“I think this is it,” said Cat. He felt very sad to be leaving.
“I think it is, too,” Janet agreed in an awed, muffled voice. “I feel a bit miserable to be going, as a matter of fact. How do we go?”
“I’m going to try sprinkling a pinch of dragon’s blood in the archway,” said Cat.
He fumbled out the crucible wrapped in his handkerchief from his pocket. He smelt the strong smell of the dragon’s blood and knew he was doing wrong. It was wrong to bring this harmful stuff into a place that was so strongly magic in such a different way.
But, since he did not know what else to do, Cat carefully took a pinch of the smelly brown powder between the finger and thumb of his right hand, wrapped the crucible away again with his left hand, and then, carefully and guiltily, sprinkled the powder between the pillars of broken stone.
The air between the pillars quivered like air that is hot. The piece of sunny meadow they could see beyond grew misty, then milky pale, then dark. The darkness cleared slowly, away into the corners of the space, and they found they could see into a huge room. There seemed acres of it. All of it was covered in a carpet of a rather ugly playing-card sort of design in red, blue and yellow. The room was full of people. They reminded Cat of playing-cards too, because they were dressed in stiff bulky clothes in flat bright colours. They were all trailing about, this way and that, looking important and agitated. The air between them and the garden was still quivering and, somehow, Cat knew they would not be able to get into the huge room.
“This is not right,” said Janet. “Where is it?”
Cat was just about to say that he did not know either, when he saw Gwendolen. She was being carried by, quite near, on a sort of bed with handholds. The eight men carrying it wore bulky golden uniforms. The bed was gold, with gold hangings and gold cushions. Gwendolen was dressed in even bulkier clothes than the rest, that were white and gold, and her hair was done up into a high golden headdress which may have been a crown.
From the way she was behaving, she was certainly a queen. She nodded to some of the important people and they leapt eagerly to the side of her bed and listened with feverish intelligence to what she was saying. She waved to some others, and they ran to do things. She made a sign at another person and he fell on his knees, begging for mercy. He was still begging when other people dragged him away. Gwendolen smiled as if this amused her. By this time, the golden bed was right beside the archway, and the space was a turmoil of people racing to do what Gwendolen wanted.
And Gwendolen saw Cat and Janet. Cat knew she did, from the expression of surprise and faint annoyance on her face. Maybe she worked some magic of her own, or maybe the magic in the dragon’s blood was simply used up. Whatever it was, the broken archway turned dark again, then milky, then to mist; and finally, there was nothing but meadow again between the pillars, and the air had stopped shimmering.
“That was Gwendolen,” Cat said.
“I thought it was,” Janet said unappreciatively. “She’ll get fat if she has herself carried about like that all the time.”
“She was enjoying herself,” Cat said wistfully.
“I could see that,” said Janet. “But how do we find my world?”
Cat was not at all sure. “Shall we try going round to the other side of the arch?”
“Seems reasonable,” Janet agreed. She started to walk round the pillars, and stopped. “We’d better get it right this time, Cat. You can only afford one more try. Or didn’t you lose a life on that one?”
“I didn’t feel—” Cat began.
Then Mr Nostrum was suddenly standing in the broken arch. He was holding the postcard Cat had sent to Mrs Sharp, and he was cross and flustered.
“My dear boy,” he said to Cat, “I told you two-thirty, not midday. It was the merest chance that I had my hand on your signature. Let us hope all is not lost.” He turned and called over his shoulder, apparently into the empty meadow, “Come on, William. The wretched boy seems to have misunderstood me, but the spell is clearly working. Don’t forget to bring the – ah – equipment with you.”
He stepped out from between the pillars, and Cat backed away before him. Everything seemed to have gone very quiet. The leaves of the apple tree did not stir, and the small bubbling from the little spring changed to a soft, slow dripping. Cat had a strong suspicion that he and Janet had done something terrible. Janet was beyond the archway with her hands to her mouth, looking horrified. She was suddenly hidden by the large figure of Mr William Nostrum, who popped into being from nowhere between the two pillars. He had a coil of rope round one arm, and there were shiny things sticking out of the pockets of his frock-coat. His eyes were swivelling in an agitated way. He was a little out of breath.
“Premature but successful, Henry,” he puffed. “The rest have been summoned.”
William Nostrum stepped imposingly out beneath the apple tree beside his brother. The ground shook a little. The garden was quite silent. Cat backed away again and found that the little spring had stopped flowing. There was nothing but a muddy hole left. Cat was quite certain now that he and Janet had done something terrible.
Behind the Nostrums, other people came hurrying through the broken archway. The first one who came was one of the Accredited Witches from further down Coven Street, puce in the face and very startled. She had been to church in her Sunday best: a monster of a hat with fruit and flowers in it, and a black and red satin dress. Most of the people who followed her were in Sunday best too: warlocks in blue serge and hard hats, witches in silk and bombazine and hats of all shapes and sizes, respectable-looking necromancers in frock-coats like William Nostrum’s, skinny sorcerers in black, and quite a sprinkling of impressive wizards, who had either been to church in long black cloaks, or playing golf in very freckled plus-fours.
They came crowding between the pillars, first by twos and threes and then by sixes and sevens, all a little hasty and startled. Among them Cat recognised most of the witches and fortune-tellers from Coven Street, though he did not see either Mrs Sharp or Miss Larkins – but this may have been simply that, in no time at all, he was being jostled this way and that in the middle of a large and steadily growing crowd.
William Nostrum was shouting to each group who hurried through, “Spread out. Spread out up the meadow. Surround the gate there! Leave no avenue of escape.”
Janet forced her way among them and seized Cat’s arm. “Cat! What have we done? Don’t tell me these aren’t all witches and warlocks, because I won’t believe you!”
“Ah, my dear Gwendolen!” said Mr Henry Nostrum. “Plan Two is under way.”
By this time, the sloping sides of the meadow were crowded with witches and warlocks. The ground quivered to their trampling and buzzed with their cheerful conversation. There were hundreds of them – a nodding of garish hats and shiny toppers, like the audience at the opening of a bazaar.
As soon as the last necromancer had hurried between the pillars, Henry Nostrum put a heavy possessive hand on Cat’s shoulder. Cat wondered uneasily whether it was just an accident that it was the same hand which held his postcard to Mrs Sharp. He saw that the Willing Warlock had stationed himself by one of the broken pillars, blue-chinned and cheerful as ever in his tight Sunday suit. Mr William Nostrum had put as much of himself as would go behind the other pillar, and, for some reason, he had taken off his heavy silver watch-chain and was swinging it in one hand.
