The Pinhoe Egg

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Oh, well,” Cat said.

  “I can’t think what this Big Man thinks he’s got to say to us,” Gammer Norah said to Dorothea, loudly and rudely. “We did nothing wrong. It was all those Pinhoes’ fault.” She held out her empty glass. “More, please.” The green hand obligingly filled it with not-water again.

  Chrestomanci watched it rather quizzically. “I am not,” he said, “in a very forgiving state of mind, Mrs.—er—Forelock. Your Gaffer did his best to shoot me this morning, when all I was doing was testing from the air the extent of your quite unwarranted misdirection spells. Let me make this clear to all of you: those spells are a misuse of magic that I am not prepared to treat lightly. It makes it worse that the fellow who shot at me—I presume to prevent me investigating—appears to be my own employee. My gamekeeper.” He turned to Millie in a bewildered way. “Why do we need a gamekeeper, do you know? Nobody at the Castle shoots birds.”

  “Of course not,” Millie said, quickly taking up her cue. “According to the records, the last people to go shooting were wizards on the staff of Benjamin Allworthy, nearly two hundred years ago. But the records show that, when the next Chrestomanci took over, everyone quite unaccountably forgot to dismiss Mr. Farleigh.”

  Jason leaned forward. “More than that,” he said. “They increased his salary. You must be quite a wealthy lady these days, Mrs. Farleigh.”

  Gammer Norah tossed her head, causing her bun to unroll even further. “How should I know? I’m only his wife, and his third wife at that, I’d have you know.” She pounded her broomstick on the cobbles of the yard. “None of that alters the fact that the poor man’s turned into a stone tree! I want justice! From these Pinhoes here!” Her long eyes narrowed, and she glared along the row of Marianne’s uncles and aunts.

  All of them glared back. Uncle Arthur said, “We. Did. Not. Do. It. Got that, Gammer Norah?”

  “We wouldn’t know how,” Dad added in his pacific way. “We’re peaceful in our craft.” He looked down and noticed the saw he was still carrying and became very embarrassed. He bent the saw about, boing dwang. “We always cooperated,” he said. “We’ve lent Gaffer Farleigh our strength for the misdirections for eight years now. We lent him strength for one thing or another as long as I’ve been alive.”

  “Yes, and what did your Gaffer do with it? That’s what I want to know!” Marianne’s mother asked, leaning forward fiercely. “If you ask me, he had the whole countryside under his thumb, doing what he wanted. And now I hear he’s been at it for nearly two hundred years! Using our craft to lengthen his days, wasn’t he?”

  “Go it, Cecily!” Uncle Charles murmured.

  “Never mind that!” Gammer Norah shouted, pounding with her broom again. “He’s still unlawfully turned to stone! If you didn’t do it, who did? Was it you?” she demanded, turning her long-eyed glare on Chrestomanci.

  “I wonder what you mean by ‘unlawfully,’ Mrs. Farlook,” Chrestomanci told her. “The man tried to kill me. But it was not my doing. When one has just been shot, it is very hard to do anything, let alone create statues.” He gazed around the inn yard in his vaguest way. “If the person who did it is here, perhaps he would stand up.”

  Cat felt Chrestomanci using Performative Speech again and found himself standing up. His stomach felt as if it was dropping out of his body, ginger beer and all. “It was me, Mrs. Farleigh,” he said. His mouth was so dry he could hardly speak. “I—I was riding by the river.” The frightening thing was not so much that they were all witches here. It was the way they were all people he didn’t know, gazing at him in accusing amazement. But behind Gammer Norah’s chair, green and purple-brown hands were punching the air in joy. The ones like squirrels were bounding about on the walls. And behind the inn chimneys, the music changed to loud, glad, and triumphant. This helped Cat a great deal. He swallowed and went on, “I wasn’t quick enough to stop him firing at the flying machine—I’m sorry. But after that he was going to shoot Klartch, then Syracuse, then me. It was the only way I could manage to stop him.”

  “You?” said Gammer Norah, leaning incredulously on her broom. “A little skinny child like you? Are you lying to me?”

  “Deep in evil,” Dorothea said. “They’re all like that.”

  “I was born with nine lives,” Cat explained.

  “Oh, you’re that one, are you?” Gammer Norah said venemously. She was going to hurl a spell at him, Cat knew she was. But Millie made a small, quick gesture and Gammer Norah’s attention somehow switched back to the Pinhoes. “I don’t see any of you looking very sorry!” she yelled at them.

