House of Many Ways (15 page)

She got there in the end, however, and put Waif down thankfully on the garden path. Indoors, Peter was in the kitchen, sitting on one of the ten bags of laundry, staring moodily at a big red slab of meat on the table. Beside it were three onions and two carrots.

“I don’t know how to cook these,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” Charmain said, dumping her bag on the table. “I went to see my father this evening. And here,” she added, fishing out the two notebooks, “are recipes and the spells that go with them.” Both notebooks were rather the worse for flan. Charmain wiped them on her skirt and handed them over.

Peter brightened up wonderfully and jumped off
the laundry bag. “That’s really useful!” he said. “And a bag of food is better.”

Charmain unpacked bent flan, broken pasties, and squashed buns. The cream cake at the bottom had a knee-shaped dent in it, and it had oozed into some of the pasties. This made her angry with Prince Ludovic all over again. She told Peter all about it while she tried to reassemble the pasties.

“Yes, my mother says he’s got the makings of a real tyrant,” Peter said, a little absently, because he was flipping through the notebooks. “She says that’s why she left this country. Do I do these spells while I cook the food, or before, or after, do you know?”

“Dad didn’t say. You’ll have to work it out,” Charmain said and went away to Great-Uncle William’s study to find a soothing book to read.
The Twelve-Branched Wand
was interesting, but it made her feel as though her mind had broken into a hundred little pieces. Each branch of the Wand had twelve more branches growing out of it, and twelve more from each of those. Much more, and I’d turn into a tree, Charmain thought as she searched the
shelves. She chose a book called
The Magician’s Journey
, which she hoped would be an adventure story. And it was, in a way, but she very soon realized that it was also a step-by-step account of how a magician learned his skills.

This set her thinking again of how Dad had turned out to be a magic user. And I
know
I’ve inherited it, she thought. I learned to fly and I mended the pipes in the bathroom, all in no time. But I ought to learn how to do it smoothly and quietly, instead of shouting and bullying things. She was still sitting, pondering this, when Peter yelled to her to come and eat.

“I used the spells,” he said. He was very proud of himself. He had warmed up the pasties and made a truly tasty mixture of the onions and carrots. “And,” he added, “I was quite tired after a day of exploring.”

“Looking for gold?” Charmain said.

“It’s the natural thing to do,” Peter said. “We know it’s somewhere in this house. But what I found instead was the place where the kobolds live. It’s
like a huge cave, and they were all in there making things. Cuckoo clocks mostly, but some of them were making teapots, and some more were making something like a sofa near the entrance. I didn’t speak to them—I didn’t know if they were in the past or nowadays, so I just smiled and watched. I didn’t want them angry again. What did you do today?”

“Oh, goodness!” Charmain said. “It was quite a day. It started with Twinkle out on the roof. I was so scared!” And she told him all the rest.

Peter frowned. “This Twinkle,” he said, “and this Sophie—are you quite sure they’re not up to something sinister? Wizard Norland said fire demons were dangerous beings, you know.”

“I did wonder,” Charmain admitted. “But I think they’re all right. It looks as if Princess Hilda has called them in to help. I wish I knew how to find what the King is looking for. He got so excited when I found that family tree. Did you know that Prince Ludovic has eight second cousins, mostly called Hans and Isolla, and nearly all of them have met with sticky ends?”

“Because they were all bad lots,” Peter said. “My mother says that Hans the cruel was poisoned by Isolla the murderess, and
she
was killed by Hans the drunkard when he was drunk. Then
that
Hans fell downstairs and broke his neck. His sister Isolla was hanged over in Strangia for trying to kill the lord she married there—How many am I up to?”

“Five,” said Charmain, quite fascinated. “Three to go.”

“Those are two Matildas and another Hans,” Peter said. “Hans Nicholas, that one was, and I don’t know how he died, except that he was somewhere abroad when he did. One of the Matildas was burned when her manor house caught fire, and they say the other one is such a dangerous witch that Prince Ludovic has her shut up in an attic in Castel Joie. Nobody dares go near her, not even Prince Ludovic. She kills people just by looking at them. Is it all right that I gave Waif that lump of meat?”

“Probably,” said Charmain. “If she didn’t choke. How do you know all about these cousins? I’d never heard of them before today.”

