Wild Robert

by Diana Wynne Jones

  Robert snapped his fingers crossly. “No longer,” he said. “Take me to your father and I will tell him to find money another way.”

  “What? You mean from your treasure?” Heather asked.

  Robert gave her another sideways look. “You harp on that,” he said. “No, I must speak with your father. Meanwhile all these folk must go away home.”

  “But—” Heather began, and stopped with a gulp, because she saw the line of the world waving up and down in front of her eyes. The path under her feet seemed to slant first one way and then another, even though she knew it was not moving, and she saw the flowers and hedges rippling. It made her wish she had not eaten quite so many strawberries.

  When things straightened out, Heather saw that all the people round her were quietly heading towards the car park. A mother and father went by with four small children. The father was saying, “I think we’ve seen all there is to see here.”

  “We’ve been here too long,” the mother agreed. “The kids aren’t the only ones who are bored stiff.”

  Though this was exactly what Heather had been wishing for, only this morning, she found she was horrified. Robert had spoilt a day out for hundreds of people. And if he went on sending people away, day after day, Castlemaine would have no money at all. Maybe Mum and Dad would lose their jobs. She looked round for Robert to explain to him, but he was nowhere near. His oddly bright figure was a long way ahead, striding through the steady stream of people all making for the car park. He was nearly at the house.

  Heather raced after him, dodging past people and bumping into others. By the time she reached the steps to the main door, Robert was most of the way up them. “Wait!” she panted.

  But he did not wait. He went straight indoors and straight past the desk where Mr Mimms sat taking tickets. Mr Mimms said, “May I see your ticket for the tour of the house, sir?” And when Robert went straight past without taking any notice, Mr Mimms sighed and began levering himself up.

  “He’s with me, Mr Mimms,” Heather panted as she shot past. Mr Mimms had only one leg. Heather liked Mr Mimms. She did not want him turned into another dog. Besides, she had once seen a dog with three legs and felt desperately sorry for it. She was glad when Mr Mimms believed her and sat down again.

  Ahead of her there was a big party of people gathering in the hall for the next tour of the house. Robert had not sent them home, but he had somehow dodged through them. Heather could see his clear, bright shape climbing the main stairs. “Excuse me,” Heather said, pushing among the waiting people. “Excuse me.” And when some of the people took no notice, she put on a whining voice and lied shamelessly. “I’ve got to find my Mum! She’s up those stairs.”

  They let her through and she dashed up the stairs, thinking it would just serve her right if she did run into Mum. Mum was probably the last person she wanted to meet – apart from Dad, that was – at least until she had thought of some way to stop Robert working magic all over the place. And even then there was the problem of what he was going to do for the rest of his life, she realised. She clattered up the stairs trying to think of jobs for magicians. All she could think of was a magic show on television. And wouldn’t Robert hate that?

  She caught up with Robert outside the bedroom Queen Elizabeth I slept in. He was peering inside wonderingly. “What is the reason for the red rope across the doorway?” he asked her. “Is there danger beyond?”

  “No, it’s because Queen Elizabeth I slept there,” Heather said. “The room’s full of treasures. Now look—!”

  “But she never used this room!” Robert said. “They told me how a place was made for her downstairs. She was old then, and stairs troubled her.” And when Heather opened her mouth again to scold him, he gave her another of his odd sideways looks and said, “What strange things are called treasures! I see no treasure here but the coverlet my grandmother stitched for my brother’s wedding.”

  “Well that’s a treasure because she stitched it so beautifully!” Heather snapped. “Now listen to me! You had no business sending those people home. They’d all paid to be here!”

  Robert shrugged. “This is a matter I shall discuss with your father,” he said. “Where is he?”

