Master Spiderman barged her aside and dashed into the ward, dragging the boys with him.
They were in a long, dimly lighted space with a row of beds on either side. The souls were about halfway down the room, flitting cautiously in their usual cluster. But the place was not quiet. Cat had the strange feeling that they had just burst into a rookery. The air rang with peculiar cawing noises.
It took him a second or so to realize that the cawing was coming from little white cradles that were hooked to the bottom of each bed. All the people in the beds were ladies, all looking rather exhausted, and in each cradle there was a tiny, wrinkly, red-faced newborn baby—at least, there were two of them in the cradle nearest Cat—and it was the babies who were making the noise, more and more of them, as the nun’s scream and the crash of the bottles, followed by the thunder of the door and the shout of anger Master Spiderman gave as he towed Cat and Tonino between the beds, woke every single baby there up.
“We’re in a maternity ward,” Cat said, wishing he could back straight out of here again.
Tonino was horribly out of breath, but he managed to grin. “I know. The souls are being clever after all.”
Master Spiderman was shouting, “Stop them! Don’t let them get into any babies! They’ll be gone for good then!” He dived at the cluster of souls with his butterfly net raised.
The souls did seem to be showing intelligence at last. As Master Spiderman dived, they rose up in a group above his waving net and then peeled apart in eight different directions. For a second or so, Master Spiderman did manage to keep most of them up in the air by swatting at them and shouting, but then two dived over behind him.
Like a pair of shooting stars, the ivy leaf and the fig leaf shot downward to two of the cradles. Each poised for a moment over a yelling baby and then softly descended into the baby’s wide-open bawling mouth. And were gone. A look of acute surprise crossed the face of each baby. Then they were yelling louder than ever with their faces screwed up and their short arms batting the air. It must feel very strange, Cat thought, suddenly to find you had two souls, but he could not see that it did any harm. And it was the perfect place to hide from Master Spiderman.
He nudged Tonino. “I think we’d better help them.”
Tonino nodded. They set off down the ward just as things began to get difficult. Master Spiderman was speeding this way and that, scooping at darting souls, and most of the new mothers, tired as they were, were beginning to sit up and object. They could not seem to see the souls, but they could see Master Spiderman.
“What do you think you’re doing?” several ladies demanded.
Another said, “I’m not letting that madman near my baby!” She picked her howling baby out of its cradle, just as the fluttering maple leaf soul was poised above it, and hugged it to her chest. The maple leaf was forced to swoop on to the next cradle, where Master Spiderman’s butterfly net scooped at it and missed.
“He’s a lunatic,” said the mother in the next bed. “Ring the bell for help.”
“I already did,” said a mother in the bed opposite. “I rang twice now.”
“It’s too bad!” several mothers said. And several more shouted at Master Spiderman to get out or they would have the law on him.
Meanwhile soul after soul darted away from Master Spiderman and vanished into babies. By this time only two were left, the oldest and the newest. The oldest leaf was still stunted, though it seemed to have grown a little, but it was evidently bewildered and weak. All its efforts to get into babies were timid and slow, and whenever Master Spiderman’s butterfly net swept toward it, all it seemed able to do was to flutter up toward the ceiling again, where the newest and biggest leaf shape hovered, perhaps trying to tell the old leaf what to do.
The old soul timorously descended again as Cat and Tonino set off to help it. Master Spiderman pelted back to catch it. But he skidded to a stop when the ward doors clapped open, and an awesome voice asked, “And what, pray, is the meaning of this?”
It was the Mother Superior. It did not take the hugeness of her starched headdress, the severity of her dark blue habit, the large silver cross hanging from her waist, or even her six feet of height to tell you who and what she was. It was obvious. Such was the power of her personality that as she advanced down the ward, nearly all the babies stopped crying.
