Dissolution? Thasper was ashamed. He, who was so good at asking questions, had never thought of asking this one. Why should one’s mind not climb right out of the rules, after all?

He went home and asked his parents about the Sage of Dissolution. He fully expected them to know. He was quite agitated when they did not. But they had a neighbour, who sent Thasper to another neighbour, who had a friend, who, when Thasper finally found his house, said he had heard that the Sage was a clever young man who made a living by mocking the gods.

The next day, someone had washed the words off. But the day after that, a badly printed poster appeared on the same wall.

THE SAGE OF DISSOLUTION ASKS
BY WHOSE ORDER IS ORDER
ANYWAY??
COME TO SMALL UNCTION
SUBLIME CONCERT HALL
TONITE 6.30

At 6.20, Thasper was having supper. At 6.24, he made up his mind and left the table. At 6.32 he arrived panting at Small Unction Hall. It proved to be a small shabby building quite near where he lived. Nobody was there. As far as Thasper could gather from the grumpy caretaker, the meeting had been the night before. Thasper turned away, deeply disappointed. Who ordered the order was a question he now longed to know the answer to. It was deep. He had a notion that the man who called himself the Sage of Dissolution was truly brilliant.

By way of feeding his own disappointment, he went to school the next day by a route which took him past the Small Unction Concert Hall. It had burnt down in the night. There were only blackened brick walls left. When he got to school, a number of people were talking about it. They said it had burst into flames just before 7.00 the night before.

“Did you know,” Thasper said, “that the Sage of Dissolution was there the day before yesterday?”

That was how he discovered he was not the only one interested in the Sage. Half his class were admirers of Dissolution. That, too, was when the girls deigned to notice him. “He’s amazing about the gods,” one girl told him. “No one ever asked questions like that before.”

Most of the class, however, girls and boys alike, only knew a little more than Thasper, and most of what they knew was second-hand. But a boy showed him a carefully cut-out newspaper article in which a well-known scholar discussed what he called “The so-called Doctrine of Dissolution”. It said, long-windedly, that the Sage and his followers were rude to the gods and against all the rules.

It did not tell Thasper much, but it was something. He saw, rather ruefully, that his obsession with rules had been quite wrong-headed and had, into the bargain, caused him to fall behind the rest of his class in learning of this wonderful new Doctrine. He became a Disciple of Dissolution on the spot. He joined the rest of his class in finding out all they could about the Sage.

He went round with them, writing up on walls:

DISSOLUTION RULES OK.

For a long while after that, the only thing any of Thasper’s class could learn of the Sage were scraps of questions chalked on walls and quickly rubbed out.

WHAT NEED OF PRAYER?

WHY SHOULD THERE BE A HUNDRED ROADS
TO GODLINESS, NOT MORE OR LESS?

DO WE CLIMB ANYWHERE ON THE STEPS
TO HEAVEN?

WHAT IS PERFECTION: A PROCESS OR A STATE?

WHEN WE CLIMB TO PERFECTION
IS THIS A MATTER FOR THE GODS?

Thasper obsessively wrote all these sayings down. He was obsessed again, he admitted, but this time it was in a new way. He was thinking, thinking. At first, he thought simply of clever questions to ask the Sage. He strained to find questions no one had asked before. But in the process, his mind seemed to loosen, and shortly he was thinking of how the Sage might answer his questions. He considered order and rules and Heaven, and it came to him that there was a reason behind all the brilliant questions the Sage asked. He felt light-headed with thinking.

The reason behind the Sage’s questions came to him the morning he was shaving for the first time. He thought, The gods need human beings in order to be gods! Blinded with this revelation, Thasper stared into the mirror at his own face half covered with white foam. Without humans believing in them, gods were nothing! The order of Heaven, the rules and codes of earth, were all only there because of people! It was transcendent.

As Thasper stared, the letter from the Unknown came into his mind. “Is this being face to face with myself?” he said. But he was not sure. And he became sure that when that time came, he would not have to wonder.

Then it came to him that the Unknown Chrestomanci was almost certainly the Sage himself. He was thrilled. The Sage was taking a special mysterious interest in one teenage boy, Thasper Altun. The vanishing letter exactly fitted the elusive Sage.

The Sage continued elusive. The next firm news of him was a newspaper report of the Celestial Gallery being struck by lightning. The roof of the building collapsed, said the report, “only seconds after the young man known as the Sage of Dissolution had delivered another of his anguished and self-doubting homilies and left the building with his disciples.”

“He’s not self-doubting,” Thasper said to himself. “He knows about the gods. If I know, then he certainly does.”

He and his classmates went on a pilgrimage to the ruined gallery. It was a better building than Small Unction Hall. It seemed the Sage was going up in the world.

Then there was enormous excitement. One of the girls found a small advertisement in a paper. The Sage was to deliver another lecture, in the huge Kingdom of Splendour Hall. He had gone up in the world again. Thasper and his friends dressed in their best and went there in a body. But it seemed as if the time for the lecture had been printed wrong. The lecture was just over. People were streaming away from the Hall, looking disappointed.

Thasper and his friends were still in the street when the Hall blew up. They were lucky not to be hurt. The Police said it was a bomb. Thasper and his friends helped drag injured people clear of the blazing Hall. It was exciting, but it was not the Sage.

By now, Thasper knew he would never be happy until he had found the Sage. He told himself that he had to know if the reason behind the Sage’s questions was the one he thought. But it was more than that. Thasper was convinced that his fate was linked to the Sage’s. He was certain the Sage wanted Thasper to find him.

But there was now a strong rumour in school and around town that the Sage had had enough of lectures and bomb attacks. He had retired to write a book. It was to be called Questions of Dissolution. Rumour also had it that the Sage was in lodgings somewhere near the Road of the Four Lions.

Thasper went to the road of the Four Lions. There he was shameless. He knocked on doors and questioned passers-by. He was told several times to go and ask an invisible dragon, but he took no notice. He went on asking until someone told him that Mrs Tunap at No. 403 might know. Thasper knocked at No. 403, with his heart thumping.

Mrs Tunap was a rather prim lady in a green turban. “I’m afraid not, dear,” she said. “I’m new here.” But before Thasper’s heart could sink too far, she added, “but the people before me had a lodger. A very quiet gentleman. He left just before I came.”

“Did he leave an address?” Thasper asked, holding his breath.

Mrs Tunap consulted an old envelope pinned to the wall in her hall. “It says here, ‘Lodger gone to Golden Heart Square’, dear.”

But in Golden Heart Square, a young gentleman who might have been the Sage had only looked at a room and gone. After that, Thasper had to go home. The Altuns were not used to teenagers and they worried about Thasper suddenly wanting to be out every evening.

Oddly enough, No. 403 Road of the Four Lions burnt down that night.

Thasper saw clearly that assassins were after the Sage as well as he was. He became more obsessed with finding him than ever. He knew he could rescue the Sage if he caught him before the assassins did. He did not blame the Sage for moving about all the time.

Move about the Sage certainly did. Rumour had him next in Partridge Pleasaunce Street. When Thasper tracked him there, he found the Sage had moved to Fauntel Square. From Fauntel Square, the Sage seemed to move to Strong Wind Boulevard, and then to a poorer house in Station Street. There were many places after that.

By this time, Thasper had developed a nose, a sixth sense, for where the Sage might be. A word, a mere hint about a quiet lodger, and Thasper was off, knocking on doors, questioning people, being told to ask an invisible dragon, and bewildering his parents by the way he kept rushing off every evening. But no matter how quickly Thasper acted on the latest hint, the Sage had always just left. And Thasper, in most cases, was only just ahead of the assassins. Houses caught fire or blew up, sometimes when he was still in the same street.

At last he was down to a very poor hint, which might or might not lead to New Unicorn Street. Thasper went there, wishing he did not have to spend all day at school. The Sage could move about as he pleased, and Thasper was tied down all day. No wonder he kept missing him. But he had high hopes of New Unicorn Street. It was the poor kind of place that the Sage had been favouring lately.

Alas for his hopes. The fat woman who opened the door laughed rudely in Thasper’s face. “Don’t bother me, son! Go and ask an invisible dragon!” And she slammed the door again.

Thasper stood in the street, keenly humiliated. And not even a hint of where to look next. Awful suspicions rose in his mind: he was making a fool of himself; he had set himself a wild goose chase; the Sage did not exist. In order not to think of these things, he gave way to anger. “All right!” he shouted at the shut door. “I will ask an invisible dragon! So there!” And, carried by his anger, he ran down to the river and out across the nearest bridge.

He stopped in the middle of the bridge, leaning on the parapet, and knew he was making an utter fool of himself. There were no such things as invisible dragons. He was sure of that. But he was still in the grip of his obsession, and this was something he had set himself to do now. Even so, if there had been anyone about near the bridge, Thasper would have gone away. But it was deserted. Feeling an utter fool, he made the prayer-sign to Ock, Ruler of Oceans – for Ock was the god in charge of all things to do with water – but he made the sign secretly, down under the parapet, so there was no chance of anyone seeing. Then he said, almost in a whisper, “Is there an invisible dragon here? I’ve got something to ask you.”

Drops of water whirled over him. Something wetly fanned his face. He heard the something whirring. He turned his face that way and saw three blots of wet in a line along the parapet, each about two feet apart and each the size of two of his hands spread out together. Odder still, water was dripping out of nowhere all along the parapet, for a distance about twice as long as Thasper was tall.

Thasper laughed uneasily. “I’m imagining a dragon,” he said. “If there was a dragon, those splotches would be the places where its body rests. Water dragons have no feet. And the length of the wetness suggests I must be imagining it about eleven feet long.”

“I am fourteen feet long,” said a voice out of nowhere. It was rather too near Thasper’s face for comfort and blew fog at him. He drew back. “Make haste, child-of-a-god,” said the voice. “What did you want to ask me?”

“I-I-I—” stammered Thasper. It was not just that he was scared. This was a body-blow. It messed up utterly his notions about gods needing men to believe in them. But he pulled himself together. His voice only cracked a little as he said, “I’m looking for the Sage of Dissolution. Do you know where he is?”

The dragon laughed. It was a peculiar noise, like one of those water-warblers people make bird noises with. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you precisely where the Sage is,” the voice out of nowhere said. “You have to find him for yourself. Think about it, child-of-a-god. You must have noticed there’s a pattern.”

“Too right, there’s a pattern!” Thasper said. “Everywhere he goes, I just miss him, and then the place catches fire!”

“That too,” said the dragon. “But there’s a pattern to his lodgings too. Look for it. That’s all I can tell you, child-of-a-god. Any other questions?”

“No – for a wonder,” Thasper said. “Thanks very much.”

“You’re welcome,” said the invisible dragon. “People are always telling one another to ask us, and hardly anyone does. I’ll see you again.” Watery air whirled in Thasper’s face. He leaned over the parapet and saw one prolonged clean splash in the river, and silver bubbles coming up. Then nothing. He was surprised to find his legs were shaking.

He steadied his knees and tramped home. He went to his room and, before he did anything else, he acted on a superstitious impulse he had not thought he had in him, and took down the household god Alina insisted he keep in a niche over his bed. He put it carefully outside in the passage. Then he got out a map of the town and some red stickers and plotted out all the places where he had just missed the Sage.

The result had him dancing with excitement. The dragon was right. There was a pattern. The Sage had started in good lodgings at the better end of town. Then he had gradually moved to poorer places, but he had moved in a curve, down to the station and back towards the better part again. Now, the Altun’s house was just on the edge of the poorer part. The Sage was coming this way! New Unicorn Street had not been so far away. The next place should be nearer still. Thasper had only to look for a house on fire.

It was getting dark by then. Thasper threw his curtains back and leaned out of his window to look at the poorer streets. And there it was! There was a red and orange flicker to the left – in Harvest Moon Street, by the look of it. Thasper laughed aloud. He was actually grateful to the assassins!

He raced downstairs and out of the house. The anxious questions of parents and the yells of brothers and sisters followed him, but he slammed the door on them. Two minutes’ running brought him to the scene of the fire. The street was a mad flicker of dark figures. People were piling furniture in the road. Some more people were helping a dazed woman in a crooked brown turban into a singed armchair.

“Didn’t you have a lodger as well?” someone asked her anxiously.

The woman kept trying to straighten her turban. It was all she could really think of. “He didn’t stay,” she said. “I think he may be down at the Half Moon now.”

Thasper waited for no more. He went pelting down the street.

The Half Moon was an inn on the corner of the same road. Most of the people who usually drank there must have been up the street, helping rescue furniture, but there was a dim light inside, enough to show a white notice in the window. ROOMS, it said.

Thasper burst inside. The barman was on a stool by the window craning to watch the house burn. He did not look at Thasper. “Where’s your lodger?” gasped Thasper. “I’ve got a message. Urgent.”

The barman did not turn round. “Upstairs, first on the left,” he said. “The roof’s caught. They’ll have to act quick to save the house on either side.”

Thasper heard him say this as he bounded upstairs. He turned left. He gave the briefest of knocks on the door there, flung it open and rushed in.

The room was empty. The light was on and it showed a stark bed, a stained table with an empty mug and some sheets of paper on it, and a fireplace with a mirror over it. Beside the fireplace, another door was just swinging shut. Obviously somebody had just that moment gone through it.

Thasper bounded towards that door. But he was checked, for just a second, by seeing himself in the mirror over the fireplace. He had not meant to pause. But some trick of the mirror, which was old and brown and speckled, made his reflection look for a moment a great deal older. He looked easily over twenty. He looked—

He remembered the Letter from the Unknown. This was the time. He knew it was. He was about to meet the Sage. He had only to call him. Thasper went towards the still gently swinging door. He hesitated. The Letter had said call at once. Knowing the Sage was just beyond the door, Thasper pushed it open a fraction and held it so with his fingers. He was full of doubts. He thought, Do I really believe the gods need people? Am I so sure? What shall I say to the Sage after all? He let the door slip shut again.

“Chrestomanci,” he said, miserably.

There was a whoosh of displaced air behind him. It buffeted Thasper half around. He stared. A tall man was standing by the stark bed. He was a most extraordinary figure in a long black robe, with what seemed to be yellow comets embroidered on it. The inside of the robe, swirling in the air, showed yellow, with black comets on it. The tall man had a very smooth dark head, very bright dark eyes and, on his feet, what seemed to be red bedroom slippers.

“Thank goodness,” said this outlandish person. “For a moment, I was afraid you would go through that door.”

The voice brought memory back to Thasper. “You brought me home through a picture when I was little,” he said. “Are you Chrestomanci?”

“Yes,” said the tall outlandish man. “And you are Thasper. And now we must both leave before this building catches fire.”

He took hold of Thasper’s arm and towed him to the door which led to the stairs. As soon as he pushed the door open, thick smoke rolled in, filled with harsh crackling. It was clear that the inn was on fire already. Chrestomanci clapped the door shut again. The smoke set both of them coughing, Chrestomanci so violently that Thasper was afraid he would choke. He pulled both of them back into the middle of the room. By now, smoke was twining up between the bare boards of the floor, causing Chrestomanci to cough again.

“This would happen just as I had gone to bed with flu,” he said, when he could speak. “Such is life. These orderly gods of yours leave us no choice.” He crossed the smoking floor and pushed open the door by the fireplace.

It opened on to blank space. Thasper gave a yelp of horror.

“Precisely,” coughed Chrestomanci. “You were intended to crash to your death.”

“Can’t we jump to the ground?” Thasper suggested.

Chrestomanci shook his smooth head. “Not after they’ve done this to it. No. We’ll have to carry the fight to them and go and visit the gods instead. Will you be kind enough to lend me your turban before we go?” Thasper stared at this odd request. “I would like to use it as a belt,” Chrestomanci croaked. “The way to Heaven may be a little cold, and I only have pyjamas under my dressing-gown.”

The striped undergarments Chrestomanci was wearing did look a little thin. Thasper slowly unwound his turban. To go before gods bareheaded was probably no worse than going in nightclothes, he supposed. Besides, he did not believe there were any gods. He handed the turban over. Chrestomanci tied the length of pale blue cloth around his black and yellow gown and seemed to feel more comfortable.

“Now hang on to me,” he said, “and you’ll be all right.” He took Thasper’s arm again and walked up into the sky, dragging Thasper with him.

For a while, Thasper was too stunned to speak. He could only marvel at the way they were treading up the sky as if there were invisible stairs in it. Chrestomanci was doing it in the most matter of fact way, coughing from time to time and shivering a little, but keeping very tight hold of Thasper nevertheless. In no time, the town was a clutter of prettily lit dolls’ houses below, with two red blots where two of them were burning. The stars were unwinding about them, above and below, as if they had already climbed above some of them.

“It’s a long climb to Heaven,” Chrestomanci observed. “Is there anything you’d like to know on the way?”

“Yes,” said Thasper. “Did you say the gods are trying to kill me?”

“They are trying to eliminate the Sage of Dissolution,” said Chrestomanci, “which they may not realise is the same thing. You see, you are the Sage.”

“But I’m not!” Thasper insisted. “The Sage is a lot older than me, and he asks questions I never even thought of until I heard of him.”

“Ah yes,” said Chrestomanci. “I’m afraid there is an awful circularity to this. It’s the fault of whoever tried to put you away as a small child. As far as I can work out, you stayed three years old for seven years – until you were making such a disturbance in our world that we had to find you and let you out. But in this world of Theare, highly organised and fixed as it is, the prophecy stated that you would begin preaching Dissolution at the age of twenty-three, or at least in this very year. Therefore the preaching had to begin this year. You did not need to appear. Did you ever speak to anyone who had actually heard the Sage preach?”

“No,” said Thasper. “Come to think of it.”

“Nobody did,” said Chrestomanci. “You started in a small way anyway. First you wrote a book, which no one paid much heed to—”

“No, that’s wrong,” objected Thasper. “He – I – er, the Sage was writing a book after preaching.”

“But don’t you see,” said Chrestomanci, “because you were back in Theare by then, the facts had to try to catch you up. They did this by running backwards, until it was possible for you to arrive where you were supposed to be. Which was in that room in the inn there, at the start of your career. I suppose you are just old enough to start by now. And I suspect our celestial friends up here tumbled to this belatedly and tried to finish you off. It wouldn’t have done them any good, as I shall shortly tell them.” He began coughing again. They had climbed to where it was bitterly cold.

By this time, the world was a dark arch below them. Thasper could see the blush of the sun, beginning to show underneath the world. They climbed on. The light grew. The sun appeared, a huge brightness in the distance underneath. A dim memory came again to Thasper. He struggled to believe that none of this was true, and he did not succeed.

“How do you know all this?” he asked bluntly.

“Have you heard of a god called Ock?” Chrestomanci coughed. “He came to talk to me when you should have been the age you are now. He was worried—” He coughed again. “I shall have to save the rest of my breath for Heaven.”

They climbed on, and the stars swam around them, until the stuff they were climbing changed and became solider. Soon they were climbing a dark ramp, which flushed pearly as they went upwards. Here, Chrestomanci let go of Thasper’s arm and blew his nose on a gold-edged handkerchief with an air of relief. The pearl of the ramp grew to silver and the silver to dazzling white. At length, they were walking on level whiteness, through hall after hall.

The gods were gathered to meet them. None of them looked cordial.

“I fear we are not properly dressed,” Chrestomanci murmured.

Thasper looked at the gods, and then at Chrestomanci, and squirmed with embarrassment. Fanciful and queer as Chrestomanci’s garb was, it was still most obviously nightwear. The things on his feet were fur bedroom slippers. And there, looking like a piece of blue string around Chrestomanci’s waist, was the turban Thasper should have been wearing.

The gods were magnificent, in golden trousers and jewelled turbans, and got more so as they approached the greater gods. Thasper’s eye was caught by a god in shining cloth of gold, who surprised him by beaming a friendly, almost anxious look at him. Opposite him was a huge liquid-looking figure draped in pearls and diamonds. This god swiftly, but quite definitely, winked. Thasper was too awed to react, but Chrestomanci calmly winked back.

At the end of the halls, upon a massive throne, towered the mighty figure of Great Zond, clothed in white and purple, with a crown on his head. Chrestomanci looked up at Zond and thoughtfully blew his nose. It was hardly respectful.

“For what reason do two mortals trespass in our halls?” Zond thundered coldly.

Chrestomanci sneezed. “Because of your own folly,” he said. “You gods of Theare have had everything so well worked out for so long that you can’t see beyond your own routine.”

“I shall blast you for that,” Zond announced.

“Not if any of you wish to survive,” Chrestomanci said.

There was a long murmur of protest from the other gods. They wished to survive. They were trying to work out what Chrestomanci meant. Zond saw it as a threat to his authority and thought he had better be cautious. “Proceed,” he said.

“One of your most efficient features,” Chrestomanci said, “is that your prophecies always come true. So why, when a prophecy is unpleasant to you, do you think you can alter it? That, my good gods, is rank folly. Besides, no one can halt his own Dissolution, least of all you gods of Theare. But you forgot. You forgot you had deprived both yourselves and mankind of any kind of free will, by organising yourselves so precisely. You pushed Thasper, the Sage of Dissolution, into my world, forgetting that there is still chance in my world. By chance, Thasper was discovered after only seven years. Lucky for Theare that he was. I shudder to think what might have happened if Thasper had remained three years old for all his allotted lifetime.”

“That was my fault!” cried Imperion. “I take the blame.” He turned to Thasper. “Forgive me,” he said. “You are my own son.”

Was this, Thasper wondered, what Alina meant by the gods blessing her womb? He had not thought it was more than a figure of speech. He looked at Imperion, blinking a little in the god’s dazzle. He was not wholly impressed. A fine god, and an honest one, but Thasper could see he had a limited outlook. “Of course I forgive you,” he said politely.

“It is also lucky,” Chrestomanci said, “that none of you succeeded in killing the Sage. Thasper is a god’s son. That means there can only ever be one of him, and because of your prophecy he has to be alive to preach Dissolution. You could have destroyed Theare. As it is, you have caused it to blur into a mass of cracks. Theare is too well organised to divide into two alternative worlds, like my world would. Instead, events have had to happen which could not have happened. Theare has cracked and warped, and you have all but brought about your own Dissolution.”

“What can we do?” Zond said, aghast.

“There’s only one thing you can do,” Chrestomanci told him. “Let Thasper be. Let him preach Dissolution and stop trying to blow him up. That will bring about free will and a free future. Then either Theare will heal, or it will split, cleanly and painlessly, into two healthy worlds.”

“So we bring about our own downfall?” Zond asked mournfully.

“It was always inevitable,” said Chrestomanci.

Zond sighed. “Very well. Thasper, son of Imperion, I reluctantly give you my blessing to go forth and preach Dissolution. Go in peace.”

Thasper bowed. Then he stood there silent a long time. He did not notice Imperion and Ock both trying to attract his attention. The newspaper report had talked of the Sage as full of anguish and self-doubt. Now he knew why. He looked at Chrestomanci, who was blowing his nose again.

“How can I preach Dissolution?” he said. “How can I not believe in the gods when I have seen them for myself?”

“That’s a question you certainly should be asking,” Chrestomanci croaked. “Go down to Theare and ask it.” Thasper nodded and turned to go. Chrestomanci leaned towards him and said, from behind his handkerchief. “Ask yourself this too: Can the gods catch flu? I think I may have given it to all of them. Find out and let me know, there’s a good chap.”

To Stella Paskins

Author’s Preface

This book, and all the other books about Chrestomanci, takes place in a universe made up of many worlds. People living in these worlds have explored them and given them the name “Related Series” on the grounds that the same languages are spoken in each. There are twelve such Series, numbered One to Twelve, and there are usually nine different worlds in each Series, each of which will share the same geography as others of the same number. (For instance, Series Two is a mass of marshy land and rivers, Series Five is all islands, and Series Seven has the worlds where the British Isles have not split off from the continent of Europe).

Chrestomanci himself lives in Series Twelve A, which is like our own world except that magic is common there. Our own world is Twelve B and does not have magic to speak of. A magic user using the proper spells can easily cross from one world to another, which is what Christopher does in this book.

Conrad’s Fate takes place in Series Seven and, although there are in fact thousands of different worlds, none of the others need concern you here.

Diana Wynne Jones

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Author’s Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

When I was small, I always thought Stallery Mansion was some kind of fairy-tale castle. I could see it from my bedroom window, high in the mountains above Stallchester, flashing with glass and gold when the sun struck it. When I got to the place at last, it wasn’t exactly like a fairy tale.

Stallchester, where we had our shop, is quite high in the mountains too. There are a lot of mountains here in Series Seven and Stallchester is in the English Alps. Most people thought this was the reason why you could only receive television at one end of the town, but my uncle told me it was Stallery doing it.

“It’s the protections they put round the place to stop anyone investigating them,” he said. “The magic blanks out the signal.”

My Uncle Alfred was a magician in his spare time so he knew this sort of thing. Most of the time he made a living for us all by keeping the bookshop at the cathedral end of town. He was a skinny, worrity little man with a bald patch under his curls and he was my mother’s half-brother. It always seemed a great burden to him, having to look after me and my mother and my sister Anthea. He rushed about muttering, “And how do I find the money, Conrad, with the book trade so slow!”

The bookshop was in our name too – it said GRANT AND TESDINIC in faded gold letters over the bow windows and the dark green door – but Uncle Alfred explained that it belonged to him now. He and my father had started the shop together. Then, just after I was born and a little before he died, my father had needed a lot of money suddenly, Uncle Alfred told me, and he sold his half of the bookshop to Uncle Alfred. Then my father died and Uncle Alfred had to support us.

“And so he should do,” my mother said in her vague way. “We’re the only family he’s got.”

My sister Anthea said she wanted to know what my father had needed the money for, but she never could find out. Uncle Alfred said he didn’t know. “And you never get any sense out of Mother,” Anthea said to me. “She just says things like ‘Life is always a lottery’ and ‘Your father was usually hard up’ – so all I can think is that it must have been gambling debts. The casino’s only just up the road after all.”

I rather liked the idea of my father gambling half a bookshop away. I used to like taking risks myself. When I was eight I borrowed some skis and went down all the steepest and iciest ski runs, and in the summer I went rock climbing. I felt I was really following in my father’s footsteps. Unfortunately, someone saw me halfway up Stall Crag and told my uncle.

“Ah, no, Conrad,” he said, wagging a worried, wrinkled finger at me. “I can’t have you taking these risks.”

“My dad did,” I said, “betting all that money.”

“He lost it,” said my uncle, “and that’s a different matter. I never knew much about his affairs, but I have an idea – a very shrewd idea – that he was robbed by those crooked aristocrats up at Stallery.”

“What?” I said. “You mean Count Rudolf came with a gun and held him up?”

My uncle laughed and rubbed my head. “Nothing so dramatic, Con. They do things quietly and mannerly up at Stallery. They pull the possibilities like gentlemen.”

“How do you mean?” I said.

“I’ll explain when you’re old enough to understand the magic of high finance,” my uncle replied. “Meanwhile…” His face went all withered and serious. “Meanwhile, you can’t afford to go risking your neck on Stall Crag, you really can’t, Con, not with the bad karma you carry.”

“What’s karma?” I asked.

“That’s another thing I’ll explain when you’re older,” my uncle said. “Just don’t let me catch you going rock climbing again, that’s all.”

I sighed. Karma was obviously something very heavy, I thought, if it stopped you climbing rocks. I went to ask my sister Anthea about it. Anthea is nearly ten years older than me and she was very learned even then. She was sitting over a line of open books on the kitchen table, with her long black hair trailing over the page she was writing notes on. “Don’t bother me now, Con,” she said without looking up.

She’s growing up just like Mum! I thought. “But I need to know what karma is.”

“Karma?” Anthea looked up. She has huge dark eyes. She opened them wide to stare at me, wonderingly. “Karma’s sort of like Fate, except it’s to do with what you did in a former life. Suppose that in a life you had before this one you did something bad, or didn’t do something good, then Fate is supposed to catch up with you in this life, unless you put it right by being extra good of course. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said, though I didn’t really. “Do people live more than once then?”

“The magicians say you do,” Anthea answered. “I’m not sure I believe it myself. I mean, how can you check that you had a life before this one? Where did you hear about karma?”

Not wanting to tell her about Stall Crag, I said vaguely, “Oh, I read it somewhere. And what’s pulling the possibilities? That’s another thing I read.”

“It’s something that would take ages to explain and I haven’t time,” Anthea said, bending over her notes again. “You don’t seem to understand that I’m working for an exam that could change my entire life!”

“When are you going to get lunch then?” I asked.

“Isn’t that just my life in a nutshell!” Anthea burst out. “I do all the work round here and help in the shop twice a week, and nobody even considers that I might want to do something different! Go away!”

You didn’t mess with Anthea when she got this fierce. I went away and tried to ask Mum instead. I might have known that would be no good.

Mum has this little bare room with creaking floorboards half a floor down from my bedroom, with nothing in it much except dust and stacks of paper. She sits there at a wobbly table, hammering away at her old typewriter, writing books and magazine articles about Women’s Rights. Uncle Alfred had all sorts of smooth new computers down in the back room where Miss Silex works, and he was always on at Mum to change to one as well. But nothing will persuade Mum to change. She says her old machine is much more reliable. This is true. The shop computers went down at least once a week – this, Uncle Alfred said, was because of the activities up at Stallery – but the sound of Mum’s typewriter is a constant hammering, through all four floors of the house.

She looked up as I came in and pushed back a swatch of dark grey hair. Old photos show her looking rather like Anthea, except that her eyes are a light yellow-brown, like mine, but you would never think her anything like Anthea now. She is sort of faded and she always wears what Anthea calls “that horrible mustard coloured suit” and forgets to do her hair. I like that. She’s always the same, like the cathedral, and she always looks over her glasses at me the same way. “Is lunch ready?” she asked me.

“No,” I said. “Anthea’s not even started it.”

“Then come back when it’s ready,” she said, bending to look at the paper sticking up from her typewriter.

“I’ll go when you tell me what pulling the possibilities means,” I said.

“Don’t bother me with things like that,” she said, winding the paper up so that she could read her latest line. “Ask your uncle. It’s only some sort of magicians’ stuff. What do you think of ‘disempowered broodmares’ as a description? Good, eh?”

“Great,” I said. Mum’s books are full of things like that. I’m never sure what they mean. That time I thought a disempowered broodmare was some sort of weak nightmare, and I went away thinking of all her other books, called things like Exploited for Dreams and Disabled Eunuchs. Uncle Alfred had a whole table of them down in the shop. One of my jobs was to dust them, but he almost never sold any, no matter how enticingly I piled them up.

I did lots of jobs in the shop, unpacking books, arranging them, dusting them, and cleaning the floor on the days Mrs Potts’ nerves wouldn’t let her come. Mrs Potts’ nerves were always bad on the days after she had tried to tidy Uncle Alfred’s workroom. The shop, and the whole house, used to echo then with shouts of “I told you just the floor, woman! You’ve ruined that experiment! And you’re lucky not to be a goldfish! Touch it again and you’ll be a goldfish!”

But Mrs Potts, at least once a month, just could not resist stacking everything in neat piles and dusting the chalk marks off the workbench. Then Uncle Alfred would rush up the stairs shouting and the next day Mrs Potts’nerves kept her at home and I would have to clean the shop floor. As a reward for this, I was allowed to read any books I wanted from the children’s shelves.

To be brutally frank with you – which is Uncle Alfred’s favourite phrase – this reward meant nothing to me until about the time I heard about karma and Fate and started wondering what pulling the possibilities meant. Up to then I preferred doing risky things. Or I mostly wanted to go and see friends in the part of town where televisions worked. Reading was even harder work than cleaning the floor. But suddenly one day I discovered the Peter Jenkins books. You must know them – Peter Jenkins and the Thin Teacher, Peter Jenkins and the Headmaster’s Secret and all the others. They’re great. Our shop had a whole row of them, at least twenty, and I set out to read them all.

Well, I had already read about six, and those all kept harking back to another one called Peter Jenkins and the Football Formula that sounded really exciting. So that was the one I wanted to read next.

I finished the floor as quickly as I could. Then, on my way to dust Mum’s books, I stopped by the children’s shelves and looked urgently along the row of shiny red and brown Peter Jenkins books for Peter Jenkins and the Football Formula. The trouble is, all those books look the same. I ran my finger along the row, thinking I’d find the book about seventh along. I knew I’d seen it there. But it wasn’t. The one in about the right place was called Peter Jenkins and the Magic Golfer. I ran my finger right along to the end, and it still wasn’t there, and The Headmaster’s Secret didn’t seem to be there either. Instead, there were three copies of one called Peter Jenkins and the Hidden Horror which I’d never seen before. I took one of those out and flipped through it, and it was almost the same as The Headmaster’s Secret, but not quite – vampire bats instead of a zombie in the cupboard, things like that – and I put it back feeling puzzled and really frustrated.

In the end, I took one at random before I went on to dust Mum’s books. And Mum’s books were different – just slightly – too. They looked the same, with FRANCONIA GRANT in big yellow letters on them, but some of the titles were different. The fat one that used to be called Women in Crisis was still fat, but it was now called The Case for Females, and the thin floppy one was called Mother Wit, instead of Do We Use Intuition? like I remembered.

Just then I heard Uncle Alfred galloping downstairs whistling, on his way to open the shop. “Hey, Uncle Alfred!” I called out. “Have you sold all the Peter Jenkins and the Football Formulas?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, rushing into the shop with his worried look. He hurried along to the children’s shelves, muttering about having to reorder as he changed his glasses over. He peered through them at the row of Peter Jenkins books. He bent to look at the books below and stood on tiptoe to look at the shelves above. Then he backed away looking so angry that I thought Mrs Potts must have tidied the books too. “Would you look at that!” he said disgustedly. “That’s a third of them different! It’s criminal. They went for a big working without even considering the side effects! Go outside and see if the street’s still the same, Conrad.”

I went to the shop door, but as far as I could see, nothing…Oh! The postbox down the road was now bright blue.

“You seel” said my uncle when I told him. “You see what they’re like! All sorts of details will be different now – valuable details – but what do they care? All they think of is money!”

“Who?” I asked. I couldn’t see how anyone could make money by changing books.

He pointed up and sideways with his thumb. “Them. Those bent aristocrats up at Stallery, to be brutally frank with you, Con. They make their money by pulling the possibilities about. They look, and if they see they could get a bigger profit from one of their companies if just one or two things were a little different, then they twist and twitch and pull those one or two things. It doesn’t matter to them that other things change as well. Oh no. And this time they’ve overdone it. Greedy. Wicked. People are going to notice and object if they go on doing this.” He took his glasses off and cleaned them. Beads of angry sweat stood on his forehead. “There’ll be trouble,” he said. “Or so I hope.”

So this was what pulling the possibilities meant. “How do they change things?” I asked.

“By very powerful magic,” said my uncle. “More powerful than you or I can imagine, Conrad. Make no mistake, Count Rudolf and his family are very dangerous people.”

When I finally went up to my room to read my Peter Jenkins book, I looked out of my window first. Because I was at the very top of our house, I could see Stallery as just a glint and a flashing in the place where green hills folded into rocky mountain. I found it hard to believe that anyone in that high, twinkling place could have the power to change a lot of books and the colour of the postboxes down here in Stallchester. I still didn’t understand why they should want to.

“It’s because if you change to a new set of things that might be going to happen,” Anthea explained, looking up from her books, “you change everything just a little. This time,” she added, ruefully turning the pages of her notes, “they seem to have done a big jump and made a big difference. I’ve got notes here on two books that don’t seem to exist any more. No wonder Uncle Alfred’s annoyed.”

We got used to the changes by next day. Sometimes it was hard to remember that postboxes used to be red. Uncle Alfred said that we only remembered anyway because we lived in that part of Stallchester. “To be brutally frank with you,” he said, “half Stallchester thinks postboxes were always blue. So does the rest of the country. The King probably calls them royal blue. Mind games, that’s what it is. Diabolical greed.”

This happened in the glad old days when Anthea was at home. I think Mum and Uncle Alfred thought Anthea would always be at home. That summer, Mum said as usual, “Anthea don’t forget that Conrad needs new school clothes for next term,” and Uncle Alfred was full of plans for expanding the shop once Anthea had left school and could work there full time.

“If I clear out the boxroom opposite my workroom,” he would say, “we can put the office in there. Then we can put books where the office is – maybe build out into the yard.”

Anthea never said much in reply to these plans. She was very quiet and tense for the next month or so. Then she seemed to cheer up. She worked in the shop quite happily all the rest of the summer and, in the early autumn, she took me to buy new clothes just as she had done last year, except that she bought things for herself at the same time. Then, after I had been back at school a month, she left.

She came down to breakfast carrying a small suitcase. “I’m off,” she said. “I start at University tomorrow. I’m catching the nine-twenty to Ludwich, so I’ll say goodbye now and get something to eat on the train.”

“University!” Mum exclaimed. “But you’re not clever enough!”

“You can’t,” said Uncle Alfred. “There’s the shop – and you don’t have any money.”

“I took an exam,” Anthea said, “and I won a scholarship. That gives me enough money if I’m careful.”

“But you can’t!” they both said together. Mum added, “Who’s going to look after Conrad?” and Uncle Alfred said, “Look here, my girl, I was relying on you for the shop.”

“Working for nothing. I know,” Anthea said. “Well, I’m sorry to spoil your plans for me, but I do have a life of my own, you know, and I’ve made arrangements for myself because I knew you’d both stop me if I told you. I’ve looked after all three of you for years. But now Conrad’s old enough to look after himself, I’m going to go and get a life.”

And she went, leaving us all staring. She didn’t come back. She knew Uncle Alfred, you see. Uncle Alfred spent a lot of time in his workroom setting up spells to make sure that when Anthea came home at the end of the University semester she would find herself having to stay with us for good. Anthea guessed he would. She simply sent a postcard to say she was staying with friends and never came near us. She sent me cards and presents for my birthdays, but she never came back to Stallchester for years.

Anthea’s going made a dreadful difference, far worse than any change made by Count Rudolf up at Stallery. Mum was in a bad mood for weeks. I’m not sure she ever forgave Anthea.

“So sly!” she kept saying. “So mean and secretive. Don’t you ever be like that, Conrad, and it’s no use expecting me to run after you. I have my work to do.”

Uncle Alfred was tetchy and grumpy for a long time too, but he cheered up after he had set the spells that were supposed to fix Anthea at home once she came back. He took to patting me on the shoulder and saying, “You’re not going to let me down like that, are you, Con?”

Sometimes I answered, “No fear!” but mostly I wriggled a bit and didn’t answer. I missed Anthea horribly for ages. She had been the person I could go to when I had a question to ask, or to get cheered up. If I fell down or cut myself, she had been the one with sticking plaster and soothing words. She used to suggest things for me to do if I was bored. I felt quite lost now she was gone.

I hadn’t realised how many things Anthea did in the house. Luckily, I knew how to work the washing machine, but I was always forgetting to run it and finding I’d no clothes to go to school in. I got into trouble for wearing dirty clothes until I got used to remembering. Mum just went on piling her clothes into the laundry basket as she always had, but Uncle Alfred was particular about his shirts. He had to pay Mrs Potts to iron them for him and he grumbled a lot about how much she charged.

“The ingredients for my experiments cost the earth these days,” he kept saying. “Where do I find the money?”

Anthea had done all the shopping and cooking too, and this was where we all suffered most. For the week after she left we lived on cornflakes, until they ran out. Then Mum tried to solve the problem by ordering two hundred frozen quiches and cramming these into the freezer. You can’t believe how quickly you get tired of eating quiche. And none of us remembered to fetch the next quiche out to thaw. Uncle Alfred was always having to unfreeze them by magic, and this made them soggy and seemed to affect the taste.

“Is there anything else we can eat that might be less squishy and more satisfying?” he asked pathetically. “Think, Fran. You used to cook once.”

“That was when I was being exploited as a female,” Mum retorted. “The quiche people do frozen pizzas too, but you have to order them by the thousand.”

Uncle Alfred shuddered. “I’d rather eat bacon and eggs,” he said sadly.

“Then go out and buy some,” said my mother.

In the end, we settled that Uncle Alfred would do the shopping and I would try to cook what he bought. I fetched books called Simple Cookery and Easy Eating up out of the shop and did my best to do what they told me. I was never very good at it. The food always seemed to turn black and stick to the bottom of the pan, but I usually had enough on top to get by with. We ate a lot of bread, though only Mum got noticeably fatter. Uncle Alfred was naturally skinny and I kept growing. Mum had to take me shopping for new clothes several times a year from then on. It always seemed to happen when she was very busy finishing a book and this made her so unhappy that I tried to make my clothes last as long as I could. I got into trouble at school once or twice for looking like a scarecrow.

We got used to coping by next summer. I suppose that was when it finally became obvious that Anthea was not coming back. I had worked out by Christmas that she had left for good, but it took Mum and Uncle Alfred most of a year.

“She’ll have to come home this summer,” Mum was still saying hopefully in May. “All the Universities shut for months over the summer.”

“Not she,” said Uncle Alfred. “She’s shaken the dust of Stallchester off her feet. And to be brutally frank with you, Fran, I’m not sure I want her back now. Someone that ungrateful would only be a disturbing factor.”

He sighed, dismantled his spell to keep Anthea at home and hired a girl called Daisy Bolger to help in the shop. After that, he was always worrying about how much he had to pay Daisy in order to stop her going to work at the china shop by the cathedral instead. Daisy knew how to get money out of Uncle Alfred much better than I did. Talk about sly! And Daisy always seemed to think I was going to mess up the books when I was in the shop. Once or twice, Count Rudolf up at Stallery worked another big change, and each time Daisy was sure it was me messing the books about. Luckily, Uncle Alfred never believed her.

Uncle Alfred was sorry for me. He would look at me over his glasses in his most worried way and shake his head sadly. “I reckon Anthea going has hit you hardest of all, Con,” he took to saying sadly. “To be brutally frank, I suspect it was your bad karma that caused her to leave.”

“What did I do in my past life?” I asked anxiously.

Uncle Alfred always shook his head at that. “I don’t know what you did, Con. The Lords of Karma alone know that. You could have been a crooked policeman, or a judge that took bribes, or a soldier that ran away, or maybe a traitor to the country – anything! All I know is that you either didn’t do something you should have done, or you did something you shouldn’t. And because of that, a bad Fate is going to keep dogging you.” Then he would hurry away muttering, “Unless we find a way you could expiate your misdeed, I suppose.”

I always felt horrible after these conversations. Something bad almost always happened to me just afterwards. Once I slipped when I was quite high up climbing Stall Crag and scraped the whole front of me raw. Another time I fell downstairs and twisted my ankle, and one other time I cut myself quite badly in the kitchen – blood all over the onions – but the truly nasty part was that, each time, I thought, I deserve this! This is because of my crime in my past life. And I felt horribly guilty and sinful until the scrapes or the ankle or the cut had healed. Then I remembered Anthea saying she didn’t believe people had more than one life, and after that I would feel better.

“Can’t you find out who I was and what I did?” I asked Uncle Alfred, one time after I had been told off by the Headmistress because my clothes were too small. She sent a note home with me about it, but I threw it away because Mum had just started a new book and, anyway, I knew I deserved to be in trouble. “If I knew, I could do something about it.”

“To be brutally frank,” said my uncle, “I fancy you have to be a grown man before you can change your Fate. But I’ll try to find out. I’ll try, Con.” He did experiments in his workroom to find out, but he never seemed to make much headway.

About a year after Anthea left, I got really annoyed with Daisy Bolger, when she tried to stop me looking at the newest Peter Jenkins book. I told her my uncle had said I could, but she just kept saying, “Put it back! You’ll crease it and then I’ll be blamed.”

“Oh, why don’t you go away and work in that china shop!” I said in the end.

She tossed her head angrily. “Fat lot you know! I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s boring. I only say I will to get a decent wage out of your uncle – and he doesn’t pay me half what he could afford, even now.”

“He does,” I said. “He’s always worrying how much you cost.”

“That,” said Daisy, “is because he’s stingy, not because he hasn’t got it. He must be as rich as the Count up at Stallery, almost. This bookshop’s coining money.”

“Is it?” I said.

“I keep the till. I know,” Daisy said. “We’re at the picturesque end of town and we get all the tourists, winter and summer. Ask Miss Silex if you don’t believe me. She does the accounts.”

I was so astonished to hear this that I forgot to be angry and forgot the Peter Jenkins book too. That was no doubt what Daisy intended. She was a very cunning person. But I couldn’t believe she was right, not when Uncle Alfred was always so worried. I began counting the people who came into the shop.

And Daisy was right. Stallchester is a famous beauty spot, full of historic buildings and surrounded by mountains. In summer, we got people to look at the town and play the casino, and hikers who walked in the mountains. In winter, people came to ski. But because we are so high up, we get rain and mist in summer; and in winter there are always times when the snow is not deep enough, or too soft, or coming down in a blizzard, and these are the days when tourists come into the shop in their hundreds. They buy everything, from dictionaries to help with crosswords, to deep books of philosophy, detective stories, biographies, adventure stories and cookery books for self-catering. Some even buy Mum’s books. It only took a few months for me to realise that Uncle Alfred was indeed coining money.

“What does he spend it all on?” I asked Daisy.

“Goodness knows,” she said. “That workroom of his is pretty expensive. And he always buys best vintage port for his Magicians’ Circle. All his clothes are handmade too, you know.”

I almost didn’t believe that either. But when I thought about it, one of the magicians who came to Uncle Alfred’s Magicians’ Circle every Wednesday was Mr Hawkins the tailor, and he often came early with a package of clothes. And I’d helped carry dusty old bottles of port wine upstairs for the meeting, often and often. I just hadn’t realised the stuff was expensive. I was annoyed with Daisy for noticing so much more than I did. But then she was a really cunning person.

You would not believe how artfully Daisy went to work when she wanted more money. She often took as much as two weeks on it – ten days of sighing and grumbling and saying how overworked and hard up she was, followed by another day of saying how the nice woman in the china shop had told her she could come and work there any time. Finally, she would flare up with “That’s it! I’m leaving!” And it worked every time.

Uncle Alfred hates people to leave, I thought. That’s why he let Anthea go to Cathedral School, so she could stay at home and be useful here.

I couldn’t threaten to leave, not yet. You have to stay at school until you are twelve in this country. But I could pretend I was not going to do any more cooking. It didn’t take much pretending, really.

That first time, I went even slower than Daisy. I spent over a fortnight sighing and saying I was sick to my back teeth of cooking. Finally, it was Mum who said, “Really, Conrad, to listen to you, anyone would think we exploited you.”

It was wonderful. I went from simmering to boiling in one breath, and I shouted with real feeling, “You are exploiting me! That’s it! I’m not doing any more cooking ever again!”

Then it was even more wonderful. Uncle Alfred hurried me away to his workroom and pleaded with me. “You know – let’s be brutally frank, Con – your mother’s hopeless with food and I’m worse. But we’ve all got to eat, haven’t we? Be a good boy and reconsider now.”

I looked around at the strange-shaped glass things and shining machinery in the workroom and wondered how much it all cost. “No,” I said sulkily. “Pay someone else to do it.”

He winced. He almost shuddered at the idea. “Suppose I was to offer you a little something to take up as our chef again,” he said cajolingly. “What could I offer you?

I let him cajole for a while. Then I sighed and asked for a bicycle. He agreed like a shot. The bicycle was not so wonderful when it came, because Uncle Alfred only produced one that was second hand, but it made a start. I knew how to do it now.

When winter came, I went into my act again. I refused to cook twice. First I got regular pocket money out of my uncle and then I got skis of my own. In the spring, I did it again and got modelling kits. That summer I got most things I needed. The next autumn I actually made Uncle Alfred give me a good camera. I know this was calculated cunning and quite as bad as Daisy – though I couldn’t help noticing that my friends at school got skis and pocket money as if they had a right to them, and that none of them had to cook for these things, either – but I told myself that my Fate had made me bad and I might as well make use of it.

I stopped the year I was going to be twelve. This was not because I was reformed. It was part of a Plan. You can leave school at twelve, you see, and I knew Uncle Alfred would have thought of that. The rule is that you can go on to an Upper School, but only if your family pays for you. Otherwise you go and find a job. All my friends were going to Upper Schools, most of them to Cathedral like Anthea, but my best friends were going to Stall High. I thought of it as like the school in the Peter Jenkins books. Stall High cost more, but it was supposed to be a terrific place and, best of all, it taught magic. I had set my heart on learning magic with my friends. Living as I did in a house where Uncle Alfred filled the stairway with peculiar smells and the strange buzz of working spells at least once a week, I couldn’t wait to do it too. Besides, Daisy Bolger told me that Uncle Alfred had been to Stall High himself as a boy. How that girl found out these things was something I never knew.

Knowing Uncle Alfred, I knew he would try to keep me at home somehow. He might even be going to sack Daisy and make me work in the shop for nothing. So my Plan was to threaten to stop cooking just near the end of my last term and get him to bribe me with Stall High. If that didn’t work, I thought I would threaten to go and get a job in the lowlands, and then say that I’d stay if I could go to Cathedral School instead.

I worked all this out sitting in my room, staring upwards at Stallery glimmering among the mountains. Stallery always made me wish for all the strange and exciting things that I didn’t seem to have. It made me think that Anthea must have sat in her room making plans in much the same way – except that you couldn’t see Stallery from Anthea’s old room. Mum used it as a paper store now.

Stallery was in the news around then anyway. Count Rudolf died suddenly. People gossiping in the bookshop said he was quite young really, but some diseases took no account of age, did they? “Driven to an early grave,” Mrs Potts said to me. “Mark my words. And the new Count is only twenty-one, they say. His sister’s even younger. They’ll be having to marry soon to preserve the family name. She’ll insist on it.”

Daisy was very interested in weddings. She hunted everywhere for a magazine that might have pictures of the new Count Robert and his sister, Lady Felice. All she found was a newspaper with the announcement of Count Robert’s engagement to Lady Mary Ogworth in it. “Just plain print,” she complained. “No photos.”

“Daisy won’t find pictures,” Mrs Potts told me. “Stallery likes its privacy, it does. They know how to keep the media out of their lives up there. I’ve heard there’s electrical fences all round those grounds, and savage dogs patrolling inside. She won’t want people prying, not she.”

“Who’s she?” I asked.

Mrs Potts paused, kneeling with her back to me on the stairs. “Pass the polish,” she said. “Thanks. She,” she went on, rubbing in polish in a slow, enjoying sort of way, “is the old Countess. She’s got rid of her husband – bothered and nagged him to death, I’ve heard – and now she won’t want anyone to see while she works on the new Count. They say he’s well under her thumb already and bound to be more so, poor boy. She likes all the power, all the money. He’ll marry that girl she’s chosen and then she’ll run the pair of them, you’ll see.”

“She sounds horrible,” I said, fishing for more.

“Oh, she is,” said Mrs Potts. “Used to be on the stage. Caught the old Count by kicking up her legs in a chorus line, I heard. And…”

Unfortunately, Uncle Alfred came rushing upstairs at this point and upset Mrs Potts’ cleaning bucket and Mrs Potts’ nerves along with it. I never got Mrs Potts to gossip about Stallery again. That was my Fate at work there, I thought. But I got a few more hints from Uncle Alfred himself. With his face almost withered with worry, he said to me, “What happens up in Stallery now, eh? It could be even worse. I mention no names, but someone’s very power hungry up there. I dread the next set of changes, Con.”

He was so worried that he telephoned his Magicians’ Circle and they actually met on a Tuesday, which was almost unheard-of. After that, they met on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and I helped carry up twice the number of dusty wine bottles every week.

And those weeks slowly passed, until the dread day arrived when the Headmistress came and gave everyone in the top class a School Leaver’s Form. “Take this home to your parent or guardian,” she said. “Tell them that if they want you to leave school at the end of this term, they must sign Section A. If they want you to go on to an Upper School, then they sign Section B. Get them to sign tonight. I want all these forms back tomorrow without fail.”

I took my form home to the shop, prepared for battle and cunning. I went in through the back yard and straight upstairs to Mum. My plan was to get her to sign Section B before Uncle Alfred even knew I’d got the form.

“What’s this?” Mum said vaguely as I pushed the yellow paper in front of her typewriter.

“School Leaver’s Form,” I explained. “If you want me to go on at school you have to sign Section B.”

She pushed her hair back distractedly. “I can’t do that, Conrad, not when you’ve got a job already. And at Stallery of all places. I must say I’m really disappointed in you.”

I felt as if the whole world had been pulled out from under me like a carpet. “Stallery!” I said.

“If that’s what you told your uncle, yes,” my mother said. And she took the form and signed Section A with her married name. F. Tesdinic. “There,” she said. “I wash my hands of you, Conrad.”

I stood there, feeling utterly let down. I didn’t know what to do, or what to think. Then, when I next caught up with myself, I was racing downstairs, waving the School Leaver’s Form. I rushed into the shop, where Uncle Alfred was standing behind the pay desk, and I wagged the form furiously in his face.

“What the hell do you mean by this?” I pretty well shrieked at him.

A lot of customers whirled round from the shelves and stared at me. Uncle Alfred looked at them, blinked at me and said to Daisy, “Do you mind taking over here for a moment?” He dodged out from behind the desk and seized my elbow. “Come up to my workroom and let me explain.”

He more or less dragged me from the shop. I was still flapping the form with my free hand and I think I was shouting too. “What do you mean – explain?” I screamed as we went upstairs. “You can’t do this to me! You’ve no right!”

When we reached the workroom, Uncle Alfred shoved me inside into a strong smell of recent magic and shut the door behind both of us with a clap. He straightened his glasses, which I had knocked crooked. He was panting and he looked more worried than I had ever seen him, but I didn’t care. I opened my mouth to shout at him again.

“No, don’t, Con,” Uncle Alfred said earnestly. “Please. I’m doing the best I can for you. Honestly. It’s your Fate – this wretched bad karma of yours – that’s the problem, see.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I demanded.

“Everything,” he said. “I’ve been doing a lot of divining about you and it’s even worse than I realised. Unless you put right what you did wrong in your previous life – and put it right now – you are going to be horribly and painfully dead before the year’s out.”

“What?” I said. “I don’t believe you!”

“It’s true,” he assured me. “The Lords of Karma will just scrap you and let you try again when you next get reborn. They’re quite ruthless, you know. But I don’t ask you to believe me just like that. I’d like you to come to the Magicians’ Circle this evening and see what they say. They don’t know you, I haven’t told them about you, but I’m willing to bet they’ll spot this karma of yours straight off. To be brutally frank with you, it’s round you in a black cloud these days, Con.”

I felt terrible. My mouth went dry and my stomach shook, in wobbly waves. “But,” I said, and found my voice had gone down to a whisper, “but what’s it got to do with this?” I tried to flourish the Leaver’s Form at him again, but I could only manage a feeble flap. My arm had gone weak.

“Ah, I wish you’d come to me first,” said my uncle. “I’d have explained. You see, I’ve discovered what you did wrong. There was someone in your last life the Lords of Karma required you to put an end to. And you didn’t. You lost your nerve and let them go free. And this person got reborn and continued his evil ways in this present life too…”

“But I still don’t see—” I began.

He held up a hand to stop me. It was shaking. He seemed to be shaking with worry all over. “Let me finish, Con. Let me go on. Since I discovered what caused your Fate, I’ve done every kind of divination to find out who this person is that you didn’t put an end to. It’s been really difficult – I don’t have to tell you how the magics up at Stallery interfere with spells down here – but it was pretty definite even so. It’s someone up at Stallery, Con.”

“You mean it’s the new Count?” I said.

“I don’t know,” said my uncle. “It’s one of them up there. Someone up at Stallery has a lot of power and is doing something really bad, and they’ve got the exact pattern of this person you should have done away with last time. That’s all I can find out, Con. Look on the bright side. We know where to find him or her. That’s why I arranged for you to get a job up at Stallery.”

“What kind of a job?” I asked.

“Domestic,” said Uncle Alfred. “The kind of thing you’re used to really. The steward up there – butler, whatever – is a Mr Amos and he’s reckoning to take on some school leavers shortly, to train up as servants to the new Count. Day after the end of term, he’ll be interviewing a whole bunch of you. And he’ll take you, Con, never fear. I’ll put a really good spell on you so he’ll have no choice. You don’t need to worry about getting the job. And you’ll be right in the middle of things then, cleaning boots and running errands, and you’ll have ample opportunity to seek out the person responsible for this terrible karma you carry…”

I thought, Cleaning boots! And nearly burst into tears. My uncle went on talking, nervously, persuasively, but I just couldn’t attend any more. It wasn’t simply that my careful Plan had been no use at all. It was more that I suddenly saw where the Plan had been leading me. I hadn’t admitted it to myself before, but I knew now – I knew very fiercely – that what I wanted was to be like Anthea, to leave the bookshop, leave Stallchester, go somewhere quite different and make a career of some kind. I hadn’t actually thought what career, until then, but now I thought of flying an aircraft, becoming a great surgeon, being a famous scientist, or perhaps, best of all, learning to be the strongest magician in the world.

It was like peeping past a door that was just slamming in my face. I could do so many interesting things if I had the right education. Instead, I was going to spend my life cleaning boots.

“I don’t want to!” I blurted out. “I want to go to Stall High!”

“You haven’t listened to what I’ve been telling you,” Uncle Alfred said. “You’ve got to get this evil Fate of yours cleared away first, Con. If you don’t, you’ll die in agony before the year’s out. Once you’ve gone up to Stallery, found out who this person is and done away with him or her, then you can do anything you want. I’ll arrange for you to go to Stall High then like a shot. Of course I will.”

“Really?” I said.

“Really,” he said.

It was like that door softly swinging open again. True, there was an ugly doorstep in the way labelled Bad Karma, Evil Fate, but I could step over that. I found myself letting out a long, long sigh. “All right,” I said.

Uncle Alfred patted my shoulder. “Good lad. I knew you’d see reason. But I don’t ask you to take my word alone. Come to the Magicians’ Circle tonight and see what they have to say. All right now?” I supposed I was. I nodded. “Then could I get back to the shop?” he said. “Daisy hasn’t the experience yet.”

I nodded again. But as he pushed me out on to the stairs, I had a thought. “Who’s going to do the cooking with me gone?” I asked. I was surprised not to have thought of this before.

“Don’t worry about that,” my uncle said. “We’ll hire Daisy’s mother. Daisy’s always telling me what a good cook her mum is.”

I stumbled away up to my room and stared up at Stallery twinkling out of its fold in the mountains. My mind felt like someone in the dark, stumbling about among huge pieces of furniture with sharp corners on them. I kept barking myself on the corners. No Stall High unless I went and cleaned boots in Stallery – that was one corner. The Lords of Karma scrapped you if you were no good – that was another. A person up there among those glinting windows was so wicked they had to be done away with – that was another—and I had to deal with the person now because I’d been too feeble to do it in my last life – that was yet another. Then I barked my mind on the most important corner of the lot. If I didn’t do this, I’d die. It was this person or me, him or me.

Him or me, I kept saying to myself. Him or me.

Those words were going through my head while I helped Uncle Alfred carry the bottles of port up to his workroom that evening. I had to back into the room because I had two bottles in each hand.

“Dear me,” someone said behind me. “What appalling karma!”

Before I could turn round, someone else said, “My dear Alfred, did you realise that your nephew carries some of the blackest Fate I’ve ever seen?”

All the magicians of the Circle were there, though I hadn’t heard them arrive. Two of them were smoking cigars, filling the workroom with strong blue smoke, which made the place look a different shape and size somehow. Instead of the usual workbench and glass tubes and machinery, there was a circle of comfortable armchairs, each with a little table beside it. There was another table in the middle loaded with bottles, wineglasses and several decanters.

I knew most of the people sitting in the armchairs at least by sight. The one pouring himself a glass of rich red wine was Mr Seuly, the Mayor of Stallchester, who owned the ironworks at the other end of town. He passed the decanter along to Mr Johnson, who owned the ski runs and the hotels. Mr Priddy, beside him, ran the casino. One of those smoking a cigar was Mr Hawkins the tailor and the other was Mr Fellish who owned The Stallchester News. Mr Goodwin, beyond those, owned a big chain of shops in Stallchester. I wasn’t quite sure what the others were called, but I knew the tall one owned all the land round here, and that the fat one ran the trams and buses. And there was Mr Loder the butcher, helping Uncle Alfred uncork bottles and carefully pour wine into decanters. The thick nutty smell of port cut across the smell of cigars.

All these men had shrewd respectable faces and expensive clothes, which made it worse that they were all staring at me with concern. Mayor Seuly sipped at his wine and shook his head a little. “Not long for this life unless something’s done soon,” he said. “What’s causing it? Does anyone know?”

“Something – no, someone he should have put down in his last life, by the looks of it,” Mr Hawkins the tailor said.

The tall land-owning one nodded. “And the chance to cure it now, only he’s not done it,” he said, deep and gloomy. “Why hasn’t he?”

Uncle Alfred beckoned me to stop standing staring and put the bottles on the table. “Because,” he said, “to be brutally frank with you, I’ve only just found out who he should be dealing with. It’s someone up at Stallery.”

There was a general groan at this.

“Then send him there,” said Mr Fellish.

“I am. He’s going next week,” my uncle said. “It couldn’t be contrived any sooner.”

“Good. Better late than never,” Mayor Seuly said.

“You know,” observed Mr Priddy, “it doesn’t surprise me at all that it’s someone up at Stallery. That’s such a strong Fate on the boy. It looks equal to the power up there – and that’s so strong that it interferes with communications and stops this town thriving as it should.”

“It’s not just this town Stallery interferes with,” Mayor Seuly said. “Their financial grip is down over the whole world, like a net. I come up against it almost every day. They have magical stoppages occurring all the time, so that they can make money and I can’t. If I try to get round what they do – bang. I lose half my profits.”

“Oh, we’ve all had that,” agreed Mr Goodwin. “Odd to think it’s in this lad’s hands to save us as well as himself.”

I stood by the table, turning from one to the other as they spoke. My mouth went drier with each thing that was said. By this time I was so horrified I could hardly swallow. I tried to ask a question, but I couldn’t.

My uncle seemed to realise what I wanted to know. He turned round. He was holding his glass up to the light, so that a red blob of light from it wavered on his forehead as he said, “This is all very true and tragic, but how is my nephew to know who this person is when he sees him? That’s what you wanted to ask, wasn’t it, Con?” It was, but I couldn’t even nod by then.

“Simple,” said Mayor Seuly. “There’ll come a moment when he’ll know. There’s always a moment of recognition in cases of karma. The person he needs will say something or do something, and it will be like clicking a switch. Light will come on in the boy’s head and he’ll know.”

The rest of them nodded and made growling murmurs that they agreed, it was like that, and Uncle Alfred said, “Got that, Con?”

I managed to nod this time. Then Mayor Seuly said, “But he’ll want to know how to deal with the person when he does know. That’s quite as important. How about he uses Granek’s Equation?”

“Too complicated,” said Mr Goodwin. “Try him with Beaulieu’s Spell.”

“I’d prefer a straight Whitewick,” Mr Loder the butcher said.

After that they all began suggesting things, all of which meant nothing to me, and each of them got quite heated in favour of his own suggestion. Before long, the tall, land-owning one was banging his wineglass on the little table beside his chair and shouting, “You’ve got to have him eliminate this person for good, quickly and simply! The only answer is a Persholt!”

“Please remember,” my uncle said anxiously, “that Con’s only a boy and he doesn’t know any magic at all.”

This caused a silence. “Ah,” Mayor Seuly said at length. “Yes. Of course. Well then, I think the best plan is to enable him to summon a Walker.”

At this, all the others broke into rumbles of “Exactly! Of course! A Walker. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

Mayor Seuly looked round the circle of them and said, “Agreed? Good. Now what can we give him to use? It ought to be something quite plain and ordinary that no one will suspect…Ah. Yes. A cork from one of those bottles will do nicely.”

He held out his hand with a handsome gold ring shining on it and Mr Loder passed him the purple stained cork from the bottle he had just emptied into a decanter. Mr Seuly took it and clasped it in both hands for a moment. Then he nodded and passed it on to Mr Johnson, who did the same. The cork slowly travelled round the entire circle, including Uncle Alfred and Mr Loder standing by the table, who passed it back to the Mayor.

Mayor Seuly held the cork up in his finger and thumb and beckoned me over to him. I still couldn’t speak. I stood there, looking down on his wealthily clipped hair, that almost hid the thin place on top, and wondering at how rounded and rich he looked. I breathed in smells of nutty, fruity wine, smooth good cloth and a tang of aftershave, and nodded at everything he said.

“All you have to do,” he said, “is first to have your moment of recognition and then to fetch out this cork. You hold it up like I’m doing, and you say, ‘I summon a Walker to bring me what I need’ Have you got that?” I nodded. It sounded quite easy to remember. “You may have to wait a while for the Walker,” Mayor Seuly went on, “and you mustn’t be frightened when you see the Walker coming. It may turn out bigger than you expect. When it reaches you, the Walker will give you something. I don’t know what. Walkers are designed to give you exactly the tool for the job. But take my word for it, the object you get will do just what you need it to do. And you must give the Walker this cork in exchange. Walkers never give something for nothing. Have you got all that?” he asked. I nodded again. “Then take this cork and keep it with you all the time,” he said, “but don’t let anyone else see it. And I hope that when we next meet you’ll carry no karma at all.”

As I took the cork – which felt like an ordinary cork to me – Mr Johnson said, “Right. That’s done. Send him off, Alfred, and let’s start the meeting.”

I didn’t really need Uncle Alfred to jerk his head at me to go. I got out as quickly as I could and rushed upstairs to the kitchen for a drink of water. But by the time I got there, my mouth was hardly dry at all. That was odd, but it was such a relief that I hardly wondered about it. I wasn’t even very scared any more, and that was odd too, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

I got much more nervous as the week marched on. The worst part was the end of term assembly, when I had to sit on the left side with the school leavers, while all my friends sat across the gangway because they were going to Upper Schools. I felt really left out. And while I sat there, I realised that even when I’d found the karma person and got rid of him, I’d still be a year behind my friends at Stall High. And on my side of the gangway, the boy next to me had got a job at Mayor Seuly’s ironworks and the girl on the other side was going to train as a maid in Mr Goodwin’s house. I still had to get my job.

Then it suddenly hit me that I was going off on my own to a strange place where I wouldn’t know what to do or how to behave – and that was bad enough, without having to find the person causing my evil Fate as well. I tried saying It’s him or me to myself, but that was no help at all. When I got home, I looked out of my window, up at Stallery, and that was terrifying. I realised that I didn’t know the first thing about the place, except that it was full of powerful wizardry and that someone up there was thoroughly wicked. When Uncle Alfred came and took me to his workroom to put the spell on me that would make this Mr Amos give me the job at Stallery, I went very slowly. My legs shook.

The workroom was back to its usual state. There was no sign of the comfortable chairs, or the port wine. Uncle Alfred chalked a circle on the floor and had me stand inside it. Otherwise, the magics were just like ordinary life. I didn’t feel anything particularly, or notice much except a very small buzzing, right at the end. But Uncle Alfred was beaming when he had finished.

“There!” he said. “I defy anyone to refuse to employ you now, Con! It’s tight as a diving suit.”

I went away, shaking with nerves. I was so full of doubts and ignorance that I went and interrupted Mum. She was sitting at her creaky table reading great long sheets of paper, making marks in the margins as she read. “Say whatever it is quickly,” she said, “or I’ll lose my place in these blessed galleys.”

Out of all the things I wanted to know, all I could think of was, “Do I need to take any clothes with me to Stallery tomorrow?”

“Ask your uncle,” Mum said. “You arranged the whole caper with him. And remember to have a bath and wash your hair tonight.”

So I went downstairs, where Uncle Alfred was now unpacking guidebooks out in the back, and I asked him the same question. “And can I take my camera?” I said.

He pulled his lip and thought about it. “To be frank with you, by rights you shouldn’t take anything,” he said. “It’s only supposed to be an interview tomorrow. But of course, if the spell works and you do get the job, you’ll probably start work there straight away. I know they provide the uniforms. But I don’t know about underclothes. Yes, perhaps you ought to take underclothes along. Only don’t make it obvious you expect to be staying. They won’t like that.”

This made me more nervous than ever. I thought the spell had fixed it. After that, I had a short, blissful moment when I thought that if I was dreadfully rude to them in Stallery, they’d throw me out and not give me the job. Then I could go to Stall High next term. But of course that wouldn’t work, because of my evil Fate. I sighed and went to pack.

The tram that went up past Stallery left from the market square at midday. Uncle Alfred walked down there with me. I was in my best clothes and carrying a plastic bag that looked like my lunch. I’d arranged a packet of sandwiches and a bottle of juice artfully on top. Underneath were all my socks and pants wrapped round my camera and the latest Peter Jenkins book – I thought Uncle Alfred could spare me one book from the shop.

The tram was filling up with people when we got to the square.

“You’d better get on or you won’t have a seat,” my uncle said. “Good luck, Con, and I’ll love you and leave you. Oh, and Con,” he said as I started to climb the metal steps into the tram. He beckoned and I came back down. “Something I forgot,” he said. He led me a little way off across the pavement. “You’re to tell Mr Amos that your name is Grant,” he said, “like mine. If you tell them a posh name like Tesdinic they’ll think you’re too grand for the job. So from now on your name is Conrad Grant. Don’t forget, will you?”

“All right,” I said. “Grant.” Somehow this made me feel a whole lot better. It was like having an alias, the way people did in the Peter Jenkins books when they lived adventurous double lives. I began to think of myself as a sort of secret agent. Grant. I grinned and waved quite cheerfully at Uncle Alfred as I climbed back on the tram and bought my ticket. He waved and went bustling off.

About half the people on the tram were girls and boys my own age. Most of them had plastic bags like mine, with lunch in. I thought it was probably an end-of-term outing to Stallstead from one of the other schools in town. The Stallery tram was a single-line loop that went up into the mountains as far as Stallstead and then down into Stallchester again by the ironworks. Stallstead is a really pretty village right up among the green Alps. People go there all summer for cream teas and outings.

Then the tram gave out a clang and started off with a lurch. My heart and stomach gave a lurch too, in the opposite direction, and I stopped thinking about anything except how nervous I was. This is it, I thought. I’m really on my way now. I don’t remember seeing the shops, or the houses, or the suburbs we went past. I only began to notice things when we reached the first of the foothills, among the woods, and the cogs underneath the tram engaged with the cogs in the roadway, clunk, and we went steeply up in jerks, croink, croink, croink.

This woke me up a bit. I stared out at the sunlight splashing on rocks and green trees and thought, in a distracted way, that it was probably quite beautiful. Then it dawned on me that there was none of the chattering and laughing and fooling about on the tram that there usually is on a school outing. All the other kids sat staring quietly out at the woods, just as I was doing.

They can’t all be going to Stallery to be interviewed! I thought. They can’t! But there didn’t seem to be any teachers with them. I clutched at the slightly sticky cork in my pocket and wondered if I would ever get to use it to call a Walker, whatever that was. But I had to call one, or I would be dead. And I realised that if any of these kids got the job instead of me, it would be like a death sentence.

I was really scared. I kept thinking of the way Uncle Alfred had told me not to be too obvious about taking clothes and then to call myself Grant, as if he wasn’t too sure that his spell on me would work, and I was more frightened than I had ever been before. When the tram came out on the next level part, I stared down at the view of Stallchester nestled below, and the blue peaks where the glacier was, and at Stall Crag, and the whole lot went fuzzy with my terror.

It takes the tram well over an hour to get as high as Stallery, cogging up the steep bits, rumbling through rocky cuttings and stopping at lonely inns and solitary pairs of houses on the heights. One or two people got on or off at every stop, but they were all adults. The other children just sat there, like me. Let them all be going to Stallstead! I thought. But I noticed that none of the ones with bags of lunch tried to eat any of it, as if they might be too nervous for food, just as I was. Though they could be saving it to eat in Stallstead, I thought. I hoped they were.

At last we were running on an almost level part, where there were clumps of trees and meadowlands and even a farm on one side. It looked almost like a lowland valley here. But on the other side of the road there was a high dark wall with spikes on top. I knew this was the wall round Stallery and that we were now really high up. I could even feel the magics here, like a very faint fizzing. My heart began banging so hard it almost hurt.

That wall seemed to run for miles, with the road curving alongside it. There was no kind of break in its dark surface, until the tram swung round an even bigger curve and began slowing down. There was a high turreted gateway ahead in the wall, which seemed to be some kind of a house as well – anyway I saw windows in it – and across the road from this gateway, along the verge by the hedge, I was surprised to see some gypsies camping. I noticed a couple of tumbledown-looking caravans, an old grey horse trying to eat the hedge, and a white dog running up and down the verge. I wondered vaguely why they hadn’t been moved on. It seemed unlike Stallery to allow gypsies outside their gates. But I was too nervous to wonder much.

Clang, clang, went the tram, announcing it was stopping.

A man in a brown uniform came to the gate and stood waiting. He was carrying two weird-shaped brown paper parcels. Barometers? I wondered. Clocks? He came over as the tram stopped and handed the parcels to the driver.

“For the clock mender in Stallstead,” he said. Then, as the driver unfolded the doors, the man came right up into the tram. “This is Stallery South Gate,” he said loudly. “Any young persons applying for employment should alight here, please.”

I jumped up. So, to my dismay, did all the other kids. We all crowded towards the door and clattered down the steps into the road, every one of us, and the gatehouse seemed to soar above us. The tram clanged again and whined away along its tracks, leaving us to our fate.

“Follow me,” the man in the brown uniform said, and he turned towards the gate. It was a gateway big enough to have taken the tram, like a huge arched mouth in the towering face of the gatehouse, and it was slowly swinging open to let us through.

Everyone clustered forward then, and I was somehow at the back. My feet lagged. I couldn’t help myself. Behind me, across on the other side of the road, someone called out in a strong, cheerful voice, “Bye then. Thanks for the lift.”

I looked round to see a tall boy swing himself down from the middle caravan – I hadn’t noticed there were three before – and come striding across the road to join the rest of us.

Anyone less likely to climb out of a shabby, broken-down caravan was hard to imagine. He was beautifully dressed in a silk shirt, a blue linen jacket and impeccably creased fawn trousers, and his black hair was crisply cut in a way that I could see was expensive. He seemed older than the rest of us – I thought, fifteen at least – and the only gypsy things about him were the dark, dark eyes in his confident, good-looking face.

My heart sank at the sight of him. If anyone was going to get the job at Stallery, it would be this boy.

The gatekeeper came pushing past the boy and shook his fist at the gypsy encampment. “I warned you!” he shouted. “Clear off!”

Someone on the driving seat of the front caravan shouted back. “Sorry, guvnor! Just going now!”

“Then get going!” yelled the gatekeeper. “Go on. Hop it. Or else!”

Rather to my surprise, all five caravans moved off at once. I hadn’t realised there were so many and, for another thing, I had thought the grey horse was eating the hedge and not hitched up to any of them. I dimly remembered there was a cooking fire too, with an iron pot hanging over it. But I thought I must have been wrong about that when all six carts bumped down into the road, leaving empty grass behind, and set off clattering away in the direction of Stallstead. The white dog, which had been sniffing at the hedge some way down the road, came pelting after them and leapt up and down behind the last caravan. A thin brown arm came out of the back of this caravan and the dog was hauled inside with enormous scramblings. It looked as if the dog had been taken by surprise as much as I had.

The gatekeeper grunted and pushed back among us to the open gate. “Come on through,” he said.

We obediently shuffled forward between the walls of the gatehouse. At the exact moment that I was level with the gate, I felt the magical defences of Stallery cut through me like a buzz saw. It was only a thin line, luckily, but while I crossed it, it was like having my body taken over by a swarm of electric bees. I squeaked. The tall boy, walking beside me, made a small noise like “Oof!” I didn’t notice if any of the others felt it because almost at once we came through under the gatehouse into a huge vista of perfect parkland. We all made little murmurs of pleasure.

There was perfect green rolling lawn wherever you looked, with a ribbon of beautifully kept driveway looping through it among clumps of graceful trees. The greenness rose into hills here and there and the hills were either crowned with trees or they had little white pillared summerhouses on them. And it all went on and on, into the blue distance.

“Where’s the house?” one of the girls asked.

The gatekeeper laughed. “Couple of miles away. Start walking. When you come to the path that goes off to the right, take that and keep walking. When you can see the mansion, take the right-hand path again. Someone will meet you there and show you the rest of the way.”

“Aren’t you coming too then?” the girl asked.

“No,” said the man. “I stay with the gate. Off you go.”

We set off, trudging in a dubious little huddle along the drive, like a lost herd of sheep. We walked until the wall and the gate were out of sight behind two of the green hills, but there was still no sign of the mansion. A certain amount of sighing and shuffling began, particularly among the girls. They were all wearing the kind of shoes that hurt your feet just to look at them, and most of them had the latest fashion in dresses on too, which held their knees together and forced them to take little tripping steps. Some of the boys had come in good suits made of thick cloth. They were far too hot, and one boy who was wearing hand-stitched boots was hobbling worse than the girls.

“I’ve got a blister already,” one of the girls announced. “How much further is it?”

“Do you think it’s some kind of a test?” wondered the boy with the boots.

“Oh, it’s bound to be,” said the tall boy from the gypsy camp. “This drive is designed to lead us round in circles until only the fittest survive. That was a joke,” he added, as almost everyone let out a moan. “Why don’t we all take a rest?” His bright dark eyes travelled over our various plastic bags. “Why don’t we sit on this nice smooth grass and have a picnic?”

This suggestion caused instant dismay. “We can’t!” half of them cried out. “They’re expecting us!” And most of the rest said, “I can’t mess up my good clothes!”

The tall boy stood with his hands in his pockets surveying everyone’s hot, anxious faces. “If they want us that badly,” he said, in a testing kind of way, “they might have had the decency to send a car.”

“Ooh, they wouldn’t do that, not for domestic,” one of the girls said.

The tall boy nodded. “I suppose not.” I had the feeling that, up until then, this boy had not the least notion why we were all here. I could see him digesting the idea. “Still,” he said, “domestic or not, there’s nothing to stop people taking their shoes off and walking on this nice smooth grass, is there? There’s no one who could see.” Faces turned to him with longing. “Go on,” he said. “You can always put them on again when we sight the house.”

More than half of them took his advice. Girls plucked off shoes, boys unlaced tight boots. The tall boy sauntered behind with a pleased but slightly superior smile, watching them scamper barefoot along the smooth verge. Some of the girls hauled their tight skirts up. Boys took off hot jackets.

“That’s better,” he said. He turned to me. “Aren’t you going to?”

“Old shoes,” I said, pointing down at them. “They don’t hurt.” His shoes looked to be handmade. I could see they fitted him like gloves. I felt very suspicious of him. “If you really thought it was a test,” I said, “you’ve made them all fail it.”

He shrugged. “It depends if Stallery wants barefoot parlourmaids and footmen with big hairy toes,” he said, and I could have sworn he looked at me closely then, to see if I thought this was what we all intended to be. His piercing dark eyes travelled on down to my carrier bag. “You couldn’t spare a sandwich, could you? I’m starving. The Travellers only eat when they happen to have some food, and that didn’t seem to happen most of the time I was with them.”

I fished him out one of my sandwiches and another for myself. “You couldn’t have been with the gypsies that long,” I said, “or your clothes would have got creased.”

“You’d be surprised,” he said. “It was nearly a month, actually. Thanks.”

We marched along munching egg and cress, while the driveway unreeled ahead of us and more hills with trees and lacy white buildings came into view, and the other kids ran along ahead of us in a bunch. Most of them were trying to eat sandwiches too, and hang on to coats and shoes and bags while they ate.

“What’s your name?” I said at length.

“Call me Christopher,” he said. “And you?”

“Conrad Te—Grant,” I said, remembering my alias just in time.

“Conrad T Grant?” he said.

“No,” I said. “Just Grant.”

“Very well,” he said. “Grant you shall be. And you aim to be a footman and strut in Stallery in velvet hose, do you, Grant?”

Hose? I thought. I had visions of myself in a reel of rubber pipe. “I don’t know what they dress you in,” I said. “But I do know they can’t be going to take more than one or two.”

“That seems obvious,” Christopher replied. “I regard you as my chief rival, Grant.”

This was so exactly what I thought about him that I was rather shaken. I didn’t answer, and we swung up another loop of drive to find there were now banks of flowers under some of the trees, as if we might be getting near the gardens round the house. Here a dog of some kind came lolloping from the nearest trees and put on speed towards us. It was quite a big dog. The kids on the verge instantly began milling about, yelling out that it was one of the ferocious guard dogs on the loose. A girl screamed. The boy with the hand-stitched boots swung them, ready to throw at the dog.

“Don’t do that, you fool!” Christopher bellowed at him. “Do you want it to go for you?” He set off in great strides up the grass towards the dog. It put on speed and came sort of snaking at him, long and low.

I’m sure the kids were right about that dog. It was snarling as if it wanted to tear Christopher’s throat out, and when it got near, it bunched itself, ready to spring. A girl screamed again.

“Stop that, you fool of a dog,” Christopher said. “Stop it at once.”

And the dog did stop. Not only did it stop, but it wagged its tail and wagged its bunched-up hind parts and came crawling and grovelling towards Christopher, where it tried to lick his beautiful shoes.

“No slobber,” Christopher commanded, and the dog stopped and just grovelled instead. “You’ve made a mistake,” he told it. “No one here’s a trespasser. Go away. Go back where you came from.” He pointed sternly up at the trees. The dog got up and walked slowly back the way it had come, turning round hopefully every so often as it went, in case Christopher was going to let it come and grovel again. Christopher came down the hill saying, “I think it’s trained to go for anyone who isn’t on the path. Shoes on again, everyone, I’m afraid.”

Everyone now regarded him as a sort of hero, saviour and commander. Several girls gave him passionate looks while they put their shoes back on, and we all limped and straggled on round another curve of drive. Here there were hedges, with glimpses of flowers blazing beyond and, beyond that, a twinkle of many windows from behind the trees. A path branched off to the right. Christopher said, “This way, troops,” and led everyone along it.

We went through more parkland, but it was just as well everyone had put their shoes on again, because this path was quite short and soon branched into another, among tall shiny shrubs, where it ended in a flight of stone steps.

The boys hastily put their jackets back on. A youngish man was waiting for us at the top of these steps. He was quite skinny and only an inch or so taller than Christopher. He had a nice, snubby face. But all of us, even Christopher, stared up at him with awe because he was dressed in black velvet knee breeches, with yellow and brown striped stockings below those and black buckled shoes. He wore a matching brown and yellow striped waistcoat over a white shirt, and his fairish hair was long, tied at the back of his neck by a smooth black bow. It was enough to make anyone stare.

Christopher dropped back beside me. “Ah,” he said. “I see a footman or a lackey. But it’s the breeches that seem to be velvet. The hose are striped silk.”

“My name’s Hugo,” the young man said. He smiled at us, very pleasantly. “If you’ll just follow me, I’ll show you where to go. Mr Amos is waiting to interview you in the undercroft.”

Every one went quiet and nervous. Even Christopher said nothing more. We all trooped up the steps and, with the young man’s buckled shoes and striped stockings flashing ahead, we followed him through confusing shrubbery paths. By now we were quite near the mansion. We kept getting glimpses of high walls and windows above the bushes, but we only got a real sight of the house when Hugo led us cornerwise to a door in a yard. Just for a moment, there was a space where you could look along the front of the mansion. We all craned sideways.

The place was enormous. There were windows in rows. It seemed to have its main front door halfway up the front wall, with two big stone stairways curving up to it, and all sorts of curlicues and golden things above that, on a heavy piece of roof that hung over the door. There was a fountain jetting down between the two stairways, and a massive circle of drive beyond that.

This was all I had time to see. Hugo led us at a brisk pace into the yard, across it, and in through a large square doorway in the lower part of the house. In no time at all we were crowding into a big wood-lined room where Mr Amos was standing waiting for us.

No one had any doubt who he was. You could tell he was a Stallery servant because he wore a striped waistcoat like Hugo’s, but the rest of his clothes were black, like someone going to a funeral. He had surprisingly small feet in very shiny black shoes. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, like something blocky that might be going to take root in the floor, his small shiny shoes astride, his blunt, pear-shaped face forward, and he made you feel almost religious awe. The Bishop down in Stallchester was much less awe-inspiring than Mr Amos was – although it was hard to see why. He was the most pear-shaped man I had ever seen. His striped waistcoat rounded in front, his black coat spread at the sides, and his hands had to reach a long way back in order to clasp behind him. His face was rather purple as well as pear-shaped. His lips were quite thick below his wide, flat nose. He was not much taller than me. But you felt that if Mr Amos were to get angry and uproot his small shiny shoes from the floor, the floor would shake and the world with it.

“Thank you, Mr Hugo,” he said. He had a deep, resounding voice. “Now I want you all standing in a line, hands by your sides, and let me look at you.”

We all hastily shuffled into a row. Those of us with plastic bags tried to lean them up against the backs of our legs, out of sight. Mr Amos uprooted himself then, and the floor did shake slightly as he paced along in front of us, looking each of us intently in the face. His eyes were quite as awesome as the rest of him, like stones in his purple face. When he came to me, I tried to stare woodenly above his smooth grey head. This seemed the right way to behave. He smelt a little like Mayor Seuly, only more strongly, of good cloth, fine wine and cigar. When he came to Christopher at the end of the line, he seemed to stare harder at him than at anyone, which worried me quite a lot. Then he turned massively sideways and snapped his fingers.

Instantly two more youngish men dressed like Hugo came into the room and stood looking polite and willing.

“Gregor,” Mr Amos said to one, “take these two boys and this girl to be interviewed by Chef. Andrew, these boys are to see Mr Avenloch. Take them to the conservatory, please. Mr Hugo, all the rest of the girls will see Mrs Baldock in the Housekeeper’s Room.”

All three young men nodded, murmured, “Yes, Mr Amos,” and led their batch of people away. I think most of them had to catch the next tram down into Stallchester. I never saw more than two of them again. In a matter of seconds, the room was empty except for Mr Amos, Christopher and me. My heart began to bang again, horribly.

Mr Amos planted himself in front of us. “You two look the most likely ones,” he said. His voice boomed in the empty room. “Can I have your names, please.”

“Er,” I said. “Conrad Grant.”

Christopher said, with great smartness, “I’m Christopher Smith, Mr Amos.” I bet that’s a lie, I thought. He’s got an alias, just like me.

Mr Amos’s stone-like eyes turned to me. “And where are you from?”

“The bookshop,” I said, “down in Stallchester.”

The stone eyes rolled up and down to examine me. “Then,” Mr Amos said, “I take it you’ll have had no experience of domestic work.”

“I clean the shop quite often,” I said.

“Not what I had in mind,” Mr Amos said coldly. “No experience of waiting on your betters, I meant. Being polite. Guessing what they need before they ask. Being invisible until they need you. Have you?”

“No,” I said.

“And you?” Mr Amos asked, moving his stony eyes to Christopher. “You’re older. You must have earned your keep, or you wouldn’t have had the money for those fancy clothes.”

Christopher bowed his neatly clipped dark head. “Yes, Mr Amos. I confess I have been three years in a household of some size – though not as big as this one, of course. But, in case you get the wrong impression, I was there more as a hanger-on than precisely as part of the workforce.”

Mr Amos stared intently at Christopher. “You mean as a poor relation?” he said.

“That sort of thing, yes,” Christopher agreed. I thought he sounded a little uncomfortable about it.

“So neither of you has the sort of experience I mentioned,” Mr Amos said. “Good. I like my trainees ignorant. It means they don’t come to Stallery with all the wrong habits. Next big question. How do you both feel about serving as a valet – a gentleman’s gentleman? This means dressing your gentleman, caring for his clothes, looking to his comfort, running errands if he asks it, even cooking for him in certain cases, and generally knowing the gentleman’s secrets – but never, ever breathing a word of those secrets to another soul. Can you do all that?”

Christopher looked a little stunned by this. I remembered how Christopher, so oddly, had not seemed to know why he was here, and I realised that this was my best chance ever of making sure I got this job. “I’d like doing that a lot,” I said.

“Me too,” Christopher said promptly. “Looking after clothes and keeping secrets are the two things I do best, Mr Amos.” I began to think I hated him.

“Good, good,” Mr Amos said. “I’m glad to see you both so ambitious. Because of course it will take some years of training before either of you are up to a position of such trust. But both of you seem quite promising material.” He rocked back and forth on his small shiny feet. “Let me explain,” he commanded. “In a few years I shall probably be retiring. When this happens, my son, Mr Hugo, will naturally take over my position in charge of Stallery, as I took over from my father here. This will leave untenanted Mr Hugo’s current post as valet to Count Robert. My aim is to train up more than one candidate for this position, so that, when the time comes, Count Robert will have a choice. With this in mind, I propose to appoint the pair of you to the position of Improvers, and I expect you to regard yourselves as rivals for the honour of becoming, in time, a proper valet. I shall naturally recommend to the Count whichever of you most meets with my approval.”

This was wonderful luck! I could feel my face spreading into a relieved grin. “Thank you!” I said, and then added, “Mr Amos, sir,” in order to start by being respectful.

Christopher seemed equally relieved, but also slightly bewildered. “Er, won’t you need to see any of my references, sir?” he asked. “One of them is quite glowing.”

“Keep them,” Mr Amos said, “for your own encouragement. The only reference I need is my own powers of observation, honed through many years of scrutinising young applicants. You no doubt saw the ease with which I distinguished who, among your companions, was likely to make a kitchen apprentice, who were potential maidservants and who could only become a gardener’s boy. I can do this in seconds and I am almost never wrong. Am I, Mr Hugo?”

“Very seldom,” Hugo agreed, from the other side of the room.

Neither of us had seen him come in. We both jumped.

“Take Christopher and Conrad to their quarters, Mr Hugo, show them the establishment and acquaint them with their hours,” Mr Amos said. “We have our two Improvers, I am glad to say.”

“Yes, sir. Where do they eat?” Hugo asked.

We could see this was an important question. Mr Amos looked gravely at us, looked at the ceiling, and rocked on his feet. “Quite,” he said. “The Middle Hall will be their station once it is in use, but since it is not…Not the Lower Hall, I fear. Young men are too prone to horseplay with the maidservants. I think we must reluctantly do as we temporarily did with the footmen and allow them to eat in the Upper Hall until the period of mourning for the late Count is past and we have Stallery full of guests again. Show them, will you. I want them present and properly dressed when I Serve Tea.”

Hugo held open the door beside him and said, in his pleasant way, “If you’d come with me, then.”

As I picked up my plastic bag and followed Christopher through that door, I was nervous all over again, in quite a new way. I felt as if I had accidentally entered the priesthood and wasn’t cut out for it. I expected Christopher to be feeling the same; but, as Hugo showed us into a slow brown lift – “Strictly for Staff,” he said. “Never show Family or their friends to a Staff lift” – and pressed button A for the attics, I could see Christopher was wholly delighted, bubbling over with delight, as if he had just won a game. He looked the way I felt whenever Uncle Alfred pleaded with me to go on doing the cooking.

Christopher seemed quite unable to contain his joy while the lift climbed sluggishly upwards. “Tell me,” he burst out at Hugo, “will Conrad and I learn your trick of entering a room through a crack in the floorboards? I once read a book where a manservant was always oozing in like some soundless liquid, but with you it was more like soundless gas! You were just there! Was it magic?”

Hugo grinned at this. Now I knew he was Mr Amos’s son, I could see the likeness. He had the big lips and the snubby nose, but in Hugo it was rather nice-looking. Otherwise, he was such a different size and shape, and seemed such a different sort of person, that it was hard to see him stepping into his father’s place when Mr Amos retired. “You’ll learn how to enter a room,” he said, leaning against the wall of the lift. “My father had me doing it for hours before he let me go into a room where the Family were. But the main thing you’ll learn – I’m warning you – is how to be on your feet for fourteen hours at a stretch. Staff never sit down. Any more questions?”

“Hundreds,” Christopher said. “So many I can’t think what to ask first.” This was evidently true. He had to stop and stare at the wall, trying to decide.

I seized the space to ask, “Should we call you Mr Hugo?”

“Only in front of my father,” Hugo said with another grin. “He’s very strict about it.”

“Because you’re the heir to the butlership?” Christopher asked irrepressibly.

“That’s right,” said Hugo.

“Rather you than me!” Christopher said.

“Quite,” Hugo answered, rather sadly.

Christopher looked at him shrewdly, but he said nothing else until the lift finally made it up to the attics. Then he said, “My God! A rat maze!”

Hugo and I both laughed, because it was like that up there. The roof was quite low, with skylights in it, so you could see narrow wooden corridors lined with doors running in all directions. It was warm and smelt of wood. I’m going to get lost up here, I thought.

“You’ll be sharing a room along here,” Hugo said, leading the way along a corridor that looked just like any of the rest. All the doors were painted the same dull red-brown. He opened a door like all the others. “You’ll have to be careful not to make too much noise up here,” he remarked. “You’ll be among quite senior Staff.”

Beyond the door was a fresh white room with a sloping ceiling and two narrow white beds. The little low window looked out at blue mountains and sun streamed in. It smelt of warm whitewash. There was a carpet, a chest of drawers and a curtained corner for hanging things in. It was rather nicer than my room at home. I looked at Christopher, expecting him to be used to much fancier bedrooms. But I’d forgotten he’d just spent a month in a gypsy caravan. He looked round with pleasure.

“Nice,” he said. “Companionable. Twice as big as a caravan. Er – bathroom?”

“The end of the corridor,” Hugo said. “The corner room on every passage is always a bathroom. Now come and get your uniforms. This way.”

I hurriedly dumped my plastic bag on a bed, wondering if I would ever find it again, and we followed Hugo back out into the corridor.

Here Christopher said, “Just a second.” He took off his narrow silk tie and wrapped it round the doorknob on the outside of the door. “Now we can find ourselves again,” he said. “Or isn’t it allowed?” he asked Hugo.

“I’ve no idea,” Hugo said. “I don’t think anyone’s thought of doing it before.”

“Then you must all have the most wonderful sense of direction,” Christopher said. “Is this the bathroom?”

Hugo nodded. We both stuck our heads round the door and Christopher nodded approvingly. “All the essentials,” he said. “Far better than a tin tub or a hedge. Towels?”

“In the linen store next to the uniforms,” Hugo told him. “This way.”

He led us in zigzags through the narrow corridors to a place with a bigger skylight than usual. Here the doors were slatted, although they were the same red-brown as all the others. He opened the first slatted door. “Better take a towel each,” he said.

We gazed at a room twice the size of the one we had been given, filled with shelves piled with folded towels, sheets and blankets. Enough for an army, it seemed to me.

“How many Staff are there?” Christopher asked as we each took a big red-brown towel.

“We’re down to just fifty indoors at the moment,” Hugo said. “When we start entertaining again, we’ll go up to nearly a hundred. But the mourning period for Count Rudolf isn’t over for another fortnight, so we’re very quiet until then. Plenty of time for you to find your feet. Uniforms are this way.”

He led us to the next slatted door. Beyond it was an even bigger room. It had shelves like a public library and all the shelves were stacked with clothes. There was pile after pile of pure white shirts, a wall of velvet breeches, neat towers of folded waistcoats, stack upon stack of striped stockings, rails hung with starched white neckcloths and more shelves devoted to yellow striped aprons. Underneath the shelves were cardboard boxes of buckled shoes. A strong spell against moths made my eyes water. Christopher’s eyes went wide, but I only dimly saw Hugo going round checking labels, looking at us measuringly, and then taking down garments from the shelves.

We each got two shirts, two aprons, four pairs of underpants, four pairs of stockings, one waistcoat and one pair of velvet breeches. Hugo followed those with neckcloths, carefully laid over the growing heaps in our arms, and then a striped nightshirt apiece. “Do you know your shoe sizes?” he asked.

Neither of us did. Hugo whipped up a sliding measure from among the cardboard boxes and swiftly found out. Then he fetched buckled shoes from the boxes and made us try them on, efficiently checking where our toes came to and how the heels fitted. “It’s important your shoes don’t hurt,” he said. “You’re on your feet so much.” I could see he made a very good valet.

“Right,” he said, dumping a gleaming pair of shoes on top of each of the nightshirts. “Go and get into the uniforms and put the rest away and meet me by the lift in ten minutes.” He fetched a slender gold watch out of his waistcoat pocket and looked at the time. “Make that seven minutes,” he said. “Or I won’t have time to show you the house. I have to start for Ludwich with Count Robert at four.”

I put my chin on the shoes to hold them steady and tried to remember the way we had come here. So did Christopher. I went one way with my pile of clothes. Christopher, with a vague but purposeful look, marched off in exactly the opposite direction.

Hugo went racing after Christopher, shouting, “Stop! Not there!” He sounded so horrified that Christopher swung round in alarm.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Hugo pointed to a wide red-brown stripe painted on the wall beside Christopher. “You mustn’t ever go past this line,” he said. “It’s the women’s end of the attics beyond that. You’d be sacked on the spot if you were found on the wrong side of it.”

“Oh,” said Christopher. “Is that all? From the way you yelled, I thought there must be a hundred-foot drop along there. Which is the right way back to our room then?”

Hugo pointed. It was in a direction that neither of us had thought of taking. We hurried off that way, feeling rather foolish, and after a while, more by luck than anything, arrived in the corridor where Christopher’s tie hung on the doorknob.

“What foresight on my part!” Christopher said as we each dumped our armloads of clothing on a bed. “I don’t know about you, Grant, but I know I’m going to look and feel a perfect idiot in these clothes – though not as silly as I’m going to feel in this nightshirt tonight.”

“We’ll get used to it,” I said grumpily as I scrambled out of my own clothes. By this time, Christopher’s confident way of going on was annoying me.

“Do I detect,” Christopher asked, climbing out of his trousers and hanging them carefully on the rail of his bed, “a certain hostility in you, Grant? Have you, by any chance, let Mr Amos’s ideas get to you? Are you regarding me as a rival?”

“I suppose I’m bound to,” I said. I turned the black knee-length trousers round to see which was front and which was back. It wasn’t easy to tell.

“Then let me set your mind at rest, Grant,” Christopher said, puzzling over the breeches too. “And hang on. I think we need to put the stockings on first. These things buckle over the stripy socks and – I hope – help to keep the wretched things up. I sincerely hope so. I hate wrinkles round my ankles. Anyway, forget Mr Amos. I shall only be here for a short time.”

“Why?” I said. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Christopher said, wriggling a bare foot dubiously into a striped stocking. “I’m only doing this while I’m on my way to something quite different. When I find what I want, I shall leave at once.”

I was at that moment standing on one foot while I tried to put a stocking on too. It was floppy and it twisted and the top kept closing up. I was so astonished to hear that Christopher was in exactly the same position as me, that I overbalanced. After a moment or so of frantic hopping about, I sat on the floor with a crash.

