Carbonel and Calidor

by Barbara Sleigh

  ‘By road and over stiles,’ he went on.

  ‘And buy and buy from Uncle’s shop ...’

  At this point he dried up completely, standing white-faced, with screwed-up eyes.

  ‘Till all is sold, then they can stop!’ yelled Rosemary, from the shadow of the tool-shed.

  ‘Till all is sold, then they can stop!’ repeated John gratefully.

  Then he turned, and clutching the ring in his fist once more dashed for the house. Mrs Witherspoon, who had kicked off her other shoe, was gaining on him now. John’s breath was coming in gasps.

  ‘Rosie! Rosie! ... Stop her if you can ...’ he panted. ‘For the sake of the Golden Gew-Gaw!’ But Rosemary was too far behind to do anything. It was Dumpsie who came to the rescue. Just as Mrs Witherspoon stretched out her hand to grip John by the shoulder, the little cat dashed between her feet so that she stumbled and fell on her knees on the wet grass.

  ‘Oh well done, Dumpsie!’ said Rosemary. All three dashed into the house, and slammed and bolted the door behind them.

  At the top of the stairs they met Uncle Zack. Now he was smiling from ear to ear.

  ‘Go and help Mrs Bodkin, you two! Customers suddenly started pouring in only a few minutes ago. The drive is black with people! Extraordinary!’

  ‘You go and help, Rosie,’ said John, ‘and I’ll join you in a minute. I’m going to hide this blessed ring in my bedroom, then even if Mrs Witherspoon comes and searches me she won’t find it.’ He raced upstairs, and pushed the Golden Gew-Gaw under his pillow.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent in such a flurry of handing round cups of tea, such a running backwards and forwards with cups to be washed and refilled, that there was no time to think of anything else. Realizing that they were rushed off their feet, Miss Dibdin offered to help. With sleeves rolled up, she stood at the sink in a cloud of steam, washing up a stream of tea-cups, while Mrs Bodkin’s married cousin dried, and Mrs Bodkin poured out.

  Presently the drive was filled with customers going the other way, carrying copper kettles, candlesticks, footstools and china; staggering under the weight of chairs and tables; helping one another to take away beds and cupboards and chests of drawers. In ten minutes, the collection of china ornaments with the label ‘All In This Tray Six Pence’ had been cleared by the children, of whom there were dozens. No one went away empty-handed. Uncle Zack made out bills in a happy trance, and Mr Sprules took the money and gave change.

  ‘I never saw anything like it,’ said Mrs Bodkin when the rush was over. ‘The whole village was here, as well as crowds I’ve never set eyes on, and all buying as if they’d gone mad!’

  ‘Incredible!’ said Uncle Zack.

  ‘Remarkable!’ said Mr Sprules.

  ‘There was Mrs Bucket from the bakery, says she’s bought a four-post bed, and her with a house as big as a match-box! And old Mr Grimes, who’s not left his bed for nine months, here in his pyjamas! Said he didn’t know why but he suddenly felt he’d got to come. Bought a grandfather clock and carried it off over his shoulder. Said he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much for years!’

  ‘And the road-man,’ said Rosemary. ‘When I took him his biscuits, he showed me a funny sort of cup he’d bought, with a ledge to rest his moustache on when he drinks his tea, so that he shan’t get it wet ... his moustache, I mean. He’s as pleased as Punch with it!’

  ‘He told me some chaps are coming tomorrow to replace the cat’s eyes by the railway bridge,’ said John.

  ‘There isn’t a thing left in the shop,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘I’m sorry they had to go, all my treasures, but it had to be. I think we can say it’s been a thoroughly successful day! Thanks to all my gallant helpers!’ He turned to Miss Dibdin. ‘It was so kind of you to give a hand with the washing-up.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘It has done me a very good turn. I have arranged to go into lodgings with Mrs Bodkin’s married cousin while I am house-hunting, which is really what I came to Highdown to do. I shall move in tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You know,’ said John later that evening, ‘I’m beginning to feel uncomfortable about Miss Dibdin not being told that her parcel really did come. We’ve been behaving as though it was our property, and it’s really hers. Do you think we ought to tell her about the purple cracker and all the rest of it, now she’s so much more sensible?’

