Charmed Life

by Diana Wynne Jones

  Janet had to try another way to find out what he was talking about. She was getting quite good at it. “I want you to describe it to Cat, though,” she said. “He doesn’t know about it, and he may need to because—because most unfortunately they’ve taken my witchcraft away.”

  Mr. Nostrum wagged a playful finger at her. “Yes, naughty girl. I’ve been hearing things about you in the village. A sad thing to lose, but let us hope it will only be temporary. Now—as to explaining to Young Chant—how shall I best go about it?” He thought, smoothing his frizzy wings of hair, as his habit was. Somehow, the way he did it showed Cat that whatever Mr. Nostrum was going to tell him, it would not be quite the truth. It was in the movement of Mr. Nostrum’s hands, and in the very sit of his silver watch-chain across his shabby, rounded waistcoat.

  “Well, Young Chant,” said Mr. Nostrum, “this is the matter in a nutshell. There is a group, a clique, a collection of people, headed by the Master of the Castle, who are behaving very selfishly in connection with witchcraft. They are keeping all the best things to themselves, which of course makes them very dangerous—a threat to all witches, and a looming disaster to ordinary people. For instance, take dragons’ blood. You know that it is banned. These people, with That Person at their head, had it banned, and yet—mark this well, Young Chant—they use it daily themselves. And—here is my point—they keep tight control of the ways to get to the worlds where dragons’ blood comes from. An ordinary necromancer like myself can only get it at great risk and expense, and our exotic suppliers have to endanger themselves to get it for us. And the same goes for almost any product from another world.

  “Now, I ask you, Young Chant, is this fair? No. And I’ll tell you why not, young Eric. It is not fair that the ways to other worlds should be in the hands of a few. That is the crux of the matter: the ways to other worlds. We want them opened up, made free to everyone. And that is where you come in, Young Chant. The best and easiest way, the broadest Gateway to Elsewhere, if I may put it like that, is a certain enclosed garden in the grounds of this said Castle. I expect you have been forbidden to enter it—”

  “Yes,” said Cat. “We have been.”

  “And consider how unfair!” said Mr. Nostrum. “The Master of That Place uses it every day and travels where he pleases. So what I want you to do, Young Chant, and this is all Plan Two amounts to, is to go into that garden at two-thirty precisely on Sunday afternoon. Can you promise me to do that?”

  “What good would that do?” asked Cat.

  “It would break the seal of enchantment these dastardly persons have set on the Gateways to Elsewhere,” Mr. Nostrum said.

  “I’ve never quite understood,” Janet said, with a very convincing wrinkle in her forehead, “how Cat could break the seals just by going into the garden.”

  Mr. Nostrum looked a little irritated. “By being an ordinary innocent lad, of course. My dear Gwendolen, I have stressed to you over and over again the importance of having an innocent lad at the center of Plan Two. You must understand.”

  “Oh, I do, I do,” Janet said hastily. “And has it to be this Sunday at two-thirty?”

  “As ever is,” said Mr. Nostrum, smiling again. “It’s a good strong time. Will you do that for us, Young Chant? Will you, by this simple act, set your sister and people like her free—free to do as they need in the practice of magic?”

  “I’ll get into trouble if I’m caught,” said Cat.

  “A bit of boyish cunning will see you through. Then, never fear, we’ll take care of you afterwards,” Mr. Nostrum persuaded.

  “I suppose I can try,” said Cat. “But do you think you can help me a bit in return? Do you think your brother could very kindly lend us twenty pounds by next Wednesday?”

  A vague, though affable, look affected Mr. Nostrum’s left eye. It pointed benevolently to the farthest corner of the parlor. “Anything you please, dear boy. Just get into that garden, and the fruits of all the worlds will be yours for the picking.”

  “I need to be a flea half an hour later, and I want to look as if I can do magic on Monday,” said Cat. “That’s all I need, apart from the twenty pounds.”

  “Anything, anything! Just get into that garden for us,” said Mr. Nostrum expansively.

  With that, it seemed Cat and Janet had to be content. Cat made several efforts to fix Mr. Nostrum in a definite promise, but all he would say was, “Just get into that garden.” Janet looked at Cat and they got up to go.

  “Let us gossip,” suggested Mr. Nostrum. “I have at least two items of interest to you.”

