The Pinhoe Egg Page 8

  Such was the awe all the Pinhoe family felt for Gammer that Joss didn’t argue and didn’t dare mention the weather again. He said, “All right, then,” and went.

  With Syracuse fighting to go faster, faster! Cat rode along the grass verge, while Roger pedaled beside them on the road. They were quite evenly matched going along the level, but whenever they came to a hill, Syracuse sailed up it, shaking his head and trying to gallop, and Roger stood on his pedals and worked furiously, puffing like a train. Roger’s chubby face became the color of raspberries, and he still got left far behind.

  They could see the woods they were making for, tantalizingly only two hills away, a spill of dark green trees with already one or two dashes of pure, sunlit yellow that signaled autumn coming. Every time Cat looked—usually while he was at the top of a hill waiting for Roger—those trees seemed farther and farther off, and more away to the left, and still two hills away. Cat began to think they had missed a turning, or perhaps even taken the wrong road to start with.

  When Roger caught up next time, with his face beyond raspberry into strawberry color, Cat said, “We ought to take the next left turn.”

  Roger was too much out of breath to do anything but nod. So Cat took the lead and swung Syracuse into a nice broad road leading away left. SHALLOWHELM, the signpost said. UPHELM.

  About half a mile later, when he could speak, Roger said, “This road can’t be right. It should take us back to the Castle.”

  Cat could still see the wood, still in the same place, so he kept on. The road bent about, among nothing but empty countryside for what seemed miles, up and down, until Roger was more the color of a peony than anything else. Then it swung round a corner and went up a truly enormous hill.

  Roger let out a wail at the sight of it. “I can’t! I’ll have to get off and push.”

  “No, don’t,” Cat said. “Let me give you a tow.”

  He used the same spell he had used to keep Julia from falling off Syracuse and flung it round Roger’s bicycle. They went on, fast at first, because Syracuse still regarded every hill as a challenge to gallop, then slower—even when Cat allowed Syracuse to try to gallop—and then slower still. Halfway up, when Syracuse’s front hooves were digging and digging and his back ones were scrambling, it dawned on Syracuse what was going on. He looked across at Roger and the bicycle, so uncannily keeping beside him. Then he threw Cat in the ditch and scrambled through the hedge into the stubble field beyond.

  Roger only just saved himself and the bicycle from falling in the ditch too. “That horse,” he said, kneeling in the grass beside his spinning front wheel, “is too clever by half. Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” Cat said, but he stayed sitting in the squashy weeds at the bottom of the ditch. It was not so much the fall. It was that Syracuse had broken the spell quite violently. This had never happened to Cat before. He discovered that it hurt. “In a moment,” he added.

  Roger looked anxiously from Cat’s white face to Syracuse pounding happily about in the field above them. “I wish I was old enough to drive a car,” he said. “Or I wish that there was some way of moving this bike without having to pedal.”

  “Couldn’t you invent a way?” Cat asked, to take his mind off hurting.

  They were both sitting thinking about this, when a boy on a bicycle came past them up the hill. He was riding an ordinary bike, but he was humming smoothly upward at a good speed, and he was not pedaling at all. Roger and Cat stared after him with their mouths open. Cat was so amazed that it took him several seconds to recognize Joe Pinhoe. Roger was simply amazed. They both began shouting at once.

  “Hey, Joe!” Cat shouted.

  “Hey, you!” Roger shouted.

  And they both yelled in chorus, “Can you stop a moment? Please!”

  For a moment, it looked as if Joe was not going to stop. He had hummed his way about twenty yards uphill before he seemed to change his mind. He shrugged a bit. Then his hand went down to a box on his crossbar, where he appeared to move a switch of some kind, after which he turned in a smooth curve and came coasting back down the hill to them.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, propping himself on the bank with one boot. “Want me to help catch the horse?” He nodded at Syracuse, who was now watching them across the hedge with great interest.

  “No, no!” Cat and Roger said at once. “It’s not the horse,” Cat added.

  Roger said, “We wanted to know how you make your bike go uphill without pedaling like that. It’s brilliant!”

