“Yes, please,” Cat said.
He had Syracuse out in the yard and saddled up, and Syracuse was bouncing, tugging, and dancing as usual, too glad to be ridden to let Cat get up and ride him, when Syracuse abruptly stopped dead and flung his head up. Cat looked round to see the griffin staggering enthusiastically toward them. Cat could only stare at it. He could not think what to do.
Syracuse stared, too, down his upheld nose. It was hard to blame him. The griffin was such a plump, scrawny, unfinished-looking creature. It still had not gotten the hang of walking. It rolled from side to side, scratching the stones of the yard with its long pink claws, and whirling its stringy tail behind it. Cat could see it was terribly proud at having found him.
“It’s only a baby,” he said pleadingly to Syracuse.
As the griffin staggered near, Syracuse swayed backward on all four feet, snorting. The griffin stopped. It stared upward at Syracuse. Its beak fell open with what seemed to be admiration. It made a whirring noise and stretched its face up. And Syracuse, to Cat’s relief and astonishment, lowered his own shapely head and nosed the griffin’s beak. At this, the griffin’s little wings worked with excitement. It cooed, and Cat could have sworn that a grin grew at the sides of its beak. But he had to stop it when it put out a clumsy front paw that was obviously meant to be friendly but threatened to scratch Syracuse’s nose.
“That’ll do. So you like one another. That’s good,” Cat said. “How did you get out here anyway?”
Millie came dashing across the yard. “Oh, I only turned my back for a minute when Miss Bessemer came to ask about towels! And off he went. Come on, come back with Millie, little griffin. Oh, I wish he had a name, Cat!”
“Klartch,” said the griffin.
“That’s a new noise,” said Millie. “Whatever it means, you’ve got to come in, griffin.”
“No—wait,” Cat said. “I think it’s his name. Is your name Klartch, griffin?”
The griffin turned its face up to him. It was definitely smiling. “Klartch,” it said happily.
“Mr. Vastion said they named themselves,” Millie said, “but I didn’t realize that meant they talked. Well, Klartch, that goes two ways. If you can talk, you can understand too. Come indoors with me at once and finish your breakfast. Now.”
The griffin made a small noise like “Yup” and followed Millie obediently back to the kitchen. Well, well! Cat thought.
Joss, who had been standing looking utterly dumbfounded, said, “That creature—where did it come from?”
“A girl called Marianne gave me his egg,” Cat said.
“Marianne did?” Joss said. “Marianne Pinhoe?” Cat nodded. Joss said dubiously, “Well, I suppose in a way she had a right to. But you’d better not let Mr. Farleigh get a sight of the thing. He’d go spare.”
Cat could not really see why the sight of a baby griffin should annoy Mr. Farleigh, but he was sure Joss knew. Everything seemed to annoy Mr. Farleigh anyway.
Chapter Thirteen
Marianne did catch Uncle Charles on his way home from Woods House, but he refused to believe that Gammer could do any wrong. He laughed and said, “You have to be older to understand, my chuck. None of us Pinhoes would do a thing like that. We work with the Farleighs.”
Though this seemed to show that no one was going to believe her, Marianne went on trying to make someone understand about Gammer. Almost everyone she spoke to over the next few days said, “Gammer wouldn’t do a thing like that!” and refused to talk about it anymore. Uncle Arthur gave Marianne a pat on the head and a bag of scrittlings for Nutcase. “She was a good mother to me and a good Gammer to all of us,” he said. “You never knew her in her prime.”
Marianne wondered about this. She supposed that a mother with seven sons had to be a good one, but she went and asked Mum about it all the same.
“Good mother!” Mum said. “What gave you that idea? When I was your age, my mother and her friends were always looking out cast-off clothes for your dad and his brothers, or they’d have been running round in rags. She said those boys were too scared of Gammer to tell her when they’d grown out of their things.”
“But didn’t Gammer notice their clothes?” Marianne said.
“Not that I ever saw,” Mum said. “She left the younger ones to Dad to look after.”