  This was true. Grins were spreading across most of the Pinhoe faces. Cat sat down again, hugely relieved, and gave Klartch’s head a comforting rub.

  Gammer Norah screamed, “And what about the rest of it? Eh? What about the rest?”

  “What rest is this?” Chrestomanci asked politely.

  “The frogs, the ill-wishing, the fleas, the nits, the ants in all our cupboards!” Gammer Norah yelled, pounding with her broomstick. “Deny all that if you can! Every time we sent a plague back on you, you did another. We sent you whooping cough, we sent you smallpox, but you still didn’t stop!”

  “Bosh. We never sent you anything,” Uncle Richard said.

  “It was you sent us frogs,” Uncle Charles added. “Or is your mind going now?”

  Cat felt his face grow bright and hot as he remembered sending those frogs away from Mr. Vastion’s surgery. He was wondering whether to stand up and confess again, when Marianne spoke up, loudly and clearly. “I’m afraid it was Gammer Pinhoe sending all those things on her own, Mrs. Farleigh.”

  Cat realized she was a lot braver than he was. She was the instant target of every Pinhoe there. The aunts glared at her, even more fiercely than they had glared at Gammer Norah. The uncles looked either contemptuous or reproachful. Dad said warningly, “I told you not to spread stories, Marianne!”

  Mum added, “How could you, Marianne? You know how poorly Gammer is.”

  And from the back, Great-Uncle Edgar boomed, “Now that’s enough of that, child!”

  Marianne went pale, but she managed to say, “It is true.”

  “Yes,” Chrestomanci agreed. “It is true. We at the Castle have been checking up on all of you rather seriously for the last few weeks. Ever since young Eric here pointed out to me the misdirection spells, in fact, we have had you under observation. We noted that an old lady called Edith Pinhoe was sending hostile magics to Helm St. Mary, Uphelm, and various other villages nearby, and we were preparing to take steps.”

  “Though we did wonder why none of you tried to stop her,” Millie put in. “But it’s fairly clear to me now that she must have bespelled all of you as well.” She smiled kindly at Marianne. “Except you, my dear.”

  While the Pinhoes were turning to one another, doubtful and horrified, Gammer Norah kept beating with her broomstick. “I want justice!” she bellowed. “Plagues and stone trees! I want justice for both! I want—” She broke off with a gurgle as a green hand clapped itself over her mouth. A purple-brown hand firmly took away her broomstick.

  Cat thought that most people there decided that Chrestomanci had shut her up. He was fairly sure only a few of them could see the hidden folks. But Chrestomanci could.

  Chrestomanci swallowed a slight grin and said, “Presently, Mrs. Farago, although you may not like the justice when you have it. There are a few serious questions I have to ask first. The most important of these concerns the other Gaffer in the case, the Mr. Ezekiel Pinhoe who was said to be dead eight years ago. Now a short while ago, I visited Ulverscote—”

  “But you couldn’t!” quite a number of Pinhoes protested. “You’re not a Pinhoe.”

  “I took the precaution of getting a lift with Mr. and Mrs. Yeldham here,” Chrestomanci said. “As you may know, Mrs. Yeldham was born a Pinhoe.” Beside him, Irene colored up and bent over Nutcase on her knee, as if she were not sure that being a Pinhoe was altogether a good thing. Chrestomanci
looked over to where the Reverend Pinhoe was quietly sipping lemonade over by the inn door. “I called on your vicar—Perhaps you could explain, Reverend.”

  Oh, it was him! Marianne thought. The day I met the Farleigh girls. He was in the churchyard.

  The Reverend Pinhoe looked utterly flustered and extremely unhappy. “Well, yes. It is a most terrible thing,” he said, “but most impressive magic, I must admit. But appalling, quite appalling all the same.” He took an agitated gulp of lemonade. “Chrestomanci asked me to show him Elijah Pinhoe’s grave, you see. I saw no harm in that, of course, and conducted him to the corner of the church where the grave was—is, I mean. Chrestomanci then most politely asked my permission to work a little magic there. As I saw no harm in that, I naturally agreed. And—” The vicar took another agitated gulp from his glass. “You can judge my astonishment,” he said, “when Chrestomanci caused the coffin to emerge from the grave—without, I hasten to say, disturbing a blade of grass or any of the flowers you Pinhoe ladies so regularly place there—and then, to my further surprise, caused the coffin to open, without disturbing so much as a screw.”

