Carbonel: The King of Cats

by Barbara Sleigh

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  CARBONEL

  Barbara Sleigh was born in 1906 in Warwickshire. She took an art teacher’s training course, and began to write stories for children for radio. She was a lecturer at Goldsmiths’ Teacher Training College, then in 1933 joined the staff of BBC Children’s Hour. Three years later she married David Davis, who later became Head of Children’s Hour.

  Her first children’s book, Carbonel, the first of what was later to become a Carbonel trilogy, was published in 1955 and is still one of the most popular fantasies for younger children.

  Barbara Sleigh died in 1982.

  ‘I believe you want me to follow you.’

  Books by Barbara Sleigh

  CARBONEL

  GARBONEL AND CALIDOR

  THE KINGDOM OF CARBONEL

  GRIMBLEGRAW AND THE WUTHERING WITCH

  NINETY-NINE DRAGONS

  CARBONEL

  The Prince of Cats

  Illustrated by V H. Drummond

  BARBARA SLEIGH

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published in Great Britain by Max Parrish 1955

  Published in Puffin Books 1961

  8

  Text copyright © Barbara Sleigh, 1955

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 9780141929095

  To

  Fabia

  and the whiskered shades of

  Tibby

  Tarquin

  Quince

  and

  Spike

  Contents

  1

  Breaking-up

  2

  Fairfax Market

  3

  Carbonel

  4

  The Summoning Words

  5

  The Search Begins

  6

  Mrs Walker Says ‘No’

  7

  Carbonel and Mrs Walker

  8

  Tussocks

  9

  John

  10

  The Spell Works

  11

  Showing Off

  12

  Carbonel Explains

  13

  The Occupier

  14

  Making Plans

  15

  Where is the Cauldron?

  16

  The Cauldron

  17

  The Wishing Magic

  18

  Where is She?

  19

  Mrs Cantrip

  20

  The Book

  21

  More Plans

  22

  The Fête

  23

  The Full Moon

  24

  The Battle

  25

  The End

  1

  Breaking-up

  Rosemary’s satchel bounced cheerfully up and down on her back as she hopped on and off the pavement of Tottenham Grove. She enjoyed school, except for arithmetic and boiled fish on Fridays. But breaking-up, as you will have noticed, even if you have not particularly distinguished yourself, gives everyone a delightful party feeling, particularly at the end of the Summer Term. Rosemary Brown was fizzing with it as she bounced up and down on the kerb.

  She had just reached the pillar box at the corner when Mary Winters came by with her friend Arlene.

  ‘Hallo, Rosie!’ said Mary. ‘We’re going to Blackpool tomorrow!’

  ‘Blackpool is common, my auntie says. We’re going to Bournemouth.’ Arlene wore brooches, and sometimes a gold bracelet to go to school, although it was not allowed. Her auntie thought a great many things were common. ‘Where are you going, Rosie?’

  Rosemary hopped off the kerb, changed feet, and hopped on again with great deliberation.

  ‘Nowhere!’ she said as carelessly as she could manage.

  ‘Poor thing!’ said Arlene with maddening pity, and the two friends hurried off, giggling, together.

  Rosemary went on doggedly hopping, but the party feeling was only fizzing at half-cock now. Mary and Arlene knew quite well that she was unlikely to be going away. It was hard enough for her mother to manage at all, because she had no money but her widow’s pension, and what she earned by sewing for people. Rosemary stopped hopping. Her satchel was beginning to hurt when she bounced. It was heavy because it was full of end of term things, a rather squashy piece of clay modelling, her indoor shoes and a dirty overall, as well as some books. She ran the rest of the way down Tottenham Grove with her short pigtails flapping up and down sideways, like the blades of an old pair of scissors.

  Rosemary and her mother lived at number ten, in three furnished rooms on the top floor, with use of bath on Tuesdays and Fridays, and a share of the kitchen. It was not a very pleasant arrangement, because the furniture was ugly (most of it was covered with horse-hair that pricked, even through a winter tunic), and the bathroom was always festooned with other people’s washing. But it was cheap, and would have to do until they could find somewhere unfurnished, and then they would be able to use their own comfortable, shabby belongings again.

  The houses in Tottenham Grove were all exactly alike, very tall and thin, with a great deal of peeling paint and cracking plaster. Once they had been rather grand, with servants in the basement, and carriages driving up to the front doors, and ladies with very large hats and very small waists paying calls. Her mother had told her all about it. But Rosie was not bothering her head about that at the moment. She knew without looking which was number ten, and went running up the twelve steps so quickly that she bumped into Mrs Walker, the landlady, who was slapping the door mat against one of the pillars of the peeling portico.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Walker!’ said Rosemary breathlessly.

