The Lives of Christopher Chant (17 page)

“What made you
do
it?” Miss Rosalie cried out.

“Money,” Tacroy said carelessly.

“Would you care to expand on that?” Gabriel said. “When you left the Castle in order to infiltrate the Wraith organization, the Government agreed to pay you a good salary and to provide comfortable lodgings in Baker Street. You still have both.”

So much for the garret in Covent Garden! Christopher thought bitterly.

“Ah, but that was in the early days,” said Tacroy, “when the Wraith only operated in Series Twelve. He couldn’t offer me enough to tempt me then. As soon as he expanded into the rest of the Related Worlds, he offered me anything I cared to ask.” He took the silk handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully flicked imaginary dust off his good boots. “I didn’t take the offer straightaway, you know,” he said. “I got deeper in by degrees. Extravagance gets a hold on you.”

“Who
is
the Wraith?” Gabriel asked. “You owe the Government that information at least.”

Tacroy’s foot swung. He folded the handkerchief neatly and his eyes went carelessly around the half circle of people facing him. Christopher kept the vaguest look on his face that he could manage, but Tacroy’s eyes passed over him just as they passed over everyone else, as if Tacroy had never seen him before. “There I can’t help you,” he said. “The man guards his identity very carefully. I only had dealings with his underlings.”

“Such as the woman Effisia Bell who owns the house in Kensington where your body was seized?” one of the policemen asked.

Tacroy shrugged. “She was one of them. Yes.”

Miss Bell, the Last Governess, Christopher thought. She had to be one of them. He kept his face so vague that it felt as stiff as the golden statue of Asheth.

“Who else can you name?” someone else asked.

“Nobody much, I’m afraid,” Tacroy said.

Several other people asked him the same question in different ways, but Tacroy simply swung his foot and said he couldn’t remember. At length Gabriel leaned forward. “We have taken a brief look at that horseless carriage on which your spirit smuggled the plunder,” he said. “It’s an ingenious object, Roberts.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Tacroy agreed. “It must have taken quite a while to perfect. You can see it had to be fluid enough to cross the World Edge, but solid enough so that the people in the other Series could load it when I got it there. I got the impression that the Wraith had to wait until he’d got the carriage right before he could expand into the Related Worlds.”

That’s not true! Christopher thought. And
I
used to load it! He’s lying about everything!

“Several wizards must have worked on that thing, Mordecai,” Miss Rosalie said. “Who were they?”

“Heaven knows,” said Tacroy. “No—wait a minute. Effie Bell dropped a name. Phelps, was it? Felper? Felperin?”

Gabriel and the policemen exchanged glances. Flavian murmured, “The Felperin brothers! We’ve suspected they were crooked for years.”

“Another curious thing, Roberts,” Gabriel said. “Our brief inspection of the carriage shows that it seems at one time to have been almost destroyed by fire.”

Christopher found that he had stopped breathing.

“Accident in the workshop, I suppose,” Tacroy said.

“
Dragon
fire, Mordecai,” said Dr. Simonson. “I recognized it at once.”

Tacroy let his bitter, anxious, laughing eyes travel around everyone’s faces. Christopher still could not breathe. But once again Tacroy’s eyes passed over Christopher as if he had never seen him before. He laughed. “I was joking. The sight of you all sitting around in judgment brings out the worst in me. Yes, it was burned by a dragon objecting to a load of dragons’ blood I was collecting in Series Eight. It happened about a year ago.” Christopher began breathing at that. “I lost the whole load,” Tacroy said, “and was nearly too scalded to get back into my body. We had to suspend operations most of last autumn until the carriage was repaired. If you remember, I reported to you that the Wraith seemed to have stopped importing then.”

Christopher drew in some long relieved breaths and tried not to make them too obvious. Then one of the whiskered Government men spoke up. “Did you always go out alone?” he asked, and Christopher almost stopped breathing again.

“Of course I was alone,” said Tacroy. “What use would another traveler be? Mind you, I have absolutely no way of knowing how many other carriages the Wraith was sending out. He could have hundreds.”

