Part 10 (1/2)

”Oh dear!” said Janet. ”They know.”

”Give them to me,” said Cat. ”Quick. Someone will hear.”

Janet poured the earrings into Cat's palm. The voices stopped at once. ”I can't get used to all this magic,”

said Janet. ”Cat, what am I to do? How can I pay that horrible man?”

”There must be something we can sell,” said Cat. ”There's a junk shop in the village. Come on. We must get to lunch.”

They hurried up to the playroom, to find that Mary had already put plates of stew and dumplings in their places.

”Oh, look,” said Janet, who needed to relieve her feelings somehow. ”Nouris.h.i.+ng fattening lunch. How nice!”

Mary glared at both of them and left the room without speaking. Julia's look was quite as unpleasant. As Janet sat down in front of her stew, Julia pulled her handkerchief out of her sleeve, already knotted, and laid it in her lap. Janet put her fork into a dumpling. It stuck there. The dumpling was a white pebble, swimming with two others in a plateful of mud.

Janet carefully laid down her fork, with the pebble impaled on it, and put her knife neatly across the mud.

She was trying to control herself but, for a moment, she looked like Gwendolen at her most furious. ”I was quite hungry,” she said.

Julia smiled. ”What a pity,” she said cosily. ”And you've got no witchcraft to defend yourself with, have you?” She tied another smaller knot at the end of her handkerchief. ”You've got all sorts of things in your hair, Gwendolen,” she said as she pulled it tight. The twigs sticking in Janet's hair writhed and began dropping on the table and over her skirt. Each one was a large, stripy caterpillar.

Janet was no more bothered by wriggly things than Gwendolen. She picked the caterpillars off and put them in a heap in front of Julia. ”I've a good mind to shout for your father,” she said.

”Oh, no, don't be a telltale,” said Roger. ”Let her be, Julia.”

”Certainly not,” said Julia. ”She's not getting any lunch.”

After the meeting with Mr. Baslam, Cat was not really very hungry. ”Here,” he said, and changed his plate of stew with Janet's mud. Janet started to protest. But, as soon as the plate of mud was in front of Cat, it was steaming stew again. And the looping heap of caterpillars was simply a pile of twigs.

Julia turned to Cat, not at all pleased. ”Don't you interfere. You annoy me. She treats you like a slave and all you do is stick up for her.”

”But I only changed the plates!” Cat said, puzzled. ”Why-?”

”It could have been Michael,” Roger suggested.

Julia glowered at him too. ”Was it you?” Roger blandly shook his head. Julia looked at him uncertainly.”If I have to go without marmalade again,” she said at length, ”Gwendolen's going to know about it. And I hope the stew chokes you.”

Cat found it hard to concentrate on lessons that afternoon. He had to watch Janet like a hawk. Janet had decided that the only safe thing was to be totally stupid-she thought Gwendolen must have been pretty stupid anyway-and Cat knew she was overdoing it. Even Gwendolen had known the twice-times table.

Cat was worried too, in case Julia started knotting that handkerchief of hers when Mr. Saunders' back was turned. Luckily, Julia did not quite dare. But Cat's main worry was how to find twenty pounds by next Wednesday. He could hardly bear to think of what might happen if he did not. The very least thing, he knew, would be Janet confessing she was not Gwendolen. He thought of Chrestomanci giving him that scathing stare and saying, ”You went with Gwendolen to buy dragons' blood, Eric? But you knew it was illegal. And you tried to cover up by making Janet pretend to be Gwendolen? You show touching concern, Eric.” The mere idea made Cat shrivel up inside. But he had nothing to sell except a pair of earrings that shouted that they belonged to someone else. If he wrote to the Mayor of Wolvercote and asked if he could have twenty pounds out of the Fund, the Mayor would only write to Chrestomanci to ask why Cat wanted it. And then Chrestomanci would stare scathingly and say, ”You went with Gwendolen to buy dragons' blood, Eric?” It was hopeless.

”Are you feeling well, Eric?” Mr. Saunders asked several times.

”Oh, yes,” Cat replied each time. He was fairly sure that having your mind in three places at once did not count as illness, much as it felt like it.

”Play soldiers?” Roger suggested after lessons.