  Joe was clearly very gratified. He grinned. But, being Joe, he also hung his head and looked sulky. “I only use it on hills,” he said guardedly.

  “That’s what’s so brilliant,” Roger said. “How do you do it?”

  Joe hesitated.

  Roger could see Joe was very proud of his device, whatever it was, and was itching to show it off, really. He asked coaxingly, “Did you invent it yourself?”

  Joe nodded, grinning his sulky grin again.

  “Then you must be a brilliant inventor,” Roger said. “I like inventing things too, but I’ve never come up with anything this useful. I’m Roger, by the way. Don’t you work in the Castle? I know I’ve seen you there.”

  “Boot boy,” said Joe. “I’m Joe.” He nodded at Cat. “I’ve met him.”

  “Jason Yeldham used to be boot boy there too,” Roger said. “It must go with brilliance.”

  “Herbs, I know,” Joe said. “It’s machines I like, really. But this box—it’s more of a dwimmer-thing, see.” His hand went out to the box on his crossbar, and stopped. “What’s in it for me, if I do show you?” he asked suspiciously.

  Roger was commercially minded too. He sympathized with Joe completely. The problem was that he had no money on him and he knew Cat had none either. And Joe could be offended at being offered money anyway. “I wouldn’t tell anyone else about it,” he said while he thought. “And Cat won’t either. I tell you what—when we get back to the Castle, I’ll give you the address of the Magics Patent Office. You register your invention with them, and everyone has to pay you if they want to use it too.”

  Joe’s face gleamed with cautious greed. “Don’t I have to be grown up to do that?”

  “No,” said Roger. “I sent for the forms when I invented a magic mirror game last year, and they don’t ask your age at all. They ask for a fifty-pound fee, though.”

  Cat wondered whether to point out that he, and not Roger, had invented the mirror game by accident. But he said nothing, because he was quite as interested in the box as Roger was.

  Joe had a distant, calculating look. “I could be earning that much this summer,” he decided. “They pay quite well at the Castle. All right. I’ll show you.”

  Grinning his sulky grin, Joe carefully unhooked the small latch that held the box on his crossbar shut. The hinged lid dropped downward to show—Cat craned out of the ditch and then recoiled—of all things, a stuffed ferret! The bent yellow body had bits of wire and twisted stalks of plants leading from its head and its paws to the place where the box met the crossbar.

  “Metal to metal,” Joe explained, pointing to the join. “That’s machinery, see. The dwimmer part is to use the right herbs for life. You have to use something that has once been alive, see. Then you can get the life power running through the frame and turning the wheels.”

  “Brilliant!” Roger said reverently, peering in at the ferret. Its glass eyes seemed to glare sharply back at him. “But how do you get the life power to flow? Is that a spell, or what?”

  “It’s some old words we sometimes use in the woods,” Joe said. “But the trick is the herbs that go with the wires. Took me ages to find the right ones. You got to blend them, see.”

  Roger bent even closer. “Oh, I see. Clever.”

  Cat got up out of the ditch and went to catch Syracuse. He knew, now he had seen the box, that he could almost certainly make Roger one this evening, probably without needing a stuffed ferret. But he knew Roger would hate
that. Cat’s kind of magic made some things too easy. Roger would be wanting to make a box by himself, however long it took. As Cat pushed his way through the hedge, he wondered exactly what Joe’s word “dwimmer” meant. Was it an old word for magic? It sounded more specialized than that. It must mean a special sort of magic, probably.

  Syracuse was not very hard to catch. He was quite tired after hauling Roger uphill, and a little bored by now in the wide, empty stubble field. But when Cat finally had the reins in his hands again, he discovered that Syracuse only had three shoes. One shoe must have torn off while Syracuse was plunging through the hedge.

  Finding the shoe was not a problem. Cat simply held his hand out and asked. The missing horseshoe whirled up out of a clump of grass, where no one would have found it for years in the ordinary way, and slapped itself into Cat’s hand. The real problem was that Cat knew Joss Callow would be outraged if Cat tried sticking the shoe back on by magic. It was bound to go on wrong somehow. And Joss would be truly angry if Cat tried to ride Syracuse with one uneven foot. Cat sighed. He was going to have to levitate Syracuse all the way home, or conjure him along in short bursts, or—knowing how much Syracuse hated magic—most likely just walk. Bother.