“I see your feelings overwhelm you,” Christopher remarked. “You really needn’t worry, Grant. Regard me as a complete amateur. I shall never be a serious footman, let alone a valet or a butler.”

After what Christopher had said, I expected him to look all wrong in his new clothes. Not a bit of it. As soon as he had tightened the straps of his striped waistcoat, so that it sat trimly around his waist, and tied the white neckcloth under his chin, he looked a perfect, jaunty young footman. I was the one who looked wrong. I could see myself in the long stripe of mirror on the back of the door looking, ever so slightly, a mess. This was odd and unfair, because my hair was as black as Christopher’s and I was not fat and there was nothing wrong with my face. But I looked as if I had stuffed my head through a hole on the top of a suit of clothes meant for someone else, the way you do for trick photographs.

“Seven minutes up,” Christopher said, folding back the frill at the wrist of his shirt to look at his watch. “No time to admire yourself, Grant.”

As we left the room, I remembered that I had left the port-wine cork in the pocket of my own trousers. Mayor Seuly had said to carry it with me at all times. I had to dive back to get it and stuff it into…Oh. The wretched breeches turned out not to have pockets. I crammed the cork into a narrow waistcoat pocket as I followed Christopher out. I was going to tell him it was a keepsake from home, if he asked, but he never seemed to notice.

Hugo had his watch out when we found him. “You’ll have to keep better time than this,” he said. “My father insists on it.” He put his watch away in order to tweak at my neckcloth, than at Christopher’s. Everyone at Stallery was always trying to rearrange our neckcloths, but we didn’t know that then and we both backed away in surprise. “Follow me,” Hugo said.

We didn’t go down in the lift. Hugo led us down narrow, creaking stairs to the next floor. Here the ceilings were higher and the corridors wider, with matting on them, but everywhere was rather dark. “This is the nursery floor,” he said. “At the moment, we use some of the rooms for the housekeepers and the sort of guests who don’t eat with the Family, valets, the accountant, and so on.”

On the way to the next flight of stairs, he opened a door to show us a long, dark, polished room with a rocking horse halfway down it, looking rather lonely. “Day nursery,” he said.

The next flight of stairs was wider and had matting for carpet. At the bottom, the ceilings were a bit higher still and there was carpet everywhere, new and pungent and dove grey. There were pictures on the walls. “Guest rooms?” Christopher guessed brightly.

“Overflow guest rooms,” Hugo corrected him. “My father has his quarters on this floor,” he added, taking us to the next flight of stairs. These stairs were quite broad and carpeted rather better than the best hotel in Stallchester.

Below this, it was suddenly opulent. Christopher pursed his mouth and whispered out a whistle as we stared along a wide passageway with a carpet like pale blue moss, running through a vista of gold and crimson archways, white statues, and golden ornaments on marble-topped tables with bent gold legs. There were vases of flowers everywhere here. The air felt thick and scented.

Hugo took us right along this passage. “You’ll need to know this floor,” he said, “in case you have to deliver anything to one of the Family’s rooms.” He pointed to each huge white double door as we came to it, saying, “Main guest room, red guest room, Count Robert’s rooms, blue guest room, painted guest room. The Countess has the rose rooms, through here. This one is the white guest room, and Lady Felice has the rooms on this corner. Round beyond there are the lilac room and the yellow room. We don’t use these so often, but you’d better know. Have you got all that?”

“Only vaguely,” Christopher admitted.

“There’s a plan in the undercroft,” Hugo said, and he led us on, down wide, shallow steps this time, blue and soft like the passage, to a floor more palatial yet. My head was spinning by this time, but I sort of aimed my face where Hugo pointed and tried to look intelligent. “Ballroom, banquet room, music room, Grand Saloon,” he said, and I saw vast spaces, enormous chandeliers, vistas of gold-rimmed sofas, and one room with about a hundred yards of table lined with flimsy gold chairs. “We don’t use these more than two or three times a year,” Hugo told us, “but they all have to be kept up, of course. There was going to be a grand ball here for Lady Felice’s coming-of-age, but it had to be cancelled when the Count died. Pity. But we’ll be using them again in a couple of weeks to celebrate Count Robert’s engagement. We had a spectacular ball here four years ago when the present Count was eighteen. Almost all the titles in Europe came. We used ten thousand candles and nearly two thousand bottles of champagne.”

“Quite a party,” Christopher remarked as we went past the main grand stairway. We craned, and saw it led down into a huge hall with a streaky black marble floor.

Hugo pointed a thumb down the stairway. “The rooms down there are used by the Family most of the time – drawing rooms, dining rooms, library and so on – but Staff are not allowed to use these stairs. Don’t forget.”

“Makes me want to slide down those banisters at once,” Christopher murmured, as Hugo took us to a much narrower flight of stairs instead, which came out into the hall behind the Family lift. He pointed to the various big black doors and told us which was which, but he said we couldn’t look inside the rooms because Family might be using any one of them. We nodded, and our feet skidded in our new shoes on the black, streaky floor.

Then we thudded through a door covered with green cloth and everywhere was suddenly grey stone and plain wood. Hugo pointed, “My father’s pantry, Family china scullery, silver room, flower room, Staff toilets. We go down here to the undercroft.”

He went galloping down a flight of steep stone steps. As we clattered down after him, I suddenly felt as if I was back at school. It had that smell, rather too warm and mixed with chalk and cooking, and like school there was that feeling of lots of people about, many voices in the distance and large numbers of feet shuffling and hurrying. A girl laughed, making echoes, and – again like school – a bell rang somewhere.

The bell was ringing in the large stone lobby at the bottom of the stairs. There was a huge board there with row upon row of little round lights on it. One was flashing red more or less in the middle of it. A lady in a neat brown and yellow striped dress and a yellow cap on her grey hair was looking up at the light rather anxiously.

“Oh, Hugo,” she said gladly as we clattered off the stairs. “It’s Count Robert.”

Hugo strode across to the board. “Right,” he said, and unhooked a sort of phone from the side, which seemed to stop the light flashing at once. I looked up at it as it went off. White letters under the light said CR Bdm. All the lights had similar incomprehensible labels. Stl Rm, I read. Bkfst Rm, Dng Rm, Hskpr, C Bthrm, Stbls. The only clear one was in the middle at the bottom. It said Mr Amos.

Meanwhile, a voice was distantly snapping out of the phone-thing. It sounded nervous and commanding. “Coming right away, my lord,” Hugo said to it. He hung the phone up and turned to us. “I’ve got to go. I’ll have to leave you here with Miss Semple. She’s our Under-Housekeeper. Do you mind showing these Improvers round the undercroft?” he asked the lady.

“Not at all,” she said. “You’d better go. He’s been ringing for three minutes now.” Hugo grinned at all of us and went racing up the stone steps again. We were left with Miss Semple, who smiled a mild, cheerful smile at us. “And your names are?”

“Conrad T—Grant,” I said. I only remembered my alias just in time.

Christopher was just the same. He said, “Christopher – er – er – Smith,” and backed away from her a little.

“Conrad and Christopher,” she said. “Two Cs.” Then she made us both start backwards by pouncing on us and straightening our neckcloths. “That’s better!” she said. “I’ve just been putting your duty rosters up on our bulletin board. Come and look.”

It was really more like school than ever. There was a long, long board, taking up all the wall beside the stairs. This was divided into sections by thick black lines, with black headings over each section: Housemaids, Footmen, Parlour Staff, Stillroom, Laundry, Kitchen, we read and, right at the end beside the stairs, we found Improvers. There were lists and timetables pinned under each heading, but it was like school again in the way there were other, less official notices scattered about the board. A big pink one said Housemaids’ Knees-up, 8.30 Thurs. All Welcome. Miss Semple tut-tutted and took that one down as we came to it. Another one read, in dark blue letters, Chef wants that hat returned NOW!! Miss Semple left that one up. She also left a yellow paper that said, Mrs Baldock still wants to know who scattered those pins in the Conservatory.

When we came to the Improvers column, we saw two large sheets of paper neatly ruled into seven and labelled with the days of the week. Times of the day, from six in the morning until midnight, were written on the left and lines ruled for each hour. Almost every one of the boxes made like this was filled with neat, grey, spidery writing. 6.00, I read on the left-hand sheet, Collect shoes to take to Blacking Rmfor cleaning. 7.00, Join Footmen in readying Breakfast Rm. 8.00, On duty in Breakfast Rm… My eyes scudded on, with increasing dismay, to things like 2.00, Training session in Laundry. 3.00, Training sessions in Stillroom and Kitchen annexe 3 with 2nd Underchef. It was almost a relief to find a square labelled simply Mr Amos from time to time. On down my eyes went, anxiously, to the last box, 11.00–12.00. That said On call in Upper Hall. Bad, I thought. I couldn’t see one spare minute in which I might manage to summon a Walker, once I knew who was causing my Fate. And there didn’t seem to be any boxes with meals marked in them either.

Christopher seemed to be trying to hide even worse dismay than I felt. “This is a disaster!” I heard him mutter as he scanned the closely filled right-hand sheet. He put a finger out to one of the only empty squares there was. “Er – someone seems to have forgotten to fill this square in.”

“No mistake,” Miss Semple said, in her high cheerful voice. She was one of those nice, kind people who have no sense of humour at all. “You both have two hours off on Wednesday afternoons and two more on a Thursday morning. That’s a legal requirement.”

“Glad to hear it!” Christopher said faintly.

“And another hour to yourselves on a Sunday, so that you can write home,” Miss Semple added. “Your full day off comes every six weeks and you can…” A bell began to ring on the board across the lobby. Miss Semple whirled round to look. “That’s Mr Amos!” She hurried over and unhooked the phone.

While she was busy saying, “Yes, Mr Amos…No, Mr Amos…” I said to Christopher, “Why did you say this was a disaster?”

“Well, er,” he said. “Grant, did you know we were going to be kept this busy when you applied for the job?”

“No,” I said dolefully.

Christopher was going to say more, but Miss Semple hooked the phone back and hastened across the lobby again, saying confusingly, “You can take two free days together every three months if you prefer but I shall have to show you the undercroft later. Hurry upstairs, boys. Mr Amos wants a word with you before Tea is Served.”

We ran up the stone stairs. As Christopher said late that night, if we had grasped one thing about Stallery by then, it was that you did what Mr Amos said, and you did it fast. “Before he’s said it, if possible,” Christopher added.

Mr Amos was waiting for us in the wood and stone passage upstairs. He was smoking a cigar. Billows of strong blue smoke surrounded us as he said, “Don’t pant. Staff should never look hurried unless Family particularly tells them to hurry. That’s your first lesson. Second—Straighten those neckcloths, both of you.” He waited, looking irritated, while we fumbled at the white cloths and tried not to pant and not to cough in the smoke. “Second lesson,” he said. “Remember at all times that what you really are is living pieces of furniture.” He pointed the cigar at us three times, in time to the words. “Living. Pieces. Of furniture. Got that?” We nodded. “No, no!” he said. “You say, ‘Yes, Mr Amos’!”

“Yes, Mr Amos,” we chorused.

“Better,” he said. “Say it smarter next time. And, like furniture, you stand against the walls and seem to be made of wood. When Family asks you for anything, you give it them or you do it, as gracefully and correctly as possible, but you do not speak unless Family makes a personal remark to you. What would you say if the Countess gives you a personal order?”

“Yes, your ladyship?” I suggested.

“No, no!” Mr Amos said, billowing smoke at me. “Third lesson. The Countess and Lady Felice are to be addressed as ‘my lady’ and Count Robert as ‘my lord’. Now bear these lessons firmly in mind. You are about to be shown to the Countess while we Serve Tea. You are there for this moment simply to observe and learn. Watch me, watch the footman on duty, and otherwise behave like two chairs against the wall.”

His stone-coloured eyes stared at us expectantly. After a moment we realised why and chorused again, “Yes, Mr Amos.”

“And chairs would be slightly more use,” he said. “Now, repeat back to me…”

Luckily, at that moment a bell shrilled downstairs in the lobby.

“Ah,” said Mr Amos. “The Countess has Rung for Tea.” He stubbed out his cigar on a piece of wall that was black and grey with having cigars stubbed on it and put the dead cigar into a pocket of his striped waistcoat. Then he stuck out both arms, rather like a penguin, to make his shirt cuffs show and shook his thick shoulders to settle his coat. “Follow me,” he said, and pushed through the green cloth door into the hall.

We followed his solemn, pear-shaped back out into the middle of the huge, black-floored hall. There his voice rang round the space. “Wait here.” So we waited while he went to one of the large doors on the other side of the hall and pushed the two halves of it gently open. “You rang, my lady?” his voice came to us, smooth and rich and full of respect.

Probably someone said something in the room beyond. Mr Amos bowed and backed away into the hall, gently closing the doors. For a moment after that, I could hardly see or hear anything, because I knew I was now actually going to see the person causing my bad karma. I was going to know who they were and I was going to have to summon a Walker. My heart banged and I could hardly breathe. My face must have looked odd, because I saw Christopher give me a surprised, searching look, but he had no time to say anything. At that moment, the footman called Andrew backed out through the distant green door, carefully towing a high tea-trolley.

Later that day, Christopher said this was when he began to feel he might be in church. Mr Amos gestured to us to fall in on either side of Andrew, while he walked in front of the trolley himself and threw the double door wide open so that we could all parade into the room beyond in a solemn procession, with the trolley rattling among us. But it didn’t go quite smoothly. Just as we got to the doorway, Andrew had to stop the trolley to let a young blonde lady go through first.

She was very good-looking. Christopher and I agreed on that. We both stared, although we noticed that Andrew very carefully didn’t look at her. But she did not seem to see me, or Christopher, or Andrew, though she nodded at Mr Amos and said, “Oh good. I’m in time for Tea.” She went on into the room, where she sat bouncily on one of the several silk sofas, opposite the lady who was already there. “Mother, guess what…”

“Hush, Felice dear,” the other lady said.

This was because the church service was still going on and the other lady – the Countess – did not want it interrupted. She was one of those who had to have everything exactly so and done in the right order.

If you looked at her quickly, this Countess, you thought she was the same age as the good-looking one, Lady Felice. She was just as blonde and just as slender, and her dark lilac dress made her face look pure and delicate, almost like a teenager’s. But when she moved, you saw she had studied for years and years how to move gracefully, and when she spoke, her face took on expressions that were terribly sweet, in a way that showed she had been studying expressions for years too. After that, you saw that the delicate look was careful, careful, expert make-up.

By this time, two small jerks of Mr Amos’s chin had sent me and Christopher to stand with our backs against the wall on either side of the doorway. Andrew stopped the trolley and shut the doors – practically soundlessly – and Mr Amos gently produced a set of little tables, which he placed beside the ladies. Then back and forth he and Andrew went, back and forth from trolley to tables, setting a thin, gold-rimmed plate and a fluted cup and saucer on three of the tables, then napkins and little forks and spoons. Then there was the teapot to place on its special mat on another table, a strainer in a bowl, a gold-edged jug of cream and a boat-shaped thing full of sugar cubes. All just so.

Then there was a pause. The ladies sat. The teapot sat too, steaming faintly.

Christopher, who was staring ahead looking so totally blank that he seemed to have no brain at all, said that at this point he was thinking the tea in the pot would soon be cold. Or stewed. So was I, a bit. But mostly I was feeling really let down. I stared and stared at the Countess, hoping I would suddenly know that she was the person causing my Fate. I even looked at Lady Felice and wondered, but I could tell she was just a normal, happy kind of person who was having to behave politely in front of the Countess. The Countess was a sort of hidden dragon. That was why I thought she might be the one. She was very like a teacher we had in my third year. Mrs Polak seemed very sweet but she could really give you grief, and I could see the Countess was the same. But I didn’t get any knowing off her at all.

It has to be Count Robert then, I thought.

“Amos,” the Countess said in a lovely melodious voice, “Amos, perhaps you could tell my son the Count that we are waiting to have tea.”

“Certainly, my lady.” Mr Amos nodded at Andrew and Andrew scudded out of the room.

We waited some more, at least five minutes to judge from the way my feet ached. Then Andrew slithered back between the doors and whispered to Mr Amos.

Mr Amos turned to the Countess. “I regret to tell you, my lady, that Count Robert left for Ludwich some twenty minutes ago.”

“Ludwich!” exclaimed the Countess. I wondered why she didn’t know. “What on earth does he need to go to Ludwich for? And did he give any indication of how long he proposed to be away?”

Mr Amos’s pear-shaped body bent in a bow. “I gather he intended a stay of about a week, my lady.”

“That’s what I was going to tell you, Mother,” Lady Felice put in.

At this, something happened to the Countess’s face, a hard sort of movement under the delicate features. She gave a tinkly little laugh. “Well!” she said. “At least the tea has had time to brew. Please pour, Amos.”

Ouch! I thought. The Count’s going to be in for it when he gets back!

This was the signal for the church service to go on. Mr Amos poured tea as if it was the water of life. It was steaming so healthily that Christopher said later that he was sure there was a keep-warm spell in the mat. Andrew offered cream. The Countess waved him away and got given lemon in transparent-thin slices by Mr Amos instead. Then Andrew moved in with the sugar boat and the Countess let him give her four lumps.

While the show moved on to Lady Felice, the Countess said, as if she were covering up an awkward pause, “I see we have two new pageboys, Amos.”

“Improvers, my lady,” Mr Amos said, “who will function as pages until they learn the work.” His head jerked sharply at Christopher. “Christopher, be good enough to hand the sandwiches.”

Christopher jumped. I could see his mind had been miles away, but he pulled himself together and heaved the sandwiches up off the trolley. There were scores of them, tiny thin things with no crusts and thick, savoury-smelling fillings, heaped up on a vast, oval silver plate. Christopher sniffed at them yearningly as he hoisted the plate up, but he went and held the plate out to the Countess very gallantly, with a flourishing bow that matched the way he looked. The Countess seemed startled, but she took six sandwiches. Mr Amos frowned as Christopher brought the plate to Lady Felice and went on one knee to hold it out to her.

Christopher had to go back and forth. It was amazing how much those two slim ladies ate. And all the while Mr Amos stood back like a stuffed penguin and frowned. I could see he thought Christopher was too fancy.

“Ludwich!” the Countess complained after about her fifteenth sandwich. “Whatever does Robert mean by it? Without warning too!”

She went on about it rather. Eventually, Lady Felice dumped her eighteenth sandwich back on her plate in an irritated way and said, “Really, Mother, does it matter?”

She got a stare. The Countess had ice-blue eyes, big ones, and the stare was glacial. “Of course it matters, dear. It’s extreme discourtesy to me.”

“But he was probably called away on business,” Lady Felice said. “He was telling me that his bonds and shares…”

I could see this was quite a cunning thing to say – a bit like the way Anthea and I used to ask Uncle Alfred for money to stop him raging when we’d broken something. The Countess held up a small, gentle hand all over rings to stop Lady Felice. “Please, darling! I know nothing about finance. Amos, are there cakes?”

It was my turn to jump. Mr Amos said, “Conrad, hand the cakes now, please.”

They were at the bottom of the trolley on another huge silver plate. I almost staggered as I heaved it up. The plate was truly heavy and made heavier still by being piled so with all the tiniest and most delicious pastries you could imagine. Scents of cream, fruit, rosewater, almond, meringue and chocolate hit my nose. I felt my stomach whirr. It sounded so loud to me that I couldn’t think of any elegant way to hand those cakes. I simply walked over to the Countess and held the plate out to her.

Mr Amos frowned again. I could tell he thought I was too plain.

Luckily, I didn’t have to heave the plate about for very long. The Countess had just wanted to change the subject, I think. She only took three cakes. Lady Felice had one. How they could bear not to eat the lot, I shall never know.

After that we had the church service again, with everything being cleared back on to the trolley in the proper, religious order. Mr Amos and Andrew bowed. Both glared sideways at us until we realised we had to bow too. Then we were allowed to push the trolley away into the hall.

“Tea ceremony over,” Christopher muttered, under the clattering.

But it was not, not quite. In the middle of the hall, Mr Amos stopped and told us off. He made me, at least, feel quite awful. “In front of Family!” he kept saying. “One of you flounces like a pansy and the other plods like a yokel!” Then he went on to the way we stood. “You do not gaze like halfwits, you do not stand to attention like common soldiers. You are in a proper household here. You behave right. Watch Andrew next time. He stands against a wall as if it were natural.”

“Yes, Mr Amos,” we said miserably.

He allowed us to go away down the stone stairs in the end. And there the bewildering day went on and on. Miss Semple was waiting to show us the undercroft. Christopher tried to sidle off then, but she turned and shot him a mild but all-seeing look and shook her head. He came glumly to heel. I followed her resignedly anyway. It was clear to me that I was here for a week, until Count Robert came back, so I thought I might as well learn my way about.

The undercroft was vast. I had to be shown all over it again the next day, because it was too big to take in that first time. All I remembered was a confusion of steams and scents from several kitchens and a laundry, and people in brown and gold uniform rushing about. There were cold stores and dry stores full of food, and a locked door leading to the cellars. There was at least one room dedicated entirely to crockery, where two girls seemed to be washing up all the time. I was very surprised when Miss Semple told us this was just crockery for Staff. The good china for the Family was upstairs in another pantry with another set of maids to wash it. Family and Staff were like two different worlds that only linked together at certain times and places.

Christopher became fascinated by this. “It’s my amateur status, Grant,” he told me. “It allows me to take a detached view of the tribal customs here. You must admit it’s a strange set-up, when all these people chase about in the basement just to look after two women.”

He was so fascinated that he asked question after question at supper. Our part of the Staff had supper in the Upper Hall at seven, so that we would be ready to wait on the Family when they dined at eight. Their food was called Dinner and was very formal, but ours was fairly formal too. A whole lot of Staff gathered round a big table at one end of a large sort of sitting room. There were chairs and magazines in the other end, and a smaller board with lights, in case anyone needed us while we were there, but no television. Andrew told me rather sadly that you couldn’t get a signal up in Stallery, not for any money. Andrew was the nicest of the footmen by far.

Anyway, there were six footmen, and us, and a dismal old man with a snuffle (he was steward or accountant or something) and a whole lot of women. Miss Semple was there of course, and she told me that the very smart elderly woman was the Countess’s maid, and the almost-as-smart younger one was Lady Felice’s. Those two weren’t very nice. They only spoke to one another. But there were the Upper Stillroom Maid, the Head of Housemaids, the Head of Parlourmaids and several other Heads of Somethings. Apparently, there should have been Hugo too, but he had gone to Ludwich with Count Robert. All the other Staff ate in the Lower Hall, except Mr Amos, who had his meals alone, Miss Semple said.

There was also Mrs Baldock. She was Housekeeper, but I kept thinking of her as the Headmistress. She was the largest woman I had ever seen, a vast six-footer with iron-grey hair and a huge bosom. The most noticeable thing about her was the purple flush up each side of her large face. Christopher said this didn’t look healthy to him. “Possibly she drinks, Grant,” he said, but this was later. At that supper, she swept in after all the rest of us. Everyone stood up for her. Mrs Baldock said a short Grace, then looked down the table until she saw Christopher and me.

“I’ll expect you two in the Housekeeper’s Room promptly at nine-thirty tomorrow,” she said.

This sounded so ominous to me that I kept my head down and said nothing for most of the meal. But Christopher was another matter. When supper came – and it was steak pie and marvellous, with massive amounts of potatoes in butter – it was brought in by four maids. Mrs Baldock cut the pie and the maids carried it round to us. Nobody started eating until Mrs Baldock did.

“What is this?” Christopher said as the maid brought his slice.

“Steak pie, sir,” the girl said. She was about Christopher’s age and you could see she thought he was ever so handsome.

“No, I mean the way there are Staff to wait on Staff,” Christopher said. “When do you get to eat?”

“We have high tea at six-thirty, sir,” the girl said, “but…”

“What a lot of meals!” Christopher said. “Doesn’t that take another whole kitchen and a whole lot more Staff to wait on you?”

“Well, only sort of,” the girl said. Her eyes went nervously to Mrs Baldock. “Please, sir, we’re not supposed to hold conversations while we’re serving.”

“Then I’ll ask you,” Christopher said to Andrew. “Do you see any reason why this serving-business should ever stop? We have supper now, so as to wait on the Family, and these charming young ladies have theirs at six-thirty in order to wait on us. And when they are waited on, those people must have to eat at six, and before that some other people have to eat earlier still in order to wait on them. There must be some Staff who have supper at breakfast time in order to fit all this serving in.”

Andrew laughed, but some of the other footmen were not amused. The one called Gregor growled, “Cheeky little beggar!” and the one called Philip said, “You think you’re quite a card, don’t you?” Behind them all four maids were trying not to giggle and, from the head of the table, Mrs Baldock was staring. Well, everyone was staring. Most of the head maids were annoyed and the two ladies’ maids were scandalised, but Mrs Baldock stared with no expression at all. There was no way of knowing if she approved of Christopher or was about to sack him on the spot.

“Someone must be cooking all the time,” Christopher said. “How do you manage with only three kitchens?”

Mrs Baldock spoke. She said, “And a bakery. That will do, young man.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Christopher said. “Delicious pie, whichever kitchen it came from.” He and Mrs Baldock eyed one another down the length of the table. Everyone’s heads turned from one to the other like people’s at a tennis match. Christopher smiled sweetly. “Pure curiosity, ma’am,” he said.

Mrs Baldock just said, “Hm,” and turned her attention to her plate.

Christopher kept a wary eye on her, but he went on asking questions.

We had to jump up as soon as we had finished supper. We left the maids clearing plates and giggling at Christopher’s back, and hurried upstairs with the footmen to the dining room. This was a tall, gloomy room that matched the black-floored hall. Mr Amos was waiting there to show us how to fold stiff white napkins into a fancy boat-shape, and then to instruct us in the right way to make two little silver islands of cutlery and wine glasses on the shiny black table. We had to put each knife, fork and spoon exactly in its right place.

Christopher went rather pale while we were trying to get it right. “Indigestion, Grant,” he told me in a sorrowful whisper. “Bolting pie and then running upstairs is not what I’m used to.”

“That won’t be the only thing that disagrees with you, if Mr Amos hears you,” the surly footman – Gregor – said to him. “Hold your tongue. Put this cloth over that arm, both of you, and stand by that wall. Don’t move, or I’ll belt you one.”

We spent the next hour doing just that. We were supposed to be attending to what Mr Amos and the footmen did as they circled in and out around the two Ladies sitting each at their little island of glass and silver, but I think I dozed on my feet half the time. The rest of the time, I stared at a big picture of a dead bird and some fruit on the opposite wall and wished I could be at home in the bookshop. The two Ladies bored me stiff. They talked the whole time about the clothes they were going to buy as soon as the time of mourning was over, and where they would stay in Ludwich while they were shopping. And they seemed to go on eating for ever.

When at last they were finished, we were allowed to go back to the undercroft, but we had to stay in the Upper Hall in case we were needed to bring things to the Ladies in the drawing room. Gregor watched us to make sure we didn’t try to slip away. We sat side by side on a hard sofa as far away from Gregor as we could get, trying not to listen to the two ladies’ maids, who were doing embroidery quite near to us, and whispering gossipy things to one another.

“She’s got a whole drawerful of keepsakes from him by now,” said one.

The other one said, “If that gets found out, they’ll both be in trouble.”

“I wouldn’t be in her shoes for any money,” the first one said.

I yawned. I couldn’t help it.

“Come, come, Grant,” Christopher said. “On these occasions, you have to keep going by taking an interest in little things, like those two maids do. We’ve been here a good seven hours by now. I know they seem the longest we’ve ever known, but you must have found some little thing to be amazed about somewhere.”

I had, now he came to remind me. “Yes,” I said. “How do the Countess and Lady Felice eat so much and stay so thin?”

“Good question,” Christopher replied. “They fair put it away, don’t they? The young one probably rushes about, but the old one is slightly stately. She ought by rights to be the size of Mrs Baldock. Perhaps the chef charms her food. But my guess is she takes slim spells. I dare you to go over and ask her lady’s maid if I’m right.”

I looked across at the two gossiping women. I laughed. “No. You do it.”

Christopher didn’t dare either, so we went on to talk about other things we had noticed. This was when Christopher told me his theory that Mrs Baldock drank. But right at the end, just before Andrew came in and said we could go off to bed, Christopher astounded me by asking, “By the way, what or where is this Ludwich that the Countess is so peeved with the Count for vanishing to?”

I stared at him. How could he not know? “It’s the capital city, of course! Down in the Sussex Plains, beside the Little Rhine. Everyone knows that!”

“Oh,” said Christopher. “Ah. So the Count’s gone on a spree, has he? The fact is, Grant, that one gets a little confused about geography, living with the Travellers. They never bother to say where we are or where we’re going. So what part of the country are we in now?”

“The English Alps,” I said. “Just above Stallchester.” I was still astonished.

Christopher repeated, “The English Alps. Ah,” looking grave and wise. “What other Alps are there then – as a matter of interest?”

“French, Italian, Austrian,” I said. “Those Alps sort of run together. The English Alps are divided off by Frisia.” Christopher looked quite bewildered. He didn’t seem to know any Geography at all. “Frisia’s the country on the English border,” I explained. “The whole of Europe is quite flat between Ludwich and Mosskva, and the Alps make a sort of half moon round the south of that. The English Alps are to the north of the plains.”

Christopher nodded to himself. I thought I heard him murmur, “Series Seven – no British Isles here, of course.”

“What?” I said. “What are you on about now?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m half asleep.”

I don’t think he was, although I certainly was. When Andrew said we could go, I tottered into the lift, then out of it, and fell into the nightshirt and into bed and went to sleep on the spot. I dimly heard Christopher get up later in the night. I assumed he was visiting the toilet up at the end of the corridor and I waited, mostly asleep, for him to come back. But he was away for so long that I went properly back to sleep and never heard him returning. All I knew was that he was in bed and asleep the next morning.

They woke us up at dawn.

We got used to this in the end, but that first morning was awful. We had to put on aprons and go round with a big basket collecting shoes to be cleaned, from the attics downwards. Most doors had at least one set of shoes outside them. But Mr Amos put out four pairs of small black shoes. The Countess put out a dozen pairs, all fancy. Lady Felice put out a stack of riding boots. We had to stagger down to the undercroft with the lot, where we were very relieved to discover that they employed someone else to clean them all. I could hardly clean my face that morning, let alone shoes.

Then we were allowed to have breakfast with a crowd of red-eyed, grumpy footmen. Andrew was off duty that morning and Gregor was in charge, and he didn’t like either of us and had it in for Christopher particularly. He sent us upstairs to the Family breakfast room before we’d really finished eating. He said it was important to have someone on duty there in case one of the Family came down early.

“I bet that was a lie!” Christopher said, and he rather shocked me by helping himself to bread and marmalade from the vast sideboard. We found out that all the footmen did the same, when they finally loitered in.

And it was just as well they deigned to turn up. Lady Felice came in before seven, looking pale and pensive and wearing riding clothes. No one had expected her. Gregor had to shove the bread he was eating under the sideboard in a hurry, and his mouth was so full that one of the other footmen had to ask Lady Felice what she fancied for breakfast. She said, a bit sadly, that she only wanted rolls and coffee. She was going out riding, she said. And would Gregor go to the stables and ask them to get Iceberg saddled. Gregor still couldn’t speak or he would have sent Christopher. He had to go himself, scowling.

By the time the Countess stalked in, obviously seething for some reason, the sideboard had been lined with dishes under dome-shaped silver covers – most of them fetched from the food lift by Christopher or me – and she had a choice of anything from mixed grill to smoked kidneys and fish. She ate her way through most of them while she was interviewing the poor snuffly old accountant man.

His name was Mr Smithers and I think he had only just started his own breakfast when she rang for him. He kept eyeing her plates sorrowfully. But he was a long time arriving and Gregor sent Christopher to look for him, while the Countess drummed her long pearly nails angrily on the tablecloth.

Christopher marched smartly out of the room and marched smartly in again almost at once with Mr Smithers, who behaved as if Christopher had dragged him there by his coat collar. Gregor looked daggers at Christopher. And, honestly, that was one of a good many times that I didn’t blame Gregor. Christopher was so pleased with himself. When he looked like that, I usually wanted to hit him as much as Gregor did.

Mr Smithers was in trouble with the Countess. She had an awful way of opening her ice-blue eyes wide, wide, and saying in a sweet, cold, cooing voice, “Explain yourself, Smithers. Why is this so?” Or sometimes she just said, “Why?” which was worse.

Poor Mr Smithers snuffled and shifted and tried to explain. It was about some part of her money that was late coming in. We had to stand there and listen while he tried.

And it was odd. It was all quite ordinary stuff, like the income from the home farms and the inn she owned in Stallstead, and her property in Ludwich. I kept thinking of Uncle Alfred telling me about Stallery’s worldwide dealings, and the huge markets that needed the probabilities pulled to work them, and I began to wonder if Uncle Alfred had got this right. He had told me about millions on the stock exchange, and here was the Countess asking about sixties and eighties and hundreds. I was really confused. But then I thought it had to be the Count who dealt in the big money. Someone had to. You only had to look at Stallery to see it cost a bomb to run the place.

But I didn’t have much time to think. Mrs Baldock rang for us the moment the Countess had polished off Mr Smithers and her breakfast. Christopher and I had to pelt off to the Housekeeper’s Room. By the time we got there, Mrs Baldock was pacing about among her pretty floral chairs and little twiddly tables. The purple bits down the sides of her face were almost violet with impatience.

“I can only spare you five minutes,” she said. “I have to be at my daily conference with the Countess after this. There’s just time to outline the nature of your training to you now. We aim, you see, to ensure that whichever of you attains the post of valet to the Count is completely versed in all aspects of domestic science. You’ll be learning, first and foremost, the correct care of clothing and the correct fashion for everything a gentleman does. Proper clothes for fishing are just as important as evening dress, you know, and there are six types of formal evening wear…”

She went on about clothes for a good minute. I couldn’t help thinking that the Count would have had to hire a lorry when he went to Ludwich, if he really did take all the clothes Mrs Baldock said he needed. I watched her feet tramping about on the floral carpet. She had huge ankles that draped over the sides of her buckled shoes.

“But just as important are laundering, house cleaning and bed making,” she said. “And in order to learn to care for your gentleman in every way, you’ll be having courses on flower arranging, hair cutting and cookery too. Do either of you cook?”

While I was saying, “Yes, ma’am,” I had the briefest glimpse of absolute horror on Christopher’s face. Then he somehow managed a beguiling smile. “No,” he said. “And I couldn’t arrange flowers if my life depended on it. It’s beginning to look as if Conrad’s going to be the next valet, isn’t it?”

“The Count will shortly marry,” Mrs Baldock pointed out. “The Countess is insisting on it. By the time his son is of an age to require a valet, even you should have learnt what is necessary.” She gave Christopher one of her long, expressionless looks.

“But why cooking?” he said despairingly.

“It is the custom,” Mrs Baldock said, “for the Count’s son to be sent to University accompanied by both his tutor and his valet. They will take lodgings together and the valet will create their meals.”

“I’d far rather create a meal than cook one,” Christopher told her frankly.

Mrs Baldock actually grinned. She seemed to have taken to Christopher. “Get along with you!” she said. “I can see well enough that you can do anything you set your mind to, young man. Now go and report to the Upper Laundrymaid and tell her I sent you both.”

We blundered our way through the stone warren of the undercroft and finally found the laundry. There, the woman in charge looked at us doubtfully, straightened our neckcloths, and then stood back to see if this had changed her opinion of us. She sighed. “I’ll start you on ironing,” she said pessimistically. “Things that don’t matter too much. Paula! Take these two to the pressing room and show them what to do.”

Paula materialised out of the steam and took us in tow, but, unfortunately, she turned out to be no good at explaining things. She showed us to a bare stone room with various sizes of ironing tables in it. She gave Christopher a damp linen sheet and me a pile of wettish neckcloths. She told us how to turn the irons on. Then she left.

We looked at one another. Christopher said, “Penny for them, Grant.”

“It’s a bit like,” I said, “that story where they had to turn straw into gold.”

“It is!” Christopher agreed. “And no Rumpelstiltskin to help.” He pushed his iron experimentally across the sheet. “This makes no difference – or possibly more wrinkles than before.”

“You have to wait for the iron to get hot,” I said. “I think.”

Christopher lifted the iron and turned it this way and that in front of his face. “A touch of warmth now,” he said. “How do these things work anyway? They don’t plug in. Is there a salamander inside, or something?”

I laughed. Christopher’s ignorance was truly amazing. Fancy thinking a fire lizard could heat an iron! “They have a power unit inside – just like lights and cookers and tellies do.”

“Do they? Oh!” said Christopher. “A little light came on at the end of this iron!”

“That may mean it’s hot enough,” I said. “Mine’s got a light now. Let’s try.”

We got going. My first idea – that you could save time and effort by doing ten neckcloths at once – didn’t seem to work. I cut the pile down to five, to two, and then to just one, which promptly turned yellowish and smelled. Christopher kept muttering, “I don’t seem to be living up to Mrs Baldock’s high opinion of me – not at all!” until he startled me by crying out, “Great Heavens! A church window! Look!”

I looked. He had a dark brown iron-shape burnt into the middle of his sheet.

“I wonder if it will do that again,” he said.

He tried, and it did. I watched, fascinated, while Christopher printed a whole row of church windows right across the sheet. Then he went on to make a daisy-shape in the lower half of it.

But at this point I was recalled to my own work by a cloud of black smoke and a very strong smell. I looked down to find that my iron had burnt a neckcloth right in two and then gone on to burn its way into the ironing table beneath. I had a very deep black church window there. I found red cinders in it when I snatched the iron up.

“Oh, help!” I said.

“Panic ye not, Grant,” Christopher said.

“I can’t help it!” I said, trying to fan away rolls of brown smoke. “We’re going to get into awful trouble.”

“Only if things stay like this,” Christopher said. He came across and looked at my disaster. “Grant,” he said, “this is too deep for a church window. What you have here is probably a dug-out canoe.” He switched his own iron off and wagged it in my face. “I congratulate you,” he said.

I nearly screamed at him. “It’s not funny!”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “Look.”

I looked, and I gaped. The smoke had gone. The black boat-shape was not there any more. The ironing table was flat and complete, with its brown-blotched surface quite smooth, and on top of it lay a plain, white, badly ironed neckcloth. “How…?” I said.

“No questions,” Christopher said. “I shall just get rid of my own artwork.” He picked up a corner of his ruined sheet and shook it. And all the church windows simply disappeared. He turned to me, looking very serious. “Grant,” he said, “you didn’t see me do this. Promise me you didn’t, or your dug-out canoe comes back deeper and blacker and smokier than ever.”

I looked from him to the restored ironing table. “If I promise,” I said, “can I ask you how you did it?”

“No,” he said. “Just promise.”

“All right. I promise,” I said. “It’s obvious anyway. You’re a magician.”

“A magician,” Christopher said, “is someone who sets out ritual candles round a pentangle and then mutters words of power. Did you see me do that?”

“No,” I said. “You must be a very advanced kind.”

Then I was half frightened, half pleased, because I thought I had made Christopher annoyed enough to tell me about himself. “Piffle! Pig-headed piffle!” he began. “Grant…”

To my great disappointment, Miss Semple hurried in and interrupted him. “You have to stop this now, boys,” she said. “Make sure the irons are switched off. Mr Avenloch has just brought in the produce for today, and Mr Maxim wants you to start your cookery course by learning to pick out the best.”

So off we hurried once more, to a chilly stone storeroom that opened off the yard, where Mr Avenloch was standing watching a gang of lower gardeners carry in baskets of fruit and boxes of vegetables. One of the gang was the boy with the handmade boots. He grinned at us and we grinned back, but I didn’t envy him. Mr Avenloch was one of those tall, thin, eagle-faced types. He looked a total tyrant.

“Wipe that smile off your face, Smedley,” he said, “and get you gone back to that hoeing.”

When the whole gang had gone scurrying out again, Mr Maxim pranced forward. He was almost as full of himself as Christopher was. He was Second Underchef and he had been given the extra responsibility of teaching us, and this had made him really cocky. He rubbed his hands eagerly together and said to Christopher, “You are choosing for the table of the Countess herself. Pick me out – by sight only – all the best vegetables for her.”

From the look on Christopher’s face, I was fairly sure he had never seen a raw vegetable in his life before this. But he made a confident pounce towards a basket of gooseberries. “Here,” he said, “are some splendid peas, really big ones. Oh no, they’re hairy. It can’t be good for peas to have bristles, can it?”

“Those,” Mr Maxim said, “are gooseberries for the Stillroom. Try again.”

A little more cautiously, Christopher approached a small box of bright red chillies. “Now here are some fine, glossy carrots,” he suggested. “They probably fade a bit when you cook them.” He looked at Mr Maxim. Mr Maxim nearly dislodged his tall white hat by clutching at his head. “No?” Christopher asked. “What are they then? Pipless strawberries? Long thin cherries?”

By this time, I was leaning against the wall bent over with laughter. Mr Maxim rounded on me. “This is no joke!” he shouted. “He’s winding me up, isn’t he?”

I could see he was furious. Cocky people hate being made fun of. I shook my head and managed to pull myself together. “No, he’s not,” I said. “He really doesn’t know. He – you see – he’s lived all his life as heir to a great estate – a bit like Stallery really – but the family fell on hard times and he had to get a job.” I looked sideways at Christopher. He put on a modest look and did not try to deny what I said. Interesting.

Mr Maxim was instantly sorry for Christopher. “My dear boy,” he said, “I quite understand. Please go round with Conrad and let him identify the produce for you.” He was wonderfully kind to Christopher after that, and even quite kind to me when I mistook a pawpaw for a vegetable marrow.

“Thanks,” Christopher murmured to me, while we were arranging the fruit I had chosen in a great cut-glass bowl. “I owe you one, Grant.”

“No you don’t,” I whispered back. “Dug-out canoe.”

But he did end up owing me one later that day. This was after we had stood against the wall in yet another eating room, each of us with a useless white cloth draped over one arm, watching the Countess and Lady Felice eat lunch. Part of the meal was actually the bowl of fruit we had arranged that morning. This gave me a good feeling, as if I had really done something at last. The Countess attacked the fruit heartily, but Lady Felice took one grape and that was all.

“Darling,” said the Countess, “you’ve hardly eaten anything. Why?”

It was the bad “Why?” with the stare. Lady Felice looked at her plate in order not to meet the stare and muttered that she wasn’t hungry. This did not satisfy the Countess at all. She went on and on about it. Was Felice ill? Should she call a doctor? What were the symptoms? Or had breakfast disagreed with her? All in the sweet high voice.

In the end, Lady Felice said, “I just don’t feel like food, Mother. All right?” Her face went pink, and she almost glared at the Countess.

And the Countess said, “There’s no need to be coy, dear. If you’re trying to lose weight, you’re welcome to borrow my pills.”

Christopher’s eyes went sideways and met mine. She does take spell pills! his look said. Both of us nearly burst, trying not to laugh. Mr Amos shot us a dirty look. So did Gregor. And by the time we had a grip on ourselves, Lady Felice had flung down her napkin and rushed out of the room, leaving the Countess looking annoyed and mystified.

“Amos,” she said, “I shall never understand the young.”

“Naturally not, my lady,” Mr Amos replied.

She smiled graciously, folded her napkin neatly and walked elegantly to the door. “Tell Smithers to come to my boudoir with his revised accounts,” she said as she left.

For some reason – I think it was watching her walk – I remembered Mrs Potts saying that the Countess used to kick up her legs in a chorus line. I was staring after her, trying so hard to imagine her doing it – and I couldn’t – that I jumped a mile when Mr Amos shouted at me. He was really angry. He planted himself on the carpet face to face with us, and he told us off thoroughly for daring to laugh in front of the Ladies. He made me at least feel awful. It didn’t seem to matter that he was the same height as I was and inches shorter than Christopher. He was like a prophet or a saint or something, hating us for being ungodly and thundering out of heaven at us.

“Now you will learn to be mannerly,” he said in the end. “Both of you are to go out of this door and come in again as softly and politely as you can. Go on.”

Even Christopher was quite cowed by then. We crept to the double door, crept out into the hall, and tiptoed apologetically in again. And of course that was not right. Mr Amos made us do it over and over again, while Gregor kept shooting us mean smiles as he cleared the lunch away. We must have gone in and out fifty times, and Mr Amos was just promising us that we would go on doing it until we got it right, when one of the other footmen came to say that Mr Amos was wanted on the telephone.

“What a relief!” Christopher muttered.

“Gregor,” said Mr Amos, “set these two to cleaning the silver until we Serve Tea. If this is the call I was expecting, I shall be busy all afternoon, so you are to make sure they keep at it.” And he hurried away on his small shiny feet.

“I spoke too soon,” Christopher said, as Gregor came towards us.

“This way. Hurry up,” Gregor said. He was positively gloating. Among his other drawbacks, Gregor was big. Hefty. He had the meaty sort of hands you could rather easily imagine giving you a wallop on the ear. We scuttled after him without a word, with our three sets of feet ringing, clack-clack-clack, around the hall. He led us through the green cloth door and along the wood and stone passage to a room right at the end, where there was a long table covered with newspapers. “Right,” Gregor said. “Aprons behind the door. Roll your sleeves up. Here are the rags and this is the polish. Get going.” He whipped the newspaper away. “I shall be back to check,” he said, “and I need to see my face in all this when I do.”

He left us staring at two deep boxes of cutlery, silver teapots, silver coffee pots, several jugs, ladles and two rows of the huge silver plates, all laid out on more newspaper. Rearing behind those were bowls, tureens, urns and complicated twiddly candlesticks, most of them enormous.

“Straw into gold again, Grant,” Christopher said, “and I think that would be easier.”

“Most of it’s quite shiny already,” I said. “Look on the bright side.”

“I hate bright sides,” said Christopher.

But we knew Gregor would love to catch us slacking so we got to work. I let Christopher rub on the pink, strong-smelling polish – because that was the easy part, and I was fairly sure that cleaning silver was another thing Christopher had never done before – while I took a pile of rags and rubbed and rubbed. After a while I got into the swing of it and began to read the newspapers under the silver and to think of other things. The cleaning room must have been next door to Mr Amos’s pantry. I could hear his voice as I worked, droning on in blasts and occasionally giving out a sort of booming bark, but I couldn’t hear the words, just his voice. It got me down.

I mentioned this to Christopher. He sighed.

I made several other remarks to Christopher and he did not answer any of them. I turned and looked at him. He was drooping over the table, panting a bit, and his face was almost the grey and white colour of the newspaper on the table. He had turned his neckcloth back to front in order not to get polish on it, and I noticed that there was a gold chain with a ring threaded on it hanging out of his shirt. It kept tinking on the candlestick he was working on because he was all bowed over.

I remembered a boy called Hamish at my school who could never do Art because the paints gave him asthma. It looked as if something the same was wrong with Christopher. “What’s the matter? Is the polish making you ill?”

Christopher put the candlestick down and held himself up with both hands on the table. “Not the polish,” he said. “The silver. There’s something about Series Seven that makes it worse than usual. I don’t think I can go on, Grant.”

Gregor, luckily, was lazy enough not to keep dropping in on us. But he was going to come in at some point. And Christopher was the one he disliked most. “All right,” I said. “You keep a lookout by the door so that you can look busy when Gregor turns up, and I’ll do it. There’s no point making yourself ill.”

“Really?” said Christopher.

“Truly,” I said, and waited. Now he really did owe me one.

Christopher said, “Thanks!” gratefully, and backed away from the silver. He went a better colour almost at once. I saw him glance down and notice the gold ring dangling out of his shirt. He looked quite horrified for an instant. He tucked the ring and its chain out of sight, double quick, and pulled his neckcloth round to hide it. “I owe you, Grant,” he said as he went to the door. “What can I do for you?”

Success! I thought. I was so curious about Christopher by now that I very nearly blurted out that I wanted him to tell me all about himself. But I didn’t. Christopher was the kind of person that you needed to go cautiously with. So I said, “I don’t want anything at the moment. I’ll let you know when I do.”

“Fair enough,” Christopher said. “What’s this droning sound coming through the wall?”

“Mr Amos phoning,” I said, picking up the candlestick and starting to rub.

“What could a butler find to phone about all this time?” Christopher said. “The exact vintage of champagne? Or has he an old mother who insists on a daily report? Amos, dear, are you using those corn plasters I sent you? Or is it his wife? Hugo must have a mother, after all. I wonder where they keep her.”

I grinned. I could tell Christopher was feeling all right again now.

“Talking of mothers,” he said, “I don’t care for the Countess at all, do you, Grant?”

“No,” I said. “Mrs Potts who cleans the bookshop says she used to be a chorus girl.”

Christopher was absolutely delighted. “No? Really? Tell me every word Mrs Potts said about her.”

So I told him as I polished. From there, I somehow went on to tell him about the bookshop too, and about Mum and Uncle Alfred, and how Anthea had left. As I talked, it occurred to me that, instead of me finding out about Christopher, he was finding out about me.

And I thought that was just typical of Christopher. Anyway, I didn’t mind telling him, as long as he didn’t get to know about my evil Fate and what I had to do, and it did help the silver-cleaning along wonderfully. By the time Gregor put his head round the door – and Christopher dashed to the table and pretended to buff up a jug – it was almost all done. Gregor was really annoyed.

“Tea is Served in ten minutes,” he said, scowling. “Get washed. You two are pushing the tea-trolley in today.”

“Never an idle moment here, is there?” Christopher said.

There was never an idle moment. We were kept so hard at it that I never managed to read one word of my Peter Jenkins book. Most nights I fell into bed and went straight to sleep. But I did notice, that second night, while we were getting into our nightshirts, that there was no sign of the ring or the chain round Christopher’s neck. Hidden by magic, I thought, and then fell fast asleep.

Then – you know how it is – after three more days I began to get into the rhythm of things and to know my way about. Everything started to feel much more leisurely. I had time that day to be maddened with curiosity about what Christopher was really doing at Stallery and about where he had come from. In fact, I had time to be maddened by Christopher generally. He would keep calling me “Grant” in that superior way, and there were times when I wanted to hit him for it, or shout that it was only my alias, or – anyway he really annoyed me. Then he would say something that doubled me up with laughter and I discovered I liked him again. It was truly confusing.

There was a full moon that fifth night. Christopher said, “Grant, this darned moon is shining right in my eyes,” and he pinned our curtains together so that the room was almost completely dark.

As I lay down and shut my eyes, I thought, Ah! He wants me to be asleep while he goes off like he did before. I was annoyed enough to do my best to stay awake.

I didn’t manage it. I was sound asleep when I somehow realised that the door had just shut softly behind Christopher.

By then I was so maddened with curiosity that I more or less tore myself out of sleep. I stumbled out of bed. It was cold. Stallery didn’t provide you with dressing gowns or slippers, so I was forced to climb quickly into my velvet breeches and drag the bedspread off my bed to make a sort of cloak. With the undone buckles of the breeches banging at my knees, I raced out into the corridor just as Christopher flushed the toilet and came out of the bathroom. I dodged back into our room again and waited to see where he would go.

And a right idiot I shall look if he just comes back to bed! I thought.

But Christopher went straight past our room and on in the direction of the lift. I tiptoed quietly after him, trying to tread on the parts of the chilly floorboards that didn’t creak. But Christopher himself was making the floor creak so much that I almost need not have bothered. He strode on as if he thought he was the only person awake in the attics.

He marched straight past the lift and towards the clothing room. He stood there in front of the slatted doors for a moment, in moonlight blazing down on him from the big skylights, and I heard him mutter, “No, it is further on then.” Then he swung half round and marched off down the corridor that led to the line painted on the wall and the women’s rooms beyond.

I must admit I nearly didn’t follow him. It would be a disaster to be sacked from Stallery before I had met Count Robert and settled my evil Fate. But then I thought that there was no point in getting up half dressed in order to follow Christopher if I didn’t follow him. So I went after him.

When I caught up with Christopher, he was in a wide, bare space where moonlight shone bright and white through a row of windows. He was shivering in his nightshirt as he turned slowly round on the spot. “It is here,” he was saying to himself, quite loudly. “I know it is! So why can’t I find it then?”

“What are you looking for?” I said.

He made a noise like “Eek!” and jumped round to face me. It was the nearest to undignified that I had ever seen Christopher. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you. For a moment I thought you were the ghost of a hunchback. What are you doing here? I left a really strong sleep spell on you.”

“I made myself wake up,” I said.

“Bother you!” he said. “You must have a bigger talent for magic than I realised, then.”

“But what are you doing here?” I said. “You’ll get the sack. This is the women’s part.”

“No, it isn’t,” Christopher said. “The women’s part is along there.” He pointed. “There’s a painted line there too that I suppose they’re forbidden to go past as well. Go and look if you like. This part of the attics is empty, right from the front to the back, and there’s something very odd about it. Can’t you feel it?”

I was going to say “Nonsense!” I was quite sure he was just trying to distract me from my curiosity. But when I had my breath all drawn in ready to say it, I let it out again without speaking. There was an oddness. It was not unlike the peculiar buzzing I used to feel in Uncle Alfred’s workroom after Uncle Alfred had been doing magic, except that this strange vibration felt old and stale. And it did not feel as if it had been made by a person. It felt like a sort of earth tremor, only it was magical instead of natural.

“Yes, and it feels pretty creepy,” I said.

“It goes right down through the building,” Christopher said, “though it’s strongest up here. I’ve been all over this beastly mansion by now, so I know.”

I was distracted, even though I knew he meant me to be. “What, even into the women’s part and Mr Amos’s pantry?” I said. “You can’t have.”

“I couldn’t get into the wine cellar,” Christopher said regretfully, “but I’ve been everywhere else. Mr Amos’s pantry stinks of cigars and booze and Mrs Baldock’s room is full of crinoline dolls. Mr Amos’s bedroom is even more spectacular than the Countess’s is. He has a circular bed. In mauve silk.”

I was even more distracted. I tried to see Mr Amos rolling about in a round, mauve bed. It was nearly as hard as seeing the Countess in a row of chorus girls. “You’re joking,” I said. “I’ve been with you all the time.”

Christopher gave a chuckle that was half a shiver. He wrapped his arms round his nightshirt and said, “Ah, Grant, what an innocent you are! It’s not difficult to make an image of yourself. I simply made an illusion of me standing by the wall while the Countess wolfs down her Dinner. It’s the one time I know Mr Amos is busy waiting on her. Think about it, Grant. Have I looked at you or talked to you much during these last few Dinner times?”

I realised that he hadn’t. I was amazed. It was hard not to be even more distracted and pester Christopher to tell me how he did it, but I took a stern grip on myself. “Yes, but what have you been looking for? Tell me. You owe me.

“Grant,” Christopher said, “you’re a pest. You keep your nose to my trail like a bloodhound. All right. I’ll tell you. But let’s go back to our room first. I’m getting frostbite.”

Back in our room, Christopher put on his smart linen jacket and wrapped himself in his bedclothes. “That’s better,” he said. “Why does it get so cold at night? Because this place is up in the mountains? How high is Stallery, Grant?”

“Three thousand feet, and you’re trying to distract me again,” I said.

Christopher sighed. “All right. I was just wondering where to start really. I suppose I’d better begin by admitting that I don’t come from this world of yours. I come from another one, a different universe entirely, that we call Series Twelve. This one, where you live, we call Series Seven. Do you have trouble believing that yours is not the only world in the world, Grant?”

“Not really,” I said. “Uncle Alfred told me there might be other ones. He says it’s all to do with probabilities.”

“Right. Good,” said Christopher. “One hurdle cleared. The next thing you should know is that I was born a nine-lifed enchanter – and that, believe me, Grant, is a great deal more than just being a magician – and, although I only have a few lives left now, that doesn’t make any difference to the kind of powers I have. And it means that, at home in my own world, I’m being trained to take over as what we call the Chrestomanci. The Chrestomanci is an enchanter appointed by the government to control the use of magic. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes,” I said. “And what happens if you don’t want the job?”

“Shrewd point,” said Christopher. “I take off to Series Seven, I suppose.” He laughed in a way that was not quite happy. “To be truthful,” he said, “I was almost looking forward to being the Chrestomanci, until I had a bad disagreement with my guardian, who happens to be the present Chrestomanci. He’s a very serious and correct person, my guardian – one of those who knows he’s always right, if you follow me, Grant.”

“Then can’t he train up someone else that he gets on with better?” I asked.

Across the dark room, I could just see Christopher shaking his head. “No. As far as we know,” he said, “there is no one else he can train up. We two seem to be the only nine-lifed enchanters in all the known worlds. So “we’re stuck with one another. He disapproves of me and I think he’s boring. But the disagreement wasn’t really about that. He’s guardian to a lot of people my age – most of us live with him in Chrestomanci Castle – but one of us – an enchantress from Series Ten who likes to be called Millie – is a sort of special case. She only lives with us in the holidays, because the people she came from insisted on her going to boarding school. Her latest school’s in Switzerland…”

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“You don’t have it in Seven,” Christopher said. “It’s in the Alps, squashed in among France, Germany and Italy…”

“I don’t know of a Germany either,” I said.

“The Teutonic States then?” Christopher guessed.

“Oh, you mean the Slavo-Teutonic States!” I said. “I know about those. Mum says the Tesdi – my father’s ancestors – came from there during the Conquest.”

“You don’t have to tell me history and geography are different here,” Christopher said. “I have been educated. Do you want to hear the rest, or not?”

“Go on,” I said.

“Well,” Christopher said, “Millie was really unhappy at this Swiss school. She said the girls and the teachers were horrible and she didn’t learn anything and they were always punishing her just for being different, and she didn’t want to go back last term. But of course our guardian sent her back because it was right. She cried. She’s not one who usually cries, so I knew she was having a really horrible time. I tried to tell our guardian she was, but he wouldn’t listen, and we had our first row. So then Millie got desperate and she ran away from this school. Being an enchantress, she did it very cleverly, in a way that made the school and my guardian think she was hiding somewhere in Series Twelve. But I knew, right from the start, that she was in a different Series. I told my guardian, but he told me he wasn’t going to listen to juvenile maunderings. That was our second row.”

There was a short silence here. I could feel Christopher brooding. I knew it had been a very bad row. At length, Christopher sighed and went on.

“Anyway, soon after that, I began to be sure that wherever Millie was hiding, she was in some kind of trouble. I even got worried enough to go to my guardian again. He more or less told me to shut up and go away.” There was another short, brooding silence. “That made our third row,” Christopher said. “He said they were doing all they could to find Millie and I was to stop wasting his time, and I said no they weren’t because he wouldn’t listen to me. Honestly, Grant, if he hadn’t been a nine-lifed enchanter too, I’d have turned him into a slug, I was so angry!”

“So you came to look for her yourself,” I said.

“That,” said Christopher, “makes it sound much easier than it was. It’s taken me weeks just to get this far. Finding out – secretly, of course – where Millie had gone was hard enough, and I now see that was the simple part. I got her pinned down in this part of Series Seven in a couple of days, and I worked out what / had to do to stop them coming after me in a matter of hours. My guardian thinks I’m hiding in Twelve B, but that’s just cover for the way I cadged a lift from the Travellers. That’s what started the delays. Travellers, you see, are some of the few people who are always moving from world to world…”

“You mean those two – three – five – caravans and that horse go to other worlds!” I said.

“All the time, Grant,” Christopher said, “and there are tribes more of them and they’re much better organised than they let you see. They go in a sort of spiral around the worlds – that was something I didn’t know either and I nearly went mad while they did. And they’re more important than anyone thinks. You wouldn’t believe the delays and disasters there were, while they coped with crises in Series One and so on, and I chewed my nails. It was over a month before we even got within smelling distance of Series Seven. Then we had to get here. Luckily, they always go to Stallery. There’s something about Stallery that they need to keep contained, they tell me. The only good thing is that my guardian is probably as confused as I am about where I’ve been.”

“You’ll be in awful trouble with him, won’t you?” I said.

“Grant, you are putting that too mildly,” Christopher replied. “Trouble is not the word for what will happen if he catches up with me. You see…” Christopher paused, and this time he seemed to be seething with bottled-up misery, rather than brooding. “You see, Grant, when I was younger, I kept losing my lives. And my guardian, in his usual high-handed way, tried to stop me losing any more of them by taking one of my lives away and locking it in his safe under nine high-power charms that only he was allowed to break. As long as he had that life, I knew he could trace me wherever I went. Anyway, I felt I had a right to my own life. So, before I left with the Travellers, I broke the charms, opened the safe, and took my life away with me. He’s not going to forgive me for that, Grant.”

That gold ring! I thought. I bet that’s his life. This guardian of his sounded a total monster. “So what are you going to do,” I asked, “when you find Millie?”

“I don’t know! That’s just the problem, Grant. I can’t find her!” There were pounding noises across the room, where I could dimly see Christopher’s fist rising and falling, beating at his knees. “I can feel her,” he said. “She’s here, I know she is! I felt her when we were coming here across the park, and I keep feeling her inside this house. When I get to that queer part beyond that line of paint, it almost feels as if I’m treading on her! But she’s not there! I don’t understand it, Grant, and it’s driving me mad!”

He was pounding away at his knees in a frenzy by then. I was surprised, because Christopher always seemed so cool. “Take it easy,” I said. “Does she seem unhappy – as if she was a prisoner or something?”

“No, not really.” Christopher calmed down, enough to stop beating his knees and think about this. “No, I don’t think she’s a prisoner – exactly. But she’s not happy. It’s – it’s more as if she was stuck somehow, in a way she didn’t expect to be – in a maze, or somewhere like that – and can’t work out the turnings to find the exit. I think she panics quite often. My first idea was that she was working as a maid here and had signed a fifty-year contract or something, but I’ve seen all the girls who work here now, and none of them is Millie, not even in disguise.”

“And the only place you haven’t looked is the wine cellar?” I said.

“Yes, but I couldn’t feel her at all when I stood outside the cellar door,” Christopher said. “Though – come to think of it – that cellar door is right in the centre of the strange bit of the house…”

“We’d better get inside it then,” I said. “We could get round Mr Maxim to take us in there for a wine tasting. And have you looked out of doors yet? There could be a maze in the gardens where she’s stuck. Don’t forget it’s our free afternoon tomorrow. Let’s go out and search the grounds then.”

“Grant, you are a genius,” Christopher said. “It feels like a maze, where she is – although she would have been inside it for months. There must be magic in it, or she would have starved to death by now.”

“There is lots of magic in Stallery,” I said. “Everyone in Stallchester complains about it. We can’t receive television because of it.”

“Oh, I know there’s lots of magic here all right,” Christopher agreed. “It’s all over the place, but I haven’t a clue what most of it’s doing. Some of it’s to keep trespassers out, so that the rest of the magic won’t be interrupted, but…”

I think I fell asleep at this point. I don’t remember anything else Christopher said, and the next thing I knew, beastly Gregor was battering on our door, shouting that we were lazy lumps and to get out and get those shoes collected or he’d tell Mr Amos.

“I hate Gregor,” I said while we were going down in the lift with the shoe basket. “You couldn’t do some magic to make him fall face first into the sandwiches at Tea, could you?”

Christopher was pale and tired and thoughtful that morning. “It’s tempting,” he said. But I could tell that his mind was on this Millie he was looking for. If it was me, I’d have been worrying more about that dreadful guardian of his, but I could see that Christopher was just angry, really, and hardly scared of his guardian at all.

Oh, well, I thought, and got on with the day.

At breakfast, Lady Felice looked more cheerful than usual, even though she did nothing but scrunch her bread all over the table and make a mess that Gregor made me clear up before the Countess arrived.

It was spotting with rain that morning. Lady Felice looked at it and said she would go riding later on, when the rain had stopped. Andrew had to run all the way to the stables to stop them getting her horse ready. I wished she had sent Gregor. Andrew came back red in the face and quite wet.

We were supposed to go to Mr Maxim straight after the Countess had finished breakfast, but Mrs Baldock sent for us first.

“Have you looked in the stables?” I asked Christopher on our way to the Housekeeper’s Room.

“Not really,” he said. “Just felt about there. I don’t get on with horses. But you’re right, Grant. We’d better investigate there too this afternoon.”

It was about our afternoon off that Mrs Baldock wanted to see us. “You’ll have time to go up to Stallstead,” she said, “and if you want to do that, I’ll advance you some pay. But remember – you have to be back here at six o’clock promptly.”

I was relieved. I was afraid she was going to tell us off for being up half the night. Christopher said, with great courtly politeness, “No, thank you, ma’am. We hoped to look round the gardens and perhaps take a tour of the stables, if that’s all right.”

“Oh, well, in that case,” Mrs Baldock said, and she smiled at Christopher. He was a real favourite with her by then. “There’s no problem about the stables. Just ask one of the grooms. But the gardens and the park are another matter. Staff are not allowed to be seen there by the Family. In the gardens, you must take care not to go where you can be seen from the windows, and if you see any member of the Family in the gardens or the park, you must get out of sight at once. If I get a complaint about that from the Family, there’s nothing I can do but give you notice on the spot, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“No indeed, ma’am,” Christopher said, very seriously. “We’ll be extremely careful.” As we went back along the stone passage to find Mr Maxim, he said, “You know, Grant, I was just getting really angry about the Family hogging all these acres of gardens, when I realised that I’ve never once seen a footman or a housemaid in the gardens at home. I think they must have the same rule there. Oh, and Grant, don’t forget we’re trying to persuade Mr Maxim to take us into the wine cellar. That’s urgent.”

This turned out to be difficult. Mr Maxim had us cooking eggs that day. “The simplest, quickest and most nutritious form a light meal can take,” he said, rubbing his hands together in his usual irritating way. “How many ways do you know of cooking an egg?”

“Poached, boiled,” Christopher said, “er, omelettes. What wine goes best with an egg, Mr Maxim?”

“Later, later,” Mr Maxim said. “Conrad?”

“Scrambled,” I said. “Fried. My sister sometimes used to do them in little pots in the oven. When she did, my uncle used to open a bottle of red wine…”

“Let’s leave your family history out of this,” Mr Maxim retorted, “and come and look at the stove instead. I have a small pan of water boiling here and another full of melted butter. What is your next step? Christopher?”

He held a large bowl of eggs out to Christopher. Christopher thought hard for a moment. “Marinade!” he said. “That’s the word! If I poured wine over these…”

“You could try boiling them in wine instead of water,” I suggested, backing Christopher up. “Sort of poached de luxe?”

“Or we could put wine in the butter,” Christopher said. “If I knew which wine…”

It was a wonder Mr Maxim didn’t throw all the eggs on the floor. I could see he wanted to. “Give me patience!” he all but screamed. “Forget wine! Learn the basics first! Christopher, how would you make me a plain boiled egg?”

“Um. I think I’d drop it in and let it boil for an hour or so,” Christopher said. “But I do want to learn about wine too,” he added, looking hopeful.

Mr Maxim said, with his teeth clenched together, “I – said – forget – wine. Wine is Mr Amos’s business, not yours. Conrad, what do you think of Christopher’s suggestion?”

“He’d end up with a sort of poached bullet,” I said. “Honestly, Mr Maxim, we were hoping you’d let us do a little wine tasting today.”

“Well, you can’t,” said Mr Maxim. “Now boil me an egg.”

The best thing about these lessons was that we were allowed to eat what we cooked. I suppose it was a good way to keep our minds on what we did. We ate boiled eggs – or I did. Christopher left his because he said his spoon bounced off it. We did omelettes next. I think Christopher was hungry. He was very careful and attentive to his omelette. They were coming along beautifully and I was really looking forward to eating mine, when there was a most peculiar feeling. It was as if the world jerked violently sideways.

Christopher cried out, “What was that?” His omelette flew out of his pan and fell on his feet. I only just saved mine – except that, when I looked down at it, it was bacon and fried eggs. Christopher had a fried egg on each shoe and bacon caught on the buckles.

“What do you mean, What was that?” Mr Maxim asked angrily. “You are a nightmare, boy, a cook’s despair! I ask you to cook me the simplest meal there is and you tip it on your shoes! Pick it up. Throw it away and try again.”

Christopher’s eyes met mine in a mystified stare. Instead of the big bowl of eggs waiting on the table to be cooked, there were rashers of bacon and four cups, each with an egg ready broken into it. But Mr Maxim simply had not noticed.

“There’s been a change, Mr Maxim,” I explained. “We were cooking omelettes a moment ago. Someone’s pulled the possibilities, I think.”

Christopher’s stare turned into an enlightened grin. “Really, Grant? A probability shift? I never knew they felt like that.”

Mr Maxim looked at us gloomily. “My memory is that I decided yesterday to teach you bacon and eggs,” he said. “But I take your word for it. Staff are always telling me things have changed. I never notice.” Then he went all suspicious and demanded, “You’re not pulling my leg, are you?”

“No, I promise,” I said. “The books in our shop used to change like this too.”

An idea struck Christopher. “If he really doesn’t remember…” he murmured to me. And he said to Mr Maxim, “I’d like to ask you about wine—”

“Stop that!” Mr Maxim shrieked. “I tell you for once and for all that there is no wine that goes with bacon and eggs! Now clean up your shoes.”

“Hm,” said Christopher. He delicately slid a fried egg off each shoe into the waste bucket and shook the bacon off after them. “We obviously wanted a wine tasting in this probability as well. I think that means the cellar is important.”

“What are you muttering about?” Mr Maxim yelled.

“Nothing, nothing,” Christopher said. “Just something we’d do on our afternoon off – I suppose that hasn’t changed, has it, Grant?”

It hadn’t. To our relief, as soon as the Countess had folded her napkin and left, Mr Amos solemnly gave us leave to go. Because he was watching us, we walked soberly across the black floor of the hall, but once we were through the green door, we ran. We clattered down the stone steps and charged through the undercroft to the nearest outside door. It felt good just to run. The drizzle had stopped outside and we galloped out into sun, laughing.

The stables, across the yard beyond the kitchens, were an enormous place like two barns joined together by a clock tower. I let Christopher talk to the groom on duty there. He could turn on the charm far better than I could. And he did. In next to no time, we were walking on a soft passageway inside the big dim barn, gazing into spacious stalls lined with even softer stuff. The horses in the stalls put their faces over the doors and gazed back at us.

I found myself gripped with a sort of fierce wistfulness. If only I had not happened to be born and brought up in a bookshop, if only I had happened to be born a stableboy like the one who was showing us round, then I could have spent all day with these huge, beautiful horses. The smell of them went to my head and the look of them turned my heart over. There was one really big horse, almost red-coloured, who had a white streak down his bent and noble nose, that I liked particularly. He was called Teutron. All the horses had their names on a board outside their stalls.

The stableboy said Teutron had belonged to the old Count and would probably be sold soon. I wished I was rich enough to buy him. The new Count liked a different style of horse, the boy said, and showed us two smaller, darker horses that moved like cats, which he said were Count Robert’s. They were called Dawn and Dusk. Christopher, whose nose was wrinkled in disgust and who was definitely not enjoying it here, said those were sissy names. Lady Felice had three horses, Iceberg, Pessimist and Oracle. They were putting a saddle on Oracle, down at the end of the barn, ready for Lady Felice to ride. Lucky thing.

We watched them doing that, me with interest, Christopher yawning, until the boy happened to mention that the next barn was where they kept the cars.

“Ah,” Christopher said, suddenly coming awake. “Lead me to the cars.”

I took this to mean that Christopher had not found any trace of Millie in the horse barn. I followed him rather sadly into the barn next door, where the lovely hay and animal smell was replaced by fumes of motor fuel. A row of gleaming saloons were being polished by six dapper mechanics.

“Better,” Christopher said. “Penny for them, Grant. You look mournful.”

I sighed. “I was thinking I made a mistake not getting reborn in this life as a stable hand. But perhaps they don’t let you choose. Maybe whatever I did to get my bad karma meant I had to be born in the bookshop instead.”

Christopher gave me one of his long, vague looks as we edged along by the cars. “Why are you so sure that your soul has been recycled, Grant? There’s no evidence of it that I can see.”

“My Uncle Alfred knows,” I said. “He said I had a bad former life.”

“Your Uncle Alfred’s word is not law,” Christopher said. “Oh, look. Here’s a car with all its guts showing.”

We leant on the wall next to this car and Christopher watched with ridiculous interest while a mechanic did things inside its open front. I yawned. “Can you tear yourself away, Grant?” Christopher said after an endless five minutes. “We must have a look at the gardens.”

The man working on the car told us that the quickest way to the park was through the small door across the yard outside the car barn. Christopher sauntered off there beside me. I was just opening the small door when there was a terrific noise from a car – a really bad noise, like pop-pop-pop BOOM – and a small red sports car came bellowing into the yard through the big open gates. It stopped with a squeal, in a spray of stones and a gust of blue smelly smoke. The two young men in it were laughing their heads off.

“That was quite horrible!” one of them said as the engine died with a final pop.

“At least it got us here,” said the one who was driving.

Christopher, like lightning, pushed us both through the small door and then held it not quite shut, so that we could only see a slit of the yard with the red car in it. “Family, Grant,” he said.

The two young men came vaulting out of the car, still laughing. The one who had been driving called out, “Lessing! I’m afraid we need you. This is a very sick car.”

The mechanic we had been watching walked into view saying, “What is it this time, my lord?”

The other young man swallowed a giggle and said, “A piece dropped off in the middle of Stallchester. Robert said it was only a piece of trim, but it obviously wasn’t. I said if he was that sure, there was no point stopping and picking it up. A mistake.”

“Yes, blame Hugo,” said the driver. “He couldn’t wait to get home, so we’ve had to push the darn thing up all the steepest Alps.” Both young men laughed again.

I stared at them through the gap Christopher was holding open. They were both in ordinary sort of clothes, and medium tall, and thin, with fairish hair. They might have been a pair of students, laughing and joking after a day out together. But the one with the fairer hair had to be Count Robert himself, and the other one, now I looked properly, was indeed Hugo. I just hadn’t known him without his valet’s clothes.

I looked at the Count then, expecting to know that he was the one causing my evil Fate. But I had no feeling at all. The Count might have been any cheerful, healthy young man, like one of the students who came to Stallchester to ski. I put my hand into my waistcoat pocket and took hold of the port-wine cork, hoping that would help me to know, but it made no difference at all. The Count was still nothing but a normal, good-looking young man. I couldn’t understand it.

While I stared, Lessing was saying something about the pair of them only having to look at a car for it to go wrong, and he’d better see what they’d done now. He shrugged humorously and went to fetch his tools.

When he was gone, the Count and Hugo turned to one another, not laughing any more, and stood for a moment looking sober and rueful. “Ah, well, Hugo,” the Count said. “Back to real life, I suppose.” And they both followed Lessing into the car barn.

“Interesting,” Christopher remarked, gently shutting the small door. “No sign of Millie here, Grant. We have to look elsewhere.”

We followed a path round to the gardens at the back of the mansion. These were massive. We went through steep, ferny parts, flat places with pools and water lilies, fountains and rose arches, and a huge stretch that was all gravel and trees carved into silly shapes, and came to the part directly behind the house. There, the garden was like one of those jigsaws that are almost impossible to do, with flowers of all kinds stacked into acres of long beds, and grass and paths between.

I hung back rather. “We aren’t supposed to be seen from the windows.”

“I assure you,” Christopher said, “that not a soul will see us, Grant. I’m not a nine-lifed enchanter for nothing, you know.”

He strode on and I followed much less boldly. We marched down an endlessly long path slap in the middle of the jigsaw, with frothy walls of flowers on both sides of us and our ears filled with the buzzing of bees. We were in full view from the rows of windows behind us, but nobody came after us with yells of anger, so I supposed it was all right.

“I can feel that strangeness here too,” Christopher said, “but not as strongly as at the top of the house.”

As he said this, we came out into a wider bit, where the flowers bent outwards to make a circle round a sundial. “Can you feel Millie here at all?” I asked him.

Christopher frowned. “Ye-es,” he said, “and no.” He went and leaned on the sundial. “She’s here and not here,” he said. “Grant, I don’t understand this at all.”

“You said a maze,” I was beginning, when there came that sideways jerk that had changed the eggs that morning. Christopher was suddenly leaning against a statue of a chubby boy with wings. He sprang away with a squawk. “The Count,” I said. “He’s back. He must have done that.”

“Nonsense,” Christopher said. “Use your head, Grant. Someone was messing with the probabilities this morning, long before the Count got home. Come along and let’s look for a maze.”

There didn’t seem to be a maze. The nearest we found to one was where the jigsaw puzzle petered out into a place where stone pillars stood in rows, hung with flowering creepers. Beyond that, the gardens stopped. There was a drop of about ten feet down into a ditch, and after the ditch, the parklands began, rolling away for miles ahead of us.

“A ha-ha,” Christopher said.

“Nothing’s funny,” I said. I was too hot by then, and sick of searching for a girl who didn’t seem to exist. I was beginning to think Christopher was imagining Millie was near.

“I mean that this drop into a ditch at the end of a garden is called a ha-ha,” Christopher explained. “At least, it is in my world.”

“I don’t think it is here,” I said. The new gardener’s boy, Smedley, was sitting in the ditch a few yards along from us. He had his boots off, and he looked as hot and sulky as I felt. “Why not ask him?” I said.

“Good idea.” Christopher bounded along the row of pillars and stuck his head through the creepers above where the boy was sitting. “I say! Smedley!”

The poor kid jumped a mile. His sweaty face went white and he scrambled to his bare feet in a hurry. “Just coming, sir—Oh, it’s you!” he said, when he saw Christopher’s face sticking out from the creepers above his head. “Don’t call out at me in posh voices like that! Do you want to give me a heart attack?”

“This is my normal voice,” Christopher said coldly. “What are you doing in that ditch anyway?”

“Skiving off, of course,” said Smedley. “I’m supposed to be looking for that damn guard dog – the one you tamed when we was walking here. Brute disappeared this morning and park security’s doing his nut, thinking someone may have poisoned it. All us garden staff are out looking for it.” He scowled. “I’m not risking getting bitten, thanks.”

“Very sensible,” Christopher said. “Tell me, does this garden have a maze?”

“No,” said Smedley. “Oriental garden, rose garden, four flower gardens, water garden, shrubbery, topiary garden, fern garden, hedged garden, vegetable garden, fruit garden, six hothouses, one orangery, big conservatory, but no maze. Or it may have got caught in a trap, see.”

“What – the maze? Or the whole garden?” Christopher asked.

“The dog, stupid!” Smedley said.

“We’ll keep a look out for it for you,” Christopher told him. “What do you call this ditch and wall at the end of this garden? Apart from a good place to lurk, that is.”

“This? This is the ha-ha,” Smedley said.

Christopher shot me a superior look. “There you are, Grant. Come along now.” He jumped down into the ditch beside Smedley, who flinched away. “Fear me not,” Christopher said. “Grant and I are merely going for a stroll in the park. We will not give you away.”

I jumped down and went squelch. One of my buckled shoes came off. I took the other one off too, and my striped stockings. Smedley seemed to me to have the right idea. The grass felt deliciously cool and wet as we climbed the bank and set off into the parklands.

“Your funeral if you tread on a bee!” Smedley shouted after me. Evidently Christopher’s superior manner annoyed him as much as it annoyed me, because he added, “Poncy footmen!” when we were almost too far away to hear.

“Take no notice,” Christopher said – as if I would have done. “Our friend Smedley has clearly been told that house staff are nothing but mincing lackeys and that gardeners do all the real work.” We walked a little way. I curled my toes luxuriously into the grass and thought that Christopher would think this. He had no idea how irritating he could be. “Smedley may be right,” Christopher added. “I’ve never minced so much in my life before.”

We walked some more and Christopher began to frown. “The oddness is getting fainter,” he said. “Can you feel?”

“Not really,” I confessed. “I only properly felt it in the attics.”

“Pity. Well, let’s go as far as that clump of trees and see,” Christopher said.

The clump of trees was more like a small bushy wood on top of a little hill. We pushed our way through, up the hill and down in a straight line. I had forgotten it had rained earlier. Willows wept on us and bushes sprayed us. Christopher hardly seemed to notice. He pushed on, murmuring, “Fainter, fainter.” I put my shoes back on my muddy feet, wishing we’d taken the time to put on ordinary clothes. We would both need to change into dry uniforms for this evening, or Mr Amos would have our guts for garters. Count Robert would be there for Dinner, I supposed. Maybe the reason I hadn’t known he was causing my Fate was because I hadn’t been close enough to him. I could get to stand right beside him at Dinner. Then I’d surely know.

We were both so busy thinking of other things that we nearly missed seeing Lady Felice riding towards the wood on Oracle.

I said, “Oh – oh! Family!” and pulled Christopher back among the wet willows.

He said, “Thanks, Grant.” Then we had to stand there, because Lady Felice was cantering straight towards the hill where we were. Water ran down our necks, along with itchy bits of willow, while we waited for her to swerve around the hill and ride out of sight.

Instead, she came careering straight towards the edge of the wood and pulled the horse to a stop there. Hugo came out of the bushes just below us, still in his everyday clothes, and stood there with his hair as wet as ours was, looking up at her. She stared down at Hugo. Everything went tense and still.

Hugo said, “The car nearly broke down. I thought I was never going to get back.”

Lady Felice said, “I wish you or Robert had warned me. It felt like a hundred years!”

“For me too,” Hugo said. “Robert didn’t want any questions asked, you see. At least he didn’t find Ludwich as dreary as I did. It was like being half dead.”

Lady Felice cried out, “Oh, Hugo!” and jumped down off Oracle. Hugo sort of plunged forward to meet her, and the two of them flung their arms around each other as if it really had been a hundred years since they last met. Oracle wandered peacefully off and then stood, with the look of a horse that was used to this.

I stared at them and then stared at Christopher, who looked quite as uncomfortable as I felt. He made a very slight gesture and said, in his normal voice, “Spell of silence, Grant. They won’t hear us. I guess we’re looking at something here that mustn’t get back to the Countess or Mr Amos either.”

Not altogether believing in the spell of silence, I was just nodding, when there was another of those sideways jerks. It was quite strong, but nothing much seemed to change. It did not seem to affect Hugo and Lady Felice in the least, and we were still draped in trees – except that they were not willows now, but some other kind, just as drooping and just as wet. I noticed that my striped stockings were not in my hand any more. When I looked down, I saw they were on my legs instead.

Christopher backed away out of sight of Hugo and his Lady, looking very excited. “That definitely came from the house!” he said. “Come on, Grant. Let’s get back there quickly and find out what’s doing it.”

Christopher set off through the wet wood at a gallop. On the level grass beyond I had to work hard to keep up. He had such long legs. But he had to stop in the ditch in front of the ha-ha and wait for me to boost him up the wall.

“Found the dog?” Smedley called out from further along.

“No,” I panted, boosting hard.

Christopher held down his hands to help me scramble up and hauled me up as if I weighed nothing.

“What’s the hurry then?” Smedley said as my feet met the top of the wall and we both set off running again. “I thought the dog was after you!”

We were too breathless to answer. Christopher dropped to a jog-trot and kept on in a straight line towards the house, past yew hedges and tiny box hedges, and then between the banks of flowers. I had a feeling that some of this was new, but it all jogged past so fast that I was not really sure anything had changed until we came to the open circle where Christopher had leaned on the sundial. The chubby boy statue was now a stately stone young lady carrying an urn, which was spouting water.

I couldn’t help laughing. “Lucky it didn’t do that while you were leaning on it!”

“Save your breath,” Christopher panted.

We jogged on, pounding on gravel, then clattering up stone steps, and more stone steps, until we were charging across a wide paved platform in front of the house itself. I tried to stop here. It was obviously a place where Staff were not allowed. But Christopher trotted on, into the house through an open glass door, across a parquet floor in a room that was lined with books. While Christopher was wrestling open the heavy door, I saw there was a ladder up to a balcony where there were more books, under a fancy ceiling, and I knew this was the library and we shouldn’t be there.

The heavy door brought us out into the hall, with the main stairway ahead in the distance. Andrew was just crossing the black floor, carrying a tray. He said, “Hey!” as we dashed past him. I knew then that Christopher, in his hurry to discover what was making the changes, had clean forgotten to make us invisible – and forgotten that he had forgotten. Andrew stared after us as Christopher skidded round the banisters and led me charging up the forbidden stairway. I was just glad it was Andrew and not Gregor. Gregor would have reported us to Mr Amos.

At the top, outside the ballroom, Christopher had to stop and bend over to get his breath. But as soon as he could stand up again, he stared around in a puzzled way and then pointed towards the lofty ceiling.

“I don’t understand, Grant. I thought we’d be on top of it here. Up again.”

So up we went again, to the floor where the Family bedrooms were. Here the next lot of stairs were not in a straight line from the lower lot. We had to tear along the palatial passage to get to them and round a corner. When we whirled round that corner, I thought for a moment we were in a riot. There were squeals and screams and girls in brown and gold uniforms pelting everywhere. They all froze when they saw us. Then one of them said, “It’s only the Improvers,” and there were sighs of relief all round. I could see they were all the younger maids. None of them were much older than me or Christopher.

“It’s line-tig,” one of them explained breathlessly. “Want to play?”

“Love to,” Christopher said, quite as breathlessly. “But we have to take a message.” And he charged on to the next stairs and up those. “I suppose – have to have – fun – somewhere,” he panted as we pounded upwards.

“If I was them, I’d go and chase about in the nurseries where it’s empty,” I said.

“No – excuse for – being there,” Christopher suggested.

He did not pause on the next floor with its smell of new carpets. He just shook his head, chased along to the next stairs and clattered up them to the nursery floor. “Getting warmer,” he gasped, and we trotted along to the creaking wooden stairs to the attics.

By this time, I could feel the strangeness too. It was buzzing actively. It did not surprise me in the least when, as soon as we panted into the attics, Christopher plunged away past the lift towards the centre of the house. I knew we were going to end up in that space beyond the line painted on the wall.

Christopher was galloping along, excitedly puffing out, “Warm, warmer, almost hot!” when we both more or less ran into Miss Semple coming away from the clothes stores.

“Steady on!” she said. “Don’t you know the rule about not running?”

“Sorry!” we both said. Then, without having to think, I added, “We need new clothes. Christopher got mud on his breeches.”

Christopher looked down at himself. He was covered in brick dust and moss as well as mud. “And Conrad’s ruined his stockings,” he said.

I looked at my striped legs and discovered that at least four of the stripes had converted into ladders, with my skin showing through. There were willow leaves stuck behind the buckles of my shoes.

“So I see,” Miss Semple said, looking too. “Come along then.” She marched us into the clothes room, where she made us change practically everything. It was such a waste of time. Miss Semple said we were a disgrace to Stallery. “And those stockings will have to come out of your wages,” she told me. “Silk stockings are costly. Be more careful in future.”

Christopher scowled and sighed and fretted. I whispered to him, “If we hadn’t met her, she’d have gone down and caught those girls playing tig. Or she might have caught us going past the painted line.”

“True,” Christopher muttered. “But it’s still maddening. The changes have stopped now, damn it!” He was right. I couldn’t feel the strangeness buzzing at all now.

When we were clean and neat and crisp again, Miss Semple picked up the pile of towels she had been carrying and sailed away to the lift with them.

“Now, hurry,” Christopher said, “before anything else interferes.”

We tiptoed speedily and cautiously towards the centre of the attics. In the distance, floors creaked and someone banged a door, but no one came near. I think we both gasped with nervous relief when we passed the line painted on the wall. Then we sprinted to the wide space with the row of windows.

“Here – it is here, the centre of things!” Christopher said. He turned slowly round, looking up, looking down. “And I still don’t understand it,” he said.

There really did seem to be nothing but flaking plaster ceiling above and wide old floorboards underfoot. In front of us, the rather dirty row of windows looked out over the distant blue mountains above Stallchester, and behind us was just wall, flaking like the ceiling. The dark passage on the other side that led to the women’s quarters was identical to one we had come along.

I pointed to it. “What about Millie? Is she along there?”

Christopher shook his head impatiently. “No. Here. Here is the only place she feels anywhere near at the moment. It looks as if these changes are somehow connected to the way she’s not here – but that’s all I know.”

“Under the floor then?” I suggested. “We could take one of the floorboards up.”

Christopher said, in an unconvinced way, “I suppose we could try,” and we had, both of us, knelt down near the windows to look at the boards, when another sideways jolt happened. It was lucky we were kneeling. Up here, the shift was savage. We were both thrown over by it. My head cracked against the wall under the windows. I swore.

Christopher reached out and hauled me up. “I see the reason for these painted lines now,” he said, rather soberly. “If you’d been standing up, Grant, you’d have gone straight through the window. I shudder to think how far it is to the ground from here.”

He was pale and upset. I was annoyed. I looked round while I was rubbing my head and it was all exactly the same, wide floorboards, distant mountains through the windows, flaky plaster, and the feeling of something strange here as strong as ever. “What does it?” I said. “And why?”

Christopher shrugged. “So much for my clever ideas,” he said. “If I have a fault, Grant, it’s being too clever. Let’s go down and check the nursery floor. Nothing seems to have changed at all this time.”

Famous last words, my sister Anthea used to say. Christopher strode away down the passage and there was a door blocking his way, a peeling, red-brown door.

“Oh!” he said. “This is new!” He rattled at it until he found the way it opened.

It blew inwards out of his hands. We both went backwards.

Wind howled around us, crashing the door into the wall and flapping our neckcloths into our faces. We both knew at once we were somewhere different and rickety and very, very high up. We could feel the floor shaking under our feet. We clutched at one another and edged cautiously forward into the stormy daylight beyond the door.

There Christopher said, “Oooh!” and added airily, “Not afraid of heights, I hope, Grant?”

I could hardly hear him for the wind and the creaking of wood. “No,” I said. “I like them.” The door led out on to a small wooden balcony-thing with a low, flimsy-looking rail round it. Almost at our feet, a square hole led into a crazy old wooden stairway down the side of what seemed to be a tall wooden tower. Our heads both bent to look through the hole. And we could see the stairway zigzagging giddily away, down and down, getting smaller and smaller, outside what was definitely the tallest and most unsafe looking wooden building I had ever seen. It could have been a lighthouse – except that it had slants of roof sticking out every so often, like a pagoda. It swayed and creaked and thrummed in the wind. Far, far below, something seemed to be channelling the gale into a melancholy howling.

I tore my eyes from that tottering stairway and looked outwards. Where the park should have been, the ground was all grey-green heathery moor, but beyond that – this was the creepy part to me – there were the hills around Stallery, the exact same craggy shapes that surrounded Stallchester. I could see Stall Crag over there, plain as plain.

After that I stood by the railing and looked upwards. There was a very small slanting roof above us, made of warped wooden tiles, with a sort of spire on top that ended in a broken weathercock. It was all so old that it was groaning and fluttering in the wind. Behind and around us, the moor just went on. There was no sign of Stallery at all.

Christopher was white, nearly as white as the neckcloth that kept fluttering across his face. “Grant,” he said, “I’ve got to go down. Millie feels quite near now.”

“We’ll both go,” I said. I didn’t want to be up at the top of this building when Christopher’s weight brought the whole thing down and, besides, it was a challenge.

I don’t think Christopher saw it as a challenge. It took him an obvious effort to unclench his hand from the door jamb, and when he had, he turned round very quickly and clenched the same hand even harder on the rail beside the stairs. The whole balcony swayed. He kept making remarks – nervous, joky remarks – as he went carefully down out of sight, but the wind roared too hard for me to hear them.

As soon as Christopher was far enough down that I wouldn’t kick his face, I scrambled on to the stairs too. A mistake. Everywhere groaned, and the staircase, together with the balcony, swayed outwards away from the building. I had to wait until Christopher was further down and putting weight on a different part of it. Then I had to go slowly because he was. I could tell he was scared silly.

I was quite scared too. I’d rather climb Stall Crag any day. It stays still. This place swayed every time one of us moved, and I kept wondering what lunatic had built the thing, and why. As far as I could tell, nobody lived in it. It was all cracked and weathered and twisted. There were windows without glass in the wooden walls. When Christopher was being particularly slow, I leaned over with the wind thundering around me and peered into the nearest window, but they were always just empty wooden rooms inside. There was a door on each balcony we came to, but when I looked down past my own legs – not a clever thing to do: I went quite giddy – I saw that Christopher was not trying to open any of the doors, so I left them alone too. I just went on to the next flight, slanting the opposite way.

About halfway down, the sticking-out roofs were much wider. The stairs went out over the roofs there, to mad little spidery balconies hanging on the very edge, and then there would be another stair going down under that roof to the next one. When Christopher came to the first of these balconies, he just stopped. I had to hang on to the ladder and wait. I thought he must have found Millie, and that the howling sound I could still hear was being made by an injured girl in mortal agony. But Christopher went on in the end. And when I got to that balcony I knew why he had stopped. You could see through the floor of it, down and down, and it was rocking. And the howling was still going on, below somewhere.

I got off that balcony as quick as I could. So did Christopher after that. We had to climb over three more of the horrible things before we came to a longer, thicker stair, where there was actually a handrail. I caught up there. We were only one floor up by then.

“Nearly there,” Christopher said. He looked ghastly.

“Millie?” I asked.

“I can’t feel her at all now,” he said. “I hope I don’t understand.”

As we clattered down the last few steps, the howling became a sort of squeaking. At the bottom, a great brown shape hurled itself at us, slavering. Christopher sat down, hard. I was so scared that I went up half the flight again without even noticing. “They left a wild beast on guard!” I said.

“No, they didn’t,” Christopher said. He was sitting on the bottom step with his arms round the creature and the creature was licking his face. Both of them seemed to be enjoying it. “This is the guard dog that went missing today. Its name is…” He reached round the great tongue and found the name tag on the dog’s collar…“Champ. I think it’s short for Champion and not a description of its habits.”

I went down the stairs again and the dog seemed glad to see me too. I suppose it had thought it was permanently lost. It put great paws on my shoulders and squeaked its joy. Its massive tail thumped dust out of the ground, which whirled in the wind, stingingly. “No, you’ve got it wrong,” I told it. “We’re lost too. We are, aren’t we?” I asked Christopher.

“For the moment,” he said. “Yes. Stallery seems to have been built on a probability fault, I think – a place where a lot of possible universes are close together and the walls between them are fairly weak. So when whoever – or whatever – keeps shifting to another line of possible events, it shifts the whole mansion across a bit and that bit at the top of the house gets moved a lot. The top gets jerked somewhere else for a while. At least, I’m hoping it’s just for a while. Now we know why those painted lines are really there.”

“Do you think it’s the Countess doing it?” I said. “Or the Count?”

“It may be no one,” Christopher said. “It could just happen, like an earthquake.”

I didn’t believe that, but there was no point arguing until I met the person causing my evil Fate and knew. Come to think of it, my Fate must have landed us here anyway. In order not to feel too bad about it, I said to Christopher, “You worked out what had happened on the way down?”

“In order not to think of dry rot and planks snapping,” he said, “or the distance to the ground. And I realised that Millie must be stuck in one of the other probabilities, just beyond this one. Maybe she hasn’t noticed which part of the mansion moves—Oh dear!”

We both understood the same thing at the same moment. In order to get ourselves back to the Stallery we knew, we had to be at the top of the tower when another sideways shift happened. We looked at one another. We got up, towing the dog, and backed away to where we could see the whole unpainted wooden height of the thing, moving and quivering in the wind, and the crazy stairway zigzagging up it. It looked worse from the ground even than from the top.

“I don’t think,” Christopher admitted, “I can bring myself to climb that again.”

“And we’d never get the dog up it anyway…Hang on!” I said. “The dog can’t have been in the attics when it got here. It lives in the grounds.”

“Oh, what a relief!” Christopher said. “Grant, you’re a genius! Let’s sit on the right line and wait then.”

So we did that. Christopher very carefully paced from side to side, and then back and outwards, until he found the spot where the strangeness felt strongest. He decided that a lump of rock about forty feet from the tower was the place. We sat leaning against it – with the dog between us for warmth and the wind hurling our hair and neckcloths sideways – staring at the derelict front door of the tower and waiting. Grey clouds scudded overhead. An age passed.

“It’s funny,” Christopher said. “I have no desire at all to explore that building. Do you, Grant?”

I shuddered. The wind sort of moaned in the twisted timber and I could hear doors opening and slamming shut somewhere inside. I hoped it was only the wind doing it. “No,” I said.

Later on, Christopher said, “My stockings have turned into ladders held together by loops. If they take them out of our wages, how much do the things cost?”

“They’re silk,” I said. “You’ve probably worked all last week for nothing.”

“Bother,” he said.

“So have I,” I said, “only I’ve ruined two pairs now. How long have we sat here?”

Christopher looked at his watch. It was nearly five-thirty. We were going to be late back on duty if another shift didn’t happen soon. A whole set of doors slammed inside the tower, making us jump.

“I suppose I deserve this,” I said.

“Why?” Christopher demanded.

“Because…” I sighed and supposed I might as well confess. “This is all probably my fault. I have this bad karma, you see.”

“What bad karma?” he said.

“There’s something I didn’t do in my last life,” I said, “and now I’m not doing it in this life either…”

“You’re talking perfect codswallop,” Christopher said.

“Maybe it’s something you don’t have in your world,” I said.

“Yes, we do. I was studying it, as it happens, just before I came away, and I assure you, my dear Grant…”

“If you’re only in the middle of learning…” I started to say, when we both realised that the wooden tower was now a dark stone building. Without any kind of warning, or blurring, or any sort of sideways jerk, it had become twice as wide, though no less derelict. It seemed to be built of long blocks of dark slate, sloping inwards slightly, so that it tapered up to a square top, high, high above us. Its square stone doorway gaped in front of us, breathing out a dank and rather rotten smell. There were no stairs any more.

“That’s odd,” said Christopher. “I didn’t feel it change, did you? What do you say, Grant? Do we risk looking inside?”

“It looks more like a house than the wooden place,” I said, “and we’re stuck here if we don’t do something.”

“True,” said Christopher. “Let’s go.”

We got up and lugged the dog over to the empty square doorway. The place smelt horrible inside and it was absolutely empty in there. Light came in through enough small windows – just gaps between slabs of slate, really – to show us that the stairs were now indoors. They went zigzagging up one of the walls, and they were simply steps, with nothing to stop a person falling off the outside edge. They were made of slate like all the rest, but they were so old that they sort of drooped outwards towards the empty middle of the place. And the trouble was, this building was as high as ever the wooden tower had been.

I told myself that it was no worse than Stall Crag. Christopher swallowed rather. “One slip,” he said, “one stumble, and we’ll be dog meat for Champ here. But I think I can keep us stuck to them by magic if we stay close together.”

The dog refused to go inside at first. I knew it was the smell combined with the sight of those stairs, but Christopher explained cheerfully that poor Champ lived out of doors and was probably forbidden to go inside a house. It could have been true. Anyway, he towed the resisting beast to the bottom of the stairs. There Champ braced all four gigantic paws and would not budge. We tried climbing up a short way and calling beguilingly, but he simply went out into the middle of the dark, smelly floor and began to howl again.