But Mum had never liked Gammer, Marianne thought, trying to be fair. Uncle Arthur truly believed what he had said. In many ways Uncle Arthur was very like Dad, though, always believing the best of everyone. Mum snorted whenever Dad said kind and respectful things about Gammer, and called it “rewriting history.” So where did the real truth lie? Somewhere in the middle? Marianne sighed. The facts seemed to be that no one, even Mum, was going to believe that Gammer had sent the Farleighs a plague of frogs or—Marianne stopped on her way upstairs to go on with her story of Princess Irene.
Oh, heavens! she thought. Suppose it wasn’t only frogs!
She turned and went downstairs again. “Just going down to the Dell!” she called to Mum, and went straight there to talk to Aunt Dinah.
As she passed the Post Office, she was glad to see that some of Uncle Simeon’s people were now working on the ruined wall. They were working in that deceptively slow way that witchcraftly workmen did such things, and the wall was nearly waist high already. That must mean that the alterations up at Woods House were almost finished, with the same deceptive, witchcraftly speed.
And here was an example of the way no one would believe any ill of Gammer, Marianne thought. Gammer had broken that Post Office wall. But everyone was treating it as an accident, or an act of God.
She had half a mind to go into the Post Office. Aunt Joy would believe her. But Aunt Joy always believed the worst of everyone. And, more importantly, no one believed Aunt Joy. Marianne went on down the lane toward the Dell. There were still a few of the charmed frogs jumping about in the hedges there. It had been impossible to catch every single one.
Aunt Dinah had surprise all over her square blond face, when Marianne said she wanted to talk to her and not Gammer. But she led the way into her little, dark kitchen, where there were fresh-cooked queen cakes on wire trays all over the table. Aunt Dinah pushed them aside, telling Marianne to eat as many as she wanted, and made them both a cup of coffee. “Now, dear. What is it?”
Marianne had decided to approach this very carefully. Sniffing the lovely smell of new cake, she said, “Does Gammer do any magic at all these days?”
Aunt Dinah looked perplexed, and a little worried. “Why do you want to know, dear?”
“Well,” Marianne said. “It looks as if I might have to be the next Gammer, doesn’t it? And I don’t really know enough.” This was perfectly true, but the next bit wasn’t. She said, in a bit of a rush, “I wondered if she was up to giving me some lessons, seeing her mind isn’t quite right these days. Does she do any workings? Does she get them wrong at all?”
“You have a point,” Aunt Dinah agreed. “But I don’t see how she can, dear. You’d be better off asking your dad to teach you. Gammer just sits these days. Of course she mutters a bit.”
“Don’t tell me,” Marianne said artificially, “that she’s still going on about the Farleighs!”
“Well, you’ve heard her,” said Aunt Dinah. “I admit she can sound quite abusive at times, but it doesn’t mean a thing, bless her!”
“Does she do anything else at all?” Marianne asked, trying to sound disappointed.
Aunt Dinah smiled and shook her head. “Nothing. She just sits and plays with things like a child. The other day she’d got hold of a rose hip and a bit of sneezewort, and she was taking them apart and twiddling them for hours.” (Oh dear! That’s itches and rashes and colds in the head! Marianne thought.) “Lately,” Aunt Dinah said, “she’s been asking for water all the time. I’ve watched her pour it from one glass to another and smile—” (What’s that for? Marianne wondered. It has to be another spell, if she smiled!) “And she mixed soot with some of it,” Aunt Dinah went o
n, “and made it so dirty I had to take it away from her.” (So some of it’s a filth spell, Marianne thought.) “Oh, and the other day,” Aunt Dinah admitted, lowering her voice because this was disgraceful, “she caught a flea. I was so ashamed. I don’t mind her catching ants, the way she does, but a flea! I try to keep her clean as clean, but there she was, holding it and saying, ‘Look, Dinah, here’s a flea!’ I offered to kill it for her, but she did it herself.”
So now she’s done a plague of ants and a plague of fleas! Marianne thought. Right under Aunt Dinah’s nose, too! Those poor Farleighs! No wonder they ill-chanced us! Nerving herself up to say such a thing to a grown-up aunt, Marianne asked, “But don’t all those things seem to be spells of some kind, Aunt Dinah?” Particularly the water, Marianne thought. If she’s poisoned their water, that’s wicked!
“Oh, no, dear,” Aunt Dinah said kindly. “She’s just amusing herself, bless her. She’s left the craft behind her now.”
Marianne drew in a deep, cake-scented breath and said boldly, “I don’t think she has.”
