Marianne said to Cat, “You’ve let all the hidden folk out, haven’t you?”
Cat nodded. He was not going to apologize, even to Chrestomanci, about that.
Marianne said, “My family are going to be furious with you. They fuss all the time that it’s their sacred task to keep them in.”
A particularly mocking and malevolent laugh rang out among the trees as Marianne said this. “Some of them don’t sound very nice,” she added, looking that way uneasily.
“Some humans aren’t very nice either,” Cat said.
Marianne thought of Great-Uncle Edgar and Aunt Joy and said, “True.”
The road ran out into strong daylight a moment later. They found themselves on a rocky headland, looking down on Ulverscote across a long green meadow. They were above the church tower here and could see down into the main street over the roof of the Pinhoe Arms. It was quiet and empty because everyone was indoors having lunch.
This rocky bit, Cat thought, was the part of Ulverscote Wood that he and Roger had kept seeing when they tried to get to it before. While they waited for Klartch to catch up, he looked out the other way, across the wide countryside, over humping hills, hedges, and the white winding road, wondering if he could see the Castle from here.
He saw a most peculiar bristling black cloud coming across the nearest hill. It spread across a stubble field on one side and a pasture on the other, and it appeared to be trickling and wobbling along the road too. It was rushing toward them almost as fast as a car could go. An angry buzzing sort of sound came with it.
“What on earth is that?” he said to Marianne. “A swarm of huge wasps?”
Marianne looked, and went pale. “Oh, my lord!” she said. “It’s the Farleighs. On broomsticks and bicycles.”
Cat could see it was people now: angry, determined women of all ages whizzing along on broomsticks and equally angry men and boys pedaling furiously along the road.
Marianne said, “I must go down and warn everyone!” and set off at a run down the meadow.
But it was too late. Before Marianne had gone three steps, the horde of Farleighs had swept down into Ulverscote and the place was black with them. Yelling with fury and triumph, the broomstick riders sprang off onto their feet, lofted their brooms, and began smashing windows with the butt ends. The cyclists arrived, braking and howling, and threw powdered spells in through the smashed windows. Inside the houses, Pinhoes screamed.
At the screams, a whole crowd of Pinhoe men, who must have been having lunch in the inn, came swarming out of the Pinhoe Arms, carrying stools and chairs and small tables. Marianne saw Uncle Charles there, brandishing a chair leg, and Uncle Arthur charging in front with a coatrack. They all fell on the cyclists, whacking mightily. More Pinhoes poured into the street from the houses, and others leaned out of upstairs windows and threw things and tipped things upon the Farleighs.
Round the smashed windows of the grocer’s and the chemist’s, there were instant battles. Feet crunched in broken glass there, cheeses and big bottles were hurled. Broomsticks walloped. In almost no time, the main street was a fighting tangle of bent bicycles and shouting, screaming people. Marianne could see Gammer Norah Farleigh at the back of the fight, yelling her troops on and cracking an enormous horsewhip.
Down the hill at the other end, Aunt Joy raced out of the Post Office carrying a long bar of scaffolding like a lance and screaming curses. Uncle Isaac and Uncle Richard were pelting up behind her. Marianne saw her parents running behind them. Mum was carrying her new broom, and Dad seemed to be waving a saw. Nicola’s mother came out of her house dressed in her best, on her way to visit Nicola, screamed, went in and slammed her door. Up the hill at the other end, Great-Uncle Lester, who was coming in his car to give Nicola’s mother a lift to the hospital, bared his teeth and drove straight at the back of Gammer Norah. She saw him coming in time and levitated to the roof of his car, where she rode screaming, cracking her whip and trying to break his wind-screen with her broomstick. Uncle Lester drove slowly on regardless, trying to run over Farleighs, but mostly running over bicycles instead.
Behind the car, Great-Uncle Edgar and Great-Aunt Sue, who must have been out exercising their dogs, were arriving at a tired trot. They were surrounded by exhausted dogs, who were mostly too fat and tired to bite Farleighs, although Great-Aunt Sue shrieked at them to “Bite, bite, bite!” They settled for barking instead.