Christopher said, “This is hopeless!” and he went down and tied his neckcloth into Champ’s collar for a lead. He hauled. The neckcloth stretched. Champ stopped howling, but he shook all over and still refused to move.

“Do you think he knows something we don’t?” I suggested. I was resting a hand on a step two stairs up and it was slimy. It would be nice to have an excuse not to climb the things.

“He knows exactly what we know. He’s a coward, that’s all,” Christopher said. “Champ, I refuse to put a compulsion spell on a mere dog. Come on. It’s getting late. Supper, Champ. Supper!”

That did the trick. Champ came up the steps in a rush. I was barged into the slate wall, first by the dog and then by Christopher as Christopher was towed upwards, and I had to scramble like a maniac to keep up with them. We took the first three zigzags at a mad run, but after that, when the hollow building was like a deep, smelly well around us, Champ seemed to realise he might need to save his breath, and he slowed down.

It was worse like that. I climbed sliding my back up the rough wall and hoped hard that Christopher’s spell was a good strong one. Some of the steps higher up were broken and slanted outwards more than ever. To take my mind off it, I asked, “Why did you say my bad Fate was codswallop – my karma?” My voice made a dead sort of booming around the place.

Christopher’s voice made more dead echoes as he called downwards, “I don’t think you have any. You have a new, fresh feel to me. Either this is your very first life or your earlier ones were blameless.”

I knew he was wrong. He was making me seem so childish. “How do you mean?” I boomed up at him.

And he echoed back, “Like Lady Felice. I don’t think she’s been around more than once at the most. Compare her with the Countess, Grant. There’s an old soul if ever I met one!”

“You mean she has bad karma?” I boomed.

“Not particularly,” he echoed down. “Not anything very bad from before, I think, though mind you she’s laying up a bit this time round, if you ask me.”

This made me sure he was just guessing. “You don’t know really, do you?” I shouted back. “Other people can see my Fate! They told me!”

“Like who?” Christopher called down.

“Like my Uncle Alfred and the Mayor of Stallchester,” I yelled upwards. “So!”

By now it was getting hard to hear. The place was filling with echoes and Champ, up ahead, was rasping out breaths as if Christopher’s neckcloth was throttling him, but I am fairly sure Christopher said, “If you ask me, Grant, they were probably smelling their own armpits.”

“Will you stop calling me Grant in that superior way!” I shouted at him.

I don’t think he heard. Champ at that moment dived away sideways. I thought he was simply diving up the next zigzag, but it turned out to be the top of the stairs. Christopher, with his arm stretched out to hang on to the neckcloth, was jerked after Champ and out of sight. I thought for a moment that they had disappeared, but when I sidled up after them, I found a square slate passage leading through the top of the wall. There was light at the end of the passage, lighting up every slimy slab, and Champ was towing Christopher along it at full gallop. I sprinted after them, expecting to come out on the roof.

But we all burst out on to big floorboards in a place full of the warm smell of wood, where I saw that the light had been coming from a row of dusty windows looking out to the mountains above Stallchester. The ceiling was flaking plaster and all around us was the feel, like an engine in the distance, of other people living and moving around here.

“Grant,” Christopher whispered, “I believe we’re back.” He looked ghastly. It wasn’t just that he was white and shaking and his stockings were laddered. He was covered with dark slime and cobwebs too. And if the back of his waistcoat was anything to go by, mine was ruined. I could see my breeches were. And my stockings. Again.

“Let’s go and check,” I said.

We tiptoed back along the passage we seemed to have just come in by. It was wooden now. At the end of it we came to the streak of paint on the wall. Then we had only to peep round the corner to see we were certainly in Stallery. Andrew and Gregor were just coming out of the clothes store, adjusting crisp new neckcloths. People were hurrying and calling things and coming in and out of doors in the distance. We could tell that everyone was getting smartened up for supper and Dinner after that.

We dodged back into the part with the windows.

“We’d better let them go downstairs before we get more clothes,” I said.

“I approve of the first part of your plan,” Christopher said, “but you’re forgetting Champ. We have to account for him too. We must go down as we are. Then, if anyone sees us, we can say that we found him stuck in the drains. And if nobody does see us, we let him out of the nearest door for Smedley to find and then sneak up here for more clothes.”

“Drains right up here?” I said.

“There have to be,” he said firmly. “Where does our bath water go – and so forth?”

I supposed it might work. It seemed to me a recipe for trouble. “Can’t you magic our clothes?”

“Not for a whole evening,” Christopher said. “It would be an illusion and illusions wear thin after an hour or so.”

I sighed. “Anyway, thanks for keeping us on those stairs.”

Just for a second, Christopher had such a blank, dumbfounded look that I knew he had forgotten to work any magic on those steps. I was glad I had not known while I was on them. “Think nothing of it, Grant,” he said airily.

Then we hung about for a boring ten minutes. Champ did not help. He whined and drooled and made little rushes towards the passage. Either he knew he was not meant to be here or he could smell all the suppers cooking.

At length the bell went for maids’ supper, making us all jump. Champ turned his jump into another surge down the passage. This time we followed him. There were still people about in the distance and we could hear the lift working. That meant we had to go down the stairs, trying not to let Champ tow us down them too fast.

He took us in an eager rush down on to the matting of the nursery floor. Here he broke into a gallop, whatever we said. Perhaps he thought the matting was grass and he was allowed to run on it. Anyway, he ran us straight past the top of the next stairs and dragged us on down the passage, to where the door was open on that long, empty nursery.

As we hurtled up to it, a young man in evening dress came out of the nursery. The dim light there showed his fair hair and the lost, rather drooping way he looked. But the look changed as he saw us. His head went back and he went ramrod straight, with his face all firmed into haughty surprise.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” he said.

It was quite obvious to all three of us that he was Count Robert.

Christopher must have used some magic then. He and the dog both stopped as if they had run into a wall. I overran a little and stopped myself on a doorknob on the other side of the corridor. The Count turned himself so that his frosty look could hit me as well as Christopher.

I had no idea what to do, but Champ had no doubt. His tail thumped. He crawled forward, quivering with shame, to the full stretch of Christopher’s neckcloth, and tried to get into licking distance of the Count’s beautiful, shiny shoes. Christopher just stood and looked at the Count as if he were summing him up. This was where being an amateur was a big help. Christopher would not have minded being sacked on the spot. He had more or less found Millie now and he could make himself invisible and come back to finish the job – but I still had my evil Fate to think of. I stared at the Count too, hoping and hoping to know he was the one causing my Fate, but all I could see was a young fellow in expensive evening dress who had every right to stare at us in outrage.

“Come on,” Count Robert said. “Explain. Why are you dragging poor old Champ around up here?”

“It’s more that he was dragging us,” Christopher said. “From the look of him, I think he caught your scent, my lord.”

“Yes, he did, didn’t he?” Count Robert agreed, looking thoughtfully down at Champ, who wagged and grovelled more than ever. “But that doesn’t explain why he’s here or why all of you are covered with black gunk.” At this, Christopher drew breath, presumably to begin on the drains story. “No,” said the Count. “Not you. I can see you’d just tell me something glib and untrue.” Christopher looked hurt and indignant and the Count turned to me. “You tell me.”

It seemed to me that I’d nothing more to lose. I knew I was about to be sacked and sent home in disgrace. Wondering what Uncle Alfred would say, and then thinking dismally that I would be dead by next year anyway, so what did Uncle Alfred matter either, I said, “We went past the painted line in the attics. Champ was at the bottom of a wooden tower there, but we couldn’t have got him back up it, so we waited until it changed into an empty slate building.”

Christopher muttered, “Believe it or not, I was going to tell you that too.” The Count gave him a disbelieving sideways look. “Honestly,” Christopher said. “I thought you’d probably guessed.”

“More or less,” said Count Robert. His frosty look tipped up at the edges and became a slight grin. “You were unlucky to get those two towers straight off. Hugo and I didn’t run into them for years. Well, now what shall we do about it? I don’t think any of you should be seen as you are. Amos is prowling round the next floor in a rage…”

“About us?” I said anxiously.

“No, no – about something I told him,” the Count said. “But he’d certainly better not see you or Champ as you are. He’d fire you both on the spot if he knew where you’d been, so…” He considered for a second. “Give me the dog. Hugo and I can get him cleaned up in my rooms – luckily, Champ is well known to be a friend of mine – and then I can take him down to the stables. You two go and get fresh clothes, or you’ll be in real trouble.”

We both said, with real gratitude, “Thank you, my lord.”

Count Robert smiled. There was a sad sort of look to him, smiling. “No problem. Here, Champ!”

Christopher let go of the neckcloth. It was an ex-neckcloth really, more of a dirty string by this time. Champ immediately sprang to his hind legs and attempted to put both his paws on the shoulders of the Count’s evening jacket. The Count caught the paws just in time, in a way that showed he had had a lot of practice, and said, “No, down, Champ! I love you too, but there’s a time and a place for everything.” He put Champ down on all four feet and took firm hold of the ex-neckcloth. “Off you go,” he said to us.

We scurried away to the attic stairs. I looked round as we went and saw Count Robert using one of his gleaming shoes to urge Champ into the Family lift. “Get on, stupid!” he was saying. “It’s quite safe. Or do you want to meet Amos in a rage?”

Christopher was very excited as we sped back to the clothes store. “My guess was right, Grant! You heard the Count, did you? There are lots more places beside those two frightful towers. Millie must be in one. Will you come with me to look for her tomorrow on our morning off?”

Well, of course I would. I could hardly wait to explore. Next time, I thought, I would take my camera with me too, and collect some real evidence of other worlds, or dimensions, or whatever they were.

Before that, of course, we had to get into new clothes, hide the gunky ones in an empty room and rush off to our supper. Then we had to stand by the dining room wall with those stupid cloths over our arms while Mr Amos, Andrew and two other footmen served the Family their Dinner. Neither of us dared do a thing wrong. Mr Amos was still in a rage. Whatever Count Robert had said to him, fury about it was bottled into Mr Amos so that he was like a huge pear-shaped balloon full of seething gas. Andrew and the other two tiptoed around him. Christopher and I tried our best to look like part of the wall.

The Countess was in a rage too, but she wasn’t doing nearly such a good job of bottling it as Mr Amos was. I suppose she had no need to bother. Nothing was right for her that evening. There was a thumbprint on her wineglass, she said, a speck of dirt on her fork, she said, and iron mould on her napkin. Then she found a smear of pink polish on the salt cellar. Each time, one of us was sent whizzing away to fetch a new one of whatever was wrong, and then, while she waited for it, she turned to Count Robert, opened her eyes wide and did her “Why?” at him. When I came back with a shiny new salt cellar, she was saying, “Really, darling, you must grow out of this habit of only pleasing yourself.”

Count Robert stood up to it better than I would have done. He smiled and said, “But you asked me to arrange it, Mother.”

“But not now, Robert. Not when we’ve got company coming to celebrate your engagement!” the Countess said. “Amos, this plate is dirty. See this speck on the edge here?”

Mr Amos leant over her shoulder and inspected the plate. “I believe that is part of the pattern, my lady.” He shot Count Robert a mean look while he said it. “I’ll have it replaced at once,” he said, and snapped his fingers at Christopher.

By the time Christopher had whizzed back with a fresh plate, Count Robert was really getting it in the neck. “And you haven’t even considered where this hireling of yours will eat,” the Countess said. “When I think of all the trouble I went to, to teach you that a gentleman should consider others, I quite despair of you, Robert! You behave like a greedy child. Greedy and selfish. Me, me, me! Your character is so weak. Why can’t you learn to be strong, just for once? Why?”

Christopher rolled his eyes at me as he took up his place by the wall again. And it really was amazing the way the Countess went on at Count Robert – who after all owned Stallery – as if he was about six years old, just as if there were no footmen standing like wooden statues, or us listening to her, or Mr Amos by the serving table looking meanly glad that the Count was in trouble. I was quite embarrassed. But I was also pretty curious to know what Count Robert had done to annoy the Countess and Mr Amos so.

By this time, the Countess was on about the way the weaknesses of Count Robert’s character had shown up when he was a toddler, and kept reminding him of bad things he had done when he was two and four and ten years old. The Count just sat there, bearing it. Lady Felice kept her head down over her plate. But the Countess noticed her too.

“I’m glad to see that your silly little eating disorder is over, dear.”

“It was nothing, Mother,” Lady Felice said.

So then the Countess decided that the fish was overcooked and told Mr Amos to send it back to the kitchen. Mr Amos snapped his fingers at me to take it. “And be sure,” he said, handing me the loaded tray, “to tell Chef exactly what her ladyship found wrong with it.”

I missed the next bit while I went away through the hall and the swing door, down the steps to the undercroft and on to the kitchens; but Christopher said it was just more of the same. In the kitchen, the chef put his hands on his hips and stared at me humorously. All the footmen called him the Great Dictator, but I thought he was quite a nice man. “And what’s supposed to be wrong with it?” he asked me.

“She says it’s overcooked,” I said. “She’s in a really bad mood.”

“One of those evenings, eh?” the chef said. “Slimming spells disagreed with her and she’s saving herself for the roast, is she? All right, get back and tell her that yours truly grovels all over the carpet and you needn’t mention that this fish was perfect.”

Back I went, all the way to the dining room, where I managed to go in almost exactly as I was supposed to, slipping in sideways with nearly no noise. Mr Amos was waiting there for me. Behind his bulky pear-shape the room felt like a thunderstorm. “And what has Chef to say for himself?” he demanded, low and urgent.

“He grovels on the carpet and I’m not to say the fish was perfect,” I said.

That was stupid of me. I think it was Christopher’s influence that made me say it. Mr Amos had the perfect opportunity to get rid of some of his bad temper on me. He gave me a glare from his stone-coloured eyes that made my knees go weak. Luckily for me, Lady Felice chose that moment to jump up from her chair and fling her big white napkin on to the table. Two wine glasses went over.

“Mother!” she said, almost in a scream. “Will you stop going on at Robert as if he’d committed a crime! All he’s done is hire the librarian you asked him to hire! So leave him alone, will you!”

The Countess turned to Lady Felice. Her eyes went wide and her lips began shaping the “Wh…” of one of her dreadful Whys.

“And if you say ‘Why, dear?’ once more,” Lady Felice screamed, “I shall pick up this candlestick and brain you with it!” She gave out a sound like a laugh and a sob mixed and rushed for the door. Mr Amos and I both had to dodge. Lady Felice stormed past us and crashed out of the room like a warm, scented hurricane and slammed the door behind her.

In the rest of the room she left a feverish, dead silence. Andrew and the other footmen sprang into action, silently and on tiptoe, mopping up spilt wine, taking away the fallen glasses and whipping away all the knives, forks and spoons still there at Lady Felice’s place. The other two at the table simply sat there, while – just as if nothing had happened – Mr Amos walked round to speak gently in the Countess’s ear.

“Chef sends his profound apologies, my lady, and says it will not occur again. Allow me to bring on the next course, my lady.”

The Countess, in a frozen way, nodded. Because the footmen were still busy wiping up wine, Mr Amos beckoned Christopher and me over to the food lift and passed us tureens and sauce boats to carry over to the table. I was not sure where to put things, but Christopher whirled everything across and dumped them any old where, and then bowed and patted the table mats with both hands, as if he knew just what he was doing. Mr Amos glowered at him over his shoulder as he picked up a massive platter piled with meat.

The Countess, still looking frozen, said to Count Robert, “Felice is so tiresome these days. I think it’s high time she was married. I shall invite that nice Mr Seuly to Dinner with our other guests. I feel sure I can induce Felice to marry him.”

Count Robert said, “Are you making some kind of a joke, Mother?”

“Not at all. I never joke, dear,” said the Countess. “Mr Seuly is Mayor of Stallchester, after all. He is wealthy, and widowed, and he has a very respectable position in life – and it’s not important who Felice marries, the way it is for you, dear. You are engaged to a title, but—”

“Give me patience!” Count Robert suddenly shouted out. He leapt to his feet, whacked his napkin on the table and – like Lady Felice – made for the door with great strides, just as Mr Amos arrived with the platter of meat.

I never could work out how Mr Amos missed Count Robert. The Count did not seem to see either Mr Amos or the meat. He just charged out through the door and banged it shut behind him. Mr Amos somehow managed to raise the vast platter above both their heads and then to twirl himself away. The Countess sat, still frozen, watching Mr Amos waltzing round with the great steaming dish.

When at last he stopped twirling, she said, “I don’t understand, Amos. What is making my children so very tiresome lately?”

‘I believe it is their extreme youth, my lady,” Mr Amos replied, laying the platter reverently down on the table. “They are mere adolescents, after all.”

Christopher’s eyes swivelled to mine in amazement. As he said to me afterwards, you called people adolescents at his age and mine. “Lady Felice has come of age,” he said, “even if they did have to cancel the party for it. And Count Robert must be in his twenties! Grant, do you think that the Countess is mad and Mr Amos humours her?”

He said that much later though. At that time we had to stand there while the Countess obstinately ploughed through three more courses, half a bottle of wine and dessert, and looked angrier with every mouthful. Mr Amos’s bottled rage grew so huge that even Christopher hardly dared move. The footmen all pretended they were invisible and so did I.

And it did not stop there. The Countess laid down her napkin and went to the Grand Saloon, telling Mr Amos that the Improvers could bring her coffee there. This meant that Christopher and I had to race upstairs after her with trays of comfits and chocolates, while Mr Amos followed us with coffee, herding us like a rather heavy sheepdog.

The Grand Saloon was vast. It stretched from the front to the back of the house and was full of things to fall over, like golden footstools and small shiny tables. The Countess sat in the middle of it, where Christopher and I had to keep dribbling coffee for her into a cup so small that it reminded me of the crucibles Uncle Alfred did his experiments in. I drizzled in coffee and Christopher dripped in cream, while Mr Amos stood by the distant door, rocking on his small shiny feet and waiting for us to make a mistake so that he could vent some of his rage on us. We knew that the very least that could happen was that Mr Amos would cancel our morning off, so we were very, very careful. We tiptoed and poured for what seemed a century, until the Countess said, “Amos, I wish to be alone now.” By that time my arms were shaking and my calves ached with tiptoeing, but we hadn’t made any mistakes so Mr Amos had to let us go.

“Whew!” I said when we were safely out of hearing. “What has Count Robert done to make them both so angry? Did you find out?”

“Well,” Christopher said, scratching at his head so that his sleek hair separated into curls, “you probably know as much as I do, Grant. But while you were away with the fish, the Countess did say something about hiring penniless students to catalogue the library here. Though why that should make anyone angry I haven’t a clue. After all, she’s supposed to have asked Count Robert to hire someone. The Librarian at Chrestomanci Castle says you have to have a proper list of the books you’ve got or you can’t find any of them. And I can’t see why that should make Mr Amos angry as well.”

I felt suddenly full of an idea. “Could it be,” I said, “that they have secret books in there? You know, books about pulling the possibilities, or explaining how to work the changes at the top of the house?”

Christopher stood still in the passage outside our room. “Now that is a notion!” he said. “Grant, I think we ought to take a look at this library when we’re free tomorrow morning.”

Naturally, that next morning we went to look at the top of the mansion first. Christopher was seriously anxious about this girl Millie, and I was really excited about what we’d see there next. We went to the attics as soon as we were free.

On the way, I dodged into our room and got my camera. I wanted to have proof that we weren’t imagining the strange towers. As it was a dull sort of day, with fog down in Stallchester Valley and only Stall Crag sticking up out of it, I made sure the flash was working.

Christopher jumped at the sudden brightness. “Don’t count your chickens, Grant,” he said while we crept along to the streak of paint on the wall. “You may not have anything to photograph.”

This made me sure that my bad karma would cancel out any chance of the mansion changing. But we were in luck. Just as we passed the stripe of paint, there was the most almighty sideways wrench. Christopher and I were thrown against one another and sort of staggered round in a half circle, with me hanging on to Christopher’s neckcloth for balance. And as soon as we were facing the other way, we realised that the passage we had just come through was now a tall pointed archway made of stone. Beyond it was somewhere so shadowy and stony that I was glad I’d remembered my camera flash.

“Looks like that tower we hauled the dog up again,” Christopher said as we went through the archway.

It was nothing like the slate tower. The archway opened into a stone-floored gallery held up on one side by fancy stone pillars, each pillar a different shape. The roof was a basketwork of stone vaulting and the other wall was blank stone. The vaulting and the carvings on the pillars must have been picked out in gold paint once, but a lot of the gold had flaked off, leaving the patterns hard to see. From the space beyond the pillars there came vast, soft, shuffling echoes. It felt huge out there, but not as if people were living in it. It was more like the time my school had gone round Stallchester Cathedral, when the guide had taken us up into the passages in the dome.

Christopher said, “Millie’s here! Quite near!” and set off at a run to the other end of the gallery, where the gloomy light came from.

I raced after him with my camera bouncing on my chest. The gallery opened into a big curving stone staircase, leading down into the grey light. Christopher went plunging down the stairs and I followed. And as soon as we came round the first curve, we realised we were on an enormous spiral – a double spiral, we realised after the next curve. There was another staircase opposite ours, sort of wrapped round the one we were on. When we leaned over the high stone side, we could see the two staircases spiralling down and down. When we looked up, we saw the inside of a tower overhead. It had fancy windows in it, but they were so dirty that it was no wonder the place was in such gloom.

Footsteps rang, like an echo of ours. We looked over at the other staircase and there was a girl there, hurrying down to get to the same level as us. “Christopher!” she shouted. “What are you doing here?”

It was hard to see what the girl was like because of the gloom and because the staircases were so big and so wide apart, but her voice sounded nice. She seemed to have a rounded face and straight brownish hair, but that was all I could see. I swung up my camera and photographed her as she dashed down opposite us, which made her stop and try to cover her eyes.

“Meet us at the bottom!” Christopher shouted at her. His voice boomed around in a hundred echoes. “I’ll tell you then.”

In fact, he tried to tell her as we dashed on down and round, the two of us circling round Millie and Millie circling round us, while the space rang with our hurrying feet and the voices of the other two. They kept shouting at one another as they went, trying to explain what they were doing here, but I don’t think either of them could hear properly because of the echoes. I could tell they were truly glad to see one another. I took several more photos as we went. It was such an amazing place.

I think Millie shouted something like, “I’m so pleased you came! I’ve been having such a frustrating time! This house keeps changing and I can’t seem to get out!”

“Me too!” Christopher bellowed back. “I had to take a job as a lackey. What do you get to eat?”

“There’s always food downstairs,” Millie yelled in reply, “but I don’t know where it comes from.”

“How did you get in?” Christopher roared. The echoes got worse and worse. Neither of us could hear what Millie shouted in answer to this. Christopher roared again, “You know the main changes happen at the top of the house, do you?” I think Millie yelled back that of course she did, she wasn’t a fool, but she never seemed to get anywhere. And she seemed to try and describe her frustrations as we all hammered down several more spirals. Then Christopher began bellowing, across her description, that one of the places was bound to be the perfect place for the two of them to live in secret – but we shot down the last curve at this point and there was ceiling over the staircase. The echoes quite suddenly cut off. And we found ourselves in a plain stone hallway. Christopher stopped shouting and turned to me. “Quick, Grant. Where’s the other stairway?”

We both ran along the hall to the place we thought the other spiral ought to come out, but there was only wall there. It had little windows in it that looked out on to woodland, so it was obviously wrong.

“We got turned around,” Christopher panted, and he dashed back the other way so fast that I could barely keep up.

There was a door at the end of the hall that way. Christopher thundered through it and on into the middle of a largish room, where he stopped dead beside a pile of sofas and armchairs with a sheet draped on top of them. Beyond that, big windows showed a garden that was mostly weeds. Rain was falling on the weeds. There were more windows, showing more weeds, in the left-hand wall, a harp or something in one corner, and nothing but a big empty fireplace in the right-hand wall.

“Not here,” Christopher said in a defeated way. I only had time to take one photo of the harp-thing before he was off again, back the way we had come, to the hall and the staircase again. “I think I saw a door,” his voice said in the distance. “Ah, yes.”

The door was behind the stairs. Christopher had opened it and rushed through before I caught up, but when I did, he was moving slowly and cautiously down the dark stone passage beyond. There was a door on each side and a door at the end. The door on the right was open and we could see it was a sort of big cloakroom with a row of dusty boots on the floor, several grimy coats on pegs and a cobwebby window that looked out on to wet woodland. Christopher made angry noises and barged me aside to open the door across the passage. The room there was a dining room, as neglected and dusty as the cloakroom, and its window looked on to the weedy garden.

Christopher expressed his feelings by slamming that door before I could take a photo. He plunged on to the door at the end of the passage.

There were kitchens beyond that, two quite cosy-looking places with rocking chairs and big scrubbed tables and some kind of a stove in the further one. There was a scullery beyond that which opened into a rainy yard with red tumbledown sheds all round it. By this time, even Christopher was having to admit that this house we were in was much, much smaller than the place with the double staircase.

“I don’t understand it!” he said, standing miserably beside the table in the second kitchen. “I didn’t feel any change. Did you?” He looked almost as if he might cry.

I wished he would keep his voice down. There were definite signs that someone had been in this kitchen recently. Warmth was coming from the stove and there was a bag of knitting on one of the rocking chairs. I could see crumbs on the table around a magazine of some kind, as if someone had been reading while they had breakfast. “Maybe the change happened while you were shouting at Millie,” I said, very quietly, to give Christopher a hint.

He looked round at the stove, the knitting and the table. “This must be where Millie comes to eat,” he said. “Grant, you stay here in case she turns up. I’m going back up the stairs to see if she’s there anywhere.”

“Does Millie do much knitting?” I asked, but he had dashed off again by then and he didn’t hear me. I sighed and sat in the chair by the table. It was clear to me, if not to Christopher, that the two staircases split apart somehow on the last spiral. Millie must have ended up somewhere as different from this house as the wooden tower was from Stallery. And I didn’t like this house. People lived here. They had left furniture, coats and knitting about, and they might come back at any moment and accuse me of trespassing. I had no idea what I would say if they did. Ask if they’d seen Millie, perhaps?

In order not to feel too nervous, I pulled the magazine across and looked through it while I waited for Christopher. It was quite, quite strange, so strange that it fascinated me – so very strange, in fact, that I was not surprised to find it was dated 1399, February issue. It could not have been anything like that old. It smelt new. It was printed on thick, furry paper in weird, washed-out blues and reds, in the kind of round, plain letters you get in books in infant school. Gossip Weekly, it was called. There were no photographs or advertisements in it at all and it was full of quite long articles that had titles like ‘From Rags to Riches’ or ‘Singer’s Lost Honeymoon’ or ‘Scandal in Bank of Asia’. Each article was illustrated by a drawing. Blue and red drawings. I had never seen such bad drawings in my life. They were so bad that most of them looked like caricatures, though I could see that the artist had put in lots of red and blue shadings, trying to make the drawings look like real people. And here was the really queer thing – about half of them looked like people I knew. The lady at the top of ‘Rags to Riches’ could almost have been Daisy Bolger and one of the drawings for the Bank Scandal looked exactly like Uncle Alfred. But it must have been bad drawing. When I turned to the big picture beside an article called ‘Royal Occasion’ the picture looked like our king, except the caption called him ‘Prince of Alpenholm’. One of the courtiers bowing to him might almost have been Mr Hugo.

Now come on, I thought. This is, actually and truly, a magazine from another world. For all I know, in this world someone just like Hugo really is a royal courtier. How amazing. And I started reading about the Royal Occasion. I had got most of the way down one washed-out blue column without understanding what the occasion was, or why it happened, when I heard heavy, slow footsteps coming in through the scullery.

They were the footsteps of a person you definitely did not want finding you sitting in their house. They stamped. There was angry puffing with them, and bad-tempered grunting. I dropped the magazine and tried to slide quietly away into the further kitchen. Unfortunately, my foot knocked the chair as I slid out of it and it scraped on the floor quite loudly. The person in the scullery put on speed and arrived in the doorway while I was still in the middle of the room. This is my evil Fate at work again, I thought.

She was a heavily built woman with a blunt, mauve face. I could see at a glance she was the kind of woman who knows you’re up to no good, even if you aren’t, and calls the police. She had a rubber sheet over her head against the rain and she was wearing big rubber boots and carrying a can of milk. And she was a witch. I knew this the moment she put the milk can down and said, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” I could feel the witchcraft buzzing off her as she spoke.

“A mistake,” I said. “Just going.”

I backed away towards the door as fast as I could. She came trudging towards me in her big boots with her hands hanging, ready to grab. “They always find me,” she said. “They send spies and they find me wherever I hide.”

She was saying this to make me think she was mad and harmless. I knew she was because I could feel her casting a spell. It buzzed in my ears under her words until I could hardly think or see. So I did the only thing I could manage. I raised my camera and took her picture. She was nearer than I realised. The flash went off right in her face. She screamed, and her rubber sheet fell off as she put her hands up to hide her face. I heard her fall over the chair I had kicked as I pelted away through the other kitchen.

I ran like mad, through the corridor and out into the stone hall. I raced up those stone stairs, round and up, round and up, with the other set of stairs spinning dizzily past as I climbed, until my breath was almost gone, but I still hardly slowed up when I met Christopher coming down.

“Run!” I shrieked at him. “There’s a witch in that kitchen! Run!”

He said, “We can do better than that, Grant,” and seized hold of my elbow.

Before I could shake him off, we were somehow at the top of the stairs in a strong buzzing of magic. This buzzing was somehow wider and cleaner-feeling than the buzzing the witch had made. As Christopher pulled me by my elbow along the gallery, I remembered that he was supposed to be a nine-lifed enchanter, which made me feel a little safer, but I didn’t really feel safe until we came out through the archway into the smell of warm wood and plaster in the attics of Stallery.

“Phew…!” I began.

Christopher said, “In our room first, Grant,” and turned me round. The archway had gone then and we were able to scurry along the attic passages to our room, where we both sat heavily on our beds, me panting fit to burst and Christopher all limp, white and dejected. “Tell,” he said, with his head hanging. So I told him about the witch.

Christopher’s head came up and he said, “Hm. I wonder if she’s the reason Millie can’t get out of there. Millie’s an enchantress, you know. She ought to be able to leave. Instead, she seems to keep being shunted on to another probability. There was no sign of her on those stairs, and it could well be the witch doing it. We’d better go back and deal with the witch then.”

He got up. I got up too, although my legs were weak and shaking, and followed him out beyond the stripe of paint again. Christopher groaned when we got there. There was no archway – nothing but the ordinary attics we had just come through. We sat on the floorboards for quite some time, waiting, but there was no change.

“You panicked me, Grant,” Christopher said. “We should have gone down, not up. Oh, damn it! We were so close!”

“It was probably my bad karma,” I said.

“Oh, don’t talk nonsense!” he said. “Let’s go and look for secret books in the library. I’m sick of sitting here. One of the maids is going to see us breaking the rules if we’re not careful.”

He was probably right. There seemed to be a lot of female noise coming from the other end of the attics suddenly, as if all the maids had arrived there at once. The empty space by the windows echoed to shrieks and giggles and I could feel the floorboards creaking under me, the way they always did when everyone came up to bed. When we got up and went through our side of the attics, we found there was a fair amount of noise there too. There were doors being slammed, running feet and men laughing. A big deep man’s voice was singing inside the nearest bathroom. It was so out of tune that I giggled.

Christopher raised his eyebrows at me. “Gregor?” he asked.

“Mr Amos?” I said.

Christopher laughed then. It seemed to do him good. He was a lot more cheerful as we went down in the lift. He nodded at my camera, still hanging round my neck. “Are you intending to photograph the books, Grant?”

“No,” I said. “I’d need a different lens. I just forgot I’d got it. Why are we getting off at Floor Two? The library’s on the ground floor.”

“Ah. Admire my forethought and cunning, Grant,” Christopher said. “That library has a sort of minstrel’s gallery and the door to it is on this floor. We can sneak in and make sure the Countess isn’t in there consulting a cookery book or something.”

“Ha, ha,” I said. I was glad Christopher had cheered up, but there were times when his jokes really annoyed me.

But there was a woman in the library. When we softly opened the low wooden door and crept through on to a high balcony lined with shelves of books, we could see her through the carved wooden bars at the front of it. We both ducked down and knelt on the carpet, but she could have seen us through the bars, even so. She was sitting at the top of a long wooden stepladder, reaching for a book on a high shelf. The one good thing was that she wasn’t the Countess, because she had dark hair, but that didn’t alter the fact that she only needed to turn her head to see us there.

I grabbed for the door, ready to crawl out through it at once. “Never fear, Grant,” Christopher said. I judged from the buzzing feeling I was getting that he had put a spell of invisibility around us on the spot. Then I gathered it was probably a spell of silence too, because Christopher first sat down comfortably with his arms round his knees and then spoke in his normal voice. “We wait, Grant. Again. Honestly, Grant, I’ve never done so much waiting around as I have in this place.”

“But she could be here for ages,” I whispered. The stepladder was so close to the balcony that I couldn’t help whispering. “I think she must be the penniless student who’s supposed to catalogue the books.”

Christopher looked critically through the bars of the balcony. “She doesn’t look penniless to me,” he said.

I had to admit that she didn’t. She was wearing a dark blue dress that was both flowing around her and clinging to her in an expensive way, and her feet, hooked on a rung of the ladder, were in soft red boots, really nice ones. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders in the same sort of costly hairstyle that Lady Felice had.

“She’s a friend of the Family come to borrow a book,” Christopher said.

While he was saying it, the lady took down a book and opened it. She looked at the title page, nodded and made a note on the pad on her knee. Then she leafed through the book, shut it, looked at the binding and shook her head. She slipped some kind of card into the front and turned to put the book carefully into a box that was fastened to the back of the ladder.

She was my sister Anthea.

I stood up. I couldn’t help it. I nearly called out. I would have done if Christopher had not grabbed me and pulled me down. “Someone else coming!” he said.

Christopher was right. The big main door of the library opened and Count Robert came in. He shut the door behind him and stood smiling up at my sister. “Hallo, love,” he said. “Are you on the job already? It was only a pretext, you know.”

And my sister Anthea cried out, “Robert!” and came galloping down the ladder. She flung herself into Count Robert’s arms and the two of them began hugging and kissing one another frantically.

At this point Christopher got cramp in one leg. I think it was embarrassment really. Or it could have been running up and down those stairs. But it was real cramp. He whipped himself into a ball and rolled about clutching his left calf, with his face in a wide grin of agony. I was forced to park my camera on the lowest bookshelf and lean over him, pounding and kneading at his striped silk leg. I could feel the muscles under the stocking in a hard ball, and you know how much that hurts. It used to happen to me after skiing sometimes. I tried to make Christopher take hold of his own foot and pull his toes upwards, but he didn’t seem to understand that this was the way to cure cramp. He just rolled and clutched.

I kept glancing through the bars in case my sister or Count Robert had noticed us, but they didn’t seem to. They were now leaning backwards with their arms round one another’s waists, laughing and saying, “Darling!” rather often.

“Ooh – ow! Ooh – ow!” Christopher went.

“Pull your toes!” I kept whispering.

“Ooh – ow!” he said.

“Then use some magic, you fool!” I said.

I heard the main door open again and looked. This time it was Hugo who came in. He stood and smiled at Anthea too, all over his puggy face. “Good to see you, Anthea,” he said, and then something that sounded like “Join the club”. But Christopher’s knee hit my chin just then and I went back to kneading. When I next looked, the three of them had gone to the leather chairs by the window, where Count Robert and Anthea each sat on the arm of the same chair, while Hugo leant on the back of it. Hugo was talking quickly and urgently and Count Robert and Anthea looked up at him and nodded anxiously at what he said.

I wanted to know what Hugo was saying. I took hold of Christopher’s ear, put my mouth to it and more or less shouted, “Use some magic, I said!”

That seemed to get through. There was some frantic buzzing. Then Christopher abruptly straightened out and lay with his face in the carpet, panting. “Oh, horrible!” he gasped. “And deaf in one ear too.”

I looked down into the library again in time to see Count Robert kiss Anthea and get up. Hugo kissed her too, a friendly kiss on one cheek, and they both turned to go. But the library door opened yet again. This time it was Mr Amos who came in, looking anything but friendly. Christopher and I both froze.

“Has this young person got everything she requires?” Mr Amos asked, with truly dreadful politeness.

“Well, not really,” my sister said, cool as a cucumber. “I was just explaining that I need a computer if I’m to do this job properly.”

Hugo said, with an anxious look, “I told you, miss. Atmospheric conditions here in Stallery mean that your programming is liable to random changes.”

Count Robert turned to Mr Amos with his chin up, all lordly. “Have we a computer, Amos?”

It was a splendid cover-up from all three. Mr Amos gave Count Robert a small bow and said, “I believe so, my lord. I will see to it personally.” Then he went away, very slow and stately.

Count Robert and Hugo grinned at one another and then at Anthea. Hugo gave her a wink over his shoulder as he followed Count Robert out of the library.

“Phew!” said my sister. Then she swung round in a swirl of expensive skirt and came marching towards the balcony, looking really angry. “Come down out of there,” she said, “whoever you are!”

I hardly needed to look at Christopher’s face, squashed against the carpet, to know that he had forgotten all about his spells of invisibility and silence from the moment he got cramp. I stood up. “Hallo, Anthea,” I said.

She caught hold of the stepladder and stared. She was really astonished. “Conrad!” she said. “What on earth are you doing here dressed like a lackey?”

“I am a lackey,” I said.

“But that’s ridiculous!” she said. “You ought to be at school.”

“Uncle Alfred said I could go to Stall High as soon as I had expiated my evil Fate,” I explained.

“What evil Fate? What are you talking about? Come down here this instant and tell me properly,” Anthea said. I had to smile. Anthea pointed over and over at the carpet in front of her as she gave her commands. It was so exactly what she used to do in the bookshop when she was annoyed with me that I felt almost happy as I climbed down the steep stair from the balcony. “And your friend,” Anthea commanded, jabbing her finger towards another place on the carpet.

Christopher got up, quite meekly, and limped down the stair after me. Anthea looked from him to me.

“This is Christopher,” I said. “He’s a nine-lifed enchanter and he’s here on false pretences like I am.”

“Really?” Anthea said suspiciously. “Well, I felt someone doing magic, so I suppose that could be true. Now stand there, Conrad Tesdinic, and tell me all about this nonsense that Uncle Alfred’s been putting into your head.”

“I knew it was nonsense,” Christopher said. “But I thought his name was Grant. Are you his sister? You look quite alike.”

“Yes. Shut up, you!” Anthea said. “Conrad?”

Christopher, to my surprise, did what Anthea said. He stood there attentively, looking slightly amused, while I told her what Uncle Alfred had said about my bad karma and how it was going to kill me unless I dealt with the person who was causing it. Anthea sighed and looked at the ceiling. So I told her that Mayor Seuly and the rest of the Magicians’ Circle had seen my evil Fate clinging to me too, and how they had given me the way to know the person responsible before Uncle Alfred sent me to Stallery. Anthea frowned heavily at this, and Christopher looked even more amused. But he seemed quite surprised when Anthea said, “Oh dear! I feel really guilty! I shouldn’t have left you. And Mother? Didn’t she even try to tell you Uncle Alfred was talking nonsense?”

“She’s always busy writing,” I said uncomfortably. “We never talked about my Fate. And it isn’t nonsense, is it? Mayor Seuly thought it was true.”

“Everyone knows he’s a crook. He just wants his chance to make money the way Stallery does,” my sister said. “I think he lied to you, Conrad, in order to find out how to pull the probabilities himself.” She looked from me to Christopher. “Have you discovered yet who’s doing it, and how?”

“No,” we both said, and Christopher asked, “So it doesn’t happen naturally then?”

“Some of it does,” Anthea said. “But someone is helping it along somehow. This is something Robert and I would really like to know about. It’s one reason why I’m here. And what were you supposed to do, Conrad, when you found out who was doing it?”

“Summon a Walker,” I said.

Christopher and Anthea both looked utterly puzzled.

“They gave me this wine cork,” I said, fetching it out. I was feeling awful by then, stupid and taken-in and, well, sort of pointless. If I didn’t have a Fate, then what was I?

I felt worse when Christopher said, “I did try to tell him he hasn’t any bad karma.”

“But he might have an awful lot if he does what Mayor Seuly and Uncle Alfred seem to want!” Anthea said. She gave me a worried, puzzled look. It made me feel worse than ever. “Conrad, for goodness sake, what stopped Mother paying for you to go on at school?”

“She hasn’t any money,” I said. “Uncle Alfred owns the bookshop and…”

“But he doesn’t!” Anthea exclaimed. “Oh, I should have written and told you! I admit that puzzled me too, so I went and looked up Father’s Will in the Record Office as soon as I got to Ludwich, and he’d left the entire shop to Mother.”

“What? All of it?” I said.

“All of it,” she said. “And to you and me after that. He left Uncle Alfred some money, but that’s all. Come to think of it, I do remember Father saying to me when he was dying that he hoped Alfred would take his money and go, because he didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him…” She tailed off in an uncertain way. “Now why didn’t I remember that before?”

She was looking vaguely at Christopher as she said this. He must have thought she was asking him, because he said, “If he’s a magician, this uncle, he could cast a selective forget spell quite easily. They’re not difficult.”

“He must have cast one,” Anthea said, and went on decisively, “Conrad, I’m going to ring Mother up – I was going to anyway and this makes it urgent – and see what she says.”

There was a telephone in the corner of the library. Anthea marched across to it and dialled the number of our bookshop. I hurried after her and tried to listen in. Anthea turned the receiver so that I could distantly hear a bored woman’s voice say, “Grant and Tesdinic. How can I help?”

Anthea mouthed at me, asking Who? I said, “Daisy. New assistant after you left.”

Anthea nodded. “Could I speak to Franconia Grant, please?” she said.

Daisy said, “Who?”

“The famous feminist writer,” Anthea said. “I believe she married a Mr Tesdinic, but we feminists don’t mention that.”

“Ooh!” Daisy went in the distance. “I get you. Just a minute and I’ll see if she’s free.”

There were muffled footsteps running about and voices calling murkily. I heard Uncle Alfred, faint and far off, saying, “Not me – I don’t have anything to do with those harpies!”

Finally, there was a clatter and my mother’s voice said, “Franconia Grant speaking.” From then on it was much easier to hear. Christopher was leaning over us wanting to hear too.

Anthea said cheerfully, “Hallo, Mother. This is Anthea.”

My mother said, “Good heavens!” which was not surprising. It had been four years. “I thought you’d left here for good,” she added.

“I have really,” Anthea said. “But I thought you ought to know when your daughter gets married.”

“I don’t believe it,” my mother said. “No daughter of mine would ever even think of enslaving herself to a male ethic—”

“Well, I am,” Anthea said. “He’s wonderful. I knew you’d disapprove, but I had to tell you. And how’s Conrad?” There was a blank pause on the other end of the line. “My little brother,” Anthea said. “Remember?”

“Oh,” said my mother. “Oh, yes. But he’s not here now. He insisted on leaving school as soon as he was old enough and he took a job right outside this district. I…”

“Did Uncle Alfred tell you that?” Anthea interrupted.

“No, of course not,” my mother said. “You know as well as I do that Alfred is a compulsive liar. He told me Conrad was staying on at school. I even signed the form, and then Conrad went off without a word, just like you did. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve two children like you.” Then, while Anthea was trying to say that it was not true about me at least, my mother suddenly snapped, “Who is this wonderful man who has lured you into female bondage, Anthea?”

“If you mean marriage, Mother,” Anthea said, “it’s Count Robert of Stallery.”

At this, my mother uttered something that sounded like “That impostor!” though it was more of a strange, wailing yelp, and dropped the phone. We heard it clatter on to a hard surface. There was some kind of distant commotion then, until someone firmly put the phone back and cut us off.

As Anthea hung the whirring receiver back on its rest, I had the hardest job in the world not to burst into tears. Tears pushed and welled at my eyes and I had to stand rigid and stare at the shelves of books in front of me. They bulged and swam. I felt utterly let down and betrayed. Everyone had lied to me. By now, I didn’t even know what the truth was.

Anthea put her arm round me, hard. Christopher said, “I know how you feel, Grant. Something a bit like this happened to me too once.”

Anthea asked him, “Is our mother under a spell, do you think?”

“She just doesn’t care!” I managed to say.

“No, Grant, I think it’s a bit more complicated than that,” Christopher said. “Think of it as a mixture of lies and very small spells done by someone who knows her very well and who knows she’ll go where she’s pushed if she’s pushed often enough and gently enough. It sounds as if much the same was done to you, Grant. What’s this Walker you were supposed to summon? Why don’t you try summoning it now, and see what happens?”

The same dry-mouthed fear seized me that I had felt in the Magicians’ Circle. I was horrified. “No, no!” I cried out. “I’m not supposed to do that until I know!”

“Know what?” my sister asked.

“The – the person who’s – the one who I should have killed in my last life,” I stammered.

I felt Anthea and Christopher look at one another across my head. “Fear spell,” Christopher said. “And you don’t know, do you, Grant? Then it’s much safer to summon the thing now, before there’s any real danger.”

“Yes, do that. Do it at once, Conrad,” Anthea said. “I want to know what he’s making you do. And you,” she said to Christopher, “if you really are an enchanter, you can stand guard on the door in case that butler comes back with a computer.”

Christopher’s face was such a mixture of surprise and outrage that I nearly laughed. “If I am an enchanter!” he said. “If! I’ve a good mind to turn you into a hippopotamus and see how Count Robert likes you then!” But he went and stood with his shoulders against the door all the same, glowering at my sister. “Summon away, Grant,” he said. “Do what the hippopotamus tells you.

Anthea still had her arm round me. “I won’t let it hurt you,” she said, just as if I were six years old again and she was putting a plaster on my knee.

I leaned on her as I took the wine-blotched cork out of my waistcoat pocket. I still felt miserably ashamed of myself for believing all those lies, but the dry-mouthed fear seemed to have gone. And the cork was so ordinary. It had Illary Wines 1893 stamped on it and it smelt faintly sour. I began to feel silly. I even wondered if the Magicians’ Circle had been playing a joke on me. But I pointed the cork at the end wall of the library and said, “I hereby summon a Walker. Come to me, and give me what I need. I think it’s a hoax,” I added to Anthea.

“No, it isn’t,” Anthea said, sounding sharp and stern. Her arm went tight round my shoulders.

There was a sudden feeling of vast open distances. It was a very odd feeling, because the library was still all around us, close and warm and filled with the quiet, mildewy scent of books, but the distances were there too. I could smell them. They brought a sharp, icy smell like the winds over frozen plains. Then I realised I could see the distance too. Beyond the books, further off than the edge of any world, there was a huge curving horizon, faintly lit by an icy sunrise, and winds that I couldn’t feel blew off it. I knew those were the winds of eternity. And real fear gripped me, nothing to do with any fear spell.

Then I realised that I could see the Walker coming. Across the huge horizon, lit from behind by the strange hidden sunlight, a dark figure came walking. He or she walked in an odd, hurried, careful way, bending a little over the small thing it carried in both hands, as if whatever it was might spill or break if it was jogged in any way. So it walked smoothly but quickly in little steps, and the winds blew its hair and its clothes out sideways – except that the hair and the clothes never moved at all. On it came, and on. And all the time, I could see the shelves of books in front of me, in ordinary daylight, and yet I could see the distance and the Walker just as clearly.

Anthea’s arm was clamped around me. I could feel her trembling. Christopher’s shoulders thumped against the library door as he tried to back away and I heard him mutter, “Gracious heavens!” We all knew there was nothing we could do to stop the Walker coming.

It came nearer and nearer with its strange, pattering strides, and the winds blew its clothes and its hair and they still never moved, and it still bent over the small thing in its hands. When it was only yards away, and the room filled with gusts of arctic scent that we could smell but not feel, I could have sworn the Walker was taller than the library ceiling – and that was two storeys high. But when it came right up to me, it was only a foot or so taller than Anthea. It was properly inside the room then and I was numbed with the cold that I couldn’t feel, only smell. It sort of bent over me. I saw a sweep of dark hair blown unmovingly away from a white face and long dark eyes. The eyes looked at me intently as it held out one hand to me. I had never seen any eyes so intent. I knew as I looked back that this was because the Walker was bound to get whatever it gave me exactly right. Exactly right. But I had to give it the cork first in exchange.

I put the cork into the hand it was holding out. That hand closed around the cork and the other hand came out and passed me something else, something cold as ice and about twice as long and a good deal heavier. My face felt stiff and numb, but I managed to say, “Thanks,” in a mumbling sort of way. The intent white face in front of me nodded in reply, once.

Then the Walker walked on past Anthea and me.

All our breaths, Christopher’s, Anthea’s and mine, came out in a “Whoosh!” of pure relief. As soon as the Walker had gone past me, it had gone. The icy smell and the horizon of eternity had gone too, and the library was once more an enclosed, warm room.

Christopher said, in a voice that was trying not to sound too awed, “Was it a man or a woman? I couldn’t tell at all.”

“I’m not sure that applies to a being like that,” Anthea said. “What did it give you, Conrad?”

I looked at the thing in my hand. It felt quite warm now, or only cold the way metal always feels. I looked at it and puzzled. It seemed to be a small corkscrew – very like the one I used to struggle with when the Magicians’ Circle wanted a bottle of port opened – one of those with an open handle that you hook two fingers through, with little curls at either side for two more fingers. But there was a key sticking out from the top of the handle. If I held the thing one way up it was a corkscrew, but if I turned it round the corkscrew became the handle of the key.

I held the thing up to Anthea and twiddled it at Christopher. “Look. I’m supposed to need this. What do you think I do with it?”

Anthea leaned over me to look. “It could be the key to a wine cellar.”

Christopher slapped the side of his velvet breeches. “That’s it! The hippopotamus has got it in one! I knew it was important to get into that wine cellar! Come on, Grant. Let’s go and do it before we have to go back on duty.”

He rushed off to the gallery staircase. I followed him slowly, feeling upset and puzzled and let down. I had expected the Walker to give me something much more dangerous than a key or a corkscrew.

“Get a move on, Conrad,” Anthea said. “That butler…”

So I hurried a bit, and lucky that I did. I had only just climbed into the gallery when the door below opened again. Mr Amos came importantly in, followed by a line of footmen carrying a viewscreen, a tower, a keyboard, drums of flex, armloads of disks, a stack of power cells, a printer, boxes of paper and a load of other accessories.

“I shall supervise the setting up of the equipment personally, miss,” Mr Amos said to Anthea.

Christopher dragged me through the door at the back of the balcony. “Good,” he said, when we were safely out in the corridor. “If he’s busy in there, he can’t possibly be in the wine cellar. Let’s go, Grant!”

We galloped downstairs, and down again to the undercroft. “Funny,” I said to Christopher as we tiptoed towards the stairs that led to the cellar. “I didn’t know any of those footmen with Mr Amos. Did you?”

“Hush,” he said. “Utmost caution, Grant.”

Actually, there was no one about and it was quite safe. Christopher was just being dramatic because it was all so easy. There were nice broad steps curving down to the cellar and a light switch beside the door at the bottom so that I could see to put the corkscrew-key into the keyhole. The keyhole looked far too big, but the key went in, fitted exactly, and unlocked the door when I turned it. The door swung open easily and silently, and lights came on in the cellar as it opened.

“Lock it after you,” Christopher said.

“No,” I said. “We may need to get out quickly.”

Christopher shrugged. I pushed the door shut and we walked on into a set of low, cold rooms lined with wine racks and barrels. There were dusty bottles and shiny new bottles, rank on rank of them, little kegs labelled cognac in foreign letters, bigger barrels labelled jerez that Christopher said meant sherry, and whole walls of champagne.

“One could get awfully drunk here,” Christopher remarked, surveying a dusty wall of bottles marked Nuits d’été 1848. “I have quite a mind to drown my sorrows, Grant. I saw Millie. I talked to her. Do you know how to open champagne?”

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. I pulled him away and led him on, and on, past thousands of bottles, until we came to another locked door in a wall at the end.

“Ah,” said Christopher. “This may be it – whatever it is. Does your gadget work on this door too?”

I tried the corkscrew-key again, and it worked. This door creaked a bit as it opened, as if it were not used very much, and we saw why as soon as we were inside. Lights came on and showed another, newer-looking staircase that led to a trap door in the ceiling. Christopher looked up at the shiny new metal of the trap door very thoughtfully.

“I do believe,” he said, “that we may be right under the butler’s pantry here, Grant. In which case, the important stuff is just round this corner.”

The walls here were of quite new brick. It looked as if an extra room had been built, off at an angle to the main cellars. We edged round the corner to it. There we both stopped, quite bewildered. This room was lined – as closely as the wine cellars were lined with bottles – with lighted, flickering viewscreens. From floor to ceiling they were stacked in rows. Most were covered with green columns of figures that ran and jumped and changed all the time; but about a third of them, mostly on the end wall, were full of strange swirlings or coloured jagged shapes. The jumping and flickering made me seasick. Worse than that was the peculiar buzzing of magic in the room, electric and alien and feeling like metal bars vibrating. I had to look at the floor for a while, until I got used to it. But Christopher walked up and down the room watching the screens with interest.

“Do you understand this, Grant?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“I almost do,” Christopher said, “but I’m going to need your help to be sure.” He pointed to a screen of jumping numbers. “For instance, what does Coe-Smith mean?”

“Stock market,” I said. “I think.”

“Right!” Christopher said triumphantly. He pointed to another screen, where blue columns of numbers raced so fast that I couldn’t read them. “What’s Buda-Parich?”

“That’s a city,” I said, “over in the middle of the continent. It’s where all the big banks are.”

“And here’s Ludwich,” Christopher said, at another screen. “I know that one. More big banks and a stock exchange in Ludwich, am I right? But there can’t be a city called Metal Futures, can there? This lot of screens must be stocks and shares then. Yes, Chemics, Heavy Munitions, Carbon Products—it sort of makes sense. And…” He paused at a clump of screens where green and red lines zigzagged, bent and climbed. “These lot have to be graphs. But the really puzzling ones,” he went on, moving round to the end wall, “are these. They just seem to be patterns. What do you think this one is? The one that’s all jagged moving shapes.”

“Fractals?” I suggested.

“I wouldn’t know a fractal if it jumped up and bit me,” Christopher said. “Which it almost looks as if it could do. Oh, look. These must be the controls.”

Under the possible fractals there was a sloping metal console. Rows of buttons took up the top half of it. The bottom part held a very used-looking keyboard. The lights from the screens painted winding coloured patterns on Christopher’s attentive face as he leant both hands on the edge of the console and stared at the rows of buttons.

“Interesting,” he said. “When controls are used a lot, you can see which the important ones are. This keyboard-thingy is quite filthy with finger grease. Used every day, I should think. And this one on its own at the top has been used almost as much.” His thin white finger pointed to a square button up on the right above all the others. The metal around this button was worn shiny and ribby, with a ring of grease around the shiny part. The label under it was all but worn away. As far as I could see, it said SHIFT.

“That must be…” I began, but Christopher turned to me, looking almost unholy in the coloured lights.

“What do you think?” he said. “Dare we, Grant? Dare we?”

“No, we daren’t,” I said.

Christopher simply grinned and pressed the used, square button firmly down.

We felt the shift like an earthquake down there. Our feet seemed to jerk sideways under us. All the screens blinked and began to flicker away madly in new configurations. Above the console, the strange patterns wove and writhed into quite different shapes and colours.

“Now you’ve done it!” I said. “Let’s get out.”

Christopher made a face, but he nodded and began to tiptoe away from the console. I had just turned to follow him, when a voice spoke. It was a woman’s voice, very cultivated and rather deep. “Amos!” it said, and stopped both of us in our tracks. We stood, bent and on tiptoe, craning to look up at the round grid in the ceiling where the voice had come from. “Amos,” it said. “Do pay attention. I don’t think we can afford to make changes at the moment. We may have trouble this end. I told you about the ratty little fellow we caught sneaking around the office. Security locked him up, but he must have been some kind of magic user because he got away in the night. Amos! Are you listening?”

Christopher and I waited for no more. I clutched his arm and he grabbed my shoulder and we bundled one another round the corner and out through the door. I could scarcely turn the corkscrew-key in the lock for giggling. Christopher giggled too. It was the silly way you behave when you feel you have almost been caught.

As we sped back past the ranks of wine, Christopher said in a giggling whimper, “That was never the Countess, was it?”

“No,” I said. “Mrs Amos?”

“A bit lah-di-dah for that,” Christopher said.

We were still laughing when we came to the outer door and I locked that after us, and we didn’t really get a grip on ourselves until we came to the lobby of the undercroft and I tried to fit the corkscrew-key into my waistcoat pocket. It wouldn’t go. It was more than twice as long as the wine cork and it stuck out whatever I did.

Christopher said, “Here. Let me.” He whipped a piece of string out of thin air, threaded it through the corkscrew handle, knotted the ends together and hung the lot round my neck. “Under your shirt with it, Grant,” he said.

While I was stuffing it out of sight under my cravat, Miss Semple came into the lobby, full speed ahead, striped skirts flying. “I’ve been looking all over for you two!” she said. “You’re eating in the Middle Hall from now on, with the new Staff…” She stopped, went back a step and put her hands up in horror. She was the sort of person who did that. “My goodness!” she said. “Go and get into clean uniforms at once! You’ve got two minutes. You’ll be late for lunch, but it will serve you right.”

We fled up the undercroft steps and dodged into the Staff toilets at the top. Christopher sagged against the nearest wall inside. “This has been quite the busiest morning of my life,” he said. “Damned if I go all the way up to the attics again!”

This was my feeling too. But when I looked over at the mirror, I saw why Miss Semple had been so horrified. We were both filthy. Christopher was covered in dust and carpet fluff. One of his stockings had come down and his neckcloth looked like a grey string again. I had cobwebs all over me and my hair stuck up. “Then work some magic,” I said.

Christopher sighed and flapped one hand. “There.” And we were once more smart flunkeys in crisp, clean shirts and neat neckcloths. “Drained,” he said. “I’m exhausted, Grant. You’ve forced me to do permanent magic on us. At this rate, I shall be old before my time.”

I could see he was all right really, but he kept saying this sort of thing all the way back into the undercroft. I didn’t mind. Neither of us wanted to talk about the Walker, or about the screens in the cellar and the voice from the ceiling. It was all too big to face just then.

We opened the door of the Middle Hall to find it almost entirely full of strangers, maids in yellow caps and footmen in waistcoats and striped stockings, who all seemed more than usually good-looking. Andrew, Gregor and the other footmen we knew were sitting in a row down at the end of the long, low room, staring in a stunned way. One of the best-looking maids was standing on the table among the glasses and cutlery. As we came in, she held one hand up dramatically and said, “Oh when, oh when comes azure night and brings my love to me?”

And a fellow in a dark suit who was kneeling on the floor between the chairs said, “E’en before the twilight streaks the west with rose, I come, I come to thee!”

“Most rash,” replied the young lady on the table.

“EH?” said Christopher.

Everyone jumped. Before I could believe it possible, every new maid and every strange footman was sitting demurely in a chair at the table, except for the man in the suit, who was standing up and pulling his coat sleeves down. And the girl – she really was very pretty – was still standing on the table.

“You rats!” she cried out. “You might have helped me down. Now I’m the one in trouble!”

“It’s all right,” I said. “We’re only the Improvers.”

Everyone relaxed. The man in the suit bowed to us. He was almost ridiculously tall and thin, with a sideways sort of hitch to his face. “Prendergast,” he said. “Temporary Under-Butler. Temporary name too,” he added, hitching his face to the other side. “My stage name is Boris Vestov. Perhaps you have heard of me? No,” he said sadly, seeing Christopher looking as blank as I felt. “I mostly play in the provinces anyway.”

“We’re all actors here, darlings,” another good-looking maid explained.

“How? Why?” Christopher said. “I mean…”

“Because Mr Amos is an extremely practical person,” said the girl on the table. She knelt down and smiled at Christopher. She was blonde and, face to face, quite stunning. Christopher looked as stunned as Andrew and the rest. Her name, I found out, was Fay Marley and she was a rising star. I’d seen her last year on a friend’s television, when I came to think about it.

I nudged Christopher. “It’s true,” I said. “She was in Autopsy last year.”

“So?” he said. “What has it got to do with Mr Amos being practical?”

Fay Marley scrambled off the table and explained. They all explained. Nobody could have been friendlier than those actors. They laughed and joked and called us “darling”, and they went on explaining while the ordinary maids came in with lunch. The ordinary maids were full of giggles and goggles. They kept whispering to me or to Christopher, “She’s that young nurse in Autopsy!” and “He’s the one who jumps through the window in the chocolate ad!” and “He was the lost elf in Chick-Chack!” Mr Prendergast/Vestov had more or less to push them out of the room.

Anyway, it seemed that practical Mr Amos had, a long time ago, made an agreement with the Actors’ Union that when Stallery needed more maids or footmen in a hurry, he would hire any actors who were not at that moment working.

“Being out of work is something actors are quite often,” a glamorous footman said.

“But the Union makes strict conditions,” a dark maid, who was quite as glamorous, told us. “If we get stage or film work while we’re here, we’re allowed to leave Stallery at once.”

“And we take our meals together,” a beautiful parlourmaid said. “We’re only allowed to work so many hours a day here. You’ll be doing much longer hours than us, darlings.”

“But,” said Christopher, “what makes you think you can do the work at all?”

They all laughed. “There’s not a soul among us,” Mr Prendergast told him, “who has not, at one time in his or her career, walked on to a stage and said ‘Dinner is served, madam’ or carried on a tray of coloured water and wineglasses. We know the part quite well.”

“And we’ve a day or so to rehearse anyway,” said another glamorous footman. He was Francis and fair haired like Fay. “I’m told that the guests don’t arrive until the ladies get back from Ludwich.”

They told us that they had all arrived by coach earlier that morning. “Along with that lovely wench who’s checking the library,” a pretty parlourmaid added. “I’d give my eye teeth for a complexion like that girl has.”

We got told this bit more than once. This was because there were at least two more of those sideways changes during lunch. At each one, the conversation did a sort of jolt and went back a few stages. Christopher began to look just a little guilty. He rolled his eyes at me each time, hoping I would not say anything. By the end of lunch, he was quite quiet and anxious.

Then the bell rang. Christopher and I had to go back on duty, along with Andrew, Gregor and two of the actor footmen. And Mr Amos was waiting at the top of the stairs, stubbing his cigar out in the usual place. I was sure he knew that we had been in his secret cellar. I almost ran away. Christopher went white. But it was the new footmen Mr Amos wanted. He sent us on to the dining room ahead.

Whatever Mr Amos said to the actors, it made them very nervous. They were awful. They got in one another’s way all the time. Francis broke two plates and Manfred fell over a chair. Andrew and Gregor were very scornful. And when the Countess came in, followed by Lady Felice and Count Robert, it was to the long clattering of knives pouring out of a drawer that Francis had pulled open too far. The Countess stopped and stared. She was all beautifully got up for her trip to Ludwich.

“I do beg pardon, my lady,” Mr Amos said. “The new Staff, you know.”

“Is that what it was?” Count Robert said. “I thought it was a war.”

The Countess gave him a disgusted look and stalked to her chair, while Francis, redder in the face than I thought a person could be, crawled about scooping knives out of her path. Mr Amos nodded me and Christopher off to help him. I was crawling about on the floor, and Manfred had just managed to slop soup over half the knives, when there came the most majestic clanging from somewhere, like someone tolling for a funeral in a cathedral.

“The front door,” Mr Amos said. “I beg you will excuse me, my ladies, my lord. Mr Prendergast is not yet practised in his duties.” He seized Andrew’s arm and whispered, “Put those two idiots against the wall until I get back.” Then he fairly whirled out of the room.

Gregor gave me a sharp kick – typically – and made me serve the soup instead of Manfred. By the time I had given all three of them a bowlful, and the Countess, spoon poised at her lips, was saying, “Now Felice, dear, you and I are going to have a very serious talk about Mr Seuly on the way to Ludwich,” Mr Amos came hurrying back. He looked almost flustered. As he shut the door in his soundless way, I could hear the voice of Mr Prendergast outside it.

“I tell you I’m quite capable of opening a door, you pear-shaped freak!”

Everyone pretended not to hear.

Mr Amos came and bent over Count Robert. “My lord,” he said, “there is a King’s Courier in the hall asking to speak with you.”

The Countess’s head snapped up. Her spoon clanged back into the soup. “What’s this? Asking to speak to Robert? What nonsense!” She sprang up. Count Robert got up too. “Sit down,” she said to him. “There must be some mistake. I’m in charge here. I’ll speak to this Courier.”

She pushed Count Robert aside and marched to the door. Manfred tried to make up for his mistakes by rushing to open it for her, but he slipped in the spilt soup and sat down with a thump. Christopher whisked the door open instead and the Countess sailed out.

Count Robert simply shrugged and, while Francis and Christopher were hauling Manfred up, he walked around the struggle and went to talk to Lady Felice. She was sitting with her head hanging, looking really miserable. I didn’t hear most of what Count Robert said to her, but when Gregor shoved me over to wipe up the soup from the floor, the Count was saying, “Bear up. Remember she can’t force you to marry anyone. You can say ‘no’ at the altar, you know.”

Lady Felice looked up at him ruefully. “I wouldn’t bet on that,” she said. “Mother’s a genius at getting her own way.”

“I’ll fix something,” Count Robert said.

The Countess came back then, very crisp and angry. “Well!” she said. “Such impertinence! I soon sent that man packing.”

“What did he want, my lady?” Mr Amos asked.

“There’s a Royal Commissioner coming to the district,” the Countess said. “They want me to entertain him as a guest at Stallery, of all things! I told the man it was out of the question and sent him away.”

Mr Amos went a little white around his pear-shaped jowls. “But, my lady,” he said, “this must have been a request from the King himself.”

“I know,” the Countess said as Andrew pulled her chair out for her and she sat down. “But the King has no right to interfere with my plans.”

Mr Amos gulped. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said. “It is mandatory for peers of the realm to extend hospitality to envoys of the King when required. We would not wish to annoy His Majesty.”

“Amos,” said the Countess, “this person wishes to plant himself here, in my mansion, at the precise time when we have a house full of eminent guests. Lady Mary, the Count’s fiancée, will be here with all her family and the people I have chosen to meet her. All the guest rooms will be full. The valets and ladies’ maids will be filling both upper floors. This Commissioner has a staff of ten and twenty security men. Where, pray, am I supposed to put them? In the stables? No. I told them to go to a hotel in Stallchester.”

“My lady, I think that was most unwise,” Mr Amos said.

The Countess looked stonily at her soup and then across to the chops Andrew was fetching from the food lift. “I don’t want this,” she said. She slapped her napkin down and stood up again. “Come, Felice,” she said. “We’ll set off for Ludwich now. I’m not going to stay here and have my authority questioned all the time. Amos, tell them to bring the cars round to the door in five minutes.”

She and Lady Felice hurried away in a brisk clacking of heels. Suddenly, everyone else was rushing about as well. Andrew raced off with a message to the garage, Christopher was sent to fetch the two ladies’ maids, who were going to Ludwich too, and the other footmen rushed away to bring down the luggage. Mr Amos, looking thunderously upset, turned to Count Robert. “Will you wish to continue lunch now, my lord, or wait until the ladies have departed?”

Count Robert was leaning on the back of a chair and I swear he was trying not to laugh. “I think you should go and lie down, Amos,” he said. “Forget lunch. No one’s hungry.” Then, before Mr Amos could send me off to the kitchens, he turned and beckoned me over to him. “You,” he said, “go to the library and tell the young lady waiting there to meet me in the stable yard in ten minutes.”

As I left, he was giving Mr Amos a sweet, blank smile.

I found Anthea in the library sitting rather crossly in front of a computer screen. “They were quite right about the disturbances here,” she said to me. “Everything keeps hopping sideways and when I get it back it says something quite different.”

When I gave her Count Robert’s message, she jumped up, beaming. “Oh good! How do I find the stables in this barracks?”

“I’ll take you there,” I said.

We went the long way round, talking the whole way. I told her about the screens Christopher and I had found in the cellar. “And I think your computer went wrong when Christopher pressed the shift button,” I said. “It felt magic to me.”

“Very probably,” she said. “So it’s that pear-shaped butler messing up the world’s finance, is it? Thanks. Robert will be very glad to know that.”

“How did you meet Count Robert?” I asked.

My sister smiled. “At University, of course. And Hugo too – though he was always popping off to visit Felice in her finishing school. I met Robert at a magic class on my first day and we’ve been together ever since.”

“But,” I said, “the Countess says Count Robert has to marry a Lady Mary Something who’s coming here soon.”

Anthea smiled, happily and confidently. “We’ll see about that. You’ll find Robert’s just as strong-minded as his awful mother. So am I.”

I thought about this. “And what do I do, Anthea? I can’t stay on here as an Improver, and Uncle Alfred won’t let me go to school, because I didn’t use the cork like he said – anyway, he’ll know I know he’s told me all those lies now. What do I do?”

“It’s all right, Conrad,” Anthea said. “Just hang on. Hang on and wait. Robert will make everything all right. I promise.”

Then we got to the stable yard where Count Robert was waiting in his red sports car. My sister rushed over to it, waving happily. I went away. She had an awful lot of faith in him. I didn’t. I couldn’t see someone like Count Robert ever sorting out this mess. Anthea’s faith was just love really.

The next couple of days were strange and hectic. I hardly saw Anthea, except when she was dashing away from the Upper Hall after breakfast. She was out with Count Robert in his sports car almost all the time. I don’t think she went into that library at all. And Count Robert didn’t come in to meals, so I never set eyes on him either. Hugo now, he was another matter. I seemed to run into him everywhere, wandering about, missing Lady Felice.

Because none of the Family were using the dining room, Mr Amos used it to train the actor-footmen in. He had me and Christopher and Andrew and Gregor in there all that first afternoon, sitting at the table pretending to be Family, so that Manfred and the rest could pour us water into wineglasses and hand us plates of dried fruit and cold custard. To do those actors justice, they learnt quickly. By the evening, Francis only dropped one spoon the last time he served me with custard, and Manfred was the only one still falling over things. But we none of us really fancied our supper.

Christopher summed up my feelings too when he poked his potato cheese with a fork and said, “You know, Grant, I find it hard not to see this as custard.” The food turned into liver and cauliflower as he poked it. Christopher shot me a glum, guilty look. Since Mr Amos had been giving the actors a hard time in the dining room all afternoon, we knew he had not been down to the cellar to push the shift button. So this change was Christopher’s fault. I quite expected him to start persuading me to go to the cellar again with him that night. I was determined to say no. One time in that place was enough. The thought of its alien, technological magics made my flesh creep – and the thought of Mr Amos discovering us there was even worse.

But all Christopher said was, “Things must be changing like this where Millie is too. She could be lost for good if I don’t get to her soon.” And I half woke up in the night to hear him tiptoeing away to the forbidden part of the attics.

I don’t know how long he stayed out there, but he was very hard to wake in the morning. “No luck?” I asked as we collected the shoes.

Christopher shook his head. “I don’t understand it, Grant. There were no changes at all, and I sat there for hours.”

Here the lift opened and we found it crowded with actors acting a scene from Possession. This was the strange thing about actors. They loved acting so much that they did it all the time. They spoke in funny voices and imitated people if they didn’t do scenes from plays. And the lift made a good place to act in, because Mr Amos and Mrs Baldock couldn’t see them at it there. From then on, the lift was always liable to have a scene going on in it, or someone saying, “No, darling, the best way to see the part is like this,” and then doing it. In between, Hugo rode broodingly up and down, looking as if he did not want to be disturbed. Christopher and I got used to taking the stairs instead.

The undercroft was crowded with the regular Staff, up early in hopes of catching one or other of the actors. The maids had all got it badly for the footmen. Francis was most popular and Manfred next, because he looked dark and soulful, but even Mr Prendergast got his share of giggles and fluttered eyelashes and shy requests for his autograph – and he was really odd-looking.

“It’s something about greasepaint, Grant,” Christopher said. “It acts like a love potion. What did I tell you?” he added as we ran into four of the regular footmen, Mr Maxim and the boot boy, who all wanted to know if we had seen Fay Marley that morning. “In the lift,” Christopher told them, “pretending to be possessed by a devil or something.”

Stallery echoed with rehearsals that day, not only actors acting, but with official ones. Mrs Baldock and Miss Semple tore the maids away from the actor-footmen, and the actor-maids out of the lift, and drilled them all in their duties upstairs. Mr Amos took Mr Prendergast and all the footmen to the hall, where he trained them how to receive the guests. Mr Smithers was roped in to pretend to be a guest, and sometimes Christopher was too. Christopher was good at grand entries. I was on the stairs, mostly, learning what to do with the dozens of empty suitcases Mr Amos had found to be luggage for the pretend guests. Mr Amos made me stack them in pairs in the lift and then take each one to the right bedroom. This always took ages. If Hugo was not in the lift, then it was two of the actresses, looking exhausted.

“If I have to make one more bed or lay out one more breakfast tray, I shall drop, darling!”

“Why does Miss Semple insist on counting everything? Does she think I’m a thief, darling?”

And when I arrived in the right bedroom with my empty luggage, Mrs Baldock usually grabbed me and trained me in all the other things I might have to bring to people’s bedrooms. I was made to carry in trays, newspapers, drinks and towels. Mrs Baldock seemed to think she had as much right to me as Mr Amos did. I several times caught myself thinking that this must be my evil Fate at work – in fact, I kept thinking it, and then realising all over again that Uncle Alfred had probably invented it. It gave me a strange, hectic feeling at the back of my mind all day. On top of that, I kept waiting for Mr Amos to discover that Christopher had pressed that shift button.

Luckily, Mr Amos was too busy in the hall just then. I came back to my station on the main stairs to find a full-scale rehearsal just starting.

“Right, go!” Mr Amos shouted. He was standing in the middle of the hall like the director of a film.

The great doorbell solemnly clanged. At this signal, footmen in velvet breeches and striped waistcoats and stockings came rushing from behind the stairs and formed up in two slanting rows on either side of the front door.

“Like a flipping ballet,” Mr Prendergast said, gloomily standing beside me with his arms folded and too much wrist showing beyond the sleeves of his smart, dark coat.

Mr Amos paced solemnly towards the front door. He took hold of the handles. He stopped. He called over his shoulder, “Prendergast! Where are you this time?”

“Coming, coming,” Mr Prendergast called back, walking slowly and importantly down the stairs.

“Hurry it up, can’t you?” Mr Amos boomed up at him. “Do you think you’re the King, or something?”

Mr Prendergast stopped. “Ah, no indeed,” he said. “It’s these stairs, you see. No actor can ever resist a fine flight of stairs. You feel you have to make an entrance.”

Mr Amos, for a second, seemed about to burst. “Just – hurry – up,” he said, slowly, quietly and carefully.

Mr Prendergast went on down the stairs, in a sort of royal loiter, and crossed the hall to stand behind Mr Amos’s left shoulder.

“My right shoulder, you fool!” Mr Amos practically snarled.

Mr Prendergast took two measured steps sideways.

“Now!” said Mr Amos, and threw open the two halves of the door. Francis jumped forward and grabbed one half and Gregor took the other and they each dragged their half wide open. Mr Amos bowed. Mr Prendergast did a much better bow. And Mr Smithers edged apologetically indoors. Christopher followed him, airily strolling, looking every inch an important guest…

But here one of the sideways changes happened and the show broke down. Everyone was suddenly in a different position, milling around, with Mr Amos in the midst of the chaos almost screaming with rage. “No, no, no! Francis, why are you over there? Andrew, it is not your job to fetch luggage in. You take Mr Smithers’ coat.”

Mr Amos really did not seem to see that there had been a change. It began to dawn on me that he might be as insensitive to the shifts as Mr Maxim was. It was an odd thing, because Mr Amos must have been some sort of a magician, and I would have thought he ought to have known when his own magic machinery was working, but I could see that he didn’t. That was a relief! Christopher was looking at Mr Amos consideringly, as if he was thinking the same things as me. Beside him, Mr Smithers stared around anxiously for the right footman to hand his imaginary coat to.

“Start again,” Mr Amos said. “And try this time.”

“I try, I try!” Mr Prendergast said, arriving beside me again. “I am exercising every thew and sinew to persuade that man to give me the sack, but will he?”

“Why?” I said.

“The Union must have been right when they told me that a reasonable-looking Under-Butler was very hard to find at short notice,” Mr Prendergast said dolefully.

“No, I meant why do you want to be sacked?” I said.

Mr Prendergast grabbed each of his elbows in the opposite hand and hitched his face mournfully sideways. “I don’t like the man,” he said. “I don’t like this house. It strikes me as haunted.”

“You mean the changes,” I said.

“No,” said Mr Prendergast. “I mean haunted. As in ghosts.”

And the strange thing was that by lunchtime, everyone was saying that Stallery was haunted. Several agitated people told me that someone – or something – had thrown a whole shelf of books on the library floor. I tried to find Anthea to ask her, but she was out with Count Robert. By teatime, all the maids were saying that things in the bedrooms kept being moved. Some of them had heard strange hammerings and knockings there too. By the end of the day, Mr Prendergast was not the only actor who was talking about leaving.

“It’s just the changes,” Christopher said as we climbed the stairs that night – the lift was full of a courtroom drama just then, with Mr Prendergast as the Judge and a very glamorous dark girl called Polly Varden being accused of murdering Manfred. “Actors are some of the most superstitious people there are.”

“I’m glad Mr Amos doesn’t seem to notice the changes,” I said.

“It is lucky,” Christopher agreed. Here he began looking very anxious and raced ahead to the attics.

He didn’t go into our room at all. I think he spent all night out in the forbidden part of the attics. I woke up to find him already dressed and bending over me urgently. “Grant,” he said, “there were no changes last night either. I think that fat swindler turns his machines off before he goes to bed. I’m going to have to look for Millie by day. Be an absolute cracker and cover up for me, will you?”

“How do you mean?” I asked sleepily.

“By saying I’m ill. Pretend I’m up here covered in green and yellow spots. Please, Grant.” Christopher had been learning from the actors. He went down on one knee and raised his hands to me as if he were praying. “Pretty please, Grant! There’s a witch out there – remember?”

I woke up enough to start thinking. “It won’t work,” I said. “Miss Semple is bound to come up and check on you, and when you’re not there I’ll be in trouble too.”

Christopher went, “Oooh!” desperately.

“No, wait,” I said. “The way to work it is for you to show Mrs Baldock that you’re really not well. Can’t you work some magic to make yourself look ill? Give yourself bubonic plague or something? Then stagger into her room looking like death.”

Christopher stood up. “Oh,” he said. “Thanks, Grant. I wasn’t thinking, was I? It’s easy really. All I have to do is to get hold of some silver and Series Seven will do the rest. But you’ll have to be the one who brings meals and medicines to my sick bed. Will you do that, Grant?”

“All right,” I said.

So, when we took the boots and shoes down, we took them by way of the big main staircase. There was no one about to see us at that hour. This made it all the more puzzling when we found a big red rubber ball, which must have come from the nurseries, bouncing slowly down the stairs in front of us.

“I wonder if there is a ghost after all,” Christopher murmured.

We were too busy with our plan to get hold of something silver to bother much about it. When the ball rolled away across the black marble floor of the hall, we simply dumped our baskets of footgear outside the breakfast room and sneaked in through the door. Christopher went on a rapid search of the sideboard in there. In no time, he selected a very small silver spoon from one of the big cruet sets and stuffed it into his waistcoat pocket. “This’ll do,” he said.

The effect was almost instant. His face went bluish white and, by the time he was back at the door, his legs were staggering. “Perfect,” he said. “Come on.”

We dodged out into the hall again, where, as far as I could see, the red rubber ball had vanished. But I didn’t have any opportunity to look for it because Christopher was now – honestly and completely – too weak to carry his basket. He panted and he wavered and I had to carry one handle of it for him.

“Don’t look so concerned, Grant,” he told me irritably. “It’s only a sort of magical allergy.”

Actually, I was staring anxiously after the vanished rubber ball with shudders creeping up my back, but I didn’t like to say so. I helped Christopher to the undercroft, and to dump the baskets in the boot room, and then to the Middle Hall for breakfast. By the time everyone else arrived there, he was looking like death warmed up.

All the actors exclaimed. Fay Marley took Christopher along to Mrs Baldock herself, and Mrs Baldock believed he was at death’s door like everyone else did. Christopher reappeared in the Middle Hall doorway, blue-pale and staggering between Fay on one side and Mrs Baldock on the other.

“I must have Grant!” he gasped. “Grant can take me upstairs!”

I knew he meant that we had to put the silver spoon back before Mr Amos noticed it was missing. I jumped up at once and draped Christopher’s arm artistically across my shoulders. Christopher collapsed against me, so that I staggered too.

To my surprise, everyone protested. “You’re not his servant!” several actors said. Most of the others added, “Let Fay help you take him!” and Gregor said, “I could probably carry him.”

Mrs Baldock said anxiously, “Are you sure you’re strong enough, Conrad? He’s a big lad. Let someone else try.

“Grant!” Christopher insisted expiringly. “Grant!”

“Not to worry,” I said. “I can get him as far as the lift and we can go up in that.”

They let us go, rather doubtfully. I heaved Christopher along to the lift, which was about as far as I could manage. Christopher was looking so unwell by then that I was quite alarmed. I took the spoon out of his waistcoat pocket and put it in mine, before I opened the lift in case anyone was listening for me to do that. Hugo was in the lift, sitting on the floor with his arms around his knees, staring at nothing. So I shut the lift again. When I turned to Christopher, there was colour back in his face and he was standing on his own – it was as quick as that.

“Keep tottering,” I said, and we pretended to stagger to the lobby.

We met Anthea there, dashing past us from the stairs. “What’s wrong with him?” she wanted to know.

“Muscular dysfunctional debilitation,” Christopher said. “MDD, you know. I’ve had it from the cradle.”

“You look pretty healthy to me,” Anthea said, but she was, luckily, in too much of a hurry to ask any more.

We tottered artificially on, up into the hall and across it to the breakfast room, where Christopher took a swift look around to make sure that nobody was there. “You put it back, Grant,” he said. “I have to get going.” And he went dashing away up the main stairs.

I was a bit annoyed, but I sighed and slipped into the breakfast room.

As soon as I was inside, I was quite positive there was a ghost in there. The room had a heavy, occupied feeling, and the air seemed thicker than it ought to be. It smelt of damp and dust instead of the usual coffee and bread smell. I stood for a moment wondering which was worse, facing a ghost or being accused of stealing the silver. Facing Mr Amos, I thought. Definitely worse. But my back shuddered all over when I finally made myself scuttle over to the sideboard. As quick as I could, I laid the shiny little spoon back where I thought it came from.

There was a thudding sound behind me.

I whirled round to see the big bowl of fruit in the middle of the table in the act of tipping over. The thud had been the orange that tipped out first. It was followed by apples, pears, nectarines and more oranges, which went rolling across the table and off its edges, while the bowl stood on its edge to shake out a floppy bunch of grapes.

“Don’t do that!” I shouted.

The bowl thumped back to its right position. Nothing else happened. I stood there for what must have been five minutes, feeling as if my hair was trying to pull itself up by its roots. Then I made myself scramble to pick up the fruit and put it back.

“I’m only doing this because of what Mr Amos will say,” I said as I crawled after apples. “I’m not helping you. Go and annoy Mr Amos, not me. He’s the one that needs a fright.” I crammed the last handful of apples in anyhow, on top of the grapes, and then I ran. I don’t remember anything on my way to the Middle Hall. I was too scared.

The next thing I remember is being in the Hall and being greeted merrily by the actors. “Come and sit down,” they called. “We saved your breakfast. Do you want my sausage?”

Polly Varden said, “I’m glad you’re not ill too. We enjoy having you here, Conrad.”

“But you’re too humble with Christopher, you know,” Fay Marley said. “Why did it have to be you who hauled him to the attics?”

I couldn’t answer that. All I could think of to say was, “Well, Christopher’s – er – special.”

“No, he’s not, no more than you are,” Francis said.

“Darling, he just thinks of himself as a star,” Fay said. “Don’t get taken in by the posing.”

And Mr Prendergast explained, “A person may have the quality, but he still has to earn his right to be a star, see. What has young Christopher done that makes him so special?”

“It’s – more the way he was born,” I said.

They didn’t like that either. Mr Prendergast said he didn’t hold with aristocracy, and the rest said, in different ways, that it was work that made you a star. Polly made me really embarrassed by saying, “But you don’t put on airs, Conrad. We like you.”

I was quite glad when it was time to go and stand against the wall while Count Robert bolted his breakfast – he seemed to be in as much of a hurry as Anthea. The ghost was still in there. I think it was the ghost that made Manfred drop a steaming, squashy haddock on his feet – but it could have been Manfred on his own, of course.

That morning Mr Amos had us all up on the ballroom floor, first in the grand Banqueting Hall, learning how to lay it out for a formal Dinner, and after that in the Grand Saloon, where he made half of us pretend to serve coffee and drinks to the other half. It did not go well. There was change after change, sideways jerk after sideways jerk, and each change caused someone to make a mistake. There was a golden footstool that turned up in so many places that even Mr Amos noticed. I suppose it was hard to miss after Manfred had booted it across the room six times. Mr Amos thought it was me playing practical jokes.

“No, no, you wrong the lad,” Mr Prendergast said, stepping up between me and Mr Amos. “There is a ghost in this place. You need an exorcist, not a lecture. You need a divine with bell, book and candle. As I have played the part of a bishop many times, I would be happy to stand in the role of cleric and see what I could do.”

Mr Amos gave him an even nastier look than he had been giving me. “There has never,” he said, “been a ghost at Stallery and there never will be.” But he gave up lecturing me.

Despite what Mr Prendergast said, the maids told me that they thought the ghost had been busy in the bedrooms all morning, making loud thumps on the walls and rolling soap about. Mrs Baldock had had to go and lie down. The maids were scared stiff. And they may have been right and it may have been the ghost. The trouble was, it was so difficult to tell, with all the changes. The sideways jerks seemed to be happening twice as often that day.

The maids crowded round and told me all about it when I went to the kitchens at lunchtime to fetch a tray of food for Christopher. I had to push my way through them. I knew that if I didn’t take the food to Christopher quickly, then Fay or Polly would tell me I was being too humble and take the tray up herself. And either she would find Christopher looking perfectly healthy, or he would not be there at all.

Mr Maxim handed me the tray with a wonderful domed silver cover on it and whispered, “You’ll never guess! Mr Avenloch has gone missing! The garden staff don’t know what to do!”

“You mean – like the dog, Champ?” I asked.

“Just like that,” Mr Maxim said. “A real mystery!” He was loving it, I could see.

I rushed off to the lift with the tray before any of the actors could start acting in there. And it was just as well I took it. Christopher was not in our room. There was no sign of him anywhere in the attics. I wondered what to do for a while. Then it occurred to me that the silver dome would make Christopher ill anyway, and so would the silver cutlery Mr Maxim had given him, so I might as well eat the lunch myself. I sat on my bed and ate it all, peacefully.

I was finishing with the trifle when there was a really big sideways jerk. I sat there feeling a little sick, wondering if the trifle had changed into something else on the way down. As long as it wasn’t sardines! I was thinking, when I heard footsteps clattering on bare boards in the distance.

Christopher’s back! was my first, rather guilty thought. I laid the tray on my bed and hurried out to explain that I had eaten his lunch, but he could pretend to get well and go down and eat mine. By the time I reached the bathroom on the corner, I could clearly hear that there were two separate sets of footsteps, one heavy and one lighter. He’s found Millie! I thought. Now we’re going to have problems!

I shot anxiously through into the forbidden middle of the attics.

Mr Avenloch the head gardener was there, along with the new gardener’s boy, Smedley. They were clattering around, both of them looking tired, sweaty and bewildered.

“Now where have we got to?” Mr Avenloch was saying, in an angry sort of moan. “This is different again!”

Smedley saw me. He shook Mr Avenloch’s earthy tweed sleeve. “Sir, sir, here’s Conrad! We must be back in Stallery!” His face was bright red and he was almost crying in his relief. “This is Stallery, isn’t it?” he implored me.

“Yes, of course it is,” I said. “Why? Where have you been?” I had a fair idea of course.

“Half the morning outside a ruined castle,” Mr Avenloch said disgustedly. “With a lake to it, all weeds. Ought to have been drained and replanted years ago, but I suppose there was no one there to do it. Can you show us the way down from here, boy? I was only ever in the undercroft before now.”

“Certainly,” I said, in my best flunkey manner. “This way.” I took them along towards the lift, collecting the tray on the way. They thumped along after me in their great crusty boots.

“It wasn’t only a castle,” Smedley said. “It was never the same castle anyway. It kept turning different. Then it was a huge place made of glass…”

“All cracked and dirty,” said Mr Avenloch. “Such neglect I never saw.”

“And after that there were three palaces with white marble everywhere,” Smedley chattered on. I knew how he felt. He had been having the sort of experience you just have to talk about. “And then there was this great enormous brick mansion, and when we went inside it kept changing all the time. Stairs in all directions. Old furniture, ballrooms…”

“Didn’t you see any people at all?” I asked, hoping to get news of Christopher.

“Only the one,” Mr Avenloch said repressively, “and she was in the distance all the time.” I could see he thought Smedley was talking too much.

I thought nervously of the witch. “What, like an old woman in rubber boots?” I asked.

“She seemed like a young girl to me,” Mr Avenloch replied, “and ran like a hare when we called out to her.”

“That was what brought us up here,” Smedley explained. “She ran away upstairs in the mansion – well, it was more like a cathedral by then – and we chased up after her, wanting to know what was happening and how to get out of there…”

We were at the lift by then. Its door slid aside to show Mr Prendergast pretending to be Mr Amos. I hadn’t realised that Mr Prendergast was such a good actor. He was tall and thin and Mr Amos was short and wide, but he had Mr Amos’s way of holding his head back and slowly waving one hand so exactly that I almost saw him as pear-shaped. Mr Avenloch and Smedley both gaped at him.

“Lunch is served,” Mr Prendergast said. “I require you to be furniture against the wall. Furniture with legs of flesh.” Then he did a Mr Amos stare at Mr Avenloch and Smedley. “And what are you doing with a rake and a wheelbarrow, Conrad, may I ask?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. Hugo was in the lift too, behind Mr Prendergast, grinning all over his face. “Can we come down in the lift with you?” I asked.

“Feel free,” Hugo said. “He came up looking for you anyway.”

Mr Prendergast waved the two gardeners into the lift, like Mr Amos ushering the Countess. “Enter. It is not your place to wait upon your fellow Improver, Conrad,” he said to me, and I really felt for a moment as if it was Mr Amos telling me off. “Enter, and place the rake in that corner and the wheelbarrow by the wall here. Hold your tray two inches higher. We will now descend.” He pressed the lift button with a Mr Amos flourish. “I will now,” he said, “make use of our descent to instruct you upon the correct way to place chairs for a banquet. All chair legs must be exactly in line. Having placed them at the table, you must then crawl along behind them, measuring the distance of chair from chair, with a tape measure carried in the waistcoat pocket for the purpose.”

He went on like this all the way down to the undercroft. Smedley could not help giggling – and kept getting a Mr Amos glare, followed by, “Know your place, wheelbarrow” – and even Mr Avenloch began to grin after a while. Hugo was laughing as much as I was.

When we got to the undercroft, Mr Prendergast announced, “Mr Hugo will now repair to the Upper Hall, while I march Conrad off to his fate in the Middle Hall. You two implements…”

“Please, sir,” Smedley interrupted imploringly, “have we missed our lunch, sir?”

“Take this tray,” Mr Prendergast said, removing it from me and dumping it on Smedley, “and proceed with your mentor to the kitchens, where you will find they have been anxiously awaiting your return. Off with you now.” He pretended to look at his watch. “You have exactly two minutes before they feed your lunch to the dogs.”

Smedley went racing off. Mr Avenloch paused to say, “That was as good as a play. But don’t let Mr Amos catch you at it. You’d be in for it then.”

“It’s probably the one thing he wouldn’t forgive me for,” Mr Prendergast agreed cheerfully. “Which is why I am rehearsing the part. Come, Conrad. Your lunch awaits.”

I had to have another lunch. They really did not like me running after Christopher. And I really could not explain. I was half asleep for the rest of the afternoon, until around supper time, when I was suddenly ravenous and wide awake. And, I don’t know why, I was quite convinced that Christopher was back. I sneaked off early to the kitchens and asked them to give me Christopher’s tray now. I did not want Mr Prendergast butting in again.

It was so early that the regular maids were all gathering there for their high tea. They told me that the ghost had been bouncing that red rubber ball up and down the corridors all afternoon. They weren’t frightened by then, they said, just annoyed by it. Besides, who wanted to leave, one of them added, when there was a chance of getting to know Francis? Or Manfred, said another. A third one said, “Yes, if you want gravy poured down your neck!” and they all shrieked with laughter.

The men’s end of the attics seemed very quiet after this. I went along to our room and got the door open – which is not easy when you’re carrying a tray – and Christopher seemed to be there. At least, he was in bed and asleep when I went in, but when I turned round from putting the tray on the chest of drawers there was no one there. The bed was flat and empty.

“Oh, come on!” I said. “Don’t be stupid. It’s only me. What happened? Didn’t you find Millie then?”

A girl’s voice answered, “Oh dear. What’s gone wrong? You’re not Christopher.”

I spun about, looking for where the voice came from. Christopher’s bed was still flat and unused, but there was a dip in the edge of my bed, the sort of dent a person makes sitting on the very edge. She was obviously very nervous. I said, “It’s all right. I’m Conrad. I work here at Stallery with Christopher. You’re Millie, aren’t you? He said you were an enchantress.”

She became visible rather slowly, first as a sort of wobble in the air, then as a blur that gently hardened into the shape of a girl. I think she was ready to whip herself invisible again and run away if I seemed to be hostile. She was just a girl, nothing like as glamorous as Fay or Polly, and a bit younger than Christopher. She had straight brown hair and a round face, and a very direct way of looking at a person. I thought she seemed nice. “Not that good an enchantress,” she said ruefully. “You’re that boy who was with Christopher on those stairs, aren’t you? I made a real mistake getting into all those mansions. There never seemed to be a way to get outside them.”

“It may have been the witch keeping you in,” I said.

“Oh, it was,” she said. “I didn’t realise at first. She was sort of kind and she had food cooked whatever kitchen I got to, and she kept hinting that she knew all about the way the buildings changed. She said she’d show me the way out when things were ready. Then she suddenly disappeared, and as soon as she was gone, I realised that it was that knitting of hers – she was sort of knitting me in, trying to take me over, I think. I had to spend a day undoing her knitting before I could get anywhere.”

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“Christopher shouted across those double stairs to go to the top and then find the room with his tie on the doorknob,” Millie said. “I was so tired by then that I did.”

“Then he’s still out there?” I said.

Millie shrugged. “I suppose so. He’ll be back in the end. He’s good at that kind of thing – having nine lives and so on.”

She seemed a bit cool about it. I began to wonder if the witch had grabbed Christopher instead, because he was stronger, and that this was how Millie got out. “Oh well,” I said. “He’s not here and you are. He’s supposed to be ill and I’m supposed to bring his meals. Would you like this supper now I’ve brought it?”

Millie brightened up wonderfully. “Yes, please! I don’t know when I’ve ever been so hungry!”

So I passed her the tray. She arranged it on the bedside table, which she pulled in front of the bed, and began to eat heartily. The food changed from egg and chips to cottage pie while she ate, but she hardly seemed to notice. “I had nothing to buy food with, you see,” she explained. “And the witch only did breakfast. The last breakfast was days ago.”

“Did you run away from school without any money then?” I asked.

“Pretty well,” Millie said. “Money from Series Twelve wouldn’t work in Series Seven, so I only took what was in my pocket. I was going to be a parlourmaid and earn some money. Except when I got inside those mansions, there was nobody there to be a maid for. But…” She looked at me very earnestly. I could tell she was wanting me to believe the next bit particularly. “But I had to run away from that school. It really was an awful place – awful girls, awful teachers – and the lessons were all things like dancing and deportment and embroidery and how to make conversation with an ambassador, and so on. I told Gabriel de Witt that I was miserable and not learning a thing, but he just thought I was being silly.”

“And you told Christopher,” I said.

“In the end,” Millie said. “Only as a last resort – Gabriel never listens to him either. And Christopher was just as overbearing as I knew he would be. You know, ‘My dear Millie, set your mind at rest and I will fix it’ – and this time he was worse. He decided we were going to go and live together on an island in Series Five. And when I said I wasn’t sure I wanted to go and live all alone with Christopher – well, would you want to, Conrad?”

“No,” I said, very definitely. “He’s far too fond of his own way. And the way he makes superior jokes all the time – I want to hit him!”

“Oh, doesn’t he just!” Millie said.

After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding – which started as jam roly-poly and then became chocolate meringue – we both tore Christopher’s character to shreds. It was wonderful fun. Millie, from having known Christopher for years, found two faults in him where I only knew one. His clothes, she told me, he fussed about his clothes being perfect all the time. He’d been like that for three years now. He drove everyone in Chrestomanci Castle mad by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pyjamas. “And he could get them right anyway by magic,” Millie told me, “if he wasn’t too lazy to learn how. He is lazy, you know. He hates having to learn facts. He knows he can get by just pretending to know – bluffing, you know. But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person’s name. If a person isn’t important to him, he always forgets their name.”

When Millie said this, I realised that Christopher had never once forgotten my name – even if it was an alias. It suddenly seemed to me to be rather mean, talking about Christopher’s faults when he wasn’t here to defend himself.

“Yes,” I said. “But I’ve never known him do anything really nasty. I think he’s all right underneath. And he makes me laugh.”

“Oh, me too,” Millie agreed. “I do like him. But you can’t deny that he’s maddening a lot of the time – who’s that?”

It was Mr Prendergast again. We could hear him outside in the corridor, doing his Mr Amos act. “Grant,” he called out. “Conrad, stop lurking in sickrooms and descend to the undercroft immediately. Supper is being served!”

He was nearer than we realised. The next moment he flung the door open and stood looming in the doorway. Millie made a sort of movement, as if she was thinking of turning invisible, but then realised that it was too late, and stood up instead. Mr Prendergast hitched his face sideways at her, and his eyebrows travelled up and down his forehead like two sliding mice. He looked at me, and then at the tray.

“What is this?” he said. “Is Christopher really a girl?”

“No, no,” I said. “This is Millie.”

“She’s not another wheelbarrow,” Mr Prendergast said. “Is she?” And when Millie simply looked completely confused, he narrowed his eyes at her and said, “So where are you from, young lady?” For a moment, he looked so utterly serious that he made goosebumps come up on my arms.

Millie probably felt the same. “Er – from Series Twelve really,” she admitted.

