The Pinhoe Egg Read online

  Gammer had grown herself into the bed. She had sunk into the mattress, deep into it, and rooted herself, with little hairy nightdress-colored rootlets sticking out all round her. Her long toe-nails twined like transparent yellow creepers into the bars at the end of the bed. At the other end, her hair and her ears were impossibly grown into the pillow. Out of it her face stared, bony, defiant, and smug.

  “Mother!” said Marianne’s dad.

  “Thought you could get the better of me, didn’t you?” Gammer said. “I’m not going.”

  Marianne had almost never seen her father lose his temper, but he did then. His round amiable face went crimson and shiny. “Yes, you are going,” he said. “You’re moving to Dinah and Isaac’s whatever tricks you play. Leave her be,” he said to the aunts. “She’ll get tired of this in the end. Let’s get all the furniture moved out first.”

  This was easier said than done. No one had realized quite how much furniture there was. A house the size of Woods House, that was big enough to have held a family with seven children once, can hold massive quantities of furniture. And Woods House did. Joss Callow had to go and fetch Uncle Cedric’s hay wain and then borrow the Reverend Pinhoe’s old horse to pull it, because the farm cart was just not enough and they would have been at it all day. Great-Uncle Edgar prudently left at this point in case someone suggested they use his fine, spruce carriage too; but Great-Uncle Lester nobly stayed and offered to take the smaller items in his car. Even so, all three vehicles had to make several trips to the big barn out on the Hopton Road, while a crowd of younger Pinhoes rushed out there on bikes and broomsticks to unload the furniture, stack it safely, and surround it in their best spells of preservation. At the same time, so many things turned up that people thought Gammer would need in her new home, that Dolly the donkey was going backward and forward nonstop between Woods House and the Dell, with the cart loaded and creaking behind her.

  “It’s so nice to have things that you’re used to around you in a strange place!” Great-Aunt Sue said. Marianne privately thought this was rather sentimental of Aunt Sue, since most of the stuff was things she had never once seen Gammer use.

  “And we haven’t touched the attics yet!” Uncle Charles groaned, while they waited for the donkey cart to come back again.

  Everyone else had forgotten the attics. “Leave them till after lunch,” Dad said hastily. “Or we could leave them for the new owner. There’s nothing but junk up there.”

  “I had a toy fort once that must be up there,” Uncle Simeon said wistfully.

  But he was ignored, as he mostly was, because Uncle Richard brought the donkey cart back with a small Pinhoe girl who had a message from Mum. Evidently Mum was getting impatient to know what had become of Gammer.

  “They’re all ready,” small Nicola announced. “They sprung clent.”

  “They what?” said all the aunts.

  “They washed the floor and they dried and they polished and the carpet just fits,” Nicola explained. “And they washed the windows and did the walls and put the new curtains up and started on all the furniture and the pictures and the stuffed trout and Stafford and Conway Callow teased a goat and it butted them and—”

  “Oh, they spring cleaned,” said Aunt Polly. “Now I understand.”

  “Thank you, Nicola. Run back and tell them Gammer’s just coming,” Dad said.

  But Nicola was determined to finish her narrative first. “And they got sent home and that Joe Pinhoe got told off for being lazy. I was good. I helped,” she concluded. Only then did she scamper off with Dad’s message.

  Dad began wearily climbing the stairs. “Let’s hope Gammer’s uprooted herself by now,” he said.

  But she hadn’t. If anything, she was rooted to the bed more firmly than ever. When Great-Aunt Sue said brightly, “Up we get, Gammer. Don’t we want to see our lovely clean new home?” Gammer just stared, mutinously.

  “Oh, come on, Mother. Cut it out!” Uncle Arthur said. “You look ridiculous like that.”

  “Shan’t,” said Gammer. “I said root downward and I meant it. I’ve lived in this house every single year of my life.”

  “No, you haven’t. Don’t talk nonsense!” Dad said, turning red and shiny again. “You lived opposite the Town Hall in Hopton for twenty years before you ever came here. One last time—do you get up, or do we carry you to the Dell bed and all?”

  “Please yourself. I can’t do with your tantrums, Harry—never could,” Gammer said, and closed her eyes.

  “Right!” said Dad, angrier than ever. “All of you get a grip on this bed and lift it when I count to three.”