The Reverend Pinhoe appeared on the churchyard wall, waving a censer of smoking incense on a chain and making prayerful gestures. When that made no difference to the struggling mayhem in the street below him, he swung the censer at any Farleigh head he could reach. There were clangs and terrible cries. And down near the Post Office, Marianne’s parents had entered the fray, Mum batting with her broom and Dad swinging the flat of the saw at any Farleigh near. Even above the noise of the rest, Marianne could hear the dreadful ker-blatt SWAT from Dad’s saw. And she and Cat both winced at what Aunt Joy was doing with her scaffolding pole.
They both turned their eyes away to the upper end of the village again. There, behind the row of yelping dogs, the long black car from the Castle edged cautiously out of the gates of Woods House and crawled to a halt at the back of the battle, as if Millie, who was driving it, was at a loss to know what to do. Nearly a thousand fighting witches seemed a bit much even for an enchantress as strong as Millie.
“Do something! Do something!” Marianne implored Cat.
Nearly a thousand fighting witches were a bit much for Cat too. And he was not going to take Syracuse and Klartch in among that lot. But someone was going to be killed soon if he didn’t do something. That man with the saw down the hill was starting to hit people with the edge of it. There was blood down that end of the street. A giant stasis might stop it, Cat thought. But what happened when he took the stasis off?
All the same, Cat drew in his power, as he had been taught, in order to cast the stasis. He almost had enough when, with a violent clattering and screams of “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” the flying machine swept in from above the Post Office. The faces of the fighters turned upward in alarm as it clapped and flapped and shouted its swift way over their heads.
A giant voice, magically amplified and accompanied by a steady chant of “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” shouted, “OUT OF THE WAY! We’re CRASHING!”
Everyone dived to the sides of the street. The machine did not so much crash as simply keep on in a straight line. It seemed to get lower with every flap of the jointed tables, but in fact it was the street that got steeper and the flying machine just flew into it. It landed with a great clatter and a tremendous crunching of bicycles underneath, exactly opposite the Pinhoe Arms. The chanting from the broken furniture faded to a murmur. Joe and Roger sat back gasping. Joe was without his shirt, and both were covered with sweat. Roger’s hair was so dark with perspiration that, for a moment, he looked quite strikingly like his father.
Every person there was able to make that comparison quite easily. Chrestomanci stood up among the tangle of chairs at the back of the machine. Chrestomanci’s left arm was in a bloodstained sling that seemed to have been Joe’s shirt, and his smooth gray jacket was torn. He looked very unwell, but no one had any doubt who he was. Pinhoes and Farleighs, panting, with hair hanging over their faces and, in some cases, blood running down among the hair, stopped fighting and said to one another, “It’s the Big Man! That’s torn it!”
Cat sighed and sent his gathered magic off as a goodwill spell. “Mr. Farleigh shot him!” he said to Marianne.
Marianne merely nodded and went running off down the meadow, making for the alleyway beside the Pinhoe Arms. As she ran, she could hear tinny bongings as Gammer Norah trampled up and down the roof of Great-Uncle Lester’s car, shouting, “Don’t you dare interfere! We don’t need you from the Castle! These Pinhoes turned our Gaffer into a stone tree! So keep out of it!”
“I believe you have made a serious error there, ma’am,” Chrestomanci replied.
When Marianne hurtled out of the other end of the alley into the street, Gammer Norah was still shouting. Her hair had come down from its bun into a sort of wad on one shoulder. What with that, and her long eyes narrowed with rage, she looked as menacingly witchy as a person could. But Chrestomanci was just standing there, waiting for her to stop. The moment Gammer Norah had to pause to take a breath, he said, “I suggest you join me in the Pinhoe Arms to discuss the matter.”
Gammer Norah drew herself up to her full squat height. “I will not! I have never been inside a public house in my life!”
“In the inn yard, then,” Chrestomanci said. He climbed out of the flying machine, which seemed to settle and spread once he was out of it. As Marianne rushed up to it, she could hear all the chairs, stools, tables, and even the feather duster at the tail, still whispering that they belonged to Chrestomanci Castle.
“Are you all right?” she asked Joe. He looked almost as pale as Chrestomanci.