“Then I think I don’t want to know,” Mr Prendergast said. He hitched his face the other way, and I remembered, with great relief, that he was simply a very good actor. “I think,” he said to me, “that she’d better be a feather duster.”

“What are you talking about?” Millie said, exasperated and frightened, but almost laughing too. This was the effect Mr Prendergast seemed to have on people.

“We can’t have Conrad embarrassed,” he said to her, “and he would be if you went on sharing his room like this. So I think you’d better come downstairs and get turned into another new housemaid. Luckily, there are so many just now that one more will hardly be noticed. Come along to the lift, both of you. No, let her carry the tray, Conrad. It makes her look the part more.”

Hardly able to believe it, we followed Mr Prendergast to the lift. Hugo was in it. He stared at Millie with gloomy surprise.

“New feather duster,” Mr Prendergast told him airily. “She’s the child star of Baby Bunting – you won’t know it yet, it’s on trial in the provinces, but it’ll be a hit, I assure you.”

Millie went bright red and gazed hard at her tray, biting her lip. I think she was trying not to laugh.

Mr Prendergast said nothing more until the lift was nearly at the undercroft. Then he said suddenly, “By the way, where is Christopher?”

“Around,” I said.

Millie added, “He went to the bathroom.”

“Ah,” said Mr Prendergast. “Indeed. That accounts for it then.”

Rather to my surprise, he didn’t ask any more. He just stalked with us to the Middle Hall, where he took Fay aside and murmured a few words to her. It was like magic really. Fay and Polly and two other girls instantly took charge and hurried Millie off to the maids’ cloakroom. When they came back, Millie was wearing a brown and gold striped dress just like the other girls, and a proper maid’s cap. She sat and chatted to them and the other actors while the rest of us had supper.

Fay and Polly must have found somewhere for Millie to sleep that night. When I saw her at breakfast the next morning, she had her hair up on top of her head, under her cap, and Fay or someone had done things to her face with clever make-up, so that Millie looked rather different and quite a bit older. I think she was enjoying herself. She had a surprised, happy look whenever I saw her.

I kept out of Millie’s way on the whole. I dreaded the moment when Miss Semple spotted Millie. Miss Semple’s mild, serious, distracted eyes didn’t miss much, and I was sure she would realise that Millie was not a real maid before long. Then the fat would be in the fire and Mr Prendergast would probably get the sack. I was fairly sure he had made Millie into a feather duster in order to get sacked.

But Miss Semple – nor Mrs Baldock – did not notice Millie all day. Some of the reason was the ghost. It distracted people by playing pranks, dragging the sheets off all the newly made beds on the nursery floor, smashing tooth glasses and bouncing that red rubber ball down flights of stairs. It had done something new every time Mrs Baldock took me over to train me upstairs. But some of the distraction was due to the changes Christopher had started by pressing that button in the cellar. Everything kept moving about, so that when you put something down, and then turned round to pick it up again, it wasn’t where you’d left it. Most people who noticed – and it was hard not to notice before long – thought this was the ghost’s doing too. They just sighed. Even when all the sheets and towels got shifted to quite different cupboards on different floors, they said it was the ghost again and sighed.

But no one could blame the ghost when, late in the afternoon, all our uniforms suddenly changed colour. Instead of gold and brown stripes, we were suddenly wearing bright apple green and cream.

Miss Semple was really distressed by that change. “Oh, Conrad!” she said. “What is going on? These are the colours we had in my mother’s day. My mother changed them because they were thought to be unlucky. Green is, you know. Things had gone wrong then until Stallery had barely enough money to buy the new colours. Oh, I do hope we aren’t in for any more bad luck!” she said, and went rushing off past me in her usual way.

We were all still rushing about exclaiming, when the Countess and Lady Felice came back unexpectedly.

The Countess and Lady Felice were not expected until the next morning, just before all the guests arrived. But they had finished their shopping early, it seemed, and now there they were, in three cars drawing up outside the great front entrance.

Their arrival caused a general stampede. I had just arrived in the kitchens for my cookery lesson, but Mr Maxim sent me away again because he had to help get together a proper Dinner for the Ladies in a hurry. He told me to go and help in the hall instead. Hugo shot out of the lift as I went by, and raced to the garage to find out where Count Robert had gone with Anthea, and to get him back if he could. In the black-floored hall, there was the main stampede, for what Mr Prendergast called “the dress rehearsal for the real show tomorrow”. Footmen raced down from the attics and up from the undercroft and the marvel was that we all arrived there just as Mr Amos – with Mr Prendergast haunting his right shoulder like a skinny black scarecrow – threw open the huge front doors and Francis and Andrew pulled them wide.

The Countess sailed inside with a new fur wrap trailing from her shoulders. As she handed the wrap off to Manfred, she gazed round at us all with gracious satisfaction, but she seemed, for a second, a little puzzled to see us all in our green and cream stripes. “Amos…” she began.

Mr Amos said, “Yes, my lady?”

“I forgot what I was going to say,” said the Countess. Evidently, she was as insensitive to the changes as Mr Amos was. “Has all been well?”

“Naturally, my lady,” said Mr Amos. He turned and looked at the red rubber ball that came trundling out of the library as he spoke. Then he looked at me. I picked it up – and it felt just as if I was wrenching the ball out of someone’s resisting hand. I shuddered and shoved it into the library and shut the door on it.

“Then where is Count Robert?” the Countess demanded.

“Mr Hugo is currently searching for him, my lady,” Mr Amos replied.

“Oh,” the Countess said ominously. She marched away to the stairs, saying, “See to the luggage, will you, Amos.”

It needed all of us to see to it. The three cars were stuffed with boxes, carrier bags and parcels. I could not believe that two Ladies could have bought so much in such a short time – though I suppose there were four ladies at it really. The two ladies’ maids came in with armfuls of parcels and made a great pother about things being handled gently and being carried right way up. You could see they had been enjoying themselves. But Lady Felice, who hurried through while we were all handing parcels and carrier bags along like a bucket chain, did not look happy. She kept her head down, but I could see she had been crying.

She still looked that way when I was waiting on the Family at Dinner that night. This was such a magnificent meal that you would never have guessed that the Great Dictator and Mr Maxim had been taken by surprise like the rest of us and had – so Mr Maxim told me – made it up as they went along, wrestling also with the way chickens became salmon and cream became parsley as the food was fetched to the kitchens. The changes were quite bad that evening.

“You know I never notice,” Mr Maxim told me, “but Chef does, and he sorrowed, Conrad.”

It struck me as a pity that neither Lady Felice nor Count Robert seemed to feel much like eating. Count Robert, who arrived back from some inn outside Stallstead, had certainly had supper with my sister before Hugo found him. He pushed food about on his plate, while the Countess told him that he should have been in the hall to meet her and how discourteous he was not to be there. He didn’t even point out that she had come home a day early. But he stopped even pretending to eat when she went on to describe all the things he was expected to do and say when Lady Mary Ogworth arrived tomorrow.

So much for Anthea’s chances! I thought, standing against the wall on my own. Christopher was still missing, and I was beginning to worry about him. With all these changes happening, he could be in castles and towers and mansions moving further and further away from Stallery all the time, and if the witch had not caught him yet, she would catch him if he was stuck out there again when Mr Amos turned his machines off for the night. But there seemed nothing I could do…

“As for Felice,” I heard the Countess say, “the very least I insist on is that she be polite to Mr Seuly.”

At this, Lady Felice threw her fork down with a clatter.

Count Robert leant forward. “Mother,” he said, “does this mean that you’ve made some kind of arrangement for this Mr Seuly to marry Felice?”

“Of course, dear,” said the Countess. “We called on him on our way to Ludwich and we had a long talk. He has made a very handsome offer for Felice, financially speaking.”

“As if I was a horse!” Lady Felice said violently.

The Countess ignored this. “As I keep telling Felice,” she said, “Mr Seuly is even richer than Lady Mary Ogworth.”

“Then,” said Count Robert, “why don’t you marry him yourself?”

This caused an astonished silence. Mr Amos stared, the Countess stared, Gregor’s mouth came open, and even Lady Felice raised her face and looked at her brother as if she could not believe her ears. At length, the Countess said, in a fading, reproachful whisper, “Robert! What a thing to say!”

“You said it first. To Felice,” Count Robert pointed out. And before the Countess could pull her wits together, he went on, “Tell me, Mother, why are you so very set on your children marrying for money?”

“Why?” gasped the Countess, with her eyes very wide and blue. “Why? But Robert, I only want the best for you both. I want to see you properly settled – with plenty of money, naturally – so that if anything happens, you’ll both be all right.”

“What do you mean, ‘if anything happens’?” Count Robert demanded. “What do you imagine might happen?”

The Countess looked to one side and then to the other and seemed not to know how to answer this. “Well, dear,” she said finally, “all sorts of things might happen. We might lose all our money – or – or…This is a very uncertain world, Robert, and you know Mother knows best.” She was so much in earnest, saying this, that big tears trembled on the ends of her eyelashes. “You’ve hurt me very much,” she said.

“My heart bleeds,” Count Robert answered.

“At all events,” the Countess said, in a sort of imploring shriek, “you have to promise me, darlings, both of you, to behave properly to our guests!”

“You can count on us to behave,” Count Robert said, “but neither of us is going to promise more than that. Is that clear?”

“I knew I could count on you!” the Countess announced. She smiled lovingly from Count Robert to Lady Felice.

They both looked confused. I didn’t blame them. It was really hard to tell what anyone had promised by then. I looked at Mr Amos to see what he thought. He was scowling, but that might have been because he could see a speck of dust on the glass he was holding to the light. I wished Christopher was there. He would have known what was going on underneath this talk.

But Christopher was not there that night and he did not turn up in the morning either. I had to make two journeys to collect all the boots and shoes. I was annoyed. After that, I was working almost too hard to remember Christopher. But not quite. People are wrong when they say things like, “I didn’t have time to think.” If you’re really worried, or really miserable, those feelings come welling up around the edges of the other things you’re doing, so that you are in the feelings even when you’re working hard at something else. I was thinking – and feeling – a lot all the time the guests were arriving. Thinking about Christopher, worrying about Anthea, and feeling for myself, stuck here without even an evil Fate to account for what I was doing.

The guests began arriving from early afternoon onwards. Very stately people rolled up to the front doors in big cars and came in past the lines of footmen, wearing such expensive clothes that it seemed like a fashion parade in the hall. Then Mr Prendergast would give out calls of “Lady Clifton’s luggage to the lilac room!” or “The Duke of Almond’s cases to the yellow suite!” and I would be rushing after Andrew and Gregor, or Francis and Manfred, with a heavy leather suitcase in each hand. When no guests were arriving, Mr Amos had us measuring the spaces between the chairs at the banquet table to make sure they were evenly spaced. He really did that! And I’d thought Mr Prendergast had been joking! Then the bells would clang, and it would be back to the black marble hall to carry more luggage.

And all the time I was more and more miserable and wishing Christopher would get back. Millie was quite as worried about him by then too. I kept meeting her racing past with trays or piles of cloths. Each time, she said, “Is Christopher back yet?” and I said, “No.” Then as things got more and more frantic, Millie simply said, “Is Christopher?” and I shook my head. By the middle of the afternoon, Millie was just giving me a look as we shot past one another and I hardly had time even to shake my head.

This was when Lady Mary Ogworth arrived. She came with her mother – who reminded me more than a little of the Countess, to tell the truth. Both of them were wearing floaty sort of summer coats, but the mother looked like just another guest in hers. Lady Mary was beautiful. Up till then I’d never expected to see anyone who was better looking than Fay Marley, but, believe me, Lady Mary was. She had a mass of feathery, white-fair curls, which made her small face look tiny and her big dark blue eyes look enormous. She walked like a willow tree in a breeze, with her coat sort of drifting around her, and her figure was perfect. Most of the footmen around me gasped when they saw her and Gregor actually gave out a little moan. That was how beautiful Lady Mary was.

Count Robert was in the hall to meet her. He had been hanging about beside Mr Prendergast on the stairs, fidgeting and shuffling and pulling down his cuffs, exactly like a bridegroom waiting by the altar for the bride. As soon as he saw Lady Mary, he rushed down the stairs and across the hall, where he took Lady Mary’s hand and actually kissed it.

“Welcome,” he said, in a choky sort of way. “Welcome to Stallery, Mary.” Lady Mary kept her head shyly bent and whispered something in reply. Then Count Robert said, “Let me show you to your rooms,” and he took her, still holding her hand, across the hall and away up the stairs. He was smiling at her all the way.

Gregor had to poke me in the back to remind me to pick up my share of her luggage. I was staring after them, feeling horrible. Anthea doesn’t have a chance! I thought. She’s deluding herself. Count Robert has simply been fooling about with her.

As soon as I’d dumped the suitcases, I sneaked to the library to find my sister, but she wasn’t there. The ghost was. A book sailed at my head as soon as my face was round the door. But there was no sign of Anthea. I dodged the book and shut the door. Then I went to look for Anthea in the undercroft, but she was nowhere there either. And the undercroft was in an uproar because Lady Mary never stopped ringing her bell.

“Honestly, darling,” Polly said, flying past, “you’d think we’d put her in a pigsty! Nothing’s right for that woman!”

“The water, the sheets, the chairs, the mattress,” Fay panted, flying past the other way. “This time it was the towels. Last time it was the soap. We’ve all been up there at least six times. Millie’s up there now.”

Miss Semple rushed down the stairs to the lobby, saying, “Mr Hugo’s fixed her shower – he thinks. But—”

Then the bell labelled Ldy Ste rang again and they all cried out, “Oh, what is it now?”

Miss Semple got to the phone first and made soothing Yes-madams into it. She turned away in despair. “Oh, I do declare—! There’s a spider in her water carafe now! Fay – no you’re finding her more shoe trees, aren’t you?” Her mild, all-seeing eye fell on me. “Conrad. Fetch a clean carafe and glasses and take them up to the Lady Suite on one of the best gilt trays, please. Hurry.”

If I had been Christopher, I thought, I would have found an amusing way to say that my arms had come out of their sockets from carrying luggage. As I was just me, I sighed and went to the glass pantry beside the green cloth door. While I loaded a tray with glittering clean glassware and took it up in the lift, I decided that it must be the changes that were upsetting Lady Mary. They were going on remorselessly now. Before I got to the second floor, the lift stopped being brown inside and became pale yellow. It was enough to upset anyone who wasn’t used to it.

The lift stopped and the door slid back. Millie, still looking very smart and grown-up in her maid’s uniform, was waiting outside to go back down. She gave me another of her expressive looks.

“No,” I said. “Still no sign of Christopher.”

“I didn’t mean that this time,” Millie said. “Are you taking that trayful to Lady Mary?”

“Yes,” I said. “Fay and them have had enough.”

“Then I don’t want to prejudice you,” Millie said, “but I think I ought to warn you. She’s a witch.”

“Really?” I said as I got out of the lift. “Then…”

Millie turned sideways to go past me. I could see she was angry then, pink and panting. “Then nothing!” she said. “Just watch yourself. And, Conrad, forget all the mean things I said about Christopher – I was being unreasonable. Christopher never misuses magic the way that – that – she does!”

The lift shut then and carried Millie away downwards. I went along the blue-moss carpet and round the corner to the best guest suite, thinking about Christopher. He could be very irritating, but he was all right really. And now I considered, he had set off to rescue Millie like a knight errant rescuing a damsel in distress. That impressed me. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of Christopher that way before. I wished he would come back.

I knocked at the big gold-rimmed double door, but no one told me to come in. After a moment, I knocked again, balanced the tray carefully on one hand, and went in.

Lady Mary was sitting sprawled in a chair that must have come from another room. Everything in the huge frilly room was pink, but the chair was navy blue, with the wrong pattern on it. Fay or Polly or someone must have lugged it in here from somewhere else. Lady Mary was clutching its arms with fingers bent up like claws and scowling at the fireplace. Like that, she looked almost as old as the Countess and not very beautiful at all. There was a half-open door beyond her. I could hear someone sobbing on the other side of it – her lady’s maid probably.

“Oh, shut up, Stevens, and get on with that ironing!” Lady Mary snarled as I came in. Then she saw me. Her big blue eyes went narrow, unpleasantly. “I didn’t say you could come in,” she said.

I said, very smoothly, like Mr Prendergast imitating Mr Amos, “The fresh carafe and glasses you rang for, my lady.”

She unclawed a hand and waved it. “Put them down over there.” She waited for me to cross the room and put the tray on a small table, and then snapped, “Now stand there and answer my questions.”

I was glad Millie had warned me. The hand-waving must have been a spell. I found myself standing to attention beside the table and the door to the corridor seemed a mile off. Lady Mary waved her hand again. This time I felt as if there was a tight band around my head, so tight that it somehow gave me pins and needles down both arms. I couldn’t loosen it however hard I tried. “Why are you doing that?” I said.

“Because I want to know what I’m taking on here,” she said, “and you’re going to tell me. What do you think of Count Robert?”

“He seems nice enough – but I really hardly know him,” I said. By this time I was panting and sweating. The pressure round my head seemed to be worse every second. “Please take this off,” I said.

“No. Is Count Robert a magic user?” Lady Mary said.

“I’ve no idea – I don’t think so,” I said. “Please!”

“But someone here is,” she said. “Someone’s using magic to change things all the time. Why?”

“To make money,” I found myself saying.

“Who?” Lady Mary asked.

I thought of Christopher pressing that shift button. I thought of Mr Amos. I thought my head was going to burst. And at the same time I knew I wasn’t going to tell this horrible woman anything else. “I don’t – don’t know anything about magic,” I said.

“Nonsense,” Lady Mary said. “You’re stuffed with talent. For the last time, Who?”

“Nobody taught me magic,” I gabbled desperately. My head was going to crack like an egg any moment, I thought. “I can’t tell you because I don’t know!”

Lady Mary screwed her mouth up angrily and muttered, “Why don’t any of them know? It’s ridiculous!” She looked at me again and said, “What do you think of the Countess?”

“Oh, she’s awful,” I said. It was a relief to be able to tell her something.

Lady Mary smiled – it was more of a gloating grin really. “They all say that,” she remarked. “So it must be true. I’ll have to get rid of her first thing then. Now tell me…

A change came just as she said this. I never thought I’d be glad of a change. The tightness round my head snapped – ping! – like a rubber band that had been stretched too much. I staggered for a moment, pins and needles all over, eyes all blurry, but I could just see that the carafe and glasses on the tray had turned into a teapot, an elegant cup and saucer, and a plate of sugary biscuits.

I took a look at Lady Mary. She was behaving as if the rubber band hand snapped itself in her face, blinking her big eyes and gasping. “Enjoy your tea, my lady,” I said. Then I turned and ran.

I went down in the lift feeling awful. The pins and needles went away, slowly, but they left me feeling very miserable indeed. Lady Mary was obviously going to take over Stallery the moment she was married to Count Robert – or maybe even sooner. She would give me the sack at once, because I knew what she was like. I had no idea what I would do then. It was no good asking Anthea – she was as badly off as I was. And Christopher was not here to ask.

That was the good thing about Christopher. He never seemed to think anything was hopeless. If something went wrong, he made one of his annoying jokes and thought of something to do about it. I really needed that at the moment. I stopped the lift and sent it upwards instead, just in case the changes had brought Christopher back. But our room was empty. I looked at Christopher’s tie dangling from the doorknob and felt so lost that I began to wonder if Uncle Alfred was right after all about my evil Fate. Everything went wrong for me, all the time.

Middle Hall was crowded that evening. Mr Smithers and quite a few upper maids were sent to eat with the actors, because Upper Hall was filled with valets and ladies’ maids who had come with the guests. They had to help the guests get dressed, of course, so they had supper later. Mrs Baldock was holding a special cocktail party for them in her Housekeeper’s Room before that. Polly, Fay, Millie and another girl had to bolt their food in order to race off and wait on Mrs Baldock and her guests. The rest of us hardly had time to finish before bells began pealing and Miss Semple came rushing in.

“Quick, quick, all of you! That’s Mr Amos ringing. The company will be down in five minutes. Mr Prendergast, you’re in the Grand Saloon in charge of drinks…”

“Oh, am I?” Mr Prendergast said, unfolding to his feet. “Menial tasks, nuts and pink gin, is it?”

“…with Francis, Gregor and Conrad,” Miss Semple rushed on. “All other menservants to the Banqueting Hall to make ready there. Maids to the ballroom floor crockery store and service hatches. Hurry!”

The undercroft thundered with our feet as we all raced away.

The part in the Grand Saloon is a bit of a blur to me. I was too anxious and upset to notice much, except that Mr Prendergast plonked a heavy silver tray in my hands, which made my arms ache. The guests were mostly a roar of loud voices to me, fine silk dresses and expensive evening suits. I remember the Countess graciously greeting them all, in floating blue, with a twinkly thing in her hair, and I remember Count Robert coming and snatching up a glass from my tray, looking as if he really needed that drink – and then I noticed that the glass he had taken was orange juice. I wondered whether to call out to him that he had made a mistake, but he was off by then, saying hallo to people, chatting to them and working his way over to the door as if he expected Lady Mary to come in any minute.

Lady Mary didn’t arrive until right near the end. She was in white, straight white, like a pillar of snow. She went to Count Robert almost at once and talked to him with her head bent and a shy smile. I could hardly believe she had spent the afternoon complaining and casting spells and making her maid cry.

“That,” Mr Prendergast said, looming up beside me, “is a classic example of a glamour spell. I thought you might like to know.”

“Oh,” I said. I wanted to ask Mr Prendergast how he knew, but he said, “Your tray’s slanting,” and surged away to fetch Gregor a fresh soda siphon.

Lady Felice arrived, wearing white too and looking horribly nervous. She went nearly as white as her dress when Mr Amos flung the door open and boomed, “The Mayor of Stallchester, Mr Igor Seuly.”

Mr Seuly looked really out of place. He was just as well dressed as everyone else, but he seemed smaller somehow, a little sunken inside his good clothes. He walked in trying to swagger, but he looked as if he was crawling really. When the Countess rustled graciously up to him, he took hold of her hand with a grab, as if she was rescuing him from drowning. Then he caught sight of me and my tray and came and took the largest glass as if that was a rescue too.

“Have you found out how they pull the possibilities yet?” he asked me in a whisper.

“Not quite,” I said. “I – er – we…”

“Thought not,” Mr Seuly said. He seemed relieved. “Not to worry now,” he said. “When I’m spliced to Felice, I’ll be part of the set up and I’ll be able to handle it for you. Don’t you do anything until then. Understand?”

“But Uncle Alfred said—” I began.

“I’ll fix your uncle,” Mr Seuly answered. Then he turned round and marched away into the crowd.

Shortly after that, Mr Amos unfolded the double doors at the end of the room and said, in his grandest manner, “My lords, ladies and gentlemen, Dinner is served.”

Everyone streamed slowly away into the Banqueting Hall and it got quite peaceful. While Francis, Gregor and I were clearing up spilt nuts and piling glasses on trays to give to Polly and the other maids at the door, Mr Prendergast stretched himself out with a sigh along the most comfortable sofa.

“An hour of peace at least,” he said, and lit a long black cigar. “Pass that ashtray, Conrad. No, make that nearly three hours of peace. I’m told they’re having ten courses.”

The double doors opened again. “Prendergast,” Mr Amos said. “You’re on front-hall duty. Get on down there.”

“But surely,” Mr Prendergast said, sitting up protestingly, “everyone’s arrived who’s going to arrive.”

“You never can tell,” Mr Amos said. “Events like this often attract poor relations. Stallery prides itself on being prepared.”

Mr Prendergast sighed – it was more of a groan really – and stood up. “And what do I do in the unlikely event that penniless Cousin Martha or drunken Uncle Jim turn up and start hammering at the front door? Deny them?”

“You use your discretion,” Mr Amos growled. “If you have any. Put them in the library of course, man, and then inform me. And you – Gregor, Francis, Conrad – in the Banqueting Hall as soon as you’ve finished here. Service is slower than I would like. We need you.”

So, for the next two and a half hours, I was hard at it fetching dishes for other footmen to hand over elegant shoulders and carrying bottles for Mr Amos to pour. Manfred had done quite well and only dropped one plate, but Mr Amos would not let Manfred or me do any of the actual waiting at table. He said he was taking no chances. But we were allowed to go round with cheeseboards, near the end. By this time the chinking of cutlery and the roar of voices had died down to a mellow rumble mixed with the occasional sharp tink. Mr Amos sent Andrew back to the Grand Saloon to make coffee. And after I had carried round special wine for the speech and the toasts, he sent me to the Saloon too.

Mrs Baldock and Miss Semple were there arranging piles of chocolates enticingly on silver plates. Mrs Baldock seemed a little unsteady. I thought I heard her hiccup once or twice. And I remembered Christopher saying the first night we were here that he thought Mrs Baldock drank – although she had just given a party, I suppose. I reached out to sneak a chocolate, thinking of Christopher. There had been no changes for hours now. Mr Amos must have switched off his equipment, so Christopher was stuck for yet another night. Here Miss Semple slapped my reaching hand and brought me back to reality. She sent me hustling up and down the huge room planting the piles of chocolates artistically on little tables. So I was able to snitch a chocolate anyway, before Andrew called me over to help him rattle out squads of tiny coffee cups and ranks of equally tiny glasses.

I was thinking of Christopher, so I said what Christopher might have said. “Are we having a dolls’ tea party?”

“Liqueurs are served in small glasses,” Andrew explained kindly, and showed me a table full of round bottles, tall bottles, triangular bottles, flat bottles, red, blue, gold and brown bottles, and one big green one. He thought I didn’t know about liqueurs. If he had been Christopher, he would have known I was joking. “The big round glasses are for brandy,” Andrew instructed me. “Don’t go making a mistake.”

Before I could think of a Christopher-type joke about this, the Countess came sailing in through the distant doors, saying over her shoulder to a stout man with a beard, “Ah, but this is Stallery, Your Grace. We never have new brandy!” Other guests came slowly crowding after her.

Mrs Baldock and Miss Semple vanished. Andrew and I went into furniture mode. The rest of the guests gradually filtered out across the room and settled into chairs and sofas. Mr Seuly had a lot of trouble over this. He kept trying to sit in a chair next to Lady Felice, but Lady Felice always stood up just before he got to her and, with a sad, absent-minded stare, walked away to another chair in another part of the room. Count Robert somehow got buried in the crowd. He was never anywhere near Lady Mary, who was sitting on a golden sofa beside her mother, looking lovelier than ever.

Then Mr Amos arrived. He closed the double doors on a violent crashing – Manfred was dropping plates again, I think, as the rest of the footmen cleared away the feast – and beckoned me and Andrew over to the table with the coffee cups. I was kept very busy taking round tiny clattery cups. The main thing I remember about this part is when I had to take coffee to Lady Mary and her mother. As I got to their sofa, the mother put out her hand to take one of the chocolates on the table beside them. Lady Mary snapped at her, in a little grating voice, “Mother! Those are bad for you!”

The mother took her hand back at once, looking so sad that I was sorry for her. I handed Lady Mary a cup of coffee, and managed to make it rattle and clatter so much that Lady Mary put out both hands to it and turned to give me a dirty look. Behind her, I saw the mother’s hand shoot out to the chocolates. I think she took about five. When I handed the mother her coffee, she gave me a look that said, Please don’t give me away!

I was just giving her a blank, furniture look in reply that said, Give away what, my lady? when the door to the service area behind us opened and Hugo and Anthea came quietly into the Saloon. They were wearing evening dress, just like the guests. Hugo looked good in his, and far more natural than Mr Seuly. My sister was in red and she looked stunning.

Nobody seemed to notice them at first except me. They walked slowly side by side out into the middle of the room, both looking very determined. Hugo was so determined that he looked almost like a bulldog. Then Anthea made a small magical gesture and the Countess looked up and saw them. She sprang up and swept towards them in a swirl of silky blue.

“What is the meaning of this?” she said in a fast, angry whisper. “I will not have my guests disturbed in this way!

At this, Lady Mary looked up, looked at Anthea, and looked venomous. Beside my sister’s black hair and glowing skin, Lady Mary hardly seemed to be there. She was like a faded picture, and she knew it.

Across by the little cups and glasses, Mr Amos looked up too. He stared. Then he glared. If looks could have killed, Hugo would have dropped dead then, followed by Anthea.

But Lady Felice was now standing up, slowly and nervously. She was so obvious in her white dress that most of the guests turned round to see what she was doing. They looked at her, and then they looked at Hugo and Anthea. The talk died away. Then Count Robert stood up and walked forward from the other end of the Saloon. Everyone stared at him too. One lady got out a pair of glasses on a stick in order to stare better.

“I apologise for the disturbance,” Count Robert said, “but we have a couple of announcements to make.”

The Countess whirled round to him and began to make her Why, dear? face. She was sweetly bursting with rage. By the look of him, so was Mr Amos, only not sweetly. But before either of them could speak, the main door at the far end of the Saloon opened and Mr Prendergast stood and loomed there.

“The Honourable Mrs Franconia Tesdinic,” he announced, in his ringing, actor’s voice.

Then he backed out of the room and my mother came in.

My mother looked even more unkempt than usual. Her hair was piled on her head in a big untidy lump, rather like a bird’s nest. She had found from some cupboard, where it must have hung for twenty years or more, a long yellow woollen dress. It had turned khaki with age. I could see the moth holes in it even from where I was. She had added to the dress a spangled bag she must have bought from a toy shop. And she sailed into that huge room as if she were dressed as finely as the Countess.

I have never been so embarrassed in my life. I wanted to get into a hole and pull it in after me. I looked at Anthea, sure that she must be feeling at least as bad as I was. But my sister was gazing at our mother almost admiringly. With an affectionate grin growing on her face, she said to Hugo, “My mother is a naughty woman. I know that dress. She saves it to embarrass people in.”

My mother sailed on like a queen, through the room, until she came face to face with the Countess. “Good evening, Dorothea,” she said. “You seem to have grown very fine since you married for money. What became of your ambition to go on the stage?” She turned to the lady with the glasses on a stick and explained, “We were at school together, you know, Dorothea and I.”

“So we were,” the Countess said icily. “What became of your ambition to write, Fanny? I don’t seem to have read any books by you.”

“That’s because your reading skills were always so low,” my mother retorted.

“What are you doing here?” the Countess demanded. “How did you get in?”

“The usual way,” my mother said. “By tram. The lodge keeper remembered me perfectly well and that nice new butler let me into the house. He said he had had instructions about poor relations.”

“But why are you here?” the Countess said. “You swore at my wedding never to set foot in Stallery again.”

“When you married that actor, you mean?” said my mother. “You must realise that only the most pressing reason would bring me here. I came—”

She was interrupted by Mr Amos. His face was a strange colour and he seemed to be shaking as he arrived beside my mother. He put a hand on her moth-eaten arm. “Madam,” he said, “I believe you may be a little overwrought. Would you allow me to take you to our housekeeper?”

My mother gave him a short, contemptuous look. “Be quiet, Amos,” she said. “This has nothing to do with you. I am here purely to prevent my daughter from marrying this Dorothea’s son.”

“What?” said the Countess.

From the other end of the room, Lady Mary said “WHAT?” even louder and sprang to her feet. “There must be some mistake, my good woman,” Lady Mary said. “Robert is going to marry me.”

Count Robert gave a cough. “No mistake,” he said. “Or only slightly. Before the three of you settle my fate between you, I’d better say that I’ve already settled it myself.” He went over to Anthea and pulled her hand over his arm. “This is one of the announcements I was about to make,” he said. “Anthea and I were married two weeks ago in Ludwich.”

There were gasps and whispers all over the room. My mother and the Countess stared at one another in almost identical outrage. Count Robert smiled happily at them and then at all the staring guests, as if his announcement was the most joyful thing in the world.

“And Hugo married my sister Felice this morning in Stallstead,” he added.

“WHAT?” thundered Mr Amos.

“But she can’t, dear,” the Countess said. “I didn’t give my consent.”

“She’s of age. She didn’t need your consent,” Count Robert said.

“Now look here, young lord,” Mr Seuly said, getting up and advancing on Count Robert. “I had an understanding—”

Mr Amos cut him off by suddenly bellowing, “I forbid this! I forbid everything!”

Everyone stared at him. His face was purple, his eyes popped, and he seemed to be gobbling with rage.

“I give the orders here and I forbid it!” he shouted.

“He’s mad,” some duchess said from beside me. “He’s only the butler.”

Mr Amos heard her. “No, I am not!” he boomed. “I am Count Amos Tesdinic of Stallery and I will not have my son marry the daughter of an impostor!”

Everyone’s faces turned to the Countess then, my mother’s very sardonically. The Countess turned and stretched her arms out reproachfully to Mr Amos. “Oh, Amos!” she said tragically. “How could you? Why did you have to give us all away like this?”

“Too bad, isn’t it?” Hugo said, with his arm round Lady Felice.

Mr Amos turned on him, so angry that his face was purple. “You…!” he shouted.

Goodness knows what might have happened then. Mr Amos threw a blaze of magic at Hugo and Lady Felice. Hugo flung one hand up and seemed to send the magic back. Lady Mary joined in, with a sizzle that shot straight at Anthea. My mother whirled round and sent buzzing lumps of sorcery at Lady Mary. Lady Mary screamed and hit back, which made my mother’s bird’s nest of hair tumble down into hanks on her shoulders. By then, Mr Seuly, Anthea, Count Robert and some of the guests were throwing magics too. The room buzzed with it all, like a disturbed wasps’ nest, and there were screams and cries mixed in with it. Several chairs fell over as most of the guests tried to retreat towards the Banqueting Hall.

Mr Prendergast threw open the door again. His voice thundered over the rest of the noise.

“My lords, ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please! Pray silence for the Royal Commissioner Extraordinary!”

The magics and the shouting stopped. Everyone stared. Mr Prendergast stood aside from the doorway and announced each person as he or she came in. There was quite a crowd of them. The first two were large solemn men in dark suits, who went at once to stand on either side of Mr Amos.

“Sir Simon Caldwell and Captain William Forsythe,” Mr Prendergast boomed, “personal wizards to His Majesty the King.”

Mr Amos looked from Sir Simon to Captain Forsythe in an astonished, hunted way, and then looked a little happier when two smartly dressed ladies came to stand on either side of Count Robert.

“The Princess Wilhelmina and Madame Anastasia Dupont, Sorceresses Royal,” Mr Prendergast announced. Count Robert went very pale, hearing this.

Quite a lot of the guests went pale too as the next group was announced. Mr Prendergast intoned, “Mrs Havelok-Harting, the Prosecutor Royal; Mr Martin Baines, Solicitor to His Majesty; Lord Constant of Goodwell and Lady Pierce-Willoughby, King’s High Justices…” I forget the rest, but they were all legal people and Mrs Havelok-Harting in particular was an absolute horror, grey, severe and pitiless. They all stared keenly at everyone in the Saloon as they spread out to make room for the next group of people.

“The Chief Commissioner of Police, Sir Michael Weatherby, Inspectors Hanbury, Cardross and Goring,” Mr Prendergast boomed. This lot were in police uniform.

It dawned on me around then that these were all the people the Countess had told the courier to send to a hotel in Stallchester. I felt a trifle dizzy at the Countess’s nerve. I tried to imagine them all crowded into the Stallchester Arms or the Royal Stag – probably both, considering how many of them there were – and I simply could not see it. The Countess obviously knew what she had done. She had both hands to her face. When the woman, Inspector Goring, came and stood stonily beside her, the Countess looked as if she might faint. The other two Inspectors went to stand by Hugo – who looked grim – and Mr Seuly – who went a sort of yellow – and the Chief Commissioner marched through the Saloon and went to stand by the doors to the Banqueting Hall. Some of the guests who had been edging towards those doors went rather hastily to sit down again.

“The household wizards to the Royal Commissioner,” Mr Prendergast announced, and another group of sober-looking men and women filed in. They brought with them a cold, clean buzz of magic that reminded me somehow of the Walker.

“And,” Mr Prendergast proclaimed, “by special request of His Majesty the King, the Royal Commissioner Extraordinary, Monsignor Gabriel de Witt.”

Oh no! I thought. Gabriel de Witt was every bit as terrifying as Christopher had led me to believe. He made Mrs Havelok-Harting look ordinary. He was very tall, and dressed in foreign-looking narrow trousers and black frock coat, which made him seem about eight feet high. He had white hair and a grey, triangular face out of which stared the most piercing eyes I had ever seen. He brought such strong age-old magic with him that he made my whole body buzz and my stomach feel as if it was plunging down to the centre of the earth. I must warn Millie! I thought. But I didn’t dare move.

After all this, I was not surprised when Mr Prendergast swept his large right hand towards his own chest and added, “And also myself, the King’s Special Investigator.” Of course Mr Prendergast was a detective, I thought. It made perfect sense.

Gabriel de Witt stepped slowly forward. “I must explain,” he said. He had an old, dry voice, like a corpse speaking. “I came to Series Seven initially in search of two of my young wards, who seemed to have got themselves lost in this world. Naturally, I went to the King first and asked his permission to continue my search in this country. But the King had problems of his own. It seemed that somebody in this country kept changing the probabilities for this world. There had been so many shifts, in fact, that all Series Seven was in danger of flowing into Series Six on one side and Series Eight on the other. The King’s wizards were very concerned.”

Mr Amos, looking very startled, shook his head and made denying gestures. “It couldn’t possibly have that effect!” he said.

“Oh yes it could,” Gabriel de Witt said. “I assure you that this is true. I noticed it from the moment I stepped into this world. There are beginning to be serious climate changes and even more serious disruptions to geography – mountains subsiding, seas moving about, continents cracking apart – as this Series tries to conform to the Series on either side. Altogether these changes constitute such a serious misuse of magic that, when the King asked me for my help, I had no hesitation in agreeing. I and my staff started to investigate immediately. As a first result of our enquiries, a woman calling herself Lady Amos was arrested yesterday and her offices in Ludwich closed down.”

“No!” Mr Amos cried out.

“Yes,” said Gabriel de Witt. “I fancy she is your wife. And…” He looked at Hugo. “Your mother, I believe. We now have enough evidence to make further arrests here in Stallery. Mrs Havelok-Harting, if you would be so good as to read out the charges.”

The grey, pitiless lady stepped forward. She rattled open an official paper and cleared her throat with a rather similar rattle. “Robert Winstanley Henry Brown, Dorothea Clarissa Peony Brown, née Partridge, Hugo Vanderlin Cornelius Tesdinic, and Amos Rudolph Percival Vanderlin Tesdinic,” she read, “you are all four hereby charged with treasonous imposture, the working of magic to the peril of the realm, fraud, conspiracy to defraud and high treason. You are under arrest…”

“Not high treason!” Mr Amos said. He had gone a queer pale mauve.

Count Robert – or plain Robert Brown as I suppose he really was – had turned the same sort of colour Christopher went when he touched silver. “I deny treason!” he said chokingly. “I told Amos I wasn’t going along with his pretence any more. I told him as soon as I got back from marrying Anthea.”

My sister, who was clearly trying not to cry, opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs Havelok-Harting simply turned implacably to one of the legal people. “Make a note,” she said. “Tesdinic the elder and the male Brown enter pleas of Not Guilty as charged.”

“And I am innocent!” the Countess said sobbingly. If she was not crying, she was doing a good job of pretending to. “I never did any of this!”

“No more did I,” Mr Amos said. “This is all some kind of trumped up…” He stopped and backed away as the red rubber ball came sailing through the Saloon. When it reached Mr Amos, it began bouncing up and down vehemently in front of him. “…mistake,” Mr Amos finished, eyeing the ball queasily.

“One moment.” Gabriel de Witt held up his hand and strode towards the bouncing ball. “What is this?”

“It’s a ghost, Monsignor,” said one of the royal wizards beside Mr Amos.

The other wizard added, hushed and shocked, “It says it’s been murdered, sir.”

Gabriel de Witt caught the ball and held it in both hands. There was dead silence in the Saloon as he stood there inspecting it, his face growing grimmer every second. “Yes,” he said. “Indeed. A female ghost. It says the evidence for the murder will be found in the library. Sir Simon, would you be so good as to accompany this unfortunate ghost to the library and bring the evidence back here to me?”

He passed the wizard the ball. Sir Simon nodded and carried it away past Mr Prendergast and out through the door.

“This has nothing to do with me,” Mr Amos declared. “You must understand, all of you!” He spread his arms pleadingly. The trouble was that everyone was so shocked and frightened by the presence of a murdered ghost that nobody really took Mr Amos seriously. My thought was that Mr Amos looked like a short, pear-shaped penguin as he went on passionately, “You must understand! I only acted for the sake of Stallery. When my father, Count Humphrey, died, Stallery was bankrupt. The gardens were a wilderness, the roof was falling in and I had to mortgage everything to pay what Staff we had – and they were a second-rate, slipshod lot anyway. It nearly broke my heart. I love Stallery. I wanted to have it as it should be, well run, restored, beautiful, full of properly respectful servants. I knew that would take millions, I knew it would take all my time and energy, I knew it would take magic – specially applied magic, magic I invented myself, I’ll have you know, and secretly installed in the cellars! And in order to make my money, I had to have control of those cellars. The only person who has control of the cellars is the butler, so naturally I had to become the butler. You must see I had to be the butler! I paid a young actor to take my place – Rudolph Brown and I looked much alike in those days…”

“Yes, and you turned your own brother – my husband – out,” my mother said, suddenly and bitterly. “So he wouldn’t get in your way. Hubert never got over it.”

Mr Amos stared at her as if he had forgotten she was there. “Hubert was quite happy running a bookshop,” he said.

“No, he wasn’t,” my mother retorted. “The bookshop was my idea.”

“You are ignoring two things, Count Amos,” Gabriel de Witt put in. “First, that your elevation of your actor friend meant you were deceiving the King, which is treason; and second, that your attempt to restore Stallery was bound to come to nothing.”

“Nothing?” said Mr Amos. He held up a hand and flourished it around the Grand Saloon, the guests, the chandeliers, the beautifully painted ceiling, the golden chairs and sofas. “You call this nothing.”

“Nothing,” Gabriel de Witt repeated. “You must have seen that all the other buildings constructed over this probability fault are, without exception, empty ruins. This probability fault is like a sink. It would have pulled Stallery into the same ruined state in the end, however much magic you used, however much money you poured into it. I imagine this place costs more to run every year…Ah, here is Sir Simon again.”

He turned away from Mr Amos’s look of horrified disbelief as Sir Simon came striding among the lawyers and wizards. Of course, on this floor, he could go in through the balcony to the library and be there and back in minutes. Sir Simon came up to Gabriel de Witt holding the rubber ball in one hand. With the other hand he was dangling my camera.

“Here we are, Monsignor,” he said. “The victim claims that the murderer killed her by trapping her soul in this camera.”

For a moment, I could not breathe. I swear my heart stopped beating. Then, all of a sudden, my heart thundered into life again, hammering in my ears until everything went grey and blotchy and I thought I was going to pass out. I remembered then, I had parked that camera on a bookshelf when Christopher got cramp. I remembered the flashlight going off in the face of that witch as she started to put a spell on me. And I remembered that peculiar magazine, illustrated with bad drawings. Not photographs, drawings. The witch came from a world where nobody dared take a photo, because that trapped the person’s soul inside the camera. I was a murderer. And, I thought, I really do have an evil Fate after all.

I only dimly heard Gabriel de Witt saying, “I must ask every person here to wait, either in this room or in the Banqueting Hall with the servants. I or my staff or the police must question each of you under a truth spell.”

Quite a number of the guests protested. I thought, I must get out of here! I looked around and realised I was quite near the service door. I had been pushed back towards it when all the people had come in with Gabriel de Witt. While Gabriel de Witt was saying, “Yes, it may indeed take all night, but this is a case of murder, madam,” I began backing, very slowly and gently, towards that door. I backed while more guests protested. As I reached the door, Gabriel de Witt was saying, “I apologise, but justice must be done, sir.” I went on backing until the door had swung open, just a small bit, behind me. Then, quite thankful that Mr Amos had made me practise going in and out of rooms so much, I took hold of the door and slid myself around it. I let it close itself on top of my fingers so that it would not thump and then stood for a moment, hoping that no one had noticed me.

“Gabriel de Witt’s in there, isn’t he?” somebody whispered.

I shot sideways and saw Millie pressed against the wall beside the door. She looked almost as terrified as I was.

“And the house is full of policemen,” she said. “Help me get away, Conrad!”

I nodded and tiptoed towards the service stairs. I told myself Millie would be much more frightened if I said why I needed to get away even more urgently than she did. I just whispered to her as she followed me, “Where are they mostly, these policemen?”

“Collecting all the maids and the kitchen staff and taking them to the Banqueting Hall to be questioned,” she whispered back. “I kept having to hide.”

“Good,” I said. “Then we can probably get out through the undercroft. Can you make us both invisible?”

“Yes, but a lot of them are wizards,” Millie whispered, “They’d see us.

“Do it all the same,” I said.

“All right,” she said.

We tiptoed on. I couldn’t tell if we were invisible or not. I think we must have been though, because we passed the lift before we got to the stairs and a policeman came out of it, pushing Mrs Baldock and Miss Semple in front of him, and none of them saw us. Both housekeepers were crying, Mrs Baldock in big heaving sobs and Miss Semple noisy and streaming. “You don’t understand!” Miss Semple wept. “We’ve both worked here most of our lives! If they turn us out over this, where do we go? What do we do?”

“Nothing to do with me,” the policeman said.

Millie and I dodged round them and fled down the stairs to the ground floor. I pushed the green cloth door open a fraction there. There was a lot of noise in the entrance hall, where more policemen seemed to be marshalling gardeners, stablemen and chauffeurs up the main stairs. Most of them were protesting that only Family was allowed to go up this way. I let the door shut itself and we scudded away, down to the undercroft.

I had never seen the undercroft so deserted. It was dim, empty and echoing. I could almost believe that the probability fault had already swallowed all the life down here. I led Millie as fast as I could towards the door between the kitchens and the cellars where the gardeners usually brought their vegetables and fruit.

This bit was not empty. Light was shining up the cellar steps from the open door at the bottom. There were sounds of people busy in the cellars. Millie and I both jumped violently when a strong, wizardly voice shouted upwards, “Go and tell him that shift key is completely stuck at ON! If I turn the power on we’ll have changes all over the place again. Go on. Hurry!”

I nearly laughed. Christopher stuck that key down! I thought. But somebody began coming up the steps at a run. Millie seized my wrist and we sprinted, past the top of the stairs and into the produce lobby, before the person could get to the top of the cellar steps and see us. I opened the door and we tiptoed out. Really out, outside into the gardens.

I was very dismayed to find that it was pitch dark out there, but I said, “Now, run!”

Actually, we went at more of a lumbering trot, with our arms out in case we hit something, trying to follow the pale lines that were probably paths. I think that misled us a bit. We may have been following things that were accidentally pale. At any rate, after lumbering for what seemed half an hour, we found ourselves bursting out beyond some midnight-black bushes into the wide open spaces of the park, not the garden as I had expected. It seemed much, much lighter out there.

“Oh good, we can see!” Millie said.

And be seen! I thought. But we had to get outside the grounds somehow. I began to run, quite hard, towards where I thought the main gate was, taking a straight line over the driveway and across the mown turf of the parkland. I felt I couldn’t get away from Stallery fast enough.

There was a deep “Woof!” somewhere near us, followed by the pounding of mighty paws. I had forgotten Champ. I said a bad word and slowed down. So did Millie.

“Is that a guard dog?” she asked. She sounded even more nervous than I felt.

“Yes, but don’t worry,” I said, trying to sound thoroughly confident. “He knows me.” And I called out, “Champ! Hey, Champ!”

We could trace Champ by the paws and the enormous panting at first. Then his huge dark shape appeared out of the gloom at a gallop. Millie and I both panicked and clutched at one another. But Champ simply swerved towards us, showing us he knew we were there, and went hurtling on, uttering another deep “Woof!”

A second later, there was the most terrible noise in the distance. Champ burst out barking, a deep chesty baying, like thunder. Another dog joined in, this one high and ear-piercing, and yapped and yapped and yapped, making even more noise than Champ. A horse started whinnying, over and over, madly. Mixed in with the animal sounds were human voices shouting, some high, some low and angry. We had no idea what was going on until another human voice shouted ringingly, “Shut up, the lot of you!”

There was instant silence. This was followed by the same voice saying, “Yes, Champ, I love you too. Just take your paws off my shoulders, please.”

Millie shouted, “Christopher!” and ran towards the voice.

When I caught her up, she was hanging on to Christopher’s hands with both hers and I think she was crying. Christopher was saying, “It’s all right, Millie. I only had a little bother with the changes. Nothing else was wrong. It’s all right!”

Behind them, looming against the dark sky, was a Traveller’s caravan drawn by an irritated-looking white horse. Beyond its twitching ears and flicking tail I could just see a man on the driving seat. His skin was so dark that I never saw him clearly. All I saw were his eyes, looking from me to Millie. The small white dog sitting beside him was much easier to see. Last of all I picked out the faces of a woman and two children looking at us over the man’s shoulders.

Here the small white dog decided I was an intruder and started yapping again. Champ, on the ground beside me, took this as a mortal insult and replied. The two yelled abuse at one another, fit to wake the dead.

“Do shut them up!” I bawled across the din. “The mansion’s full of lawyers and police!”

“And Gabriel’s here!” Millie yelled. She seemed to be having some kind of reaction to our narrow escapes. Anyway, she was shivering all over.

Christopher said to the dogs, “Shut up!” and they did. “I know he’s here,” he said to us. “Gabriel and his merry men were all over the towers and empty castles yesterday, having a good look at the changes. I had an awful job keeping out of sight.”

“We have to get away,” Millie said.

Christopher said, “I know,” and looked up at the Traveller driving the caravan. “Is there any chance you can take us all a bit further?” he asked.

The man gave a sort of mutter and turned to talk with the woman. They spoke quickly together in a language I had never heard before. When the man turned back, he said, “We can take you down to the town, but no further. We have a rendezvous to make just after dawn.”

“I suppose we can get a train there,” Christopher said. “Fine. Thank you.”

The woman said, “Climb in at the back then.”

So we all scrambled into the caravan, leaving Champ a melancholy dark hump in the middle of the parkland. The Traveller clicked to his horse and we drove away.

It was strange inside the caravan. I never saw it I properly because it was so dark in there, but it seemed much bigger than I would have expected it to be. It was warm – at least it was warm to me, but Millie kept shivering – and full of warm smells of cloth and onions and spiciness, with a sort of tinny, metallic smell behind that. Things I couldn’t see kept up a tinkling and chiming from somewhere in the walls. There were what seemed like bunks to sit on, where Christopher and I sat with Millie between us to keep her warm, looking across to the two children, who had hurried inside to stare at us through the dimness as if we were the strangest things on earth. But they wouldn’t speak to us, whatever we said.

“They’ve gone shy again. Take no notice,” Christopher said. “Why are you fleeing Stallery, Grant?”

“I’m a murderer,” I said, and told him about the ghost and the camera.

Christopher said, “Oh,” very soberly. After a while, he said, “I could really almost believe you do have bad karma, Grant, although I know you don’t. You certainly have vilely bad luck. Maybe it was the magic – did you know you were absolutely covered in spells when I first met you? One of them may have been a death spell. But I thought I took them all off you while we were walking through the park.”

It was my turn to say, “Oh.” I explained, rather angrily, “One of those spells was supposed to make Mr Amos give me a job.”

“I know,” Christopher said. “That’s why I took them off you. I wanted the job. What was Gabriel doing in Stallery – besides looking for me and Millie, that is?”

“Arresting Mr Amos,” I said. “Did you know he was my uncle?”

“Gabriel can’t be your uncle,” said Christopher. “He comes from Series Twelve.”

“No, stupid – Mr Amos,” I said. “My mother said she was married to Mr Amos’s brother.”

“That usually does make a person your uncle,” Christopher agreed.

“And Mr Amos is really Count of Stallery,” I told him. “Not Count Robert. His father was an actor called Mr Brown. The Countess is really plain Mrs Brown.”

Christopher was delighted. “Tell me all, Grant,” he said. So I did.

Millie said, with her teeth chattering, “Did they arrest that witch too – Lady Mary?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, “but they may have been going to arrest Mr Seuly.”

“What a pity,” Millie said. “Lady Mary ought to be arrested. She uses magic in the vilest way. But—No, shut up, Christopher. Stop making clever remarks and tell me what happened to you now. How did you end up with the Travellers?”

“By using my brain,” Christopher said, “at last. Before it rotted and fell out of my head. I confess that I got really stuck, out in all those empty towers and mansions. Every time there was a change – and there were plenty of those – I seemed to get further and further off from Stallery, and half the time there didn’t seem to be a way to get anywhere, even when I went outside. I got really tired and hungry and confused. I was in a giant building made entirely of glass, when the whole scene suddenly filled with Gabriel’s people. Have you ever tried to hide in a glass house? Don’t. It can’t be done. And they were between me and the way to the roof, so I couldn’t go up there to wait for another change. So I panicked. And then I thought, There must be another way! Then I thought of Champ. Champ was never allowed into the house…”

“Just like Mr Avenloch and Smedley!” I said. “The changes happen out in the park too!”

“They do, Grant,” Christopher said. “The probability fault has two ends, but one is out in the middle of nowhere and nobody notices it. As soon as I realised that, I dodged out of the beastly greenhouse and went chasing out into the moors to look for the other end. But I don’t think I’d ever have found it if the Travellers hadn’t come through more or less as I got there. They gave me some food and I asked them to get me to Stallery – I hoped you were there by then, Millie – and they didn’t want to do that at first. They said they would come out in the middle of the park. But I said I’d get them out through the gatehouse, so they agreed to take me.”

“How do we get out through the gate?” I asked.

The words were hardly out of my mouth when the regular clop of the horse’s shoes stopped. The Traveller leant back from the driver’s seat and said, “Here is the gatehouse.”

“Right.” Christopher got up and scrambled to the front of the caravan.

I don’t know what he did. The horse started walking again and, after a moment, the inside of the caravan went so dark that the kids opposite me gave out little twitters of alarm. The next thing I knew, I was looking out of the back of the van at the tunnel of the gateway, with its gates wide open, and the horse was turning out into the road. I heard its hooves bang and slide on the tramlines as Christopher came crawling back, and then it must have found the space between the rails, because its feet settled into a regular clopping again.

“How did you do that?” Millie asked. It was a professional, enchantress sort of question, even though her teeth were still chattering.

“The gatekeeper wasn’t there,” Christopher said, “so it was easy to short out the defences. They must have arrested him too.”

It was a long way down to Stallchester and the horse went nothing like so fast as the tram. The slow clopping of its feet was so regular and the inside of the caravan so cosy that I fell asleep and dreamed slow, cloves-and-metal scented dreams. From time to time I woke up, usually on the steep bits, where the horse went slower than ever and the Traveller put on the brake with a long, slurring noise and called out to the horse in his foreign language. Then I went to sleep again.

I woke up finally when white morning light was coming through both ends of the caravan. The clopping hooves seemed louder, with a lot of echo to them. I sat up and saw Stallchester Cathedral going past, very slowly, at the back of the caravan.

A moment later, the Traveller leant backwards to say, “This is where we must put you down.”

Christopher jumped awake in a flurry to say, “Oh. Right. Thanks.” I don’t think Millie woke up until we were down in the street, watching the caravan swiftly rumbling away from us, jingling and tinkling all over, with the horse now at a smart trot.

Millie started to shiver again. I was not surprised. Her striped Stallery uniform was not at all warm – neither was mine, for that matter. We looked very out of place in the middle of the wet, slightly foggy street. Christopher’s clothes must have been caught in one of the changes. He was wearing wide baggy garments that could have been made of sackcloth and he looked even odder than Millie and I did.

“Are you all right?” he said to Millie.

“Just freezing,” she said.

“She lived most of her life in a hot country,” Christopher explained to me. He looked anxiously round at the touristy boutiques on either side of the street. “It’s too early for these shops to be open. I suppose I could conjure you a coat…”

Coat, I thought, sweaters, woollen shirts – I know where to find all these things. “Our bookshop is just down the end of this street,” I said. “I bet my winter clothes are still there in my room. Let’s sneak in and get some sweaters.”

“Good idea,” Christopher said, looking worriedly at Millie. “And then show us the way to the train station.”

I led them down the street and into the alley at the back of our shop. Our yard gate opened in the usual way, with me climbing to the top of it, leaning over to slide the bolt back, and then jumping down and lifting the latch. Inside the yard, the key to the back door was hanging behind the drainpipe, just as usual. I might never have been away, I thought, as we tiptoed through the office. In the shop, it was not quite as usual. The cash desk and most of the big bookcases were in different places. I couldn’t tell whether this was from one of Uncle Alfred’s reorganisations or because of all the changes up at Stallery. The place smelt the same, anyway, of book and floor polish and just a whiff of chemicals from Uncle Alfred’s workroom.

“You two stay here,” I whispered to Christopher and Millie. “I’ll creep up and fetch the clothes.”

“Will anyone hear?” Millie asked. She settled into the chair behind the cash desk with a weary shiver.

As far as I knew, my mother was still up at Stallery. She had missed the last tram by the time she came into the Grand Saloon, and the first tram in the morning didn’t get down to Stallchester until eight-thirty. Uncle Alfred needed two large alarm clocks with double bells the size of teacups in order to wake up in the mornings. “No,” I said and ran up the stairs as lightly as I could.

It was strange. Our stairs seemed small and shabby after Stallery. The fizz of old magics coming from Uncle Alfred’s workroom felt small and shabby too, after the magic I had felt from Christopher and from Stallery itself. And I had forgotten that the private part of our house smelt so dusty. I hurried through the strangeness up to the very top, to my room.

And I could scarcely believe it when I got there. My mother had taken my room to write in. It was full of her usual piles of papers and copies of her books, and there by the window was her splintery old table with her typewriter on it. For a moment, I thought it just might be one of the changes from Stallery, but when I looked closely, I saw the marks where my bed and my chest of drawers had been.

Still scarcely able to believe it, I shot down half a floor to Mum’s old writing room. My bed was in there, upside down, and rammed in beside it was my chest of drawers with all its drawers open, empty. All my clothes were gone, and my model aircraft, and my books. They had truly not expected me to come back. I felt – well, hurt is the only word for it. Very, dreadfully hurt. But, just in case, I went on down and looked into Anthea’s room.

That was worse. When I left, there had still been Anthea’s furniture in there, along with Mum’s papers. Now that was all cleared away. Uncle Alfred had made it into a store for his magical supplies. There were new shelves full of bottles and packets on three of the walls and a stack of glassware in the middle. I stood and stared at it for a moment, thinking about Anthea. How did she feel at this moment, now they had arrested her new husband for fraud?

I felt quite as bad.

I pulled myself together and tiptoed across the landing to my mother’s room. This was better. This room looked and smelt the same as always – though perhaps dustier – and her unmade bed was piled with heaps of her dusty, moth-eaten clothes. There were more clothes puddled in heaps on the floor. Mum had obviously thrown everything out of her cupboards when she hunted out that awful yellow dress to wear at Stallery. I picked up one of her usual mustard-coloured sweaters and put it on. It smelt of Mum, which somehow made me feel more hurt than ever. The sweater looked awful over my green and cream uniform, but at least it was warm. I picked up another, thicker sweater for Millie and a jacket for Christopher and hurried away downstairs.

As I went, I thought I heard the shop door open, with its usual muffled tinkle. Oh no! I thought. Christopher is doing something cleverly stupid again! I put on speed and fairly charged out into the shop.

It was empty. I stood in the polished space beside the cash desk and stared round miserably. Christopher and Millie must have left without me.

I was just about to charge on out into the street, waving the clothes, when I heard the flop, flop of slippers hurrying down the stairs behind me. Uncle Alfred bustled out into the shop, tying his dressing gown over his striped pyjamas.

“Someone in the shop,” he was saying as he came. “I can’t turn my back for a moment – never a wink of sleep…” Then he saw me and stopped dead. “What are you doing here?” he said. He pushed his spectacles up his nose to make sure it was me. When he was certain, he ran his hands through his tousled hair and seemed quite bewildered. “You’re supposed to be up at Stallery, Con,” he said. “Did your mother send you back here? Does that mean you’ve killed your Uncle Amos already?”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t.” I wanted to tell him that Mr Amos had been arrested. So there! But I also wanted to tell Uncle Alfred just what I thought of him for putting spells on me and pretending I had an evil Fate, and I couldn’t decide which I wanted to say first. I hesitated, and after that I had lost my chance. Uncle Alfred more or less screamed at me.

“ You haven’t killed him!” he shrieked. “But I sent you up there with death spells all over you, boy! I sent you to summon a Walker! I sent you with spells to make you know it was Amos Tesdinic you had to kill! And you let me down!” He advanced on me in a dreadful flopping of slippers and his hands sort of clutching like claws. “You’ll pay for this!” he shouted. His face was wild, with strange blotches all over it, and his eyes glared at me through his glasses like big yellow marbles. “I might have had Stallery in my hands – these hands – but for you!” he screamed. “With you hanged and Amos dead, they’d give the place to your mother, and I can manage her.”

“No, you’re wrong,” I said, backing away. “There’s Hugo, you see. And Anthea.”

He didn’t listen to me. He almost never did, of course, unless I forced him to by going on strike about something. “ I could have been pulling the probabilities this moment!” he howled. “Just let me get my hands on you!”

I could feel the fizz of his magic rising around me. I wanted to turn and run, but I didn’t seem to be able to. I didn’t know what to do.

“Summon the Walker again!” Christopher’s voice whispered urgently in my ear. I could feel Christopher’s breath tickling the side of my face and the invisible warmth of him beside me. I don’t think I have ever been so glad to feel anything. “Summon it now, Grant!”

The corkscrew-key hung round my neck was tugged by invisible fingers and flipped out over Mum’s mustard-coloured sweater.

I dropped the jacket and the sweater for Millie and grabbed the corkscrew-key gratefully. I held it up. The string it was hanging on lengthened helpfully so that I could more or less wave the thing in Uncle Alfred’s glaring face. “I hereby summon a Walker!” I screamed. “Come to me and give me what I need!”

The cold, and the feeling of vast open distances, began at once. I could see the immense curving horizon beyond Uncle Alfred’s untidy hair, glowing from the light that was out of sight below it. Uncle Alfred whipped round and saw it too. His mouth opened. He started to back away towards the cash desk, but he did not seem to be able to. I could see dents on the sleeves of his dressing gown where two pairs of hands were hanging on to each of his arms. As the figure of the Walker crossed the huge horizon with its hurried, pattering steps, I could feel Christopher on one side of Uncle Alfred and Millie on the other, both holding on to Uncle Alfred like grappling irons.

Uncle Alfred shouted, “No, no! Let go!” and plunged and pulled to get free. His arms heaved as if there were lead weights on him as Christopher and Millie hung on.

The Walker approached with surprising speed, its hair and clothing blown sideways without moving, in the unfelt frozen wind it brought with it. In no time at all, it was towering into the shop and looming among the bookcases, filling the space with its icy smell. Then it was standing over us. Its intent white face and long dark eyes turned from Uncle Alfred to me.

“No, no!” Uncle Alfred cried out.

The Walker’s long dark eyes turned to Uncle Alfred again. It held out to him the small crimson-stained wine cork labelled Illary Wines 1893.

“Don’t point that at me!” Uncle Alfred shrieked, pulling away backwards. “Point it at Con! It’s got a really strong death spell on it!”

The Walker’s white face nodded at him. Once. Both its arms swept out. It picked Uncle Alfred up bodily and pattered on past me, carrying Uncle Alfred as easily as if he had been a baby. The last I saw of him were his striped pyjama legs kicking frantically as he was carried away beside my right shoulder. As the Walker itself passed me, there was a jerk at my neck and the corkscrew-key flew out of my hands and vanished. The feeling of wind and the horizon of eternity vanished at the same instant.

Millie and Christopher became visible then, staggering away sideways, both looking extremely shaken. Christopher said, in an unusually small, sober voice, “I don’t think I like either of your uncles, Grant.”

“That,” said a deep, dry voice from behind me, “must be the first sensible notion you have had for months, Christopher.”

Gabriel de Witt was standing there, grey and severe, and looking as tall as the Walker in his black frock coat. He was not alone. All the staff who had come with him into the Grand Saloon were there too, crowded up against bookcases and standing in the space where the Walker had been. Mr Prendergast was with them, and the King’s Solicitor, and one of the Sorceresses Royal – Madame Dupont, it was – and the dreadful Mrs Havelok-Harting as well. My mother and Anthea were standing beside Gabriel de Witt, both very weary and tear-stained. But I was interested to see, looking round, that every single person there seemed as shaken as I was by the passing of the Walker. Even Gabriel de Witt was a little greyer than he had been in Stallery.

At the sight of him, and of all the other people, Christopher looked as dumbfounded as I had ever seen him. His face went as white as the Walker’s. He gulped a bit and tried to straighten the tie he wasn’t wearing. “I can explain everything,” he said.

“Me too,” Millie whispered. She looked downright ill.

“I shall speak to the two of you later,” Gabriel de Witt said. It sounded very ominous. “For now,” he said, “I want to talk to Conrad Tesdinic.”

This sounded even more ominous. “I can explain everything too,” I said. I was scared stiff. I thought I’d rather talk to Uncle Alfred, any day. “I come of a criminal family, you see,” I said. “Both my uncles – and I’m sure I do have an evil Fate, whatever Christopher says.”

For some reason, this made Anthea give a weepy little laugh. My mother sighed.

“I need to ask you some questions,” Gabriel de Witt said, just as if I had not said anything. He pulled a packet out of an inside pocket of his ink-black respectable frock coat and passed it to me. It seemed to be a packet of postcards. “Please look through these pictures and explain to me what you see there.”

Though I could not for the life of me see why Gabriel de Witt should be interested in picture postcards, I opened the packet and pulled them out. “Oh,” I said. They were prints of the photographs I had taken of the double spiral staircase where we saw Millie. There was one of just the staircase, then two of Millie on the same staircase shouting across at Christopher, and then one of the same staircase, looking up towards the dirty glass of the tower. But something had gone wrong with all of them. Behind each one, misty but quite distinct, were the insides of other buildings, dozens of them. I could see fuzzy hallways, other stairways, domed rooms in many different styles, ruined stone arches and, several times, what looked like a giant greenhouse. They were all on top of one another, in layers. “I think I must have loaded a film that someone else had used first,” I said.

Gabriel de Witt simply said, “Continue looking, please.”

I went on down the pile. Here was the hall the double stairway had led down to, but the other person seemed to have photographed a marble place with a sort of swimming pool in it and somewhere dark, with statues, behind that. The next was the room with the harp, but this had literally dozens of rooms mistily behind it, blurred vistas of ballrooms and dining rooms and huge saloons, and a place with billiard tables on top of what looked like several libraries. The next two photographs showed the kitchens – with dim further kitchens behind them – including the knitting on the chair and the table with the strange magazine on it. The next…

I gave a sharp yelp. I couldn’t help it. The witch had been even nearer than I’d thought. Her face had come out flat and round and blank, the way faces do when you push a camera right up to them. Her mouth was open in a black and furious crescent and her eyes glared flatly. She looked like an angry pancake.

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” I said.

“Oh, you didn’t kill her,” Gabriel de Witt, to my astonishment, replied. “You merely trapped her soul. We found her body in a coma in one of those kitchens while we were exploring the alternate buildings, and we returned it to Seven D, where I am pleased to say they promptly put it in prison. She was wanted in that world for killing several enchanters in order to obtain their magical powers.”

Millie gave a small gasp at this.

One of Gabriel de Witt’s tufty eyebrows twitched towards Millie, but he continued without interrupting himself, “We have, of course, returned the woman’s soul to Seven D now, so that she may stand trial in the proper way. Tell me what else you see in those pictures.”

I leafed through the pile again. “These two of Millie on the stairs would be quite good,” I said, “if it wasn’t for all the buildings that have come out behind her.”

“They were not there when you took the photographs?” Gabriel de Witt asked me.

“Of course not,” I said. “I’ve never seen them before.”

“Ah, but we have,” said one of Gabriel de Witt’s people, a youngish man with a lot of light curly hair and a brown skin. He came forward and handed me a packet of differently shaped photographs. “I took these while we were searching the probabilities for Millie and Christopher,” he said. “What do you think?”

These were photographs of two ruined castles, some marble stairs leading up from a pool, a ballroom, a huge greenhouse, and the double spiral staircase again, and the last one was of the rickety wooden tower where Christopher and I found Champ. All of them, to my shame, were clear and single and precise.

“They’re much better than mine,” I said.

“Yes, but just look,” said the man. He took my first photograph of Millie on the stairway and held it beside four of his. “Look in the background of yours,” he said. “You’ve got both these ruined castles in it and the glass house – and I think that blurred thing behind them is the wooden tower. And if you take yours with the harp, you can see my ballroom at the back of it quite clearly. See?”

The Sorceress Royal said, “In our opinion – and Mrs Havelok-Harting agrees with me – it’s a remarkable talent, Conrad, to be able to photograph alternate probabilities that you can’t even see. Isn’t this so, Monsignor?” she asked Gabriel de Witt.

Mr Prendergast added, “Hear, hear.”

Gabriel de Witt took my photographs back from me and stood frowning down at them. “Yes indeed,” he said at last. “Master Tesdinic here has an extraordinary degree of untrained magical talent. I would like,” he turned his frown on my mother, “to take the lad back with me to Series Twelve and make sure that he is properly taught.”

“Oh no!” Anthea said.

“I believe I must,” Gabriel de Witt said. He was still frowning at my mother. “I cannot think what you were doing, madam, neglecting to provide your son with proper tuition.”

My mother’s hair was down all over the place, like an unstuffed mattress. I could see she had no answer to Gabriel de Witt. So she said tragically, “Now all my family is to be taken from me!”

Gabriel de Witt straightened himself, looking grim and dour even for him. “That, madam,” he said, “is what tends to happen when one neglects people.” And before my mother could think what to say to this, he added, “The same thing can be said to myself, if this is any consolation.” He turned his grim face to Millie. “You were quite right about that Swiss school, my dear,” he said to her. “I went and inspected it before I came on here. I should have done that before I sent you to it. It’s a terrible place. We shall see about a better school as soon as we get home.”

Millie’s face became one jubilant, shivering smile.

Christopher said, “What did I tell you?”

It was clear that Christopher was still in bad trouble. Gabriel de Witt said to him, “I said I would speak to you later, Christopher,” and then turned to Mrs Havelok-Harting. “May I leave all outstanding matters in your capable hands, Prosecutor? It is more than time that I returned to my own world. Please present my compliments to His Majesty and my thanks to him for allowing me the freedom to investigate here.”

“I shall do that,” the formidable lady said. “We would have been quite at a stand without you, Monsignor. But,” she added rather more doubtfully, “did your magics last night definitely stop those dreadful probability changes?”

“Very definitely,” Gabriel de Witt said. “Some foolish person appeared to have jammed the shift key to ON, that was all.” I saw Christopher wince at this. Luckily, Gabriel de Witt did not notice. He went on, “If you have any further trouble, please send a competent wizard to fetch me back. Now is everyone ready? We must leave.”

Anthea rushed at me and flung her arms round me. “Come back, Conrad, please!”

“Of course he will,” Gabriel de Witt said, rather impatiently. “No one can leave his own world for ever. Conrad will return to act as my permanent representative in Series Seven.”

I have just come back to Series Seven to be Agent for the Chrestomanci here.

Before this I spent six blissfully happy years at Chrestomanci Castle, learning magic I never dreamed existed and making friends with all the other young enchanters being educated there – Elizabeth, Jason, Bernard, Henrietta and the rest – although the first week or so was a little difficult. Christopher was in such bad trouble – and so annoyed about it – that the castle seemed to be inside a thunderstorm until Gabriel de Witt forgave him. And Millie turned out to have caught flu. This was why she had been feeling so cold. She was so ill with it that she did not go to her new school until after Christmas.

At the end of the six years, when I was eighteen, Gabriel de Witt called me into his study and explained that I must go home to Series Seven now or I would start to fade, not being in my own world. He suggested that the way to get used to my own world again was to attend Ludwich University. He also said he was sorry to lose me, because I seemed to be the only person who could make Christopher see sense. I am not sure anyone can do that, but Christopher seems to think so too. He has asked me to come back next year to be Best Man at his wedding. He and Millie are using the gold ring with Christopher’s life in it as a wedding ring, which seems a good way to keep it safe.

Anyway, I have enrolled as a student in Ludwich and I am staying with Mr Prendergast in his flat opposite the Variety Theatre. Though Mr Prendergast isn’t really an actor, he never can stay away from theatres. Anthea wanted me to stay with her. She keeps ringing me up from New Rome to say I must live with her and Robert as soon as she gets back. She is in New Rome supervising her latest fashion show – she has become quite a famous dress designer. And Robert is away too, filming in Africa. He took up acting as soon as the police let him go. Mrs Havelok-Harting decided that, as Robert only discovered Mr Amos’s fraud when his father died, and then refused to be part of it, he could not be said to be guilty. Hugo had a harder time, but they released him too in the end. Now—and I could hardly believe this when Mr Prendergast told me – Hugo and Felice are running the bookshop in Stallchester. My mother is still writing books in their attic. We are driving up to see them next weekend.

Mr Amos is still in jail. They transferred him to St Helena Prison Island last year. And the Countess is living in style in Buda-Parich, not wanting to show herself in this country. And – Mr Prendergast is not sure, but he thinks this is so – Mr Seuly went there to join her when he got out of prison. Anyway, Stallchester has a new mayor now.

No one has seen or heard of my Uncle Alfred since the Walker took him away. Now I have learnt about such things, I am not surprised. The Walkers are messengers of the Lords of Karma, and Uncle Alfred tried to use the Lords of Karma in his schemes.

And Stallery is falling into ruin, Mr Prendergast told me sadly, and becoming just like all the other deserted probability mansions. I remembered Mrs Baldock and Miss Semple coming weeping out of the lift, and wondered what had become of all the Staff who had lost their jobs there.

“Oh, the King stepped in there,” Mr Prendergast told me cheerfully. “He’s always on the lookout for well-trained domestics to man the Royal Residences. They’ve all got royal jobs. Except Manfred,” Mr Prendergast added. “He had to give up acting after he fell through the wall in a dungeon scene. I think he’s a schoolteacher now.”

The King wants to see me tomorrow. I feel very nervous. But Fay Marley has promised to go with me at least as far as the door and hold my hand. She knows the King well and she says she thinks he may want to make me a Special Investigator like Mr Prendergast. “You notice things other people don’t see, darling,” she says. “Don’t worry so much. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

To Greer Gilman

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

At the beginning of the summer holidays, while Chrestomanci and his family were still in the south of France, Marianne Pinhoe and her brother Joe walked reluctantly up the steep main street of Ulverscote. They had been summoned by Gammer Pinhoe. Gammer was head of Pinhoe witchcraft in Ulverscote and wherever Pinhoes were, from Bowbridge to Hopton, and from Uphelm to Helm St Mary. You did not disobey Gammer’s commands.

“I wonder what the old bat wants this time,” Joe said gloomily as they passed the church. “Some new stupid thing, I bet.”

“Hush,” said Marianne. Uphill from the church, the Reverend Pinhoe was in the vicarage garden spraying his roses. She could smell the acid odour of the spell and hear the hoosh of the vicar’s spray. It was true that Gammer’s commands had lately become more and more exacting and peculiar, but no adult Pinhoe liked to hear you say so.

Joe bent his head and put on his most sulky look. “But it doesn’t make sense,” he grumbled as they passed the vicarage gate. “Why does she want me too?”

Marianne grinned. Joe was considered “a disappointment” by the Pinhoes. Only Marianne knew how hard Joe worked at being disappointing – though she thought Mum suspected it. Joe’s heart was in machines. He had no patience with the traditional sort of witchcraft or the way magic was done by the Pinhoes – or by the Farleighs over in Helm St Mary, or for that matter the Cleeves in Underhelm on the other side of Ulverscote. As far as that kind of magic went, Joe wanted to be a failure. They left him in peace then.

“It makes sense she wants you,” Joe continued as they climbed the last stretch of hill up to Woods House, where Gammer lived. “You being the next Gammer and all.”

Marianne sighed and made a face. The fact was that no girls except Marianne had been born to Gammer’s branch of the Pinhoes for two generations now. Everyone knew that Marianne would have to follow in Gammer’s footsteps. Marianne had two great uncles and six uncles, ten boy cousins, and weekly instructions from Gammer on the witchcraft that was expected of her. It weighed on her rather. “I’ll live,” she said. “I expect we both will.”

They turned up the weedy drive of Woods House. The gates had been broken ever since Old Gaffer died when Marianne was quite small. Their father, Harry Pinhoe, was Gaffer now, being Gammer’s eldest son. But it said something about their father’s personality, Marianne always thought, that everyone called him Dad and never Gaffer.

They took two steps up the drive and sniffed. There was a powerful smell of wild animal there.

“Fox?” Joe said doubtfully. “Tom cat?”

Marianne shook her head. The smell was strong, but it was much pleasanter than either of those. A powdery, herby scent, a bit like Mum’s famous foot-powder.

Joe laughed. “It’s not Nutcase anyway. He’s been done.”

They went up the three worn steps and pushed on the peeling front door. There was no one to open it to them. Gammer insisted on living quite alone in the huge old house, with only old Miss Callow to come and clean for her twice a week. And Miss Callow didn’t do much of a job, Marianne thought as they came into the wide entrance hall. Sunlight from the window halfway up the dusty oak staircase made slices of light filled thick with dust motes, and shone murkily off the glass cases of stuffed animals that stood on tables round the walls. Marianne hated these. The animals had all been stuffed with savage snarls on their faces. Even through the dust, you saw red open mouths, sharp white teeth and glaring glass eyes. She tried not to look at them as she and Joe crossed the hall over the wall-to-wall spread of grubby coconut matting and knocked on the door of the front room.

“Oh, come in, do,” Gammer said. “I’ve been waiting half the morning for you.”

“No, you haven’t,” Joe muttered. Marianne hoped this was too quiet for Gammer to hear, true though it was. She and Joe had set off the moment Aunt Joy brought the message down from the Post Office.

Gammer was sitting in her tattered armchair, wearing the layers of black clothing she always wore, with her black cat Nutcase on her bony knees and her stick propped up by the chair. She did not seem to have heard Joe. “It’s holidays now, isn’t it?” she said. “How long have you got? Six weeks?”

“Nearly seven,” Marianne admitted. She looked down into the ruins of Gammer’s big, square, handsome face and wondered if she would look like this when she was this old herself. Everyone said that Gammer had once had thick chestnutty hair, like Marianne had, and Gammer’s eyes were the same wide brown ones that Marianne saw in the mirror when she stared at herself and worried about her looks. The only square thing about Marianne was her unusually broad forehead. This was always a great relief to Marianne.

“Good,” said Gammer. “Well, here’s my plans for you both. Can’t have the pair of you doing nothing for seven weeks. Joe first, you’re the eldest. We’ve got you a job, a live-in job. You’re going to go and be boot boy to the Big Man in You-Know-Where.”

Joe stared at her, horrified. “In Chrestomanci Castle, you mean?”

“Be quiet,” his grandmother said sharply. “You don’t say that name here. Do you want to have them notice us? They’re only ten miles away in Helm St Mary.”

“But,” said Joe, “I’d got plans of my own for these holidays.”

“Too bad,” said Gammer. “Idle plans, stupid plans. You know you’re a disappointment to us all, Joseph Pinhoe, so here’s your chance to be useful for once. You can go and be our inside eyes and ears in That Castle, and send me word back by Joss Callow if they show the slightest signs of knowing us Pinhoes exist – or Farleighs or Cleeves for that matter.”

“Of course they know we exist,” Joe said scornfully. “They can’t think there’s no one living in Ulverscote or —”

Gammer stopped him with a skinny pointing finger. “Joe Pinhoe, you know what I mean. They don’t know and can’t know that we’re all of us witches. They’d step in and make rules and laws for us as soon as they knew and stop us from working at our craft. For two hundred years now – ever since they put a Big Man in That Castle – we’ve stopped them finding out about us and I intend for us to go on stopping them. And you are going to help me do that, Joe.”

“No, I’m not,” Joe said. “What’s wrong with Joss Callow? He’s there.”

“But he’s an outside man,” Gammer said. “We want you inside. That’s where all the secrets are.”

“I’m not —” Joe began.

“Yes, you are!” Gammer snapped. “Joss has you all fixed up and recommended to that harpy Bessemer that they call Housekeeper there, and go there you will, until you start school again.” She snatched up her stick and pointed it at Joe’s chest. “I so order it,” she said.

Marianne felt the jolt of magic and heard Joe gasp at whatever the stick did to him. He looked from his chest to the end of the stick, dazed and sulky. “You’d no call to do that,” he said.

“It won’t kill you,” Gammer said. “Now, Marianne, I want you with me from breakfast to supper every day. I want help in the house and errands run, but we’ll give out that you’re my apprentice. I don’t want people thinking I need looking after.”

Marianne, seeing her holidays being swallowed up and taken away, just like Joe’s, cast around for something – anything! – that might let her off. “I promised Mum to help with the herbs,” she said. “There’s been a bumper crop —”

“Then Cecily can just do her own stewing and distilling alone, like she always does,” Gammer said. “I want you here, Marianne. Or do I have to point my stick at you?”

“Oh, no. Don’t —” Marianne began.

She was interrupted by the crunch of wheels and hoofbeats on the drive outside. Without waiting for Gammer’s sharp command to “See who’s there!” Marianne and Joe raced to the window. Nutcase jumped off Gammer’s knee and beat them to it. He took one look through the grimy glass and fled, with his tail all bushed out. Marianne looked out to see a smart wickerwork pony carriage with a well-groomed piebald pony in its shafts just drawing up by the front steps. Its driver was Gaffer Farleigh, whom Marianne had always disliked, in his best tweed suit and cloth cap, and looking grim even for him. Behind him in the wicker carriage seat sat Gammer Norah Farleigh. Gammer Norah had long thin eyes and a short thin mouth, which made her look grim at the best of times. Today she looked even grimmer.

“Who is it?” Gammer demanded urgently.

“Gaffer Farleigh. In his best,” Joe said. “And Gammer Norah. State visit, Gammer. She’s got that horrible hat on, with the poppies.”

“And they all look horribly angry,” Marianne added. She watched a Farleigh cousin jump out of the carriage and go to the pony’s head. He was in a suit too. She watched Gaffer Farleigh hand the whip and the reins to the cousin and climb stiffly down, where he stood smoothing his peppery whiskers and waiting for Gammer Norah, who was making the carriage dip and creak as she stood up and got down too. Gammer Norah was a large lady. Poor pony, Marianne thought, even with a light carriage like that.

“Go and let them in. Show them in here and then wait in the hall,” Gammer commanded. “I want some Pinhoes on call while I speak to them.” Marianne thought Gammer was quite as much surprised by this visit as they were.

She and Joe scurried out past the stuffed animals, Joe with his sulkiest, most head-down, mulish look. The cracked old doorbell jangled and Gaffer Farleigh pushed the front door open as they reached it.

“Come all the way from Helm St Mary,” he said, glowering at them, “and I find two children who can’t even be bothered to come to the door. She in, your Gammer? Or pretending she’s out?”

“She’s in the front room,” Marianne said politely. “Shall I show —?”

But Gaffer Farleigh pushed rudely past and tramped towards the front room, followed by Gammer Norah who practically shoved Joe against the nearest stuffed animal case getting her bulk indoors. She was followed by her acid-faced daughter Dorothea, who said to Marianne, “Show some manners, child. They’ll need a cup of tea and biscuits at once. Hurry it up.”

“Well, I like that!” Joe said, and made a face at Dorothea’s back as Dorothea shut the front room door with a slam. “Let’s just go home.”

Raised voices were already coming from behind the slammed door. “No, stay,” Marianne said. “I want to know what they’re so angry about.”

“Me too,” Joe admitted. He grinned at Marianne and quietly directed a small, sly spell at the front room door, with the result that the door shortly came open an inch or so. Gaffer Farleigh’s voice boomed through the gap. “Don’t deny it, woman! You let it out!”

“I did not!” Gammer more or less screamed, and was then drowned out by the voices of Norah and Dorothea, both yelling.

Marianne went to the kitchen to put the kettle on, leaving Joe to listen. Nutcase was there, sitting in the middle of the enormous old table, staring ardently at a tin of cat food someone had left there. Marianne sighed. Gammer always said Nutcase had only two braincells, both of them devoted to food, but it did rather look as if Gammer had forgotten to feed him again. She opened the tin for him and put the food in his dish. Nutcase was so ecstatically grateful that Marianne wondered how long it was since Gammer had remembered that cats need to eat. There were no biscuits in any of the cupboards. Marianne began to wonder if Gammer had forgotten to feed herself too.

As the kettle was still only singing, Marianne went into the hall again. The screaming in the front room had died down. Dorothea’s voice said, “And I nearly walked into it. I was lucky not to be hurt.”

“Pity it didn’t eat you,” Gammer said.

This caused more screaming and made Joe giggle. He was standing over the glass case that held the twisted, snarling ferret, looking at it much as Nutcase had looked at the tin of cat food. “Have you found out what it’s about yet?” Marianne whispered.

Joe shrugged. “Not really. They say Gammer did something and she says she didn’t.”

At this moment the noise in the front room died down enough for them to hear Gaffer Farleigh saying, “… our sacred trust, Pinhoes and Farleighs both, not to speak of Cleeves. And you, Edith Pinhoe, have failed in that trust.”

“Nonsense,” came Gammer’s voice. “You’re a pompous fool, Jed Farleigh.”

“And the very fact that you deny it,” Gaffer Farleigh continued, “shows that you have lost all sense of duty, all sense of truth and untruth, in your work and in your life.”

“I never heard anything so absurd,” Gammer began.

Norah’s voice cut across Gammer’s. “Yes, you have, Edith. That’s what we’re here to say. You’ve lost it. You’re past it. You make mistakes.”

“We think you should retire,” Dorothea joined in priggishly.

“Before you do any more harm,” Gaffer Farleigh said.

He sounded as if he was going to say more, but whatever this was it was lost in the immense scream Gammer gave. “What nonsense, what cheek, what an insult!” she screamed. “Get out of here, all of you! Get out of my house, this instant!” She backed this up with such a huge gust of magic that Joe and Marianne reeled where they stood, even though it was not aimed at them. The Farleighs must have got it right in their faces. They came staggering backwards out of the front room and across the hall. At the front door, they managed to turn themselves around. Gaffer Farleigh, more furiously angry than either Joe or Marianne had ever seen him, shook his fist and roared out, “I tell you you’ve lost it, Edith!” Marianne could have sworn that, mixed in with Gammer’s gust of magic, was the sharp stab of a spell from Gaffer Farleigh too.

Before she could be sure, all three Farleighs bolted for their carriage, jumped into it and drove off, helter-skelter, as if Chrestomanci himself was after them.

In the front room, Gammer was still screaming. Marianne rushed in to find her rocking back and forth in her chair and screaming, screaming. Her hair was coming down and dribble was running off her chin. “Joe! Help me stop her!” Marianne shouted.

Joe came close to Gammer and bawled at her, “I’m not going to Chrestomanci Castle! Whatever you say!” He said afterwards that it was the only thing he could think of that Gammer might attend to.

It certainly stopped Gammer screaming. She stared at Joe, all wild and shaky and panting. “Filberts of halibuts is twisted out of all porringers,” she said.

“Gammer!” Marianne implored her. “Talk sense!”

“Henbane,” said Gammer. “Beauticians’ holiday. Makes a crumbfest.”

Marianne turned to Joe. “Run and get Mum,” she said. “Quickly. I think her mind’s gone.”

By nightfall, Marianne’s verdict was the official one.

Well before Joe actually reached Furze Cottage to fetch Mum, word seemed to get round that something had happened to Gammer. Dad and Uncle Richard were already rushing up the street from the shed behind the cottage where they worked making furniture; Uncle Arthur was racing uphill from the Pinhoe Arms; Uncle Charles arrived on his bicycle and Uncle Cedric rattled in soon after on his farm cart; Uncle Simeon’s builder’s van stormed up next; and Uncle Isaac pelted over the fields from his smallholding, followed by his wife Aunt Dinah and an accidental herd of goats. Soon after that came the two great-uncles. Uncle Edgar, who was an estate agent, spanked up the drive in his carriage and pair; and Uncle Lester, who was a lawyer, came in his smart car all the way from Hopton, leaving his office to take care of itself.

The aunts and great-aunts were not far behind. They paused only to make sandwiches first – except for Aunt Dinah, who went back to the Dell to pen the goats before she too made sandwiches. This, it seemed to Marianne, was an unchanging Pinhoe custom. Show them a crisis and Pinhoe aunts made sandwiches. Even her own mother arrived with a basket smelling of bread, egg and cress. The great table in the Woods House kitchen was shortly piled with sandwiches of all sizes and flavours. Marianne and Joe were kept busy carrying pots of tea and sandwiches to the solemn meeting in the front room, where they had to tell each new arrival exactly what happened.

Marianne got sick of telling it. Every time she got to the part where Gaffer Farleigh shook his fist and shouted, she explained, “Gaffer Farleigh cast a spell on Gammer then. I felt it.”

And every time, the uncle or aunt would say, “I can’t see Jed Farleigh doing a thing like that!” and they would turn to Joe and ask if Joe had felt a spell too. And Joe was forced to shake his head and say he hadn’t. “But there was such a lot of stuff coming from Gammer,” he said, “I could have missed it.”

But the aunts and uncles attended to Joe no more than they attended to Marianne. They turned to Gammer then. Mum had arrived first, being the only Pinhoe lady to think of throwing sandwiches together by witchcraft, and she had found Gammer in such a state that her first act had been to send Gammer to sleep. Gammer was most of the time lying on the shabby sofa, snoring. “She was screaming the place down,” Mum explained to each newcomer. “It seemed the best thing to do.”

“Better wake her up then, Cecily,” said the uncle or aunt. “She’ll be calmer by this time.”

So Mum would take the spell off and Gammer would sit up with a shriek. “Pheasant pie, I tell you!” she would shout. “Tell me something I don’t know. Get the fire brigade. There’s balloons coming.” And all manner of such strange things. After a bit, the uncle or aunt would say, “On second thoughts, I think she’ll be better for a bit of a sleep. Pretty upset, isn’t she?” So Mum would put the sleep spell back on again and solemn peace would descend until the next Pinhoe arrived.

The only one who did not go through this routine was Uncle Charles. Marianne liked Uncle Charles. For one thing – apart from silent Uncle Simeon – he was her only thin uncle. Most of the Pinhoe uncles ran to a sort of wideness, even if most of them were not actually fat. And Uncle Charles had a humorous twitch to his thin face, quite unlike the rest. He was held to be “a disappointment”, just like Joe. Knowing Joe, Marianne suspected that Uncle Charles had worked at being disappointing, just as hard as Joe did – although she did think that Uncle Charles had gone a bit far when he married Aunt Joy at the Post Office. Uncle Charles arrived in his paint-blotched old overalls, being a house-painter by trade, and he looked at Gammer, snoring gently on the sofa with her mouth open. “No need to disturb her for me,” he said. “Lost her marbles at last, has she? What happened?”

When Marianne had explained once more, Uncle Charles stroked his raspy chin with his paint-streaked hand and said, “I don’t see Jed Farleigh doing that to her, little as I like the man. What was the row about?”

Marianne and Joe had to confess that they had not the least idea, not really. “They said she’d let a sacred trust get out and it ran into their Dorothea. I think,” Marianne said. “But Gammer said she never did.”

Uncle Charles raised his eyebrows and opened his eyes wide. “Eh?”

“Let it be, Charles. It’s not important,” Uncle Arthur told him impatiently. “The important thing is that poor Gammer isn’t making sense any more.”

“Overtaxed herself, poor thing,” Marianne’s father said. “It was that Dorothea making trouble again, I’ll bet. I could throttle the woman, frankly.”

“Should have been strangled at birth,” Uncle Isaac agreed. “But what do we do now?”

Uncle Charles looked across at Marianne, joking and sympathetic at the same time. “Did she ever get round to naming you Gammer after her, Marianne? Should you be in charge now?”

“I hope not!” Marianne said.

“Oh, do talk sense, Charles!” all the others said. To which Dad added, “I’m not having my little girl stuck with that, even for a joke. We’ll wait for Edgar and Lester to get here. See what they say. They’re Gammer’s brothers, after all.”

But when first Great Uncle Edgar and then Great Uncle Lester arrived, and Marianne had gone through the tale twice more, and Gammer had been woken up to scream, “We’re infested with porcupines!” at Uncle Edgar and “I told everyone it was twisted cheese!” at Uncle Lester, neither great uncle seemed at all sure what to do. Both pulled at their whiskers uncertainly and finally sent Joe and Marianne out to the kitchen so that the adults could have a serious talk.

“I don’t like Edgar,” Joe said, moodily eating left over sandwiches. “He’s bossy. What does he wear that tweed hat for?”

Marianne was occupied with Nutcase. Nutcase rushed out from under the great table demanding food. “It’s what estate agents wear, I suppose,” she said. “Like Lester wears a black coat and striped trousers because he’s a lawyer. Joe, I can’t find any more cat food.”

Joe looked a little guiltily at the last of Great Aunt Sue’s sandwiches. They had been fat and moist and tasty and he had eaten all but one. “This one’s sardine,” he said. “Give him that. Or —” He lifted the cloth over the one untouched plateful. These were thin and dry and almost certainly Aunt Joy’s. “Or there’s these. Do cats eat meat paste?”

“They sometimes have to,” Marianne said. She dismantled sandwiches into Nutcase’s dish and Nutcase fell on them as if he had not been fed for a week. And perhaps he hadn’t, Marianne thought. Gammer had neglected almost everything lately.

“You know,” Joe said, watching Nutcase guzzle, “I’m not saying you didn’t feel Gaffer Farleigh cast a spell – you’re better at magic than I am – but it wouldn’t have taken much. I think Gammer’s mind was going anyway.” Then, while Marianne was thinking Joe was probably right, Joe said coaxingly, “Can you do us a favour while we’re here?”

“What’s that?” Marianne asked as Nutcase backed away from the last of Aunt Joy’s sandwiches and pretended to bury it. She was very used to Joe buttering her up and then asking a favour. But I think her mind was going, all the same, she thought.

“I need that stuffed ferret out there,” Joe said. “If I take it, can you make it look as if it’s still there?”

Marianne knew better than to ask what Joe wanted with a horrid thing like that ferret. Boys! She said, “Joe! It’s Gammer’s!”

“She’s not going to want it,” Joe said. “And you’re much better at illusion than me. Be a sport, Marianne. While they’re all still in there talking.”

Marianne sighed, but she went out into the hall with Joe, where they could hear the hushed, serious voices from the front room. Very quietly, they inspected the ferret under its glass dome. It had always struck Marianne as like a furry yellow snake with legs. All squirmy. Yuk. But the important thing, if you were going to do an illusion, was that this was probably just what everyone saw. Then you noticed the wide open fanged mouth too, and the ferocious beady eyes. The dome was so dusty that you really hardly saw anything else. You just had to get the shape right.

“Can you do it?” Joe asked eagerly.

She nodded. “I think so.” She carefully lifted off the glass dome and stood it beside the stuffed badger. The ferret felt like a hard furry log when she picked it up. Yuk again. She passed the thing to Joe with a shudder. She put the glass dome back over the empty patch of false grass that was left and held both hands out towards it in as near ferret shape as she could. Bent and yellow and furry-squirmy, she thought at it. Glaring eyes, horrid little ears, pink mouth snarling and full of sharp white teeth. Further yuk.

She took her hands away and there it was, exactly as she had thought it up, blurrily through the dust on the glass, a dim yellow snarling shape.

“Lush!” said Joe. “Apex! Thanks.” He raced back into the kitchen with the real ferret cradled in his arms.

Marianne saw the print of her hands on the dust of the dome, four of them. She blew on them furiously, willing them to go away. They were slowly clearing when the door to the front room banged importantly open and Great Uncle Edgar strode out. Marianne stopped doing magic at once, because he was bound to notice. She made herself gaze innocently instead at Edgar’s tweed hat, like a little tweed flowerpot on his head. It turned towards her.

“We’ve decided your grandmother must have professional care,” Great Uncle Edgar said. “I’m off to see to it.”

Someone must have woken Gammer up again. Her voice echoed forth from inside the front room. “There’s nothing so good as a stewed ferret, I always say.”

Did Gammer read other people’s minds now? Marianne held her breath and nodded and smiled at Great Uncle Edgar. And Joe came back from the kitchen at that moment, carrying Aunt Helen’s sandwich basket – which he must have thought was Mum’s – with a cloth over it to hide the ferret. Great Uncle Edgar said to him, “Where are you off to?”

Joe went hunched and sulky. “Home,” he said. “Got to take the cat. Marianne’s going to look after him now.”

Unfortunately Nutcase spoilt this explanation by rushing out of the kitchen to rub himself against Marianne’s legs.

“But he keeps getting out,” Joe added without a blink.

Marianne took in a big breath, which made her quite dizzy after holding it for so long. “I’ll bring him, Joe,” she said, “when I come. You go on home and take Mum’s basket back.”

“Yes,” said Great Uncle Edgar. “You’ll need to pack, Joseph. You have to be working in That Castle tomorrow, don’t you?”

Joe’s mouth opened and he stared at Edgar. Marianne stared too. They had both assumed that Gammer’s plans for Joe had gone the way of Gammer’s wits. “Who told you that?” Joe said.

“Gammer did, yesterday,” Great Uncle Edgar said. “They’ll be expecting you. Off you go.” And he strode out of the house, pushing Joe in front of him.

Marianne meant to follow Joe home, but Mum came out into the hall then, saying, “Marianne, Joy says there’s still her plate of sandwiches left. Can you bring them?”

When Marianne confessed that there were no sandwiches, she was sent down to the Pinhoe Arms to fetch some of Aunt Helen’s pork pies. When she got back with the pies, Aunt Joy sent her off again to pin a note on the Post Office door saying CLOSED FOR FAMILY MATTERS, and when she got back from that Dad sent her to fetch the Reverend Pinhoe. The Reverend Pinhoe came back to Woods House with Marianne, very serious and dismayed, wanting to know why no one had sent for Dr Callow.

The reason was that Gammer had no opinion at all of Dr Callow. She must have heard what the vicar said because she immediately began shouting. “Quack, quack, quack! Cold hands in the midriff. It’s cabbages at dawn, I tell you!”

But the vicar insisted. Marianne was sent to the vicarage phone to ask Dr Callow to visit, and when the doctor came there was a further outbreak of shouting. As far as Marianne could tell from where she sat on the stairs with Nutcase on her knee, most of the noise was “No, no, no!” but some of it was insults like “You knitted squid, you!” and “I wouldn’t trust you to skin a bunion!”