  Gammer’s reply to this was to make herself enormously heavy. The bare floor creaked under the weight of the bed. No one could shift it.

  Marianne heard Dad’s teeth grind. “Very well,” he said. “Levitation spell, everyone.”

  Normally with a levitation spell, you could move almost anything with just one finger. This time, whatever Gammer was doing made that almost impossible. Everyone strained and sweated. Great-Aunt Clarice’s hairstyle came apart in the effort. Pretty little combs and hairpins showered down on Gammer’s roots. Great-Aunt Sue stopped looking neat at all. Marianne thought that, for herself, she could have lifted three elephants more easily. Uncle Charles and four cousins left off loading the donkey cart and ran upstairs to help, followed by Uncle Richard and then by Great-Uncle Lester. But the bed still would not move. Until, when every possible person was gathered round the bed, heaving and muttering the spell, Gammer smiled wickedly and let go.

  The bed went up two feet and shot forward. Everyone stumbled and floundered. Great-Aunt Sue was carried along with the bed as it made for the doorway and then crushed against the doorpost as the bed jammed itself past her and swung sideways into the upstairs corridor. Great-Aunt Clarice rescued Aunt Sue with a quick spell and a tremendous POP! which jerked the bed on again. It sailed toward the stairs, leaving everyone behind except for Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur was holding on to the bars at the end of the bed and pushing mightily to stop it.

  “Ridiculous, am I?” Gammer said to him, smiling peacefully. And the bed launched itself down the stairs with Uncle Arthur pelting backward in front of it for dear life. At the landing, it did a neat turn, threw Uncle Arthur off, bounced on his belly, and set off like a toboggan down the rest of the stairs. In the hall, Nutcase—who had somehow gotten out again—shot out of its way with a shriek. Everyone except Uncle Arthur leaned anxiously over the banisters and watched Gammer zoom through the front door and hit Great-Uncle Lester’s car with a mighty crunch.

  Great-Uncle Lester howled, “My car, my car!” and raced down after Gammer.

  “At least it stopped her,” Dad said as they all clattered after Great-Uncle Lester. “She hurt?” he asked, when they got there to find a large splintery dent in the side of the car and Gammer, still rooted, lying with her eyes shut and the same peaceful smile.

  “Oh, I do hope so!” Great-Uncle Lester said, wringing his hands. “Look what she’s done!”

  “Serve you right,” Gammer said, without opening her eyes. “You smashed my dollhouse.”

  “When I was five!” Great-Uncle Lester howled. “Sixty years ago, you dreadful old woman!”

  Dad leaned over the bed and demanded, “Are you ready to get up and walk now?”

  Gammer pretended not to hear him.

  “All right!” Dad said fiercely. “Levitation again, everyone. I’m going to get her down to the Dell if it kills us all.”

  “Oh, it will,” Gammer said sweetly.

  Marianne’s opinion was that the way they were all going to die was from embarrassment. They swung the bed up again and, jostling for a hand-hold and treading on one another’s heels, took it out through the gates and into the village street. There the Reverend Pinhoe, who had been standing in the churchyard, vaulted the wall and hurried over to help. “Dear, dear,” he said. “What a very strange thing for old Mrs. Pinhoe to do!”

  They wedged him in and jostled
on, downhill through the village. As the hill got steeper, they were quite glad of the fact that the Reverend Pinhoe was no good at levitation. The bed went faster and faster and the vicar’s efforts were actually holding it back. Despite the way they were now going at a brisk trot, people who were not witches or not Pinhoes came out of the houses and trotted alongside to stare at Gammer and her roots. Others leaned out of windows to get a look, too. “I never knew a person could do that!” they all said. “Will she be like that permanently?”

  “God knows!” Dad snarled, redder and shinier than ever.

  Gammer smiled. And it very soon appeared that she had at least one more thing she could do.

  There were frantic shouts from behind. They twisted their heads around and saw Great-Uncle Lester, with Uncle Arthur running in great limping leaps behind him, racing down the street toward them. No one understood what they were shouting, but the way they were waving the bed carriers to one side was quite clear.

  “Everyone go right,” Dad said.

