The Pinhoe Egg (25 page)

Janet and Julia were cautiously inspecting the machine. Janet called out, “Cat, I can't find Klartch anywhere!”

Julia called out, “What have you been up to without
us
? It isn't fair!”

“You wouldn't have enjoyed it,” Cat called back. “Millie's got Klartch.”

“I don't care,” Julia shouted. “It still isn't fair!”

 

Marianne arrived very apprehensively the next Monday. She found she was in for ordinary lessons at first with Joe, Roger, Cat, Janet, and Julia, taught by a tall, keen man called Michael Saunders. She was impressed by Mr. Saunders. No one else had ever made Joe do any schoolwork at all. But Joe had been promised a big new work shed where he and Roger could experiment with all their new ideas, provided he pleased Mr. Saunders. So Joe sat at a desk and worked, and very soon proved to be quite extraordinarily good with figures.

Marianne began to enjoy herself. She made
friends instantly with both the other girls, and she liked Cat anyway, although she was shy of Roger. Roger
would
talk about machinery or money.

Most afternoons, Marianne and Cat had a lesson with Chrestomanci. At first, Marianne could hardly speak for nerves. Enchanter's magic was all so strange, and Cat knew so much more than she did. But she discovered on the second afternoon that Cat was slow with Magic Theory, whereas Marianne found it so easy that she almost felt she knew most of it already. Anyway, the next half of the lesson was always more like a conversation, with Cat and Chrestomanci asking her interested questions about the craft and dwimmer and herb lore. After the first terrifying afternoon, Marianne felt entirely at ease and talked and talked.

She had brought her story with her, of “Princess Irene and Her Cats,” but she never got very far with it, because she was always being roped in for games with the girls or with Klartch and half the people in the Castle, and these were all so much fun that she never seemed to have time for anything else.

By the end of the week, she was enjoying
herself so much that it was a real wrench when she and Joe had to go home to Ulverscote. They found they had missed Gammer's funeral. But at least they arrived in time to welcome Nicola home from hospital, pale and skinny but no longer seriously ill. As they walked back from the welcome party, Joe and Marianne talked all the time about Chrestomanci Castle. In fact, they talked of nothing else all weekend. Dad was morose about it, but Mum listened, doubtfully but intently. When the car came and fetched Joe and Marianne away again the next Monday, their mother went thoughtfully along to Woods House to talk to Irene.

Irene had never been officially named as the next Gammer, but people were always going to talk to her as if she was. Irene would lay her pencil down across her latest delicate design work and listen seriously with Nutcase on her knee. Nutcase was now able to get into any cupboard or at any food he fancied, and only Jane James could control him. Mum told Marianne it was a blessing that Irene liked that cat so much.

Irene's advice was always considered to be excellent—though Irene told Marianne that all
she did was to tell people what they were really trying to say to her. One of the first people to consult her was Uncle Charles. He put on his badly crumpled wedding suit and went up to Woods House as an official visitor, where he told Irene many things. Shortly after that, he enrolled as an advanced student at the Bowbridge College of Art. Mum told Marianne that Uncle Charles was intending to go to London to seek his fortune in a year or so.

“There's another who's above his own family now,” Dad said.

Mum's own visit to Irene resulted in her sharing the car that came for Joe and Marianne on the third Monday and arriving at Chrestomanci Castle too. Millie welcomed her with delight. Mum spent a most enjoyable morning talking to Millie over coffee and biscuits—good, but not as good as Jane James's, Mum said, but then whose were?—talking about everything under the sun, including the deep mysteries of herbs. After a bit, she agreed to let Chrestomanci's secretary, Tom, come in and take notes, because, as Millie said, she was saying things that even Jason had never heard of. Marianne's mum enjoyed this visit so much—
including the chance to have lunch with both her children—that she went back to the Castle many times. It annoyed Dad, but, Mum said, there you go, that's Dad.

After this, the car going to the Castle on a Monday was often quite crowded with Pinhoe ladies—and their broomsticks for the return journey—visiting various people in the Castle. Mr. Stubbs and Miss Bessemer were busy learning from the craft too. Amazing new chutneys and tangy pickles made their way into the Castle, along with certain magical embroideries for sheets, clothes, and cushions. The Castle gave them spells in return, but most Pinhoe ladies were agreed that Castle spells were not a patch on the spells of the craft. It made them feel pleasantly useful and superior.

The men mostly went over by bicycle. They were even more superior, particularly Uncle Richard and Uncle Isaac, when they found themselves giving lessons in woodworking and the craft of growing things to a ring of earnest gardeners and footmen.

“Bah!” said Dad. “Letting them pick your brains!”

By this time, it was all round the country,
beyond Bowbridge in one direction and Hopton the other way, that Edgar and Lester Pinhoe had done away with Gaffer Pinhoe. Both of them lost clients. In the end, neither of them could stand the gossip anymore. They moved away to Brighton, where they lived together in a bachelor flat. Great-Aunt Clarice moved in with Great-Aunt Sue, where they lived in the house just outside Ulverscote among more fat, lazy dogs than anyone could count. Dad called the house The Fleapit from then on.

Gammer Norah and her daughter Dorothea naturally bore a grudge. They were the ones who spread the gossip about Edgar and Lester. When Marianne's two great-uncles left, Gammer Norah and Dorothea took to standing on the green of Helm St. Mary, where they scowled so at any Pinhoes visiting the Castle that, as Mum said, it made you nervous in case they still had the evil eye. But that stopped when Gammer Norah won a lottery ticket for two to go to Timbuktu, and both Norah and Dorothea went. “We can't have them festering away on our doorstep,” Millie said, with a wink at Mum. “They had to go before their magic grew back.”

“Typical interference,” Dad said.

Klartch continued to grow. By Christmas he was developed enough to join the others in the now crowded schoolroom and learn to read and write. Even Janet began to realize that Klartch was a friend and not a pet. Games of Klartchball still got played on the lawn, but the rules changed with Klartch's size. Klartch was a team on his own by the New Year.

Often, usually around dusk, the Castle staff got used to seeing a huge female griffin come ghosting down to the lawn. This was sometimes confusing, because Joe's latest flying machine was also liable to arrive home at dusk, whereupon it usually crashed. The way to tell the difference, Mr. Frazier explained, was that if it was the griffin, you got knocked down in the corridor by Klartch rushing out to see his mother. If Klartch did not appear, then
you
rushed out with healing spells and mending crafts the Pinhoes had taught you.

And sometimes, sometimes, when Cat rode out on Syracuse into the more distant woods, they would see a tall old man striding along in the distance with his hand on the back of a glimmering white unicorn.

Cover art © 2006 by Brandon Dorman

Cover design by Paul Zakris