alt="publisher logo"/>
It rained on Saturday afternoon. Gwendolen shut herself into her room, and once again Cat did not know what to do. He wrote to Mrs Sharp on the back of his postcard of the Castle, but that only took ten minutes, and it was too wet to go out and post it. Cat was hanging about at the foot of his stairs, wondering what to do now, when Roger came out of the playroom and saw him.
“Oh good,” said Roger. “Julia won’t play soldiers. Will you?”
“But I can’t – not like you do,” Cat said.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Roger. “Honestly.”
But it did. No matter how cunningly Cat deployed his lifeless tin army, as soon as Roger’s soldiers began to march, Cat’s men fell over like ninepins. They fell in batches and droves and in battalions. Cat moved them furiously this way and that, grabbing them by handfuls and scooping them with the lid of the box, but he was always on the retreat. In five minutes, he was reduced to three soldiers hidden behind a cushion.
“This is no good,” said Roger.
“No, it isn’t,” Cat agreed mournfully.
“Julia,” said Roger.
“What?” said Julia. She was curled in the shabbiest armchair, managing to suck a lollipop, to read a book called In the Hands of the Lamas, and to knit, all at the same time. Her knitting, hardly surprisingly, looked like a vest for a giraffe which had been dipped in six shades of grey dye.
“Can you make Cat’s soldiers move for him?” said Roger.
“I’m reading,” said Julia, round the edges of the lollipop. “It’s thrilling. One of them’s got lost and they think he’s perished miserably.”
“Be a sport,” said Roger. “I’ll tell you whether he did perish, if you don’t.”
“If you do, I’ll turn your underpants to ice,” Julia said amiably. “All right.” Without taking her eyes off her book or the lollipop out of her mouth, she fumbled out her handkerchief and tied a knot in it. She laid the knotted handkerchief on the arm of her chair and went on knitting.
Cat’s fallen soldiers picked themselves up from the floor and straightened their tin tunics. This was a great improvement, though it was still not entirely satisfactory. Cat could not tell his soldiers what to do. He had to shoo them into position with his hands. The soldiers did not seem happy. They looked up at the great flapping hands above them in the greatest consternation. Cat was sure one fainted from terror. But he got them positioned in the end – with great cunning, he thought.
The battle began. The soldiers seemed to know how to do that for themselves. Cat had a company in reserve behind a cushion and, when the battle was at its fiercest, he shooed them out to fall on Roger’s right wing. Roger’s right wing turned and fought. And every one of Cat’s reserve turned and ran. The rest of his army saw them running away and ran too. In three seconds, they were all trying to hide in the toy cupboard, and Roger’s soldiers were cutting them down in swathes. Roger was exasperated.
“Julia’s soldiers always run away!”
“Because that’s just what I would do,” Julia said, putting out a knitting-needle to mark her place in her book. “I can’t think why all soldiers don’t.”
“Well, make them a bit braver,” said Roger. “It’s not fair on Eric.”
“You only said make them move,” Julia was arguing, when the door opened and Gwendolen put her head in.
“I want Cat,” she said.
“He’s busy,” said Roger.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Gwendolen. “I need him.”
Julia stretched out a knitting-needle towards Gwendolen and wrote a little cross in the air with it. The cross floated, glowing, for a second. “Out,” said Julia. “Go away.” Gwendolen backed away from the cross and shut the door again. It was as if she could not help herself. The expression on her face was very annoyed indeed. Julia smiled placidly and pointed her knitting-needle towards Cat’s soldiers. “Carry on,” she said. “I’ve filled their hearts with courage.”
When the dressing-gong sounded, Cat went to find out what Gwendolen had wanted him for. Gwendolen was very busy reading a fat, new-looking book and could not spare him any attention at first. Cat tipped his head sideways and read the title of the book. Other-world Studies, Series III. While he was doing it, Gwendolen began to laugh. “Oh, I see how it works now!” she exclaimed. “It’s even better than I thought! I know what to do now!” Then she lowered the book and asked Cat what he thought he was doing.
“Why did you need me?” said Cat. “Where did you get that book?”
“From the Castle library,” said Gwendolen. “And I don’t need you now. I was going to explain to you about Mr Nostrum’s plans, and I might even have told you about mine, but I changed my mind when you just sat there and let that fat prig Julia send me away.”
“I didn’t know Mr Nostrum had any plans,” Cat said. “The dressing-gong’s gone.”
“Of course he has plans – and I heard it – why do you think I wrote to Chrestomanci?” said Gwendolen. “But it’s no good trying to wheedle me. I’m not going to tell you and you’re going to be sorry. And piggy-priggy Julia is going to be sorrier even sooner!”
Gwendolen revenged herself on Julia at the start of dinner. A footman was just passing a bowl of soup over Julia’s shoulder, when the skirt of Julia’s dress turned to snakes. Julia jumped up with a shriek. Soup poured over the snakes and flew far and wide, and the footman yelled, “Lord have mercy on us!” among the sounds of the smashing soup-bowl.
Then there was dead silence, except for the hissing of snakes. There were twenty of them, hanging by their tails from Julia’s waistband, writhing and striking. Everyone froze, with their heads stiffly turned Julia’s way. Julia stood like a statue, with her arms up out of reach of the snakes. She swallowed and said the words of a spell.
Nobody blamed her. Mr Saunders said, “Good girl!”
Under the spell, the snakes stiffened and fanned out, so that they were standing like a ballet skirt above Julia’s petticoats. Everyone could see where Julia had torn a flounce of a petticoat building the tree-house and mended it in a hurry with red darning wool.
“Have you been bitten?” said Chrestomanci.
“No,” said Julia. “The soup muddled them. If you don’t mind, I’ll go and change this dress now.”
She left the room, walking very slowly and carefully, and Millie went with her. While the footmen, all rather green in the face, were clearing up the spilt soup, Chrestomanci said, “Spitefulness is one thing I won’t have at the dinner-table. Gwendolen, oblige me by going to the playroom. Your food will be brought to you there.”
Gwendolen got up and went without a word. As Julia and Millie did not come back, the dining table seemed rather empty that evening. It was all stocks and shares from Bernard at one end, and statues again from Mr Saunders