Joe stared up at her as if she was a nightmare. “He shot him!” he said hoarsely. “Gaffer Farleigh shot the Big Man! We had to land on Crowhelm Top and do first aid. He was bleeding in spurts, Marianne. I’d never done a real healing before. I thought he was going to die. I was scared.”
Marianne said soothingly, “But he’s got nine lives, Joe.”
Roger looked up at her. “No, he hasn’t. He’s only got two left, and he could have been down to just the one. I was scared too.”
Meanwhile, all around them, Farleighs were sullenly separating from Pinhoes, picking up bicycles and broomsticks and kicking them into working order. Two particularly hefty Farleigh men came and stood beside the flying machine. “You’re on top of our bikes,” one of them said, in a way that suggested trouble.
At this Chrestomanci came and put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. He gave Marianne a long, vague look as he said, “You two get yourselves back to the Castle now.” Joe and Roger both groaned at the thought of further effort. “Well, you are blocking the main road,” Chrestomanci said, “and these gentlemen need their bicycles.”
“Who are you calling gentlemen?” the Farleigh man demanded.
“Not you, obviously,” Chrestomanci said. “Roger, tell Miss Bessemer to give you both hot, sweet tea and then lunch, and ask her to send Tom and Miss Rosalie here to me at once. Miss Rosalie is to bring the folder from my study, the blue one.” His bright dark eyes met Marianne’s, making her jump. “Young lady, would you mind very much giving them a strong boost to get them airborne? I see you have the power. And you,” he added to the Farleigh men, “please stand clear.”
Marianne nodded, highly surprised. As the Farleigh men grudgingly moved back, Joe and Roger exchanged a look of misery and Joe said, “Right. One, two, three.” The two of them began pedaling. The three-legged stool revolved on the front and the machine trembled all over.
Help! Marianne thought. How do you boost? There was no charm for this any more than there was for pulling the barrier down. She supposed she had better do it the way Cat had told her, by willing.
She willed, hard and ignorantly. The flying machine went straight upward, with a mighty clattering and a scream of “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!” It tipped left wing downward, and the bent bicycle that had been caught in the woodwork clanged out of it, almost on top of the Farleigh it belonged to.
“Straighten her out!” Joe shrieked.
Marianne did her best, Roger did his best, and Joe swayed himself madly to the right. Marianne realized what to do and gave them another boost, forward this time. The pieces of table began to flap at last and the machine sailed forward up the hill, forcing Gammer Norah to slide quickly off Uncle Lester’s car or be smacked on the head. The machine then swayed sideways the other way, to only just miss the Castle car as it crept downhill toward the Pinhoe Arms, and then pitched the other way to skim across the heads of Uncle Cedric and Aunt Polly, who were arriving too late, both perched on the same cart horse. After that it straightened out and went majestically flapping, creaking, and whispering over the chimneys of Woods House. Most of Aunt Sue’s dogs decided it was the real enemy and went off up the road after it, yapping fit to burst.
“Oh, I wish it hadn’t gone!” one of Marianne’s smaller cousins wailed. “I wanted a go in it!”
Marianne shuddered. The thing looked even chancier than riding Mum’s broomstick at night. She watched the Castle car stop by the Pinhoe Arms. It had all four tires thickly coated in spells against the broken pieces of glass in the road. Clever, she thought. Uncle Lester’s car had three flat tires and several bicycles sticking out from underneath it. Millie got out from the driver’s seat and hurried toward Chrestomanci, horrified at the state he was in. Jason sprang out from the other side. The back door opened to let out Joss Callow, to Marianne’s surprise. Joss turned to help out Irene, who was holding Nutcase in her arms.
I think Nutcase really is going back to Woods House to live, Marianne thought, not sure whether she was sad or relieved. And really, some of my uncles are so slow! she added to herself, as Uncle Cedric and Aunt Polly clopped massively downhill and Uncle Simeon came thundering uphill in his builder’s van, both of them far too late to do any good.
There was almost a quiet moment after this, while Chrestomanci conferred quickly with Jason and Millie and Millie seemed to be trying to patch Chrestomanci up. Marianne looked up at the sign on the Pinhoe Arms that Uncle Charles had painted the year she was born. The unicorn was definitely Molly, and the griffin facing her was, equally definitely, Klartch’s mother. Uncle Charles had known. Then why had he always pretended that things like unicorns and griffins didn’t exist?
