The Chrestomanci Series

by Jones, Diana Wynne

  Cat conjured a sausage roll from somewhere inside the Pinhoe Arms and set out to coax Klartch away from the middle of the yard. He did not like the way Gammer Norah and some of the Pinhoes were looking at Klartch. He found himself, with the sausage roll held out in front of Klartch’s beak, backing away past a row of Marianne’s aunts.

  “Strange looking creature, isn’t he?” said one.

  “You can see it’s a baby from the fluff. Rather sweet in a yicky way,” said a second.

  The third one said, “What are you doing with one of my sausage rolls, boy?”

  And the one who Cat was sure was Marianne’s mother said, thinking about it, “You know, it’s going to look just like Charles’s painting on the inn sign when it’s grown. And it’s going to be vast. Look at the size of the feet on it.”

  Before Cat could think of anything to say in reply, the Farleighs were leaving, trudging sullenly out of the yard, muttering murderously about having to walk home now they had no magic.

  “It isn’t exactly like tonsils,” Chrestomanci remarked as they tramped past him. “It can grow back in time if you’re careful.” He was standing with Tom on one side of him and Miss Rosalie on the other, and it is doubtful if any of the Farleighs heard him, because Miss Rosalie was saying brightly at the same time, “I make that forty-two charges of misuse of magic, sir, in Ulverscote alone. Shall I read them out?”

  “No need,” Chrestomanci said. “Yet.” He said to all the Pinhoes, “You all understand, do you, that I can take your magic too, or have nearly all of you arrested? Instead of doing that, I am going to ask for your co-operation. You have a whole new set of magics here, and one of my duties is to study unknown magic. I would particularly like to know more about the kind you call dwimmer.” His eyes flicked to Cat for a moment. “I think I need to know more of dwimmer as soon as possible. We would like as many of you as feel able to visit the Castle and explain your working methods to us.”

  He got eight outraged glowers from Marianne’s uncles and great uncles for this. Dad twanged his saw disgustedly. Millie bustled happily up to the aunts, who all turned their backs on her, except for Marianne’s mother, who folded her arms and stared, rather in Aunt Joy’s manner.

  “You’re the famous herbmistress, aren’t you, Mrs Pinhoe?” Millie said. “I really would be grateful if you’d come and give me a lesson or so —”

  “What, give away all my secrets?” Mum said. “You’ve got a hope.”

  “But, my dear, why ever do you need to keep things secret?” Millie asked. “Suppose you’d been killed in the fight just now.”

  “I’ve tried to bring Marianne up to know herbs,” Mum said. She gave Marianne an irritated look. “Not that it seems to have taken very well.”

  “Well, of course it wouldn’t,” Millie said, smiling at Marianne. “Your daughter’s an enchantress, not a witch. She’ll have quite a different way of doing things.”

  While Mum was staring at Marianne as if Marianne had suddenly grown antlers and a trunk, Millie sighed and whirled away to Chrestomanci, saying, “Get in the car, love. You look wiped.”

  “I need to have a word with Gammer Pinhoe first,” Chrestomanci said.

  “I’ll drive you down to the Dell then,” Millie said.

  This caused Cat to have to tempt Klartch all the way back across the yard to the car. They went rather slowly because both Cat and Klartch were constantly turning to watch strings of blue-green magic fluttering along the walls, or being dragged into barrels, or flying in tatters from chimneys as the half-seen folk carried it away. Millie waited for them, and Jason held the rear door open and helped Cat heave Klartch in beside Irene. Klartch instantly ramped upright to look out of the window. There were loud popping sounds as his talons went into the expensive leather upholstery.

  By that time, the Pinhoes had gathered that Chrestomanci was going down to the Dell. They were not going to let him loose on Gammer on her own. Cat found himself between Marianne and Miss Rosalie, inside a crowd of Pinhoes, all of them trotting, jogging and crunching broken glass behind the car as it glided down the hill.

  “Gaffer must be somewhere,” Marianne said miserably as they passed Great Uncle Lester’s ruined car.