  They had gone to look at the empty showrooms, and their footsteps echoed eerily on the bare boards.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did begin to tell her,’ said Rosemary, going rather red. ‘It just sort of ... slipped out, while she was washing up this afternoon.’ She went on quickly, interrupting John’s exclamation of dismay. ‘Oh it’s all right! She wouldn’t listen. Said that now she had given the whole thing up she didn’t want to hear about the parcel. I’m sorry. I know I’m always saying things when I ought to shut up, but they sort of slip out. I can’t help it somehow. We’re so different, you and me. I think you were super brave when you tackled Mrs Witherspoon about the ring. I couldn’t have done that. I was scared stiff.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t as brave as you were when you made me pour that purple stuff down your ear, and we weren’t sure what it would do to you,’ said John.

  ‘The Hearing Mixture?’ said Rosemary. John nodded, and shuffled his feet in an embarrassed way. ‘I was too scared to do it, but I let you. I’ve felt uncomfortable about it ever since,’ he mumbled.

  ‘And Dumpsie was as brave as a lion when she tripped up Mrs Witherspoon, so that we could escape,’ went on Rosemary.

  ‘It runs in the family,’ said Dumpsie airily. ‘Lions is second cousins to cats. Oh well, I suppose there’s different ways of being brave.’

  ‘Well, I bet we shall need them all tonight when we go to Tucket Towers,’ said John.

  22. Councils of War

  ‘THERE hasn’t been a single second, since we left the Dump, to plan what we’re going to do tonight when we get to Tucket Towers,’ said John. ‘It’s half past nine already, and moonrise is at half past ten, I looked it up in my School Boy’s Diary.’

  They were sitting on Rosemary’s bed, with Dumpsie washing her already spotless shirt front as she sat between them on the patchwork quilt. Supper had been late, after the clearing up and excitements of the day. Pleading tiredness, they had gone upstairs soon after.

  ‘I met Mrs Witherspoon again this evening,’ said Rosemary uneasily. John looked at her in surprise. ‘I wanted to tell you, but there hasn’t been a chance. It was in the drive when the Sale was over, and you were helping Mrs Bodkin collect the dirty tea things. I’d been helping a woman load up her pram with a dinner service. There wasn’t much room for the baby as well. It was queer. She seemed much more worried about the dinner service.’

  ‘I expect that was the magic,’ said John. ‘It seems to make people quite different somehow. I don’t think it really cares what happens to them. Like making a fool of me up against the station roof, and Mrs Bodkin having to do all that ironing. And imagine bringing poor old Mr Grimes to the Sale in his pyjamas! But what did Mrs Witherspoon say?’

  ‘She must have been hanging about in the bushes by the gate because she pounced on me as I was coming back,’ said Rosemary. ‘She said she couldn’t come inside without her shoes — she’d lost them in the flower-bed — and her pink frock was all muddy. She asked me to give you a message. She said: “Tell that boy I shall be even with him yet, in the way he will mind most and least expect!” And then she laughed, but it was a queer sort of laugh. I didn’t like it. And then she said ...’ Rosemary stopped, and shuffled uncomfortably on the patchwork quilt.

  ‘Well, go on! What did she say?’

  ‘She said,’ went on Rosemary slowly, ‘ “Have you ever thought of being a witch yourself? If you come to Tucket Towers, Gullion and I will teach you. You’d make a very pretty witchling”!’

  ‘She never said that!’ said John incredulously, and burst out laughing. Rosemary did not laugh. She sat with her chin in her hands, staring at
the toes of her shoes. ‘A crumby old witch you’d make, Rosie! But what infernal cheek! What did she say when you turned her down?’

  ‘She just laughed that queer laugh again, and then she said: “Stranger things have happened”, and not to forget her message to you.’

  ‘ “Get even with me in the way I least expect”?’ repeated John more soberly.

  In the thoughtful silence that followed, faint and far away they heard the church clock strike.

  ‘Gosh! Ten o’clock!’ said John. ‘And here we are talking nonsense, instead of making plans to rescue Carbonel. I’d better take my torch.’

  ‘There’s one more wish left in the Golden Gew-Gaw,’ said Rosemary. ‘Why don’t we use magic to clear the whole business up?’