“That’s because I come from Montalbino,” Peter said. “Everyone at my school knows all about the Nine Bad Cousins of High Norland. But I suppose that in this country neither the King nor Prince Ludovic want it to get about that their relatives were so vile. They say Prince Ludovic is as bad as the rest too.”

“And we’re such a
nice
country, really!” Charmain protested. She felt quite hurt that her own High Norland should have given birth to nine such awful people. It seemed hard on the King, as well.

Charmain woke early the following day, because Waif stuck her small cold nose into Charmain’s ear, obviously thinking they needed to go to the Royal Mansion as usual.

“No, I
don’t
need to go!” Charmain said crossly. “The King has to look after Prince Ludovic today. Go away, Waif, or I may turn into an Isolla and poison you! Or a Matilda and do evil magic at you. Just
go
!”

Waif pattered sadly away, but Charmain was awake by then. Before long she got up, soothing her
crossness by promising herself that she would spend a fine, lazy day reading
The Magician’s Journey.

Peter was up too and he had other ideas. “We’re going to do some of this laundry today,” he said. “Have you noticed that there are ten bags of it in here now and ten more in Wizard Norland’s bedroom? I think there may be ten in the pantry as well.”

Charmain glowered at the laundry bags. She could not deny that they filled the kitchen up, rather. “Let’s not bother,” she said. “It must be those kobolds doing it.”

“No, it isn’t,” Peter said. “My mother says that laundry breeds if you don’t wash it.”

“We have a washerwoman,” Charmain said. “I don’t know how to wash things.”

“I’ll show you how,” Peter said. “Stop hiding behind your ignorance.”

Angrily wondering how it was that Peter always managed to set her to work, Charmain shortly found herself pumping hard at the pump in the yard, filling buckets with water for Peter to carry to the wash
house and empty into the great copper boiler. After about the tenth bucketful, Peter came back, saying, “We need to light the fire under the copper now, but I can’t find any fuel. Where do you think he keeps it?”

Charmain wiped sweaty hair back from her face with an exhausted hand. “It must work like the kitchen fire,” she said. “I’ll go and see.” She led the way to the shed, thinking, And if this doesn’t work, we can stop trying. Good. “We need just one thing that will burn,” she told Peter.

He looked blankly round. Inside the shed there was nothing but a stack of wooden tubs and a box of soapflakes. Charmain eyed the place at the bottom of the boiler. It was black with old fires. She eyed the tubs. Too big. She eyed the soapflakes and decided not to risk another storm of bubbles. She went outside and plucked a twig from the unhealthy tree. Shoving this into the blackened fireplace, she slapped the side of the boiler and said, “Fire!” And had to leap quickly backward as flames thundered into being underneath. “There,” she said to Peter.

“Good,” he said. “Back to the pump. We need the copper full now.”

“Why?”
said Charmain.

“Because there’s thirty sacks of washing, of course,” Peter said. “We’ll need to run hot water into some of these tubs to soak the silks and do the woolens in. And then we’ll need water for rinsing. Buckets and buckets more.”

“I don’t
believe
this!” Charmain muttered to Waif, who was pottering about watching. She sighed and went back to pumping.

Meanwhile, Peter fetched out a kitchen chair and put it in the shed. Then, to Charmain’s indignation, he set out the tubs in a row and began pouring bucketfuls of her hard-worked-for cold water into them. “I thought those were for the copper!” she protested.

Peter climbed on the chair and began hurling handfuls of soapflakes into the top of the boiler. It was now steaming and making simmering noises. “Stop arguing and keep pumping,” he said. “It’s nearly hot enough for the whites now. Four more
buckets should do it, and then you can start putting shirts and things in.”

He climbed off the chair and went away into the house. When he came back, he was lugging two of the laundry bags, which he left propped against the shed while he went back for more. Charmain pumped, and panted, and glowered, and climbed on the chair to pour her four full buckets into the soapy clouds of steam rising from the copper. Then, glad to be doing something else, she untied the strings that held the first laundry bag closed. There were socks inside, and a red wizardly robe, two pairs of trousers, and shirts and underclothes below that, all smelling of mildew from Peter’s bathroom flood. Oddly enough, when Charmain untied the second bag, there were the same, identical things inside it.

