The Chrestomanci series: 3 Book Collection. Diana Wynne Jones

a strong rending noise up in the tree. “Drat!” said Janet. “These are ridiculous clothes for climbing trees in.”

      “Can’t you sew?” Cat called as he climbed up too.

      “I despise it as female bondage,” said Janet. “Yes, I can, actually. And I’m going to have to. It was both petticoats.” She tested the creaking floor that was all that remained of the house and stood up on it, trailing two different colours of frill below the hem of Gwendolen’s dress. “You can see into the village from here. There’s a butcher’s cart just turning in to the Castle drive.”

      Cat climbed up beside her and they watched the cart and the dappled horse pulling it.

      “Don’t you have cars at all?” Janet asked. “Everyone has cars in my world.”

      “Rich people do,” said Cat. “Chrestomanci sent his to meet us off the train.”

      “And you have electric light,” said Janet. “But everything else is old-fashioned compared with my world. I suppose people can get what they want by witchcraft. Do you have factories, or long-playing records, or high-rise blocks, or television, or aeroplanes at all?”

      “I don’t know what aeroplanes are,” said Cat. He had no idea what most of the other things were either, and he was bored with this talk.

      Janet saw he was. She looked round for a change of subject and saw clusters of big green conker-cases hanging all around them at the ends of the branches. The leaves there were already singed-looking round the edges, suggesting that the conkers could not be far off ripe. Janet edged out along a branch and tried to reach the nearest cluster of green cases. They bobbed at the tips of her fingers, just out of reach. “Oh dachshunds!” she said. “They look almost ripe.”

      “They aren’t,” said Cat. “But I wish they were.” He took a lathe out of the wreckage of the house and slashed at the conker-cases with it. He missed, but he must have shaken them. Eight or so dropped off the tree and went plomp on the ground below.

      “Who says they’re not ripe?” said Janet, leaning down.

      Cat craned out of the tree and saw brown shiny conkers showing in the split green cases. “Oh, hurray!” He came down the tree like a monkey, and Janet crashed after him, with her hair full of twigs. They scooped up the conkers greedily – wonderful conkers with grain on them like the contours in a map.

      “A skewer!” Janet moaned. “My kingdom for a skewer! We can thread them on my bootlaces.”

      “Here’s a skewer,” said Cat. There was one lying on the ground by his left hand. It must have fallen out of the tree-house.

      They drilled conkers furiously. They took the laces out of Gwendolen’s second-best boots. They discovered the rules of conkers were the same in both their worlds, and they went to the formal garden and held a battle royal there on the gravel path. As Janet firmly smashed Cat’s last conker and yelled, “Mine! Mine’s a sevener now!” Millie came round a corner past a yew tree and stood laughing at them.

      “Do you know, I wouldn’t have thought the conkers were ripe yet. But it’s been a lovely summer.”

      Janet looked at her in consternation. She had no idea who this plump lady in the beautiful flowered silk dress could be.

      “Hallo, Millie,” said Cat. Not that this helped Janet much.

      Millie smiled and opened the handbag she was carrying. “There are three things Gwendolen needs, I think. Here.” She handed Janet two safety-pins and a packet of bootlaces. “I always believe in being prepared.”

      “Th-thanks,” Janet stammered. She was horribly conscious of her gaping boots, her twig-filled hair and the two trailing strips of petticoat. She was even more confused by not knowing who Millie was.

      Cat knew that. He knew by now that Janet was one of those people who are not happy unless they have an explanation for everything. So he said fulsomely to Millie, “I do think Roger and Julia are lucky, having a mother like you, Millie.”

      Millie beamed and Janet looked enlightened. Cat felt dishonest. He did think that, but he would never have dreamt of saying it but for Janet.

      Having gathered that Millie was Chrestomanci’s wife, Janet was quite unable to resist going on and gathering as much more information as she could. “Millie,” she said. “Were Cat’s parents first cousins like – I mean, were they? And what relation is Cat to you?”

      “That sounds like those questions they ask you to find out how clever you are,” said Millie. “And I don’t know the answer, Gwendolen. It’s my husband’s family you’re related to, you see, and I don’t know too much about them. We need Chrestomanci here to explain, really.”

      As it happened, Chrestomanci came through the doorway in the garden wall at that moment. Millie rustled up to him, beaming.

      “My love, we were needing you.”

      Janet, who had her head down, trying to pin her petticoats, glanced up at Chrestomanci and then looked thoughtfully down the path, as if the stones and sand there had suddenly become rather interesting.

      “It’s quite simple,” Chrestomanci said, when Millie had explained the question. “Frank and Caroline Chant were my cousins – and first cousins to one another, too, of course. When they insisted on getting married, my family made a great fuss, and my uncles cut them off without a shilling in a thoroughly old-fashioned way. It is, you see, rather a bad thing for cousins to marry when there’s witchcraft in the family. Not that cutting them off made the slightest difference, of course.” He smiled at Cat. He seemed thoroughly friendly. “Does that answer the question?”

      Cat had an inkling of how Gwendolen had felt. It was confusing and exasperating the way Chrestomanci would seem friendly when one ought to have been in disgrace. He could not resist asking, “Is Euphemia all right?”

      Then he wished he had not asked. Chrestomanci’s smile snapped off like a light. “Yes. She’s feeling better now. You show touching concern, Eric. I believe you were so sorry for her that you hid her in a wardrobe?”

      “My love, don’t be so terrifying,” Millie said, hooking her arm through Chrestomanci’s. “It was an accident, and it’s all over now.” She led him away down the path. But, just before they went out of sight behind a yew tree, Chrestomanci turned and looked over his shoulder at Cat and Janet. It was his bewildered look, but it was far from reassuring.

      “Hot cross bunwrappers! Jiminy purple creepers!” Janet whispered. “I’m beginning to hardly dare move in this place!” She finished pinning her petticoat. When Millie and Chrestomanci had had nearly a minute in which to walk out of hearing, she said, “She’s sweet – Millie – an absolute honey. But him! Cat, is it possible Chrestomanci is a rather powerful enchanter?”

      “I don’t think he is,” said Cat. “Why?”

      “Well,” said Janet, “partly it’s the feeling he gives—”

      “I don’t get a feeling,” said Cat. “I’m just frightened of him.”

      “That’s it,” said Janet. “You’re probably muddled anyhow from having lived with witches all your life. But it isn’t only a feeling. Have you noticed how he comes when people call him? He’s done it twice now.”

      “Those were two complete accidents,” said Cat. “You can’t build ideas on accidents.”

      “He disguises it well, I admit,” said Janet. “He comes looking as if it was something else he was doing, but—”

      “Oh do shut up! You’re getting as bad as Gwendolen. She couldn’t stop thinking of him for a moment,” Cat said crossly.

      Janet pounded her open right boot on the gravel. “I am not Gwendolen! I’m not even really like her! Get that into your fat head, will