The Chrestomanci Series

by Jones, Diana Wynne

  I gave a sharp yelp. I couldn’t help it. The witch had been even nearer than I’d thought. Her face had come out flat and round and blank, the way faces do when you push a camera right up to them. Her mouth was open in a black and furious crescent and her eyes glared flatly. She looked like an angry pancake.

  “I didn’t mean to kill her,” I said.

  “Oh, you didn’t kill her,” Gabriel de Witt, to my astonishment, replied. “You merely trapped her soul. We found her body in a coma in one of those kitchens while we were exploring the alternate buildings, and we returned it to Seven D, where I am pleased to say they promptly put it in prison. She was wanted in that world for killing several enchanters in order to obtain their magical powers.”

  Millie gave a small gasp at this.

  One of Gabriel de Witt’s tufty eyebrows twitched towards Millie, but he continued without interrupting himself, “We have, of course, returned the woman’s soul to Seven D now, so that she may stand trial in the proper way. Tell me what else you see in those pictures.”

  I leafed through the pile again. “These two of Millie on the stairs would be quite good,” I said, “if it wasn’t for all the buildings that have come out behind her.”

  “They were not there when you took the photographs?” Gabriel de Witt asked me.

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’ve never seen them before.”

  “Ah, but we have,” said one of Gabriel de Witt’s people, a youngish man with a lot of light curly hair and a brown skin. He came forward and handed me a packet of differently shaped photographs. “I took these while we were searching the probabilities for Millie and Christopher,” he said. “What do you think?”

  These were photographs of two ruined castles, some marble stairs leading up from a pool, a ballroom, a huge greenhouse, and the double spiral staircase again, and the last one was of the rickety wooden tower where Christopher and I found Champ. All of them, to my shame, were clear and single and precise.

  “They’re much better than mine,” I said.

  “Yes, but just look,” said the man. He took my first photograph of Millie on the stairway and held it beside four of his. “Look in the background of yours,” he said. “You’ve got both these ruined castles in it and the glass house – and I think that blurred thing behind them is the wooden tower. And if you take yours with the harp, you can see my ballroom at the back of it quite clearly. See?”

  The Sorceress Royal said, “In our opinion – and Mrs Havelok-Harting agrees with me – it’s a remarkable talent, Conrad, to be able to photograph alternate probabilities that you can’t even see. Isn’t this so, Monsignor?” she asked Gabriel de Witt.

  Mr Prendergast added, “Hear, hear.”

  Gabriel de Witt took my photographs back from me and stood frowning down at them. “Yes indeed,” he said at last. “Master Tesdinic here has an extraordinary degree of untrained magical talent. I would like,” he turned his frown on my mother, “to take the lad back with me to Series Twelve and make sure that he is properly taught.”

  “Oh no!” Anthea said.

  “I believe I must,” Gabriel de Witt said. He was still frowning at my mother. “I cannot think what you were doing, madam, neglecting to provide your son with proper tuition.”

  My mother’s hair was down all over the place, like an unstuffed mattress. I could see she had no answer to Gabriel de Witt. So she said tragically, “Now all my family is to be taken from me!”

  Gabriel de Witt straightened himself, looking grim and dour even for him. “That, madam,” he said, “is what tends to happen when one neglects people.” And before my mother could think what to say to this, he added, “The same thing can be said to myself, if this is any consolation.” He turned his grim face to Millie. “You were quite right about that Swiss school, my dear,” he said to her. “I went and inspected it before I came on here. I should have done that before I sent you to it. It’s a terrible place. We shall see about a better school as soon as we get home.”

  Millie’s face became one jubilant, shivering smile.

  Christopher said, “What did I tell you?”

  It was clear that Christopher was still in bad trouble. Gabriel de Witt said to him, “I said I would speak to you later, Christopher,” and then turned to Mrs Havelok-Harting. “May I leave all outstanding matters in your capable hands, Prosecutor? It is more than time that I returned to my own world. Please present my compliments to His Majesty and my thanks to him for allowing me the freedom to investigate here.”