  John shook his head. ‘It’s too complicated. What should we actually wish for? We should only make a mess of it. Besides, I’m quite certain Carbonel and Calidor would want to win this battle by themselves, not because of any old wishing ring. Like me and football.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Rosemary doubtfully. At the mention of Calidor, Dumpsie had stopped washing herself. She sat up very straight, and pricked her ears.

  ‘Well how on earth do we get inside Tucket Towers for a start?’ went on Rosemary.

  ‘That bit’s easy,’ said John. ‘The latch of the scullery window is broken, you remember. We’re lucky that there isn’t any electric light any more. I suppose Mrs Witherspoon has to use candles instead.’

  ‘In all those grand silver candlesticks,’ added Rosemary.

  ‘It’ll make it easier to get to the tower without being spotted, said John.

  ‘But twice as creepy!’ added Rosemary. ‘And with Mrs Witherspoon keeping the key of Carbonel’s prison on a string round her neck, how on earth do we unlock the door? Calidor didn’t know what he was asking.’

  ‘If Calidor tells us to do something, we does it,’ said Dumpsie shortly. ‘What a pother you’m making over this business! If you want the turret door opened, why don’t you let this Witch-Woman do it for you? Is there anywhere you can hide by the door?’

  ‘I suppose we could squat behind some of that junk on the landing, outside,’ said John. ‘But how would that help us?’

  ‘See here,’ said Dumpsie in a patient voice. ‘The Witch-Woman comes up them twirly stairs you told me about, holding her candle. She’ll have to put it down somewheres while she hauls up the key, hand over hand. Then she puts the key in the lock, and as soon as you hear it turning you ups and blows out the light so as she can’t see what’s going on.’

  ‘But what about all those Scrabbles on guard in a ring round Carbonel? They will be able to see, each one with its four great eyes shining back and front,’ said Rosemary.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ interrupted John. ‘Mrs Witherspoon thinks the Scrabbles can see in the dark because they’re called cat’s eyes, but I don’t believe they can. When they are just cat’s eyes in the road, they only glow when the headlights of a car shine full on them. They just reflect light. Don’t you remember, Rosie, we saw it happen?’

  ‘Of course! Then if the candle is blown out and there is no light, their eyes aren’t any good and they won’t be able to see!’

  ‘Cat’s eyes!’ said Dumpsie scornfully. ‘Cats is cats, and Scrabbles is Scrabbles.’

  ‘But even if the Scrabbles can’t see in the dark, neither can we,’ said Rosemary obstinately.

  ‘Nor the Witch-Woman neither,’ said Dumpsie. ‘So humans start even. Only King Carbonel and me, true cats, will see near as plain as day without much light. It’ll all be easy as falling off a dustbin lid!’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said John soberly. ‘But at least we’ve got some sort of plan to start off with. We must be going. Come on, Rosie! You’re better at these magic rhymes than I am. Think one up quickly while I fish the broom out from under your bed. You’d better tell it to take us to the little wood. We’re less likely to be spotted landing there, and the rooks will be asleep.’

  In no time at all they were sailing through Rosemary’s bedroom window, with John in the middle and Dumpsie up behind. The night was dark. Here and there, different coloured squares of light glowed where the inhabitants of Highdown sat behind their window curtains. Over the church they flew, so low that John gave the weather-cock on the steeple a flick with his toe and sent it twirling; over the fields, and the dark ribbon that was the railway cutting, with the station a dim shadow crouching away to their left, until they dived down into the gently-swaying black mass which was the wood, landing so neatly that not a twig or a leaf was disturbed.

  ‘Well done, broom!’ whispered Rosemary, ‘and thank you.’ She propped it up against a tree.

  ‘Come on,’ said John. ‘We’d better hurry. The sky is getting lighter. It must be nearly moonrise. Here, Dumpsie,’ he went on. ‘I don’t suppose the Broomhurst sentries will bother about humans, but they will be on the look-out for strange cats. You’d better sit inside my jacket until we get inside the house.’ (He was still wearing the best suit he had worn for the Sale.) He picked her up and tucked her inside, where she continued to purr her thanks. When they reached the gate into the yard, Rosemary, who was in front, stopped suddenly, and lifted a warning hand.

  ‘Cats, talking!’ she whispered.

  ‘You’d better repeat instructions, Growser,’ said a solemn cat-voice. ‘I wouldn’t be in your paws if you make a mistake.’

