The Kingdom of Carbonel (9 page)

They had to help wash up after supper, but as soon as the front door closed behind them, Rosemary told John her adventures. He listened open-mouthed.

‘I was in such a tizzy to get away from Mrs Cantrip's garden that I forgot I wouldn't be able to explain how I came to be in my bedroom without going through the sitting room. We shall have to think of some way to hide the chair, or Mum will want to know where it came from.'

‘Smuggle it down to the Green Cave for the moment, and cover it with leaves,' John suggested. ‘But
I've
got something to tell
you
!'

When John described the conversation he had overheard when he was hiding in the half-built house, it was Rosemary's turn to be impressed.

‘Thank goodness they didn't catch you!' she said. ‘Well, it's quite clear that Mrs Cantrip and that Dibdin woman are hatching some plot with the Queen of the Broomhurst cats. Tudge said that trouble was brewing.'

‘And he thought it was against Fallowhithe!'

‘If they're meeting tomorrow night on top of the tallest building in Broomhurst, it must be on
that new ten-storey block of offices that Mr Featherstone told us about. I'd give my boots for us to be behind a chimney so that we could listen to what they're up to.'

‘John!' said Rosemary excitedly. ‘Why shouldn't we go?'

‘But they're meeting in the middle of the night. How could we get on to the roof ? The place would be locked up!'

‘Well, said Rosemary, ‘as Mrs Cantrip said, “there's other ways than walking”!'

‘John whistled. ‘Do you mean the rocking chair? Do you think it could carry us both?'

‘We could ask it in the morning. I think it's had enough for one day. Come on, let's feed the kittens.'

It was growing dusk when they reached the greenhouse. When they opened the door an unexpected sight greeted them. Blandamour was sitting on an upturned flower pot, and at her feet were the two kittens, both sitting up as straight and still as their royal mother.

Woppit looked on with her head on one side and a doting expression on her brindled face. ‘Hush!' she said to John and Rosemary. ‘The little darlings is saying their lessons!'

In small, piping voices the kittens were repeating:

‘No paw or whisker in the dish,
Whether meat or fowl or fish…'

Calidor's voice faltered when a delicious tendril of haddock smell wafted from the plate Rosemary held and tickled his nose.

‘Calidor, pay attention!' said Blandamour. ‘Each awkward…'

The black kitten sighed, but went on:

‘Each awkward bone be sure to gnaw
Upon the plate, not on the floor.
Lap your milk from out the platter
From the edge, and do not scatter
Drops from either bowl or mug
On quarried floor or silken rug.
Steady lapping, rhythmic, quiet,
Is correct for milky diet.
After food, wash paws and face,
And don't forget to purr your grace.'

‘Very good, my children. Now you may eat,' said Blandamour. ‘But remember what you have repeated. Greetings to you, John and Rosemary. My children are well, and if they are closely confined, no doubt you have your reasons!'

‘We certainly have, Your Majesty!' said John. ‘It's like this…'

Blandamour listened in silence. Only once did she interrupt to summon a grizzled old tabby cat with four white stockings who was sitting in the shadow of the bushes outside.

‘Merbeck, my cousin and chief councillor,' she said. ‘He too must hear your tale.'

When the children had finished, she bowed her beautiful white head.

‘You have done well and bravely, and I am grateful. But it will need more courage still to fly to Cat Country and overhear Grisana's schemings. It may even be dangerous. Merbeck, should we not send a pair of animals instead?'

Merbeck shook his grizzled head. ‘I think not, Your Majesty. Grisana is wily in her wickedness. Her sentry will be on the alert for foreign cats, but flying humans they will not expect.'

‘Couldn't I go too, oh, couldn't I?' asked Calidor, standing with his short legs spread out and his tail waving angrily. ‘I'd show 'em!'

‘Me too!' said Pergamond shrilly.

‘No, my son,' said Blandamour. ‘One day when you are older you will have many chances to prove how brave you are. Until we find out Grisana's plans, we do not know where the danger lies.'

‘Therefore, we must go warily and keep our eyes and ears open. Above all, guard the royal kittens!'
said Merbeck. ‘Tomorrow we will come again and hear what you have discovered, and may good luck go with you!'