And where was Gaffer? Marianne wondered anxiously. He said he would come.
Chrestomanci looked round, checking up on everybody. “I need all the principals in this matter in the inn yard with me now,” he said.
The words caught Cat as he was halfway down the meadow. Chrestomanci was using Performative Speech, the enchanters’ magic Cat had been wrestling with after he put Joe on the ceiling. He recognized it as he arrived with a jolt in the inn yard with Syracuse. Klartch, draped across the saddle, was shot off backward as Syracuse made his usual objections to people using magic on him. Cat was carried off his feet for a moment, and it was Marianne who rescued Klartch with a quick levitation spell, and lowered him gently to the obbles.
“Thanks!” Cat gasped, and then had to turn the other way as, to his dismay, Joss Callow dodged up and grabbed Syracuse from the other side.
“I’ll walk him back home for you if you like,” Joss said breathlessly, searching in his pocket for a peppermint.
Joss was not angry with him, Cat realized. Joss was extremely anxious to get away from here. Cat did not blame him. The people Joss spied for and the people Joss spied on were all here in the yard, and most of them were strong magic users.
“Thanks. Would you?” he said, and gave Syracuse over to Joss gladly, wishing he had the same excuse to leave. But Chrestomanci’s eye was now on Cat, bright and vague. Cat looked back, appalled at all the blood on Chrestomanci and at how unwell Chrestomanci looked. He knew he should have stopped Mr. Farleigh firing that gun at all.
Chapter Nineteen
Chrestomanci turned to have a word with Uncle Arthur, who had a black eye again. “Yes,” he said. “Find her something as much like a throne as you can. That may calm her down. And drinks all round on the Castle, if you please.” Cat could see Chrestomanci was feeling dreadful, but holding himself together by magic.
As Joss led Syracuse out of the inn yard, things settled down into a sort of open-air conference. Gammer Norah was given a mighty carved wooden chair from the Snug—where she sat and glared round aggressively—and sour Dorothea was given a smaller chair next to her. Various Farleigh cousins sat on barrels around them, trying to look dignified. Cat and Marianne sat on crates with Klartch between them. Everyone else pulled around the weather-beaten benches and settles from beside the inn walls to sit in a rough circle, while Uncle Arthur hurri
ed out again with a cushioned chair from the saloon bar for Chrestomanci. Chrestomanci sank into it gratefully.
Drinks began arriving then. Chris Pinhoe and Clare Callow came out with trays of mugs, followed by Aunt Helen and most of her boys with trays of glasses. But they were not the only ones giving out drinks. Cat saw a thin green nonhuman hand reach round Gammer Norah’s chair to present her with a foaming mug.
“Not for me. I never drink anything but water,” Gammer Norah said, loftily pushing the mug aside.
The hand drew back so that it was out of Gammer Norah’s sight, and the mug it held changed to a straight glass full of transparent liquid, which it held out to Gammer Norah again. A very quiet titter of laughter came from behind the chair as Gammer Norah seized the glass and took a hearty swig from it.
Cat was wondering what it really was in that glass, when two brownish purple hands pushed themselves between himself and Marianne, invitingly holding out glasses of something pink. Cat was going to take one, but Millie caught his eye and shook her head vigorously. “No, thank you,” Cat said politely.
Marianne looked at him and said, “No, thank you,” too. The hands drew back in a disappointed way. “Look what you did!” Marianne whispered to Cat. “They’re everywhere!”
They were too, Cat realized, as he gratefully took a glass of real ginger beer from the tray Marianne’s cousin John held out to him. The brownish purple hands were now offering what looked like beer to Uncle Charles and Marianne’s dad. Marianne could not help giggling while she sipped her lemonade, when both men took the not-beer. Sour Dorothea was swigging from an enormous glass of not-water. At the gate of the yard, where a crowd of Pinhoes and Farleighs stood looking on, small half-seen shapes were flitting among legs and peering round skirts, and hands of strange colors were passing people glasses and mugs. Things that were almost like squirrels skipped along the walls of the yard. Up on the inn roof someone invisible was playing a faint skirling tune behind one of the chimneys.
The Pinhoe Egg Page 23