  “I shall do that,” the formidable lady said. “We would have been quite at a stand without you, Monsignor. But,” she added rather more doubtfully, “did your magics last night definitely stop those dreadful probability changes?”

  “Very definitely,” Gabriel de Witt said. “Some foolish person appeared to have jammed the shift key to ON, that was all.” I saw Christopher wince at this. Luckily, Gabriel de Witt did not notice. He went on, “If you have any further trouble, please send a competent wizard to fetch me back. Now is everyone ready? We must leave.”

  Anthea rushed at me and flung her arms round me. “Come back, Conrad, please!”

  “Of course he will,” Gabriel de Witt said, rather impatiently. “No one can leave his own world for ever. Conrad will return to act as my permanent representative in Series Seven.”

  I have just come back to Series Seven to be Agent for the Chrestomanci here.

  Before this I spent six blissfully happy years at Chrestomanci Castle, learning magic I never dreamed existed and making friends with all the other young enchanters being educated there – Elizabeth, Jason, Bernard, Henrietta and the rest – although the first week or so was a little difficult. Christopher was in such bad trouble – and so annoyed about it – that the castle seemed to be inside a thunderstorm until Gabriel de Witt forgave him. And Millie turned out to have caught flu. This was why she had been feeling so cold. She was so ill with it that she did not go to her new school until after Christmas.

  At the end of the six years, when I was eighteen, Gabriel de Witt called me into his study and explained that I must go home to Series Seven now or I would start to fade, not being in my own world. He suggested that the way to get used to my own world again was to attend Ludwich University. He also said he was sorry to lose me, because I seemed to be the only person who could make Christopher see sense. I am not sure anyone can do that, but Christopher seems to think so too. He has asked me to come back next year to be Best Man at his wedding. He and Millie are using the gold ring with Christopher’s life in it as a wedding ring, which seems a good way to keep it safe.

  Anyway, I have enrolled as a student in Ludwich and I am staying with Mr Prendergast in his flat opposite the Variety Theatre. Though Mr Prendergast isn’t really an actor, he never can stay away from theatres. Anthea wanted me to stay with her. She keeps ringing me up from New Rome to say I must live with her and Robert as soon as she gets back. She is in New Rome supervising her latest fashion show – she has become quite a famous dress designer. And Robert is away too, filming in Africa. He took up acting as soon as the police let him go. Mrs Havelok-Harting decided that, as Robert only discovered Mr Amos’s fraud when his father died, and then refused to be part of it, he could not be said to be guilty. Hugo had a harder time, but they released him too in the end. Now—and I could hardly believe this when Mr Prendergast told me – Hugo and Felice are running the bookshop in Stallchester. My mother is still writing books in their attic. We are driving up to see them next weekend.

  Mr Amos is still in jail. They transferred him to St Helena Prison Island last year. And the Countess is living in style in Buda-Parich, not wanting to show herself in this country. And – Mr Prendergast is not sure, but he thinks this is so – Mr Seuly went there to join her when he got out of prison. Anyway, Stallchester has a new mayor now.

  No one has seen or heard of my Uncle Alfred since the Walker took him away. Now I have learnt about such things, I am not surprised. The Walkers are messengers
of the Lords of Karma, and Uncle Alfred tried to use the Lords of Karma in his schemes.

  And Stallery is falling into ruin, Mr Prendergast told me sadly, and becoming just like all the other deserted probability mansions. I remembered Mrs Baldock and Miss Semple coming weeping out of the lift, and wondered what had become of all the Staff who had lost their jobs there.

  “Oh, the King stepped in there,” Mr Prendergast told me cheerfully. “He’s always on the lookout for well-trained domestics to man the Royal Residences. They’ve all got royal jobs. Except Manfred,” Mr Prendergast added. “He had to give up acting after he fell through the wall in a dungeon scene. I think he’s a schoolteacher now.”