  The bed and its crowd of carriers veered over toward the houses and, on Marianne’s side, began stumbling over doorsteps and barking shins on foot-scrapers, just as Dolly the donkey appeared, with her cart of furniture bounding behind her, apparently running for her life.

  “Oh, no!” groaned Uncle Richard.

  The huge table from the kitchen in Woods House was chasing Dolly, gaining on her with every stride of its six massive wooden legs. Everyone else in the street screamed warnings and crowded to the sides. Uncle Arthur collapsed on the steps of the Pinhoe Arms. Great-Uncle Lester fled the other way into the grocer’s. Only Uncle Richard bravely let go of the bed and jumped forward to try to drag Dolly to safety. But Dolly, her eyes set with panic, swerved aside from him and pattered on frantically. Uncle Richard had to throw himself flat as the great table veered to charge at him, its six legs going like pistons. Gammer almost certainly meant the table to go for the bed and its carriers, but as it galloped near enough, Uncle Charles, Dad, Uncle Simeon, and the Reverend Pinhoe each put out a leg and kicked it hard in the side. That swung it back into the street again. It was after Dolly in a flash.

  Dolly had gained a little when the table swerved, but the table went so fast that it looked as if, unless Dolly could turn right at the bottom of the hill toward Furze Cottage in time, or left toward the Dell, she was going to be squashed against the Post Office wall. Everyone except Marianne held their breath. Marianne said angrily, “Gammer, if you’ve killed poor Dolly I’ll never forgive you!”

  Gammer opened one eye. Marianne thought the look from it was slightly ashamed.

  Dolly, seeing the wall coming up, uttered a braying scream. Somehow, no one knew how, she managed to throw herself and the cart sideways into Dell Lane. The cart rocked and shed a bird-cage, a small table, and a towel rail, but it stayed upright. Dolly, cart and all, sped out of sight, still screaming.

  The table thundered on and hit the Post Office wall like a battering ram. It went in among the bricks as if the bricks weighed nothing and plowed on, deep into the raised lawn behind the wall. There it stopped.

  When the shaken bed carriers trotted up to the wreckage, Aunt Joy was standing above them on the ruins, with her arms folded ominously.

  “You’ve done it now, haven’t you, you horrible old woman?” she said, glaring down at Gammer’s smug face. “Making everyone carry you around like this—you ought to be ashamed! Can you pay for all this? Can you? I don’t see why I should have to.”

  “Abracadabra,” Gammer said. “Rhubarb.”

  “That’s right. Pretend to be balmy,” said Aunt Joy. “And everyone will back you up, like they always do. If it was me, I’d dump you in the duck pond. Curse you, you old—!”

  “That’s enough, Joy!” Dad commanded. “You’ve every right to be annoyed, and we’ll pay for the wall when we sell the house, but no cursing, please.”

  “Well, get this table out of here at least,” Aunt Joy said. She turned her back and stalked away into the Post Office.

  Everyone looked at the vast table, half buried in rubble and earth. “Should we take it down to the Dell?” a cousin asked doubtfully.

  “How do you want it when it’s there?” Uncle Charles asked. “Half outside in the duck pond, or on one end sticking up through the roof? That house is small. And they say this table was built inside Woods House. It couldn’t have gotten in any other way.”

  “In that case,” asked Great-Aunt Sue, “how did it get out?”

  Dad and the other uncles exchanged alarmed looks. The bed dipped as Uncle Simeon dropped his part of it and raced off up the hill to see if Woods House was still standing. Marianne was fairly sure that Gammer grinned.

  “Let’s get on,” Dad said.

  They arrived at the Dell to find Dolly, still harnessed to the cart, standing in the duck pond shaking all over, while angry ducks honked at her from the bank. Uncle Richard, who was Dolly’s adoring friend, dropped his part of the bed and galloped into the water to comfort her. Aunt Dinah, Mum, Nicola, Joe, and a crowd of other people rushed anxiously out of the little house to meet the rest of them.

  Everyone gratefully lowered the bed to the grass. As soon as it was down, Gammer sat up and held a queenly hand out to Aunt Dinah. “Welcome,” she said, “to your humble abode. And a cup of hot marmalade would be very welcome too.”

  “Come inside then, dear,” Aunt Dinah said. “We’ve got your tea all ready for you.” She took hold of Gammer’s arm and, briskly and kindly, led Gammer away indoors.