  “We haven’t time,” Janet lied firmly. “Come on, Cat.”

  Mr. Nostrum was used to Gwendolen being equally firm. He got up and led them to the Inn door like royalty and waved to them as they went out onto the green. “I’ll see you on Sunday,” he called after them.

  “No you won’t!” Janet whispered. Keeping her head down so that Gwendolen’s broad hat hid her from Mr. Nostrum, she whispered to Cat, “Cat, if you do one thing that unbelievably dishonest man wants, you’ll be a fool! I know he told you a pack of lies. I don’t know what he’s really after, but please don’t do it.”

  “I know—” Cat was beginning, when Mr. Baslam got up from a bench outside the White Hart and shambled after them.

  “Wait!” he puffed, rolling beer fumes over them. “Young lady, young sir, I hope you’re bearing in mind what I said to you. Wednesday. Don’t forget Wednesday.”

  “No fear. It haunts my dreams,” said Janet. “Please. We’re busy, Mr. Bustle.”

  They walked quickly away across the green. The only other living soul in sight was Will Suggins, who came out of the backyard of the bread shop in order to stare meaningly after them.

  “I think I’ve got to do what he wants,” Cat said.

  “Don’t,” said Janet. “Though I must say I can’t see what else we can do.”

  “About the only thing left is running away,” said Cat.

  “Then let’s do that—at once,” said Janet.

  They did not exactly run. They walked briskly out of the village on the road Cat thought pointed nearest to Wolvercote. When Janet objected that Wolvercote was the first place anyone at the Castle would think of looking, Cat explained about Mrs. Sharp’s grand contacts in London. He knew Mrs. Sharp would smuggle them away somewhere, and no questions asked. He made himself very homesick by talking of Mrs. Sharp. He missed her dreadfully. He trudged along the country road, wishing it was Coven Street and wishing Janet was not walking beside him making objections.

  “Well, you may be right,” Janet said, “and I don’t know where else we could go. How do we get to Wolvercote? Hitchhike?” When Cat did not understand, she explained that it meant getting lifts by waving your thumb.

  “That would save a lot of walking,” Cat agreed.

  The road he had chosen shortly turned into a very country lane, rutted and grassy and lined with high hedges hung with red bryony berries. There was no traffic of any kind.

  Janet managed not to point this out. “One thing,” she said. “If we’re going to make a proper go of this, do promise me you won’t happen to mention You Know Who.” When Cat did not understand this either, she explained, “The man Mr. Nostrum kept calling That Person and the Master of the Castle—you know!”

  “Oh,” said Cat. “You mean Chrest—”

  “Quiet!” bawled Janet. “I do mean him, and you mustn’t say it. He’s an enchanter and he comes when you call him, stupid! Just think of the way that Mr. Nostrum was scared stiff to say his name.”

  Cat thought about this. Gloomy and homesick as he was, he was not anxious to agree with anything Janet said. She was not really his sister, after all. Besides, Mr. Nostrum had not been telling the truth. And Gwendolen had never said Chrestomanci was an enchanter. She would surely never have dared do all the magic she did if she thought he was. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “Al
l right. Don’t,” said Janet. “Just don’t say his name.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Cat. “I hope I never see him again anyway.”

  The lane grew wilder as they walked. It was a crisp, warm afternoon. There were nuts in the hedges and great bushes of blackberries. Before they had gone another half mile, Cat found his feelings had changed entirely. He was free. His troubles had been left behind. He and Janet picked the nuts, which were just ripe enough to eat, and laughed a good deal over cracking them. Janet took her hat off—as she told Cat repeatedly, she hated hats—and they filled the crown of it with blackberries for later on. They laughed when the juice oozed through the hat and dripped down Janet’s dress.

  “I think running away is fun,” said Cat.

  “Wait till we’re spending the night in a rat-infested barn,” said Janet. “Flitterings and squeakings. Are there ghouls and goblins in this wor—? Oh, look! There’s a car coming! Thumb—no, wave. They probably don’t understand thumbing.”

  They waved furiously at the big black car that was whispering and bouncing along the ruts towards them. To their delight, it sighed to a stop beside them. The nearest window rolled down. They got a very rude shock when Julia put her head out of it.

