The Chrestomanci Series: Entire Collection Books 1-7. Diana Wynne Jones
in a twinkle of glassy feet, behind the robes of a simpering lady saint. The hairy saint jumped gleefully up and down on the model of the Castle.
One by one, all the windows came to life. Almost every saint turned and fought the one next to him. Those who had no one to fight, either hitched up their robes and did silly dances, or waved to the vicar, who rambled on without noticing. The little tiny people blowing trumpets in the corners of the windows sprang and gambolled and frisked, and pulled transparent faces at anyone who was looking. The hairy saint winkled the kingly one out from behind the simpering lady and chased him from window to window in and out of all the other fighting couples.
By this time, the whole congregation had seen. Everyone stared, or whispered, or leant craning this way and that to watch the twinkling glass toes of the kingly saint.
There was such a disturbance that Mr Saunders woke up, puzzled. He looked at the windows, understood, and looked sharply at Gwendolen. She sat with her eyes demurely cast down, the picture of innocence. Cat glanced at Chrestomanci. For all he could tell, Chrestomanci was attending to the vicar’s every word and had not even noticed the windows. Millie was sitting on the edge of her seat, looking agitated. And the vicar still rambled on, quite unconscious of the turmoil.
The curate, however, felt he ought to put a stop to the unseemly behaviour of the windows. He fetched a cross and a candle. Followed by a giggling choirboy swinging incense, he went from window to window murmuring exorcisms. Gwendolen obligingly stopped each saint in its tracks as he came to it – which meant that the kingly saint was stranded halfway across the wall. But, as soon as the curate’s back was turned, he began to run again, and the free-for-all went on more riotously than before. The congregation rolled about, gasping.
Chrestomanci turned and looked at Mr Saunders. Mr Saunders nodded. There was a sort of flicker, which jolted Cat where he sat, and, when he looked at the windows, every saint was standing stiff and glassy there, as they should be.
Gwendolen’s head came up indignantly. Then she shrugged. At the back of the church, a great stone crusader sat up on his tomb and, with much rasping of stone, thumbed his nose at the vicar.
“Dearly beloved—” said the vicar. He saw the crusader. He stopped, confounded.
The curate hastened up and tried to exorcise the crusader. A look of irritation crossed the crusader’s face. He lifted his great stone sword. But Mr Saunders made a sharp gesture. The crusader, looking even more irritated, lowered his sword and lay down again with a thump that shook the church.
“There are some in this congregation who are certainly not sanctified,” the vicar said sadly. “Let us pray.”
When everyone straggled out of church, Gwendolen sauntered out among them, quite impervious to the shocked looks everyone gave her as she passed. Millie hurried after her and seized her arm. She looked most upset.
“That was disgraceful, you ungodly child! I don’t dare speak to the poor vicar. There is such a thing as going too far, you know!”
“Have I gone it?” Gwendolen asked, really interested.
“Very nearly,” said Millie.
But not quite, it seemed. Chrestomanci did not say anything to Gwendolen, though he said a great deal, very soothingly, both to the vicar and to the curate.
“Why doesn’t your father tell Gwendolen off?” Cat asked Roger as they walked back up the avenue. “Taking no notice of her just makes her worse.”
“I don’t know,” said Roger. “He comes down on us hard enough if we use witchcraft. Perhaps he thinks she’ll get tired of it. Has she told you what she’s going to do tomorrow?” It was clear Roger could hardly wait.
“No. She’s cross with me for playing soldiers with you,” said Cat.
“Her stupid fault for thinking she owns you,” said Roger. “Let’s get into old clothes and build some more of the tree-house.”
Gwendolen was angry when Cat went off with Roger again. Maybe that was why she thought of what she did next. Or perhaps, as she said, she had other reasons. At all events, when Cat woke up on Monday morning, it was dark. It felt very early. It looked even earlier. So Cat turned over and went to sleep again.
He was astonished to find Mary shaking him a minute later. “It’s twenty to nine, Eric. Get up, do!”
“But it’s dark!” Cat protested. “Is it raining?”
“No,” said Mary. “Your sister’s been hard at it again. And where she gets the strength from, a little girl like her, beats me!”
Feeling tired and Mondayish, Cat dragged himself out of bed and found he could not see out of the windows. Each window was a dark criss-cross of branches and leaves – green leaves, bluish cedar sprays, pine-needles, and leaves just turning yellow and brown. One window had a rose pressed against it, and there were bunches of grapes squashed on both of the others. And behind them, it looked as if there was a mile-thick forest. “Good Lord!” he said.
“You may well look!” said Mary. “That sister of yours has fetched every tree in the grounds and stood them as close as they can get to the Castle. You wonder what she’ll think of next.”
The darkness made Cat weary and gloomy. He did not want to get dressed. But Mary stood over him, and made him wash, too. The reason she was so dutiful, Cat suspected, was that she wanted to tell someone all about the difficulties the trees were causing. She told Cat that the yew trees from the formal garden were packed so tight by the kitchen door that the men had to hack a path for the milk to come through. There were three oak trees against the main front door, and no one could budge it. “And the apples are all underfoot among the yew trees, so it smells like a cider-press in the kitchen,” Mary said.
When Cat arrived wearily in the playroom, it was even darker there. In the deep greenish light, he could see that Gwendolen was, understandably, white and tired. But she looked satisfied enough.
“I don’t think I like these trees,” Cat whispered to her, when Roger and Julia had gone through to the schoolroom. “Why couldn’t you do something smaller and funnier?”
“Because I’m not a laughing stock!” Gwendolen hissed back. “And I needed to do it. I had to know how much power I could draw on.”
“Quite a lot, I should think,” Cat said, looking at the mass of horse-chestnut leaves pressed against the window.
Gwendolen smiled. “Better still when I’ve got my dragon’s blood.”
Cat nearly blurted out that he had seen dragon’s blood in Mr Saunders’s workshop. But he stopped himself in time. He did not care for mighty works like this.
They spent another morning with the lights on, and at lunch time, Cat, Julia and Roger went out to have a look at the trees. They were disappointed to find that it was quite easy to get out of their private door. The rhododendrons were three feet away from it. Cat thought Gwendolen must intentionally have left them a way out, until he looked up and saw, from their bent branches and mashed leaves, that the bushes had indeed been squashed against the door earlier. It looked as if the trees were retreating.
Beyond the rhododendrons, they had to fight their way through something like a jungle. The trees were rammed so tight that, not only had twigs and leaves broken off by cartloads, but great branches had been torn away too, and fallen tangled with smashed roses, broken clematis and mangled grapes. When the children tore themselves out on the other side of the jungle, blank daylight hit them like a hammer blow. They blinked. The gardens, the village, and even the hills beyond were bald. The only place where they could still see trees was above the old grey ruined wall of Chrestomanci’s garden.
“It must have been a strong spell,” said Roger.
“It’s like a desert,” said Julia. “I never thought I’d miss the trees so much!”
But, halfway through the afternoon, it became clear that the trees were going back to their proper places.