The Chrestomanci Series: Entire Collection Books 1-7

Cat enjoyed the tea. It was the first time he had enjoyed anything since he came to the Castle. There were paper-thin cucumber sandwiches and big squashy eclairs. Cat ate even more than Roger did. He was surrounded by cheerful, ordinary chat from the Family, with a hum of stocks and shares in the background, and the sun lay warm and peaceful on the green stretches of the lawn. Cat was glad someone had somehow restored it. He liked it better smooth. He began to think he could almost be happy at the Castle, with a little practice.

Gwendolen was nothing like so happy. The newspaper packets weighed on her head. Their smell spoilt the taste of the eclairs. And she knew she would have to wait until dinner before Chrestomanci spoke to her about the lawn.

Dinner was later that night, because of the tea. Dusk was falling when they filed into the dining room. There were lighted candles all down the polished table. Cat could see them, and the rest of the room, reflected in the row of long windows facing him. It was a pleasing sight, and a useful one. Cat could see the footman coming. For once he was not taken by surprise when the man thrust a tray of little fish and pickled cabbage over his shoulder. And, as he was now forbidden to use his right hand, Cat felt quite justified in changing the serving things over. He began to feel he was settling in.

Because he had not been allowed to talk about Art at tea, Mr Saunders was more than usually eloquent at dinner. He talked and he talked. He took Chrestomanci’s attention to himself, and he talked at him. Chrestomanci seemed dreamy and good-humoured. He listened and nodded. And Gwendolen grew crosser every minute. Chrestomanci said not a word about lawns, neither here nor in the drawing room beforehand. It became clearer and clearer that no one was going to mention the matter at all.

Gwendolen was furious. She wanted her powers recognised. She wanted to show Chrestomanci she was a witch to be reckoned with. So there was nothing for it but to begin on another spell. She was a little hampered by not having any ingredients to hand, but there was one thing she could do quite easily.

The dinner went on. Mr Saunders talked on. Footmen came round with the next course. Cat looked over at the windows to see when the silver plate would come to him. And he nearly screamed.

There was a skinny white creature there. It was pressed against the dark outside of the glass, mouthing and waving. It looked like the lost ghost of a lunatic. It was weak and white and loathsome. It was draggled and slimy. Even though Cat realised almost at once that it was Gwendolen’s doing, he still stared at it in horror.

Millie saw him staring. She looked herself, shuddered, and tapped Chrestomanci gently on the back of the hand with her spoon. Chrestomanci came out of his gentle dream and glanced at the window too. He gave the piteous creature a bored look, and sighed.

“And so I still think Florence is the finest of all the Italian States,” said Mr Saunders.

“People usually put in a word for Venice,” said Chrestomanci. “Frazier, would you draw the curtains, please? Thank you.”

“No, no. In my opinion, Venice is overrated,” Mr Saunders asserted, and he went on to explain why, while the butler drew the long orange curtains and shut the creature out of sight.

“Yes, maybe you’re right. Florence has more to offer,” Chrestomanci agreed. “By the way, Gwendolen, when I said the Castle, I meant of course the Castle grounds as well as indoors. Now, do carry on, Michael. Venice.”

Everyone carried on, except Cat. He could imagine the creature still mouthing and fumbling at the glass behind the orange curtains. He could not eat for thinking of it.

“It’s all right, stupid! I’ve sent it away,” said Gwendolen. Her voice was sticky with rage.

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Gwendolen gave vent to her fury in her room after dinner. She jumped on her bed and threw cushions about, screaming. Cat stood prudently back against the wall waiting for her to finish. But Gwendolen did not finish until she had pledged herself to a campaign against Chrestomanci.

“I hate this place!” she bawled. “They try to cover everything up in soft sweet niceness. I hate it, I hate it!” Her voice was muffled among the velvets of her room and swallowed up in the prevailing softness of the Castle. “Do you hear it?” Gwendolen screamed. “It’s an eiderdown of hideous niceness! I wreck their lawn, so they give me tea. I conjure up a lovely apparition, and they have the curtains drawn. Frazier, would you draw the curtains, please! Ugh! Chrestomanci makes me sick!”

“I didn’t think it was a lovely apparition,” Cat said, shivering.

“Ha, ha! You didn’t know I could do that, did you?” said Gwendolen. “It wasn’t to frighten you, you idiot. It was to give Chrestomanci a shock. I hate him! He wasn’t even interested.”

“What did he have us to live here for, if he isn’t interested in you either?” Cat wondered.

Gwendolen was rather struck by this. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “It may be serious. Go away. I want to think about it. Anyway,” she shouted, as Cat was going to the door, “he’s going to be interested, if it’s the last thing I do! I’m going to do something every day until he notices!”

Once again, Cat was mournfully on his own. Remembering what Millie had said, he went along to the playroom. But Roger and Julia were there, playing with soldiers on the stained carpet. The little tin grenadiers were marching about. Some were wheeling up cannon. Others were lying behind cushions, firing their rifles with little pinpricks of bangs. Roger and Julia turned round guiltily.

“You won’t mention this, will you?” said Julia.

“Would you like to come and play too?” Roger asked politely.

“Oh, no thanks,” Cat said hastily. He knew he could never join in this kind of game unless Gwendolen helped him. But he did not dare disturb Gwendolen in her present mood. And he had nothing to do. Then he remembered that Millie had obviously expected him to poke about the Castle more than he had done. So he set off to explore, feeling rather daring.