And that’s nonsense! Christopher thought. Ours was the only one, or they wouldn’t have had to stop last autumn when I went to school and forgot. If he had not realized by then that Tacroy was protecting him, he would have known by the end of the morning. The questions went on and on. Tacroy’s eyes slid across Christopher over and over again, without a trace of recognition. And every time Tacroy’s answer should have incriminated Christopher, Tacroy lied, and followed the lie up with a smokescreen of other confessions to take people’s minds off the question. Christopher’s face went stiff from keeping the vague look on it. He stared at Tacroy’s bitter face and felt worse and worse. At least twice, he nearly jumped up and confessed. But that seemed such a waste of all Tacroy’s trouble.

The questions did not stop for lunch. The butler wheeled in a trolley of sandwiches, which everyone ate over pages of notes, while they asked more questions. Christopher was glad to see one of the footmen taking Tacroy some sandwiches too. Tacroy was pale as the milkiest coffee by then and his swinging boot was shaking. He bit into the sandwiches as if he was starving and answered the next questions with his mouth full.

Christopher bit into his own sandwich. It was salmon. He thought of mermaids and was nearly sick.

“What’s the matter?” whispered Flavian.

“Nothing. I just don’t like salmon,” Christopher whispered back. It would be stupid to give himself away now after Tacroy had worked so hard to keep him out of it. He put the sandwich to his mouth, but he just could not bring himself to take another bite.

“It could be the effect of that life-removal,” Flavian murmured anxiously.

“Yes, I expect that’s it,” Christopher said. He laid the sandwich down again, wondering how Tacroy could bear to eat his so ravenously.

The questions were still going on when the butler wheeled the trolley away. He came back again almost at once and whispered discreetly to Gabriel de Witt. Gabriel thought, decided something, and nodded. Then, to Christopher’s surprise, the butler came and leaned over him.

“Your mother is here, Master Christopher, waiting in the Small Saloon. If you will follow me.”

Christopher looked at Gabriel, but Gabriel was leaning forward to ask Tacroy who collected the packages when they arrived in London. Christopher got up to follow the butler. Tacroy’s eyes flickered after him. “Sorry,” Christopher heard him say. “My mind’s getting like a sieve. You’ll have to ask me that again.”

Mermaids, Christopher thought, as he crossed the hall after the butler. Fishy packages. Bundles of dragons’ blood. I knew it was dragons’ blood in Series Eight, but I didn’t know the dragon was objecting. What’s going to happen to Tacroy now? When the butler opened the door of the Small Saloon and ushered him in, he could hardly focus his mind on the large elegant room or the two ladies sitting in it.

Two
ladies?

Christopher blinked at two wide silk skirts. The pink and lavender one belonged to Mama, who looked pale and upset. The brown and gold skirt that was quite as elegant belonged to the Last Governess. Christopher’s mind snapped away from mermaids and dragons’ blood and he stopped short halfway across the oriental carpet.

Mama held out a lavender glove to him. “Darling boy!” she said shakily. “How
tall
you are! You remember dear Miss Bell, don’t you, Christopher? She’s my Companion these days. Your uncle has found us a nice house in Kensington.”

“Walls have ears,” remarked Miss Bell in her dullest voice. Christopher remembered how her hidden prettiness never did come out in front of Mama. He felt sorry for Mama.

“Christopher can deal with that, can’t you, dear?” said Mama.

Christopher pulled himself together. He had no doubt that the Saloon was hung with listening spells, probably one to each gold-framed picture. I ought to tell the police the Last Governess is here, he thought. But if the Last Governess was living with Mama, that would get Mama into trouble too. And he knew that if he gave the Last Governess away, she would tell about him and waste all Tacroy’s trouble. “How did you get in?” he said. “There’s a spell around the grounds.”

“Your mama cried her eyes out at the lodge gates,” the Last Governess said, and gestured meaningly around the room to tell Christopher to do something about the listening spells.

Christopher would have liked to pretend not to understand, but he knew he dared not offend the Last Governess. A blanketing spell was enchanter’s magic and easy enough. He summoned one with an angry blink and, as usual, he overdid it. He thought he had gone deaf. Then he saw that Mama was tapping the side of her face with a puzzled expression and the Last Governess was shaking her head, trying to clear her ears. Hastily he scraped out the middle of the spell so that they could all hear one another inside the deafness.

