The Pinhoe Egg (16 page)

Cat thought. He was so tired, that was the problem. And the more he cudgeled his sleepy brain, the more responsible he felt. There was no doubt that he had said just the one thing to Marianne likely to start her getting into the mess she was now in. He ought to help her, even though what he said had really been to tell himself something instead. But how was he to stop a witch war among people he didn't even know? Walk up to this Gammer person and put her in a stasis spell? Suppose he got the wrong old lady? He wanted to tell Marianne that it was hopeless, except that she was so upset that she had come miles at night on a broomstick. She must have sneaked off from her angry father to do it too. No, he had to think of something.

“All right,” he said. “I'll think. But not now. I'm too sleepy. Klartch keeps needing to be fed in the night, you see. I'll have a real, serious think in the morning. Is there anywhere I can meet you to tell you any ideas I get?”

“Tomorrow?” Marianne said. “All right, as long as it's secret. I don't want Dad to know I talked to you—you're as bad as the Big Man to him. He says you're a nine-lifed enchanter too. I didn't know. I thought you were Irene's son. Can you get Irene to bring you to Woods House again? People from the Castle have to be with a Pinhoe to get there, you see. Otherwise they stop you and send you back here.”

“I think so,” said Cat. “She goes there most days with Jason. And I tell you what—I'll try to get Joe to come too if he's free. Meet me around midday. I have to think first, and exercise Syracuse.”

Marianne looked puzzled. “I thought his name was Klartch.”

“Syracuse,” Cat explained, “is a horse. Klartch is this griffin. The cat sitting on my bed staring at you is Mopsa.”

“Oh,” said Marianne. She almost grinned. “You
do seem to be surrounded in creatures. That's a dwimmer-thing, I think. I can tell you have quite strong dwimmer. See you tomorrow at midday, then.” Looking much more cheerful, she scrambled up and stared round for her broomstick.

Cat plucked the broomstick away from the window and handed it politely to Marianne. “Will you be all right?” he asked, trying not to yawn. “It's pretty dark.”

“As long as the owls miss me,” Marianne said. “They never look where they're going. But if you had any idea how uncomfortable it is riding a broomstick, you wouldn't ask. I suppose one more set of bruises won't notice. See you.” She sat herself sideways on the hovering broomstick. “Ouch,” she said. “This is Mum's broom. It doesn't like me riding it.”

Cat opened the window for her and Marianne swooped out through it, away into the night.

Cat stumbled back to bed. He had not a clue how to solve Marianne's problems. He simply hoped, as he pushed Mopsa out of the way, that a good idea came into his head while he was asleep. He was asleep the next second. He forgot to turn out the light. He did not see the offended way
Mopsa jumped down and joined Klartch in his basket.

He woke—much too soon, it seemed—when Janet barged cheerfully into his room, saying, “Breakfast, Klartch. Come on down to the kitchen. I'm going to start house-training him today,” she told the yawning Cat. “It
should
be all right if we can get downstairs fast enough.”

When Janet and Klartch had crashed out of the room, Cat sat up, searching his sleepy brain for any ideas that might have landed in it during the night. There was one, but it struck him as very poor and stupid indeed, one only to be used if nothing else occurred to him. He got up and went along to have a shower, hoping that might liven his brain up a little. The water in the Castle was bespelled, and Cat had hopes of it.

But nothing happened. With only the poor, thin idea in his head, Cat got dressed and went downstairs. He met a strong disinfectant spell on the next flight down. This was followed by the angry clattering of a bucket and Janet's raised voice. “Purple nadgers, Euphemia! He's only a baby! And he's terribly ashamed. Just look at him!” It sounded as if Klartch had not gotten
downstairs quite fast enough after all.

Cat grinned and galloped down the other set of stairs that led to the stable door. They came out past the cubbyhole where Joe was supposed to clean shoes. Rather to Cat's surprise, Joe was actually there, busily blacking a large boot.

Cat leaned into the little room. “Your sister was here last night, trying to find you,” he said. “She's got troubles. She says your Gammer is secretly putting spells on the Farleighs.”

“Our Gammer?” Joe said, calmly rubbing away at the boot. “You must know she is. You saw me on my way to set the first spell for her, didn't you?”

“The tadpoles?” Cat said.