  Dad answered her by giving vent to his feelings. “Look what you brought us to, Marianne! This is all your fault for thinking you know better than the rest of us. The good old ways are not good enough for you. No. You had to get us noticed by the Castle. And see where we are now, at the mercy of these jumped up, jazzy, know-it-alls in good suits, who’ll have us arrested if we don’t do —”

  He was interrupted for a second here by Nicola’s mother, swooping uphill past them on her broomstick. “I can’t wait, Lester!” she called out. “I’ll miss visiting hours.”

  As Great Uncle Lester gave her a dismal wave, Dad took up his diatribe again. “Them and their threats! How can they say we’ve misused magic and then want to know what it is we do? It makes no sense. But they think they have the right to give us a going over with their new-fangled stuck up ways and their stupid stories about slaughter in history and children misunderstanding – I don’t believe a word of it. We’re just ordinary folk, doing what we’ve always done, and they come along —”

  Miss Rosalie, who had been looking increasingly annoyed, snapped, “Oh, shut up, man! Of course you can go back to your good old ways. We want to study them.”

  This simply set Dad off again. “Poking and prying. Going on about craft things nobody should talk about. Letting out the hidden folk. That’s just what I’m complaining about, woman! What are we, a flaming fish tank?”

  “I refuse to argue with you!” Miss Rosalie panted haughtily.

  “Good!” said Dad and went on with his diatribe in an increasingly breathless mutter as Chrestomanci’s car gathered speed down the hill. He did not stop, even when the car was turning the corner at the bottom of the hill, where they encountered Aunt Joy standing on her half-built wall.

  “I meant what I said!” Aunt Joy shouted, and hurled a suitcase at Uncle Charles. “You’re not coming back and here’s your things, wedding suit and all. I jumped on it.”

  Uncle Charles did not try to answer. He simply picked up the battered suitcase and trotted on, smiling sheepishly at Uncle Richard. “Staring at us,” went Dad. “Thinking they’re so clever. Fish tank. All Marianne’s fault.”

  At the Dell, they found Gammer outside the front door, surrounded by hard-to-see flying folk. They did not appear to love Gammer. They darted in, pulled her hair, tweaked and scratched at her, and darted back away. Gammer beat at them with a rolled up newspaper. “Shoo!” she shouted. “Gerroff! Shoo!”

  Aunt Dinah, who could not seem to see the flying ones at all, was dodging helplessly in and out, ducking under the newspaper and saying, “That’s enough now, Gammer dear. Come inside now, dear.”

  “Fish tank,” said Dad, and ran down in a kind of moaning sound as he saw how easily Gammer had managed to walk out through his careful containment spells.

  Gammer stared at Chrestomanci as he climbed stiffly and shakily out of the car. She seemed to know at once who he was. “Don’t you dare!” she shouted at him as he walked towards her round the duck pond. “You’ve only come to interferret me. I didn’t do it. It was Edgar and Lester.”

  The half-seen ones knew who Chrestomanci was too. They flew up from Gammer in a body and roosted on the cottage roof to watch.

  “I know about Edgar and Lester, ma’am,” Chrestomanci said. “I want to know why you were persecuting the Farleighs.”

  “Jedded my head,” Gammer said. “My mouth is porpoised.”

  “Means her lips are sealed,” Uncle Charles translated from among the crowd.

  “Utterly dolphinned,” Gammer agreed.

  “And possibly whaled as well,” Chrestomanci murmured. “I think you had better unwalrus them, ma’am, and —”

  The gate from the back way, through Uncle Isaac’s vegetable acres, clicked quietly open to let Molly and Gaffer throu
gh.

  Not everyone saw them straight away, because the corner of the cottage was in the way. But Marianne saw. And she knew why Gaffer had been so long on the way. His legs were bent and bowed and his feet twisted so that it was all but impossible for him to walk. He had both arms across the unicorn’s back. She was walking one careful step at a time, and then stopping so that Gaffer could swing himself along beside her. Each time his legs had to take his weight, Marianne saw him shudder with pain.

  She turned and screamed at her great uncles. She was so angry that both of them recoiled from her, amost into the hedge at the back. “That is the cruellest thing I ever saw! Uncle Edgar, I shall never speak to you again! Uncle Lester, I shall never go near you!” She raced towards Gaffer and tore the ensorcellment off him. It was a bit like clearing weeds and creepers off a struggling overgrown tree in Mum’s garden. Marianne clawed and pulled and dragged, and the spell fought back like thorns and nettles, but she finally hauled it all away, panting, with stinging hands and tears in her eyes, and threw it to the hard-to-see folk to get rid of. They swooped on it and took it away gladly.

