14: In which a Royal Wizard catches a cold
Sophie rode back to the castle’s Kingsbury entrance in one of the King’s coaches, drawn by four horses. On it also were a coachman, a groom, and a footman. A sergeant and six Royal Troopers went with it to guard it. The reason was Princess Valeria. She had climbed into Sophie’s lap. As the coach clattered the short way downhill, Sophie’s dress was still covered with the wet marks of Valeria’s royal approval. Sophie smiled a little. She thought Martha might have a point after all, wanting children, although ten Valerias struck her as a bit much. As Valeria had scrambled over her, Sophie remembered hearing that the Witch had threatened in some way, and she found herself saying to Valeria, “The Witch shan’t hurt you. I won’t let her!”
The King had not said anything about that. But he had ordered out a royal coach for Sophie.
The equipage drew to a very noisy halt outside the disguised stable. Michael shot out of the door and got in the way of the footman who was helping Sophie down. “Where did you get to?” he said. “I’ve been so worried! And Howl’s terribly upset-”
“I’m sure he is,” Sophie said apprehensively.
“Because Mrs. Pentstemmon’s dead,” said Michael.
Howl came to the door too. He looked pale and depressed. He was holding a scroll with red-and-blue royal seals dangling off it, which Sophie eyed guiltily. Howl gave the sergeant a gold piece and did not say a word until the coach and the Troopers had gone clattering away. Then he said, “I make that four horses and ten men just to get rid of one old woman. What did you do to the King?”
Sophie followed Howl and Michael indoors, expecting to find the room covered with green slime. But it was not, and there was Calcifer flaring up the chimney, grinning his purple grin. Sophie sank into the chair. “I think the king got sick of me turning up and blackening your name. I went twice,” she said. “Everything went wrong. And I met the Witch on her way from killing Mrs. Pentstemmon. What a day!”
While Sophie described some of what had happened, Howl leaned on the mantelpiece, dangling the scroll as if he was thinking of feeding it to Calcifer. “Behold the new Royal Wizard,” he said. “My name is very black.” Then he began to laugh, much to the surprise of Sophie and Michael. “And what did she do to the Count of Catterack?” he laughed. “I should never have let her near the King!”
“I did blacken your name!” Sophie protested.
“I know. It was my miscalculation,” Howl said. “Now, how am I going to go to poor Mrs. Pentstemmon’s funeral without the Witch knowing? Any ideas, Calcifer?”
It was clear that Howl was far more upset about Mrs. Pentstemmon than anything else.
Michael was the one who worried about the Witch. He confessed next morning that he had had nightmares all night. He had dreamed she came through all the castle entrances at once. “Where’s Howl?” he asked anxiously.
Howl had gone out very early, leaving the bathroom full of the usual scented steam. He had not taken his guitar, and the doorknob was turned to green-down. Even Calcifer knew no more than that. “Don’t open the door to anyone,’ Calcifer said. “The Witch knows about all our entrances except the Porthaven one.”
This so alarmed Michael that he fetched some planks from the yard and wedged them crosswise over the door. Then he got to work at last on the spell they had got back from Miss Angorian.
Half an hour later the doorknob turned sharply to black-down. The door began to bounce about. Michael clutched at Sophie. “Don’t be afraid,” he said shakily. “I’ll keep you safe.”
The door bounced powerfully for a while. Then it stopped. Michael had just let go of Sophie in great relief when there came a violent explosion. Calcifer plunged to the bottom of the grate and Michael plunged into the broom cupboard, leaving Sophie standing there as the door burst open and Howl stormed in.
“This is a bit much, Sophie!” he said. “I do live here.” He was soaking wet. The gray-and-scarlet suit was black-and-brown. His sleeves and the ends of his hair were dripping.
Sophie looked at the doorknob, still turned to black-down. Miss Angorian, she thought. And he went to see her in that charmed suit. “Where have you been?” she said.
Howl sneezed. “Standing in the rain. None of your business,” he said hoarsely. “What were those planks in aid of?”
