The Pinhoe Egg

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “How extraordinary!” she said. “My maiden name was Pinhoe.”

  Edgar Pinhoe was astonished and dismayed. He stepped backward from Irene. “Pinhoe, Pinhoe?” he said. “I had instructions to sell this house to a Pinhoe if possible.” Upon this, he remembered his manners and shook Irene’s hand as if he were afraid it would burn him, and dropped his superior, pitying look entirely. Cat realized that the man had been using some kind of domination spell on them up to then. Once it was gone, Cat was free to think about the house.

  Jason said, “You might do that—sell it to a Pinhoe. My wife is the one with the money, not me.”

  While he was speaking, Cat was feeling the shape of the house with his mind. It was all big, square, airy rooms, lots of them, and though it echoed with emptiness and neglect, underneath that it was warm and happy and eager to be lived in again. Over many, many years, people had lived here who were friendly and full of power—special people—and the house wanted to be full of such people again. It was glad to see Irene and Jason.

  Cat let them know it was the right house at once. Then he saw the girl walking up to them, as glad to see them as the house was. She was wearing villager sort of clothes, with the pinafore over them to keep them clean, the way most country girls did, but Cat did not think of her as a country girl because she had such very strong magic. Cat noticed the magic particularly, being used to Julia with her medium-sized magic and Janet with almost none at all. It seemed to blaze off this girl. He wondered who she was.

  Edgar Pinhoe saw her. “Not now, Marianne,” he said. “I’m busy with prospective buyers. Run along home, there’s a good girl.” His domination spell was back, aimed at Marianne. Cat wondered what good Edgar Pinhoe thought it would do, when his magic was only about warlock level and this girl’s was pretty well as strong as Millie’s. And Millie, of course, was an enchantress.

  Sure enough, the domination bounced off Marianne. Cat was not sure she even noticed it. “I’m looking for Nutcase, Uncle Edgar,” she said. “I think he got in through the conservatory door. It was open.”

  “Of course it was open. I unlocked it so that these good people could look round the garden,” Edgar Pinhoe said irritably. “Never mind your wretched cat. Go home.”

  Here the pinstriped man who had just come in said, in a fussy, nervous way, “Please, Marianne. You’ve no right to come into this house now, you know.”

  Marianne’s wide brown eyes turned to him, steady and puzzled. “Of course I’ve got the right, Uncle Lester. I know Gammer lived here, but the house belongs to my dad.” A very good idea struck her. She turned to Jason and Irene. She was longing to get to know them. “Can I help show you round? If we go into all the rooms, we’re bound to find Nutcase somewhere. He used to live here with Gammer, you see, and he keeps coming back.”

  “When he’s not slaughtering day-old chicks,” Great-Uncle Lester murmured.

  He was obviously about to say no, but Irene smiled and interrupted him before he could. “Of course you can help show us round, my dear. Someone who knows the house would be really useful.”

  “You’ll know where the roof leaks and so on,” Jason said.

  Both older men looked shocked. “I assure you this house is absolutely sound,” Edgar said. He added, with a slightly defiant look at Uncle Lester, “Shall we start with the kitchen, then?”

  They all went along to the kitchen. It was newly painted, and Cat could see new cupboards down the far end. Irene stood looking down the length of the huge scrubbed table, which seemed to have been carefully mended and planed smooth at her end. “This is lovely and light,” she said. “And so much space. This table’s enormous, and it still doesn’t nearly fill the room. I can see Jane James loving it. We’d need to put in a new stove for her, though.”

  She went over to the old black boiler and cautiously took up one of its rusty lids, shaking her head and sprinkling soot down her iris-patterned dress. Marianne knew that Gammer’s old cooker was now stored in the shed on the Hopton road. She had never seen that stove used since the old days before Gaffer died. She shook her head too and made her way down the kitchen, opening all the cabinets to make sure that Nutcase had not gotten himself shut inside one, and then looking into the pantry. Nutcase was not there either.

  Jason meanwhile was rubbing his hand vaguely across the damaged end of the huge table. Cat could tell he was using a divining spell, but to the two elderly men who were rather tensely watching him, Jason probably looked like a man bored with womanish things like kitchens and stoves. “Seems to have got a bit bashed here, this table,” he said. “Was there some trouble getting it in here?”

