a terrible white. Sophie could see sweat standing on his face. “Thank you,” he said. “Stop there. I won’t trouble you for the rest. Even the good woman is untrue in the last verse, isn’t she? I remember now. Silly of me. John Donne, of course.” Miss Angorian lowered the book and stared at him. He forced a smile. “We must be going now. Sure you won’t change your mind about supper?”
“I will not,” said Miss Angorian. “Are you quite well, Mr Jenkins?”
“In the pink,” Howl said, and he hustled Michael and Sophie away down the stairs and into the horrible horseless carriage. The invisible watchers in the houses must have thought Miss Angorian was chasing them with a sabre, if they judged from the speed with which Howl packed them into it and drove off.
“What’s the matter?” Michael asked as the carriage went roaring and grinding uphill again and Sophie clung to bits of seat for dear life. Howl pretended not to hear. So Michael waited until Howl was locking it into its shed and asked again.
“Oh, nothing,” Howl said airily, leading the way back to the yellow house called Rivendell. “The Witch of the Waste has caught up with me with her curse, that’s all. Bound to happen sooner or later.” He seemed to be calculating or doing sums in his head while he opened the garden gate. “Ten thousand,” Sophie heard him murmur. “That brings it to about Midsummer Day.”
“What is brought to Midsummer Day?” asked Sophie.
“The time I’ll be ten thousand days old,” Howl said. “And that, Mrs Nose,” he said, swinging into the garden of Rivendell, “is the day I shall have to go back to the Witch of the Waste.” Sophie and Michael hung back on the path, staring at Howl’s back, so mysteriously labelled WELSH RUGBY. “If I keep clear of mermaids,” they heard him mutter, “and don’t touch a mandrake root—”
Michael called out, “Do we have to go back into that house?” and Sophie called, “What will the Witch do?”
“I shudder to think,” Howl said. “You don’t have to go back in, Michael.”
He opened the wavy-glass door. Inside was the familiar room of the castle. Calcifer’s sleepy flames were colouring the walls faintly blue-green in the dusk. Howl flung back his long sleeves and gave Calcifer a log.
“She caught up, old blueface,” he said.
“I know,” said Calcifer. “I felt it take.”
CHAPTER TWELVE In which Sophie becomes Howl’s old mother
Sophie did not see much point in blackening Howl’s name to the King, now that the Witch had caught up with him. But Howl said it was more important than ever. “I shall need everything I’ve got just to escape the Witch,” he said. “I can’t have the King after me as well.”
So the following afternoon Sophie put on her new clothes and sat feeling fine, if rather stiff, waiting for Michael to get ready and for Howl to finish in the bathroom. While she waited, she told Calcifer about the strange country where Howl’s family lived. It took her mind off the King.
Calcifer was very interested. “I knew he came from foreign parts,” he said. “But this sounds like another world. Clever of the Witch to send the curse in from there. Very clever all round. That’s magic I admire, using something that exists anyway and turning it round into a curse. I did wonder about it when you and Michael were reading it the other day. That fool Howl told her too much about himself.”
Sophie gazed at Calcifer’s thin blue face. It did not surprise her to find Calcifer admired the curse, any more than it surprised her when he called Howl a fool. He was always insulting Howl. But she never could work out if Calcifer really hated Howl. Calcifer looked so evil anyway that it was hard to tell.
Calcifer moved his orange eyes to look into Sophie’s. “I’m scared too,” he said. “I shall suffer with Howl if the Witch catches him. If you don’t break the contract before she does, I won’t be able to help you at all.”
Before Sophie could ask more, Howl came dashing out of the bathroom looking his very finest, scenting the room with roses and yelling for Michael. Michael clattered downstairs in his new blue velvet. Sophie stood up and collected her trusty stick. It was time to go.
“You look wonderfully rich and stately!” Michael said to her.
“She does me credit,” said Howl, “apart from that awful old stick.”
“Some people,” said Sophie, “are thoroughly self-centred. This stick goes with me. I need it for moral support.”
Howl looked at the ceiling, but he did not argue.
They took their stately way into the streets of Kingsbury. Sophie of course looked back to see what the castle was like here. She saw a big, arched gateway surrounding a small black door. The rest of the castle seemed to be a blank stretch of plastered wall between two carved stone houses.
“Before you ask,” said Howl, “it’s really just a disused stable. This way.”
They walked through the streets, looking at least as fine as any of the passersby. Not that many people were about. Kingsbury was a long way south and it was a bakingly hot day there. The pavements shimmered. Sophie discovered another disadvantage to being old: you felt queer in hot weather. The elaborate buildings wavered in front of her eyes. She was annoyed, because she wanted to look at the place, but all she had was a dim impression of golden domes and tall houses.
“By the way,” Howl said, “Mrs Pentstemmon will call you Mrs Pendragon. Pendragon’s the name I go under here.”
“Whatever for?” said Sophie.
“For disguise,” said Howl. “Pendragon’s a lovely name, much better than Jenkins.”
“I get by quite well with a plain name,” Sophie said as they turned into a blessedly narrow, cool street.
“We can’t all be Mad Hatters,” said Howl.
Mrs Pentstemmon’s house was gracious and tall, near the end of the narrow street. It had orange trees in tubs on either side of its handsome front door. This door was opened by an elderly footman in black velvet, who led them into a wonderfully cool black and white checkered marble hall, where Michael tried secretly to wipe sweat off his face. Howl, who always seemed to be cool, treated the footman as an old friend and made jokes to him.
The footman passed them on to a page boy in red velvet. Sophie, as the boy led them ceremoniously up polished stairs, began to see why this made good practice for meeting the King. She felt as if she were in a palace already. When the boy ushered them into a shaded drawing room, she was sure even a palace could not be this elegant. Everything in the room was blue and gold and white, and small and fine. Mrs Pentstemmon was finest of all. She was tall and thin, and she sat bolt upright in a blue and gold embroidered chair, supporting herself rigidly with one hand, in a gold-mesh mitten, on a gold-topped cane. She wore old-gold silk, in a very stiff and old-fashioned style, finished off with an old-gold headdress not unlike a crown, which tied in a large old-gold