“I did them,” Michael said, edging out of the broom cupboard. “The Witch-”
“You must think I don’t know my business,” Howl said irritably. “I have so many misdirection spells out that most people wouldn’t find us at all. I give even the Witch three days. Calcifer, I need a hot drink.”
Calcifer had been climbing up among his logs, but as Howl went over to the fireplace, he plunged down again. “Don’t come near me like that! You’re wet!” he hissed.
“Sophie,’ Howl said pleadingly.
Sophie folded her arms pitilessly. “What about Lettie?” she said.
“I’m soaked through,’ said Howl. “I should have a hot drink.”
“And I said, what about Lettie Hatter?” Sophie said.
“Bother you, then!” said Howl. He shook himself. The water fell off him in a neat ring on the floor. Howl stepped out of it with his hair gleaming dry and his suit gray-and-scarlet and not even damp, and went to fetch the saucepan. “The world is full of hard-hearted women, Michael,” he said. “I can name three without stopping to think.”
“One of them being Miss Angorian?” asked Sophie.
Howl did not answer. He ignored Sophie grandly for the rest of the morning while he discussed moving the castle with Michael and Calcifer. Howl really was going to run away, just as she had warned the King he would, Sophie thought as she sat and sewed more triangles of blue-and-silver suit together. She knew she must get Howl out of that gray-and-scarlet suit as soon as possible.
“I don’t think we need move the Porthaven entrance,” Howl said. He conjured himself a handkerchief out of the air and blew his nose with a hoot which made Calcifer flicker uneasily. “But I want the moving castle well away from anywhere it’s been before and the Kingsbury entrance shut down.”
Someone knocked on the door then. Sophie noticed that Howl jumped and looked round as nervously as Michael. Neither of them answered the door. Coward! Sophie thought scornfully. She wondered why she had gone through all that trouble for Howl yesterday. “I must have been mad!” she muttered to the blue-and-silver suit.
“What about the black-down entrance?” Michael asked when the person knocking seemed to have gone away.
“That stays,” Howl said, and conjured himself another handkerchief with a final sort of flick.
It would! Sophie thought. Miss Angorian is outside it. Poor Lettie!
By the middle of the morning Howl was conjuring handkerchiefs in twos and threes. They were floppy squares of paper really, Sophie saw. He kept sneezing. His voice grew hoarser. He was conjuring handkerchiefs by the half-dozen soon. Ashes from the used ones were piled all round Calcifer.
“Oh, why is that whenever I go to Wales I always come back with a cold!” Howl croaked and conjured himself a whole wad of tissues.
Sophie snorted.
“Did you say something?” Howl croaked.
“No, but I was thinking that people who run away from everything deserve every cold they get,” Sophie said. “People who are appointed to do something by the King and go courting in the rain instead have only themselves to blame.”
“You don’t know everything I do, Mrs. Moralizer,’ Howl said. “Want me to write out a list before I go out another time? I have looked for Prince Justin. Courting isn’t the only thing I do when I go out.”
“When have you looked?” said Sophie.
“Oh, how your ears flap and your long nose twitches!” Howl croaked. “I looked when he first disappeared, of course. I was curious to know what Prince Justin was doing up this way, when everyone knew Suliman had gone to the Waste. I think someone must have sold him a dud finding spell, because he went right over into the Folding Valley and bought another from Mrs. Fairfax. And that fetched him back this way, fairly naturally, where he stopped at he castle and Michael sold him another finding spell and a disguise spell-”
Michael’s hand went over his mouth. “Was that man in the green uniform Prince Justin?”
“Yes, but I didn’t mention the matter before,” said Howl, “because the King might have thought you should have had the sense to sell him another dud. I had a conscience about it. Conscience. Notice that word, Mrs. Longnose. I had a conscience.” Howl conjured another wad of handkerchiefs and glowered at Sophie over them out of eyes that were now red-rimmed and watery. Then he stood up. “I feel ill,” he announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.” He tottered piteously to the stairs. “Bury me beside Mrs. Pentstemmon,” he croaked as he went up them to bed.