  Edgar and Lester both flinched. “No, no, no,” Lester said, and Edgar added, “I am told—family tradition has it—that this table was actually made inside this room.”

  “Ah!” said Jason. Cat could feel him quivering, hot on the scent of something. “Someone else told me about this table, quite a few years ago now. A dwimmerman called Elijah Pinhoe.”

  Edgar and Lester both jumped, quite violently. Lester answered gravely, “Passed away. Passed away these eight years now.”

  “Yes, but am I right in thinking he actually lived in this house?” Jason said.

  “That’s right,” Edgar admitted. “Marianne’s grandfather, you know.”

  “Right! Great!” Jason said. He whirled round on Marianne as she came out of the empty pantry and seized her arm. “Young lady, come with me at once and show me where your grandfather’s herb bed was.”

  “We-ell,” said Marianne, who was wondering whether Nutcase had gone up to hide in the attics.

  “You do know, don’t you?” Jason said eagerly.

  Good gracious, he’s just like Gaffer, only young and Cockney! Marianne thought. And he has lovely bright blue eyes. “Yes, of course I do,” she said. “It’s outside the conservatory, so that he could take the weak ones inside. This way.”

  Jason cheered and rushed them all outside. Irene laughed heartily at his enthusiasm. “He’s always like this about his herbs,” she told Cat. “We have to humor him.”

  Jason stopped in dismay when he saw the thistles and the grass. “I suppose it has been eight years,” he said, walking in among the weeds. Next moment he was down on his knees, quite forgetting his nice pale trousers, carefully parting a clump of nettles. “Hairy antimony!” he cried out. “Still alive! Well, I’ll be—! And this is button lovage and here’s wolfwort still going strong! This must be a strong spell on it, if it’s alive after eight years! The ground’s too dry for it, really. And here’s—What’s this?” he asked, looking up at Marianne.

  “Gaffer always called it hare’s paws,” she said. “And the one by your foot—Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue! Do you know?” she asked Cat.

  Cat surprised himself and everyone else by answering, “Portulaca fulvia. Scarlet purslane’s the English name.” Evidently some of the herb lore he had been made to learn must have stuck in his brain somewhere. He rather thought it was Marianne’s strong magic that had brought the name up out of a very deep, bored sleep.

  “Yes, yes! And very rare. You get the green and yellow all the time, but the scarlet’s the really magic one and you almost never find it!” Jason cried out, crawling across to another clump of plants. “Pinwort, golden spindlemans, nun’s pockets, fallgreen—this is a treasure house!”

  Edgar and Lester were standing in the grass, looking helpless, prim, and irritated. “Wouldn’t you like to see the rest of the house?” Edgar said at last.

  “No, no!” Jason cried out. “I’ll buy it even if the roof’s fallen off! This is wonderful!”

  “But I’d like to see it,” Irene said, taking pity on them. “Come and show me round.” She led the pair of them away through the conservatory.

  Marianne left Jason wrestling with a thistle and came over to Cat. “Will you help me look for Nutcase?” she asked him.

  “What does he look like?” Cat said.

  Marianne approved of this practical quest
ion. “Black,” she said. “Rather fat, and one eye greener than the other. His coat grows in a ruff round his neck but the rest of him is smooth, except his tail. That’s bushy.”

  “Have you tried a directional spell?” Cat said. “Or divining?”

  More practical questions, Marianne thought approvingly. There was no nonsense about Cat. “Nutcase is pretty well immune to magic,” she said. “I suppose he had to be, living with Gammer.”

  “But I bet he’s not immune to a spell making a luscious fish smell down in the hall,” Cat said. “Wouldn’t that fetch him out?”

  “Not fish. Bacon. He loves bacon,” Marianne said. “Let’s go and try.”

  They hurried through the house to the hall. It was empty, but they could hear hollow footsteps as Irene and the two great-uncles trod about on bare floorboards somewhere in the distance. Here Marianne set the bacon spell, going slowly and carefully, as if she did not quite trust her powers. Cat, while he waited, fixed the image of a black cat with odd eyes and a ruff in his mind and cast about for Nutcase.

