Барбара Слэй - Carbonel - The King Of Cats

It took her a long time to find the right house, but when she did Miss Withers gave her a piece of seed cake, which she did not much like, and sixpence, which she did. The sixpence she took to the fishmonger on her way home. He was a large man with large rubber boots and large hands permanently spangled with fish scales. As he was an old friend of Rosemary’s she told him what she wanted the fish for. He gave her half-a-pound of Coley and three shrimps, and he would only take fourpence.

‘The Coley’s for bread, as you might say, and the shrimpses is for jam,’ he explained.

Rosemary burst eagerly into the room when she reached home. The saucer she had left on the hearthrug was empty and polished clean, and Carbonel was lying curled up beside it. Rosemary dashed off for the broom and came whirling back.

‘Carbonel, you are very, very naughty! I’ve been so worried. Where have you been?’

The black cat stretched himself and yawned so that she could see his magnificent white teeth and his pink tongue, frilled like a flower petal, between.

‘I don’t know what you are making a fuss about,’ he said. ‘You could have said the Words and called me back again any time you wanted to.’

‘What Words?’ said Rosemary.

‘Oh, didn’t I tell you?’ She shook her head. ‘The Summoning Words. You simply say…

By squeak of bat ,

And brown owl’s hoot ,

By hellebore ,

And mandrake root

Come swift, and silent

As the tomb ,

Dark minion

Of the twiggy broom .

‘The merest doggerel I know, but it works. It wouldn’t be so humiliating if it were better poetry,’ he said bitterly. ‘Whenever you say it I’m bound to come, no matter how important the business I may be engaged upon. Have you never seen a black cat hurrying relentlessly along as though he’s being pulled by an invisible string? Well, that is what has happened to him, not a doubt.’

Rosie repeated the rhyme until she had learned it by heart.

‘It doesn’t sound very polite,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I wouldn’t quite like to call you, “minion of the twiggy broom”.’

‘Well, you’ll have to get over that if you want to summon me. You can’t expect magic to be ladylike. And that reminds me. I was looking at the broom before you came in and there is precious little life in the old thing.’

Rosemary looked at it thoughtfully. It was indeed a sad sight. It reminded her of a parrot she had once seen that was moulting.

‘When the last of those twigs drop off, her power has gone, and it will be too late to find the cauldron and the steeple hat, and I shall be your slave for ever whether you want it or not.’

‘Couldn’t we mend it somehow?’ said Rosemary. ‘I could tie on the twigs with string or raffia or something.’ Carbonel was horrified.

‘Good gracious, no! You can’t mend magic with string!’ he said in a shocked voice. ‘You will be suggesting glue and tin-tacks next. A few weeks ago the cauldron sprang a leak, and SHE insisted on filling up the hole with one of those pot-mender things you get at an ironmonger’s, at sixpence a card. And what was the result?’ He paused dramatically.

‘What?’ breathed Rosemary.

‘Her spells worked out lumpy. But I tell you what, we’ve no time to lose. We’d better start searching this afternoon.’

They had their dinner first. Rosie cooked the fish on the gas ring, and then she warmed up the stew that her mother had left her. They ate together in companionable silence on the hearth-rug. Carbonel seemed really touched by the three shrimps.

‘A Prince of the Royal Blood,’ he said with emotion, ‘and yet nobody before has given me shrimps. I shall not forget.’

When they had finished they decided on the plan of action. It was agreed that they would do best to go back to Fairfax Market.

‘We must take the broom with us so that I can talk to you, but we mustn’t ride on it. I’ve still got tuppence from this morning so we can take a bus there, but we shall have to walk home.’

5

The Search Begins

They reached the market without any adventures. The bus conductor was quite nice about Carbonel going on top, and insisted on calling Rosemary ‘Miss Whittington’, which made everyone in the bus laugh. When they reached the Market it was looking as she had expected to find it the day before. There was a jolly bustle of busy people with bulging shopping bags and baskets, with the noise of people chatting, and stallholders crying their wares. Rosemary could have happily spent the afternoon just looking round, but she knew that more serious work was on hand. They had agreed to go round all the stalls that sold second-hand things first, in the hope that Mrs Cantrip might have sold the hat or the cauldron to one of them, and all the time they were to keep a lookout for the old woman herself. There was always the chance that they might find her there. Rather regretfully Rosemary left the cheerful stalls that sold fruit and groceries, and cotton frocks, and china ornaments. The second-hand stalls were on the edge of the Market, near the spot where Rosemary had bumped into Mrs Cantrip.

They were a little forlorn, these stalls, like the people who kept them. There were rickety bedsteads and lumpy mattresses for sale, chipped chests of drawers, and piles of old shoes and gramophone records, and bundles of spoons and forks tied up like bunches of flowers. There was an old-fashioned hip bath full of oddments marked ‘All in this lot sixpence’ which Rosemary would have liked to explore.

‘Isn’t it funny how old clothes seem to go on being like the people who have worn them,’ she said to Carbonel, looking at a limp hat with feathers on it that was perched jauntily on top of a large chipped china jug.

‘That is just what I say,’ said an old man who was sitting on a chair behind a trestle table covered with old books. Seeing no one else near, he thought she was addressing him.

‘There’s more profit on new ’uns, but not the interest, I always say. Was you wanting something, dearie?’

He looked a kindly little man, and Rosemary plucked up enough courage to say, ‘Please, have you got such a thing as a witch’s hat?’ The old man began to laugh, and he laughed until the laugh turned into a wheezy cough. When he had recovered, he wiped his red-rimmed eyes and said, ‘No, dearie, nor no fairy wands, neither. They’re in short supply at present.’ And he went off into another wheezy laugh at his own joke.

Rosemary moved on to the next stall. Quite clearly, she decided, she must use more guile.

‘Why don’t you use your eyes more!’ said Carbonel crossly. ‘That’s the worst of humans. They will talk too much.’

But use her eyes as she would, Rosemary could see no trace of the hat or the cauldron. There were half-a-dozen possible stalls, but she looked and looked and hung about until she felt she could write down from memory exactly what was for sale on each one. So she decided to walk round the Market on the chance of seeing Mrs Cantrip again. She walked all the way round, which took some time because she could not help stopping to look at most of the stalls, and then she found herself back at the wheezy old man. All this time Carbonel had padded quietly after her. Her legs were aching by now, so she sat down on an empty packing-case, and because she felt it was too public to talk to Carbonel she just stroked him instead. Suddenly the wheezy old man said:

‘Like an apple, ducks?’

It was rather a hard, green apple, but Rosemary was very grateful for it. She thanked him gravely and munched away.