The Pinhoe Egg (18 page)

“Then use it to go home on,” Mr. Farleigh said, “and I'll not turn you back.”

“But I don't want to turn back,” Cat said with his teeth clenched. “How do you think you can stop me going on?”

“With the weight of this whole county,” Mr. Farleigh said. “I carry it with me, boy.”

He did, too, in some odd way, Cat realized. Though Syracuse was trampling and sidling, highly disturbed by the magic Cat had used, Cat managed a small push of power toward Mr. Farleigh. He met a resistance that felt as old as granite, and as gnarled and nonhuman as a tree that was petrified and turned to stone. The stony roots of Mr. Farleigh seemed to have twined and clamped themselves into the earth for miles around.

Cat sat back in his saddle wondering what to do. He was
not
going to go tamely back to the Castle, just because a bullying witchmaster with a gun told him to.

“
Why
don't you want me to ride this way?” he asked.

Mr. Farleigh's strange pale eyes glowered at him from under his bushy brows. “Because you mess up my arrangements,” he said. “You have no true belief. You trespass and you trample and you unveil that which should be hidden. You try to release what should be safely imprisoned.”

It sounded religious to Cat. He bent forward to pat Syracuse's tossing head and wondered how to say that he had not done any of these things. As to Mr. Farleigh's arrangements, he should just make them some other way! People should be allowed to ride where they wanted.

He was just deciding that there was no way to say this politely, and he had opened his mouth to be rude, when he was interrupted by a most unusual set of sounds coming from somewhere behind his right shoulder. There were voices, chattering, singing, and murmuring, as if quite a large crowd of people were walking along the top
of the meadows. This noise was mixed with a strange, shrill whispering, which was combined with creakings and clatterings and a wooden thumping. Cat's head swiveled to see what on earth it was.

It was the flying machine. It was coming slowly across the top of the meadow about a hundred yards away and about twenty feet in the air. And it was the most peculiar object Cat had seen in his life. To either side of it, a jointed set of broken tables slowly flapped. Something that looked like a three-legged stool whirled furiously on its nose. The rest of it looked like a tangle of broken chairs all loosely hooked together, with each bit of it working and waving and making little flaps of wood go in and out. It had a long feather duster for a tail. In the midst of it, Cat could just see the dismantled frames of two bicycles and two people on them, pedaling madly. And every bit of this strange contraption was calling out as it came, “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle, I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” high, low, shrill, and steady.

Mr. Farleigh said, in a voice that was almost a groan, “The very air is not safe from them!”
Cat's head whipped back to find Mr. Farleigh staring up at the machine in horror. As Cat looked, Mr. Farleigh pulled something on his gun and raised it.

The gun barrel moved to track the flying machine and, before Cat could do more than put one hand out and shout, “
No!,
” Mr. Farleigh fired.

Cat thought there was a yell from the machine. But the
crack-bang!
of the shot sent Syracuse into a panic. He squealed and reared in earnest. Cat found himself clinging to a vertical horse and fighting to keep Syracuse's trampling back hooves from going into the river. He saw everything in snatches, among flying horsehair and clods of mud and grass splashing into the water, but he saw Mr. Farleigh slam another cartridge into his gun and he saw, uphill, the flying machine tipping to one side so that one set of flapping tables almost brushed the grass.

Then Syracuse came down, quivering with terror. Cat saw the flying machine right itself with a clap and a clatter. Then it was off, with astonishing speed, tables flapping, feather duster wagging, boys' feet flashing round and round. It had
slipped over the top of the hill and vanished from sight before Mr. Farleigh could raise his gun again.

While Mr. Farleigh lowered his gun, looking grim and frustrated, Cat patted Syracuse and pulled his ear to quiet him. He said to Mr. Farleigh, “That would have been murder.” He was surprised that his voice came out firm and angry and hardly frightened at all.

Mr. Farleigh gave him a contemptuous look. “It was an abomination,” he said.

“No, it was a flying machine,” Cat said. “There were two people in it.”

Mr. Farleigh paid no attention. He looked beyond Cat and seemed horrified again. “Here is another abomination!” he said. He lowered his gun farther and aimed at the path behind Cat.

