The Pinhoe Egg (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “We forgot how young he really is,” Janet said.

  The gardeners put Klartch in a wheelbarrow and trundled him to the kitchen door. Klartch did not stir the entire time. They trundled him indoors and parked him in a pantry, where he slept until Mr Stubbs had his lunch ready. Then he woke up eagerly and, instead of opening his beak and going “Weep!”, he said, “Me!” and tried to eat the mince by himself.

  “You are coming on well,” Millie said to him admiringly. “Cat, at this rate, he won’t be needing you to feed him in the night for much longer.”

  Cat did hope so. He was so sleepy most of the time that he was sure he would never manage to stay awake during lessons, when lessons started again.

  The holidays were indeed almost over. The children’s tutor, Michael Saunders, arrived back in the Castle that evening, keen and talkative as ever. He talked so much over supper that even Jason could hardly get a word in, let alone anyone else. Jason wanted to tell everyone about the changes they were making to Woods House, but Michael Saunders had been to the worlds in Series Eight to take the young dragon he had been rearing back into the wild, and he had a longer tale to tell.

  “I had to take the wretched creature to Eight G in the end,” he said. “We tried Eight B, where he came from, and all he would do was shiver and say the cold would kill him. Eight A’s colder, so we went to C, D and E, and C was too wet for him, D was too empty and it was snowing when we got to E. I skipped F. There are more people there and I could see he was itching for the chance to eat a few. So we went on to G and he didn’t like it there either. It began to dawn on me that the wretch was so pampered that nothing less than tropical was going to suit him. But G has equatorial forests and I took him down there. He liked the climate all right, but he refused to catch his own food. All he would say was ‘You do it.’ I thought about it a bit, and then I trapped him one of the large beasts they call lumpen in that Series, and as soon as he was eating it, I left him to it and came away. If he wants to eat again, he’ll have to hunt now —”

  Here Michael Saunders noticed the way Roger, Janet, Julia and Cat were all looking at him. He laughed. “Never fear,” he said. “I don’t intend to start giving you lessons until next Monday. I need a rest first. Nursemaiding a teenage dragon has worn me ragged.”

  In Cat’s opinion, nursemaiding a baby griffin was quite as bad. He gave Klartch a large meal before he went to bed that night and fell asleep seriously hoping that Klartch would not wake up until the morning. It seemed a reasonable hope. When Cat put the light out, Klartch was lying on his back in his basket, with his tight, round stomach upwards, snoring like a hive of bees.

  But no. Around one o’clock in the morning, Mopsa’s dabbing nose and treading paws woke Cat up. When he groaned and put the light on, there was Klartch, thin as a rake again, standing on his hind legs to look into Cat’s face. “Food,” he told Cat mournfully.

  “All right.” Cat sighed and got up.

  It was a very messy business. Klartch insisted on feeding himself. Cat’s main job seemed to be to scoop up dropped dinner and dump it back into Klartch’s bowl for Klartch to spill again. Cat was sleepily scraping meat up from the carpet for the thirtieth time, when he heard a sharp tapping on the window. This was followed by a thump.

  What have Roger and Joe done with their flying machine this time? he thought. Mad. They are quite mad! He went and opened the window.

  A broomstick swooped inside with Marianne riding side-saddle on it. Cat dodged it and stared at her. Seeing Cat, Marianne gave a cry of dismay, slipped off the broom and sat down hard on the carpet. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she said. “I thought this was the attic!”

  Cat caught the broomstick as it tried to fly away through the window again. “It’s a tower room really,” he said as he shut the window to stop the broom escaping.

  “But your light was on and I thought it was bound to be Joe in here!” Marianne protested. “Which is Joe’s attic then? He’s my brother and I need to talk to him.”

  “Joe has one of the little rooms down by the kitchen,” Cat told her.

  “What – downstairs?” Marianne asked. Cat nodded. “I thought they always put servants in the attics,” Marianne said. “All the way down?”

  Cat nodded again. By this time he was awake enough to be quite shocked at how pale and miserable Marianne looked. One side of her face was bruised and she had a big, sore-looking scrape across her mouth, as if someone had beaten her up recently.

  “So I’d have to go down past all your wizards and enchanters to get to Joe?” she said dismally.

  “I’m afraid so,” Cat said.

