like cardboard scenery.
He wondered, as they rode along, if his idea of a wood had been wrong after all. Then Syracuse surged suddenly sideways and stopped. Syracuse was always liable to do this. This was one reason why Cat stuck himself to the saddle by magic. He did not fall off – though it was a close thing – and when he had struggled upright again, he looked to see what had startled Syracuse this time.
It was the fluttering feathers of a dead magpie. The magpie had been nailed to a wooden framework standing beside the ride. Or maybe Syracuse had disliked the draggled wings of the dead crow nailed beside the magpie. Or perhaps it was the whole framework. Now that Cat looked, he saw dead creatures nailed all over the thing, stiff and withering and beyond even the stage when flies were interested in them. There were the twisted bodies of moles, stoats, weasels, toads, and a couple of long blackened tube-like things that might have been adders.
Cat shuddered. As Joss rode up, he turned and asked him, “What’s this for?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Joss said. “It’s just – Oh, good morning, Mr Farleigh.”
Cat looked back in the direction of the grisly framework. An elderly man with ferocious side whiskers was now standing beside it, holding a long gun that pointed downwards from his right elbow towards his thick leather gaiters.
“It’s my gibbet, this is,” the man said, staring unlovingly up at Cat. “It’s for a lesson. And an example. See?”
Cat could think of nothing to say. The long gun was truly alarming.
Mr Farleigh looked over at Joss. He had pale, cruel eyes, overshadowed by mighty tufts of eyebrow. “What do you mean bringing one like him in my wood?” he demanded.
“He lives in the Castle,” Joss said. “He’s entitled.”
“Not off the rides,” Mr Farleigh said. “Make sure he stays on the cleared rides. I’m not having him disturbing my game.” He pointed another pale-eyed look at Cat and then swung around and trudged away among the trees, crushing leaves, grass and twigs noisily with his heavy boots.
“Gamekeeper,” Joss explained. “Walk on.”
Feeling rather shaken, Cat induced Syracuse to move on down the ride.
Three paces on, Syracuse was walking through the missing depths that the wood should have had. It was very odd. There was no foreground, no smooth green bridle path, no big trees. Instead, everywhere was deep blue-green distance full of earthy, leafy smells – almost overpoweringly full of them. And although Cat and Syracuse were walking through distance with no foreground, Cat was fairly sure that Joss, riding beside them, was still riding on the bridle path, through foreground.
Oh, please, said someone. Please let us out!
Cat looked up and around to find who was speaking and saw no one. But Syracuse was flicking his ears as if he too had heard the voice. “Where are you?” he asked.
Shut behind, said the voice – or maybe it was several voices. Far inside. We’ve been good. We still don’t know what we did wrong. Please let us out now. It’s been so long.
Cat looked and looked, trying to focus his witch sight as Chrestomanci had taught him. After a while, he thought some of the blue distance was moving, shifting cloudily about, but that was all he could see. He could feel, though. He felt misery from the cloudiness, and longing. There was such unhappiness that his eyes pricked and his throat ached.
“What’s keeping you in?” he said.
That – sort of thing, said the voices.
Cat looked where his attention was directed and there, like a hard black portcullis, right in front of him, was the framework with the dead creatures nailed to it. It seemed enormous from this side. “I’ll try,” he said.
It took all his magic to move it. He had to shove so hard that he felt Syracuse drifting sideways beneath him. But at last he managed to swing it aside a little, like a rusty gate. Then he was able to ride Syracuse out round the splintery edge of it and on to the bridle path again.
“Keep your horse straight,” Joss said. He had obviously not noticed anything beyond Syracuse moving sideways on for a second or so. “Keep your mind on the road.”
“Sorry,” said Cat. As they rode on, he realised that he had really been saying sorry to the hidden voices. Even using all his strength, he had not been able to help them. He could have cried.
Or perhaps he had done something. Around them, the wood was slowly and gently filling up with blue distance, as if it were leaking round the edge where Cat had pushed the framework of dead things aside. A few birds were, very cautiously, beginning to sing. But it was not enough. Cat knew it was not nearly enough.
He rode home, hugging the queer experience to him, the way you hug a disturbing dream. He thought about it a lot. But he was bad at telling people things, and particularly bad at telling something so peculiar. He did not mention it properly to anyone. The nearest he came to telling about it was when he said to Roger, “What’s that wood like over on that hill? The one that’s furthest away.”
“No idea,” Roger said. “Why?”
“I want to go there and see,” Cat said.
“What’s wrong with Home Wood?” Roger asked.
“There’s a horrible gamekeeper,” Cat said.
“Mr Farleigh. Julia used to think he was an ogre,” Roger said. “He’s vile. I tell you what, why don’t we both go to that wood on the hill? Ulverscote Wood, I think it’s called. You ride and I’ll go on my bike. It’ll be fun.”
“Yes!” said Cat.
Cat knew better than to mention this idea to Joss Callow. He knew Joss would say it was far to soon for Cat to take Syracuse out on his own. He and Roger agreed that they would wait until it was Joss’s day off.
Cat was interested to see that Joss seemed to want to avoid Mr Farleigh too. When they rode out after that, they went either along the river or out into the bare upland of Hopton Heath, both in directions well away from Home Wood. And here too, going both ways, Cat discovered the background felt as if it were missing. He found it sad and puzzling.
Roger was hugely excited about going for a real long ride. He tried to interest Janet and Julia in the idea. They had now cycled everywhere possible in the Castle grounds, and round and round the village green in Helm St Mary too, so they were ripe for a long ride. The three of them made plans to cycle all of twelve miles, as far away as Hopton, although, as Julia pointed out, this made it twenty-four miles, there and back, which was quite a distance. Janet told her not to be feeble.
They were just setting out for this marathon, when a small blue car unexpectedly rattled up to the main door of the Castle.
Julia dropped her bike on the drive and ran towards the small blue car. “It’s Jason!” she shrieked. “Jason’s back!”
Millie and Chrestomanci arrived on the Castle steps while Julia was still yards away and shook hands delightedly with the man who climbed out of the car. He was just in time to turn round as Julia flung herself on him. He staggered a bit. “Lord love a duck!” he said. “Julia, you weigh a ton these days!”
Jason Yeldham was not very tall. He had contrived, even after years of living at the Castle, to keep a strong cockney accent. “No surprise. I started out as boot boy here,” he explained to Janet. He had a narrow bony face, very brown from his foreign travels, topped by sun-whitened curls. His