“Yes, but I need to know what the terms of it are,” Sophie said. “Did Howl tell you I was a witch, because if he did—”
“He did not. There is no need to be coy. You can rely on my experience to know these things,” said Mrs Pentstemmon. Then, to Sophie’s relief, she shut her eyes. It was like a strong light being turned off. “I do not know, nor do I wish to know, about such contracts,” she said. Her cane wobbled again, as if she might be shuddering. Her mouth quirked into a line, suggesting she had unexpectedly bitten on a peppercorn. “But I now see,” she said, “what has happened to the Witch. She made a contract with a fire demon and, over the years, that demon has taken control of her. Demons do not understand good and evil. But they can be bribed into a contract, provided the human offers them something valuable, something only humans have. This prolongs the life of both human and demon, and the human gets the demon’s magic power to add to his or her own.” Mrs Pentstemmon opened her eyes again. “That is all I can bear to say on the subject,” she said, “except to advise you to find out what that demon got. Now I must bid you farewell. I have to rest a while.”
And like magic, which it probably was, the door opened and the page boy came in to usher Sophie out of the room. Sophie was extremely glad to go. She was all but squirming with embarrassment by then. She looked back at Mrs Pentstemmon’s rigid, upright form as the door closed and wondered if Mrs Pentstemmon would have made her feel this bad if she had really and truly been Howl’s old mother. Sophie rather thought she would. “I take my hat off to Howl for standing her as a teacher for more than a day!” she murmured to herself.
“Madam?” asked the page boy, thinking Sophie was talking to him.
“I said, go slowly down the stairs or I can’t keep up,” Sophie told him. Her knees were wobbling. “You young boys dash about so,” she said.
The page boy took her slowly and considerately down the shiny stairs. Halfway down, Sophie recovered enough from Mrs Pentstemmon’s personality to think of some of the things Mrs Pentstemmon had actually said. She had said Sophie was a witch. Oddly enough, Sophie accepted this without any trouble at all. That explained the popularity of certain hats, she thought. It explained Jane Farrier’s Count Whatsit. It possibly explained the jealousy of the Witch of the Waste. It was as if Sophie had always known this. But she had thought it was not proper to have a magic gift because she was the eldest of three. Lettie had been far more sensible about such things.
Then she thought of the grey and scarlet suit and nearly fell downstairs with dismay. She was the one who had put the charm on that. She could hear herself now, murmuring to it. “Built to pull in the girls!” she had told it. And of course it did. It had charmed Lettie that day in the orchard. Yesterday, somewhat disguised, it must have had its secret effect on Miss Angorian too.
Oh, dear! Sophie thought. I’ve gone and doubled the number of hearts he’ll have broken! I must get that suit off him somehow!
Howl, in that same suit, was waiting in the cool black and white hall with Michael. Michael nudged Howl in a worried way as Sophie came slowly down the stairs behind the page boy.
Howl looked saddened. “You seem a bit ragged,” he said. “I think we’d better skip seeing the King. I’ll go and blacken my own name when I make your excuses. I can say my wicked ways have made you ill. That could be true, from the look of you.”
Sophie certainly did not wish to see the King. But she thought of what Calcifer had said. If the King commanded Howl to go into the Waste and the Witch caught him, Sophie’s own chance of being young again would have gone too.
She shook her head. “After Mrs Pentstemmon,” she said, “the King of Ingary will seem just like an ordinary person.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN In which Sophie blackens Howl’s name
Sophie was feeling decidedly queer again when they reached the Palace. Its many golden domes dazzled her. The way to the front entrance was up a huge flight of steps, with a soldier in scarlet standing guard every six steps. The poor boys must have been near fainting in the heat, Sophie thought as she puffed her way dizzily up past them.
At the top of the steps were archways, halls, corridors, lobbies, one after another. Sophie lost count of how many. At every archway a splendidly dressed person wearing white gloves – still somehow white in spite of the heat – inquired their business and then led them on to the next personage in the next archway.
“Mrs Pendragon to see the King!” the voice of each echoed down the halls.
About halfway, Howl was politely detached and told to wait. Michael and Sophie went on being handed from person to person. They were taken upstairs, after which the splendid persons were dressed in blue instead of red, and handed on again until they came to an anteroom panelled in a hundred different-coloured woods. There Michael was peeled off and made to wait too. Sophie, who by this time was not at all sure whether she was not having some strange dream, was ushered through huge double doors, and this time the echoing voice said, “Your Majesty, here is Mrs Pendragon to see you.”
And there was the King, not on a throne, but sitting in a rather square chair with only a little gold leaf on it, near the middle of a large room, and dressed much more modestly than the persons who waited on him. He was quite alone, like an ordinary person. True, he sat with one leg thrust out in a kingly sort of manner, and he was handsome in a plump, slightly vague way, but to Sophie he seemed quite youthful and just a touch too proud of being a king. She felt he ought, with that face, to have been more unsure of himself.
He said, “Well, what does Wizard Howl’s mother want to see me about?”
And Sophie was suddenly overwhelmed by the fact that she was standing talking to the King. It was, she thought dizzily, as if the man sitting there and the huge, important thing which was kingship were two separate things that just happened to occupy the same chair. And she found she had forgotten every word of the careful, delicate things Howl had told her to say. But she had to say something.
“He sent me to tell you he’s not going to look for your brother,” she said. “Your Majesty.”
She stared at the King. The King stared back. It was a disaster.
“Are you sure?” asked the King. “The Wizard seemed quite willing when I talked to him.”
The one thing Sophie had left in her head was that she was here to blacken Howl’s name, so she said, “He lied about that. He didn’t want to annoy you. He’s a slitherer-outer, if you know what I mean, Your Majesty.”
“And he hopes to slither out of finding my brother Justin,” said the King. “I see. Won’t you sit down, since I see you are not young, and tell me the Wizard’s reasons?”
There was another plain chair rather a long way from the King. Sophie creaked herself down into it and sat with her hands propped on her stick like Mrs Pentstemmon, hoping that would make her feel better. But her mind was still simply a roaring white blank of stagefright. All she could think of to say was, “Only a coward would send his old mother along to plead for him. You can see what he’s like just from that, Your Majesty.”
“It is an unusual step,” the King said