Rosemary kept her promise to the chair the next morning. While John mended the lock of the greenhouse, she carried dusters and furniture polish down to the Green Cave. She rubbed away until her arms ached and the curves of the dark wood of the chair gleamed with little, bright reflections.

‘The Queen herself really would be proud to sit in you now, just as I promised,' said Rosemary, sitting back on her heels to admire her handiwork.

The chair gave a little rock which seemed to show it was pleased. Or had she caught it with her duster?

‘And I know a real queen who might come and sit in you,' went on Rosemary. There was another little rock. ‘A cat queen!'

The rocking stopped abruptly.

‘A beautiful, snow-white queen who needs your
help,' she went on hurriedly. ‘Dear rocking chair, you carried me home so splendidly, won't you help us again? You see –' Once more she explained about the meeting on the tallest building in Broomhurst.

‘Roofs and walls are Cat Country at night,' she said. ‘The place will be locked. Our only way to get there is by flying, if only you will take us. I'll make you –' she thought quickly – ‘an antimacassar! You know, one of those things to hang over the back – an embroidered one. I promise!'

Rosemary held her breath. There was a moment's pause, and then the chair gave another little rock.

‘I knew I could rely on you!' she whispered, and ran back to the flat to get her nightdress case. It would make an excellent chair-back, she felt. Armed with needles and coloured thread, she went back to the greenhouse to tell John of her success.

It was beginning to rain. Woppit was asleep in a corner, her untidy whiskers twitching as she chased dream mice around a shadowy dream cellar. The kittens were playing with something that rolled obligingly round the floor, and John was whistling through his teeth and fiddling with the lock which he had taken to pieces.

‘Good!' he said absently, when Rosemary told him that she thought the rocking chair would take them.

It was almost cosy in the greenhouse, with the raindrops plopping on the glass roof. They worked away in friendly silence. Rosemary was sewing ‘R.C.' for Rocking Chair in green chain stitch on the nightdress case. She looked up and bit off her thread. ‘Can you really put it together again?'

John looked with a puzzled frown at the bits of lock which he had laid out on the floor.

‘If two screws hadn't vanished into thin air, I could,' he snapped. ‘You might try to find them instead of sitting there doing nothing.'

‘I've been working twice as hard as you!' said Rosemary. ‘I've been making up a flying rhyme for tonight all the time I've been sewing!' But she put down her work and looked for the screws. ‘They can't have vanished,' she said. ‘Have you seen them, kittens?'

Pergamond and Calidor were staring with deep interest at a curled-up wood louse. They looked up, to the wood louse's relief.

‘Screws?' asked Calidor. ‘What's screws?'

‘Do they roll?' asked Pergamond.

Rosemary nodded.

‘Then they're down there,' said Calidor, peering through the pierced pattern of the iron grille
covering the pipes under the floor which once had warmed the greenhouse.

‘We were pretending they were mice,' said Pergamond, ‘so they had to go down a hole.'

Both kittens peered down into the darkness. They could see the hot water pipes, but not the screws.

‘Come on, Rosie, help me pull up the grille!' said John. They pulled and pulled, but it would not budge.

‘Rusted in, I suppose,' said John disgustedly. ‘Of all the stupid interfering animals!'

The kittens hung their heads. Rosemary scooped them up and put one on each shoulder. They were so very soft and light! She listened to the quick beating of their hearts.

‘Don't be cross with them,' she said, and two small rough tongues rasped her hands gratefully as she lifted them into her lap. ‘They didn't mean to be a nuisance. I'll hold them here and keep them out of mischief while you finish.' The kittens quarrelled drowsily in the hollow of her skirt. John put the lock together again and screwed it to the door. The key turned silently in the newly-oiled works.

‘It looks splendid to me!' said Rosemary hopefully.

‘My good girl, a lock on the door is not much
use without the plate on the doorpost for it to fit into!'

They looked up as footsteps scrunched toward them on the gravel path. It was Mr Featherstone.

‘Hello! I thought I would find you here. Well, this makes a very snug little kitten garden. I've been suggesting to your mother that, as it's wet, we might all four of us go to the pictures this afternoon. There's a very funny film at the Parthenon, I'm told. What do you say?'