  The King wants to see me tomorrow. I feel very nervous. But Fay Marley has promised to go with me at least as far as the door and hold my hand. She knows the King well and she says she thinks he may want to make me a Special Investigator like Mr Prendergast. “You notice things other people don’t see, darling,” she says. “Don’t worry so much. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

  To Greer Gilman

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  At the beginning of the summer holidays, while Chrestomanci and his family were still in the south of France, Marianne Pinhoe and her brother Joe walked reluctantly up the steep main street of Ulverscote. They had been summoned by Gammer Pinhoe. Gammer was head of Pinhoe witchcraft in Ulverscote and wherever Pinhoes were, from Bowbridge to Hopton, and from Uphelm to Helm St Mary. You did not disobey Gammer’s commands.

  “I wonder what the old bat wants this time,” Joe said gloomily as they passed the church. “Some new stupid thing, I bet.”

  “Hush,” said Marianne. Uphill from the church, the Reverend Pinhoe was in the vicarage garden spraying his roses. She could smell the acid odour of the spell and hear the hoosh of the vicar’s spray. It was true that Gammer’s commands had lately become more and more exacting and peculiar, but no adult Pinhoe liked to hear you say so.

  Joe bent his head and put on his most sulky look. “But it doesn’t make sense,” he grumbled as they passed the vicarage gate. “Why does she want me too?”

  Marianne grinned. Joe was considered “a disappointment” by the Pinhoes. Only Marianne knew how hard Joe worked at being disappointing – though she thought Mum suspected it. Joe’s heart was in machines. He had no patience with the traditional sort of witchcraft or the way magic was done by the Pinhoes – or by the Farleighs over in Helm St Mary, or for that matter the Cleeves in Underhelm on the other side of Ulverscote. As far as that kind of magic went, Joe wanted to be a failure. They left him in peace then.

  “It makes sense she wants you,” Joe continued as they climbed the last stretch of hill up to Woods House, where Gammer lived. “You being the next Gammer and all.”

  Marianne sighed and made a face. The fact was that no girls except Marianne had been born to Gammer’s branch of the Pinhoes for two generations now. Everyone knew that Marianne would have to follow in Gammer’s footsteps. Marianne had two great uncles and six uncles, ten boy cousins, and weekly instructions from Gammer on the witchcraft that was expected of her. It weighed on her rather. “I’ll live,” she said. “I expect we both will.”

  They turned up the weedy drive of Woods House. The gates had been broken ever since Old Gaffer died when Marianne was quite small. Their father, Harry Pinhoe, was Gaffer now, being Gammer’s eldest son. But it said something about their father’s personality, Marianne always thought, that everyone called him Dad and never Gaffer.

  They took two steps up the drive and sniffed. There was a powerful smell of wild animal there.

  “Fox?” Joe said doubtfully. “Tom cat?”

  Marianne shook her head. The smell was strong, but it was much pleasanter than either of those. A powdery, herby scent, a bit like Mum’s famous foot-powder.

  Joe laughed. “It’s not Nutcase anyway. He’s been done.”

  They went up the three worn steps and pushed on the peeling front door. There was no one to open it to them. Gammer insisted on living quite alone in the huge old house, with only old Miss Callow to come and clean for her twice a week. And Miss Callow didn’t do much of a job, Marianne thought as they came into the wide entrance hall. Sunlight from the window halfway up the dusty oak staircase made slices of light filled thick with dust motes, and shone murkily off the glass cases of stuffed animals that stood on tables round the walls. Marianne hated these. The animals had all been stuffed with savage snarls on their faces. Even through the dust, you saw red open mouths, sharp white teeth and glaring glass eyes. She tried not to look at them as she and Joe crossed the hall over the wall-to-wall spread of grubby coconut matting and knocked on the door of the front room.

  “Oh, come in, do,” Gammer said. “I’ve been waiting half the morning for you.”

  “No, you haven’t,” Joe muttered. Marianne hoped this was too quiet for Gammer to hear, true though it was. She and Joe had set off the moment Aunt Joy brought the message down from the Post Office.

  Gammer was sitting in her tattered armchair, wearing the layers of black clothing she always wore, with her black cat Nutcase on her bony knees and her stick propped up by the chair. She did not seem to have heard Joe. “It’s holidays now, isn’t it?” she said. “How long have you got? Six weeks?”

