The Pinhoe Egg (UK) Page 6

  Syracuse promptly whipped round and made for the stables with Julia clinging madly to his mane. The stable doors were shut, so Syracuse aimed himself at the low open doorway of the tack room instead. Julia saw it coming up fast and realised that she was likely to be beheaded. Shrieking out the words of a spell, she managed to levitate herself right up on to the stable roof. There, while Cat and Joss hauled Syracuse out backwards draped in six bridles and one set of carriage reins, Julia sat with big tears rolling down her face and gave vent to her feelings.

  “I hate this horse! He deserves to be dog meat! He’s horrible!”

  “I agree,” Chrestomanci said, appearing beside Cat in fabulous charcoal grey suiting. “Would you like me to try to get you a real horse?”

  “I hate you too!” Julia screamed. “You only got this one because you thought we were silly to want a horse at all!”

  “Not true, Julia,” Chrestomanci protested. “I did think you were silly, but I made an honest try and Prendergast diddled me. If you like, I’ll try for something fat and placid and elderly, and this one can go to the vet. What’s his name?” he asked Joss.

  “Mr Vastion,” Joss said, untangling leather straps from Syracuse’s tossing head.

  “No!” said Julia. “I’m sick of all horses.”

  “Mr Vastion, then,” said Chrestomanci.

  Cat could not bear to think of anything so beautiful and so much alive as Syracuse being turned into dog meat. “Can I have him?” he said.

  Everyone looked at him in surprise, including Syracuse.

  “You want the vet?” Chrestomanci said.

  “No, Syracuse,” said Cat.

  “On your head be it then.” Chrestomanci shrugged and turned to help Julia down off the roof.

  Cat found he owned a horse – just like that. Since everyone seemed to expect him to, he approached Syracuse and tried to remember the way Joss had told Julia to do things. He got his foot stretched up into the correct stirrup, collected the reins from Joss and jumped himself vigorously up into the saddle. He would not have been surprised to find himself facing Syracuse’s tail. Instead, he found himself looking forwards across a pair of large, lively ears beyond a tossing black mane, into Julia’s tearful face.

  “Oh, this is just not fair!” Julia said.

  Cat knew what she meant. As soon as he was in the saddle, a peculiar kind of magic happened, which was quite unlike the magic Cat usually dealt in. He knew just what to do. He knew how to adjust his weight and how to use every muscle in his body. He knew almost exactly how Syracuse felt – which was surprise, and triumph at having got the right rider at last – and just what Syracuse wanted to do. Together, like one animal that happened to be in two parts, they surged off across the yard, with Joss Callow in urgent pursuit, and through the open paddock gate. There Syracuse broke into a glad canter. It was the most wonderful feeling Cat had ever known.

  It lasted about five minutes and then Cat fell off. This was not Syracuse’s fault. It was simply because muscles and bones that Cat had never much used before started first to ache, then to scream, and then gave up altogether. Syracuse was desperately anxious about it and stood over Cat nosing him, until Joss Callow raced up and seized the reins. Cat tried to explain to him.

  “I see that,” Joss said. “There must be some other world where you and this horse are the two parts of a centaur.”

  “I don’t think so,” Cat said. He levered himself up off the grass like an old, old man. “They say I’m the only one there is in any world.”

  “Ah, yes, I forgot,” said Joss. “That’s why you’re a nine-lifer like the Big Man.” He always called Chrestomanci the Big Man.

  “Congratulations,” Chrestomanci called out, leaning on the gate beside Julia. “It saves you having to teleport, I suppose.”

  Julia added, rather vengefully, “Remember you have to do the mucking out now.” Then she smiled, a sighing, relieved sort of smile, and said, “Congratulations, too.”

  Chapter Five

  Cat ached all over that afternoon. He sat on his bed in his round turret room wondering what kind of magic might stop his legs and his behind and his back aching. Or one part of him anyway. He had decided that he would make himself numb from the neck down and was wondering what the best way was to do it, when there was a knock at his door. Thinking it must be Roger being more than usually polite, Cat said, “I’m here, but I’m performing nameless rites. Enter at your peril.”