Sophie applied herself to her sewing harder than ever. Here was her chance to get the gray-and-scarlet suit off Howl before it did more damage to Miss Angorian’s heart-unless, of course, Howl went to bed in his clothes, which she did not put past him. So Howl must have been looking for Prince Justin when he went to Upper folding and met Lettie. Poor Lettie! Sophie thought, putting brisk, tiny stitches round her fifty-seventh blue triangle. Only another forty or so to go.
Howl’s voice was presently heard shouting weakly, “Help me, someone! I’m dying from neglect up here!”
Sophie snorted. Michael left off working on his new spell and ran up and downstairs. Things became very restless. In the time it took Sophie to sew ten more blue triangles Michael ran upstairs with lemon and honey, with a particular book, with cough mixture, with a spoon to take the cough mixture with, and then with nose drops, throat pastilles, gargle, pen, paper, three more books, and an infusion of willow bark. People kept knocking at the door too, making Sophie jump and Calcifer flicker uneasily. When no one opened the door, some of the people went on hammering for five minutes or so, rightly thinking they were being ignored.
By this time, Sophie was becoming worried about the blue-and-silver suit. It was getting smaller and smaller. One cannot sew in that number of triangles without taking up quite a lot of cloth in the seams. ‘Michael,” she said when Michael came rushing downstairs again because Howl fancied a bacon sandwich for lunch. “Michel, is there a way of making small clothes larger?”
“Oh, yes,” said Michael. “That’s just what my new spell is-when I get the chance to work on it. He wants six slices of bacon in the sandwich. Could you ask Calcifer?”
Sophie and Calcifer exchanged speaking looks. ‘I don’t think he’s dying,” Calcifer said.
“I’ll give you the rinds to eat if you bend your head down,” Sophie said, laying down her sewing. It was easier to bribe Calcifer than bully him.
They had bacon sandwiches for lunch, but Michel had to rush upstairs in the middle of eating his. He came down with the news that Howl wanted him to go into Market Chipping now, to get some things he needed for moving the castle.
“But the Witch-is it safe?” Sophie asked.
Michael licked bacon grease off his fingers and dived into the broom cupboard. He came out with one of the dusty velvet cloaks slung round his shoulders. At last, the person who came out wearing the cloak was a burly man with a red beard. This person licked his fingers and said with Michael’s voice, “Howl thinks I’ll be safe enough like this. It’s misdirection as well as disguise. I wonder if Lettie will know me.” The burly man opened the door green-down and jumped out onto the slowly moving hills.
Peace descended. Calcifer settled and chinked. Howl had evidently realized that Sophie was not going to run about after him. There was silence upstairs. Sophie got up and cautiously hobbled to the broom cupboard. This was her chance to go and see Lettie. Lettie must be very miserable by now. Sophie was fairly sure Howl had not been near her since that day in the orchard. It might just do some good if Sophie were to tell her that her feelings were caused by a charmed suit. Anyway, she owed it to Lettie to tell her.
The seven-league boots were not in the cupboard. Sophie could not believe it at first. She turned everything out. And there was nothing there but ordinary buckets, brooms, and the other velvet cloak. “Drat the man!” Sophie exclaimed. Howl had obviously made sure she would not follow him anywhere.
She was putting everything back into the cupboard when someone knocked at the door. Sophie, as usual, jumped and hoped they would go away. Bu this person seemed more determined than most. Whoever it was went on knocking-or perhaps hurling him or herself at the door, for the sound was more a steady whump, whump, whump, than proper knocking. After five minutes they were still doing it.
Sophie looked at the uneasy green flickers which were all she could see of Calcifer. “Is it the Witch?”
“No,” said Calcifer, muffled among his logs. “It’s the castle door. Someone must be running along beside us. We’re going quite fast.”
“Is it the scarecrow?” Sophie asked, and her chest gave a tremor at the mere idea.
“It’s flesh and blood,” Calcifer sad. His blue face climbed up into the chimney, looking puzzled. “I’m not sure what it is, except it wants to come in badly. I don’t think it means any harm.”