Cat would have liked to, but he dared not leave Janet on her own. ”I've got to do something,” he said.

”With Gwendolen. I know,” Roger said wearily. ”Anyone would think you were her left leg, or something.”

Cat felt hurt. The annoying thing was that he knew Janet could have done without her left leg more easily than she could have done without him. As he hurried after Janet to Gwendolen's room, he wished heartily it was really Gwendolen he was hurrying after.

Inside the room, Janet was feverishly collecting things: Gwendolen's spell books, the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the gold-backed brush and hand mirror off the dressing table, the jar on the bedside table, and half the towels from the bathroom.

”What are you doing?” said Cat.

”Finding things we can sell. Is there anything you can bear to spare from your room?” said Janet.

”Don't look like that. I know it amounts to stealing, but I get so desperate when I think of that horrible Mr. Bisto going to Chrestomanci that I don't care anymore.” She went to the wardrobe and rattled the clothes along the rail. ”There's an awfully good coat in here.”

”You'll need that on Sunday if it turns cold,” Cat said drearily. ”I'll go and see what I've got- only promise me to stay here until I come back.”

”Sho' ting,” said Janet. ”I daren't move widd-out you, bwana. But hurry up.”

There were fewer things in Cat's room, but he collected what he could find, and added the great sponge from the bathroom. He felt like a criminal. Janet and he wrapped their finds in two towels and crept downstairs with their c.h.i.n.king bundles, expecting someone to discover them any minute. ”I feel like a thief with the swag,” Janet whispered. ”Someone's going to s.h.i.+ne a searchlight any second, and then the police will close in. Are there police here?”

”Yes,” said Cat. ”Do shut up.”

But, as usual, there was no one about near the private door. They crept down the s.h.i.+ny pa.s.sage and peeped outside. The s.p.a.ce by the rhododendrons was empty. They crept out towards them. Trees that would hide Mr. Baslam would hide them and their loot.

They were three steps outside the door when a ma.s.sed choir burst into song. Janet and Cat nearly jumped out of their skins. ”We belong to Chrestomanci Castle! We belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” thundered forty voices. Some were deep, some were shrill, but all were very loud. They made a shattering noise. It took them a second or so to realize that the voices were coming from their bundles.

”Creeping antimaca.s.sars!” said Janet.

They turned around and ran for the door again, with the forty voices bawling in their ears.

Miss Bessemer opened the door. She stood tall and narrow and purple, waiting for them to come through it. There was nothing Janet and Cat could do but scuttle guiltily past her into the pa.s.sage, where they put their suddenly silent bundles down on the floor and steeled themselves for trouble.

”What an awful noise, my loves!” said Miss Bessemer. ”I haven't heard the like since a silly warlock tried to burgle us. What were you doing?”

Janet did not know who the stately purple lady was. She was too scared to speak. Cat had to say something. ”We were wanting to play houses in the tree house,” he said. ”We needed some things for it.”

He was surprised how likely he made it sound.

”You should have told me, sillies!” said Miss Bessemer. ”I could have given you some things that don't mind being taken outside. Run and put those back, and I'll look you out some nice furnis.h.i.+ngs for tomorrow.”

They crept dismally back to Janet's room. ”I just can't get used to the way everything's magic here,” Janet moaned. ”It's getting me down. Who was that long purple lady? I'm offering even money she's a sorceress.”

”Miss Bessemer. The housekeeper,” said Cat.

”Any hope that she'll give us splendid castoffs that will fetch twenty quid in the open market?” Janet asked. They both knew that was unlikely. They were no nearer thinking of another way to earn twenty pounds when the dressing gong went.

Cat had warned Janet what dinner was like. She had promised not to jump when footmen pa.s.sed things over her shoulder, and sworn not to try and talk about statues with Mr. Saunders. She a.s.sured Cat she would not mind hearing Bernard talk of stocks and shares. So Cat thought that for once he could be easy. He helped Janet dress and even had a shower himself, and when they went into the drawing room, he thought that they both did him credit.

But Mr. Saunders proved at last to have worn out his craze for statues. Instead, everyone began to talk about identical twins, and then about exact doubles who were no relation. Even Bernard forgot to talk about shares in his interest in this new subject.