Carbonel: The King Of Cats

3

Carbonel

‘Hallo, darling!’ said Mrs Brown. ‘How late you are. I didn’t hear you come upstairs.’

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ burst out Rosemary, ‘but Mummy, I’ve bought a cat in the Market. Please may I keep him?’

Mrs Brown rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand in the way she had when she was tired and worried.

‘A cat? Oh dear! Of course I don’t mind. But Mrs Walker isn’t very pleased with us at the moment.’

‘Because of the toffee?’ said Rosemary, rather crestfallen. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Besides, that was three weeks ago, and I never meant to let it boil over. This isn’t an ordinary cat, he talks! Don’t you, my Pussums?’

The black cat yawned disdainfully, jumped on to the window sill, and gazed abstractedly out.

‘I forgot. You can only hear him talk if you are holding the witch’s broom-stick.’

Her mother was smiling in a grown-up ‘Bless-your-little-fancies’ way. Then she laughed.

‘He might really have been showing you that he doesn’t approve of being called Pussums. Poor creature, he is terribly thin. You had better give him that bit of fish in the meat-safe. I was going to make some fish-cakes, for supper, but we can open a tin of something instead.’

Rosemary beamed. She knew that if her mother began to take an interest in the cat she would never have the heart to turn him away – at least, not without a struggle. The cat ate the fish and drank a saucer of milk and then, purring deeply, turned his attention to his appearance. He washed his paws and whiskers very thoroughly while Rosemary, curled up on the horsehair sofa, ate the tea her mother had kept for her. There was a mug of milk, some jam sandwiches, and a piece of Swiss roll.

‘He is really a very handsome animal,’ went on her mother. ‘You know, Mrs Pendlebury Parker never found her ginger cat again, although she offered a reward for him. It must be four months now since she lost him.’

‘The one she called Popsey Dinkums?’ asked Rosemary. She was busy unwinding her Swiss roll, a fascinating occupation which was only allowed at picnic sort of meals.

‘Mrs Parker thought the world of that animal,’ went on her mother. ‘I’ve seen it eating meals I would willingly have had for our supper. Oh dear, why does the shuttle always have to give out just a few inches from the end of the seam? I must finish this dressing-gown for Miss Withers before I start working for Mrs Pendlebury Parker.’

‘And that means tonight. Poor Mummy!’

Mrs Brown sighed. ‘Never mind. You had better get to bed early, Rosie. You are yawning your head off! We will talk to Mrs Walker in the morning about the cat, but don’t be too hopeful, darling.’

‘I am rather tired. I expect it was all that walking this afternoon. But Mummy, can I have him to sleep in my room? I’m sure he’ll be good, won’t you, Pussums? And if he wants to go out there is always the little flat roof outside my window.’

‘Well, really,’ said her mother, ‘he might be trying to get round me!’ She bent down to stroke the cat, who was rubbing himself against her legs and purring loudly. ‘Very well, dear, he can sleep with you if you like.’

Later that evening, when she had kissed her mother good night and put on her nightdress, Rosemary fetched the broom from her wardrobe, jumped on to her bed, and patted the quilt beside her.

‘Come on, Pussums! Now we can have a long talk.’

‘Not if you call me by that revolting name. Pussums indeed! As if I were a common or garden, mousing, sit-by-the-fire cat.’

‘I’m very sorry, Pu… I mean, what shall I call you, then?’

‘You may call me Carbonel. That is my name.’

The cat had jumped up beside her and was kneading the quilt with his front paws, before settling in the hollow she had made in the bedclothes. He turned round three times and then sat neatly down with his front paws tucked under him.

‘Rosemary, you have a great deal to learn, but you have a kind heart and the right sort of hands.’

She was rubbing him under his chin and feeling the soft vibration of the beginnings of a purr. Rosemary stroked him in silence for a few minutes, and then she said:

‘If I’ve got a lot to learn, please don’t go to sleep now, but begin teaching me. What shall we do if Mrs Walker says we mayn’t keep you?’

‘That’s neither here nor there. In any case I can’t stay, at least, not very long.’

‘Can’t stay?’ said Rosemary in dismay. ‘But why? You’re mine! I bought you with my own money!’

‘For which, believe me, I shall be always grateful. But you are only fulfilling the prophecy’

‘What prophecy? Oh, do explain!’ said Rosie, bouncing with impatience so that the bed creaked. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about!’

‘I said you had a lot to learn,’ said Carbonel coolly. ‘Sit still and I will try to explain. In the first place you thought you had bought a common witch’s cat. Mind you, I’m not blaming you. A very natural mistake. You were not to know that I am a Royal Cat.’

