20: In which Sophie finds further difficulties in leaving the castle
Midsummer Day dawned. About the same moment that it did, Howl crashed in through the door with such noise that Sophie shot up in her cubbyhole, convinced that the Witch was hot on his heels.
“They think so much about me that they always play without me!” Howl bellowed. Sophie realized that he was only trying to sing Calcifer’s saucepan song and lay down again, whereupon Howl fell over the chair and caught his foot in the stool so that it shot across the room. After that, he tried to go upstairs through the broom cupboard, and then the yard. This seemed to puzzle him a little. But finally he discovered the stairs, all except the bottom one, and fell up them on his face. The whole castle shook.
“What’s the matter?” Sophie asked, sticking her head through the banister.
“Rugby Club Reunion,” Howl replied with thick dignity. “Didn’t know I used to fly up the wing for my university, did you, Mrs. Nose?”
“If you were trying to fly, you must have forgotten how,” Sophie said.
“I was born to strange sights,” said Howl, “things invisible to see, and I was just on my way to bed when you interrupted me. I know where all the past years are, and who cleft the Devil’s foot.”
“Go to bed, you fool,” Calcifer said sleepily. “You’re drunk.”
“Who, me?” said Howl. “I assure you, my friends, that I am cone sold stober.” He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him. “What a lie that was!” Howl remarked as he walked into the wall. “My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.” He walked into the wall several times more, in several different places, before he discovered his bedroom door and crashed his way through it. Sophie could hear him falling about, saying that his bed was dodging.
“He is quite impossible!” Sophie said, and she decided to leave at once.
Unfortunately, the noise Howl made woke Michael up, and Percival, who was sleeping on the floor in Michael’s room. Michael came downstairs, saying that they were so thoroughly awake that they might as well go out and gather the flowers for the Midsummer garlands while the day was still cool. Sophie was not sorry to go out into the place of flowers for one last time. There was a warm, milky haze out there, filled with the scent and half-hidden colors. Sophie thumped along, testing the squashy ground with her stick and listening to the whirrings and twitters of the thousands of birds, feeling truly regretful. She stroked a moist satin lily and fingered one of the ragged purple flowers with long, powdery stamens. She looked back at the tall black castle breathing the mist behind them. She sighed.
“He made it much better,” Percival remarked as he put an armful of hibiscus into Michael’s floating bath.
“Who did?” said Michael.
“Howl,” said Percival. “There were only bushes at first, and they were quite small and dry.”
“You remember being here before?” Michael asked excitedly. He had by no means given up his idea that Percival might be Prince Justin.
“I think I was here with the Witch,” Percival said doubtfully.
They fetched two bathloads of flowers. Sophie noticed that when they came in the second time, Michael spun the knob over the door several times. That must have something to do with keeping the Witch out. Then of course there were the Midsummer garlands to make. That took a longtime. Sophie had meant to leave Michael and Percival to do that, but Michael was too busy asking Percival cunning questions and Percival was very slow at the work. Sophie knew what made Michael excited. There was a sort of air about Percival, as if he expected something to happen soon. It made Sophie wonder just how much in the power of the Witch he still was. She had to make most of the garlands. Any thoughts she might have had about staying and helping Howl against the Witch vanished. Howl, who could have made all the garlands just by waving his hand, was now snoring so loudly she could hear him right through the shop.
They were so long making the garlands that it was time to open the shop before they had finished. Michael fetched them bread and honey, and they ate while they dealt with the tremendous first rush of customers. Although Midsummer Day, in the way of holidays, had turned out to be a gray and chilly day in Market Chipping, half the town came, dressed in fine holiday clothes, to buy flowers and garlands for the festival. There was the usual jostling crowd out in the street. So many people came into the shop that it was getting on midday before Sophie finally stole away up the stairs and through the broom cupboard. They had taken so much money, Sophie thought as she stole about, packing up some food and her old clothes in a bundle, that Michael’s hoard under the hearthstone would be ten times the size.
“Have you come to talk to me?” asked Calcifer.
“In a moment,” Sophie said, crossing room with her bundle behind her back. She did not want Calcifer raising an outcry about that contract.
She stretched out her hand to unhook her stick from the chair, and somebody knocked at the door. Sophie stuck, with her hand stretched out, looked inquiringly at Calcifer.