“Darling,” Mama said tearfully, “we’ve come to take you away from all this. There’s a cab from the station waiting outside, and you’re coming back to Kensington to live with me. Your uncle wants me to be happy and he says he knows I can’t be happy until I’ve got you. He’s quite right of course.”

Only this morning, Christopher thought angrily, he would have danced with joy to hear Mama say this. Now he knew it was just another way to waste Tacroy’s trouble. And another plot of Uncle Ralph’s of course. Uncle Wraith! he thought. He looked at Mama, and Mama looked appealingly back. He could see she meant what she said, even though she had let Uncle Ralph rule her mind completely. Christopher could hardly blame her for that. After all, he had let Uncle Ralph fascinate him, that time when Uncle Ralph tipped him sixpence all those months ago.

He looked at the Last Governess. “Your mama is quite well off now,” she told him in her smooth, composed way. “Your uncle has already restored nearly half your mama’s fortune.”

Nearly half! Christopher thought. Then what has he done with the rest of the money I earned him for nothing? He must be a millionaire several times over by now!

“And with you to help,” said the Last Governess, “in the way you always used to, you can restore the rest of your mama’s money in no time.”

In the way I always used to! Christopher thought. He remembered the smooth way the Last Governess had worked on him, first to find out about the Anywheres and then to get him to do exactly what Uncle Ralph wanted. He could not forgive her for that, though she was even more devoted to Uncle Ralph than Mama was. And remembering that, he looked at Mama again. Mama’s love for Christopher might be perfectly real, but she had left him to nursery maids and Governesses and she would leave him to the Last Governess as soon as they got to Kensington.

“We’re relying on you, darling,” said Mama. “Why are you looking so vague? All you have to do is to climb out of this window and hide in the cab, and we’ll drive away without anyone being the wiser.”

I see, Christopher thought. Uncle Ralph knew Tacroy had been caught. So now he wanted Christopher to go on with the smuggling. He had sent Mama to fetch Christopher and the Last Governess to see that they did as Uncle Ralph wanted. Perhaps he was afraid Tacroy would give Christopher away. Well, if Tacroy could lie, so could Christopher.

“I wish I could,” he said, in a sad, hesitating way, although underneath he was suddenly as smooth and composed as the Last Governess. “I’d love to get out of here—but I can’t. When the dragon burned me in Series Eight, that was my last life but one. Gabriel de Witt was so angry that he took my lives and hid them. If I go outside the Castle now I’ll die.”

Mama burst into tears. “That horrid old man! How awkward for everyone!”

“I think,” said the Last Governess, standing up, “that in that case there’s nothing to detain us here.”

“You’re right, dear,” Mama sobbed. She dried her eyes and gave Christopher a scented kiss. “How terrible not to be able to call one’s lives one’s own!” she said. “Perhaps your uncle can think of something.”

Christopher watched the two of them hurry away, rustling expensively over the carpet as soon as they came out from the silence spell. He canceled the spell with a dejected wave. Though he knew what both of them were like, he still felt hurt and disillusioned as he watched them through the window climbing into the cab that was waiting under the cedar trees of the drive. The only person he knew who had not tried to use him was Tacroy. And Tacroy was a criminal and a double-crosser.

And so am I! Christopher thought. Now he had finally admitted this to himself, he found he could not bear to go back to the Middle Drawing Room to listen to people asking Tacroy questions. He trudged miserably up to his room instead. He opened the door. He stared.

A small girl in a dripping wet brown robe was sitting shivering on the edge of his bed. Her hair hung in damp tails around her pale round face. In one hand she seemed to be gripping a handful of soaking white fur. Her other hand was clutching a large waxed-paper parcel of what looked like books.

This was all I needed! Christopher thought. The Goddess had somehow got here and she had clearly brought her possessions with her.

“
H
OW DID YOU GET HERE?”
Christopher said.

The Goddess shook with shivers. She had left all her jewelry behind, which made her look very odd and plain. “B-By remembering what you said,” she answered through chattering teeth, “about having to leave a l-life b-behind. And of course there are t-two of me if you count the g-golden statue as one. B-But it wasn’t easy. I w-walked into the w-wall s-six times around the corner of m-my r-room b-before I g-got it right. Y-You m-must be b-brave to keep g-going through th-that awful P-Place B-Between. It was h-horrible—I n-nearly d-dropped P-Proudfoot t-twice.”