  Julia was pale and agitated. “Oh please come back!” she said. “I know you ran away because of me, and I’m sorry! I swear I won’t do it anymore!”

  Roger put his head out of the back window. “I kept telling her you would,” he said. “And she didn’t believe me. Do come back. Please.”

  The driver’s door had opened by then. Millie came hurrying around the long bonnet of the car. She looked much more homely than usual, because her skirts were looped up for driving and she was wearing stout shoes and an old hat. She was as agitated as Julia. When she reached Janet and Cat, she flung an arm around each of them and hugged them so hard and thankfully that Cat nearly fell over.

  “You poor darlings! Another time you get unhappy, you must come and tell me at once! And what a thing too! I was so afraid you’d got into real trouble, and then Julia told me it was her. I’m extremely vexed with her. A girl did that to me once and I know how miserable it made me. Now, please, please come back. I’ve got a surprise waiting for you at the Castle.”

  There was nothing Cat and Janet could do but climb into the back of the car and be driven back to the Castle. They were miserable. Cat’s misery was increased by the fact that he began to feel sick from the moment Millie started to bump the car backwards down the lane to a gate where she could turn it. The smell of blackberry coming from Janet’s squashy hat made him feel worse.

  Millie, Roger, and Julia were very relieved to have found them. They chattered joyfully the whole way. Through his sickness, Cat got the impression that, although none of them said so, what they were particularly glad about was to have found Janet and Cat before Chrestomanci came to hear they were gone. This did not make either Cat or Janet feel any better.

  In five minutes, the car had whispered up the avenue and stopped at the main door of the Castle. The butler opened it for them just, Cat thought sadly, as Gwendolen would have wished. The butler, furthermore, ceremoniously took Janet’s leaking hat away from her. “I’ll see that these get to Cook,” he said.

  Millie told Janet that her dress would just pass muster and hurried them to what was called the Little Drawing Room. “Which means, of course, that it’s a mere seventy feet square,” she said. “Go in. Tea will be there for you.”

  They went in. In the middle of the big, square room, a wispy, skinny woman in beaded black clothes was sitting nervously on the edge of a gilded chair. She jumped around when the door opened.

  Cat forgot he felt sick. “Mrs. Sharp!” he shouted, and ran to hug her.

  Mrs. Sharp was overjoyed, in spite of her nervousness. “It’s my Cat, then! Here, stand back, let me look at you, and you too, Gwendolen, love. My word, you do wear fine clothes to go playing about in! You’re fatter, Cat. And Gwendolen, you’ve gone thin. I can understand that, dear, believe me! And would you just look at the tea they’ve brought for the three of us!”

  It was a marvelous tea, even better than the tea on the lawn. Mrs. Sharp, in her old greedy way, settled down to eat as much as she could, and to gossip hard. “Yes, we came up on the train yesterday, Mr. Nostrum and me. After I got your postcard, Cat, I couldn’t rest till I’d had a look at you both, and seeing as how my contacts and other things have been paying nicely, I felt I owed it to myself. They treated me like royalty when I turned up here at the door too. I can’t fault them. But I wish I cared for it in this Castle. Tell me, Gwendolen, love, does it get you like it gets me?”

  “How does it get you?” Janet asked cautiously.

  “I’m nerves all over,” said Mrs. Sharp. “I feel weak and jumpy as a kitten—and that reminds me, Cat, but I’ll tell you later. It’s so quiet here. I kept trying to think what it was before you came—and you were a long time, my loves—and at last it came to me. It’s an enchantment, that’s what it is, a terrible strong one too, against us witches. I said, ‘This Castle does not love witches, that’s what it is!’ and I felt for you, Gwendolen. Make him send you to school away somewhere. You’d be happier.”

  She chattered on. She was delighted to see them both, and she kept giving Cat particularly proud and affectionate looks. Cat thought she had convinced herself she had brought him up from a baby. After all, she had known him since he was born.

  “Tell us about Coven Street,” he said yearningly.