“Wizard’s washing was bound to be peculiar,” Charmain said. She took armfuls of the washing, climbed on the chair, and heaved the clothes into the copper.

“No, no, no!
Stop!
” Peter shouted, just as Charmain had emptied the second bagful in. He
came rushing across the grass, towing eight more bags all tied together.

“But you
said
to do it!” Charmain protested.

“Not before we’ve sorted it out, you fool!” Peter said. “You only boil the
white
things!”

“I didn’t know,” Charmain said sullenly.

She spent the rest of the morning sorting laundry into heaps on the grass, while Peter hurled shirts in to boil and ran off soapy water into tubs to soak robes and socks and twenty pairs of wizardly trousers in.

At length he said, “I think the shirts have boiled enough,” and pulled forward a swilling tub of cold water. “You put the fire out while I run the hot water off.”

Charmain had not the least idea how you put a magical fire out. Experimentally, she slapped the side of the copper. It burned her hand. She said, “
Ow!
Fire, go
out
!” in a sort of scream. And the fire obediently flickered down and disappeared. She sucked her fingers and watched Peter open the tap at the bottom of the copper and send steaming pink
suds gushing away down the drain. Charmain peered through the steam as the tap ran.

“I didn’t know the soap was pink,” she said.

“It wasn’t,” Peter said. “Oh, my heavens! Look what you’ve done
now
!” He leaped up on the chair and began heaving out steaming shirts with the forked stick meant for the purpose. Every one of them, as it splashed into the cold water, turned out to be bright cherry pink. After the shirts, he forked out fifteen tiny shrunken socks, all of which would have been too small for Morgan, and a baby-sized pair of wizardly trousers. Finally, he fished up a very small red robe and held it out accusingly, dripping and steaming, for Charmain to see. “That’s what you did,” he said. “You
never
put red wool in with white shirts. The dye runs.
And
it’s turned out almost too small for a kobold. You
are
an utter fool!”

“How was I to know?” Charmain demanded passionately. “I’ve lived a sheltered life! Mother never lets me go near our wash house.”

“Because it’s not respectable. I know,” Peter said
disgustedly. “I suppose you think I should be sorry for you! Well, I’m not. I’m not going to trust you anywhere near the mangle. The lord knows what you’d do with that! I’m going to try a bleaching spell while I do the mangling.
You
go and get the clothesline and that tub of clothes pegs from the pantry and hang everything up to dry. Can I trust you not to hang yourself or something while you do that?”

“I’m not a fool,” Charmain said haughtily.

An hour or so later, when Peter and Charmain, both weary and damp with steam, were soberly chewing yesterday’s leftover pasties in the kitchen, Charmain could not help thinking that her efforts with the clothesline were rather more successful than Peter’s with the mangle and the bleaching spell. The clothesline zigzagged ten times back and forth across the yard. But it
stayed up.
The shirts now flapping from the pegs on it were not white. Some were streaked with red. Some had curious pink curlicues all over them, and some others were a delicate blue. Most of the robes had white stripes on them somewhere. The socks and the trousers
were all creamy white. Charmain thought it very tactful of her that she did not point out to Peter that the elf, who was ducking and dodging among the zigzags of washing, was staring at it in grave amazement.

“There’s an
elf
out there!” Peter exclaimed with his mouth full.

Charmain swallowed the rest of her pasty and opened the back door to see what the elf wanted.

The elf bent his tall fair head under the doorway and stalked into the middle of the kitchen, where he put the glass box he was carrying down on the table. Inside the box were three roundish white things about the size of tennis balls. Peter and Charmain stared at them, and then at the elf, who simply stood there without speaking.

“What are these?” Peter said at length.

The elf bowed, very slightly. “These,” he said, “are the three lubbock eggs that we have removed from the wizard William Norland. It was a very difficult operation, but we have performed it successfully.”

“Lubbock eggs!”
Peter and Charmain exclaimed, almost together. Charmain felt her face draining white and very much wished she had not eaten that pasty. All Peter’s freckles showed up brown in his white face. Waif, who had been begging for lunch under the table, set up a frantic whining.

“Why…why have you brought the eggs
here
?” Charmain managed to say.

The elf said calmly, “Because we have found it impossible to destroy them. They defeat all our efforts, magical and physical. We have finally concluded that only a fire demon is capable of destroying them. Wizard Norland informs us that Miss Charming will, by now, have contact with a fire demon.”