“Frogs,” said Joe.

“Oh,” Cat said. “Um.
Those
frogs. In Helm St. Mary?”

“That's right,” Joe said. “Gammer said if I could get the one spell out for her, then she could follow the thread with a load of others, and if she did, it would work her free of the containment my dad had put on her. By-product, she called it. She pointed her stick at me to make me do it. And I didn't want to have rode all the way to
Ulverscote for nothing and I knew Gaffer Farleigh did put an addle spell on her—Marianne swears he did, and she knows—so I took the jar to Helm St. Mary and tipped it into their duck pond there for her.”

Cat was hugely relieved. He had no need to use his poor, thin idea. Joe could solve Marianne's problems with a word. “Then do you think you could come to Ulverscote with me this morning and tell your father? Marianne says Gammer's set a spell on everyone so that they don't believe her and the Farleighs are sending them plagues in revenge.”

Joe's head went sulkily down as he pondered. He shrugged. “If Gammer's done that, then they won't believe me neither, not if they don't believe Marianne. She's strong in the craft, Gammer is, and I'm no one. Besides, Mr. Frazier says he'll have me up before the Big Man if I don't stay here where I'm paid to be.
And
just when we've got our machine near perfect! No. Sorry. Can't oblige you.”

And, to prove that Joe was not just making excuses, Mr. Frazier came along the kitchen corridor just then, saying, “Joe Pinhoe, are you
working? Master Cat, I'll trouble you not to interrupt Joe in his work. We're privileged today. Master Pinhoe has actually cleaned a boot.”

“Just going,” Cat told Mr. Frazier. He leaned farther into the cubbyhole and asked, “Is Mr. Farleigh the gamekeeper any relation to the Farleighs who got the frogs?”

“Jed Farleigh,” said Joe. “He's their Gaffer.” Hearing Mr. Frazier treading closer, he picked up two more boots and tried to look as if he was cleaning all three at once.

Cat said “Thanks” to him and hurried toward the stables, thinking. If he understood rightly, these Gammers and Gaffers were the heads of these tribes of witchy people, and if Mr. Farleigh the gamekeeper was one, the whole thing was much more frightening than Cat had realized. No wonder Marianne had been so upset. And here was he, Cat, with only one poor, second-rate idea to put against it all. Joe was no help. Cat hurried out into the yard, feeling small and weak and heartily wishing he had not agreed to help Marianne.

As Cat crossed the yard, Jason came out of his herb shed with a stack of flat wooden boxes. Cat
went over to him. Jason, by the time Cat reached him, was standing on one leg, holding the boxes on one knee while he locked the shed. He spared Cat a harried smile. “What can I do for you, young nine-lifer?” The smells of many kinds of herbs, faint and sweet or rich and spicy, swam round the pair of them.

“Can you give me a lift to Woods House today?” Cat asked.

“Well, I
could
,” Jason said, “but you'd have to find your own way back. We're moving in there for good today. Irene's busy packing.”

Cat had not realized that things had moved on so quickly. He was quite taken aback. But he supposed that when an enchanter did things, he did them more swiftly than other people. And he was going to miss Irene. “Not to worry, then,” he said. “Thanks.”

He stood aside and watched Jason carry the boxes away across the yard. That did it, then. He was let off. But somehow that did not make him terribly happy. Marianne would be expecting him. He would have let her down. No, he would have to find a way to get to Ulverscote on his own. It was a pity that he had such a poor, thin idea to take there.

He could teleport, he thought, there and back. That ought to have been easy, but for the mis-direction spell—and then there was that barrier. If he tried it without one of the Pinhoes, he could end up caught behind the barrier like Chrestomanci. Better think of some other way. Cat walked slowly over to Syracuse's stall to tell it to muck itself out, considering.

Joss Callow met him as he got there. “When you're ready, we'll ride out over the heath,” he told Cat. “Half an hour?”

Cat's mind had this way of making plans without Cat knowing it was. “Can you make it later than that?” he asked, without having to think. “Jason and Irene are leaving today and I'll need to say good-bye.”

“Suits me,” Joss said. “I've plenty to do here. Eleven o'clock, then?”