Dr Callow came out into the hall with Mum, Dad and most of the aunts, shaking his head and talking about “the need for long term care”. Everyone assured him that Edgar was seeing to that, so the doctor left, followed by the vicar, and the aunts came into the kitchen to make more sandwiches. Here they discovered that there was no bread and only one tin of sardines. So off Marianne was sent again, to the baker and the grocer and down to Aunt Dinah’s to pick up some eggs. She remembered to buy some cat food too and came back heavily laden, and very envious of Joe for having made his getaway so easily.

Each time Marianne came back to Woods House, Nutcase greeted her as if she were the only person left in the world. While she was picking him up and comforting him, Marianne could not help stealing secret looks at the glass dome that had held the ferret. Each time she was highly relieved to see a yellow smear with a snarl on the end of it seemingly inside the dome.

At long last, near sunset, the hooves, wheels and jingling of Great Uncle Edgar’s carriage sounded in the driveway. Great Uncle Edgar shortly strode into the house, ushering two extremely sensible-looking nurses. Each had a neat navy overcoat and a little square suitcase. After Mum, Aunt Prue and Aunt Polly had shown them where to sleep, the nurses looked into the kitchen, at the muddle of provisions heaped along the huge table there, and declared they were not here to cook. Mum assured them that the aunts would take turns at doing that – at which Aunt Prue and Aunt Polly looked at one another and glowered at Mum. Finally the nurses marched into the front room.

“Now, dear,” their firm voices floated out to Marianne on the stairs, “we’ll just get you into your bed and then you can have a nice cup of cocoa.”

Gammer at once started screaming again. Everyone somehow flooded out into the hall with Gammer struggling and yelling in their midst. No one, even the nurses, seemed to know what to do. Marianne sadly watched Dad and Mum looking quite helpless, Great Uncle Lester wringing his hands, and Uncle Charles stealthily creeping away to his bicycle. The only person able to cope seemed to be solid, fair Aunt Dinah. Marianne had always thought Aunt Dinah was only good at wrestling goats and feeding chickens, but Aunt Dinah took hold of Gammer’s arm, quite gently, and, quite as gently, cast a soothing spell on Gammer.

“Buck up, my old sausage,” she said. “They’re here to help you, you silly thing! Come on upstairs and let them get your nightie on you.”

And Gammer came meekly upstairs past Marianne and Nutcase with Aunt Dinah and the nurses. She looked down at Marianne as she went, almost like her usual self. “Keep that cat in order for me, girl,” she said. She sounded nearly normal.

Soon after that, Marianne was able to walk home between Mum and Dad, with Nutcase struggling a little in her arms.

“Phew!” said Dad. “Let’s hope things settle down now.”

Dad was a great one for peace. All he asked of life was to spend his time making beautiful solid furniture with Uncle Richard as his partner. In the shed behind Furze Cottage the two of them made chairs that worked to keep you comfortable, tables bespelled so that anyone who used them felt happy, cabinets that kept dust out, wardrobes that repelled moths, and many other things. For her last birthday, Dad had made Marianne a wonderful heart-shaped writing desk with secret drawers in it that were really secret: no one could even find those drawers unless they knew the right spell.

Mum, however, was nothing like such a peace addict as Dad. “Huh!” she said. “She was born to make trouble as the sparks fly upwards, Gammer was.”

“Now, Cecily,” said Dad. “I know you don’t like my mother —”

“It’s not a question of like,” Mum said vigorously. “She’s a Hopton Pinhoe. She was a giddy town girl before your father married her. Led him a proper dance, she did, and you know it, Harry! It was thanks to her that he took to going off into the wild and got himself done away with if you ask —”

“Now, now, Cecily,” Dad said, with a warning look at Marianne.

“Well, forget I said it,” Mum said. “But I shall be very surprised if she settles down, mind or no mind.”

Marianne thought about this conversation all evening. When she went to bed, where Nutcase sat on her stomach and purred, she sleepily tried to remember her grandfather. Old Gaffer had never struck her as being led a dance. Of course she had been very young then, but he had always seemed like a strong person who went his own way. He was wiry and he smelt of earth. Marianne remembered him striding with his long legs, off into the woods, leading his beloved old horse, Molly, harnessed to the cart in which he collected all the strange plants and herbs for which he had been famous. She remembered his old felt hat. She remembered Gammer saying, “Oh, do take that horrible headgear off, Gaffer!” Gammer always called him Gaffer. Marianne still had no idea what his name had been.

She remembered how Old Gaffer seemed to love being surrounded by his sons and his grandchildren – all boys, except for Marianne – and the way she had a special place on his knee after Sunday lunch. They always went up to Woods House for Sunday lunch. Mum couldn’t have enjoyed that, Marianne thought. She had very clear memories of Mum and Gammer snapping at one another in the kitchen, while old Miss Callow did the actual cooking. Mum loved to cook, but she was never allowed to in that house.

Just as she fell asleep, Marianne had the most vivid memory of all, of Old Gaffer calling at Furze Cottage with what he said was a special present for her. “Truffles,” he said, holding out his big wiry hand heaped with what looked like little black lumps of earth. Marianne, who had been expecting chocolate, looked at the lumps in dismay. It was worse when Gaffer fetched out his knife – which had been sharpened so often that it was more like a spike than a knife – and carefully cut a slice off a lump and told her to eat it. It tasted like earth. Marianne spat it out. It really hurt her to remember Old Gaffer’s disappointed look and the way he had said, “Ah, well. She’s maybe too young for such things yet.” Then she fell asleep.

Nutcase was missing in the morning. The door was shut and the window too, but Nutcase was gone all the same. Nor was he downstairs asking for breakfast.

Mum was busy rushing about finding socks and pants and shirts for Joe. She said over her shoulder, “He’ll have gone back to Woods House, I expect. That’s cats for you. Go and fetch him back when we’ve seen Joe off. Oh God! I’ve forgotten Joe’s nightshirts! Joe, here’s two more pairs of socks – I think I darned them for you.”

Joe received the socks and the other things and secretively packed them in his knapsack himself. Marianne knew this was because the stolen ferret was in the knapsack too. Joe had his very sulkiest look on. Marianne could not blame him. If it had been her, she knew she would have been dreading going to a place where they were all enchanters and out to stop anyone else doing witchcraft. But Joe, when she asked him, just grumbled, “It’s not the magic, it’s wasting a whole holiday. That’s what I hate.”

When at last Joe pedalled sulkily away, with a shirtsleeve escaping from his knapsack and fluttering beside his head, it felt as if a thunderstorm had passed. Marianne, not for the first time, thought that her brother had pretty powerful magic, even if it was not the usual sort.

“Thank goodness for that!” Mum said. “I hate him in this mood. Go and fetch Nutcase, Marianne.”

Marianne arrived at Woods House to find the front door – most unusually – locked. She had to knock and ring the bell before the door was opened by a stone-faced angry nurse.

“What good are you going to do?” the nurse demanded. “We asked the vicar to phone for Mr Pinhoe.”

“You mean Uncle Edgar?” Marianne asked. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s poltergeisting us,” said the nurse. “That’s what’s wrong.” As she spoke, a big brass tray rose from the table beside the door and sliced its way towards the nurse’s head. The nurse dodged. “See what I mean?” she said. “We’re not going to stay here one more day.”

Marianne watched the tray bounce past her down the steps and clang to a stop in the driveway, rather dented. “I’ll speak to her,” she said. “I really came to fetch the cat. May I come in?”

“With pleasure,” said the nurse. “Come in and make another target, do!”

As Marianne went into the hall, she could not help snatching a look at the ferret’s glass dome. There still seemed to be something yellow inside the glass, but it did not look so much like a ferret today. Damn! she thought. It was fading. Illusions did that.

But here Gammer distracted her by coming rushing down the stairs in a frilly white nightdress and a red flannel dressing gown, with the other nurse pelting behind her. “Is that you, Marianne?” Gammer shrieked.

Maybe she’s all right again, Marianne thought, a bit doubtfully. “Hallo, Gammer. How are you?”

“Under sentence of thermometer,” Gammer said. “There’s a worldwide epidemic.” She looked venemously from nurse to nurse. “Time to leave,” she said.

To Marianne’s horror, the big long-case clock that always stood by the stairs rose up and launched itself like a battering ram at the nurse who had opened the door. The nurse screamed and ran sideways. The clock tried to follow her. It swung sideways across the hall, where it fell across the ferret’s dome with a violent twanging and a crash of breaking glass.

Well, that takes care of that! Marianne thought. But Gammer was now running for the open front door. Marianne raced after her and caught her by one skinny arm as she stumbled over the brass tray at the bottom of the steps.

“Gammer,” she said, “you can’t go out in the street in your nightclothes.”

Gammer only laughed crazily.

She isn’t all right, Marianne thought. But she’s not so un-all right as all that. She spoke sternly and shook Gammer’s arm a little. “Gammer, you’ve got to stop doing this. Those nurses are trying to help you. And you’ve just broken a valuable clock. Dad always says it’s worth hundreds of pounds. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Shame, shame,” Gammer mumbled. She hung her head, wispy and uncombed. “I didn’t ask for this, Marianne.”

“No, no, of course not,” Marianne said. She felt the kind of wincing, horrified pity that you would rather not feel. Gammer smelt as if she had wet herself and she was almost crying. “This is only because Gaffer Farleigh put a spell on you —”

“Who’s Gaffer Farleigh?” Gammer asked, sounding interested.

“Never mind,” Marianne said. “But it means you’ve got to be patient, Gammer, and let people help you until we can make you better. And you’ve really got to stop throwing things at those poor nurses.”

A wicked grin spread on Gammer’s face. “They can’t do magic,” she said.

“That’s why you’ve got to stop doing it to them,” Marianne explained. “Because they can’t fight back. Promise me, Gammer. Promise, or …” She thought about hastily for a threat that might work on Gammer. “Promise me, or I shan’t even think of being Gammer after you. I shall wash my hands of you and go and work in London.” This sounded like a really nice idea. Marianne thought wistfully of shops and red buses and streets everywhere instead of fields. But the threat seemed to have worked. Gammer was nodding her unkempt head.

“Promise,” she mumbled. “Promise Marianne. That’s you.”

Marianne sighed at a life in London lost. “I should hope,” she said. She led Gammer indoors again, where the nurses were both standing staring at the wreckage. “She’s promised to be good,” she said.

At this stage, Mum and Aunt Helen arrived hotfoot from the village, Aunt Polly came in by the back door, and Great Aunt Sue alighted from the carriage behind Great Uncle Edgar. Word had got round as usual. The mess was cleared up and, to Marianne’s enormous relief, nobody noticed that there was no stuffed ferret among the broken glass. The nurses were soothed and took Gammer away to be dressed. More sandwiches were made, more Pinhoes arrived and, once again, there was a solemn meeting in the front room about what to do now. Marianne sighed again and thought Joe was lucky to be out of it.

“It’s not as if it was just anyone we’re talking about, little girl,” Dad said to her. “This is our head of the craft. It affects all of us in three villages and all the country that isn’t under Farleighs or Cleeves. We’ve got to get it right and see her happy or we’ll all go to pot. Run and fetch your Aunt Joy here. She doesn’t seem to have noticed there’s a crisis on.”

Aunt Joy, when Marianne fetched her from the Post Office, did not see things Dad’s way at all. She walked up the street beside Marianne, pinning on her old blue hat as she went and grumbling the whole way. “So I have to leave my customers and lose my income – and it’s no good believing your Uncle Charles will earn enough to support the family – all because this spoilt old woman loses her marbles and starts throwing clocks around. What’s wrong with putting her in a Home, I want to know.”

“She’d probably throw things around in a Home too,” Marianne suggested.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t be dragged off to deal with it,” Aunt Joy retorted. “Besides,” she went on, stabbing her hat with her hatpin, “my Great Aunt Callow was in a Home for years and did nothing but stare at the wall, and she was just as much of a witch as your Gammer.”

When they got to Woods House, Marianne escaped from Aunt Joy by going to look for Nutcase in the garden, where, sure enough, he was, stalking birds in the overgrown vegetable plot. He seemed quite glad to be taken back to Furze Cottage and given breakfast.

“You stupid old thing!” Marianne said to him. “You have to have your meals here now. I don’t think Gammer knows you exist any more.” To her surprise, Marianne found herself swallowing back a sob as she spoke. She had not realised that things were as upsetting as that. But they were. Gammer had never done anything but order Marianne about, nothing to make a person fond of her, but all the same it was awful to have her screaming and throwing things and behaving generally like a very small child. She hoped they were deciding on a way to make things more reasonable, up at Woods House.

It seemed as if it had not been easy to decide anything. Mum and Dad came home some hours later, with Uncle Richard, all of them exhausted. “Words with the nurses, words with Edgar and Lester,” Mum said, while Marianne was making them all cups of tea.

“Not to speak of Joy rabbiting on about that nursing home she stuck old Glenys Callow in,” Uncle Richard added. “Three spoonfuls, Marianne, love. This is no time for a man to watch his weight.”

“But what did you decide?” Marianne asked.

It seemed that the nurses had been persuaded to stay on another week, for twice the pay, provided one of the aunts was there all the time to protect them.

“So we take it in turns,” Mum said, sighing. “I’ve drawn tonight’s shift, so it’s cold supper and rush off, I’m afraid. And after that —”

“It’s my belief,” Dad said peacefully, “that they’ll settle in and she’ll get used to them and there’ll be no more need to worry.”

“In your dreams!” Mum said. Unfortunately, she was right.

The nurses lasted two more nights and then, very firmly and finally, gave notice. They said the house was haunted. Though everyone was positive the haunting was Gammer’s doing, no one could catch her at it and no one could persuade the nurses. They left. And there was yet another Pinhoe emergency meeting.

Marianne avoided this one. She told everyone, quite reasonably, that you had to keep a cat indoors for a fortnight in a new place or he would run away. So she sat in her room with Nutcase. This was not as boring as it sounded because, now Joe was not there to jeer at her, she was able to open the secret drawer in her heart-shaped desk and fetch out the story she was writing. It was called The Adventures of Princess Irene and it seemed to be going to be very exciting. She was quite sorry when everyone came back to Furze Cottage after what Uncle Richard described as a Flaming Row and even Dad described as “a bit of difficulty”.

According to Mum, it took huge arguments for them even to agree that Gammer was not safe on her own, and more arguments to decide Gammer had to live with someone. Great Uncle Edgar then cheerfully announced that he and Great Aunt Sue would live in Woods House and Great Aunt Sue would look after Gammer. This had been news to Great Aunt Sue. She did not go for the idea at all. In fact, she had said she would go and live with her sister on the other side of Hopton, and Edgar could look after Gammer himself and see how he liked it. So everyone hastily thought again. And the only possible thing, Mum said, was for Gammer to come and live with one of Gammer’s seven sons.

“Then,” said Uncle Richard, “the fur really flew. Cecily let rip like I’ve never seen her.”

“It’s all very well for you!” Mum said. “You’re not married and you live in that room over in the Pinhoe Arms. Nobody was going to ask you, Richard, so take that smug look —”

“Now, Cecily,” Dad said peaceably. “Don’t start again.”

“I wasn’t the only one,” said Mum.

“No, there was Joy and Helen and Prue and Polly all screeching that they’d got enough to do, and even your Great Aunt Clarice, Marianne, saying that Lester couldn’t have his proper respectable lifestyle if they had to harbour a madwoman. It put me out of patience,” Dad said. “Then Dinah and Isaac offered. They said as they don’t have children, they had the room and the time, and Gammer could be happy watching the goats and the ducks down in the Dell. Besides, Dinah can manage Gammer —”

“Gammer didn’t think so,” said Mum.

Gammer had somehow got wind of what was being decided. She appeared in the front room wrapped in a tablecloth and declared that the only way she would leave Woods House was feet first in her coffin. Or that was what most Pinhoes thought she meant when she kept saying, “Root first in a forcing bucket!”

“Dinah got her back to bed,” Uncle Richard said. “We’re moving Gammer out tomorrow. We put a general call out for all Pinhoes to help and —”

“Wait. There was Edgar’s bit before that,” Mum said. “Edgar was all set to move into Woods House as soon as Gammer was out of it. Your Great Aunt Sue didn’t disagree with him on that, surprise, surprise. The ancestral family home, they said, the big house of the village. As the oldest surviving Pinhoe, Edgar said, it was his right to live there. He’d rename it Pinhoe Manor, he thought.”

Dad chuckled. “Pompous idiot, Edgar is. I told him to his face he couldn’t. The house is mine. It came to me when Old Gaffer went, but Gammer set store by living there, so I let her.”

Marianne had had no idea of this. She stared. “Are we going to live there then?” And after all the trouble I’ve been to, training Nutcase to stay here! she thought.

“No, no,” Dad said. “We’d rattle about in there as badly as Gammer did. No, my idea is to sell the place, make a bit of money to give to Isaac to support Gammer at the Dell. He and Dinah could use the cash.”

“Further flaming row,” said Uncle Richard. “You should have seen Edgar’s face! And Lester saying that it should only be sold to a Pinhoe or not at all – and Joy screeching for a share of the money. Arthur and Charles shut her up by saying ‘Sell it to a Pinhoe, then.’ Edgar looked fit to burst, thinking he was going to have to pay for the place, when he thought it was his own anyway.”

Dad smiled. “I wouldn’t sell it to Edgar. His side of the family are Hopton born. He’s going to sell it for me. I told him to get someone rich from London interested, get a really good price for it. Now let’s have a bit of a rest, shall we? Something tells me it may be hard work moving Gammer out tomorrow.”

Dad was always given to understating things. By the following night, Marianne was inclined to think this was Dad’s understatement of the century.

Everyone gathered soon after dawn in the yard of the Pinhoe Arms: Pinhoes, Callows, half-Pinhoes and Pinhoes by marriage, old, young and middle aged, they came from miles around. Uncle Richard was there, with Dolly the donkey harnessed to Dad’s furniture delivery cart. Great Uncle Edgar was drawn up outside in his carriage, alongside Great Uncle Lester’s big shiny motor car. There was not room for them in the yard, what with all the people and the mass of bicycles stacked up among the piles of broomsticks outside the beer shed, with Uncle Cedric’s farm cart in front of those. Joe was there, looking sulky, beside Joss Callow from That Castle, alongside nearly a hundred distant relatives that Marianne had scarcely ever met. About the only people who were not there were Aunt Joy, who had to sort the post, and Aunt Dinah, who was getting the room ready for Gammer down in the Dell.

Marianne tried to edge up to Joe to find out how he was getting on among all the enemy enchanters, but before she could get near Joe, Uncle Arthur climbed on to Uncle Cedric’s cart and, with Dad up there too to prompt him, began telling everyone what to do. It made sense to have Uncle Arthur do the announcing. He had a big booming voice, rather like Great Uncle Edgar’s. No one could say they had not heard him.

Everyone was divided into work parties. Some were to clear everything out of Woods House, to make it ready to be sold, some were to take Gammer’s special things over to the Dell, and yet others were to help get Gammer’s room ready there. Marianne found herself in the fourth group that was supposed to get Gammer herself down to the Dell. To her disappointment, Joe was in the work party that was sent to Aunt Dinah’s.

“And we should be through by lunchtime,” Uncle Arthur finished. “Special lunch for all, here at the Pinhoe Arms at one o’clock sharp. Free wine and beer.”

While the Pinhoes were raising a cheer at this, the Reverend Pinhoe climbed up beside Uncle Arthur and blessed the undertaking. “And may many hands make light work,” he said. It all sounded wonderfully efficient.

The first sign that things were not, perhaps, going to go that smoothly was when Great Uncle Edgar stopped his carriage outside Woods House slap in the path of the farm cart and strode into the house, narrowly missing a sofa that was just coming out in the hands of six second cousins. Edgar strode up to Dad, who was in the middle of the hall, trying to explain which things were to go with Gammer and which things were to be stored in the barn outside the village.

“I say, Harry,” he said in his most booming and important way, “mind if I take that corner cupboard in the front room? It’ll only deteriorate in storage.”

Behind him came Great Uncle Lester, asking for the cabinet in the dining room. Marianne could hardly hear him for shouts of “Get out of the way!” and “Lester, move your car! The sofa’s stuck!” and Uncle Richard bawling, “I have to back the donkey there! Move that sofa!”

“Right royal pile-up, by the sound,” Uncle Charles remarked, coming past with a bookshelf, two biscuit tins and a stool. “I’ll sort it out. You get upstairs, Harry. Polly and Sue and them are having a bit of trouble with Gammer.”

“Go up and see, girl,” Dad said to Marianne, and to Edgar and Lester, “Yes, have the blessed cupboard and the cabinet and then get out of the way. Though mind you,” he panted, hurrying to catch up with Marianne on the stairs, “that cupboard’s only made of plywood.”

“I know. And the legs on the cabinet come off all the time,” Marianne said.

“Whatever makes them happy,” Dad panted.

The shouts outside rose to screams mixed with braying. They turned round and watched the sofa being levitated across the startled donkey. This was followed by a horrific crash as someone dropped the glass case with the badger in it. Then they had to turn the other way as Uncle Arthur came pelting down the stairs with a frilly bedside table hugged to his considerable belly, shouting, “Harry, you’ve got to come! Real trouble.”

Marianne and Dad squeezed past him and rushed upstairs to Gammer’s bedroom, where Joss Callow and another distant cousin were struggling to get the carpet out from under the feet of a crowd of agitated aunts. “Oh, thank goodness you’ve come!” Great Aunt Clarice said, looking hot and wild-haired and most unlike her usual elegant self.

Great Aunt Sue, who was still almost crisp and neat, added, “We don’t know what to do.”

All the aunts were holding armfuls of clothes. Evidently they had been trying to get Gammer dressed.

“Won’t get dressed, eh?” Dad said.

“Worse than that!” said Great Aunt Clarice. “Look.”

The ladies crowded aside to give Dad and Marianne a view of the bed. Dad said, “My God!” and Marianne did not blame him.

Gammer had grown herself into the bed. She had sunk into the mattress, deep into it, and rooted herself, with little hairy nightdress-coloured rootlets sticking out all round her. Her long toenails twined like transparent yellow creepers into the bars at the end of the bed. At the other end, her hair and her ears were impossibly grown into the pillow. Out of it her face stared, bony, defiant and smug.

“Mother!” said Marianne’s dad.

“Thought you could get the better of me, didn’t you?” Gammer said. “I’m not going.”

Marianne had almost never seen her father lose his temper, but he did then. His round amiable face went crimson and shiny. “Yes, you are going,” he said. “You’re moving to Dinah and Isaac’s whatever tricks you play. Leave her be,” he said to the aunts. “She’ll get tired of this in the end. Let’s get all the furniture moved out first.”

This was easier said than done. No one had realised quite how much furniture there was. A house the size of Woods House, that was big enough to have held a family with seven children once, can hold massive quantities of furniture. And Woods House did. Joss Callow had to go and fetch Uncle Cedric’s hay wain and then borrow the Reverend Pinhoe’s old horse to pull it, because the farm cart was just not enough and they would have been at it all day. Great Uncle Edgar prudently left at this point in case someone suggested they use his fine, spruce carriage too; but Great Uncle Lester nobly stayed and offered to take the smaller items in his car. Even so, all three vehicles had to make several trips to the big barn out on the Hopton Road, while a crowd of younger Pinhoes rushed out there on bikes and broomsticks to unload the furniture, stack it safely and surround it in their best spells of preservation. At the same time, so many things turned up which people thought Gammer would need in her new home, that Dolly the donkey was going backwards and forwards non stop between Woods House and the Dell, with the cart loaded and creaking behind her.

“It’s so nice to have things that you’re used to around you in a strange place!” Great Aunt Sue said. Marianne privately thought this was rather sentimental of Great Aunt Sue, since most of the stuff was things she had never once seen Gammer use.

“And we haven’t touched the attics yet!” Uncle Charles groaned, while they waited for the donkey cart to come back again.

Everyone else had forgotten the attics. “Leave them till after lunch,” Dad said hastily. “Or we could leave them for the new owner. There’s nothing but junk up there.”

“I had a toy fort once that must be up there,” Uncle Simeon said wistfully.

But he was ignored, as he mostly was, because Uncle Richard brought the donkey cart back with a small Pinhoe girl who had a message from Mum. Evidently Mum was getting impatient to know what had become of Gammer.

“They’re all ready,” small Nicola announced. “They sprung clent.”

“They what?” said all the aunts.

“They washed the floor and they dried and they polished and the carpet just fits,” Nicola explained. “And they washed the windows and did the walls and put the new curtains up and started on all the furniture and the pictures and the stuffed trout and Stafford and Conway Callow teased a goat and it butted them and —”

“Oh, they spring cleaned,” said Aunt Polly. “Now I understand.”

“Thank you, Nicola. Run back and tell them Gammer’s just coming,” Dad said.

But Nicola was determined to finish her narrative first. “And they got sent home and that Joe Pinhoe got told off for being lazy. I was good. I helped,” she concluded. Only then did she scamper off with Dad’s message.

Dad began wearily climbing the stairs. “Let’s hope Gammer’s uprooted herself by now,” he said.

But she hadn’t. If anything, she was rooted to the bed more firmly than ever. When Great Aunt Sue said brightly, “Up we get, Gammer. Don’t we want to see our lovely clean new home?” Gammer just stared, mutinously.

“Oh, come on, Mother. Cut it out!” Uncle Arthur said. “You look ridiculous like that.”

“Shan’t,” said Gammer. “I said root downwards and I meant it. I’ve lived in this house every single year of my life.”

“No, you haven’t. Don’t talk nonsense!” Dad said, turning red and shiny again. “You lived opposite the Town Hall in Hopton for twenty years before you ever came here. One last time – do you get up, or do we carry you to the Dell bed and all?”

“Please yourself. I can’t do with your tantrums, Harry – never could,” Gammer said, and closed her eyes.“Right!” said Dad, angrier than ever. “All of you get a grip on this bed and lift it when I count to three.”

Gammer’s reply to this was to make herself enormously heavy. The bare floor creaked under the weight of the bed. No one could shift it.

Marianne heard Dad’s teeth grind. “Very well,” he said. “Levitation spell, everyone.”

Normally with a levitation spell, you could move almost anything with just one finger. This time, whatever Gammer was doing made that almost impossible. Everyone strained and sweated. Great Aunt Clarice’s hairstyle came apart in the effort. Pretty little combs and hairpins showered down on Gammer’s roots. Great Aunt Sue stopped looking neat at all. Marianne thought that, for herself, she could have lifted three elephants more easily. Uncle Charles and four cousins left off loading the donkey cart and ran upstairs to help, followed by Uncle Richard and then by Great Uncle Lester. But the bed still would not move. Until, when every possible person was gathered round the bed, heaving and muttering the spell, Gammer smiled wickedly and let go.

The bed went up two feet and shot forward. Everyone stumbled and floundered. Great Aunt Sue was carried along with the bed as it made for the doorway and then crushed against the doorpost as the bed jammed itself past her and swung sideways into the upstairs corridor. Great Aunt Clarice rescued Great Aunt Sue with a quick spell and a tremendous POP! which jerked the bed on again. It sailed towards the stairs, leaving everyone behind except for Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur was holding on to the bars at the end of the bed and pushing mightily to stop it.

“Ridiculous, am I?” Gammer said to him, smiling peacefully. And the bed launched itself down the stairs with Uncle Arthur pelting backwards in front of it for dear life. At the landing, it did a neat turn, threw Uncle Arthur off, bounced on his belly, and set off like a toboggan down the rest of the stairs. In the hall, Nutcase – who had somehow got out again – shot out of its way with a shriek. Everyone except Uncle Arthur leant anxiously over the bannisters and watched Gammer zoom through the front door and hit Great Uncle Lester’s car with a mighty crunch.

Great Uncle Lester howled, “My car, my car!” and raced down after Gammer.

“At least it stopped her,” Dad said, as they all clattered after Great Uncle Lester. “She hurt?” he asked, when they got there to find a large splintery dent in the side of the car and Gammer, still rooted, lying with her eyes shut and the same peaceful smile.

“Oh, I do hope so!” Great Uncle Lester said, wringing his hands. “Look what she’s done!” “Serve you right,” Gammer said, without opening her eyes. “You smashed my doll’s house.”

“When I was five!” Great Uncle Lester howled. “Sixty years ago, you dreadful old woman!”

Dad leant over the bed and demanded, “Are you ready to get up and walk now?”

Gammer pretended not to hear him.

“All right!” Dad said fiercely. “Levitation again, everyone. I’m going to get her down to the Dell if it kills us all.”

“Oh, it will,” Gammer said sweetly.

Marianne’s opinion was that the way they were all going to die was from embarrassment. They swung the bed up again and, jostling for a handhold and treading on one another’s heels, took it out through the gates and into the village street. There, the Reverend Pinhoe, who had been standing in the churchyard, vaulted the wall and hurried over to help. “Dear, dear,” he said. “What a very strange thing for old Mrs Pinhoe to do!”

They wedged him in and jostled on, downhill through the village. As the hill got steeper, they were quite glad of the fact that the Reverend Pinhoe was no good at levitation. The bed went faster and faster and the vicar’s efforts were actually holding it back. Despite the way they were now going at a brisk trot, people who were not witches or not Pinhoes came out of the houses and trotted alongside to stare at Gammer and her roots. Others leant out of windows to get a look too. “I never knew a person could do that!” they all said. “Will she be like that permanently?”

“God knows!” Dad snarled, redder and shinier than ever.

Gammer smiled. And it very soon appeared that she had at least one more thing she could do.

There were frantic shouts from behind. They twisted their heads round and saw Great Uncle Lester, with Uncle Arthur running in great limping leaps behind him, racing down the street towards them. No one understood what they were shouting, but the way they were waving the bed-carriers to one side was quite clear.

“Everyone go right,” Dad said.

The bed and its crowd of carriers veered over towards the houses and, on Marianne’s side, began stumbling over doorsteps and barking shins on foot-scrapers, just as Dolly the donkey appeared, with her cart of furniture bounding behind her, apparently running for her life.

“Oh no!” groaned Uncle Richard.

The huge table from the kitchen in Woods House was chasing Dolly, gaining on her with every stride of its six massive wooden legs. Everyone else in the street screamed warnings and crowded to the sides. Uncle Arthur collapsed on the steps of the Pinhoe Arms. Great Uncle Lester fled the other way into the grocer’s. Only Uncle Richard bravely let go of the bed and jumped forward to try to drag Dolly to safety. But Dolly, her eyes set with panic, swerved aside from him and pattered on frantically. Uncle Richard had to throw himself flat as the great table veered to charge at him, its six legs going like pistons. Gammer almost certainly meant the table to go for the bed and its carriers, but as it galloped near enough, Uncle Charles, Dad, Uncle Simeon and the Reverend Pinhoe each put out a leg and kicked it hard in the side. That swung it back into the street again. It was after Dolly in a flash.

Dolly had gained a little when the table swerved, but the table went so fast that it looked as if, unless Dolly could turn right at the bottom of the hill towards Furze Cottage in time, or left towards the Dell, she was going to be squashed against the Post Office wall. Everyone except Marianne held their breaths. Marianne said angrily, “Gammer, if you’ve killed poor Dolly I’ll never forgive you!”

Gammer opened one eye. Marianne thought the look from it was slightly ashamed.

Dolly, seeing the wall coming up, uttered a braying scream. Somehow, no one knew how, she managed to throw herself and the cart sideways into Dell Lane. The cart rocked and shed a birdcage, a small table and a towel rail, but it stayed upright. Dolly, cart and all, sped out of sight, still screaming.

The table thundered on and hit the Post Office wall like a battering ram. It went in among the bricks as if the bricks weighed nothing, and ploughed on, deep into the raised lawn behind the wall. There it stopped.

When the shaken bed-carriers trotted up to the wreckage, Aunt Joy was standing above them on the ruins, with her arms folded ominously.

“You’ve done it now, haven’t you, you horrible old woman?” she said, glaring down at Gammer’s smug face. “Making everyone carry you around like this – you ought to be ashamed! Can you pay for all this? Can you? I don’t see why I should have to.”

“Abracadabra,” Gammer said. “Rhubarb.”

“That’s right. Pretend to be barmy,” said Aunt Joy. “And everyone will back you up, like they always do. If it was me, I’d dump you in the duck pond. Curse you, you old—!”

“That’s enough, Joy!” Dad commanded. “You’ve every right to be annoyed, and we’ll pay for the wall when we sell the house, but no cursing, please.”

“Well, get this table out of here at least,” Aunt Joy said. She turned her back and stalked away into the Post Office.

Everyone looked at the vast table, half buried in rubble and earth. “Should we take it down to the Dell?” a cousin asked doubtfully.

“How do you want it when it’s there?” Uncle Charles asked. “Half outside in the duck pond, or on one end sticking up through the roof? That house is small. And they say this table was built inside Woods House. It couldn’t have got in any other way.”

“In that case,” asked Great Aunt Sue, “how did it get out?”

Dad and the other uncles exchanged alarmed looks. The bed dipped as Uncle Simeon dropped his part of it and raced off up the hill to see if Woods House was still standing. Marianne was fairly sure that Gammer grinned.

“Let’s get on,” Dad said.

They arrived at the Dell to find Dolly, still harnessed to the cart, standing in the duck pond shaking all over, while angry ducks honked at her from the bank. Uncle Richard, who was Dolly’s adoring friend, dropped his part of the bed and galloped into the water to comfort her. Aunt Dinah, Mum, Nicola, Joe and a crowd of other people rushed anxiously out of the little house to meet the rest of them.

Everyone gratefully lowered the bed to the grass. As soon as it was down, Gammer sat up and held a queenly hand out to Aunt Dinah. “Welcome,” she said, “to your humble abode. And a cup of hot marmalade would be very welcome too.”

“Come inside then, dear,” Aunt Dinah said. “We’ve got your tea all ready for you.” She took hold of Gammer’s arm and, briskly and kindly, led Gammer away indoors.

“Lord!” said someone. “Did you know it’s four o’clock already?”

“Table?” suggested Uncle Charles. Marianne could tell he was anxious not to annoy Aunt Joy any further.

“In one moment,” Dad said. He stood staring at the little house, breathing heavily. Marianne could feel him building something around it in the same slow, careful way he made his furniture.

“Dear me,” said the Reverend Pinhoe. “Strong measures, Harry.”

Mum said, “You’ve stopped her from ever coming outside. Are you sure that’s necessary?”

“Yes,” said Dad. “She’ll be out of here as soon as my back’s turned, otherwise. And you all know what she can do when she’s riled. We got her here, and here she’ll stay – I’ve made sure of that. Now let’s take that dratted table back.”

They went back in a crowd to the Post Office, where everyone exclaimed at the damage. Joe said, “I wish I’d seen that happen!”

“You’d have run for your life like Dolly did,” Dad snapped, tired and cross. “Everybody levitate.”

With most of the spring cleaning party to help, the table came loose from the Post Office wall quite quickly, in a cloud of brick dust, grass, earth and broken bricks. But getting it back up the hill was not quick at all. It was heavy. People kept having to totter away and sit on doorsteps, exhausted. But Dad kept them all at it, until they were level with the Pinhoe Arms. Uncle Simeon met them there, looking mightily relieved.

“Nothing I can’t rebuild,” he said cheerfully. “It took out half the kitchen wall, along with some cabinets and the back door. I’ll get them on it next Monday. It’ll be a doddle compared with the wall down there. That’s going to take time, and money.”

“Ah well,” said Dad.

Uncle Arthur came limping out of the yard, leaning on a stick, with one eye bright purple black. “There you all are!” he said. “Helen’s going mad in here about her lunch spoiling. Come in and eat, for heaven’s sake!”

They left the table blocking the entrance to the yard, under the swinging sign of the unicorn and griffin, and flocked into the inn. There, although Aunt Helen looked unhappy, no one found anything wrong with the food. Even elegant Great Aunt Clarice was seen to have two helpings of roast and four veg. Most people had three. And there was beer, mulled wine and iced fruit drink – just what everyone felt was needed. Here at last Marianne managed to get a word with Joe.

“How are you getting on in That Castle?”

“Boring,” said Joe. “I clean things and run errands. Mind you,” he added, with a cautious look at Joss Callow’s back, bulking at the next table, “I’ve never known anywhere easier to duck out from work in. I’ve been all over the Castle by now.”

“Don’t the Family mind?” Marianne asked.

“The main ones are not there,” Joe said. “They come back tomorrow. Housekeeper was really hacked off with me and Joss for taking today off. We told her it was our grandmother’s funeral – or Joss did.”

With a bit of a shudder, hoping this was not an omen for poor Gammer, Marianne went on to the question she really wanted to ask. “And the children? They’re all enchanters too, aren’t they?”

“One of them is,” Joe said. “Staff don’t like it. They say it’s not natural in a young lad. But the rest of them are just plain witches like us, from what they say. Are you going for more roast? Fetch me another lot too, will you.”

Eating and drinking went on a long time, until nearly sunset. It was quite late when a cheery party of uncles and cousins took the table back to Woods House, to shove it in through the broken kitchen wall and patch up the damage until Monday. A second party roistered off down the hill to tidy the bricks up there.

Everyone clean forgot about the attics.

On the way back from the south of France, Chrestomanci’s daughter Julia bought a book to read on the train, called A Pony of My Own. Halfway through France, Chrestomanci’s ward, Janet, snatched the book off Julia and read it too. After that, neither of them could talk about anything but horses. Julia’s brother Roger yawned. Cat, who was younger than any of them, tried not to listen and hoped they would get tired of the subject soon.

But the horse fever grew. By the time they were on the cross-Channel ferry, Julia and Janet had decided that both of them would die unless they had a horse each the moment they got home to Chrestomanci Castle.

“We’ve only got six weeks until we start lessons again,” Julia sighed. “It has to be at once, or we’ll miss all the gymkhanas.”

“It would be a complete waste of the summer,” Janet agreed. “But suppose your father says no?”

“You go and ask him now,” Julia said.

“Why me?” Janet asked.

“Because he’s always worried about the way he had to take you away from your own world,” Julia explained. “He doesn’t want you to be unhappy. Besides, you have blue eyes and golden hair —”

“So has Cat,” Janet said quickly.

“But you can flutter your eyelashes at him,” Julia said. “My eyelashes are too short.”

But Janet, who was still very much in awe of Chrestomanci – who was, after all, the most powerful enchanter in the world – refused to talk to Chrestomanci unless Julia was there to hold her hand. Julia, now that owning a horse had stopped being just a lovely idea and become almost real, found she was quite frightened of her father too. She said she would go with Janet if the boys would come and back them up.

Neither Roger nor Cat was in the least anxious to help. They argued most of the way across the Channel. At last, when the white cliffs of Dover were well in sight, Julia said, “But if you do come and Daddy does agree, you won’t have to listen to us talking about it any more.”

This made it seem worth it. Cat and Roger duly crowded into the cabin with the girls, where Chrestomanci lay, apparently fast asleep.

“Go away,” Chrestomanci said, without seeming to wake up.

Chrestomanci’s wife, Millie, was sitting on a bunk darning Julia’s stockings. This must have been for something to pass the time with, because Millie, being an enchantress, could have mended most things just with a thought. “He’s very tired, my loves,” she said. “Remember he had to take a travel-sick Italian boy all the way back to Italy before we came home.”

“Yes, but he’s been resting ever since,” Julia pointed out. “And this is urgent.”

“All right,” Chrestomanci said, half opening his bright black eyes. “What is it then?”

Janet bravely cleared her throat. “Er, we need a horse each.”

Chrestomanci groaned softly.

This was not promising, but, having started, both Janet and Julia suddenly became very eloquent about their desperate, urgent, crying need for horses, or at least ponies, and followed this up with a detailed description of the horse each of them would like to own. Chrestomanci kept groaning.

“I remember feeling like this,” Millie said, fastening off her thread, “my second year at boarding school. I shall never forget how devastated I was when old Gabriel De Witt simply refused to listen to me. A horse won’t do any harm.”

“Wouldn’t bicycles do instead?” Chrestomanci said.

“You don’t understand! It’s not the same!” both girls said passionately.

Chrestomanci put his hands under his head and looked at the boys. “Do you all have this mania?” he asked. “Roger, are you yearning for a coal-black stallion too?”

“I’d rather have a bicycle,” Roger said.

Chrestomanci’s eyes travelled up Roger’s plump figure. “Done,” he said. “You could use the exercise. And how about you, Cat? Are you too longing to speed about the countryside on wheels or hooves?”

Cat laughed. After all, he was a nine-lifed enchanter too. “No,” he said. “I can always teleport.”

“Thank heavens! One of you is sane!” Chrestomanci said. He held up one hand before the girls could start talking again. “All right. I’ll consider your request – on certain conditions. Horses, you see, require a lot of attention, and Jeremiah Carlow —”

“Joss Callow, love,” Millie corrected him

“The stableman, whatever his name is,” Chrestomanci said, “has enough to do with the horses we already keep. So you girls will have to agree to do all the things they tell me these tiresome creatures need – mucking out, cleaning tack, grooming and so forth. Promise me you’ll do that, and I’ll agree to one horse between the two of you, at least for a start.”

Julia and Janet promised like a shot. They were ecstatic. They were in heaven. At that moment, anything to do with a horse, even mucking it out, seemed like poetry to them. And, to Roger’s disgust, they still talked of nothing else all the way home to the Castle.

“At least I’ll get a bicycle out of it,” he said to Cat. “Don’t you really want one too?”

Cat shook his head. He could not see the point.

Chrestomanci was as good as his word. As soon as they were back in Chrestomanci Castle, he summoned his secretary, Tom, and asked him to order a boy’s bicycle and to bring him all the journals and papers that were likely to advertise horses for sale. And when he had dealt with all the work Tom had for him in turn, he called Joss Callow in and asked his advice on choosing and buying a suitable horse. Joss Callow, who was rather pale and tired that day, pulled himself together and tried his best. They spread newspapers and horsey journals out all over Chrestomanci’s study, and Joss did his best to explain about size, breeding and temperament, and what sort of price a reasonable horse should be. There was a mare for sale in the north of Scotland that seemed perfect to Joss, but Chrestomanci said that was much too far away. On the other hand, a wizard called Prendergast had a decent small horse for sale in the next county. Its breeding was spectacular, its name was Syracuse, and it cost rather less money. Joss Callow wondered about it.

“Go and look at that one,” Chrestomanci said. “If it seems docile and anything like as good as this Prendergast says, you can tell him we’ll have it and bring it back by rail to Bowbridge. You can walk it on from there, can you?”

“Easily can, sir,” Joss Callow said, a little dubiously. “But the fares for horse travel —”

“Money no object,” Chrestomanci said. “I need a horse and I need it now, or we’ll have no peace. Go and look at it today. Stay overnight – I’ll give you the money – and, if possible, get the creature here tomorrow. If it’s no good, telephone the Castle and we’ll try again.”

“Yes, sir.” Joss Callow went off, a little dazed at this suddenness, to tell the stableboy exactly what to do in his absence.

He reached the stableyard in time to discover Janet and Julia trying to open the big shed at the end. “Hey!” he said. “You can’t go in there. That’s Mr Jason Yeldham’s store, that is. He’ll kill us all if you mess up the spells he’s got in there!”

Julia said, “Oh, I didn’t know. Sorry.”

Janet said, “Who’s Mr Jason Yeldham?”

“He’s Daddy’s herb specialist,” Julia said. “He’s lovely. He’s my favourite enchanter.”

“And,” Joss Callow added, “he’s got ten thousand seeds in that shed, most of them from foreign worlds, and umpteen trays of plants under stasis spells. What did you think you wanted in there?”

Janet replied, with dignity, “We’re looking for somewhere suitable for our horse to live.”

“What’s wrong with the stables?” Joss said.

“We looked in there,” Julia said. “The loose box seems rather small.”

“Our horse is special, you see,” Janet told him. Joss Callow smiled.

“Special or not,” he said kindly, “the loose box will be what he’s used to. You don’t want him to feel strange, do you? You cut along now. He’ll be here tomorrow, with any luck.”

“Really?” they both said.

“Just off to fetch him now,” said Joss.

“Clothes!” Janet said, thoroughly dismayed. “Julia, we need riding clothes. Now!”

They went pelting off to find Millie.

Millie, who always enjoyed driving the big sleek Castle car, loaded Joss Callow into the car with the girls and dropped him at Bowbridge railway station before she took Julia and Janet shopping. Julia came back more madly excited than ever with an armload of riding clothes. Janet, with another armload, was almost silent. Her parents, in her own world, had not been rich. She was appalled at how much riding gear cost.

“Just the hard hat on its own,” she whispered to Cat, “was ten years’ pocket money!”

Cat shrugged. Although it seemed to him to be a stupid fuss, he was glad Janet had new things to think about. It made a slight change from horses. Cat was feeling rather flat himself, after the south of France. Flat and dull. Even the sunlight on the green velvet stretch of the lawns seemed dimmer than it had been. The usual things to do did not feel interesting. He suspected that he had grown out of most of them.

Next morning, the Bowbridge carter arrived with Roger’s gleaming new bicycle. Cat went down to the front steps with everyone else to admire it.

“This is something like!” Roger said, holding the bike up by its shiny handlebars. “Who wants a horse when they can have this?” Janet and Julia naturally glared at him. Roger grinned joyfully at them and turned back to the bicycle. The grin faded slowly to doubt. “There’s a bar across,” he said, “from the saddle to the handles. How do I—?”

Chrestomanci was standing with his hands in the pockets of a sky blue dressing gown with dazzling golden panels. “I believe,” he said, “that you put your left foot on the near pedal and swing your right leg over the saddle.”

“I do?” Roger said. Dubiously, he did as his father suggested.

After a moment of standing, wobbling and upright, Roger and the bicycle slowly keeled over together and landed on the drive with a crash. Cat winced.

“Not quite right,” Roger said, standing up in a spatter of pebbles.

“I fancy you forgot to pedal,” Chrestomanci said.

“But how does he pedal and balance?” Julia wanted to know.

“One of life’s mysteries,” Chrestomanci said. “But I have frequently seen it done.”

“Shut up, all of you,” Roger said. “I will do this!”

It took him three tries, but he got both feet on the pedals and pushed off, down the drive in a curvacious swoop. The swoop ended in one of the big laurel bushes. Here Roger kept going and the bicycle mysteriously did not. Cat winced again. He was quite surprised when Roger emerged from the bush like a walrus out of deep water, picked up the bike and grimly got on it again. This time his swoop ended on the other side of the drive in a prickly bush.

“It’ll take him a while,” Janet said. “I was three days learning.”

“You mean you can do it?” Julia said. Janet nodded. “Then you’d better not tell Roger,” Julia said. “It might hurt his pride.”

The rest of the morning was filled with the sound of sliding gravel, followed by a crash, with every so often, the hefty threshing sound of a plump body hitting another bush. Cat got bored and wandered away.

Syracuse arrived in the early afternoon. Cat was up in his room at the time, at the top of the Castle. But he clearly felt the exact moment when Joss Callow led Syracuse towards the stableyard gates and the spells around Chrestomanci Castle cancelled out whatever spells Wizard Prendergast had put on Syracuse. There was a kind of electric jolt. Cat was so interested that he started running downstairs at once. He did not hear the mighty hollow bang as Syracuse’s front hooves hit the gates. Nor the slam as the gates flew open. He did not see how Syracuse then got away from Joss Callow. By the time Cat arrived on the famous velvety lawn, Syracuse was out there too, being chased by Joss Callow, the stableboy, two footmen and most of the gardeners. Syracuse was having the time of his life dodging them all, skipping this way and that with his lead rein wildly swinging, and, when any of them got near enough to catch him, throwing up his heels and galloping out of reach.

Syracuse was beautiful. This was what Cat mainly noticed. Syracuse was a dark brown that was nearly black, with a swatch of midnight for his mane and a flying silky black tail. His head was shapely and proud. He was a perfect slender, muscly build of a horse, and his legs were elegant, long and deft. He was not very large and he moved like a dancer as he jinked and dodged away from the running, shouting, clutching humans. Cat could see Syracuse was having enormous fun. Cat trotted nearer to the chase, quite fascinated. He could not help chuckling at the clever way Syracuse kept getting away.

Joss Callow, very red in the face, called instructions to the rest. Before long, instead of running every which way, they were organised into a softly walking circle that was moving slowly in on Syracuse. Cat saw they were going to catch him any second now.

Then into the circle came Roger on his bicycle, waving both arms and pedalling hard to stay upright. “Look, no hands!” he shouted. “I can do it! I can do it!” At this point, he saw Syracuse and the bicycle wagged about underneath him. “I can’t steer!” he said.

He shot among the frantically scattering gardeners and fell off in front of Syracuse.

Syracuse reared up in surprise, came down, hurdled Roger and the bicycle, and raced off in quite a new direction.

“Keep him out of the rose garden!” the head gardener shouted desperately, and too late.

Cat was now the person nearest to the rose garden. As he sprinted towards the arched entry to it, he had a glimpse of Syracuse’s gleaming brown rear turning left on the gravel path. Cat put on more speed, dived through the archway and turned right. It stood to reason that Syracuse would circle the place on the widest path. And Cat was correct. He and Syracuse met about two-thirds of the way down the right hand path.

Syracuse was gently trotting by then, with his head and ears turned slightly backwards to listen to the pursuit rushing up the other side of the rose garden. He stopped dead when he saw Cat and nodded his head violently upwards. Cat could almost hear Syracuse thinking, Damn!

“Yes, I know I’m a spoilsport,” Cat said to him. “You were having real fun, weren’t you? But they don’t let people make holes in the lawn. That’s what’s annoyed them. They’ll probably kill Roger. You made hoofprints. He’s practically ploughed it up.”

Syracuse brought his head halfway down and considered Cat. Then, rather wonderingly, he stretched his neck out and nosed Cat’s face. His nose felt very soft and whiskery, with just a hint of dribble. Cat, equally wonderingly, put one hand on Syracuse’s firm, warm, gleaming neck. A definite thought came to him from Syracuse: Peppermint?

“Yes,” Cat said. “I can get that.” He conjured a peppermint from where he knew Julia had one of her stashes and held it out on the palm of his left hand. Syracuse, very gently, lipped it up.

While he did so, the pursuit skidded round the corner and piled to a halt, seeing Syracuse standing quietly with Cat. Joss Callow, who had been cunning too, and limping because Syracuse had trodden on him, came up behind Cat and said, “You got him then?”

Cat quickly took hold of the dangling lead rein. “Yes,” he said. “No trouble.”

Joss Callow sniffed the air. “Ah,” he said. “Peppermint’s the secret, is it? Wish I’d known. I’ll take the horse now. You better go and help your cousin. Got himself woven into that cycle somehow.”

It took Cat some quite serious magic to separate Roger from the bicycle, and then it took both of them working together to unplough the lawn where Roger had hit it, so Cat never saw how Joss got Syracuse back to the stables. He gathered it took a long time and a lot of peppermints. After that, Joss went to the Castle and asked to speak to Chrestomanci.

As a result, next morning when Janet and Julia came into the stableyard self-consciously wearing their new riding clothes, Chrestomanci was there too, in a dressing-gown of tightly belted black silk with sprays of scarlet chrysanthemums down the back. Cat was with him because Chrestomanci had asked him to be there.

“It seems that Wizard Prendergast has sold us a very unreliable horse,” Chrestomanci said to the girls. “My feeling is that we should sell Syracuse for dog meat and try again.”

They were horrified. Janet said, “Not dog meat!” and Julia said, “We ought to give him a chance, Daddy!”

Cat said, “That’s not fair.”

“Then I rely on you, Cat,” Chrestomanci said. “I suspect you are better at horse magics than I am.”

Joss Callow led Syracuse out, saddled and bridled. Syracuse reeked of peppermint and looked utterly bored. In the morning sunlight he was sensationally good looking. Julia exclaimed. But Janet, to her own great shame, discovered there and then that she was one of those people who are simply terrified of horses. “He’s enormous!” she said, backing away.

“Oh, nonsense!” said Julia. “His head’s only a bit higher than yours is. Get on him. I’ll give you first go.”

“I – I can’t,” Janet said. Cat was surprised to see she was shaking.

Chrestomanci said, “Given the creature’s exploits yesterday, I think you are very wise.”

“I’m not wise,” Janet said. “I’m just scared silly. Oh, what a waste of new riding clothes!” She burst into tears and ran away into the Castle, where she hid in an empty room.

Millie found her there, sitting on the unmade bed sobbing. “Don’t take it so hard, my love,” she said, sitting beside Janet. “A lot of people find they can’t get on with horses. I don’t think Chrestomanci can, you know. He always says he hates them because of the way they smell, but I think it’s more than that.”

“But I feel so ashamed!” Janet wept. “I went on and on about being a famous rider and now I can’t even go near the horse!”

“But how could you possibly know that until you tried?” Millie asked. “No one can help the way they’re made, my love. You just have to think of something you’re good at doing instead.”

“But,” said Janet, coming to the heart of her shame, “I made such a fuss that I made Chrestomanci spend all that money on a horse, and all for nothing!”

“I think I heard Julia making quite as much fuss,” Millie remarked. “We’d have bought the horse for her in the end, you know.”

“And these clothes,” Janet said. “So expensive. And I shall never wear them again.”

“Now that is silly,” Millie told her. “Clothes can be given to someone else. It will take me five minutes and the very minimum of magic to make them into a second set for Julia – or for anyone else who wants to ride. Roger might decide he wants to, you know.”

Janet found herself giving a weak giggle at the thought of Roger sitting on Syracuse in her clothes. It seemed the most impossible thing in all the Related Worlds.

“That’s better,” said Millie.

Meanwhile, Chrestomanci said, “Well, Julia? You seem to have this horse all to yourself.”

Julia happily approached Syracuse. She attended carefully to the instructions Joss Callow gave her, gathered up the reins, put her foot in the stirrup, and managed to get herself into the saddle. “It feels awfully high up,” she said.

Syracuse contrived to hump his back somehow, so that Julia was higher still.

Joss Callow jerked the bit to make Syracuse behave and led Syracuse sedately round the yard with Julia crouching in a brave wobbly way on top. All went well until Syracuse stopped suddenly and ducked his head down. Cat only just prevented Julia from sliding off over Syracuse’s ears, by throwing a spell like a sort of rope to hold her on. Syracuse looked at him reproachfully.

“Had enough, Julia?” Chrestomanci asked.

Julia clenched her teeth and said, “Not yet.” She bravely managed another twenty minutes of walking round the yard, even though part of the time Syracuse was not walking regularly, but putting his feet down in a random scramble that had Julia tipping this way and that.

“It really does seem as if this animal does not wish to be ridden,” Chrestomanci said. He went away indoors and quietly ordered two girl’s bicycles.

Julia refused to give up. Some of it was pride and obstinacy. Some of it was the splendid knowledge that she now owned Syracuse all by herself. None of this stopped Syracuse making himself almost impossible to ride. Cat had to be in the yard whenever Julia sat on the horse, with his rope spell always ready.

Two days later, Joss Callow opened the gate to the paddock and invited Julia to see if she – or Syracuse – did better in the wider space.

Syracuse promptly whipped round and made for the stables with Julia clinging madly to his mane. The stable doors were shut, so Syracuse aimed himself at the low open doorway of the tack room instead. Julia saw it coming up fast and realised that she was likely to be beheaded. Shrieking out the words of a spell, she managed to levitate herself right up on to the stable roof. There, while Cat and Joss hauled Syracuse out backwards draped in six bridles and one set of carriage reins, Julia sat with big tears rolling down her face and gave vent to her feelings.

“I hate this horse! He deserves to be dog meat! He’s horrible!”

“I agree,” Chrestomanci said, appearing beside Cat in fabulous charcoal grey suiting. “Would you like me to try to get you a real horse?”

“I hate you too!” Julia screamed. “You only got this one because you thought we were silly to want a horse at all!”

“Not true, Julia,” Chrestomanci protested. “I did think you were silly, but I made an honest try and Prendergast diddled me. If you like, I’ll try for something fat and placid and elderly, and this one can go to the vet. What’s his name?” he asked Joss.

“Mr Vastion,” Joss said, untangling leather straps from Syracuse’s tossing head.

“No!” said Julia. “I’m sick of all horses.”

“Mr Vastion, then,” said Chrestomanci.

Cat could not bear to think of anything so beautiful and so much alive as Syracuse being turned into dog meat. “Can I have him?” he said.

Everyone looked at him in surprise, including Syracuse.

“You want the vet?” Chrestomanci said.

“No, Syracuse,” said Cat.

“On your head be it then.” Chrestomanci shrugged and turned to help Julia down off the roof.

Cat found he owned a horse – just like that. Since everyone seemed to expect him to, he approached Syracuse and tried to remember the way Joss had told Julia to do things. He got his foot stretched up into the correct stirrup, collected the reins from Joss and jumped himself vigorously up into the saddle. He would not have been surprised to find himself facing Syracuse’s tail. Instead, he found himself looking forwards across a pair of large, lively ears beyond a tossing black mane, into Julia’s tearful face.

“Oh, this is just not fair!” Julia said.

Cat knew what she meant. As soon as he was in the saddle, a peculiar kind of magic happened, which was quite unlike the magic Cat usually dealt in. He knew just what to do. He knew how to adjust his weight and how to use every muscle in his body. He knew almost exactly how Syracuse felt – which was surprise, and triumph at having got the right rider at last – and just what Syracuse wanted to do. Together, like one animal that happened to be in two parts, they surged off across the yard, with Joss Callow in urgent pursuit, and through the open paddock gate. There Syracuse broke into a glad canter. It was the most wonderful feeling Cat had ever known.

It lasted about five minutes and then Cat fell off. This was not Syracuse’s fault. It was simply because muscles and bones that Cat had never much used before started first to ache, then to scream, and then gave up altogether. Syracuse was desperately anxious about it and stood over Cat nosing him, until Joss Callow raced up and seized the reins. Cat tried to explain to him.

“I see that,” Joss said. “There must be some other world where you and this horse are the two parts of a centaur.”

“I don’t think so,” Cat said. He levered himself up off the grass like an old, old man. “They say I’m the only one there is in any world.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot,” said Joss. “That’s why you’re a nine-lifer like the Big Man.” He always called Chrestomanci the Big Man.

“Congratulations,” Chrestomanci called out, leaning on the gate beside Julia. “It saves you having to teleport, I suppose.”

Julia added, rather vengefully, “Remember you have to do the mucking out now.” Then she smiled, a sighing, relieved sort of smile, and said, “Congratulations, too.”

Cat ached all over that afternoon. He sat on his bed in his round turret room wondering what kind of magic might stop his legs and his behind and his back aching. Or one part of him anyway. He had decided that he would make himself numb from the neck down and was wondering what the best way was to do it, when there was a knock at his door. Thinking it must be Roger being more than usually polite, Cat said, “I’m here, but I’m performing nameless rites. Enter at your peril.”

There was a feeling of hesitation outside the door. Then, very slowly and cautiously, the handle turned and the door was pushed open. A sulky-looking boy about Roger’s age, wearing a smart blue uniform, stood there staring at him. “Eric Chant, are you?” this boy said.

Cat said, “Yes. Who are you?”

“Joe Pinhoe,” said the boy. “Temporary boot boy.”

“Oh.” Now Cat thought about it, he had seen this boy out in the stableyard once or twice, talking to Joss Callow. “What do you want?”

Joe’s head hunched. It was from embarrassment, Cat saw, but it made Joe look hostile and aggressive. Cat knew all about this. He had mulish times himself, quite often. He waited. At length Joe said, “Just to take a look at you really. Enchanter, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Cat said.

“You don’t look big enough,” Joe said.

Cat was thoroughly annoyed. His aching bones didn’t help, but mostly he was simply fed up at the way everyone seemed to think he was too little. “You want me to prove it?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Joe.

Cat cast about in his mind for something he could do. Quite apart from the fact that Cat was forbidden to work magic in the Castle, Joe had the look of someone who wouldn’t easily be impressed. Most of the small, simple things Cat thought he could get away with doing without Chrestomanci noticing were, he was sure, things that Joe would call tricks or illusions. Still, Cat was annoyed enough to want to do something. He braced his sore legs against his bed and sent Joe up to the very middle of the room’s round ceiling.

It was interesting. After an instant of total astonishment, when he found himself aloft with his uniformed legs dangling, Joe began casting a spell to bring himself down. It was quite a good spell. It would have worked if it had been Roger and not Cat who had put Joe up there.

Cat grinned. “You won’t get down that way,” he said, and he stuck Joe to the ceiling.

Joe wriggled his shoulders and kicked his legs. “Bet I can get down somehow,” he said. “It must take you a lot of effort doing this.”

“No it doesn’t,” Cat said. “And I can do this too.” He slid Joe gently across the ceiling towards the windows. When Joe was dangling just above the largest window, Cat made the window spring open and began lowering Joe towards it.

Joe laughed in that hearty way you do when you are very nervous indeed. “All right. I believe you. You needn’t drop me out.”

Cat laughed too. “I wouldn’t drop you. I’d levitate you into a tree. Haven’t you ever wanted to fly?”

Joe stopped laughing and wriggling. “Haven’t I just!” he said. “But my family says boys can’t use broomsticks. Go on. Fly me down to the village. I dare you.”

“Er – hem,” said someone in the doorway.

Both of them looked round to find Chrestomanci standing there. It was one of those times when he seemed so tall that he might have been staring straight into Joe’s face, and Joe at that moment was a good fifteen feet in the air.

“I think,” Chrestomanci said, “that you must achieve your ambition to fly by some other means, young man. Eric is strictly forbidden to perform magic inside the Castle. Aren’t you, Cat?”

“Er — ” said Cat.

Joe, very white in the face, said, “It wasn’t his fault – er – sir. I told him to prove he was an enchanter, see.”

“Does it need proving?” Chrestomanci asked.

“It does to me,” Joe said. “Being new here and all. I mean, look at him. Do you think he looks like an enchanter?”

Chrestomanci turned his face meditatively down to Cat. “They come in all shapes and sizes,” he said. “In Cat’s case, eight other people just like him either failed to get born in the other worlds of our series, or they died at birth. Most of them would probably have been enchanters too. Cat has nine people’s magic.”

“Sort of squidged together. I get you,” Joe said. “No wonder it’s this strong.”

“Yes. Well. This vexed matter being settled,” Chrestomanci said, “perhaps, Eric, you would be so good as to fetch our friend down so that he can go about his lawful business.”

Cat grinned up at Joe and lowered him gently to the carpet.

“Off you go,” Chrestomanci said to him.

“You mean you’re not going to give me the sack?” Joe asked incredulously.

“Do you want to be sacked?” Chrestomanci said.

“Yes,” said Joe.

“In that case, I imagine it will be punishment enough to you to be allowed to keep your doubtless very boring job,” Chrestomanci told him. “Now please leave.”

“Rats!” said Joe, hunching himself.

Chrestomanci watched Joe slouch out of the room. “What an eccentric youth,” he remarked when the door had finally shut. He turned to Cat, looking much less pleasant. “Cat —”

“I know,” Cat said. “But he didn’t believe —”

“Have you read the story of Puss in Boots?” Chrestomanci asked him.

“Yes,” Cat said, puzzled.

“Then you’ll remember that the ogre was killed by being tempted to turn into something very large and then something small enough to be eaten,” Chrestomanci said. “Be warned, Cat.”

“But —” said Cat.

“What I’m trying to tell you,” Chrestomanci went on, “is that even the strongest enchanter can be defeated by using his own strength against him. I’m not saying this lad was —”

“He wasn’t,” said Cat. “He was just curious. He uses magic himself and I think he thinks it goes by size, how strong you are.”

“A magic user. Is he now?” Chrestomanci said. “I must find out more about him. Come with me now for an extra magic theory lesson as a penalty for using magic indoors.”

But Joe was all right really, Cat thought mutinously as he limped down the spiral stairs after Chrestomanci. Joe had not been trying to tempt him, he knew that. He found he could hardly concentrate on the lesson. It was all about the kind of enchanter’s magic called Performative Speech. That was easy enough to understand. It meant that you said something in such a way that it happened as you said it. Cat could do that, just about. But the reason why it happened was beyond him, in spite of Chrestomanci’s explanations.

He was quite glad to see Joe the next morning on his way out to the stables. Joe dodged out of the boot room into Cat’s path, in his shirtsleeves, with a boot clutched to his front. “Did you get into much trouble yesterday?” he asked anxiously.

“Not too bad,” Cat said. “Just an extra lesson.”

“That’s good,” said Joe. “I didn’t mean to get you caught – really. The Big Man’s pretty scary, isn’t he? You look at him and you sort of drain away, wondering what’s the worst he can do.”

“I don’t know the worst he can do,” Cat said, “but I think it could be pretty awful. See you.”

He went on out into the stableyard, where he could tell that Syracuse knew he was coming and getting impatient to see him. That was a good feeling. But Joss Callow insisted that there were other duties that came first, such as mucking out. For someone with Cat’s gifts, this was no trouble at all. He simply asked everything on the floor of the loose box to transfer itself to the muck heap. Then he asked new straw to arrive, watched enviously by the stableboy.

“I’ll do it for the whole stables if you like,” Cat offered.

The stableboy regretfully shook his head. “Mr Callow’d kill me. He’s a great believer in work and elbow grease and such, is Mr Callow.”

Cat found this was true. Looking after Syracuse himself, Joss Callow said, could never be done by magic. And Joss was in the right of it. Syracuse reacted very badly to the merest hint of magic. Cat had to do everything in the normal, time-consuming way and learn how to do it as he went.

The other part of the problem with Syracuse was boredom. When Cat, now wearing what had been Janet’s riding gear most artfully adapted by Millie, had got Syracuse tacked up ready to ride, Joss Callow decreed that they went into the paddock for a whole set of tame little exercises. Cat did not mind too much, because his aches from yesterday came back almost at once. Syracuse objected mightily.

“He wants to gallop,” Cat said.

“Well he can’t,” said Joss. “Or not yet. Lord knows what that wizard was up to with him, but he needs as much training as you do.”

When he thought about it, Cat was as anxious to gallop across open country as Syracuse was. He told Syracuse, Behave now and we can do that soon. Soon? Syracuse asked. Soon, soon? Yes, Cat told him. Soon. Be bored now so that we can go out soon. Syracuse, to Cat’s relief, believed him.

Cat went away afterwards and considered. Since Syracuse hated magic so much, he was going to have to use the magic on himself instead. He was forbidden to use magic in the Castle, so he would have to use it where it didn’t show. He used it, very quietly, to train and tame all the new muscles he seemed to need. He let Syracuse show him what was needed, and then he used the strange unmagical magic that there seemed to be between himself and Syracuse to show Syracuse how to be patient in spite of being bored. It went slower than Cat hoped. It took longer than it took Janet, laughing hilariously, to teach Julia to ride her new bicycle. Roger, Julia and Janet were all pedalling joyfully around the Castle grounds and down through the village long before Cat and Syracuse were able to satisfy Joss Callow.

But they did it quite soon. Sooner than Cat had believed possible, really, Joss allowed that they were now ready to go out for a real ride.

They set off, Joss on the big brown hack beside Cat on Syracuse. Syracuse was highly excited and inclined to dance. Cat prudently stuck himself to the saddle by magic, just in case, and Joss kept a stern hand on Cat’s reins while they went up the main road and then up the steep track that led to Home Wood. Once they were on a ride between the trees, Joss let Cat take Syracuse for himself. Syracuse whirled off like a mad horse.

For two furlongs or so, until Syracuse calmed down, everything was a hard-working muddle to Cat, thudding hooves, loud horse breath, leaf mould kicked up to prick Cat on his face, and ferns, grass and trees surging past the corners of his eyes, ears and mane in front of him. Then, finally, Syracuse consented to slow to a mere trot and Joss caught up. Cat had space to look around and to smell and see what a wood was like when it was in high summer, just passing towards autumn.

Cat had not been in many woods in his life. He had lived first in a town and then at the Castle. But, like most people, he had had a very clear idea of what a wood was like – tangled and dark and mysterious.

Home Wood was not like this at all. Any bushes seemed to have been tidied away, leaving nothing but tall dark-leaved trees, ferns and a few burly holly trees, with long straight paths in between. It smelt fresh and sweet and leafy. But the new kind of magic Cat had been learning through Syracuse told him that there should have been more to a wood than this. And there was no more. Even though he could see far off through the trees, there was no depth to the place. It only seemed to touch the front of his mind, like cardboard scenery.

He wondered, as they rode along, if his idea of a wood had been wrong after all. Then Syracuse surged suddenly sideways and stopped. Syracuse was always liable to do this. This was one reason why Cat stuck himself to the saddle by magic. He did not fall off – though it was a close thing – and when he had struggled upright again, he looked to see what had startled Syracuse this time.

It was the fluttering feathers of a dead magpie. The magpie had been nailed to a wooden framework standing beside the ride. Or maybe Syracuse had disliked the draggled wings of the dead crow nailed beside the magpie. Or perhaps it was the whole framework. Now that Cat looked, he saw dead creatures nailed all over the thing, stiff and withering and beyond even the stage when flies were interested in them. There were the twisted bodies of moles, stoats, weasels, toads, and a couple of long blackened tube-like things that might have been adders.

Cat shuddered. As Joss rode up, he turned and asked him, “What’s this for?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Joss said. “It’s just – Oh, good morning, Mr Farleigh.”

Cat looked back in the direction of the grisly framework. An elderly man with ferocious side whiskers was now standing beside it, holding a long gun that pointed downwards from his right elbow towards his thick leather gaiters.

“It’s my gibbet, this is,” the man said, staring unlovingly up at Cat. “It’s for a lesson. And an example. See?”

Cat could think of nothing to say. The long gun was truly alarming.

Mr Farleigh looked over at Joss. He had pale, cruel eyes, overshadowed by mighty tufts of eyebrow. “What do you mean bringing one like him in my wood?” he demanded.

“He lives in the Castle,” Joss said. “He’s entitled.”

“Not off the rides,” Mr Farleigh said. “Make sure he stays on the cleared rides. I’m not having him disturbing my game.” He pointed another pale-eyed look at Cat and then swung around and trudged away among the trees, crushing leaves, grass and twigs noisily with his heavy boots.

“Gamekeeper,” Joss explained. “Walk on.”

Feeling rather shaken, Cat induced Syracuse to move on down the ride.

Three paces on, Syracuse was walking through the missing depths that the wood should have had. It was very odd. There was no foreground, no smooth green bridle path, no big trees. Instead, everywhere was deep blue-green distance full of earthy, leafy smells – almost overpoweringly full of them. And although Cat and Syracuse were walking through distance with no foreground, Cat was fairly sure that Joss, riding beside them, was still riding on the bridle path, through foreground.

Oh, please, said someone. Please let us out!

Cat looked up and around to find who was speaking and saw no one. But Syracuse was flicking his ears as if he too had heard the voice. “Where are you?” he asked.

Shut behind, said the voice – or maybe it was several voices. Far inside. We’ve been good. We still don’t know what we did wrong. Please let us out now. It’s been so long.

Cat looked and looked, trying to focus his witch sight as Chrestomanci had taught him. After a while, he thought some of the blue distance was moving, shifting cloudily about, but that was all he could see. He could feel, though. He felt misery from the cloudiness, and longing. There was such unhappiness that his eyes pricked and his throat ached.

“What’s keeping you in?” he said.

That – sort of thing, said the voices.

Cat looked where his attention was directed and there, like a hard black portcullis, right in front of him, was the framework with the dead creatures nailed to it. It seemed enormous from this side. “I’ll try,” he said.

It took all his magic to move it. He had to shove so hard that he felt Syracuse drifting sideways beneath him. But at last he managed to swing it aside a little, like a rusty gate. Then he was able to ride Syracuse out round the splintery edge of it and on to the bridle path again.

“Keep your horse straight,” Joss said. He had obviously not noticed anything beyond Syracuse moving sideways on for a second or so. “Keep your mind on the road.”

“Sorry,” said Cat. As they rode on, he realised that he had really been saying sorry to the hidden voices. Even using all his strength, he had not been able to help them. He could have cried.

Or perhaps he had done something. Around them, the wood was slowly and gently filling up with blue distance, as if it were leaking round the edge where Cat had pushed the framework of dead things aside. A few birds were, very cautiously, beginning to sing. But it was not enough. Cat knew it was not nearly enough.

He rode home, hugging the queer experience to him, the way you hug a disturbing dream. He thought about it a lot. But he was bad at telling people things, and particularly bad at telling something so peculiar. He did not mention it properly to anyone. The nearest he came to telling about it was when he said to Roger, “What’s that wood like over on that hill? The one that’s furthest away.”

“No idea,” Roger said. “Why?”

“I want to go there and see,” Cat said.

“What’s wrong with Home Wood?” Roger asked.

“There’s a horrible gamekeeper,” Cat said.

“Mr Farleigh. Julia used to think he was an ogre,” Roger said. “He’s vile. I tell you what, why don’t we both go to that wood on the hill? Ulverscote Wood, I think it’s called. You ride and I’ll go on my bike. It’ll be fun.”

“Yes!” said Cat.

Cat knew better than to mention this idea to Joss Callow. He knew Joss would say it was far to soon for Cat to take Syracuse out on his own. He and Roger agreed that they would wait until it was Joss’s day off.

Cat was interested to see that Joss seemed to want to avoid Mr Farleigh too. When they rode out after that, they went either along the river or out into the bare upland of Hopton Heath, both in directions well away from Home Wood. And here too, going both ways, Cat discovered the background felt as if it were missing. He found it sad and puzzling.

Roger was hugely excited about going for a real long ride. He tried to interest Janet and Julia in the idea. They had now cycled everywhere possible in the Castle grounds, and round and round the village green in Helm St Mary too, so they were ripe for a long ride. The three of them made plans to cycle all of twelve miles, as far away as Hopton, although, as Julia pointed out, this made it twenty-four miles, there and back, which was quite a distance. Janet told her not to be feeble.

They were just setting out for this marathon, when a small blue car unexpectedly rattled up to the main door of the Castle.

Julia dropped her bike on the drive and ran towards the small blue car. “It’s Jason!” she shrieked. “Jason’s back!”

Millie and Chrestomanci arrived on the Castle steps while Julia was still yards away and shook hands delightedly with the man who climbed out of the car. He was just in time to turn round as Julia flung herself on him. He staggered a bit. “Lord love a duck!” he said. “Julia, you weigh a ton these days!”

Jason Yeldham was not very tall. He had contrived, even after years of living at the Castle, to keep a strong cockney accent. “No surprise. I started out as boot boy here,” he explained to Janet. He had a narrow bony face, very brown from his foreign travels, topped by sun-whitened curls. His eyes were a bright blue and surrounded by lines from laughing or from staring into bright suns, or both.

Janet was fascinated by him. “Isn’t it odd,” she said to Cat, who came to see what the excitement was. “You hear about someone and then a few days later they turn up.”

“It could be the Castle spells,” Cat said. But he liked Jason too.

Roger morosely gathered up the three bicycles and put them away. The rest crowded into the main hall of the Castle, where Jason was telling Millie and Chrestomanci which strange worlds he had been to and saying he hoped that his storage shed was still undisturbed. “Because I’ve got this big hired van following on full of some of the weirdest plants you ever saw,” he said, with his voice echoing from the dome overhead. “Some need planting out straight away. Can you spare me a gardener? Some I’ll need to consult about – they need special soil and feed and so on. I’ll talk to your head gardener. Is that still Mr McDermot? But I’ve been thinking all the way down from London that I need a real herb expert. Is that old dwimmerman still around – the one with the long legs and the beard – you know? He always knew twice what I did. Had an instinct, I think.”

“Elijah Pinhoe, you mean?” Millie said. “No. It was sad. He died about eight years ago now.”

“I gather the poor fellow was found dead in a wood,” Chrestomanci said. “Hadn’t you heard?”

“No!” Jason looked truly upset. “I must have been away when they found him. Poor man! He was always telling me that there was something wrong in the woods round here. Must have had a presentiment, I suppose. Perhaps I can talk with his widow.”

“She sold the house and moved, I heard,” Millie said.

“There’s some very silly stories about that.”

Jason shrugged. “Ah well. Mr McDermot’s got a good head for plants.”

The van arrived, pulled by two carthorses, and everyone from the temporary boot boy to Miss Rosalie the librarian was roped in to deal with Jason’s plants. Janet, Julia, the footmen and most of the Castle wizards and sorceresses carried bags and pots and boxes to the shed. Millie wrote labels. Jason told Roger where to put the labels. Cat was told off, along with the butler and Miss Bessemer the housekeeper, to levitate little tender bundles of root and fuzzy leaves to places where Mr McDermot thought they would do best, while Miss Rosalie followed everyone round with a list. Anyone left over unpacked and sorted queer shaped bulbs to be planted later in the year.

Roger gloomed. He knew there was no question of cycling anywhere that day.

He almost forgave Jason that evening at supper when Jason kept everyone fascinated by telling of the various worlds he had been on and the strange plants he had found there. There was a plant in World Nine B that had a huge flower once every hundred years, so beautiful that the people there worshipped it as a god.

“That was one of my failures,” Jason told them. “They wouldn’t let me take a cutting, whatever I said.”

But he had done better in World Seven D, where there was a remote valley full of medicinal crocuses. At first the old man who owned the valley could not think of anything he wanted in exchange for the bulbs and he warned Jason that the crocuses were very bad for your teeth. Jason got round the old man and got a sackful of the crocuses by enchanting sets of false teeth for the old man and his family. And then he told of the mountain in World One F which was the only place in all the worlds where a dark green ferny plant grew that actually cured colds. Naturally the man who owned the mountain was very rich from selling these plants – minus their roots, so that no one else could grow any – and quite determined that nobody else was going to get hold of one. He had guard beasts and armed men patrolling the mountain night and day. Jason had sneaked in at night under heavy spells and dug up several before he was spotted and forced to run for it. The guards pursued him right through World Two A before Jason skipped to World Five C and they gave up. There were now three of those plants at Chrestomanci Castle, in the care of Mr McDermot.

“And we’ll plant some of the rest tomorrow,” Jason said gleefully.

Janet and Julia and most of the others were still helping Jason that next day. But that day was Joss Callow’s day off. Roger looked at Cat. Cat went to the stables, where he fed Syracuse peppermints and saddled him up, and led him through all the people busy around Jason and his shed.

“I’m just going to ride him round the paddock,” he explained. And he did that. He knew Syracuse would be unmanageable unless he had had a bit of exercise first.

Half an hour later, Cat and Roger were on the road to the distant hills.

Joss Callow meanwhile cycled down to Helm St Mary, where he dropped in to see his mother, so that if anyone asked he could truthfully say he had been to visit his mother. But he only stayed half an hour before he pedalled on to Ulverscote.

In Ulverscote, Marianne’s dad finished his work at mid-morning by packing the donkey cart with a set of kitchen chairs and sending Dolly the donkey and Uncle Richard off to deliver them in Crowhelm. Harry Pinhoe then walked up to the Pinhoe Arms to meet Joss. The two of them settled comfortably in the private snug with pints of beer. Arthur Pinhoe leant amiably in through the hatch from the main bar, and Harry Pinhoe lit the pipe that he allowed himself on these occasions.

“So what’s the news?” Harry Pinhoe asked, puffing fine blue clouds. “I hear the Family came back.”

“Yes, and bought a horse,” Joss Callow said. “Got diddled properly over it.” Harry and Arthur laughed. “Me included,” Joss admitted. “Wizard who sold it put half a hundred spells on it to make it seem manageable, see. About the only one who can ride it is the boy they’re training up to be the next Big Man, and he gets on with it a treat. Odd, though. He doesn’t seem to use any magic on it that I can see. But what I was getting round to with this was about Gaffer Farleigh. He turned up when I was out with the boy in Home Wood and gave us both a proper warning off. Seemed to think the boy was likely to interfere with our work. What do you think?”

Harry and Arthur exchanged looks. “Some of that may be about the row he had with Gammer,” Arthur suggested, “before Gammer got took strange. All us Pinhoes are dirt to the Farleighs at the moment.”

“They’ll get over it,” Harry said placidly. “But we can’t have that boy riding all over the country. We’ll have to stop that.”

“Oh, I will,” Joss assured him. “He’s not going out without me any day soon.”

Harry chuckled. “If he does, the road workings will take care of it.” They drank beer peacefully for a while, until Harry asked, “Anything else, Joss?”

“Not much. Usual stuff,” said Joss. “The Big Man got straight back to work when he wasn’t buying horses and bicycles – magical swindle in London, some coven in the Midlands giving trouble, Scottish witches fussing about funds for Hallowe’en, row of some kind two worlds away over the new tax on dragon’s blood – business as usual. Oh, I nearly forgot! That enchanter’s back from collecting plants all over the Related Worlds. The young one that used to be so thick with Old Gaffer. Jason Yeldham. He was asking after Gaffer. How much of an eye ought I to keep on him?”

“Shouldn’t think he’d be much trouble,” Harry said, emptying vile black dottle from his pipe into the ashtray. He scraped round the pipe bowl and thought about it. He shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “He’s not likely to come bothering us here now Gaffer’s gone all these years ago. I mean, it’s all studying and book-learning with him, isn’t it? It’s not like he uses the herbs the way we do. No need to interfere with him. But stay alert, if you follow me.”

“Will do,” said Joss.

They asked Arthur for more beer and refreshed themselves with pork pies and pickled onions for a while. After a bit, Harry remembered to ask, “How’s Joe doing then?”

Joss shrugged. “All right, I suppose. I scarcely ever see him.”

“Good. Then he’s not in trouble yet,” Harry said.

Then Joss remembered to ask, “And how’s Gammer settling in?”

“She’s fine,” Harry said. “Dinah looks after her a treat. She sits there and no one can get any sense out of her, not even our Marianne, but there you go, she’s happy. She makes Marianne go round there every day and tells Marianne she has to look after that cat of hers every time, but that’s all. It’s all peace this end, really.”

“I’d better go and pay my respects to her,” Joss said. “She’s bound to find out I was here if I don’t.” He drained off the rest of his beer and stood up. “See you later, Harry, Arthur.”

He picked up his bicycle from the yard and coasted his way downhill through the village, nodding to the occasional Pinhoe who called out a greeting, shaking his head at the piles of brick and earth where the table had run into the Post Office wall. Wondering why nobody had done anything yet about mending that wall, he turned into Dell Lane and shortly arrived at the smallholding, where geese, ducks and hens ran noisily out of his way as he went to knock at the front door.

“Come to see Gammer,” he said to Dinah when she opened it.

“Now there’s an odd thing!” Dinah exclaimed. “She’s been on about you all this morning. She’s said to me over and over, ‘When Joss Callow comes, you’re to show him straight in,’ she said, and I’d no idea you were even coming to Ulverscote!” She dived back in and opened the door on the right of the tiny hallway. “Gammer, guess who! It’s Joss Callow come to see you!”

“Well, they all say that,” Gammer’s voice answered. “They look and they spy on me all the time.”

Joss Callow paused in the front doorway. Partly he was wondering what you said to that, and partly he was shaken by the strength of the spells Harry Pinhoe had put up to stop Gammer getting out. He pulled himself together and pushed his way through into the tiny front room, full of teapots and vases and boxes that people had thought Gammer might want. Gammer was sitting in an upright armchair with wings that almost hid her ruined face and tousled white hair, with her hands folded on the knee of her clean, clean skirt. “How are you today then, Gammer?” he said heartily.

“Not so wide as a barn door, but enough to let chickens in,” Gammer answered. “Thank you very much, Joss Callow. But it was Edgar and Lester who did it, you know.”

“Oh?” said Joss. “Really?”

While he was wondering what else to say, whether to give her news from the Castle or talk about the weather, Gammer said sharply, “And now you’re here at last, you can go and fetch me Joe here at once.”

“Joe?” Joss said. “But I can give you news of the Castle just as well, Gammer.”

“I don’t want news, I want Joe,” Gammer insisted. “I know as well as you do where he is and I want him here. Or don’t you call me Gammer any more?”

“Yes, of course I do,” Joss said, and tried to change the subject. “It’s a bit grey today, but —”

“Don’t you try to put me off, Joss Callow,” Gammer interrupted. “I’ve told you to fetch me Joe here and I mean it.”

“But quite warm – a bit warm for cycling really,” Joss said.

“Who cares about the weather?” Gammer said. “I said to fetch Joe here. Go and get him at once and stop trying to humour me!”

This seemed quite definite and perfectly sane to Joss. He sighed at the thought of a lost afternoon at the Pinhoe Arms, chatting to Arthur and maybe playing darts with Charles. “You want me to cycle all the way back to Helm St Mary and tell Joe to come here, do you?”

“Yes. You should have done it yesterday,” Gammer said. “I don’t know what you young ones are coming to, arguing with the orders I give. Go and fetch Joe. Now. Tell him I want to speak to him and he’s not to tell anyone else. Go on. Off you go.”

Such was the awe all the Pinhoe family felt for Gammer that Joss didn’t argue and didn’t dare mention the weather again. He said, “All right then,” and went.

With Syracuse fighting to go faster, faster! Cat rode along the grass verge, while Roger pedalled beside them on the road. They were quite evenly matched going along the level, but whenever they came to a hill, Syracuse sailed up it, shaking his head and trying to gallop, and Roger stood on his pedals and worked furiously, puffing like a train. Roger’s chubby face became the colour of raspberries and he still got left far behind.

They could see the woods they were making for, tantalisingly only two hills away, a spill of dark green trees with already one or two dashes of pure, sunlit yellow, that signalled autumn coming. Every time Cat looked – usually while he was at the top of a hill waiting for Roger – those trees seemed further and further off, and more away to the left, and still two hills away. Cat began to think they had missed a turning, or perhaps even taken the wrong road to start with.

When Roger caught up next time, with his face beyond raspberry into strawberry colour, Cat said, “We ought to take the next left turn.”

Roger was too much out of breath to do anything but nod. So Cat took the lead and swung Syracuse into a nice broad road leading away left. SHALLOWHELM the signpost said. UPHELM.

About half a mile later, when he could speak, Roger said, “This road can’t be right. It should take us back to the Castle.”

Cat could still see the wood, still in the same place, so he kept on. The road bent about among nothing but empty countryside for what seemed miles, up and down, until Roger was more the colour of a peony than anything else. Then it swung round a corner and went up a truly enormous hill.

Roger let out a wail at the sight of it. “I can’t! I’ll have to get off and push.”

“No, don’t,” Cat said. “Let me give you a tow.”

He used the same spell he had used to keep Julia from falling off Syracuse and flung it round Roger’s bicycle. They went on, fast at first, because Syracuse still regarded every hill as a challenge to gallop, then slower – even when Cat allowed Syracuse to try to gallop – and then slower still. Halfway up, when Syracuse’s front hooves were digging and digging, and his back ones were scrambling, it dawned on Syracuse what was going on. He looked across at Roger and the bicycle, so uncannily keeping beside him. Then he threw Cat in the ditch and scrambled through the hedge into the stubble field beyond.

Roger only just saved himself and the bicycle from falling in the ditch too. “That horse,” he said, kneeling in the grass beside his spinning front wheel, “is too clever by half. Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Cat said, but he stayed sitting in the squashy weeds at the bottom of the ditch. It was not so much the fall. It was that Syracuse had broken the spell quite violently. This had never happened to Cat before. He discovered that it hurt. “In a moment,” he added.

Roger looked anxiously from Cat’s white face to Syracuse pounding happily about in the field above them. “I wish I was old enough to drive a car,” he said. “Or I wish that there was some way of moving this bike without having to pedal.”

“Couldn’t you invent a way?” Cat asked, to take his mind off hurting.

They were both sitting thinking about this, when a boy on a bicycle came past them up the hill. He was riding an ordinary bike, but he was humming smoothly upwards at a good speed and he was not pedalling at all. Roger and Cat stared after him with their mouths open. Cat was so amazed that it took him several seconds to recognise Joe Pinhoe. Roger was simply amazed. They both began shouting at once.

“Hey, Joe!” Cat shouted.

“Hey you!” Roger shouted.

And they both yelled in chorus, “Can you stop a minute! Please!”

For a moment, it looked as if Joe was not going to stop. He had hummed his way about twenty yards uphill before he seemed to change his mind. He shrugged a bit. Then his hand went down to a box on his crossbar, where he appeared to move a switch of some kind, after which he turned in a smooth curve and came coasting back down the hill to them.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, propping himself on the bank with one boot. “Want me to help catch the horse?” He nodded at Syracuse, who was now watching them across the hedge with great interest.

“No, no!” Cat and Roger said at once. “It’s not the horse,” Cat added.

Roger said, “We wanted to know how you make your bike go uphill without pedalling like that. It’s brilliant!”

Joe was clearly very gratified. He grinned. But, being Joe, he also hung his head and looked sulky. “I only use it on hills,” he said guardedly.

“That’s what’s so brilliant,” Roger said. “How do you do it?”

Joe hesitated.

Roger could see Joe was very proud of his device, whatever it was, and was itching to show it off, really. He asked coaxingly, “Did you invent it yourself?”

Joe nodded, grinning his sulky grin again.

“Then you must be a brilliant inventor,” Roger said. “I like inventing things too, but I’ve never come up with anything this useful. I’m Roger, by the way. Don’t you work in the Castle? I know I’ve seen you there.”

“Boot boy,” said Joe. “I’m Joe.” He nodded at Cat. “I’ve met him.”

“Jason Yeldham used to be boot boy there too,” Roger said. “It must go with brilliance.”

“Herbs, I know,” Joe said. “It’s machines I like really. But this box – it’s more of a dwimmer thing, see.” His hand went out to the box on his crossbar, and stopped. “What’s in it for me, if I do show you?” he asked suspiciously.

Roger was commercially minded too. He sympathised with Joe completely. The problem was that he had no money on him and he knew Cat had none either. And Joe could be offended at being offered money anyway. “I wouldn’t tell anyone else about it,” he said, while he thought. “And Cat won’t either. I tell you what – when we get back to the Castle, I’ll give you the address of the Magics Patent Office. You register your invention with them and everyone has to pay you if they want to use it too.”

Joe’s face gleamed with cautious greed. “Don’t I have to be grown up to do that?”

“No,” said Roger. “I sent for the forms when I invented a magic mirror game last year, and they don’t ask your age at all. They ask for a fifty pound fee, though.”

Cat wondered whether to point out that he, and not Roger, had invented the mirror game by accident. But he said nothing, because he was quite as interested in the box as Roger was.

Joe had a distant, calculating look. “I could be earning that much this summer,” he decided. “They pay quite well at the Castle. All right. I’ll show you.”

Grinning his sulky grin, Joe carefully unhooked the small latch that held the box on his crossbar shut. Cat craned out of the ditch – and then recoiled. The hinged lid dropped downwards to show, of all things, a stuffed ferret! The bent yellow body had bits of wire and twisted stalks of plants leading from its head and its paws to the place where the box met the crossbar.

“Metal to metal,” Joe explained, pointing to the join. “That’s machinery, see. The dwimmer part is to use the right herbs for life. You have to use something that has once been alive, see. Then you can get the life-power running through the frame and turning the wheels.”

“Brilliant!” Roger said reverently, peering in at the ferret. Its glass eyes seemed to glare sharply back at him. “But how do you get the life-power to flow? Is that a spell, or what?”

“It’s some old words we sometimes use in the woods,” Joe said. “But the trick is the herbs that go with the wires. Took me ages to find the right ones. You got to blend them, see.”

Roger bent even closer. “Oh, I see. Clever.”

Cat got up out of the ditch and went to catch Syracuse. He knew, now he had seen the box, that he could almost certainly make Roger one this evening, probably without needing a stuffed ferret.

But he knew Roger would hate that. Cat’s kind of magic made some things too easy. Roger would be wanting to make a box by himself, however long it took. As Cat pushed his way through the hedge, he wondered exactly what Joe’s word “dwimmer” meant. Was it an old word for magic? It sounded more specialised than that. It must mean a special sort of magic, probably.

Syracuse was not very hard to catch. He was quite tired after hauling Roger uphill, and a little bored by now in the wide, empty stubble field. But when Cat finally had the reins in his hands again, he discovered that Syracuse only had three shoes. One shoe must have torn off while Syracuse was plunging through the hedge.

Finding the shoe was not a problem. Cat simply held his hand out and asked. The missing horseshoe whirled up out of a clump of grass, where no one would have found it for years in the ordinary way, and slapped itself into Cat’s hand. The real problem was that Cat knew Joss Callow would be outraged if Cat tried sticking the shoe back on by magic. It was bound to go on wrong somehow. And Joss would be truly angry if Cat tried to ride Syracuse with one uneven foot. Cat sighed. He was going to have to levitate Syracuse all the way home, or conjure him along in short bursts, or – knowing how much Syracuse hated magic – most likely just walk. Bother.

He found a gate and led Syracuse out through it and down the hill where Joe and Roger were sitting side by side on the bank, talking eagerly. Cat could see they were now fast friends. Well, they clearly had a lot in common.

“That’s women’s work, a machine for washing dishes,” Joe was saying. “We can do better than that. If you get any good notions, you better come and tell me. I get in trouble if I wander round the Castle. You can find me in the boot room.”

He looked up as he heard Syracuse’s uneven footfalls. “I have to be going,” he said. “I’ve an errand to run for our Gammer, down in Helm St Mary.” He got up off the bank and picked up his bicycle. “And you’ll never guess what it is,” he said. “Take a look.” He pulled a large glass jar with a lid on out of the basket on the front of his bicycle and held it up. “I’m to tip this in their village pond there,” he said.

Cat and Roger leant to look at the murky, greenish water in the jar. A few fat black things with tails were wiggling slowly around in it.

“Tadpoles?” said Roger. “A bit late in the year, isn’t it?”

“Quite big ones,” Cat said.

“I know,” Joe said. “I could only find six and some of those have their legs already. Know what they’re for?” They shook their heads. “This is not a jar of tadpoles,” Joe said. “It’s a declaration of war, this is.” He put the jar back in his basket and got astride his bike.

“Wait a moment,” Cat said. “Do you know how far it is to Chrestomanci Castle?”

Joe shot him a slightly guilty look. “You can see it from the top of this hill,” he said. “Got turned around, didn’t you? Not my fault. But the Farleighs don’t like people wandering around in their country, so they do this to the roads. See you.”

He switched the toggle at the side of his box and went purring smoothly away up the hill.

Not surprisingly, Cat got back to the Castle a long time after Joe or Roger did. Syracuse resisted Cat’s attempt to levitate him and started to stamp and panic at the mere hint of teleportation. Cat was too much afraid he would split the unshod hoof to try either spell more than just the once. He could hardly bear to think of what Joss Callow would say if he brought Syracuse in with an injury. So he was reduced to plodding along by the grass verge, with Syracuse breathing playfully on his hair, happy that Cat was not trying to use magic any more. That wizard who sold Syracuse, Cat thought glumly, must have frightened the horse badly by slamming spells on him. Cat would have liked to slam a few spells back on the wizard.

After a while, however, Syracuse’s happiness made Cat cheerful too. He began to notice things in that special way Syracuse seemed to be training him to do. He sniffed the smells of the grass, the ditches and the hedges, and the dustier smell of the crops standing in the fields. He looked up to see birds teeming across the sky to roost for the night; and, like Syracuse, he jumped and then peered at a rustling in the hedge that was certainly a weasel. They both glimpsed the tiny, brown, almost snakelike body. They both raised their heads to see rabbits bounce away from the danger in the pasture on the other side of the hedge.

But Syracuse was puzzled because there should have been more than just these smells and sights. Cat knew what Syracuse meant. There was an emptiness to the countryside, where it should have been full – though quite what should have filled it, neither Cat nor Syracuse knew. It reminded Cat a little of that time in Home Wood, where the distance was so strangely missing. Things were not here, where they should have been joyful and busy. Even so, it was peaceful. They plodded on, quietly enjoying the walk, until they topped the hill and turned the long corner, and there was Chrestomanci Castle in the distance on the next hill.

Oh dear, Cat thought. Walking was so slow. He was going to miss supper.

In fact, it was still only early evening when they reached the stableyard gates. When Cat pushed one gate open and led Syracuse through, the yard was full of long golden light, with two long shadows stretching across it. Unfortunately, these shadows belonged to Chrestomanci and Joss Callow. They were waiting side by side to meet him, looking as unlike as two men more or less the same height could look. Where Chrestomanci was rake thin, Joss was wide and heavy. Where Chrestomanci was dark, Joss was ruddy. Chrestomanci was wearing a narrow grey silk suit, while Joss was in his usual rough leather and green shirt. But they both looked powerful and they both looked far from pleased. Cat could hardly tell which of them he wanted less to meet.

“At last,” Chrestomanci said. “As I understand it, you had no business to be out alone on this horse at all. What kept you?”

Joss Callow simply ran his hand down Syracuse’s leg and picked up the shoeless foot. The look he gave Cat across it made Cat’s stomach hurt. He could think of nothing else to do but hold the missing horseshoe out to Joss.

“How come?” Joss said.

“He threw me off and went through a hedge,” Cat said, “but it was my fault.”

“Is he lame?” Chrestomanci asked.

“No more than you would be, walking with one bare foot,” Joss said. “The hoof’s sound, by some kind of a miracle. I’ll take him to the stable now, if you don’t mind, sir.”

“By all means,” Chrestomanci said.

Cat watched Joss lead Syracuse off. Syracuse drooped his head as if he felt as much to blame as Cat. From Syracuse’s point of view this was probably true, Cat thought. Syracuse had loved their illegal outing.

“I am going to ask Joss to exercise that wretched horse himself for a while,” Chrestomanci said. “I haven’t decided yet if it’s for a week or a month or a year. I’ll let you know. But you are not to ride him until I say so, Cat. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Cat said miserably.

Chrestomanci turned round and started to walk away. Cat was relieved at first. Then he realised there was something he ought to tell Chrestomanci and ran after him.

“Did Roger tell you about the roads?”

Chrestomanci turned back. He did not look pleased. “Roger seems to be keeping out of my way. What about the roads?”

This made Cat see that, unless he was very careful, he would get not only Roger but Joe too into trouble. Joe should have been in the Castle, not riding about with a jar of tadpoles. He said, thinking about every word, “Well, Roger was with me on his bike—”

“And it jumped a hedge as well and perhaps lost a wheel?” Chrestomanci said.

“No, no,” Cat said. Chrestomanci always confused him when he got sarcastic. “No, he’s fine. But we were trying to get to Ulverscote Wood and we couldn’t. The roads kept turning us back towards the Castle all the time.”

Chrestomanci dropped his sarcastic look at once. His head came up, like Syracuse when he heard Cat coming. “Really? A misdirection spell, you think?”

“Something like that – but it was one I didn’t know,” Cat said.

“I’ll check,” Chrestomanci said. “Meanwhile, you are in disgrace, Cat, and so is Roger, when I find him.”

Roger of course knew he was likely to be in trouble. He met Cat on his way down to the very formal supper they always had at the Castle. “Is he very angry?” he asked, nervously straightening his smart velvet jacket.