  ‘Of course I know the instructions, Splodger,’ said a second voice.

  ‘Mr Sprules’s cat!’ mouthed Rosemary.

  ‘One shrill miaow if I see so much as a whisker of a Fallowhithe animal,’ went on Growser. ‘But what’s it all about, I should like to know?’

  ‘You will be told, all in good time,’ said Splodger. ‘Her Majesty Queen Grisana will be here any minute now to explain. Wait a minute: there she is, I do believe, on the other side of the yard! Come on, let’s hurry!’

  The two animals ran off together, and as John and Rosemary peered round the gate-post in the thinning darkness, one after another, shadowy cat shapes ran on silent paws in the same direction.

  ‘There must be dozens of them!’ whispered John, and then from the far side of the yard came the voice of Grisana. It rose harsh and shrill, like the squeal of a slate pencil that sets your teeth on edge. To an ordinary person it would have sounded like any cat singing to the rising moon, but to John and Rosemary, and of course to the animals in the yard, she was making the same sort of speech as Queen Elizabeth I before the battle of the Armada.

  ‘Cats of Broomhurst!’ she called. ‘Now is the chance to pour shame and scorn on your hated rivals, the cats of Fallowhithe!’ She paused, and there was a stir and a murmur among the animals assembled in the yard. ‘Carbonel, their king, is held prisoner in this very house behind me. When the moon rises he will be set free — or so he thinks. I have commanded you to make a ring round the house, so that, from whichever door or window he leaps, you will be ready to catch and hold him fast!’ There was a yowl of excitement from the cats. ‘We shall take him captive back to Broomhurst!’

  ‘Yowl! Yowl!’ yelled the cats.

  ‘But that is not all,’ cried Grisana. ‘When Calidor, his son, hears what has happened, he will come at once to the rescue of his father. Hiding behind every corner and every chimney pot of the town, we shall watch him walk into our trap; and when I give the sign it will be the work of a moment to scrodge the pair of them!’

  The vicious way in which Grisana spat out the word ‘scrodge’ made Dumpsie poke an indignant head from John’s jacket.

  ‘Don’t you dare ...’ she began.

  John pushed her hurriedly back again. Luckily the Broomhurst cats were making such a chorus of triumphant miaows and miaowks that they had not heard her.

  ‘Come on,’ whispered John. ‘Now’s our chance to creep round to the scullery window while they’re making this shindy, before the sentries go back to their posts.’

  23. The Full Moon

  SILEN
TLY, John and Rosemary crept round the front of the house, Dumpsie still making indignant cat noises inside John’s jacket.

  ‘Look, there’s a light in one of the windows, and someone is playing the piano,’ said Rosemary.

  They tiptoed up to the front of the house, and, standing on the weedy flower-bed underneath, peered cautiously through the window. Mrs Witherspoon, swooping and swaying, was playing a strange wild tune, the two flickering candles in their holders on either side making her shadow dance even more wildly. The only thing in the darkened room that was perfectly still was Gullion the toad, who sat motionless on top of the piano.

  ‘What with the piano pounding in front, and cats cater-wauling at the back, nobody would hear us however much noise we made!’ said John. ‘Come on, let’s hurry.’

  And hurry they did: across the drive, and through the jungle of what was once the kitchen garden.

  ‘Of course,’ said Rosemary, ‘the Middle Magic only made the house as it was fifty years ago, not the outside. But John, won’t the latch of the scullery window be mended? That’s part of the house.’

  John looked at her in alarm. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Come on!’ They broke into a run.

  ‘Thank goodness!’ he said, when they reached the window. Rosemary had been right. It was no longer broken, but it was neatly pegged open a few inches. The door was locked, as they expected, so John lifted the metal arm from its peg and swung the casement wide. Dumpsie poked her head out of his jacket once more.

  ‘Better let me get in first, then I can see if it’s all right.’

  John lifted her up, and she jumped on to the draining board the other side.

  ‘All clear!’ she called back.

  ‘Now you, Rosie,’ said John. ‘I’ll give you a heave.’

  Unfortunately, he heaved with rather too much enthusiasm, and there was a crash of falling saucepans, as Rosemary disappeared through the window. They all three froze, but the distant piano-playing never faltered.