Since the whump, whump just kept on, giving Sophie an irritable feeling of urgency, she decided to open the door and put a stop to it. Besides, she was curious about what it was. She still had the second velvet cloak in her hand from turning out the broom cupboard, so she threw it round her shoulders as he went to the door. Calcifer stared. Then, for the first time since she had known him, he bent his head down voluntarily. Great cackles of laughter came from under the curly green flames. Wondering what the cloak had turned her into, Sophie opened the door.
A huge, spindly greyhound leaped off the hillside between the grinding black blocks of the castle and landed in the middle of the room. Sophie dropped the cloak and backed away hurriedly. She had always been nervous of dogs, and greyhounds are not reassuring to look at. This one put itself between her and the door and stared at her. Sophie looked longingly at the wheeling rocks outside and wondered whether it would do any good to yell for Howl.
The dog bent its already bent back and somehow hoisted itself onto its lean hind legs. That made it almost as tall as Sophie. It held its front legs stiffly out and heaved upward again. Then, as Sophie had her mouth open to yell to Howl, the creature put out what was obviously an enormous effort and surged upward into the shape of a man in a crumpled brown suit. He had gingerish hair and a pale, unhappy face.
“Came from Upper Folding!” panted this dog-man. “Love Lettie-Lettie sent me-Lettie crying and very unhappy-sent me to you-told me to stay-” He began to double up and shrink before he had finished speaking. He gave a dog howl of despair and annoyance. “Don’t tell Wizard!” he whined and dwindled away inside reddish curly hair into a dog again. A different dog. This time he seemed to be a red setter. The red setter waved its fringed tail and stared earnestly at Sophie from melting, miserable eyes.
“Oh, dear,” said Sophie as she shut the door. “You do have troubles, my friend. You were that collie dog, weren’t you? Now I see what Mrs. Fairfax was talking about. That Witch wants slaying, she really does! But why has Lettie sent you here? If you don’t want me to tell Wizard Howl-”
The dog growled faintly at the name. But it also wagged its tail and stared appealingly.
“All right. I won’t tell him,” Sophie promised. The dog seemed reassured. He trotted to the hearth, where he gave Calcifer a somewhat wary look and lay down beside the fender in a skinny red bundle. “Calcifer, what do you think?” Sophie said.
“This dog is a bespelled human,” Calcifer said unnecessarily.
“I know, but can you take the spell off him?” Sophie asked. She supposed Lettie must have heard, like so many people, that howl had a witch working for him now. And it seemed rather important to turn the dog into a man again and send him back to Upper Folding before Howl got out of bed and found him there.
“No. I’d need to be linked with Howl for that,” Calcifer said.
“Then I’ll try it myself,” Sophie said. Poor Lettie! Breaking her heart for Howl, and her only other lover a dog most of the time! Sophie laid her hand on the dog’s soft, rounded head. “Turn back into the man you should be,” she said. She said it quite often, but its only effect seemed to be to send the dog deeply to sleep. It snored and twitched against Sophie’s legs.
Meanwhile a certain amount of moaning and groaning was coming from upstairs. Sophie kept muttering to the dog and ignored it. A loud, hollow coughing followed, dying away into more moaning. Crashing sneezes followed the coughing, each one rattling the window and all the doors. Sophie found those harder to ignore, but she managed. Poot-pooooot! went a blown nose, like a bassoon in a tunnel. The coughing started again, mingled with moans. Sneezes mixed with the moans and the coughs, and the sounds rose to a crescendo in which Howl seemed to be managing to cough, groan, blow his nose, sneeze, and wail gently all at the same time. The doors rattled, the beams in the ceiling shook, and one of Calcifer’s logs rolled off onto the hearth.
“All right, all right, I get the message!” Sophie said, dumping the log back into the grate. “It’ll be green slime next. Calcifer, make sure that dog stays where it is.” And she climbed the stairs, muttering loudly, “Really, these wizards! You’d think no one had ever had a cold before! Well, what is it?” she asked, hobbling through the bedroom door onto the filthy carpet.