Cat snatched a look behind him. To his terror, he found that Klartch had followed them. Klartch was standing in the path with his beak open and his small triangular wings raised, obviously paralyzed with fear. Without having to think, Cat put out his left hand and rolled the barrel of Mr. Farleigh's gun up like a party whistle or a Swiss roll.

“If you fire now, it'll blow your face off!” he said. He was truly angry by then.

Mr. Farleigh looked grimly down at his rolled-up gun. He looked up at Cat with his bushy eyebrows raised and gave him a sarcastic stare. The gun, slowly, started to unroll again.

Behind Cat, Klartch went “Weep, weep, weep!” Syracuse shook all over.

What shall I do? Cat thought. He knew, as clearly as if Mr. Farleigh had just said so, that after he had shot Klartch, Mr. Farleigh would shoot Syracuse and then Cat, because Cat was a witness and Syracuse was in the way. He had to do something.

He pushed at Mr. Farleigh with his left hand out and came up against flinty, knotty power, like an oak tree turned to stone. Cat could not move it. And the gun steadily unrolled. Mr. Farleigh stared at Cat across it, immovable and contemptuous. He seemed to be saying,
You can do nothing
.

Yes, I
can
! Cat thought. I must, I
will
! Or Klartch and Syracuse will be dead. At least I've still got three lives left.

The thought of those three lives steadied him. When Mr. Farleigh shot him, Cat would still be
alive, on his eighth life, just like Chrestomanci was, and he could do something then. All the things he had been taught by Chrestomanci surged about in his head. There must be
something
Chrestomanci had said—Yes, there was! After Cat had sent Joe to the ceiling, Chrestomanci had said, “Even the strongest enchanter can be defeated by using his own strength against him.” So instead of pushing
against
Mr. Farleigh's heavy, stony power, suppose Cat pushed
with
it? And quick, because the gun was nearly unrolled.

Then it was not difficult at all. Cat pushed out hard with his left hand and made Mr. Farleigh into a petrified oak tree.

It was a weird thing. It stood nine feet high, made of bent and twisted gray rock, and it had huge and knotty roots that had somehow delved and gouged their way into the earth of the path where it stood. It had a broken-looking hump at the top, which had probably been Mr. Farleigh's head, and three lumpy, writhen branches. One branch must have been the gun, because the other two had stone oak leaves clinging to them, each leaf with a glitter of mica to it.

Syracuse hated it. His front feet danced this way and that, trying to take him away from it. Klartch gave out another frightened “Weep, weep!”

“It's all right,” Cat said to both of them. “It won't hurt you now. Honestly.” He got down from Syracuse and found he was shaking as badly as the horse was. Klartch crept up to him, shaking too. “I
wish
you hadn't followed me,” Cat said to him. “You nearly got killed.”

“Need to come too,” Klartch said.

Cat had half a mind to take them all back home to the Castle. But he had promised to meet Marianne and they were well over halfway by now. And he could tell, by the sound of the river and the feel of the meadow, that Mr. Farleigh had been the center that held the misdirection spells together. They were so weak now that they were almost gone. It would be easy to get to Woods House, except for—Cat looked up at the ugly stone oak, looming above them. There would be no getting Syracuse past that thing, he knew. Besides, it was right in the path and a terrible nuisance to anyone trying to go this way.

Cat steadied his trembling knees and sent the
stone oak away somewhere else, somewhere it fitted in better, he had no idea where. It went with a soft rumble like thunder far off, followed by a small breeze full of dust from the path, river smell, and bird noises. The willows rattled their leaves in it. For a moment, there were deep trenches in the path where the stone roots had been, but they began filling in almost at once. Sand and earth poured into the holes like water, and then hardened.

Cat waited until the path was back to the way it had been and then levitated Klartch up into Syracuse's saddle. Klartch flopped across it with a gasp of surprise. One pair of legs hung down on each side, helplessly. Syracuse craned his head round and stared.

“It's the best I can do,” Cat said to them. “Come on. Let's go.”

M
arianne looked up gladly as Cat came across the stubbly lawn, leading Syracuse. She was sad to see that Joe was not with him, but at least Cat was here. She had begun to think he was not coming.