  Gaffer slowly and creakily stood to his proper height, the same height as Chrestomanci. He smiled at her. “Why, thank you, pet,” he said.

  Molly turned her head to say sadly, “I can heal wounds of the flesh, but that was magic.” She added to Gaffer, “Keep your arm over me. You won’t walk easily straight away.”

  They moved on, round the corner of the cottage. Chrestomanci, now leaning beside Cat on the long black bonnet of the car, could see them perfectly, but Gammer, with Aunt Dinah dodging around her, was too busy screaming insults at Chrestomanci to notice.

  “Inkbubble chest of drawers!” she yelled. “Unstuck bog!”

  Cat thought that both the unicorn and the tall old man had a curious, unreal, silvery look as they came round into the sunlight at the front of the cottage.

  There was a long murmur from the Pinhoes. “It’s Old Gaffer!” and “Isn’t that his old mare Molly?” they said.

  This alerted Gammer. She swung round, with dismay all over her ruined face. “You!” she said. “I told them to kill you!”

  “There were times when I wished they had,” Gaffer answered. “What have you been up to, Edith? Let’s have the truth now.”

  Gammer shrugged a little. “Frogs,” she said. “Ants, nits, fleas. Itching powder.” She giggled. “They thought the itching was more fleas and washed till they were raw.”

  “Who did?” Gaffer asked. He took his arm off Molly and stood looking down at her on his own. The unicorn backed herself round and stepped across to Chrestomanci. There she stretched her neck out and gave Chrestomanci’s ragged, bleeding arm the merest flick with her horn.

  Chrestomanci jerked and gasped. Cat could feel the warm rush of health from the horn, even though it was not aimed at him. “Thank you,” Chrestomanci said gratefully, looking into the unicorn’s wise blue eyes. “Very much indeed.” He was a better colour already and, although the blood was still there, all over Joe’s shirt, Cat was was fairly sure that there was now no bullet wound in Chrestomanci’s arm.

  “My pleasure,” replied the unicorn. She winked a blue eye at Cat and stepped round again towards Gaffer.

  “Who did?” Gaffer was repeating. “Who have you been tormenting now?”

  Gammer looked mulishly down at the grass. “Those Farleighs,” she said. “I hate the lot of them. That Dorothea of theirs met a griffin by the Castle gates and they said I let it out.”

  “The griffin was only looking for her egg, poor creature,” Gaffer said. “She thought it might have arrived at the Castle by then. What had you done with it?”

  Gammer scrubbed at the grass with one toe. She giggled a little. “It wouldn’t break,” she said, “not even when I threw it downstairs. I made Harry stick it in the attic with a binding on it and hoped it would die. Nasty thing.”

  Gaffer pressed his lips together and looked down at her with great pity. “You’ve gone like a wicked small child, haven’t you?” he said. “No thought for others at all. But your spells on them are stronger than ever and they still all do your bidding.”

  The unicorn softly approached.

  Gammer looked up and saw the long, whorled horn coming towards her. “No!” she said. “It wasn’t me! It was Edgar and Lester.”

  Gaffer shook his head, floppy old hat and all. “No, it was you, Edith. Let go now. You’ve gone your length.”

  He stood aside and let Molly gently touch the tip of her horn to Gammer’s forehead. Cat felt the warm blast of this too, but this time it seemed to be blowing the other way. Gammer gave out a small noise that was horribly like Klartch’s “Weep!” and crumpled slowly down on the grass, where she lay curled up like a baby.

  Aunt Dinah charged forward. “What has that monster done?”

  Gaffer looked at her with tears running on his withered cheeks and into his beard. “You wouldn’t wish to be forced to obey madness for the next ten years, would you?” he said. His pleasant voice was all hoarse. He coughed. “She’ll last three days now,” he said. “You’ll have time to choose your new Gammer before she dies.”

  Aunt Dinah looked helplessly at the other Pinhoes crowded round the car and the pond. “But there’s only Marianne,” she said. Marianne’s heart sank.