  There was a feeling of hesitation outside the door. Then, very slowly and cautiously, the handle turned and the door was pushed open. A sulky-looking boy about Roger’s age, wearing a smart blue uniform, stood there staring at him. “Eric Chant, are you?” this boy said.

  Cat said, “Yes. Who are you?”

  “Joe Pinhoe,” said the boy. “Temporary boot boy.”

  “Oh.” Now Cat thought about it, he had seen this boy out in the stableyard once or twice, talking to Joss Callow. “What do you want?”

  Joe’s head hunched. It was from embarrassment, Cat saw, but it made Joe look hostile and aggressive. Cat knew all about this. He had mulish times himself, quite often. He waited. At length Joe said, “Just to take a look at you really. Enchanter, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right,” Cat said.

  “You don’t look big enough,” Joe said.

  Cat was thoroughly annoyed. His aching bones didn’t help, but mostly he was simply fed up at the way everyone seemed to think he was too little. “You want me to prove it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Joe.

  Cat cast about in his mind for something he could do. Quite apart from the fact that Cat was forbidden to work magic in the Castle, Joe had the look of someone who wouldn’t easily be impressed. Most of the small, simple things Cat thought he could get away with doing without Chrestomanci noticing were, he was sure, things that Joe would call tricks or illusions. Still, Cat was annoyed enough to want to do something. He braced his sore legs against his bed and sent Joe up to the very middle of the room’s round ceiling.

  It was interesting. After an instant of total astonishment, when he found himself aloft with his uniformed legs dangling, Joe began casting a spell to bring himself down. It was quite a good spell. It would have worked if it had been Roger and not Cat who had put Joe up there.

  Cat grinned. “You won’t get down that way,” he said, and he stuck Joe to the ceiling.

  Joe wriggled his shoulders and kicked his legs. “Bet I can get down somehow,” he said. “It must take you a lot of effort doing this.”

  “No it doesn’t,” Cat said. “And I can do this too.” He slid Joe gently across the ceiling towards the windows. When Joe was dangling just above the largest window, Cat made the window spring open and began lowering Joe towards it.

  Joe laughed in that hearty way you do when you are very nervous indeed. “All right. I believe you. You needn’t drop me out.”

  Cat laughed too. “I wouldn’t drop you. I’d levitate you into a tree. Haven’t you ever wanted to fly?”

  Joe stopped laughing and wriggling. “Haven’t I just!” he said. “But my family says boys can’t use broomsticks. Go on. Fly me down to the village. I dare you.”

  “Er – hem,” said someone in the doorway.

  Both of them looked round to find Chrestomanci standing there. It was one of those times when he seemed so tall that he might have been staring straight into Joe’s face, and Joe at that moment was a good fifteen feet in the air.

  “I think,” Chrestomanci said, “that you must achieve your ambition to fly by some other means, young man. Eric is strictly forbidden to perform magic inside the Castle. Aren’t you, Cat?”

  “Er — ” said Cat.

  Joe, very white in the face, said, “It wasn’t his fault – er – sir. I told him to prove he was an enchanter, see.”

  “Does it need proving?” Chrestomanci asked.

  “It does to me,” Joe said. “Being new here and all. I mean, look at him. Do you think he looks like an enc
hanter?”

  Chrestomanci turned his face meditatively down to Cat. “They come in all shapes and sizes,” he said. “In Cat’s case, eight other people just like him either failed to get born in the other worlds of our series, or they died at birth. Most of them would probably have been enchanters too. Cat has nine people’s magic.”

  “Sort of squidged together. I get you,” Joe said. “No wonder it’s this strong.”

  “Yes. Well. This vexed matter being settled,” Chrestomanci said, “perhaps, Eric, you would be so good as to fetch our friend down so that he can go about his lawful business.”

  Cat grinned up at Joe and lowered him gently to the carpet.

  “Off you go,” Chrestomanci said to him.

  “You mean you’re not going to give me the sack?” Joe asked incredulously.

  “Do you want to be sacked?” Chrestomanci said.

  “Yes,” said Joe.

  “In that case, I imagine it will be punishment enough to you to be allowed to keep your doubtless very boring job,” Chrestomanci told him. “Now please leave.”

