The Pinhoe Egg (4 page)

“Everyone go right,” Dad said.

The bed and its crowd of carriers veered over toward 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 toward Furze Cottage in time, or left toward the Dell, she was going to be squashed against the Post Office wall. Everyone except Marianne held their breath. 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 bird-cage, 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 plowed 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 balmy,” 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 gotten 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 up the bricks there.

Everyone clean forgot about the attics.

O
n 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 the 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 anymore.”

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 under
stand
! 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 traveled 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 news-papers 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 favorite 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 up the bike 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 curvaceous 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 toward the stableyard gates and the spells around Chrestomanci Castle
canceled 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 organized 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 pedaling 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.