“Fine,” Cat said gratefully. While he cleaned the stall and gave Syracuse his morning peppermint, he found out what he meant to do. His mind had it all neatly worked out. He was going to ride to Ulverscote on Syracuse, and the way to make sure he got there was to follow the river. He was fairly sure the same river ran past the Castle
and through Ulverscote. And, surely, even the most secretive of Pinhoes and the angriest of Farleighs could not change the way a river ran. They might deceive him into
thinking
it ran the other way, but Cat was fairly sure he could guard against that if he kept his witch sight firmly on the way it was
really
flowing.

Cat gave Syracuse a pat and a strong promise to ride him later and went indoors. Before he went upstairs to the playroom for breakfast, he dodged into the library where, much to the surprise of old Miss Rosalie, the Castle librarian, he asked for a map of the country between the Castle and Ulverscote.

“I don't understand this,” Miss Rosalie grumbled, spreading the map out on a table for him. “
Everyone
seems to want this map at the moment. Jason, Tom, Bernard, Chrestomanci, Millie, Roger. Now you.”

Miss Rosalie always grumbled. She thought all books and maps should be on shelves. Cat paid no attention to her. He leaned over the map and carefully followed the wavy blue line of the river as it snaked through its steep valley beside the Castle. Sure enough, the valley, and the river with
it, curved its way on, around the hill with Ulverscote Wood on it, and ran along the bottom of the slope where Ulverscote village was. By that stage, the valley was a simple dip, but it was the same river. Cat's brain had gotten it right. He thanked Miss Rosalie and raced away.

In the schoolroom, Klartch was sitting on the sofa trying very seriously to eat a banana. “He's in disgrace,” Euphemia snapped, banging toast and coffee down in front of Cat. “Don't you go and be nice to him.”

While Janet was loudly protesting that Klartch was only a baby and that the way to teach babies was to be nice to them, Julia said to Cat, “Jason and Irene are moving out today, did you know? Are you coming down to the hall to say good-bye to them?”

Cat nodded. His mind was busy with the problem of how to get rid of Joss without making Joss suspicious. He thought he had it.

Julia said, “Roger?”

Roger just grunted. He was busy making diagrams on scraps of paper. He had been doing this at every meal for weeks now. Julia looked at the ceiling. “Boys! Honestly!”

Here Chrestomanci sailed in, wearing a kingly red dressing gown with ermine down the front. He took a long stride and got the banana skin away from Klartch just as Klartch tried to eat it. “I think not,” he said. “We don't want any more accidents on the stairs.”

“Good morning, Daddy,” Julia said. “Why does everyone always have their minds on something
else
?”

“A good question,” Chrestomanci said, tossing the banana skin into the air. It disappeared. “I suppose it must be because we all have a lot to think about. Roger.” Roger looked up guiltily. The scraps of paper had somehow disappeared, like the banana skin. “Roger, I need to talk to you,” Chrestomanci said, “on a matter of some urgency. Can you come with me to my study, please.”

Roger got up, looking pale and apprehensive. Chrestomanci politely ushered him out of the schoolroom ahead of himself and gently closed the door behind them both. The other three looked at one another, glanced at Euphemia, and decided to say nothing.

Roger had still not come back when everyone
gathered in the hall to say good-bye to Irene and Jason. He and Chrestomanci were almost the only people missing.

“Never mind,” Jason said, shaking hands with Millie. “We'll see him when we give our house-warming party.”

“I'll make sure he's there,” Millie said. “Jason, it's been a pleasure having you.”

Jason went round shaking hands with everyone. Irene followed, hugging people. Cat stood a little back from the throng. He was engaged in the most delicate piece of long-distance magic he had ever done, trying to make Joss's big brown horse lose a shoe in a way that looked completely natural, without hurting the horse. He took its off hind foot up in imaginary hands and gently prized at the long iron nails that held the shoe on, going round them each several times, easing them out a bit at a time, until the horseshoe was hanging away from the hoof. Then he gave the horseshoe a sharp sideways push. It flew off. At least Cat thought it did. He certainly felt the horse give a jump of surprise. He let its foot carefully down. Then he picked the shoe up in imaginary hands and looked at it with imaginary eyes.
Good. All the nails were most satisfactorily bent, as if the horse itself had twisted the horseshoe off. He tossed the shoe into a corner of the stall so that the horse was less likely to tread on it and injure itself.