“Wizard Norland’s
alive
? He’s talking to you?” Peter said eagerly.

“Indeed,” said the elf. “He is recovering well and should be ready to return here in three or four days at the most.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” Charmain said. “So it was lubbock eggs making him ill?”

“That is so,” the elf agreed. “It seems that the wizard encountered a lubbock some months ago while walking in a mountain meadow. The fact that he is a wizard has caused the eggs to absorb his magic and become nearly impossible to destroy. You are warned not to touch the eggs or attempt to open this box that they are in. They are extremely dangerous. You are advised to obtain the services of the fire demon as soon as possible.”

While Peter and Charmain gulped and stared at those three white eggs in their box, the elf gave another small bow and stalked away through the inner door. Peter pulled himself together and ran after him, shouting to know more. But he arrived in the living room to see the front door slamming shut. When he, followed by Charmain, followed by Waif, rushed out into the front garden, there was no sign of the elf at all. Charmain caught sight of Rollo, peering slyly round the stalks of a hydrangea, but the elf was gone completely.

She picked up Waif and planted her in Peter’s arms. “Peter,” she said, “keep Waif
here.
I’ll go and
get Calcifer at once.” And she set off at a run down the garden path.

“Be quick!” Peter shouted after her. “Be
very
quick!”

Charmain did not need Peter to tell her that. She ran, followed by Waif’s despairing and squeaky howls, and ran, and went on running, until she had rounded the great cliff and could see the town ahead. There she had to drop to a hasty walk and clutch at the stitch in her side, but she kept on as fast as she could. The thought of those round white eggs sitting on the kitchen table was enough to make her break into a trot as soon as her breath came back. Suppose the eggs hatched before she had found Calcifer. Suppose Peter did something stupid, like trying to put a spell on them. Suppose—She tried to take her mind off all the other awful possibilities by panting to herself, “I am
so
stupid! I could have asked that elf what the Elfgift was! But I clean forgot. I
should
have remembered. I’m
stupid
!” But her heart was not really in it. All she could see in her mind was Peter mumbling spells over the glass box. It would be just like him to try.

It came on to pour with rain as she entered the town. Charmain was pleased. That should take Peter’s mind off the lubbock eggs. He would have to rush outside and bring the washing in before it got soaked again. Just so long as he hadn’t done something stupid before that!

She arrived at the Royal Mansion soaked through and almost out of breath entirely, where she clattered at the knocker and rang the bell even more frantically than she had when Twinkle was on the roof. It seemed an age before Sim opened the door.

“Oh, Sim,” she gasped. “I need to see Calcifer at once! Can you tell me where he is?”

“Certainly, miss,” Sim replied, not in the least put out by Charmain’s soaking hair and dripping clothes. “Sir Calcifer is presently in the Grand Lounge. Allow me to show you the way.”

He shut the door and shuffled off, and Charmain dripped her way after him, down the long damp hallway, past the stone staircase, to a grand doorway somewhere near the back of the Mansion, where Charmain had never been before.

“In here, miss,” he said, throwing the grand but shabby door open.

Charmain went in, to a roar of voices and a crowd of finely dressed people, who all seemed to be shouting at one another while they walked about eating cake off elegant little plates. The cake was the first thing she recognized. It stood grandly on a special table in the middle of the room. Although only half of it was there by now, it was definitely the same cake that her father’s cooks had been working on yesterday evening. It was like seeing an old friend among all these finely dressed strangers. The nearest man, who was dressed in midnight blue velvet and dark blue brocade, turned and stared haughtily at Charmain and then exchanged disgusted looks with the lady beside him. This lady was wearing—not exactly a ball dress, not at
teatime
! Charmain thought—silks and satins so sumptuous that she would have made Aunt Sempronia look shabby, had Aunt Sempronia been there. Aunt Sempronia was not there, but the Lord Mayor was, and so was his lady, and so were all the most important people in town.

“Sim,” asked the man in midnight blue, “just who
is
this wet little commoner?”

“Lady Charming,” Sim replied, “is the new assistant to His Majesty, Your Highness.” He turned to Charmain. “Allow me to present you to His Highness, Crown Prince Ludovic, my lady.” He stepped backward and shut himself outside the room.