Gwendolen had done then.
“You mean Gwendolen really was a witch!” Janet exclaimed.
Cat wished she had not said was. He had a growing suspicion that he would never see the real Gwendolen again.
“Of course she is,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“Great heavens no!” said Janet. “Though I’m beginning to wonder if I mightn’t have been, if I’d lived here all my life. Witches are quite common, are they?”
“And warlocks and necromancers,” said Cat. “But wizards and magicians don’t happen so often. I think Mr Saunders is a magician.”
“Medicine-men, witch-doctors, shamans, devils, enchanters?” Janet asked rapidly. “Hags, fakirs, sorcerers? Are they thick on the ground too?”
“Most of those are for savages,” Cat explained. “Hag is rude. But we have sorcerers and enchanters. Enchanters are very strong and important. I’ve never met one.”
“I see,” said Janet. She thought for a moment and then swung herself out of bed, in a sort of scramble that was more like a boy’s than a girl’s, and again quite unlike the way Gwendolen would have done it. “We’d better have a hunt round,” she said, “in case dear Gwendolen has been kind enough to leave a message.”
“Don’t call her that,” Cat said desolately. “Where do you think she is?”
Janet looked at him and saw he was miserable. “Sorry,” she said. “I won’t again. But you do see I might be a bit cross with her, don’t you? She seems to have dumped me here and gone off somewhere. Let’s hope she has a good explanation.”
“They spanked her with a boot and took away her magic,” Cat said.
“Yes, you said,” Janet replied, pulling open drawers in the golden dressing-table. “I’m terrified of Chrestomanci already. But did they really take away her magic? How did she manage to do this, if they did?”
“I don’t understand that either,” Cat said, joining in the search. By now, he would have given his little finger for a word from Gwendolen – any kind of word. He felt horribly lonely. “Why were you in the bath?” he said, wondering whether to search the bathroom.
“I don’t know. I just woke up there,” said Janet, shaking out a tangle of hair ribbons in the bottom drawer. “I felt as if I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, and I’d no clothes on, so I was freezing.”
“Why had you no clothes on?” Cat said, stirring Gwendolen’s underclothes about, without success.
“I was hot in bed last night,” said Janet. “So naked I came into this world. And I wandered about pinching myself – ’specially after I found this fabulous room. I thought I must have been turned into a princess. But there was this nightdress lying on the bed, so I put it on—”
“You’ve got it on back to front,” said Cat.
Janet stopped scanning the things on the mantelpiece to look down at the trailing ribbons. “Have I? It won’t be the only thing I’m going to get back to front, by the sound of it. Try looking in that artistic wardrobe. Then I explored outside here, and all I found was miles of long green corridor, which gave me the creeps, and stately grounds out of the windows, so I came back in here and went to bed. I hoped that when I woke up it would all have gone away. And instead there was you. Found anything?”
“No,” said Cat. “But there’s her box—”
“It must be in there,” said Janet.
They squatted down and unpacked the box. There was not much in it. Cat knew that Gwendolen must have taken a lot of things with her to wherever she had gone. There were two books, Elementary Spells and Magic for Beginners and some pages of notes on them. Janet looked at Gwendolen’s large round writing.
“She writes just like I do. Why did she leave these books? Because they’re First Form standard and she’s up to O Levels, I suppose.” She put the books and notes to one side and, as she did so, the little red book of matches fell out from among them. Janet picked it up and opened it, and saw that half the matches were burnt without having been torn out. “That looks suspiciously like a spell to me,” she said. “What are these bundles of letters?”
“My parents’ love-letters, I think,” said Cat.
The letters were in their envelopes still, stamped and addressed. Janet squatted with a bundle in each hand. “These stamps are penny blacks! No, it’s a man’s head on them. What’s your King called?”
“Charles the Seventh,” said Cat.
“No Georges?” Janet asked. But she saw Cat was mystified and looked back at the letters again. “Your mother and father were both called Chant, I see. Were they first cousins? Mine are. Granny didn’t want them to marry, because it’s supposed to be a bad thing.”
“I don’t know. They may have been. They looked rather alike,” Cat said, and felt lonelier than ever.
Janet looked rather lonely too. She tucked the little book of matches carefully inside the pink tape that tied together the letters addressed to Miss Caroline Chant – like Gwendolen, she evidently had a tidy mind – and said, “Both tall and fair, with blue eyes? My mum’s name is Caroline too. I’m beginning to see. Come on, Gwendolen, give!” And saying this, Janet tossed aside the letters and, in a most untidy way, scrabbled up the remaining folders, papers, writing-sets, pen-wipers and the bag with Souvenir from Blackpool on it. At the very bottom of the box was a large pink sheet of paper, covered all over with Gwendolen’s best and roundest writing.
“Ah!” said Janet, pouncing on it. “I thought so! She’s got the same secretive mind as I have.” And she spread the letter on the carpet so that Cat could read it too. Gwendolen had written:
Dear Replacement,
I have to leave this terible place. Nobody understands me. Nobody notices my talents. You will soon see because you are my exact double so you will be a witch too. I have been very clever. They do not know all my resauces. I have found out how to go to another world and I am going there for good. I know I shall be Queen of it because my fortune was told and said so. There are hundreds of other worlds only some are nicer than others, they are formed when there is a big event in History like a battle or an earthquake when the result can be two or more quite diferent things. Both those things hapen but they cannot exist together so the world splits into two worlds witch start to go diferent after that. I know there must be Gwendolens in a lot of worlds but not how many. One of you will come here when I go because when I move it will make an empty space that will suck you in. Do not grieve however if your parents still live. Some other Gwendolen will move into your place and pretend to be you because we are all so clever. You can carry on here making Chrestomanci’s life a misery and I shall be greatful knowing it is in good hands.
Your loving
Gwendolen Chant
PS. Burn this.
PS2 Tell Cat I am quite sorry but he must do what Mr Nostrum says.
Having read this, Cat knelt