  “He went up,” he said, pointing to the stairs when Marianne had finished. “We could go and catch him coming down.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Let’s.”

  They went up to the next floor. “This is nice,” Cat said, looking through an open door into a square, comfortable bedroom.

  The room was completely bare, but Marianne knew what Cat meant. “Isn’t it?” she agreed. “You know, Gammer kept it all so dark and dusty that I never saw what a nice house this really is.”

  Cat found himself saying, “I think she kept you dark and dusty too. You do know your magic is pretty well enchanter standard, do you?” What made me say that? he thought.

  Marianne stared at him. “Is it?”

  “Yes, but you just don’t trust it,” Cat said.

  Marianne turned away. Cat thought at first that she was upset, then that she didn’t believe him, until she said, “I think you’re right. It’s hard to—to trust yourself when everyone’s always telling you you’re too young and to do what you’re told. Thank you for telling me. I think Nutcase went to the attics. I’ve known he did all along really, but I didn’t trust it.”

  They went along the bare passage to another set of stairs that were half hidden by a huge wooden hutch thing that must have had a hot-water tank inside. At any rate it was glopping and trickling as if it didn’t work very well. The stairs were dark and splintery, and the door at the top was half open, on to brown dimness. Uncle Charles must have left it open, Marianne thought, as her foot knocked against a row of paint tins just inside.

  Cat thought, There’s been a really strong “Don’t Notice” spell here! At least, it was more like a “Don’t Want to Know” when he came to think about it—as if somebody had really disliked this place. He wondered why. Marianne seemed to have broken the spell as she went inside.

  He followed Marianne into a glorious smell like the ghosts of mint sauce, turkey stuffing, and warm spiced wine. This came, he saw, from bundles and bundles of dry herbs hanging from the beams in the roof, most of them too old and dry to be any good now. Nearly all the floor space was filled with boxes, bundles, and old leather suitcases, but there were old-fashioned chairs and sofas there too, rows of pointed boots, tin trunks, and what looked like clumps of rusty garden tools. Everything was lit by a dim light coming in under the eaves of the house. Cat could see a dusty toy fort down by his feet, which made him feel sorry that he seemed to be too old for such things these days.

  The place turned a corner, he saw, and went on out of sight. There was something exciting round there.

  Cat was stepping forward in the narrow space between the piles of junk, to find out just what it was round that corner, when Marianne said, “Nutcase was here.”

  “How do you know?” said Cat.

  Marianne pointed to what was left of a mouse, lying beside the paint cans. “He always only eats the front end and leaves the tail,” she said.

  This gave Cat the perfect excuse to explore the attic. He edged his way on along the strip of floor between the bundles and boxes.

  “But he’s not here now,” Marianne said.

  “I know, but I need an excuse,” Cat said, and shuffled on. Marianne followed him.

  The first recognizable thing they met as they turned the corner was a box of Christmas ornaments, really old-fashioned ones: carved wooden angels, heavy round glass balls, and masses of thick golden paper stamped into shapes and letters.

  “Oh, I remember these!” Marianne cried out. “I used to help Gaffer put them on the tree in the hall.”

  She knelt by the box. Cat left her shaking out the gold paper, so that it fell into a long MERRY CHRISTMAS and an equally long YULETIDE IS COME, and groped his way onward. It was darker in this part of the attic and there were no more herbs, but Cat was now convinced that there was something truly precious and exciting stored down near the end. He shuffled and groped—and occasionally put an arm up over his face as something that did not seem quite real fluttered at his head. His feeling grew, and grew, that there was something enormously magical along there, something so important that it needed to be protected with nearly real illusions.

  He found it right at the end, where it was so dark that he was in his own light and could barely see it at all. It was large and round and it sat in a nest of old moth-eaten blankets. At first Cat thought it was just a football. But when he put his hands on it, it seemed to be made of china. The moment Cat touched it, he knew it was very strange and valuable indeed. He picked it up—it was quite heavy—and shuffled carefully back to where Marianne was kneeling beside the box of decorations.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked her. He found his voice was shaking with hidden excitement, like Jason’s when he knew that this was the herbman’s house.