The big soul that had been Gabriel de Witt hastily plunged from near the ceiling and was just in time to vanish into the only baby still crying. The mothers who were sitting up all hurriedly lay down again, and the one who had picked her baby up guiltily popped it back into its cradle and lay down, too. Cat and Tonino, feeling as guilty as the rest, stood still and tried to look as if they were visiting a new little brother or sister. Master Spiderman’s flat mouth hung open as if the Mother Superior had cast a spell on him. But Cat did not think it was magic. As the Mother Superior’s cold eye passed over him, he knew it was pure personality. He wanted to sink into the floor.
“I do not,” said the Mother Superior to Master Spiderman, “wish to know what you are doing here, my good man. I want you simply to take your butterfly net and your filthy street urchins, and leave. Now.”
“Very good, ma’am.” Master Spiderman cringed. His hairy monkey face twisted with guilt. For an instant it seemed as if he were going to do as he was told and go away. But the stunted and bewildered old soul, which had been hovering miserably up near the ceiling, suddenly decided that the Mother Superior was the one to keep it safe. It came down in a fluttering spiral and landed on her great white headdress, where it nestled, frail and quivering, upon the highest starched point. Master Spiderman stared at it urgently, with round monkey eyes.
“Off you go,” said the Mother Superior, “my good man.”
Master Spiderman’s face bunched up. “I’ll have this one at least,” Cat heard him mutter. He made one of his throwing gestures. “Freeze,” he said.
The Mother Superior promptly became as stiff and still as a statue. Most of the babies started to cry again.
“Good,” said Master Spiderman. “I never did hold with nuns. Nasty religious creatures.” He stood on tiptoe to swat the roosting old soul into his net. But the Mother Superior’s headdress was just too high for him. It flapped and rattled as he hit it, and the Mother Superior herself swayed about, and the soul, instead of being swatted into the net, was shot off sideways into the cradle that contained the twins. Both were bawling just then.
Cat saw the soul dive thankfully, but he did not see which twin got it, because Master Spiderman pushed him angrily aside and tried to unhook the cradle from the bed. “I’ll have this one at least!” he cried out. “I’ll start all over again, but I’ll have one!”
“You will not!” said the mother of the twins. She climbed out of bed and advanced on Master Spiderman. She was enormous. She had huge arms that looked as if they had plowed and reaped fields, made dough, and pounded washing clean until they were stronger than the arms of most men. The rest of her was in a vast white nightgown with a frill around its neck, and on top of the frill was a surprisingly pretty and very determined face.
Cat took one look at her and respectfully handed her his butterfly net as she marched past him. She gave him a nod of thanks and absently turned it back to front, with the net near her hand. “Let go that cradle,” she said, “or I shall make you very sorry.”
Master Spiderman hastily hooked the cradle onto the bed again and backed away. “Let’s be reasonable here, madam,” he said in his most oily and placating manner. “You have two fine babies there. Suppose I were to give you a gold piece for the pair of them.”
“I never,” said the huge lady, “heard anything so disgusting in my life!” And she swung the shaft of the butterfly net with both hands.
Master Spiderman had just time to yell. “Two gold pieces then!” before the handle of the net met his head with a whistling crack. His hat came off, revealin
g his wispy brown scalp, and he tottered sideways, shrieking. Tottered some more and fell against the Mother Superior. Cat and Tonino were just in time to hold her upright by leaning against her as Master Spiderman slid howling down the front of her.
And as he slid, his bare head hit the silver cross hanging from the Mother Superior’s waist. There was a strange crackling sound, followed by a strong smell. Master Spiderman jerked all over and hit the floor with an empty sort of flop. Cat found himself staring down at an old brown dead thing, that was so dried out and so withered that it might have been a mummified monkey. It looked as if it had died centuries before.
Cat’s first act was to look anxiously around for any sign of Master Spiderman’s soul. He did not want that getting into a baby. But it seemed almost as if any soul Master Spiderman had had was gone long ago. He could see and feel nothing of it. Then he looked down at the brown mummified thing again and thought, shuddering, If that’s an evil enchanter, I don’t want to be anything like that! At which point, he found he remembered who he was and that he was an enchanter, too. And he was suddenly so engulfed in feelings and memories that he could not move.
