To Greer Gilman

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Beyond the Book

Note from the Author

Other titles by Diana Wynne Jones

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

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.

Chapter Two

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.

Chapter Three

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.

Chapter Four

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.”

Chapter Five

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.

Chapter Six

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.”

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