  Heather knew she needed a lot more time to think before she let Robert anywhere near Dad. She thought of herself saying to Dad, “This is Wild Robert. I just happened to call him up out of his mound.” And she knew just the kind, unbelieving look Dad would give her, and how he would try to hide a smile. Then she thought of Robert getting angry and turning Dad into a dog. She even knew the lean, brown, trusting sort of dog that Dad would turn into. No – she would have to do a lot of thinking before she let them get together.

  “Last time I saw my father,” she said truthfully, “he was by the stairs to William Toller’s tower.”

  Robert’s face brightened. “The old watch-tower! How do we go there these days?”

  “Through the Long Gallery,” said Heather, and took him that way.

  Robert was delighted with the Long Gallery. “This is almost as I remember!” he said, looking through one of the line of leaded windows. “And the view of the garden is not so strange, either! I can almost begin to think myself at home. Except—” He waved towards the rows of pictures in their fat gilt frames. “Except for these strangers. Who are they all?”

  Heather seized on the chance to side-track him. She took Robert along the pictures and told him about all the ones she could remember the names of. “This is Lady Mary Francey,” she said. “I know her because she’s so pretty. And the bishop is Henry Toller. And here’s James Toller in the curly wig. This one with the gun is Edward Toller-Francey – I think he was killed in a war.”

  As she went, she kept noticing a very mixed expression on Robert’s face. Heather thought she understood. Some of it was pride, some of it was the lost look she had noticed when Robert first saw the house. She thought she would feel very odd, too, looking at all the people who came after her in her own family. None of them looked much like Robert. Some of them had dark eyes and light hair, but none of them had the brown, slanted features of Robert’s face.

  “There isn’t a picture of you, is there?” she said, as they came round under the picture of Sir Francis bowing to Queen Elizabeth I.

  The mixed feelings on Robert’s face gave way to a bright smile Heather somehow did not believe in. She knew he was hurt again. “There would be none,” he said. “I had my portrait done, but I daresay it was burnt when I – when I was put down. My brother married a lady strongly puritan, who detested my magic arts.” His bright smile stretched even brighter. “She was a Francey, as it happens.” As if he was glad to change the subject, he swung round and pointed to the smaller gallery. “And here is another room of pictures that is new to me.”

  “That’s the Feud Room,” Heather said. She was glad to change the subject, too. “It’s the pictures of all the Franceys and Tollers who had the quarrel two hundred years ago.”

  Robert hugged himself with both arms and burst out laughing. He laughed with his head thrown back until the Long Gallery rang with it. “Oh, this is great! I put a curse on them, that Franceys should hate Tollers, in revenge on my brother’s wife. And it took! It took! What did they quarrel about?”

  “Hush,” said Heather. “I’ve no idea. I just know there were duels and lawsuits and things for a hundred years.”

  Robert turned to her with that look a person has when they are going to be thoroughly naughty. “Shall we find out?” He spread his hand out.

  Heather surprised herself by saying “No!” as sternly as Mum did sometimes.

  But it was too late.

  Chapter Five

  The edge of the ordinary world tipped past Heather’s eyes and strangeness took over. All down the Feud Room the glass of pictures swung open like windows. The first person to lean out of his frame was a man in a judge’s wig.

  “Damn my eyes!” he said, with disgust all over his long, cruel face. “This place is full of stinkin
g Franceys!”

  The large fat Duchess in the portrait opposite was furious. She shook a pink first with diamond rings embedded in it. “And you took bribes, George Toller!” she screamed. “No Judge was ever greedier than you, nor hanged more poor souls who could not pay!”

  At this, the people in the other portraits joined in by leaning out of their frames and yelling insults. “Drunk before breakfast!” somebody beside Heather screamed, and the person beside Robert howled, “And you are mutton dressed as lamb, madam!” Robert listened with his head on one side, trying to discover what made them hate one another so, but there was far too much noise.

  Meanwhile, the fat Duchess was so angry that she hoisted one bulging leg over the edge of her frame, ready to climb down and go for Judge George Toller. As she did so, Mum came in at the other end of the Feud Room, leading a crowd of tourists.