  “Ah no,” Gaffer said. “Marianne has her own way to go and her own race to run, bless her. You mustn’t lumber anyone with this who hasn’t found her own way in life first.” He looked towards the rear door of the car, where Irene and Jason were trying to shove Klartch back inside. Klartch wanted to get out and examine the ducks. “My friend Jason’s lady has more dwimmer than I’ve known for many years,” Gaffer said. “Think about it.”

  Irene looked up into the massed stares of the Pinhoes and turned bright, warm red. “Oh, my goodness!” she said.

  Uncle Richard and Uncle Isaac walked carefully around the edge of the pond and the Reverend Pinhoe followed them. Warily, giving the unicorn a very wide berth, the two uncles picked Gammer up and carried her away indoors. Aunt Dinah rushed in after them. Dad watched them with a scowl. “I wouldn’t have Marianne anyway,” he said. “She’s not suitable.”

  “No indeed,” Chrestomanci agreed. “She can override any of your spells any time she pleases. Awkward for you. Tell me, Marianne, how do you feel about being educated at the Castle? As a weekly boarder, say, coming home every weekend? I’ve just made the same arrangement with your brother Joe. Would you like to join him?”

  Marianne could hardly think, let alone speak, for huge, nervous delight. She felt her face stretching into a great smile. Looking up at Gaffer, she saw his eyes twinkling encouragement to her, even though he was busy mopping his cheeks on his ragged sleeve.

  Before either of them could say anything, Dad burst out, “Joe, did you say? What do you want with him? He’s even more of a disappointment than Marianne is!”

  “On the contrary,” Chrestomanci said. “Joe has immense and unusual talent. He has already invented three new ways of combining magic with machinery. A couple of wizards from the Royal Society are coming down to interview him tomorrow. They’re very excited about him. So what do you say, Marianne?”

  “I see!” Dad burst out, again before Marianne could speak. “I see. You’re going to take them off and make them think they’re too good for the rest of their family!”

  “Only if you make it that way,” Chrestomanci replied. “The surest way to make them think they’re too good for you is to keep telling yourself that and then telling them that they are.”

  Dad looked a trifle dazed. “I can’t get my head around this,” he said.

  “Then you have a problem, Mr Pinhoe,” Chrestomanci said, and then turned away to Gaffer. “Are you going to be taking your former place again as Gaffer, sir?” he asked.

  Gaffer slowly shook his head. “Molly and I are not really with this world any more,” he said. The twinkle with which he was looking at Marianne began to glow. “I was always o
ne for walking the woods,” he said. “Now I can walk again, I’ll be going far and wide with Molly, bringing young Jason more odd herbs than he’s seen in his life, I reckon. Besides,” he added, and the glow blazed into humour now, “if you’re wanting them all to go on the way they always did, then Harry will do you a fine stout job at that. Let him carry on.” He bent and kissed Marianne, a soft, tickly brushing with his beard. “Bye, pet. You go and find who you really are and don’t let anyone stop you.”

  He and Molly turned to go. Chrestomanci went striding back to the car, where Tom was standing with Miss Rosalie. “Tom, take Miss Rosalie back with you,” Cat heard him say. “Make a list of her forty-two misuses of magic and send a copy to each of the Pinhoe brothers and both their uncles. I want them all to know what trouble they could be in if they don’t co-operate with us.” Tom nodded and took hold of Miss Rosalie’s skinny arm. Both of them vanished. Chrestomanci turned to tell Cat to get into the car.

  But there was a frantic, pattering, yelling disturbance at the back of the crowd. Marianne’s uncles and aunts scattered this way and that, and the Reverend Pinhoe, who was still only halfway round the pond, was dislodged into the water with a splash. He stood up to his knees in green weeds, staring as Dolly the donkey came racing past. She was somehow not Dolly as Marianne had always known her. She was taller and slenderer, and her ears were not so big. Her usual yellowish colour was now silvery, almost silver gilt. And a small, elegant spire of horn grew from her forehead.

  “My other daughter!” Molly said and turned round to lay her head across Dolly’s back.

  “I thought I’d missed you!” Dolly panted. “It’s been such years. I had to break the door down.”

  Uncle Richard, who was just coming out through the cottage door, stood astonished. “Dolly!” he said. “Why did I never know – how didn’t I know?”

  “You never looked,” Dolly said, rubbing herself against Molly’s shaggy side.