“Friend of yours?” asked talkative Mr. Adams. “That's a fine piece of horseflesh he's got there. Arab ancestry, I shouldn't wonder. What's he got on the saddle?”

Marianne wondered too, until Cat came near. She saw that Cat stared at Mr. Adams much as she had done herself. “Oh, you've brought Klartch!” she said.

“He followed me. I had to bring him,” Cat
said. He did not feel like explaining how lethal that had nearly been.

“I love your horse,” Marianne said. “He's beautiful.” She went boldly up to rub Syracuse's face. Cat watched a little anxiously, knowing what Syracuse could be like. But Syracuse graciously allowed Marianne to rub his nose and then pat his neck, and Marianne said, “Ah, you like peppermints, do you? I'm afraid I—”

“Here you are,” Mr. Adams said, producing a paper bag from an earthy pocket. “These are extra strong—he'll like these. They call me Mr. Adams,” he added to Cat. “Been in Princess Irene's family for years.”

“How do you do?” Cat said politely, wondering how he would get a private word with Marianne with Mr. Adams there. While Marianne fed Syracuse peppermints, he hauled Klartch off the saddle and dropped him in the grass—with a grunt from both of them: Klartch was heavy and landed heavily. Mr. Adams stared at Klartch in some perplexity.

“I give up,” he said. “Is it a flying bird-dog, or what?”

“He's a baby griffin,” Cat explained. He tried
to smile at Mr. Adams, but the word
flying
made him terribly anxious suddenly about Roger and Joe, and the smile was more of a grimace. He didn't think that Mr. Farleigh's bullet had hit either of them, but it had certainly hit the flying machine somewhere, and one of them had yelled. Still, there was nothing he could do.

“Shall I look after the horse for you while you go indoors?” Mr. Adams offered. “Second to gardening, I love tending to horses. He'll be safe with me.”

Cat and Marianne exchanged relieved looks. Marianne had been wondering how they were going to talk in private too.

“I'll look after this griffin fellow too, if you like,” Mr. Adams offered.

“Thanks. I'll take Klartch with me,” Cat said. He did not feel like letting Klartch out of his sight just then. He handed Syracuse over to Mr. Adams and managed to thank him, although he was nervous again, knowing what Syracuse could be like. But Syracuse bent his head to Mr. Adams and seemed prepared to make a fuss of him, while Mr. Adams murmured and made little cheeping whistles in reply.

It seemed to be all right. Marianne and Cat went to the open door of the conservatory, with Klartch lolloping after them. “Is something the matter?” Marianne said as they went. “You look pale. And you only talk in little jerks.”

Cat would have liked to tell Marianne all about his encounter with Mr. Farleigh. He was almost longing to. But that strange thing happened in his head that made him so bad at telling people things, and all he could manage to say was, “I had a—a turn up with Gaffer Farleigh on the way.” And as soon as Marianne was nodding in perfect understanding, Cat was forced to change the subject. He leaned toward her and whispered, “Is Mr. Adams a
gnome
?”

Marianne choked on a giggle. “I don't
know
!” she whispered back.

Cat was feeling much better and they were both trying not to laugh as they entered the conservatory. It was transformed. When Cat had last been here, the glass of the roof and walls had been too dirty to see through, and the floor had been coconut matting with dead plants standing about on it. Marianne could hardly remember it any other way. Now the glass sparkled and there
were big green frondy plants, some of them with huge lilylike flowers, white and cream and yellow, which Jason must have brought here from his store. The floor that the plants stood on was a marvel of white, green, and blue tiles, in a gentle eye-resting pattern. There were new cane chairs. Best of all, a small fountain—that must have been covered up by the old matting—was now playing, making a quiet chuckling and misting the fronds of the plants. The smell this brought out from the flowers reminded them both of Irene's scent.

Marianne said wonderingly, “This must all have been underneath! How
could
Gammer have kept it all covered up?”

