Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [48]
But Mr. Baslam looked more hurt than ever. He turned away from Cat and Janet and gazed mournfully up at the Castle walls. “You live in a place like this, and tell me you can only get hold of ten bob a week! Don’t play cruel games with me. You can lay your hands on no end of lucre if you puts your minds to it.”
“But we can’t, honestly,” Cat protested.
“I think you should try, young gentleman,” said Mr. Baslam. “I’m not unreasonable. All I’m asking is twenty quid part payment, interest of ten percent included, and the price of the shutting-up spell thrown in. That should come quite easy to you.”
“You know perfectly well it won’t!” Janet said indignantly. “You’d better keep those earrings. Your stuffed rabbit may look pretty in them.”
Mr. Baslam gave her a very whipped look. At the same time, a thin, singing noise began to come from the palm of his hand where the earrings lay. It was too faint for Cat to pick out the words, but it put paid to any notion that Mr. Baslam had been lying. Mr. Baslam’s drooping look became less whipped. He looked more like a bloodhound hot on the trail. He let the earrings slide between his fat fingers and fall on the gravel.
“There they lie,” he said, “if you care to stoop for them. I may remind you, young lady, that trade in dragons’ blood is illicit, illegal, and banned. I’ve obliged you in it. You’ve fobbed me off. Now I’m telling you that I need twenty quid by next Wednesday. That should give you time. If I don’t get it, then Chrestomanci hears of the dragons’ blood Wednesday evening. And if he does, then I wouldn’t be in your shoes, young lady, not for twenty thousand quid and a diamond tiara. Have I made myself clear?”
He had, appallingly. “Suppose we give you the dragons’ blood back?” Cat suggested desperately. Gwendolen had taken Mr. Baslam’s dragons’ blood with her, of course, but there was always that huge jar of it in Mr. Saunders’ workshop.
“What would I do with dragons’ blood, son?” said Mr. Baslam. “I’m not a warlock. I’m only a poor supplier, and there’s no demand for dragons’ blood around here. It’s the money I need. Twenty quid of it, by next Wednesday, and don’t forget.” He gave them a bloodhound nod which flapped his eyes and his cheeks, and edged back into the rhododendrons. They heard him rustling stealthily away.
“What a nasty old man!” Janet said in a shaken whisper. “I wish I really was Gwendolen. I’d turn him into a four-headed earwig. Ugh!” She bent and scrabbled the earrings up off the gravel.
Immediately the air by the door was filled with high, singing voices. “I belong to Caroline Chant! I belong to Caroline Chant!”
“Oh dear!” said Janet. “They know.”
“Give them to me,” said Cat. “Quick. Someone will hear.”
Janet poured the earrings into Cat’s palm. The voices stopped at once. “I can’t get used to all this magic,” said Janet. “Cat, what am I to do? How can I pay that horrible man?”
“There must be something we can sell,” said Cat. “There’s a junk shop in the village. Come on. We must get to lunch.”
They hurried up to the playroom, to find that Mary had already put plates of stew and dumplings in their places.
“Oh, look,” said Janet, who needed to relieve her feelings somehow. “Nourishing fattening lunch. How nice!”
Mary glared at both of them and left the room without speaking. Julia’s look was quite as unpleasant. As Janet sat down in front of her stew, Julia pulled her handkerchief out of her sleeve, already knotted, and laid it in her lap. Janet put her fork into a dumpling. It stuck there. The dumpling was a white pebble, swimming with two others in a plateful of mud.
Janet carefully laid down her fork, with the pebble impaled on it, and put her knife neatly across the mud. She was trying to control herself but, for a moment, she looked like Gwendolen at her most furious. “I was quite hungry,” she said.
Julia smiled. “What a pity,” she said cosily. “And