  “And I’m not sure I dare,” Marianne said. “Oh dear, why do I keep doing everything wrong just lately?”

  Cat thought she was going to cry then. He could see her trying not to and he had no idea what to say. Fortunately Klartch finished his meal just then – all of it that was in the bowl anyway – and came bumbling across the room to see why this new human was sitting dejectedly on the floor. Marianne stared, and stared more when Klartch caught one of his front talons on the carpet and fell on his beak beside her knees.

  “Oh, I thought you were a dog! But you’re not, are you?” Marianne put her hands under Klartch’s face and helped him struggle to his feet. Then she helped him unhook his claw from the carpet. “You’ve got a beak,” she said, “and I think you’re growing wings.”

  “He’s a griffin,” Cat told her, glad of the interruption. “He’s called Klartch. He hatched from that egg you gave me.”

  “Then it really was an egg!” Marianne was distracted from her troubles enough to kneel up and stroke Klartch’s soft fluffy coat. “I wonder if they had that egg because we’ve got a griffin on the Pinhoe Arms. And a unicorn. My Uncle Charles painted both of them on the inn sign when he was young. Mind you,” she told Klartch, “you’ve got a long way to go before you look like our griffin. You need some feathers, for a start.”

  “Growing some,” Klartch said, rather offended.

  At this Marianne said, just like Millie, “I didn’t know they talked!”

  “Learning,” said Klartch.

  “So perhaps it was worth it, giving the egg away,” Marianne said sadly. “I don’t think you were going to hatch where you were.” She looked up at Cat and a tear leaked its way down the swollen side of her face. “I got into terrible trouble for giving you his egg,” she said. “And for trying to do what you said and tell the truth. Be confident, you know, how you said to me. No one in Ulverscote is speaking to me now.”

  Cat began to feel a slow, guilty responsibility. “I was saying it to myself too,” he confessed. “What did I make you do?”

  Marianne put her face up and pressed her scratched lips together, trying not to cry again. Then she burst into tears anyway. “Oh drat it!” she sobbed. “I hate crying! It wasn’t my fault, or yours. It was Gammer. But no one will believe me when I say it was her. Gammer’s lost her mind, you see, and she keeps sending the Farleighs frogs and nits and things, and dirtying their washing and flooding their houses. So the Farleighs are furious. And they sent us bad luck and whooping cough. My distant cousin Nicola’s been taken to hospital with it and they think she’ll die! But Gammer’s cast this spell on everyone so that no one will blame her for any of it.”

  Marianne was sobbing in such earnest now that Cat conjured her a pile of his handkerchiefs.

  “Oh thanks!” Marianne wept, pressing at least three of them to her wet face. She went on to describe the fight with the Farleigh girls and the way she had got rid of the white powder. “And that was silly of me,” she sobbed, “but it was really strong and I had to do something about it. But Joss Callow had told Dad about the fight, and Dad shouted at me for insulting the Farleighs, and I didn’t! I told Dad about the powder they were bringing and he went up there this evening to see it and of course there wasn’t any, because I’d burnt it all, and he came back and shouted at me again for trying to stir up trouble —”

  “What was th
e powder?” Cat asked.

  “A bad disease with spots and sores,” Marianne said, sniffing. “I think it may have been smallpox.”

  Ouch! Cat thought. He did not know much about diseases, but he knew that one. If it didn’t kill you, it disfigured you for life. Those Farleigh girls had not been joking. “But wouldn’t they have caught it too?”

  “They must have made some immunity spells, I suppose,” Marianne said. “But those wouldn’t have stopped it spreading all over the county to people who haven’t done a thing to the Farleighs. Oh, I don’t know what to do! I want to ask Joe if he can think of a way to stop Gammer, or at least take off the spell she’s got on everyone. I want someone to believe me!”

  Cat thought about Joe, who had rather impressed him on the whole. Joe had brains. Marianne was probably right to think Joe would know what to do, except – there was this mad flying machine. Joe’s head was, at the moment, literally in the clouds. “Joe’s pretty busy just now,” he said. “But I believe you. My sister was a witch who got out of hand like your Gammer. If you like, I could go and tell Chrestomanci.”