“I’m dying of boredom,” Howl said pathetically. “Or maybe just dying.”
He was lying propped on dirty gray pillows, looking quite poorly, with what might have been a patchwork coverlet over him except that it was all one color with dust. The spiders he seemed to like so much were spinning busily in the canopy above him.
Sophie felt his forehead. “You do have a bit of a fever,” she admitted.
“I’m delirious,” said Howl. “Spots are crawling before my eyes.”
“Those are spiders,” said Sophie. “Why can’t you cure yourself with a spell?”
“Because there is no cure for a cold,” Howl said dolefully. “Things are going round and round in my head-or maybe my head is going round and round in things. I keep thinking of the terms of the Witch’s curse. I hadn’t realized she could lay me bare like that. It’s a bad thing to be laid bare, even though the things that are true so far are all my own doing. I keep waiting for the rest to happen.”
Sophie thought back to the puzzling verse. “What things? ‘Tell me where all the past years are’?”
“Oh, I know that,” said Howl. “My own, or anyone else’s. They’re all there, just where they always were. I could go and play bad fairy at my own christening if I wanted. Maybe I did and that’s my trouble. No, there are only three things I’m waiting for: the mermaids, the mandrake root, and the wind to advance an honest mind. And whether I get white hairs, I suppose, only I’m not going to take the spell off to see. There’s only about three weeks left for them to come true in, and the Witch gets me as soon as they do. But the Rugby Club Reunion is Midsummer Eve, so I shall get to that at least. The rest all happened long ago.”
“You mean the falling star and never being able to find a woman true and fair?” said Sophie. “I’m not surprised, the way you go on. Mrs. Pentstemmon told me you were going to the bad. She was right, wasn’t she?”
“I must go to her funeral if it kills me,” Howl said sadly. “Mrs. Pentstemmon always thought far too well of me. I blinded her with my charm.” Water ran out of his eyes. Sophie had no idea if he was really crying, or whether it was simply his cold. But she noticed he was slithering out again.
“I was talking about the way you keep dropping ladies as soon as you’ve made them love you,” she said. “Why do you do it?”
Howl pointed a shaky hand up toward the canopy of his bed. “That’s why I love spiders. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, again.’ I keep trying,” he said with great sadness. “But I brought it on myself by making a bargain some years ago, and I know I shall never be able to love anyone properly now.”
The water running out of Howl’s eyes was definitely tears now. Sophie was concerned. “Now, you mustn’t cry-”
There was a pattering outside. Sophie looked round to see the dog-man oozing himself past the door in a neat half-circle. She reached out and caught a handful of his red coat, thinking he was certainly coming to bite Howl. But all the dog did was to lean against her legs, so that she had to stagger back to the peeling wall.
“What’s this?” said Howl.
“My new dog,” Sophie said, hanging on to its curly hair. Now she was against the wall, she could see out of the bedroom window. It ought to have looked out on the yard, but instead it showed a view of a neat, square garden with a child’s metal wing in the middle. The setting sun was firing raindrops hanging on the swing to blue and red. As Sophie stood and stared, Howl’s niece, Mari, came running across the wet grass. Howl’s sister, Megan, followed Mari. She was evidently shouting that Mari should not sit on the wet swing, but no sound seemed to come through. “Is that the place called Wales?” Sophie asked.
Howl laughed and pounded on the coverlet. Dust climbed like smoke. “Bother that dog!” he croaked. “I had a bet on with myself that I could keep you from snooping out of the window all the time you were in here!”
“Did you now?” said Sophie, and she let go of the dog, hoping he would bite Howl hard. But the dog only went on leaning on her, shoving her toward the door now. “So all that song and dance was just a game, was it?” she said. “I might have known!”
Howl lay back on his gray pillows, looking wronged and injured. “Sometimes,” he said reproachfully, “you sound just like Megan.”
“Sometimes,” Sophie answered, shooing the dog out of the room in front of her, “I understand how Megan got the way she is.”
And she shut the door on the spiders, the dust, and the garden, with a loud bang.