Thoroughly curious to know what the rest of the house was like now, they went on into the hall. The same tiles were here, blue, white, and green, making the hall twice as light. To Marianne's surprise, the tiles went on up the walls, to about the height of her shoulders, where she had only known dingy, knobbly cream paint before. Above the tiles, Uncle Charles had painted the walls a paler shade of the blue in the tiles. Marianne wondered if Uncle Charles had chosen it, or Irene. Irene, certainly. There were
plants here too, one of them a whole tree. The stairs had been polished so that they gleamed, with a rich, moss-colored strip of carpet down the middle.

Klartch had difficulty walking on the tiles. His front talons clattered and slid. His back feet, which were more like paws, skidded. Cat turned and waited for him.

Marianne, watching Klartch, said, “I suppose Gammer covered the tiles with matting because they were slippery. Or was it in case they got spoiled? What was your idea for helping me?”

Cat turned back to her, wishing it was a bigger, better idea. “Well,” he began.

But Jason came out of one of the rooms just then. “Oh, hello!” he said. “I didn't hear you arrive. Welcome to the dez rez, both of you!”

And Irene came racing down the moss-carpeted stairs, crying out in delight. She seized Marianne and kissed her, hugged Cat, and then kneeled down to lift Klartch up by his feathery front legs so that she could rub her face on his beak. Klartch made little crooning noises at her in reply. “This is splendid!” Irene said. “Not many people can say that their very first visitor was a
griffin!” She lowered Klartch down and looked anxiously up at Marianne. “I hope you don't mind what we've done to the house.”

“Mind?”
Marianne said. “It's wonderful! Were these tiles always up the walls like this?” She went over and rubbed her hand across them. “Smooth,” she said. “Lovely.”

“They were painted over,” Irene said. “When I discovered them under the paint, I just had to have it scraped off. I'm afraid the painting Mr. Pinhoe wasn't very pleased about the extra work. But I cleaned the tiles myself.”

Uncle Charles was an idiot then, Marianne thought. “It was worth it. They glow!”

“Ah, that's Irene's doing,” Jason said, with a proud, loving look toward his wife. “She's inherited the dwimmer gift. Dwimmer,” he explained to Cat, “means that a person is in touch with the life in everything. They can bring it out even when it's hidden. When Irene cleaned those tiles, she didn't just take the paint and dirt of ages off them. She released the art that went to making them.”

A slight noise made Marianne look up at the stairs. Uncle Charles was standing near the top of
them, in his paint-blotched overalls, looking outraged. None of the adult Pinhoes liked to hear the craft openly spoken of like this. Not even Uncle Charles, Marianne thought sadly. Uncle Charles was becoming more of a standard Pinhoe and less of a disappointment every day. Oh, I
wish
they'd let him go and study to be an artist, like he wanted to after he painted our inn sign! she thought.

Uncle Charles coughed slightly and came loudly down the wooden part of the stairs. Marianne knew that, although it looked as if Uncle Charles was trying to keep paint off the mossy carpet, what he was really doing was making a noise in order to stop Jason talking about dwimmer. “I've finished the undercoat in the small bathroom, madam,” he said to Irene. “I'll be off to my lunch while it dries and come back to do the gloss this afternoon.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pinhoe,” Irene said to him.

Jason said, trying to be friendly, “I don't know how you do it, Mr. Pinhoe. I've never known paint to dry as quickly as yours does.”

Uncle Charles just gave him a fixed and disapproving look and clumped across the tiles to the
front door. The look, and Uncle Charles's head with it, jerked a little when he saw Klartch. For a fraction of an instant, delight and curiosity jumped across his face. Then the disapproving look settled back, stronger than ever, and Uncle Charles marched on, and away outside.

He left a slightly awkward silence behind him.

“Well,” Jason said at length, a bit too heartily, “I think we should show you all over the house.”

“I only came to find my cat, really,” Marianne said.

“Jane James has got him,” Irene said. “He's quite safe.
Do
come and see what we've done here!”

It was impossible to say no. Jason and Irene were both so proud of the place. They swept Cat and Marianne through into the front room, where the moss green chairs, new white walls, and some of Irene's design paintings on it in frames, made it look like a different room from the one where Gammer had shouted at the Farleighs. Then Cat and Marianne were swept to Jason's den, full of books and leather, and Irene's workroom, all polished wood and a sloping table under the window, with an antique stand for paints and pencils that Marianne knew Dad
would have admired: it was so cleverly designed.