  Marianne looked up at him in horror. Klartch yelped as her hand closed on a fistful of his fluff. “Sorry,” Marianne said, letting go of Klartch. “No! No, you can’t tell the Big Man! Please! They’d all go spare! Pinhoes, Farleighs, Cleeves, everyone! You don’t understand – we all keep hidden from him so he won’t boss us about!”

  “Oh,” said Cat. “I didn’t know.” It seemed a bit silly to him. This was the kind of problem Chrestomanci could solve by more or less simply snapping his fingers. “He doesn’t boss people unless they misuse witchcraft.”

  “Well, we are doing,” Marianne said. “Or Gammer is. Think of something else.”

  Cat thought. He was so tired, that was the problem. And the more he cudgelled his sleepy brain, the more responsible he felt. There was no doubt that he had said just the one thing to Marianne likely to start her getting into the mess she was now in. He ought to help her, even though what he said had really been to tell himself something instead. But how was he to stop a witch-war among people he didn’t even know? Walk up to this Gammer person and put her in a stasis spell? Suppose he got the wrong old lady? He wanted to tell Marianne that it was hopeless, except that she was so upset that she had come miles at night on a broomstick. She must have sneaked off from her angry father to do it, too. No, he had to think of something.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll think. But not now. I’m too sleepy. Klartch keeps needing to be fed in the night, you see. I’ll have a real, serious think in the morning. Is there anywhere I can meet you to tell you any ideas I get?”

  “Tomorrow?” Marianne said. “All right, as long as it’s secret. I don’t want Dad to know I talked to you – you’re as bad as the Big Man to him. He says you’re a nine-lifed enchanter too. I didn’t know. I thought you were Irene’s son. Can you get Irene to bring you to Woods House again? People from the Castle have to be with a Pinhoe to get there, you see. Otherwise they stop you and send you back here.”

  “I think so,” said Cat. “She goes there most days with Jason. And I tell you what – I’ll try to get Joe to come too if he’s free. Meet me around midday. I have to think first, and exercise Syracuse.”

  Marianne looked puzzled. “I thought his name was Klartch.”

  “Syracuse,” Cat explained, “is a horse. Klartch is this griffin. The cat sitting on my bed staring at you is Mopsa.”

  “Oh,” said Marianne. She almost grinned. “You do seem to be surrounded in creatures. That’s a dwimmerthing, I think. I can tell you have quite strong dwimmer. See you tomorrow at midday then.” Looking much more cheerful, she scrambled up and stared round for her broomstick.

  Cat plucked the broomstick away from the window and handed it politely to Marianne. “Will you be all right?” he asked trying not to yawn. “It’s pretty dark.”

  “As long as the owls miss me,” Marianne said. “They never look where they’re going. But if you had any idea how uncomfortable it is riding a broomstick, you wouldn’t ask. I suppose one more set of bruises won’t notice. See you.” She sat herself sideways on the hovering broomstick. “Ouch,” she said. “This is Mum’s broom. It doesn’t like me riding it.”

  Cat opened the window for her and Marianne swooped out through it, away into the night.

  Cat stumbled back to bed. He had not a clue how to solve Marianne’s problems. He simply hoped, as he pushed Mopsa out of the way, that a good idea came into his head while he was asleep. He was asleep the next second. He forgot to turn out the light. He did not see the offended way Mopsa jumped down and joined Klartch in his basket.

  He woke – much too soon, it seemed – when Janet barged cheerfully into his room, saying, “Breakfast, Klartch. Come on down to the kitchen. I’m going to start house-training him today,” she told the yawning Cat. “It should be all right if we can get downstairs fast enough.”

  When Janet and Klartch had crashed out of the room, Cat sat up, searching his sleepy brain for any ideas that might have landed in it during the night. There was one, but it struck him as very poor and stupid indeed, one only to be used if nothing else occurred to him. He got up and went along to have a shower, hoping that might liven his brain up a little. The water in the Castle was bespelled and Cat had hopes of it.

  But nothing happened. With only the poor, thin idea in his head, Cat got dressed and went downstairs. He met a strong disinfectant spell on the next flight down. This was followed by the angry clattering of a bucket and Janet’s raised voice. “Purple nadgers, Euphemia! He’s only a baby! And he’s terribly ashamed. Just look at him!” It sounded as if Klartch had not got downstairs quite fast enough after all.