‘Gracious!’ said Rosemary in a voice that squeaked with excitement. ‘But how did you…?’

‘Don’t interrupt,’ said Carbonel, ‘I’m telling you. I was stolen from my cradle when I was a mere kitten. There was a prophecy among my people that something like that would happen one day. SHE stole me. Always ambitious, she was, and nothing would satisfy her but a Royal Cat to run her errands and sit on her broom. Oh, she was a proud one in those days. Handsome they say she was once, too, though you wouldn’t think so now.’

‘How horrid of her to steal a kitten!’ breathed Rosemary indignantly.

‘Yes,’ said the cat, gazing out of the window with his great amber eyes, not as if he was looking at the roofs and chimneys, but as though he was seeing something quite different. ‘I was so young that my eyes were still blue, and my tail no longer than your little finger. But I knew the Royal Rules. I learnt ’em as soon as my eyes were open. I can just remember my mother, a beautiful, smoke grey Persian she was, saying to me: “My son,” she used to say, “my little son, never forget you are a Prince. Behave like one, even if you do not feel like one or look like one.” I never forgot her words, so I never lost my self respect. Many’s the time when I’ve been too hungry to sleep I’ve repeated the Rules over and over to myself, till at last I dropped off.’

‘Poor little kitten!’ said Rosemary softly.

‘But it had its moments,’ he went on. ‘I took to the broomstick business like a duck to water. Oh, those were the days, when you raced together through the tumbling sky, with the Milky Way crackling below, and the wind in your fur strong enough to tear the whiskers off you! Or leaping and plunging through the midnight sky with a host of others, and the earth twirling beneath you no bigger than a bobbin!’

He was standing now with his back arched and bristling, making strange cat noises in his throat. It was growing dusk, and his eyes glowed hotly. Rosemary waited, a little awed, till the noises in his throat subsided, and then she put out a timid hand and stroked the bristling fur. The cat started and came to himself again. She stroked him gently till the only sign of his excitement was in the twitching end of his tail.

‘But why did you not run away?’ asked Rosemary presently.

‘Because the magic was too strong for me. There was nothing for it but to wait until the prophecy was fulfilled. It went like this…

A kit among the stars shall sit

Beyond the aid of feline wit.

Empty Royal throne and mat,

Till Three Queens save a princely cat.

‘And did you sit among the stars?’ asked Rosie.

‘Of course,’ said Carbonel, ‘many a night. On Christian name terms with some of them I was… But don’t go and start me off again.’

‘I’m beginning to see!’ said Rosemary, bouncing up and down again. ‘My Queen Victoria farthings are the Three Queens, and they bought you from… from the old woman.’

‘You’d better call her Mrs Cantrip. That’s the name she goes by.’

‘And now you are free! Oh, Carbonel! How lovely. I’m so glad.’ But Carbonel did not seem to share her excitement.

‘That’s not all,’ he said soberly. ‘The prophecy is fulfilled and I am free from HER. I did try to escape, I was a kitten of spirit, but of course she caught me. As a punishment, and to make quite certain, she put another spell on me, and until that is broken I must be your slave instead. It was sheer extravagance throwing good magic about like that, but just like her. Spiteful.’

‘But I don’t want a slave! Carbonel dear, how can we undo it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the black cat soberly. ‘That’s just it. It was a Silent Magic – they’re the worst kind – and of course as it was silent I didn’t hear it. All I do know is that it must be undone with all the same things with which it was made. If you want to undo it you must have the hat and the cauldron. The broom you have already.’

‘But, of course, I want to undo the spell and set you free! Didn’t you see what she did with the other things?’

‘SHE sold them when I was away on an errand so that I should not know where they are. When we find them we’ve still got to discover the Silent Magic.’ There was silence in the little room, which was almost dark now. Even the noise of her mother’s sewing machine had stopped. Rosemary put her arm comfortingly round Carbonel.

‘We’re jolly well going to find everything. The first thing to do is to discover what has happened to the hat and the cauldron. We will start immediately after breakfast tomorrow!’

Suddenly she realized how sleepy she was. ‘We’d better go to bed now.’ She padded across the linoleum of the bedroom floor and put the broom in the wardrobe. Before she slipped between the sheets she put both arms round Carbonel and gave him a hug, a thing she would have been rather shy of doing when she could hear him talking. But Carbonel seemed to bear her no malice and gave her cheek a little lick. Rosemary lay down and tucked up her linoleum-chilled toes in her nightdress. She was just dropping off to sleep when she thought to herself, ‘He didn’t tell me who his people are, or where they live.’

She was just wondering whether to get out of bed to fetch the broom to ask him, when somehow it was morning. The sun was streaming through the window and her mother was knocking on the door.