Eva Ibbotson - The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

‘Sparky and humorous… Ibbotson is dextrous with pace and suspense, accessible, always amusing and a treat to read aloud… this book is both joyously light-hearted and profoundly good-natured’ Sunday Times

‘A fast-paced adventure story’ Financial Times

‘An irresistible adventure’ The Times

‘A clever blend of magic and humour, The Beasts of Clawstone Castle is an enthralling story, elegantly written’ Guardian

‘Here’s a story that bubbles with humour… immensely entertaining and beautifully crafted, the story offers suspense, a satisfying conclusion, superb characterization and, above all, good-natured humour’ Books for Keeps

‘This comic adventure has all the right ingredients for a great read — witty characters, hilarious pace and lots of action’ Carousel

‘The book has all of Ibbotson’s gentle wisdom and is a tribute to her inventiveness as well as her lucid prose and lightness of touch’ Times Educational Supplement

‘What a treat’ Daily Mirror

‘Hilarious’ Irish Times

Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna, but when the Nazis came to power her family fled to England and she was sent to boarding school. She planned to become a physiologist, but hated doing experiments on animals and was rescued from some fierce rabbits by her husband-to-be. She became a writer while bringing up her four children, and her bestselling novels for both adults and children have been published around the world. Her books have also won and been shortlisted for many prizes. Journey to the River Sea won the Nestlé Gold Award and was runner-up for the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year and the Guardian Fiction Award. The Star of Kazan won the Nestlé Silver Award and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Eva lives in Newcastle.

The Star of Kazan

Journey to the River Sea

The Great Ghost Rescue

Which Witch?

The Haunting of Hiram

Not Just a Witch

The Secret of Platform 13

Dial a Ghost

Monster Mission

For older readers

A Song for Summer

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

There are children whose best friends have two legs, and there are children whose best friends have four — or a thousand, or none at all.

Madlyn was very fond of people . Ordinary, two-legged people. She liked the girls at her school and in her dancing class, and she liked the people she met at the swimming pool and in the supermarket and the library. When you like people they usually like you back, and Madlyn had so many invitations to parties and sleep-overs that if she had accepted them all she would never have had a night at home. She was very pretty, with silky fair hair and clear blue eyes and a deep laugh — the kind that infects other people and makes them think that being alive is a thoroughly good idea.

Rollo, her brother, who was two years younger, was quite different. He did not mind people, but his truest friends lived under stones or in the rafters of the local church or in heaps of earth in the park, and if he was writing a birthday card it was more likely to be addressed to his stump-tailed skink than to a boy in his class.

The skink didn’t exactly belong to him — it lived in London Zoo — but he had adopted it. The zoo runs a very good scheme whereby children can choose an animal to adopt and when he was six years old his parents had taken him to the zoo to choose something he liked.

The cuddly animals like the wombats and bush-babies and fluffy possums all had waiting lists of children wanting to adopt them, but Rollo had always liked lizards and as soon as he met Stumpy’s eyes and saw his berry-blue tongue flicker out he knew the creature was for him.

The children lived in a ground-floor flat in a pleasant part of south London. Their parents were funny and clever and nice, but they were apt to be a little bit frantic because of their jobs. Mrs Hamilton ran an experimental theatre which put on interesting plays but kept on running out of money, and Mr Hamilton was a designer and had to have good ideas about what people should do with their houses.

Both of them worked long hours and never knew when they were going to be home and, when Rollo was a baby and Madlyn had just started school, life had been rather a muddle. But as Madlyn grew older everything became easier. Though she loved parties and clothes and going out with her friends, she was a sensible and practical girl and soon she began to take a hand in the running of her home. She left notes for her mother, reminding her to pick up Rollo’s coat from the cleaners and make an appointment with the dentist; she rang her father at the office and told his secretary that a man from Hong Kong had come to see him and was eating doughnuts in the kitchen. And almost every morning she found the car keys, which her parents had lost.

Most of all, she saw to it that Rollo had what he needed, which was not always the same as what other boys needed. She soothed him when stupid people asked after his skunk instead of his skink; she stopped the cleaning lady from throwing away the snails he kept in a jar under his bed, and when he had a nightmare she was beside him almost as soon as he woke. It wasn’t that she loved him — she did, of course — but it was more than that. It was as though she was able to get right inside his skin. As for Rollo, when he came in through the front door he looked first of all for Madlyn and if she was there he gave a little sigh of content and went off to his room to get on with his life.

When everything is going along normally it is hard to imagine why there should be a change. But at the beginning of the summer term when Madlyn was eleven an offer came from an American college inviting Mr Hamilton to spend two months in New York setting up a course for people who wanted to start their own design business. There was a room in the college for him and his wife, but nothing at all was said about the children.

‘We can’t possibly leave them,’ said Mr Hamilton.

‘And we can’t possibly take them along,’ said Mrs Hamilton.

‘So we’ll have to refuse.’

‘Yes.’

But the Americans had offered a lot of money and the car was making terrible noises and bills were dropping through the letter box in droves.

‘Unless we send them to the country. They ought to be in the country,’ said Mrs Hamilton. ‘It’s where children ought to be.’

‘But where?’ asked her husband. ‘Where in the country? Where would we send them for two whole months?’

‘Up to the Scottish border. To Clawstone. To Uncle George at Clawstone Castle. I’ve always meant to take them there but…’

By ‘but’ she meant that Uncle George lived in the bleakest and coldest part of England and was a thoroughly grumpy old man.