The Kingdom of Carbonel (12 page)

‘Then you won't say anything to anyone this time?' said Rosemary. ‘You are a darling! We'll
never do it again, and we shall never forget how kind you've been!'

The old woman's eyes twinkled. ‘Well, I like a bit of fun myself. Always did! And believe it or not, I was young once myself. Where do you live?'

‘Fallowhithe,' said Rosemary.

‘Fallow…?'

The old woman put down her mug with such a bump that the cocoa slopped over. She stared at Rosemary.

‘'Ere, don't tell me you're in your night things?'

Rosemary nodded.

‘You been up there all night?'

Rosemary nodded again.

‘Your poor ma will be frantic! Have you got your bus fares home? You haven't? Well, I don't know! ‘Ere you are.' She took a worn black purse from her pocket and pushed a shilling into John's hand. When they tried to thank her she seemed embarrassed.

‘All right, all right, you can send it back, dear. Flackett's the name, Number 1 Adelaide Row. Now hop it, or I shan't get my work done early after all.'

John and Rosemary did not have to be told twice. But before finally going out into the street,
Rosemary tied up her nightdress with her dressing gown cord.

‘It's a good thing your dressing gown has got too small,' said John. ‘It looks like a coat.'

‘I hope everyone else will think so,' said Rosemary doubtfully.

But people who travel on buses between seven and eight in the morning do not bother very much about what their fellow travellers are wearing. Apart from a wink and a ‘What's this, the babes in the wood?' from the driver, for there were no other children, they reached the end of Cranshaw Road without any more adventures.

As they turned into number 101, John said, ‘We never made any plans last night after all about keeping the kittens safe. Let's look in before we go up to breakfast and tell Woppit to be specially careful.'

Rosemary nodded.

‘And we must get those screws for the lock straight away,' she said as they ran across the lawn. They could see the greenhouse from the bottom of the path.

‘Oh!' she said. ‘The door's open! Come on!'

Together they raced down the path and looked inside. The flower pots they had stacked in one corner so neatly were upset and were scattered over the floor. The basket, in which the kittens
slept, was on its side. The blanket was not there.

‘Calidor! Pergamond!' called Rosemary sharply.

There was no reply. Only a plaintive squeak from the swinging door broke the silence. Frantically, they searched in every corner, they parted the strands of the creeper that grew up the sides of the greenhouse, they turned the watering can upside down, they even peered through the grating in the floor and as they searched they called. But there was no sign of the kittens.

‘It's no use,' said Rosemary. ‘They've gone!'

John and Rosemary stood and looked at each other in horrified silence. And then the silence was broken.

‘What's that?' said Rosemary sharply. ‘Listen!' It was a strangled ‘mew!' which seemed to come from somewhere outside the greenhouse. The two children ran through the open door and looked around anxiously. Propped against the wall was a large, cracked, earthenware pot, the kind that gardeners sometimes use for forcing rhubarb. The hole at the top was covered with a brick, but it was from underneath that the sounds came.

‘Quick!' said John. The mews were growing stronger.

They lifted the pot, but it was not the kittens they could hear. It was Woppit. The old cat was
trying to free herself from the folds of the kittens' blanket in which she had been rolled.

‘Woppit, dear!' said Rosemary, as she unwound the struggling animal. ‘The kittens have gone! What has happened?' But Woppit was too ruffled and woebegone to explain.

‘My little, kingly kittens!' she wailed. ‘My furry darlings! They've gone! They've taken them away, and old Woppit still alive to tell! The shame of it!'

She rocked herself, moaning, from side to side. Rosemary lifted the rumpled animal on to her lap, but Woppit refused to be comforted.

‘I'm quite sure you did everything you could!' said Rosemary. ‘But tell us what happened!'

‘They were sleeping in their bed,' said Woppit, ‘so sweet and snug as two little sardines in a tin, and the moon was shining down on them so round and white as a bowl of milk, and there was me standing guard, and humming a little song and never dreaming –' She broke off, lifted her untidy whiskers to the sky and wailed again.

‘Oh, do go on, Woppit!' said John. ‘If only you'd tell us what happened, perhaps we could
do
something!'

‘Peaceful as a kitchen hearthrug it was,' she continued. ‘And then suddenly the door opened, and there was them humans!'

‘What were they like?' asked Rosemary.

‘There was a tall thin one with Persian fur that needed a deal of licking, and a short sleek one.'

‘Persian fur?' repeated John.

‘I guessed as much,' said Rosemary. ‘It must have been Mrs Cantrip. Her hair sticks out around her face when it's untidy, rather like a Persian cat, and “sleek” is a very good description of Miss Dibdin. But how did they find out the kittens were here?'

‘Search me!' said John shortly.

‘Go on. Woppit. What did they do?'

‘Do?' went on Woppit, rocking herself from side to side in her distress. ‘They stood over the basket, and Persian stirs my precious pets with her great bony finger and says, “We're in luck, my dear! It's them sure enough. It's Carbonel's kittens!”

‘And Sleek says, “How do you know, dear?”

‘“By the three white hairs at the tips of their little tails. The sign of all royal cats and kittens. Didn't they teach you anything at Oxford?”

‘And Sleek claps her hands and says, “What a stroke of luck!” and she laughs, as pleased as if she'd found a couple of kipper heads in a bowl of cream. “Let's take 'em and go!” she says, and she bends down to scoop up my little furry loves.