  ‘I should think so!’ said Mrs Walker sourly. ‘Home for the holidays? How long is it this time?’

  ‘Six weeks,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, I don’t know! Six weeks! I should have thought a great girl like you could have been doing something useful.’

  She flopped the still dusty mat into its place, and Rosie went slowly upstairs with her satchel bumping on each step as it trailed behind her. When she opened the door of the sitting room she saw that the table wa
s drawn up to the window and already laid.

  ‘Mummy, what a lovely dinner!’

  ‘Well, it’s the first day of the holidays,’ said her mother cheerfully, ‘and I’ve just got three weeks’ work from Mrs Pendlebury Parker, so I thought we would celebrate.’

  There was a bunch of marigolds in the centre of the blue and white table cloth, a constellation of small, glowing suns. There were crescent rolls, tinned tongue and salad, and a bottle of bright pink fizzy stuff for Rosemary.

  ‘There is ice-cream with stewed fruit afterwards,’ said her mother, ‘but hang up your things and wash first.’

  ‘Tell me about Mrs Pendlebury Parker!’ said Rosemary when her knife and fork began to move a little more slowly. ‘Is it nice sort of sewing, and can you bring it home with you?’

  Stories of Mrs Pendlebury Parker and the splendours of Tussocks, her house which was just outside the town, were always a source of wonder to Rosemary.

  ‘I’m afraid I shall have to go there every day for the next three weeks,’ said her mother. ‘I’m so sorry to have to leave you for so long on your own, Poppet, but she does pay so well, I felt I could not afford to say no. I’m afraid it is largely mending linen, so I can’t bring the work home.’

  Rosie let the blob of ice-cream on her tongue melt completely before she answered, and then she said as cheerfully as she could, ‘I shan’t mind really, I expect. How hateful for you to be sides-to-middling sheets, when you ought to be making beautiful dresses!’

  Mrs Brown smiled. ‘Never mind, darling. Think of all the things I shall have to tell you when I come home in the evenings!’

  ‘And perhaps,’ said Rosemary, brightening, ‘you’ll be rich enough afterwards to buy one of those things for making your sewing machine go by electricity, and then you’ll earn so much more money that we shall be able to go and live somewhere else, where your ladies will come to you, instead of you having to go to their houses whatever the weather is like. And I shall dress in black satin and say, “This way, Modom!”’ Her mother laughed.

  ‘And I shall be able to say, “Mrs Pendlebury Parker,” I shall say, “No, I’m afraid I cannot make you twelve flannel nightdresses by the day after tomorrow. I never sew anything coarser than crêpe de chine!”’ They both laughed a great deal, and the meal ended quite cheerfully.

  When they had finished, Mrs Brown had to go into the town to match some silks, so Rosemary cleared away and washed up the dinner plates. Next she put away her school things and changed into a cotton frock, and all the time she was wondering what she could do with herself for the next three weeks. Could she really do something useful, she wondered, as Mrs Walker had suggested? It had been rather unfair to call her a ‘great girl’, because she was rather small for her ten years. All the same, it would be wonderful, she thought, to earn some money without her mother knowing anything about it, and at the end of the holidays carelessly to pour a shower of clinking coins into her astonished lap!

  ‘The trouble is, I don’t know what I could do,’ she said to herself. ‘I can’t sew well enough. The only thing I can do is to keep our rooms clean and tidy. I always do that in the holidays when Mummy is busy. I can sweep and polish and wash-up.’

  She rather liked the idea, and by the time she had done up the difficult button at the back of her cotton frock Rosemary had made up her mind. She would go out daily and clean.

  Now she had a hazy idea that it would be necessary to take her tools with her, in the same way that her mother took her own thimble, needles, and scissors when she went out to sew. Dusters and a scrubbing brush would be easy, but Mrs Walker would not let her past the front door with a broom without going into a long explanation, and then it would no longer be a surprise.

  ‘Well, there is nothing for it,’ she said to herself, ‘I shall have to buy one for myself.’

  After much rattling and poking with a dinner knife her money-box produced two and fivepence three farthings.

  ‘P’r’aps if I went to Fairfax Market I could find a cheap broom,’ she thought doubtfully. ‘It’s rather a long way, but I think I could get there and back before tea time.’

  2

  Fairfax Market

  Rosemary put the money in her pocket and left a note for her mother; then she started off for Fairfax Market. This was held in the old part of the town in the cobbled market square. Because she imagined that two and fivepence three farthings was not very much money with which to buy a broom, she decided not to waste any of it on a bus.