  “Rats!” said Joe, hunching himself.

  Chrestomanci watched Joe slouch out of the room. “What an eccentric youth,” he remarked when the door had finally shut. He turned to Cat, looking much less pleasant. “Cat —”

  “I know,” Cat said. “But he didn’t believe —”

  “Have you read the story of Puss in Boots?” Chrestomanci asked him.

  “Yes,” Cat said, puzzled.

  “Then you’ll remember that the ogre was killed by being tempted to turn into something very large and then something small enough to be eaten,” Chrestomanci said. “Be warned, Cat.”

  “But —” said Cat.

  “What I’m trying to tell you,” Chrestomanci went on, “is that even the strongest enchanter can be defeated by using his own strength against him. I’m not saying this lad was —”

  “He wasn’t,” said Cat. “He was just curious. He uses magic himself and I think he thinks it goes by size, how strong you are.”

  “A magic user. Is he now?” Chrestomanci said. “I must find out more about him. Come with me now for an extra magic theory lesson as a penalty for using magic indoors.”

  But Joe was all right really, Cat thought mutinously as he limped down the spiral stairs after Chrestomanci. Joe had not been trying to tempt him, he knew that. He found he could hardly concentrate on the lesson. It was all about the kind of enchanter’s magic called Performative Speech. That was easy enough to understand. It meant that you said something in such a way that it happened as you said it. Cat could do that, just about. But the reason why it happened was beyond him, in spite of Chrestomanci’s explanations.

  He was quite glad to see Joe the next morning on his way out to the stables. Joe dodged out of the boot room into Cat’s path, in his shirtsleeves, with a boot clutched to his front. “Did you get into much trouble yesterday?” he asked anxiously.

  “Not too bad,” Cat said. “Just an extra lesson.”

  “That’s good,” said Joe. “I didn’t mean to get you caught – really. The Big Man’s pretty scary, isn’t he? You look at him and you sort of drain away, wondering what’s the worst he can do.”

  “I don’t know the worst he can do,” Cat said, “but I think it could be pretty awful. See you.”

  He went on out into the stableyard, where he could tell that Syracuse knew he was coming and getting impatient to see him. That was a good feeling. But Joss Callow insisted that there were other duties that came first, such as mucking out. For someone with Cat’s gifts, this was no trouble at all. He simply asked everything on the floor of the loose box to transfer itself to the muck heap. Then he asked new straw to arrive, watched enviously by the stableboy.

  “I’ll do it for the whole stables if you like,” Cat offered.

  The stableboy regretfully shook his head. “Mr Callow’d kill me. He’s a great believer in work and elbow grease and such, is Mr Callow.”

  Cat found this was true. Looking after Syracuse himself, Joss Callow said, could never be done by magic. And Joss was in the right of it. Syracuse reacted very badly to the merest hint of magic. Cat had to do everything in the normal, time-consuming way and learn how to do it as he went.

  The other part of the problem with Syracuse was boredom. When Cat, now wearing what had been Janet’s riding gear most artfully adapted by Millie, had got Syracuse tacked up ready to ride, Joss Callow decreed that they went into the paddock for a whole set of tame little exercises. Cat did not mind too much, because his aches from yesterday came back almost at once. Syracuse objected mightily.

  “He wants to gallop,” Cat said.

  “Well he can’t,” said Joss. “Or not yet. Lord knows what that wizard was up to with him, but he needs as much training as you do.”

  When he thought about it, Cat was as anxious to gallop across open country as Syracuse was. He told Syracuse, Behave now and we can do that soon. Soon? Syracuse asked. Soon, soon? Yes, Cat told him. Soon. Be bored now so that we can go out soon. Syracuse, to Cat’s relief, believed him.

  Cat went away afterwards and considered. Since Syracuse hated magic so much, he was going to have to use the magic on himself instead. He was forbidden to use magic in the Castle, so he would have to use it where it didn’t show. He used it, very quietly, to train and tame all the new muscles he seemed to need. He let Syracuse show him what was needed, and then he used the strange unmagical magic that there seemed to be between himself and Syracuse to show Syracuse how to be patient in spite of being bored. It went slower than Cat hoped. It took longer than it took Janet, laughing hilariously, to teach Julia to ride her new bicycle. Roger, Julia and Janet were all pedalling joyfully around the Castle grounds and down through the village long before Cat and Syracuse were able to satisfy Joss Callow.