‘“Not without reckoning with me!” I says, and I ups and claws her hand good and proper. Well, she lets out a screech so loud as if she'd got her
tail caught in the door. But Persian tumbles my darlings on to the floor, whips the blanket out of the basket and drops it on top of me. Mind you, I got in a left and right that'll leave a mark for a bit, but it weren't no good. She rolls me up and puts me in that dark place, and then she cackles through the hole at the top, “You can tell them children they may be clever, but Katie Cantrip has still got a trick up her sleeve! I might have known they'd get themselves mixed up in this!” And then she claps something on top of the pot so that I can't even hear what happens to my little purring, furry sweetings!'

The old cat lifted her muzzle and wailed again.

‘Look, Woppit, dear. You don't have to tell us how frightful it is. We know. But we must go back to the flat now. We'll come back as soon as we can after breakfast.'

‘We've simply got to keep our heads,' said John.

‘The best thing you can do is to wait here until Blandamour comes, and tell her what's happened,' Rosemary added.

‘We've had some excitement, too, I can tell you!' said John.

The two children ran toward the house. When they reached the path from which they had set out the night before, Rosemary stopped.

‘Look at that, John!'

‘What, those two great skid marks on the gravel?'

‘Yes, don't you see what it means?'

‘Well, I suppose it means that we've got to get the garden roller and roll it flat again,' said John crossly. ‘It must have been the weight of the two of us in the chair last night. Oh, come on, Rosie. I could eat a huge breakfast. Hope it's fried eggs.'

‘But it wasn't us!' persisted Rosemary. ‘Those are the marks of the rocking chair coming back with Mrs Cantrip! I think it did the same to her as it did to me. Of course it's a dear, but I don't think it's very bright. When you tell it to go home, it simply goes back to wherever it started from. It doesn't stop to think which house belongs to which person.'

John whistled, fried eggs forgotten for the moment.

‘So when Mrs Cantrip told it to take her home, it brought her to your house by mistake, and I expect the broom with Miss Dibdin followed.'

Rosemary nodded.

‘And I suppose the two of them thought they'd look around while they were here, so that's how they found the kittens. Almost by mistake! What rotten luck!'

‘We've got to think of some way out of this as we've never thought before,' said Rosemary.

‘Well, it's no use trying to think on empty stomachs. Do come on!'

Rosemary hurried, and together they burst into the flat. The adventures of the night before had paled before this new anxiety. They rushed into the kitchen where Mrs Brown was frying eggs and bacon.

‘Mother! The kittens have gone!' said Rosemary. ‘They aren't anywhere to be found. Whatever shall we do?'

Her mother lifted a fried egg and slid it carefully on to a piece of fried bread. Then she looked up, and said with maddening grown-up detachment, ‘Do, darling? Well, first of all you had better get dressed and then both of you must have a thorough wash! Where have you been? I don't mind you getting up early, Rosie, but I think you're a bit big to go wandering about the garden in your night things.'

‘Yes, Mummy, but the kittens –!'

Her mother smiled. ‘I expect they're somewhere in the garden, darling. Don't worry. Run off and dress now.'

Rosemary ran.

As soon as they were able after breakfast, which, for John at least, was a thorough-going affair of
cereal, bacon and egg, toast and marmalade, the children escaped to the garden. As they went into the greenhouse, Blandamour ran to meet them. Merbeck sat in respectful attendance in the background, and Woppit lay on the floor with her front paws over her nose moaning quietly to herself.

‘Has she told you what's happened?' asked Rosemary.

‘She has told me, poor, faithful creature,' said Blandamour. ‘My unhappy little ones!'

‘It is a bad business, Your Majesty,' said Merbeck. ‘It could not be much worse!'

‘Oh, couldn't it?' said John. ‘You haven't heard half of it yet. You see, last night –!'

He began the story of their adventure, and then Rosemary broke in and finished the tale. And as they recounted Grisana's wicked plot, Woppit stopped moaning and sat up to listen, and Blandamour fixed them with unwavering blue eyes, motionless except for the angry twitching of her long white tail.

‘Then Grisana thinks that with me and my kittens out of the way, she and her Broomhurst crowd will be able to walk into my country and take possession, without a claw being raised in its defence! She is so unused to a well-governed kingdom that she mistakes the contentment of Fallowhithe cats for lack of spirit! And I, Blandamour,
am to disappear! She talks as if I were a kitten with its eyes closed. I assure you I can defend myself!'

The white cat was pacing up and down now with flattened ears and bristling back.

‘There will be many to defend you, Your Majesty, should it come to that. But the first part of Grisana's plan has succeeded,' said Merbeck. ‘The royal kittens have gone.'

‘My poor little children. What will become of them?'

‘Your Majesty!' said John suddenly.

All through Rosemary's account of their adventures, he had been busy digging out a loose tile from the floor with the toe of his shoe. His face was very red. ‘Your Majesty, it's my fault, about the kittens I mean. If I had finished mending the lock, as I meant to last night, it would never have happened.'

‘It's just as much my fault,' said Rosemary loyally.

‘Somehow or other, we'll find the kittens and bring them back safely,' went on John. ‘Won't we, Rosie?'

Rosemary nodded.

Blandamour looked searchingly at them both.

‘If anyone can, I think you will. When the Kings return, my dear husband will thank you as you
deserve for all you have done for us. When that day comes, all will be well again. Until then, we must keep this grasping Grisana at bay!'

‘Your Majesty,' said Merbeck, stepping forward. ‘I am old, my claws are blunt and my flanks are lean, but my blood races like a young animal at the tale of such wickedness! If your subjects know of this foul plot too soon, there will be bloodshed. And that we must avoid. Hot-headed young animals would bandy words with Broomhurst cats, and that would lead to blows. There would be border incidents, sallies into enemy country and eventually open war. I have seen it happen before.'

‘Then what shall we do?' asked Blandamour.

‘For the moment the hardest thing of all. Nothing,' said Merbeck. ‘Only a few trusted animals must know of this plot until the time is ripe!'