  He found a gate and led Syracuse out through it and down the hill, where Joe and Roger were sitting side by side on the bank, talking eagerly. Cat could see they were now fast friends. Well, they clearly had a lot in common.

  “That’s women’s work, a machine for washing dishes,” Joe was saying. “We can do better than that. If you get any good notions, you better come and tell me. I get in trouble if I wander round the Castle. You can find me in the boot room.” He looked up as he heard Syracuse’s uneven footfalls. “I have to be going,” he said. “I’ve an errand to run for our Gammer, down in Helm St. Mary.” He got up off the bank and picked up his bicycle. “And you’ll never guess what it is,” he said. “Take a look.” He pulled a large glass jar with a lid on out of the basket on the front of his bicycle and held it up. “I’m to tip this in their village pond there,” he said.

  Cat and Roger leaned to look at the murky, greenish water in the jar. A few fat black things with tails were wiggling slowly around in it.

  “Tadpoles?” said Roger. “A bit late in the year, isn’t it?”

  “Quite big ones,” Cat said.

  “I know,” Joe said. “I could only find six, and some of those have their legs already. Know what they’re for?” They shook their heads. “This is not a jar of tadpoles,” Joe said. “It’s a declaration of war, this is.” He put the jar back in his basket and got astride his bike.

  “Wait a moment,” Cat said. “Do you know how far it is to Chrestomanci Castle?”

  Joe shot him a slightly guilty look. “You can see it from the top of this hill,” he said. “Got turned around, didn’t you? Not my fault. But the Farleighs don’t like people wandering around in their country, so they do this to the roads. See you.”

  He switched the toggle at the side of his box and went purring smoothly away up the hill.

  Chapter Seven

  Not surprisingly, Cat got back to the Castle a long time after Joe or Roger did. Syracuse resisted Cat’s attempt to levitate him and started to stamp and panic at the mere hint of teleportation. Cat was too much afraid he would split the unshod hoof to try either spell more than just the once. He could hardly bear to think of what Joss Callow would say if he brought Syracuse in with an injury. So he was reduced to plodding along by the grass verge, with Syracuse breathing playfully on his hair, happy that Cat was not trying to use magic anymore. That wizard who sold Syracuse, Cat thought glumly, must have frightened the horse badly by slamming spells on him. Cat would have liked to slam a few spells back on the wizard.

  After a while, however, Syracuse’s happiness made Cat cheerful too. He began to notice things in that special way Syracuse seemed to be training him to do. He sniffed the smells of the grass, the ditches, and the hedges, and the dustier smell of the crops standing in the fields. He looked up to see birds teeming across the sky to roost for the night; and, like Syracuse, he jumped and then peered at a rustling in the hedge that was certainly a weasel. They both glimpsed the tiny, brown, almost snakelike body. They both raised their heads to see rabbits bounce away from the danger in the pasture on the other side of the hedge.

  But Syracuse was puzzled, because there should have been more than just these smells and sights. Cat knew what Syracuse meant. There was an emptiness to the countryside, where it should have been full—though quite what should have filled it, neither Cat nor Syracuse knew. It reminded Cat a little of that time in Home Wood, where the distance was so strangely missing. Things were not here, where they should have been joyful and busy. Even so, it was peaceful. They plodded on, quietly enjoying the walk, until they topped the hill and turned the long corner, and there was Chrestomanci Castle in the distance on the next hill.

  Oh dear, Cat thought. Walking was so slow. He was going to miss supper.

  In fact, it was still only early evening when they reached the stableyard gates. When Cat pushed one gate open and led Syracuse through, the yard was full of long golden light, with two long shadows stretching across it. Unfortunately, these shadows belonged to Chrestomanci and Joss Callow. They were waiting side by side to meet him, looking as unlike as two men more or less the same height could look. Where Chrestomanci was rake thin, Joss was wide and heavy. Where Chrestomanci was dark, Joss was ruddy. Chrestomanci was wearing a narrow gray silk suit, while Joss was in his usual rough leather and green shirt. But they both looked powerful and they both looked far from pleased. Cat could hardly tell which of them he wanted less to meet.