After this they were whirled through the dining room and then on upstairs, into a moss green corridor with bedrooms and bathrooms opening off it. Irene had had some of the walls moved, so that now there were bedrooms, sunny and elegant, which had not been there when Marianne last saw the house. The trickling cistern cabinet had become a white warm cupboard that was full of towels and made no noise at all. Uncle Simeon, Marianne thought, had done wonders up here, sprained ankle and all.

“We're still thinking what to do with the attics,” Irene said, “but they need a lot of sorting out first.”

“I want to check all those herbs for seeds. Some of them are quite rare and may well grow, given the right spells,” Jason explained as he swept everyone downstairs again.

Marianne sent Cat an urgent look on the way down. Cat pretended to be waiting for Klartch in order to look reassuringly back. They had to let Jason and Irene finish showing them the house. It was no good trying to talk before then.

Down the passage from the hall, which turned
out to be lined with the same blue, green, and white tiles, Jason flung open the door to the kitchen. More of those tiles over the sink, Marianne saw, and in a line round the room; but mostly the impression was of largeness, brightness, and comfort. There was a rusty red floor, which the place had always needed, in Marianne's opinion, and of course the famous table, now scrubbed white, white, white.

Nutcase leered smugly at her from Jane James's bony knees. Jane James was sitting in a chair close to the stove, stirring a saucepan with one hand and reading a magazine she held in the other.

“I've taken the scullery for my distillery,” Jason said. “Let me show—”

“Lunch in half an hour,” Jane James replied.

“I'll tell Mr. Adams,” Irene said.

Jane James stood up and put the magazine on the table and Nutcase on the magazine. Nutcase sat there demurely until Klartch shuffled and clacked his way round the door. Then Nutcase stood up in an arch and spat.

“Don't be a silly cat,” Jane James said, as if she saw creatures like Klartch every day. “It's only a baby griffin. Will he eat biscuits?” she asked Cat.

She seemed to know at once that he was responsible for Klartch.

“
I'll
eat biscuits,” Jason said. “She makes the best biscuits in this world,” he told Marianne.

“Yes, but not for you. You'll spoil your lunch,” Jane James said. “You and Irene go and get cleaned up ready.”

Cat was not surprised that Jason and Irene meekly scurried out of the kitchen. Nor was he surprised when Jane James gave a secret smile as she watched them go. He thought she was quite certainly a sorceress. She reminded him a lot of Miss Bessemer, who was.

Her biscuits were delicious, big and buttery. Klartch liked them as much as Cat and Marianne did and kept putting his beak up for more. Nutcase looked down from the table at him, disgustedly.

After about her tenth biscuit, Marianne found herself searching Jane James's face for the humor she was sure was hidden there. “That time you brought Nutcase home in a basket,” she said curiously, “you weren't cross about him, really, were you?”

“Not at all,” Jane James said. “He likes me and
I like him. I'd gladly keep him here if he's too much trouble for you. But I kept seeing you chasing around, worrying about him. Did you get
any
holiday to yourself this year?”

Marianne's face crumpled a little as she thought of her story of “Princess Irene and her Cats,” still barely started. But she said bravely, “Our family likes to keep children busy.”

“You're no child. You're a full-grown enchantress,” Jane James retorted. “Don't they
notice
? And I don't see any of your cousins very busy. Riding their bikes up and down and yelling seems to me how busy
they
are.” She stood up and planted Nutcase into Marianne's arms. “There you are. Tell Mr. Adams to come for his lunch on your way out.”

You had to go when Jane James did that, Cat thought. She was quite a tartar. They thanked her for the biscuits and went out into the passage again. As they turned left toward the hall, they nearly collided with a person who appeared to come out of the tiled wall.

“Ooops-a-la!” that person said.

They stared at him. Both of them had a moment when they thought they were looking at
Mr. Adams and that Mr. Adams had shrunk. He had the same tufts of hair and the same wrinkled brown face with the big ears. But Mr. Adams had not been wearing bright green, blue, and white checkered trousers and a moss green waistcoat. And Mr. Adams was about the same height as Cat, who was small for his age, where this person only came up to Cat's waist.