been up to. Oh, what’s Euphemia doing?”
“Mary’s beside herself this morning,” Roger said. He winked. For a moment, there were two Marys, one real and one vague and ghostly. Janet jumped. It was only the second piece of witchcraft she had seen and she did not find it easy to get used to.
“I expect it’s Gwendolen’s fault,” said Julia, and she gave Janet one of those meaning stares.
Janet was very put out. Cat had forgotten to warn her how much Julia had disliked Gwendolen ever since the snakes. And a meaning stare from a witch is worse than a meaning stare from an ordinary person. Julia pushed Janet backwards across the room, until Cat put himself in the way of it.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “She’s sorry.”
“Is she?” said Julia. “Are you?” she asked, trying to get the stare round Cat to Janet again.
“Yes, horribly sorry,” Janet said fervently, not having the least idea why. “I’ve had a complete change of heart.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Julia. But she left off staring in order to watch Mary bringing the usual bread, the marmalade, and the jug of cocoa.
Janet looked, sniffed the cocoa steaming from the jug, and her face fell, rather like Gwendolen’s on the first day. “Oh, dear. I hate cocoa,” she said.
Mary rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “You and your airs and graces! You never said you hated it before.”
“I – I’ve had a revulsion of feeling,” Janet invented. “When I had my change of heart, all my taste buds changed, too. I – you haven’t any coffee, have you?”
“Where? Under the carpet or something?” Mary demanded. “All right. I’ll ask the kitchen. I’ll tell them your taste buds are revolting, shall I?”
Cat was very pleased to hear that cocoa was not compulsory after all. “Could I have coffee, too?” he asked, as Mary went to the lift. “Or I prefer tea really.”
“But you waited to say so until Euphemia goes missing and leaves me all on my own!” Mary said, getting very put-upon.
“She never does anything anyway,” Cat said in surprise.
Mary flounced crossly to the speaking-tube and ordered a pot of coffee and a pot of tea. “For Her Highness and His Nibs,” she said to it. “He seems to have caught it now. What I wouldn’t give for a nice normal child in this place, Nancy!”
“But I am a nice normal child!” Janet and Cat protested in unison.
“And so are we – nice anyhow,” Julia said comfortably.
“How can you be normal?” Mary demanded as she let down the lift. “All four of you are Chants. And when was a Chant ever normal? Answer me that.”
Janet looked questioningly at Cat, but Cat was as puzzled as she was. “I thought your name was Chrestomanci,” he said to Roger and Julia.
“That’s just Daddy’s title,” said Julia.
“You’re some kind of cousin of ours,” said Roger. “Didn’t you know? I always thought that was why Daddy had you to live here.”
As they started breakfast, Cat thought that this, if anything, made the situation more difficult than ever.
Cat watched his moment and, when Mr Saunders called them to lessons, he caught Roger’s arm and whispered, “Look, Gwendolen’s turned Euphemia into a frog and—”
Roger gave a great snore of laughter. Cat had to wait for him to stop.
“And she won’t turn her back. Can you?”
Roger tried to look serious, but laughter kept breaking through. “I don’t know. Probably not, unless she’ll tell you what spell she used. Finding out which spell without knowing is Advanced Magic, and I’m not on that yet. Oh how funny!” He bent over the table and yelled with laughter.
Naturally, Mr Saunders appeared at the door, remarking that the time for telling jokes was after lessons. They had to go through to the schoolroom. Naturally, Cat found Janet had sat in his desk by mistake. He got her out as quietly as he could and sat in it himself, distractedly wondering how he could find out which spell Gwendolen had used.
It was the most uncomfortable morning Cat had ever known. He had forgotten to tell Janet that the only thing Gwendolen knew about was witchcraft. Janet, as he rather suspected, knew a lot, about a lot of things. But it all applied to her own world. About the only subject she would have been safe in was simple arithmetic. And Mr Saunders chose that morning to give her a History test. Cat, as he scratched away left-handed at an English essay, could see the panic growing on Janet’s face.
“What do you mean, Henry V?” barked Mr Saunders. “Richard II was on the throne until long after Agincourt. What was his greatest magical achievement?”
“Defeating the French,” Janet guessed. Mr Saunders looked so exasperated that she babbled, “Well, I think it was. He hampered the French with iron underwear, and the English wore wool, so they didn’t stick in the mud, and probably their longbows were enchanted too. That would account for them not missing.”
“Who,” said Mr Saunders, “do you imagine won the battle of Agincourt?”
“The English,” said Janet. This of course was true for her world, but the panic-stricken look on her face as she said it suggested that she suspected the opposite was true in this world. Which of course it was.
Mr Saunders put his hands to his head. “No, no, no! The French! Don’t you know anything, girl?”
Janet looked to be near tears. Cat was terrified. She was going to break down any second and tell Mr Saunders she was not Gwendolen. She did not have Cat’s reasons for keeping quiet. “Gwendolen never knows anything,” he remarked loudly, hoping Janet would take the hint. She did. She sighed with relief and relaxed.
“I’m aware of that,” said Mr Saunders. “But somewhere, somewhere inside that marble head there must be a little cell of grey matter. So I keep looking.”
Unfortunately Janet, in her relief, became almost jolly. “Would you like to take my head apart and look?” she asked.
“Don’t tempt me!” cried Mr Saunders. He hid his eyes with one knobby hand and fended at Janet with the other. He looked so funny that Janet laughed. This was so unlike Gwendolen that Mr Saunders lowered his hand across his nose and stared at her suspiciously over it. “What have you been up to now?”
“Nothing,” Janet said guiltily.
“Hm,” said Mr Saunders, in a way which made both Cat and Janet very uncomfortable.
At last – very long last – it was time for Mary to bring the milk and biscuits, which she did, with a very portentous look. Crouched on the tray beside Mr Saunders’s cup of coffee was a large wet-looking brown thing. Cat’s stomach seemed to leave him and take a plunge into the Castle cellars. From the look of Janet, hers was doing the same.
“What have you got there?” said Mr Saunders.
“Gwendolen’s good deed for today,” Mary said grimly. “It’s Euphemia. Look at its face.”
Mr Saunders bent and looked. Then he whirled round on Janet so fiercely that Janet half got out of her seat. “So that’s what you were laughing about!”
“I didn’t do it!” said Janet.
“Euphemia was in Gwendolen’s room, shut in the wardrobe, croaking her poor head