“have I caught you at the right—?” He stopped when he saw Mr Saunders’s face. “Is something wrong?”
“Will you please to look at this frog, sir,” said Mary. “It was in Gwendolen’s wardrobe.”
Chrestomanci was wearing an exquisite grey suit with faint lilac stripes to it. He held his lilac silk cravat out of the way and bent to inspect the frog. Euphemia lifted her head and croaked at him beseechingly. There was a moment of ice-cold silence. It was a moment such as Cat hoped never to live through again. “Bless my soul!” Chrestomanci said, gently as frost freezes a window. “It’s Eugenia.”
“Euphemia, Daddy,” said Julia.
“Euphemia,” said Chrestomanci. “Of course. Now who did this?” Cat wondered how such a mild voice could send the hair prickling upright at the back of his head.
“Gwendolen, sir,” said Mary.
But Chrestomanci shook his smooth black head. “No. Don’t give a dog a bad name. It couldn’t have been Gwendolen. Michael took her witchcraft away last night.”
“Oh,” said Mr Saunders, rather red in the face. “Stupid of me!”
“So who could it have been?” Chrestomanci wondered.
There was another freezing silence. It seemed to Cat about as long as an Ice Age. During it, Julia began to smile. She drummed her fingers on her desk and looked meditatively at Janet. Janet saw her and jumped. She drew in her breath sharply. Cat panicked. He was sure Janet was going to say what Gwendolen had done. He said the only thing he could think of to stop her.
“I did it,” he said loudly.
Cat could hardly bear the way they all looked at him. Julia was disgusted, Roger astonished. Mr Saunders was fiercely angry. Mary looked at him as if he was a frog himself. But Chrestomanci was politely incredulous, and he was worst of all. “I beg your pardon, Eric,” he said. “This was you?”
Cat stared at him with a strange misty wetness round his eyes. He thought it was due to terror. “It was a mistake,” he said. “I was trying a spell. I – I didn’t expect it to work. And then – and then Euphemia came in and turned into a frog. Just like that,” he explained.
Chrestomanci said, “But you were told not to practise magic on your own.”
“I know.” Cat hung his head, without having to pretend. “But I knew it wouldn’t work. Only it did of course,” he explained.
“Well, you must undo the spell at once,” said Chrestomanci.
Cat swallowed. “I can’t. I don’t know how to.”
Chrestomanci treated him to another look so polite, so scathing and so unbelieving, that Cat would gladly have crawled under his desk had he been able to move at all. “Very well,” said Chrestomanci. “Michael, perhaps you could oblige?”
Mary held the tray out. Mr Saunders took Euphemia and put her on the schoolroom table. Euphemia croaked agitatedly. “Only a minute now,” Mr Saunders said soothingly. He held his hands cupped round her. Nothing happened. Looking a little puzzled, Mr Saunders began to mutter things. Still nothing happened. Euphemia’s head bobbed anxiously above his bony fingers, and she was still a frog. Mr Saunders went from looking puzzled to looking baffled. “This is a very strange spell,” he said. “What did you use, Eric?”
“I can’t remember,” said Cat.
“Well, it doesn’t respond to anything I can do,” said Mr Saunders. “You’ll have to do it, Eric. Come over here.”
Cat looked helplessly at Chrestomanci, but Chrestomanci nodded as if he thought Mr Saunders was quite right. Cat stood up. His legs had gone thick and weak, and his stomach seemed to have taken up permanent quarters in the Castle cellars. He slunk towards the table. When Euphemia saw him coming, she showed her opinion of the matter by taking a frantic leap off the edge of the table. Mr Saunders caught her in mid-air and put her back.
“What do I do?” Cat said, and his voice sounded like Euphemia croaking.
Mr Saunders took Cat by his left wrist and planted Cat’s hand on Euphemia’s clammy back. “Now take it off her,” he said.
“I – I—” said Cat. He supposed he ought to pretend to try. “Stop being a frog and turn into Euphemia again,” he said, and wondered miserably what they would do to him when Euphemia didn’t.
But, to his astonishment, Euphemia did. The frog turned warm under his fingers and burst into growth. Cat shot a look at Mr Saunders as the brown lump grew furiously larger and larger. He was almost sure he caught a secret smile on Mr Saunders’s face. The next second, Euphemia was sitting on the edge of the table. Her clothes were a little crumpled and brown, but there was nothing else froggish about her. “I never dreamt it was you!” she said to Cat. Then she put her face in her hands and cried.
Chrestomanci came up and put his arm round her. “There, there, my dear. It must have been a terrible experience. I think you need to go and lie down.” And he took Euphemia out of the room.
“Phew!” said Janet.
Mary grimly handed out the milk and biscuits. Cat did not want his. His stomach had not yet come back from the cellars. Janet refused biscuits.
“I think the food here is awfully fattening,” she said unwisely. Julia took that as a personal insult. Her handkerchief came out and was knotted. Janet’s glass of milk slipped through her fingers and smashed on the pitted floor.
“Clean it up,” said Mr Saunders. “Then get out, you and Eric. I’ve had enough of both of you. Julia and Roger, get out magic text books, please.”
Cat took Janet out into the gardens. It seemed safest there. They wandered across the lawn, both rather limp after the morning’s experiences.
“Cat,” said Janet, “you’re going to be very annoyed with me, but it’s absolutely essential that I cling to you like a limpet all the time we’re awake, until I know how to behave. You saved my bacon twice this morning. I thought I was going to die when she brought in that frog. Rigor mortis was setting in, and then you turned her back again! I didn’t realise you were a witch too – no, it’s a warlock, isn’t it? Or are you a wizard?”
“I’m not,” said Cat. “I’m not any of those things. Mr Saunders did it to give me a fright.”
“But Julia is a witch, isn’t she?” said the shrewd Janet. “What have I done to make her hate me so – or is it just general Gwendolenitis?”
Cat explained about the snakes.
“In which case I don’t blame her,” said Janet. “But it’s hard that she’s in that schoolroom at the moment brushing up her witchcraft, and here I am without a rag of a spell to defend myself with. You don’t know of a handy karate teacher, do you?”
“I never heard of one,” Cat said cautiously, wondering what karate might be.
“Oh well,” said Janet. “Chrestomanci’s a wonderfully fancy dresser, isn’t he?”
Cat laughed. “Wait till you see him in a dressing-gown!”
“I hardly can. It must be something! Why is he so terrifying?”
“He just is,” said Cat.
“Yes,” said Janet. “He just is. When he saw the frog was Euphemia and went all mild and astonished like that, it froze the goose-pimples on my back. I couldn’t have told him I wasn’t Gwendolen – not even under the most refined modern tortures – and that’s why I shall have to stick to you. Do you mind terribly?”
“Not at all,” said Cat. But he did rather. Janet could not have been more of a burden if she had been sitting on his shoulders with her legs wrapped round his chest. And to crown it all, it seemed as if there had been no need for his false confession. He took Janet to the ruins of the