  “At last,” Chrestomanci said. “As I understand it, you had no business to be out alone on this horse at all. What kept you?”

  Joss Callow simply ran his hand down Syracuse’s leg and picked up the shoeless foot. The look he gave Cat across it made Cat’s stomach hurt. He could think of nothing else to do but hold the missing horseshoe out to Joss.

  “How come?” Joss said.

  “He threw me off and went through a hedge,” Cat said, “but it was my fault.”

  “Is he lame?” Chrestomanci asked.

  “No more than you would be, walking with one bare foot,” Joss said. “The hoof’s sound, by some kind of a miracle. I’ll take him to the stable now, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  “By all means,” Chrestomanci said.

  Cat watched Joss lead Syracuse off. Syracuse drooped his head as if he felt as much to blame as Cat. From Syracuse’s point of view this was probably true, Cat thought. Syracuse had loved their illegal outing.

  “I am going to ask Joss to exercise that wretched horse himself for a while,” Chrestomanci said. “I haven’t decided yet if it’s for a week or a month or a year. I’ll let you know. But you are not to ride him until I say so, Cat. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” Cat said miserably.

  Chrestomanci turned round and started to walk away. Cat was relieved at first. Then he realized there was something he ought to tell Chrestomanci and ran after him.

  “Did Roger tell you about the roads?”

  Chrestomanci turned back. He did not look pleased. “Roger seems to be keeping out of my way. What about the roads?”

  This made Cat see that, unless he was very careful, he would get not only Roger but Joe too into trouble. Joe should have been in the Castle, not riding about with a jar of tadpoles. He said, thinking about every word, “Well, Roger was with me on his bike—”

  “And it jumped a hedge as well and perhaps lost a wheel?” Chrestomanci said.

  “No, no,” Cat said. Chrestomanci always confused him when he got sarcastic. “No, he’s fine. But we were trying to get to Ulverscote Woods and we couldn’t. The roads kept turning us back toward the Castle all the time.”

  Chrestomanci dropped his sarcastic look at once. His head came up, like Syracuse when he heard Cat coming. “Really? A misdirection spell, you think?”

&
nbsp; “Something like that—but it was one I didn’t know,” Cat said.

  “I’ll check,” Chrestomanci said. “Meanwhile, you are in disgrace, Cat, and so is Roger, when I find him.”

  Roger of course knew he was likely to be in trouble. He met Cat on his way down to the very formal supper they always had at the Castle. “Is he very angry?” he asked, nervously straightening his smart velvet jacket.

  “Yes,” Cat said.

  Roger shivered a little. “Then I’ll go on keeping out of his way,” he said. “Oh, and keep out of the girls’ way too.”

  “Why?” said Cat.

  “They’re being a pain,” Roger said. “Particularly Janet.”

  The girls were already there, when Roger and Cat went into the anteroom where Chrestomanci, Millie, and all the wizards and sorcerers who made up the Castle staff were gathered before supper. Janet and Julia were pale and quiet but not particularly painful as far as Cat could see. Roger at once slid off along the walls, trying to keep a wizard or a sorceress always between himself and his father. It did not work. Wherever Roger slid, Chrestomanci turned and fixed him with a stare from those bright black eyes of his. At supper, it was worse. Roger had to be in plain view then, sitting at the table, since, being Roger, he seriously wanted to eat. Chrestomanci’s vague, sarcastic look was on him most of the time. Jason Yeldham, for some reason, was not there that evening, so there was no one to distract Chrestomanci. Roger squirmed in his chair. He kept his head down. He pretended to look out of the long windows at the sunset over the gardens, but, whatever he did, that stare kept meeting his eyes.

  “Oh blast it!” Roger muttered to Cat. “Anyone would think I’d murdered someone!”

  As soon as supper was over, Roger jumped from his chair and rushed off. So too did Julia and Janet. Chrestomanci raised one of his eyebrows at Cat. “Aren’t you going to run away as well?” he said.

  “Not really. But I think I’ll go,” Cat said, getting up.