“Proudfoot?” said Christopher.

The Goddess opened her hand with the white fur in it. The white fur squeaked in protest and began shivering too. “My kitten,” the Goddess explained. Christopher remembered how hot it was in Series Ten. Sometime ago someone had put the scarf old Mrs. Pawson had knitted him neatly away in his chest of drawers. He began searching for it. “I c-couldn’t leave her,” the Goddess said pleadingly. “I brought her feeding bottle with m-me. And I
had
to g-get away as soon as they l-left me alone after the p-portent. They know I know. I heard M-Mother P-Proudfoot saying they were going to have to l-look for a new L-Living One at once.”

And clothes for the Goddess too, Christopher realized, hearing the way her teeth chattered. He tossed her the scarf. “Wrap the kitten in that. It was knitted by a witch so it’ll probably keep her safe. How on earth did you find the Castle?”

“B-By looking into every v-valley I c-came to,” said the Goddess. “I c-can’t
think
why you s-said you didn’t have w-witch sight. I n-nearly m-missed the s-split in the s-spell. It’s really f-faint!”

“Is
that
witch sight?” Christopher said distractedly. He dumped an armful of his warmest clothes on the bed beside her. “Go in the washroom and get those on before you freeze.”

The Goddess put the kitten down carefully wrapped in a nest of scarf. It was still so young that it looked like a white rat. Christopher wondered how it had survived at all. “B-Boys’ clothes?” the Goddess said.

“They’re all I’ve got,” he said. “And be quick. Maids come in and out of here all the time. You’ve got to hide. Gabriel de Witt told me not to have anything to do with Asheth. I don’t know what he’d do if he found you here!” At this, the Goddess jumped off the bed and snatched up the clothes. Christopher was glad to see that she looked truly alarmed. He dashed for the door. “I’ll go and get a hiding place ready,” he said. “Wait here.”

Off he went at a run to the larger of the two old tower rooms, the one that had once been a wizard’s workshop. A runaway Goddess just about put the lid on his troubles, he thought. Still it was probably very lucky that everyone was taken up with poor Tacroy. With a bit of cunning, he ought to be able to keep the Goddess hidden here while he wrote to Dr. Pawson to ask what on earth to do with her permanently.

He dashed up the spiral stair and looked around the dusty room. One way and another, he had not made much progress furnishing it as a den. It was empty apart from an old stool, worm-eaten workbenches, and a rusty iron brazier. Hopeless for a Goddess! Christopher began conjuring desperately. He fetched all the cushions from the Small Saloon. Then on second thought he knew someone would notice. He sent most of them back and conjured cushions from the Large Drawing Room, the Large Saloon, the Middle Saloon, the Small Drawing Room and anywhere else where he thought there would be nobody to see. Charcoal from the gardeners’ shed next to fill the brazier. Christopher summoned fire for it, almost in too much of a hurry to notice he had got it right for once. He remembered a saucepan and an old kettle by the stables and fetched those. A bucket of water he brought from the pump by the kitchen door. What else? Milk for the kitten. It came in a whole churn and he had to tip some out into the saucepan and then send the churn back—the trouble was that he had no idea where things were kept in the Castle. Teapot, tea—he had no idea where those came from, and did the Goddess drink tea? She would have to. What then? Oh, cup, saucer, plates. He fetched the ones out of the grand cabinet in the dining room. They were quite pretty. She would like those. Then spoon, knife, fork. Of course none of the silver ones would respond. Christopher fetched what must have been the whole kitchen cutlery drawer with a crash, sorted hastily through it and sent it back like the churn. And she would need food. What was in the pantry?

The salmon sandwiches arrived, neatly wrapped in a white napkin. Christopher gagged. Mermaids. But he arranged them with the other things on the bench before taking a hasty look around. The charcoal had begun to glow red in the brazier, but it needed something else to make it look homey. Yes, a carpet. The nice round one from the library would do. When the carpet came, it turned out twice as big as he had thought. He had to move the brazier to make room. There. Perfect.