Of course they both said yes.

‘Good. Can't stop now, see you later,' said Mr Featherstone, who went whistling down the path. Both John and Rosemary were glad for something to fill in the time before their perilous adventure that night. It seemed to grow more perilous the more they thought about it.

‘We can buy a couple more screws on our way home,' said John.

‘Come on, it's time we got cleaned up,' said Rosemary, looking at his oily hands. ‘We can wedge the door shut till this evening.'

The film was so funny that they saw it twice, quite forgetting about the screws, and when they came blinking out into the daylight with their cheeks still creased with laughter, the shops had closed.

‘Well, the door will just have to stay wedged until
tomorrow,' said John. ‘I expect it'll be all right.'

‘I hope so,' said Rosemary anxiously. ‘Don't forget, eleven thirty sharp in my bedroom.'

Rosemary decided to undress as usual that evening. When Mrs Brown came to say good night, she would notice if her daughter's clothes were not folded at the foot of the bed.

‘Mother, I do like Mr Featherstone, don't you?' asked Rosemary, as her mother tucked her in. ‘It was nice this afternoon when we all had tea together.'

Mrs Brown smoothed the bedspread with unusual care. She laughed, but she did not answer.

‘Go to sleep now, poppet,' was all she said as she bent to kiss her daughter good night.

Rosemary was determined to do nothing of the sort. Both she and John had decided that, rather than take the risk of oversleeping, it would be wiser to stay awake. But one minute she was going over the rhyme that she had made up for the flying spell, and the next, John was shaking her by the shoulder.

‘Wake up, you owl! It's twenty to twelve!' he whispered.

Rosemary shot up from the bedclothes. ‘Why ever didn't you wake me sooner?'

‘I couldn't,' said John. ‘Your mother was pottering
about in the sitting room for ages, so I couldn't get through. And then I had to wait till I was pretty certain she was asleep. You haven't time to dress. Come on, you'll just have to put on your dressing gown.'

Rosemary tied the cord of her old red dressing gown around her waist and pushed her toes into her shoes. Then she picked up the newly embroidered antimacassar.

‘Let's go!' she whispered.

The house was full of small night noises as they crept out. Boards creaked and the curtains stirred in a little breeze. Once John fell over a stool, but Mrs Brown did not seem to wake. They tiptoed down the stairs and out into the moonlit garden.

It was strangely transformed by the pale light, with a magic that had nothing to do with Mrs Cantrip and her kind. The familiar back of the house had become a mysterious palace, with gleaming, moon-touched windows. The blues and purples of the garden had disappeared. Only the pale flowers gleamed silver in the strange light. The tobacco plants raised their white trumpets to the sky and, together with the clumps of white stock, filled the air with a heavy perfume. Jasmine starred the shadowy porch, and the Mermaid rose dropped slow, pale petals on the weedy path. A
moth fluttered by, sighing something that Rosemary could not quite hear.

‘John!' she said. ‘Anything could happen on a night like this!'

‘Well, I'll tell you what
will
happen if we don't hurry up,' said John. ‘We won't get to that roof-top place until the meeting is over. We should look pretty silly turning up there when they've all gone home again.'

He seized Rosemary's hand, and together they ran down the path, in and out of light and shadow.

‘It's us, chair! John and me!' called Rosemary softly when they reached the Green Cave.

They dived into the moon-chequered darkness under the currant bushes.

‘I've brought it. I promised I would! The antimacassar, I mean,' said Rosemary. ‘I embroidered your initials on it specially,' she said proudly, as she tied it on to the back of the chair with two hair ribbons. The chair seemed to give a pleased little jump as Rosemary fluffed out the bows.

‘For goodness' sake!' said John impatiently. ‘I bet that rocking chair is a female the way it carries on about its appearance,' he growled. ‘No male chair would be so soppy!'

‘Hush,' said Rosemary quickly. The chair had
stopped rocking abruptly. ‘I hope you haven't hurt its feelings.'

John was not listening.

‘You sit on the seat,' he said, as they carried it from the shelter of the bushes and stood it on the garden path. ‘I'll stand on the rockers behind and hold on to the back.'