  “Nearly seven,” Marianne admitted. She looked down into the ruins of Gammer’s big, square, handsome face and wondered if she would look like this when she was this old herself. Everyone said that Gammer had once had thick chestnutty hair, like Marianne had, and Gammer’s eyes were the same wide brown ones that Marianne saw in the mirror when she stared at herself and worried about her looks. The only square thing about Marianne was her unusually broad forehead. This was always a great relief to Marianne.

  “Good,” said Gammer. “Well, here’s my plans for you both. Can’t have the pair of you doing nothing for seven weeks. Joe first, you’re the eldest. We’ve got you a job, a live-in job. You’re going to go and be boot boy to the Big Man in You-Know-Where.”

  Joe stared at her, horrified. “In Chrestomanci Castle, you mean?”

  “Be quiet,” his grandmother said sharply. “You don’t say that name here. Do you want to have them notice us? They’re only ten miles away in Helm St Mary.”

  “But,” said Joe, “I’d got plans of my own for these holidays.”

  “Too bad,” said Gammer. “Idle plans, stupid plans. You know you’re a disappointment to us all, Joseph Pinhoe, so here’s your chance to be useful for once. You can go and be our inside eyes and ears in That Castle, and send me word back by Joss Callow if they show the slightest signs of knowing us Pinhoes exist – or Farleighs or Cleeves for that matter.”

  “Of course they know we exist,” Joe said scornfully. “They can’t think there’s no one living in Ulverscote or —”

  Gammer stopped him with a skinny pointing finger. “Joe Pinhoe, you know what I mean. They don’t know and can’t know that we’re all of us witches. They’d step in and make rules and laws for us as soon as they knew and stop us from working at our craft. For two hundred years now – ever since they put a Big Man in That Castle – we’ve stopped them finding out about us and I intend for us to go on stopping them. And you are going to help me do that, Joe.”

  “No, I’m not,” Joe said. “What’s wrong with Joss Callow? He’s there.”

  “But he’s an outside man,” Gammer
said. “We want you inside. That’s where all the secrets are.”

  “I’m not —” Joe began.

  “Yes, you are!” Gammer snapped. “Joss has you all fixed up and recommended to that harpy Bessemer that they call Housekeeper there, and go there you will, until you start school again.” She snatched up her stick and pointed it at Joe’s chest. “I so order it,” she said.

  Marianne felt the jolt of magic and heard Joe gasp at whatever the stick did to him. He looked from his chest to the end of the stick, dazed and sulky. “You’d no call to do that,” he said.

  “It won’t kill you,” Gammer said. “Now, Marianne, I want you with me from breakfast to supper every day. I want help in the house and errands run, but we’ll give out that you’re my apprentice. I don’t want people thinking I need looking after.”

  Marianne, seeing her holidays being swallowed up and taken away, just like Joe’s, cast around for something – anything! – that might let her off. “I promised Mum to help with the herbs,” she said. “There’s been a bumper crop —”

  “Then Cecily can just do her own stewing and distilling alone, like she always does,” Gammer said. “I want you here, Marianne. Or do I have to point my stick at you?”

  “Oh, no. Don’t —” Marianne began.

  She was interrupted by the crunch of wheels and hoofbeats on the drive outside. Without waiting for Gammer’s sharp command to “See who’s there!” Marianne and Joe raced to the window. Nutcase jumped off Gammer’s knee and beat them to it. He took one look through the grimy glass and fled, with his tail all bushed out. Marianne looked out to see a smart wickerwork pony carriage with a well-groomed piebald pony in its shafts just drawing up by the front steps. Its driver was Gaffer Farleigh, whom Marianne had always disliked, in his best tweed suit and cloth cap, and looking grim even for him. Behind him in the wicker carriage seat sat Gammer Norah Farleigh. Gammer Norah had long thin eyes and a short thin mouth, which made her look grim at the best of times. Today she looked even grimmer.