Around him the babies were all crying at full strength, and most of their mothers were cheering. The mother of the twins was sitting on her bed saying she felt rather queer.
“I’m not surprised!” said the Mother Superior. “You did very well, my dear. A good flush hit—one of the best I’ve ever seen.”
On the other side of the Mother Superior, Tonino was doing what Cat realized he should have been doing hours ago and shouting at the top of his strong, clear voice, “Chrestomanci! Chrestomanci, come here quickly!”
There was a blat of warm moving air, like a train passing, combined with a strange spicy smell from another universe entirely, and Chrestomanci was standing in the ward, almost face-to-face with the Mother Superior.
The effect was extremely odd. The Conclave of Mages seemed to require Chrestomanci to wear a skinny thigh-length white tunic above enormously baggy black trousers. It made him look even taller than the Mother Superior, and a great deal thinner.
“Ah, Mother Janissary,” he said. “Good evening. We met last year, I believe.”
“At the canonical conference, and my name is Mother Justinia,” the Mother Superior replied. “I am extremely glad to see you, Sir Christopher. We seem to have a spot of bother here.”
“So I see,” said Chrestomanci. He looked down at the remains of Master Spiderman and then across at Cat and Tonino. After that, his gaze traveled around the ward, the howling babies and the staring mothers, and he began to get his most bewildered look. “It seems a little late in the day for hospital visiting,” he said. “Perhaps someone will tell me why we are all here.” His brow creased and he made a little gesture, at which all the babies stopped crying and fell peacefully asleep. “That’s better,” he said. “Tonino, you explain.”
Tonino told it, clearly and well. There were several occasions when Cat might have interrupted with some further explanations, but he scarcely said anything, because he was so ashamed. It was not just that he, a nine-lifed enchanter, had let Master Spiderman cast a spell on him to make him forget what he was—and he knew he should have noticed the spell; it must have been inside that old hackney cab—but the fact that he, Cat, had been so busy resenting Tonino that he had nearly got both of them killed.
It made him feel worse that Tonino kept saying that Cat had behaved well and that Cat had been managing to work magic in spite of Master Spiderman’s spells. Cat did not think either of these things was true. The most he could say for himself was he was glad he had been sorry for the trapped souls, enough to help rescue them. And he supposed he was glad to find he liked Tonino after all. Tonino had been so calm and sturdy through it all—the perfect companion. And he suspected that Tonino’s backup magic had done twice as much as his own.
“So Gabriel de Witt is dead,” Chrestomanci said sadly.
“Not really,” Tonino said, gesturing around at the sleeping babies. “He is here somewhere.”
“Ah, yes, but I imagine he—or she—doesn’t know who he is now,” Chrestomanci answered. He sighed. “So Neville Spiderman was hiding out in a time bubble, collecting the souls of all the Chrestomancis, was he? And probably killing apprentices to prolong his own life while he waited. It was lucky he kidnapped the two of you. We’d never have caught him without that. But now we have, I think we’d better get rid of what’s left of him; it looks infectious to me. How old is this hospital?” he asked the Mother Superior.
“About seventy years old,” she replied, rather surprised.
“And what was here before it was built, do you know?” Chrestomanci asked.
She shrugged, rattling her headdress. “Just green fields, I think.”
“Good,” said Chrestomanci. “Then I can send him back in time without moving him. It’s a bit hard on the person who falls over him in the field, but it fits with what I remember. He was supposed to have been found dead in a ditch somewhere near Dulwich. Will everyone please stand back?”
Cat, Tonino, and Mother Justinia all backed away a pace. Before they had quite finished moving, a blue glow appeared around the monkeylike thing on the floor, and Neville Spiderman was gone. This was followed by a rapidly evaporating puddle with a strong smell of hospital.