  “Here is what is called the Feud Room,” Mum began. She stopped, gaping, as the Duchess hoisted her other leg across the frame and dropped to the floor with a wallop that rattled every piece of glass in the room.

  “Now, eat your words, George Toller!” the Duchess screamed.

  Behind Mum, everyone in the guided tour crowded through and stared at the Duchess. They seemed to think this was meant to be happening.

  At this, Robert got the giggles. “What are they?” he asked. “How they gape! They are nothing but sheep!” He spread his hand out, laughing so much he had to hold his wrist with his other hand to keep it steady.

  “No, don’t!” Heather said, too late again.

  The Feud Room was suddenly full of sheep. It was also suddenly full of Franceys and Tollers from past times, all jumping down from their frames to go on with their feud. The sheep ran and bleated and got in the way of people in red robes and black coats and blue brocade and embroidered waistcoats and huge rustling skirts with corsets that creaked. Each of these people had snatched up things from their portraits to use as weapons. Some were lucky enough to have been painted with sticks, or whips and parasols, and one man even had a sword, but that was knocked out of his hand by a small thin man who was belabouring everyone in sight with a huge book. The rest of them hit one another with fans and embroidery frames and rolls of parchment and silken purses. Hats flew off, and wigs were knocked sideways.

  In the midst of it all, Mum was standing holding a shepherd’s crook, staring from the red, angry faces of the Tollers and the Franceys to the running, bleating sheep, and looking more bewildered than Heather had ever seen her.

  “Oh, poor Mum!” Heather said. “Robert, stop it this instant!”

  But Robert just ran away down the Long Gallery, laughing. Heather ran after him. He was not running very fast, because he kept doubling over to laugh, but he was very good at dodging. Heather almost caught him every time he stopped to laugh, but either he dodged, or the world tipped slightly as she put her hand out to grab him, and she knew that he had got away by magic. In spite of her annoyance, Heather almost laughed once or twice, because Robert so clearly thought of it as a game. She felt more as if she was chasing a small boy, instead of a young man who should have been old enough to know better.

  Robert let Heather corner him, down the end of the Long Gallery at last. By this time the sheep had got out into the Long Gallery, too, and were running about on tottery little hooves crying, “Baaa!” in almost human voices. The polished floor was getting sprinkled with their droppings, so that the fighting Tollers and Franceys, who had also spilled out of the Feud Room in a mass of bright-coloured clothes, kept slipping as they tried to hit one another. Heather saw the fat Duchess skid and fall flat on her back under the picture of Sir Francis Toller and Queen Elizabeth I. She stayed there, puffing and mopping at her bleeding nose with a lace handkerchief. Mum was standing beside the Duchess, still holding the Shepherd’s crook, looking round quite wildly.

  Heather took hold of Robert’s black silk shoulders and shook him. Doing that crumpled his crisp white collar, but Heather did not care. She felt like Robert’s elder sister.

  “Stop them! Turn them back!” she said. “Quickly, before Mum decides she’s gone mad!”

  “But you think of them as sheep yourself,” Robert said. “I know you do.”

  Heather had to admit he was right. “Yes, but I know they’re people really,” she said. “They probably think they’re mad, too. Turn them back.”

  “Now?” Robert asked pleadingly. He made his most charming smile at her. “But all will be back by sunset. Can they not wait?”

  “No. Sunset’s far too late at this time of year,” Heather said. “Do it now. Do it or – or I shall never speak to you again!”

  She said this because it was what she often said to Janine – not meaning it, of course – and it was the only threat she could think of. She was surprised how well it worked. Robert’s eyes went big and sad. “Never?” he said.

  “Never!” Heather shouted firmly, above the bleating and the yelling from the rest of the Long Gallery.

  “Then I am gone maybe another hundred years,” Robert said sadly. “Very well, I’ll undo it, if you promise to speak to me again now, and again tomorrow.”