He dashed back to his room. He arrived at the exact moment when Flavian opened its door and started to walk in.

Christopher hastily cast the fiercest invisibility spell he could. Flavian opened the door on utter blankness. To Christopher’s relief, he stood and stared at it.

“Er-hem!” Christopher said behind him. Flavian whirled around as if Christopher had stabbed him. Christopher said airily, and as loudly as he could, “Just practicing my practical magic, Flavian.” The stumbling sounds he could hear from inside the blankness stopped. The Goddess knew Flavian was there. But he had to get her out of there.

“Oh. Were you? Good,” Flavian said. “Then I’m sorry to interrupt, but Gabriel says I’m to give you a lesson now because I won’t be here tomorrow. He wants a full muster of Castle staff to go after the Wraith.”

While Flavian was speaking, Christopher felt inside the invisibility in his room—using a magical sixth sense which up to then he did not know he had—and located first the Goddess standing by his bed, then the kitten nestled in the scarf on the bed, and sent them both fiercely to the tower room. At least, he hoped he had. He had never transported living things before and he had no idea if it was the same. He heard a heavy
whoosh
of displaced air from among the invisibility, which was the same kind of noise the milk churn had made, and he knew the Goddess had gone somewhere. He just had to hope she would understand. She had after all shown she could look after herself.

He canceled the invisibility. The room seemed to be empty. “I like to practice in private,” he told Flavian.

Flavian shot him a look. “Come to the schoolroom.”

As they walked along the corridor, Christopher caught up with what Flavian had been saying. “You’re all going after the Wraith tomorrow?”

“If we can get him,” Flavian said. “After you left, Mordecai cracked open enough to give us a few names and addresses. We think he was telling the truth.” He sighed. “I’d look forward to catching them, except that I can’t get over
Mordecai
being one of them!”

What about Mama? Christopher wondered anxiously. He wished he could think of a way to warn her, but he had no idea where in Kensington she was living.

They reached the schoolroom. The moment they got there, Christopher realized that he had only canceled the invisibility on his room, not on the Goddess or the kitten. He fumbled around with his mind, trying to find her in the tower room—or wherever—and get her visible again. But wherever he had sent her, she seemed too far away for him to find. The result was that he did not hear anything Flavian said for at least twenty minutes.

“I
said
,” Flavian said heavily, “that you seem a bit vague.”

He had said it several times, Christopher could tell. He said hastily, “I was wondering what was going to happen to Ta—Mordecai Roberts now.”

“Prison, I suppose,” Flavian answered sadly. “He’ll be in clink for years.”

“But they’ll have to put a special clink around his spirit to stop that getting away, won’t they?” Christopher said.

To his surprise, Flavian exploded. “That’s just the kind of damn-fool, frivolous, unfeeling remark you
would
make!” he cried out. “Of all the hardhearted, toffee-nosed, superior little beggars I’ve ever met, you’re the worst! Sometimes I don’t think you have a soul—just a bundle of worthless lives instead!”

Christopher stared at Flavian’s usually pale face all pink with passion, and tried to protest that he had not meant to be unfeeling. He had only meant that it must be quite hard to keep a spirit traveler in prison. But Flavian, now he had started, seemed quite unable to stop.

“You seem to think,” he shouted, “that those nine lives give you the right to behave like the Lord of Creation! That, or there’s a stone wall around you. If anyone so much as tries to be friendly, all they get is haughty stares, vague looks, or pure damn rudeness! Goodness knows,
I’ve
tried. Gabriel’s tried. Rosalie’s tried. So have all the maids, and
they
say you don’t even notice
them
! And now you make jokes about poor Mordecai! I’ve had enough! I’m sick of you!”

Christopher had no idea that people saw him like this. He was astounded. What’s gone wrong with me? he thought. I’m nice really! When he went to the Anywheres as a small boy, everyone had liked him. Everybody had smiled. Total strangers had given him things. Christopher saw that he had gone on thinking that people only had to see him to like him, and it was only too clear that nobody did. He looked at Flavian, breathing hard and glaring at him. He seemed to have hurt Flavian’s feelings badly. He had not thought Flavian had feelings to hurt. And it made it worse somehow that he had
not
meant to make a joke about Tacroy—not when Tacroy had just spent the whole day lying on his behalf. He
liked
Tacroy. The trouble was, he did not dare tell Flavian he did. Nor did he dare say that his mind had mostly been on the Goddess. So what
could
he say?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly sorry.” His voice came out wobbly with shock. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings—not this time anyway—really.”