“Disinfectant,” Chrestomanci explained. “Now, we have eight souls to account for still. Cat, can you remember which babies they all went to?”
Cat was more ashamed than ever. The babies all looked alike to him. And it had all been so confusing, with souls darting in all directions. “I’ve no idea,” he confessed. “One of the twins, but I don’t know which. And that’s all.”
“They all went everywhere,” Tonino explained. “Won’t their mothers know?”
“Most people,” said Chrestomanci, “can’t see souls. It takes magic. Oh, well. We’ll have to do it the hard way.”
He turned around and snapped his fingers. The young man who acted as Chrestomanci’s secretary jumped into existence farther up the ward. He was obviously not used to this kind of summons. He was in the middle of tying a spotted bow tie and almost dropped it. Cat could see him staring around at the mothers, the babies, and the Mother Superior and then at the filthy and disheveled boys, and trying to look as if he saw such things every day.
“Tom,” Chrestomanci said to him, “be a good fellow and go around and get the names and addresses of all the mothers and every baby here, will you?”
“Certainly, sir,” Tom said, trying to look efficient and understanding.
Some of the mothers looked indignant at this, and Mother Justinia said, “Is that really necessary? We like to be confidential here.”
“Absolutely necessary,” Chrestomanci said. He raised his voice so that all the mothers could hear him. “Some of your babies are going to grow up with very powerful magic. They might have strange memories, too, which could frighten both you and them. We want to be able to help them if this happens. We also want to educate them properly in the use of their magic. But since none of us knows which children are going to have these gifts, we are going to have to keep track of you all. So we are going to give each baby here a government grant of five hundred pounds a year until he or she is eighteen. Does this make you feel better about it?”
“You mean they get the money if they have magic or not?” somebody asked.
“Exactly,” said Chrestomanci. “Of course they only get the grant when they come to Chrestomanci Castle once a year for magical testing.”
“Mine might have magic anyway,” someone else murmured. “My mother’s father—”
The twins’ mother said, “Well, I’m taking the money. I was at my wits’ end how to give them all they need. I wasn’t reckoning on twins. Thank you, sir.”
“My pleasure, madam,” Chrestomanci said, bowing to her. “Tom will give you any further details
.” Tom, who had just conjured himself a notebook and a pen, looked pleading and alarmed at this. Chrestomanci ignored him. “He can cope,” he said to Cat. “That’s what he’s paid for. You and Tonino look as if you need a bath and a square meal. Let’s take you both home.”
“But—” said Cat.
“But what?” asked Chrestomanci.
Cat did not know how to put the shame he felt. He was fairly sure he had been starting to turn into someone like Neville Spiderman, but he did not dare tell Chrestomanci that. “I don’t deserve anything,” he said.
“No more than those twins deserve five hundred pounds a year each,” Chrestomanci said cheerfully. “I don’t know what’s biting you, Cat, but it seems to me that you’ve managed rather well in a dangerous situation without thinking you can rely on magic to help you. Think about it.”
Beside Cat, Tonino exclaimed. Cat looked up from the floor to find they were in the grand central hall of Chrestomanci Castle, standing in the five-pointed star under the chandelier. Millie was rushing down the marble stairs to meet them.
“Oh, you found them!” she called out. “I’ve been so worried. Mordecai telephoned to say he put them in a cab that disappeared at the end of the street. He was terribly upset. And Gabriel de Witt died this evening, did you hear?”
“After a fashion,” Chrestomanci said. “In one way Gabriel’s still very much with us.” He looked from Millie to Cat and Tonino. “Dear, dear. Everyone looks exhausted. I tell you what. I can borrow a villa in the south of France once the measles have abated—with a swimming pool. Tonino can go on to Italy from there. Would you like that, Tonino?”
“Yes, but I cannot swim,” Tonino said.
“Neither can I,” Cat said. “But we can both learn.”
Tonino beamed at him and Cat was glad to discover he still liked Tonino, rather a lot.
Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci Page 7