“Yes,” Cat said.

Roger shivered a little. “Then I’ll go on keeping out of his way,” he said. “Oh, and keep out of the girls’ way too.”

“Why?” said Cat.

“They’re being a pain,” Roger said. “Particularly Janet.”

The girls were already there, when Roger and Cat went into the anteroom where Chrestomanci, Millie and all the wizards and sorcerers who made up the Castle staff were gathered before supper. Janet and Julia were pale and quiet but not particularly painful as far as Cat could see. Roger at once slid off along the walls, trying to keep a wizard or a sorceress always between himself and his father. It did not work. Wherever Roger slid, Chrestomanci turned and fixed him with a stare from those bright black eyes of his. At supper, it was worse. Roger had to be in plain view then, sitting at the table, since, being Roger, he seriously wanted to eat. Chrestomanci’s vague, sarcastic look was on him most of the time. Jason Yeldham, for some reason, was not there that evening, so there was no one to distract Chrestomanci. Roger squirmed in his chair. He kept his head down. He pretended to look out of the long windows at the sunset over the gardens, but, whatever he did, that stare kept meeting his eyes.

“Oh blast it!” Roger muttered to Cat. “Anyone would think I’d murdered someone!”

As soon as supper was over, Roger jumped from his chair and rushed off. So too did Julia and Janet. Chrestomanci raised one of his eyebrows at Cat. “Aren’t you going to run away as well?” he said.

“Not really. But I think I’ll go,” Cat said, getting up.

“Are you quite sure you won’t join us for nuts and coffee?” Chrestomanci asked politely.

“You always talk about things I don’t understand,” Cat explained. “And I need to see Janet.”

Whatever Roger said, Cat found this was one of the times when he felt a little responsible for Janet. She had been looking very pale. And she was only here in this world of Twelve A because Cat’s sister Gwendolen had worked a thoroughly selfish spell and stranded Janet here. He knew there were still times when strangeness and loneliness overwhelmed Janet.

He thought, when he went into the playroom, that this was one of those times. Janet was sitting sobbing on the battered sofa. Julia had both arms round her.

“What is it?” Cat said.

Julia looked up, and Cat saw she was almost as woebegone as Janet. “Jason’s married!” Julia said tragically. “He got married in London before he came here.”

“So?” said Cat.

Janet flung herself round on the sofa. “You don’t understand!” she said sobbingly. “I was planning to marry him myself in about four years’ time!”

“So was I,” Julia put in. “But I think Janet’s more in love with him than I am.”

“I know I shall hate his wife!” Janet wept. “Irene! What an awful name!”

Julia said, judicious and gloomy, “She was Miss Irene Pinhoe, but at least Irene Yeldham makes a better name. He probably married her out of kindness.”

“And,” Janet wailed, “he’s gone to fetch her here, so that they can look at houses. They’ll be here for ages and I know I won’t be able to go near her!”

Julia added disgustedly, “She’s an artist, you see. The house they buy is going to have to be just right.”

Cat knew by now exactly what Roger had meant. He began backing out of the playroom.

“That’s right! Slide away!” Janet shouted after him. “You’ve no more feelings than a – than a chair leg!”

Cat was quite hurt that Janet should say that. He knew he was full of feelings. He was wretched already at being forbidden to ride Syracuse.

The next day, he missed Syracuse more than ever. What made it worse was that he could feel Syracuse, turned out into the paddock, missing Cat too, and sad and puzzled when Cat did not appear. Cat moped about, avoiding Janet and Julia and not being able to see much of Roger either. Roger, possibly as a way of avoiding Chrestomanci, was spending most of his time with Joe. Whenever Joe was not working – which seemed to be more than half the day – he and Roger were to be found with their heads together, talking machinery in the old garden shed behind the stables. At least, Cat could find them, being an enchanter, but nobody much else could. They had a surprisingly strong “Don’t Notice” spell out around the shed. But Cat was bored by machinery and only went there once.

The day after that, Jason Yeldham’s small blue car thundered up to the front door of Chrestomanci Castle. This time, Janet and Julia refused to go near it. But Millie rushed through the hall to meet it and Cat went with her out of boredom. Jason sprang out of the car in his usual energetic way and ran round it to open the other door and help Irene climb out.

As Irene stood up and smiled – just a little nervously – at Millie and Cat, Cat’s instant thought was, Janet and Julia can’t possibly hate her! Irene was slender and dark, with that proud, pale kind of profile that Cat always thought of as belonging to the ancient Egyptians. On Irene, it was somehow very beautiful. Her eyes, like those of the wives of the Pharoahs, were huge and slanted and almond shaped, so that it came as quite a shock when Irene looked at Cat and he saw that her eyes were a deep shining blue. Those eyes seemed to recognise Cat, and know him, and to take him in and warm to him, like a friend’s. Millie’s eyes had the same knack, now Cat came to think of it.

He did not blame Jason for smiling so proudly as he led Irene up the steps and into the hall, where Irene looked at the huge pentacle inlaid in the marble floor, and up into the glass dome where the chandelier hung, and round at the great clock over the library door. “Goodness gracious!” she said.

Jason laughed. “I told you it was grand,” he said.

By this time, all the wizards and sorceresses of Chrestomanci’s staff were streaming down the marble stairs to meet Irene. Chrestomanci himself came behind them. As usual at that hour of the morning, he was wearing a dressing gown. This one was bronzy gold and green and blue, and seemed to be made of peacock feathers. Irene blinked a little when she saw it, but held out her hand to him almost calmly. As Chrestomanci took it and shook it, Cat could tell that Chrestomanci liked Irene. He felt relieved about that.

Julia and Janet appeared at the top of the stairs, behind everyone’s backs as they crowded round Irene. Janet took one look and rushed away, crying bitterly. But Julia stayed, watching Irene with a slight, interested smile. Cat was relieved about that too.

Altogether the arrival of Irene made Cat’s separation from Syracuse easier to bear. She was as natural and warm as if she had known Cat for years. Jason allowed Cat to show her round the Castle – although he insisted on showing Irene the gardens himself – and Irene strolled beside Cat, marvelling at the ridiculous size of the main rooms, at the miles of green carpeted corridors and at the battered state of the schoolroom. She was so interested that Cat even showed her his own round room up in the turret.

Irene much admired it. “I’ve always wanted a tower room like this myself,” she said. “You must love it up here. Do you think there’s a house in the neighbourhood that’s big enough to have a tower like this one?”

Cat was quite ashamed to say he didn’t know.

“Never mind,” said Irene. “Jason’s found several for sale that I might like. You see, it’s got to be quite a big house. My father left me money when he died, but he left me his two old servants as well. We have to have room for them to live with us without being cramped. Jane James insists she doesn’t mind where we live or how much room we have – but I know that’s not true. She’s a very particular person. And Adams has set his heart on living in the country and I simply can’t disappoint him. If you knew him, you’d understand.”

Later, Irene sat in the vast Small Saloon and showed Cat a portfolio of her drawings. Cat was surprised to find that they were more like patterns than drawings. They were all in neatly ruled shapes, long strips and elegant diamonds. The strips had designs of ferns and honeysuckle inside them and the diamonds had fronds of graceful leaves. There were plaits of wild roses and panels of delicately drawn irises. It was a further surprise to Cat to find that each pattern sent out its own small fragrant breath of magic. Each was full of a strange gentle joy. Cat had had no idea that drawings could do this.

“I’m a designer really,” Irene explained. “I do book decorations and fabrics, tiles and wallpaper and so forth. I do surprisingly well with them.”

“But you’re a witch too, aren’t you?” Cat said. “These all have magic in.”

Irene went the pink of the wild roses in the design she was showing Cat. “Not exactly,” she said. “I always use real plants for my drawings, but I don’t do anything else. The magic just comes out of them somehow. I’ve never thought of myself as a witch. My father, now, he could do real magic – I never knew quite what he did for a living, but Jason says he was a well known enchanter – so maybe just a touch of it came down to me.”

Later still, Cat overheard Irene asking Millie why Cat was so mournful. He went away before he had to hear Millie explain about Syracuse.

“Huh!” Janet said, catching him on the schoolroom stairs. “In love with Irene, aren’t you? Now you know how I feel.”

“I don’t think I am,” Cat said. He thought he probably wasn’t. But it did strike him that when he was old enough to start being in love – pointless though that seemed – he would try to find someone not unlike Irene to be in love with. “She’s just nice,” he said, and went on up to his room.

Irene’s niceness was real, and active. She must have spoken to Jason about Cat. The next morning, Jason came to find Cat in the schoolroom. “Irene thinks you need taking out of yourself, young nine-lifer,” he said. “How do you feel about driving around with us this morning to look at a few houses for sale?”

“Won’t I be in the way?” Cat asked, trying not to show how very much more cheerful this made him feel.

“She says she values your judgement,” Jason said. “She assures me, hand on heart, that you’ll only have to look at a house to know if we’ll be happy there or not. Would you say that’s true?”

“I don’t know,” Cat said. “It may be.”

“Come along then,” Jason said. “It’s a lovely day. It feels as if it’s going to be important somehow.”

Jason was right about this, although perhaps not quite in the way he or Cat thought.

Over in Ulverscote, Nutcase was being a perfect nuisance to Marianne. Nothing seemed to persuade him that he was now living in Furze Cottage. Dad changed all the locks, and the catches on the windows, but Nutcase still managed to get out at least once a day. No one knew how he did it. People from all over the village kept arriving at Furze Cottage with Nutcase struggling in their arms. Nicola found him prowling in Ulverscote Wood. Aunt Joy sourly brought him back from the Post Office. Aunt Helen arrived at least twice with him from the pub, explaining that Nutcase had been at the food in the kitchen there. And Uncle Charles repeatedly knocked at the door, carrying Nutcase squirming under one paint-splashed arm, saying that Nutcase had turned up in Woods House yet again.

“He must think he still lives there,” Uncle Charles said. “Probably looking for Gammer. Do try to keep him in. The wall’s mended and I’ve nearly finished the painting. We put the back door in yesterday. He’ll get locked in there when we leave and starve to death if you’re not careful.”

Mum’s opinion was that Nutcase should go and live with Gammer in the Dell. Marianne would have agreed, except that Gammer was always saying to her, “You’ll look after Nutcase for me, won’t you, Marianne?”

Gammer insisted that Marianne walked over to see her every day. Marianne had no idea why. Often, Gammer simply stared at the wall and said nothing except that she was to look after Nutcase. Sometimes she would lean forward and say things that made no sense, like “It’s the best way to get pink tomatoes.” Most frequently Gammer just grumbled to herself. “They’re out to get me,” she would say. “I have to get a blow in first. They have spies everywhere, you know. They watch and they wait. And of course they have fangs and terrible teeth. The best way is to drain the spirit out of them.”

Marianne grew to hate these visits. She could not understand how Aunt Dinah put up with these sinister grumbles of Gammer’s. Aunt Dinah said cheerfully, “It’s just her way, poor old thing. She’s no idea what she’s saying.”

Nutcase must have learnt the way to the Dell by following Marianne. He turned up there one day just after Marianne had left and got in among Aunt Dinah’s day-old chicks. The slaughter he worked there was horrific. Uncle Isaac arrived at Furze Cottage, as Marianne was setting off to look for Nutcase, and threw Nutcase indoors so hard and far that Nutcase hit the kitchen sink, right at the other end of the house.

“Dinah’s in tears,” he said. “There’s barely twenty chicks left out of the hundred. If that cat gets near the Dell one more time, I’ll kill him. Wring his neck. I warn you.” And he slammed the front door and stalked away.

Mum and Marianne watched Nutcase pick himself up and lick his whiskers in a thoroughly satisfied way. “There’s no way he can go and live with Gammer after this,” Mum said, sighing. “Do try to keep him in, Marianne.”

But Marianne couldn’t. She doubted if anyone could. She tried putting twelve different confinement spells on Nutcase, but Nutcase seemed as immune to magic as he was to locks and bolts, and he kept getting out. The most Marianne could manage was a weak and simple directional spell that told her which way Nutcase had gone this time. If he had set off in any way that led towards the Dell, Marianne ran. Uncle Isaac very seldom made threats, but when he did he meant them. Marianne could not bear to think of Nutcase with his neck wrung, like a dead chicken.

Each time she found Nutcase was missing, Marianne’s heart sank. That particular morning, when she got back from another useless visit to Gammer and found that Nutcase had vanished yet again, she hastened to work her weak spell and did not feel comfortable until she had spun the kitchen knife three separate times and it had pointed uphill towards Woods House whenever it stopped.

That’s a relief! she thought. But it’s not fair! I never get any time to myself.

Upstairs, hidden in Marianne’s heart-shaped desk, her story about the lovely Princess Irene was still hardly begun. She had made some headway. She knew what Princess Irene looked like now. But then she had to think of a Prince who was good enough for her and, with all these interruptions, she wondered if she ever would.

As she set off uphill to Woods House, Marianne thought about her story. Princess Irene had a pale Egyptian sort of profile, massive clusters of dark curls and fabulous almond shaped blue eyes. Her favourite dress was made of delicate crinkly silk, printed all over with big blue irises that matched her eyes. Marianne was pleased about that dress. It was not your usual princess-wear. But she could not for the life of her visualise a suitable Prince.

Typically, her thoughts were interrupted all the way up the street. Nicola leant out of a window to shout, “Nutcase went that way, Marianne!” and point uphill.

Marianne’s cousin Ron rode downhill on his bike, calling, “Your cat’s just gone in the pub!”

And when Marianne came level with the Pinhoe Arms, her cousin Jim came out of the yard to say, “That cat of yours was in our larder. Our mum chased him off into the churchyard.”

In the churchyard, the Reverend Pinhoe met Marianne, saying, “Nutcase seems to have gone home to Woods House again, I’m afraid. I saw him jump off my wall into the garden there.”

“Thanks,” Marianne said, and hastened on towards the decrepit old gates of Woods House.

The house was all locked up by this time. Uncle Simeon and Uncle Charles had repaired the damage and gone on to other work, leaving the windows bolted and the doors sealed. Nutcase could not have got inside. Marianne gloomily searched all his favourite haunts in the garden instead. She wanted simply to go away. But then Nutcase might take it into his head to go down to the Dell by the back way, beside the fields, where Uncle Isaac would fulfil his threat.

Nutcase was not among the bushy, overgrown near-trees of the beech hedge. He was not sunning himself in the hayfield of the lawn, nor on the wall that hid the jungle of kitchen garden. He was not in the broken cucumber frame, or hiding in the garden shed. Nor was he lurking under the mass of green goosegrass that hid the gooseberry bushes by the back fence. Big pale gooseberries lurked there instead. They had reached the stage when they were almost sweet. Marianne gathered a few and ate them while she went to inspect Old Gaffer’s herb bed beside the house. This had once been the most lovingly tended part of the gardens, but it was now full of thistles and tired elderly plants struggling among clumps of grass. Nutcase often liked to bask in the bare patches here, usually beside the catmint.

He was not there either.

Marianne looked up and around, terribly afraid that Nutcase was now on his way to the Dell, and saw that the door to the conservatory was standing ajar.

“That’s a relief — Oh bother!” she said. Nutcase had almost certainly gone indoors. Now she had to search the house too.

She shoved the murky glass door wider and marched in over the dingy coconut matting on the floor. The massed Pinhoes had forgotten to clear the conservatory. Marianne marched past broken wicker chairs and dead trees in large pots and on down the passage to the hall.

There were four people in the hall – no, five. Great Uncle Lester was just letting himself in through the front door. One of the other people was Great Uncle Edgar in his tweed hat, looking unusually flustered and surprised. And as for the others —! Marianne stood there, charmed. There stood her Princess Irene, almost exactly, in her floating dress with the big irises printed on it to match her eyes. As she was a human lady and not part of Marianne’s imagination, she was not quite as Marianne had thought. No one had the masses of hair that Marianne had dreamt up. But this Irene’s hair was dark, though it was wavy rather than curly, and she had the right slender figure and exactly the right pale Egyptian profile. It was amazing.

Beside the princess was a fair and cheerful young man with a twinkly sort of look to him that Marianne immediately took to. He was wearing a jaunty blazer and very smart, beautifully creased pale trousers, which struck Marianne as the sort of things a prince might put on for casual wear. He’s just the Prince I ought to have given her! she thought.

There was a boy with them, who had that slightly deadened expression Joe often had when he was with adults he didn’t like. Marianne concluded that he didn’t care for Great Uncle Edgar, just like Joe. Since the boy was fair haired, Marianne supposed he must be the son of Irene and her Prince. Obviously the story had moved on a few years. Irene and her Prince were in the middle of living happily ever after and looking for a house to do it in.

Marianne walked towards them, smiling at this thought. As she did so, the boy said, “This one’s the right house.”

Irene turned towards him anxiously. “Are you quite sure, Cat? It’s awfully run down.”

Cat was sure. They had visited two shockers, one of them damp and the other where the ceilings pressed down, like despair, on your mind. And then they had gone to look at what was advertised as a small castle, because Irene had hoped it would have a tower room like Cat’s, only it had had no roof. This one felt – Well, Cat had been confused for a moment, when the bulky man with a hat like a tweed flowerpot had come striding up to them booming, “Good morning. I’m Edgar Pinhoe. Estate agent, you know.” This man had looked at Jason and Irene as if they were two lower beings – and they did seem sort of frail beside Edgar – and Jason had looked quite dashed. But Irene had laughed and held out her hand.

“How extraordinary!” she said. “My maiden name was Pinhoe.”

Edgar Pinhoe was astonished and dismayed. He stepped backwards from Irene. “Pinhoe, Pinhoe?” he said. “I had instructions to sell this house to a Pinhoe if possible.” Upon this, he remembered his manners and shook Irene’s hand as if he were afraid it would burn him, and dropped his superior, pitying look entirely. Cat realised that the man had been using some kind of domination spell on them up to then. Once it was gone, Cat was free to think about the house.

Jason said, “You might do that – sell it to a Pinhoe. My wife is the one with the money, not me.”

While he was speaking, Cat was feeling the shape of the house with his mind. It was all big, square, airy rooms, lots of them, and though it echoed with emptiness and neglect, underneath that it was warm and happy and eager to be lived in again. Over many, many years, people had lived here who were friendly and full of power – special people – and the house wanted to be full of such people again. It was glad to see Irene and Jason.

Cat let them know it was the right house at once. Then he saw the girl walking up to them, as glad to see them as the house was. She was wearing villager sort of clothes, with the pinafore over them to keep them clean, the way most country girls did, but Cat did not think of her as a country girl because she had such very strong magic. Cat noticed the magic particularly, being used to Julia with her medium-sized magic and Janet with almost none at all. It seemed to blaze off this girl. He wondered who she was.

Edgar Pinhoe saw her. “Not now, Marianne,” he said. “I’m busy with prospective buyers. Run along home, there’s a good girl.” His domination spell was back, aimed at Marianne. Cat wondered what good Edgar Pinhoe thought it would do, when his magic was only about warlock level and this girl’s was pretty well as strong as Millie’s. And Millie, of course, was an enchantress.

Sure enough, the domination bounced off Marianne. Cat was not sure she even noticed it. “I’m looking for Nutcase, Uncle Edgar,” she said. “I think he got in through the conservatory door. It was open.”

“Of course it was open. I unlocked it so that these good people could look round the garden,” Edgar Pinhoe said irritably. “Never mind your wretched cat. Go home.”

Here the pinstriped man who had just come in said, in a fussy, nervous way. “Please, Marianne. You’ve no right to come into this house now, you know.”

Marianne’s wide brown eyes turned to him, steady and puzzled. “Of course I’ve got the right, Uncle Lester. I know Gammer lived here, but the house belongs to my dad.” A very good idea struck her. She turned to Jason and Irene. She was longing to get to know them. “Can I help show you round? If we go into all the rooms, we’re bound to find Nutcase somewhere. He used to live here with Gammer, you see, and he keeps coming back.”

“When he’s not slaughtering day-old chicks,” Great Uncle Lester murmured.

He was obviously about to say no, but Irene smiled and interrupted him before he could. “Of course you can help show us round, my dear. Someone who knows the house would be really useful.”

“You’ll know where the roof leaks and so on,” Jason said.

Both older men looked shocked. “I assure you this house is absolutely sound,” Edgar said. He added, with a slightly defiant look at Great Uncle Lester, “Shall we start with the kitchen then?”

They all went along to the kitchen. It was newly painted and Cat could see new cupboards down the far end. Irene stood looking down the length of the huge scrubbed table, which seemed to have been carefully mended and planed smooth at her end. “This is lovely and light,” she said. “And so much space. This table’s enormous and it still doesn’t nearly fill the room. I can see Jane James loving it. We’d need to put in a new stove for her though.”

She went over to the old black boiler and cautiously took up one of its rusty lids, shaking her head and sprinkling soot down her iris-patterned dress. Marianne knew that Gammer’s old cooker was now stored in the barn on the Hopton road. She had never seen that stove used since the old days before Gaffer died. She shook her head too and made her way down the kitchen, opening all the cabinets to make sure that Nutcase hadn’t got himself shut inside one, and then looking into the pantry. Nutcase was not there either.

Jason meanwhile was rubbing his hand vaguely across the damaged end of the huge table. Cat could tell he was using a divining spell, but to the two elderly men who were rather tensely watching him, Jason probably looked like a man bored with womanish things like kitchens and stoves. “Seems to have got a bit bashed here, this table,” he said. “Was there some trouble getting it in here?”

Edgar and Lester both flinched. “No, no, no,” Lester said, and Edgar added, “I am told – family tradition has it – that this table was actually made inside this room.”

“Ah!” said Jason. Cat could feel him quivering, hot on the scent of something. “Someone else told me about this table, quite a few years ago now. A dwimmerman called Elijah Pinhoe.”

Edgar and Lester both jumped, quite violently. Lester answered gravely, “Passed away. Passed away these eight years now.”

“Yes, but am I right in thinking he actually lived in this house?” Jason said.

“That’s right,” Edgar admitted. “Marianne’s grandfather, you know.”

“Right! Great!” Jason said. He whirled round on Marianne as she came out of the empty pantry and seized her arm. “Young lady, come with me at once and show me where your grandfather’s herb bed was.”

“We-ell,” said Marianne, who was wondering whether Nutcase had gone up to hide in the attics.

“You do know, don’t you?” Jason said eagerly.

Good gracious, he’s just like Gaffer, only young and cockney! Marianne thought. And he has lovely bright blue eyes. “Yes, of course I do,” she said. “It’s outside the conservatory, so that he could take the weak ones inside. This way.”

Jason cheered and rushed them all outside. Irene laughed heartily at his enthusiasm. “He’s always like this about his herbs,” she told Cat. “We have to humour him.”

Jason stopped in dismay when he saw the thistles and the grass. “I suppose it has been eight years,” he said, walking in among the weeds. Next moment he was down on his knees, quite forgetting his nice pale trousers, carefully parting a clump of nettles. “Hairy antimony!” he cried out. “Still alive! Well, I’ll be —! And this is button lovage and here’s wolfwort still going strong! This must be a strong spell on it, if it’s alive after eight years! The ground’s too dry for it really. And here’s – What’s this?” he asked, looking up at Marianne.

“Gaffer always called it hare’s paws,” she said. “And the one by your foot – Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue! Do you know?” she asked Cat.

Cat surprised himself and everyone else by answering, “Portulacca fulvia. Scarlet purslane’s the English name.” Evidently some of the herb lore he had been made to learn must have stuck in his brain somewhere. He rather thought it was Marianne’s strong magic that had brought the name up out of a very deep, bored sleep.

“Yes, yes! And very rare. You get the green and yellow all the time, but the scarlet’s the really magic one and you almost never find it!” Jason cried out, crawling across to another clump of plants. “Pinwort, golden spindlemans, nun’s pockets, fallgreen – this is a treasure house!”

Edgar and Lester were standing in the grass, looking helpless, prim and irritated. “Wouldn’t you like to see the rest of the house?” Edgar said at last.

“No, no!” Jason cried out. “I’ll buy it even if the roof’s fallen off! This is wonderful!”

“But I’d like to see it,” Irene said, taking pity on them. “Come and show me round.” She led the pair of them away through the conservatory.

Marianne left Jason wrestling with a thistle and came over to Cat. “Will you help me look for Nutcase?” she asked him.

“What does he look like?” Cat said.

Marianne approved of this practical question. “Black,” she said. “Rather fat, and one eye greener than the other. His coat grows in a ruff round his neck but the rest of him is smooth, except his tail. That’s bushy.”

“Have you tried a directional spell?” Cat said. “Or divining?”

More practical questions, Marianne thought approvingly. There was no nonsense about Cat.

“Nutcase is pretty well immune to magic,” she said. “I suppose he had to be, living with Gammer.”

“But I bet he’s not immune to a spell making a luscious fish smell down in the hall,” Cat said. “Wouldn’t that fetch him out?”

“Not fish. Bacon. He loves bacon,” Marianne said. “Let’s go and try.”

They hurried through the house to the hall. It was empty, but they could hear hollow footsteps as Irene and the two great uncles trod about on bare floorboards somewhere in the distance. Here Marianne set the bacon spell, going slowly and carefully, as if she did not quite trust her powers. Cat, while he waited, fixed the image of a black cat with odd eyes and a ruff in his mind and cast about for Nutcase.

“He went up,” he said, pointing to the stairs when Marianne had finished. “We could go and catch him coming down.”

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s.”

They went up to the next floor. “This is nice,” Cat said, looking through an open door into a square, comfortable bedroom.

The room was completely bare, but Marianne knew what Cat meant. “Isn’t it?” she agreed. “You know, Gammer kept it all so dark and dusty that I never saw what a nice house this really is.”

Cat found himself saying, “I think she kept you dark and dusty too. You do know your magic is pretty well enchanter standard, do you?” What made me say that? he thought.

Marianne stared at him. “Is it?”

“Yes, but you just don’t trust it,” Cat said.

Marianne turned away. Cat thought at first that she was upset, then that she didn’t believe him, until she said, “I think you’re right. It’s hard to – to trust yourself when everyone’s always telling you you’re too young and to do what you’re told. Thank you for telling me. I think Nutcase went to the attics. I’ve known he did all along really, but I didn’t trust it.”

They went along the bare passage to another set of stairs which were half hidden by a huge wooden hutchthing that must have had a water cylinder inside. At any rate it was glopping and trickling as if it didn’t work very well. The stairs were dark and splintery, and the door at the top was half open, on to brown dimness. Uncle Charles must have left it open, Marianne thought, as her foot knocked against a row of paint tins just inside.

Cat thought, There’s been a really strong “Don’t Notice” spell here! At least, it was more like a “Don’t Want to Know” when he came to think about it – as if somebody had really disliked this place. He wondered why. Marianne seemed to have broken the spell as she went inside.

He followed Marianne into a glorious smell like the ghosts of mint sauce, turkey stuffing and warm spiced wine. This came, he saw, from bundles and bundles of dry herbs hanging from the beams in the roof, most of them too old and dry to be any good now. Nearly all the floor space was filled with boxes, bundles and old leather suitcases, but there were old fashioned chairs and sofas there too, rows of pointed boots, tin trunks and what looked like clumps of rusty garden tools. Everything was lit by a dim light coming in under the eaves of the house. Cat could see a dusty toy fort down by his feet, which made him feel sorry that he seemed to be too old for such things these days.

The place turned a corner, he saw, and went on out of sight. There was something exciting round there.

Cat was stepping forward in the narrow space between the piles of junk, to find out just what it was round that corner, when Marianne said, “Nutcase was here.”

“How do you know?” said Cat.

Marianne pointed to what was left of a mouse, lying beside the paint cans. “He always only eats the front end and leaves the tail,” she said.

This gave Cat the perfect excuse to explore the attic. He edged his way on along the strip of floor between the bundles and boxes.

“But he’s not here now,” Marianne said.

“I know, but I need an excuse,” Cat said, and shuffled on. Marianne followed him.

The first recognisable thing they met as they turned the corner was a box of Christmas ornaments, really old fashioned ones: carved wooden angels, heavy round glass balls and masses of thick golden paper stamped into shapes and letters.

“Oh, I remember these!” Marianne cried out. “I used to help Gaffer put them on the tree in the hall.”

She knelt by the box. Cat left her shaking out the gold paper, so that it fell into a long Merry Christmas and an equally long Yuletide Is Come, and groped his way onward. It was darker in this part of the attic and there were no more herbs, but Cat was now convinced that there was something truly precious and exciting stored down near the end. He shuffled and groped – and occasionally put an arm up over his face as something that did not seem quite real fluttered at his head. His feeling grew, and grew, that there was something enormously magical along there, something so important that it needed to be protected with nearly-real illusions.

He found it right at the end, where it was so dark that he was in his own light and could barely see it at all. It was large and round and it sat in a nest of old motheaten blankets. At first Cat thought it was just a football. But when he put his hands on it, it seemed to be made of china. The moment Cat touched it, he knew it was very strange and valuable indeed. He picked it up – it was quite heavy – and shuffled carefully back towhere Marianne was kneeling beside the box of decorations.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked her. He found his voice was shaking with hidden excitement, like Jason’s when he knew that this was the herbman’s house.

Marianne looked up from laying a row of golden bells out on the floor. “Oh, is that still here? I don’t know what it is. Gammer always said it was one of Gaffer’s silly jokes. She said he told her it was an elephant’s egg.”

It could be an egg, Cat supposed. He turned the thing round under what little light there was. It was possibly more pointed at one end. Its smooth shiny surface was mauvish and speckled with darker mauve. It was not particularly lovely – just strange. And he knew he had to have it.

“Can – can I have it?” he said.

Marianne was doubtful. “Well, it’s probably Gammer’s,” she said. “Not mine to give.” But if everyone hadn’t forgotten the attics, she thought, it would have been cleared out with all the other things up here and probably thrown away. And the house was Dad’s really, together with all the things left in it. In a way, Marianne had a perfect right to give some of the junk away, since nobody else was going to want it. “Oh, go on, take it,” she said. “You’re the only person who’s ever been interested in the thing.”

“Thanks!” Cat said. Marianne could have sworn that his face literally glowed, as if a strong light had been shone on it. For a second his hair looked the same gold as the Christmas bells.

Great Uncle Edgar’s voice floated up to them, peevish and distant, from somewhere downstairs. “Marianne! Marianne! Are you and the boy up there? We want to lock the house up.”

Marianne bundled the bells back into the box, in a strong, high chiming. “Lord!” she said. “And I’ve still not found Nutcase! Let’s hope that bacon spell fetched him down.”

It had. When they clattered down the bare stairway to the hall, Cat carefully carrying the strange object in both arms, the first thing they saw was Nutcase’s smug face peering at them over Irene’s shoulder. Nutcase’s tail was wrapped contentedly over Irene’s arm and he was purring. Irene was walking about the hall with him saying, “You big fat smug thing you! You have no morals at all, do you? You wicked cat!” Jason was watching her with an admiring smile and a brown patch of earth on both knees.

“I knew she was bound to be a cat person!” Marianne said, at which the faces of both great uncles turned up to her, irritably. Cat put a good strong “Don’t Notice” around the thing he was carrying.

Great Uncle Lester had enough magic to know that Cat was carrying something, but he must have thought it was the box of Christmas decorations. “Has Marianne given you those?” he said. “Rubbishy old stuff. I wouldn’t be seen dead with those on my tree.” Then, while Cat and Marianne both went red trying not to laugh, Uncle Lester turned to Jason. “If you and your good lady can be at my office in Hopton at eleven tomorrow, Mr Yeldham, we’ll have the paperwork ready for you then. Marianne, collect your cat and I’ll give you a lift down to Furze Cottage.”

All the way back to Chrestomanci Castle, Jason and Irene were far too excited at having actually bought a real house, with a bed full of rare herbs, to pay much attention to Cat and the strange object he was holding on his knees. When they got to the Castle, there was no one to ask Cat what it was or to tell him he shouldn’t have it. There was some kind of panic going on.

Staff were rushing anxiously around the hall and up and down the stairway. Tom, Chrestomanci’s secretary, was with Millie beside the pentacle on the floor. As Cat went past carrying his object, Tom was saying, “No, none of the usual spells have been tripped. Not one!”

Millie replied, “And I’m quite certain he didn’t leave by this pentacle. Has Bernard finished checking the old garden yet?”

It seemed nothing to do with Cat. He carried the object carefully away by the back stairs and on up to his room. His room was in a mess, as if Mary, the maid who usually did the bedrooms, had been sucked into the panic too. Cat shrugged and took his new possession over to the windows to have a good look at it.

It was the chilly sort of mauve that his own skin went when he was too cold for too long. It was heavy and smooth and not at all pretty, but Cat still found it the most exciting thing he had ever owned in his life. Perhaps this feeling had something to do with the mysterious dark purple spots and squiggles all over its china surface. They were like a code. Cat thought that if only he knew this code, it would tell him something hugely important that nobody else in the world knew. He had never seen anything like this thing.

But the mauve colour kept making him think it was too cold. He carefully put a spell of warmth around it. Then, because it looked as if it would break rather easily, and he knew how careless Mary could be, he surrounded the warmth with a strong protection. To keep it properly safe beyond that, he made a sort of nest for it out of his winter scarf and hat and put the lot on his chest of drawers so that he could look at it from wherever he was in the room. After that, he had to tear himself away from it and go down to the playroom for lunch.

Cat had meant to tell them all – or Roger at least – that he had just been given this amazing new object, but the three of them looked so worried that he said, “What’s the matter?”

“Daddy’s disappeared,” Julia said.

“But he’s always disappearing!” Cat said. “Whenever someone calls him.”

“This is different,” Roger said. “He has a whole string of spells set up so that the people here know who’s called him and roughly where he’s gone —”

“And,” said Janet, who was still glum and red-eyed over Jason, “there are more spells to say if he’s run into danger, and none of them have been set off.”

“Mummy thinks he might not have had any clothes on when he went,” Julia chipped in. “Today’s dressing gown was thrown over a chair and none of the rest of his clothes seem to have gone.”

“That’s silly,” Cat said. “He can always conjure clothes from somewhere.”

“Oh, so he can,” said Julia. “What a relief!”

“I think it’s all silly,” Cat told her. “He must have forgotten to set off the spells.” He got on with his lunch. It was liver and bacon, and the smell reminded him of Marianne’s spell. He thought about that cat, Nutcase. Cats were queer animals. This one had struck him as unusually magical.

“Oh, I wish you weren’t so calm about things!” Janet said passionately. “You’re even worse than Chrestomanci is! Can’t you see when things are serious?”

“Yes,” Cat said, “and this isn’t.”

But by suppertime, when Chrestomanci had still not reappeared, even Cat was beginning to wonder. It was odd. When Cat thought about Chrestomanci, he had a calm, secure feeling, as if Chrestomanci was quite all right, wherever he was, but possibly wishing he could be there to supper; but when he looked at Millie, he saw desperate worry in her face, and in all the faces round the table, even Jason’s. Cat almost began thinking he ought to worry too. But he knew that would make no difference.

Still, when he went to bed that night and lay staring proudly at the big speckled mauve sphere sitting in his scarf across the room, Cat found himself hanging a piece of his mind out to one side, so that he would know in his sleep if Chrestomanci came back in the night. But all that piece of his mind caught was Syracuse, out in the paddock under the moon, wistfully eating grass and wondering why Cat had deserted him.

In the middle of the night, he had a strange dream.

It started with something tapping at his biggest window. Cat turned over in his sleep and tried to take no notice, but the tapping grew more and more insistent, until he dreamt that he woke up and shambled across the room to open the window. He could see a face through the glass, upside down, looking at him with shining purple-blue eyes. But he never saw it clearly, because a great white moon was directly behind it, dazzling him.

“Enchanter,” it said, muffled by the glass. “Enchanter, can you hear me?”

Cat put his hand on the catch and slowly pushed the window open. The face retreated upwards to give the window room to open. Cat heard its feet shuffle on the roof and what were probably its wings flap and spread for balance. By the time he had the window wide open, he knew that a great shadowy dragonlike thing was sitting on the round turret roof above him.

“What do you want?” he said.

The face came down again and put itself through the window upside down. It was huge. Cat backed away from it, feeling a faint, dreamlike brush of what seemed to be feathers against his ear.

“You have my child in there,” the creature said.

Cat looked over his shoulder to where the moonlight gleamed softly off the strange object nestling in his scarf. He had no doubt that this was what the creature was talking about. “Then it’s an egg?” he said.

“My egg,” the great pointed mouth said.

With a dreadful feeling of loss and desolation, Cat said, “You want it back?”

“I can’t take it,” the creature answered sadly. “I’m under a sundering spell. I can only get free at full moon nowadays. We put the egg outside the spell and I wanted to be sure that my child was in safe hands. It should be buried in warm sand.”

There was no difficulty about that. Cat turned towards the gleaming egg and converted his warmth spell into a warm sandy one. “Is that right? What else should I do?”

“Let it live free when it hatches,” the creature replied. “Give it food and love and let it grow.”

“I’ll do that,” Cat promised. Even in his dream he wondered how he would do it.

“Thank you,” the great beast said. “I will repay you in any way I can.” It withdrew its head from the window. There was a slight shuffling overhead. Then a great shadow dropped past the window on enormous outspread wings and wheeled away across the moon as noiselessly as an owl.

Cat staggered sleepily towards the egg, wondering how else he could fulfil the creature’s trust. In his dream, he doubled the amount of warm sand, made trebly sure that no one could knock it down or disturb it and, as an afterthought, covered it all over with love and friendship and affection. That should do it, he thought, wriggling down into his bed again.

He was quite surprised in the morning to find the window wide open. As for the egg, he could warm his hands on it from a yard away. It must have been one of those real dreams, Cat thought as he went off for his shower. Chrestomanci had said that they happened to enchanters.

When Cat came back, the red-headed maid, Mary, was in his room, glaring at the egg. “You expect me to dust that thing?” she said angrily.

“No,” Cat said. “Don’t touch it. It’s a dragon’s egg.”

“Mercy me!” Mary said. “As if I’d go near it! I’ve enough to do with the place in this uproar as it is.”

“Is Chrestomanci still missing?” Cat asked.

“Not a sign of him,” Mary said. “They’ve all been sitting in the main office doing spells to find him all night. The cups of tea and coffee I’ve taken in there for them, you wouldn’t believe! Lady Chant looks like death this morning.”

Cat was sorry that Millie was so upset. In the middle of the morning, when there had been no further news, he went along to the main office to tell Millie that Chrestomanci was all right – or, not quite all right, he thought, feeling around in the distance as he went. There was a bit of something wrong, but no danger.

Millie was not in the office when he got there. “She’s gone to lie down,” they told him. “You mustn’t disturb her, dear, not when she’s so worried.”

“Then could you tell her that Chrestomanci’s more or less all right?” Cat said.

He could tell that they did not believe he could possibly know. “Yes, dear,” they said, humouring him. “Run along now.”

Cat went away, feeling sad, as he always did when this kind of thing happened. As he went, he remembered that “Run along” was exactly what Marianne’s two great uncles had said to her. And he had told Marianne that this was undermining her – Cat stopped short halfway along one of the Castle’s long pale green corridors. He realised that he knew how Marianne was being made to feel unsure of herself because exactly the same thing was always happening to him. He wondered if he should go back to the office and insist on being allowed to find Chrestomanci for them.

But why should they allow him to do something they couldn’t do for themselves?

Cat stood and thought. No, if he insisted or even asked, someone would forbid him to try. The obvious thing was to go and get Chrestomanci and bring him back, without any fuss or bother or asking. And why not do it straight away? Cat stood until he had fixed in his mind precisely where in the dim distance Chrestomanci was. Then he launched himself and shot over to the place.

He hit a barrier that was like an old, wobbly fence. The fence swayed and shot him back with a twang. The next second, he was back in his own tower room with all the breath knocked out of him.

Cat sat on his carpet and gasped. He was truly indignant. He knew he should have got to Chrestomanci. And that barrier was so shoddy. It was made of magic, but it was like rusty barbed wire and old chicken netting. It ought to have been a pushover.

All the same, his next thoughts were for the dragon’s egg sitting on his chest of drawers. He could have hurt it or cracked it, arriving back with such violence. He got up and anxiously put his hands on it.

It was not cracked. It was warm and peaceful and comfortable, basking in the hot sand spell, enfolded in the spells of affection. Cat could feel the life in it through his fingers. It was almost purring, like Nutcase in Irene’s arms. So that was all right. Now he had to get to Chrestomanci. He sat on his bed and considered.

The mistake had been to dive straight at the barrier, straight at Chrestomanci, he decided. It must have been designed to throw you off if you did that. Yes, it was. It had been made to throw you off and throw you off the scent too. But Cat now knew the barrier was there, and he knew Chrestomanci was somehow behind it. That ought to mean he could sneak up to it and perhaps slip through it sideways. Or it was so shoddy that he could even break it, if that was the only way to get through. And he was fairly sure that being a left-handed enchanter gave him an advantage. That barrier felt as if it had been constructed by right-handed people who had been – rather long ago – very set in their ways. He could take them by surprise if he was clever.

Cat got up and sauntered out of his room and down the spiral stair. Keeping his mind deliberately vague, in case the barrier-people expected him to try again, he made his way down through the Castle and out beside the stables. Here he had a wistful moment when he longed to go and talk to Syracuse, but he told himself he would do that afterwards, whatever Chrestomanci said, and sauntered on towards the hut where Roger and Joe met to talk machinery. They were in there at that moment. He heard Roger say, “Yes, but if we patent this, everyone will try to use it.” Cat grinned and sidled in among their “Don’t Notice” spells. Now it was not even his own magic that was hiding him. Then he launched himself again.

This time, he went quite gently and left side first. Holding his strong left hand out in front of him, he felt at the barrier as he floated up to it, until he found a weak place. There, quite quietly, he bent a section of what seemed to be chicken wire aside and popped through the space.

He felt a thump as his feet hit a roadway and opened his eyes.

He was standing on a road that was more of a mossy track than a road. The huge trees of an old wood stood on either side of it, making an archway where the road vanished into distance.

He smelt bacon cooking.

Cat thought of Marianne’s bacon spell and grinned as he looked for where the scent was coming from. A few yards on, there was an old man in a squashy felt hat sitting by a small fire on the grass verge, busily frying bacon and eggs in an old black frying pan. Beyond the old man was an ancient, decrepit wooden cart, and beyond that, Cat could just see an old white horse grazing on the bank. All his pleasure and triumph at fooling the barrier vanished. This was not Chrestomanci. What had happened?

“Excuse me, sir,” he said politely to the old man.

The old man looked up, revealing a little fringe of greywhite beard, a brown seamy face and a pair of very wide, shrewd brown eyes. “Good afternoon to you,” the old man said pleasantly, and he gave Cat a humourous look because it was by now after midday. “What can I do for you?”

“Have you seen an enchanter anywhere around here?” Cat asked him.

“The only one I’ve seen is you,” the old man said. “Care for some lunch?”

It was early for lunch, but Cat found that launching himself at the barrier had made him ravenous, and the smell of that bacon made him even hungrier. “Yes, please,” he said. “If you can spare it.”

“Surely. I’m just about to put in the mushrooms,” the old man said. “You like those? Good. Come and sit down then.”

As Cat went over to the fire, the horse beyond the cart raised its head from grazing to look at him. There was something odd about it, but Cat did not properly see what, because he went to sit down then and the old man said, quite sharply, “Not there. There’s a thriving clump of milkwort there I’d like to keep alive, if you please. Move here. You can miss the strawberries, and silverleaf and cinquefoil never mind being sat on much.”

Cat moved obediently. He watched the old man fetch out a knife that had been sharpened so much that it was thin as a prong and use it to slice up some very plump looking mushrooms.

“You have to put them in early enough to catch the taste of bacon, but not so early that they go rubbery,” the old man explained, tossing the mushrooms hissing into the pan. “A fine art, cooking. The best mushrooms are sticky-buns, the ones the French call cepes, and best of all are your truffles. It takes a trained dog or a good pig to find truffles. I’ve never owned either, to my sorrow. Do you know the properties of the milkwort I stopped you sitting on?”

“Not really,” Cat said, somewhat surprised. “I know it was supposed to help mothers’ milk, but that’s not true, is it?”

“With the right spell done, it’s perfectly true,” the old man said, turning the mushrooms. “Your scientific herbalists nowadays always neglect the magics that go with the properties, and then they think the plants have no virtue. A great waste. Change the spell from womanly to manly, and your milkwort does wonders for men too. Pass me over those two plates there beside you. And what’s the special virtue of the small fern beside your foot?”

Cat picked up the two wooden plates and passed them over while he inspected the fern.

“Invisibility?” he said doubtfully. Now he came to look, the grassy verge was a mass of tiny plants, all different. And the wild strawberries almost underneath him were ripe. He felt as he often did with Syracuse, as if he was being given a whole new way of looking at the world.

The old man, pushing bacon, eggs and mushrooms on to the plates with a wooden spatula, said, “Not invisibility so much as a very good ‘Don’t Notice’. You can be a tree or a passing bird with some of this under your tongue, but you have to tell it what you need it to do. That’s mostly how herb magic works. Tuck in and enjoy it.”

He passed Cat a full plate, still sizzling, with a bent knife and a wooden fork lying across it. Cat balanced the plate on his knee and ate. It was delicious. While he ate, the old man went on telling him about the plants he was sitting among. Cat learnt that one plant made your breath sweet, another cured your cough, and that the small pink one, ragged robin, was very powerful indeed.

“Handled one way, it slides any ill-wishing away from you,” the old man said, “but if you pick it roughly, it brings a thunderstorm. It’s not good to be rough with any living thing. Handle it the third way, and ask for its help, it can bring strong vengeance down on your enemy. Has the egg hatched yet?”

“No, not yet,” Cat said. Somehow it did not surprise him that the old man knew about the egg.

“It will soon, once it’s warm and being loved,” the old man said. He sighed. “And its poor mother can set her mind at rest at last.”

“What – what’s it going to be?” Cat asked. He found he was quite nervous about this.

“Ah, it will bring its own name with it,” the old man answered. “Something weak and worried and soft, it will be at first, that’s certain. It’ll need all your help for a while. Finished?” He held out his big brown hand for the plate.

“Yes. It was really good. Thank you,” Cat said, passing the plate, knife and fork over.

“Then you’d be better going after your Big Man,” the old man said. Cat, in the middle of standing up, stared at him. The old man looked slightly ashamed. “My fault for distracting you,” he said. “I was very desirous of meeting you, you see. Your Big Man’s not far away.”

Cat could feel Chrestomanci quite near. He thought the old man must be pretty powerful to have distracted him from knowing until now. So he thanked him again and said goodbye, rather respectfully, before he set off along the mossy road.

As he passed the cart, the old white horse once more raised her head to look at him. Cat found himself facing a most un-horselike pair of interested blue eyes with a tumble of white mane almost across them. Sticking out from that swatch of white horsehair was quite a long pointed horn. It was pearly coloured, with a spiral groove around it.

He turned to the old man incredulously. “Your horse has got – your horse is a unicorn!” he called out.

“Yes, indeed,” the old man called back, busy with his fire.

And the horse said, “My name is Molly. I was interested to meet you too.”

“How do you do,” Cat said respectfully.

“Not so bad, considering how old I am,” the unicorn said. “I’ll see you.” She went back to grazing again, tearing up mouthfuls of grass and tiny flowers.

Cat stood for a moment, sniffing the smell of her. It was not quite like a horse. She smelt of incense, almost, together with horse-smell. Then he said, “See you,” and went on his way.

About a hundred yards down the road, he found he needed to turn off and plunge into the wood to the right. He waded through bracken and crunched across thorny undergrowth, until he came to clearer ground under some bigger trees. There he found an open space, knee deep in old leaves. As Cat waded into the leaves, Chrestomanci came wading out into the space as well from the opposite direction. They stopped and stared at one another.

“Cat!” said Chrestomanci. “What a relief!”

He was wearing clothes Cat had never seen him in before, plus-fours with thick knitted socks and big walking shoes, and a sweater on his top half. Cat had never seen Chrestomanci in a sweater before, but as he was also carrying a walking stick, Cat supposed that these were what Chrestomanci thought of as clothes for walking in. He had never seen Chrestomanci in need of a shave before, either. It all made him look quite human.

“I came to get you,” Cat said.

“Thank heavens!” Chrestomanci replied. “There seemed no reason why I should ever get out of this wood.”

“How did you get in?” Cat asked him.

“I made a mistake,” Chrestomanci admitted, wearily. “When I set off, my aim was simply to check up on what you told me about the roads, by walking to Ulverscote Wood if I could. But when I found myself repeatedly walking back to the Castle, whatever direction I took, I got irritated and pushed. I got to the wood with a bit of a fight, but then I couldn’t get out. I must have been walking in circles for twenty-four hours now.”

“This isn’t really Ulverscote Wood,” Cat told him.

“I believe you,” Chrestomanci said. “It’s a sad, lost, empty place whatever it is. How do we get home?”

“There’s a funny sort of a barrier,” Cat told him. “I think they put you behind it if you break their turn-you-back-to-the-Castle spell, but I’m not sure. It’s pretty old and rusty. Just start a slow teleport to the Castle and I’ll try to get us through.”

“I’ve tried that,” Chrestomanci said wryly.

“Try again with me,” Cat said.

Chrestomanci shrugged and they set off. Almost at once, they were up against the barrier. It seemed much more real from this side. It looked almost exactly like chicken wire and old corrugated iron that was grown all over with brambles, goosegrass and thickly tangled honeysuckle. In among the tangle Cat thought he saw swags of bright red briony berries and the small pink flowers of ragged robin. Ahah! he thought, remembering what the old man had told him. A slide-you-off spell. He turned himself left side foremost and scratched about among the creepers to find a join. While he groped, he felt Chrestomanci being slid away backwards. Cat had to seize hold of Chrestomanci’s walking stick with his other hand and drag him forwards to the place where he thought he could feel two pieces of corrugated iron overlapping. Luckily, before they were both swept away backwards again, Chrestomanci saw the overlap too and helped Cat force the two pieces apart. It took all the strength of both of them.

Then they squeezed through. They arrived, panting and strung with creepers, halfway up the Castle driveway, where Cat found he still had hold of Chrestomanci’s walking stick.

“Thank you,” Chrestomanci said, taking his stick back. He needed it to walk with. Cat saw he was limping quite badly. “Lord knows what that barrier was really made of. I refuse to believe such strong magic can be simply chicken fencing.”

“It was the creepers, I think,” Cat said. “They were all for binding and keeping enemies in. Have you hurt your ankle?”

“Just some of the biggest blisters of my life,” Chrestomanci said, pausing to pull a long strand of clinging goosegrass off his sweater. “I’ve been walking for a day and a night, in shoes I’m beginning to hate. I shall throw the socks away.” He limped on a few steps and started to say something else, in a way that seemed quite heartfelt, but before he could begin, Millie came dashing down the driveway and flung her arms round Chrestomanci.

Millie was followed by Julia, Irene, Jason, Janet and most of the Castle wizards. Chrestomanci was engulfed in a crowd of people, welcoming, exclaiming, asking where he had been, congratulating Cat and wanting to know if Chrestomanci was all right.

“No I am not all right!” Chrestomanci said, after five minutes of this. “I have worldwide blisters. I need a shave. I’m tired out and I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast yesterday. Would you feel all right in my position?”

Saying this, he vanished from the driveway in a cloud of dust.

“Where’s he gone?” everyone said.

“To have a bath, I imagine,” Millie said. “Wouldn’t you? Someone go and find him some foot balm while I go and order him something to eat. Cat, come with me and explain how on earth you managed to find him.”

An hour later, Chrestomanci summoned Cat to his study. Cat found him sitting on a sofa with his sore feet propped on a leather tuffet, shaved and smooth again and wearing a peach satin dressing gown that put Cat in mind of a quilted sunset. “Are you all right now?” Cat said.

“Perfectly, thank you, thanks to you,” Chrestomanci replied. “To continue the conversation we were about to have when the welcoming hordes descended, I can’t stop thinking about that barrier. It’s a real mystery, Cat. Twenty-odd years ago, when I was around your age, I was dragged off on the longest, wettest walk of my life up to then. Flavian Temple marched me right across Hopton Moor almost to Hopton. I set Hopton Wood on fire. There were no turn-you-round spells then and no kind of barrier. I know. I would have welcomed either of them heartily. Temple and I walked miles in a straight line, and nothing stopped us.”

“The barrier looked quite old,” Cat said.

“Twenty years can grow a lot of creepers,” Chrestomanci said, “and a lot of rust. Let’s take it that the barrier is no older than that. The real puzzle is why is it there?”

Cat would have liked to know that too. He could only shake his head.

Chrestomanci said, “It may only apply to Ulverscote Wood, of course. But I see I shall have to investigate the whole thing. The real reason I asked you in here, Cat, is to tell you that I can’t, after the way you rescued me, keep you apart from that wretched horse any longer. The stableman tells me its feet are sounder than mine are. So off you go. There’s just time for a ride before supper.”

Cat hurtled off to the stableyard. And there would have been time for a ride, except that Syracuse saw Cat coming and hurdled the paddock gate, and hurdled Joss with it as Joss tried to open the gate. Syracuse then dashed several times round the yard and jumped back into the paddock, where he spent a joyous hour avoiding the efforts of Joss, Cat and the stableboy to catch him. After that, there was no time left before supper.

“No she is not!” Gammer shouted, so loudly that the Dell’s crowded little living room rang all over with the noise. “Pinhoes is Pinhoes and make sure you look after Nutcase for me, Marianne.”

“I don’t understand you, Gammer,” Marianne said boldly. She thought Cat had been right to say she was downtrodden, and she had decided to be brave from now on.

Gammer chomped her jaws, breathed heavily and stared stormily at nothing.

Marianne sighed. This behaviour of Gammer’s would have terrified her a week ago. Now she was being brave, Marianne felt simply impatient. She wanted to go home and get on with her story. Since her meeting with Irene, the story had suddenly turned into The Adventures of Princess Irene and her Cats, which was somehow far more interesting than her first idea of it. She could hardly wait to find out what happened in it next. But Aunt Joy had sent Cousin Ned down to Furze Cottage to say that Gammer wanted Marianne now, and Mum had said, “Better see what she wants, love.” So Marianne had had to stop writing and hurry round to the Dell. Uselessly, because Gammer was not making any sense.

“You have got Nutcase, have you?” Gammer asked anxiously.

“Yes, Gammer.” Marianne had left Nutcase sitting on the draining board watching Mum chop herby leaves and peel knobby roots. She could only hope that he stayed there.

“But I’m not having it!” Gammer said, switching from anxiety to anger. “It’s not true. You’re to contradict it whenever you hear it, understand?”

“I would, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marianne said.

At this, Gammer fell into a real rage. “Hocum pocum!” she yelled, beating the floor with her stick. “You’re all turned against me! It’s insurpery, I tell you! They wouldn’t tell me what they’d done with him. Put him down it and pull the chain, I told them, but would they do it? They lied. Everyone’s lying to me!”

Marianne tried to say that no one was lying to Gammer, but Gammer just yelled her down. “I don’t understand you!” Marianne bawled back. “Talk sense, Gammer! You know you can if you try.”

“It’s an insult to Pinhoes!” Gammer screamed.

The noise brought Aunt Dinah striding cheerfully in. “Now, now, Gammer, dear. You’ll only tire yourself out if you shout like that. She’ll fall asleep,” Aunt Dinah said to Marianne, “and when she wakes up she’ll have forgotten all about it.”

“Yes, but I don’t know what she’s so angry about,” Marianne said.

“Oh, it’s nothing really,” Aunt Dinah said, just as if Gammer was not sitting there. “It’s only that your aunt Helen was in here earlier. She likes to have all your aunts drop in, tell her things, cheer her up. You know. And Helen was telling her that the new lady that’s just bought Woods House is a Pinhoe born and bred —”

“She is not!” Gammer said sulkily. “I’m the only Pinhoe around here.”

“Are you, dear?” Aunt Dinah said cheerily. “And where does that leave the rest of us?”

This seemed to be the right way to treat Gammer. Gammer looked surprised, ashamed and amused, all at once, and took to pleating the clean, clean skirt that Aunt Dinah had dressed her in that morning. “These are not my clothes,” she said.

“Whose are they then?” Aunt Dinah said, laughing. She turned to Marianne. “She’d no call to drag you over here for that, Marianne. Next time she tries it, just ignore it. Oh, and could you ask your mum for more of that ointment for her? She gets sore, sitting all the time.”

Marianne said she would ask, and walked away among the chickens and the ducks, taking care to latch the gate behind her. Joe was always forgetting to shut the gate properly. Last time Joe forgot, the goats had got out into everyone’s gardens. The things Aunt Joy had said about Joe —! Marianne discovered herself to be missing Joe far more than she had expected. She wondered how he was getting on.

“Mum,” Marianne asked, as she came into the herby, savoury steam of the kitchen in Furze Cottage. Nutcase, to her relief, was still there, sitting on the table now, among the jars and bottles waiting to be filled with balms and medicines. “Mum, is Mrs Yeldham a Pinhoe born and bred?”

“So your great uncle Lester says,” Mum said. Her narrow face was fiery red and dripping in the steam. Wet curls were escaping from the red and white checked cloth she had wrapped round her head. “Marianne, I could use your help here.”

Marianne knew how this one worked: help Mum, or she would get no further information. She sighed because of her unfinished story and went to find a cloth to wrap her hair in. “Yes?” she said, once she was hard at work beating chopped herbs into warm goose grease. “And?”

“She really is a Pinhoe,” Mum said, carefully straining another set of herbs through a square of muslin. “Lester went up to London and checked the records in case he did wrong to sell her the house. You remember those stories about Luke Pinhoe who went to London to seek his fortune a hundred years ago?”

“The one who turned his Gaffer into a tree first?” Marianne said.

“Only overnight,” Mum said, as if that excused it. “He did it so that he could get away, I think. There must have been quite a row there, what with Luke refusing to be the next Gaffer, and his father crippling both his legs so that he’d have to stay. Anyway, they say that Luke stole his father’s old grey mare and rode all night until he came to London, and the mare made her way back here all on her own. And Luke found an enchanter to mend his legs – and that must be true, because Lester found out that Luke set up as an apothecary first, which would have been hard to do as a cripple. He’d have been more likely to have been begging on the streets. But there he was, dealing in potions because he was herb-cunning, like me. But Luke seems to have found out quite soon that he was an enchanter himself. He made himself a mint of money out of it. And his son was an enchanter after him, and his son after that, right down to this present day, when William Pinhoe, who died this spring, had only the one daughter. They say he left his daughter all his money and two servants to look after her, and she’s the Mrs Yeldham who bought Woods House.”

While Mum paused to spoon careful measures of fresh chopped herbs into the strained water, Marianne remembered that Irene had talked about someone called Jane James, who must have been her cook. It did seem to fit. “But why is Gammer so angry about it?”

“Well,” Mum said, rather dryly, “I could say it’s because she’s lost her wits, but between you and me and the gatepost, Marianne, I’d say it’s because Mrs Yeldham’s more of a Pinhoe than Gammer is. Luke was his Gaffer’s eldest son. Gammer’s family comes down from the second cousins who went to live in Hopton. See?” She covered her bowl with fresh muslin and went to put it in the cold-store to steep.

Marianne started to lick goose grease from her fingers, remembered in time that it was full of herbs you shouldn’t eat, and felt rather proud of being a Pinhoe by direct descent – or no! Her family descended from that Gaffer’s second son, George, who had been by all accounts a meek and rather feeble man, and did just what his father told him. So Irene was more Pinhoe than Marianne — “Oh what does it matter?” she said aloud. “It was all a hundred years ago!” She looked round for Nutcase and was just in time to catch him sneaking through the window Mum had opened to try to get rid of the steam. Marianne grabbed him and shut the window. “No, you mustn’t,” she told Nutcase as she put him on the floor. “Some of them move in to Woods House today. They won’t want you.”

As everyone in Ulverscote somehow knew – without anyone’s precisely being told – Irene’s two servants arrived that morning. They came in a heavy London van that took two carthorses to pull it, bringing some basic furniture to put into the house. The good furniture was supposed to arrive later, when the Yeldhams moved in. Uncle Simeon and Uncle Charles went up there in the afternoon to see what alterations were going to be required.

They came away chastened.

“Massive job,” Uncle Simeon said, in his untalkative way, when the two of them arrived in Furze Cottage to report to Dad and drink restorative tea. “And the new stove and water tank to come from Hopton before we can even start.”

“That Jane James!” Uncle Charles said feelingly. “You can’t put a foot wrong there. Proper old-time servant. All I did was think the two of them was married and – ooh! And there was he, little trodden-on-looking fellow, but you have to call him Mister Adams, she says, and show proper respect. So then I call her Miss James, showing proper respect like she told me, and she shoots herself up and gathers herself in like an umbrella and ‘I’m Jane James and I’ll thank you to remember it!’ she says. After that we just crawled away.”

“Got to go back though,” Uncle Simeon said. “The Yeldhams come to see what’s needed tomorrow, and she wants you to start on the whitewash, Charles.”

Irene and Jason were indeed due to set off to confer with Pinhoe Construction Limited in Woods House that next day. Irene took a deep breath and invited Janet and Julia to go with them. “Do come,” she said. “Whatever Jane James has done to it, I know it’s going to look a depressing mess still. I need someone to tell me how to make it livable in.”

Janet looked at Julia and Julia looked at Janet. It was more a sliding round of eyes than a proper look. Irene seemed to hold her breath. Cat could see Irene knew the girls did not like her for some reason and it obviously worried her. At length, Julia said, not altogether politely, “Yes. Please. Thank you, Mrs Yeldham,” and Janet nodded.

It was not friendly, but Irene smiled with relief and turned to Cat.

“Would you like to come too, Cat?”

Cat knew she was hoping he would help make the girls more friendly, but Syracuse was waiting. Cat smiled and shook his head and explained that Joss was taking him for a ride beside the river in half an hour. And Roger was not to be found. Irene looked a little dashed, and only Janet and Julia went with Jason and Irene to Ulverscote.

In the normal way all Ulverscote would have come out to stare at them. But that day only a few people – who had all had the presence of mind to call on the Reverend Pinhoe in order to stare over the vicarage wall – caught sight of the four of them getting out of Jason’s car. They all told one another that the fair haired girl looked as sour as Aunt Joy, and what a pity, it just showed you what they were like at That Castle, but Mrs Yeldham did credit to the Pinhoe family. A real lady. She was born a Pinhoe, you know.

The rest of the village was in the grip of a mysterious wave of bad luck. A fox got into the chick pen at the Dell and ate most of the baby chicks that Nutcase had not accounted for. Mice got into the grocer’s and into the pantry at the Pinhoe Arms. The wrong bricks were delivered to mend the Post Office wall.

“Bright yellow bricks I am not having!” Aunt Joy screamed at the van men. “This is a Post Office not a sandcastle on a beach!” And she made the men take the bricks away again.

“Before I could even take a look at them, too!” Uncle Simeon complained. He was in Dr Callow’s surgery when the bricks were delivered, with a sprained ankle. He had been forced to send his foreman, Podge Callow, to consult with the Yeldhams in his place. Besides Uncle Simeon, the surgery was crowded with sprains, dislocations and severe bruises, all to Pinhoes and all of them acquired that morning. Uncle Cedric was there, after falling from his hayloft, and so was Great Uncle Lester, who had shut his thumb in his car door. Almost all of Marianne’s cousins had had similar accidents, and Great Aunt Sue had tipped boiling water down her leg. Dr Callow had to agree with her that this spate of injuries was not natural.

Down at Furze Cottage, Mum was trying to deal with further cuts and scrapes and bruises, working under great difficulty, as she said to Marianne. Half of her new infusions had got mildew overnight. Marianne had to sort the bad jars out for her, before they infected the rest. Meanwhile, Uncle Richard, carefully carving a rose on the front of a new cabinet, let his gouge slip somehow and ploughed a deep bloody furrow in the palm of his other hand. Mum had to leave her storeroom yet again and sort him out with a wad of cobwebs and some lotion charmed to heal.

“I don’t think this is natural, Cecily,” Uncle Richard said while Mum was bandaging his hand. “Joy shouldn’t have cursed Gammer like that.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Dad, who had come in to make sure his brother was all right. “I stopped Joy before she started. This is something else.”

Dad was about the only person who believed this. As the bad luck spread to people who were only distantly related to Pinhoes, and then to people who had no witchcraft at all, most of Ulverscote began to blame Aunt Joy. Aunt Joy’s face, as Mum said, would have soured milk from a hundred yards away.

The bad luck extended to Woods House too. There, to Jane James’s annoyance, the man installing the new stove dropped it on his foot and then mystified her by limping away into the village saying, “Mother Cecily will fix me up. Don’t touch the boiler till I get back.”

While Mum was dealing with what she suspected was a broken bone in this man’s foot, Marianne discovered – mostly by the severely bad smell – that the whole top shelf of jars in the storeroom had grown fuzzy red mould. And Nutcase disappeared again.

Nutcase reappeared some time later in the hall of Woods House, just in time to trip Uncle Charles up, as Uncle Charles crossed the hall carrying a ladder and a bucket of whitewash. Uncle Charles, in trying to save himself, hit himself on the back of the head with the ladder and dropped the bucket of whitewash over Nutcase.

The clang and the crash fetched Jane James and Irene from the kitchen and Janet, Julia and Jason from what was going to be the dining room. Everyone exclaimed in sympathy at the sight of the house painter lying under a ladder in a lake of whitewash, while beside him the desperate white head of a cat stuck out from under the upturned whitewash pail.

Uncle Charles stopped swearing at the sight of Jane James’s face, but continued telling the world at large just what he would like to do to Nutcase. As he told Marianne later, a bang on the head does that to you. And those two girls laughed.

“But are you all right?” Jason asked him.

“I’d be better off if that cat was dead,” Uncle Charles replied. “I didn’t chance to kill him, did I?”

Janet and Julia, trying – and failing – not to laugh too much, tipped the pail up and rescued Nutcase. Nutcase was scrawny, clawing and mostly white. Whitewash sprayed over everyone as Nutcase struggled. Janet held him at arm’s length, with her face turned sideways, while Irene and Jason dived to help Uncle Charles. “Oh, it’s a black cat!” Julia exclaimed as the underside of Nutcase became visible. Jason’s foot skidded in the whitewash. He tried to save himself by grabbing Irene’s arm. The result was that Jason fell flat on his face in the whitewash and Irene sat in it. Janet’s opinion of Irene changed completely when Irene simply sat on the floor and laughed.

“All their good clothes ruined,” Uncle Charles told Marianne. He arrived, a trifle dizzily, at Furze Cottage with Nutcase clamped under one arm. “It just goes to show that even an enchanter can’t avoid a bad luck spell. That fellow’s a full enchanter, or I’m a paid up Chinaman. Don’t tell Gammer he is. She’d take a fit. He had me standing up while his face was still in the matting. Take your cat. Wash him. Drown him if you like.”

Marianne took Nutcase to the sink and ran both taps on him. Nutcase protested mightily. “It’s your own fault. Shut up,” Marianne told him. Dad was sitting at the table assembling the flowers and frondy leaves of ragged robin in the careful overlapping pattern of a counter-charm, and Marianne was trying to listen to what he was saying to Uncle Charles about the bad luck spell.

“It’s an ill-chancing. Positive,” Uncle Charles was saying. “I knew that as soon as that damn ladder hit my head. But I don’t know whose, or —”

Mum interrupted by bawling from the front room, where she was treating a small boy for a sudden severe cough. She wanted to know if Uncle Charles was concussed.

“Just a bit dizzy like,” Dad bawled back. “He’s fine. Yes,” he said to Uncle Charles. “It feels like a nudge job to me. One of those that lies in wait for all the things you nearly get wrong, like you nearly trip and you nearly drop a pail of whitewash, and it gives those a nudge so that you do it really. It doesn’t have to be strong to have a big effect.”

“That doesn’t account for the fox,” Uncle Charles objected. “Or they’re saying a lot of little ones have got the whooping cough. It can’t account for that.”

“Those could be separate,” Dad said. “If they were a part of it, then I’d have to say, to be fair, that it’s stronger than a nudge – and nobody’s dead yet.”

Meanwhile, Jason’s whitewash-spattered party was leaving Woods House in order to get some clean clothes. Jason looked particularly spectacular as, not only the front of him, but the tip of his nose and the fringe of his hair were white. He was annoyed enough to shout with rage when his car refused to start. He called the car more names than Uncle Charles had called the cat. Janet’s theory was that the car eventually started out of pure shame. Julia told her that Jason had used magic, a lot of magic.

When the car was finally chugging, they drove out into the road and out beyond the last small houses of the village. There Jason stopped, with a screech and a violent jerk. He jumped out of the car and stood in the middle of the road, glaring round at the hedges.

“What’s he doing?” Janet said.

They all looked anxiously at Jason’s clownlike figure.

“Magic,” Julia said, and got out too.

Janet and Irene followed Julia just as Jason made a dive for a clump of plants growing on the verge. “And right in the middle of the artemisia to lend it power!” they heard him say. He hacked into the clump with the heel of his boot. “Come out, you!”

A little black lump with trailing strings came out of the plants. It looked like a dirty lavender bag that someone had not tied up properly. Jason hacked it out of the grass and down the bank to the road. “Got you!” he said. Irene took one look at the thing and went back to the car, looking white and ill. Julia felt queasy. Janet wondered what was the matter with them both. It was only a greasy grey bag of herbs. “Keep back,” Jason said to her. He kicked the bag into the centre of the road and bent over it warily. “Someone’s been very nasty here. This is a brute of an ill-wishing – it’s probably infecting the whole village by now. Get in the car while I get rid of the thing.”

By this time even Janet was feeling something wrong about the bag. She stumbled and nearly fell over as Julia pulled her back to the car. “I think I’m going to be sick,” Julia said.

They watched from inside the car while Jason levitated the bag fifteen feet into the air and made it burst into flames. It burnt and it burnt, with improbably long crimson flames, and gave off a whirl of thick black smoke. Jason kept collecting the smoke and sending it back to the flames to burn again. They all, even Janet, had the feeling that the bag was trying to fall on Jason and burn him too. But Jason made it stay in the air with batting motions of his left hand, the way you make a balloon stay in the air, batting and batting, while his other hand collected smoke and fed it back to the flames, over and over, until at last there was nothing left of it, not even the smallest flake of ash. He was sweating through the whitewash when he came back to the car.

“Phew!” he said. “Someone around here is not nice at all. That thing was designed to get worse by the hour.”

All this while, Cat was trotting blissfully on Syracuse along the bank of the river, following Joss on his big brown horse. Syracuse was drawing Cat’s attention to the smells of the river valley – the mildly churning river on one side with its rich watery smells, and the damp grassiness from the plants on its banks, and the way the scents from the rest of the valley were those of late summer. Cat sniffed the dry incense smells from the fields and thought he would know it was the end of August even if he suddenly went blind. Syracuse, who was feeling quite as blissful as Cat, helped him sense the myriad squishy things in the river going about their muddy lives, all the hundreds of creatures rustling about on its banks, and the truly teeming life of birds and animals in the meadows above.

Cat set a spell to keep off the midges and horseflies. They were teeming too. They came pouring out of the bushes in clouds. While he set the spell, he had the feeling that he always had now when he rode out, the same feeling he had first had in Home Wood, that despite the thronging of living things, there ought to have been more. Behind the bustle of creatures, and behind the flitting and soaring of birds, there was surely an emptiness that should have been filled.

Cat was once again trying to track down the emptiness, when everything stopped.

Birds stopped singing. Creatures stopped rustling among the rushes. Even the river lost its voice and seemed to flow milklike and silent. Joss stopped too, so suddenly that Syracuse nearly shot Cat off into the water, going sideways to avoid the rear end of Joss’s horse.

Mr Farleigh stepped into sight beyond a clump of willows, with his long gun under his arm.

“Morning, Mr Farleigh,” Joss said respectfully.

Mr Farleigh ignored the politeness, just as he ignored Cat too, sitting slantwise across the path behind Joss. His grim eyes fixed accusingly on Joss. “Tell the Pinhoes to stop,” he said.

Joss clearly had no more idea than Cat did what this meant. He said, “Sorry?”

“You heard me. Tell them to stop,” Mr Farleigh said, “or they’ll be having more than a bit of ill-chancing coming down on them. Tell them I told you.”

“Of course,” Joss said. “If you say so.”

“I do say,” Mr Farleigh said. He shifted a little, so that he was now ignoring Cat more than ever. Pointedly and deliberately ignoring him. “And you’ve no business letting Castle people out all over the place,” he said. “Keep the Big Man’s nose out of things, do you hear me? I had to take steps over that myself the other day. Do your job, man.”

In front of Cat, Joss was making helpless movements. Cat could feel Syracuse, underneath him, making movements that suggested it would be a good plan to barge past Mr Farleigh and tumble him into the river. Cat entirely agreed, but he knew this was not wise. He made movements back at Syracuse to tell him not to.

“My job’s not to stop things, Mr Farleigh,” Joss said apologetically. “I only report.”

“Then report,” Mr Farleigh said, “or I don’t know where it will all end. Take some steps, before I have to get rid of the lot of them.” He swung round on the heel of his big boot and plodded away down the river path.

When Mr Farleigh had vanished ahead of them behind the willows, Joss turned to Cat. “Got to go up through the meadows now,” he said. “It won’t do to shove Mr Farleigh off the path.”

Cat longed to ask Joss what was going on here, but he could tell Joss was hoping that Cat had not understood a word of what had been said. So he said nothing and let Syracuse follow Joss up through the fields at the side of the valley. Around them, birds flew and creatures rustled, and the river behind them went back to churning again.

The egg started hatching that night. Cat was not really asleep when it did. He was lying in bed thinking. That night at supper, Julia had told everyone about the greasy grey lavender bag. Chrestomanci had not said anything, but he had looked unusually vague. When Chrestomanci looked vague, it always meant that he was attending particularly closely. Cat was not surprised when Chrestomanci took Jason away to his study afterwards to ask him all about it. An ill-chancing was a bad misuse of magic and it was, after all, Chrestomanci’s job to stop such things. The trouble was, Cat knew he should have told Chrestomanci about Mr Farleigh too, because he was fairly sure that bag was one of the things Mr Farleigh had been talking about by the river.

He tried to work out why he had said nothing. One good reason was that Joss Callow was obviously some kind of spy, and telling Chrestomanci would give Joss away. Cat liked Joss. He did not want to get Joss into trouble – and it would be very bad trouble, Cat knew. But the real reason was because Mr Farleigh had said these things while Cat was sitting there on Syracuse, hearing every word. It was as if Mr Farleigh had no need to worry. If he was powerful enough to lock Chrestomanci himself away behind a barrier of chicken wire, then he had enough sour, gnarled power to get rid of everyone in the Castle if he wanted to. He had more or less said so.

Let’s face it, Cat thought. It’s because I’m scared stiff of him.

It was then that Cat began to hear a muffled tapping.

At first he thought it was coming from the window again, but when he sat up and listened, he knew the noise was coming from inside his room. He snapped the light on. Sure enough, the big mauve-speckled egg was rocking gently in its nest of winter scarf. The tapping from inside it was getting faster and faster, as if whatever was in there was in a panic to get out. Then it stopped, and there was an exhausted silence.

Oh help! Cat thought. He jumped out of bed and quickly took off the safety spell and then the warm sand spell, hoping this would make things easier for the creature. He bent anxiously over the egg. “Oh, don’t be dead!” he said to it. “Please!” But he knew the thing must have been for years in a cold attic. It was surely at the end of its strength by now.

To his huge relief, the tapping started again, slower now, but quite strong and persistent. Cat could tell that the creature inside was concentrating on one part of the egg in order to make a hole. He wondered whether to help it by making the hole for it, from outside. But he was somehow sure this was a bad idea. He could hurt it, or it could die of shock. The only thing he could do was to hang helplessly over the egg and listen.

Tap, tap, TAP, it went.

And a hair-fine crack appeared, near the top of the egg. After that, there was another exhausted silence. “Come on!” Cat whispered. “You can do it!”

But it couldn’t. The tapping started again, weaker now, but the crack did not grow any bigger. After a while, the tapping was going so fast that it was almost a whirring, but still nothing happened. Cat could feel the creature’s growing panic. He began to panic too. He didn’t know what to do, or what would help.

There was only one person in the Castle that Cat knew could help. He rushed to his door, opened it wide, and then rushed back to the egg. He picked it up, scarf and all, and raced away down his winding stair to find Millie. He could feel the egg vibrating with terror as he ran. “It’s all right!” he panted to it. “Don’t panic! It’ll be all right!”

Millie had her own sitting room on the next floor. She and Irene were sitting there, chatting quietly over mugs of cocoa before bed. Millie’s big grey cat Mopsa was on her knee, filling most of it, and Irene had two more of the Castle cats, Coy and Potts, wedged into her chair on either side. All three cats sprang up and whirled to safe, high places when Cat slammed the door open and rushed in.

“Cat!” Millie exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”

“It won’t break! It can’t get out!” Cat panted. He was almost crying by then.

Millie did not waste time asking questions. “Give it to me, here on the floor. Gently,” she said, and knelt quickly on the furry hearthrug. Cat, shaking, panting and sniffing, passed her the egg at once. Millie put it carefully down on the rug and carefully unwrapped the scarf from it. “I see,” she said, running her finger lightly along the thin, almost invisible crack. “Poor thing.” She put both hands around the egg, as far as they would reach. “It’s all right now,” she murmured. “We’re going to help you.”

Cat could feel calmness spreading into the egg, along with hope and strength. He always forgot that Millie, apart from Chrestomanci and himself, was the strongest enchanter in the country. People said she had been a goddess once.

Irene came to kneel on the hearthrug too. “The shell seems awfully thick,” she said.

“I don’t think that’s the problem – quite,” Millie murmured. Her hands moved to either side of the crack and began gently, gently trying to spread it wider. Mopsa edged in under Millie’s elbow and stared as if she were trying to help. She probably was, Cat realised. All the Castle cats descended from Asheth temple cats and had magic of their own. Coy and Potts, on the mantlepiece, were staring eagerly too. “Ah!” Millie said.

“What?” Cat asked anxiously.

“There’s a stasis spell all round the inside of the shell,” Millie said. “I suppose whoever put it there was trying to preserve the egg, but it’s making things really difficult. Let’s see. Cat, you and Irene put your hands where mine are, while I try to get rid of the spell. Hold the split as wide as you can, but very gently, not to crack it further.”

They knelt with their heads touching, Cat and Irene – Irene rather timidly – pulling at the crack, while Millie picked at the tiny space they made. After a moment, Millie made an annoyed noise and grew the nails on her thumb and forefinger an inch longer. Then she picked again with her new long nails, until she succeeded in pulling a tiny whitish piece of something through.

“Ah!” they all said.

Millie went on pulling, slowly, steadily, gently, and the filmy white something came out further and further, and finally came out entirely, with a faint whistling sound. As soon as it was free, it vanished. Millie said, “Bother! I’d like to have known whose spell it was. But never mind.” She leant down to the egg. “Now you can get to work, my love.”

The creature inside did its best. It tapped and hammered away, but so feebly by then that Cat could scarcely bear to listen.

Irene whispered, “It’s very weak. Couldn’t we just break the shell for it?”

Millie shook her head, tangling her hair into Irene’s and Cat’s. “No. Much better to feed it strength. Put your hands on mine, both of you.” She took hold of the egg, with her fingernails normal length again. Cat laid his hands over Millie’s and Irene doubtfully did the same. Cat could tell that Irene had no notion of how to give strength to someone else, so he did it for her and pushed Irene’s strength inside the egg along with his own and Millie’s.

The creature inside now hammered away with a will. Tap, tap, taptaptap, taptaptap, BANG.

CRACK. And a thing that might have been a beak – anyhow it was yellowish and blunt – came out through the mauve shell. There it stopped, seeming to gasp. It looked so tender and soft that Cat’s nose and mouth felt sore in sympathy. Fancy having to break this thick shell with that! he thought. Next second, the beak had been joined by a small thin paw with long pink nails. Then a second paw struggled out, tiny and weak like the first.

The cats were all on the alert now. Mopsa’s nose was almost on the widening dark crack.

“Is it a dragon?” Irene asked.

“I’m – not sure,” Millie said.

As she spoke, the weak claws found the edges of the crack, scrabbled and then shoved. The egg split into two white-lined halves and the creature rolled loose. It was much bigger than Cat expected, twice the size of Mopsa at least, and it was desperately thin and scrawny and slightly wet, and covered with pale, draggled fluff. It opened two round yellow eyes above its beak and looked at Cat imploringly. “Weep, weep, weep!” it went.

Cat did what it seemed to want and gathered it up into his arms. It snugged down against him with an exhausted sigh, beak and front paws draped over his right arm, and hind claws quite painfully hooked on his left pyjama sleeve. It had a tail like a piece of string that hung down on his knee. “Weep,” it said.

It was much lighter for its size than Cat thought it should be. He was just about to ask Millie what on earth kind of creature it was, when the door of Millie’s sitting room opened and Chrestomanci hurried in, looking anxious, with Jason behind him. “Is there some kind of crisis?” Chrestomanci asked.

“Not exactly,” Millie said, pointing to the creature in Cat’s arms.

Chrestomanci looked from the two broken eggshell halves on the hearthrug to the creature Cat was holding. He said, “Bless my soul!” and came over to look. He ran a finger down the creature’s back, from soft beak to stringy tail, and picked up the tail to look at the tuft on its end. Then he went to the other end of it and examined the long pink front claws. Finally, he spread out one of the two funny little triangular things that grew from the creature’s shoulders. “Bless my soul!” he said again. “It really is a griffin. These are its wings. Look.”

They did not look much like wings to Cat. They had no feathers and were covered with the same pale fluff as the rest of it, but he supposed that Chrestomanci knew. “What do they eat?” he asked.

“Blowed if I know,” Chrestomanci said and looked at Jason, who said, “Me neither.”

As if it had understood, the baby griffin promptly discovered that it was starving. Its beak opened like a fledgling bird’s, all pink and orange inside. “Weep!” it said. “Weep, weep, weep, weep! Weep. WEEP, WEEP, WEEP!” It struggled about in Cat’s arms so painfully that he was forced to put it down on the hearthrug, where it lay spread-eagled and weeping miserably. Mopsa rushed up to it and began washing it. The baby griffin seemed to like that. It hunched itself towards Mopsa, but it did not stop its shrill, miserable “Weep, weep, weep!”

Millie stood up and did some quick conjuring. When she knelt down again, she was holding a jug of warm milk and a large medecine dropper. “Here,” she said. “Most babies like milk, in my experience.” She filled the dropper with milk and gently squirted some into the corner of the gaping beak.

The baby griffin choked and most of the milk came out on to the hearthrug. Cat did not think it liked milk. But when he said so, Millie said, “Yes, but it’s got to have something or it’ll die. Let’s get some milk into it for now – it can’t do any harm – and in the morning we’ll rush it down to the vet – Mr Vastion – and see what he can suggest.”

“Weep, weep, weep,” went the griffin, and choked again when Millie squeezed some more milk into it.

There followed three hours of hard work, during which they all five tried to feed the baby griffin and only partly succeeded. Irene was best at it. As Jason said, Irene had a knack with animals. Cat was next best, but he thought that by the time his turn came, the baby griffin had got the hang of being fed from a dropper. Cat got most of a jugful into it, but that seemed to do very little good. He had barely laid it down looking contented, when it raised its beak and went “Weep, weep, weep!” again. And it was the same for the other four. Eventually, Cat was so exhausted that he only stayed awake because he was so desperately sorry for the baby griffin. It needed a parent.

Chrestomanci yawned until his jaw gave out a sort of clop. “Cat, if you don’t mind my asking, how did you come by this insatiable beast?”

“It hatched,” Cat explained, “from the egg in Jason’s attic. A girl called Marianne Pinhoe said I could have it. The house belonged to her father.”

“Ah,” Chrestomanci said. “Pinhoe. Hm.”

“It was under a stasis spell,” Millie said. “It must have been in that house for years.”

“But Cat somehow succeeded in hatching it. I see,” Chrestomanci said, sighing. It was his turn to feed the baby griffin. He sat on the hearthrug, a very strange sight in a frilly apron that Millie had conjured for him, over his dark crimson velvet evening dress, and aimed the dropper at the griffin’s open beak. The griffin choked again and most of the milk dribbled out. Chrestomanci looked resigned. “I think,” he said, “that the only way to deal with this poor creature is to cast a four hour sleep spell over it and get it to the vet as soon as it wakes up.”

Everyone wearily agreed. “I’ll conjure a dog basket for it,” Millie said.

“No,” Cat said. “I’ll have it in bed with me. It needs a parent.”

He set off back to his room with the sleep-bespelled griffin draped on his arms. Millie went with him to make sure they got there safely, and Mopsa followed them. Mopsa seemed to have decided to be the griffin’s mother. No bad thing, as Millie said. Cat fell asleep with the baby griffin snuggled against him, snoring slightly, and Mopsa snuggled against the griffin. Between them, they had nearly pushed Cat out of the bed by the morning.

He woke to find that the griffin had wet his bed. That was scarcely surprising after all that milk, Cat supposed. And here the poor thing was, going “Weep, weep” again.

Millie arrived on the third “Weep!” as anxious as Cat was. “At least it’s still alive, poor little soul,” she said. “I’ve telephoned Mr Vastion and he says he can only see it this morning if we bring it down to his surgery now. He’s got to go and see to a very sick cow after that. You get dressed, Cat, and I’ll see if it will drink some more milk.”

Cat climbed over the griffin and Mopsa and got out of his somewhat smelly pyjamas, while Millie once more aimed the dropper at the griffin’s desperate beak. It spat the milk out. “Oh well,” Millie said. “They’re going to have to change your bedding anyway. I’ve told Miss Bessemer. It’s lucky I thought to bring it a clean blanket. Are you ready yet?”

Cat was just tying his boots. He had dressed all anyhow, in his old suit trousers and the red sweater he wore to ride in. Millie had done much the same. She was in a threadbare tweed skirt and an expensive lace blouse, and too worried about the griffin to notice. She spread out the fluffy white blanket she had brought and Cat tenderly lifted the griffin on to it. It was shivering. And it continued shivering even when it was wrapped in the blanket.

They left Mopsa finishing the milk Millie had brought and hurried down to the main door of the Castle. Millie had not bothered to wake the Castle chauffeur. She had brought the long black car round to the front of the Castle before she came to wake Cat. The griffin was still shivering when Cat got into the passenger seat with it, and it went on shivering while Millie drove the short distance down into Helm St Mary and along to the vet’s surgery on the outskirts of the village.

Cat liked Mr Vastion at once. He wore glasses like little half moons well down on his nose and looked humorously at Cat and Millie over them. “Now what have we here?” he said. His voice was a gloomy kind of moan, with a bit of a grunt to it. “Bring it in, bring it in,” he told them, waving them through to his consulting room, “and put it down here,” he said, pointing with a thick finger at a high, shiny examining table. When Cat carefully dumped the bundle of blanket on the table, Mr Vastion unwrapped it in a resigned way, moaning, “What a parcel. Is this necessary? What have we in here?”

To Cat’s surprise, the griffin seemed to like Mr Vastion too. It stopped shivering and looked up at him with its great golden eyes. “Weep?”

“And weep to you too,” Mr Vastion grunted back at it, unwrapping. “You shouldn’t coddle them, you know. Not good for any animal. Now – Oh, yes. You have a fine boy griffin here. Small still, but they grow quite quickly, you know. Does he have a name yet?”

“I don’t think so,” Cat said.

“Quite right,” Mr Vastion moaned. “They always name themselves. Fact. I read up about griffins before you got here. Just in case this wasn’t a complete hoax. Very rare things in this world, griffins. First one I’ve ever seen, actually. Just a moment.”

He paused, holding the griffin down with one expertly spread hand, while, with the other hand, he picked up a frog which had somehow appeared on the table and threw it out of the window.

“Damn nuisance, these frogs,” he moaned, while he turned the griffin this way and that, feeling its stomach and its ribs and its legs and examining both sets of claws. “They’ve got a plague of frogs here,” he explained. “Came to me and asked me to get rid of them. I asked them what I was supposed to do – poison the duck pond? Told them to get rid of the things themselves. They’re Farleighs. Should know how. But there’s no doubt too many frogs are a pest. They get in everywhere. And they strike me as half unreal anyway. Some magician’s idea of a joke, I’d say.” He held the griffin’s beak open and looked down its throat. “Fine voice in there, by the look of it. Now let’s have you over, old son.”

Mr Vastion set the griffin on its feet and unfolded the little triangular stubs of its wings. He felt round the bottom of them. “Plenty of good flight muscles here,” he grunted. “Just need a bit of growing and fledging. The feathers will come, along with the proper coat at the back end. You’ll find this fluff will drop out as he grows. Just what were you worrying about?”

“We don’t know what to give him to eat,” Cat explained. “He doesn’t like milk.”

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” Mr Vastion moaned. “The front half of him’s bird. Look.”

He turned the griffin deftly over on its side, where it lay peacefully. Cat could see that it liked this firm handling. Mr Vastion slid his hand over the creature’s beak, and then upwards, so that its small tufty ears were flattened.

“Now you’ve got the contours,” he grunted. “Reminds me of nothing so much as an osprey. Or a sea eagle, even more. Magnificent birds. Huge wingspan. Take that as your guide, but chop the food up small or he’ll choke. Sea eagles do take fish, but they take rabbits even more. Easier to catch. I expect this fellow will be quite happy with minced beef. But he’ll want raw vegetables chopped into it too, to keep him healthy. I’d better show you. Hold him for me a minute, Lady Chant.”

Millie put both hands on the peacefully lying griffin. “He’s so thin and weak!”

Mr Vastion gave out a long moan. “Of course he is. Just hatched. All new born creatures are like this. Skinny. Feeble. Bags under their eyes. Excuse me a moment. I’ll get him some puppy food.” He left the room in the sort of shuffling plod that seemed to be his way of walking.

Another frog landed on the table while they waited. Cat picked it up and, like Mr Vastion had done, threw it out of the window. A flopping feeling on his feet showed him two more frogs that had somehow landed on his boots. In the dim light down there, parts of them glowed transparent green, with touches of red. Cat saw Mr Vastion had been quite right. These frogs were only partly real. He bent down and collected both frogs in his left hand, just as Mr Vastion shuffled back into the room. The baby griffin leapt up from under Millie’s hands with its beak wide open, going “Weep, weep, weep!” in such excitement that it seemed about to leap right off the table. Cat quickly sent all the frogs back to where they came from and dived to catch the griffin.

“That’s right,” Mr Vastion grunted. He was holding a large handful of raw mince mixed with shredded carrot. They watched him put the meat into his bunched up fingers, so that his hand was roughly beak-shaped. “Like this, see,” he moaned, and popped the handful expertly down the griffin’s throat. “Think you can do that?”

The griffin swallowed, clapped its beak and looked soulfully up at Mr Vastion. “Weep?”

“In a bit, fellow. Lady Chant will take you home and give you a square meal there,” Mr Vastion moaned. “Bring him back again if you’re worried. That will be ten and sixpence, Lady Chant.”

They got back into the car again, Cat carrying the griffin without the blanket. Millie tossed the blanket into the back seat, saying, “I think we were worrying too much, Cat. Raw meat! Thank goodness he told us!” She drove off, round the village green and up the long driveway to the Castle, where she did not stop at the main door; she drove on round to the kitchen door and stopped outside that.

Cat was surprised at how many people were crowded in to the kitchen to meet them. Mr Frazier the butler opened the kitchen door to them. Mr Stubbs the head cook met them as they came in, surrounded by his apprentices, and asked anxiously just what it was that griffins ate.

“Raw mince,” Millie said, “with grated carrots – and chopped parsley, I think, for clean breath.”

“I rather thought that might be it,” Mr Stubbs said. “Eddie, fetch out that minced rabbit. Joan and Laurie, grate us some carrots, and Jimmy, you chop parsley. And you’ll be wanting breakfast yourselves while you feed him, I guess. Bert, coffee, toast.”

Miss Bessemer the housekeeper was there too, hurrying to spread newspaper on a table for Cat to put the griffin down on. “A basket in your room?” she asked Cat. “I’ve found you a nice roomy one. And we’ll bespell the lining until he’s house-trained, dear, if you don’t mind.”

As the mince arrived, the baby griffin stood up on wobbly legs, whirling its stringlike tail and going “Weep!” again. A crowd surrounded the table to watch. Cat saw Joe the boot boy, Mary, Euphemia and two other maids, several footmen, all the kitchen staff, Mr Frazier, Miss Bessemer, nearly all the Castle wizards, Roger, Janet, Julia, Irene, Jason and Mopsa, looking possessive. He even caught a glimpse of Chrestomanci, in a purple dressing gown, at the back of the crowd, watching over people’s heads.

“We don’t get a griffin every day,” Millie said. “You feed him, love. He came to you after all.”

Cat took up a fistful of meat, made his fingers into a beak, and posted the lump down the griffin’s expectant throat. “Oh, bless!” someone murmured as the griffin swallowed, looked pleased, and looked up for more. “Weep?” That plateful went in no time. Cat had only time to snatch a piece of toast before there was a further, louder “Weep, weep!” and Mr Stubbs had to fetch more meat. The baby griffin ate all the rabbit there was, followed by a pound of minced steak, and then went “Weep!” for more. Mr Stubbs produced smoked salmon. It ate that. By this time its scrawny stomach was round, and tight as a drum.

“I think that will do,” Millie said. “We don’t want him ill. But he obviously needs a lot.”

“I sent an order down to the butcher, ma’am,” Mr Stubbs said. “I can see it’s going to be quantities. Every four hours, if you ask me, if he’s anything like a human baby.”

“Oh help!” Cat said. “Really?”

“Pretty certainly,” Mr Frazier said, suddenly revealing himself as a bird-fancier. “Your fledgling bird eats its own weight in food daily, and often more. Better weigh it, Mr Stubbs. You may need to increase your order.”

So the kitchen scales were fetched and the griffin was discovered to weigh over a stone already, sixteen pounds, in fact. It objected to being weighed. It wanted to go to sleep, preferably in Cat’s arms. While Cat carried it away upstairs, with its beak contentedly resting on his shoulder and Mopsa following watchfully, Mr Stubbs did sums on the back of an old bill. The total came to so much that he sent Joe down to the butcher’s to double his first order.

Joe stopped to exchange an urgent look with Roger before he left. “I’ll wait,” Roger said. “Promise.”

“Get going, Joe Pinhoe!” Mr Stubbs said. “You lazy layabout, you!”

Over in Ulverscote there was suddenly a plague of frogs. Nobody had seen the like before. There were thousands of them, and there was a sort of green-redness to them if you saw them in the shade. They got in everywhere. People trod on them when they got out of bed that morning and found them in the teapot when they tried to make tea. About the only inhabitant of the village who enjoyed the plague was Nutcase. He chased frogs all over Furze Cottage. His favourite place to hunt them into was Marianne’s bedroom. Then he killed them on Marianne’s bedside rug.

Marianne picked up the strange small black remains. The frogs seemed to shrink when they were dead and die away into something dark and dry with holes in. Not real, she thought. There was a smell coming off them that she knew. Where had she smelt that particular odour before? She knew Joe had been there when she smelt it. Was it when they stole the stuffed ferret? No. It was before that. It was when Gammer had sent that blast of magic at the Farleighs.

That’s it, Marianne thought. These are Gammer’s.

She went downstairs and put the dry remains into the waste pail. “I’m going round to see Gammer,” she told Mum.

“Does she want you again?” Mum said. “Don’t be too long. I’m still finding jars with mildew in them. We’re going to have to scald the lot out.”

Though the wave of bad luck had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, the effects of it were still there, in the mildew, in half healed cuts, sprained ankles and – this seemed to be the final thing the spell had done – an outbreak of whooping cough among the smaller children. Dismal coughing came from most of the houses Marianne passed on her way to the Dell. But the right kind of red bricks were just now being delivered at the Post Office as she went by.

Aunt Joy was standing on her lawn above the broken wall, watching the delivery. “I may have my bricks,” she grumbled to Marianne, “but that’s as far as it goes. Your uncle Simeon’s too busy doing the renovations at Woods House, hobbling around with a stick, if you please! All for that new woman who says she’s a Pinhoe. If he can do it on one leg for her, why not for me? As if my money wasn’t as good as hers!”

There was a lot more on these lines, but Marianne only smiled at Aunt Joy and went on. As Dad often said, if you stayed to listen to Aunt Joy, you’d be there a week and she still wouldn’t have finished grumbling.

There were frogs in the lane all the way to the Dell and the pond in front of the cottage was a seething, hopping mass of them. The ducks had given up trying to swim and were sitting grumpily on the grass.

“I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve this,” Aunt Dinah said, opening the door for Marianne. “Anyone would think we’d offended Moses or something! Go on in. She’s been asking for you.”

Marianne marched into Gammer’s crowded living room. “Gammer,” she said.

Gammer’s ruined face turned up to her. “I’m not in my right mind,” Gammer said quickly.

“Then you shouldn’t do magic,” Marianne retorted. “There’s frogs all over the village.”

Gammer shook her head as if she were saddened by the way people behaved. “What’s this world becoming into? Those shouldn’t be there.”

“Where should they be then?” Marianne challenged her.

Gammer shook her head again. “No need to take on. Little girls shouldn’t worry their heads over such things.”

“Where?” Marianne said.

Gammer bent her face down and pleated her freshly starched skirt.

“Where?” Marianne insisted. “You sent those frogs somewhere, didn’t you?”

Very reluctantly, Gammer muttered, “Jed Farleigh should have left me alone.”

“Helm St Mary?” Marianne said.

Gammer nodded. “And all over. There’s Farleighs in all the villages over there. I forget the names of those places. I don’t remember so well these days, Marianne. You have to understand.”

“I do,” said Marianne. “You sent frogs to Helm St Mary, right outside Chrestomanci Castle, so that they were almost bound to notice, and you made the Farleighs so angry that they ill wished us and sent the frogs right back. Aren’t you ashamed, Gammer?”

“That’s Jed Farleigh all over,” Gammer said. “Hides out over there, thinks he’s safe from me. And they’re spying on me all the time, spying and lurking. It wasn’t me, Marianne. It was Edgar and Lester. I didn’t tell them to do it.”

“You know perfectly well that Edgar and Lester would never send anyone frogs!” Marianne said. “I’m disgusted with you, Gammer!”

“I have to defend myself!” Gammer protested.

“No you don’t, not like this!” Marianne said, and stormed out among the frogs, down the lane and past the stack of new bricks. Feeling angrier and braver than she had ever been in her life, she stormed on down Furze Lane and into the shed behind Furze Cottage. There, Dad and Uncle Richard were trying to saw wood without cutting frogs in half. “Gammer did these frogs,” she told them.