  Cat grinned and galloped down the other set of stairs that led to the stable door. They came out past the cubby hole where Joe was supposed to clean shoes. Rather to Cat’s surprise, Joe was actually there, busily blacking a large boot.

  Cat leant into the little room. “Your sister was here last night, trying to find you,” he said. “She’s got troubles. She says your Gammer is secretly putting spells on the Farleighs.”

  “Our Gammer?” Joe said, calmly rubbing away at the boot. “You must know she is. You saw me on my way to set the first spell for her, didn’t you?”

  “The tadpoles?” Cat said.

  “Frogs,” said Joe.

  “Oh,” Cat said. “Um. Those frogs. In Helm St Mary?”

  “That’s right,” Joe said. “Gammer said if I could get the one spell out for her, then she could follow the thread with a load of others, and if she did, it would work her free of the containment my dad had put on her. By-product, she called it. She pointed her stick at me to make me do it. And I didn’t want to have rode all the way to Ulverscote for nothing and I knew Gaffer Farleigh did put an addle spell on her – Marianne swears he did, and she knows – so I took the jar to Helm St Mary and tipped it into their duck pond there for her.”

  Cat was hugely relieved. He had no need to use his poor, thin idea. Joe could solve Marianne’s problems with a word. “Then do you think you could come to Ulverscote with me this morning and tell your father? Marianne says Gammer’s set a spell on everyone so that they don’t believe her and the Farleighs are sending them plagues in revenge.”

  Joe’s head went sulkily down as he pondered. He shrugged. “If Gammer’s done that, then they won’t believe me neither, not if they don’t believe Marianne. She’s strong in the craft, Gammer is, and I’m no one. Besides, Mr Frazier says he’ll have me up before the Big Man if I don’t stay here where I’m paid to be. And just when we’ve got our machine near perfect! No. Sorry. Can’t oblige you.”

  And, to prove that Joe was not just making excuses, Mr Frazier came along the kitchen corridor just then, saying, “Joe Pinhoe, are you working? Master Cat, I’ll trouble you not to interrupt Joe in his work. We’re privileged today. Master Pinhoe has actually cleaned a boot.”

  “Just going,” Cat told Mr Frazier. He leant furt
her into the cubby hole and asked, “Is Mr Farleigh the gamekeeper any relation to the Farleighs who got the frogs?”

  “Jed Farleigh,” said Joe. “He’s their Gaffer.” Hearing Mr Frazier treading closer, he picked up two more boots and tried to look as if he was cleaning all three at once.

  Cat said, “Thanks,” to him and hurried towards the stables, thinking. If he understood rightly, these Gammers and Gaffers were the heads of these tribes of witchy people, and if Mr Farleigh the gamekeeper was one, the whole thing was much more frightening than Cat had realised. No wonder Marianne had been so upset. And here was he, Cat, with only one poor, second rate idea to put against it all. Joe was no help. Cat hurried out into the yard, feeling small and weak and heartily wishing he had not agreed to help Marianne.

  As Cat crossed the yard, Jason came out of his herb shed with a stack of flat wooden boxes. Cat went over to him. Jason, by the time Cat reached him, was standing on one leg, holding the boxes on one knee while he locked the shed. He spared Cat a harried smile. “What can I do for you, young nine-lifer?” The smells of many kinds of herbs, faint and sweet, or rich and spicy, swam round the pair of them.

  “Can you give me a lift to Woods House today?” Cat asked.

  “Well, I could,” Jason said, “but you’d have to find your own way back. We’re moving in there for good today. Irene’s busy packing.”

  Cat had not realised that things had moved on so quickly. He was quite taken aback. But he supposed that when an enchanter did things, he did them more swiftly than other people. And he was going to miss Irene. “Not to worry, then,” he said. “Thanks.”

  He stood aside and watched Jason carry the boxes away across the yard. That did it then. He was let off. But somehow that did not make him terribly happy. Marianne would be expecting him. He would have let her down. No, he would have to find a way to get to Ulverscote on his own. It was a pity that he had such a poor, thin idea to take there.

  He could teleport, he thought, there and back. That ought to have been easy, but for the misdirection spell – and then there was that barrier. If he tried it without one of the Pinhoes, he could end up caught behind the barrier like Chrestomanci. Better think of some other way. Cat walked slowly over to Syracuse’s stall to tell it to muck itself out, considering.