  The Reverend Pinhoe tried to take another gulp from his glass and discovered it was empty. “Oh, please—” he said. A blue-green hand emerged from behind the rain barrel beside him and passed him a full glass. The Reverend Pinhoe surveyed it dubiously, then took a sip and nodded.

  “I thank you,” he said. “I think. Anyway, I regret to have to inform you that the coffin contained nothing but a large wooden post and three bags of extremely moldy chaff. Gaffer Pinhoe was not inside it.” He took another sip from his new glass and turned a little pink. “It was a great shock to me,” he said.

  It was a great shock to some of the aunts too. Aunt Helen and Great-Aunt Sue turned to each other and gaped. Aunt Joy said, “You mean someone stole him? After all we spent on flowers!”

  Chrestomanci was looking vaguely around the yard. Cat knew he was checking to see who was surprised by the news and who was not. The Farleighs looked a little puzzled but not at all surprised. Most of the Pinhoe cousins were as surprised as Aunt Joy was and frowned at one another, mystified. But to Marianne’s dismay, none of her uncles turned a hair, though Uncle Isaac tutted and tried to pretend he was upset. Dad took it calmest of all. Oh, dear! she thought sadly.

  “A very strange thing,” Chrestomanci said. Cat could feel him using Performative Speech again. “Now who can explain this odd occurrence?”

  Great-Uncle Edgar cleared his throat and looked uneasily at Great-Uncle Lester. Great-Uncle Lester went gray and seemed to get very shaky. “You tell them, Edgar,” he quavered. “I—I’m not up to it after all this time.”

  “The fact is,” Great-Uncle Edgar said, looking pompously around the inn yard, “Gaffer Pinhoe is not—er—actually dead.”

  “What’s this?” Gammer Norah cried out, catching up rather late. “What’s this? Not dead?” She’s drunk! Marianne thought. She’s going to start singing soon. “What do you mean, not dead? I told you to kill him. Gaffer Farleigh ordered you to kill him. Your own Gammer, his wife, said you had to kill him. Why didn’t you?”

  “We felt that was a little extreme,” Great-Uncle Lester said apologetically. “Edgar and I simply used that spell that was used on Luke Pinhoe.” He nodded at Irene. “Your ancestor, Mrs. Yeldham. We disabled both his legs. Then we put him in that old cart he loved so much and drove him into the woods.”

  Irene looked aghast.

  “It had been our intention,” Uncle Edgar explained, “to stow him beyond and behind with the hidden folks. But, upon experiment, we found we couldn’t open the confining spell. So we made another confining spell by building a barrier and left him behind that.”

  “Please understand, Gammer Norah,” Great-Uncle Lester pleaded. “Gaffer Farleigh knew all about it, and he didn’t object. It—it seemed so much kinder that way.”

  Chrestomanci said, so softly and gently that both great-uncles shuddered, “It seems to me exceedingly cruel. Who else knew about this kind plot of yours?”

  “Gammer knew, of course—” Great-Uncle Edgar began.

  But Chrestomanci was still using Performative Speech. Dad spoke up. “They told all of us,” he said, bending his saw about. “All his sons. They needed to, because of dividing out his property. We weren’t surprised. We’d all seen it coming. We arranged for Cedric and Isaac to leave him eggs and bread and stuff behind the barrier.” He looked earnestly up at Chrestomanci. “He must be still alive. The food goes.”

  Here, Great-Aunt Sue, who had been sitting holding the collar of the one fat dog that had come back from chasing the flying machine, quite suddenly stood up and slapped her hands down her crisp skirt. “Alive in the woods,” she said. “For eight years. Without the use of his legs. And all of you lying about it. Nine grown men. I’m ashamed to belong to this family. Edgar, that does it. I’m leaving. I’m going to my sister outside Hopton. Now. And don’t expect to hear from me again. Come on, Towser,” she said, and went striding briskly out of the yard, with the dog panting after her.

  Great-Uncle Edgar sprang up despairingly. “Susannah! Please! It’s just—we just didn’t want to upset anyone!”

  He started after Great-Aunt Sue. But Chrestomanci shook his head and pointed to the bench where Great-Uncle Edgar had been sitting. Great-Uncle Edgar sank back onto it, purple faced and wretched.

  “I must say I’m glad Clarice isn’t here to hear this,” Great-Uncle Lester murmured.