  “Lord!” said someone. “Did you know it’s four o’clock already?”

  “Table?” suggested Uncle Charles. Marianne could tell he was anxious not to annoy Aunt Joy any further.

  “In one moment,” Dad said. He stood staring at the little house, breathing heavily. Marianne could feel him building something around it in the same slow, careful way he made his furniture.

  “Dear me,” said the Reverend Pinhoe. “Strong measures, Harry.”

  Mum said, “You’ve stopped her from ever coming outside. Are you sure that’s necessary?”

  “Yes,” said Dad. “She’ll be out of here as soon as my back’s turned, otherwise. And you all know what she can do when she’s riled. We got her here, and here she’ll stay—I’ve made sure of that. Now let’s take that dratted table back.”

  They went back in a crowd to the Post Office, where everyone exclaimed at the damage. Joe said, “I wish I’d seen that happen!”

  “You’d have run for your life like Dolly did,” Dad snapped, tired and cross. “Everybody levitate.”

  With most of the spring-cleaning party to help, the table came loose from the Post Office wall quite quickly, in a cloud of brick dust, grass, earth, and broken bricks. But getting it back up the hill was not quick at all. It was heavy. People kept having to totter away and sit on doorsteps, exhausted. But Dad kept them all at it until they were level with the Pinhoe Arms. Uncle Simeon met them there, looking mightily relieved.

  “Nothing I can’t rebuild,” he said cheerfully. “It took out half the kitchen wall, along with some cabinets and the back door. I’ll get them on it next Monday. It’ll be a doddle compared with the wall down there. That’s going to take time, and money.”

  “Ah, well,” said Dad.

  Uncle Arthur came limping out of the yard, leaning on a stick, with one eye bright purple-black. “There you all are!” he said. “Helen’s going mad in here about her lunch spoiling. Come in and eat, for heaven’s sake!”

  They left the table blocking the entrance to the yard, under the swinging sign of the unicorn and griffin, and flocked into the inn. There, although Aunt Helen looked unhappy, no one found anything wrong with the food. Even elegant Great-Aunt Clarice was seen to have two helpings of roast and four veg. Most people had three. And there was beer, mulled wine, and iced fruit drink—just what everyone felt was needed. Here at last Marianne managed to get a word with Joe.

  “How are you getting on in That Castle?”


  “Boring,” said Joe. “I clean things and run errands. Mind you,” he added, with a cautious look at Joss Callow’s back, bulking at the next table, “I’ve never known anywhere easier to duck out from work in. I’ve been all over the Castle by now.”

  “Don’t the Family mind?” Marianne asked.

  “The main ones are not there,” Joe said. “They come back tomorrow. Housekeeper was really hacked off with me and Joss for taking today off. We told her it was our grandmother’s funeral—or Joss did.”

  With a bit of a shudder, hoping this was not an omen for poor Gammer, Marianne went on to the question she really wanted to ask. “And the children? They’re all enchanters too, aren’t they?”

  “One of them is,” Joe said. “Staff don’t like it. They say it’s not natural in a young lad. But the rest of them are just plain witches like us, from what they say. Are you going for more roast? Fetch me another lot, too, will you?”

  Eating and drinking went on a long time, until nearly sunset. It was quite late when a cheery party of uncles and cousins took the table back to Woods House, to shove it in through the broken kitchen wall and patch up the damage until Monday. A second party roistered off down the hill to tidy up the bricks there.

  Everyone clean forgot about the attics.

  Chapter Four

  On the way back from the south of France, Chrestomanci’s daughter, Julia, bought a book to read on the train, called A Pony Of My Own. Halfway through France, Chrestomanci’s ward, Janet, snatched the book off Julia and read it too. After that, neither of them could talk about anything but horses. Julia’s brother, Roger, yawned. Cat, who was younger than any of them, tried not to listen and hoped they would get tired of the subject soon.

  But the horse fever grew. By the time they were on the cross–Channel ferry, Julia and Janet had decided that both of them would die unless they had a horse each the moment they got home to the Castle.

  “We’ve only got six weeks until we start lessons again,” Julia sighed. “It has to be at once, or we’ll miss all the gymkhanas.”