“It’s the mansion door,” said Calcifer. “Flesh and blood and harmless.”
The knocking came again. This always happens when I try to leave! Sophie thought. She turned the knob orange-down and opened the door.
There was a carriage in the drive beyond the statues, pulled by a goodish pair of horses. Sophie could see it round the edges of the very large footman who had been doing the knocking.
“Mrs. Sacheverell Smith to call upon the new occupants,” said the footman.
How very awkward! Sophie thought. It was the result of Howl’s new paint and curtains. “We’re not at h-” she began. But Mrs. Sacheverell Smith swept the footman aside and came in.
“Wait with the carriage, Theobald,” she said to the footman a she sailed past Sophie, folding her parasol.
It was Fanny-Fanny looking wonderfully prosperous in cream silk. She was wearing the cream silk hat trimmed with roses, which Sophie remembered only too well. She remembered what she had said to that hat as she trimmed it: “You are going to have to marry money.” And it was quite clear from the look of her that Fanny had.
“Oh, dear!” said Fanny, looking round. “There must be some mistake. This is the servants quarters!”
“Well-er-we’re not quite moved in yet, Madam,” Sophie said, and wondered how Fanny would feel if she knew that the old hat shop was only just beyond the broom cupboard.
Fanny turned round and gaped at Sophie. “Sophie!” she exclaimed. “Oh, good gracious, child, what’s happened to you? You look about ninety! Have you been very ill?” And, to Sophie’s surprise, fanny threw aside her hat and her parasol and all of her grand manner and flung her arms round Sophie and wept. “Oh, I didn’t now what had happened to you!” she sobbed. “I went to Martha and I sent to Lettie, and neither of them knew. They changed places, silly girls, did you know? But nobody knew a thing about you! I’ve reward out still. And here you are, working as a servant, when you could be living in luxury up the hill with me and Mr. Smith!”
Sophie found she was crying as well. She hurriedly dropped her bundle and led Fanny to the chair. She pulled the stool up and sat beside Fanny, holding her hand. By this time they were both laughing as well as crying. They were most powerfully glad to see one another again.
“It’s a long story,” Sophie said after Fanny had asked her six times what happened to her. “When I looked in the mirror and saw myself like this, it was such a shock that I sort of wandered away-”
“Overwork,” Fanny said wretchedly. “How I’ve blamed myself!”
“Not really,” said Sophie. “And you mustn’t worry, because Wizard Howl took me in-”
“Wizard Howl!” exclaimed Fanny. “That wicked, wicked man! Has he done this to you? Where is he? Let me at him!”
She seized her parasol and became so very warlike that Sophie had to hold her down. Sophie did not care to think how Howl might react if Fanny woke him by stabbing him with her parasol. “No, no!” she said. “Howl has been very kind to me.” And this was true, Sophie realized. Howl showed his kindness rather strangely, but, considering all Sophie had done to annoy him, he had been very good to her indeed.
“But they say he eats women alive!” Fanny said, still struggling to get up.
Sophie held down her waving parasol. “He doesn’t really,” she said. “Do listen. He’s not wicked at all!” There was a bit of a fizz from the grate at this, where Calcifer was watching with some interest. “He isn’t!” Sophie said, to Calcifer as much as to Fanny. “In all the time I’ve been here, I’ve not seen him work a single evil spell!” Which again was true, she knew.
“Then I have to believe you,” Fanny said, relaxing, “though I’m sure it must be your doing if he’s reformed. You always did have a way with you, Sophie. You could stop Martha’s tantrums when I couldn’t do a thing with her. And I always said it was thanks to you that Lettie only got her way half of the time instead of all the time! But you should have told me where you were, love!”
Sophie knew she should have. She had taken Martha’s view of Fanny, whole and entire, when she should have known Fanny better. She was ashamed.
Fanny could not wait to tell Sophie about Mr. Sacheverell Smith. She launched into a long and excited account of how she had met Mr. Smith the very week Sophie had left, and married him before the week was out. Sophie watched her as she talked. Being old gave her an entirely new view of Fanny. She was a lady who was still young and pretty, and she had found the hat shop as boring as Sophie did. But she had stuck with it and done her best, both with the shop and the three girls-until Mr. Hatter died. Then she had suddenly been afraid she was just like Sophie: old, with no reason, and nothing to show for it.