  I wish I wasn’t here to hear it! Marianne thought. Tears were pushing to come out of her eyes, and she knew she would never feel the same about any of her uncles.

  Aunt Joy, who seemed to have waited for this to be over, stood up too, and folded her arms ominously. “Eight years,” she said. “Eight years I’ve been living a lie.” She loosed one arm in order to point accusingly at Uncle Charles. “Charles,” she said, “don’t you expect to come home tonight, because I’m not having you! You spineless layabout. They do away with your own father, and you don’t even mention the matter, let alone object. I’ve had enough of you, and that’s final!”

  Uncle Charles looked sideways at Aunt Joy, under her pointing finger, with his head down, rather like Joe. Marianne did not think he looked enormously unhappy.

  Aunt Joy swung her pointing finger round toward the rest of the aunts. “And I don’t know how you women can sit there, knowing what they’ve all done and lied about. I’m ashamed of you all, that’s all I have to say!” She swung herself round then and stalked out of the yard as well. The invisible person on the roof played a march in time to Aunt Joy’s banging shoes.

  Marianne looked at her other aunts. Aunt Polly had not turned a hair. Uncle Cedric had obviously told her everything years ago. They were very close. Aunt Helen was staring trustingly at Uncle Arthur, sure that he had good reasons for not telling her; but Aunt Prue was looking at Uncle Simeon very strangely. Her own mother looked more unhappy than Marianne had ever seen her. Marianne could tell Dad had never said a word to her. She looked at Uncle Isaac’s grave face and wondered what—if anything—he had told Aunt Dinah.

  “I hope no one else wishes to leave,” Chrestomanci said. “Good.” He turned his eyes to Dad. Though his face was pale and pulled with pain, his eyes were still bright and dark. Dad jumped as he met those eyes. “Mr. Pinhoe,” Chrestomanci said, “perhaps you would be good enough to explain just what you had seen coming and why everyone felt it was necessary to—er—do away with your father.”

  Dad laid the saw carefully down by his feet. The brownish purple hand at once obligingly offered him another tankard of drink. Harry Pinhoe took it with a nod of thanks, too bothered by what he was going to say to notice where the drink had come from. “It was that egg,” he said slowly. “The egg was the last straw. Anyone had only to look at it to know Gaffer had fetched it from behind the confinement spell. Everything else led up to that, really.”

  “In what way?” Chrestomanci asked.

  Harry Pinhoe s
ighed. “You might say,” he answered, “that Old Gaffer suffered from too much dwimmer. He was always off in the woods gathering weird herbs and poking into things best left alone. And he kept on at Gammer that the hidden folk were unhappy in confinement and ought to be let free. Gammer wouldn’t hear of it, of course. Nor wouldn’t Jed Farleigh. They had rows about it almost every week, Gammer saying it has always been our job to keep them in, and Gaffer shouting his nonsense about it was high time to let them out. Well, then—”

  Harry Pinhoe took a long encouraging pull at his strange drink and made a puzzled face at the taste of it before he went on.

  “Well, then, the crisis came when Gaffer came out of the woods with this huge, like egg. He gave it to Gammer and told her to keep it warm and let it hatch. Gammer said why should she do any such thing? Gaffer wouldn’t tell her, not until she put a truth spell on him. Then he told her it was his scheme to let the hidden folks out. He said that when this egg hatched, he would be there to watch the bindings on the hidden folks undone.” Harry Pinhoe looked unhappily over at Chrestomanci. “That did it, see. Gaffer said it like a prophecy, and Gammer couldn’t have that. Gammer’s the only one that’s allowed to prophesy, we all know that. So she told her brothers Gaffer was quite out of hand and ordered them to kill him.”

  Marianne shivered. Cat found he had one hand protectively on Klartch, gripping the warm fluff on his back. Klartch, luckily, seemed to be asleep. Chrestomanci smiled slightly and seemed entirely bewildered. “But I don’t understand,” he said. “Why is it necessary to keep these unfortunate beings confined?”

  Dad was puzzled that he should ask. “Because we always have,” he said.

  Gammer Norah came abreast of the talk again. “We always have,” she proclaimed. “Because they’re abominations. Wicked, ungodly things. Sly, mischievous, wild, and beastly!”

  Dorothea looked up from her enormous glass. “Dangerous,” she said. “Evil. Vermin. I’d destroy every one of them if I could.”