Aunt Dinah laughed. “And I know she has. Don’t worry your head, Marianne, and get your dad to teach you. You can trust Isaac and I to look after Gammer for you.”
So here was another person who would only believe the best of Gammer, Marianne thought sadly as she got up to go. It was almost as if they were under a spell. “I’ll let myself out. Thanks for the coffee,” she told Aunt Dinah.
She strode straight through the hall and ignored Gammer’s voice, raised from behind the door of the front room. “Is that you, Marianne?” Gammer always seemed to know when Marianne was in the Dell.
“No, it isn’t!” she muttered with her teeth clenched.
As she marched off down the lane between the rustling, croaking hedges, Marianne considered Gammer’s spells and wished she knew how to cancel them. They would be strong. If she had any doubts about how strong, she only had to remember the blast of magic Gammer had sent at the Farleighs. That wasn’t just a plain blast, either. It was meant to send the Farleighs away, certainly, but it was also intended to make them believe that Gammer was upright and innocent and in her right mind. Gammer was an expert at interwoven spells.
“Oh!” Marianne said out loud, and almost stopped walking.
Of course Gammer had laid a spell on everyone. She didn’t want anyone to stop her getting her revenge on the Farleighs and she didn’t want to be blamed when the Farleighs fought back. So she had bespelled every single Pinhoe in the village to think only the best of her. The thing that had confused Marianne was the way she herself seemed to be immune to the spell.
Or not quite immune. Marianne walked slowly on, remembering the day they had moved Gammer out of Woods House. It had been perfectly reasonable to her then—if annoying—that Gammer should have rooted herself to her bed, and not at all unreasonable that Gammer should have chased Dolly with the kitchen table and knocked the Post Office wall down. Now she looked back on it, she saw that it was dreadful behavior. Gammer must have been pouring on the ensorcellment that day.
But she had probably started setting the spell before that, probably while she was poltergeisting those poor nurses. None of the aunts and uncles had blamed Gammer for that—but then they almost never did blame Gammer for anything she did—
Marianne’s eyes went wide as she realized that Gammer might have been setting this spell all of Marianne’s own life. No one ever blamed Gammer. She had only to look at the Farleighs to realize how unlikely that was. The Farleighs certainly obeyed old Mr. Farleigh, because he was their Gaffer, but they grumbled that he was set in his ways and very few of them liked him. But the Pinhoes treated Gammer as if she was something natural and precious, like rain in April that was good for the crops—and people grumbled about rain, but never about Gammer.
It puzzled Marianne why she herself seemed to be mostly immune to Gammer’s spell. She thought it must be that Mum was always saying sour things about Gammer—even though Mum was not immune to the spell herself. Mum was not going to help Marianne deal with Gammer. Marianne wondered, rather desperately, if anyone could. Then it occurred to her that the spell almost certainly only applied to people who actually lived in Ulverscote. There were Pinhoes who lived in other places, outside the village. Who could she ask?
The nearest and most obvious person was Great-Uncle Edgar. He and his wife, Great-Aunt Sue, lived a couple of miles out, along the Helm St. Mary road. It was no good expecting Great-Uncle Edgar to believe anything bad about Gammer. He was her brother, after all. But, when she thought about it, Marianne had hopes of Great-Aunt Sue. Aunt Sue had come from a wealthy family on the other side of Hopton, according to Mum, and might be expected to take a more outside view of things—and she surely couldn’t see Gammer as blameless after nearly getting squashed to death between Gammer’s bed and the doorpost. Mum had been taking Aunt Sue jars of her special balm for her bruises ever since.
“Shall I take Aunt Sue another jar of your balm?” Marianne asked Mum as soon as she got back to Furze Cottage.
“Oh, would you!” Mum said. “I’m so busy making up tinctures to help whooping cough, you wouldn’t believe! They say little Nicola’s really poorly with it. She could hardly fetch her breath last night, poor little mite!”
Marianne took off her pinafore and went to fetch her bike from the shed. The first thing she saw there was Mum’s new broomstick. Marianne eyed it, wondering whether to borrow that instead. The stick was white and fresh and the bristles thick and stiff and pinkish. She could see it would fly splendidly. But Mum might object, and Aunt Sue was more likely to look kindly on Marianne if she arrived on an ordinary bicycle. She sighed and wheeled out her bike instead.