“And then, with you not being there to pass it on to, there seemed no reason not to sell the sop,” Fanny was saying, when there was a clatter of feet in the broom cupboard.
Michael came through, saying, “We’ve shut the shop. And look who’s here!” He was holding Martha’s hand.
Martha was thinner and fairer and almost looked like herself again. She let go of Michael and rushed at Sophie, shouting, “Sophie, you should have told me!” while she flung her arms round her. Then she flung her arms round Fanny, just as if she had never said all those things about her.
But this was not all. Lettie and Mrs. Fairfax came through the cupboard after Martha, carrying a hamper between them, and after them came Percival, who looked livelier than Sophie had ever seen him. “We came over by carrier at first light,” Mrs. Fairfax said, “and we brought-Bless me! It’s Fanny!” she dropped her end of the hamper and ran to hug fanny. Lettie dropped her end and ran to hug Sophie.
In fact, there was such general hugging and exclaiming and shouting that Sophie thought it was a marvel Howl did not wake up. But she could hear him snoring even through the shouting. I shall have to leave this evening, she thought. She was too glad to see everyone to consider leaving before that.
Lettie was very fond of Percival. While Michael carried the hamper to the bench and unpacked cold chickens and wines and honey puddings from it, Lettie hung on to Percival’s arm in an ownerlike way that Sophie could not quite approve of, and made him tell her all he remembered. Percival did not seem to mind. Lettie looked so lovely that Sophie did not blame him.
“He just arrived and kept turning into a man and then into different dogs and insisting that he knew me,” Lettie said to Sophie. “I knew I’d never seen him before, but it didn’t matter.” She patted Percival’s shoulder as if he were still a dog.
“But you had met Prince Justin?” Sophie said.
“Oh, yes,” Lettie said offhandedly. “Mind you, he was in disguise in a green uniform, but it was obviously him. He was so smooth and courtly, even when he was annoyed about the finding spells. I had to make him up two lots because they would keep showing that Wizard Suliman was somewhere between us and Market Chipping, and he swore that couldn’t be true. And all the time I was doing them, he kept interrupting me, calling me ‘sweet lady’ in a sarcastic sort of way, and asking me who I was and where my family lived and how old I was. I thought it was cheek! I’d rather have Wizard Howl, and that’s saying something!”
By this time everyone was milling about, eating chicken and sipping wine. Calcifer seemed to be shy. He had gone down to green flickers and nobody seemed to notice him. Sophie wanted him to meet Lettie. She tried to coax him out.
“Is that really the demon who has charge of Howl’s life?” Lettie said, looking down at the green flickers rather disbelievingly.
Sophie looked up to assure Lettie that Calcifer was real and saw Miss Angorian standing by the door, looking shy and uncertain. “Oh, do excuse me. I’ve come at a bad time, haven’t I?” Miss Angorian said. “I just wanted to talk to Howell.”
Sophie stood up, not quite sure what to do. She was ashamed of the way she had driven Miss Angorian out before. It was only because she knew Howl was courting Miss Angorian. On the other hand, that did not mean she had to like her.
Michael took things out of Sophie’s hands by greeting Miss Angorian with a beaming smile and a shout of welcome. “Howl’s asleep at the moment,” he said. “Come and have a glass of wine while you wait.”
“How kind,” said Miss Angorian.
But it was plain that Miss Angorian was not happy. She refused wine and wandered nervously about, nibbling at a leg of chicken. The room was full of people who all knew one another very well and she was the outsider. Fanny did not help by turning form nonstop talk with Mrs. Fairfax and saying, “What peculiar clothes!” Martha did not help either. She had seen how admiringly Michael had greeted Miss Angorian. She went and made sure that Michael did not talk to anyone but herself and Sophie. And Lettie ignored Miss Angorian and went to sit on the stairs with Percival.
Miss Angorian seemed rather quickly to decide that she had had enough. Sophie saw her at the door, trying to open it. She hurried over, feeling very guilty. After all, Miss Angorian must have felt strongly about Howl to have come here at all. “Please don’t go yet,” Sophie said. “I’ll go and wake Howl up.”
“Oh, no, you mustn’t do that,” Miss Angorian said, smiling nervously. “I’ve got a day off, and I’m quite happy to wait. I thought I’d go and explore outside. It’s rather stuffy in here with that funny green fire burning.”