“Oh, come now, Marianne,” Dad said. “Gammer wouldn’t do a thing like that!”

“Yes, she would. She did!” Marianne said. “She sent them to Helm St Mary, but the Farleighs sent them back here and did an ill wishing on us because Gammer made them so angry. Dad, I think we’re in the middle of a war with the Farleighs without knowing we are.”

Dad laughed. “The Farleighs are not that uncivilised, Marianne. These frogs are just someone’s idea of a joke – you can see they’re creatures bewitched from the way they glow. Run along and don’t worry your head about them.”

Whatever Marianne said after that, Dad simply laughed and refused to believe her. She went indoors and tried to tell Mum.

“Oh, really, Marianne!” Mum said, holding a kettle with a cloth round the handle, amid clouds of steam. “I grant you Gammer’s mad as coot these days, but the Farleighs are sane people. We co-operate with them around the countryside. Just get your hair tied up and give me a hand here and forget about the beastly frogs!”

Marianne spent the rest of the day boiling kettles in a sort of angry loneliness. She did not trust Gammer simply to stop at frogs. She knew she had to get someone to believe her before the Farleighs got so angry that they did something terrible, but Dad and Mum seemed to have closed their minds. Some of the time, she was tempted just to keep quiet about Gammer and let bad things happen. But she had started being brave now and she felt she had to go on. She wondered who else might believe her. Someone who might stop Gammer and explain to the Farleighs. Apart from Uncle Charles, she could think of no one, and Uncle Charles was working up at Woods House with Uncle Simeon. I’ll talk to him when he gets off work, she decided. Because I think it really is urgent.

By that afternoon, the frogs had become such a nuisance that Uncle Richard took action. He harnessed Dolly the donkey to the cart and filled the cart with bins and sacks. Then he called in all Marianne’s cousins, all ten of them, and the troop of them went round the houses collecting frogs. They were handed frogs by squirming fistfuls everywhere. For those people who were too old or too busy with the whooping cough to collect frogs for themselves, the boys went in and tipped frogs out of tea caddies and scooped frogs out of cupboards, shoes and toilets, while the rest hunted frogs in the gardens. They came joyfully out again with squirming, croaking sacks and dumped them in the cart. Then they went on to the next house. They caught two hundred frogs in the vicarage and twice that number in the church. The only place with more frogs was the Dell.

“Stands to reason,” Uncle Richard said, refusing to believe a word against Gammer. “There’s a pond at the Dell.”

When, finally, the cart was piled high with bulging sacks and croaking bins and there was hardly a loose frog to be seen, they took Dolly down Furze Lane to the river and tipped all the frogs in. Uncle Richard scratched his head over what happened then. Every frog, as it hit the running water, seemed to dissolve away to nothing. The cousins could not get over it.

“Well they say running water kills the craft,” Uncle Richard told Mum and Marianne, when he came to Furze Cottage for a cup of tea after his labours, “but I’d never believed it until now. Melted away into black like foam, they did. Astonishing.”

Here, Marianne looked round and noticed that Nutcase was missing again. “Oh, bother him!” she wailed and hurried to the table to set the knife spinning. It was still whirling round and round when there was a knock at the front door.

“See who that is, Marianne!” Mum called out, busy pouring hot water on the tea.

Marianne opened the door. And stared. A very tall thin woman stood there, carrying a basket. She had straight hair and a flat chest and she wore the drabbest and most dust-coloured dress Marianne had ever seen. Her face was long and severe. She gazed at Marianne and Marianne was reminded of a teacher about to find fault.

Before Marianne could ask what this stranger wanted, the woman said, “Jane James. From Woods House. Wrong way to make your acquaintance, I know, but did you know your cat walks through walls? He was in my kitchen eating the fish for Mr Adams’s supper. Doors all shut. Only explanation. Don’t know how you’ll keep him in.”

“I don’t either,” Marianne said. She looked up at the grim face and found it was full of hidden humour. Jane James evidently found the situation highly amusing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll come and fetch him back at once.”

“No need,” said Jane James. She opened the basket she was carrying and turned Nutcase out of it like a pudding on to the doormat. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, and went away.

“Well I’ll be —!” Uncle Richard said, as Marianne shut the front door. “Quite a touch of the craft in that woman, if you ask me!”

“And no wonder we can’t keep that cat in!” Mum said, putting the teapot on the table.

Nutcase sat on the doormat and glowered at Marianne. Marianne glowered back. They can believe Jane James that Nutcase walks through walls, but they can’t believe me about Gammer, she thought. “You,” she said to Nutcase, “you’re as bad as Gammer! And I can’t say worse than that!”

Meanwhile, back at the Castle, Cat was trying to get used to the way he had to feed a baby griffin every four hours – at least, it was usually only about three and half hoursbefore the griffin woke, with its stomach all flat and thin again, and went “Weep, weep, weep!” for more food. He was carrying it to the kitchen yet again – and it felt a good deal heavier than it was when it first hatched – when Julia stopped him on the stairs.

“Can I help you feed him?” she asked. “He’s just so sweet! Janet wants to help too.”

Cat realised that this was exactly what he needed. He said quickly, “We can have a feeding rota then. You can feed him in the day, but I’ll have to look after him at night.”

In fact, as he soon discovered, a surprising number of people wanted to help feed the griffin. Miss Bessemer wanted to, and so did Mr Stubbs and Euphemia. Millie wanted to, having, as she said, a personal interest in this griffin. And Irene, when she was not over in Ulverscote seeing to the alterations to her new house, begged to have a turn as well.

At first Cat found himself sitting over the person feeding the griffin as possessively as Mopsa did. He knew it was happier when he was beside it. But when the griffin seemed perfectly used to somebody else putting lumps of meat into its beak, Cat – rather guiltily – sighed with relief and went off to ride Syracuse. Before long, he only had to feed the griffin during the nights.

He went up to his room every night carrying two large covered bowls of meat, each with a stasis spell on it to keep it fresh. By the third night he was – well, almost – used to being woken at midnight and again at four in the morning by the griffin’s “Weep, weep, weep!” If this did not wake Cat, then Mopsa did, pushing her cold nose urgently into Cat’s face and treading heavily on his stomach.

What he never seemed to get used to was how sleepy he was during the day.

On the third night, Mopsa as usual woke him at midnight. “All right. I know, I know!” Cat said, rolling out from under Mopsa’s nose and feet. “I’m coming.” He sat up and switched on the light.

To his surprise, the griffin was still heavily asleep, curled in its basket with its yellow beak propped on the edge, making small whistling snores. But there was something tapping on his big window. It was exactly like that strange dream he had had. I think I know what that is! Cat thought. He got out of bed and opened the window.

An upside down face stared at him, but it was human.

Cat stared back, finding this hard to believe.

“Can you give us a bit of help?” the face asked, rather desperately. “It’s raining.”

Because it was upside down, it took Cat a moment or so to recognise that the face belonged to Joe the boot boy. “How did you get there?” he said.

“We made this flying machine,” Joe explained, “but we didn’t get it right. It crashed on your roof. Roger’s up here too, wedged like.”

Oh my lord! Cat thought. That’s what they’ve been up to in that shed! “All right,” he said. “I’d better bring you in here. Let yourself go loose.”

By using a spur-of-the-minute mixture of conjuring and levitation, Cat managed to pull Joe off the roof and bend him round through the window and into his room. Unfortunately, this seemed to dislodge the crashed flying machine. As Joe flopped heavily on to Cat’s carpet, there was a set of long sliding sounds from above, followed by a cry of horror from Roger. Cat was only just in time to catch Roger as he fell past the window and to levitate him inside too.

“Thanks!” Roger gasped.

Both of them stood by the window, panting, pale and speckled with rain. Instead of doing as Cat would have expected and crawling away to bed, the two of them went into an anxious conference. Joe said, “Where do you reckon we went wrong then? Think it was the rain?”

Roger answered, “No. I think we got the wiring wrong on the stuffed eagle.”

Joe said, “May have to start again from scratch then.”

“No, no,” Roger said. “I’m sure we’ve got the basics. We just need to refine it some more.”

They’re mad! Cat thought. He looked past them at the wreckage. It was now hanging down across the window, growing wetter by the second. As far as Cat could see, it was a number of interlocked pieces of tables and chairs, with a three-legged stool in there somewhere, and dangling upside down in the midst of it a forlorn and draggled stuffed golden eagle. The eagle had wires coming out of it, together with a few damp tufts of herbs.

“I belong to Chrestomanci Castle,” the eagle remarked sadly. Everything in the Castle was bespelled to say this if it was taken more than a few feet from the castle walls.

“Where did you get the eagle?” Cat asked.

“It was in one of the attics,” Roger said. “We have to insulate the dandelion seeds, for a start.”

“We might try using willow herb instead,” Joe replied.

The griffin woke up. Instead of screaming for food, it sat up and stared at the two wet boys and the dangling wreckage with interest. Mopsa sat on Cat’s bed and stared too, disapprovingly.

“You can’t leave all that stuff hanging there,” Cat said.

“We know,” said Roger. “Or we could use both kinds of seeds.”

“And gear up the bikes a bit,” Joe replied.

“It’s a real nuisance,” Roger said, “having to do things at night in order not to be found out. Cat, we’ll go down into the garden. When we whistle, can you levitate the flying machine down to us? Gently, mind, in order not to break it any more.”

“I suppose so,” Cat said.

Joe went down on one knee to pet the griffin as if it were a dog. “Aren’t you soft!” he said to it. “All that fluff. Where have I seen one of you before? It’ll come down in bits, you know. Part of it got hooked on your turret.”

Cat giggled. If he had been Chrestomanci, he knew he would have said, The griffin got hooked on the turret? “All right,” he said. “I’ll send it up first, to unhook it, before I send it down. You two get down to the garden before someone notices it.”

The two aviators hurried off, both limping slightly. The griffin opened its beak.

“All right,” Cat said. “Don’t say it!”

He had time to feed the griffin a square meal before a soft whistle came from the garden below. Cat put the bowl away and leant out of the window to levitate the wreckage.

“I belong to Chrestomanci Castle,” the stuffed eagle said piteously.

“I know,” said Cat. “But this is difficult.”

The remains of the flying machine were wedged on to the turret. Cat had to spread the various bits of it apart and send them downwards piece by piece. He had no idea what most of the bits were. He simply floated them away from his roof and down to the ground. Another soft whistle and a faint chorus of voices singing “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” told him when all the parts had landed safely under the cedar trees. Wooden clatterings and the occasional soft clang showed that the two aviators were now hauling the stuff away, protesting that it belonged to the Castle.

“They’re mad!” Cat told Mopsa and the griffin. “Quite mad.” He went back to bed.

The griffin did not wake him again that night. In the morning, it climbed out of its basket and woke Cat by nudging him with its beak. Cat opened his eyes to find two yellow griffin eyes staring into his, interested and friendly. “Oh, I do like you!” Cat said, before he had had time to think. Then he felt guilty, because Syracuse was bound to be jealous.

Still, there was nothing to be done about Syracuse just then. Cat got dressed, while the griffin staggered around the room investigating everything Cat owned. There was no doubt that it had grown again in the night. The dark beginnings of feathers were showing on its neck and on its absurd, stubby wings.

“Isn’t it growing too quickly?” Cat asked Millie anxiously, when he had got it down to the kitchen. The griffin was now far too heavy for Cat to carry. The two of them came downstairs in a mixture of staggering and levitating – and some flopping – and the griffin looked very pleased with himself for getting there.

Millie pursed up her mouth and studied the griffin. “You have to remember,” she said, “that griffins are strongly magical creatures, and this one must have spent years inside that stasis spell in the egg. I think it’s making up for lost time. I wonder how big it’s going to be.”

Only about the size of Syracuse, Cat hoped. Any bigger would be really awkward. He was about to say so, when Millie added, “Cat, I’m worried about Roger. He seems so tired today.”

“Um,” Cat said. “He could have been up all night reading.”

“He must have been,” Millie agreed. “He had six books by his bed when I went in, all from other worlds. They were all about flying. I do hope he’s not going to do anything silly.”

“He won’t,” Cat said, because he knew Roger already had.

He left Millie shoving mince into the griffin and went to muck out Syracuse, soon done by enchanter’s methods. While Cat was grooming Syracuse, wishing that there was some magical method to do this too, Joss Callow came in.

“It’s my day off today,” Joss said. “If you want a ride, you’d better make it now before breakfast.”

“Yes, please,” Cat said.

He had Syracuse out in the yard and saddled up, and Syracuse was bouncing, tugging and dancing as usual, too glad to be ridden to let Cat get up and ride him, when Syracuse abruptly stopped dead and flung his head up. Cat looked round to see the griffin staggering enthusiastically towards them. Cat could only stare at it. He could not think what to do.

Syracuse stared too, down his upheld nose. It was hard to blame him. The griffin was such a plump, scrawny, unfinished-looking creature. It still had not got the hang of walking. It rolled from side to side, scratching the stones of the yard with its long pink claws, and whirling its stringy tail behind it. Cat could see it was terribly proud at having found him.

“It’s only a baby,” he said pleadingly to Syracuse.

As the griffin staggered near, Syracuse swayed backwards on all four feet, snorting. The griffin stopped. It stared upwards at Syracuse. Its beak fell open with what seemed to be admiration. It made a whirring noise and stretched its face up. And Syracuse, to Cat’s relief and astonishment, lowered his own shapely head and nosed the griffin’s beak. At this, the griffin’s little wings worked with excitement. It cooed, and Cat could have sworn that a grin grew at the sides of its beak. But he had to stop it when it put out a clumsy front paw that was obviously meant to be friendly but threatened to scratch Syracuse’s nose.

“That’ll do. So you like one another. That’s good,” Cat said. “How did you get out here anyway?”

Millie came dashing across the yard. “Oh, I only turned my back for a minute when Miss Bessemer came to ask about towels! And off he went. Come on, come back with Millie, little griffin. Oh, I wish he had a name, Cat!”

“Klartch,” said the griffin.

“That’s a new noise,” said Millie. “Whatever it means, you’ve got to come in, griffin.”

“No – wait,” Cat said. “I think it’s his name. Is your name Klartch, griffin?”

The griffin turned its face up to him. It was definitely smiling. “Klartch,” it said happily.

“Mr Vastion said they named themselves,” Millie said, “but I didn’t realise that meant they talked. Well, Klartch, that goes two ways. If you can talk, you can understand too. Come indoors with me at once and finish your breakfast. Now.”

The griffin made a small noise like “Yup” and followed Millie obediently back to the kitchen. Well, well! Cat thought.

Joss, who had been standing looking utterly dumbfounded, said, “That creature – where did it come from?”

“A girl called Marianne gave me his egg,” Cat said.

“Marianne did?” Joss said. “Marianne Pinhoe?” Cat nodded. Joss said dubiously, “Well, I suppose in a way she had a right to. But you’d better not let Mr Farleigh get a sight of the thing. He’d go spare.”

Cat could not really see why the sight of a baby griffin should annoy Mr Farleigh, but he was sure Joss knew. Everything seemed to annoy Mr Farleigh anyway.

Marianne did catch Uncle Charles on his way home from Woods House, but he refused to believe that Gammer could do any wrong. He laughed and said, “You have to be older to understand, my chuck. None of us Pinhoes would do a thing like that. We work with the Farleighs.”

Though this seemed to show that no one was going to believe her, Marianne went on trying to make someone understand about Gammer. Almost everyone she spoke to over the next few days said, “Gammer wouldn’t do a thing like that!” and refused to talk about it any more. Uncle Arthur gave Marianne a pat on the head and a bag of scrittlings for Nutcase. “She was a good mother to me and a good Gammer to all of us,” he said. “You never knew her in her prime.”

Marianne wondered about this. She supposed that a mother with seven sons had to be a good one, but she went and asked Mum about it all the same.

“Good mother!” Mum said. “What gave you that idea? When I was your age, my mother and her friends were always looking out cast-off clothes for your dad and his brothers, or they’d have been running round in rags. She said those boys were too scared of Gammer to tell her when they’d grown out of their things.”

“But didn’t Gammer notice their clothes?” Marianne said.

“Not that I ever saw,” Mum said. “She left the younger ones to Dad to look after.”

But Mum had never liked Gammer, Marianne thought, trying to be fair. Uncle Arthur truly believed what he had said. In many ways Uncle Arthur was very like Dad, though, always believing the best of everyone. Mum snorted whenever Dad said kind and respectful things about Gammer, and called it “rewriting history”. So where did the real truth lie? Somewhere in the middle? Marianne sighed. The facts seemed to be that no one, even Mum, was going to believe that Gammer had sent the Farleighs a plague of frogs or – Marianne stopped on her way upstairs to go on with her story of Princess Irene.

Oh, heavens! she thought. Suppose it wasn’t only frogs!

She turned and went downstairs again. “Just going down to the Dell!” she called to Mum and went straight there to talk to Aunt Dinah.

As she passed the Post Office, she was glad to see that some of Uncle Simeon’s people were now working on the ruined wall. They were working in that deceptively slow way that witchcraftly workmen did such things and the wall was nearly waist high already. That must mean that the alterations up at Woods House were almost finished, with the same deceptive, witchcraftly speed.

And here was an example of the way no one would believe any ill of Gammer, Marianne thought. Gammer had broken that Post Office wall. But everyone was treating it as an accident, or an act of God.

She had half a mind to go into the Post Office. Aunt Joy would believe her. But Aunt Joy always believed the worst of everyone. And, more importantly, no one believed Aunt Joy. Marianne went on down the lane towards the Dell. There were still a few of the charmed frogs jumping about in the hedges there. It had been impossible to catch every single one.

Aunt Dinah had surprise all over her square blonde face, when Marianne said she wanted to talk to her and not Gammer. But she led the way into her little dark kitchen, where there were fresh-cooked queen cakes on wire trays all over the table. Aunt Dinah pushed them aside, telling Marianne to eat as many as she wanted, and made them both a cup of coffee. “Now, dear. What is it?”

Marianne had decided to approach this very carefully. Sniffing the lovely smell of new cake, she said, “Does Gammer do any magic at all these days?”

Aunt Dinah looked perplexed, and a little worried. “Why do you want to know, dear?”

“Well,” Marianne said. “It looks as if I might have to be the next Gammer, doesn’t it? And I don’t really know enough.” This was perfectly true, but the next bit wasn’t. She said, in a bit of a rush, “I wondered if she was up to giving me some lessons, seeing her mind isn’t quite right these days. Does she do any workings? Does she get them wrong at all?”

“You have a point,” Aunt Dinah agreed. “But I don’t see how she can, dear. You’d be better off asking your dad to teach you. Gammer just sits these days. Of course she mutters a bit.”

“Don’t tell me,” Marianne said artificially, “that she’s still going on about the Farleighs!”

“Well, you’ve heard her,” said Aunt Dinah. “I admit she can sound quite abusive at times, but it doesn’t mean a thing, bless her!”

“Does she do anything else at all?” Marianne asked, trying to sound disappointed.

Aunt Dinah smiled and shook her head. “Nothing. She just sits and plays with things like a child. The other day she’d got hold of a rose hip and a bit of sneezewort, and she was taking them apart and twiddling them for hours.” (Oh dear! That’s itches and rashes and colds in the head! Marianne thought.) “Lately,” Aunt Dinah said, “she’s been asking for water all the time. I’ve watched her pour it from one glass to another and smile —” (What’s that for? Marianne wondered. It has to be another spell, if she smiled!) “And she mixed soot with some of it,” Aunt Dinah went on, “and made it so dirty I had to take it away from her.” (So some of it’s a filth spell, Marianne thought.) “Oh and the other day,” Aunt Dinah admitted, lowering her voice because this was disgraceful, “she caught a flea. I was so ashamed. I don’t mind her catching ants, the way she does, but a flea! I try to keep her clean as clean, but there she was, holding it and saying, “Look, Dinah, here’s a flea!” I offered to kill it for her, but she did it herself.”

So now she’s done a plague of ants and a plague of fleas! Marianne thought. Right under Aunt Dinah’s nose, too! Those poor Farleighs! No wonder they ill-chanced us!

Nerving herself up to say such a thing to a grown-up aunt, Marianne asked, “But don’t all those things seem to be spells of some kind, Aunt Dinah?” Particularly the water, Marianne thought. If she’s poisoned their water, that’s wicked!

“Oh, no, dear,” Aunt Dinah said kindly. “She’s just amusing herself, bless her. She’s left the craft behind her now.”

Marianne drew in a deep, cake-scented breath and said boldly, “I don’t think she has.”

Aunt Dinah laughed. “And I know she has. Don’t worry your head, Marianne, and get your dad to teach you. You can trust Isaac and I to look after Gammer for you.”

So here was another person who would only believe the best of Gammer, Marianne thought sadly as she got up to go. It was almost as if they were under a spell. “I’ll let myself out. Thanks for the coffee,” she told Aunt Dinah.

She strode straight through the hall and ignored Gammer’s voice, raised from behind the door of the front room. “Is that you, Marianne?” Gammer always seemed to know when Marianne was in the Dell.

“No, it isn’t!” she muttered, with her teeth clenched.

As she marched off down the lane between the rustling, croaking hedges, Marianne considered Gammer’s spells and wished she knew how to cancel them. They would be strong. If she had any doubts about how strong, she only had to remember the blast of magic Gammer had sent at the Farleighs. That wasn’t just a plain blast, either. It was meant to send the Farleighs away, certainly, but it was also intended to make them believe that Gammer was upright and innocent and in her right mind. Gammer was an expert at interwoven spells.

“Oh!” Marianne said out loud, and almost stopped walking.

Of course Gammer had laid a spell on everyone. She didn’t want anyone to stop her getting her revenge on the Farleighs and she didn’t want to be blamed when the Farleighs fought back. So she had bespelled every single Pinhoe in the village to think only the best of her. The thing that had confused Marianne was the way she herself seemed to be immune to the spell.

Or not quite immune. Marianne walked slowly on, remembering the day they had moved Gammer out of Woods House. It had been perfectly reasonable to her then – if annoying – that Gammer should have rooted herself to her bed, and not at all unreasonable that Gammer should have chased Dolly with the kitchen table and knocked the Post Office wall down. Now she looked back on it, she saw that it was dreadful behaviour. Gammer must have been pouring on the ensorcellment that day.

But she had probably started setting the spell before that, probably while she was poltergeisting those poor nurses. None of the aunts and uncles had blamed Gammer for that – but then they almost never did blame Gammer for anything she did —

Marianne’s eyes went wide as she realised that Gammer might have been setting this spell all of Marianne’s own life. No one ever blamed Gammer. She had only to look at the Farleighs to realise how unlikely that was. The Farleighs certainly obeyed old Mr Farleigh, because he was their Gaffer, but they grumbled that he was set in his ways and very few of them liked him. But the Pinhoes treated Gammer as if she was something natural and precious, like rain in April that was good for the crops – and people grumbled about rain, but never about Gammer.

It puzzled Marianne why she herself seemed to be mostly immune to Gammer’s spell. She thought it must be that Mum was always saying sour things about Gammer – even though Mum was not immune to the spell herself. Mum was not going to help Marianne deal with Gammer. Marianne wondered, rather desperately, if anyone could. Then it occurred to her that the spell almost certainly only applied to people who actually lived in Ulverscote. There were Pinhoes who lived in other places, outside the village. Who could she ask?

The nearest and most obvious person was Great Uncle Edgar. He and his wife, Great Aunt Sue, lived a couple of miles out, along the Helm St Mary road. It was no good expecting Great Uncle Edgar to believe anything bad about Gammer. He was her brother, after all. But, when she thought about it, Marianne had hopes of Great Aunt Sue. Aunt Sue had come from a wealthy family on the other side of Hopton, according to Mum, and might be expected to take a more outside view of things – and she surely couldn’t see Gammer as blameless after nearly getting squashed to death between Gammer’s bed and the doorpost. Mum had been taking Aunt Sue jars of her special balm for her bruises ever since.

“Shall I take Aunt Sue another jar of your balm?” Marianne asked Mum as soon as she got back to Furze Cottage.

“Oh would you!” Mum said. “I’m so busy making up tinctures to help whooping cough, you wouldn’t believe! They say little Nicola’s really poorly with it. She could hardly fetch her breath last night, poor little mite!”

Marianne took off her pinafore and went to fetch her bike from the shed. The first thing she saw there was Mum’s new broomstick. Marianne eyed it, wondering whether to borrow that instead. The stick was white and fresh and the bristles thick and stiff and pinkish. She could see it would fly splendidly. But Mum might object, and Aunt Sue was more likely to look kindly on Marianne if she arrived on an ordinary bicycle. She sighed and wheeled out her bike instead.

It felt strange to be doing this. Last time Marianne had ridden her bike, she had been on her way to school, with Joe pedalling beside her. Joe always made sure Marianne got safely to the girls’ school, although Marianne was not sure that he always went on to the boys’ school after that. Joe was not fond of school.

Joe would have believed me about Gammer! Marianne thought. He said worse things about Gammer than Mum did. And he was surely outside the spell, ten miles away at the Castle. Now there was a thought! But try Aunt Sue first.

As Mum came to the front door with the jar of balm, the bicycle obviously put her in mind of school too. “Remind me to beg us a lift to Hopton from your uncle Lester,” she said, putting the jar of balm into Marianne’s bike basket. “We have to get there for your school uniform sometime this week. School starts again the week after this, doesn’t it? Goodness knows how I’m to get Joe his new uniform, with him away working. He’ll have grown a foot, I know.”

This gave Marianne a sad feeling of urgency as she rode away up the hill. There would be no time for anything, once she went back to school. She would have to get someone to believe her about Gammer soon, she thought, standing on her pedals to get up the steep part of the road by the church.

She saw the Reverend Pinhoe out of the corner of her eye as she puffed upwards. He was in the churchyard by one of the graves, talking to someone very tall and gentlemanly. A stranger, which was odd. Pinhoes didn’t exactly welcome strangers in the village. But Marianne was distracted then, by two furniture vans up ahead of her, each labelled Pickford & Pallebras. Each van was pulled by two dray horses and both drivers were cracking whips and shouting as they made the difficult turn in through the gates of Woods House. It looked as if the Yeldhams were moving in already.

Marianne put one foot on the ground when she came level with the gates – saying to herself it was not curiosity: she had to stop to get her breath – and watched men in green baize aprons spring down and unlatch the backs of the vans. The van she could see into best had some very nice Londonish furniture stacked inside it. She saw chairs with round backs and buttons, covered in moss green velvet, and a sideboard that Dad would have put his head on one side to admire greatly. Good old work – she could almost hear Dad saying it – beautiful marquetry.

She inherited that from Luke Pinhoe, Marianne thought. It somehow brought home to her that Irene really was a Pinhoe. And she’s coming back home to live! Marianne thought, getting back on her bike. That’s good.

She pedalled past the last few houses and came between the hedges, where the road bent. And there, coming towards her, were six other cyclists, all girls. As soon as they saw Marianne, they stopped and swung their cycles sideways in a herringbone pattern, blocking the road. Marianne recognised the one in front as Margot Farleigh and the next one as Margot’s cousin Norma. She didn’t know the names of the others, but she knew they were all Farleighs too, and probably best friends with one another because they all had the same hairstyle, very smooth and scraped back, with one little thin dangling plait down one cheek. Oh dear! she thought. She could smell, or feel – or whatever – that each girl had a spell of some kind in the basket on the front of her bike.

“Well, look who’s here!” Margot Farleigh said jeeringly. “It’s Gammer Pinhoe’s little servant!”

“Off to Helm to put another ill-chancing on us, are you?” Norma asked.

“No, I’m not,” Marianne said. “I never put a single ill chance on anyone.”

This caused a chorus of jeering laughs from all six girls. “Oh, didn’t you?” Margot said, pretending to be surprised. “My mistake. You didn’t bring us frogs, then, or fleas, or nits?”

“Or the rashes, or the flu and the whooping cough, I suppose?” Norma added.

At this, the rest began calling out, “Nor you didn’t put ants in our cupboards, did you?” and “What about all the mud in our washing?” and “What made Gammer Norah swell up then?” and “So you didn’t make Dorothea fall in the pond – like hell you didn’t!”

Marianne sagged against her bicycle, thinking, Oh lord! Gammer has been busy! “No, honestly,” she said. “You see, Gammer’s not right in her head, and —”

“Oh? Really?” Margot drawled.

“Excuses, excuses,” said Norma.

“She’s right enough in her head to flood all Farleigh houses knee deep in water!” Margot said. “All our houses, from Uphelm to Bowbridge. Not anyone else’s, mark you. Our Gammer Norah’s in a raving rage about it, let me tell you.”

“She’s not sent us the stomach ache so far,” Norma said. “Is that what you’re bringing us now?”

Marianne knew they had a right to be angry. She began to say, “Look, I’m sorry —”

That was a mistake. But then anything she said would have been, Marianne knew. Margot said, “Get her, everyone!” and all the girls threw down their bicycles and went for Marianne.

She was kicked and punched and had her hair pulled, agonisingly. She tried to defend herself by making a bull-like rush at Margot, and went floundering among bicycles, tripping, crashing and being hit and pinched and scratched by any girl who could lay hands on her. Spell bags fell out of bicycle baskets and got trodden on. The air from hedge to hedge filled with strong white powder. Everyone was sneezing in it, but too angry to notice. Marianne threw punches in all directions, some of them magical, some with her fists, but this only made the Farleigh girls angrier than ever. She ended up crouching half underneath her own bicycle, while Margot jumped on it.

“That’s right!” screamed the others. “Squash her! Kill her!”

“Here, here, HERE!” Joss Callow said loudly, riding up behind the fight. “Stop that at once, you girls! You hear me?”

Everyone turned round guiltily and stared at Joss Callow parking his bike meaningly against the hedge. Marianne stood up from under her bent bike. Her hair was all over her face and she could feel her lips swelling.

“Now what was this all about?” Joss said. “Eh?”

“She started it!” Margot said, pointing at Marianne. “The hateful little slime!”

“Yes, look what she did to me!” Norma said, holding out a torn sleeve.

“And she’s ruined my bike!” said another girl. “She’s disgusting!”

They all knew Joss because his mother lived in Helm St Mary. He knew them too. He was not impressed. “Funny thing,” he said. “I never see you girls except when you’re making trouble. Six to one is cowards’ work in my book. Ride away home now.”

“But we’ve got an errand to run —” Norma began, and stopped in dismay, looking at the burst spell bag under her feet. “Just look what she did to this!”

“I don’t care what you think you’re doing here,” Joss said. “Go home.”

“Who are you to tell us that?” Margot asked rudely.

“I mean what I say,” Joss said. He nodded to each girl in turn and, as he nodded, each girl’s hairstyle writhed on her head and stood itself straight up in the air. Hairgrips and rubber bands pinged off into the road. In instants, the hairstyles had become long upright bundles on the top of heads, with the little pigtails waving off to one side like feelers.

All the girls clutched their heads. Several of them screamed. “I can’t go home like this!” Norma wailed.

“People’ll laugh!” Margot screeched. She took a double handful of her bushy Farleigh hair and tried to pull it down. It sprang upright again through her fingers.

“Yes,” Joss said. “Everyone who sees you will laugh like a drain. And serve you right. It’ll go down when you go into your own house, and not before. Now get going.”

Sullenly, the girls picked up their bicycles and mounted them, snarling and complaining to one another when most of the mudguards proved to be loose. Norma said, among the clanking and clattering, “Why has he left her hair alone?”

As they rode off, looking long headed and decidedly peculiar, Margot answered loudly, “He’s a mongrel half-Pinhoe, that’s why.”

She meant Joss to hear, and he did. He was not pleased. When Marianne said, “Joss, they were angry because Gammer’s been putting spells on the Farleighs,” he simply scowled at her.

“I’m not standing here to listen to accusations, Marianne,” he said. “I don’t care what it was about. I’ll straighten your bike for you, but that’s your lot.”

He picked up Marianne’s bicycle and, with a few expert twists and bangs and the same number of well-directed stabs of witchcraft, he straightened the bent frame and twisted pedals, and made the wheels round again. Tears in Marianne’s eyes distorted the sight of him putting the chain back on. Gammer has been so thorough! she thought. No one believes a word I say!

“There,” Joss said, handing her the restored bike. “Now get wherever you were going, get your face seen to, and don’t try insulting any Farleighs again.” He picked up his own bike, swung his leg swiftly across the saddle, and rode away into the village before Marianne could think of what to say.

She stood in the road for a moment, softly weeping in a way she thoroughly despised. Then she pulled herself together and took a look at the little burst bags and the white powder from them lying in a trail across the road and dusting the hedges on either side. Those girls had been bringing some fierce stuff to wish on the Pinhoes. From the sore feeling down her back, Marianne was sure it was another illness of some kind. Luckily, it was so fierce that whoever sent it had made it so that it did not work until someone said the right word, but, even so, Marianne knew she ought not to leave it here. Someone could say the right word accidentally at any time.

Sighing, she laid her bike down and wondered how to deal with it. This was something Mum would have been better at than she was.

There was one thing she could do that might work. Marianne had not tried it very often because Mum had been so alarmed when she discovered Marianne could do it.

Marianne took a deep breath and, very carefully and gently, summoned fire. She summoned it to just the surface of the road and very tops of the leaves in the hedges. And in case that was not enough, she instructed it to burn every scrap of the powder wherever it was.

Little blue flames answered her, flickering an inch high over road, grassy banks and hedges. Almost at once, the flames filled with tiny white sparks, hissing and fizzing. Then the powder underneath caught fire and burnt with a most satisfactory snarling sound, like a bad tempered dog. The six little bags went up with six soft powdery whoomps and made clumps of flame that were more green than blue and sent up showers of the white sparks. Like a firework display, Marianne thought, except for the strong smell of dragon’s blood. When she called the flames back, every scrap of the powder was gone and there was no sign of the bags.

“Good,” Marianne said, and rode onwards.

She must have been an alarming sight when she arrived at Great Uncle Edgar’s house, what with her swollen mouth, scratched face and wild, pulled hair. Her knees were scraped too, and one of her arms. Great Aunt Sue exclaimed when she opened the door.

“Good gracious, dear! Did you fall off your bicycle?”

Aunt Sue was so crisp and starched and orderly and looked so sympathetic that Marianne found she was crying again. She held out the jar of balm and gulped, “I’m afraid it got cracked.”

“Never mind, never mind. I haven’t finished the last one yet,” Aunt Sue said. “Come on in and let me see to your scrapes.” She led Marianne through to her neat and orderly kitchen, surrounded by Great Uncle Edgar’s five assorted dogs, all of them noisily glad to see Marianne, where she made Marianne sit on a stool and bathed her face and knees with some of Mum’s herbal antiseptic. “What a mess!” she said. “Surely a big girl like you knows enough charms by now not to fall off a bike!”

“I didn’t fall off,” Marianne gulped. “There were some Farleigh girls —”

“Oh, come now, dear. You just told me you fell off,” Aunt Sue said. And before Marianne could explain, Aunt Sue hurried to fetch her a glass of milk and a plate of macaroons.

Aunt Sue’s macaroons were always lovely, pale brown and crusty outside and softly white and luscious inside. Biting into the first one, Marianne discovered that one of her teeth was loose. She had to concentrate hard for nearly a minute to get it fixed back in again. By then she had completely lost her chance to point out to Aunt Sue that she had not said she had fallen off her bike, and that Aunt Sue had just assumed she had.

Nothing could make it clearer that Aunt Sue was not going to listen to her properly. But Marianne tried. “I met six Farleigh girls,” she said carefully, when the tooth was firm again. “And they told me that Gammer has been sending them ill-chance spells. They’ve had frogs and nits and ants in their cupboards, and now they’ve got whooping cough too.”

Great Aunt Sue looked disgusted. She passed both hands down her crisply flounced skirt and said, “There’s no believing how superstitious some of these country girls can be! It’s amazed me ever since I came to live in Ulverscote. Anything that’s caused by their own dirty habits – and the Farleighs are not a clean clan, dear – they try to blame on somebody’s use of the craft. As if anyone would stoop – and certainly not your poor grandmother! She can barely walk these days, so Dinah tells me.”

Marianne knew it was no good then, but she said, “Gammer sits there and does spells, Aunt Sue. Little cunning things that Aunt Dinah doesn’t notice. The latest one was water.”

“And what does she do with that? Cause a flood?” Aunt Sue asked, brightly and disbelievingly.

“Yes,” Marianne said. “In all their houses. And mud in their washing.”

Aunt Sue laughed. “Really, dear, you’re as credulous as the Farleighs. Anyway, this whooping cough is simply a natural epidemic. It’s all over the county now. Edgar tells me they have cases from Bowbridge to Hopton.”

Spread by the widening rings of an ill-chance spell, before someone put a stop to the spell, Marianne thought. But she did not say so. There was no point, and she felt tired and sore and shaken. She sat quietly and politely on the stool and listened to Aunt Sue talking about all the things Aunt Sue always talked about.

Aunt Sue’s two sons first, Damion and Raphael. Aunt Sue was very proud of them. They were both in Bowbridge, doing very well. Damion was an accountant and Raphael was an auctioneer. It was a pity they were both going bald so young, but baldness was in Aunt Sue’s family and it always came from the female, didn’t it?

Then the dogs. Mr Vastion said they were all too fat and needed more exercise. But, said Aunt Sue, how were they to get walked properly with Edgar so busy and the boys not at home any more? Aunt Sue had enough to do in the house.

Then the house. Aunt Sue wanted new wallpaper. It was a lovely house, and Aunt Sue had never stopped being grateful to Gammer for giving it to them when Gaffer died. Gammer was so generous. She had given Uncle Arthur the Pinhoe Arms, Uncle Cedric the farm, and let Isaac have the smallholding. But truly, Marianne, this place was almost as run down as Woods House.

Marianne looked round the bright, empty, efficient kitchen, and wondered how Aunt Sue could think that. And for the first time, she wondered if all this property had been Gammer’s to give away. If Dad was the one the property came to, shouldn’t it have been Dad who gave it away? She thought she must ask Mum.

Aunt Sue said that she had booked Uncle Charles, over and over, to redecorate the house, but Uncle Charles always seemed to have something more urgent to do. And Aunt Sue was not going to employ anyone else, because Uncle Charles used the craft in his work, which made him quicker and neater than anyone in the county. But now he had gone to redecorate Woods House. Why should a newcomer, even if she was a Pinhoe born, have the right to take up Uncle Charles’s time?

By this time, Marianne had had enough. She did not want to hear either Uncle Charles or the lovely Princess Irene being gently criticised by Aunt Sue. She stood up, thanked Aunt Sue politely, and said she had to be going now.

Meanwhile, Joss Callow arrived at the Pinhoe Arms ready to report to Marianne’s father. As he was parking his bike in the yard, little blue flames broke out all over the front of him, hissing and fizzing and sending out small white sparks. They squirted from under his boots and even sizzled for a moment on the front wheel of his bicycle. Joss beat at them, but they were gone by then.

“Have to do better than that, girls,” he said, naturally thinking it was a revenge from Margot Farleigh and her friends.

Then he forgot about it and went into the snug, where Harry Pinhoe was waiting for him and Arthur Pinhoe leaning through the hatch. “Search me what the Big Man’s up to just now,” he said, when he was comfortably settled with beer and pickled eggs. “He’s very busy with something, but I don’t know what. They’ve got all the old maps and documents out in their library and you can feel the magic they’re using on them, but that’s all I can tell you.”

“Can’t Joe tell you?” asked Joe’s father, puffing at the pipe he allowed himself at these times.

“That Joe,” said Joss, “is bloody useless, excuse my French. He’s never there. I don’t know what he does with his time, but I’m not the only one to complain. Mr Frazier was about ready to blow his top yesterday when Joe went missing. And Mr Stubbs was fit to kill, because he wanted an order taken to the butcher and Joe had vanished off the face of the earth.”

Harry Pinhoe and Joe’s uncle Arthur exchanged sad shrugs. Joe was always going to be a disappointment.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Joss said. “Young Cat Chant – Eric, the nine-lifer, you know – has hatched an abomination somehow. Griffin, I think. I saw it this morning. I hardly knew what it was at first. It was all fluff and big feet, but it’s got wings and a beak so that’s what it must be.”

Uncle Arthur shook his head. “Bad. That’s bad. We don’t want one of those out.”

“Not much we can do, if it’s living in the Castle,” Harry Pinhoe observed, puffing placidly. “We’d have to wait to catch it in the open.”

“And when I asked him, this young Eric said your Marianne gave him the egg,” Joss added.

“What?!” Harry Pinhoe was disturbed enough to let his pipe drop on the floor. Groping for it, red in the face, he said, “That egg was stored safe in the attic. It should have been safe there till Kingdom Come. I put the workings on it myself. I don’t know what’s got into Marianne lately. First she goes round telling everyone that poor Gammer’s setting spells on the Farleighs, and now she does this!”

“She said that about Gammer to me too,” said Joss. “She was in a henfight with some Farleigh girls about it, out on the Helm road just now.”

“Let her just wait!” Harry said. His face was still bright red. “I’ll give her what for!”

All unknowing, Marianne free-wheeled down past the Pinhoe Arms, more or less at that moment. At the bottom of the hill, she braked, put one foot down and stared. The expensive taxi from Uphelm was standing throbbing outside the house where Nicola lived. As Marianne stopped, Nicola’s dad, who ought to have been working on the Post Office wall, hurried out of the house carrying Nicola wrapped in a mass of blankets and got into the taxi with her. Marianne could hear the wretched, whooping, choking breathing of Nicola from where she stood.

“Taking her to the hospital in Hopton,” old Miss Callow said, standing watching. “Doctor says she’ll die if they don’t.”

Nicola’s mother, looking desperately anxious, hurried out of the house in her best hat, calling instructions over her shoulder to Nicola’s eldest sister as she left. She climbed into the taxi too and it drove away at once, faster than Marianne had ever seen it go.

Marianne rode on to Furze Cottage, almost crying again. It might have been the Farleighs who sent the whooping cough, but it was Gammer who had provoked them. As she wheeled her bike into the shed, she decided she would have to have another talk with Mum.

But that all went out of her mind when Dad burst in through the front door as Marianne came through the back, red faced and furious, and began shouting at her at once. He began with, “What do you mean, giving away that egg?” and went on to say that Marianne was a worse disappointment than Joe was, and, having torn her personality to shreds, accused her of spreading evil talk about Gammer. Finally he sent her to her room in disgrace.

Marianne sat there with Nutcase, doing her best to stop the tears trickling off her face on to Nutcase. “I was only trying to be brave and truthful,” she said to Nutcase. “Does this happen to everyone who tries to do the right thing? Why does no one believe me?” She knew she would have to talk to Joe. He seemed to be the only person in the world who might listen to her.

The griffin became very lively that day. He was also growing an odd small tuft of feathers on his head, like an untidy topknot.

“I think that is going to be his crest,” Chrestomanci said when Janet asked. “I believe all griffins have one.” Chrestomanci seemed to be taking as much interest in Klartch as everyone else. He came into the playroom – in a more than usually embroidered dressing gown – while Janet, Julia and Cat were finishing breakfast, and knelt down to inspect Klartch all over. “Accelerated growth,” he said to Klartch. “You have a lot of magic, don’t you? You’ve been held up in your egg for years and you’re trying to make up for lost time, I imagine. Don’t overdo it, old fellow. By the way, where is Roger?”

Cat knew Roger was in that shed with Joe by now. Roger had snatched a piece of toast and raced away eating it, to get on with rebuilding the flying machine. But he had not said that was what he was going to do. Cat held his tongue and let Julia and Janet tell Chrestomanci that they had no idea where Roger had gone. Luckily Chrestomanci seemed satisfied with this.

As soon as Chrestomanci had sailed away again, Klartch invited everyone for a romp. Cat was not sure how Klartch did this, but it was not long before all four of them were rolling about on the floor and leaping from the sofa to the chairs in a mad game of chase. This was when they discovered that griffins could laugh. Klartch laughed in small chuckling giggles when Julia caught him, rolled him over and tickled him, and he laughed in long hoots when Cat and Janet chased him round the sofa. Then Janet jumped on him and Klartch dodged. His long front claws caught in the carpet and tore three large strips out of it.

“Oh-oh!” they all said, Klartch included.

“And just look what that creature’s done!” Mary the maid said, coming in to clear away the breakfast. “That’s what comes of having a wild beast indoors.”

Cat guiltily put the carpet back together. They collected three balls and a rubber ring from the cupboards and took Klartch out into the gardens instead. As soon as they came out on to the great smooth lawn, gardeners appeared from all directions and hurried towards them.

“Oh, they’re not going to let us play!” Janet said.

But it was not so. They all wanted to see Klartch. “We heard no end about him,” they explained. “Odd looking beast, isn’t he? Does he play?”

When Julia explained that playing was what they had come out to do, a gardeners’ boy ran and fetched a football.

Klartch pounced on it. All six of his front claws sank into it. The football gave out a sad hiss and went flat. Klartch and the gardeners’ boy both looked so miserable about it that Cat picked up the football and, after thinking hard, managed to mend it, blow it up again and make it griffin proof in future.

Then everyone, even the head gardener, joined in a game that Janet called Klartchball. The rules were a little vague and mostly involved everyone running about, while Klartch galloped and rolled and tripped other players up. It was such fun that Roger and Joe emerged from their shed and joined in for a while. The game only stopped when Klartch suddenly stood still, hunched himself and rolled over on his side in the middle of the lawn.

“He’s dead!” Julia said, appalled. “Daddy told him not to overdo things!”

They all raced over to Klartch, fearing Julia was right. But, when they reached him, Klartch was breathing steadily and his eyes were shut. “He’s asleep!” Cat said, hugely relieved.

“We forgot how young he really is,” Janet said.

The gardeners put Klartch in a wheelbarrow and trundled him to the kitchen door. Klartch did not stir the entire time. They trundled him indoors and parked him in a pantry, where he slept until Mr Stubbs had his lunch ready. Then he woke up eagerly and, instead of opening his beak and going “Weep!”, he said, “Me!” and tried to eat the mince by himself.

“You are coming on well,” Millie said to him admiringly. “Cat, at this rate, he won’t be needing you to feed him in the night for much longer.”

Cat did hope so. He was so sleepy most of the time that he was sure he would never manage to stay awake during lessons, when lessons started again.

The holidays were indeed almost over. The children’s tutor, Michael Saunders, arrived back in the Castle that evening, keen and talkative as ever. He talked so much over supper that even Jason could hardly get a word in, let alone anyone else. Jason wanted to tell everyone about the changes they were making to Woods House, but Michael Saunders had been to the worlds in Series Eight to take the young dragon he had been rearing back into the wild, and he had a longer tale to tell.

“I had to take the wretched creature to Eight G in the end,” he said. “We tried Eight B, where he came from, and all he would do was shiver and say the cold would kill him. Eight A’s colder, so we went to C, D and E, and C was too wet for him, D was too empty and it was snowing when we got to E. I skipped F. There are more people there and I could see he was itching for the chance to eat a few. So we went on to G and he didn’t like it there either. It began to dawn on me that the wretch was so pampered that nothing less than tropical was going to suit him. But G has equatorial forests and I took him down there. He liked the climate all right, but he refused to catch his own food. All he would say was ‘You do it.’ I thought about it a bit, and then I trapped him one of the large beasts they call lumpen in that Series, and as soon as he was eating it, I left him to it and came away. If he wants to eat again, he’ll have to hunt now —”

Here Michael Saunders noticed the way Roger, Janet, Julia and Cat were all looking at him. He laughed. “Never fear,” he said. “I don’t intend to start giving you lessons until next Monday. I need a rest first. Nursemaiding a teenage dragon has worn me ragged.”

In Cat’s opinion, nursemaiding a baby griffin was quite as bad. He gave Klartch a large meal before he went to bed that night and fell asleep seriously hoping that Klartch would not wake up until the morning. It seemed a reasonable hope. When Cat put the light out, Klartch was lying on his back in his basket, with his tight, round stomach upwards, snoring like a hive of bees.

But no. Around one o’clock in the morning, Mopsa’s dabbing nose and treading paws woke Cat up. When he groaned and put the light on, there was Klartch, thin as a rake again, standing on his hind legs to look into Cat’s face. “Food,” he told Cat mournfully.

“All right.” Cat sighed and got up.

It was a very messy business. Klartch insisted on feeding himself. Cat’s main job seemed to be to scoop up dropped dinner and dump it back into Klartch’s bowl for Klartch to spill again. Cat was sleepily scraping meat up from the carpet for the thirtieth time, when he heard a sharp tapping on the window. This was followed by a thump.

What have Roger and Joe done with their flying machine this time? he thought. Mad. They are quite mad! He went and opened the window.

A broomstick swooped inside with Marianne riding side-saddle on it. Cat dodged it and stared at her. Seeing Cat, Marianne gave a cry of dismay, slipped off the broom and sat down hard on the carpet. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she said. “I thought this was the attic!”

Cat caught the broomstick as it tried to fly away through the window again. “It’s a tower room really,” he said as he shut the window to stop the broom escaping.

“But your light was on and I thought it was bound to be Joe in here!” Marianne protested. “Which is Joe’s attic then? He’s my brother and I need to talk to him.”

“Joe has one of the little rooms down by the kitchen,” Cat told her.

“What – downstairs?” Marianne asked. Cat nodded. “I thought they always put servants in the attics,” Marianne said. “All the way down?”

Cat nodded again. By this time he was awake enough to be quite shocked at how pale and miserable Marianne looked. One side of her face was bruised and she had a big, sore-looking scrape across her mouth, as if someone had beaten her up recently.

“So I’d have to go down past all your wizards and enchanters to get to Joe?” she said dismally.

“I’m afraid so,” Cat said.

“And I’m not sure I dare,” Marianne said. “Oh dear, why do I keep doing everything wrong just lately?”

Cat thought she was going to cry then. He could see her trying not to and he had no idea what to say. Fortunately Klartch finished his meal just then – all of it that was in the bowl anyway – and came bumbling across the room to see why this new human was sitting dejectedly on the floor. Marianne stared, and stared more when Klartch caught one of his front talons on the carpet and fell on his beak beside her knees.

“Oh, I thought you were a dog! But you’re not, are you?” Marianne put her hands under Klartch’s face and helped him struggle to his feet. Then she helped him unhook his claw from the carpet. “You’ve got a beak,” she said, “and I think you’re growing wings.”

“He’s a griffin,” Cat told her, glad of the interruption. “He’s called Klartch. He hatched from that egg you gave me.”

“Then it really was an egg!” Marianne was distracted from her troubles enough to kneel up and stroke Klartch’s soft fluffy coat. “I wonder if they had that egg because we’ve got a griffin on the Pinhoe Arms. And a unicorn. My Uncle Charles painted both of them on the inn sign when he was young. Mind you,” she told Klartch, “you’ve got a long way to go before you look like our griffin. You need some feathers, for a start.”

“Growing some,” Klartch said, rather offended.

At this Marianne said, just like Millie, “I didn’t know they talked!”

“Learning,” said Klartch.

“So perhaps it was worth it, giving the egg away,” Marianne said sadly. “I don’t think you were going to hatch where you were.” She looked up at Cat and a tear leaked its way down the swollen side of her face. “I got into terrible trouble for giving you his egg,” she said. “And for trying to do what you said and tell the truth. Be confident, you know, how you said to me. No one in Ulverscote is speaking to me now.”

Cat began to feel a slow, guilty responsibility. “I was saying it to myself too,” he confessed. “What did I make you do?”

Marianne put her face up and pressed her scratched lips together, trying not to cry again. Then she burst into tears anyway. “Oh drat it!” she sobbed. “I hate crying! It wasn’t my fault, or yours. It was Gammer. But no one will believe me when I say it was her. Gammer’s lost her mind, you see, and she keeps sending the Farleighs frogs and nits and things, and dirtying their washing and flooding their houses. So the Farleighs are furious. And they sent us bad luck and whooping cough. My distant cousin Nicola’s been taken to hospital with it and they think she’ll die! But Gammer’s cast this spell on everyone so that no one will blame her for any of it.”

Marianne was sobbing in such earnest now that Cat conjured her a pile of his handkerchiefs.

“Oh thanks!” Marianne wept, pressing at least three of them to her wet face. She went on to describe the fight with the Farleigh girls and the way she had got rid of the white powder. “And that was silly of me,” she sobbed, “but it was really strong and I had to do something about it. But Joss Callow had told Dad about the fight, and Dad shouted at me for insulting the Farleighs, and I didn’t! I told Dad about the powder they were bringing and he went up there this evening to see it and of course there wasn’t any, because I’d burnt it all, and he came back and shouted at me again for trying to stir up trouble —”

“What was the powder?” Cat asked.

“A bad disease with spots and sores,” Marianne said, sniffing. “I think it may have been smallpox.”

Ouch! Cat thought. He did not know much about diseases, but he knew that one. If it didn’t kill you, it disfigured you for life. Those Farleigh girls had not been joking. “But wouldn’t they have caught it too?”

“They must have made some immunity spells, I suppose,” Marianne said. “But those wouldn’t have stopped it spreading all over the county to people who haven’t done a thing to the Farleighs. Oh, I don’t know what to do! I want to ask Joe if he can think of a way to stop Gammer, or at least take off the spell she’s got on everyone. I want someone to believe me!”

Cat thought about Joe, who had rather impressed him on the whole. Joe had brains. Marianne was probably right to think Joe would know what to do, except – there was this mad flying machine. Joe’s head was, at the moment, literally in the clouds. “Joe’s pretty busy just now,” he said. “But I believe you. My sister was a witch who got out of hand like your Gammer. If you like, I could go and tell Chrestomanci.”

Marianne looked up at him in horror. Klartch yelped as her hand closed on a fistful of his fluff. “Sorry,” Marianne said, letting go of Klartch. “No! No, you can’t tell the Big Man! Please! They’d all go spare! Pinhoes, Farleighs, Cleeves, everyone! You don’t understand – we all keep hidden from him so he won’t boss us about!”

“Oh,” said Cat. “I didn’t know.” It seemed a bit silly to him. This was the kind of problem Chrestomanci could solve by more or less simply snapping his fingers. “He doesn’t boss people unless they misuse witchcraft.”

“Well, we are doing,” Marianne said. “Or Gammer is. Think of something else.”

Cat thought. He was so tired, that was the problem. And the more he cudgelled his sleepy brain, the more responsible he felt. There was no doubt that he had said just the one thing to Marianne likely to start her getting into the mess she was now in. He ought to help her, even though what he said had really been to tell himself something instead. But how was he to stop a witch-war among people he didn’t even know? Walk up to this Gammer person and put her in a stasis spell? Suppose he got the wrong old lady? He wanted to tell Marianne that it was hopeless, except that she was so upset that she had come miles at night on a broomstick. She must have sneaked off from her angry father to do it, too. No, he had to think of something.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll think. But not now. I’m too sleepy. Klartch keeps needing to be fed in the night, you see. I’ll have a real, serious think in the morning. Is there anywhere I can meet you to tell you any ideas I get?”

“Tomorrow?” Marianne said. “All right, as long as it’s secret. I don’t want Dad to know I talked to you – you’re as bad as the Big Man to him. He says you’re a nine-lifed enchanter too. I didn’t know. I thought you were Irene’s son. Can you get Irene to bring you to Woods House again? People from the Castle have to be with a Pinhoe to get there, you see. Otherwise they stop you and send you back here.”

“I think so,” said Cat. “She goes there most days with Jason. And I tell you what – I’ll try to get Joe to come too if he’s free. Meet me around midday. I have to think first, and exercise Syracuse.”

Marianne looked puzzled. “I thought his name was Klartch.”

“Syracuse,” Cat explained, “is a horse. Klartch is this griffin. The cat sitting on my bed staring at you is Mopsa.”

“Oh,” said Marianne. She almost grinned. “You do seem to be surrounded in creatures. That’s a dwimmerthing, I think. I can tell you have quite strong dwimmer. See you tomorrow at midday then.” Looking much more cheerful, she scrambled up and stared round for her broomstick.

Cat plucked the broomstick away from the window and handed it politely to Marianne. “Will you be all right?” he asked trying not to yawn. “It’s pretty dark.”

“As long as the owls miss me,” Marianne said. “They never look where they’re going. But if you had any idea how uncomfortable it is riding a broomstick, you wouldn’t ask. I suppose one more set of bruises won’t notice. See you.” She sat herself sideways on the hovering broomstick. “Ouch,” she said. “This is Mum’s broom. It doesn’t like me riding it.”

Cat opened the window for her and Marianne swooped out through it, away into the night.

Cat stumbled back to bed. He had not a clue how to solve Marianne’s problems. He simply hoped, as he pushed Mopsa out of the way, that a good idea came into his head while he was asleep. He was asleep the next second. He forgot to turn out the light. He did not see the offended way Mopsa jumped down and joined Klartch in his basket.

He woke – much too soon, it seemed – when Janet barged cheerfully into his room, saying, “Breakfast, Klartch. Come on down to the kitchen. I’m going to start house-training him today,” she told the yawning Cat. “It should be all right if we can get downstairs fast enough.”

When Janet and Klartch had crashed out of the room, Cat sat up, searching his sleepy brain for any ideas that might have landed in it during the night. There was one, but it struck him as very poor and stupid indeed, one only to be used if nothing else occurred to him. He got up and went along to have a shower, hoping that might liven his brain up a little. The water in the Castle was bespelled and Cat had hopes of it.

But nothing happened. With only the poor, thin idea in his head, Cat got dressed and went downstairs. He met a strong disinfectant spell on the next flight down. This was followed by the angry clattering of a bucket and Janet’s raised voice. “Purple nadgers, Euphemia! He’s only a baby! And he’s terribly ashamed. Just look at him!” It sounded as if Klartch had not got downstairs quite fast enough after all.

Cat grinned and galloped down the other set of stairs that led to the stable door. They came out past the cubby hole where Joe was supposed to clean shoes. Rather to Cat’s surprise, Joe was actually there, busily blacking a large boot.

Cat leant into the little room. “Your sister was here last night, trying to find you,” he said. “She’s got troubles. She says your Gammer is secretly putting spells on the Farleighs.”

“Our Gammer?” Joe said, calmly rubbing away at the boot. “You must know she is. You saw me on my way to set the first spell for her, didn’t you?”

“The tadpoles?” Cat said.

“Frogs,” said Joe.

“Oh,” Cat said. “Um. Those frogs. In Helm St Mary?”

“That’s right,” Joe said. “Gammer said if I could get the one spell out for her, then she could follow the thread with a load of others, and if she did, it would work her free of the containment my dad had put on her. By-product, she called it. She pointed her stick at me to make me do it. And I didn’t want to have rode all the way to Ulverscote for nothing and I knew Gaffer Farleigh did put an addle spell on her – Marianne swears he did, and she knows – so I took the jar to Helm St Mary and tipped it into their duck pond there for her.”

Cat was hugely relieved. He had no need to use his poor, thin idea. Joe could solve Marianne’s problems with a word. “Then do you think you could come to Ulverscote with me this morning and tell your father? Marianne says Gammer’s set a spell on everyone so that they don’t believe her and the Farleighs are sending them plagues in revenge.”

Joe’s head went sulkily down as he pondered. He shrugged. “If Gammer’s done that, then they won’t believe me neither, not if they don’t believe Marianne. She’s strong in the craft, Gammer is, and I’m no one. Besides, Mr Frazier says he’ll have me up before the Big Man if I don’t stay here where I’m paid to be. And just when we’ve got our machine near perfect! No. Sorry. Can’t oblige you.”

And, to prove that Joe was not just making excuses, Mr Frazier came along the kitchen corridor just then, saying, “Joe Pinhoe, are you working? Master Cat, I’ll trouble you not to interrupt Joe in his work. We’re privileged today. Master Pinhoe has actually cleaned a boot.”

“Just going,” Cat told Mr Frazier. He leant further into the cubby hole and asked, “Is Mr Farleigh the gamekeeper any relation to the Farleighs who got the frogs?”

“Jed Farleigh,” said Joe. “He’s their Gaffer.” Hearing Mr Frazier treading closer, he picked up two more boots and tried to look as if he was cleaning all three at once.

Cat said, “Thanks,” to him and hurried towards the stables, thinking. If he understood rightly, these Gammers and Gaffers were the heads of these tribes of witchy people, and if Mr Farleigh the gamekeeper was one, the whole thing was much more frightening than Cat had realised. No wonder Marianne had been so upset. And here was he, Cat, with only one poor, second rate idea to put against it all. Joe was no help. Cat hurried out into the yard, feeling small and weak and heartily wishing he had not agreed to help Marianne.

As Cat crossed the yard, Jason came out of his herb shed with a stack of flat wooden boxes. Cat went over to him. Jason, by the time Cat reached him, was standing on one leg, holding the boxes on one knee while he locked the shed. He spared Cat a harried smile. “What can I do for you, young nine-lifer?” The smells of many kinds of herbs, faint and sweet, or rich and spicy, swam round the pair of them.

“Can you give me a lift to Woods House today?” Cat asked.

“Well, I could,” Jason said, “but you’d have to find your own way back. We’re moving in there for good today. Irene’s busy packing.”

Cat had not realised that things had moved on so quickly. He was quite taken aback. But he supposed that when an enchanter did things, he did them more swiftly than other people. And he was going to miss Irene. “Not to worry, then,” he said. “Thanks.”

He stood aside and watched Jason carry the boxes away across the yard. That did it then. He was let off. But somehow that did not make him terribly happy. Marianne would be expecting him. He would have let her down. No, he would have to find a way to get to Ulverscote on his own. It was a pity that he had such a poor, thin idea to take there.

He could teleport, he thought, there and back. That ought to have been easy, but for the misdirection spell – and then there was that barrier. If he tried it without one of the Pinhoes, he could end up caught behind the barrier like Chrestomanci. Better think of some other way. Cat walked slowly over to Syracuse’s stall to tell it to muck itself out, considering.

Joss Callow met him as he got there. “When you’re ready, we’ll ride out over the heath,” he told Cat. “Half an hour?”

Cat’s mind had this way of making plans without Cat knowing it was. “Can you make it later than that?” he asked, without having to think. “Jason and Irene are leaving today and I’ll need to say goodbye.”

“Suits me,” Joss said. “I’ve plenty to do here. Eleven o’clock then?”

“Fine,” Cat said gratefully. While he cleaned the stall and gave Syracuse his morning peppermint, he found out what he meant to do. His mind had it all neatly worked out. He was going to ride to Ulverscote on Syracuse, and the way to make sure he got there was to follow the river. He was fairly sure the same river ran past the Castle and through Ulverscote. And, surely, even the most secretive of Pinhoes and the angriest of Farleighs could not change the way a river ran. They might deceive him into thinking it ran the other way, but Cat was fairly sure he could guard against that if he kept his witch sight firmly on the way it was really flowing.

Cat gave Syracuse a pat and a strong promise to ride him later and went indoors. Before he went upstairs to the playroom for breakfast, he dodged into the library where, much to the surprise of old Miss Rosalie, the Castle librarian, he asked for a map of the country between the Castle and Ulverscote.

“I don’t understand this,” Miss Rosalie grumbled, spreading the map out on a table for him. “Everyone seems to want this map at the moment. Jason, Tom, Bernard, Chrestomanci, Millie, Roger. Now you.”

Miss Rosalie always grumbled. She thought all books and maps should be on shelves. Cat paid no attention to her. He leant over the map and carefully followed the wavy blue line of the river as it snaked through its steep valley beside the Castle. Sure enough, the valley, and the river with it, curved its way on, around the hill with Ulverscote Wood on it, and ran along the bottom of the slope where Ulverscote village was. By that stage, the valley was a simple dip, but it was the same river. Cat’s brain had got it right. He thanked Miss Rosalie and raced away.

In the schoolroom, Klartch was sitting on the sofa trying very seriously to eat a banana. “He’s in disgrace,” Euphemia snapped, banging toast and coffee down in front of Cat. “Don’t you go and be nice to him.”

While Janet was loudly protesting that Klartch was only a baby and that the way to teach babies was to be nice to them, Julia said to Cat, “Jason and Irene are moving out today, did you know? Are you coming down to the hall to say goodbye to them?”

Cat nodded. His mind was busy with the problem of how to get rid of Joss without making Joss suspicious. He thought he had it.

Julia said, “Roger?”

Roger just grunted. He was busy making diagrams on scraps of paper. He had been doing this at every meal for weeks now. Julia looked at the ceiling. “Boys! Honestly!”

Here Chrestomanci sailed in, wearing a kingly red dressing gown with ermine down the front. He took a long stride and got the banana skin away from Klartch just as Klartch tried to eat it. “I think not,” he said. “We don’t want any more accidents on the stairs.”

“Good morning, Daddy,” Julia said. “Why does everyone always have their minds on something else?”

“A good question,” Chrestomanci said, tossing the banana skin into the air. It disappeared. “I suppose it must be because we all have a lot to think about. Roger.” Roger looked up guiltily. The scraps of paper had somehow disappeared, like the banana skin. “Roger, I need to talk to you,” Chrestomanci said, “on a matter of some urgency. Can you come with me to my study, please.”

Roger got up, looking pale and apprehensive. Chrestomanci politely ushered him out of the schoolroom ahead of himself and gently closed the door behind them both. The other three looked at one another, glanced at Euphemia, and decided to say nothing.

Roger had still not come back when everyone gathered in the hall to say goodbye to Irene and Jason. He and Chrestomanci were almost the only people missing.

“Never mind,” Jason said, shaking hands with Millie. “We’ll see him when we give our housewarming party.”

“I’ll make sure he’s there,” Millie said. “Jason, it’s been a pleasure having you.”

Jason went round shaking hands with everyone. Irene followed, hugging people. Cat stood a little back from the throng. He was engaged in the most delicate piece of long-distance magic he had ever done, trying to make Joss’s big brown horse lose a shoe in a way that looked completely natural, without hurting the horse. He took its off hind foot up in imaginary hands and gently prised at the long iron nails that held the shoe on, going round them each several times, easing them out a bit at a time, until the horseshoe was hanging away from the hoof. Then he gave the horseshoe a sharp sideways push. It flew off. At least Cat thought it did. He certainly felt the horse give a jump of surprise. He let its foot carefully down. Then he picked the shoe up in imaginary hands and looked at it with imaginary eyes. Good. All the nails were most satisfactorily bent, as if the horse itself had twisted the horseshoe off. He tossed the shoe into a corner of the stall so that the horse was less likely to tread on it and injure itself.

He came back to himself to find Irene hugging him. “You’re very quiet, Cat. Is something wrong?” she asked. There were scents around Cat of spice and flowers. Irene always smelt lovely.

“I shall miss you,” Cat said truthfully. “May I come and visit you later today, or will you be too busy?”

“Oh what a nice idea!” Irene said. “Be our first visitor, Cat. I’m longing to show off what we’ve done to the house. But make it after midday so that we can unpack a little first.”

Cat grinned a trifle anxiously as he shook hands with Jason. How soon would Joss notice that missing horseshoe? He hadn’t yet. Perhaps the shoe hadn’t really come off. It was often quite hard to tell if magic had worked or not.

He came to the door with everyone else and watched as Jason and Irene climbed into the small blue car. They could not have fitted Cat into it anyway. There was luggage strapped all over it and more piled into the back seat, with Jason’s herb boxes on top of that. They drove off in a waft of blue smoke, herb scent and Irene scent, waving joyously as they vanished down the drive.

“I think they’ll be very happy,” Millie said. “And I’m longing to see their house. I think I shall drive over there as soon as they’re settled in.”

She won’t get there, Cat thought, without a Pinhoe to take her. I wonder what will happen then. He was edging away as he thought, wondering more about that horseshoe than about Millie. As soon as no one was looking at him, he turned and ran for the stables. It was nowhere near eleven yet, but he had to know.

He got there just as Joss was leading the big brown horse out through the stableyard gate.

“Cast a shoe,” Joss called over his shoulder to Cat. “I have to get him down to the blacksmith before we can ride out. So don’t hold your breath. We could be gone hours if the forge is busy. I’ll send someone to tell you when I’m back. All right?”

“All right,” Cat said, trying not to look as relieved and joyful as he felt.

Marianne was having even more difficulty getting away than Cat was. She was in such disgrace at home that Mum was making her do all sorts of chores in order to keep Marianne under her eye.

“I’m not having you going round spreading any more tales,” Mum said. “If you’ve cleaned your room, you can come and sort these herbs and worts for me now. Throw out any leaves and berries that look manky. Then put worts in this bowl and just the fresh tips of the leaves in that one. And I want it done right, Marianne.”

As if I was four years old again! Marianne thought. I know how to sort herbs, Mum! It looked as if she was never going to get out of the house today. The only good thing about today was that, thanks to Mum’s lotions, Marianne’s bruises and scrapes had almost disappeared in the night. But what was the good of that when she was a prisoner? Marianne sighed as she spread the fresh green bundles of plants apart on the table. Nutcase jumped up beside her and rubbed sympathetically against her arm. Marianne looked at him. Now there was an idea. If she could persuade Nutcase to wander off again …

“Go and visit Woods House, Nutcase,” she whispered to him. “Why don’t you? You like going there. Go on. As a favour to me? Please?”

Nutcase moved his ears and twitched his tail and stayed sitting on the table. But I live here now, he seemed to be saying.

“Oh, I know you do, but pay a visit to Woods House anyway,” Marianne said. She opened the side window and put Nutcase out through it.

Two minutes later, Nutcase came in through the back door with Mum when she brought in an armful of plants and unloaded them in the sink to be cleaned. He jumped on to the draining board and gave Marianne a smug look.

As soon as Mum had gone out into the garden again, Marianne picked Nutcase up and carried him through the house to the front door. She opened the door and dumped him on the path outside. “Go to Woods House!” she whispered fiercely to him.

Nutcase’s reply was to sit in the middle of the tiny front lawn, stick a leg up and wash. Marianne shut the front door, hoping he would leave when he was ready.

Five minutes later, Nutcase came in through the back door again, with Mum and another bundle of herbs.

This is hopeless! Marianne thought, while Mum ran water in the sink. I shall just have to walk off without an excuse and get into worse trouble than ever. Wasn’t there any way she could tempt Nutcase to Woods House? Could she do something like the bacon spell she had tempted him with, the time she gave Cat the egg? But I can’t do that from here, she thought, right at the other end of the village. Or could she? When she looked at Woods House in a special, witchy way, she could feel that the bacon spell was still there. It only needed reactivating. But could she manage to start it up again from here, strongly enough to tempt Nutcase all the way from Furze Cottage? No, I’m not strong enough, she thought.

But Cat had said she was. He had said she had nearly enchanter-strength magic but just didn’t trust herself. He had made her bold enough to get into this trouble. Surely she could be bold enough to get herself out of it.

All right, she said to herself. I’ll try.

Marianne nipped the last fresh leaf-tips into the bowl and concentrated. And concentrated. And trusted herself and concentrated some more. It was odd. She felt as if each new push she gave herself spread her mind out, wider, and then wider still, until she almost seemed to be hovering beside the faded remains of the bacon spell in the hall of Woods House. She gave it a flip and brought it to life again, and then a further flip to make it stronger – or she hoped she did. It was so hard to tell for sure.

But look at Nutcase!

Nutcase’s head went up and then went up further, until he was nose upwards, sniffing. Marianne watched him, hardly daring to breathe. Nutcase gave himself a shake and got up and stretched, front legs first, then back legs. Then, to Marianne’s acute amazement, Nutcase really did walk through the kitchen wall. He trod towards the wall, steadily and deliberately, but when his head touched the whitewashed bricks he didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down. He walked on. His head disappeared into the wall, then his shoulder ruff, then most of his body, until he was just a pair of black, walking hind legs and a tail. The legs walked out of sight and left only the bushy, waving tail. Then there was only the tip of the tail, which vanished with a jerk, as if Nutcase had given a pull to fetch it through. Marianne was left staring at the bricks of the wall. There was no sign of the place where Nutcase had gone through. Well, well! she thought.

She gave Nutcase ten minutes to get on his way. Then, when Mum came in from the garden again, she said, “Mum, have you got Nutcase?” She was surprised how natural she sounded.

Mum said, “No. I thought he was with you. Oh – bother!”

They searched the house as they always did, then Dolly’s stall, because Dolly and Nutcase seemed to have struck a friendship, and then they went to Dad’s work shed and asked if Nutcase was there. Of course Nutcase was in none of these places. Mum said, “Better go after him quick, Marianne. If he gets down to the Dell again and your uncle Isaac finds him, there’ll be hell to pay. Hurry. Get a wiggle on, girl!”

Marianne shot out of Furze Cottage, delighted.

At the top of Furze Lane, the men building the Post Office wall all pointed uphill with their thumbs, grinning. “Off again. Went that way.”

It was a relief that Nutcase had not suddenly decided to visit the Dell instead. Marianne turned uphill. There was no Nicola to shout to her where Nutcase had gone, but Nicola’s mum was standing in her doorway. She pointed uphill and nodded to Marianne.

Marianne hovered backwards on one foot for a second. “How’s Nicola?”

Nicola’s mother put one hand out and made swaying motions with it. “We’re hoping.”

“Me too!” Marianne said, and went on, past the grocer, past the Pinhoe Arms and then the church.

The big gates to Woods House, when she came to them, seemed really strange, newly mended, newly painted and shut. Marianne had never known those gates to be shut since Gaffer died. It felt odd to have to open one half of the gates and slip round it into the driveway. The overgrown bushes there seemed to have been cut back a bit. They gave Marianne a sight of the front door long before she was used to seeing it. A small battered blue car was parked outside.

Oh, they’re here! Marianne thought. She suddenly felt a total trespasser. This was not one of the family houses any more. She had had no business arranging to meet Cat here. And she would have to knock at the front door – which was now painted a smooth olive green – and ask for Nutcase.

Marianne found she could not face doing this. She sheered away round the house into the garden, hoping Nutcase had gone to sun himself there. She could always say quite truthfully that she was looking for Gammer’s cat if anyone asked, and it was always possible that Cat would see her out of one of the windows – always supposing Cat was here, of course.

The garden was transformed.

Marianne stood for a moment in amazement, looking from the smoothly trimmed square shape of the beech hedge to the lawn that was almost a lawn again. Someone had scythed and then mowed the long grass. It still had a stubbly grey look, but green was pushing through in emerald lines and ovals, showing where there had once been flowerbeds. Marianne went along the trim hedge, pretending to look into it for Nutcase, and marvelling. The goosberry bushes at the end, where the wood began, had been cleared and pruned, along with the old lilac trees behind them. No sign of Nutcase there. But there had been currant bushes there all these years and Marianne had never known, and a stand of raspberry canes that still had raspberries on them. When she turned alongside the canes – keeping to the edges just like a cat might – she saw that the long flowerbed against the wall that hid the vegetable garden actually had flowers in it now: long hollyhocks, asters, dahlias and montbretia mostly at this time of year, but enough to make it look like a flowerbed again.

She slipped guiltily round the end of the wall and found that the vegetable garden was most transformed of all. It was like Uncle Isaac’s professional market garden. Everything was in neat rows in moist black earth, pale lettuces, frilly carrots, spiky onions. A lot of the beds were plain black earth with string stretched along, where seeds had not yet come up. And – Marianne stared around – she had not known that the walls had roses trained along them. They had always seemed a mass of green creeper. But this had been pared away and the roses tied back, and they were just now coming into bloom, red and peach-coloured and yellow and white, as if it were June, not nearly September.

Marianne crunched her way timidly down a newly cindered path towards the house. I’m looking for my cat when somebody asks. When she reached the archway beside the conservatory, she peered cautiously through.

The little man energetically digging in Old Gaffer’s herb patch drove his spade to a standstill beside the tall mugwort and smiled at her. “Made a bit of a change here,” he remarked to her. “How do you like it?”

Marianne could not help staring at him, even while she was smiling back. He was so small, so bandy and so brown. His hair grew in tufts round his bald head and his wrinkly face had two tufts of beard on it, just under his large ears. If there were such things as gnomes, Marianne thought, she would be sure he was one. But his smile was beaming, friendly and full of pride in his gardening. Her own smile enlarged to beaming in reply. “You’ve done so much! In no time at all!”

“It was the dream of my life,” he said, “to work in a country garden. Mistress Irene, bless her, promised me that I should, and she kept her promise as you see. I’ve hardly started yet. August’s not the best time to dig and sow, but I reckon that if I can get it all in good heart by the autumn, then when spring comes, I can really begin. They call me Mr Adams, by the way. And you are?”

“Marianne Pinhoe,” said Marianne.

“Oh,” said Mr Adams, “then you’re quite a personage around here, as I read it.”

Marianne made a face. “Not so’s you’d notice. I – er – came looking for my cat.”

“Nutcase,” said Mr Adams. “In the house. He went past me into the conservatory five minutes ago. Before you go in, come and look how your grandfather’s herb bed’s coming along. It went against the grain with me to leave it till last, when it’s so near the house, but I had to wait for Mr Yeldham to come and tell me which were the weeds. Awful lot of strange plants here.”

He beckoned to Marianne so imperiously that she came nervously out from the archway, to find the big plot looking almost as she remembered it from Gaffer’s time: low cushions of plants round the edges, tall gangly ones near the middle and medium sized ones in between, each one carefully placed in sun or shade as it needed, and growing in different coloured earths that were right for them. The spicy whiffs of scent made her throat ache, remembering her old Gaffer.

She smiled down at Mr Adams. She was a lot taller than he was. “You’ve made this almost how it should be, Mr Adams. It’s wonderful.”

“For my pleasure,” he said. “And to be worthy of Princess Irene.”

Thoroughly surprised, Marianne said, “I call her that too!”

Cat rode quite slowly along the river path, so that Syracuse waltzed and bounced, wanting to go faster. Even after galloping round the paddock before they set out, Syracuse was still bored by walking.

They were going the same way that the river flowed and Cat kept firmly remembering this. The water had already tried to deceive him twice by seeming to flow the other way. Last spring, when Mr Saunders had been teaching him how you used witch sight, Cat had been rather bored. It had seemed so obvious. Now he was glad of those lessons. The lessons had not been so much about how you saw things truthfully when they were bespelled – Cat could do that standing on his head – but about how to keep seeing them when other spells were trying to distract you. Mr Saunders, being the keen, fierce kind of teacher he was, had invented a dozen fiendish ways to take Cat’s mind off what he was seeing. Cat had hated it. But now it was paying off.

Cat kept that river firmly under his witch sight and did not allow it to get away once. He did not look at the surrounding valley at all. Now he was warned, he could feel it swirling about, trying to suggest he was going the wrong way.

Thanks to Syracuse, he could attend to the valley by smelling it instead of looking. The scents of water, rushes, willows and the tall meadows had changed quite a lot in the short time since he had last come this way with Joss. The spiciness was damper, sadder and smokier, and smelt of summer giving way to autumn. Cat surprised himself by thinking that a year was really a short time. Things changed so fast. Which was silly, he thought, almost getting distracted, because you could do so much in a year.

Mr Farleigh was suddenly standing in front of them in the path.

He was there so abruptly and unexpectedly – and so solidly – that Syracuse was startled into trying to rear. There was a difficult few seconds when Cat nearly fell off and Syracuse’s back hooves walked off the path and squelched among the rushes. Cat managed to keep himself in the saddle and Syracuse right way up, but only with a frenzy of magic and of spells he had no idea he knew. Mr Farleigh watched his struggles sarcastically.

“I told you not to come here,” he said, as soon as Syracuse’s front hooves were on the ground again.

Cat was quite angry by then. It was an unusual experience for him. Up to now, when things happened that would have made most people angry, Cat had just felt bewildered. But now, he faced Mr Farleigh’s pale eyed glare and was surprised to find himself filled with real fury. The man could have hurt Syracuse. “This is a public bridleway,” he said. “You’ve no right to tell me not to use it.”

“Then use it to go home on,” Mr Farleigh said, “and I’ll not turn you back.”

“But I don’t want to turn back,” Cat said with his teeth clenched. “How do you think you can stop me going on?”

“With the weight of this whole county,” Mr Farleigh said. “I carry it with me, boy.”

He did too, in some odd way, Cat realised. Though Syracuse was trampling and sidling, highly disturbed by the magic Cat had used, Cat managed a small push of power towards Mr Farleigh. He met a resistance that felt as old as granite, and as gnarled and non-human as a tree that was petrified and turned to stone. The stony roots of Mr Farleigh seemed to have twined and clamped themselves into the earth for miles around.

Cat sat back in his saddle wondering what to do. He was not going to go tamely back to the Castle, just because a bullying witchmaster with a gun told him to.

“Why don’t you want me to ride this way?” he asked.

Mr Farleigh’s strange pale eyes glowered at him from under his bushy brows. “Because you mess up my arrangements,” he said. “You have no true belief. You trespass and you trample and you unveil that which should be hidden. You try to release what should be safely imprisoned.”

It sounded religious to Cat. He bent forward to pat Syracuse’s tossing head and wondered how to say that he had not done any of these things. As to Mr Farleigh’s arrangements, he should just make them some other way! People should be allowed to ride where they wanted.

He was just deciding that there was no way to say this politely and he had opened his mouth to be rude, when he was interrupted by a most unusual set of sounds coming from somewhere behind his right shoulder. There were voices, chattering, singing and murmuring, as if quite a large crowd of people were walking along the top of the meadows. This noise was mixed with a strange, shrill whispering, which was combined with creakings and clatterings and a wooden thumping. Cat’s head swivelled to see what on earth it was.

It was the flying machine. It was coming slowly across the top of the meadow about a hundred yards away and about twenty feet in the air. And it was the most peculiar object Cat had seen in his life. To either side of it, a jointed set of broken tables slowly flapped. Something that looked like a three-legged stool whirled furiously on its nose. The rest of it looked like a tangle of broken chairs all loosely hooked together, with each bit of it working and waving and making little flaps of wood go in and out. It had a long feather duster for a tail. In the midst of it, Cat could just see the dismantled frames of two bicycles and two people on them, pedalling madly. And every bit of this strange contraption was calling out as it came, “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle, I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” high, low, shrill and steady.

Mr Farleigh said, in a voice that was almost a groan, “The very air is not safe from them!”

Cat’s head whipped back to find Mr Farleigh staring up at the machine in horror. As Cat looked, Mr Farleigh pulled something on his gun and raised it.

The gun barrel moved to track the flying machine and, before Cat could do more than put one hand out and shout, “No!”, Mr Farleigh fired.

Cat thought there was a yell from the machine. But the crack-bang! of the shot sent Syracuse into a panic. He squealed and reared in earnest. Cat found himself clinging to a vertical horse and fighting to keep Syracuse’s trampling back hooves from going into the river. He saw everything in snatches, among flying horsehair and clods of mud and grass splashing into the water, but he saw Mr Farleigh slam another cartridge into his gun and he saw, uphill, the flying machine tipping to one side so that one set of flapping tables almost brushed the grass.

Then Syracuse came down, quivering with terror. Cat saw the flying machine right itself with a clap and a clatter. Then it was off, with astonishing speed, tables flapping, feather duster wagging, boys’ feet flashing round and round. It had slipped over the top of the hill and vanished from sight before Mr Farleigh could raise his gun again.

While Mr Farleigh lowered his gun, looking grim and frustrated, Cat patted Syracuse and pulled his ear to quiet him. He said to Mr Farleigh, “That would have been murder.” He was surprised that his voice came out firm and angry and hardly frightened at all.

Mr Farleigh gave him a contemptuous look. “It was an abomination,” he said.

“No, it was a flying machine,” Cat said. “There were two people in it.”

Mr Farleigh paid no attention. He looked beyond Cat and seemed horrified again. “Here is another abomination!” he said. He lowered his gun further and aimed at the path behind Cat.

Cat snatched a look behind him. To his terror, he found that Klartch had followed them. Klartch was standing in the path with his beak open and his small triangular wings raised, obviously paralysed with fear. Without having to think, Cat put out his left hand and rolled the barrel of Mr Farleigh’s gun up like a party whistle or a Swiss roll.

“If you fire now, it’ll blow your face off!” he said. He was truly angry by then.

Mr Farleigh looked grimly down at his rolled up gun. He looked up at Cat with his bushy eyebrows raised and gave him a sarcastic stare. The gun, slowly, started to unroll again.

Behind Cat, Klartch went “Weep, weep, weep!” Syracuse shook all over.

What shall I do? Cat thought. He knew, as clearly as if Mr Farleigh had just said so, that after he had shot Klartch, Mr Farleigh would shoot Syracuse and then Cat, because Cat was a witness and Syracuse was in the way. He had to do something.

He pushed at Mr Farleigh with his left hand out and came up against flinty, knotty power, like an oak tree turned to stone. Cat could not move it. And the gun steadily unrolled. Mr Farleigh stared at Cat across it, immovable and contemptuous. He seemed to be saying, You can do nothing.

Yes, I can! Cat thought. I must, I will! Or Klartch and Syracuse will be dead. At least I’ve still got three lives left.

The thought of those three lives steadied him. When Mr Farleigh shot him, Cat would still be alive, on his eighth life, just like Chrestomanci was, and he could do something then. All the things he had been taught by Chrestomanci surged about in his head. There must be something Chrestomanci had said – Yes, there was! After Cat had sent Joe to the ceiling, Chrestomanci had said, “Even the strongest enchanter can be defeated by using his own strength against him.” So instead of pushing against Mr Farleigh’s heavy, stony power, suppose Cat pushed with it? And quick, because the gun was nearly unrolled.

Then it was not difficult at all. Cat pushed out hard with his left hand and made Mr Farleigh into a petrified oak tree.

It was a weird thing. It stood nine feet high, made of bent and twisted grey rock, and it had huge and knotty roots that had somehow delved and gouged their way into the earth of the path where it stood. It had a broken-looking hump at the top, which had probably been Mr Farleigh’s head, and three lumpy, writhen branches. One branch must have been the gun, because the other two had stone oak leaves clinging to them, each leaf with a glitter of mica to it.

Syracuse hated it. His front feet danced this way and that, trying to take him away from it. Klartch gave out another frightened “Weep, weep!”

“It’s all right,” Cat said to both of them. “It won’t hurt you now. Honestly.” He got down from Syracuse and found he was shaking as badly as the horse was. Klartch crept up to him, shaking too. “I wish you hadn’t followed me,” Cat said to him. “You nearly got killed.”

“Need to come too,” Klartch said.

Cat had half a mind to take them all back home to the Castle. But he had promised to meet Marianne and they were well over halfway by now. And he could tell, by the sound of the river and the feel of the meadow, that Mr Farleigh had been the centre that held the misdirection spells together. They were so weak now that they were almost gone. It would be easy to get to Woods House, except for – Cat looked up at the ugly stone oak, looming above them. There would be no getting Syracuse past that thing, he knew. Besides, it was right in the path and a terrible nuisance to anyone trying to go this way.

Cat steadied his trembling knees and sent the stone oak away somewhere else, somewhere it fitted in better, he had no idea where. It went with a soft rumble like thunder far off, followed by a small breeze full of dust from the path, river smell and bird noises. The willows rattled their leaves in it. For a moment, there were deep trenches in the path where the stone roots had been, but they began filling in almost at once. Sand and earth poured into the holes like water, and then hardened.

Cat waited until the path was back to the way it had been and then levitated Klartch up into Syracuse’s saddle. Klartch flopped across it with a gasp of surprise. One pair of legs hung down on each side, helplessly. Syracuse craned his head round and stared.

“It’s the best I can do,” Cat said to them. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Marianne looked up gladly as Cat came across the stubbly lawn, leading Syracuse. She was sad to see that Joe was not with him, but at least Cat was here. She had begun to think he was not coming.

“Friend of yours?” asked talkative Mr Adams. “That’s a fine piece of horseflesh he’s got there. Arab ancestry, I shouldn’t wonder. What’s he got on the saddle?”

Marianne wondered too, until Cat came near. She saw that Cat stared at Mr Adams much as she had done herself. “Oh, you’ve brought Klartch!” she said.

“He followed me. I had to bring him,” Cat said. He did not feel like explaining how lethal that had nearly been.

“I love your horse,” Marianne said. “He’s beautiful.” She went boldly up to rub Syracuse’s face. Cat watched a little anxiously, knowing what Syracuse could be like. But Syracuse graciously allowed Marianne to rub his nose and then pat his neck and Marianne said, “Ah, you like peppermints, do you? I’m afraid I —”

“Here you are,” Mr Adams said, producing a paper bag from an earthy pocket. “These are extra strong – he’ll like these. They call me Mr Adams,” he added to Cat. “Been in Princess Irene’s family for years.”

“How do you do?” Cat said politely, wondering how he would get a private word with Marianne with Mr Adams there. While Marianne fed Syracuse peppermints, he hauled Klartch off the saddle and dropped him in the grass – with a grunt from both of them: Klartch was heavy and landed heavily. Mr Adams stared at Klartch in some perplexity.

“I give up,” he said. “Is it a flying bird-dog, or what?”

“He’s a baby griffin,” Cat explained. He tried to smile at Mr Adams, but the word “flying” made him terribly anxious suddenly about Roger and Joe, and the smile was more of a grimace. He didn’t think that Mr Farleigh’s bullet had hit either of them, but it had certainly hit the flying machine somewhere, and one of them had yelled. Still, there was nothing he could do.

“Shall I look after the horse for you while you go indoors?” Mr Adams offered. “Second to gardening, I love tending to horses. He’ll be safe with me.”

Cat and Marianne exchanged relieved looks. Marianne had been wondering how they were going to talk in private too.

“I’ll look after this griffin fellow too, if you like,” Mr Adams offered.

“Thanks. I’ll take Klartch with me,” Cat said. He did not feel like letting Klartch out of his sight just then. He handed Syracuse over to Mr Adams, and managed to thank him, although he was nervous again, knowing what Syracuse could be like. But Syracuse bent his head to Mr Adams and seemed prepared to make a fuss of him, while Mr Adams murmured and made little cheeping whistles in reply.

It seemed to be all right. Marianne and Cat went to the open door of the conservatory, with Klartch lolloping after them. “Is something the matter?” Marianne said as they went. “You look pale. And you only talk in little jerks.”

Cat would have liked to tell Marianne all about his encounter with Mr Farleigh. He was almost longing to. But that strange thing happened in his head that made him so bad at telling people things, and all he could manage to say was, “I had a – a turn up with Gaffer Farleigh on the way.” And as soon as Marianne was nodding in perfect understanding, Cat was forced to change the subject. He leant towards her and whispered, “Is Mr Adams a gnome?”

Marianne choked on a giggle. “I don’t know!” she whispered back.

Cat was feeling much better and they were both trying not to laugh as they entered the conservatory. It was transformed. When Cat had last been here, the glass of the roof and walls had been too dirty to see through, and the floor had been coconut matting with dead plants standing about on it. Marianne could hardly remember it any other way. Now the glass sparkled and there were big green frondy plants, some of them with huge lily-like flowers, white and cream and yellow, which Jason must have brought here from his store. The floor that the plants stood on was a marvel of white, green and blue tiles, in a gentle eye-resting pattern. There were new cane chairs. Best of all, a small fountain – that must have been covered up by the old matting – was now playing, making a quiet chuckling and misting the fronds of the plants. The smell this brought out from the flowers reminded them both of Irene’s scent.

Marianne said wonderingly, “This must all have been underneath! How could Gammer have kept it all covered up?”

Thoroughly curious to know what the rest of the house was like now, they went on into the hall. The same tiles were here, blue, white and green, making the hall twice as light. To Marianne’s surprise, the tiles went on up the walls, to about the height of her shoulders, where she had only known dingy, knobbly cream paint before. Above the tiles, Uncle Charles had painted the walls a paler shade of the blue in the tiles. Marianne wondered if Uncle Charles had chosen it, or Irene. Irene, certainly. There were plants here too, one of them a whole tree. The stairs had been polished so that they gleamed, with a rich, moss-coloured strip of carpet down the middle.

Klartch had difficulty walking on the tiles. His front talons clattered and slid. His back feet, which were more like paws, skidded. Cat turned and waited for him.

Marianne, watching Klartch, said, “I suppose Gammer covered the tiles with matting because they were slippery. Or was it in case they got spoilt? What was your idea for helping me?”

Cat turned back to her, wishing it was a bigger, better idea. “Well,” he began.

But Jason came out of one of the rooms just then. “Oh, hello!” he said. “I didn’t hear you arrive. Welcome to the dez rez, both of you!”

And Irene came racing down the moss-carpeted stairs, crying out in delight. She seized Marianne and kissed her, hugged Cat and then knelt down to lift Klartch up by his feathery front legs so that she could rub her face on his beak. Klartch made little crooning noises at her in reply. “This is splendid!” Irene said. “Not many people can say that their very first visitor was a griffin!” She lowered Klartch down and looked anxiously up at Marianne. “I hope you don’t mind what we’ve done to the house.”

“Mind?” Marianne said. “It’s wonderful! Were these tiles always up the walls like this?” She went over and rubbed her hand across them. “Smooth,” she said. “Lovely.”

“They were painted over,” Irene said. “When I discovered them under the paint, I just had to have it scraped off. I’m afraid the painting Mr Pinhoe wasn’t very pleased about the extra work. But I cleaned the tiles myself.”

Uncle Charles was an idiot then, Marianne thought. “It was worth it. They glow!”

“Ah, that’s Irene’s doing,” Jason said, with a proud, loving look towards his wife. “She’s inherited the dwimmer gift. Dwimmer,” he explained to Cat, “means that a person is in touch with the life in everything. They can bring it out even when it’s hidden. When Irene cleaned those tiles, she didn’t just take the paint and dirt of ages off them. She released the art that went to making them.”

A slight noise made Marianne look up at the stairs. Uncle Charles was standing near the top of them, in his paint-blotched overalls, looking outraged. None of the adult Pinhoes liked to hear the craft openly spoken of like this. Not even Uncle Charles, Marianne thought sadly. Uncle Charles was becoming more of a standard Pinhoe and less of a disappointment every day. Oh, I wish they’d let him go and study to be an artist, like he wanted to after he painted our inn sign! she thought.

Uncle Charles coughed slightly and came loudly down the wooden part of the stairs. Marianne knew that, although it looked as if Uncle Charles was trying to keep paint off the mossy carpet, what he was really doing was making a noise in order to stop Jason talking about dwimmer. “I’ve finished the undercoat in the small bathroom, madam,” he said to Irene. “I’ll be off to my lunch while it dries and come back to do the gloss this afternoon.”

“Thank you, Mr Pinhoe,” Irene said to him.

Jason said, trying to be friendly, “I don’t know how you do it, Mr Pinhoe. I’ve never known paint to dry as quickly as yours does.”

Uncle Charles just gave him a fixed and disapproving look and clumped across the tiles to the front door. The look, and Uncle Charles’s head with it, jerked a little when he saw Klartch. For a fraction of an instant, delight and curiosity jumped across his face. Then the disapproving looked settled back, stronger than ever, and Uncle Charles marched on, and away outside.

He left a slightly awkward silence behind him.

“Well,” Jason said at length, a bit too heartily, “I think we should show you all over the house.”

“I only came to find my cat really,” Marianne said.

“Jane James has got him,” Irene said. “He’s quite safe. Do come and see what we’ve done here!”

It was impossible to say no. Jason and Irene were both so proud of the place. They swept Cat and Marianne through into the front room, where the moss green chairs, new white walls and some of Irene’s design paintings on it in frames, made it look like a different room from the one where Gammer had shouted at the Farleighs. Then Cat and Marianne were swept to Jason’s den, full of books and leather, and Irene’s workroom, all polished wood and a sloping table under the window, with an antique stand for paints and pencils that Marianne knew Dad would have admired: it was so cleverly designed.

After this they were whirled through the dining room and then on upstairs, into a moss green corridor with bedrooms and bathrooms opening off it. Irene had had some of the walls moved, so that now there were bedrooms, sunny and elegant, which had not been there when Marianne last saw the house. The trickling cistern cabinet had become a white warm cupboard that was full of towels and made no noise at all. Uncle Simeon, Marianne thought, had done wonders up here, sprained ankle and all.

“We’re still thinking what to do with the attics,” Irene said, “but they need a lot of sorting out first.”

“I want to check all those herbs for seeds. Some of them are quite rare and may well grow, given the right spells,” Jason explained as he swept everyone downstairs again.

Marianne sent Cat an urgent look on the way down. Cat pretended to be waiting for Klartch in order to look reassuringly back. They had to let Jason and Irene finish showing them the house. It was no good trying to talk before then.

Down the passage from the hall, which turned out to be lined with the same blue, green and white tiles, Jason flung open the door to the kitchen. More of those tiles over the sink, Marianne saw, and in a line round the room; but mostly the impression was of largeness, brightness and comfort. There was a rusty red floor, which the place had always needed, in Marianne’s opinion, and of course the famous table, now scrubbed white, white, white.

Nutcase leered smugly at her from Jane James’s bony knees. Jane James was sitting in a chair close to the stove, stirring a saucepan with one hand and reading a magazine she held in the other.

“I’ve taken the scullery for my distillery,” Jason said. “Let me show —”

“Lunch in half an hour,” Jane James replied.

“I’ll tell Mr Adams,” Irene said.

Jane James stood up and put the magazine on the table and Nutcase on the magazine. Nutcase sat there demurely until Klartch shuffled and clacked his way round the door. Then Nutcase stood up in an arch and spat.

“Don’t be a silly cat,” Jane James said, as if she saw creatures like Klartch every day. “It’s only a baby griffin. Will he eat biscuits?” she asked Cat. She seemed to know at once that he was responsible for Klartch.

“I’ll eat biscuits,” Jason said. “She makes the best biscuits in this world,” he told Marianne.

“Yes, but not for you. You’ll spoil your lunch,” Jane James said. “You and Irene go and get cleaned up ready.”

Cat was not surprised that Jason and Irene meekly scurried out of the kitchen. Nor was he surprised when Jane James gave a secret smile as she watched them go. He thought she was quite certainly a sorceress. She reminded him a lot of Miss Bessemer, who was.

Her biscuits were delicious, big and buttery. Klartch liked them as much as Cat and Marianne did and kept putting his beak up for more. Nutcase looked down from the table at him, disgustedly.

After about her tenth biscuit, Marianne found herself searching Jane James’s face for the humour she was sure was hidden there. “That time you brought Nutcase home in a basket,” she said curiously, “you weren’t cross about him really, were you?”

“Not at all,” Jane James said. “He likes me and I like him. I’d gladly keep him here if he’s too much trouble for you. But I kept seeing you chasing around, worrying about him. Did you get any holiday to yourself this year?”

Marianne’s face crumpled a little as she thought of her story of Princess Irene and her cats, still barely started. But she said bravely, “Our family likes to keep children busy.”

“You’re no child. You’re a full-grown enchantress,” Jane James retorted. “Don’t they notice? And I don’t see any of your cousins very busy. Riding their bikes up and down and yelling seems to me how busy they are.” She stood up and planted Nutcase into Marianne’s arms. “There you are. Tell Mr Adams to come for his lunch on your way out.”