The Castle seemed strange at night. There were dim little electric lights at regular intervals. The green carpet glowed gently, and things were reflected in the polished floor and walls even more strongly than they were by day. Cat walked softly along, accompanied by several reflected ghosts of himself, until he hardly felt real. All the doors he saw were closed. Cat listened at one or two and heard nothing. He had not quite the courage to open any of them. He went on and on.

After a while, he found he had somehow worked round to the older part of the Castle. Here the walls were whitewashed stone, and all the windows went in nearly three feet before there was any glass. Then Cat came to a staircase which was the twin of the one that twisted up to his room, except that it twisted in the opposite direction. Cat went cautiously up it.

He was just on the last bend, when a door at the top opened. A brighter square of light shone on the wall at the head of the stairs, and a shadow stood in it that could only belong to Chrestomanci. No one else’s shadow could be so tall, with such a smooth head and such a lot of ruffles on its shirt-front. Cat stopped.

“And let’s hope the wretched girl won’t try that again,” Chrestomanci said, out of sight above. He sounded a good deal more alert than usual, and rather angry.

Mr Saunders’s voice, from further away, said, “I’ve had about enough of her already, frankly. I suppose she’ll come to her senses soon. What possessed her to give away the source of her power like that?”

“Ignorance,” said Chrestomanci. “If I thought she had the least idea what she was doing, it would be the last thing she ever did in that line – or any other.”

“My back was to it,” said Mr Saunders. “Which was it? Number five?”

“No. Number three by the look of its hair. A revenant,” said Chrestomanci. “For which we must be thankful.” He began to come down the stairs. Cat was too scared to move. “I’ll have to get the Examining Board to revise their Elementary Magic Courses,” Chrestomanci called back as he came downstairs, “to include more theory. These hedge-wizards push their good pupils straight on to advanced work without any proper grounding at all.” Saying this, Chrestomanci came down round the corner and saw Cat. “Oh hallo,” he said. “I’d no idea you were here. Like to come up and have a look at Michael’s workshop?”

Cat nodded. He did not dare do otherwise.

Chrestomanci seemed quite friendly, however, and so did Mr Saunders when Chrestomanci ushered Cat into the room at the top of the stairs. “Hallo, Eric,” he said in his cheerful way. “Have a look round. Does any of this mean anything to you?”

Cat shook his head. The room was round, like his own, but larger, and it was a regular magician’s workshop. That much he could see. He recognised the five-pointed star painted on the floor. The smell coming from the burning cresset hanging from the ceiling was the same smell that had hung about Coven Street, back in Wolvercote. But he had no idea of the use of the things set out on the various trestle tables. One table was crowded with torts and limbecks, some bubbling, some empty. A second was piled with books and scrolls. The third bench had signs chalked all over it and a mummified creature of some sort lying among the signs.

Cat’s eyes travelled over all this, and over more books crammed into shelves round the walls, and more shelves filled with jars of ingredients – big jars, like the ones in sweet shops. He realised Mr Saunders worked in a big way. His scudding eyes raced over some of the labels on the huge jars: Newts’ Eyes, Gum Arabic, Elixir St John’s Wort, Dragon’s Blood (dried). This last jar was almost full of dark brown powder. Cat’s eyes went back to the mummified animal stretched among the signs chalked on the third table. Its feet had claws like a dog’s. It looked like a large lizard. But there seemed to be wings on its back. Cat was almost sure it had once been a small dragon.

“Means nothing, eh?” said Mr Saunders.

Cat turned round and found that Chrestomanci had gone. That made him a little easier. “This must have cost a lot,” he said.

“The taxpayer pays, fortunately,” said Mr Saunders. “Would you like to learn what all this is about?”

“You mean, learn witchcraft?” Cat asked. “No. No thanks. I wouldn’t be any good at it.”

“Well, I had at least two other things in mind besides witchcraft.” Mr Saunders said. “But what makes you think you’d be no good?”

“Because I can’t do it,” Cat explained. “Spells just don’t work for me.”

“Are you sure you went about them in the right way?” Mr Saunders asked. He wandered up to the mummified dragon – or whatever – and gave it an absent-minded flick. To Cat’s disgust, the thing twitched all over. Filmy wings jerked and spread on its back. Then it went lifeless again. The sight sent Cat backing towards the door. He was almost as alarmed as he was the time Miss Larkins suddenly spoke with a man’s voice. And, come to think of it, the voice had been not so unlike Mr Saunders’s.

“I went about it every way I could think,” Cat said, backing. “And I couldn’t even turn buttons into gold. And that was simple.”

Mr Saunders laughed. “Perhaps you weren’t greedy enough. All right. Cut along, if you want to go.”

Cat fled, in great relief. As he ran through the strange corridors, he thought he ought to let Gwendolen know that Chrestomanci had, after all, been interested in her apparition, and even angry. But Gwendolen had locked her door and would not answer when he called to her.

He tried again next morning. But, before he had a chance to speak to Gwendolen, Euphemia came in, carrying a letter. As Gwendolen snatched it eagerly from Euphemia, Cat recognised Mr Nostrum’s jagged writing on the envelope.

The next moment, Gwendolen was raging again. “Who did this? When did this come?” The envelope had been neatly cut open along the top.

“This morning, by the postmark,” said Euphemia. “And don’t look at me like that. Miss Bessemer gave it to me open.”