a stiff, bent, crumpled way that showed Charmain he was in quite a lot of pain. She was surprised to find that she felt sorry for him, but she did wish he wouldn’t stare at her so steadily. It made her feel guilty. And his lower eyelids drooped from his tired blue eyes, showing the insides all red, like blood. Charmain disliked blood almost as much as she disliked earthworms.
“Well, you seem a very tall, competent-looking young lady,” Great Uncle William said. His voice was tired and gentle. “The red hair is a good sign, to my mind. Very good. Do you think you can manage here while I’m gone? The place is a little disordered, I’m afraid.”
“I expect so,” Charmain said. The musty room seemed quite tidy to her. “Can you tell me some of the things I ought to do?” Though I hope I shan’t be here long, she thought. Once the King replies to my letter…
“As to that,” said Great Uncle William, “the usual household things, of course, but magical. Naturally, most of it’s magical. As I wasn’t sure what grade of magic you’ll have reached, I took some steps—”
Horrors! Charmain thought. He thinks I know magic!
She tried to interrupt Great Uncle William to explain, but at that moment they were both interrupted. The front door clattered open and a procession of tall, tall elves walked quietly in. They were all most medically dressed in white, and there was no expression on their beautiful faces at all. Charmain stared at them, utterly unnerved by their beauty, their height, their neutrality and, above all, by their complete silence. One of them moved her gently aside and she stood where she was put, feeling clumsy and disorderly, while the rest clustered around Great Uncle William with their dazzling fair heads bent over him. Charmain was not sure what they did, but in next to no time Great Uncle William was dressed in a white robe and they were lifting him out of his chair. There were what seemed to be three red apples stuck to his head. Charmain could see he was asleep.
“Er… haven’t you forgotten his suitcase?” she said, as they carried him away towards the door.
“No need for it,” one of the elves said, holding the door open for the others to ease Great Uncle William out through it.
After that, they were all going away down the garden path. Charmain dashed to the open front door and called after them, “How long is he going to be away?” It suddenly seemed urgent to know how long she was going to be left in charge here.
“As long as it takes,” another of the elves replied. Then they were all gone before they reached the garden gate.
CHAPTER TWO
In which Charmain explores the house
Charmain stared at the empty path for a while and then shut the front door with a bang. “Now what do I do?” she said to the deserted, musty room.
“You will have to tidy the kitchen, I’m afraid, my dear,” said Great Uncle William’s tired, kindly voice out of thin air. “I apologise for leaving so much laundry. Please open my suitcase for more complicated instructions.”
Charmain shot the suitcase a look. So Great Uncle William had meant to leave it, then. “In a minute,” she said to it. “I haven’t unpacked for myself yet.” She picked up her two bags and marched with them to the only other door. It was at the back of the room and, when Charmain had tried to open it with the hand that held the food bag, then with that hand and with both bags in the other hand, and finally with both hands and with both bags on the floor, she found it led to the kitchen.
She stared for a moment. Then she dragged her two bags round the door just as it was shutting and stared some more.
“What a mess!” she said.
It ought to have been a comfortable, spacious kitchen. It had a big window looking out on to the mountains, where sunlight came warmly pouring through. Unfortunately, the sunlight only served to highlight the enormous stacks of plates and cups piled into the sink and on the draining board and down on the floor beside the sink. The sunlight then went on – and Charmain’s dismayed eyes went with it – to cast a golden glow over the two big canvas laundry bags leaning beside the sink. They were stuffed so full with dirty washing that Great Uncle William had been using them as a shelf for a pile of dirty saucepans and a frying pan or so.
Charmain’s eyes travelled from there to the table in the middle of the room. Here was where Great Uncle William appeared to keep his supply of thirty or so teapots and the same number of milk jugs – not to speak of several that had once held gravy. It was all quite neat in its way, Charmain thought, just crowded and not clean.
“I suppose you have been ill,” Charmain said grudgingly to the thin air.
There was no reply this time. Cautiously, she went over to the sink, where, she had a feeling, something was missing. It took her a moment or so to realise that there were no taps. Probably this house was so far outside town that no water pipes had been laid. When she looked through the window, she could see a small yard outside and a pump in the middle of it.
“So I’m supposed to go and pump water and then bring it in, and then what?” Charmain demanded. She looked over at the dark, empty fireplace. It was summer, after all, so naturally there was no fire, nor anything to burn that she could see. “I heat the water?” she said. “In a dirty saucepan, I suppose, and— Come to think of it, how do I wash? Can’t I ever have a bath? Doesn’t he have any bedroom, or a bathroom at all?”
She rushed to the small door beyond the fireplace and dragged it open. All Great Uncle William’s doors seemed to need the strength of ten men to open, she thought angrily. She could almost feel the weight of magic holding them shut. She found herself looking into a small pantry. It had nothing on its shelves apart from a small crock of butter, a stale-looking loaf and a large bag mysteriously labelled CIBIS CANINICUS that seemed to be full of soapflakes. And piled into the back part of it were two more large laundry bags as full as the ones in the kitchen.
“I shall scream,” Charmain said. “How could Aunt Sempronia do this to me? How could Mother let her do it?”
In this moment of despair, Charmain could only think of doing what she always did in a crisis: bury herself in a book. She dragged her two bags over to the crowded table and sat herself down in one of the two chairs there. There she unbuckled the carpet bag, fetched her glasses up on to her nose and dug eagerly among the clothes for the books she had put out for Mother to pack for her.
Her hands met nothing but softness. The only hard thing proved to be the big bar of soap among her washing things. Charmain threw it across the room into the empty hearth and dug further. “I don’t believe this!” she said. “She must have put them in first, right at the bottom.” She turned the bag upside down and shook everything out on to the floor. Out fell wads of beautifully folded skirts, dresses, stockings, blouses, two knitted jackets, lace petticoats and enough other underclothes for a year. On top of those flopped her new slippers. After that, the bag was flat and empty. Charmain nevertheless felt all the way round the inside of the bag before she threw it aside, let her glasses drop to the end of their chain and wondered whether to cry. Mrs Baker had actually forgotten to pack the books.
“Well,” Charmain said, after an interval of blinking and swallowing, “I suppose I’ve never really been away from home before. Next time I go anywhere, I’ll pack the