You had to go when Jane James did that, Cat thought. She was quite a tartar. They thanked her for the biscuits and went out into the passage again. As they turned left towards the hall, they nearly collided with a person who appeared to come out of the tiled wall.

“Ooops-a-la!” that person said.

They stared at him. Both of them had a moment when they thought they were looking at Mr Adams and that Mr Adams had shrunk. He had the same tufts of hair and the same wrinkled brown face with the big ears. But Mr Adams had not been wearing bright green, blue and white chequered trousers and a moss green waistcoat. And Mr Adams was about the same height as Cat, who was small for his age, where this person only came up to Cat’s waist.

Klartch clacked forward with great interest.

The little man fended him off with a hand that appeared to be all long thin fingers. “Now, now, now, Klartch. I’m not food for griffins. I’m only a skinny old househob.”

“A househob!” Marianne said. “When did you move in here?”

“About two thousand years ago, when your first Gaffer’s hall was built in this place,” the little man replied. “You might say I’ve always been here.”

“How come I’ve never seen you before, then?” Marianne asked.

The little man looked up at her. His eyes were big and shiny and full of green sadness. “Ah,” he said, “but I’ve seen you, Miss Marianne. I’ve seen most things while I’ve been sealed inside these walls these many long years, until the dwimmer-lady, Princess Irene, let me out.”

“You mean – under the cream paint?” Marianne said. “Did Gammer seal you in?”

“Not she. It was more than paint and longer ago than that,” the househob said. “It was in those days after the devout folk came. After that, the folks in charge here named me and all my kind wicked and ungodly, and they set spells to imprison us – all of us, in houses, fields and woods – and told everyone we were gone for good. Though, mind you, I never could see why these devout folk could believe on the one hand that God made all, and on the other hand call us ungodly – but there you go. It was done.” He spread both huge hands and brought his pointed shoulders up in a shrug. Then he bowed to Marianne and turned and bowed to Cat. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, dwimmer folk both, I believe Jane James has my lunch ready. And she doesn’t hold with me coming in through her kitchen wall. I have to use the door.”

Amazed and bemused, Cat and Marianne stepped back out of the househob’s way. He set off at a crablike trot towards the kitchen. Then turned back anxiously. “You didn’t eat all the biscuits, did you?”

“No, there’s a big tinful,” Cat told him.

“Ah. Good.” The househob turned towards the kitchen door. He did not open it. They watched him walk through it, much as Marianne had watched Nutcase walk through the wall in Furze Cottage. Nutcase, at the sight, squirmed indignantly in Marianne’s arms. He seemed to think he was the only one who should be able to do that sort of thing.

Cat and Marianne looked at one another, but could think of nothing to say.

It was not until they were halfway across the hall that Marianne said, “You think you have an idea for what I can do about Gammer?”

“Yes – I hope,” Cat said, wishing it was a better idea. “At least, I think I know someone you could ask. I met a man in your wood here who I think could help. He was awfully wise.”

Marianne felt truly let down. “A man,” she said disbelievingly. “In the wood.”

“Really wise,” Cat said rather desperately. “Dwimmer wise. And he had a unicorn.”

Marianne supposed Cat was speaking the truth. If he was, then a unicorn did make a difference. If househobs were real, then might not unicorns be real too? A unicorn was part of the Pinhoe coat of arms and could – surely? – be expected to be on her side. And they were in such a mess, she and the Pinhoes and the Farleighs, that anything was worth a try.

“All right,” she said. “How do I find them?”

“I’ll have to take you,” Cat said. “There was a queer barrier in the way. Do you want to come now?”

“Yes, please,” Marianne said.

Outside, beyond the conservatory, Mr Adams was leaning against Syracuse with his arms round Syracuse’s neck, amid a strong smell of peppermint. Positively canoodling, Cat thought, rather jealously. But then, Cat thought, looking at Mr Adams closely, besides seeming as if he had gnome in his ancestry – or was it househob? – Mr Adams had more than a little of this strange thing called dwimmer. He was bound to get on with Syracuse, because Syracuse had it too.

Mr Adams, however much he was enjoying Syracuse, was only too ready to hand Syracuse over and go in for his lunch. “There’s no doubt,” he said, in his talkative way, “that working a garden gives you an appetite. I’ve never been so hungry as I am since I moved here.”

He went on talking. He talked all the time he was helping Cat heave Klartch up across Syracuse’s saddle. He talked while he checked the girths. He talked while he carefully cleaned his spade. But eventually he talked his way through the archway in the wall and round to the kitchen door. They could hear him begin talking to Jane James as he opened it. As soon as the door shut, Marianne put Nutcase secretly down in the beech hedge. “You go on home to Furze Cottage,” she told him. “You know the way.”

“Not happy,” Klartch said plaintively from the saddle.

Cat could see Klartch was uncomfortable, but he said, “It’s your own fault. You would follow me. You can’t walk fast enough to keep up, so stay up there and I’ll let you down when we find the road.”

He and Marianne set off, Cat leading Syracuse, across the stubbly lawn to the row of lilacs at the back. There they found the small rickety gate Cat had come in by. It was green with mildew and almost falling apart with age and they had to shove it hard to get it open again.

“I’d forgotten this was here,” Marianne said, as they went through into the empty, rustling wood. “Gaffer used to call it his secret escape route. Which way do we go?”

“Keep straight on, I think,” Cat said.

There was no path, but Cat set his mind on the whereabouts of that barrier and led the way, over shoals of fallen leaves, past brambles and through hazel thickets, deeper and deeper among the trees. Some of the time he was dragged through bushes by Syracuse, who was getting very excited by the wood and wanted to throw Klartch off and run. Poor Klartch was jogged and jigged and bounced and was less happy than ever. “Down!” he said.

“Soon,” Cat told him.

They came to the barrier quite unexpectedly on the other side of a holly bush. It stretched as far as either of them could see in both directions, rusting, ramshackle and overgrown. Marianne looked at it in astonishment.

“What’s this? I never saw this before!”

“You didn’t know to look for it, I expect,” Cat said.

“It’s a mess!” Marianne said. “Creepers and nettles and rusty wire. Who put it up?”

“I don’t know,” Cat said. “But it’s made of magic really. Do you think you could help me take it down? We won’t get Syracuse past it the way I got in last time.”

“I can try, I suppose,” Marianne said. “How do you suggest?”

Cat thought about it for a moment and then conjured the nearest clothesline from Ulverscote. It came with a row of someone’s pants pegged on it, which made them both struggle not to give shrieks of laughter. Each of them had the feeling that loud laughter might fetch the person who made the barrier here. From then on, they spoke in low voices, to be on the safe side.

While Marianne carefully unpegged the pants and put them in a pile by the nearest tree, Cat fastened each end of the rope to the back of the saddle on Syracuse, using a thick blob of magic to fix it there. Klartch reared up and watched with interest as Cat took the rest of the clothesline and stretched high to loop it along the ragged top of the barrier. Klartch was an actual help here. Because Klartch was attending to the barrier, Cat somehow knew that it was mostly unreal. It had been made out of two small pieces of chicken wire and one length of corrugated iron, plus a charm to make the weeds grow over it, and then stretched by magic to become the long, impenetrable thing it was now. This meant that the clothesline was going to slide straight through it and come loose, if Cat was not careful.

“Thanks, Klartch,” Cat said. As soon as the rope was jammed in along the ragged spikes of rusty iron, he fixed it there with a truly enormous slab of magic. He jerked it to test it. It was quite solid. “You take one side and pull hard when I say,” Cat murmured to Marianne, and took hold of the rope on the other side.

“What charm do I use when I pull?” Marianne asked.

“Nothing particularly,” Cat said, surprised that she should ask. Ulverscote witchcraft must be very different from enchanter’s magic. “Just think hard of the barrier coming down.”

Marianne’s eyebrows went up, but she obediently took hold of the rope on her side. She was terribly obedient, Cat thought. He remembered Janet once telling him that he was too obedient, and he knew that had been the result of the way his sister always despised him. He was suddenly, firmly decided that, however much Marianne protested, he was going to tell Chrestomanci about her.

“Right,” Cat said to Syracuse, in a low voice. “Work, Syracuse. Walk on.”

Syracuse turned his head and stared at Cat. Me, work? said every line of him. And he simply planted himself and stood there, whatever Cat said.

“You can have another peppermint,” Cat said. “Just walk. We need your strength.”

Syracuse put his ears back and simply stood.

“Oh, lord!” Marianne said. “He’s as bad as Nutcase. You go and lead him and I’ll pull on both halves of the rope.” She collected Cat’s side of the rope and stood in the middle, holding both lengths of clothesline.

If Syracuse decided to kick out, he could hurt Marianne there. Cat hurried round to Syracuse’s head and took hold of his bridle. He found a slightly furry peppermint in one of his pockets and held it out at arm’s length in front of Syracuse’s nose, before he dared pull on the bridle. “Now come on, Syracuse! Peppermint!”

Syracuse’s ears came up and he rolled an eye at Cat, to say he knew exactly what Cat was up to.

“Yes,” Cat said to him. “It’s because we really need you.”

Syracuse snorted. Then, when Cat was ready to give up, and to his huge relief, Syracuse started to trudge forward, stirring up clouds of broken dead leaves that got into Cat’s eyes and his mouth and down his boots and even somehow down his neck. Cat blinked and blew and urged Syracuse and encouraged him and willed at the barrier. He could feel Marianne behind them, willing too with surprising power, as she pulled on the clothesline like someone in two tug-of-wars at once.

The barrier rustled, grated, groaned, and keeled slowly over in front of Marianne. When Cat turned to tell Syracuse he was a good horse and to feed him the peppermint, he could see the long line of metal and creepers in both directions, slowly falling flat, piece by piece, rather like a wave breaking on a beach. He could hear metal screaming and branches snapping, off into the distance both ways. Cat was rather surprised. He had not expected to bring the whole thing down. But he supposed it must be because the barrier had been made out of just the one small piece really.

“Hooray!” Marianne said quietly, letting go of the rope.

Though the barrier now looked like a pile of nettles, brambles and broken creepers, there was still jagged metal underneath. Cat flicked the rope loose from it and undid the fastenings from Syracuse and, while Marianne busily pegged the pants back on to the rope, he tried growing a mat of ivy over the barrier, to make it safer for Syracuse to walk on. Chrestomanci was always telling him that he should never waste magic, so Cat fed the slab of magic that had fastened the rope back into the fallen creepers.

This was quite as startling as the way the whole barrier had come down. Ivy surged and spread and gnarled and tangled, a mature and glossy dark green, in a whispering rush, that put out yellowish flowers and then black fruits in seconds, not just in one place as Cat had intended, but off along the fallen barrier in both directions. By the time Marianne had turned round with the pants pegged back on the clothesline, the barrier was a long mound of ivy as far as she could see both ways. It looked as if it had been growing there for years.

“My!” she said. “You do have dwimmer, don’t you!”

“It may be the magic in this wood,” Cat said. He sent the clothesline back where it had come from, then he turned Syracuse round and led him carefully over the ivy bank and down into the mossy road beyond. While Marianne crunched her way across after them, Cat stopped and got Klartch down. Klartch immediately became hugely happy. He gave out whistling squeaks and went lolloping off towards the nearest bend in the road. The mossy surface seemed perfect for his clawed feet. Syracuse felt it was perfect for hooves too. He bounded and waltzed and tried to take off after Klartch so determinedly that Cat was dragged along in great hopping bounds, with Marianne pelting after them.

They whirled round the bend in the road with Klartch in the lead. The old cart was there, parked in a new place on the verge, with the seeming old white mare grazing beside it. Beyond that, the old man looked up in amazement from his panful of mushrooms and bacon. He just managed to let the pan go and brace himself, before Marianne rushed up and hurled herself on him.

“Gaffer!” she screamed. “Oh, Gaffer, you’re not dead after all!” She pushed her face into the old man’s tattered jacket and burst into tears.

Syracuse stopped dead when he saw the old unicorn. She raised her head from the grass and looked at him enquiringly. A ray of sun, slanting between the trees, caught her horn and lit it into pearly creams and greens and blues. Or was that blue and green and white, like the tiles in Woods House, Cat wondered. Syracuse tiptoed respectfully towards her and put out his nose. Graciously, the old unicorn touched her nose to his.

“He’s got unicorn blood in him somewhere,” she remarked softly to Cat. “I wonder how that happened.”

Beyond her, Klartch was creeping towards the pan of mushrooms and bacon with his beak out. Cat thought he ought to go and drag him away. But Marianne was kneeling in the old man’s arms, sobbing out what seemed to be private things, and Cat was embarrassed about interrupting. However, while Cat hesitated, the old man swivelled himself round and spared an arm from Marianne in order to tap Klartch firmly on the beak. “Wait,” Cat heard him say. “You shall have some presently.” And he went back to listening attentively to Marianne.

“Do you understand a little more about dwimmer now?” the unicorn said conversationally to Cat.

“I – think so,” Cat said. “Irene has it. Marianne keeps saying I’ve got it too. Have I?”

“You have. Even more strongly than my old Gaffer,” the unicorn told him. “Didn’t you just grow several miles of ivy?”

Nearly a year ago now, Cat had been forced to accept that he was a nine-lifed enchanter. That had been hard to do, but he supposed it made it easier to accept having dwimmer too. He grinned, thinking of himself stuffed full of every kind of magic – except, he thought, Joe Pinhoe’s kind. But then, when he thought about it, he knew that Joe had been using dwimmer to animate that stuffed ferret of his. How muddling. “Yes,” he said. “Can you tell me what I ought to be doing with it?”

“We all hoped you might ask me that,” said the unicorn. “You can do many thousands of folk the same favour that Irene did for her househob, if you want.”

“Oh,” said Cat. “Where are these people?”

Syracuse nudged up to the unicorn and snorted impatiently.

“I’ll have a long talk with you in a moment,” she said to him. “Why don’t you graze on this tasty bank for a while?”

Syracuse looked at her questioningly. She stumped forward a step or so and flicked her horn affectionately along his mane. All his tack vanished, saddle, bit, reins, everything, leaving him without so much as a halter. He looked much better like that to Cat’s eyes. Syracuse twitched all over with relief, before he bent his head and started tearing up mouthfuls of grass and little fragrant plants.

“If you can taste it through all the peppermint you’ve eaten,” the unicorn remarked dryly.

She said to Cat, “I’ll put it all back later. The folks are here. Hidden behind. Imprisoned for no fault that I can see, except that they scare humans. Can’t you feel this?”

Cat examined the wood with his thoughts. It was quiet, too quiet, and the silence was not peace. It was the same emptiness that he had felt whenever he rode out with Syracuse, by the river and on the heath, and behind the emptiness was misery, and longing. It was the same thing that he had felt in Home Wood when he first encountered Mr Farleigh. As for this wood, he remembered Chrestomanci saying, rather irritably, what a dreary, empty place it was. But here there seemed to be no rack of dead animals to act as a gate between the emptiness and the misery in the distance behind.

“I don’t know what to do about it,” he told the unicorn. He had not managed to do anything in Home Wood, even with a gate. What did you do here, against complete blankness? “You can’t clean a wood the way Irene cleaned those tiles.”

“You can make an opening, though,” the unicorn suggested quietly. “Make a road between the background and the foreground. That’s how roads usually go.”

“I’ll try.” Cat stood and thought. If he thought of it as like stage scenery, he supposed he could make the empty wood seem like a solid sort of curtain that had been drawn across the real scenery, the blue distance behind, and then tightly fixed. “Draw it like a curtain?” he asked the unicorn.

“If you want,” she answered.

The trouble was, it was only the one curtain. There was no opening, the way there was with window curtains, where you take hold of the two sides and pull them apart. Cat could not see himself tearing trees and grass and bushes in two. Even if he could, it would kill everything. No. The only thing to do seemed to be to find the edge of the curtain, wherever that was, and pull it from there.

He looked for the edge. There was miles of this curtain. Like a sheet of rubbery gauze, it stretched and stretched, out across the country, out across the continent, over the oceans, right to the edges of the world. He had to stretch and stretch himself to get near it, and the rubbery edge kept slipping away from his imaginary clutching fingers. Cat clenched his teeth and stretched himself more, just that little bit further. And at last his reaching left hand closed on the thin, slippery edge of it. He put both hands to it and hauled. It would hardly budge. Someone had pegged it down really firmly. Even when the unicorn came and rested her horn gently on Cat’s shoulder, Cat could only move the thing an inch or so.

“Try asking the prisoners to help,” the unicorn murmured.

“Good idea,” Cat panted. Still hanging on to the distant end of the curtain, he pushed his mind into the empty blue distance behind it, and it was not empty. The ones inside were all swarming, drifting and anxiously clustering towards the other side of the curtain. “Pull, pull!” he whispered to them. “Help me pull!” It was so like making Syracuse pull down the barrier that he almost offered them peppermint.

But they needed no bribery. They were frantic to get out now. They swooped on the place where Cat’s imaginary hands were clutched, in a storm of small, fierce strangenesses, and fastened on beside Cat and heaved. Beside Cat, the unicorn put her horn down and heaved too.

The curtain tore. First it came away in a long strip across the middle, making Cat stagger back into the unicorn. Then it tore downwards, then diagonally, as more and more eager creatures inside clawed and hauled and pulled at it. Finally it began flopping down in wobbly dead heaps, which folded in on themselves and melted. Cat could actually smell it as it melted. The smell was remarkably like the disinfectant spell Euphemia had used on the stairs. But this smell was overwhelmed almost at once by a sweet, wild scent from the myriad beings who came whirring out past Cat’s face and fled away into the landscape. Cat thought it was, just a little, like the incense smell from the meadows by the river.

“Done it, I think!” he gasped at the unicorn. He slid down her hairy side and sat on the bank with a bump. He was weak with effort. But he was glad to see that the trees of the wood were still there. It would have been a mistake to have tried to tear the wood in half.

“You have,” the unicorn said. “Thank you.” Her horn gently touched Cat’s forehead. It smelt like the meadows too.

When Cat recovered and sat up properly, he saw that the old man was still talking earnestly with Marianne. But he knew what had been going on. His bright brown eyes kept turning appreciatively to the woods, although he now had the pan on his knees and was feeding a soothing mushroom to Marianne and then some bacon to Klartch, as if there was no difference between them.

“But, Gaffer,” Cat heard Marianne say, “if you’ve been trapped here all these years, where do you get your bacon from?”

“Your Uncle Cedric puts it through the barrier for me,” Gaffer said. “And eggs. They all know I’m here, you know, but Cedric’s the only one who thinks I might need feeding.”

While they talked, the wood was making a great rustling and heaving. Like a sail filling with wind, it seemed to be filling with life around them. Cat looked down and saw, almost between his knees, a multitude of tiny green beings milling and welling out of the ground. Other bigger ones flitted at the corners of his eyes. When he looked across the road, he could see strange gawky creatures stalking among the trees and small, airborne ones darting from bush to bush. There seemed to be a tall green woman walking dreamily through a distant patch of sunlight. Someone came up behind Cat – all he could see of him or her was a very thin brown leg – and bent over to whisper, “Thank you. None of us is going to forget.” He or she was gone when Cat turned his head.

Hooves sounded on the mossy road. The unicorn, who was now standing head to tail with Syracuse, presumably having the talk she had promised, looked up at the sound. “Ah,” she said. “Here comes my daughter, free at last. Thank you, Cat.”

Cat and Marianne both found themselves standing up as a splendid young unicorn dashed along the road and stopped beside the old man’s cart. She was small and lissom and silvery, with quantities of white mane and tail. Cat could see she was very young because her horn was the merest creamy stub on her forehead. Syracuse, at the sight of her, began to prance and sidle and make himself look magnificent.

“Ah, no,” the old unicorn said. “She’s still only a yearling, Syracuse. She’s been a yearling for more than a thousand years. Give her a chance to grow up now.”

The small unicorn ignored Syracuse anyway and trotted lovingly up to her mother.

“Beautiful!” Gaffer said admiringly. He put the food down on the grass for Klartch and leant over to concentrate on the young unicorn.

Klartch, to Cat’s surprise, turned away from the food and went shambling and stumbling across the road, making squeaks and hoots and long quavering whistles. The sounds were answered from inside the wood by a deeper whistling, like a trill on an oboe. A blot of darkness that Cat had taken for a holly brake stirred and stretched and moved out into the road, where she lifted great grey wings and put her enormous horn-coloured beak down to meet Klartch. Cat knew it was the creature that had landed on his tower before Klartch was hatched. She was surprisingly graceful for something that huge, grey and white from her sleek feathered head to her lionlike furry body and swinging tufted tail. She lifted a feathered foot with six inch talons on the end and gently, very gently, pulled Klartch in under one of her enormous wings.

She was Klartch’s mother of course. For the first time in his life, Cat knew what it was like to be truly and wretchedly miserable. Before, when he had been miserable, Cat had mostly felt lost and peevish. But now, when he was going to lose Klartch, he felt a blinding heartache that not only devastated his mind but gave him a real, actual pain somewhere in the centre of his chest. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, when he heaved up a difficult breath and said, “Klartch ought to go with you now.”

The mother griffin drew her beak back from Klartch squirming and squeaking under her wing and turned her enormous yellow eyes on Cat. Cat could see she was as sad as he was. “Oh, no,” she said in her deep trilling voice. “You hatched him. I’d prefer you to bring him up. He needs a proper education. Griffins are meant to be as learned and wise as they are magical. He ought to have teaching that I never had.”

Gaffer said, rather reproachfully, “I did my best to teach you.”

“Yes, you did,” the mother griffin replied. She smiled at Gaffer with the ends of her beak. “But you could only teach me when I got out at full moon, Gaffer-man. I hope you can teach me all the time now, but I’d like Klartch to have an enchanter’s upbringing.”

“So be it,” Gaffer said. He said to Cat, “Can you do that for her?”

“Yes,” Cat said, and then added bravely, “It depends what Klartch wants, though.”

Klartch seemed surprised that anyone should question what he wanted. He dived out from under the griffin’s big wing and scuttled over to Cat, where he leant heavily against Cat’s legs and wiped his beak against Cat’s riding boots. “Mine,” he said. “Cat mine.”

The pain lifted from Cat’s chest like magic. He smiled – because he couldn’t help it – across at Klartch’s mother. “I really will look after him,” he promised.

“That’s settled then,” Gaffer said, warm and approving. “Marianne, my pet, would you do me the favour of running down to the village and telling your dad I’ll be along shortly to sort things out? He won’t be too pleased, I’m afraid, so tell him I insisted. I’ll follow you when I’ve tidied up here.”

Now Marianne was leaving, Cat realised that he ought to be going too. Joss Callow would have complained to Chrestomanci by this time. He went up to the big griffin and held his hand out politely. She rubbed it with her great beak. “May I visit Klartch from time to time?” she asked.

“Yes, of course,” Cat said. “Any time.” He hoped Chrestomanci wouldn’t mind too much – he hoped Chrestomanci wouldn’t mind too much about all of it. He would have to confess what he had done to Mr Farleigh sometime soon. He decided not to think about that yet.

When he turned round, Syracuse was stamping irritably because his saddle and bridle were back. Marianne was staring at the two unicorns.

“Gaffer,” she said, “when did old Molly turn into a unicorn?”

Gaffer looked up from cleaning out his pan. “She always was one, pet. She chose not to let people see it.”

“Oh,” Marianne said. She was very quiet, thinking about this, as she walked along the mossy road with Cat and Syracuse. The old grey mare who took Luke Pinhoe to London and then came back on her own – had that been Molly too? Unicorns lived for hundreds of years, they said. Marianne wished she knew.

Cat was letting Klartch bumble along behind them since the surface suited his feet so well. Around them, the woods were full of green distances that had not been there before and alive with rushings, rustlings and small half-heard voices. There was laughter too, some of it plain joyful, some of it mean and mocking.

Marianne said to Cat, “You’ve let all the hidden folk out, haven’t you?”

Cat nodded. He was not going to apologise, even to Chrestomanci, about that.

Marianne said, “My family are going to be furious with you. They fuss all the time that it’s their sacred task to keep them in.”

A particularly mocking and malevolent laugh rang out among the trees as Marianne said this. “Some of them don’t sound very nice,” she added, looking that way uneasily.

“Some humans aren’t very nice either,” Cat said.

Marianne thought of Great Uncle Edgar and Aunt Joy and said, “True.”

The road ran out into strong daylight a moment later. They found themselves on a rocky headland, looking down on Ulverscote across a long green meadow. They were above the church tower here and could see down into the main street over the roof of the Pinhoe Arms. It was quiet and empty because everyone was indoors having lunch.

This rocky bit, Cat thought, was the part of Ulverscote Wood that he and Roger had kept seeing when they tried to get to it before. While they waited for Klartch to catch up, he looked out the other way, across the wide countryside, over humping hills, hedges and the white winding road, wondering if he could see the Castle from here.

He saw a most peculiar bristling black cloud coming across the nearest hill. It spread across a stubble field on one side and a pasture on the other, and it appeared to be trickling and wobbling along the road too. It was rushing towards them almost as fast as a car could go. An angry buzzing sort of sound came with it.

“What on earth is that?” he said to Marianne. “A swarm of huge wasps?”

Marianne looked, and went pale. “Oh my lord!” she said. “It’s the Farleighs. On broomsticks and bicycles.”

Cat could see it was people now: angry, determined women of all ages whizzing along on broomsticks and equally angry men and boys pedalling furiously along the road.

Marianne said, “I must go down and warn everyone!” and set off at a run down the meadow.

But it was too late. Before Marianne had gone three steps, the horde of Farleighs had swept down into Ulverscote and the place was black with them. Yelling with fury and triumph, the broomstick riders sprang off on to their feet, lofted their brooms and began smashing windows with the butt ends. The cyclists arrived, braking and howling, and threw powdered spells in through the smashed windows. Inside the houses, Pinhoes screamed.

At the screams, a whole crowd of Pinhoe men, who must have been having lunch in the inn, came swarming out of the Pinhoe Arms, carrying stools and chairs and small tables. Marianne saw Uncle Charles there, brandishing a chair leg, and Uncle Arthur charging in front with a coat rack. They all fell on the cyclists, whacking mightily. More Pinhoes poured into the street from the houses, and others leant out of upstairs windows and threw things and tipped things upon the Farleighs.

Round the smashed windows of the grocer’s and the chemist’s, there were instant battles. Feet crunched in broken glass there, cheeses and big bottles were hurled. Broomsticks walloped. In almost no time, the main street was a fighting tangle of bent bicycles and shouting, screaming people. Marianne could see Gammer Norah Farleigh at the back of the fight, yelling her troops on and cracking an enormous horsewhip.

Down the hill at the other end, Aunt Joy raced out of the Post Office carrying a long bar of scaffolding like a lance and screaming curses. Uncle Isaac and Uncle Richard were pelting up behind her. Marianne saw her parents running behind them. Mum was carrying her new broom and Dad seemed to be waving a saw. Nicola’s mother came out of her house dressed in her best, on her way to visit Nicola, screamed, went in and slammed her door. Up the hill at the other end, Great Uncle Lester, who was coming in his car to give Nicola’s mother a lift to the hospital, bared his teeth and drove straight at the back of Gammer Norah. She saw him coming in time and levitated to the roof of his car, where she rode screaming, cracking her whip and trying to break his windscreen with her broomstick. Uncle Lester drove slowly on regardless, trying to run over Farleighs, but mostly running over bicycles instead.

Behind the car, Great Uncle Edgar and Great Aunt Sue, who must have been out excercising their dogs, were arriving at a tired trot. They were surrounded by exhausted dogs, who were mostly too fat and tired to bite Farleighs, although great Aunt Sue shrieked at them to “Bite, bite, bite!” They settled for barking instead.

The Reverend Pinhoe appeared on the churchyard wall waving a censer of smoking incense on a chain and making prayerful gestures. When that made no difference to the struggling mayhem in the street below him, he swung the censer at any Farleigh head he could reach. There were clangs and terrible cries. And down near the Post Office, Marianne’s parents had entered the fray, Mum batting with her broom and Dad swinging the flat of the saw at any Farleigh near. Even above the noise of the rest, Marianne could hear the dreadful ker-blatt SWAT from Dad’s saw. And she and Cat both winced at what Aunt Joy was doing with her scaffolding pole.

They both turned their eyes away to the upper end of the village again. There, behind the row of yelping dogs, the long black car from the Castle edged cautiously out of the gates of Woods House and crawled to halt at the back of the battle, as if Millie, who was driving it, was at a loss to know what to do. Nearly a thousand fighting witches seemed a bit much even for an enchantress as strong as Millie.

“Do something! Do something!” Marianne implored Cat.

Nearly a thousand fighting witches were a bit much for Cat too. And he was not going to take Syracuse and Klartch in among that lot. But someone was going to be killed soon if he didn’t do something. That man with the saw down the hill was starting to hit people with the edge of it. There was blood down that end of the street. A giant stasis might stop it, Cat thought. But what happened when he took the stasis off?

All the same, Cat drew in his power, as he had been taught, in order to cast the stasis. He almost had enough, when with a violent clattering and screams of “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” the flying machine swept in from above the Post Office. The faces of the fighters turned upwards in alarm as it clapped and flapped and shouted its swift way over their heads.

A giant voice, magically amplified and accompanied by a steady chant of “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!”, shouted, “OUT OF THE WAY! WE’RE CRASHING!”

Everyone dived to the sides of the street. The machine did not so much crash as simply keep on in a straight line. It seemed to get lower with every flap of the jointed tables, but in fact it was the street that got steeper and the flying machine just flew into it. It landed with a great clatter and a tremendous crunching of bicycles underneath, exactly opposite the Pinhoe Arms. The chanting from the broken furniture faded to a murmur. Joe and Roger sat back gasping. Joe was without his shirt and both were covered with sweat. Roger’s hair was so dark with perspiration that, for a moment, he looked quite strikingly like his father.

Every person there was able to make that comparison quite easily. Chrestomanci stood up among the tangle of chairs at the back of the machine. Chrestomanci’s left arm was in a bloodstained sling that seemed to have been Joe’s shirt and his smooth grey jacket was torn. He looked very unwell, but no one had any doubt who he was. Pinhoes and Farleighs, panting, with hair hanging over their faces and, in some cases, blood running down among the hair, stopped fighting and said to one another, “It’s the Big Man! That’s torn it!”

Cat sighed and sent his gathered magic off as a goodwill spell. “Mr Farleigh shot him!” he said to Marianne.

Marianne merely nodded and went running off down the meadow, making for the alleyway beside the Pinhoe Arms. As she ran, she could hear tinny bongings as Gammer Norah trampled up and down the roof of Great Uncle Lester’s car, shouting, “Don’t you dare interfere! We don’t need you from the Castle! These Pinhoes turned our Gaffer into a stone tree! So keep out of it!”

“I believe you have made a serious error there, ma’am,” Chrestomanci replied.

When Marianne hurtled out of the other end of the alley into the street, Gammer Norah was still shouting. Her hair had come down from its bun into a sort of wad on one shoulder. What with that, and her long eyes narrowed with rage, she looked as menacingly witchy as a person could. But Chrestomanci was just standing there, waiting for her to stop. The moment Gammer Norah had to pause to take a breath, he said, “I suggest you join me in the Pinhoe Arms to discuss the matter.”

Gammer Norah drew herself up to her full squat height. “I will not! I have never been inside a public house in my life!”

“In the inn yard then,” Chrestomanci said. He climbed out of the flying machine, which seemed to settle and spread once he was out of it. As Marianne rushed up to it, she could hear all the chairs, stools, tables, and even the feather duster at the tail, still whispering that they belonged to Chrestomanci Castle.

“Are you all right?” she asked Joe. He looked almost as pale as Chrestomanci.

Joe stared up at her as if she was a nightmare. “He shot him!” he said hoarsely. “Gaffer Farleigh shot the Big Man! We had to land on Crowhelm Top and do first aid. He was bleeding in spurts, Marianne. I’d never done a real healing before. I thought he was going to die. I was scared.”

Marianne said soothingly, “But he’s got nine lives, Joe.”

Roger looked up at her. “No, he hasn’t. He’s only got two left and he could have been down to just the one. I was scared too.”

Meanwhile, all around them, Farleighs were sullenly separating from Pinhoes, picking up bicycles and broomsticks and kicking them into working order. Two particularly hefty Farleigh men came and stood beside the flying machine. “You’re on top of our bikes,” one of them said, in a way that suggested trouble.

At this Chrestomanci came and put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. He gave Marianne a long, vague look as he said, “You two get yourselves back to the Castle now.” Joe and Roger both groaned at the thought of further effort. “Well you are blocking the main road,” Chrestomanci said, “and these gentlemen need their bicycles.”

“Who are you calling gentlemen?” the Farleigh man demanded.

“Not you, obviously,” Chrestomanci said. “Roger, tell Miss Bessemer to give you both hot, sweet tea and then lunch, and ask her to send Tom and Miss Rosalie here to me at once. Miss Rosalie is to bring the folder from my study, the blue one.” His bright dark eyes met Marianne’s, making her jump. “Young lady, would you mind very much giving them a strong boost to get them airborne? I see you have the power. And you,” he added to the Farleigh men, “please stand clear.”

Marianne nodded, highly surprised. As the Farleigh men grudgingly moved back, Joe and Roger exchanged a look of misery and Joe said, “Right. One, two, three.” The two of them began pedalling. The three-legged stool revolved on the front and the machine trembled all over.

Help! Marianne thought. How do you boost? There was no charm for this any more than there was for pulling the barrier down. She supposed she had better do it the way Cat had told her, by willing.

She willed, hard and ignorantly. The flying machine went straight upwards, with a mighty clattering and a scream of “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” It tipped left wing downwards and the bent bicycle that had been caught in the woodwork clanged out of it, almost on top of the Farleigh it belonged to.

“Straighten her out!” Joe shrieked.

Marianne did her best, Roger did his best and Joe swayed himself madly to the right. Marianne realised what to do and gave them another boost, forwards this time. The pieces of table began to flap at last and the machine sailed forward up the hill, forcing Gammer Norah to slide quickly off Uncle Lester’s car or be smacked on the head. The machine then swayed sideways the other way, to only just miss the Castle car as it crept downhill towards the Pinhoe Arms, and then pitched the other way to skim across the heads of Uncle Cedric and Aunt Polly, who were arriving too late, both perched on the same carthorse. After that it straightened out and went majestically flapping, creaking and whispering over the chimneys of Woods House. Most of Aunt Sue’s dogs decided it was the real enemy and went off up the road after it, yapping fit to burst.

“Oh, I wish it hadn’t gone!” one of Marianne’s smaller cousins wailed. “I wanted a go in it!”

Marianne shuddered. The thing looked even chancier than riding Mum’s broomstick at night. She watched the Castle car stop by the Pinhoe Arms. It had all four tires thickly coated in spells against the broken pieces of glass in the road. Clever, she thought. Uncle Lester’s car had three flat tires and several bicycles sticking out from underneath it. Millie got out from the driver’s seat and hurried towards Chrestomanci, horrified at the state he was in. Jason sprang out from the other side. The back door opened to let out Joss Callow, to Marianne’s surprise. Joss turned to help out Irene, who was holding Nutcase in her arms.

I think Nutcase really is going back to Woods House to live, Marianne thought, not sure whether she was sad or relieved. And really, some of my uncles are so slow! she added to herself, as Uncle Cedric and Aunt Polly clopped massively downhill and Uncle Simeon came thundering uphill in his builder’s van, both of them far too late to do any good.

There was almost a quiet moment after this, while Chrestomanci conferred quickly with Jason and Millie, and Millie seemed to be trying to patch Chrestomanci up. Marianne looked up at the sign on the Pinhoe Arms that Uncle Charles had painted the year she was born. The unicorn was definitely Molly and the griffin facing her was, equally definitely, Klartch’s mother. Uncle Charles had known. Then why had he always pretended that things like unicorns and griffins didn’t exist?

And where was Gaffer? Marianne wondered anxiously. He said he would come.

Chrestomanci looked round, checking up on everybody. “I need all the principals in this matter in the inn yard with me now,” he said.

The words caught Cat as he was halfway down the meadow. Chrestomanci was using Performative Speech, the enchanters’ magic Cat had been wrestling with after he put Joe on the ceiling. He recognised it as he arrived with a jolt in the inn yard with Syracuse. Klartch, draped across the saddle, was shot off backwards as Syracuse made his usual objections to people using magic on him. Cat was carried off his feet for a moment and it was Marianne who rescued Klartch with a quick levitation spell, and lowered him gently to the cobbles.

“Thanks!” Cat gasped, and then had to turn the other way as, to his dismay, Joss Callow dodged up and grabbed Syracuse from the other side.

“I’ll walk him back home for you if you like,” Joss said breathlessly, searching in his pocket for a peppermint.

Joss was not angry with him, Cat realised. Joss was extremely anxious to get away from here. Cat did not blame him. The people Joss spied for and the people Joss spied on were all here in the yard, and most of them were strong magic users.

“Thanks. Would you?” he said and gave Syracuse over to Joss gladly, wishing he had the same excuse to leave. But Chrestomanci’s eye was now on Cat, bright and vague. Cat looked back, appalled at all the blood on Chrestomanci and at how unwell Chrestomanci looked. He knew he should have stopped Mr Farleigh firing that gun at all.

Chrestomanci turned to have a word with Uncle Arthur, who had a black eye again. “Yes,” he said. “Find her something as much like a throne as you can. That may calm her down. And drinks all round on the Castle, if you please.” Cat could see Chrestomanci was feeling dreadful, but holding himself together by magic.

As Joss led Syracuse out of the inn yard, things settled down into a sort of open air conference. Gammer Norah was given a mighty carved wooden chair from the snug – where she sat and glared round aggressively – and sour Dorothea was given a smaller chair next to her. Various Farleigh cousins sat on barrels around them, trying to look dignified. Cat and Marianne sat on crates with Klartch between them. Everyone else pulled around the weatherbeaten benches and settles from beside the inn walls to sit in a rough circle, while Uncle Arthur hurried out again with a cushioned chair from the saloon bar for Chrestomanci. Chrestomanci sank into it gratefully.

Drinks began arriving then. Chris Pinhoe and Clare Callow came out with trays of mugs, followed by Aunt Helen and most of her boys with trays of glasses. But they were not the only ones giving out drinks. Cat saw a thin green non-human hand reach round Gammer Norah’s chair to present her with a foaming mug.

“Not for me. I never drink anything but water,” Gammer Norah said, loftily pushing the mug aside.

The hand drew back so that it was out of Gammer Norah’s sight and the mug it held changed to a straight glass full of transparent liquid, which it held out to Gammer Norah again. A very quiet titter of laughter came from behind the chair as Gammer Norah seized the glass and took a hearty swig from it.

Cat was wondering what it really was in that glass, when two brownish purple hands pushed themselves between himself and Marianne, invitingly holding out glasses of something pink. Cat was going to take one, but Millie caught his eye and shook her head vigorously. “No, thank you,” Cat said politely.

Marianne looked at him and said, “No, thank you,” too. The hands drew back in a disappointed way. “Look what you did!” Marianne whispered to Cat. “They’re everywhere!”

They were too, Cat realised, as he gratefully took a glass of real ginger beer from the tray Marianne’s cousin John held out to him. The brownish purple hands were now offering what looked like beer to Uncle Charles and Marianne’s dad. Marianne could not help giggling while she sipped her lemonade when both men took the not-beer. Sour Dorothea was swigging from an enormous glass of not-water. At the gate of the yard, where a crowd of Pinhoes and Farleighs stood looking on, small half-seen shapes were flitting among legs and peering round skirts, and hands of strange colours were passing people glasses and mugs. Things that were almost like squirrels skipped along the walls of the yard. Up on the inn roof someone invisible was playing a faint skirling tune behind one of the chimneys.

“Oh, well,” Cat said.

“I can’t think what this Big Man thinks he’s got to say to us,” Gammer Norah said to Dorothea, loudly and rudely. “We did nothing wrong. It was all those Pinhoes’ fault.” She held out her empty glass. “More, please.” The green hand obligingly filled it with not-water again.

Chrestomanci watched it rather quizzically. “I am not,” he said, “in a very forgiving state of mind, Mrs – er – Forelock. Your Gaffer did his best to shoot me this morning, when all I was doing was testing from the air the extent of your quite unwarranted misdirection spells. Let me make this clear to all of you: those spells are a misuse of magic that I am not prepared to treat lightly. It makes it worse that the fellow who shot at me – I presume to prevent me investigating – appears to be my own employee. My gamekeeper.” He turned to Millie in a bewildered way. “Why do we need a gamekeeper, do you know? Nobody at the Castle shoots birds.”

“Of course not,” Millie said, quickly taking up her cue. “According to the records, the last people to go shooting were wizards on the staff of Benjamin Allworthy, nearly two hundred years ago. But the records show that, when the next Chrestomanci took over, everyone quite unaccountably forgot to dismiss Mr Farleigh.”

Jason leant forward. “More than that,” he said. “They increased his salary. You must be quite a wealthy lady these days, Mrs Farleigh.”

Gammer Norah tossed her head, causing her bun to unroll even further. “How should I know? I’m only his wife, and his third wife at that, I’d have you know.” She pounded her broomstick on the cobbles of the yard. “None of that alters the fact that the poor man’s turned into a stone tree! I want justice! From these Pinhoes here!” Her long eyes narrowed and she glared along the row of Marianne’s uncles and aunts.

All of them glared back. Uncle Arthur said, “We. Did. Not. Do. It. Got that, Gammer Norah?”

“We wouldn’t know how,” Dad added in his pacific way. “We’re peaceful in our craft.” He looked down and noticed the saw he was still carrying and became very embarrassed. He bent the saw about, boing dwang. “We always co-operated,” he said. “We’ve lent Gaffer Farleigh our strength for the misdirections for eight years now. We lent him strength for one thing or another as long as I’ve been alive.”

“Yes, and what did your Gaffer do with it? That’s what I want to know!” Marianne’s mother asked, leaning forward fiercely. “If you ask me, he had the whole countryside under his thumb, doing what he wanted. And now I hear he’s been at it for nearly two hundred years! Using our craft to lengthen his days, wasn’t he?”

“Go it, Cecily!” Uncle Charles murmured.

“Never mind that!” Gammer Norah shouted, pounding with her broom again. “He’s still unlawfully turned to stone! If you didn’t do it, who did? Was it you?” she demanded, turning her long-eyed glare on Chrestomanci.

“I wonder what you mean by ‘unlawfully’, Mrs Farlook,” Chrestomanci told her. “The man tried to kill me. But it was not my doing. When one has just been shot, it is very hard to do anything, let alone create statues.” He gazed around the inn yard in his vaguest way. “If the person who did it is here, perhaps he would stand up.”

Cat felt Chrestomanci using Performative Speech again and found himself standing up. His stomach felt as if it was dropping out of his body, ginger beer and all. “It was me, Mrs Farleigh,” he said. His mouth was so dry he could hardly speak. “I – I was riding by the river.” The frightening thing was not so much that they were all witches here. It was the way they were all people he didn’t know, gazing at him in accusing amazement. But behind Gammer Norah’s chair, green and purple-brown hands were punching the air in joy. The ones like squirrels were bounding about on the walls. And behind the inn chimneys, the music changed to loud, glad and triumphant. This helped Cat a great deal. He swallowed and went on, “I wasn’t quick enough to stop him firing at the flying machine – I’m sorry. But after that he was going to shoot Klartch, then Syracuse, then me. It was the only way I could manage to stop him.”

“You?” said Gammer Norah, leaning incredulously on her broom. “A little skinny child like you? Are you lying to me?”

“Deep in evil,” Dorothea said. “They’re all like that.”

“I was born with nine lives,” Cat explained.

“Oh, you’re that one, are you?” Gammer Norah said venemously. She was going to hurl a spell at him, Cat knew she was. But Millie made a small, quick gesture and Gammer Norah’s attention somehow switched back to the Pinhoes. “I don’t see any of you looking very sorry!” she yelled at them.

This was true. Grins were spreading across most of the Pinhoe faces. Cat sat down again, hugely relieved, and gave Klartch’s head a comforting rub.

Gammer Norah screamed, “And what about the rest of it? Eh? What about the rest?”

“What rest is this?” Chrestomanci asked politely.

“The frogs, the ill-wishing, the fleas, the nits, the ants in all our cupboards!” Gammer Norah yelled, pounding with her broomstick. “Deny all that if you can! Every time we sent a plague back on you, you did another. We sent you whooping cough, we sent you smallpox, but you still didn’t stop!”

“Bosh. We never sent you anything,” Uncle Richard said.

“It was you sent us frogs,” Uncle Charles added. “Or is your mind going now?”

Cat felt his face grow bright and hot as he remembered sending those frogs away from Mr Vastion’s surgery. He was wondering whether to stand up and confess again, when Marianne spoke up, loudly and clearly. “I’m afraid it was Gammer Pinhoe sending all those things on her own, Mrs Farleigh.”

Cat realised she was a lot braver than he was. She was the instant target of every Pinhoe there. The aunts glared at her, even more fiercely than they had glared at Gammer Norah. The uncles looked either contemptuous or reproachful. Dad said warningly, “I told you not to spread stories, Marianne!”

Mum added, “How could you, Marianne? You know how poorly Gammer is.”

And from the back, Great Uncle Edgar boomed, “Now that’s enough of that, child!”

Marianne went pale, but she managed to say, “It is true.”

“Yes,” Chrestomanci agreed. “It is true. We at the Castle have been checking up on all of you rather seriously for the last few weeks. Ever since young Eric here pointed out to me the misdirections spells, in fact, we have had you under observation. We noted that an old lady called Edith Pinhoe was sending hostile magics to Helm St Mary, Uphelm and various other villages nearby, and we were preparing to take steps.”

“Though we did wonder why none of you tried to stop her,” Millie put in. “But it’s fairly clear to me now that she must have bespelled all of you as well.” She smiled kindly at Marianne. “Except you, my dear.”

While the Pinhoes were turning to one another, doubtful and horrified, Gammer Norah kept beating with her broomstick. “I want justice!” she bellowed. “Plagues and stone trees! I want justice for both! I want —” She broke off with a gurgle as a green hand clapped itself over her mouth. A purple-brown hand firmly took away her broomstick.

Cat thought that most people there decided that Chrestomanci had shut her up. He was fairly sure only a few of them could see the hidden folks. But Chrestomanci could.

Chrestomanci swallowed a slight grin and said, “Presently, Mrs Farago, although you may not like the justice when you have it. There are a few serious questions I have to ask first. The most important of these concerns the other Gaffer in the case, the Mr Elijah Pinhoe who was said to be dead eight years ago. Now a short while ago, I visited Ulverscote —”

“But you couldn’t!” quite a number of Pinhoes protested. “You’re not a Pinhoe.”

“I took the precaution of getting a lift with Mr and Mrs Yeldham here,” Chrestomanci said. “As you may know, Mrs Yeldham was born a Pinhoe.” Beside him, Irene coloured up and bent over Nutcase on her knee, as if she were not sure that being a Pinhoe was altogether a good thing. Chrestomanci looked over to where the Reverend Pinhoe was quietly sipping lemonade over by the inn door. “I called on your vicar – perhaps you could explain, Reverend.”

Oh it was him! Marianne thought. The day I met the Farleigh girls. He was in the churchyard.

The Reverend Pinhoe looked utterly flustered and extremely unhappy. “Well, yes. It is a most terrible thing,” he said, “but most impressive magic, I must admit. But appalling, quite appalling all the same.” He took an agitated gulp of lemonade. “Chrestomanci asked me to show him Elijah Pinhoe’s grave, you see. I saw no harm in that, of course, and conducted him to the corner of the church where the grave was – is, I mean. Chrestomanci then most politely asked my permission to work a little magic there. As I saw no harm in that, I naturally agreed. And —”

The vicar took another agitated gulp from his glass. “You can judge my astonishment,” he said, “when Chrestomanci caused the coffin to emerge from the grave – without, I hasten to say, disturbing a blade of grass or any of the flowers you Pinhoe ladies so regularly place there – and then, to my further surprise, caused the coffin to open, without disturbing so much as a screw.”

The Reverend Pinhoe tried to take another gulp from his glass and discovered it was empty. “Oh, please—” he said. A blue-green hand emerged from behind the rain barrel beside him and passed him a full glass. The Reverend Pinhoe surveyed it dubiously, then took a sip and nodded.

“I thank you,” he said. “I think. Anyway, I regret to have to inform you that the coffin contained nothing but a large wooden post and three bags of extremely mouldy chaff. Gaffer Pinhoe was not inside it.” He took another sip from his new glass and turned a little pink. “It was a great shock to me,” he said.

It was a great shock to some of the aunts too. Aunt Helen and Great Aunt Sue turned to one another and gaped. Aunt Joy said, “You mean someone stole him? After all we spent on flowers!”

Chrestomanci was looking vaguely around the yard. Cat knew he was checking to see who was surprised by the news and who was not. The Farleighs looked a little puzzled but not at all surprised. Most of the Pinhoe cousins were as surprised as Aunt Joy was and frowned at one another, mystified. But to Marianne’s dismay, none of her uncles turned a hair, though Uncle Isaac tutted and tried to pretend he was upset. Dad took it calmest of all. Oh dear! she thought sadly.

“A very strange thing,” Chrestomanci said. Cat could feel him using Performative Speech again. “Now who can explain this odd occurrence?”

Great Uncle Edgar cleared his throat and looked uneasily at Great Uncle Lester. Great Uncle Lester went grey and seemed to get very shaky. “You tell them, Edgar,” he quavered. “I – I’m not up to it after all this time.”

“The fact is,” Great Uncle Edgar said, looking pompously around the inn yard, “Gaffer Pinhoe is not – er – actually dead.”

“What’s this?” Gammer Norah cried out, catching up rather late. “What’s this? Not dead?” She’s drunk! Marianne thought. She’s going to start singing soon. “What do you mean, not dead? I told you to kill him. Gaffer Farleigh ordered you to kill him. Your own Gammer, his wife, said you had to kill him. Why didn’t you?”

“We felt that was a little extreme,” Great Uncle Lester said apologetically. “Edgar and I simply used that spell that was used on Luke Pinhoe.” He nodded at Irene. “Your ancestor, Mrs Yeldham. We disabled both his legs. Then we put him in that old cart he loved so much and drove him into the woods.”

Irene looked aghast.

“It had been our intention,” Uncle Edgar explained, “to stow him beyond and behind with the hidden folks. But, upon experiment, we found we couldn’t open the confining spell. So we made another confining spell by building a barrier and left him behind that.”

“Please understand, Gammer Norah,” Great Uncle Lester pleaded. “Gaffer Farleigh knew all about it and he didn’t object. It – it seemed so much kinder that way.”

Chrestomanci said, so softly and gently that both great uncles shuddered, “It seems to me exceedingly cruel. Who else knew about this kind plot of yours?”

“Gammer knew, of course—” Great Uncle Edgar began.

But Chrestomanci was still using Performative Speech. Dad spoke up. “They told all of us,” he said, bending his saw about. “All his sons. They needed to, because of dividing out his property. We weren’t surprised. We’d all seen it coming. We arranged for Cedric and Isaac to leave him eggs and bread and stuff behind the barrier.” He looked earnestly up at Chrestomanci. “He must be still alive. The food goes.”

Here, Great Aunt Sue, who had been sitting holding the collar of the one fat dog that had come back from chasing the flying machine, quite suddenly stood up and slapped her hands down her crisp skirt. “Alive in the woods,” she said. “For eight years. Without the use of his legs. And all of you lying about it. Nine grown men. I’m ashamed to belong to this family. Edgar, that does it. I’m leaving. I’m going to my sister outside Hopton. Now. And don’t expect to hear from me again. Come on, Towser,” she said, and went striding briskly out of the yard, with the dog panting after her.

Great Uncle Edgar sprang up despairingly. “Susannah! Please! It’s just – we just didn’t want to upset anyone!”

He started after Great Aunt Sue. But Chrestomanci shook his head and pointed to the bench where Great Uncle Edgar had been sitting. Great Uncle Edgar sank back on to it, purple faced and wretched.

“I must say I’m glad Clarice isn’t here to hear this,” Great Uncle Lester murmured.

I wish I wasn’t here to hear it! Marianne thought. Tears were pushing to come out of her eyes, and she knew she would never feel the same about any of her uncles.

Aunt Joy, who seemed to have waited for this to be over, stood up too and folded her arms ominously. “Eight years,” she said. “Eight years I’ve been living a lie.” She loosed one arm in order to point accusingly at Uncle Charles. “Charles,” she said, “don’t you expect to come home tonight, because I’m not having you! You spineless layabout. They do away with your own father, and you don’t even mention the matter, let alone object. I’ve had enough of you, and that’s final!”

Uncle Charles looked sideways at Aunt Joy, under her pointing finger, with his head down, rather like Joe. Marianne did not think he looked enormously unhappy.

Aunt Joy swung her pointing finger round towards the rest of the aunts. “And I don’t know how you women can sit there, knowing what they’ve all done and lied about. I’m ashamed of you all, that’s all I have to say!” She swung herself round then and stalked out of the yard as well. The invisible person on the roof played a march in time to Aunt Joy’s banging shoes.

Marianne looked at her other aunts. Aunt Polly had not turned a hair. Uncle Cedric had obviously told her everything years ago. They were very close. Aunt Helen was staring trustingly at Uncle Arthur, sure that he had good reasons for not telling her; but Aunt Prue was looking at Uncle Simeon very strangely. Her own mother looked more unhappy than Marianne had ever seen her. Marianne could tell Dad had never said a word to her. She looked at Uncle Isaac’s grave face and wondered what – if anything – he had told Aunt Dinah.

“I hope no one else wishes to leave,” Chrestomanci said. “Good.” He turned his eyes to Dad. Though his face was pale and pulled with pain, his eyes were still bright and dark. Dad jumped as he met those eyes. “Mr Pinhoe,” Chrestomanci said, “perhaps you would be good enough to explain just what you had seen coming and why everyone felt it was necessary to – er – do away with your father.”

Dad laid the saw carefully down by his feet. The brownish-purple hand at once obligingly offered him another tankard of drink. Harry Pinhoe took it with a nod of thanks, too bothered by what he was going to say to notice where the drink had come from. “It was that egg,” he said slowly. “The egg was the last straw. Anyone had only to look at it to know Gaffer had fetched it from behind the confinement spell. Everything else led up to that really.”

“In what way?” Chrestomanci asked.

Harry Pinhoe sighed. “You might say,” he answered, “that old Gaffer suffered from too much dwimmer. He was always off in the woods gathering weird herbs and poking into things best left alone. And he kept on at Gammer that the hidden folk were unhappy in confinement and ought to be let free. Gammer wouldn’t hear of it of course. Nor wouldn’t Jed Farleigh. They had rows about it almost every week, Gammer saying it has always been our job to keep them in, and Gaffer shouting his nonsense about it was high time to let them out. Well then —”

Harry Pinhoe took a long encouraging pull at his strange drink and made a puzzled face at the taste of it before he went on.

“Well then, the crisis came when Gaffer came out of the woods with this huge, like, egg. He gave it to Gammer and told her to keep it warm and let it hatch. Gammer said why should she do any such thing? Gaffer wouldn’t tell her, not until she put a truth spell on him. Then he told her it was his scheme to let the hidden folks out. He said that when this egg hatched, he would be there to watch the bindings on the hidden folks undone.” Harry Pinhoe looked unhappily over at Chrestomanci. “That did it, see. Gaffer said it like a prophecy, and Gammer couldn’t have that. Gammer’s the only one that’s allowed to prophesy, we all know that. So she told her brothers Gaffer was quite out of hand and ordered them to kill him.”

Marianne shivered. Cat found he had one hand protectively on Klartch, gripping the warm fluff on his back. Klartch, luckily, seemed to be asleep. Chrestomanci smiled slightly and seemed entirely bewildered. “But I don’t understand,” he said. “Why is it necessary to keep these unfortunate beings confined?”

Dad was puzzled that he should ask. “Because we always have,” he said.

Gammer Norah came abreast of the talk again. “We always have,” she proclaimed. “Because they’re abominations. Wicked, ungodly things. Sly, mischievous, wild and beastly!”

Dorothea looked up from her enormous glass. “Dangerous,” she said. “Evil. Vermin. I’d destroy every one of them if I could.”

She said it with such venom that a desperate, terrified shiver ran round all the half-seen and invisible beings in the yard. Cat and Marianne found themselves clutched by unseen, shaking hands. One half-seen person climbed into Marianne’s lap. A hard head with whiskers – or possibly antennae – butted pleadingly at Cat’s face and, he was fairly sure, another person ran up him and sat on his head for safety. He looked at Chrestomanci for help.

Chrestomanci, however, looked at Dorothea and then, sternly, at Harry Pinhoe. “I regret to have to tell you,” he said, “that Gaffer Pinhoe was quite right and the rest of you are quite, quite wrong.”

Dad jerked backwards on his bench. There was an outcry of shocked denial from Pinhoes and Farleighs alike. Dad’s face turned red. “How come?” he said.

Millie glanced at Chrestomanci and took over. “We’ve been finding out all about you,” she said. “We’ve traced Pinhoes, Farleighs and Cleeves right back almost to the dawn of history now.”

There was another shocked muttering at this, as everyone realised at last that their secrecy was truly at an end. But they all listened attentively as Millie went on.

“You’ve always lived here,” she said. “You must be some of the oldest witch families we know about. We found you first almost like clans, most of you living in tiny houses round the chief’s great hall, and the rest of you living in the hall as followers of the chief. Woods House is certainly built on the exact spot where the Pinhoe hall was – and that was built a surprisingly long time ago too. Before the church, in fact. The Farleigh hall seems to have been destroyed in the trouble that came, but the Cleeves still have theirs, although it’s the Cleeve Arms now, over in Crowhelm.”

This caused some interest. Pinhoes and Farleighs turned to one another and murmured, “I never knew that. Cleeve Arms is old though.”

Heads turned back to Millie as she continued. “Now there are at least three important things you should know about those early days. The first is that your chief, who was known as Gaffer from quite early on, was chosen from among the old chief’s family, and he was always chosen for having the most dwimmer. And he wasn’t just chief, he was a prophet and a foreteller too. Your old Gaffer was behaving just as he should, in fact. He was the one who chose the Gammer – and she wasn’t always his wife, either. She was the woman with the most dwimmer. And the pair of them not only governed the rest, they worked in partnership with the hidden folks. These folks were cherished and loved and guarded. You shared magics with them and they repaid you with healings and —”

This was too much for everyone. Millie was drowned out with cries of “That can’t be!” and “I never heard such twaddle!”

Millie smiled slightly and her voice suddenly came out over and above the objections, clear as a bell and, seemingly, not very loud. But everyone heard when she said, “Then comes the awful gap, with all sorts of horror in it.” Everyone hushed to hear what this horror was.

“A new religion came to this country,” Millie said, “full of zeal and righteousness – the kind of religion where, if other people didn’t believe in it, the righteous ones killed and tortured them until they did. This religion hated witches and hated the hidden folk even more. They saw all witches and invisible folk as demons, monsters and devils, and their priests devised ways of killing them and destroying their magic that really worked.

“All three Gaffers at this time prophesied, as far as we can tell, and all of you, Pinhoes, Farleighs and Cleeves, at once made sure that no one knew you were witches. What craft you used, you used in utmost secrecy and, because the hidden folk were even more at risk than you were, you all combined to keep them safe by locking them away behind the back of the distance. It was only intended to be a temporary measure. The Gaffers were all quite clear that the bloodthirsty righteous ones would go away in time. And so they did. But before they did, their priests became even more skilfull and learnt to conceal their plans even from the Gaffers. Even so, the Gaffer Farleigh of the time started to prophesy disaster. But that was the night the bloodthirsty ones attacked.

“They came with fire and swords and powerful magics and they killed everyone they could.” Millie looked round the yard and at the people clustering at the gate. “When they had finished,” she said, “the only people left were children, all of them younger than any of the children here. We think the bloodthirsty ones took all the children they could catch and educated them in their own religious ways, and some children escaped to the woods. The gap lasts about fifteen years, so those children had time to grow up. Then, thank goodness, the bloodthirsty ones were conquered themselves, probably by the Romans, and you all came together again, those from the woods and those who had been captured, and started to rebuild your lives.”

Chrestomanci took a deep breath as Millie finished and steadied himself on the arms of his chair. He was looking awfully ill, Cat thought anxiously. “But you see what that means,” Chrestomanci said. “These children had been too young to understand properly. They only knew what their anxious parents had impressed on them before the slaughter. They thought they had to keep their craft secret. They believed it was their duty to keep the hidden folks confined – and they had a vague notion that danger would come if they didn’t. And they all knew that if a Gaffer prophesied, horrible things would happen – so they chose Gaffers that were good at giving orders, rather than those with dwimmer or the gift of foresight. And,” Chrestomanci said ruefully, “I am afraid to say that the bloodthirsty doctrines of the religious ones had rubbed off on quite a lot of them, and they saw it as their religious duty to do things this way.”

A long, thoughtful silence followed this. While it lasted, Cat watched a spidery hand, a new one that was a silvery white colour, reach from behind Chrestomanci’s chair to pass Chrestomanci a small glass of greenish liquid. Chrestomanci took it, looking rather startled. Cat watched him sniff it, hold it up to the light, and then cautiously dip a finger into it. His finger came out sparking green and gold like a firework. Chrestomanci examined it for a moment. Then he murmured, “Thank you very much,” and drank the glassful off. He made the most dreadful face and clapped his hand to his stomach for a moment. But after that he looked a good deal better.

Everyone stirred then, except for Gammer Norah and Dorothea, who seemed to be asleep. Dad looked up and said, “Well, it makes a good story.”

“It’s more than a story,” Chrestomanci said. He turned to a piece of the air beside him and asked, “Have you got a record of all this, Tom?”

Chrestomanci’s secretary, Tom, was unexpectedly standing there, holding a notepad. Beside him stood old Miss Rosalie, the Castle librarian. She had her glasses down her nose and her nose almost inside the large blue folder she held, which she seemed to be reading avidly.

Tom said, “Every word, sir, right from the start.”

Miss Rosalie looked up from the folder and, in her usual tactless, downright way, declared, “I’ve never met such flagrant misuse of magic, not ever. Not to speak of conspiracy to misuse. You can prosecute the lot of them.”

Chrestomanci and Millie looked as if they had rather Miss Rosalie had kept her mouth shut. There was an outcry of anger and dismay from all round the yard. The Pinhoe uncles stood up threateningly and so did most of the Farleigh cousins. Gammer Norah woke up with a jump, glaring.

Unfortunately, that was the moment when Klartch woke up too and staggered enquiringly out across the cobbles.

Cat was sure that either Chrestomanci or Millie – or possibly both of them – had caused Klartch to wake up. It was otherwise hard to understand how Klartch slipped so easily between Cat’s clutching fingers, or how Marianne missed her grab for his tail.

Dad said, “What the hell is that?”

“It’s what came out of the egg,” Uncle Charles told him. “Didn’t I mention it to you? I know I told Arthur.”

Their voices were almost drowned in Dorothea’s screams. “It’s an abomination! Kill it, Mother! Oh, the folks are loose! We’re all dead meat! Kill it!”

Gammer Norah sprang to her feet and pointed at Klartch, who turned his head towards her enquiringly. “Death,” Gammer Norah intoned. “Die, you misbegotten creature of night.”

To Marianne’s embarrassment and Cat’s heartfelt relief, nothing happened. Klartch just blinked and looked wondering. Dorothea pointed a finger at him and shrieked, “Melt! Die! Begone!” Klartch stared at her, while a crowd of hard-to-see beings rushed to him and hovered round him protectively. Quite a number of people could see these. Everyone began shouting, “The folks are loose! The folks are loose!” Some of those gathered by the gate screamed as loudly as Dorothea.

Rather shakily, Chrestomanci stood up. “Do be quiet, all of you,” he said wearily. “It’s only a baby griffin.”

The noise died down, except for Gammer Norah, who said angrily, “Why didn’t I kill it? Why is it not dead?”

“Because, Mrs Furlong,” Chrestomanci said, “while we were talking, my colleague Jason Yeldham here has been busy removing your magic.”

Gammer Norah gaped at him. “What?”

Dad said, “That has to be nonsense. Magic’s an inborn part of you. And, Marianne, you had no business at all giving that blasted boy that egg. You’ve betrayed our sacred trust and I’m very angry with you.”

Chrestomanci sighed. “You didn’t listen to a word we said, did you, Mr Pinhoe? There is no sacred trust and the hidden folks were only confined as a temporary measure for their own safety. And magic may be inborn, but so are your appendix and your tonsils. They can be removed too. Better show them, Jason.”

Jason nodded and made a gentle pushing motion. A huge ball, made up of half-transparent green-blue strands, all wound up like a vast ball of knitting wool, rolled away from beside Jason’s knees. In a light, drifting way it rolled to the middle of the yard and came to a stop there. “There,” Jason said. “That’s all the Farleigh magic. Every bit of it.”

Gammer Norah, Dorothea, and the Farleigh cousins stared at it. One cousin said, “You’d no right to do that to us.”

“I not only have the right,” Chrestomanci said, “but as a government employee it’s my duty to do this. People who use their magic to give a whole village a dangerous disease like smallpox are not to be trusted with it.”

“That was just Marianne telling stories,” said Dad.

Chrestomanci nodded at Tom, who flipped back pages in his notebook and read out, We sent you whooping cough, we sent you smallpox, and you still didn’t stop! Those are Mrs Farleigh’s exact words, Mr Pinhoe.”

Dad said nothing. He picked up his saw again and bent it about, meaningly.

Irene nudged Jason and whispered to him. Jason grinned and said, “Yes!” He turned to Chrestomanci. “Irene thinks the woodfolks ought to have this magic as compensation for wrongful imprisonment.”

“A very good idea,” Chrestomanci said.

Irene stood up to make happy beckoning movements to the walls, forgetting that Nutcase was asleep on her knee. Nutcase thumped to the ground, looked irritably around and saw all the half-seen creatures leaving Klartch in order to dive delightedly upon the ball of magic. He was off like a black streak. He got to the ball of magic first and plunged into it, straight through and out the other side. Trailing long strings of blue-green, with a crowd of angry beings after him, he raced up across Dorothea, up the pile of barrels behind her, and from there to the top of the wall.

There will be no holding Nutcase now, Marianne thought, watching Nutcase jump off the wall into the alley and Dorothea resentfully licking scratches on her arm. She was depressed and worried. Dad was never going to understand and never going to forgive her. And Gaffer had still not turned up. On top of that, school started on Monday week. Though look on the bright side, she thought. It’ll keep me away from my family, during the daytime at least.

Meanwhile, the hard-to-see people were helping themselves enthusiastically to the rest of the ball of magic. The ball shrank, and tattered, and seemed to dissolve away like smoke in a wind. There were a lot more of the folks than Cat or Marianne had realised. Some of them must have been completely invisible.

Cat conjured a sausage roll from somewhere inside the Pinhoe Arms and set out to coax Klartch away from the middle of the yard. He did not like the way Gammer Norah and some of the Pinhoes were looking at Klartch. He found himself, with the sausage roll held out in front of Klartch’s beak, backing away past a row of Marianne’s aunts.

“Strange looking creature, isn’t he?” said one.

“You can see it’s a baby from the fluff. Rather sweet in a yicky way,” said a second.

The third one said, “What are you doing with one of my sausage rolls, boy?”

And the one who Cat was sure was Marianne’s mother said, thinking about it, “You know, it’s going to look just like Charles’s painting on the inn sign when it’s grown. And it’s going to be vast. Look at the size of the feet on it.”

Before Cat could think of anything to say in reply, the Farleighs were leaving, trudging sullenly out of the yard, muttering murderously about having to walk home now they had no magic.

“It isn’t exactly like tonsils,” Chrestomanci remarked as they tramped past him. “It can grow back in time if you’re careful.” He was standing with Tom on one side of him and Miss Rosalie on the other, and it is doubtful if any of the Farleighs heard him, because Miss Rosalie was saying brightly at the same time, “I make that forty-two charges of misuse of magic, sir, in Ulverscote alone. Shall I read them out?”

“No need,” Chrestomanci said. “Yet.” He said to all the Pinhoes, “You all understand, do you, that I can take your magic too, or have nearly all of you arrested? Instead of doing that, I am going to ask for your co-operation. You have a whole new set of magics here, and one of my duties is to study unknown magic. I would particularly like to know more about the kind you call dwimmer.” His eyes flicked to Cat for a moment. “I think I need to know more of dwimmer as soon as possible. We would like as many of you as feel able to visit the Castle and explain your working methods to us.”

He got eight outraged glowers from Marianne’s uncles and great uncles for this. Dad twanged his saw disgustedly. Millie bustled happily up to the aunts, who all turned their backs on her, except for Marianne’s mother, who folded her arms and stared, rather in Aunt Joy’s manner.

“You’re the famous herbmistress, aren’t you, Mrs Pinhoe?” Millie said. “I really would be grateful if you’d come and give me a lesson or so —”

“What, give away all my secrets?” Mum said. “You’ve got a hope.”

“But, my dear, why ever do you need to keep things secret?” Millie asked. “Suppose you’d been killed in the fight just now.”

“I’ve tried to bring Marianne up to know herbs,” Mum said. She gave Marianne an irritated look. “Not that it seems to have taken very well.”

“Well, of course it wouldn’t,” Millie said, smiling at Marianne. “Your daughter’s an enchantress, not a witch. She’ll have quite a different way of doing things.”

While Mum was staring at Marianne as if Marianne had suddenly grown antlers and a trunk, Millie sighed and whirled away to Chrestomanci, saying, “Get in the car, love. You look wiped.”

“I need to have a word with Gammer Pinhoe first,” Chrestomanci said.

“I’ll drive you down to the Dell then,” Millie said.

This caused Cat to have to tempt Klartch all the way back across the yard to the car. They went rather slowly because both Cat and Klartch were constantly turning to watch strings of blue-green magic fluttering along the walls, or being dragged into barrels, or flying in tatters from chimneys as the half-seen folk carried it away. Millie waited for them, and Jason held the rear door open and helped Cat heave Klartch in beside Irene. Klartch instantly ramped upright to look out of the window. There were loud popping sounds as his talons went into the expensive leather upholstery.

By that time, the Pinhoes had gathered that Chrestomanci was going down to the Dell. They were not going to let him loose on Gammer on her own. Cat found himself between Marianne and Miss Rosalie, inside a crowd of Pinhoes, all of them trotting, jogging and crunching broken glass behind the car as it glided down the hill.

“Gaffer must be somewhere,” Marianne said miserably as they passed Great Uncle Lester’s ruined car.

Dad answered her by giving vent to his feelings. “Look what you brought us to, Marianne! This is all your fault for thinking you know better than the rest of us. The good old ways are not good enough for you. No. You had to get us noticed by the Castle. And see where we are now, at the mercy of these jumped up, jazzy, know-it-alls in good suits, who’ll have us arrested if we don’t do —”

He was interrupted for a second here by Nicola’s mother, swooping uphill past them on her broomstick. “I can’t wait, Lester!” she called out. “I’ll miss visiting hours.”

As Great Uncle Lester gave her a dismal wave, Dad took up his diatribe again. “Them and their threats! How can they say we’ve misused magic and then want to know what it is we do? It makes no sense. But they think they have the right to give us a going over with their new-fangled stuck up ways and their stupid stories about slaughter in history and children misunderstanding – I don’t believe a word of it. We’re just ordinary folk, doing what we’ve always done, and they come along —”

Miss Rosalie, who had been looking increasingly annoyed, snapped, “Oh, shut up, man! Of course you can go back to your good old ways. We want to study them.”

This simply set Dad off again. “Poking and prying. Going on about craft things nobody should talk about. Letting out the hidden folk. That’s just what I’m complaining about, woman! What are we, a flaming fish tank?”

“I refuse to argue with you!” Miss Rosalie panted haughtily.

“Good!” said Dad and went on with his diatribe in an increasingly breathless mutter as Chrestomanci’s car gathered speed down the hill. He did not stop, even when the car was turning the corner at the bottom of the hill, where they encountered Aunt Joy standing on her half-built wall.

“I meant what I said!” Aunt Joy shouted, and hurled a suitcase at Uncle Charles. “You’re not coming back and here’s your things, wedding suit and all. I jumped on it.”

Uncle Charles did not try to answer. He simply picked up the battered suitcase and trotted on, smiling sheepishly at Uncle Richard. “Staring at us,” went Dad. “Thinking they’re so clever. Fish tank. All Marianne’s fault.”

At the Dell, they found Gammer outside the front door, surrounded by hard-to-see flying folk. They did not appear to love Gammer. They darted in, pulled her hair, tweaked and scratched at her, and darted back away. Gammer beat at them with a rolled up newspaper. “Shoo!” she shouted. “Gerroff! Shoo!”

Aunt Dinah, who could not seem to see the flying ones at all, was dodging helplessly in and out, ducking under the newspaper and saying, “That’s enough now, Gammer dear. Come inside now, dear.”

“Fish tank,” said Dad, and ran down in a kind of moaning sound as he saw how easily Gammer had managed to walk out through his careful containment spells.

Gammer stared at Chrestomanci as he climbed stiffly and shakily out of the car. She seemed to know at once who he was. “Don’t you dare!” she shouted at him as he walked towards her round the duck pond. “You’ve only come to interferret me. I didn’t do it. It was Edgar and Lester.”

The half-seen ones knew who Chrestomanci was too. They flew up from Gammer in a body and roosted on the cottage roof to watch.

“I know about Edgar and Lester, ma’am,” Chrestomanci said. “I want to know why you were persecuting the Farleighs.”

“Jedded my head,” Gammer said. “My mouth is porpoised.”

“Means her lips are sealed,” Uncle Charles translated from among the crowd.

“Utterly dolphinned,” Gammer agreed.

“And possibly whaled as well,” Chrestomanci murmured. “I think you had better unwalrus them, ma’am, and —”

The gate from the back way, through Uncle Isaac’s vegetable acres, clicked quietly open to let Molly and Gaffer through.

Not everyone saw them straight away, because the corner of the cottage was in the way. But Marianne saw. And she knew why Gaffer had been so long on the way. His legs were bent and bowed and his feet twisted so that it was all but impossible for him to walk. He had both arms across the unicorn’s back. She was walking one careful step at a time, and then stopping so that Gaffer could swing himself along beside her. Each time his legs had to take his weight, Marianne saw him shudder with pain.

She turned and screamed at her great uncles. She was so angry that both of them recoiled from her, amost into the hedge at the back. “That is the cruellest thing I ever saw! Uncle Edgar, I shall never speak to you again! Uncle Lester, I shall never go near you!” She raced towards Gaffer and tore the ensorcellment off him. It was a bit like clearing weeds and creepers off a struggling overgrown tree in Mum’s garden. Marianne clawed and pulled and dragged, and the spell fought back like thorns and nettles, but she finally hauled it all away, panting, with stinging hands and tears in her eyes, and threw it to the hard-to-see folk to get rid of. They swooped on it and took it away gladly.

Gaffer slowly and creakily stood to his proper height, the same height as Chrestomanci. He smiled at her. “Why, thank you, pet,” he said.

Molly turned her head to say sadly, “I can heal wounds of the flesh, but that was magic.” She added to Gaffer, “Keep your arm over me. You won’t walk easily straight away.”

They moved on, round the corner of the cottage. Chrestomanci, now leaning beside Cat on the long black bonnet of the car, could see them perfectly, but Gammer, with Aunt Dinah dodging around her, was too busy screaming insults at Chrestomanci to notice.

“Inkbubble chest of drawers!” she yelled. “Unstuck bog!”

Cat thought that both the unicorn and the tall old man had a curious, unreal, silvery look as they came round into the sunlight at the front of the cottage.

There was a long murmur from the Pinhoes. “It’s Old Gaffer!” and “Isn’t that his old mare Molly?” they said.

This alerted Gammer. She swung round, with dismay all over her ruined face. “You!” she said. “I told them to kill you!”

“There were times when I wished they had,” Gaffer answered. “What have you been up to, Edith? Let’s have the truth now.”

Gammer shrugged a little. “Frogs,” she said. “Ants, nits, fleas. Itching powder.” She giggled. “They thought the itching was more fleas and washed till they were raw.”

“Who did?” Gaffer asked. He took his arm off Molly and stood looking down at her on his own. The unicorn backed herself round and stepped across to Chrestomanci. There she stretched her neck out and gave Chrestomanci’s ragged, bleeding arm the merest flick with her horn.

Chrestomanci jerked and gasped. Cat could feel the warm rush of health from the horn, even though it was not aimed at him. “Thank you,” Chrestomanci said gratefully, looking into the unicorn’s wise blue eyes. “Very much indeed.” He was a better colour already and, although the blood was still there, all over Joe’s shirt, Cat was was fairly sure that there was now no bullet wound in Chrestomanci’s arm.

“My pleasure,” replied the unicorn. She winked a blue eye at Cat and stepped round again towards Gaffer.

“Who did?” Gaffer was repeating. “Who have you been tormenting now?”

Gammer looked mulishly down at the grass. “Those Farleighs,” she said. “I hate the lot of them. That Dorothea of theirs met a griffin by the Castle gates and they said I let it out.”

“The griffin was only looking for her egg, poor creature,” Gaffer said. “She thought it might have arrived at the Castle by then. What had you done with it?”

Gammer scrubbed at the grass with one toe. She giggled a little. “It wouldn’t break,” she said, “not even when I threw it downstairs. I made Harry stick it in the attic with a binding on it and hoped it would die. Nasty thing.”

Gaffer pressed his lips together and looked down at her with great pity. “You’ve gone like a wicked small child, haven’t you?” he said. “No thought for others at all. But your spells on them are stronger than ever and they still all do your bidding.”

The unicorn softly approached.

Gammer looked up and saw the long, whorled horn coming towards her. “No!” she said. “It wasn’t me! It was Edgar and Lester.”

Gaffer shook his head, floppy old hat and all. “No, it was you, Edith. Let go now. You’ve gone your length.”

He stood aside and let Molly gently touch the tip of her horn to Gammer’s forehead. Cat felt the warm blast of this too, but this time it seemed to be blowing the other way. Gammer gave out a small noise that was horribly like Klartch’s “Weep!” and crumpled slowly down on the grass, where she lay curled up like a baby.

Aunt Dinah charged forward. “What has that monster done?”

Gaffer looked at her with tears running on his withered cheeks and into his beard. “You wouldn’t wish to be forced to obey madness for the next ten years, would you?” he said. His pleasant voice was all hoarse. He coughed. “She’ll last three days now,” he said. “You’ll have time to choose your new Gammer before she dies.”

Aunt Dinah looked helplessly at the other Pinhoes crowded round the car and the pond. “But there’s only Marianne,” she said. Marianne’s heart sank.

“Ah no,” Gaffer said. “Marianne has her own way to go and her own race to run, bless her. You mustn’t lumber anyone with this who hasn’t found her own way in life first.” He looked towards the rear door of the car, where Irene and Jason were trying to shove Klartch back inside. Klartch wanted to get out and examine the ducks. “My friend Jason’s lady has more dwimmer than I’ve known for many years,” Gaffer said. “Think about it.”

Irene looked up into the massed stares of the Pinhoes and turned bright, warm red. “Oh, my goodness!” she said.

Uncle Richard and Uncle Isaac walked carefully around the edge of the pond and the Reverend Pinhoe followed them. Warily, giving the unicorn a very wide berth, the two uncles picked Gammer up and carried her away indoors. Aunt Dinah rushed in after them. Dad watched them with a scowl. “I wouldn’t have Marianne anyway,” he said. “She’s not suitable.”

“No indeed,” Chrestomanci agreed. “She can override any of your spells any time she pleases. Awkward for you. Tell me, Marianne, how do you feel about being educated at the Castle? As a weekly boarder, say, coming home every weekend? I’ve just made the same arrangement with your brother Joe. Would you like to join him?”

Marianne could hardly think, let alone speak, for huge, nervous delight. She felt her face stretching into a great smile. Looking up at Gaffer, she saw his eyes twinkling encouragement to her, even though he was busy mopping his cheeks on his ragged sleeve.

Before either of them could say anything, Dad burst out, “Joe, did you say? What do you want with him? He’s even more of a disappointment than Marianne is!”

“On the contrary,” Chrestomanci said. “Joe has immense and unusual talent. He has already invented three new ways of combining magic with machinery. A couple of wizards from the Royal Society are coming down to interview him tomorrow. They’re very excited about him. So what do you say, Marianne?”

“I see!” Dad burst out, again before Marianne could speak. “I see. You’re going to take them off and make them think they’re too good for the rest of their family!”

“Only if you make it that way,” Chrestomanci replied. “The surest way to make them think they’re too good for you is to keep telling yourself that and then telling them that they are.”

Dad looked a trifle dazed. “I can’t get my head around this,” he said.

“Then you have a problem, Mr Pinhoe,” Chrestomanci said, and then turned away to Gaffer. “Are you going to be taking your former place again as Gaffer, sir?” he asked.

Gaffer slowly shook his head. “Molly and I are not really with this world any more,” he said. The twinkle with which he was looking at Marianne began to glow. “I was always one for walking the woods,” he said. “Now I can walk again, I’ll be going far and wide with Molly, bringing young Jason more odd herbs than he’s seen in his life, I reckon. Besides,” he added, and the glow blazed into humour now, “if you’re wanting them all to go on the way they always did, then Harry will do you a fine stout job at that. Let him carry on.” He bent and kissed Marianne, a soft, tickly brushing with his beard. “Bye, pet. You go and find who you really are and don’t let anyone stop you.”

He and Molly turned to go. Chrestomanci went striding back to the car, where Tom was standing with Miss Rosalie. “Tom, take Miss Rosalie back with you,” Cat heard him say. “Make a list of her forty-two misuses of magic and send a copy to each of the Pinhoe brothers and both their uncles. I want them all to know what trouble they could be in if they don’t co-operate with us.” Tom nodded and took hold of Miss Rosalie’s skinny arm. Both of them vanished. Chrestomanci turned to tell Cat to get into the car.

But there was a frantic, pattering, yelling disturbance at the back of the crowd. Marianne’s uncles and aunts scattered this way and that, and the Reverend Pinhoe, who was still only halfway round the pond, was dislodged into the water with a splash. He stood up to his knees in green weeds, staring as Dolly the donkey came racing past. She was somehow not Dolly as Marianne had always known her. She was taller and slenderer, and her ears were not so big. Her usual yellowish colour was now silvery, almost silver gilt. And a small, elegant spire of horn grew from her forehead.

“My other daughter!” Molly said and turned round to lay her head across Dolly’s back.

“I thought I’d missed you!” Dolly panted. “It’s been such years. I had to break the door down.”

Uncle Richard, who was just coming out through the cottage door, stood astonished. “Dolly!” he said. “Why did I never know – how didn’t I know?”

“You never looked,” Dolly said, rubbing herself against Molly’s shaggy side.

Chrestomanci said impatiently to Cat, “Get in. Let’s go.”

But Klartch had decided he wanted to meet Dolly. Jason had to grab him round his wriggling body and dump him in the back seat of the car, where he somehow covered Irene in green pond weed. And now Millie was climbing out of the driver’s seat to help the Reverend Pinhoe out of the pond and offer him a lift back up the hill. More pond weed arrived in the car. Chrestomanci looked exasperated. He went back to Marianne. “The car will come for you at eight-thirty on Monday,” he said to her. “I hope it will be cleaner by then. Pack for five days.”

I see how Dad feels, Marianne thought. He does expect everyone to do what he says. And she thought, I’ll miss school. Suppose they throw me out of the Castle after a week? Will school have me back? But I’ll learn all sorts of new magic. Do I want to? She gave Chrestomanci a nervous and slightly indefinite nod.

“Good.” Chrestomanci strode back to the car. Cat was now packed in beside everyone else, with Klartch across their knees. Nothing would possess Klartch to get down on the floor. He wanted to look out of the window. “Thank goodness!” Chrestomanci said, throwing himself in beside Millie. “I really must have a word with Gaffer Farleigh before all the other Farleighs get back!”

The Pinhoes stood aside and watched unlovingly while Millie turned the car and drove out of the Dell. She drove along the lane, where a few enchanted frogs still croaked in the hedges, and then on up the hill, past groups of mournful people sweeping up broken glass, past Great Uncle Lester’s stranded car, and stopped by the vicarage to let the Reverend Pinhoe squelch away, along with Irene and Jason, all of them covered in green weed. After that Cat and Klartch expanded in the back seat and Millie put on speed.

It was not long before they began passing Farleighs. Gammer Norah and Dorothea first, since they had been the last to leave, shot the car poisonous looks as it purred past them. After that came a whole line of Farleighs, trudging along the side of the road pushing bent bicycles or carrying useless broomsticks. Some of them made rude gestures, but most of them dejectedly ignored the car as it whispered by. When they had passed the last Farleigh, still only about halfway home, Chrestomanci seemed to relax. “How come you turned up so providentially?” he asked Millie.

“Oh, I only went down to the village to post a letter,” Millie said, “and the first thing I saw was a really peculiar statue of a tree, standing in the middle of the green. Norah Farleigh was stamping about beside it, haranguing people. As I walked past, I heard her say something like ’and we’ll do for those Pinhoes!’ and I saw there was going to be trouble. Then while I was posting the letter and wondering what to do, I recognised one of our horses outside the smithy. So I hurried over there and found Joss Callow. I said, ’Leave the horse and come with me at once. We may be in time to stop a witches’ war in Ulverscote.’ I knew I had to have a Pinhoe with me, you see, or their spells would stop me getting there. And Joss was only too glad to come with me. He was afraid someone was going to get killed – he kept saying so. But we hadn’t reckoned on the Farleighs being so quick. By the time we’d gone back to the Castle and I’d got the car out, they were already on the way. The road was blocked by bicycles and the air was thick with broomsticks. We had to crawl behind them the whole way. So I went to Woods House and picked up the Yeldhams, in case they got hurt – I knew I could keep them safe in the car – but when we came out into the village they were fighting there like mad things and none of us could think of how to stop them. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come along in that flying machine.”

“I was not happy to be there,” Chrestomanci said. “I’d only persuaded Roger to take me in order to get an overview of the misdirection spells.”

“I’m glad the boys survived it,” Millie said. “I must remind Roger that he has only one life.”

They purred on for another couple of miles. They were almost in Helm St Mary when they saw a man in the distance wrestling with a horse. The man was being bounced and dangled and dragged all over the road.

Cat said, “It looks as if Joss has run out of peppermints.”

“I’ll handle it,” said Chrestomanci.

Millie crept up behind Joss and whispered to a stop far enough away not to outrage Syracuse any further. Chrestomanci rolled down his window and held out a paper bag of peppermints. More of Julia’s probably, Cat thought.

“Thank you, sir!” Joss said gratefully.

Cat said sternly, “Syracuse, behave!”

Chrestomanci said, “By the way Mr – er – Carroway —”

“Callow,” Joss managed to say. He was hanging on to the reins with both hands, with the paper bag between his teeth.

“Callow,” Chrestomanci agreed. “I do hope you are not considering giving in your notice at all, Mr Carlow. You are by far and away the best stableman we have ever had.”

Joss flushed all over his wide brown face. “Thank you, sir. I – well—” He spat the bag into his hand and waved it enticingly under Syracuse’s nose. “It’s a job I’d be glad to keep,” he said. “My mother lives in Helm St Mary, see.”

“She was born a Pinhoe, I take it,” Chrestomanci said.

Joss flushed redder still and nodded. Chrestomanci did not need to say he knew that Joss had been planted in the Castle as a spy. He gave Joss a gracious wave as Millie drove on.

Very soon after this, the car was scudding round the village green of Helm St Mary, just below the Castle. There, slap in the middle of the green, stood the stone oak tree, looking like a twisty granite, three-armed memorial of some kind. Hard for Gammer Norah to miss it there, Cat thought guiltily. He’d had no idea he had sent it here.

“Dear me,” Chrestomanci murmured as the car crunched to a halt beside the green. “What a very ugly object.” He climbed out. “Come on, Cat.”

Cat scrambled out and persuaded Klartch to stay inside the car. He was not looking forward to this, he thought, as he followed Chrestomanci over to the stone tree.

“Uglier than ever, close to,” Chrestomanci said, looking up at the thing. “Now, Cat, if you could turn at least his head back, I’d be glad of a word with him. You can leave the gun as granite, I think.”

Cat was somehow very much aware of Klartch watching anxiously through the car window as he put his hands on the cold rough granite. And because Klartch was watching, Cat knew there was also a ring of half-seen beings watching quite as anxiously from behind every tuft of grass on the green. In fact, Klartch made him see that they were everywhere, swinging on the inn sign, sitting on the roofs, peering out of hedges and perched on chimneys. Cat saw that he had let them all out, all over the country. They would always be everywhere now.

“Turn back into Mr Farleigh,” he said to the stone oak.

Nothing happened.

Cat tried again with his left hand alone and still nothing happened. He tried putting both hands on the rough, knobby place that must have been Mr Farleigh’s face, and then pushing both hands apart to clear the stone away. Still nothing happened. Chrestomanci moved Cat aside and tried himself. Cat knew that this was unlikely to work. Chrestomanci almost never could turn anything back once Cat had changed it: their magic seemed to be entirely different. And he was right. Chrestomanci gave up, looking exasperated.

“Let’s try together,” he said.

So they both tried and still nothing happened. Mr Farleigh remained a grey, faintly glistening, obdurate oak made of stone.

“It comes to something,” Chrestomanci said, “when two nine-lifed enchanters together can make no difference whatsoever to this thing. What did you do, Cat?”

“I told you,” Cat said. “I made him like he really was.”

“Hm,” said Chrestomanci. “I really must learn more about dwimmer. It seems to be your great strength, Cat. But it’s very frustrating. I wanted to tell him what I thought of him – not to speak of asking him how he managed to be a gamekeeper we didn’t need for all those years.” He turned discontentedly away to the car.

A flitting half-seen being drew Cat’s attention to Joss’s bored horse, still hitched up outside the smithy. “I’d better bring Joss his horse back,” Cat said. “You go on.”

Chrestomanci shrugged and got into the car.

Cat ran over to the horse. It had all four shoes again. “All right if I take him?” he called to the blacksmith, deep inside his coaly cave of a shed.

The blacksmith looked up from hammering and called back, “About time. I’ll send the bill up to the Castle.”

Cat mounted the horse from the block of stone beside the smithy. It was much taller than Syracuse. Otherwise it had no character at all. He got no feelings from it, not even a wish to go home. This felt very strange after Syracuse. But at least its dull mind left Cat free with his own thoughts. As he clopped round the green in the early evening light, Cat wondered if he had left Mr Farleigh as a stone tree because he wanted him that way. Mr Farleigh had scared him. He had scared the half-seen beings even more. As Cat turned up through the Castle gates, the beings skipped and skittered among the trees lining the driveway, laughing in their delight that Mr Farleigh was no longer a threat. Cat wondered if they had helped him leave Mr Farleigh as he now was.

He had had no lunch and he was starving. Klartch would be hungry too. Cat made the lumpish horse go faster and – because it was now thinking dimly of home and food – he took it the short way he was not supposed to go, along the gravel in front of the newer part of the Castle. The flying machine was spread out on the lawn there, in front of four deep brown skidmarks in the grass. It looked as if Roger and Joe had had a rough landing.

Janet and Julia were cautiously inspecting the machine. Janet called out, “Cat, I can’t find Klartch anywhere!”

Julia called out, “What have you been up to without us? It isn’t fair!”

“You wouldn’t have enjoyed it,” Cat called back. “Millie’s got Klartch.”

“I don’t care,” Julia shouted. “It still isn’t fair!”

Marianne arrived very apprehensively the next Monday. She found she was in for ordinary lessons at first with Joe, Roger, Cat, Janet and Julia, taught by a tall, keen man called Michael Saunders. She was impressed by Mr Saunders. No one else had ever made Joe do any schoolwork at all. But Joe had been promised a big new workshed where he and Roger could experiment with all their new ideas, provided he pleased Mr Saunders. So Joe sat at a desk and worked, and very soon proved to be quite extraordinarily good with figures.

Marianne began to enjoy herself. She made friends instantly with both the other girls and she liked Cat anyway, although she was shy of Roger. Roger would talk about machinery or money.

Most afternoons, Marianne and Cat had a lesson with Chrestomanci. At first, Marianne could hardly speak for nerves. Enchanter’s magic was all so strange and Cat knew so much more than she did. But she discovered on the second afternoon that Cat was slow with Magic Theory, whereas Marianne found it so easy that she almost felt she knew most of it already. Anyway, the next half of the lesson was always more like a conversation, with Cat and Chrestomanci asking her interested questions about the craft and dwimmer and herb lore. After the first terrifying afternoon, Marianne felt entirely at ease and talked and talked.

She had brought her story with her, of Princess Irene and her Cats, but she never got very far with it, because she was always being roped in for games with the girls or with Klartch and half the people in the Castle, and these were all so much fun that she never seemed to have time for anything else.

By the end of the week, she was enjoying herself so much that it was a real wrench when she and Joe had to go home to Ulverscote. They found they had missed Gammer’s funeral. But at least they arrived in time to welcome Nicola home from hospital, pale and skinny but no longer seriously ill. As they walked back from the welcome party, Joe and Marianne talked all the time about Chrestomanci Castle. In fact, they talked of nothing else all weekend. Dad was morose about it, but Mum listened, doubtfully but intently. When the car came and fetched Joe and Marianne away again the next Monday, their mother went thoughtfully along to Woods House to talk to Irene.

Irene had never been officially named as the next Gammer, but people were always going to talk to her as if she was. Irene would lay her pencil down across her latest delicate design-work and listen seriously with Nutcase on her knee. Nutcase was now able to get into any cupboard or at any food he fancied and only Jane James could control him. Mum told Marianne it was a blessing that Irene liked that cat so much.

Irene’s advice was always considered to be excellent – though Irene told Marianne that all she did was to tell people what they were really trying to say to her. One of the first people to consult her was Uncle Charles. He put on his badly crumpled wedding-suit and went up to Woods House as an official visitor, where he told Irene many things. Shortly after that, he enrolled as an advanced student at the Bowbridge College of Art. Mum told Marianne that Uncle Charles was intending to go to London to seek his fortune in a year or so.

“There’s another who’s above his own family now,” Dad said.

Mum’s own visit to Irene resulted in her sharing the car that came for Joe and Marianne on the third Monday and arriving at Chrestomanci Castle too. Millie welcomed her with delight. Mum spent a most enjoyable morning talking to Millie over coffee and biscuits – good, but not as good as Jane James’s, Mum said, but then whose were? – talking about everything under the sun, including the deep mysteries of herbs. After a bit, she agreed to let Chrestomanci’s secretary Tom come in and take notes, because, as Millie said, she was saying things that even Jason had never heard of. Marianne’s mum enjoyed this visit so much – including the chance to have lunch with both her children – that she went back to the Castle many times. It annoyed Dad but, Mum said, there you go, that’s Dad.

After this, the car going to the Castle on a Monday was often quite crowded with Pinhoe ladies – and their broomsticks for the return journey – visiting various people in the Castle. Mr Stubbs and Miss Bessemer were busy learning from the craft too. Amazing new chutneys and tangy pickles made their way into the Castle, along with certain magical embroideries for sheets, clothes and cushions. The Castle gave them spells in return, but most Pinhoe ladies were agreed that Castle spells were not a patch on the spells of the craft. It made them feel pleasantly useful and superior.

The men mostly went over by bicycle. They were even more superior, particularly Uncle Richard and Uncle Isaac, when they found themselves giving lessons in woodworking and the craft of growing things to a ring of earnest gardeners and footmen.

“Bah!” said Dad. “Letting them pick your brains!”

By this time it was all round the country, beyond Bowbridge in one direction and Hopton the other way, that Edgar and Lester Pinhoe had done away with Gaffer Pinhoe. Both of them lost clients. In the end, neither of them could stand the gossip any more. They moved away to Brighton, where they lived together in a bachelor flat. Great Aunt Clarice moved in with Great Aunt Sue, where they lived in the house just outside Ulverscote among more fat lazy dogs than anyone could count. Dad called the house “The Fleapit” from then on.

Gammer Norah and her daughter Dorothea naturally bore a grudge. They were the ones who spread the gossip about Edgar and Lester. When Marianne’s two great uncles left, Gammer Norah and Dorothea took to standing on the green of Helm St Mary, where they scowled so at any Pinhoes visiting the Castle that, as Mum said, it made you nervous in case they still had the evil eye. But that stopped when Gammer Norah won a lottery ticket for two to go to Timbuktu, and both Norah and Dorothea went. “We can’t have them festering away on our doorstep,” Millie said, with a wink at Mum. “They had to go before their magic grew back.”

“Typical interference,” Dad said.

Klartch continued to grow. By Christmas he was developed enough to join the others in the now crowded schoolroom and learn to read and write. Even Janet began to realise that Klartch was a friend and not a pet. Games of Klartchball still got played on the lawn, but the rules changed with Klartch’s size. Klartch was a team on his own by the New Year.

Often, usually around dusk, the Castle staff got used to seeing a huge female griffin come ghosting down to the lawn. This was sometimes confusing, because Joe’s latest flying machine was also liable to arrive home at dusk, whereupon it usually crashed. The way to tell the difference, Mr Frazier explained, was that if it was the griffin, you got knocked down in the corridor by Klartch rushing out to see his mother. If Klartch did not appear, then you rushed out with healing spells and mending crafts the Pinhoes had taught you.

And sometimes, sometimes, when Cat rode out on Syracuse into the more distant woods, they would see a tall old man striding along in the distance with his hand on the back of a glimmering white unicorn.

Copyright

Charmed Life. Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1977
Illustrations copyright © Tim Stevens 2000

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007393930

Version 1

The Magicians of Caprona. Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1980
Illustrations copyright © Tim Stevens 2000

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007369096

Version 1

Witch Week. Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1982
Illustrations copyright © Tim Stevens 2000

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007369102

Version 1

The Lives of Christopher Chant. Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1988
Illustrations copyright © Tim Stevens 2000

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007389018

Version 1

Mixed Magics. collection © Diana Wynne Jones 2000
Warlock at the Wheel © Diana Wynne Jones 1984
Carol Oneir’s Hundreth Dream © Diana Wynne Jones 1986
The Sage of Theare © Diana Wynne Jones 1982
Stealer of Souls © Diana Wynne Jones 2000
Illustrations copyright © Tim Stevens 2000

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007389025

Version 1

Conrad’s Fate. Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 2005
Illustrations copyright © Tim Stevens 2005

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007383511

Version 1

The Pinhoe Egg. Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 2006
Illustrations copyright © Tim Stevens 2006

EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007349951

Version 1

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EPub Edition © AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780007537921

Version 1

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