  She started resolutely off, only stopping occasionally to look in a shop window. But it was hot and dusty going. The pavements seemed to toast the soles of her feet through the rubber soles of her sandals. To make matters worse, one of the buckles came off. By the time she reached the market a slight drizzle was falling, and the clock on the Market Hall roof was striking four. Instead of the cheerful racket of people shouting their wares, of laughter and bustle, the stall-holders were already packing up. Rosemary went up to a stout woman who was stacking crockery which had been displayed on the cobbles.

  ‘Please,’ she said anxiously, ‘will you tell me where I can buy a broom?’

  ‘You can’t,’ snapped the fat woman without looking up. ‘Not now you can’t.’ Then she straightened herself with a grunt and looked at Rosemary’s disappointed face.

  ‘Never ask a favour of a fat woman when she’s bending,’ she said more kindly. ‘Leastways, not if you want a civil answer. Don’t they teach you that at school?’

  Rosie shook her head, and the fat woman went on, ‘The market’s been closing at four on Mondays these last three ’undred years, leastways, so my old father told me. Never mind, cheer up, lovey! ’Ave a fancy milk jug for your ma instead?’

  Rosemary shook her head again and went sadly on between the rows of dismantled stalls and piles of goods hidden under tarpaulins, already glistening with rain. The money in her hand was hot and sticky, but there was nothing to buy with it, let alone a broom, so she put it back in her pocket. She inquired again of a young man who was loading bales of brightly coloured material into an ancient car.

  ‘Please, do you know where I can buy a broom?’

  But all he said was ‘’Op it, see!’ So Rosemary ’opped it.

  She wandered on among the drifting straw and bits of paper till she came to the end of the market, where the pavement began again. Here she found a little shop that sold newspapers and sweets and odds and ends, so she stopped to look in the window. She wondered whether to buy a toffee-apple or a liquorice bootlace to sustain her on the way home. The toffee-apple would last longer, but on the other hand she could eat a bit of the bootlace and use the rest as a skipping rope and still eat it later. She had just decided on the apple, because you cannot skip comfortably with a buckle off your sandal, when she felt something damp and furry rubbing against her bare legs. She looked down, and saw a huge black cat. Now Rosemary liked cats. If only Mrs Walker had allowed it she would certainly have had one of her own, so she bent down to stroke him. But the cat ran off and then sat down a few yards away and looked at her. Rosemary followed and tried to stroke him again, but the creature darted off for a few feet as before, and sat down to wash its paws. Rosemary laughed.

  ‘I believe you want me to follow you! All right, I will. I’m coming!’ So they went off in fits and starts, with Rosemary trying to catch the cat, who lolloped away as soon as she was within stroking distance. But although the cat did not laugh as she did, it was perfectly obvious that he was enjoying the joke as much as she was. She was just going to make a successful grab at him when she bumped into someone. It was an old woman.

  ‘I’m so sorry!’ said Rosemary.

  ‘And so you should be,’ said the old woman sharply, ‘keeping me waiting like this. Well, it’s yours for two and fivepence, and it’s cheap at the price.’

  ‘What is?’ asked Rosemary in a puzzled way.

  ‘The broom, of course! That’s what you’ve come for, isn’t it? If that cat is trying to fool
me just because I’m going out of business…’

  The cat was patting a drifting piece of orange paper with deep concentration.

  ‘Oh, but I do want a broom!’ said Rosemary eagerly.

  ‘I’ve sold my stock and bought myself a new hat,’ went on the old woman unexpectedly. ‘How do you like it?’

  Rosemary hoped she would not be asked to give an opinion about any of the rest of the old woman’s clothes. The hat was certainly very fashionable. It was sprinkled with sequins and had a little veil. But perched on the old woman’s wild grey hair it only served to make the hair look wilder and her ragged clothes more disreputable.

  ‘It’s very pretty,’ said Rosemary. ‘But shall I take off the price label? It’s hanging down behind.’

  ‘Oh, no you don’t!’ said the old woman fiercely. ‘I paid nineteen and elevenpence for my hat and I’m not giving away any of the trimmings! You can have the broom and the cat, too, if you like, but my trimmings aren’t in the bargain.’

  Rosemary felt quite indignant at the turn the conversation was taking and she answered with some spirit.

  ‘Of course I don’t want the trimmings from your hat! But I wish I could have the cat.’ She looked at the handsome animal who was sitting with his tail neatly curled round his feet, apparently fast asleep.

  The old woman chuckled.

  ‘He’s a deep one, he is!’ She paused, looked sharply at Rosemary and added, ‘He’s worth his weight in… farthings.’

  ‘But if the broom costs two and fivepence I’ve only got three farthings left, and he must be worth much more than that!’ Surely Mrs Walker could be talked round? Anyway, she knew that her mother would not mind. It was more than likely that the queer old woman was not a very kind mistress. Rosemary had a feeling that the cat was not really asleep, but was listening with all his ears.