John nodded.‘I won’t say anything about magic, only you. We’re allowed to do pretty well what we like at home during the holidays… if there are two of us. I can say we want to explore the old town, go to Fairfax Museum, and the cathedral and things like that, and she will speak to Aunt Amabel about it.Aunt Amabel thinks you are a “quaint, ladylike little thing”. I heard her say so. Of course,’ he went on reassuringly, ‘I know you aren’t anything of the kind, but she meant it as a compliment, so I expect it will be all right.’
The sky had clouded over, and great drops of rain were beginning to fall as well as rose petals. So they picked up their trays and ran indoors.
‘It was nice of John to come and thank me for letting him come to dinner,’ said Mrs Brown on the way home in the bus. ‘It quite cheered up my curtain making.’
‘Poor Mummy! Is it being horribly dull, the curtain making and sides to middling? It doesn’t seem fair when I’m having such a gorgeous time!’
Her mother laughed.‘Then I don’t mind a bit. I’m glad you are enjoying it, darling. I was afraid they were going to be such dull holidays for you. Mrs Pendlebury Parker wants you to play with John every day it can be managed. Will you like that?’
‘I shall love it!’ said Rosemary.
She had no opportunity of talking to Carbonel until she went to bed that night.
‘Well, I suppose you’ve learnt something,’ he said rather grudgingly, when she had told him all about the day’s adventures, ‘even if it’s only when to hold your tongue with human grownups. Still, to be fair, the temptation to say the Summoning Words and produceme must have been overpowering,’ he added complacently.
He was washing the difficult part under his chin as he sat beside her on the bed, and broke off to say:
‘On the whole you managed quite creditably.’ He transferred his attention to his right hind leg, and went on between licks:
‘I put in a little social time with Mrs Walker. I must say I like her taste in hearth rugs – very cosy. I collected some more talk about the Alley Cats. Heartrending, it is, the damage they are doing. Even the Humans are noticing. The tabby next door has got a torn ear and the grey at the tobacconist’s has been taken to the Vet. Now, if you and John can get about a bit on your own, Broom and I can go with you, and then we really shall begin to get somewhere.’
Rosemary swallowed her annoyance at his patronizing tone.
‘I suppose it is hateful for you, Carbonel. I mean, being “minion of the twiggy broom”, and me!’
‘Somehow it’s harder to be so near my liberty than it was when I was with HER, and there seemed no hope of release. It might be much worse, I keep telling myself. You are kind, and really quite intelligent for a human, and you stroke very well indeed.’ He was purring now, deep, slow, regular purrs. ‘So you must not mind if I’m a bit sharp now and then.’
In answer, Rosemary lifted him bodily into her lap. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, and he settled into the hollow of her nightdress like water into a bowl. His yellow eyes were the merest slits of gold. For a while she sat in the dusk listening to the diminishing purr, then she said softly:
‘Dear Carbonel! We will get you free as soon as ever we can.’
There was no reply. The purr had faded into silence. Carbonel was asleep.
15
Where is the Cauldron?
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It was two days later before they were actually able to set out together on their own. They each had an extra shilling and a packet of sandwiches which the cook at Tussocks had made up for them. Rosemary carried the broom, and Carbonel trotted in front with his tail erect.
‘We’ve got hours and hours!’ said John happily. ‘How glorious! All the same, don’t let’s waste time by walking to the Market. Let’s go by bus.’
Business people had already gone to their offices, and only a few shopping ladies were out so early, so they had the front seat and the top of the bus to themselves. They swayed and rocked through the narrow streets, as John said, like a galleon in a stormy sea. They were so busy sailing the Spanish Main with sailors dying of scurvy like flies round them, that they reached the terminus before they knew where they were. They had agreed that the best thing to do was to go and find the friendly old man who had seen Mrs Cantrip selling her things, and ask him if he remembered who had bought the cauldron. But as they had told Mrs Pendlebury Parker that they would go and see the Museum, it seemed wisest to go there first and‘get it over’, as John said, rather as if it was a visit to the dentist.
The Museum was a large house which overlooked the Market. It was very old, and full of unexpected corners, and the floors ran up and down in a pleasantly disconcerting way. Although she did not like to say so for fear of sounding priggish, Rosemary rather liked looking at museums. But in spite of himself, John found he was getting really interested. There were suits of armour, and swords and halberds and ancient pistols with beautifully inlaid handles. There was a sedan chair with a window that let up and down like a window in a railway carriage, there was a very large glove that had belonged to Queen Elizabeth I which was embroidered all over with flowers and animals, and some early Victorian dresses that Rosemary would have loved to dress up in, and a case of battered dolls that bore all the marks of having been well and truly played with.
‘I always think that things that were meant to be used look rather sad all shut up in a museum, just to be looked at,’ said Rosemary.
They were passing through a long room that had been built on at the back to house the Wilkinson Collection of china, which the attendant told them was one of the finest in the country.‘Just look at all these teasets! It must be horrid for them never to be poured out of for people to have nice cosy tea-parties.’
‘Pooh! Dull, old grownup talk!’ said John. ‘I think we have seen most of the museum now, so let’s go to the Market.’
Rosemary would like to have stayed longer, but she followed John out into the sunshine with a feeling of relief that they need no longer talk in whispers. Carbonel was sunning himself on the steps outside with the broom propped up in a corner beside him. Rosie led the way to the friendly old man. When they reached the stall, a fat woman was haggling over some linoleum. When she had gone off with a large roll of it under her arm, the old man noticed Rosemary.
‘Hallo, Susie,’ he said. ‘Them fairy wands still ain’t come in. I’m expecting a couple of gross any day now!’ And he laughed wheezily at his own joke.
Rosemary laughed politely, too. If she could get him to go on treating it as a joke she could go straight to the point.
‘It’s not a fairy wand I want this time. It’s a witch’s cauldron.’
‘A cauldron, eh? Well, you could cook up a tidy spell in that fish-kettle over there!’ And he went off into a fit of wheezing that quite alarmed Rosemary.
‘Oh, but it must be one of those black things with a handle over the top. That’s what witches always use.’
‘There’s not much call for them these days,’ said the old man, dropping into his professional manner once more, ‘not since people ’ave begun to go in for these newfangled grates, and gas and electricity. The only coalscuttles they want are the kind you just tip the coals on with so as notto dirty yer ’ands. Now where did I see one of those things lately? Now wasn’t it you I was telling about the old party that set up next to me and sold ’er ’at? Well, believe it or not, she’d got one of them old coalscuttles, too.’
‘Did she sell it?’ asked Rosemary cautiously.
‘Must ’ave,’ said the old man. ‘I don’t think I saw ’oo to, because I was busy with a customer over ’alf a dozen spoons. Stop a bit, though… I remember, now, seeing a stout party walking away with it.’
‘I remember you saying you could read people’s clothes like a book, being in the trade, you said.’