  But they did it quite soon. Sooner than Cat had believed possible, really, Joss allowed that they were now ready to go out for a real ride.

  They set off, Joss on the big brown hack beside Cat on Syracuse. Syracuse was highly excited and inclined to dance. Cat prudently stuck himself to the saddle by magic, just in case, and Joss kept a stern hand on Cat’s reins while they went up the main road and then up the steep track that led to Home Wood. Once they were on a ride between the trees, Joss let Cat take Syracuse for himself. Syracuse whirled off like a mad horse.

  For two furlongs or so, until Syracuse calmed down, everything was a hard-working muddle to Cat, thudding hooves, loud horse breath, leaf mould kicked up to prick Cat on his face, and ferns, grass and trees surging past the corners of his eyes, ears and mane in front of him. Then, finally, Syracuse consented to slow to a mere trot and Joss caught up. Cat had space to look around and to smell and see what a wood was like when it was in high summer, just passing towards autumn.

  Cat had not been in many woods in his life. He had lived first in a town and then at the Castle. But, like most people, he had had a very clear idea of what a wood was like – tangled and dark and mysterious.

  Home Wood was not like this at all. Any bushes seemed to have been tidied away, leaving nothing but tall dark-leaved trees, ferns and a few burly holly trees, with long straight paths in between. It smelt fresh and sweet and leafy. But the new kind of magic Cat had been learning through Syracuse told him that there should have been more to a wood than this. And there was no more. Even though he could see far off through the trees, there was no depth to the place. It only seemed to touch the front of his mind, like cardboard scenery.

  He wondered, as they rode along, if his idea of a wood had been wrong after all. Then Syracuse surged suddenly sideways and stopped. Syracuse was always liable to do this. This was one reason why Cat stuck himself to the saddle by magic. He did not fall off – though it was a close thing – and when he had struggled upright again, he looked to see what had startled Syracuse this time.

  It was the fluttering feathers of a dead magpie. The magpie had been nailed to a wooden framework standing beside the
ride. Or maybe Syracuse had disliked the draggled wings of the dead crow nailed beside the magpie. Or perhaps it was the whole framework. Now that Cat looked, he saw dead creatures nailed all over the thing, stiff and withering and beyond even the stage when flies were interested in them. There were the twisted bodies of moles, stoats, weasels, toads, and a couple of long blackened tube-like things that might have been adders.

  Cat shuddered. As Joss rode up, he turned and asked him, “What’s this for?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Joss said. “It’s just – Oh, good morning, Mr Farleigh.”

  Cat looked back in the direction of the grisly framework. An elderly man with ferocious side whiskers was now standing beside it, holding a long gun that pointed downwards from his right elbow towards his thick leather gaiters.

  “It’s my gibbet, this is,” the man said, staring unlovingly up at Cat. “It’s for a lesson. And an example. See?”

  Cat could think of nothing to say. The long gun was truly alarming.

  Mr Farleigh looked over at Joss. He had pale, cruel eyes, overshadowed by mighty tufts of eyebrow. “What do you mean bringing one like him in my wood?” he demanded.

  “He lives in the Castle,” Joss said. “He’s entitled.”

  “Not off the rides,” Mr Farleigh said. “Make sure he stays on the cleared rides. I’m not having him disturbing my game.” He pointed another pale-eyed look at Cat and then swung around and trudged away among the trees, crushing leaves, grass and twigs noisily with his heavy boots.

  “Gamekeeper,” Joss explained. “Walk on.”

  Feeling rather shaken, Cat induced Syracuse to move on down the ride.

  Three paces on, Syracuse was walking through the missing depths that the wood should have had. It was very odd. There was no foreground, no smooth green bridle path, no big trees. Instead, everywhere was deep blue-green distance full of earthy, leafy smells – almost overpoweringly full of them. And although Cat and Syracuse were walking through distance with no foreground, Cat was fairly sure that Joss, riding beside them, was still riding on the bridle path, through foreground.