“Well!” said Flavian. The pink in his face died away. He leaned back in his chair, staring. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say sorry—meaning it, that is. I suppose it’s some kind of breakthrough.” He clapped his chair back to the floor and stood up. “Sorry I lost my temper. But I don’t think I can go on with this lesson today. I feel too emotional. Run away, and I’ll make up for it after tomorrow.”

Christopher found himself free—and with mixed feelings about it—to go and look for the Goddess. He hurried to the tower room.

To his great relief she was there, in a strong smell of boiled-over milk, sitting on the many-colored silk cushions, feeding the kitten out of a tiny doll’s feeding-bottle. With the charcoal warming the air and the carpet—which now had a singed patch beside the brazier—covering the stone floor, the room seemed suddenly homey.

The Goddess greeted him with a most un-Goddesslike giggle. “You forgot to make me visible again! I’ve never done invisibility—it took me ages to find how to cancel it, and I had to stand still the whole time in case I trod on Proudfoot. Thanks for doing this room. Those cups are really pretty.”

Christopher giggled too at the sight of the Goddess in his Norfolk jacket and knee-breeches. If you looked just at the clothes, she was a plump boy, rather like Oneir, but if you looked at her grubby bare feet and her long hair, you hardly knew what she was. “You don’t look much like the Living Asheth—” he began.

“Don’t!” The Goddess sprang to her knees, carefully bringing the kitten and its bottle with her. “Don’t say that name! Don’t even think it! She’s me, you know, as much as I’m
her
, and if anyone reminds her, she’ll notice where I am and send the Arm of Asheth!”

Christopher realized that this must be true or the Goddess could not have got to his world alive. “Then what am I supposed to call you?”

“Millie,” said the Goddess firmly, “like the girl in the schoolbooks.”

He had known she would get around to school before long. He tried to keep her off the subject by asking, “Why do you call the kitten Proudfoot? Isn’t that dangerous too?”

“A bit,” the Goddess agreed. “But I had to put Mother Proudfoot off the scent—she was ever so flattered—I felt mean deceiving her. Luckily there was an even better reason to call her that. Look.” She laid the doll’s bottle down and gently spread one of the kitten’s tiny front paws out over the top of her finger. Its claws were pink. The paw looked like a very small daisy, Christopher thought, kneeling down to look. Then he realized that there were an awful lot of pink claws—at least seven of them in fact. “She has a holy foot,” the Goddess said solemnly. “That means she carries the luck of a certain golden deity. When I saw it, I knew it meant I should get here and go to school.”

They were back on the Goddess’s favorite subject again. Fortunately, at that moment a powerful contralto voice spoke outside the door. “Wong,” it said.

“Throgmorten!” Christopher said. He jumped up in great relief and went to open the door. “He won’t hurt the kitten, will he?”

“He’d better
not
!” said the Goddess.

But Throgmorten was entirely glad to see all of them. He ran to the Goddess with his tail up and the Goddess, despite greeting him, “Hallo, you vile cat!” rubbed Throgmorten’s ears and was obviously delighted to see him. Throgmorten gave the kitten an ownerlike sniff and then settled down between Christopher and the fire, purring like a rusty clock.

In spite of this interruption, it was only a matter of time before the Goddess got around to school again. “You got into trouble—didn’t you?—when I kept you in the wall,” she said, thoughtfully eating a salmon sandwich. Christopher had to look away. “I know you did, or you’d have said. What are these funny fishy things?”

“Salmon sandwiches,” Christopher said with a shudder, and he told her about the way Gabriel had put his ninth life in a gold ring in order to take his mind off mermaids.

“Without even asking you first?” the Goddess said indignantly. “Now you’re the one who’s worst off. Just let me get settled in at school and I’ll think of a way to get that life back for you.”