  Marianne looked up from laying a row of golden bells out on the floor. “Oh, is that still here? I don’t know what it is. Gammer always said it was one of Gaffer’s silly jokes. She said he told her it was an elephant’s egg.”

  It could be an egg, Cat supposed. He turned the thing round under what little light there was. It was possibly more pointed at one end. Its smooth, shiny surface was mauvish and speckled with darker mauve. It was not particularly lovely—just strange. And he knew he had to have it.

  “Can—can I have it?” he said.

  Marianne was doubtful. “Well, it’s probably Gammer’s,” she said. “Not mine to give.” But if everyone hadn’t forgotten the attics, she thought, it would have been cleared out with all the other things up here and probably thrown away. And the house was Dad’s really, together with all the things left in it. In a way, Marianne had a perfect right to give some of the junk away, since nobody else was going to want it. “Oh, go on, take it,” she said. “You’re the only person who’s ever been interested in the thing.”

  “Thanks!” Cat said. Marianne could have sworn that his face literally glowed, as if a strong light had been shone on it. For a second his hair looked the same gold as the Christmas bells.

  Great-Uncle Edgar’s voice floated up to them, peevish and distant, from somewhere downstairs. “Marianne! Marianne! Are you and the boy up there? We want to lock the house up.”

  Marianne bundled the bells back into the box, in a strong, high chiming. “Lord!” she said. “And I’ve still not found Nutcase! Let’s hope that bacon spell fetched him down.”

  It had. When they clattered down the bare stairway to the hall, Cat carefully carrying the strange object in both arms, the first thing they saw was Nutcase’s smug face peering at them over Irene’s shoulder. Nutcase’s tail was wrapped contentedly over Irene’s arm, and he was purring. Irene was walking about the hall with him, saying, “You big fat smug thing you! You have no morals at all, do you? You wicked cat!” Jason was watching her with an admiring smile and a brown patch of earth on both knees.

  “I knew she was bound to be a cat person!” Marianne said, at which the faces of both great-uncles turned up
to her, irritably. Cat put a good strong “Don’t Notice” around the thing he was carrying.

  Great-Uncle Lester had enough magic to know that Cat was carrying something, but he must have thought it was the box of Christmas decorations. “Has Marianne given you those?” he said. “Rubbishy old stuff. I wouldn’t be seen dead with those on my tree.” Then, while Cat and Marianne both went red trying not to laugh, Uncle Lester turned to Jason. “If you and your good lady can be at my office in Hopton at eleven tomorrow, Mr. Yeldham, we’ll have the paperwork ready for you then. Marianne, collect your cat and I’ll give you a lift down to Furze Cottage.”

  Chapter Nine

  All the way back to Chrestomanci Castle, Jason and Irene were far too excited at having actually bought a real house, with a bed full of rare herbs, to pay much attention to Cat and the strange object he was holding on his knees. When they got to the Castle, there was no one to ask Cat what it was or to tell him he shouldn’t have it. There was some kind of panic going on.

  Staff were rushing anxiously around the hall and up and down the stairway. Tom, Chrestomanci’s secretary, was with Millie beside the pentacle on the floor. As Cat went past carrying his object, Tom was saying, “No, none of the usual spells have been tripped. Not one!”

  Millie replied, “And I’m quite certain he didn’t leave by this pentacle. Has Bernard finished checking the old garden yet?”

  It seemed nothing to do with Cat. He carried the object carefully away by the back stairs and on up to his room. His room was in a mess, as if Mary, the maid who usually did the bedrooms, had been sucked into the panic too. Cat shrugged and took his new possession over to the windows to have a good look at it.

  It was the chilly sort of mauve that his own skin went when he was too cold for too long. It was heavy and smooth and not at all pretty, but Cat still found it the most exciting thing he had ever owned in his life. Perhaps this feeling had something to do with the mysterious dark purple spots and squiggles all over its china surface. They were like a code. Cat thought that if only he knew this code, it would tell him something hugely important that nobody else in the world knew. He had never seen anything like this thing.