The Chrestomanci Series: Entire Collection Books 1-7. Diana Wynne Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ singing noise began to come from the palm of his hand where the earrings lay. It was too faint for Cat to pick out the words, but it put paid to any notion that Mr Baslam had been lying. Mr Baslam’s drooping look became less whipped. He looked more like a bloodhound hot on the trail. He let the earrings slide between his fat fingers and fall on the gravel.

      “There they lie,” he said, “if you care to stoop for them. I may remind you, young lady, that trade in dragon’s blood is illicit, illegal and banned. I’ve obliged you in it. You’ve fobbed me off. Now I’m telling you that I need twenty quid by next Wednesday. That should give you time. If I don’t get it, then Chrestomanci hears of the dragon’s blood Wednesday evening. And if he does, then I wouldn’t be in your shoes, young lady, not for twenty thousand quid and a diamond tiara. Have I made myself clear?”

      He had, appallingly. “Suppose we give you the dragon’s blood back?” Cat suggested desperately. Gwendolen had taken Mr Baslam’s dragon’s blood with her of course, but there was always that huge jar of it in Mr Saunders’s workshop.

      “What would I do with dragon’s blood, son?” said Mr Baslam. “I’m not a warlock. I’m only a poor supplier, and there’s no demand for dragon’s blood round here. It’s the money I need. Twenty quid of it, by next Wednesday, and don’t forget.” He gave them a bloodhound nod which flapped his eyes and his cheeks, and edged back into the rhododendrons. They heard him rustling stealthily away.

      “What a nasty old man!” Janet said in a shaken whisper. “I wish I really was Gwendolen. I’d turn him into a four-headed earwig. Ugh!” She bent and scrabbled the earrings up off the gravel.

      Immediately, the air by the door was filled with high, singing voices. “I belong to Caroline Chant! I belong to Caroline Chant!”

      “Oh dear!” said Janet. “They know.”

      “Give them to me,” said Cat. “Quick. Someone will hear.”

      Janet poured the earrings into Cat’s palm. The voices stopped at once. “I can’t get used to all this magic,” said Janet. “Cat, what am I to do? How can I pay that horrible man?”

      “There must be something we can sell,” said Cat. “There’s a junk shop in the village. Come on. We must get to lunch.” They hurried up to the playroom, to find that Mary had already put plates of stew and dumplings in their places.

      “Oh, look,” said Janet, who needed to relieve her feelings somehow. “Nourishing fattening lunch. How nice!”

      Mary glared at both of them and left the room without speaking. Julia’s look was quite as unpleasant. As Janet sat down in front of her stew, Julia pulled her handkerchief out of her sleeve, already knotted, and laid it in her lap. Janet put her fork into a dumpling. It stuck there. The dumpling was a white pebble, swimming with two others in a plateful of mud.

      Janet carefully laid down her fork, with the pebble impaled on it, and put her knife neatly across the mud. She was trying to control herself, but, for a moment, she looked like Gwendolen at her most furious. “I was quite hungry,” she said.

      Julia smiled. “What a pity,” she said cosily. “And you’ve got no witchcraft to defend yourself with, have you?” She tied another smaller knot at the end of her handkerchief. “You’ve got all sorts of things in your hair, Gwendolen,” she said as she pulled it tight. The twigs sticking in Janet’s hair writhed and began dropping on the table and over her skirt. Each one was a large stripy caterpillar.

      Janet was no more bothered by wriggly things than Gwendolen. She picked the caterpillars off and put them in a heap in front of Julia. “I’ve a good mind to shout for your father,” she said.

      “Oh, no, don’t be a tell-tale,” said Roger. “Let her be, Julia.”

      “Certainly not,” said Julia. “She’s not getting any lunch.”

      After the meeting with Mr Baslam, Cat was not really very hungry. “Here,” he said, and changed his plate of stew with Janet’s mud. Janet started to protest. But, as soon as the plate of mud was in front of Cat, it was steaming stew again. And the looping heap of caterpillars was simply a pile of twigs.

      Julia turned to Cat, not at all pleased. “Don’t you interfere. You annoy me. She treats you like a slave and all you do is stick up for her.”

      “But I only changed the plates!” Cat said, puzzled. “Why—”

      “It could have been Michael,” Roger suggested.

      Julia glowered at him too. “Was it you?” Roger blandly shook his head. Julia looked at him uncertainly. “If I have to go without marmalade again,” she said at length, “Gwendolen’s going to know about it. And I hope the stew chokes you.”

      Cat found it hard to concentrate on lessons that afternoon. He had to watch Janet like a hawk. Janet had decided that the only safe thing was to be totally stupid – she thought Gwendolen must have been pretty stupid anyway – and Cat knew she was overdoing it. Even Gwendolen had known the twice-times table. Cat was worried, too, in case Julia started knotting that handkerchief of hers when Mr Saunders’s back was turned. Luckily, Julia did not quite dare. But Cat’s main worry was how to find twenty pounds by next Wednesday. He could hardly bear to think of what might happen if he did not. The very least thing, he knew, would be Janet confessing she was not Gwendolen. He thought of Chrestomanci giving him that scathing stare and saying, “You went with Gwendolen to buy dragon’s blood, Eric? But you knew it was illegal. And you tried to cover up by making Janet pretend to be Gwendolen? You show touching concern, Eric.”

      The mere idea made Cat shrivel up inside. But he had nothing to sell except a pair of earrings that shouted that they belonged to someone else. If he wrote to the Mayor of Wolvercote and asked if he could have twenty pounds out of the Fund, the Mayor would only write to Chrestomanci to ask why Cat wanted it. And then Chrestomanci would stare scathingly and say, “You went with Gwendolen to buy dragon’s blood, Eric?” It was hopeless.

      “Are you feeling well, Eric?” Mr Saunders asked several times.

      “Oh, yes,” Cat replied each time. He was fairly sure that having your mind in three places at once did not count as illness, much as it felt like it.

      “Play soldiers?” Roger suggested after lessons.

      Cat would have liked to, but he dared not leave Janet on her own. “I’ve got to do something,” he said.

      “With Gwendolen. I know,” Roger said wearily. “Anyone would think you were her left leg, or something.”

      Cat felt hurt. The annoying thing was that he knew Janet could have done without her left leg more easily than she could have done without him. As he hurried after Janet to Gwendolen’s room, he wished heartily it was really Gwendolen he was hurrying after.

      Inside the room, Janet was feverishly collecting things: Gwendolen’s spell books, the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the gold-backed brush and hand-mirror off the dressing-table, the jar on the bedside table, and half the towels from the bathroom.

      “What are you doing?” said Cat.

      “Finding things we can sell. Is there anything you can bear to spare from your room?” said Janet. “Don’t look like that. I know it amounts to stealing, but I get so desperate when I think of that horrible Mr Bisto going to Chrestomanci that I don’t care any СКАЧАТЬ