It felt strange to be doing this. Last time Marianne had ridden her bike, she had been on her way to school, with Joe pedaling beside her. Joe always made sure Marianne got safely to the girls’ school, although Marianne was not sure that he always went on to the boys’ school after that. Joe was not fond of school.
Joe would have believed me about Gammer! Marianne thought. He said worse things about Gammer than Mum did. And he was surely outside the spell, ten miles away at the Castle. Now there was a thought! But try Aunt Sue first.
As Mum came to the front door with the jar of balm, the bicycle obviously put her in mind of school too. “Remind me to beg us a lift to Hopton from your uncle Lester,” she said, putting the jar of balm into Marianne’s bike basket. “We have to get there for your school uniform sometime this week. School starts again the week after this, doesn’t it? Goodness knows how I’m to get Joe his new uniform, with him away working. He’ll have grown a foot, I know.”
This gave Marianne a sad feeling of urgency as she rode away up the hill. There would be no time for anything once she went back to school. She would have to get someone to believe her about Gammer soon, she thought, standing on her pedals to get up the steep part of the road by the church.
She saw the Reverend Pinhoe out of the corner of her eye as she puffed upward. He was in the churchyard by one of the graves, talking to someone very tall and gentlemanly. A stranger, which was odd. Pinhoes didn’t exactly welcome strangers in the village. But Marianne was distracted then, by two furniture vans up ahead of her, each labeled PICKFORD & PALLEBRAS. Each van was pulled by two dray horses, and both drivers were cracking whips and shouting as they made the difficult turn in through the gates of Woods House. It looked as if the Yeldhams were moving in already.
Marianne put one foot on the ground when she came level with the gates—saying to herself it was not curiosity: she had to stop to get her breath—and watched men in green baize aprons spring down and unlatch the backs of the vans. The van she could see into best had some very nice Londonish furniture stacked inside it. She saw chairs with round backs and buttons, covered in moss green velvet, and a sideboard that Dad would have put his head on one side to admire greatly. Good old work—she could almost hear Dad saying it—beautiful marquetry.
She inherited that fro
m Luke Pinhoe, Marianne thought. It somehow brought home to her that Irene really was a Pinhoe. And she’s coming back home to live! Marianne thought, getting back on her bike. That’s good.
She pedaled past the last few houses and came between the hedges, where the road bent. And there, coming toward her, were six other cyclists, all girls. As soon as they saw Marianne, they stopped and swung their cycles sideways in a herring-bone pattern, blocking the road. Marianne recognized the one in front as Margot Farleigh and the next one as Margot’s cousin Norma. She didn’t know the names of the others, but she knew they were all Farleighs too, and probably best friends with one another because they all had the same hairstyle, very smooth and scraped back, with one little thin dangling plait down one cheek. Oh dear! she thought. She could smell, or feel—or whatever—that each girl had a spell of some kind in the basket on the front of her bike.
“Well, look who’s here!” Margot Farleigh said jeeringly. “It’s Gammer Pinhoe’s little servant!”
“Off to Helm to put another ill-chancing on us, are you?” Norma asked.
“No, I’m not,” Marianne said. “I never put a single ill-chance on anyone.”
This caused a chorus of jeering laughs from all six girls. “Oh, didn’t you?” Margot said, pretending to be surprised. “My mistake. You didn’t bring us frogs, then, or fleas, or nits?”
“Or the rashes, or the flu and the whooping cough, I suppose?” Norma added.
At this, the rest began calling out, “Nor you didn’t put ants in our cupboards, did you?” and “What about all the mud in our washing?” and “What made Gammer Norah swell up, then?” and “So you didn’t make Dorothea fall in the pond—like hell you didn’t!”
Marianne sagged against her bicycle, thinking, Oh lord! Gammer has been busy! “No, honestly,” she said. “You see, Gammer’s not right in her head, and—”
“Oh? Really?” Margot drawled.
“Excuses, excuses,” said Norma.
“She’s right enough in her head to flood all Farleigh houses knee deep in water!” Margot said. “All our houses, from Uphelm to Bowbridge. Not anyone else’s, mark you. Our Gammer Norah’s in a raving rage about it, let me tell you.”