Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [57]
“Well, Young Chant,” said Mr. Nostrum, “this is the matter in a nutshell. There is a group, a clique, a collection of people, headed by the Master of the Castle, who are behaving very selfishly in connection with witchcraft. They are keeping all the best things to themselves, which of course makes them very dangerous—a threat to all witches, and a looming disaster to ordinary people. For instance, take dragons’ blood. You know that it is banned. These people, with That Person at their head, had it banned, and yet—mark this well, Young Chant—they use it daily themselves. And—here is my point—they keep tight control of the ways to get to the worlds where dragons’ blood comes from. An ordinary necromancer like myself can only get it at great risk and expense, and our exotic suppliers have to endanger themselves to get it for us. And the same goes for almost any product from another world.
“Now, I ask you, Young Chant, is this fair? No. And I’ll tell you why not, young Eric. It is not fair that the ways to other worlds should be in the hands of a few. That is the crux of the matter: the ways to other worlds. We want them opened up, made free to everyone. And that is where you come in, Young Chant. The best and easiest way, the broadest Gateway to Elsewhere, if I may put it like that, is a certain enclosed garden in the grounds of this said Castle. I expect you have been forbidden to enter it—”
“Yes,” said Cat. “We have been.”
“And consider how unfair!” said Mr. Nostrum. “The Master of That Place uses it every day and travels where he pleases. So what I want you to do, Young Chant, and this is all Plan Two amounts to, is to go into that garden at two-thirty precisely on Sunday afternoon. Can you promise me to do that?”
“What good would that do?” asked Cat.
“It would break the seal of enchantment these dastardly persons have set on the Gateways to Elsewhere,” Mr. Nostrum said.
“I’ve never quite understood,” Janet said, with a very convincing wrinkle in her forehead, “how Cat could break the seals just by going into the garden.”
Mr. Nostrum looked a little irritated. “By being an ordinary innocent lad, of course. My dear Gwendolen, I have stressed to you over and over again the importance of having an innocent lad at the center of Plan Two. You must understand.”
“Oh, I do, I do,” Janet said hastily. “And has it to be this Sunday at two-thirty?”
“As ever is,” said Mr. Nostrum, smiling again. “It’s a good strong time. Will you do that for us, Young Chant? Will you, by this simple act, set your sister and people like her free—free to do as they need in the practice of magic?”
“I’ll get into trouble if I’m caught,” said Cat.
“A bit of boyish cunning will see you through. Then, never fear, we’ll take care of you afterwards,” Mr. Nostrum persuaded.
“I suppose I can try,” said Cat. “But do you think you can help me a bit in return? Do you think your brother could very kindly lend us twenty pounds by next Wednesday?”
A vague, though affable, look affected Mr. Nostrum’s left eye. It pointed benevolently to the farthest corner of the parlor. “Anything you please, dear boy. Just get into that garden, and the fruits of all the worlds will be yours for the picking.”
“I need to be a flea half an hour later, and I want to look as if I can do magic on Monday,” said Cat. “That’s all I need, apart from the twenty pounds.”
“Anything, anything! Just get into that garden for us,” said Mr. Nostrum expansively.
With that, it seemed Cat and Janet had to be content. Cat made several efforts to fix Mr.