  “Of course I promise,” Heather said.

  Robert smiled, sighed and held his hand out. This time he tipped it the other way from usual, Heather noticed. Ordinariness swung back across her. The sheep stood up and were real people again, wandering round the Gallery with startled, rather prim looks, as if they had caught sight of something none of them wanted to know about. One or two people were irritably lifting their feet up and obviously wondering where they had trodden in a sheep dropping. Heather looked for the fat Duchess but she was not there at all. Nor were the other Tollers and Franceys. Nor were the wigs and hats that had been knocked off on to the floor.

  “Are they all in their pictures again?” Heather asked.

  “Yes, I swear it,” Robert said.

  “And what would happen if you held your hand out the other way up?” Heather asked. “Does that tip things too?”

  Robert put that hand behind him. “Don’t ask me to show you that,” he said. “That is how my brother’s wife came to hate me so.”

  Heather did not ask. She looked anxiously to see how Mum was instead. The only thing Robert seemed to have forgotten – apart from sheep droppings – was the shepherd’s crook. Perhaps he wanted to show he still thought the tourists were sheep. Perhaps he meant it as a kindness. Anyway, Mum was still holding it, and leaning on it rather heavily, while the people from the guided tour slowly forgot they had been sheep and gathered round her, waiting for more of the talk.

  “We are now in the Long Gallery,” Mum said. She sounded a bit faint, but her voice seemed to come back as she explained how Sir Francis had built the Long Gallery because rooms like that were the height of fashion then.

  “That is true, you know,” Robert told Heather. “Shall we follow these sheep for a while? I would like to know the later history of my family and their house.”

  This suited Heather. That way she could keep an eye on both Mum and Robert. And she could be quite sure of not meeting Dad. The tours were arranged so that they went one after another, without ever meeting. Dad would be taking a tour either ahead of Mum’s or behind. Heather was not ready to meet him yet. Dad asked such piercing questions and he was so full of common sense. She knew she had to make him believe when he did meet Robert, and there were a lot of things she wanted to think about first.

  Heather thought and thought while they trailed behind the people who had been sheep and listened to Mum telling them things about the house. While she thought, she kept an eye on Robert, ready to grab his wrist if he showed any sign of spreading his hand out again, and she watched Mum quite as anxiously. She was glad to see that by the time they got to the Grand Saloon, Mum was explaining about the new fashion for Chinese decorations as if she had quite forgotten there had been sheep mixed with a fight in the Long Gallery. She was glad that Robert did not try to spread his hand out again. But she had not
the foggiest idea what to do about him after this.

  “This is boring,” Robert whispered as everyone trooped after Mum into Lady Mary’s music room. “Let us go to the watch-tower and find your father.”

  “OK,” Heather said, rather relieved. The tower was probably a safe place, because she was fairly sure Dad would not be there. Anyway, she thought, it would have to do.

  They slipped away from the back of the tour. Heather took Robert the long way round to the tower, to be quite sure of not meeting any other people. “I think,” she said carefully, as they went, “it would be best if you let me speak to Dad first, before you talk to him. I know how to get him in the right mood. Suppose you were to keep out of sight. You could hide at the top of the tower.”

  “A good place,” Robert agreed. “Is your father a witch-hater then?”

  “More like someone who doesn’t believe in them,” Heather said.

  Robert smiled, in a way that made Heather even less anxious for him to meet Dad. “I have met those, too, in my time,” he said.

  “I’ll bring you some food and some blankets,” Heather said. That was the only thing to do, she thought. Keep Robert hidden and hope she could work something out.

  “Now food would be very welcome,” Robert said.

  They came clattering down the back stairs into the round room that had once been part of the castle. Heather hurried Robert to the tower stair. She had her hand on the red rope across it to unhook it, when Dad came hurrying through the round room the opposite way.

  “Oh! Hi, Dad,” Heather said awkwardly.