  “I was coming to that,” said Mrs. Sharp. “You remember Miss Larkins? Bad-tempered girl with red hair who used to tell fortunes? I never thought much of her myself. But someone did. She’s been set up by a grateful client in a Salon in Bond Street. Coven Street’s not good enough for her anymore. The luck some people have! But I’ve had a stroke of luck myself too. I told you in my letter—didn’t I, Cat?—about being given five pounds for that old cat you turned our Cat’s fiddle into, Gwendolen. Well, he was ever such a funny little man who bought him. While we were waiting to catch the old cat—you know how he never would come if you wanted him—this little man kept at me, telling me all about stocks and shares and capital investment and such like. Things I never could understand. He told me what I ought to be doing with that five pound he was giving me, and making my head go around with it. Well, I didn’t think too much of it, but I thought I’d have a go. And I did what he said, as far as I could remember. And do you know, that five pounds has brought in one hundred! One hundred pounds, he got me!”

  “He must have been a financial wizard,” Janet said.

  She meant it as a joke to cheer herself up. She needed cheering up for several reasons. But Mrs. Sharp took her literally. “He was, my dear! You’re always so clever. I know he was, because I told Mr. Nostrum, and Mr. Nostrum did exactly what I did with five pounds of his own—or it may have been more—and he lost every penny of it. And another thing—”

  Cat watched Mrs. Sharp as she chattered on. He was puzzled and sad. He was still just as fond of Mrs. Sharp. But he knew it would have been no use whatsoever running away to her. She was a weak, dishonest person. She would not have helped them. She would have sent them back to the Castle and tried to get money out of Chrestomanci for doing it. And the London contacts she was boasting of at that moment were just boasts. Cat wondered how much he had changed inside—and why he had—enough to know all this. But he did know, just as surely as if Mrs. Sharp had turned around in her gilded chair and assured him of it herself, and it upset him.

  As Mrs. Sharp came to the end of the food, she seemed to become very nervous. Perhaps the Castle was getting her down. At length she got up and took a nervous trot to the distant window, absentmindedly taking her teacup with her.

  “Come and explain this view,” she called. “It’s so grand I can’t understand it.” Cat and Janet obligingly went over to her. Whereupon Mrs. Sharp became astounded to find she had an empty teacup in her ha
nd. “Oh, look at this,” she said, shaking with nervousness. “I’ll be carrying it away with me if I’m not careful.”

  “You’d better not,” said Cat. “It’s bound to be charmed. Everything you take outside shouts where it came from.”

  “Is that so?” All of a flutter, Mrs. Sharp passed Janet her cup and followed it up, very guiltily, with two silver spoons and the sugar tongs out of her handbag. “There, dear. Would you mind taking those back to the table?” Janet set off across the yards of carpet and, as soon as she was out of hearing, Mrs. Sharp bent and whispered, “Have you talked to Mr. Nostrum, Cat?”

  Cat nodded.

  Mrs. Sharp at once became nervous in a much more genuine way. “Don’t do what he says, love,” she whispered. “Not on any account. You hear me? It’s a wicked, crying shame, and you’re not to do it!” Then, as Janet came slowly back—slowly, because she could see Mrs. Sharp had something private to say to Cat—Mrs. Sharp burst out artificially, “Oh, those great immemorial oaks! They must be older than I am!”

  “They’re cedars,” was all Cat could think of to say.

  “Well, that was a nice tea, my loves, and lovely to see you,” said Mrs. Sharp. “And I’m glad you warned me about those spoons. It’s a mean, wicked trick, enchanting property, I always think. I must be going now. Mr. Nostrum’s expecting me.” And go Mrs. Sharp did, through the Castle hall and away down the avenue with such speed that it was clear she was glad to go.

  “You can see the Castle really upsets her,” Janet said, watching Mrs. Sharp’s trotting black figure. “There is this quiet. I know what she means. But I think it’s cheerful—or it would be if everything else wasn’t so miserable. Cat, it would have been no good running away to her, I’m afraid.”

  “I know,” said Cat.

  “I thought you did,” said Janet.

  She was wanting to say more, but they were interrupted by Roger and Julia. Julia was so contrite and trying so hard to be friendly that neither Janet nor Cat had the heart to go off on their own. They played with hand mirrors instead. Roger fetched the mirror tethered to Cat’s bookcase, and collected his own and Julia’s and Gwendolen’s too. Julia took a firm little reef in that handkerchief of hers and sent all four aloft in the playroom. Until supper, they had great fun whizzing around the playroom, not to speak of up and down the passage outside.