This seemed to Sophie the perfect way to get rid of Miss Angorian without really getting rid of her. She politely opened the door for her. Somehow-maybe it had to do with the defenses Howl had asked Michael to keep up-the knob had got turned round to purple-down. Outside was a misty blaze of sun and the drifting banks of red and purple flowers.
“What gorgeous rhododendrons!” Miss Angorian exclaimed in her huskiest and most throbbing voice. “I must look!” She sprang eagerly down into the marshy grass.
“Don’t go toward the southeast,” Sophie called after her.
The castle was drifting off sideways. Miss Angorian buried her beautiful face in a cluster of white flowers. “I won’t go far at all,” she said.
“Good gracious!” Fanny said, coming up behind Sophie. “Whatever has happened to my carriage?”
Sophie explained, as far as she could. But Fanny was so worried that Sophie had to turn the door orange-down and open it to show the mansion drive in a much grayer day, where the footman and Fanny’s coachman were sitting on the roof of the carriage eating cold sausage and playing cards. Only then would Fanny believe that her carriage had not been mysteriously spirited away. Sophie was trying to explain, without really knowing herself, how one door could open on several different places, when Calcifer surged up from his logs, roaring.
“Howl!” he roared, filling the chimney with blue flame. “Howl! Howell Jenkins, the Witch has found your sister’s family!”
There were two violent thumps overhead. Howl’s bedroom door crashed and Howl came tearing downstairs. Lettie and Percival were hurled out of his way. Fanny screamed faintly at the sight of him. Howl’s hair was like a haystack and there were red rims round his eyes. “Got me on my weak flank, blast her!” he shouted as he shot across the room with his black sleeves flying. “I was afraid she would! Thanks, Calcifer!” He shoved Fanny aside and hauled open the door.
Sophie heard the door bang behind Howl as she hobbled upstairs. She knew it was nosy, but she had to see what happened. As she hobbled through Howl’s bedroom, she heard everyone else following her.
“What a filthy room!” Fanny exclaimed.
Sophie looked out the window. It was drizzling in the neat garden. The swing was hung with drops. The Witch’s waving mane of red hair was all dewed with it. She stood leaning against the swing, tall and commanding in her red robes, beckoning and beckoning again. Howl’s niece, Mari, was shuffling over the wet grass toward the Witch. She did not look as if she wanted to go, but she seemed to have no choice. Behind her, Howl’s nephew, Neil, was shuffling toward the Witch even more slowly, glowering in his most ferocious way. And Howl’s sister, Megan, was behind the two children. Sophie could se Megan’s arms gesturing and Megan’s mouth opening and shutting. She was clearly giving the Witch a piece of her mind, but she was being drawn toward the Witch too.
Howl burst out onto the lawn. He had not bothered to alter his clothes. He did not bother to do any magic. He just charged straight at the Witch. The Witch made a grab for Mari, but Mari was still too far away. Howl got to Mari first, slung her behind him, and charged on. And the Witch ran. She ran. Like a cat with a dog after it, across the lawn and over the neat fence, in a flurry of flame-colored robes, with Howl, like the chasing dog, a foot or so behind and closing. The Witch vanished over the fence in a red blur. Howl went after her in a black blur with trailing sleeves. Then the fence hid both of them from sight.
“I hope he catches her,” said Martha. “The little girl’s crying.”
Down below, Megan put her arm round Mari and took both children indoors. There was no knowing what had happened to Howl and the Witch. Lettie and Percival and Martha and Michael went back downstairs. Fanny and Mrs. Fairfax were transfixed with disgust at the state of Howl’s bedroom.
“Look at those spiders!” Mrs. Fairfax said.
“And the dust on these curtains!” said Fanny. “Annabel, I saw some brooms in that passage you came through.”
“Let’s get them,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “I’ll pin that dress up for you, Fanny, and we’ll get to work. I can’t bear a room to be in this state!”
Oh, poor Howl! Sophie thought. He does love those spiders! She hovered on the stairs, wondering how to stop Mrs. Fairfax and Fanny.
From downstairs, Michael called, “Sophie! We’re going to look round the mansion. Want to come?”
That seemed the ideal thing to stop the two ladies from cleaning. Sophie called to Fanny and hobbled hurriedly downstairs. Lettie and Percival were already opening the door. Lettie had not listened when Sophie explained it to Fanny. And it was clear that Percival did not understand either. Sophie saw they were opening it purple-down by mistake. They got it open as Sophie hobbled across the room to put them right.
The scarecrow loomed up in the doorway against the flowers.
“Shut it!” Sophie screamed. She saw what had happened. She had actually helped the scarecrow last night by telling it to go ten times as fast. It had simply sped to the castle entrance and tried to get in there. But Miss Angorian was out there. Sophie wondered if she was lying in the bushes in a dead faint. “No, don’t,” she said weakly.
No one was attending to her anyway. Lettie’s face was the color of Fanny’s dress, and she was clutching Martha. Percival was standing and staring, and Michael was trying to catch the skull, which was yattering its teeth so hard that it was threatening to fall off the bench and take a wine bottle with it. And the skull seemed to have a strange effect on the guitar too. It was giving out long, humming twangs: Noumm harrumm! Noumm Harrumm!
Calcifer flamed up the chimney again. “The thing is speaking,” he said to Sophie. “It is saying it means no harm. I think it is speaking the truth. It is waiting for your permission to come in.”
Certainly the scarecrow was just standing there. It was not trying to barge inside as it had before. And Calcifer must have trusted it. He had stopped the castle moving. Sophie looked at the turnip face and the fluttering rags. It was not so frightening after all. She had once had fellow feeling for it. She rather suspected that she had made it into a convenient excuse for not leaving the castle because she had really wanted to stay. Now there was no point. Sophie had to leave anyway Howl preferred Miss Angorian.
“Please come in,” she said, a little croakily.
“Ahmmng!” said the guitar. The scarecrow surged into the room with one powerful sideways hop. It stood swinging about on its one leg as if it was looking for something. The smell of flowers it had brought in with it did not hide its own smell of dust and rotting turnip.
The skull yattered under Michael’s fingers again. The scarecrow spun round, gladly, and fell sideways toward it. Michael made one attempt to rescue the skull and then got hastily out of the way. For as the scarecrow fell across the bench, there came a fizzing jolt of strong magic and the skull melted into the scarecrow’s turnip head. It seemed to get inside the turnip and fill it out. There was now a strong suggestion of a rather craggy face on the turnip. The trouble was, it was on the back side of the scarecrow. The scarecrow gave a wooden scramble, hopped upright uncertainly, and then swiftly spun its body round so that the front of it was under the craggy turnip face. Slowly it eased its outstretched arms down to its sides.
“Now I can speak,” it said in a somewhat mushy voice.
“I may faint,” Fanny announced, on the stairs.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Fairfax said, behind Fanny. “The thing’s only a magician’s golem. It has to do what it was sent to do. They’re quite harmless.”
Lettie, all the same, looked ready to faint. But the only one who did faint was Percival. He flopped to the floor, quite quietly, and lay curled up as if he were asleep. Lettie, in spite of her terror, ran toward him, only to back away as the scarecrow gave another hop and stood itself in front of Percival.
“This is one of the parts I was sent to find,” it said in its mushy voice. It swung on its stick until it was facing Sophie. “I must thank you,” it said. “My skull was far away and I ran out of strength before I reached it. I would have lain in that hedge forever if you had not come and talked life into me.” It swiveled to Mrs. Fairfax and then to Lettie. “I thank you both too,” it said.
“Who sent you? What are you supposed to do?” Sophie said.
The scarecrow swung about uncertainly. “More than this,” it said. “There are still part missing.” Everyone waited, most of them too shaken to speak, while the scarecrow rotated this way and that, seemingly thinking.
“What is Percival a part of?” Sophie said.
“Let it collect itself,” said Calcifer. “No one’s asked it to explain itself bef-” He suddenly stopped speaking and shrank until barely a green flame showed. Michael and Sophie exchanged alarmed glances.
Then a new voice spoke, out of nowhere. It was enlarged and muffled, as it if it were speaking in a box, but it was unmistakably the voice of the Witch. “Michael Fisher,” it said, “tell your master, Howl, that he fell for my decoy. I now have woman called Lily Angorian in my fortress in the Waste. Tell him I will only let her go if he himself comes to fetch her. Is that clear, Michael Fisher?”
The scarecrow whirled round and hopped for the open door.
“Oh, no!” Michael cried out. “Stop it! The Witch must have sent it so that she could get it in here!”